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Underground > Temple >

Magic and (Extreme) Sports

Madman in the ruins.

16:08 / 13.07.07

I'm looking for some kind of relationship between Extreme Sports practicioners and Magicians? If you go back to Crowley he was a accomplinsed mountaneer, And theres Grant Morriososn, Bungee Sigil experment in the 90's which seems to have woked Plus the whole shamaisim aspect, And the whole facing and vanquising your Demons.
On a personal level I had a problem with heights until I started climbing, I still have a problem with heights but now I savor the adrenaline rush. So the "fear" is still there but now I embbace it. Same with my mountain biking-although with MB I feel more "alive" when I cycle on the main roads to work.
I see Pakour/Skateboarding as a form of magic, a way of intrgrating with your enviroment and a way of using your phyiscall enviroment for you own ends. And what about the "straight edgers" of Punk, a Shamanic choice?
On the sufrace it seems more Chaos than Ceromonial, with Chaospheres turning up on 'boards as decoration.
I don't ever want to be a armchair and book bound magican. To me I see the physical realm as part of the whole deal.

23:13 / 14.07.07

Don't know if this will help.....I suck at extreme sports for the time being but a book that you made me think of was popped up in one of my religious studies classes:

The Psychic Side of Sports

All I could think of, but looks likes its only $2 plus shipping and it might interest you.

The book was actually mentioned in a Stanislav Grof book The Holotropic Mind and that's how I got turned onto Morehei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido. I guess there's videos of him where it appears he teleports around opponents and the tapes have been verified as unaltered. That's extreme to me, but probably not the extreme you are looking for?

15:59 / 16.07.07

I'm not even remotely EXTREME!, but over the last few years I've ended up climbing mountains, crawling through caves, and diving among the reefs simply because it's the only way to see cool stuff (like Huayna Picchu, Aktun Tunichil Muknal, or Shark Ray Alley).

As John Odin noted, seems to me that the most "magical" thing about those sorts of activities is overcoming a fear or challenging a perceived limitation.

And it sure does focus the mind -- and sometimes even cause a shift into an altered state of consciousness -- when a mistake or misstep could seriously injure or kill you.

Closed for Business Time

08:57 / 17.07.07

Do the marathon monks of Mt. Hiei seem to be someone you might be interested in reading up on? Serious running for serious people. Apparently there's at least one TV documentary out there, as well as books and articles a plenty.

09:38 / 11.08.07

Well, I ref for a women's Roller Derby league. I guess they're extreme. I also spent a year hitchhiking with no direction and no safety net (money, relatives to fall back on etc). I don't know if that's a sport but it was pretty extreme at times.

20:53 / 11.08.07

(I got distracted in the last reply and forgot some thoughts. Really should avoid posting right before going to bed.)

I see a lot of overlap between the magical world and the physical/subcultural one. Following my vision quest (ie hitchhiking trip) I've spent a lot of time trying to bring the two together. I've gotten away from the candles and the LBRP's and such like. Now I ref roller derby as a service to Athena, work in a casino to court Tyche's favor etc. Down the line I'm looking at pulling a Jim Crow, taking my magical personality on-air.

All of the spirituality you mentioned in the original post is certainly there. Magic is Will (or so some people say), so if your skater friends don't realize the power of their chaos arrows are they still employing magic?

03:32 / 12.08.07

im a brazilian jiu jitsu and judo practitioner and i have to say that the pure physical exertion heightens magical awareness almost better than anything i can think of. drawing technique and movement from pure muscle memory is downright ritualistic, and it doesnt hurt that most of the positions can be drawn almost directly from yoga (which is what old japanese ju-jutsu comes from). maybe not as spiritual as pure yoga, tai -chi, or shaolin kung fu but i like mixing practicality with my martial art.

17:22 / 13.08.07

Yup, to take off where downgrade left off, which is as good a place as any to start... I think the martial arts/magick/spirituality crossovers are definitely worth discussing. I studied Aikido when I was quite young (about 13) I can remember the videos discussed earlier in the thread where Aikido's founding member is in front of a wall which gets demolished, then suddenly he is on the other side of the room. I think they broke it down to frames and he definitely seems to move beyond 'normal' human capability. He was also performing feats such as this at quite a ripe old age. From personal experience, when I first performed the Lesser Pentagram ritual the type of 'energy' or the effect I felt it had on me was very similar to Chi exercises I had done when I practiced Aikido. More so than say Reiki or other meditations I felt the same type of physically invigorating feeling. I have in the last year got into mountain biking and I know that a good friend of mine who's superior experience of Magick I greatly respect is currently training for a marathon across the Sahara. I have found that exercise does wonders for my mental health which I hope most would appreciate is entirely relevant to a magickal practice. Mountain biking also gets me out in nature, rather than sitting in an armchair reading magickal books. It's fast pace often requires focus beyond the everyday and exhaustion can be a great key to gnosis.