Portrait Of A Mage

[Pyrokar]

Im the one after Willem Dafoe!

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[Roma]

Is the experiment too hard?

 

[DiLoco_DelEted]

A fundamental problem in my case is not only taking on too much too soon, but ..
It's messy. You see, I am battling a disability case, with the fundamental principal being that I cannot work most jobs, and as employment is at will, my epilepsy seizures have always posed a problem retaining employment.
The upside of being on disability would be that I would have free time to do things that matter to me, and to pursue magic full time.
The downside may be assisted living where candles and incense are a no-go.
In addition, I am also preparing to pursue a chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Why do I mention all of this? Honesty and integrity - two principles every mage should live by. No matter the path.
Sure, it shatters the illusion of me being a mage. The simple fact is that we have to be honest not only to others, but to thine own self be true.
In the elemental grade system of the Golden Dawn, three astrology houses get shaken to prove yourself to you and you alone. SO sorry to shatter your illusions, but not all magician find life easier. As Dion Fortune put it, working at the foundry is easier than working the Great Work.
prepare to have your life shaken like a martini cup.
Even my GD teacher stated that when you're in a financial bind, you pursue bankruptcy, not an archdemon.

 

[Pyrokar]

We don't rub elbows anymore, but that was gangsta as hell and i will respect it everytime.
Takes balls to real like that.

 

[DiLoco_DelEted]

We don't rub elbows anymore, but that was gangsta as hell and i will respect it everytime.
Takes balls to real like that.

I appreciate you, and I appreciate your reply!

Post automatically merged: Nov 17, 2023

You know, a few Golden Dawn Magi *ve known convinced me they have power. I also realized at the time, if a teacher is going to help you, you need to give 100% as well. The best way to start, and the reason I am posting so many Earl Nightingale videos is because we need to be honest with ourselves, and keep a positive mental attitude. Every thought or word we speak creates reality through the magic of the subconscious, which is why Crowley stated to bind the ass the horse and the unicorn. Thought, word, action.

 

[Xenophon]

A fundamental problem in my case is not only taking on too much too soon, but ..
It's messy. You see, I am battling a disability case, with the fundamental principal being that I cannot work most jobs, and as employment is at will, my epilepsy seizures have always posed a problem retaining employment.
The upside of being on disability would be that I would have free time to do things that matter to me, and to pursue magic full time.
The downside may be assisted living where candles and incense are a no-go.
In addition, I am also preparing to pursue a chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Why do I mention all of this? Honesty and integrity - two principles every mage should live by. No matter the path.
Sure, it shatters the illusion of me being a mage. The simple fact is that we have to be honest not only to others, but to thine own self be true.
In the elemental grade system of the Golden Dawn, three astrology houses get shaken to prove yourself to you and you alone. SO sorry to shatter your illusions, but not all magician find life easier. As Dion Fortune put it, working at the foundry is easier than working the Great Work.
prepare to have your life shaken like a martini cup.
Even my GD teacher stated that when you're in a financial bind, you pursue bankruptcy, not an archdemon.

Shatters the illusion? Shite happens to magi with some frequency. Crowley was always bumming money after he burned through his inheritance. Evola (a minor league mage) was crippled for life in a Yank air raid on Vienna. Dion Fortune died of a nasty variety of cancer. And so on...Magic is a tool it isn't er...magic? Seriously, though. It opens some doors, and bars a few others. But like you're saying, it's not a fortress. I'm a reasonably good shot, but this don't make me bulletproof.

Still and all, I hope things work out some of their kinks for you.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

A fundamental problem in my case is not only taking on too much too soon, but ..
It's messy. You see, I am battling a disability case, with the fundamental principal being that I cannot work most jobs, and as employment is at will, my epilepsy seizures have always posed a problem retaining employment.
The upside of being on disability would be that I would have free time to do things that matter to me, and to pursue magic full time.
The downside may be assisted living where candles and incense are a no-go.
In addition, I am also preparing to pursue a chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Why do I mention all of this? Honesty and integrity - two principles every mage should live by. No matter the path.
Sure, it shatters the illusion of me being a mage. The simple fact is that we have to be honest not only to others, but to thine own self be true.
In the elemental grade system of the Golden Dawn, three astrology houses get shaken to prove yourself to you and you alone. SO sorry to shatter your illusions, but not all magician find life easier. As Dion Fortune put it, working at the foundry is easier than working the Great Work.
prepare to have your life shaken like a martini cup.
Even my GD teacher stated that when you're in a financial bind, you pursue bankruptcy, not an archdemon.

Here's hoping for good outcomes for you.
And being a mage comes from, as you say, honesty and integrity - so you're good.
As Wittgenstein said: "The hardest task we face is not fooling ourselves."

 

[Ziran]

As Wittgenstein said: "The hardest task we face is not fooling ourselves."

So true... the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Myself included. With each and every achievement comes greater opportunity ( and likelihood ) of making a fool of myself. Making a fool of myself, literally. Making myself into a fool; fooling myself. That's why I think it's the "hardest task". It keeps getting harder.

Even learning and understanding how I can make myself into a fool, is an acheivement which feeds into its own inevtiable failure.

honesty and integrity

Yes. I have found very good results for myself if I am cultivating honesty and integrity. The inevitable swings into foolishness are temporary, and the honesty and integrity with myself produces a clarity which can be applied towards any pursuit. Carpe Diem works so much better with this sort of clarity.

 

[DiLoco_DelEted]

Steven Covey called it paradigms, in particular, Principle Centered Paradigms as a Habit of Highly Effective People.
Thrones and Virtues angel orders, besides loyalty, uphold truth as a virtue.

And yes .. self honesty is very important.

 

[Ziran]

Shakespeare:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

 

[Wintruz]

Honestly I don't even think of myself as a "magician" or "occultist" right now because I don't have any tested and observed "feats". I'm still just a noob trying to get past the first benchmark to even begin trying to acquire an ability to test. If people ask I'll say that I am one, in the same way that I'll state Christianity as my religion on a form I'm signing, it's just a formality. Until I can do something that truly proves my capability to myself, and repeat that feat at least 2 more times (so I know it's not a fluke), I won't consider myself to be an occultist/magician.

The annoying thing about all this is that there is no clear and defined path, and the entire process is inundated with thousands of false/inefficient paths. If you want to learn math you can get any math textbook, and the process for addition will always be the same and give you the same result.

If you want to test and see if magic is real, and try to attain magic abilities, you'll find one person mentioning a book about some working you can do with entities that H.P. Lovecraft invented, and another guy telling you to try doing some "Christian Magic" with angels, which just sounds like a contradiction since the Bible pretty much outlaws magic, etc.

There is no standard and most people can't be trusted, so it's like an endless road of trial and error until you hopefully discover "the real thing". But the sad part is, even if you somehow discover "the real thing" one day, you'll likely be practicing and inferior and weak form of it, because you didn't get proper training.

Everybody just seems to be "winging it" and cobbling together their own system of magick from whatever they've researched, and then these cobbled together systems become the basis of future cobbled together systems, and we all just get further and further away from the "true source".

There really should be some kind of universal textbook for magic.

I already know that people are going to say - "There isn't only one path, there are many paths"

But the absolute truth is that there is always a path that is the most optimal. There is a path that yields the most benefit with the least amount of effort and risk required. Just like there exists and algorithm for a specific coding task that is simply superior to all other other algorithms.

There is always a "superior option", and it annoys me that the elders of the occult community as a whole have yet to come together to unanimously find and declare that methodology.

Of course, that's just the public occult community. I would not be surprised if there was some secret society of occultists with a tested and standardized training for initiation into the occult and how to practice magic. People like me will just never be lucky enough to encounter something like that.

One of the main pains of existence is realizing that a lot of life comes down to random chance, pure luck. I can only speak to you like this because I was lucky enough to be born without any mental defects that crippled my intellect. The reason why I can walk is because I was lucky enough to not be born with any physical defects that crippled by mobility. This can be extrapolated to everything else in life, people just don't like to think about it because it makes them feel powerless.

We all get to choose, but life chooses the options that we are allowed to choose from, so our choice is merely an illusion. I'm sure there's some lucky f**k out there born into a family of occult practitioners that was raised and trained from young to learn the things that I have yet to discover (or may never discover).

There are some very healthy perspectives in this post, as there were in another post you made considering how the standards of magic have dropped in order to accommodate run-of-the-mill mental experiences.

I would argue that the roots of this are in Jung's psychoanalytical reinterpretation of alchemy. I do not dismiss Jung's exceptional insights but he set the precedent for a non-paranormal interpretation of the occult. Many would-be magicians do set out for a paranormal experience, find that they don't get one and then (perhaps to not lose face to themselves) retreat into magic as a language for explaining their inner life. As with Jung, sometimes that can produce insights and "poetic imagination" can be a nice way to experience life. However, it more often becomes a mental apparatus which comes between the "magician" and life, leading to confusion, delusion and obscurum per obscurius ("Yes Becky, absinthe may 'belong in Netzach' but how does that help you and why can't you be normal around people?"). It is, in other words, an elaborate and time-consuming mental game.

In the Golden Bough, James Frazer famously wrote that magic is "a false science”. In historical terms, this is largely correct. The occult deserves the critique because, throughout history, occultists have been utterly addicted to external explanations for those occasions when magic does work. It's the influence of the "planetary spheres", "astral" shenanigans or the interventions of angels, demons, etc. The scientific method and reason, a far better faculty for investigating the external, objective world, has made it much harder to sustain these explanations, even among occultists. Yet, turbo-charged by its success in material areas, for some, reason has become the barometer for explaining everything rather than just one limited mental faculty among many (it's necessarily limited because it's "for" dealing with matter/quantity rather than quality). Hardcore rationalists are often found in the strange and, ironically, emotionally driven position of trusting only matter and dismissing every single magical and mystical experience that has ever been reported on the planet. Because they have dismissed the frameworks which previously "explained" those experiences does not mean that the experience itself has been dismissed.

Magic is real but most of what has been written about it is nonsense. Most, but not all. Crowley made the breakthrough that magic isn't bestowed by exterior powers but it is consciousness extending itself outside of the body in hitherto unexplained ways. There is your "true source": consciousness. I entirely share Crowley's view. As with all things, there are variables, elements which mean that sometimes magic will produce a stronger effect than at other times. Many of those variables are still being explored, many of the laws which govern magic are still being discovered. One known law is that, like a muscle, consciousness has to be trained in this work and with increased training it can perform magic with increasing accuracy and power, provided it is doing so in a circumstances where there aren't stronger forces at play.

There really should be some kind of universal textbook for magic.

Write it! But first train and join with others who are exploring. Given many of the dispositions displayed by your posts you'll be far better off in the New Aeon set (Thelemic, Setian, Chaote) than Old Aeon systems.

 

[Elementriloquist]

I do not dismiss Jung's exceptional insights but he set the precedent for a non-paranormal interpretation of the occult.

This is why I don't like his writings lol. He set the precedent for larps, the delusional, and the mentally ill.

Post automatically merged: Jun 17, 2024

Write it!

IDK, I think the entire experience has left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm more the type to just fade into the background of society never to be seen or heard from again if I master magic, than write the book that changes it all. Maybe I'll write that book and release it shortly before I die, but I wouldn't release it during my lifetime and ruin all of my privacy and fun.

 

[beardedeldridge]

I’ve always thought of Crowley like the Neil Tyson of magic. Or maybe Bill Nye. I’m not saying he wasn’t smart and didn’t advance magic but it was also a lot of personality and salesmanship.

* Most of the most powerful magicians are probably the ones you’ve never heard of.

* Can change reality but probably seldom does.

* Their life probably isn’t falling apart. Or at least has had a good bit of success of some type but not necessarily famous.

-Eld

 

[Jackson]

That one Buddhist monk who could supposedly float.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Someone who is fluid enough to navigate any situation but powerful enough to always be in complete control.

Knowledge of how people, society, nature, and the cosmos function is a given. Someone who makes everything appear effortless. Someone who can be lighter than air and denser than a black hole at the flick of the wrist. The person needs to have access to allies, powers, and information that would be classified as magical.

When I think of one in media, my mind goes straight to The Man in Black from Westworld. He has an otherworldly agenda, he has boons from the powers that be, is bulletproof... here's a clip, I think seeing him in action explains it better than I ever could:

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[pixel_fortune]

David Bowie practised ceremonial magic back in the day

When you look at his success - and not just that he was wildly successful, but that he was successful while still continually evolving as an artist, able to experiment and try new things without losing his audience. Got to collaborate with artists he admired. His work was loved by both serious art critics and the album-buying populace

He was happily married and lived to see his kids become successful. He overcame a serious addiction, which is fucking hard. He also overcame some shitty personal traits of his youth and became a better person. He knew of his approaching death and was able to work right to the end to make a final artistic statement and goodbye.

I'm not putting all that down to magic, but we know he practised magic and there's not much you could point to in his life and say "well if you're such a powerful magician, how come you're not...."

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Maybe I'll write that book and release it shortly before I die, but I wouldn't release it during my lifetime and ruin all of my privacy and fun.

Take it from my personal experience; unless you are very lucky, very few people will give a flying fortress about your book. This is no reflection on either you, or the quality of the book. Certainly, your privacy will not be affected.

 

[Elementriloquist]

unless you are very lucky, very few people will give a flying fortress about your book.

Certainly, your privacy will not be affected.

Unless it's training methods are effective and actually work, and that's the only kind of book I would bother putting out. So it would be best not to take any chances. So I think the "luck" would come before the book, as I would have to be lucky enough to master the occult to such an extent.

Honestly, if someone has real occult abilities, they are actually robbing themselves if they write a genuine book that teaches other people how to really practice magic. It would be an act of altruism, a charity. Keeping the knowledge and power to yourself is much more beneficial.

I mean think about it. If you really found a training method to learn how to read peoples minds, would you write a book teaching everyone how to do that for money, or would you just simply use that ability to make the money anyways (high stakes poker or something)?

Anybody can put out an occult book that's mostly theory and untestable claims, and yeah, that kind of book will fly under the radar.

The kind of book I'm talking about is a "be all end all" kind of book, a nail in the coffin for any doubt about the existence of magic and the optimal way to begin practicing it. Something that "just works".

This is what I meant by - "universal textbook for magic". In the same way that you can pick up a math text book with the confidence of knowing that the formulas inside are "standardized" and accurate, and most (if not everybody) can use them and get the exact same result.

I'm not thinking about A book, I'm thinking about THE book. The book I always wished existed so that I could be using it right now. The book that changes history forever. The book that turns magic from "myth" and "niche hobby" into "undeniable fact".

That is the only kind of book I would be interested in writing and if I don't have the knowledge or the skills to create that book (one day), then I wouldn't bother writing anyways, so the end result would be the same (me not creating a book).

I actually do think such a book probably already exists, but it's just not going to be available to everyday people, it's kept in secret by some individual/group.

 

[Xenophon]

Unless it's training methods are effective and actually work, and that's the only kind of book I would bother putting out. So it would be best not to take any chances. So I think the "luck" would come before the book, as I would have to be lucky enough to master the occult to such an extent.

Honestly, if someone has real occult abilities, they are actually robbing themselves if they write a genuine book that teaches other people how to really practice magic. It would be an act of altruism, a charity. Keeping the knowledge and power to yourself is much more beneficial.

I mean think about it. If you really found a training method to learn how to read peoples minds, would you write a book teaching everyone how to do that for money, or would you just simply use that ability to make the money anyways (high stakes poker or something)?

Anybody can put out an occult book that's mostly theory and untestable claims, and yeah, that kind of book will fly under the radar.

The kind of book I'm talking about is a "be all end all" kind of book, a nail in the coffin for any doubt about the existence of magic and the optimal way to begin practicing it. Something that "just works".

This is what I meant by - "universal textbook for magic". In the same way that you can pick up a math text book with the confidence of knowing that the formulas inside are "standardized" and accurate, and most (if not everybody) can use them and get the exact same result.

I'm not thinking about A book, I'm thinking about THE book. The book I always wished existed so that I could be using it right now. The book that changes history forever. The book that turns magic from "myth" and "niche hobby" into "undeniable fact".

That is the only kind of book I would be interested in writing and if I don't have the knowledge or the skills to create that book (one day), then I wouldn't bother writing anyways, so the end result would be the same (me not creating a book).

I actually do think such a book probably already exists, but it's just not going to be available to everyday people, it's kept in secret by some individual/group.

Of course, if everybody does magick, it'll quickly become old hat. Like the first kid in school with a smartphone was cool. Three months later, BFD.

 

[Elementriloquist]

Of course, if everybody does magick, it'll quickly become old hat.

I think that's the definition of progress. In the far past only wealthy people had remotely usable sanitation facilities. Now today, even the average peasant has a toilet, running water, a shower, tooth paste and a toothbrush, etc.