Gabbing about Traditions and Inclusive, Ecumenical Occultism

[MorganBlack]

Making a thread to continue an enjoyable conversation from here:

Does Aurum Solis belong to the Golden Dawn? What is the relationship between its magical system and Greek polytheism?

My lack of knowledge about the Golden Dawn has led to these doubts. Their writings feel unfamiliar to me.

wizardforums.com

 

[L’chaimGoldberg]

You know I wonder how much of the whole Wicca fabrication about an ancient history is descended from the late medieval, early renaissance period where everything imaginable was “Solomon’s” book, re the character from the Bible? And then it just continued.
I recently discovered listening to a Stephen Skinner interview that the first books attributed to “Solomon” were actually almost certainly correctly attributed to a regular Jewish person named Solomon in byzantium and then people just drifted into mixing the two until everything was written by Solomon The King.

I mean if I open a book and the first thing I’m told is that this book is handed down from angels to Adam or written by a king that almost certainly never existed, THEN I see the contents are medieval Neoplatonist theory, i can safely assume that at least part of what you’re telling me ISNT factually correct.

that’s what initially turned me off about Wicca when I was younger and when I first came across asatru. This isn’t historically accurate, because i can read the sagas and mythology in Germanic culture, and can tell this other stuff is just a stripped down version of the Lemegemeton. Quit perpin’, nigga! lol.

I wonder how much those “neo” groups have been damaged by dishonesty over their origins vs being helped by a romanticized fable about Ye Antient Historia? I can’t ever forget how many times I met these teenagers in the 90s who told me they were from a long unbroken family of practicing witches back to the Middle Ages, except i knew their parents, grandparents and in some cases their great grandparents who said in no uncertain terms that wasn’t true. Just a complete coincidence that, like later descendants of “Vikings” in the 21st century, they only discovered this heritage AFTER whatever TV series came out.

in a side tangent to this, talking about Christian witchcraft in Europe, Dr Skinner talks about the goetia of dr rudd and how this was a local cunning man’s notebook that had passed through several peoples hands over several generations before being archived. It’s an interesting study in angels/demons.

i think about that sometimes, how our perception of this all has been distorted by the relative availability of occult texts. Even an expensive reprint costing 2-400 USD would have been virtually a giveaway for most magicians in history, and they copied whatever they could since, dammit, no xerox machines or scanners. The other thing is how expensive parchment and even later, laid paper was. Shit wasn’t a notebook at the dollar store. (I do love how magic oriented individuals seem to be preserving things like calligraphy and fountain pens and illuminating their notebooks, making grimoires, books of shadows etc).

anyway, great new thread!!!!

 

[MorganBlack]

L’chaimGoldberg: I’ve always felt like it’s wrong for me to practice another ethnic groups ethno-faith (I don’t like the word religion because no culture used that term originally).

Very much agreed about "religion" as concept! Even when we use word "faith" we still have the bog-standard connotations lurking in the back of our head.

Notice how modern pagans will call what are trying to rebuild as a "faith" and "religion" while also forgetting their ancestors' animist "shamanic" (ugh, need another word) practices were not a religion per se. (To be clear in the US there are tax-exemption requirements that encourage this kind of narrow lens.)

Talking about Vodou will be more useful one we unpack "religion." Most Voudisant are Catholic. As are most New World sorcery practices. But in talking to Anglo occultists, magicians, sorcerers, and witches they all seem to have this OTHER crap in their head that they could use some unburdening from.

Please pardon the tangent! Also please note half my family are Anglo / British so this is not anyting but an exploration of the history of ideas. Also please pardon the wall of words. I did not mean to write a damn book here.

-----------------

"Religion" as an English word really trips people up and is still terribly divisive. When we use it today we are often accidentally using a 16th to 20th-century British administrative tool.

"Religion" as a concept is a manifestation of the British Empire's gunboat universalism that arose in collating of local beliefs, animist and ancestral practices around the world, all in the imperial effort to better understand, manipulate, and harvest their resources. Following the Reformation in 1517, and the subsequent rise of the Church of England, the concept of "religion" shifted from a shared cultural atmosphere to a legal identity.

It was Anglican Universalism (good in many ways) attached to gunboats (bad).

Before the height of the British Empire, most cultures didn't have a word for "religion" as a standalone category, but rather they had law, custom, ancestors, and way of life. The British essentially forced the world’s spiritual diversity into a Western, post-Reformation mold, the distinctly Anglican/Protestant lens. To them, a proper religion MUST have several essentials: a sacred text: (The "People of the Book" bias), a set of creeds (specific things you believe in your head) and a "Sacred Space": (A clear line between what is "sacred" and what is "secular" or "profane").

The Anglican Universalism was the belief that there was a natural, moral order to the world that the British were uniquely qualified to oversee. Of course they were the adults in the room who could categorize the world's "superstitions" into a hierarchy. At the top was Anglicanism, at the bottom were "animist" practices. The gunboats were for stealing spices and enforcing the British legal definition of what a human being was allowed to believe and how those beliefs had to be structured to be recognized by the state.

So it amuses me to no end modern pagan reconsuction is still playing by the rules of Anglo gunboat universalism. They think they need a "faith" with "high priests and high priestesses" and a Book of Shadows , or a Book of Veles. or just some flimsy notes scraped from academic texts. And They feel they need to go to battle agasint other faiths .. usually Catholicsm or Orthodox Chrisitianity - and so thereby manifesting and furthuring the Anglo-American policing of us all as "filthy babarians." Thanks, ya'll.

Not to add to much a conspiratorial note, but when you consider that global pagan revivalism is downstream from British Wicca, it makes you pause for a second. Another wrinkle:

Using religion as a monolithic concept, the British and Dutch Empires could also paint their economic enemy, the Spanish Empire, as a monolithic evil - a "Catholic" shadow world that killed native babies. This was The Black Legend (La Leyenda Negra). In the 16th and 17th centuries, the British and Dutch used the newly minted Protestant identity to foster the perception still in play today that Protestant = Liberty/Progress vs. Catholic = Tyranny/Superstition. By framing Catholicism as a monolithic, oppressive religion, they could justify their own imperial expansion as a "liberation" of the seas from Spanish cruelty.

(And this is still very much in play today in Anglo "magic" and occultism... see Brit Chaos magicans sneering at historical usually Catholic necomancy and grimoires. )

This is another huge topic, but let's just point out that in Spanish-dominated vs. Anglo areas, "80%" and "100%" of the indigenous populations survived. As you know, in regions like Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala indigenous populations remained the demographic majority , or at least a massive plurality. In Mexico while the initial "Great Dying" (mostly from smallpox) was catastrophic, the population eventually stabilized and rebounded. Today, a huge percentage of the population in former Spanish colonies is Mestizo (mixed, such as myself) or fully indigenous.

Not to make excuses for military subjugation, but that not even getting into the legal and phycal protetions for the native population the Franciscan orders gave, and that ingenous could become Spanish citizens after two years, blah blah.

This compares to Anglo areas where they displaced and almost 100% wiped out the native populations.

The Black Legend worked so well that people still believe the Spanish were the "uniquely" evil ones, even while standing on ground in the US or Australia where the original inhabitants were completely erased - unlike the vibrant, surviving indigenous and Mestizo cultures of the South.

OK, just to tie it together.

So this is why we don’t have a good single word for what Vodou "is" maybe "syncretic," as some have used. But everyone in modern magic treats this as "bad" and "less pure" than their made-up, blood-and-soil "real faiths." Just ugh! The stupid, it burns!!

Then consider how blankity-blank "witchcraft" has the exact same issue. The irony is that the people chasing "pure" or "untainted" indigenous " faiths" or "pagan relgion" are usually the ones most trapped by the Anglo-Protestant mindset.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Also please pardon the wall of words. I did not mean to write a damn book here.

Thank you for an excellent post

I hadn't really thought about it before, but you're right - there is some confusion between "religion" and "magical system". Does one worship the gods or "merely" have commerce with them?

One of my personal hobby-horses is how much of this arises because people don't know how magic works?

Everyone can tell you how to do it - but who can tell you why it works?

And of course one of the roots of Chaos magic is "If each of these systems can be just as successful, why is that?"

 

[L’chaimGoldberg]

L’chaimGoldberg: I’ve always felt like it’s wrong for me to practice another ethnic groups ethno-faith (I don’t like the word religion because no culture used that term originally).

Very much agreed about "religion" as concept! Even when we use word "faith" we still have the bog-standard connotations lurking in the back of our head.

Notice how modern pagans will call what are trying to rebuild as a "faith" and "religion" while also forgetting their ancestors' animist "shamanic" (ugh, need another word) practices were not a religion per se. (To be clear in the US there are tax-exemption requirements that encourage this kind of narrow lens.)

Talking about Vodou will be more useful one we unpack "religion." Most Voudisant are Catholic. As are most New World sorcery practices. But in talking to Anglo occultists, magicians, sorcerers, and witches they all seem to have this OTHER crap in their head that they could use some unburdening from.

Please pardon the tangent! Also please note half my family are Anglo / British so this is not anyting but an exploration of the history of ideas. Also please pardon the wall of words. I did not mean to write a damn book here.

-----------------

"Religion" as an English word really trips people up and is still terribly divisive. When we use it today we are often accidentally using a 16th to 20th-century British administrative tool.

"Religion" as a concept is a manifestation of the British Empire's gunboat universalism that arose in collating of local beliefs, animist and ancestral practices around the world, all in the imperial effort to better understand, manipulate, and harvest their resources. Following the Reformation in 1517, and the subsequent rise of the Church of England, the concept of "religion" shifted from a shared cultural atmosphere to a legal identity.

It was Anglican Universalism (good in many ways) attached to gunboats (bad).

Before the height of the British Empire, most cultures didn't have a word for "religion" as a standalone category, but rather they had law, custom, ancestors, and way of life. The British essentially forced the world’s spiritual diversity into a Western, post-Reformation mold, the distinctly Anglican/Protestant lens. To them, a proper religion MUST have several essentials: a sacred text: (The "People of the Book" bias), a set of creeds (specific things you believe in your head) and a "Sacred Space": (A clear line between what is "sacred" and what is "secular" or "profane").

The Anglican Universalism was the belief that there was a natural, moral order to the world that the British were uniquely qualified to oversee. Of course they were the adults in the room who could categorize the world's "superstitions" into a hierarchy. At the top was Anglicanism, at the bottom were "animist" practices. The gunboats were for stealing spices and enforcing the British legal definition of what a human being was allowed to believe and how those beliefs had to be structured to be recognized by the state.

So it amuses me to no end modern pagan reconsuction is still playing by the rules of Anglo gunboat universalism. They think they need a "faith" with "high priests and high priestesses" and a Book of Shadows , or a Book of Veles. or just some flimsy notes scraped from academic texts. And They feel they need to go to battle agasint other faiths .. usually Catholicsm or Orthodox Chrisitianity - and so thereby manifesting and furthuring the Anglo-American policing of us all as "filthy babarians." Thanks, ya'll.

Not to add to much a conspiratorial note, but when you consider that global pagan revivalism is downstream from British Wicca, it makes you pause for a second. Another wrinkle:

Using religion as a monolithic concept, the British and Dutch Empires could also paint their economic enemy, the Spanish Empire, as a monolithic evil - a "Catholic" shadow world that killed native babies. This was The Black Legend (La Leyenda Negra). In the 16th and 17th centuries, the British and Dutch used the newly minted Protestant identity to foster the perception still in play today that Protestant = Liberty/Progress vs. Catholic = Tyranny/Superstition. By framing Catholicism as a monolithic, oppressive religion, they could justify their own imperial expansion as a "liberation" of the seas from Spanish cruelty.

(And this is still very much in play today in Anglo "magic" and occultism... see Brit Chaos magicans sneering at historical usually Catholic necomancy and grimoires. )

This is another huge topic, but let's just point out that in Spanish-dominated vs. Anglo areas, "80%" and "100%" of the indigenous populations survived. As you know, in regions like Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala indigenous populations remained the demographic majority , or at least a massive plurality. In Mexico while the initial "Great Dying" (mostly from smallpox) was catastrophic, the population eventually stabilized and rebounded. Today, a huge percentage of the population in former Spanish colonies is Mestizo (mixed, such as myself) or fully indigenous.

Not to make excuses for military subjugation, but that not even getting into the legal and phycal protetions for the native population the Franciscan orders gave, and that ingenous could become Spanish citizens after two years, blah blah.

This compares to Anglo areas where they displaced and almost 100% wiped out the native populations.

The Black Legend worked so well that people still believe the Spanish were the "uniquely" evil ones, even while standing on ground in the US or Australia where the original inhabitants were completely erased - unlike the vibrant, surviving indigenous and Mestizo cultures of the South.

OK, just to tie it together.

So this is why we don’t have a good single word for what Vodou "is" maybe "syncretic," as some have used. But everyone in modern magic treats this as "bad" and "less pure" than their made-up, blood-and-soil "real faiths." Just ugh! The stupid, it burns!!

Then consider how blankity-blank "witchcraft" has the exact same issue. The irony is that the people chasing "pure" or "untainted" indigenous " faiths" or "pagan relgion" are usually the ones most trapped by the Anglo-Protestant mindset.

At the same time I have to notice that whenever you point out that ancient civilizations definitely had priestly hierarchies and dogmas and laws, that they literally took mythology at face value (mythic literalism) , all of which is well attested by period, primary source documents, people IMMEDIATELY accuse you of being a Christian or trying to impose a Christian framework on paganism.

it’s always been ironic (infuriating, really) to see The Uneducated in the USA accusing Mexico or other Latin countries of being solely the product of miscegenators and rapists just going wild with the Indians. I have had a fascination with anthropology ever since I was a small child and can say with absolute certainty that nearly everyone I encounter in rural Mexico is basically an Indian. There’s mestizos of course and some blancos (mexico is officially 10-20 “white” last I checked) but it’s mostly Native American genetics.

I’ll never make any excuses for the crimes of the abrahamic hordes, but honestly I don’t think it’s even open to debate that Catholic countries were less genocidal in their conquest and rule of non European people than Protestants were and indeed, still are. Nearly all of the religious persecution Ive encountered in my life has been at the hands of the evangelical zealots who are all too eager to use their government jobs to prevent practices or beliefs that they disagree with. In fact when I was a child in the early 80s i heard that “Catholics aren’t Christians, they’re pagans” though in all fairness to the evangelical erezt rav that has diminished thanks to their realization that, no matter how much they lie about a great awakening for the past 40 years, the writing is on the wall for the slaves of Jehovah worldwide (see what I did there with the eretz rab jajaja).

the issue with naming “religion” is that it separates it from life and makes it something like an option. You want McDonald’s or Taco Bell? Or you want Christianity or Islam? To the ancients and most traditional cultures, maybe some remote tribes in Asia, Africa or South America, there was just “what we do”. A Greek didn’t think about a Scythian coming to Mt Olympus and converting to Hellenic paganism, that was ridiculous, he was a Scythian and the native was a Greek. One by definition worships Scythian and Greek gods and wears Greek and Scythian clothing and listen to Greek and Scythian music and everything.
It was also very geographically centered too,something that is completely ignored even by people who claim to be “earth based religion”.

Of course this is all a byproduct of axial age bullshit but also the fact that modern people are quite literally in most cases rootless. I was born and raised and lived my entire life in a major city in Ohio, but I have no connection whatsoever there beyond what relationships I’ve developed with whatever nature spirits I’ve been friends with. But an ancient person, they had no world beyond their tribes homeland whether it was Phrygia, Gaul or upper Egypt. That’s your world. I made the comment in college that the 21st century is a new migration era on par with the 3-500s based just on the numbers of people moving. And it’s not just the . Millions of people in India leave every 5 minutes. The recent disasters of western countries with African, Arabic and Indian migration are well known. Where i live in Mexico there’s literally 3-5 females for every man as nature lays out replacement polygamy for all the men who have been emptied into Babylon. None of my siblings are in our home city of Ohio anymore because we all have gone looking for survival conditions. The end result is that everyone is swirling around in a confused state and the resultant energy and disconnect is palpable.

You mentioned the book of veles. Omg. I can’t believe people still fall for that one, along with the oera linda book and “Jesus wasn’t a jew”, or even “Perun fights Veles in the shape of a snake”, like seriously how did someone’s theory become transformed into actual Slavic mythology??? Probably the same way as Margaret Murray’s garbage did. SMH.

I met a guy here locally who is a practitioner and it’s really interesting to see how so many things are similar across different cultures and traditions but still the same. For instance, even though we’ve known each other awhile, the shaking hands thing, and he studiously avoids looking at my tools. I’ve caught a local woman giving me the side eye when I was at my favorite yerberia, though I’m virtually on a first name basis with the proprietor’s. . “Damn gringos and our culture!” Kvetchcon 3 while I’m talking to the owner about a particular essential oil I’m looking for. 271,000 laughs, for real.

Post automatically merged: Today at 6:10 PM

Thank you for an excellent post

I hadn't really thought about it before, but you're right - there is some confusion between "religion" and "magical system". Does one worship the gods or "merely" have commerce with them?

One of my personal hobby-horses is how much of this arises because people don't know how magic works?

Everyone can tell you how to do it - but who can tell you why it works?

And of course one of the roots of Chaos magic is "If each of these systems can be just as successful, why is that?"

I know I talk about him a lot but Stephen Skinner says that magic is a system of technology and he’s discovered that it’s almost identical around the world. There’s cultural differences but the method and principles remain the same.
I’ve long held that there is no such thing as “magic” anymore so than the fact that an AK47 and laptop or F150 would be magic to someone from 1,000 years ago. In many ways people have regressed in our understanding of the universe. is it magic that you can get results from “manifesting” by thinking about something, or is it just “putting yourself in a higher vibration”? Well WTF are you doing after fasting and taking a ceremonial bath and wearing special clothes and burning incense and slathering yourself with oil and chanting for 10 minutes??? If both get results what difference does it make?

talking about worshipping vs having commerce with the gods, it’s worth noting that traditional pagan religions were extremely transactional though I don’t think that means people didn’t necessarily have genuine reverence and love for the gods, lots of songs and poetry and artwork shows they did. I had some guy acvusatotily say that the only reason I worshipped my gods is because they gave me things that I asked for and I was like, you just told me that’s why you worship the Bible god, because he can give you eternal life, the only difference is that I can show you the results of my gods gifts and you only have your promises to yourself that “he” is going to deliver. Crickets. Literally, dead silence.

 

[MorganBlack]

L’chaim Goldberg, totally!

Still thinking about how to talk about what Vodou does right imho, but the way you're thinking about all inspired me to try articulate more where I’m coming from.

Robert Ramsay, thank you!

My intellectual religious self was raised Unitarian Universalist (with Mexican Catholic animism to the side) at a church with a Scotsman minister who converted from Episcopalianism. What I'm characterizing as Anglican Universalism gave us a wonderful and very useful articulation like Chaos Magic, which is a fantastic place for those of us who were raised in very modern, highly secular Anglophone cultures to "sit" within.

People who were raised in Catholic countries have other needs and requirements. They can localize it all into their own native culture because Catholicism is fundamentally animist. Chaos Magic made it "safe" for me to go explore the wild "sublunar world" (to use the classical mythic framework). It took me a long time to parse the experiences I was having in my Verum practice and in my early experiences in Vodou, which started in the mid-1990s.

If push comes to shove, I have to agree with David Rankine: we really have no idea what the spirits are, so I really don't have any issue with anybody's hot takes, including my own.

So, decoupling them from religion - which is usually just a ritual framework rather than an totalizing "explanation" in the imperial mold - is very useful to keep us from arguing over ontology too much , which is not very useful, IMHO. That said, I agree in ritual, you get what you use and believe in, as you well know. (Said with my own Daimonic Idealist modifications in my mind.)