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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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