BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Temple >

'Reality-based' magic

  
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
08:45 / 17.03.06
Does what it says on the tin, really. This is a thread to examine what makes a good magical working and what makes a nice idea with zero chance of actually having an impact on the world.

Based on my own experience and discussions here and elsewhere, I'd say that a ouple of the most important elements are these:

1) Simplicity

By a simple working, I don't just mean cutting down on ritual paraphenalia and binning the six-page invocations (although that can certainly help). I mean attacking the problem at its root. Stripping the problem down to its bare bones and working with what you find there is more effective that creating a working that tries to treat the symptoms blindly and just hoping that the underlying issues will work themselves out.

Simplicity also means cutting away anything extraneous to the central goal of the working. Don't try to hedge your workings around with ifs and buts. A working to get that nice juicy promotion should be a working to get that promotion, not a working to get that promotion (but only if the pay hike is greater than x amount); or a working to get the promotion "and harm it none." If you're concerned about negative fallout from your working, either for yourself or others, then perform a divination or get a friend to perform one.


2) Thinking global, acting local.

This has come up again recently Whilst the idea of a group of white-hat magicians pooling their resources and channeling them into World Peace (or a Global Awakening or Unplugging T3h Sheeple From The Matrix) has a strong romantic appeal, workings for global change never actually do anything.

(No, they don't. Look, I'm sorry, but they really don't. Really. No. I don't care what you've been reading.)

If you really want to make a difference, start at the grass-roots. Start with what's going on where you are. You may not be able to stop the war in Iraq, but you can make a real difference to the lives of the people around you. That uncle who's going into hospital, that mate who's out of work, that cousin who's waiting to be re-housed. Look around you. See what needs to change, and work on that.


I'm sure other people can think of plenty more, but those are my two biggies.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
10:37 / 17.03.06
Mordant

I've been involved with several 'mass workings' over the years (although none of them have been organised via the internet) but I haven't mentioned these on the other thread as they do not 'fit' with Zoemancer's contention that it:

is much more effective to neutralize the power bases in the astral/etheric from which these physical power structures were born and receive their power from. After all everything begins as thought first then becomes physical so rather than rioting in the streets out front of Monsanto corp. you go into the astral and simply pull the plug then let nature take care of cleanup on the material plane.

Pretty much all the mass workings I've been involved with featured doing stuff 'on the material plane' (ugh) in order to support them - ranging from generating enthusiasm by running around talking to people, to leafleting campaigns, setting up support gigs & events, to direct protest action - and some of these actions involved months of organising & campaigning (getting other people to organise local events) by which time, the "ritual" felt like the 'end' of the whole process rather than the inception of it. At best, I could assert that the magic we did may have helped us achieve what we wanted to, but at the end of the day, the emphasis was on getting something done rather than 'proving' that magic works.

Last year, for example, I was involved with a "mass ritual" (60-odd people in a field - does that count?) which had the intent of encouraging magical folk to get involved with the G8 protests. To what extent was this successful - and how? Well for me, the most useful outcome of this working was that it "revved us up" to go out and promote the idea via various networks, and contributed to various groups forming, such as The Tribe of Brigid which focused on encouraging magical folk to take on supportive roles and to build links with local communities. The guy who initiated the ritual - Adrian Harris of Dragon (the ecomagic action network) reported that the Tribe's activities at the G8 included running a fund-raising event to raise money for the damage caused in Stirling by some protestors. I would say that another 'tangible' result is that it has given those of us who are involved in ecomagic and other forms of magical protest some new perspectives on how we can engage with actions in different ways.

So this is my approach. I have to say that I simply don't believe that merely "doing stuff on the astral" without anything to back it up will result in anything more than perhaps making you feel good about yourself (and Patrick West, in his book "Conspicious Compassion", makes some points apropos this which I think are quite germane to this whole discussion).
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:36 / 17.03.06
Wow. I definately need to get out more...

trouser: I get what you're saying, and the kind of workings you've described above are something that I caould get behind 100%. Trouble is, that kind of ritual, backed up with serious real-world activity and taking place over a respectable time period, seems to be as rare as hen's teeth. Or rocking-horse shite. Maybe as rare as hen's teeth in rocking-horse shite.

The kind of global peace working I come across most frequently are the kind where one guy says "Hey! I've got an idea! Let's make a sigil for World Peace, right, and then we'll all charge it!" and then Iraq gets invaded and everyone involved in the working sits around muttering "Well, it could have been worse..." or blaming scepticism.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
12:13 / 17.03.06
Mordant

I was involved in some of the stuff being discussed here - note critique of mass rituals at the end of the article.

I was also involved (in a variety of ways) with the Oxleas Woods road protests in the early 1990s, and when, some months after the event, a bunch of chaotes turned up on the London pagan scene, claiming that it was their ritual (and theirs alone) which was responsible for the successful outcome of the entire situation, they were not received favourably. Indeed, their arrogance in 'claiming sole responsibility' was rather breathtaking.

Another notion I'd question is this (apparently widely-held) belief that the more people that participate in a magical action, the more effective it will be. It strikes me that one person engaging in a magical intervention, or a small, tightly-knit group, could be just as effective (if not more so). This belief in "the power of many" has led to some furious arguments (in groups I've been involved with) as one person proposes a working which they want everyone else to get on board with - and then get angry when others don't agree with the intent, the ethics behind it, or the entire theory underpinning it.

What I also find interesting is the way that an apparently 'successful' magical action is often taken as 'proof' of either magic's efficacy or one's own (or collective) skill/power, whereas 'failures' are, er, ignored or at best explained away in such a fashion as to not damage one's self-image as TEH DARQ MAGOO.

What constitutes 'success' is of course, very subjective. I recall a few years ago, at the time of the Brixton nail-bombings, participating in a ritual working to 'expose' the people behind it (I'd been very close to one of the attacks). The very day, the police made an arrest. Time to break out the bolly? Err, no. Whilst it looked like a 'hit', the leader of the group pointed out that the police had been surveilling the guy for some time. It's way too easy IMO to slip into a rose-tinted self-congratulatory view of oneself as the Mighty Magus before whom the world trembles.
 
 
Dead Megatron
12:32 / 17.03.06
Trouble is, that kind of ritual, backed up with serious real-world activity and taking place over a respectable time period, seems to be as rare as hen's teeth

Just as a spec of hope
 
 
trouser the trouserian
13:43 / 17.03.06
To return to your question of 'viable goals' Mordant, I feel that it's very much about seeking clarity - initially - on your mission statement. Gypsy's point, over on the OCD thread, regarding the necessity of recognising the complexity of a situation - and from that point, attempting to assess what in your view would be the most appropriate element of it to attempt to 'tweak' is a very good one, and a strategy that I've generally found to be effective. Or indeed, one might choose to try and influence multiple factors simultaneously. As I've said, there's a big difference, IMO, between going for 'proof' and trying to get something done, as with the latter, I often feel that the magical element of it is incidental to the whole process. It simply doesn't matter to me whether it works or not. Indeed, I'd say, from the p.o.v, of trying to achieve a result, the less ego-investment one has in there being any kind of result, then the better one's chances will be of getting one. (As to why this is, I have no idea, but I have little interest in occult 'explanations').

The problem with these rather vague appeals to 'world peace' is there seems to be little consensus as to how this is going to be brought about or what form it will take. I mean, are we talking the Coca-Cola vision of world peace, or GWB's world "safe for democracy"? And at what price? A couple more Katrina-sized hurricanes directed to to particular areas of the USA might well cripple America's ability to process jet fuel (which was one of the knock-on effects of Katrina - the price for jet fuel went up by about 500%) - which would probably deal a death blow to America's aviation industry (which is only just now getting back on its feet after 9/11), thus crippling the US economy (and thereby that of quite a few other countries) which might, arguably, make the world a bit more peaceful and do something about air pollution as well. If you ignore the untold misery & suffering - well, after all they're only "humatons" - does it sound like a good plan?
 
 
Sam T.
14:33 / 17.03.06
The very day, the police made an arrest. Time to break out the bolly? Err, no. Whilst it looked like a 'hit', the leader of the group pointed out that the police had been surveilling the guy for some time.


I'm afraid you're missing a point here.

You're still thinking in sequential time causation.

As it could possibly well be demonstrated, time is of no importance, because it looks like the consciousness can collapse reality when it looks at it with intent, including happenings in any point of 'time' that weren't observed previously by a consciousness aware of the consequences or by the person doing the collapsing.

Try to trackback the chain of coincidence that led to the desired results of a working. The fact that this chain of coincidence started before or after the working is of no importance. You tend to assign 'hits' only when you find a chain of causation that started after you've done a working. It just seems to me that it ain't working like that. And additionally, this belief may well hamper your results.

So, of course, in a way magic is impossible to 'prove'. Duh.

Let's take your example. From my point of view, I may well argue that you doing your working led to the bomber making a small error way back in the past that led to the police taking notice of something and having them watch that person which finally led to him being arrested the morning after the working. And what I would argue next is that this was probably the easiest way for the universe to manifest your desire. Effecting back in time is often the simplest way because things can then develop placidly without breaking too much probabilities. A butterfly wings flapping just at the right time, back in the past.

But then...

'Ohh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?'. The Oracle - Obligatory Matrix quote. (Sorry, couldn't resist).



2) The closest thing I have to offer concerning the 'proof that magic works' thing', and the only way that there seems to do it is by induction.

You accept RPK (which could be statistically demonstrated as true), and postulate that it is in fact the basis of magic (which could be half demonstrated by accumulation if enough competent magician tried their hand on it and succeeded). (In passing, working with RPK allows you to increase your 'magical powers').

Then you try take off your Law of Fives rose-tinted glasses. Goddess, how they do stick to your nose, but well, you try.

You assign a hit every time things go in the direction you wished them to (Subway arriving just in time. You wished it. Traffic light changing colors. Same thing. Less quantifiable things also, but well...). You do that long enough to arrive at a point where things seems to happen to go all the time in the direction you want them to, when you properly apply intent.

When thing don't work out as expected, you of course go back to the mentation you did at that time and try to check all the factor that could have been contrary. And then a little round of RPK, just to keep you warm. Next time, it just works better.

After a while, you're bewildered, not sure at all you ain't totally victim of the delusion of grandeur your favorite occult author warned you about ('magusitis?'). So you post on an internet board to have all that peer reviewed because the only way left to sanity is to prove this works by accumulation, by having everyone to try it.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
14:51 / 17.03.06
In all honesty, MM, I think you may actually be suffering from mage-flake at this point.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
14:59 / 17.03.06
Be fair, Mordant, look at Pete Carroll's ideas on Retroactive magic for starters - and occasional barbeloid Taylor Ellwood has a new book out entitled Space-Time Magick.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
15:01 / 17.03.06
I'm afraid you're missing a point here.

You're still thinking in sequential time causation.

As funny a sentence as that is, I don't really have a problem with the notion of magic working in such a way that the result comes about because of something that happened before you even did the ritual. I'm not sure what I think about the hows and the whys of it, but I have certainly had experiences of this nature take place. Whilst remaining pragmatic about what I can reasonably attribute to the success of my magical efforts, I don't necessarily discount the possibility that magic can conceivably tinker with things that have already happened to some extent. It's odd, but then again, the whole area is very odd to start with.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
15:06 / 17.03.06
Eh. I guess I don't have any real problem with the idea of retroactive magic, at least not in theory. Sorry, I was kind of reading that last post in the light of the "Did Dion Fortune defeat Hitler" stuff over on the other thread, which was probably unfair of me.
 
 
Sam T.
15:37 / 17.03.06
A couple more Katrina-sized hurricanes directed to that particular areas of the USA might well cripple America's ability to process jet fuel (which was one of the knock-on effects of Katrina - the price for jet fuel went up by about 500%) - which would probably deal a death blow to America's aviation industry (which is only just now getting back on its feet after 9/11), thus crippling the US economy (and thereby that of quite a few other countries) which might, arguably, make the world a bit more peaceful and do something about air pollution as well. If you ignore the untold misery & suffering - well, after all they're only "humatons" - does it sound like a good plan?

Agreed.

Now, does anyone have a better idea? (Apart from going to the pub and forgetting all about it)

This is what is going to be discussed in part II of OCD anyway, if it ever gets there.
 
 
Sam T.
15:56 / 17.03.06
If you have time to waste, you might very well enjoy reading this

(No softcore porn pics in there this time, sorry people).
 
  
Add Your Reply