[Help] Do Eastern practices count as magick to you?

[lumineth Realm Lord]

I ask this because I've heard that not everyone does. Also, what resources would you recommend? Personally, I have a book on making Chinese talismans.

 

[Keldan]

If you define magick narrowly as post Renaissance Western occultism, you might say Eastern practices don’t count. But that’s a definition problem, not a problem with the evidence. Systems like Daoist ritual and talismanic work, Onmyodo and other Japanese esoteric methods, esoteric Buddhism, and a wide range of Asian folk practices clearly operate as forms of magick. So yes, they count, even if practitioners use different labels and don’t call it magick.

Asia’s haunted places are more openly integrated into public culture. Things like shrines, memorial rites, hungry ghost festivals, ancestor veneration, spirit houses, local temples that handle spirit issues, etc. Because these practices are public and ongoing, that visibility creates more recorded categories of spirit activity.

Many Eastern traditions preserve highly structured baneful methods because ritual specialists remained culturally central for a long time. The key difference is that these practices are often framed as superstition rather than being separated out and branded as magick the way it often is in modern Western occult.

 

[stalkinghyena]

I'm finally reading Demons of the Flesh by Nicholas and Zeena Shreck. In talking about Vama Marg siddhis, they mention one type where the practitioner in the midst of orgasm is able to inflict pain and agonizing death on someone far away. That's the crown jewels right there.

 

[TGalen]

Sure they do! The magical traditions of the east have a vastly different history than ours but the practices can be quite similar. If you're lucky, you could have been born into a situation where those would have been/would be living traditions (like say in japan, with mikkyo and kuji, or daoist magical traditions et al.) instead of what we have in the west. How wonderful is that? Naming is just naming. Magic is magick is whatever follows the same basic underlying structure in the practice.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I would say anyone who denies Eastern practices being magic doesn't really know what magic is.

 

[AbammonTheGreat]

I ask this because I've heard that not everyone does. Also, what resources would you recommend? Personally, I have a book on making Chinese talismans.

Hot take: I think magic as a concept primarily belongs to western esotericism. Indigenous cultures and Eastern cultures have techniques, rituals, and practices that are nearly identical to western magic but I think culturally would not be understood in the same way that we, as westerners, think of magic. I think magic itself comes mostly from Egyptian (as a force) and Mesopotamian (as compelling spirits) roots and without the developments of the west's institutions to kind of drive it into the concept we have of it today these techniques and practices would be considered mysticism, folk religion, or just plain superstition. Thats not to say the practices arent magical. Just that I dont think they have the same connotations that magic does. Communing with and compelling spirits, alternative healing, visualization/visionary experiences/astral practices, deity assumption, plant medicine, energetic bodies, mantras/vocalizations... these can all be viewed as normal mystical, religious, or shamanic/animistic practices in other cultures.

But this is just my opinion.

 

[nargile57]

There may be connections.

 

[Thee Nightfool]

Fu talismans = sorcery = "magick"

Siddhis in Hindu and Buddhist/Vajrayana tantra are numerous as well. I would say the Eastern traditions, in particular, are more magic-saturated for the most part. That's just my opinion, though.

 

[Desentient]

The division between East/West is nominal at best as our globalised world, especially post-Information Age, has severed clearer boundaries say Pre-Elightenment.

Magic exists not as a state but rather as a toolkit, a measure, a support mechanism, a vehicle. All of these things can be found in things like Depth Psychology, Art, cultural studies. Are we to say that there are clear cuts between all schools or veins of investigation?

I remember a first year college class that wherein the lecturer asked about the division and assumptions of East/West. As cultures have spread and integrated, conflation of tradition is inescapable.

 

[Gurublue]

I ask this because I've heard that not everyone does. Also, what resources would you recommend? Personally, I have a book on making Chinese talismans.

Magick is a western term. Same with occult. Eastern spiritual systems dont correlate with those terms, but as a westerner, you could think of them as that. I just feel like relating them to magick, or occult, devalues the power of the practices. They arent meant to be thought of or associated with ideas like “having powers” or things like that.

 

[Boll]

Yes, certainly

 

[Janus]

Definitely, I followed and practised the techniques in Crowley's "Magick" and "Eight Lectures on Yoga" and the same practices are taken and mentioned by Pete Carroll in "Liber NuLL" .

 

[iammonst3r]

'Eastern practices' and 'Magick' are just too broad to compare. Define Magick and define eastern practices! For me they share the same phenomenological territory with sometimes vastly different maps and mainly different end goals. Eastern Practices tend to shift to dissolution of the self, Magick the perfection of it. But this isn't necessarily true in all cases.

 

[sahgwa]

I ask this because I've heard that not everyone does. Also, what resources would you recommend? Personally, I have a book on making Chinese talismans.

Eastern magick most certainly exists.
In working and studying in Korea and Japan 20 years ago I was exposed to a good amount of local traditional magic.
In Korean mabeub...mabeop... Meaning magic, can also mean sorcery and enchantment. It is colloquially tied to shamans, or those who hold Keots, or Kuts, meaning like a banishing or exorcism dance
They also act as mediums for the spirits and can control them and enchant objects, or brew potions.

Also in Japan, Shintoism is heavily influenced by Daoist magic involving sigils and wards

 

[ModernMagus]

Does Chinese food still count as food?

 

[Swampdweller900]

Fu talismans = sorcery = "magick"

Siddhis in Hindu and Buddhist/Vajrayana tantra are numerous as well. I would say the Eastern traditions, in particular, are more magic-saturated for the most part. That's just my opinion, though.

I agree with this in a sense, that

Talismans = sorcery = directed use of intention and will = magic

Eastern traditions simply give more agency to individuals to wield their intention. Western traditions largely demand everyone send their intention via religious figures (never we mind that Christianity is technically an Eastern religion, geographically speaking, and would we call Jesus an egregore? Some would.) So it does come down to what we actually define as "magic" in an objective sense + cultural trappings.

 

[Morell]

When we put definition of magic to be something like:
Alteration of reality (both internal and external) in accordance with our will
...then I see no reason why any eastern practices should not be magical.

Magic in my opinion is ability of every human. It has to be developed, but the way each of us does it, is irrelevant in a way. Every human being is unique, so each of us has little different way to control their own mind and willpower. Doing that through an hour long invocation of a demon, or through one hour long sitting over matcha tea or by dancing with the katana... at the (magic) core the same thing.

 

[sahgwa]

I agree with this in a sense, that

Talismans = sorcery = directed use of intention and will = magic

Eastern traditions simply give more agency to individuals to wield their intention. Western traditions largely demand everyone send their intention via religious figures (never we mind that Christianity is technically an Eastern religion, geographically speaking, and would we call Jesus an egregore? Some would.) So it does come down to what we actually define as "magic" in an objective sense + cultural trappings.

I would argue that east Asian magic also puts the power out of the hands of the practitioner, but instead of just so called religious figures it is in the hands of the spirit world and largely ghosts and spirits of ancestors. This is shaped by the familial Confucian influence in Japan Korea and China. However in Buddhist magic like Bonpo or Buddhist influence you get petitions and magic towards deities as well, like bodhisattva Guanyin for fertility or protection. This is the same as Western magic and someone petitioning Mary for example

 

[Kellhuss]

Ideograms are basically sigils, when meaning is baked into visual essence of the language itself as opposed to just phonemes, there's a big indication as to the link between symbols, form, and intention. Pure magick.