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Well, as you say, "energy worker" fits into your model of therapeutic practise - in the same way that one could see, say, reiki, kundalini yoga and certain forms of magical practice as, in essence, doing the same sort of thing - redirecting flows of energy so that certain effects can be achieved. It also meant that you could locate what was going on in relation to something that you were familiar and comfortable with, which makes it easier to approach and deal with the unfamiliar part.
I think Seth and Illmatic, and others, are not only asking "why does it matter, as long as it works"; they're also looking at what it is about the names that is about the practice and what is is about the practitioner. Hence GL's questions, some of which strike me as important and useful.
Who are you rebranding magic for? Do you want a book deal? Do you want to sell magic as a lifestyle commodity to the general public? Do you want a term that you feel comfortable using to describe your practices to the man in the street that is free from the various connotations that come with "magician"? What exactly are these connotations? Why do you feel uncomfortable about them? Why do you have the impetus to talk to the hypothetical man in the street about what it is you do? Do you secretly want to be able to 'come out' as a magician? Do you believe that magic is something everyone should practice? Do you think that a new name for magic would lead to more people getting into it? Is that unequivocally a good thing? Is it really likely to happen? Can you realistically imagine every single person in your office or place of work, going home of an evening and practicing some form of re-branded magic? Do you feel that "magic" and "neurolinguistic programming" are broadly synonomous? Do you feel that "magic" and "advertising" are broadly synonomous? How far does this process of rebranding "magical" techniques under new terminology have to go before you turn into L Ron Hubbard?
If you call yourself a reality hacker, or a street mage, or an Invisible, what are you doing? You're going to have as much trouble identifying what you are to the person in the street. You may find yourself more comfortable with the idea of magical practice because, by doing so, you are identifying it with something smaller and more comprehensible - a comic book, a movie, a role-playing game.
I ponder, I guess, about the necessary reciprocity of this making-smaller - does it funnel back outwards? Does it need to? If your magical practice is based on the idea that we are living in a computer simulation, then it is pretty much vital that you keep the constraints of practice clear for it to work, right? The Golden Dawn came up with a bewildering set of levels and membership badges, which help to keep the focus hierarchical and role-directed - I guess masonism does something similar.
The Golden Dawn/Mason thing also flags up somethign that names can do - cut you off from the world. The idea of calling non-practitioners "muggles" cropped up earlier - like goths calling non-goths "mundanes", I guess. Fucking embarrassing, and I suspect unhelpful to facilitate any magical event within the world, barring possibly a magical and very satisfying slap. Call yourself magus, or high enlightened one, or thaumaturge, and you are creating that barrier and shoring it up with ideas of being higher, better, able to work miracles... these titles are self-conferred, but can be used to support, with knowledge or no, some sort of sense of entitlement, enlightenment, superiority, that before our enlightened and entitled age might at least have required a bit of peer recognition. |
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