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Well to state the obvious, to all but a fringe of mental health professionals, communicating with invisible beings on a regular basis as well as plenty of other magical practices are all definite signs of mental illness and would get you diagnosed with clinical pathologies and prescibed anti-psychotic pills. So shouldnt you defacto have to address some of that if you are talking about magic and madness.
Yes, I'm very aware that my general day-to-day way of relating to the world would be considered bugfuck crazy by a lot of people. Walking *between* worlds, for me, involves being able to live in constant animistic communion with principles of nature - thunder, fire, river, sea, iron, crossroads, boneyard, forest, etc - whilst also being able to function happily, healthily and effectively in consensus reality (whatever its ills, no - fuck that - because of its ills), able to hold down a job and support oneself and one's family, have healthy and fulfilling relationships with family, partner, loved ones, friends, and make the very best of my personal skills and aptitudes to do positive work in the world according to my nature.
I strive for there to be no dichotomy whatsoever between the version of me that is the mad shaman in the wilderness shaking a bone rattle and speaking with spirits, and the version of me that occupies a place in society - however sick that society may be. The sicker a society is, the more it needs its Doctors and Shamans. The sicker it is, the more it needs its Doctors to be able to function and actually do their job, and put their skills to practical use, rather than purposefully courting their own destruction and breaking against the rocks of their own neurosis for no good reason. I find that mediating between worlds in this way gives meaning and purpose to my practice, and prevents it becoming a solipsistic exercise in navel gazing. In New Orleans Voodoo, there's the concept of the "Two-Headed Doctor", with one head in the world of spirit and one head in consensus reality, and functional and effective in both. The two sides of the coin are not in conflict with one another, but support each other.
If I can get that balance right most of the time, I'm doing OK. Yeah, there's be times when I go "walkabout" in the world of spirit and spend extended periods doing truly demented amounts of magic that would make your teeth curl, and there are times when I have to work long hours dealing with the things I have to deal with to keep my dayside life together - but that's part of it. Part of the challenge and part of the skill of being a magician is in mediating *between* these equally important and equally fulfilling aspects of my life.
Is it the normal everyday world of 8-hours-a-day boring work interspersed with patterns of consumption - Politicians and cops and carbon monoxide - People starving because they dont have money (pieces of paper) to exchange for food.
Yeah, that's the one. Fucked isn't it. What are you going to do about it? Run away? Top yourself? Get yourself institutionalised somewhere? Dig a hole in the ground and sit in it until someone else sorts it out? Within that world of 8-hours a day boring work interspersed with patterns of consumption, politicians and cops and carbon monoxide, are fragile human lives and every one of them is just trying to survive and find a bit of happiness and live as best they can. It can be fucking hard to just do that sometimes, and people get lost, people lose hope, people destroy themselves and others. I believe that we are all intimately engaged with a process of healthy growth, in the same way that a tree grows, and ultimately this is "magic". There isn't a single human being who isn't a "magician" in that particular sense of the word.
"Magic", as I understand it, is a process of exploring and accessing the nature and powers of one's own being in order to live successfully on the planet and in harmony with one's environment and the other life with which we share it. That's the "Great Work" right there, and there's no greater work. I understand a "Magician" to be someone who is consciously engaging with that general process to the best of their ability and according to their own nature - which will vary massively from individual to individual. That sort of conscious commitment to this process does not make you special or superior to any other life, as it's a process that all living things are ultimately involved with, but it does tend to place you at the sharp end of things sometimes and if you step up to the task, you will likely encounter challenges and growing pains along the way. The point of these experiences is to learn from them, navigate them, and come out healthier, stronger and more capable than you were previously.
Every "magician", and indeed every human being, has their own individual Work to do, and part of the task is discovering what that might be, learning how to pay attention to the quiet and not so quiet internal voices that will guide you, and getting on about the task of it to the best of your ability. But no human being is an island, we are social animals, we can communicate with each other, and are enmeshed in a complex web of social interaction and interdependency. I don't think it's possible or desirable to practice "magic" in a bubble, where it doesn't have any contact or interaction with other human (or animal, vegetable and mineral!) lives and the wider social world.
I often think that there is an imbalance in "western magic" that is a direct product of the way it has been forced underground in our culture. None of this stuff is supposed to exist or have any value, therefore these very natural and accessible modes of relating to nature and the conditions of our existence on the planet have been almost entirely marginalised, we are not actively encouraged to explore any of this material, and for the most part it is often the preserve of solitary people trying to make sense of it all by themselves in small rooms. We've lost the social and community context for magic that you will tend to find in other cultures throughout the world whose magico-religious traditions have been horrifically oppressed - but oppressed a lot more recently and generally less thoroughly than the magico-religious traditions that once thrived within the culture responsible for doing all the oppressing, whatever those traditions may have been. Magic has survived in the West, but it's had to survive furtively and quietly in the margins of a culture that has been rather committed to stamping it out, and that has shaped its manifestation.
So for me (and I realise I may be a minority in seeing it this way), part of the "project" of Western Magic is about trying to address that imbalance to some degree, to look at all of these things that have been rejected out of our culture, scorned as "magic" and mumbo jumbo, comprehend what has meaning and value, and explore how this material may be used to bridge the ever-widening chasm that gapes at the heart of our culture and which we are all at risk of falling headlong into with each passing day. That's what a Doctor does. That's what a good Magician does. You can't do it effectively without mediating between worlds, because that sick world that you describe is where these things we call "magic" are most desperately needed. Does that make sense? |
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