A Brooklyn Culture Mafia

[sus]

I'm super-sceptical about people making memes on 4chan being magic. People are always saying that shit and it says more about their internet habits than anything else.

nuh-uh

 

[DannyL]

God I hate that stuff. It's an exact example of what I'm talking about.

I could stay in my bedroom wanking over snuff porn and smoking meth 'til I pass out. Does that mean I've been initiated into the mysteries of the abyss or does it just mean I'm a twat?

 

[luka]

That's always been what the occult has been about though.

 

[DannyL]

Not true mate.

 

[luka]

its never attracted wholesome well adjusted people. Those people just pursue their well adjusted and realistic desires through the usual channels. The occult is always grubby, sebaceous and disenfranchised.

 

[luka]

I think this stuff is completely in keeping with the occult tradition post Crowley. It's always this type. Always. And they are often brilliant in their way. You wouldn't want to be in the same room as them necessarily, but it's intelligent, creative and also spooky.

 

[sus]

Dubs is for real.

 

[DannyL]

its never attracted wholesome well adjusted people. Those people just pursue their well adjusted and realistic desires through the usual channels. The occult is always grubby, sebaceous and disenfranchised.

Some of my best friendships are people with lifelong occult practices, and I don't really recognise them in your description. I know what you mean - and Crowley does attract junkie wannabes - but I think that image slips out of the picture when you get up close.

 

[luka]

But if you're a teenager saying you're a wizard you're a weird nerd aren't you? That's axiomatic,

 

[DannyL]

Sometimes it's people who've had a weird experience, a moment of gnosis if you will, that they're compelled to pursue. One of my best friends/biggest influences in that scene was a guy who was a hod carrier from Oldham. He had a heavy acid experience when young that put him on the occult path.

 

[DannyL]

But if you're a teenager saying you're a wizard you're a weird nerd aren't you? That's axiomatic,

Don't disagree with that to be honest.

 

[DannyL]

But I'd say a lot of real magic is the stuff that gets you out of the pciked last for sports zone.

 

[luka]

im not wanting to bash the occult, more wanting to defend the idea that the Internet can be a venue for magic and that 4chan might have been brilliant and repulsive at the same time. Rather than just repulsive. Suspendedreason was a four chan regular for many many years and cut his teeth there. More surprisingly poetix was a regular there too.

 

[DannyL]

That's why I say if you cunt around on 4chan doing Pepe memes you're not doing magic.

 

[DannyL]

Xpost there sorry

 

[DannyL]

One of the chaos magic things was results. After all the psychologising of magic in WE Butler books and the like, they were like we did magic - THIS HAPPENED. If you make Pepe memes what does it do? Dubious claims about getting Trump elected aside.

 

[luka]

I don't know. I don't know much about it. What results did the chaos lot get? How unambiguous was it? I'm really just arguing from a strong sense that the Internet can become the venue for magic par excellence. It think it's perfectly suited for it. In the way that it responds to you instantly in particular. How it sends you messages. How it communicates with you instantly and in a more specific and concrete way than the outside world.

 

[DannyL]

I could point to lots of practices and stuff I've done and say "that yielded this result" and some of it (not all of it) changed me for the better. Not that magic should be totally utilitarian but still. The internet based stuff seems much more of a fantasy.

 

[luka]

I guess I'm less likely to distinguish between real magic and false. I'd be more inclined to put the emphasis on what it feels like to the participant(s)

 

[luka]

But that's probably cos I don't do magic and never have