Why NOT Use Magic?

Rituals, spells, prayer, meditation and magical acts.
obnoxion
Posts: 1806
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 7:59 pm

Re: Why NOT Use Magic?

Post by obnoxion »

Nefastos wrote:That said, in the opening I meant the thing that many call "higher" magic, and which I would like to call "lesser" magic: the magic use which is ritualized and outwardly formulated.
I pretty much abandoned complex ceremonies, as they are quite time consuming and overtly technical. If I would do something concrete, I would, for example, walk a certain route, remove a stone from one plece and relocate it somewhere else, cross a few sticks By the road, bury some item somewhere, or something very simple and childish like that. I also tend to recognize ritualistic patterns in everyday situations, which brings the possibility the participate on the situation on an extra level, so to speak. But, as you said, everything is magic, so when you change focus, it is just magic in a different form.

The beauty and power of simple folk magic is, I think, in whatever you do, you always do it "inside" you consciousness. If you take a pebble and put it somewhere else, then at the same time you have a dynamic picture in your mind of you taking up a pebble and putting it someplace else. And the action, the pebble and the place are all forms of thought. And on a deep level of consciousness, for example in dreams, a pebble is not just a pebble but a vital symbol - and so are the place and the action. When one is doing something practical, like carrying a shopping back, one is usually not aware that one is at the same time forming in one's mind a bundle of thought-forms. But when one is doing something that has no particular mundane value, like a simple performance of folk magic, that sort of purifies all the elements of the action, and brings to focus the inner aspect of the outer forms.

So when you take a stone in your hand, dig a hole in the ground and bury it there, you are at the same time thinking very pure and very complex thoughts - By pure I mean that you are just thinking the form of a pebble that is put in the form of the soil by the form of the hand. And although these are on the surface very simple thought forms, they are actually amazingly complex. For if you would see a dream, where a veiled person from deep darkness would approach you, and show you in his/her hand a pebble, would you not think that you have received some very deep and important idea that you cannot quite grasp. So when you handle a simple pebble with no other ulterior motivation than simply moving it from one place to another, you can be at the same time handling in your mind a profound thougth that you possibly would not be otherwise able to grasp. And if your travel like 7 miles to do this little act somewhere, and then return, will it not also be a journey deep inside, to a place your thoughts seldom visit.

If you ask, what is the point of all this, and what you are trying to accomplish with all this, well, you have already missed the point completely. I know that folk magic tends to have a practical goal, and so what I am talking about here is a completely different thing, something like Zen Buddhism. But to introduce the idea of some higher folk magic as some essentially psychological exercise is not what I mean to do. It would not be fair to either psychology or to folk magic. For the next thing would be to purify the aim of the actions, and to understand its complexity as a thought form. Because this kind of magic must not exclude anything, but it should bring about the Tantric ideal of bhuktimukti – that is, transcendence AND this worldly bliss. And thus, when magic is realized as a constant aspect of all, it should not become a hindrance to nirvanic intention, but an aid.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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