What Does Spiritual Mean?
- Thread starter luka
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pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Good thread
luka
Well-known member
We're doing our best. Tricky subject. Worth talking about though I reckon.
luka
Well-known member
Simon Silverdollar Circle was talking about the MDMA revelation being the sense of 'so this is what it feels like to be perfectly at ease with the world and with myself... And how much nicer it makes me. How much of my own malevolence is a product of my dis-ease."
And that is profound and transformational even if the sense of it can be hard to hang onto.
And that is profound and transformational even if the sense of it can be hard to hang onto.
Have you ever spent time with people who do this sort of thing though? I think your impressions are a bit off. I get why you'd have 'em but:
1) all the materialistic make something happen sigil stuff arose as a response to magical culture in the mid/late 70s where it all got very white light/WE Butler "oh it's just psychology and Jungian archetypes". To affirm "no, I'm going to do stuff to CHANGE THE WORLD" is a life affirming, bold gamble in this context. It was a reaction to magic without magic, really.
2) This stuff ends up, whether it works/doesn't work/you can't decide, as another thread through the world, another way of making meaning. The people I know who do this sort of stuff usually have very rich creative lives, and researching and investigating magic is part of a broader enquiry into history, colonialism, self change and the limits of what's possible. It can get super self-delusive if you convince yourself "I'm making this shit happen" but this tends to be a way station, not a resting point. Further, having the material world conform or interact with you in some way that's beyond casuality provides the engine for what gets called faith in conventional religion.
I don't do lots of "magick" in the way you write about above. I do use divination a lot though. And it's like I say part of my meaning making, my response to the world. How should I orientate myself here? What should I do - or not do? What's worth my time? How to do this? I'm continually asking these sorts of questions, and divination is absolutely part of how I answer them. It doesn't really matter that these might be "material" concerns as they're part of the texture of my life.
version
Well-known member
In my experience, it's not just MDMA that does that. I've had similar feelings with acid, mushrooms, booze and valium. Anything that weakens my grip, so to speak.
version
Well-known member
I agreed to go to a reiki session years ago after someone asked me to and ended up leaving within five minutes because it made me so uncomfortable. All they did was ask me to relax and close my eyes and I couldn't do it. i couldn't do it to the point where I wanted to just jump out of the window and run down the street to get away.
Should add a counterfactual re. the magical stuff. A mate who is quite famous (in that very tiny pond) for his writing about that kind of magic though long since moved on commented to me something like "it was a way of giving myself a sense of control and agency when I didn't really have much at all".
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
I don’t fit in very well in religious places.
When I was little my mum took me, my sister and my mums friend who was a model to a Hare Krishna temple. The model woman was wearing this bright pink g string so every time she bent over to do the praying all the krishna’s apparently couldn’t keep their eyes off of her ass. Then came the chanting of “Hare Krishna” and my sister starting chanting “Harry Potter” while I-rather perceptively for a 6 year old in retrospect- realised singing a Christian song would be subversive so started singing jingle bells.
Then only a few years ago around Christmas we all took my Nan to a church mass and me and my sister (both fully grown adults at this point) just had the giggles the whole time. In absolute hysterics. I remember trying to cup my fave in my hands to make it seem like I was weeping out of religious devotion but apparently the people next to me were fuming.
Might as well post the whole thread (from second link). He won't mind.
1. Sorcery can make a difference, but the personal is also political. Bottles of influence and powders of bewilderment are secondary to the everyday footfall of attrition posed by the steady drip of living magic.
2. Insistent, resilient memory that endures beyond the long cons and predatory hucksters. Soil of the dead and cacophony of branches. Undaunted in its purpose, staunch against proselytism and distortion, constant in the spell it casts.
3. Change is woven in the smallest of everyday choices. The micro-decisions that you make moment to moment, and which determine what your magic is about.
4. What you will stand for, and what you will not. What you choose to cultivate and nourish within your orbit, and what you will close the door upon and send on its way.
5. The final shape of the spell that you are casting from cradle to grave. Magic that can hear the imperative of the dead and the wild murmur of the land, and will act from this foundational point, tending its patch and taking the knife to weeds that strangle.
6. Magic that has an ear for rebellious roadside spirit and inner city undine, churchyard ghost and blood ancestor. Magic that will not break or bend to the latest deceiver or be captivated by their bag of tricks.
7. Magic that will not sit at your table. Magic that will never obey you. Magic that you will never defeat. You can crush us, you can bruise us, but you have to answer to –
8. Extract from 'Guns of Brixton' by Anthony Nine, coming soon in Conjure Codex 4 from Hadean Press.
I've read the whole thing this is from and it's lit af.
1. Sorcery can make a difference, but the personal is also political. Bottles of influence and powders of bewilderment are secondary to the everyday footfall of attrition posed by the steady drip of living magic.
2. Insistent, resilient memory that endures beyond the long cons and predatory hucksters. Soil of the dead and cacophony of branches. Undaunted in its purpose, staunch against proselytism and distortion, constant in the spell it casts.
3. Change is woven in the smallest of everyday choices. The micro-decisions that you make moment to moment, and which determine what your magic is about.
4. What you will stand for, and what you will not. What you choose to cultivate and nourish within your orbit, and what you will close the door upon and send on its way.
5. The final shape of the spell that you are casting from cradle to grave. Magic that can hear the imperative of the dead and the wild murmur of the land, and will act from this foundational point, tending its patch and taking the knife to weeds that strangle.
6. Magic that has an ear for rebellious roadside spirit and inner city undine, churchyard ghost and blood ancestor. Magic that will not break or bend to the latest deceiver or be captivated by their bag of tricks.
7. Magic that will not sit at your table. Magic that will never obey you. Magic that you will never defeat. You can crush us, you can bruise us, but you have to answer to –
8. Extract from 'Guns of Brixton' by Anthony Nine, coming soon in Conjure Codex 4 from Hadean Press.
I've read the whole thing this is from and it's lit af.
Simon silverdollarcircle
Well-known member
Yeah fair enough I don't spend time with people like that (sadly!)
I was thinking more of grant Morrison type of "do x y and z and get this result and it ALWAYS WORKS " type of magick which just seems boring to me. Too deterministic, and also daft.
"Do x y and z and no one has any idea what happens, if anything" is more appealing to me.
version
Well-known member
They might secretly enjoy the pink g-string though.
Yeah, that Grant Morrision thing is bollocks.
The latter is much more true to life in my experience! That's the classic fairly tale/Walt Disney Fantasia stories attached to magic. You might get what you want but not in the way you've anticipated. And it often only works when you forgotten about it or given up on it.
Been told lots of times *not* to do something by divination systems, often something I might be quite invested in or attached to. But there's always a learning in there somewhere.
The latter is much more true to life in my experience! That's the classic fairly tale/Walt Disney Fantasia stories attached to magic. You might get what you want but not in the way you've anticipated. And it often only works when you forgotten about it or given up on it.
Been told lots of times *not* to do something by divination systems, often something I might be quite invested in or attached to. But there's always a learning in there somewhere.