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Pop Magic

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

03:39 / 10.06.02

ok, so i finally got around to the whole pop magic thing on GMs page and after reading it had a question or 2

when he talks about the moment of blinding clarity, whatever you use to achieve it (orgasm, fight/flight etc) it got me thinking. the clearest and most focused time i can recall is when, after a night of drinking, i was feeling really low one morning and went to sit on the porch to smoke a cig ( i dont smoke really...) and after taking a few puffs i laid the cig across the back of my hand. I just kinda sat there for a little while and looked down and the cig had burned to the filter, it only felt like a fe seconds to me.
So, could i have inadvertantly reached this enlightenment moment without trying, using pain, like the azteks? i only really mention it because for the next few hours while my skin was blistering i flt very light and airey, like the guy in office space after his hypnosis.

sorry for the ramblings and spelling errs, im tired

E

04:31 / 10.06.02

Well going by personal experience I would say that you experienced a mellow buzz/blitz state and not enlightenment. Enlightenment for me has always included some sort of exclamation into the reality of existence.
This sounds like after effect of a few too many. (which can have immense value on its on accord, Ive done some of my best paintings during a post drinkfest mellow)

Less searchable M0rd4nt

06:51 / 10.06.02

Werl, Pop Magick to my mind is a kind of nifty repackaging of the ol' chaos magick toolkit, so I would say that what Morrison is talking about is gnosis in the CM sense- a moment where the conscious mind is shut down, and the subconscious rules all. How you achieve it is up to you, but it certainly sounds like you managed to get into some kind of altered state.

11:07 / 10.06.02

Yea it definatly seems that you achieved gnosis through pain that time. Using pain is something i've been doing myself recently to some good results although i wouldn't recommend using your method too often!! Unless you want hands like the Singing Detective!! One important thing about using pain as a means to an altered state has to do with how tolerent to pain you are. It can be pretty time consuming for a seasoned Sado-Masochist, banging nails into his scrotum for 3 hours, to reach a gnosis point while for a complete physical coward such as myself it can be a matter of seconds.

I think its pretty important to change your means to gnosis pretty regular as your mind builds up a tolerence to them. It's a 'Sleight of Mind' trick and your mind tends not to be tricked for too long. Using the orgasm method tends to become pretty ineffective after a while unless you start combining it with Karenza or some other Tantric and Breathing techniques.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:09 / 10.06.02

Also- and I hate to come over all nannyish- it sounds as if you were using the pain to escape from a painful emotional state. You might want to look at this aspect of the experience. Inducing physical pain can be a very toxic way of dealing with your psychological pain.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

11:12 / 12.06.02

heh, im over THAT emotional pain now, and yes it was kind of an escape i used at the time, havent gotten around to any further experiments yet, and my hands are pretty scarred up already, so may try something else next time.

thanks for the input all.

17:28 / 12.06.02

Note also that Gnosis is a moment of hyperaware nonawareness. Its not only the state of mind, but the release of energy that is important. So, its usually only a momentary flash. What you hit sounds more like a trance state. Trance states are valid for magick as well, but in different ways than gnosis states. Rather than throwing the casting into a flash of energy, the energy comes from the time you lost in the trance in devoted concentration to the working. So, you still hit something valid magickly, just in a different way.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

19:02 / 12.06.02

...so I would say that what Morrison is talking about is gnosis in the CM sense- a moment where the conscious mind is shut down, and the subconscious rules all.

Not to sound purposefully contradictory...

I'm not sure gnosis is a moment where the conscious mind shuts down, but rather more like a moment when conscious and unconscious are non-dual. Thought and action are the same thing. It's like you've fully entered reality at real-time speed rather than the slices we normally live in, which is why it's important in magick. Once there, one uses the inertia from the energy release to place whatever command one wishes. I think it was Morrison who compared it to "hacking into reality" to alter the existing programming.

20:05 / 12.06.02

I read something by Chogyam Trungpa a while ago where he said that Tibetan Buddhists believed there was a moment of pure light at the moment of death, another every time we wake up or fall asleep, and one in between every thought. The goal of meditation was to draw out and lengthen these moments.