BEYOND THE WORD AND THE FOOL Pt1

Part One

TEMPLE artefact #006

‘Tis the apple-bobbing season of ghoul and geist, when horseless headman, phantom pumpkin, Sabrina the Future Repellent Crone, and all manner of attendant Franculas, Drakensteins, Weinsteins, and wine stains come capering through the gloom to put the wind up the unwary!

In our first tribute to the spookiest month of the year, we’re opening the Temple archives and dedicating October to the occult, the magical and the just plain uncanny, with hands-on instruction in the rudiments of the Magical Arts, more Tarot, and more unlikely rabbits from more elaborate hats!

So what’s it all about really?

Kicking off our gaga Ghost Train trip comes this introductory piece, the original of which appeared in Heavy Metal magazine #286, the 2017 ‘Magic’ edition.

Some of you may have seen this previously but this is a more up to date version and can be considered a companion piece to my earlier Pop Magick! essay. Essentially, it’s an attempt to sketch out the basic elements of my magical thinking for a general audience and goes a bit like this…

BEYOND THE WORD AND THE FOOL

Who let the Dog out?

If you can get close enough to read the name on his collar, you're too close to avoid his grinning, snapping snoutful of choppers. The Greeks called him cynocephalus - "dog head" - AKA the Ape of Thoth. A baboonish yapping daftie who snaps forever at the dapper, gem-dusted heels of THOTH the eightfold and elaborate.

Thoth, with stylus in hand and molten stele at the ready!

Thoth, who scribbles incandescent hierosyllables with an iridescent Ibis quill!

Thoth, whose graceful, arcing beak reads DVD codes, like a needle in a groove, any groove!

Some have seen here a metaphor from Information Theory where Thoth = Information i.e. useful data and the Ape = Noise i.e. irrelevant background racket. But the mysteries of the Ape run deeper. There is more to his jabbering than simply noise.

The secret name of our companion Ape is Interpretation - that doggedly pursues the Mag!cian on his path, ensuring with its simian prancing, its organ grinding antics, that the clarity and precision of the Mag!cian’s words, indeed any written word, will be reliably distorted, misrepresented, twisted, condemned, mocked and mined for multiple meanings s/he never intended, world without end.

The Ape is the inevitability of misunderstanding. To be misquoted and misrepresented is to know the Wisdom of the Ape.

Nevertheless, we proceed, and with complete awareness of the gibbering simian dancing at our heels, let us attempt to be clear and precise about what is happening when we practise Mag!c.

What is this Mag!c of which ye speak?

Mag!c = Meaning.

Or to put it another way, Life + Significance = Mag!c.

Can you elaborate?

Mind confers Meaning upon Matter.

Mind is nourished and sustained by the Meaning it assigns to Matter.

Matter is elevated and ennobled to Mag!c by the Meaning Mind attributes to it.

It's a winning transaction, an erotic snakedance, a slinky menage-a-trois that makes the world go round and around and up and down.

Is it all just self-deluding New Age supernatural bullshit?

Feel free to think whatever makes you comfortable but be aware that there’s very little benefit to be gained from this dismissive approach and it could result in your missing out on something that might change your life for the better.

The simple and terrible first truth Mag!c teaches is this: you’re much more IN CHARGE of your own life than you may have been led to believe. If you truly grasp the implications, this simple statement will return to haunt and delight you in the years that lie ahead.

Mag!c, as it is discussed here, has little room for the supernatural. Nor do we see any virtue in the stereotypically “New Age’, somewhat heroic tendency to privilege all things bright and beautiful while electing not to acknowledge the ugly, cruel, dark and hateful aspects of existence.

Mag!c is a pragmatic, albeit heightened and focused, engagement with things as they are – the Buddhist condition of sunyata. If some results of this specialized attention to ordinary obvious shit give the powerful impression of supernatural events, this is a misunderstanding which further immersion in the disciplines of Mag!c will clarify and resolve in ways guaranteed to surprise and charm you.

The feats of an Olympic gymnast, conjuror, martial arts master, or talented artist can often seem like “magic”, but they are the results of years of training, focus and attention.

What may seem supernatural is predictably a natural side effect of paying more attention.

Think of our weather forecasters; by specializing and concentrating on one aspect of experience, these experts develop what could easily be mistaken for a precognitive ability; They can “predict” whether it will rain or snow. Similarly, a fashion analyst might miraculously “predict” with 100% success that skirts will get shorter this season, or that hats for men will be back in style.

Let’s imagine how in Ancient Egypt, say, this commonsense ability based on observation, enabled some seers to anticipate when the Floods would come or when the summers might be especially warm. What might easily have been interpreted as a prophetic talent given over to self-elected priests and wise men, we now understand to be a natural consequence of paying attention to conditions over time and being able to offer broad “predictions” of how things might develop or how people might behave in given circumstances, based on long-term pattern recognition.

By paying close attention, Mag!cians notice things others may miss. We make new patterns and can exploit these connections to do the seeming “impossible”.

If it’s so easy, where are all the real-life Harry Potters and Gandalfs?

Just as police stories wildly dramatize the lives of ordinary police officers and detectives in the real world, just as hospital dramas ramp up the tension and action on the wards, so do fantasy stories amplify and fictionalize the day-to-day work of the sorcerer to make it seem more exciting and spectacular.

The laser-wands and lightning staves of Gandalf or Harry Potter are storybook metaphors for the idea of "will", where “will” is symbolized as a bullet and the wand becomes little more than a fancy sort of gun in an updated Western, weaponizing the practice of Mag!c for the purposes of entertainment.

Imagine accusing a police officer of failing to qualify as a “real” law enforcement professional unless he or she had proven hirself capable of withstanding multiple bullet impacts, surviving bone-breaking physical combat or single-handledly, and without significant injury, storming a blazing building to dispatch multiple armed assailants. Nevertheless, Mag!cians who fail to emit lightning from their eyes or manifest fizzing dimensional portals in mid-air are accused of not being “real” Mag!cians by “skeptics” whose only exposure to Mag!c comes from extravagant fantasy tales!

What’s Will and what does it have to do with Mag!c?

Will is that focused and directed application of the human imaginative function which allows us to turn insubstantial ideas into solid objects/material benefits.

We may have a brilliant notion but lacking will, we may not bother to write it down or otherwise bring it to fruition in the material world. Without will, no-one could give up cigarettes or booze, or force themselves into a gym, or learn to play a musical instrument. We can all frolic in the "astral" realm of imagination and daydreams: will is the quality that allows us to turn our insubstantial musings into real things.

For will to be actualized, intent must cross the Abyss. This Abyss takes many forms but here it is the bottomless repository of every unfinished novel, every abandoned plan, every aborted child, every chance not taken -

Mag!c resides in the power to shepherd an intangible thought across the perilous devouring gap of the Abyss into the world of manifestation; be it in the form of a play, a symphony, or a daughter.

Will, the primal motive force, is the fundamental tool of the Mag!cian and should be trained and developed as rigorously as a bodybuilder develops his or her muscles.

Will is also predictive – we may announce our intent to make a work of art then six months later we can emerge from the crucible of creation with a painting, a verse, a concerto – having just predicted the future!

What's actually happening when we practise Mag!c?

When we do Mag!c, we are deliberately stimulating and encouraging "non-ordinary" states of consciousness which allow us to channel Will down well-worn grooves or following long-established patterns. We are invariably inducing psychedelic “trips” when we do Mag!c.

Peter Carroll and the Chaos sorcerers call this state “gnosis”, using the Greek word for knowledge or understanding. “Knowledge” is also the English translation of the Hebrew word Daath, the Abyss. Gnosis is a willed gap in consciousness, a hiatus or quietus which can be developed and extended using meditation.

In its excitatory state, (induced by dancing, fasting, orgasm, drugs) it may perhaps be more accurately described as “ecstasis” or ecstasy. Unlike meditation, ecstasis seeks to overload the senses so powerfully that reflective conscious thought is momentarily erased by the intensity of physical experience.

So, is it just drugs?

As we’ve established, Mag!c performed in a state of trance or ecstasy tends to be highly effective. This state of trance or gnosis can be induced by concentration, meditation, sex or roleplay. It can also be generated by chemical or pharmaceutical means, although the individual Mag!cian must understand that he or she is often breaking the law by resorting to these methods of gnosis and proceed with due caution.  

As regards chem-sorcery, it’s been my personal experience that non-intoxicated Mag!c is every bit as effective, if not quite as pyrotechnic and demonstrative, as work accomplished in chemically altered states. Mag!c simply requires an imagination and the ability to convince oneself of anything for as long as it takes to produce results. 

One of the interesting things about doing mag!c while high on acid or mushrooms is that it STILL WORKS. One might imagine that the overloaded mind of the psychedelics user would clash with the sober disciplines and ritual observances of Mag!c and yet – summon gods on drugs or while sober and you will still get Aphrodite or Hermes in accordance with ritual procedure, not Kali or Asmodeus. Only a personal observation but the practice of Mag!c tends to organise and direct the psychedelic experience.

MATTER – does it?

The universe in which we live, and from whose constituent atoms our bodies have been recycled since the dawn of life on Earth, has no meaning, no function, or so our scientific rational consensus tells us.

Everything we see and experience is simply the ongoing, arbitrary result of a restless redistribution of matter. The Universe is a whirling conglomeration of particulate dust in restless, valueless motion; A motion determined and measured by the expansion of the universe and the increase of entropy, or disorder, in a closed system.

Current research in the field of neuroscience suggests that even our sense of ourselves is a lie, a cheat, a let-down; We are only hideously unlikely self-aware complex sparks and glands, elaborate water and lightning, waiting to decay and die and be re-absorbed into the churn of matter, dust and rain that is materiality.

There is no meaning. No-one is recording our acts, or judging us, and nothing cares. We are alone, except for the other lonely dying bags of meat with whom we share our brief, uncertain lives and spend much of our time arguing with or about, then mourning.

On the strictly “Matter” side of our experiential triangle, there appears to be NO POINT AT ALL and to the best of our present scientific knowledge, this gloomy mechanistic assessment is correct.

As we will now explain, scientific materialism, which assigns careful weight and measure to all things, does not provide a full picture of the universe as it is experienced by consciousness or Mind.  

Part 2 2 follow!

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