I get the impression that today's Magick is a more personal effect, one experienced by the individual rather than the more orthidox forms of the past. What have we seen so far? First there was the dominance of the church, and magick practice and research was a secret and persecuted art. Then we have organizationa like the GD and Thelema, where magick "came out" as it were, but followed the same patterns of organization and control over its congregation even while preaching a mandate of personal freedom. Along comes Gerald Gardner and the like, who translated magick for the hippy revolution, the first of pop magick, though retained a gradient system of initiation. However, this broke down into a decentralized neo-pagan movement of family oriented traditions and individual practicioners. Next, Chaos Magick further encourages independent practice, not as a resort to failing to find a coven but as a path unto its own. More, the mandate of personal freedom is expressed and embraced. Peter Carroll follows this up by forming yet another hermetic institution, the IOT. Do they never learn?
During all of this, eastern mysteries are slowly integrated, starting with Crowley and earlier, and having a big boom in the 60s and 70s as popular culture thought of anything to do with enlightenment or mystic wisdom to have come from the East. Follow a migration of seekers to India to bring back the secrets of Yoga, Taoism, and Zen. Note that each of these was presented within a strict orthidox structure of their own, but set free in the west became almost generic tools anyone could pick up, and do. See the thread on meditation for some examples of how diffused this has become in pop culture today. These concepts have since worked their way into many aspects of pop magick, and all have to do with personal growth and enlightenment and experience of divinity as a personal experience rather than as a church.
Looking at all this, the direction Magick has been taking is away from orthidox institutions and structured initiations and towards the individualized experience of each person on their own path to enlightenment. The walls of secrecy are breaking down. The taboos are being ignored. Magick is for everyone, and it doesn't matter how you do it. The direction is pop, ambient education of the masses of magickal ideas and reality, and a shift towards magickal reality as more of the norm. The children are growing up, and no longer need their parental churches. We are coming into our own. The child Horus is us. We don't need gods because we are gods, and we understand the mysteries of divinity on our own, and act accordingly. |
