Barbelith Underground > Temple > Sheeple and scum and humatons, oh my!

The distinction between the mundane and the magick is largely erroneous as I see it. It smells of the distinction between boring routine life and a Saturday night outing if you can see what I mean… mundane means dull, and to understand everyday practical activity as dull maybe indicates a lack of imagination. And imagination is generally regarded as one of the pillars of magick. There is also a strong parallel with the dadaist-surrealist-Situationist critique of the distinction between art and life; the Situationists in particular emphasized the creative potential in the most simple of acts, like walking in the street. Creativity also being a basic principle of magick. I think painting or writing poetry or playing music are fine as isolated activities, just as I can appreciate the value of isolated magickal activity but of equal importance is the appreciation of the poetic or musical or magickal within everything outside that isolated sphere. Especially when the magick or art is shared with other people.
The vow of the master of the temple ‘to interpret every phenomenon as a personal revelation from divinity’ also shits on the distinction. I sometimes do it but not all the time. The book of the law suggests the same thing where he says “Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.” I don’t agree with using this model all the time (if you like, sometimes restriction is not sin) but I think it says a lot.

And the word ‘supernatural’ which has been used here is I think equally problematic. It depends on one’s definition of the ‘natural’, and what is more magic than Nature? The idea that magic is somehow outside or above nature seems pretty alienated to me. ‘Supernatural’ is always culturally and historically specific, 200 years ago a helicopter or television would be perceived as supernatural. And so would written language to those who had no previous experience with the concept. And I can only try to imagine how the first people to speak must have appeared to those who never did. (These ideas of language as magick are based mainly on interviews with Alan Moore). Burroughs also believed that written language has its origins in inscribing symbols for the purpose of sympathetic magic. Basically ‘language’ is a network of concepts/symbols and the ability to manipulate them; magick could be defined as the same thing (although I would say that there are modes of magickal consciousness that function without language mediating the experience of reality.)
Personally I think magical acts happen all the time (whether in accord with Will or not), and to choose a nasty example because it is easy to understand, someone can be harmed by traditional magick methods (formal spells to curse) but I also think that the same effect can be caused without any formal magical practice, often just outside the realm of observable consciousness, e.g. the evil eye.
I also think that a lot of magical thought and practice has disguised itself; just as medieval magic changed its form in response to the attitudes of religious establishments, so a lot of magic appears in secular ‘mundane’ form.