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'Sigil' as a word is out of date.
I'd go further than that myself, but possibly not for the same reasons as Grant.
All this magic stuff needs new terminology because it's not what people are being told it is at all. It's not all this wearying symbolic misdirection that's being dragged up from the Victorian Age, when no-one was allowed to talk plainly and everything was in coy poetic code.
I think I agree with this in principle, but I'd hesitate a bit over the need for the new terminology. It's hard to gauge exactly what he's suggesting and where he would consider taking it though. Certainly, I think that the curse of Victoriana still blights magical discourse horrifically, even something that pitches itself as post-modern and futurist – such as chaos magic – still has the tendency to fall back on 19th century-style scripts, frameworks of operation, and conceptual models.
In the western trad at any rate, I think some fairly straightforward concepts such as the Quabalistic Tree of Life as a model of reality, and functional "psychic technology" such as the LBRP and the Middle Pillar probably are obfuscated by what GM is referring to as "coy poetic code".
I think that's what he was getting at by dissing Alan Moore's 'Promethea' awhile back. Myself, I'd rate Promethea as one of the best books in print for getting an understanding of western Quabbala. But it does tend to portray the various Sephiroth as astral holiday resorts that only special accomplished magicians get to journey to when they've been really good, as opposed to integral components of reality.
The Abyss isn't something that you cross once as a special magical initiation, its a part of our reality. It's the broken bit. When your girlfriend leaves you, when your pet budgie dies when your a kid, when your experience of the world is totally swamped in desolation and everything has turned to dust, that is an experience of The Abyss. In the same sense that Netzach is something you experience whenever the world becomes alive with love and beautiful triumph, and Geburah is something you experience when you really want to kick somebody's fucking head in. The Tree of Life is a map of reality, but more like a cross section of the body of the universe, than a tube map showing destinations you can travel to. If that makes any sense.
On the new terminology front though, I'm not sure how far I'd agree. I think you could easily veer into what I call "dark matter accumulator rod versus duppy stick" territory, where the new terminology just ends up being a bunch of pseudo-scientific jargon as inaccurate as the Victoriana, and with the potential to start sounding very dated very quickly.
Another point I'd make is that many of the strange and seemingly outdated terminology that you might find in systems such as Quabala, Tantra or Vodon, are used to describe and differentiate extremely sophisticated concepts. So there's a massive risk of losing a lot of absolutely integral ideas if you try to append new terminology to something you may have an incomplete understanding of – which is always possible no matter who you are.
You can end up with a dumbed down baby talk version of something that actually has a lot more depth and is far more interesting and sophisticated. The recent thread on here that happily conflated the wildly different concepts of "Kundalini" and "Chi" into an amorphous new age idea of "energy" is a prime example of this sort of process in operation. I get the point Grant is making, and broadly agree with it, but working out new terminology is a fucking minefield at the same time.
The world's at a crisis point and it's time to stop bullshitting around with Qabalah and Thelema and Chaos and Information and all the rest of the metaphoric smoke and mirrors designed to make the rubes think magicians are 'special' people with special powers.
I strongly agree and strongly disagree with that statement at the same time! The first bit is exactly where my thinking is at. We are living at a crisis point and there is no time to be fucking about with this dilletante shit. No time for magic as a parlour game. No time for magic as an intellectual diversion or esoteric crossword puzzle. Get it working. Use it to make the world better. In whichever way you feel is most appropriate. Cut away the bullshit and use the magic to actually do something.
My thinking probably departs from Grant's on the second point though. I wouldn't go as far to say that magicians are "special people with special powers" but I would argue that the job of magician, as I would define it, involves developing a specific specialised skillset that marks it as a profession, more akin to doctor, lawyer, or maybe less glamourously, plumber or electrician. That's not to say that everyone won't benefit from learning basic first aid, becoming aware of their legal rights, learning how to fix a leaking tap or wire up a plug. But I'm fairly certain that not everyone would really want to operate as a magician in the same way that I operate as a magician.
There are certain processes, methods and ways of looking at things that everyone would benefit from familiarising themselves with, and which should NOT be the sole preserve of people involved with "magic". But that's not to say that the role of magician/shaman/doc is on its way to becoming obsolete. You need your specialists and you need your professionals, however occupying those roles has got nothing to do with kidding people that your somehow "special" or "magical", it's entirely dependent on whether you can walk the walk and deliver the goods in a very practical sense. A good doc always has clients, a bad doc has to hustle for his dinner.
It's not like that. Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. 'Life' plus 'significance' = magic."
Totally agree. I find that the hoodoo stuff really makes this sort of understanding come alive. In hoodoo, the act of hammering a nail into a wall to hang up a picture could be a potent magical act – the hammer, nail and artwork functioning as physical representations of "ideas" that you are manipulating towards a given intent. Scrubbing the bath clean in preparation for an uncrossing bath can be seen as religious activity. Cooking a meal with fresh herbs, each one representing a different Spirit. Getting a suit made for you. Learning the layout of your City and all its secret routes and alleyways. Anything you can fucking think of can be made magical and can come alive. |
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