Mommas, Dont Let Yer Babies Grow Up to be Thelemites

What does that subtitle have to do with anything? I have no idea. I just like the sound of it. But what this little bit of mumbling is all about is trying to explain some of my fundamental concepts on magick. Partially this is a process for me to analyze and organize my thoughts, partly I put this out to help others who want to do magick and therefore feed my enormous ego in the process.

But, you’ll find this isn’t all that organized. It is just a bunch of neat ideas, concepts, principles and other odds and ends that I think would help and I am putting up to remind myself from time to time. Think of each as a nifty (if rather ephemeral) toy that teaches you about magick. (Just humor me and say that it does.)

This is taken from a lot of places, including Discordianism, Chaos Magick, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Fortune Cookies, Science Fiction and the occasional Barbie doll (long story).

THINK. THINK CRITICALLY.

This is an important, yet slippery one. Critical thinking is vital to the practice of magick. Take a course in Critical Thinking. When dealing with magick, it is very easy to blur the line between reality and fantasy. It is very easy to “know” you are a special person bestowed with great magickal and psychic ability even when you can’t hold down a job or tie your shoelaces by yourself. Discerning between what is real and what is fantasy becomes of critical importance when you are dealing with mind-altering practices like magick. Of even more crucial importance is being about to clearly think about when the distinction is important. You may be performing magick, or you might be faking yourself out. The question is: does it matter?

Critical thinking allows you to take a step back and look at a situation and say: “What is the logical course?” But also, it gives you the option: “Okay, I know what is logical, but do I really want to be logical?” To quote the Tick: “Sanity is a one-trick pony.” But with critical thinking we can decide if that one-trick is going to be adequate for the job, what we want to do with the job, etc.

And I know someone who reads this is thinking something like “Well, can’t I just decide that logic isn’t that important to my magick and not worry about critical thinking?” Sure you can. But I would suggest against it. My basic reason for this is that it is really hard to understand the world and yourself without these critical thinking skills. I don’t mean just knowing all the standard types of logical fallacies. Critical thinking allows you to identify what is being said, what is being implied and how people are trying to manipulate you (ever analyze an ad?). You can look at what facts are actually presented to you, what facts are slanted or incomplete and what parts of what you hear/see are geared towards getting a specific response from you. From there you can decide if you want to accept or not accept whatever parts of what you have seen.

You can also use it to look at what you want and see what that means. You really want to sleep with that person over there, or are you mostly just lonely and want to feel loved? There are very different approaches to both activities. Even when approaches are similar, the little details can have huge effects later on.

The Basics of critical thinking: what do I know? What do I want? How do I get there?

YOU ARE FLAWED

Here is another important one. People are entirely too hung up on success. I hate to tell you this, but you are only human. You will be wrong at times. You will do rituals wrong. There will be times where you are completely blindsided by something that should have been obvious. You will not be able to understand certain concepts. Cope.

Now, points that go along with this:

• You just have to deal with being wrong. Moping around doesn’t help the situation. If you really want to feel guilty, be my guest. But that does not help you in preventing it from happening again. If you were wrong, look at what you did wrong. Look at why you did what you did. Learn from it. Guilt is useless unless it motivates change for the better.
• Defending your actions isn’t always the best response. It is entirely too easy to be backed into a corner by trying to defend what you have done. Then it becomes a matter of pride and what actually happened isn’t important anymore. Finding an excuse for your actions is not helpful. Finding an explanation, on the other hand, usually is.
• There is always someone better than you. Yes, it is cliche. But it is also true. No matter how much you learn, there will always be something that you have no idea about. And, in general, it is better to say to yourself and others that you have no fucking idea. You might get a chance to learn something.
• You are not being graded on life. For most of your life, the rest of the world doesn’t give a flying fuck what you do or how you do it. So everything doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to get the job done. Now what exactly the job is can be a messy point. You don’t have to convince anyone else about your knowledge or ability or power. If you don’t know, you don’t know. If you can’t do it, you can’t do it.
  The world is a big place. You can’t know all of it. You will always have more to learn about it. Being an expert isn’t required.

90% OF EVERYTHING IS BULLSHIT

This is important. (See a pattern here?) Most of the things you will read, see, learn, hear, etc. are full of crap in one way or another (this diatribe included). Not all of any particular thing will make sense to you. Not all of it has any relevance to you. Not all of it has any inherent or implied worth to it. But, there is that other 10%. Somewhere, in every single thing, there is SOMETHING of value. Whether it is a philosophical idea, a ritual or even a rock, you have something to learn from everything and somewhere in it there is some worth somewhere. Even in the things you hate. You might find the most profound truth in the oddest places, or develop a great ritual from the silliest idea. Bullshit makes the flowers grow and, hey, that’s beautiful. But too much bullshit still stinks.

WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE.

Yep, you guessed it. This is important. This principle is otherwise known as Occam’s Razor, the Cigar Principle (from Freud’s quote, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”) or K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). The key point here is that while the world can be a complex and confusing place, not all of it is. Wherever you go, there you are. It isn’t a major revelation, but it is true. Maybe your boyfriend broke up with you because he was dealing with issues from his childhood where he was used to his mother doing things for him and was taught that women should do things for men and didn’t like the fact that you refused to conform to his ideal. Maybe he just didn’t like you. Not everything has cosmic proportions. Some things just are.

NOTHING IS TRUE

How important is truth? As important as you want it to be. How much do you really know? Very little. You only know for certain what you experience first hand (and, according to psychologists, even that can be questionable). Everything else is hearsay. What is the capitol of Idaho? Boise, right? How do you know? Have you been there? And if you have, how do you know that the signs were correct? Or even that you were in the right city? A lot of what we “know” is actually what we have been told by others. We make a lot of our decisions based on knowledge that has been passed onto us and all we have is our trust in our sources to verify that what we know is true.

It is very easy to modify reality by modifying people’s perception of facts. Ever tell a story about something that happened and exaggerated it a little bit for dramatic effect? If you tell enough people about it or tell it enough times to the same people, you will tend to notice that you believe the exaggeration. Maybe you got lucky in that fight in high school with the school bully. But to people around, you are a bad ass. And they tend to treat you as one. And maybe, after a while, you begin to think of yourself as a bad ass. I mean, you did beat up the toughest guy in school, didn’t you? See how a subtle adjustment can give you an entirely different feel?

And you can modify reality a little, why not? Choose what words you use in a ritual carefully. Does it help you more to “control the magick” or “call upon the magick”? How different is it really? But which is better for your magick?

THE MAGICIAN IS A VERB

It’s important to DO SOMETHING. Like a few things in life, magick is something you have to experience and have to do in order to understand. There are so many different small variables, unexpected happenings, etc. that no method or framework is going to adequately cover it all. So you have to actually try it out and see how it works. Preparation and caution are important, but nothing changes on its own. Something has to cause change and if you want something to happen, you often have to cause that change yourself. Magick is not a topic you study, it is something you do. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.

CHILL OUT

How important is a serious approach to magick? Not very. What is the point of magick if not to have at least SOME fun with it. It should make your life better somehow and making your life better is not always about sacrifice. It’s great to be interested in enlightenment and transcending to the next level, but what does any of it matter if you are always miserable? It’s just life. Do something silly with magick, if you want to. Make a blasphemous joke if you like. Magick is about changing the world for the better and wouldn’t the world be a better place with a little more laughter?

THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE

Here it is. I talk a lot about my ideas here. But it is all what I think. That’s it. I have no particular right to the truth. Feel free to use any of the thoughts I have said here. Feel free to tell me to fuck off. Feel free to take some points and tell me to fuck off about others. It’s your life and your magick. You decide what you put in your toy-box.

CORE PRINCIPLES OF CHAOS MAGICK

These are points brought up by Phil Hine in his book Condensed Chaos. How he describes them is different then how I describe them, however.
Avoiding Dogmatism – Think for yourself.
Personal Experience – You are the one whose ass is on the line.
Technical Excellence – If you are gonna do it, do it well.
Deconditioning – Unlearn what you have been taught and learn what you have discovered.
Diverse Approaches – There is more than one way to skin a cat.
Gnosis – Lose your mind every once in a while.