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Lots of good stuff here. Yes, I think care has to be taken when ascribing origins to chaos magic, which was, after all, a confluence of a lot of historical and cultural factors. I've occasionally described Pete Carroll's magical writing as the most Thatcherite sort of magic I've ever encountered, and while that's not entirely accurate, I think there's something in it. What it particularly underlines is that just as Thatcherite economics can't deal with the crises of the post-Thatcher generation, utilitarian chaos magic is inadequate in the face of the spiritual crises it chose to write off. As has been highlighted above and elsewhere, one of chaos magic's major problems is the way in which it positions itself as central signifier in the magical universe and the hubris that inevitably generates... and thus can't account for any magic in which the magician is simply a vector of transformation in a larger social context - because, after all, there is no such thing as society.
But then, it's also important to consider the Fortune-inspired ethereal handwaving chaos magic was in some ways responding to, which can be just as solipsistic and narcissistic, with the added benefit of all sorts of dubious theosophical 'racial archetypes' and the like thrown into the mix. In some ways the political character of British magic in the first half of the 20th century is a bit of an anomaly, in that the political positions of its major figures aren't ravingly fascist or incorrigibly communist, but are mostly casual, laissez-faire libertarian conservatives or, slightly earlier, flaky Fabians. Contrast this to the explicitly political occult movements of the time both on the continent and USA (Evola et al and the fascist crossover come most immediately to mind) and it should be surprising that radical political positions don't emerge until long into the post-war period.
Gypsy, you make a good point when talking about magical groups as 'fan clubs' and the like. On a similar note, I tend to see parallels between the formation of the artistic avant-garde and the occult orders of the 20th century. If you read stuff like the futurist manifestos and Ezra Pound's Imagist essays, as well as literary periodicals (Eliot's Criterion f'rinstance), you get the impression of these vast movements which are actually mostly individuals writing on their own - however, the strategies of publication, and naming movements and organisations tends to attract a bunch of other people. You can see Crowley doing the same thing - using publication in order to bring something into existence. It's something that carried on through 'zine culture to the present day. Even in something like the queercore movement or the proliferation of industrial culture (both of which had important occult crossovers) you got the impression of something much larger happening through the way in which publication was employed.
Anyway. As far as context is concerned... I think there's something to be said about the way in which magical identities are created these days. If you look at Ficino, Pico, Dee and that lot, you get the impression that the way in which their magic worked was in uncovering a grand, unified system of wisdom (a prisca theologia, in point of fact), but the way in which a lot of people are working these days *claims* to be a single, closed system in the context of multiple possible systems. As Gypsy ponts out above, I just don't think that's the way in which it works in practice. Firstly, I don't think any system in which my magic operates would ever claim to be closed or static, but more importantly, it's always already implicated in a dialogue with those other systems of approach to the mysteries. And the fact that that dialogue can take place will tell you a lot about western systems of magic and the extent to which they are related and the extent to which they are distinct. This, of course, is where we enter difficult territory, because the temptation is to universalise or atomise and either response has its problems.
My fundamental difficulty with the roadmap to the universe-style magical systems ("We now enter the 32nd path, where we will see...") is not only that they tend to ignore the historical context in which they're implicated but that they also allow no room for grace and mystery. There are a million and one ways to rend the veil, but no-one can tell you what's behind it.
I'm fairly sure this reply was more coherent in my head... |
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