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The Rule of Shadow

  
 
sine
22:52 / 19.04.04
We all know the old piece of magickal advice, "if you know what's good for your 'work, keep mum", but do we have any clear idea of why this chestnut has so much influence? Is this a folk parapsychology recognition of the sheep/goat effect, or simply a time-honoured method of preventing the magickal Will/ Ego from deflating under repeated blasts of concentrated ridicule? Is there even a distinction? Are there instances where violating the Rule of Shadow might actually enhance a 'working? How strict are 'lithers in adhering to this Rule? Any anecdotes relating to it?
 
 
mixmage
23:10 / 19.04.04
heh... I was just about to start a thread on "To Know, To Will, To Dare and To Keep Silent ", but it seems you might have beaten me to it.

I was wondering how many 'lithers follow this, especially the "Keep Silent"... Is it equally applicable to the solo-magicko, or just for groups to prevent secrets leaking out?

Isn't it open to abuse? A code of silence possibly preventing the abused from speaking out?

Sorry to hijack your thread, but if you're gonna read my mind...
 
 
madfishmonger
23:41 / 19.04.04
i'm a newbie but it seems like people knowing you are a mage would make your workings more potent not less. i don't go around telling people because quite frankly i like being able to interact with "normal" people on their level when i need to.
 
 
---
23:50 / 19.04.04
I've always had the idea of other people's disbelief projecting negative energy towards Magickal workings and i think this is one of the reasons behind the keep silent axiom, but if you tell people who believe in Magick that surely can't be a bad thing.

I don't know much about this though, and look at what Crowley did, he didn't give a damn. But does anyone think that this could have contributed to a lot of the problems that he's said to have had?

This really interests me. I've just started telling my Mam that i'm getting into Magick, and my Brother's known for a while, but i still feel wierd about telling my friends......do other people's disbelief in Magick really cause a significant amount of negative energy to flow towards your workings or is it a load of crap?
 
 
Charlie's Horse
00:09 / 20.04.04
Hells, one of my roommates doesn't believe in a jot of this magic stuff, yet asks me to throw out a sigil for her every so often, which naturally enough works perfectly. Go figure.

I haven't noticed any negative effects, and a decent number of my non-magic using buddies know. Of course, I'm not thinking about them during a ritual or a sigil-tossing, and I doubt they spend much time thinking "Charlie's so full of shit," so it's a hard thing to gauge. If you expect non-magickers knowing about your workings to throw negative energy your way, then I'd expect that you'd prove yourself right. To me, without the employment of focused spellcraft, the negative energy they generate stays inside their own psyches. You need the techniques of magic to fire the energy at a specific target.

So maybe if they put a picture of you in a magician's robe on the dartboard and toss while tripping, or sleep deprived, or somehow tilted, it'd shoot the negative energy at you. But of course that works as a spell in and of itself..
 
 
johnj
01:08 / 20.04.04
".do other people's disbelief in Magick really cause a significant amount of negative energy to flow towards your workings or is it a load of crap? "

Yes - I am destroying it this very instance.
 
 
gravitybitch
01:36 / 20.04.04
For me, it depends on what the "work" is, and very definitely who the "audience" is. Nobody at work knows I practice magick, but most of my friends (who just happen to be inclined towards one or another subset of "magick") know that I do ritual. What I want to be learning tends to come up in conversation, but if I'm doing a specific solitary working I don't talk about it. Group workings are a different thing altogether - I would feel free to discuss most things like that with other practitioners whether or not they were involved in that specific undertaking...
 
 
illmatic
06:48 / 20.04.04
Here is a thread I started last year about Magical Secrecy

I think there's lots of valid reasons for keeping quiet about what you do - is it for you, is it personal and real or is it a pointless diverson to gossip about on the 'net? If the former, you should be able to keep fucking quiet about it. I very rarely talk about the specifics of what I do online, and I will only share my other experiences with certain people. If I were to do so, it'd feel like I'm dissapating the intent, uniqueness and sacred quality of the act. (Got a whole lot of beef about the role the internet is coming to play in magic, may start a thead later today).
 
 
Andek Niemand
09:39 / 20.04.04
Heh... I too was going to start a thread on this topic... Synchronity strikes again!
Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about this one. When I begun working with magick I was younger (still in high school), and back then I didn't speak word one about it to anybody. I guess I was somehow ashamed of it... I mean, I have always been scientific type of guy, very aneristic and all, and donning a robe and drawing pentagrams in the air with a dagger felt quite silly, even to me at the time. I didn't think about it when doing magick, but sometimes I just felt like a darn fool. So, I really kept it to myself. I didn't even keep my books about magick on the shelf, but hid them in the drawer instead.

Well, I am older now, and when I got into a serious relationship, I knew I had to tell my girlfriend about this crazy thing I do. She was quite understanding, even though I could see she was more than a bit amused as well. Nowadays we live under the same room, I don't feel embarassed about the whole magick business anymore, she accepts the occult as a part of my life, she has been very supportive and I feel it has helped my workings a lot. But even now I haven't really told anyone else of "my life with the occult". For me it has been easy to "Keep Silent": I just don't think others would quite understand.

However, I have done Tarot readings to my friends every now and then. The Tarot, it seems to me, is quite widely accepted in the community in general. Tarot has a reputation as a psychological tool: "magick" brings forth images of voodoo priests in cheap B-movies. I mean, the first thing my girlfriend asked when I told her about my workings was: "Umm... Are you, like, summoning evil demons or something like that? Because I don't want any of that kind around the apartment"

Well... This has been a long and rambling story... This IS my first post and all, so be kind to me... But the main point is this: I have kept silent, because I don't feel that many people would understand. Guess I'm a wimp at heart.
 
 
sine
10:01 / 20.04.04
I absolutely love this idea:

“Having such a secret creates a nearly unbearable sense of tension ... this tension represents “energy” or “power” that must be channelled into the work and not simply allowed to dissipate in causal conversation.”
 
 
---
10:33 / 20.04.04
If the former, you should be able to keep fucking quiet about it. I very rarely talk about the specifics of what I do online, and I will only share my other experiences with certain people.

Even though it doesn't bother me too much about online magickal talk, i definately agree about not discussing the specifics. It can cloud the meaning of what your doing/results of what you've done by having it up in a discussion and then distort the whole thing for one.
 
 
illmatic
10:34 / 20.04.04
I don't know if I'm going to bother to create the thread I had planned today. So a quick question - does the ubiquity of information availble online, and the ease at which we can engage in magick-related dialogue through the net, have negative effects on magickal practice? iIm not saying it has no positve effects, these are pretty obvious - but does the 24 hour a day dayglo magickal Internet supermarket have a downside?

(I've got my own suspicions about this, but I want to see what other people say first)
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:36 / 20.04.04
My understanding of the 'to keep silent' thing, is that it's not just about being circumspect enough to avoid getting roasted at the stake (or 21st century equivalent) and it's not about deflecting "negative energy", whatever that means. I think it's far more about creating a sacred space where your stuff can exist without being processed and served up as part of the spectacle as if it's another form of media for mass consumption. It's about keeping stuff under your hat. Tricks up your sleeve. Often the secrecy thing will apply specifically if you are involved in a relationship with an entity or entities. You might receive some information that was meant for you, not for everybody, and certainly not to be re-packaged as an amusing anecdote to entertain your mates.

There's power in secrecy, but I think it often gets conflated with the popular anarcho-hacker notion that information should be free. I don't think that this can be directly applied to the practice of magic without incurring problems. A useful analogy might be if a loved one shared something deeply personal with you, and you then posted it up on your blog the next day because, hey, information wants to be free. Twat.

Somebody said above that Crowley didn't have any regard for keeping silent and just published everything. Is that really the case? You can buy Crowley's magical journals for 1923 in most occult bookstores, but I don't think he ever actually intended for that material to be published and certainly didn't publish it in his lifetime. He wrote his autohagioraphy and was a prolific author, he even caused a stir by publishing some of the Golden Dawn's material against their will, but that doesn't automatically mean that he never ever kept a secret. He never published all of the degree secrets of the OTO, for instance.

The internet and publishing industry creates the illusion that there is no such thing as an oral tradition in magic, which is blatantly untrue. Most of the really interesting magicians I know have received a lot of their core stuff via an oral tradition. 60% of my own core practice does not exist in any book and cannot be found on the web. I never talk about the specifics of my practice on barbelith, and I rarely talk about it with my close friends. It's not because I'm worried about what they might think, or anything ridiculous like that, it's because in a lot of cases this material was intended for me alone - either through an oral tradition or as a gnostic revelation from the spirits. Occasionally I might choose to impart some aspect of these mysteries to someone I trust, and it becomes a powerful and meaningful gift to that person, and the oral tradition continues. To clarify, when I say oral tradition, I don't necessarily mean all the pomp and circumstance of an initiatory order or a direct mentor/novice relationship, it could be - and often is - a conversation in the pub or over a curry.
 
 
illmatic
13:44 / 20.04.04
I think you’re spot on talking about the oral tradition. It still exists, even in a heavily mediated, information-at-the-speed-of-light culture like our own. Often a simple sentence from the various people I’ve regarded as teachers (even if they weren’t aware of that fact) has crystallised an idea or concept I’ve been struggling with for ages. There’s also something to be said for simply spending time with people, face to face, it lets relationships deepen and grow in warmth in a way that you can’t duplicate. This is “magical secrecy” in a sense – these kind of relationships aren’t visible from “above”, off in the internet infosphere. This is what I was getting at above with criticism of the net. I feel – in part draw from reading some people’s posts in this forum – that the speed of the internet and the diversity of information available create the illusion that everything is available instantaneously. As if everything is known, but nothing needs to be known well. I feel in magick as much as anything, growth, self understanding, gnosis - comes slowly – it’s got to be organic, you can’t just put it in Google and look it up. Part of this is the bodiless factor in the net, floating around in discorporated cyberspace.

Possibly this is being hypocritical bearing in mind the amount of time I spend on here (actually this is due to the constraints of currently job and is not going to last much longer than a few months, thank fuck). Perhaps this is easy for me to say now I’ve done the work of hunting out teachers and finding what I want. I don’t want to say you can’t learn off the net, because I think you can, just giving voice to a few thoughts. I think the net is an absolutely wonderful tool for the exchange of information and opinion but it throws up areas, especially relevant to magickal practice, that are left unexamined. Wonderful as I think Barbelith is, one of its prime benefits to me has been too introduce me to people I've gone on to meet IRL.

Be interested in any one else’s thoughts on the net and magick.

(BTW, sorry to hijack your thread, Sine).
 
 
Wanderer
17:26 / 20.04.04
As to the net, I think it has both very positive and negative implications. I would compare it to a thread on sigil magic that was put up a few weeks ago, basically saying that sigils are boring and dilute magic. On one hand, the internet makes getting alot of information easier, as sigil magic makes results magic easier and negates the necessity for the training alot of other stuff requires. The books Ive found on the net have given me a broader perspective and provided alot of cool ideas I can use. Additionally, forums like this have allowed a lot more contact with those with experience in the occult than I have ever had contact with, providing a valuable support and resource. However, like sigils, that ease can prevent or dilute more serious practice. If all information is available, it can 1) negate those valuable relationships that enable a richer experience, 2) it can lead to alot of empty theory being put out there. I think some balance is necessary

As to the secrecy thing, I think the above posts have been spot on as regards specific information and enriching relationships. Another interesting point was put forth by Ramsey Dukes who basically says that the universe doesn't like being too overtly manipulated, so (using a computer analogy) overt or open magical activity leads to "anti-virus" software being deployed to restore consensus reality. I tend to disagree with this, being more of the view that the universe wants to play, but it is an interesting point nonetheless.
 
 
mixmage
18:14 / 20.04.04
Somebody said above that Crowley didn't have any regard for keeping silent and just published everything. Is that really the case?

Yes... according to Choronzon:

For know that I am proud and revengeful and lascivious, and I prate even as thou. For even as I walked among the Sons of God, I heard it said that [Crowley] could both will and know, and might learn at length to dare, but that to keep silence he should never learn. O thou that art so ready to speak, so slow to watch, thou art delivered over unto my power for this.

To be honest, anything that I could write now would simply be echoing points well-made upthread. Personally, I don't "allow vibrations to escape", don't voice stuff, in order to:
- not tremble the strands of the web. Avoid attracting attention to my intention. Not "jinx" myself.
- because information was given to me alone. Some things I have shared, some I keep to myself.
- because I'm still working on it... I'll tell ya in a bit.
- because sometimes it just sounds like a load of psychotic bullshit if you say it out loud.

If I talk about stuff, it's in order to:
- gain another insight into the situation.
- ask people to aid/join/lend energy to something.
- get help "straightening things out". This is the tough one: You feel bound to silence, but things are going very wrong. Whether this be with non-corporeal beings or other persons, the inability to seek outside help can be a major problem... perhaps the only problem.
- because sometimes it just sounds like a load of psychotic bullshit if you say it out loud.
 
 
Private Frost
20:06 / 21.04.04
- because sometimes it just sounds like a load of psychotic bullshit if you say it out loud.

Hah, too true, too true.

There have been times I've discussed the cutting waves of silence and forgetfulness that seem to settle over the room when important points and discoveries are about to be made in a conversational thread... and then wondered who around me thought I was a nutty.

(I've since considered the possibility that the "cutting" probably has something to do with some intoxicating substance or another... but I'm still not convinced.)

Anyway, I think (as stated above) there are occasions where it is necessary to "forget" your work and not speak of it, and then times where secrecy is not as necessary. Usually if I perform some kind of work (magic-on-the-fly or otherwise), I try not to think about it and put it out of my mind. I find that if I dwell on something too long, my mind begins to wander and corrupts the original statement that I was trying to make to the universe (if you will). So for the sake of "data integrity", I prefer to remain silent.

Additionally, there's that old saying that when a silent man speaks, wise men listen. Is the power of your word lessened if you cry wolf too often?

But on the other hand, I believe there are times where it is not necessary to be silent -- research, discussion (as stated earlier in thread) with peers/elders, and also times where you have to influence a situation by being in complete control. When you are in control of the "here", there's no question who's leading, no real secrecy. A warrior who calls a battle cry that enpowers his followers, or a woman who cries MOVE to lift a car off her child, is in no way concealing what he/she is trying to do. It's probably the raw power of their will fused into the resonating power of their word, that assists them in accomplishing a difficult task.

I think really, you can chop it all up to personal preference. If it works, it works. Just question your motives. Very common: Are you telling people so that you might lend power to your cause, or are you telling people in order to manipulate them into thinking that you are cool.
 
 
sine
20:31 / 22.04.04
Interesting perspectives. I love the idea of "keep silent" as a means of consecrating mental space by preventing gossip and ego aggrandizement from contaminating it.

Personally, however, The Rule of Shadow for me is all about preventing "them" from muddling up my 'work. See, as I alluded to in the post intro, I've always tended to think of "keep silent" as a sort of folk parapsychology: an early recognition of the sheep/goat effect. Now of course, you might tell a non-believer and still have the thing work out, but that would be in spite of the interference. Your will would've over-ruled theirs through force, finesse, or focus. Instead, better to have a "clean signal", and, since magick is acausal and atemporal, that means not telling anyone about your 'working before, during or after; any doubt at any time anywhere could bugger the process.

I have a few ideas about how violating the Rule of Shadow might be put to good use, but the context is distant enough to constitute thread-rot, so I think I'll start a different thread for it.
 
  
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