hi mandrake,
mandrake <[log in to unmask]>:
> I may have missed it in your very long post
I'll try to quote back in what pertained in
this response so as to save you the trouble
of rereading it. :)
> but did you maybe consider the magician's body
> as an essential part of magick?
as part of my observation of magic and identification
of it for continued study, i did *initially* consider
this notion, especially philosophically, but i did
not keep this as a criteria for continued observation
and study because i felt such possibilities made it
more difficult for me to distinguish magic from other
things, strictly speaking.
eventually i reached the conclusion that the body
was not an *essential* part of magic, excepting
that it is used to construct and/or deploy certain
magical substances or create the symbolism and
association (whether in ritual or in spellcraft)
that i consider to be essential to magic itself,
and in fact identifying. the body is required for
most things that human beings do, but it is not
necessarily what happens with the body that makes
a thing what it is as a behaviour or phenomenon,
and this is the conclusion that i have so far
reached in the case of magic.
this is not to say that the body is unimportant or
not used. in the same way, i wouldn't argue that
words by themselves or gestures by themselves
(movements by the body) were not or could not be
what constitute magic, only that they were not
essential to magic's construction.
that said, the beginning of my post made it clear
that there is a legitimate consideration of the
study of magic which accepts complete proplessness
(and therefore at least mental if not mental
as assisted by body and bodily behaviour such as
gestures and chanting) as part of magical action.
for *my* purposes, to make things easier for me in
studying magic (and later because i began to winnow
what i felt i could substantially identify *as*
magic down to restricted areas), i modified my
lexicon and zone of observation to what did include
props or paraphernalia (esp. SYMBOLISM, what Crowley
called 'the Magical Link' and others have described
as part of associative magical principles), what
was not by description achieved by mental (psychic)
skills or bodily movements and words alone.
> I believe in some Hindu traditions the body is said
> to be the only necessary magical-religious tool -
> hence the project common amongst magicians of
> keeping the body healthy long enough for the mind
> to achieve liberation. (See Alchemical, Ayurvedic
> and Siddha Medicine as aids to this process)
very interesting, thanks.
> I think it is Marcel [Mauss] who writes that some
> mental states may be contingent on certain
> physical states - which to me opens up the
> possibility of Yoga or work with the "Body
> Yantra" (tool or mechanism).
indeed. I find his "A General Theory of Magic" to
be immensely valuable and i enjoy referring to it.
I'd like to become aware of all comparable
treatises of its type.
> Of magical tools - probably the most interesting
> and useful is the statue or fetish - and the
> techniques of activating this as a means to
> liberation - these techniques - perfected in
> ancient Egyptian "Ceremony for Opening the
> Mouth for Breathing" find there way into the
> Corpus Hermeticum, Kabbalah and hence into
> our own magical tradition.
quite. poppets, dollbabies, fetishes, statues,
the image is an important and longstanding tool.
it is one that i felt that i could, especially
when a target was associated with the image and
when a known intention was part of the activity,
identify as definitively magical.
> For me its not really about props and their
> disposability -
when i am studying it and want to separate it
out as distinctly as i can in my investigation,
it helps to have such large-scale factors to
consider as identifying. I gather that for
some magicians tools aren't the deciding factor
as to whether it is a) powerful, b) important,
c) magic, d) moral, etc.
that is, tools are not an important determiner
of magical action to most mages in any positive
sense. for some they are actually a NEGATIVE
determiner as they become 'props' rather than
'paraphernalia'. they are deemed 'crutches',
which 'should be left behind in magical
development'. it was to things like this
that i referred when recently mentioning
'the Myth of the Magus' and E.M. Butler.
> its about the undoubted power of these magical
> objects
that's not usually immediately visible. it begins
to touch on sociological and psychological factors
that i was generally trying to reduce in my studies.
here's the set that i was discussing in my post....
>> 4 general 'dimensions' of examination that i might bring
>> to bear on any given incident or event that includes magic:
>> 1) Sociological -- how magic affects social groups;
the objects might be considered powerful by a number of people.
since i didn't want to engage in the survey work i didn't
consider this dmension very seriously, though i watched
for when a community decision hinged on some magical action.
>> 2) Psychological -- how magic affects participant
>> conscousness;
the objects might be considered powerful by specific
individuals, including the spellcaster and target.
this was interesting to me, and i could map it somewhat,
but i didn't get the impression it entirely mattered to
the former that the latter knew what they were doing.
in some cases they actively kept the target from
knowing either what was being done or who did it.
>> 3) Metaphysical -- how magic might function and if
>> it is a hidden (occulted) aspect
>> of the natural world which i may
>> discover or disclose as technology;
the objects might actually *be* powerful in some metaphysical
sense that, through time, we may figure out a means of measuring.
this is what i went into the situation presuming, or at least
that the *manipulation* of the objects was what caused the
effects and their relation to one another was important. this
seemed to follow certain principles identified by well-known
anthropologists and others i enjoyed reading on the subject
such as Malinowski, Frazer, Mauss, even Bonewits.
>> 4) Anthropological -- how magic fits into overall
>> human behaviour and what a
>> cross-cultural study of its
>> practice tells me about it.
a cross-cultural study on how certain types of magic tools
are seen and regarded might be helpful in determining their
overarching operating function in magical activities, how
they work, what level of essentiality they really have, etc.
> and what they teach us about the magical quest?
I don't know that there is a 'magical quest' in
any overarching sense, but in a more general sense,
the examples that we have of magic's use and the
tools that may be included do tell me quite a bit
about the modes and methods used to achieve the
aims and goals toward which magic is applied.
there are some clear principles derivable.
nagasiva:
>> even within a more narrow zone of ceremonial magic, for example,
>> as Dave points out, there are those (Chaos magicians) whose premise
>> is often that tools, implements, accoutrements, are unnecessary, and
>> in some cases that rules or principles of magic *themselves* are
>> completely unimportant. sometimes this is explained (even by
>> ordinary ceremonial mages) as an indicator about the metaphysics
>> or cosmology of the world and how the mind is so important to
>> what comes into being and changes.
>>
>> these same Chaos mages usually don't draw strident lines in the sand
>> about what kinds of magic they will perform, or what it is that magic
>> "should" be used for, whereas conventional ceremonial magicians will
>> often do this, perceiving their art as spiritual, mystical, and thus
>> important enough to reserve for deliberate and honoured occasions,
>> often outside the ordinary world of social dramas and emergencies.
> ...In my experience Chaos Magicians seem to have as much
> paraphenial as most other magicians - most significantly
> the magical ring -
interesting, that's not generally my experience, but groups of
magicians surely vary in their interest in tools and usage. :)
in the above i was trying to emphasize that, of modern mages
whose magic i have had the pleasure of experiencing or sharing,
those who placed the least emphasis on tool use and its
requirement (especially of those who affiliated in some way
with ceremonial magicians, which is how i interpreted the
phrase 'Ritual Magickians') were Chaos magicians. that
they in many cases liked tools, and even collected them,
was quite apparent.
thanks very much for your conversation. I really appreciate it.
nagasiva yronwode ([log in to unmask]), Director
YIPPIE*! -- http://www.yronwode.org/
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*Yronwode Institution for the Preservation
and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology
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