hrrm. yes, looking back it seems something does happen to get me rather over-excited on a friday afternoon. apologies for excessive knobbishness there (but not, y'know, in general) - sorry.
the thing with the hill is, it's not a dead site at all. there's quite possibly thousands of solo practitioners like myself who claim a special relationhip with it. various groups use it as a gathering spot for all sorts of occasions - the annual pagan special days, 9/9/99, the eclipse in the same year and what have you. the wider local secular community often uses it as a marker on more civic occasions, for lighting beacons and things.
one of the site's qualities, i feel, is the way it is seen as a summit of ineffable 'holiness' by those who go there, who of course can't but process that sense via their own prior knowledge and preferences. i suppose that explains how i consider the hare krishnas to have approached the site with all due reverence, even though the words 'hare rama' had probably not been heard there prior to eighty years ago. if the loci has any genius at all, i think it can work out that the fact and acts of prayer and dedication are themselves respect enough. it is worth mentining here i think how one of the area's most significant defining traditions since the dissolution is that of western hermeticism, which has doubtlessly encouraged this view despite usually associating the site with solar phallic influences. this affords a scenario where the hare krishnas, cidergnostic druids and many others can all commune with the site to their own satisfaction, something that appears to be readily appreciated by even the most monastic of the hill's worshippers.
'Sloppiness in magical practice.
the process of cultural frottage i describd so irritatingly in my anecdote, which i think is of value to this thread in its account of a concrete example in a discussion that's kept mainly to the hypothetical, sparked several ideas for the next time i get an hour to myself up the hill.
'Stealing surface elements from other cultures and appending them to a western magic framework, without bothering to go out of your way to study the actual framework that these elements exist within and are taken from.'
okay, so i've taken rhythmic drumming, dancing and chanting, or will have, but won't be saying 'hare rama'. these techniques exist within any culture i might try to claim to be a native of, and i daresay that could be true of almost anyone. the hare krishnas seemed to be having a whale of a time, presumably having considered themselves that their ceremony was not likely to be weakened in its favour to rama even though avallach is probably listening in. of course, walking up there on a sunday to pray certainly isn't a something the hks can claim they first thought of.
Not making a distinction between the two approaches.
the main aim, from what i saw, of their practice and my own (when i do it) can be happily boiled down to a combination of 'invoke often' and 'enflame with prayer'. i don't know if standing in towers on the top of windy hills is inimical to normal hk practice or not. i feel that the only distinction between the approaches exists in my head, my bookshelf, and theirs'. neither of us thought it was worth getting beefy over.
'Viewing the worlds magical traditions through the lens of western magic and chaos magic, as if these are somehow the dominant meta-paradigms that all other traditions must conform to.'
my monkish friends' tradition obviously comes from somewhere quite different, but they seemed to be happily displaying a chaotic 'do what works' approach, with heavy traditional overtones.
'The way in which this process could lead to some of the advanced methodologies of these traditions, which currently exist in predominantly third world countries, being drowned out by the loud engines of the western publishing machine producing wave after wave of dumbed down westernised versioning that, through sheer size of voice compared to that of the actual practitioners, produces a skewed perspective on these traditions even within their country of origin. The threat that the international magical community could lose important and valuable theoretical and practical knowledge as a result of this process.
i felt i learnt something new and, hopefully, strong that morning. i felt the krishnas were demonstrating an admirable flexibility not normally associated by me with folk in monastic orders. the hill was getting the kind of once-over that's it's enjoyed for thousands of years. what's the danger?
'The fact that the only likely way of halting this process is for practitioners of other cultural traditions to start competing on the western market, selling the mysteries of their tradition to an audience eager for a taste of the exotic who would willingly pay £200 for a copy of the "Voudon Gnostic Workbook".
The way in which this imposed economic situation serves to cheapen and erode the power of teachings that have traditionally been passed on via oral or initiatory means for specific reasons.'
'monky-see, monkey do' remains a valid traditional means of transmitting information between cultures. i stumbled upon a mini-initiation that morning, am glad to have done so.
'The way in which western magicians, who are significantly driving this process - if they think about it at all - justify it with platitudes such as "information wants to be free, maaaan" and, perhaps, "its those who adapt and adopt the most shamelessly who will survive and rule".
The way in which parallels can be drawn between that sort of attitude to other cultures and the attitude that justified colonialism and the slave trade.'
The fact that these are extremely emotive issues for many of the other cultures involved, yet are rarely even addressed or considered by western practitioners.
or, as i saw, eastern ones. when the god's on you and you know you need to listen, how on earth are you meant to stop and say 'oh, i wonder if that guy's god will mind?'
cultural appropriation, the demon at hand, in my experience becomes an abject irrelevance when applied to a specific instance of different traditions coming into contact. if it is ever possible to draw a clean line between 'my' culture and another one, and then for these two discrete entities to meet, they will just as likely fuck as fight.
again, sorry for earlier combative tone. |
