Entrance of an Eclipse

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Nov. 17th, 2009

08:22 am - Science and THE SCIENCE

Magick has often been spoken of as the mother of all sciences and arts. Since it seeks to change and then manifest the highest values of the individual, it follows logically that all social and technological constructions must flow from this place. This is similar to the maxim of "revolution from above". Too often, in the occult community, we see that people approach magick using the tools, techniques and approaches of the dominant culture. This is necessary, to a point. We all have to be able to read the material and put it into practice. We also require a paradigm where this change can come into being. You have to build the foundation before the cap-stone is set into place. However, a pyramid lacking a cap-stone is not a pyramid, and this highest point is what determines how the base is built. This is where initiation comes in. The rituals that we undergo give us the structure necessary to assimilate what we experience in the moment of transcendence.

The magician is always in a state of flux. Crowley tells us that magick is the "art and science of causing change in conformity with will" so the temple is always being destroyed and rebuilt. Each time, however, we should be building it higher and stronger. On a mental level, we can see this in Crowley "The Soldier and the Hunchback", but it has broader implications.

It seems to me that any magical gesture always begins with a question, a need. It is up to us to find that question. Levay pointed out that the ritual chamber was the magician's deepest aesthetic manifestation of himself, or at least it should be. Some of my friends have been turned off by his parlor of manikins, but I think it is helpful to compare this to the Chapel of Abominations at Cefalu. This deepest place, where the question or need is stated, is not usually very pretty. However, it is inside this place that the ? becomes an ! While we can use the tools of the dominant culture to take up our question, and put our answer into practice, it is this confrontation with the demon that marks the lynch pin of magick. As such, it is not directly comparable to any other technology.

I find it difficult to get into discussions about magick with people who don't really practice it, because I know they are missing this crucial experience. We can argue the minutia all day. We can compare and contrast the thoughts of various "experts", on any number of subjects that we feel are relevant, all day long, but without this point of origin, we really aren't talking about the same animal. While many of the operations that the magician engages in may appear "internal" ( divination, contact with higher planes, etc), magick as psychology is a very limiting approach. The scope of magick is much larger and more profound that any kind of "mind science" since it deals with the matter of the deep and essential individual. Psychology attempts to produce "the normal" or "the functional" and, while for some this may be a laudable goal, the magician is playing a very different game.

I think, for many modern people, the idea of placing the higher irrationality of the magician at the apex of the pyramid, and allowing it to inform the whole world with its dominant image, is very scary. We tend to see this as a regression to "primitive" times, because we see that "primitive" cultures practice magick openly, while we do not. However, we miss how our own culture is built up from a dominant image that is just as irrational as the magical image. Evola points out that so called "primitive cultures" are not a kind of base state or original culture, but are rather fallen cultures, who have lost their real image and are fragmented. When we examine the lost and scattered tribes of the 3rd world, we usually see people who are only now united by a herd instinct. We also see this in the inner city. This is not magick, even if they still use tricks of sorcery and the technology that their ancestors handed down to them. The psychological or managerial approach in our culture is similar, in that it tries to substitute the demands of the herd with the highest values of the individual. Just as we can take up the tools or paraphernalia of the "medicine man", we can also take up the tools of the psychologist or the effective manager, but we must place these in their proper role and context. If the daemon is not called up and questioned, if these lesser spirits are not put to its service, than we are not doing magick.

Current Mood: contemplative

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Apr. 7th, 2009

09:38 am - The Necessities of Political Thelema

A while ago I had dinner with a number OTO brethren. One of them insisted that he was not interested in order politics, but was concerned with "the work". I've found this to be a common attitude among OTO members, who are uncomfortable with the political process and political thought in general. Politics requires that we make divisions, and set up hierarchies. Does Osama bin Laden get to vote on US border policy? I don't think so. What brethren like this are really reacting to, I suspect, is the process of division and hierarchy itself. They often quote passages like "Every man and every woman is a star", from Liber AL, in support of their positions. Through such selective quotation they are attempting to de-couple Crowley the political philosopher, who said things like "I want a Patriarchal-Feudal system run by initiated Kings" (Tunisia, 1923), from Crowley the prophet of Thelema, but is such a division tenable?

About 90 % of Thelema, at a guess, is nothing but self-discipline.
-MWT: Chapter 70

Self discipline impels division and hierarchy. There must be "the part which disciplines" and "the part which is disciplined", and one must be set over the other. If we accept the hermetic maxim, "As below, so above", we are forced to recognize that this internal hierarchy mandates a corresponding external one. The question is never politics or no politics, rather, "Which kind of politics and why?"

Often those who make political decisions we dislike are accused of nepotism: using power to promote their friends and punish their enemies. This ignores the greater question of why certain individuals are friends and others enemies to begin with, or why some friends receive political favors and others do not. When we examine these external realities, we are also examining the internal value systems that give rise to them. Even if we exclude such "superstitions" as causing change in the material world through ceremonial magic, and relegate occultism to the psychological realm, we cannot escape the fact that our value hierarchies and divisions always manifest themselves in some kind of political process.

Every time we give money to someone, communicate with them, live with them, or lust after them we are making some kind of decision based on an internal hierarchy of values. How these decisions get made is a political process, and not a democratic one. Each of our drives does not get "a vote". Would we want to hang out with a person who operated like this? I don't think so. Why then do we assume that a similar level of confusion in our external political process is desirable? Conversely, do we allow one drive to tyrannize all the others? This would be misery. Why then, should blindly following an external authority produce better results? This means we can never abandon the political process. We are, internally, political creatures. Of necessity, we must also be external ones.

Current Mood: contemplative

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Jan. 13th, 2009

11:37 am - Local Body Closures - Mergers *ahem* " Adjustments"

"He has the morphino-maniac’s feeling of bien-étre [well-being], the delusions of the general paralytic. He loses the power of looking any fact in the face; he feeds himself on his own imagination; he persuades himself of his own attainment."

-Aleister Crowley: On the Dangers of Mysticism

Has anyone noticed that when an unpleasant event occurs, within the OTO, it is immediately recast as a cause for celebration? No matter what happens, no matter how badly it reflects on local or national leadership, immediately members come seething out of the cracks and fissures to cocoon the issue with positive platitudes. This is, of course, when they deign to discuss it AT ALL. Let's remove any higher concerns about whether or not we can get to Valhalla with this kind of attitude. On a much lower level, how are we going to grow and prosper as an organization if we can't honestly examine our problems?

Without the power of looking facts in the face, how will we be able to buy and hold property? How will we attract quality members? How will we keep the books in print, or perform the rituals "with joy and beauty", or practice the difficult and dangerous "theurgy and thaumaturgy" of the higher degrees? If we want this incarnation of the OTO to do anything of value in the world, we NEED to start calling a spade a spade.

No matter how we choose to spin it, the fact that the EC had to close the oldest continually operating local body in the WORLD is NOT a good thing. Perhaps it was moribund. Perhaps it was brain dead. Perhaps it was the best, most humane thing to do under the circumstances, but how did we end up with this set of circumstances? In any other functional, adult, organization this would be a serious wake-up call. In the OTO, it's just more of the same:

Current Mood: apathetic

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Aug. 14th, 2007