Genesis P Orridge once said that something along the lines of: “Some people say they feel they are a woman trapped in a man’s body or a man trapped in a woman’s body. I just feel trapped in a body.”
As I sit here editing my chapter on Gifts (gift x development + skillful implimentation = Success ) I am reflecting upon why I am a magician. You can use magick to aid you in gaining wealth, but it’s not the best way to get wealthy. You can use it to find love, but its not the best way to find that either. In almost every regard, whatever practical results magick can accomplish, is can be done better and surer using non magickal means.
Why bother with it than?
For me, it’s just how I am wired. Some people are gay, some people are anal retentive, some people are magicians. It’s that simple. I was born this way. It’s a calling that flows in the blood.
It has been said that the primary difference between a mystic and a normal person is that the volume on the inner world takes is turned up and the volume on the outer world is turned down. In a normal person it’s the opposite. A magician is the same except that he is trying to get the volume from the inner world to echo out into the outer world. There is a burning and biological need to do so.
Another aspect of this is the need to control the gift. Some people get involved in magick because they want to talk to spirits. Some of us get into magick because we would like them to shut up for a while.
How about you? What’s your story? Why are you wasting your time on this stuff that the world doesn’t even acknowledge as real? Do you have the need, or is it just more interesting than watching TV? I wanna know.
4 comments:
As a beginning magician, I'm still partially in that phase of not being entirely sure of why I'm doing this, but at the same time knowing that it's what I want to do.
I've always had an interest in psychology, biology and the workings of the human mind. After years of reading and writing on those topics, I came across Robert Anton Wilson who lead me on to Gurdjieff and Crowley. I consider magick part of the larger esoteric current to which I am now dedicated, and which to me represents the apex of self-evolution and self-knowledge. In one sense then, Magick for me represents the ultimate flowering of human self-knowledge, and a gateway to the interaction and manipulation of more subtle energies.
As an aspiring polymath and dedicated seeker of all things worth knowing, Magick is also another piece of the puzzle that I have to scout out for myself and relate back to my larger map of the universe. I have a good intuition that the philosophy of Magick (in the broadest change-confirmity-with-will sense of the word) is a field that can draw together almost everything I've studied so far. The method of science, the aim of religion, combined to create a philosophy of intelligent compassionate living. I want to make Huxley's Island a reality!
I guess the easy-out answer would be: because I always have practiced magic (although I hope with a bit more finess than in the days when you used to "dear lady" me on CBTH, much less than how I managed when I was aged 10). I continue to do so because I get the tools, the learning the conversation, help, happiness and satisfaction of living my life in the way I think best for me.
I think this is a great question. People seem intent on trying to redefine Magick, without ever addressing the WHY of being a magician.
General/observational answer
Whenever I ask others the reasons for being involved in Magick (or Psychism, Wicca, etc..) the same two answers often surface:
1. Because they have to.
2. To keep from going crazy.
I have never heard any personal stories of any magician (occultist, Witch, etc) who just happened to accidentally turn a corner and fall into this.
It starts with small personal experiences (dreams, hauntings, visions, etc.) that conventional logic cannot explain or rectify. Some of those experiences intensify over time, leading the individual to begin seeking answers that nothing else seems able to answer.
You might remember some of the small things that drew you into Magick, only to later realize that there were other details that now make more sense.
Personal answer
All the reasons above. In tying into the last point, about realizing details later... I was partially indoctrinated into Neopagan thinking by my Grandmother. She joking used to call herself a Witch, told me about the Great Spirit, taught me about plants and nature... I also did not know that her mother was a Native American Indian. Sadly, due to prejudices, my Great Grandmother was forgotten by the family and never spoken about. I don't believe that Native American Indian heritage automatically makes one mystical, but it did make my own Grandmother more of a counter-culture type. The omission of part of her heritage must have led her to any form of nature-based spirituality. She passed this on to me in such subtle ways that I did not even realize.
When I first started seeing auras, she explained it to me as natural. She was the one to get me to start thinking differently. She never used the word "Magick." When I began studying Magick in earnest, I never even considered her influence.
I could have sworn I commented here before. Must not have sent it.
I'm a magician 'cause I gots to, Mister! I tried just being a normal fundie, and there's just not enough hands-on interaction with the holy Spirit, if you know what I mean. It left me mystically fulfilled, but I've got that sorcerous, witchy drive to make something magical happen in my life. (I read ahead.)
I've never felt the ... power, I guess, the awesome at-one-ness with the creative engine of the universe as I do when I'm making talismans, or conjuring the spirits. It's satisfying to me. It quenches a thirst that I didn't know I had, sort of. I imagine it's similar to the feeling of pride, humility, and accomplishment a woman might have after giving birth.
And it's totally addictive. The rush, the fulfillment, the joy, and that just-cleaned feeling I get just can't be beat. Better'n drugs in many ways. Usually, there's less of a hangover. And only rarely does it take out one's liver.
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