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Magic as education

  
 
SMS
00:57 / 31.05.06
One definition given for asceticism is that it involves performative practices designed to inaugurate a new subjectivity and a symbolic universe that is alternative to that of the dominant culture. This is a definition offered by one of my teachers. I am paraphrasing.

Of course, this new subjectivity or alternative symbolic universe can never be arbitrary. I believe it needs to have some very specific end in mind, namely the end of bringing the subject in line with the way the cosmos actually works. Because the theory of the cosmos differs from practice to practice, and even from person to person, and even within a single person at different times, we cannot pin down the *end* for the purposes of definition or of comparison between traditions. But if these ascetical practices are really meant to inaugurate a new subjectivity in line with the way the cosmos works, then the practice seems to me to be serving a pedagogical rôle. In other words, those practices are forms of education that one, presumably, cannot glean from books. The new subjectivity is a wiser subjectivity, characterized by having a better grasp on the truth.

One of the reasons that this kind of practice would be necessary is that having a belief deeply, so to speak, means assenting to it completely, and not merely nodding to the proposition. In other words, if I tell you that all of creation is holy, you can say, "oh, yes, it is holy," and say so quite honestly, but, without actually treating creation as holy and experiencing it as holy, you still fail in grasping the full meaning of the proposition, and you also believe it in a lesser way than if you lived it. It is possible that some truths may not be linguistically expressed at all, but that they can nevertheless be assented to by performing certain rituals.

I am curious to hear how the practices of other 'lihers serve a similar function. Do you view your practices in this manner? What do you know about this topic that might be helpful?

†

Also, if anyone has any specific knowledge of how Tantric practices can be used in this way, I would be especially interested in that. I know this may sound like an odd question to ask specifically, given that the general topic need not have anything to do with Tantra, but … well, I'm working on a paper. In any case, I am genuinely interested in what folks here have to say. Please don't feel limited by the suggestion of this paragraph.
 
 
illmatic
06:52 / 31.05.06
I'd be up for talking to you about Tantra. What do you want to know? I might do this via PM, as some of it's personal... will have a think on your questions also.
 
 
Ticker
13:07 / 31.05.06
Illmatic please consider sharing as much as you comfortably can in the thread as I am very (respectfully) curious.

SMS I have recently started learning magical work from others rather than just book learnin' and self driven experiments. In doing so I have come to realize there exist certain pieces of information that can be communicated only through shared/guided experience. I have noted this in other areas of my life with regard to complex tasks that require a different way of perceiving than I originally brought to bear.

Having my teachers perform the action also causes my physical body (muscle memory) to learn in way that I do not believe I could gain from other sources.

Verbal descriptions often are not similar enough to avoid the problems of differing internal symbol structure. Immersion in the experience as performed by someone who has mastered it allows my full range of senses to gather information.

A somewhat normal world example is dance. I had purchased DVD's, read online resources, but none of it gelled until my teacher interacted with me directly. I find that working with her my learning has increased in part due to her critical feedback but also because I'm able to pick up more naunces than with the media versions.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
14:30 / 31.05.06
SMS
Your definition of asceticism sounds like a quote from Richard Valantasis - in particular his commentary on the Gospel of Thomas. Valantasis' definition of asceticism has done much to move the understanding of ascetic practice away from the rather restrictive view of asceticism as merely "self-denial". Having said that, I'm unsure as to how far this view of asceticism can be applied to South Asian instances.

Have you come across Gavin Flood's work at all? Two books of his you might find of use are The Tantric Body and The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition. Flood's basic argument is that asceticism always takes place within (sometimes as a reaction to) a religious tradition. Whilst, he argues, we might discern analogues of asceticism in contemporary secular society, asceticism can only take place performatively through the structures of a tradition - and that ascetic practices requires the internalisation of a tradition - so for example in The Tantric Body Flood talks about how the practitioner conforms to the displine of a particular tradition and inscribes upon his or her own body distinct cultural forms. There's obviously a lot more to this but unfortunately my copy of The Tantric Body is hiding from me at the moment.

I did some research last year on the relationship between asceticism & self-identity in India - looking at self-control & celibacy as "cultural ideals" amongst some diverse groupings (for example female renouncers and Hijras) and found that ascetic self-identification still wields tremendous moral force - to the extent that some contemporary Indian politicians self-describe themselves as celibate renunciates in order to highlight their "selfless service" to the nation.

Have more reference material if you're interested.
 
 
SMS
16:10 / 31.05.06
Briefly,

trouser, the definition is indeed from the beloved Dr Valantasis. Flood's The Tantric Body is not yet in the libraries I frequent.
 
 
illmatic
06:12 / 01.06.06
xk: I'll have a think and stick some stuff up.
 
 
grant
15:33 / 01.06.06
seconding xk's interest.

and...

if these ascetical practices are really meant to inaugurate a new subjectivity in line with the way the cosmos works, then the practice seems to me to be serving a pedagogical rôle. In other words, those practices are forms of education that one, presumably, cannot glean from books.

I think there's also the important concept of, what, apocalypse in the literal sense ("unveiling" for the kids reading at home). You're not adding information but subtracting distraction/deception. I'd be willing to bet money that every one of these ascetic practices you're looking at include in their cosmology the idea that the truth is obscured by a veil of illusion. Maya. Lies of the Demiurge.

And, as someone who was exposed to toxic levels of deconstructionist theory, I'd be inclined to lump the reading process as part of that veil (although won't bet money on it popping up explicitly in all of the traditions). Sign-making is a deception. All your books are incomple....

So what you're trying to do with the fasting and meditating and visualizing isn't so much replacing the "dominant view" with an alternate universe as penetrating past the dominant view to a more-real, more-essential bedrock. The foundations of the cosmos. That's what a tantric mandala is, isn't it? Blueprints of the universe?
 
 
Unconditional Love
16:23 / 01.06.06
The human body is a well known tantric mandala, every breath a blueprint.
 
 
illmatic
07:35 / 02.06.06
Okay for Grant and xk - This is an edit of what I wrote to SMS with some examples added.:


I don’t see my tantric meditations etc. as the internalisation of a cosmos or cosmic order – I don’t know if this sort of thing is really possible anymore, having grown up in the secular West, and been exposed to scientific understandings of the world. Gavin Flood touches on this – the impossibility of internalising these traditional symbolic orders as the real "truth" about the cosmos - at the end of “The Tantric Body" (thoroughly recommended btw). I see tantric practice as being more about is realising experiential truths about my self, mind and body and their inter-relationship. You can say these experiential truths – and what they make you think and feel about the self - are contrary to the “dominant order”, I suppose.

A lot of the tantric symbolism (yantras and so forth) expresses these truths and relationships in different ways, and they provide guides and pointers that one fills out for oneself, using own meditations/ practice as well as material from ones’ daily life. This is one of the most important things about tantra to me – ones daily life becomes the subject of meditation – it collapse the distinction between magic/not-magic that you find in the Western trad. Daily life feeds meditation and meditation fits daily life – it becomes a reciprocal feedback process.

To give a simple example – the Goddess Lalita for me represents the surging, expanding quality of life – it’s beauty and celebratory quality, the joy of life. Kali, provides the flip side of this coin and represents life’s limits and fragility, our mortality, the inevitability of death, the process of time and degeneration. One might meditate on either aspect through a variety of means – from full puja, to simply being conscious of the passage of time - and try to reconcile these two aspects as two faces of the Goddess, the life process and consciousness itself.
 
 
SMS
23:07 / 03.06.06
So what you're trying to do with the fasting and meditating and visualizing isn't so much replacing the "dominant view" with an alternate universe as penetrating past the dominant view to a more-real, more-essential bedrock.

My habit is to think that all these activities are signs, and so all are in some respect incomplete. But I'm starting to think that the Brahmanical asceticism might not fit in the educational model as well, partly because it has the kind of negative character you describe. It negates the false reality for the sake of allowing the practitioner to see the true reality. I don't see that characteristic in my own worship (which, granted, isn't ascetical, quite), or in Christian Monasticism. A lot of the ritual seems to have a positive meaning inexpressible through propositional language.

So when I take communion, for instance, I don't see the purpose as one of getting me to assent to the sentence, "this is the body/blood of Christ," but to experience that which is only vaguely expressed by that sentence, and thus to be changed because of it. But the idea of the change is not just to become a better person — to be more Christlike; it is, instead, to assent to the notion that I am already by nature Christlike, etc.

But maybe there's less difference between the unveiling and the educating than it seems.

My last post was brief. Thanks for the book recommendations. It's likely I'll check out Flood's Tantra book sometime. I own the other Flood book.
 
 
grant
11:56 / 05.06.06
I think "unveiling" is necessarily educational, I just think it works in a different way than the two-worlds (or alternate-cosmos) set-up you were suggesting.
 
 
EvskiG
17:34 / 25.09.06
Looks like a new, heavily academic journal on magic will be coming out soon.

Could be interesting.
 
  
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