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For me, magick seems to be about actuation, about things actually coming off and working well. I think the world's magick because the world, on a whole, seems to do pretty good for itself. It doesn't seem to be the model for loads of other folks. For some, it seems to come down to this idea that if something is magick it can't be criticised or be a failure or just not up to par. Alternately, it may be that it's all will-fueled and so as long as we will and desire and demand really really hard, the practices and methodology don't matter at all. I can't see either as anything but an excuse (unless it's an attempt, I guess). The best intentions in the world get you into some of the worst trouble. If your magicks aren't working, you shouldn't write it off as your thing being a success, but move on to trying other things. Or refining the stuff you're working with.
If you were so good your magick techniques were beyond improvement and it was all about will (so this hypothetical 'you' will have super badass willpower, for model purposes), then you'd not need a magick technique, so it would just be the focus and will. The intent. But, if that intent isn't getting the job done, then clearly: not above critique and refinement. This is not to laud or denounce any particular practice or belief (or individual), because I do think, as human beings, we do this naturally, anyway. Even if it's to deliberately half-ass something. If you decide you can't hit a baseball for the life of you, so you make a goofy vertical swing at it for a laugh, that's still deliberate. Even if it's an 'I meant to do that' which is clearly false, it's intentional recouping, and only falls apart for me on a level of not increasing functionality.
Getting a laugh, healing someone, defusing a moment or inciting anger, these are all deliberate actions, so if magick's simply putting some intent into the effort/world, then there it is: intentional.
Any artist worth their salt is going to look at their work, and where it doesn't communicate or arouse the things the artist wanted, they're going to go back and fix it, do it different in another piece, but only shit artists will stomp their feet and make excuses why all things are art so they should just sit in a corner and get themselves off. Because the ones whose art never evolves, whose flaws remain intact and get them stomping their feet and shouting 'It's fucken art, dude!' when those flaws are pointed out, they eventually get found out, the work doesn't sell, doesn't get enjoyed by audiences, and so on.
Someone who stomps their foot and falls back on the fact they're an attorney doesn't get much sympathy if they suck at being an attorney and never help win a case or do anything remotely to help their clients, but instead just fall back on the 'I'm an attorney' line. In fact, they'd probably pretty quickly have no clients and no job.
Same for hobbies. The model makers or readers or weekend ice-fishers are often all trying to be better at doing those things, or self-critiquing how they do them. If someone's been thirty years into putting together model cars and they still don't have one that looks like the front of the box the kit came in?
So why should putting the word 'magick' on it change the rules of the game? All the intent in the world, all the 'this is fucken magick' in the world, if it's not actually working, it ought to be criticised and hopefully modified and corrected in the future. An lolcat or photoshopping a visual of a cat may or may not be magick, depending on your proclivities, but if, say, someone did a totem of a cat on their computer, or someone was attempting to communicate or effect the audience in a way with that visual and it comes off then it's not only magick, it's good magick. Because the good magick should be the stuff that works, even if it's not eradicating world hunger, but just getting somebody to think about death as a bowl of pitted cherries or stop having the flu. Or getting someone to laugh at your cat picture and forget why they were irritated two posts earlier.
If we aren't up for a bit of criticism on our magicks, practices or perspectives, why are we here in the Temple forum? I'm well aware I'm not at the top of my game, that I'm not always getting done exactly what I want to get done, so reading what others folks think or do, just like hearing or seeing such in life, fuels my own revisions and refinements, the new unforeseen directions, but that's for enhancing the accomplishment, because the intent clearly isn't going to be strengthened by looking out to other people. |
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