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Solitary education v.s. This particular forum

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

20:47 / 13.06.05

I haven't posted here recently because I realized that a solitary education was better for me. Clearly, you all feel differently. It's not that I think solitude is better than sharing ideas with other practitioners...

...But I think we (many of us, anyway) can agree there's a lot of crap on this forum that is of little use to me or you or anyone. There's good stuff, of course, but there's still a lot of crap that I don't feel like sifting through.

My question is this: when asking advice (or just recieving it unasked) on this forum, how do you know that the person giving it has any idea what he or she is talking about? I mean, I'm sure we ("we" as in myself, and many people here) can remember a time when we thought we really knew a lot, only to realize later that we were only half as smart or capable as we thought and the other half was a lot of bullshit? Do you all take that into consideration and not say anything about it for politeness's sake? btw, if this is the case, I apologize for bringing up something everyone is aware of but doesn't like to talk about.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:01 / 13.06.05

More to the point, does one not have the same problem when reading books? There's a degree of argument even over whether the old stagers - Crowley and co - were actually getting anything productive done...

23:21 / 13.06.05

I tend to judge everything I read on practical application. I have a ton of ways in which I can experience odd shit for the sake of odd shit, but if someone here posts something I can actually use for a tangible result I file it away somewhere.

My experience of what I read here is also coloured by knowing several contributors off-board. Because I know them IRL I know I can trust their ideas and accounts. That's probably the main reason I maintain an interest in this place: I believe in the people who are here, that they're basically good hearted, good people. I tend to resist ideas when the person delivering them seems mean-spirited and unkind, regardless of the worth of what they say.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

02:25 / 14.06.05

But how do you know that anyone here has anything worth a damn?

It's tricky, you know?

Like Seth says, it helps if you can meet people in meatspace and talk about this stuff over a pint.

Also, over time you learn to compare and contrast the information offered against your own knowledge and experience. You get a feel for whether the advice you're being presented with is kosher; if the person is on the level or just trying to look 'ard; if ze really knows her stuff, or is just over-eager.

I think the important thing when you're the one offering advice/info is to be sure that people can see what your background is, what level you're at.

It's important to maintain honesty when you're talking about your practice in a forum like this, especially when someone comes in asking for help. I do try to help people who ask for advice in the Temple, but I hope I make it clear that I'm not really a big shot when it comes to this stuff. There's some things I reckon I'm fairly sound on, but like you say, we're always learning. Sometimes I'm not really sure I have got anything worth a damn.

05:03 / 14.06.05

I tend to treat advice and help on the web the same as I treat advice in books. Studying via a solitary way from books you would probably have already learnt to sift the information into 'useful' , 'maybe' and 'crap' boxes anyway. I learn via books, experiementing, asking people (websites such as here and people I know) and going to selected talks.
I am still learning and probably always will, I hope anything I say to someone or type on a site is helpful but it's also my own point of view and experience.

08:38 / 14.06.05

I'd agree that exactly the same skills of discernment apply here as they do when filtering through the signal to noise ratio of published occult books. I think you have to develop a really finely tuned bullshit radar if you're going to get anywhere with magic. Not everyone does, which is why there are so many embarrassingly rubbish occult books in the world and a perpetual market to sustain them. But ultimately, if you're in any sense "switched on" as a magician, then you probably have some capacity to filter the wheat from the chaff and clock who is speaking from their own experience and who isn't.

Unless someone is very, very good at throwing a veil over themselves, I can often gauge a person's general level of experience within five minutes of talking to them. Harder to do online, but it does show through. The clues are often in how a person seems to relate to the magic they practice, and how they talk about it.

I think there's certain stages that we all go through in our relationship with magic. For instance, if someone's posts consist of very detailed, excitable accounts of the ritual they did last night - then it's a safe bet that they're in the phase where you need a degree of validation for what you're doing. Talking about it makes it seem more real, it helps to define your non-ordinary experiences in more concrete terms by providing a level of peer recognition that might otherwise be difficult to attain. Subtle little clues like that are often suggestive of where a person is coming from and what their level of experience might be.

Unconditional Love

09:43 / 14.06.05

the best way to judge for me is what people are capable of.
so somebody that claims to be able to do this or that better be able to back it up with a display of this or that.

if they cant then generally i tend to see the magick as an image thing or fantasy escape lifestyle. i apply these rules to my own practice, seperating the wheat from the chaff. ive found myself in my own fantasy spaces from my reading and from my interactions with others, sometimes the magickal fantasy space can be enough to show me what is working and what isnt.

well as to anybodies worth, you dont really know that, and ultimately even upon meeting other folks you never will, eventually thou you have to take the risk and trust if you want any kind of interaction with anybody, and at some point you have to have trust/faith in the information you recieve, its only through the application of a teaching that i think you can the value its worth, and this may occur over an extended time period, depending on the technique employed.