“Look, man, I'm not your enemy. You worship Jesus; I just worship Jove's other son. You know, the drunken one?”
Objections people have normally thrown at me (to the work I do and have done):
- “If you do that, you'll go crazy.” (Note: not “you might go crazy,” but “you WILL go crazy.” Because, presumably, only crazy people do “that”. “That” being whatever you're planning to do.*)
- “Dionysos is only a party god, and what can he teach you about liberation?” (LOL.)
- “You can't engage in this work if (you like sex, you try any drugs, you drink anything, etc.) because it will make it so that you can't control yourself (in circle, with the group, etc.).” (Answer: don't work with those people. They probably have a very basic, at best, understanding of trance.)
- “But that isn't HOLY!” (LOL!)
- “Only Black Brothers do that.” (Such as: Saturn work. Srsly. I was told that only Black Brothers do Saturn work at one point. I'm not joking.)
- “Dion Fortune says that...” (Insert Neo-Victorian dialogue about Black/White magickz.)
Over the years, I've realized that one of the reasons people panic about certain magical work is because they aren't actually drawn to that specific work. That doesn't invalidate either their work, nor yours. It just makes it different.
If you're throwing out objections like the above? You might be a Neo-Victorian.** And the Curse of Moina Mathers (“we can't consummate our marriage because she's too busy fucking angels!”) may very well fall upon you! BEWARE THE CURSE OF THE MATHERS!
I'll be responding to comments from my last entry shortly. I swear.
* Caveat Lector: What you're planning to do may very well be crazy and ill-advised. Just because they're paranoid, does not mean you're not about to fuck up.
** Do you look up to Arthur Edward Waite and hope to write as obtusely as he did? Do you secretly wish you could join a Buddhist monastery somewhere, and escape you animalistic nature? Are you bugfuck for Theosophical theories?
* Caveat Lector: What you're planning to do may very well be crazy and ill-advised. Just because they're paranoid, does not mean you're not about to fuck up.
** Do you look up to Arthur Edward Waite and hope to write as obtusely as he did? Do you secretly wish you could join a Buddhist monastery somewhere, and escape you animalistic nature? Are you bugfuck for Theosophical theories?
5 comments:
I'm curious who told you that only Black Brothers (African American men? or does this mean something else?) engaged in Saturn work. Not that I'm asking a name, but was it a member of a particular group? I have never heard of such a thing. Saturn is one of two major forces in my magical/spiritual life, the other being Hermes.
@Harold: http://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_12.html
It was a Theosophist that accused me of being one, initially. I've since had the pleasure of being accused of being one by members of the OTO (okay, I baited the fellow into that one), the Lucis Trust group (Theosophical Offshoot via Bailey), and a few eclectics who had read Crowley's comments, linked above.
If I wasn't fairly sure that when Blavatsky coined the term she was being racist, I'd probably find it funnier.
I used to invoke Hermes quite often. These days, less so. But maybe I should again before Epiphany.
Oh, me good sir, you find a core of an issue in there - it's not their kink, so it's not okay (to borrow terms from the S&M community).
Hecate? She'll drive you mad. Dionysus? He'll drive you mad. Work with the dead? MAD, MAD I SAY! Familiars and Fairies and Things That Go Bump? Fuck, man... you're mad already.
It's not their kink, so it's not okay. OR, it'd drive them batshit, so clearly we're doomed.
This is weird. What he's describing as what happens to someone who becomes/is a member of the Black Brotherhood is very similar to something I just came across (and I've been preparing a post on), a process of spiritually lifting oneself up and then taking advantage of that height to dive down into the klippot and hopefully rescue a soul. This is called nefilat appayim, a mystical practice that used to be part of Judaism as a whole but then got banned as too dangerous--because if you do it without a perfect spirit, you might lose your soul down there and come back with the soul of an evil spirit and thereafter be considered dead. Only a few tiny Jewish sects engage in this practice anymore. What an odd coincidence. Thanks for posting about it, and I certainly must laugh at my idea that Black Brotherhood referred to black men. I thought Saturn/black, etc. These accusations of you seem ridiculous to me.
@Harold: It may help that I've toned down my "left hand pathness" in recent years, honestly. Most of these accusations were leveled when I was younger, and before I made it a point to make fun of certain ideas.
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