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Dabbler's Corner

13:58 / 05.08.06

It's been suggested that the Temple can be a bit intimidating for new posters, and too confrontational for some people's tastes. Well, not in here! This is the dabblers thread baby, let it out without fear of reprisal!
Whether it's about the first sigil you've ever tried or the difficulties contacting Eris in dreams or who Crowley was, feel free to chat about it here, the shallow end of the pool as it were where inflatable armbands and those polystyrene floaty things are perfectly acceptable.

So, ground rules-
1. Talk about whatever you like, the whole world is magical after all and many great ideas seemed foolish at first.
2. No criticism please, this is to be a nurturing environment to allow ideas to flourish.
3. Try and be helpful, like the stupid questions thread this is to entice infrequent posters and lurkers into coming out to play.
4. Remember it's different to the rest of the Temple. Elsewhere we demand Headshop style rigour, this is more like the Conversation if you see what I mean.

So I'll kick off. I reckon lots of the strange make-believe games we play as children are intuitive magical practices that provide something we don't get later in life. As we get older and become passive observers of TV and movies and such, we lose an essential element of our mental lives. We stop making upour own stories and start consuming other people's. That's why I think roleplaying is so attractive, it harks back to a time when we were an active participant and creator of story (or narrative if you prefer) and in a way magical practice satisfies the same need- being able to control aspects of the world through magic makes us feel in control and participants instead of powerless motes tossed around by the tide of events. As children making up stories and acting out imagination gives that illusion of control when we actually have very little control over our own lives, as adults maybe similar activities give us more actual control over things most people feel unable to influence (weather, love, death). Just a thought.

21:45 / 05.08.06

Ok, Toyed with starting a thread on credentials for teachers, in light of this Check out the second GL post

I have it as a general rule of thumb, that if a teacher's attitudes or behavior in some aspect of their life repulses me then best find another source for the wisdom you seek.

To my mind Crowley's abject mysogeny is not insulting or threatening to me, but as a teacher it leaves him deficient. When I refer to his blackness it is not in the sense of black magic, or dark mysteries., it is in the sense that he finds no value in me, a woman, so why the fuck should i give a toss about what he has to say about reality and it's manipulation.

For him to espouse 'Do what thou wilt, blah blah' and to wilt so much with so many women who he has comtempt for... makes me want to wash.

I know that he reamins the source of almost all magical theory , but I would rather find some derivative exposition that mitigates the mysogeny.

That said; NO i have not read his books, and as such I understand that that leaves me wide open to all the telling offs going, hence my post here where you can't shout, ha!.

22:26 / 05.08.06

I don't like Crowley and never have. His style grates, his narcissism pisses me off, his deliberate obfuscation is frustrating. On the other hand despite his odious voice what he said is invaluable, I don't like him but he was a genius and a badass magician. Just like horrible people can make beautiful music or develop incredible theories, they can redefine occultism and make amazing innovations. In My Mind AC is like Nietzsche.

06:38 / 06.08.06

I know that he reamins the source of almost all magical theory , but I would rather find some derivative exposition that mitigates the mysogeny.

You might find Nema's work interesting (Maat Magick), or have a look at some of the Jack Parsons/Majorie Cameron stuff about Babalon. Or even Linda Falario's work, for a post Grantian spin. All "thelemic" but given a different spin, with more emphasis on women. That's if you want or need to approach Thelemic stuff at all - I think Crowley's been a huge influence, yeah, but I'm not he's the source of all theory. Many people have a tough time with the internalising and making sense of his particular brand of symbolism.

08:49 / 06.08.06

I've just finished reading the Eye in the Triangle (and started re-reading it). Hot damn! I feel like I finally have a clue.
Anyway, what I meant to say was, like Quantum wrote, you don't have to agree with someone for you to learn something valuable from them.

"Accept what is useful
Reject what is useless
And add what is essentially your own."

While this quote is a bit cheasy, I think is sums up a very important point. I think of it this way: thousands of people out there, in past and present, have some pieces of the puzzle. You need to find those pieces and put them all together, to make the system that is right for you. You can't afford to throw away a piece simply because you don't like the person you got it from. If you do, you'll ruin the picture.

09:13 / 06.08.06

I'd contend that there's nothing in Crowley's work that significantly informs my practice, unless I am misremembering. I spent a significant amount of time in 'restricted' rooms of university libraries as a teenager, reading stacks of various late 19th/early 20th century occult writing by Crowley, Mathers, and others, but I don't think anything from that western-occult tradition is a valuable part of my practice today, unless again there is something I am not seeing. I was looking when I was a teenager for women who were into that stream of magickal stuff because I wanted role models, and I eventually realised that the most powerful female practitioners I encountered were way likelier to be out in the woods or the moors than in the library.

I guess my Hebrew/English psalter has its roots there, because my learning the ancient Hebrew alphabet was at the time influenced by the Golden Dawn curriculum as well as a desire to study scripture in original languages, so that's one thing, but it's tenuous. Hence I don't think it's essential to use Crowley's work to develop your practice, if you don't feel drawn to him. But then don't think I would call myself a magician either, I'm happy to be an activist/mystic or something. (I like the term practitioner if a term's necessary, it's nice and broad and really only says that someone is working on something.)

12:25 / 06.08.06

I like reading some of AC's work for the historical context of the Western Ceremonial approach. I haven't read a huge amount of it but just enough to get a better idea of how things evolved from the GD on down. Honestly when I was young I was fascinated by the whole soap opera trash cycle of Parsons and Hubbard and read the extremely silly book Moonchild by AC. I did however develop a great deal of compassion for Parsons as well as respect for his intent.

It does make looking at Scientology more surreal and a bit more interesting.

I've always found High Ceremonial (of various Western traditions) work to be fascinating and yet totally not my thing. There is something about degrees and levels being externally imposed by a system that doesn't resonate for me while I do understand it does have value for others.

14:08 / 06.08.06

(If anyone would prefer me not to be present in this thread - given the goings-on elsewhere in the policy - just say the word and I'll bugger off)

Issues with Crowley: What I practice is pretty much a kind of eclectic Voodoo witchcraft. My first exposure to magic was Golden Dawn/Crowley stuff, and I basically rejected it because it didnt do anything for me at all. But now after a decade or so of solid practice, I'm finding that I have the experience and... maturity... I guess, to be able to look at all of that material with a more critical eye and seperate out what is useful from what is unneccessary and a product of its time and place. Nowadays, when I read Crowley, I don't feel like I'm being lectured to or having something imposed on me, because I have my own experiential perspectives of magic, so I can engage with the text more constructively. I always remembered reading that a beginner should steer clear of Crowley until they are more "advanced". Like anyone with any spirit would, I ignored this rather patronising advice and checked him out. But I kind of see the value in that now, as I feel like I'm just starting to really fathom what an extraordinary mind the guy had and I can take that part of the package without having to worry about some of the more dubious aspects of him.

As far as the misogyny and the man's personality goes, I just apply the same critical distance to him that I would to any other writer/artist/musician whose actual work is valuable, but who may have been a bit of a dick in real life. A product of his place, time and culture. You don't have to buy into everything Crowley says wholesale as some kind of "teacher/guru" figure - and I would be hugely critical of someone who did. To be honest, I think the only way to get anything of real value out of any writer on magic is to interact with their output critically. To try and understand what they are getting at and where they are coming from, as a scholar of magical literature. Rather than just soaking up their perspective like a sponge with no intervening thought, or rejecting them out of hand for whatever reason without having read their books.

14:22 / 06.08.06

There is something about degrees and levels being externally imposed by a system that doesn't resonate for me while I do understand it does have value for others.

I don't think they actually can be externally imposed, and I'm not sure that's even the point so much as a misunderstanding that comes across from being exposed to little fragments of Crowley's A.'.A.'. material out of sequence and out of context - which is the only way you can really get it without a road map.

For me, the idea of grades is like a tool that you can use to shift your magical focus from one Sephiroth/element to another. I'm finding it tremendously interesting to put a creative spin on all of that material. To look at what the Neophyte/Malkuth grade was supposed to entail in these ceremonial traditions and recreate it according to my own aesthetic.

Interpret it through my own lens and work out what the work of Malkuth means for me, then go about doing it. The purpose is to create a flexible, living initiatory ladder designed to make me adept in the mysteries of earth, air, fire and water. Malkuth, Yesod, Hod and Netzach. The equilibriate them all in some Solar/Tiphareth HGA sense further down the line. I know that I can make something really great out of all of that, using the work of all of those Golden Dawn and Thelemic magicians that have gone before as a stepping stone that I can build on. It sits well with the Voodoo stuff in a weird way, as I'm positioning all these dead Victorian geezers as ancestral magicians whose magic I'm trying to rediscover and get to work for me somehow. I think you have to engage creatively with these things or else you're just repeating dead men's footsteps. I mean, that's what Crowley was doing in the first place, engaging creatively with the Golden Dawn material. Fathoming what it was about and then doing something new and interesting with it.

21:23 / 06.08.06

Feck, the board just ate my well-written post. Basically, I was musing that beautifying rituals serve some of the same function as magical ritual and meditation. Some people use a haircut or a shiny frock/shirt/shoes as a way to feel better, instead of LBRP or Omming. Modern glamours are avilable over the counter.

22:03 / 06.08.06

I really don't want this thread to go the way of the 'FI only' and 'response to the FI' threads in policy, so I think it's important that everyone feels free to post here.

Gypsy, please don't feel like you have to align yourself with the more 'headshoppy' threads in the Temple and that doing so results in you being unable to post here. It's fine to discuss what people say here in this thread regardless of who you are. I would hope people use this thread to ask questions and to present opinions that they might feel less inclined to do elsewhere, but it's important that established posters feel they have the right to respond and that there is acceptance amongst other Temple posters that they do so.

If something here needs taking into another thread then I think we have the broad moderation ability to do so without upsetting dabbler posters. I hope to contribute in this way; I would say that in some ways I am not one of the more learned Temple posters but I follow all the threads and I would hope that I can adequately moderate the discussion that goes on in this thread.

22:32 / 06.08.06

Have to agree with Gypsy's comments above on Crowley. As I've gained experience, I think I've learned to read his work with a more nuanced eye:

"In this sentence he's telling what he thinks to be the truth, but it's based on outdated scholarship; in this sentence he's fucking around with his readers just for the hell of it; in this sentence he's using a heavily veiled metaphor because he felt he couldn't write openly about sex magic or homosexuality; and in this sentence he's making an extremely clever observation about magic which he's given a totally unnecessary Thelemic twist."

It can be frustrating but it's worthwhile.

10:12 / 07.08.06

thanks for your post GL. That experience is all the mitigation you need is already making me think about Aleister with a little more curiosity. Maybe in a year or two I'll give him a read.

As an aside, I don't know whether it's this thread making me read you (stil to GL) with a warm encouraging smiley voice, or there is a genuine difference in your tone. Anyway I appreciate your patience. I know that some of the old lags here have probably done all this to death with a sucession of fly-by-night newbies. Hopefully your forbearance will pay dividends and eventually i might be able to contribute more than a series of fuckwittery enquiries. Ta.