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What they said, basically.
Please, name for me a single magician or group of magicians that have not considered themselves above the mundane world of mundane people?
I'd be interested to know where this idea of yours comes from? Magic and community are closely linked to the point of symbiosis in just about every indigenous culture that incorporates a belief in magic in its worldview. Magic is ultimately about survival. A roof over your head, food on your table, health and happiness for you and your loved ones. All magic is hunting magic, to one extent or another. We might now have ipods and the internet, but as animals, our needs probably haven't changed too much over thousands of years. Stripping back all the bullshit, magic is directly concerned with those needs. The cave painting that helps you track and kill the wild boar, is the same process as the hypersigil developed in Flash and put on a website to help you find a new job in graphic design.
The magician is a specialist who has spent hir life attempting to become really good at magic. It's a role, a function, a calling. Much like being a doctor, lawyer, plumber, priest, sex worker, scientist, artist or baker of spectacular cakes. All of these roles involve specialised skills that you have developed yourself and made available as a service to your community. Magic is no different. The magician that only uses magic to help themselves is like the barrister that only ever represents hirself in court. It's a bit of a waste of hard earned skills. Magic is a community focused activity.
If you look at cultures where magic is less marginalised than it is here in the west, you will find it occupies this role. Specifically in African and African diaspora countries, the role of magician is not the preserve of elite and aloof special people who tower above the mundane world of mundane people. It's a job in the community, a fairly weird and sometimes misunderstood one, but no more than that of sex worker. Magic is normalised in the sense that the magical plays an intrinsic part in the day-to-day life of everyone in that community.
You can see the magician occupying the same role in practically all cultures where a belief in magic is accepted by society, including pre-Christian and even Medieval Christian Europe.
In the west, you can identify a split between this version of the magician and their role in society, and the more elitist and intellectualised model epitomised by the "Dr Faustus" archetype. It posits magic as the preserve of the rich and wealthy, who have the time and resources to undertake "the Great Work" - a kind of alchemical perfection of the soul and union with the Divine. It's this tradition, along with freemasonry, that filtered quite heavily into the Victorian occult revival and its later proponents such as the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley - from which our modern conceptions of what a magician is, and what a magician does, owes an enormous debt.
However, if you go back and look at primary sources, such as the work of Henri Cornelius Agrippa whose work 'Three Books of Occult Philosophy' published in the early 1500s was a huge influence on virtually every later reconstruction of European magic - you will find that perceived split between what could be termed 'low folk magic' and 'high ceremonial magic' undermined hugely. Agrippa deals with both areas, you will find both bodies of knowledge existing side by side on the page.
It does make me wonder to what extent the concept of an aloof and elite high magician situated above the common herd of mundane sheep is a construct of fiction. So I'll turn that question around for you:
Please name me a single magician or group of magicians that DOES consider themselves above the mundane world of mundane people?
I can't think of any apart from a tiny minority of fuckwit left hand path satanists. Even someone like Aleister Crowley, who can occasionally come across as a little fascistic, is entirely egalitarian in the sense that "The Law is for all" and "Every man and woman is a Star". His Magick is the art and science of accomplishing your True Will, which is the birthright and purpose of every single human being. There is no sense that magicians are somehow "special people" above the common herd. In fact, I can't think of anywhere that this idea you have really exists apart from in fantasy novels and science fiction - which, not being funny, does seem to be the source for a lot of your assumptions in this thread.
And you quoted me out of context - I never said that Magicians exist only in myth, I said that there aren't really very many people I would rate as a "Magician" and that not everyone who affects an interest in the occult qualifies by any stretch of the imagination. On a good day, fucking yeah, I'm a Magician - a good one. I drop the ball occasionally and have my off days, but I aspire to be a good Magician. I work hard at it. I put in the hours and put in the effort. It's not a coping mechanism for me anymore than my local GPs self-image as a doctor is a coping mechanism for him. But every twat who drapes a stethoscope around their neck and has an encyclopedia of medical terms on their bookcase is not a doctor, in the same way that every twat with a pentagram necklace and a few books on magic is not a Magician. You can't fake it. You are either living it, working hard at it, putting yourself on the line, overcoming your own personal obstacles, empowering yourself and others and trying to make a better life and a better world in whatever way you can. Or you're not. |
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