From: nancyp@techbook.com (Nancy Parsons)
Subject: Re: ritual in lucid dreams
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 07:42:13 GMT


>>> I've set up a few rituals, but I've always put everything away
>>> without doing anything after I've cast the circle.  That kind of stuff
>>> just doesn't seem like real magick to me anymore.
>>
>>This I can relate to.  There isn't any "magic" in magick for me any
>>more, either.  It seems like the magick I've been involved with was
>>always too small, too involved with personal desire, to ever be
>>real magick.  The ritual was great, but it wasn't magick - the 
>>power was even better, but that wasn't magick either.  And when I
>>looked past the power, and the ritual, the magick just wasn't there.

>It all depends how you define it....  The whole reason for ritual,
>in my mind at least, is just to set up and/or operate upon *abstract*
>notions in a concrete framework.  Whether these 'notions' are conscious
>desires or unconscious patterns yet to be discovered, ritual allows
>us, as conscious and (relatively) rational beings, to work with things
>in an framework that is easier to deal with.  NOTE:  there are of course
>other types of 'frameworks' that can do this too:  art, poetry, 
>music, etc...

It is our great talent, as human beings, to enfold our world in a 
"framework" of ideas, to understand it, predict what will happen,
and to control (as much as we can) the outcome of events.  Yet 
it seems to me that our great strength can be in some sense a 
weakness when it comes to magick.  Our effort to understand magick
can rob us of the ability to fully experience it.  It seems to 
me that ritual is in part an effort to enfold our experience of
magick into our structure of ideas, to make it comprehensible and
capable of being manipulated in at least a passably rational fashion.
As such ritual is very much a double-edged sword; we can become 
so accustomed to dealing with the metaphor for the noumenon that
ritual is that we lose sight of what that metaphor represents.  
I don't know how to deal with magick without a framework of some
kind, at least not yet, but I wish I did. 

>>Don't get me wrong - I know there is magick.  I can see it in the
>>rising sun, feel it on the wind - but that magick is something too
>>large to cast a circle around, and too precious to bend to personal
>>aims.  

>True, but one thing I feel I have to add is this:  Why must 'normal'
>ritual magic(k) be limited to 'bending' things to 'personal aims'??
>Or power of any kind?

I'm sorry, it looks like I'm saying that magick is a big power trip, 
which wasn't my intention.  What I was commenting on was my own
misuse of power - a purely personal failing, not one of magick in 
general.  It seems to me, though, that when intention, personal or
otherwise, gets into magick, that something is lost.  Dawn said
earlier how she doesn't DO anything after casting the circle any 
more.  I wonder, sometimes, whether it is so necessary to do anything.
Maybe just being there is the thing.  

>>I'm looking for a magick that's as big as the magick I see inherent
>>in the world, something beyond what I can contain or maybe even
>>understand.  I don't know what it is, but what I've been doing
>>(lately, what I haven't been doing) definitely ain't it.

>Although alt.magick isn't really the place to discuss religion, this seems
>to be where this is leading.  Do you have a religious 'worldview' that
>is in operation 'behind' your magic?  Or at least a set of assumptions
>for which you 'suspend your disbelief' in order to make your magic work?
>If not, then magic has the danger of becoming just empty posturing.

>If you haven't already done this, try a close examination of the sources
>of your particular magical practice.  What theories are they based on?
>Are they perhaps based on religious principles that you do not accept?
>If you can't find anything you like, make up your own!!  :-)

Thank you for your suggestions.  I didn't really mean my comments to
be religious, but they did kind of read that way, didn't they?  I
don't know when we're talking about the noumenon whether we're using
another word for God, Goddess, whatever, but I suspect all the words
mean nearly the same thing.  

>>At least, that's a starting point.

>Sure.  Starting from the ground up in ones' magical practice has a lot
>of appeal.  Of course, one must have plenty of free time in which to
>do this....

My nephew asked me once to "teach him some magic".  So I gave him an
exercise guaranteed to make him capable of performing any magic he
wanted.  I told him to pick an interesting-looking object, and 
observe it in the most concentrated fashion of which he was capable,
then close his eyes and try to visualize it.  When he was able to
see the object as well with his mind as with his eyes, I said, I would
give him another exercise.  You gotta start 'em out right ... 8-)


-- 
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| Nancy Parsons            | "You can't fire me - slaves must be sold!   |
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| nancyp@techbook.COM  ...!{tektronix!nosun,uunet}techbook!nancyp        |
Newsgroups: alt.magick