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Dear Gek,
Please help all of these fucking muppets who have filled this thread with little wishes to the tune of 25 pages – yet rarely seem to contribute anywhere else in the Temple – understand that each time they refresh your thread they are basically reducing this forum to the level of internet chain letter spam, which ultimately undermines the perception of the forum as a place where intelligent debate around magic takes place.
Please also help them to understand that I am not saying this purely to be the cruel, mean-spirited, monstrous character that I am sometimes painted, but merely fulfilling my role as barbelith's other trusty servitor - charged with the task of providing a dissenting voice wherever it seems to be needed.
The problem is, Gek, this thread largely seems to be populated by the same bunch of names who rarely seem to interact with this forum in any way other than to ask you for stuff. So it paints an impression of a group of people within the larger community whose practice consists primarily of posting requests to the internet and drinking glasses of milk, possibly with a side-order of masturbation. This is the sort of practice that is relentlessly unpacked and deconstructed elsewhere on barbelith, but here within your thread it prospers. Now I respect that you are only trying to help people, and I do not want to tread on your toes or stop you from doing your job.
However, I wouldn't be doing my job or fulfilling my proper function if I let lazy magic slip past right under my nose without comment. I'm sure you respect that and will co-operate with me on solving this problem, as ultimately we work for the same organisation here and are both concerned with the health of the board and the well-being and development of its many and varied contributors.
To get to the bare bones of it, my concern is that threads like this - whilst being fair enough as a kind of gateway drug into experimenting with magic - tend to make people atrophy in their practice if they don't move on. I think what takes place in this thread cultivates the sense that magic is a kind of wishing game, and that everything you ever dreamed of can be had for the price of an ice cream. If someone gets this idea into their head, and gets stuck on it, it's unlikely that they will bother to explore some of the more interesting territories of magic that actually force personal development and a wider understanding of the universe around them. The fact that you rarely see many of your regular customers contributing to any of the more thoughtful or involved threads in this forum would seem to provide ample evidence for this observation.
So my request - which I'm sure you will find agreeable - is that from now on, whenever someone comes to you with a wish, you up the price at which you are prepared to work. You will continue to get your little treats, but those who call on you must also do two more things.
Firstly, they must make a concerted effort to contribute more productively to the Temple forum by either starting a new thread or by making a great post to an existing thread. If someone is not really trying as hard as they can to make a worthwhile contribution to the board, then you no longer have to do anything for them.
Secondly, they must experiment with at least one new magical practice that they find challenging and which pushes them out of their magical comfort zone and leads to healthy and constructive personal development.
If the people who come to you do not fulfill these criteria, from this post onwards, then you are absolved of your duties towards them. If they fail to deliver on these new conditions, you no longer have to help them. These are the new terms of your arrangement with barbelith, Gek. I think they serve everybody and will make the whole board a better place for all of us.
In return, I will give you a nice cup of tea and a bar of chocolate as soon I post this. I will start the thread on "Fathoming Crowley" that's been knocking around in my head all week. And I will sort out a regular meditation practice and stick at it, because historically this is the area of magic I am least proficient at and I could definitely do with sorting it out.
All the best,
Gypsy Lantern
PS: If you could encourage the people posting here to come across slightly less whiny and infantile when they make their requests, that would be great too. |
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a friend of mine has her heart set on a new house, i was wondering if you could help wiggle things in her direction?
