From: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark Peterson)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Magic and Morals (was: Re: Harish)
Date: 2 Jan 1993 21:34:32 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Reply-To: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4
Originator: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu

From article <1hvln3INN5vm@shelley.u.washington.edu>, by grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer):
> In article <1hvf0nINNk8m@uwm.edu> hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
>>
>>But, is there any way to separate the mechanics of magick from its
>>application?  I can't imagine how you can.  --and that being said
>>we're left with thelema.  Absolute and purely relative.
> 
> Huh?  Maybe I'm missing the point, but it seems to me that mechanics 
> and application (perhaps "means and ends" might be a more generally
> applicable phrasing) can be distinguished fairly clearly in this case
> as in many others.  Of course they affect one another...but the same
> thing is true of me and the terminal I'm using just now, two quite
> distinguishable things.  (At least in terms of the world of ordinary
> consciousness!)


Hmm.  Maybe.  My own sense of it is that you don't really understand
the theory until you've applied it...

> Once learned, these could be used for any purpose you care to imagine,
> and some you probably don't...  

A yup... and nope.  It's probably common experience that, quite
suddenly, there are some things you find you just *can't* do
anymore...

>>incapable (on its own) of achieving an initiated point of view.  See
>>William Blake.  ;-)
> 
> 
> On the other hand, see Plotinus, whose initiated point of view (the 
> source of a pretty fair majority of the Western esoteric tradition)
> was squarely founded on a rational dialectic, and who insisted on the
> study of dialectical logic as the way to mystical awareness...

A yup, but the operative word there is dialectic, and dialectic is a
kind of reasoning that incorporates contradiction into its own process
-- and thus has been known to scare the dickens out of pure reason.
So it isn't exactly reason straight up, and it adds more than just a
little twist.  (hmm. New Year's metaphors....)  Even Socratic
dialectic contains these interesting seeds of initiation -- see
Plato's Seventh Letter.  And speaking as an old Hegelian...  well,
probably shouldn't.  ;-)


> (There's a fairly precise Hindu equivalent of this in Jnana-yoga; I
> believe the Tibetan Buddhists also teach something of the sort.)

It's a good example.  But this too depends on showing the
contradiction and paradox potential in reason's own constitution.
Something Reason itself never sees.


> There's still a lot of Romanticism flapping around in esoteric circles
> -- probably a holdover from the agonizingly Gothicke milieu of Bulwer-
> Lytton and his ilk.  Yes, there are ways of attaining whatever-term-you-
> want-to-use which dispense with reason, and there are also ways which
> make use of it; take your pick.  (Or combine them, which seems a little
> more productive to me...)

Hmm.  I don't think we can dispense with it.  I mean, we owe a lot to
rational thought.  In door plumbing, electric lights, hydrogen bombs.
All that good stuff.  But for magick to work you need to put a bit in
its mouth.

> 
> Feeling more than usually pedantic,
> 

I thought it was quite a good message.  ;-)



hiho
-- 
mark ce peterson   | uw-washington county  | hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu 
dept of philosophy | west bend, wi.  53095 | (414) 335-5200        

     The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves.