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Maybe I should have put it in the "Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions thread.
You could have done that, or alternatively, you could have just tried it out for yourself and then written something here about how it went, how you felt about it, what the positives were, what shortcomings or limitations you observed from the method, how it compared to other things you've tried, and so on.
I think if this space is going to continue to grow and not atrophy - as it seems to be more and more of late - it could do with more people actively writing about their experiences and reflecting, both enthusiastically and critically, on those experieces - and less of a sense of this place as a resource where you can go and chuck in a question and hopefully get a response from someone who has tried it so you don't have to. What works for someone else might not work for you. Your experience is ultimately the only laboratory that really matters in magic, and the experiences and opinions of others are always going to be secondary resources.
I might tell you, for instance, that this whole approach to sigilisation - where you are constantly looking for different ways to charge your sigil (sneezing, masturbation, spinning till you get dizzy, bunjee jumping, etc) - is really limiting and can get a bit creatively stifling. You come across a lot of people who have taken on board the idea that the only real avenue of creativity in sorcery is in finding different ways to attain gnosis in order to charge your sigil. I think this idea comes from the mistaken yet prevalent belief that ALL sorcery runs off the same core dynamic as the sigil method - which it doesn't. It gets a bit frustrating when I see people caught up in this, and endlessly chasing new ways to charge that sigil, as it gives the impression of a really stiff and unimaginative practice that has not thought to question the received wisdom of chaos magic or experiment beyond the confines of that method.
BUT, anything that I can tell you about magic based on my own experiences and opinions is NOT as valuable to you as the opinions that you might form yourself through trial and error. You can often learn loads from exploring the roads that ultimately turn out to be dead ends for you, and to avoid experimenting with something altogether because some random person on the internet told you not to bother - regardless of who that person may be and how strongly they may have put their argument - is simply depriving yourself of the opportunity to learn something for yourself. You can't really learn magic that way, not really. It doesn't come out of books or on message boards. It doesn't come secondhand. All you can ever know about magic is what emerges directly out of your own experience. Then it becomes your magic, not someone elses.
Yeah, spaces like this can be really valuable, and you can get a lot from comparing notes with your peers and seeing what other people think about stuff, but that does not and cannot ever replace trying something out for yourself and then seeing what YOU think about it. Especially something as easy and low risk as sneezing over a sigil. For anything that you think might be a bit more dicey, err on the side of caution and put your question to the floor, for sure, because if you can avoid making schoolboy errors with a bit of preparation, it's silly not to. But always go with your gut instinct. You know, deep down, if you listen to your instincts, what forms of magic are right for you and what forms are not. The trick is in listening to those voices and following that thread until your own magic begins to emerge, not mine, not Peter Carrolls, not Aleister Crowleys. Once that starts happening, cultivate it, help it grow, let it flourish, bring it into the world and use it where it counts - hopefully to make positive change in your life and the lives of those around you. Then, if you like, come here and share whatever aspects of it you are comfortable sharing.
Hope some of this is useful or interesting. |
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