daily wrap up

June 28, 2005 | Share/Save

My mind has been all over the place today, trying to integrate a couple of issues that have been bubbling beneath the surface for a couple of years now. I didn’t really know what I was plannning to write about when I decided to get this blog thing going, but of course, it is always the things you are trying the hardest not to think about that you do wind up having to confront.

I made a couple of stabs at writing about politics, and of announceing that I had no plans to write about politics - but in the end of course, its all been said, I have little to add, and its depressing to think about anyway. The US is in the grip of a slow-motion fascist takeover, 9/11 was planned, the govt. is waging psychological warfare against its citizens, etc. etc. I know, I know, I know! We are swimming in a sea of lies and there is very little here I can hang onto except myself.

I could wrote more about gnosticism but I have found that long-form essays work best for me for that stuff, I have been writing magazine articles lately, its satisfying to see them published.

When I first stopped working on enemies.com 5 years ago or so (has it been that long?) I felt like there was some sort of dichotomy between power and knowledge - like, maybe you could have one or the other but not both. My life was a wreck, I constantly had people emailing me for advice I was in no position to give and… well, its like McKenna said about PDK, I got stuck in a vortex, some type of energy or entity was using me to get information out, it turned my life upside down and when it was all over I had a lot of rebuilding to do.

Part of the rebuilding I did was getting involved in martial arts - to find a realm of pure action and no thinking has been really grounding.

Another realm was - I will sound crazy for saying this but oh well - magic. I got involved in ritual magic and have really learned a lot. Learned a lot about things that are not discussed in the gnostic scriptures at all. The dead exist and are all around us, the Devil is real, spells work, you can get money or sex or power or success or self-confidence or whatever you want.

It also takes a lot of work and a lot of concentration and dedication to make magic work and can be very disorienting - when the spirits intrude into your life it can (in very similar way) open up a whole carnival funhouse of entities running amok and you have to make a lot of mistakes and learn a lot about yourself in order to figure out what sorts of things are worth trying to accomplish and what sorts of things are not.

Because you also have the ability to do things you hadn’t previously thought possible you have to figure out what your own ethical structure permits or allows pretty quickly too.

I’ve broken a lot of personal taboos. I’ve seen things that would make most people’s hair stand on end. I’m not saying this to sound tough or cool ’cause god knows I’m the biggest dork in town, but hey, that’s what’s going on.

Now, I’ve been trying to figure out, ever since - something that revolves around the crux of this issue:

It seems to me that magic is amoral. It isn’t white or black or left or right, it just is - ENERGY. The trees don’t care what you use their power for, neither does the ocean, neither do the dead. The powers will lend you a hand even if the things you want to do are destructive or shortsighted or selfish or whatever.

I have done destructive things too, but it brought me no joy - its something I really try to do only as an absolute last resort as there is almost always a nice way to do things too, even when you are handling heavy voltages.

It seems to me that the power of magic comes from God only via a very indirect route - through beings that live in worlds much further from God than we might imagine and much closer to us than we might care to think about. Some are neutral, some are evil, some are good. All have their own agendas too. These are spirits, but just because they are spirits doesn’t necessarily mean they are innocent or helpful.

WHen you do magic you STILL have the responsibility for determining your basic orientation vis a vis others. Do you want to spread freedom? Do you want to spread fear? Do you want to teach others to fish or do you want to just give them the fish and make them think you’re cool? Etc.

I cannot judge what I have seen, the things that I have seen other people do. They have made their decisions and have to live them. I can support or help them but ultimatley if they want to do evil things it is between them and god. In a lot of ways it is not unlike having a gun - witchcraft is a tool that can be used to help or to hurt. It puts a lot of responsibility on the person doin’ the witchin’.

I have no explanation really for why I would chose not to do evil things except for that is just not my agenda. It is a phase that people go through I think because it is easier to tear things down than to build them - a lot of people find that anger helps them concentrate in a way that hope cannot. But after that phase is over, and they know that they do have the power, then hopefully they move on and start working on constructive things instead.

The problem with doing destructive magic is that it sticks to you - the black energy rubs off and you carry it with you. Fuck, its just like yoda says about the Dark side - its not the anger or jealousy or fear in the spiritual world but the anger and jealousy and fear in the human heart that are so corrosive.

According to gnostic theology, the arhcons feed on that crap. So if you don’t give into it, you starve them. Its that simple. In that sense magic is just a tool, like a gun or a computer, its not the thing itself that is evil but what you bring to it and what you do with it.

The biggest mistake people make, I think, is thinking that their own status is important. OK, I can speak only for myself here - that the biggest mistake I make. God, I’m FILLED with pride - I think I’m the coolest guy to ever walk the face of the earth, the best looking, the funniest, the smartest, etc. But its all bullshit. I’ll be dead someday, and as Marcus Aurelius said, after that its either the gods or molecules for me. I’m not so important - life has more to teach me than I have to teach it.

SO that’s why the yogis say that siddhis are dangerous. They can cause an inflation of the senses and the ego that takes the mind off of God and your spiritual mission, whatever that is. As soon as you start thinking “Of fuck, I’m a bad ass” watch out! You’re heading down the wrong road.

FOLLOW UP: Ok I was rereading the alchemical brain-damage blog again and now that I have read it a second time:

The Rush is all that you want, the sensation of power has wiped away all those things you told yourself were important. You tell everyone else, you tell yourself, that you are one of the ELECT. That you have the RIGHT to do things no one else will do, things that lesser beings call wrong. You are beyond all that. Truth? Power is truth. Understanding? Understanding is what YOU say it is. And Love? Love is lust. You’ve seen enough to understand the real truth: we’re nothing but animals, and all that matters to an animal is hunger. And the power to satisfy it.

And this naked screaming person on the altar? Just one more animal, and animals are either predators or prey. And in this story you made, you are the predator, and anyone who gets in the way of your path to godhood…

… it doesn’t seem so impressive as it did the first time. I still get the point he was making, but this sounds like something from a movie or a Jack T. Chick pamphlet, not from any shamanic tradition I know about.

Then again, maybe I’m just naive about human nature. DO people like this really exist? I still wonder. In a very self-absorbed way I of course read the original article as a condemnation of shamanism but now that I reread it I realize - all of this talk about power and predators etc. is really more of a modern way of looking at things - the same bullshit that Anton LaVey babbles about - than anything that you might learn about in an anthropology class or on a trip to the Amazon.

Anyone who actually does magic or wiothcraft or shamanism is not going to glorify predators and parasites they are going to try to avoid them not work with them.

OK, I take it back, sometimes you HAVE to work with them but nonethless they’re less than we are and not something to aspire to unless you just don’t like being human and are for some reason are eager to slide back down the evolutionary latter and wallow in the mud.

Once again, I’m stumped and baffled, are there really people like this?

It might be kind of like when I was a little kid and took karate, I felt like karate was such a noble pursuit that no-one could possibly use it for evil. I was shocked, shocked, SHOCKED when I discovered that some renegade students who were respectful in class behaved like bullies in their real lives (e.g. middle school).

They are betraying the art! They are betraying our teacher! How can they do this?

I am in a way, still baffled by this.