Barbelith Underground > Temple > Magick--a means to change your life?

quote:do you think that the only way to magical discovery is through personal/ individual path? is shamanism able to be structured and documented as are other forms of magic?

I think that if you're working within a shamanic framework, then the stuff you're doing is directly informed by communication with the spirits.

If you're doing it properly, the magic starts to take over and it's working you, not the other way around.

You can draw comparisons with the indigenous shaman who wanders off into the wilderness and returns with a system of magic that he's learnt directly from the spirits.

There's certain things you can pick up from books, and from studying the formalised systems of others, that can be used as a jumping off point but any dogma you take on seems to just be a means of accessing the appropriate conditions for the magic to start working.

For example if you're working shamanically with, say, the Norse Gods, then there'll be certain ways of approaching and interacting with them that they respond best to, but it's ultimately all about personal experience and the relationships you develop. If you read in a book that Thor likes offerings of real ale, but he turns up in a dream and asks for whisky, then you go with what the God says over what the book says.

Similarly, Al Crowley wrote shed loads and developed a highly specialised sophisticated system of magick but often his most interesting work is the stuff that sprung up from 'beyond' and was often in direct opposition to his conscious objectives and ideas about magic.

Ultimately the Shamanic role is a far more demanding road to walk than that of the average dilletante Chaoist. It's probably a bit of a vocation, and whilst everyone on the planet can concievably benefit from a bit of sigilisation etc, I'm not so sure that everyone is cut out for the walk between worlds/drive yourself mad/return intact routine that the shamanic gig can often involve.

I do think that there's probably a lot of people on the chaos magic path who arent entirely fulfilled by what CM has to offer. I think it only goes so far. There's probably people with the shamanic 'calling' who have responded to the CM current because of it's immanent practicality and relevance to the modern world, but may not yet be working under the shamanic job description simply because that role doesnt really exist in our society anymore.

Which is why I'm interested in where this could go and where you could conceivably take it. Marrying the modernism and practical approach of chaos magic with the 'cunning man' tradition of serving the community, whatever that might mean in the 21st century.

One of the annoying things about the CM current is the whole 'leather pants and fake tan' brigade. The Chaoist tendancy to view themselves as a kind of leather clad tattoed army of evolved beings who are inherently 'different' and 'superior' to the lowly non-magician. It leads to big groups of magicians running around together like a pierced up self help group, each one re-inforcing each others delusions of grandeur. Each one spouting the same mish mash of Robert Anton Wilson, Genesis P Orridge, Pete Caroll and others.

I don't think this kind of elitist exclusionist behaviour is going to make any difference to anything in the long run. What would be interesting though is a revival and an upgrading of the cunning man role so that it serves the needs of 21st century culture and society, but is also informed by the post modern methodology that the CM current sparked off.

[ 13-08-2001: Message edited by: Ghost Doctor ]