paradigm shifting
Nov. 1st, 2002 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masque12I was raised Catholic, which I remained until I reached the age of reason. (rimshot)(Thank you George Carlin) I became an mistheist (my own term, like misanthropist) for a while, not just disbelieving in God, but actively hating him. Working at scout camp one summer I met my first real live Wiccan, and the religion intrigued me. So throughout high school I dabbled in Wicca, read what I could, performed some rituals, but it never really clicked for me. I liked the idea behind it, but as I'm not much of one for faith, the whole God/Goddess worship aspect always seemed like playacting.
I went on magical hiatus for a few years while I pretended to attend college classes, and mostly explored my political views. I became active with Wicca again after taking an indefinite leave of absence from college, but it was still kind of fake to me. So I became interested in ceremonial magick. I liked how it relied less on faith and more on experimenting with various things to see what kind of approach worked best, and I liked how the focus was more on the elevation of the individual as opposed to the simple devotion of religion. It was also more analytical in it's approach to metaphysics, which fits in better with the way my mind works.
I got interested in Crowley's approach to CM at this same time, and while I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Thelemite, I dig a lot of Uncle Al's stuff. I did some basic stuff with CM, LBRP, a few planetary sigils, but the structure started to chafe me, too rigid. That's when I found out about chaos magick, and that's still my basic paradigm when it comes to my approach to magick, although I have a bit of interest in Setianism and Tantra as well.
I have noticed a marked change in my thinking processes while going through these transitions. While I was Wiccan for instance, I really tried to take the Wiccan axiom of Harm None to heart, but it just didn't jibe well with my personality. I'm generally a pretty easy going guy, even though I like to argue a lot, but if you mess with one of my people, it's your ass, threefold law be damned. I also never saw any of that threefold law stuff in action, looking at society, people get away with murder all the time, so I came to the conclusion that the threefold law was wishful thinking.
Now that I know a bit about Karma in its original form, as opposed to the Theosophist view of it that permeates "New Age" culture, it makes a lot more sense to me, and I can view it in action. Most westerners think of Karma as structured like the threefold law, where bad actions bring bad rewards, and good actions bring good rewards, and that is mostly due to Blavatsky's Theosophical Society and their popularization of the term. The original concept means nothing more than attachment. The original sense of the word as I understand it is that Karma is the attachment you feel to your possessions, your actions, basically everything in your life. The bad things that are associated with Karma can happen if you dwell on the actions that caused them.
Karma isn't a cosmic force readjusting the balance of nature, it's your own guilt complexes punishing you for deeds which you feel you deserve to be punished for. Freeing yourself from the wheel of Karma eliminates these kinds of things from happening, and frees you to act how you will. As I got involved in ceremonial magick I also got into to logical analysis a lot deeper than I had been, and so I started to use that approach in life. I try to look at things from as many angles as I can, and use a good dose of Holmes' Law and Ockham's Razor to figure things out. When I got into Chaos magick I also got into Robert Anton Wilson and semantics, which really helps in using language as precisely as possible.
One of the things I've noticed socially is that as my approach to magick has changed, my tendency towards elitism has increased. I don't suffer fools gladly, although I tend to try to steer them towards good info as opposed to just blowing them off. I've lost a bit of my taste for conspiracy theory as I've become more exposed to reputable research in those areas, although some of the conspiracies I always liked seem even more likely now. The frustrating thing is that it is rather hard to find people locally that are interested in the same type of things that I am. That sounds a bit snobbish, but it's not intended that way. The pagan community here is great, active and numerous, but the fact of the matter is that most pagans are interested in the religious aspect of it more than the magickal, and
that's just not where my head's at.
I went on magical hiatus for a few years while I pretended to attend college classes, and mostly explored my political views. I became active with Wicca again after taking an indefinite leave of absence from college, but it was still kind of fake to me. So I became interested in ceremonial magick. I liked how it relied less on faith and more on experimenting with various things to see what kind of approach worked best, and I liked how the focus was more on the elevation of the individual as opposed to the simple devotion of religion. It was also more analytical in it's approach to metaphysics, which fits in better with the way my mind works.
I got interested in Crowley's approach to CM at this same time, and while I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Thelemite, I dig a lot of Uncle Al's stuff. I did some basic stuff with CM, LBRP, a few planetary sigils, but the structure started to chafe me, too rigid. That's when I found out about chaos magick, and that's still my basic paradigm when it comes to my approach to magick, although I have a bit of interest in Setianism and Tantra as well.
I have noticed a marked change in my thinking processes while going through these transitions. While I was Wiccan for instance, I really tried to take the Wiccan axiom of Harm None to heart, but it just didn't jibe well with my personality. I'm generally a pretty easy going guy, even though I like to argue a lot, but if you mess with one of my people, it's your ass, threefold law be damned. I also never saw any of that threefold law stuff in action, looking at society, people get away with murder all the time, so I came to the conclusion that the threefold law was wishful thinking.
Now that I know a bit about Karma in its original form, as opposed to the Theosophist view of it that permeates "New Age" culture, it makes a lot more sense to me, and I can view it in action. Most westerners think of Karma as structured like the threefold law, where bad actions bring bad rewards, and good actions bring good rewards, and that is mostly due to Blavatsky's Theosophical Society and their popularization of the term. The original concept means nothing more than attachment. The original sense of the word as I understand it is that Karma is the attachment you feel to your possessions, your actions, basically everything in your life. The bad things that are associated with Karma can happen if you dwell on the actions that caused them.
Karma isn't a cosmic force readjusting the balance of nature, it's your own guilt complexes punishing you for deeds which you feel you deserve to be punished for. Freeing yourself from the wheel of Karma eliminates these kinds of things from happening, and frees you to act how you will. As I got involved in ceremonial magick I also got into to logical analysis a lot deeper than I had been, and so I started to use that approach in life. I try to look at things from as many angles as I can, and use a good dose of Holmes' Law and Ockham's Razor to figure things out. When I got into Chaos magick I also got into Robert Anton Wilson and semantics, which really helps in using language as precisely as possible.
One of the things I've noticed socially is that as my approach to magick has changed, my tendency towards elitism has increased. I don't suffer fools gladly, although I tend to try to steer them towards good info as opposed to just blowing them off. I've lost a bit of my taste for conspiracy theory as I've become more exposed to reputable research in those areas, although some of the conspiracies I always liked seem even more likely now. The frustrating thing is that it is rather hard to find people locally that are interested in the same type of things that I am. That sounds a bit snobbish, but it's not intended that way. The pagan community here is great, active and numerous, but the fact of the matter is that most pagans are interested in the religious aspect of it more than the magickal, and
that's just not where my head's at.
