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"No Mr. Scientist, our magick isn't real. We're all crazy. Please move along... there's nothing to see here."

  
 
Lothar Tuppan
16:03 / 18.04.02
A little backstory:

I just got back from a conference by the Society of the Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC) in Tuscon. They are a sub-group of the American Anthropological Association and are made up of Anthropologists, Archaeologists, Evolutionary Biologists, a few Physicists, and even a mathematician or two. Their work deals with studying not only mundane consciousness but also altered states, paranormal phenomena, 'psychic' powers, shamanism and other forms of tribal magic, etc. etc.

One of my favorite presentations was on 'The Dangers of a Science of Consciousness'

The ‘science of consciousness’ in this regard is the scientific study of states of consciousness as well as paranormal phenomena, ‘magic’, psychic phenomena, etc. The presenter was a man who worked for 14 years on this ‘science’ until he had a series of concerns over how this ‘technology’, when/if it was discovered, would be used by the governments of the world. His concerns were that basically he didn’t want to participate in the creation of a psychic ‘atomic bomb’ that would be used against himself and everyone else. What I found very interesting was that during the discussion section after the panel, most people considered his concerns to be valid potentially but that he should still just move forward and not worry about it. Most people thought that it would all work itself out. My one contribution to the conference was to point out that these weren’t potential concerns but real ones that have historical siginificance. From the MKUltra program in the ‘50s to the PSI departments of both the US and USSR during the ‘60s-‘80s, to the current release of information regarding ‘remote viewers’ by the US government, world governments have poured ‘black box’ money into programs like these even BEFORE these abilities have been scientifically proven. How much money will go into them if they are empirically proven and made replicable? What amazed me was that most people were completely unaware of these programs considering that this was, to some degree at least, their job.

My question then comes from an experiential viewpoint of us practicing magicians: To magicians these technologies already exist in the forms of magical traditions. As long as these traditions stay within fringe ontologies that the 1st world Governments don’t subscribe to, they are relatively safe. We will continue to be considered freaks and weirdos, charlatans and deluded religious fanatics whose magic doesn’t work because magic doesn’t exist and these powers, by way of non-accepted 'technologies' hopefully will stay firmly in the hands of the people instead of the governments.

Is it more responsible to NOT try and scientifically prove that magic works, to not even participate in ‘scientific testing’ and to not try to marry quantum physics, chaos theory, etc. and the magical traditions? By furthering our validation in the eyes of the established, consensual reality are we contributing to our own downfall? Or are we subscribing to conspiratorial fear and keeping necessary growth and development from happening?

Note to magical sceptics: This thread should not be a place to argue whether magic is real or not - that would derail the thread and is better served in this thread. As magicians we are operating under the assumption and experience that it is real. This thread is to discuss the ethics of the situation from the standpoint that magic is real.
 
 
cusm
16:31 / 18.04.02
I'll have to admidt I'm on the fence on this one. There is something about the "open-ended reality" nature of magick that may be lost should the results and practice fall under the predictibility of science. And yet, it is through efforts like these that the arts are developed further. And then there's the matter of dealing with consciousness, where skill and science of consciousness leads to manipulation of such. And yet, I can't help but continue my own work in that direction. I can only say I feel the work must continue, but must be cared for as carefully as the science that brought us the atom bomb. In time, it is inevitable that it will be abused. Yet, damage might be controlled if more of the populous had access to these abilities.
 
 
Rev. Wright
16:47 / 18.04.02
Oi cusm, get ready for my nudge off the fence.

ickle question?

If the Universe, and reality to the matter, is paradoxical, how can everything be defined within the realms of science?

I mean how can a bunch of questioners/scientists, with their half of reality, define the other half?

Morality and ethics are something honed by practioners and relatively ignored by scientists. I agree with Lothar, and how long would it be before we witness the same tradegy as Nuclear technology.
 
 
Rev. Wright
16:48 / 18.04.02
Oh by the way, ignore my previous posts on this site with regards my lucidity derived from Magickal practice, I'm as mad as a lorry.

Woof-cluckityPING..................wibble
 
 
Ierne
16:55 / 18.04.02
To magicians these technologies already exist in the forms of magical traditions. As long as these traditions stay within fringe ontologies that the 1st world Governments don’t subscribe to, they are relatively safe. We will continue to be considered freaks and weirdos, charlatans and deluded religious fanatics whose magic doesn’t work because magic doesn’t exist and these powers, by way of non-accepted 'technologies' hopefully will stay firmly in the hands of the people instead of the governments. – Lothar Tuppan

This may not be taking into account the idea that Magick has always had a strong pull for the rich and powerful, and (more or less, depending on culture and time period) has always been an integral part of their lifestyle. Various types of Magick require an extensive amount of education, money and leisure time that only the aristocracy have at their disposal. (It has only been in the latter part of the last century that interest and knowledge of Magick has spread into the general population in a widespread, open manner.) It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if "1st world Governments" and their constituents already have – and already use - these traditions and technologies.
 
 
cusm
17:15 / 18.04.02
Ok, magick is technology. Only, its based on chaos rather than predectable order, on possibility rather than reality. By making the effects of magick into science, they cease to be magick and cease to access the limitless possibilities. Yet, at the same time, those tools brought into the realm of science become "real", and thus accessible to all. Looking at it all from a CM perspective, science isn't the way things always worked, its what we've managed to distill out of chaos into working. We're writing the rules as we discover them, and the effort of discovery is what brings these possibilities into existance. So by this, it is possible, even inevitable, that we discover secrets worse than the A-bomb by persuit of the codification of How Things Work.

Yet, even knowing this, it is still our nature to persue it. We are dynamic beings, ever seeking the new, ever trying all things. Monkies push every button, its what we do. To stop trying to advance would be to deny what we are, even if in doing so might bring about our own destruction. Aah, paradox.

The best we can do is be watchful, and try our best to keep the a-bombs out of reach until we're ready as a society to deal with them.
 
 
grant
17:21 / 18.04.02
Corporations already use NLP. Bully for them.

To make an atom bomb, you need rare elements (uranium, plutonium) and a bit of high tech hardware - basically, a functional laboratory.

To make magick, you need a brain.

It's already more democratic. The more effort anyone puts into working this stuff, the more everyone knows how it works. I'm all for it.
 
 
Seth
17:23 / 18.04.02
To be honest, I think we're already seeing forms of magic used in ways we'd rather it wasn't, only under different names than we're we're used to. I feel it when I walk into a shopping mall and feel like the entire place has been designed to direct energy, or when I watch or read news media and see the ways in which certain images/language are used to herd the viewer into intended directions. Big money, big prizes.
 
 
Seth
17:24 / 18.04.02
Delayed posting strikes again. Man, I need to refresh more often...
 
 
Rev. Wright
17:32 / 18.04.02
Forget the A-bomb, what about the devestating and pointless nuclear power programme. Humans are producing elements that we can't process, with 100,000's of years half lives. The true cost of such non-naturally earth found metals has yet to be told.

On the flipside, via Irene and Expressionless's posts, there is the fact that techniques are being used on society as a mass.
 
 
The Monkey
18:20 / 18.04.02
A bunch of thoughts - - -


Okay - does science always equal government, and do both always equal evil? It's very easy to deploy either of these caricatures, especially because we take for granted most of the good that has come from both that touches our everyday lives.

Also, I wouldn't take the activities of the CIA during the Cold War as standard operating procedure, even for a government agency, regarding the supernatural.
Not to mention that the hush-activity could be as much "embarassed silence on the part of a secular institution" as "conspiracy."

I guess the problem I see here is that *anything* can be abused in the name ofa cause, an ideology, or just plain power.

"Science" has a system of protocols to determine what is considered legitimate evidence to support a claim [empiricism], there is also by global agreement a series of ethical protocols, less often referenced, established within the Geneva Convention, the Nuremburg Protocols, and a few other documents, that determine how science is conducted. There are also numerous mission statements regarding the potential "ends" of scientific research, and a variety accords, declarations, etc. The problem is enforcing any of these declarations of ideals: there is no way o do so consistently, and in all cases. The research proposal and ethics committee are the best tools we have to enforce a standard, but even they fail, since there are always unscrupulous agents willing to fund and participate in cutting corners.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So what of magic?

First of all, "proving" of magic is a difficult undertaking, especially if you accept the premises of Chaos Magick, given that the nature of the proof is established in empirical methodology, which means that:

I. The materials and procedure are laid out, and consistent between trials
II. The order of steps is consistent...furthermore, there is the aspiration in post analysis to understand how the steps come together (or on their own) to effect the change upon the subject.
III. The procedure produces a result, consistent across replication of the procedure by other scientists/practitioners, and ideally between applications on specific subjects.
IV. In post analysis, statistical analysis must determine the degree of certainty that the procedure produced the results, not error or stochasticity.

Most magic is by nature gauged to fit the individual subject/target, and even though there is a codification in most magical systems of the use-value of materials and procedures (excepting CM), there is no systematic method of transferring data from one procedure to another, except through the interpretative lens of the practioner.

Furthermore, if a CM methology is viewed, how does one measure the impact of "magic" if magic itself works through the channels of probability, and is hence indistinguishable from stochasticity? There is no consistent procedure, no consistent method by which change is affected, no consistent result, in a correlatable fashion, let alone with the stringency of an acceptable standard deviation.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I know that the general image that people take of "the government" is as a secretive, shadowy entity that conceals "truth" from the rest of us. This images is somewhat belied by the fact the much of the US government is very much in plain sight, but simply to boring to catch our furtive attention.

So the generated image of "the government" obtaining magick is like something out of Shadowrun. The smoky back rooms are full of psychics and wizards doing spooky mind-control things and sigiling against America's enemies, right?

So I'm gonna take a different tack on the subject. If magic were validated (which, to start with, would probably be an undertaking of a university), the likelihood is that it would come out of the box in a fashion that it could not be monopolized by the government. You'd be surprised how hard it is to supress an idea. It would be a fairly open-source item. Corporations would pick it up, no doubt, and given the capitalist basis of most people's motivations (world domination is a fantasy entertained less and less; really, people do evil in the name of cash and what cash can provide...) magick would end as a a commercial item (I don't mean advertisements) consumed by a general public.

So the scene is: magic works. It's out there. What can the government do? What is the government obligated to do?

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Consider this: there is no equivalent to the Nuremburg Protocols for magic. Some systems have governing ethics of intent, pratice, and result, others don't. If magick is ever accepted as a legally valid entity - forget "proof" - this freedom (for better and worse) will be removed by the legal necessities of a governing state attempting to enforce the sovereignity of it's individual constituents. Hence the necessity of laws about when the practitioner is culpable for the results of their magic, which encompasses both malpractice and harmful intent.

There are many highly structured societies (although technologically behind the US) which consider magic to be an active part of their environment. I could list perhaps ten to twenty cases, some of them not so "primitive" to be counted as wholly alien, but will refrain. What is common to all of them is that magic has social reprucussions: as part of the accepted social paradigm, magic develops a sense of right and wrong use that will both passively and actively effect the standing of the magician within the larger social group. Almost all cultures that have benevolent images of magic-workers - shamans, healers, pirs, saints - also have malevolent ones. These distinctions are mounted in a larger ideological grounding of right and wrong practice.

In short, if magic is real, hence its effects are real, hence the initiator of the magic is responsible for the effects. Hence society has to have a system of coping with the effects of magic beyond shrugging and saying "that's what you believe." And in particular, a government, which exists in social contract to perform the ironic activity of controlling people as a mass so that each individual is free, by necessity must develop a bureaucratic and legal apparatus to deal with this new reality.

What if you fail to cure someone's disease via a healing session? What if the gingko infusion doesn't balance their ki, or the powdered rhino horn doesn't make it bigger and harder? Imagine a whole new brand of magical malpractice suit. The need for "wizard insurance" to perform healings. Tax forms, ethics committees before group workings to ensure good intent, the need for certification before prescribing herbs or incantations.

But what if you're founding putting goofer dust in someone's shoes, or working a love charm? How about media use of magick to garner attention for products? Think about the controversies, all of the personal fracass that would result from the sense, hell even the suspicion, that someone was tinkering with your free will using magick? What if someone commits a murder, but claims to be under the control of a magician? If magic (of whatever system) is seen as viable method of generating an effect from a cause (regardless of procedure or metaphysics of the function of magic) there are necessarily legal ramifications, to one citizen affecting the life of another citizen using magic.
Contestations on the basis of the overarching "right to privacy" (Griswold vs. Conneticut) alone would be massive. Indeed, the US would probably need an entirely new constitutional apparatus, reiforced with lashings of bureaucracy and an enforcement agency, to cope.

[yes,yes, there are metaphysicians out there who will quibble with my examples as demonstrations of magical use, and people who'll claim that magic "doesn't work that way" so free will isn't an issue, mind control isn't possible, etc. but - how do I put this - you don't get to eat your cake and keep it, too. If magic is real, it means the spell you cast cause the result...thus you are responsible, regardless of the mechanism.]

Suddenly, what prior to the acceptance of magic would be fobbed off as coincidence would be viewed as having agency...even when there wasn't necessarily an agent, magical or otherwise. Imagine the possible accusations between private citizens, the fact that owning candles could be viewed as premeditation to...something. People who used magic would become even more stigmatized/peripheralized, for fear that their power (socially-recognized, remember) could be used against others. Given sufficient time, or a few nasty coincidences, the local or federal government could get involved in deterring magic-users, a streched result of which might be a homomorph to:

I. The Salem Witch-Trials
II. The Shoah
III. The events described in volume One of the Gulag Archipelago.

For better and worse, if magick is proved real, it will by necessity become strapped into the social and legal paradigm of the United States. The freedom to "do as you will" in a large part comes from the majority of people's dismissal of magical activities. Magic users are a tiny community, generally surrounded by disbelievers. Their freedom to cast any magic they like is tied to fact that noone else believes that they possess any power (agency). Were people to be believe in their power (agency), the individual magicians would find themselves under scrutiny regarding both the intent and the effect of their magic.
 
 
Lothar Tuppan
18:25 / 18.04.02
That was my point to the audience: that it is already being used in unethical ways and that people/organizations/governments will continue to do so.

The 'science' aspect (and the part that to me is as dangerous, if not more than the shadow cabinets that may be using 'ritual technology') is the attempt to make machines (via biofeedback, chemicals, etc.) to where someone, without the years of training, education, discipline (which I recognize does not equal ethics either) can have access to these abilities.

In which case not only would corporations and governments be able to implant their logo-sigil-memes into our brains but could also make us more receptive to them by way of a HAARP scenario or as a chemical ingredient in our flu shots.

Geez... I sound like a conspiracy nut.
 
 
Rev. Wright
18:29 / 18.04.02
Not so nutty, we have to talk. Mail me your functioning address, please.
 
 
Lothar Tuppan
18:32 / 18.04.02
Monkey's post went up while I was adding my last post.

I agree that science doesn't always equal bad evil government just that there are already questionable programs out there that existed and continue to exist and that it will probably be ONE of many different ways that it is used.

That being said, I do find your last scenario of magic being absorbed into the social and legal paradigm to be as frightening than any melodramatic 'shadow cabinet' scenario.

Police man: "Son. Drop that goofer dust and move away from the car. Frank be ready... he may have a black cat bone on him."
 
 
The Monkey
18:51 / 18.04.02
...and a mojo, too. But only if he's the Hoochie-Coochie Man (everybody knows his name). Which would explain the cops watching him in the first place. Nothing but trouble, that there Hoochie-Coochie Man...always out, making his midnight creep. Not to mention the whole mo'-chicken-eating issue.

[If you didn't get the last paragraph, go listen to "Hoochie Coochie Man" which is a blues standards. Most people know the Eric Clapton or Muddy Waters Verions. I favor Howlin' Wolf, thought]

Personally, I'm less worried about the government, in either the licensing-program or the shadow-gov scenario, than I am to half the population going off half-cocked trying to put hexes on everyone while the other half oils their torches up and files the pitchfork tangs to "single thrust" sharpness.
 
 
cusm
19:28 / 18.04.02
Geez... I sound like a conspiracy nut.







What was that about corporate sigels, and feeding people chemicals? Smile for the clown now Lothar, and be a good boy.





  
 
The Monkey
19:36 / 18.04.02
Hold on...is a logo necessarily a sigil? Indeed, then, is any common representation/symbol a sigil? Or do you have to concentrate on it while wanking?

Ronald McDonald...Dave Thomas...[screams]
 
 
Rev. Wright
19:38 / 18.04.02
Quote post of mine @ GNN

'You must know your mythic origins.
Facts and news are reports from the current TV drama.
They have no relevance to your 2-billion-year-old divinity.
Myth is the report from the cellular memory bank.
Myths humanize the recurrent themes of evolution.


You select a myth as a reminder that
you are part of an ancient and holy process.

You select a myth to guide you when you drop out of the
narrow confines of the fake-prop studio set.


Your mythic guide must be one who has solved the death-rebirth riddle.

A TV drama hero cannot help you.
Caesar, Napoleon, Kennedy are no help to your cellular orientation.
Christ, Lao-tse, Hermes Trismegistus, Socrates are recurrent turn-on figures.


You will find it absolutely necessary to leave the city.

Urban living is spiritually suicidal.
The cities of America are about to crumble as did Rome and Babylon.


Go to the land.
Go to the sea. '

Dr. Timothy Leary Ph.D

'..until very recently every migrating race inherited from the native magicians of the new country the spiritual secrets ofteh landscape, acknowledging and respecting the superior skill of the former people in natural magic, and even, in the course of tie, coming to identify their memory with the local spirits, elementals and genii loci. Th European colonists in America were, perhaps the first to exterminate the native inhabitants without learning the secrets of their geomancy, of the seasons proper for the rites invoking the fertilizing influences and the sacred spots where they might effectively be performed. The Spanish in the southern half of the continent pursued the usual policy of building their churches wherever they found a native temple, thereby consolidating their military conquest by achieving spiritual control of the country. ..
..The catastrophic results of the new Americans' failure to inherit the geomantic lore of their predecessors is now becoming apparent in the endemic restlessness and unease of the present inhabitants and in what seems to be the inevitable approach of sterility to both land and livestock through the application of naive agricultural theories, together with the disregard on the part of politicians, generals and industrialists for the living, and therefore vunerable, nature of their eniviroment. '

John Michell

Within the confines of sprituality are of course the myths or metanarratives that generate an understanding of world view and place within it. In his essay The Struggle of Postmodernism and Postcolonialism, Gilbert McInnis implies that the postcolonial experience, such as new Americans, generates the postmodern smashing of metanarritive, as a form of control. He refers to Tiffin

'The dis/mantling, de/mystification and unmasking of European authority that has been an essential political and cultural strategy towards decolonisation and the retrieval of creation of an independent identity from the beginning persists as a prime impuse [sic] in all postcolonial literatures'

'the history of postcolonial territories, was, until recently, largely a narrative constructed by the colonizers, its functions, and language(s) in which they are written, operate as a means to cultural control'

My example of this spritual or magickal propoganda and its proliferation through mass marketing from the United States is Santa Claus.
His origins date back to early European 'Wild man' myths that were celebrated as a death/rebirth cycle. One of these was the Norse medicine man's ceremony of wearing animal skins and nature symbols, drinking hallucinagenic mushroom reideer urine and terrifying tribes members. Our modern Christian interpretation is taken from this when Pope Gregory chose him as the image of Evil (Santa = Satan). It was in the 19th Century that Santa's current image started to take form, including Haddon H Sundblom's annual Coca-Cola ads.
It is in my opinion the most important reference to Santa Claus, and one that endorses the Yule celebration of Mass consumerism, that is now sweeping the modern world.

I propose that an active propoganda media campaign dismantling original metanarratives, secures a conscious and subconscious hook within the human mind with ease, playing off of the an inherant need for myth.

One could apply such to other advertising and marketing strategies, such as the Jolly Green Giant. These charcters/deities fit well within the timeless storytelling aspect found innate within all human culture.

Thus, also, our new pantheon of gods becomes the prolific media personalities, but at what point does our encoding of their role cease and a coporate encoding start?

This theory are concept is not new or necessarily complete, but I feel that from an esoteric/spirtual angle, it is also inportant to register and address and media revolution with such matters. With the advent of NLP catching the tale of practices such as Chaos Magick, it is now necessary to 'counter culture' from both ends.
 
 
Ierne
20:09 / 18.04.02
Smile for the clown now Lothar, and be a good boy. – cusm

Does anyone remember the life-size Ronald McDonald statues that would sit on benches outside certain McDonalds "dining establishments"? One could sit next to it and have one's picture taken...often whilst gesticulating towards the statue in a distincly anti-McDonalds manner

Heh. thanks for the flashback.
 
 
The Monkey
21:39 / 18.04.02
Actually the Santa myth goes back to a Lapp man in folk history who used to cut firewood and give it to the poor during the winters, who also carved wooden toys for children. This was confabulated into Christian mythology, the converted Norse intertwining the character with one of the first saints of the region, Saint Nicholas. His affiliation with evil was due to the popularity of the Saint due to his affiliation with the primary gift-giving holidays of the Winter Solstice/Christmas (and they were gift-giving holidays, although not to the modern degree), to the degree of which he awas viewed as a usurper to Jesus upon the day of his birth. It should be noted that simultaneous to the denunciation, the Catholic Church attempted to sell the idea of the "Christ Childer" (Child-Christ) as asubstitute, oddly enough generating the supposed "real name" of Santa Claus, Kris Kringle.

And the Mitchell quote displays a stunning ignorance of non-European history. "Learning the secrets of the people before them" my monkey ass. The history of migrancy is far more complex...take as an example let's say, a historical example such as the Aryan Migration across the Hindu Kush. In the past as in the present the lines between migration and conquest are blurred to indiscernability. Mitchell is operating in platitude-speak, combined with pure Rousseauian idealization of the "wise native" conflicted with the "ignorant Western," combined with some bland blame-attribution sent forth on a wavelength that white liberals will harmonize with (and think of themselves as "revolutionary).

And the more I think about this advertising-sigil business, the sillier it gets. My stepmother worked for Leo Burnett, my best friend for BM Squib, both doing product design...the sum of their experience in the advertising industry covering from 1960 to present. Advertising doesn't need to function on some mystic, wanking-on-Ronald-McDonald level. Spokesperson images, logos, and products' aesthetic designs are generated by opinion sampling with the core demographic of the product. The magic is the psychology of identification and mnemonic recall, as determined by statistical sampling and focus groups. Unless claim is that the magic of logo development is occurring on a subconscious level in the board room (and the client consultancy room, the focus group meeting, the creative production department's offices) the case looks a tad flimsy. Even most advertising agencies concede that testing demonstrates little to no impact on consumption habits above and beyond name recall influencing decision.

And NLP isn't magic. It is an exploitation of the devices by which the brain remembers, which are nice and mechanical. They give lessons in self-NLP at seminars for old people with memory problems. Even the NLP tapes that supposedly alter the way you think function by pounding in a series of menomic correspondences.
 
 
Lothar Tuppan
22:36 / 18.04.02
cusm:

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!

(don't scare me like that)

And the more I think about this advertising-sigil business, the sillier it gets.

While Ronald, and all clowns for that matter (Bingo... Bingo the Clown-o), scare the hell out of me. [shudder] One of my problems with post-modern, hip, urban, magic philosophy is that it sometimes confuses the metaphor as being literal. While a sigil can be a logo and vice versa, I've worked too long in industries with marketing folk to think they're doing any conscious or active magic.

But if there was a 'worst case scenario' as per Monkey's full acceptance and integration of magical techniques with reality example, then these marketing departments could accept sigil and other occult techniques as valid marketing strategy. Then, possibly, looking at a billboard or hearing a jingle becomes a type of magical attack and defense. Get thee behind me CLOWN!

That being said, McDonalds is obviously Satan spawned evil that doesn't need to learn magical techniques. The magic substance of power pours out of the Grimace's orifaces for all of the corporate officers to do with as they will.

I'm kidding. (I think).
 
 
Lothar Tuppan
22:38 / 18.04.02
I also don't consider NLP to be considered 'magick' per se but I really hope this doesn't turn into another debate on what is and isn't 'magick'.
 
 
The Monkey
00:03 / 19.04.02
I personally promise to never again discuss what is or isn't magic, just as long as any sentence including the phrase "pour out of Grimace's orifices" is excluded from the text.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
00:36 / 19.04.02
Y'know, this is one reason I've always fought shy of "proving" that magick is real. You just know that if the Powers that Be get their grubby mits on it, everything'll go pearshaped. Us lot will be dragged off into an underground lab somewhere and we'll never be seen again.

I'm going to go and learn some card tricks.
 
 
Logos
01:56 / 19.04.02
Try to remember.

You [i]have[/i] been dragged off to an underground lab. Most of the sujects think they're sending messages to one another through a fantastical communications network called an "Internet".
 
 
cusm
02:00 / 19.04.02
Sorry Lothar, I didn't mean to dredge up any old traumas there

As for Logos and sigels, I'd just like to point out one thing that that people seem to miss, for being too wrapped up in one process: You don't have to charge a sigel to make it work. Notably, charging a sigel and casting causes one type of effect. However, symbols can be used for psychological manipulation without any sort of mystical workings.

You look at a symbol, and its form is recorded in your subconscious. That symbol may contain other symbols that cause a reaction, such as golden arches reminding one of breasts, the gates of heaven, etc. The color red triggers energy, power and success, gold prosperity and trust. You are then given an association, say a name: McDonalds. That's just the beginning of the programming.

Next, you are given more associations. Sizzling hot beef, tasty fries (flash of logo), colorful cartoon characters (flash logo), refreshing drinks (flash logo). Nowyou associate the logo with the product, and the vendor.

Add another layer. Commericals of people being happy, children well fed and satisfied, success, social acceptance, attractive people driving expensive cars, sex. All manner of associations are made, so that you feel these things when you see the logo, redirecting your desire for hot babes and fast cars to Big Macs and Milk Shakes.

But wait, there's more. We have mascots, characters who have developed their own mythologies. Now areas of the consciousness normally used for myth, story, and religion are subverted back to the shiny logo. Golden Arches means Ronald McDonals, and a whole pantheon of colorful characters designed to be lovable, comforting, and entertaining. Joy is remembered from childhood when the myths of the Hamburgler were taught along side myths of other characters like say, Jesus.

Now, when we see the logo, a whole host of unconscious responses are triggered. There's every sort of joy and desire we can think of tied into this logo. It is an icon of happiness, and desire for that happiness that can be attained at a drive through near you.

Advertising works by programming you, and that programming uses the same tools the magickian uses to make a sigel seem "magickal." So what if noone wanks over it. Years of exposure make it more powerful a force than any you could chant up in an evening. There is power in symbols, and more than one way to use it. The techniques of magick as human meta programming are already well known by advertisers, and have been for years. Look at their magick some time, and you might find ways to improve your own.
 
 
cusm
02:04 / 19.04.02
Logos: ssh! Don't tell them too much too soon, they might not be able to handle the shock of awakening.
 
 
The Monkey
04:25 / 19.04.02
"However, symbols can be used for psychological manipulation without any sort of mystical workings."

Um, yes...Skinner, Pavlov, Lacan, Lothar's post, my post which says "a logo is not necessarily a sigil"....

The process you are describing as some sort of insidious subconscious "programming" is in fact quite conscious on the part of the consumer. I may be a cynic about the intellectual capacities of the human race, but not even I believe that your average truckdriver is such a turlingdrome as to associate McDonald's with family and quality (without some fairly fucked-up antecedents). This position denies agency - hell, denies orbitofrontal cortexes - to people because it makes the ideological life of the pseudo intellectual easier to think the [mythical] average person (defined generally as someone not like the postulant, fitting some subjectively gauged, negative-marked idea of the median, plus or minus standard deviation) is controlled by some sort of Big Bad, rather than just manifest bad taste and poor spending habits on their own. The mythical "average person" is not strung about by the media on some Manchurian Candidate sublevel of their brain; they're strung about by the media because of their CONSCIOUS choice to indulge in certain self-gratifying myths about the ability of products and services to enhance their lives. People *want* to believe, and there are many individuals and structures in modern society that are perfectly willing to take that drive to believe and extract as much mileage and capital from it as possible. Symbol sets and their associative network of meaning are consciously maintained, and can be very flexible...but most people choose to hold onto partilcular groupings of mneaning, because their sense of self is somehow tied in. Hell, half of the time, people purchase logoed items in the hopes that others will believe the hype about what the product does to its owner. This is a radically different process from subconscious or unconscius operation. Of course, everyone who makes this sort of "programming" claim has transcended, and become self-conscious of this control...and now spout an incredibly standardized line of rhetoric on the evil of this process. Mmm, yes! We are all individuals...! The only difference I see here is that the postulators want the indoctrinated to cast off their iron chains of self-aggradizing delusions and take up a brand-new set of bronzed manacles of different self-aggrandizing delusions.

Do you really think there is an insidious process of "programming" that assures some guarantee of the customer's consumption of the consumer product? Guess what...the advertising industry has been trying to develop that kind of "magic bullet" [and that has been the pukka term for it since Kennedy] for ages. As I stated earlier, by their own admission, this process has failed beyond the point of brand recognition increase in association with a logo. This idea that an entire associative set of wish-fulfilment imagery is packed into every ad AND SUCCESSFULLY COMMUNICATED is not born out by the realities of economic successes and failures of consumer goods. All of the other shenanigans that have been tried (and are still tried) by ad agencies to increase sales of specific products - subliminal messaging, imagery - has never succeeded beyond simple mnemonic referentiality. You can get the consumer to identify your product at the market, but that doesn't mean that they buy it.

What makes the average-demographic consumer buy is a crap shoot - in the agency business they still refer to the ineffable quality that makes a person saleable as an actor/model/etc. as "It." The same is true of non-human consumer products. Attempts to generate easy equations of what sells and doesn't don't work very well. Sometimes one products hits, and there's money to be made off of imitations and homologues. Other times only the original goes anywhere. I'm sure at least one ad company has a chaos mathematician and two relayed supercomputers trying to calculate "It." And failing.

I'm not going to pitch that advertising doesn't it piss me off - it exploits the insecurities of people. But so does religion, politics, ideology, parents, girlfiends, telemarketeers.... As the man said - and he was in a position to know - there's a sucker born every minute. It's just a question of what logo they've decided to buy.
 
 
Rev. Wright
07:49 / 19.04.02
Do mindtraining, chanting, affirmations, self awareness techniques fall under the remit of esoteric procedure?

Does the consumer/average person need to have aspects of human psychology presented in idolised forms within culturally specific settings?

So NLP doesn't contain invocation rituals, but it does consist of many techniques that also exist under magickal practice. Its all about repackaging, including modern pantheon of deities or hero figures, constructing a metanarrative.

The carrier technology of Television is a form of hypnosis, dancing light show, just check out how the brain chemistry responds to it. Human communication is based on sympathetic resonance that induces trance like states, we hypnotise, to a greater or lesser degree, ourselves and others throughout our day. The more attention one can have with advertising (average saturation is 400+ a day) will inherantly be based on our latent suggestive interpersonal comm.

Modern advertsisng is constructed as monkey says, but it is interesting to note the thousands of years use of geometry with religion and culture that constructed symbols, flags, designs, and is it not these that designers and artists refer. I do not have to suggest some overt scheming in this, but that on a subconscious level we have all become subconsciously learned in these matters, through proliferation and saturation.

Going back to Lothars initial point, is it not that as the voice of magickal practice gets more prominant, it also gets absorbed within cultural norms? The steel band expands slightly
 
 
grant
15:04 / 19.04.02
I think a logo and sigil are both different descendants of FORM, a common ancestor.

I also wonder if there wouldn't be a separation between magick and state. I mean, since magickal crimes leave no physical evidence, really, there'd have to be a magickal police force for magickal retribution... I dunno.
 
 
cusm
15:13 / 19.04.02
I doubt there can be a separation of Magick and Information, let alone something like the state. Thoug granted, I see magick in any transmission or transformation of information anymore, so I might define things a little differently from out here in Bat Country.
 
 
Kobol Strom
16:28 / 19.04.02
Powerful sigils in advertising tend to be the ones that seem to offer a novel insight into the realm of semi-predictable,possibly mathematical,iconographic tapestries of a larger,interconnected framework.The generation of sigils is an approach towards an almost abstact art form,which imposes a system of destruction of the old words and meanings,and a rearrangement into unknowable personal forms, that by the process of their creation,are new,and as such,can seem quite alien.This novel instance of part of a new iteration of patterns can affect a very primordial perceptual reaction,and at the level of the unconscious and my interacting with other 'objects', can create new effects.
At some level,there is a unit of source for unconscious imagery,but to the magician,who is trained in psychic awareness ,there is a level where this premonitory revelation takes on external validity in time,with an increasing success rate.To know what is going to happen is one thing,to be able to see the future,not focussing on important or unimportant events,and be able to do something about it,is another.
To decide how events will unfold,and then bend your complete will towards that effect,to create in yourself,the right circumstances for growth,recquires a certain sense of spirituality,a level of conscious awareness,that protects the quality of a magicians work from the consequences of disapprobation.I think the CIA or whomever,could very easily hire the best psychics in the universe - but unless the institution itself is dedicated,not to exploitation,but to psychic growth, there will be no chance of achieving the kinds of results that would give the NSA wet dreams.
The right psychic who came into touch with the premonitory information would also have a developed self awareness to prevent them from wanting to give the information to the wrong people.Otherwise,the info that you recieve would be both limited in scope and clouded by ego.
I read about magick,and occasionally practise a few minor things,but I usually act on an impulse of the Will, based on visual information recieved in a trance.If its useful to know the kinds of things that are going to happen in my life during the near future by seeing them in this state,then fine.I do art for a living,so I'm constantly trying to generate something new,sometimes I can see the finished product before I even start.The mind can miraculously act to generate abstract solutions to creative problems and draw on a source of catalogued unconscious semi-predictive information that can sometimes even seem quite terrifying.In this sense, the biggest danger to me, is myself, and not the supposed machiavellian maneuvering of unseen psychic soldiers.
I guess my point is,that an organisation using psychics would inevitably self destruct,because of the personal need to protect ones own interests independent of selfishness or otherwise.
 
 
solid~liquid onwards
10:18 / 20.04.02
just read through all of this in a one'r (*phew*)...i'll just try and bring the origional concept back up, as i hate details, im a concept man.

If magic was proven (and accepted) there would just be one or two weeks of hype on the tv before 99% of the population stopped caring and carried on with what they were doing before, corporations already use psychics to an extent (uri geller was hired to find new oil fields a while back, and found some in the gulf of mexico that are still pumping away...thats one of the reasons he has so much money).

anyone hear about some dude who was in some african countries national football (soccer) coaching staff who was arrested for using tribal magic on the sidelines.

"there'd have to be a magickal police force for magickal retribution"

when i practiced astral projection, it was kinda like some sort of baser part was left behind...the same applies when im in a trance, things like hate revenge etc brieffly dissapear...we have little astral police men in our heads :P, or at least i do but i seem to be afflicted with more than my fair share of morals...no doubt there are those who would/can abuse magic...but who would decide whats right and wrong and what the appropriate punishment would be...or mabye things would fall into a natrual order (as magic is now) and exist in true anarchy.

P.S...im sure most of the ppl here are chaos magickians, which leaves a whole worlds worth of beleifs and practices open for you to scavenge from, but half of you are always arguing abbout sigils, and following what is traditionally associated with chaos magic.

pah, my thoughts are almost as disjointed on screen as they are in my head
 
 
mixmage
02:02 / 24.04.02
*... rides with Honir...*

24th post 24/04 2002
 
  
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