Doing rituals while being atheist

[Debbie]

Thank you!! I read a lot about Michael w ford and I read many times he is an atheist? Has anyone else read that that? I'm not judging Michael w ford but Anton lavey was an atheist so the point I'm trying to make an I do apologise as I'm not very good at explaining what I'm thinking ,but what is the point of doing rituals to deity's you don't believe exist? What would someone get from that is what I think I'm trying to say as for it would be like going to church and not believing in jesus or the holy scriptures!! Feel free to reply to me on this because it does really baffle me

 

[motzfeldt]

I might be wrong but wasn't LaVey a theist in private? As in, his Church of Satan waffle that he sold to the public was an atheistic ideology, but he himself in his own life was a theist.

Anyways, to answer your question, you can be an atheist while practising magic. Think of it as the Star Wars universe (I hate to use pop culture analogies but in this case it's right). There are no gods or deities, but jedis and siths are capable of wielding The Force. The Force being a psychic energy that permeates life and can be wielded for power good or bad, but just because this magic psychic energy exists in the Star Wars universe doesn't mean there are gods. Atheist magic is the same. There's a psychic energy beneath the surface of the material world that can be tapped into and used. All the deities and stuff that people do rituals to are simply symbolic, and these symbols have a powerful effect on your psyche, which in turn produces magic. Basically "It's all just psychology bro" but has a real world impact.

I don't really belong to that line of thinking. I do believe a lot of magic is the psychic energy (ether) we tap into and that a lot of it is psychologically powered, I do think that many occultists, at times, overestimate the influence of deities and spirits instead of the true power of their own mind. At the same time I'm not an atheist, I do believe in intelligences that are far more ancient and powerful than humans and exist in other planes of reality.

 

[HoldAll]

It's one of the principal features of chaos magic that belief (in gods, religions, ideology) is nothing but a tool and can be chosen and discarded at random. I myself am not so convinced about this ploy but I have to say that I find myself chronically and congenitally unable to believe in any god at all, so the best I can do is try to fervently play pretend, which can feel phoney at times... When I do the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, for example, I imagine YHVH to be the demiurge, not some god I'm supposed to be subservient to (which rubs me all the wrong ways); it's some kind of Gnostic compromise. I could imagine myself venerating some Greek gods though as I have no beef with them as with the Christian god but they're more like mythological archetypes to me. Anyway, chaos-magic style sigil magic (and certain other methods) do without any god-bothering, so religious belief is not strictly necessary to do magic, in my opinion.

 

[Vandheer]

Here is the thing, at least in my experience, all that matters is the end result.

Eg: This ritual will provide me protection. Thats all I care about. What spirits are called upon in the rite doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they didn't exist. As long as I get what I need what do I care.

Evication would be one exception to this, of course.

doing rituals to deity's you don't believe exist?

Perhaps it would help if you thought them as personified forces instead of spirits.

Even if none of this is working out there is still fun to be had with hypnosis, placebo, shadow work, etc.

 

[Galahad]

Theism and atheism both arise from the same place. They are, in the proper sense, reasonable statements/beliefs and are necessarily outward looking, towards the material world, which is precisely what reason deals with. A theist (especially one with an Aristotelian theology) looks at the world and makes the intellectual leap that God must exist, an atheist looks at the same world and makes the intellectual leap that God doesn't exist. Nothing qualitatively separates these statements because they both come from the same level of consciousness. The tool that the theist and atheist are using to make their assessments, reason, is the same (though there are millions of theists and atheists who hold their beliefs unthinkingly - these people are sleep walking and their views aren't reasoned). The presumption of both is that reason is somehow the only measure of truth.

However, reason is actually only one of many faculties of the human psyche and it's a pretty lowly one. Reason is excellent at collating data. It can tell you which neurons are firing in which parts of the brain in response to pleasant external stimuli. It can't tell you what being in love is actually like as an experience. The same applies to mysticism. Reason is not an adequate tool to assess those experiences because it can never grasp their qualitative nature. Reason works with quantity, not quality (there's an interesting parallel here with the Demiurge as geometer vs. the True God).

This is a long way of saying that whatever intellectual positions a magician "identifies" with, it really doesn't matter. A wise magician sees things like theism/atheism as the very shallow end of the pool. The Sufis reveal the shallowness of these potions by playing with the Shahada: "There is no God... but God".

As for how those who think of themselves as atheists view invoking gods; they approach them as Jungian archetypes or patterns. In much the same way that dressing as Batman might help a child to feel more powerful, these magicians use archetypes in controlled ways to take on their characteristics. I should add that theistic magicians see this in the same way although they might feel that there is something metaphysical behind the archetype, something that exists outside of the psyche of the magician.

 

[DarkHermit]

Thank you!! I read a lot about Michael w ford and I read many times he is an atheist? Has anyone else read that that? I'm not judging Michael w ford but Anton lavey was an atheist so the point I'm trying to make an I do apologise as I'm not very good at explaining what I'm thinking ,but what is the point of doing rituals to deity's you don't believe exist? What would someone get from that is what I think I'm trying to say as for it would be like going to church and not believing in jesus or the holy scriptures!! Feel free to reply to me on this because it does really baffle me

Michel is a lucifarian and a theist

 

[rayleean901]

an atheist looks at the same world and makes the intellectual leap that God doesn't exist

Mmmm, nope. That's more of a 'hard atheism' or 'anti-theism.'

A-theism might literally mean "no-god" but is used more in the sense of "without god," meaning, "without belief in a god."

I don't claim, "god doesn't exist." Only that there is not sufficient evidence to believe that He/She/It does exist.

And I arrived at that conclusion in my mid-20's - after years of experimenting (successfully) with spiritualism, ritual magic, and mainstream religion.

 

[iseht]

The only thing that ends up being relevant is your own experience as it maps to the symbolic system that you are working within. The Golden Dawn, despite being Christian magic at its core, has evolved to become magic as psychology for many because it is a complete symbolic system. The whole premise ends up being that if you understand that certain symbols map to certain emotions which map to certain aspects of your own inner experience, then you can follow this system as kind of a working model that doesn't necessarily have to be true or even truly believed.

 

[misterqar]

According to LaVey, rituals were psychodramas, intended to change the mind of the person or people doing them. They were a tool for self-suggestion. BUT he also stated that they might work and cause real effects. So LaVey's thoughts about this were a bit contradictory.

 

[Angel 7]

Thank you!! I read a lot about Michael w ford and I read many times he is an atheist? Has anyone else read that that? I'm not judging Michael w ford but Anton lavey was an atheist so the point I'm trying to make an I do apologise as I'm not very good at explaining what I'm thinking ,but what is the point of doing rituals to deity's you don't believe exist? What would someone get from that is what I think I'm trying to say as for it would be like going to church and not believing in jesus or the holy scriptures!! Feel free to reply to me on this because it does really baffle me

Magic can have many purposes, from healing and gaining knowledge to manifesting opportunities or finding love. The technology of its implementation does not need to involve focused interaction or appeals to God. In the case of Solomonic magic, where spirits are evoked using various names of God and an Angelic hierarchy. I think, while you’re working the operation , you need to be immersed in it. As you are when immersed in any story. But what is true is that the spirits need to believe in the names and forces you are invoking. Or for their own purposes they need to embody a position within that schema. We are limited so our understanding of anything about invisible beings is going to be at best flawed if not entirely incorrect. So belief and self delusion are close companion’s. The rituals are protocols of engagement. Belief in God or any entity is personal, I wouldn’t say required. Neither Skinner and Rankin are Christian (as far as I know) and still they practice Solomonic magic.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

According to LaVey, rituals were psychodramas, intended to change the mind of the person or people doing them. They were a tool for self-suggestion. BUT he also stated that they might work and cause real effects. So LaVey's thoughts about this were a bit contradictory.

Either he didn't realise, or he didn't explain himself terribly well, but to change the outside world, you have to change yourself to match the change you are after in the outside world. The magician should always be aware of their assumptions and expectations, because they WILL affect the outcomes.

 

[AlfrunGrima]

The magician should always be aware of their assumptions and expectations, because they WILL affect the outcomes.

Indeed, because they put up filters, they build a lens that shapes the experiences that will follow. Assumptions and expectations shape and are part of the personal myth, internal scripts and behaviour. And that changes timelines.

 

[Durward]

Just a small factoid, LaVey was born Howard Stanton Levey, and was Jewish, but did play music in a Baptist Church growing up.
In order to believe in Satan, you likely have to believe in the whole structure of Abrahamic god and devil hierarchy, and the stories behind them.
Anyone who does the in-depth deep dive into the materials used by many can find all sorts of parallels like Mithras, and mentions of similar entities in other cultures.
Any religion that generates enough prayer, E-motion, and energy can and will create Egregores, thus the real effects they are capable of creating.
That doesn't make the Egregores any type of stand-alone entity that existed before the congregation breathed life into them.
So, the question should be, can we use Egregores for our own magical purposes?
Which of these entities exists for real? What is the true story behind them?

 

[Robert Ramsay]

So, the question should be, can we use Egregores for our own magical purposes?
Which of these entities exists for real? What is the true story behind them?

IMO, all spirits and entities are servitors/egregores. So yes.

The question about how "real" they are has been addressed by, amongst others, Crowley:

“In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.”

Just like money, when enough people agree on something, that something becomes "real" even if it does not actually exist.

 

[Aldebaran]

,but what is the point of doing rituals to deity's you don't believe exist?

Absolutely none. This is where we start getting into creative cosplay thinking we are practicing the occult or magick, but all that is playing out is unnecessary theatrics. Lavey, from my understanding, did not perform ritual out of belief. He performed ritual out of theatrics, knowing full well the show he was presenting and its desired outcome.

There is a lot of this in ritual magic. The theatrics start being misinterpreted as the cause of the effect, rather than the practitioner themselves.

 

[AlfrunGrima]

So, the question should be, can we use Egregores for our own magical purposes?

That is a matter of connection and accept/decide that the egregore is real. There can be an interesting but sometimes unwelcome effect that an egregore can hold power over the mage by making the mage 'falling in love' with the egregore and religion. I have watched that in other people who had a change of path due to that. Not ideal in my view, the practitioner should resist and control that. So connect, validate the experience as something real and put believe and trust in it, but have clear boundaries in the workings.

 

[Morell]

Thank you!! I read a lot about Michael w ford and I read many times he is an atheist? Has anyone else read that that? I'm not judging Michael w ford but Anton lavey was an atheist so the point I'm trying to make an I do apologise as I'm not very good at explaining what I'm thinking ,but what is the point of doing rituals to deity's you don't believe exist? What would someone get from that is what I think I'm trying to say as for it would be like going to church and not believing in jesus or the holy scriptures!! Feel free to reply to me on this because it does really baffle me

Social effects. Atheist if doesn't believe in supernatural, can still use group ritual to connect with other people. Also there are psychological aspects that some atheo-pagans describe as reason for them when they do ritual - they simply enjoy it.

 

[Keldan]

Some atheists still go to church, not because they literally believe, but for things like community, moral reflection, processing grief, or any other reason that makes sense to them. In the same way that atheists who practice rituals often treat them as symbolic tools, not literal worship. Ritual becomes a way to focus intention and create change. So the point is more like “I’m using this system of symbols to change myself and my life.” A lot of people keep doing rituals even without literal belief in every element, because they believe in the outcomes and that the process can produce results.

 

[shelteringskye]

It's certainly an interesting question, especially if one is interested in traditional, ritualistic magic (e.g., Solomonic magic) that constantly invokes God, angels and the like.

I find it likely comes down to one's deeper view of what magic is: does one believe it is psychological, as some practitioners of the 20th century did, where the "entities" are in some sense products of our own minds? Or are they real, external, objective entities with powers that are being called upon?

If one holds to the former, it would seem quite straightforward to still be a kind of atheist or even materialist while still practicing magic. The latter is much more difficult, and I suspect most seasoned practitioners are not atheists in that traditional sense, and certainly are not materialists.