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That's all really interesting. Thanks for responding. I started this thread because I've become increasingly aware of a tendency in my own magical practice to acquiesce to this current of impending medievalism. It's as if my general operating framework for magical practice has become infected by this very unexamined and very seductive mythology that western civilisation is about to go tits up. All of my practice feels like preparation and training for the time when these skills become essential. It's a theme that seems to be echoed in a lot of the responses above. I'm trying to get really good at a lot of areas of magic that would be useful in an impending "collapse of society" scenario. Others seem to be doing the same thing.
It's chilling how many other people contributing to this thread seem to have similar half-developed internal mythologies going on. It's obviously got a lot to do with fears over the state of the world and where we may be heading, and it's quite readily understandable why this theme seems to have entered into the collective subconscious of a lot of people. I can think of a few examples where this fetishisation of a devolving society is reflected back at us. The most obvious instances of this are the post-alien terror social breakdown of the Spielberg 'War of the Worlds' remake, which focuses predominantly on the social dystopia caused by alien invasion rather than the actual invasion itself. Along with the vision and solution presented in the 'V for Vendetta' film, where it's bad news in every direction. So what's going on there?
The miniature David Icke that lives in everybody's head (now there's a conspiracy theory...) would probably posit that the evil lizard multimedia conglomerates that rule the world are feeding us these images and hypnotising us into a state of consciousness where we are prepared to accept radically reduced living circumstances and the total erosion of our civil liberties as an inevitability. A more level headed view might say that these media images of 'the new medievalism' are just reflecting back our early 21st century civilisation's fears of losing everything that our ancestors have struggled for. Perhaps with a heavy dose of western guilt seeking masochistic redemption for the vast gulf between our relatively pampered lifestyles and third world poverty by secretly wishing for some crisis where we are reduced to our most rudimentary survival instincts.
Whatever way you look at it, it's all a big, sour tasting, fucked-up soup of images and associations that I don't like my magic floating around in (like a weird occult crouton). I think it's worth looking more closely at this early 21st century mythology and the way we relate to it in our magical practice. Demons are bred in our unexamined responses, and sometimes I think it's a Magician's responsibility to put on an iron shirt.
I asked whether people think the role of the Magician is to get humanity off the downward spiral or prepare the species for dealing with some horrible Mad Max 2 style collapse of civilisation. I was thinking about this again this morning, in the light of responses to this thread, and I was a bit disturbed to find how limited my imaginings were. I can imagine all too easily this world where I'm forced to operate as this wholly ridiculous witchdoctor/cunning man type character within a dangerous, blighted, horrific future London. I can see how we could get there as a society and I could see the sort of response I would have to bring to it, personally and magically. What I would have to find within myself in order to cope, and how that relates to my practice now. It's a terribly seductive fantasy that lingers in the background of my magical work, and informs it to an extent that is troubling to say the least. Not least because I haven't really looked at it straight on like this, and have just allowed it to fester unexamined in the waters of personal mythology that I think we all swim in to some degree, especially as magicians.
More troubling is that I can't really imagine an alternative, positive, optimistic future to take the place of this nightmare vision with anywhere near as much ease or clarity. I can't see the happy alternative where we sort all of this out and come out on top as enlightened beings in harmony with our universe. I'm not convinced by any of the images I come up with when I try. I can't believe in that juju. It doesn't seem real. Sounds like bullshit. Wishful thinking, hippy bullshit that is in denial about the very real state of world affairs. It's not going to happen. I'm not convinced. I can't build those images very well. I don't believe in it.
I showed this thread to Rosie X the other day, whose response was interesting. Her perspective was informed by recent personal insights into how what we believe, what we think, and what we say are acts of magic that create the reality we find ourselves in. If you talk about the impossibility of your plight all the time, you are feeding that vision of your present and writing your own future out of it. That's pretty much the process that we, as Magicians, are fully complicit in by actively identifying with, nurturing and cultivating this insidious imaginary scenario where civilisation collapses and we have to deal with it one way or another. Not a particularly constructive response, but one that I'm certainly guilty of, at least subconsciously.
So I'm interested in backing this truck up a few yards and looking at the processes underpinning these beliefs, and what we can do to interact with them, before writing off human civilisation altogether as a done deal and setting out our stalls as future witchdoctors of the vague apocalypse. Certainly, I want to be ready for the worst case scenario, and make sure I know how to get down and dirty with handfuls of dirt and meat and bone, to look after people I care about if circumstances call for it. But we're not living in Mad Max 2 just yet.
I probably spend a bit more time than is healthy in speculation about the role of "The Magician" as a kind of contemporary job description within 21st century culture. I think there are several strands to this job. One of them, is that of community witchdoctor who has the mad skills to take care of business for people when the chips are down. But I think another aspect of the job is to create new realities for the species to step into. To imagine the sort of things that are difficult to imagine. Think about how the modern world has been created by "Magicians" in the past who have dreamed up something totally impossible and inconceivable from the frame of reference of their culture, but which has since come to pass. A Magician ought to deal in impossible worlds. Perhaps the work of a Magician is to shape the world through images and ideas, to cast a spell on the culture you are confronted with, to put over a glamour so seductive that the universe is smitten and falls into line with your word, not that of another.
Mr Crowley writes, in the 'Class A' document 'Liber B vel Magi': "Let Him beware of abstinence from action. For the curse of His grade is that he must speak Truth, that the Falsehood thereof may enslave the souls of men." Cryptic, double edged, and open to interpretation, but it seems to deal with this ultimate task/curse of the Magus which is to have tangible impact on the world by uttering a single word of truth that gets the whole world caught up in your falsehood, or stories, or glamour, or the vision of a new world that you have cooked up in your witch's cauldron.
All of which suggests a spectacular failure on my part, really, if I can't even begin to imagine any sort of realistic or convincing better world than the ugly, feudal, regressive medievalism that is being served up to me. But I think that opening my eyes to this modern myth building - as an ongoing process that I am involved in and actively contributing to - is a good start for fathoming the ramifications. It seems that there needs to be more concerted effort on the part of Magicians (and I use that word in a slippery way that encompasses artists, writers, musicians, scientists, teachers, politicians, businessmen, and indeed all of those involved in dreaming up the future) to imagine positive alternative scenarios where we really do get our act together as a species and come out on top. Convincing scenarios. Not empty platitudes or escapist fantasy, but powerful juju that casts its own spell. A dream of the future just as convincing as the new medievalism, that enchants itself into being. I have no idea, at present, what that might be or what practical course of action these speculations might end up developing into. But it seems to me, that if any spell is worth casting at the moment, it's the one that creates some better options and weaves a few brighter, more optimistic stitches into the mythic tapestry that we've got on the table. |
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