I gotta say

[oregano]

a lot of occult discussion both here and elsewhere online reads like an amateur philosophy debate forum. This is not how I generally conceive of magick.

Part of my understanding of the spiritual path as it relates to the archetype of The Wizard is that at a certain point, what was once called "knowledge", ie the theories, propositions, hypothesis, models, philosophies, frameworks, etc that are discussed and debated as a search for some kind of universal truth, eventually fade away into the background and are no longer the focus of the wizard's endeavors. They become a means rather than an end. The time for analytical thought for the purpose of discovering what is "the truth" has ended, and the time for action and experimentation has begun. In other words, you've done enough "finding out" and now it's time to "fuck around".

I'm not saying that philosophizing and debating about philosophizing is any kind of bad thing per ce. Just that it's not the focus I'd expect a magick group to have.

Am I way off base?

 

[ewiz]

No, I agree with you to an extent. It would be nice to see more people talking about their work rather than their theories.

Not that it doesn't happen, you can find people recording their practices and discussing them if you search the forums. I've only recently been active here but I have seen a lot more talk of theory than I have of practice. I think there are multiple reasons for this though.

A lot of people, myself included, don't often talk about their work for a variety of reasons. The whole maxim of keeping silent. Some likely do it for privacy. Others, like myself, simply avoid thinking about the work between ritual and result. Also, often times there wouldn't be much benefit from discussing the practices. Someone experienced with the work they're doing wouldn't particularly benefit from opening it up for discussion. It might offer insight to others, but might not produce a meaningful discussion for the one posting. There may not be somewhere for the discussion to really go, you know what I mean. Whereas the theoretical side will always have room to produce some sort of discussion.

I do think there's a point where you should tap the brakes on "finding out" so you can start to "fuck around," and I personally think people should do that as early as they feel comfortable. As early as possible really. But at the same time, I don't think we ever really reach the end of finding out. They're both part of the same journey.

I personally have very little experience with electional astrology, and am planning for a working in the coming months that I hope to find engaging discussion about. Both on the planning phase, and then tracking the progress of the work as time goes on. This is the sort of thing I would think might attract differing opinions on practice, and that makes it sound worth sharing.

What sort of things are you working on?

Or what sort of thing were you hoping to see discussed more frequently in occult spaces like ours?

 

[Ignotus]

I see it pretty much the same way. There are plenty of people online who genuinely know their stuff and have real practical experience but usually the others are louder. You just have to dig a bit to find the gems. A lot of occult discussion ends up feeling like a waste of time or turns into ego bullshit about who is the most advanced or powerful magician, rather than people openly exchanging practical knowledge, ideas and actual experiences.
At the end of the day, there’s only so much you can get from reading other people’s theories. You can share your knowledge or what you’ve learned when you want or when you feel it might be useful to someone, take and pick out whatever seems useful and see how it works in practice. The rest can stay where it is. You can read and debate forever but magic is something you ultimately have to experience through practice

 

[oregano]

No, I agree with you to an extent. It would be nice to see more people talking about their work rather than their theories.

Not that it doesn't happen, you can find people recording their practices and discussing them if you search the forums. I've only recently been active here but I have seen a lot more talk of theory than I have of practice. I think there are multiple reasons for this though.

A lot of people, myself included, don't often talk about their work for a variety of reasons. The whole maxim of keeping silent. Some likely do it for privacy. Others, like myself, simply avoid thinking about the work between ritual and result. Also, often times there wouldn't be much benefit from discussing the practices. Someone experienced with the work they're doing wouldn't particularly benefit from opening it up for discussion. It might offer insight to others, but might not produce a meaningful discussion for the one posting. There may not be somewhere for the discussion to really go, you know what I mean. Whereas the theoretical side will always have room to produce some sort of discussion.

I do think there's a point where you should tap the brakes on "finding out" so you can start to "fuck around," and I personally think people should do that as early as they feel comfortable. As early as possible really. But at the same time, I don't think we ever really reach the end of finding out. They're both part of the same journey.

I personally have very little experience with electional astrology, and am planning for a working in the coming months that I hope to find engaging discussion about. Both on the planning phase, and then tracking the progress of the work as time goes on. This is the sort of thing I would think might attract differing opinions on practice, and that makes it sound worth sharing.

What sort of things are you working on?

Or what sort of thing were you hoping to see discussed more frequently in occult spaces like ours?

Thanks for the civil and engaging reply!

The keeping silent thing makes sense. People always have the freedom to choose what data they make public and what to keep to themselves.

What sort of things are you working on?

RIght now the thing I am most confident sharing is a system of attention manipulation using short utterances composed of vowels. It is a work in progress and I have yet to discover a hard "use-case", so to speak. It's in the spirit of reasoning and building from first principles.

Or what sort of thing were you hoping to see discussed more frequently in occult spaces like ours?

Data logs of experiments/attempts, descriptions of exercises, elaborations of systems (but more on the pragmatic than theoretical side), lists of mystical/spiritual names, protocol specifications, useful digital tools, effective responses to specific metaphysical situations, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I do see lots of those things. I just also feel the gravitational pull of the ultimate-dogma-attractor wherever I go. That may just be more a me thing though.

 

[Nembra]

a lot of occult discussion both here and elsewhere online reads like an amateur philosophy debate forum. This is not how I generally conceive of magick.

Part of my understanding of the spiritual path as it relates to the archetype of The Wizard is that at a certain point, what was once called "knowledge", ie the theories, propositions, hypothesis, models, philosophies, frameworks, etc that are discussed and debated as a search for some kind of universal truth, eventually fade away into the background and are no longer the focus of the wizard's endeavors. They become a means rather than an end. The time for analytical thought for the purpose of discovering what is "the truth" has ended, and the time for action and experimentation has begun. In other words, you've done enough "finding out" and now it's time to "fuck around".

I'm not saying that philosophizing and debating about philosophizing is any kind of bad thing per ce. Just that it's not the focus I'd expect a magick group to have.

Am I way off base?

I mean, this is a place when people discuss, so a skew towards the theoretical side off things seems very natural. The "finding out" part is what's usually more worth talking about, I think.

 

[oregano]

I mean, this is a place when people discuss, so a skew towards the theoretical side off things seems very natural. The "finding out" part is what's usually more worth talking about, I think.

And this is certainly a valid perspective! Thanks for the honesty.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 6:05 AM

Just to reiterate: I'm not saying philosophizing is bad, just that it's not the focus I'd personally expect from a magick forum

 

[MorganBlack]

Agreed.

I've also often posted my personal results to this forum, becasue I feel these stores are important for newcomers.

Not just mine, all of ours. Old hat folks don't need them, and can rely on their own successes. Newcomers have a sort of Cath-22 where these can help.

I do hold some back because they make me look insane, on drugs, or like I am lying.

I keep meaning to finish a write-up on a dramatic encounter with the GV demon Guland, one that I've been reticent to share for years, for these reasons. Aside from being very dramatic, it is also deeply personal and speaks to my own deeply personal encounters with the Numinous.

This is unfortunate, because as a secular person (Anglo-Latino with an Anglo brain from my father), I literally had no 'faith' starting whatsoever - I didn't believe in any of this when starting out. That did not stop me, and can be gotten over.

I feel these stories become more important before you have your own. You can sort of 'quantum' piggyback on the results of others to get past that initial hump. If you were raised in a more traditional religious background, you can just use those stories. I just did not have any, except for a few watered-down ones.

More here.

Author - Jason S. Black’s notes from 'Pacts with The Devil' (1993)

The macro-level topic here might be 'Shifting into a Daimonic Universe.' More below. I'd been meaning to post these excerpts from the early 1990's book Pacts with the Devil (by S. Jason Black & Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph. D., New Falcon Press, 1993) as the evocatory bookend to the simple but...

wizardforums.com

I donut know if i did the intro justice there . Just read Black's stories a few times, ideally in a suggestible drowsy, light hynogogic state. But only if you want to pick up the grims or spirit evocation, which not all want to do.

I can ties ties back into my general take here, but yeah, intellectual overload on one end, and religious anti-intellectualism on the other, what are we magicans to do?

[Opinion] - Are Physical Objects Actually Thoughts?

thoughts "Do you consider reality to be an extension of thought" - You seem to happily replace the word thought with thoughts as if the context alluded to doesnt make a significant difference. 🤔 Whats the difference in your world between thought and thoughts? That might help get us on the same...

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Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 5:05 PM

That said, it's only other people's intellectualism that is bad. Mine is perfectly reasonable and rational

 

[Frater M.M.]

a lot of occult discussion both here and elsewhere online reads like an amateur philosophy debate forum.

These kinds of forums have always been like that as far as I can remember (~15 years) and no doubt long before that. I guess it's inevitable in such a widespread multi-path/faith group format.

Data logs of experiments/attempts, descriptions of exercises, elaborations of systems (but more on the pragmatic than theoretical side), lists of mystical/spiritual names, protocol specifications, useful digital tools, effective responses to specific metaphysical situations, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I do see lots of those things. I just also feel the gravitational pull of the ultimate-dogma-attractor wherever I go. That may just be more a me thing though.

Yeah, I like this kind of stuff too. I'm always grateful whenever someone takes the time to post their public journals in places like this so I can follow their work, experiments, results, etc.

I do hold some back because they make me look insane, on drugs, or like I am lying.

Yes, I know the feeling Even in an anonymous format like this, there are still some experiences I wouldn't share (or not in any great detail.)

 

[MorganBlack]

Yes, I know the feeling

"LOL, right! I blame 2000s Koetting here.

He started out a fine magician, but figured he could monetize young Millennials by basically pulling a Kenneth Grant. So the merest fart is Belial coming for everyone's soul in a warehouse with a neo-Nazi bouncer. I'd say, if you are hanging out with neo-Nazis, you already have no soul and that demon will be elated to find such an empty vessel to express through .

Conversely, we Gen-X magicians, raised with Crowleyian intellectual caution., never seem to share our experiences much, which sometimes makes me wonder if they have any. Not naming names.

Rant warning.

Not to pick on anyone, but in general, now the internet just makes everyone treat their mental hallucinations as full theophanic encounters to such a degree that we now have a full-tilt Dramatic Story Arms Race. So now, to get any street cred, everyone has to pretend they fly through the astral airways up and down and across the Abyss daily commute, have spent whole lives in touch with every famous entity ever named online somehow (but not the GV ones except for Claunech who is more famous ) , and have been getting demon-sex in the woods since they were young.

One, gross. And two, even if true, how does that help anyone else?

They want it both ways: to be super special, but aslo sell courses and books. You actually can't have it both ways. Which is it? Are you a super special rare magical flower... or do you know how to work hard?

Then they come online. "And you better listen to me because.." I am a super special wonder mage or Wunderkind fae witch... and you better not question my working models because that is to question Muh faith ". ...or MUH rationalism."

And even if they were the magical equivalent of being Arnold Schwarzenegger , but without having to lift any weights ... Like, great? Good for you, Scarlet Witch. Or the other version - Super Mage the Boy Wonder Brain. Whelp. You both win the Wonderful Holiday Special. I shipped it to you are at super secret special location... way over there.

It's exhausting on the other side too. Too much lack of discernment. Or too much discernment. Not sure what the middle looks like.

 

[Tryp]

I just would like to say that the FO in the FAFO motto is not about finding truth, or even an interpretation of whatever something means.
Fucking Around is about experimenting with method, belief, performance...
Finding Out is about seeing the results and consequences of your action, to see if it worked and how. Not about explaining anything.

As for the philosophizing, whether it is some entertaining speculation or some serious attempt at discovering truth, I guess it's inevitable and especially in a context like online discussion, for any discipline and more so in magical practice where the difference between UPG and revelation is a matter of taste and semantics.

Personally I'm not interested, I will skip threads about "The Universal Truth about the Universe and Everything" and prefer practical discussions, sharing resources and helping others out in specific matters, but to each its own.

 

[MorganBlack]

I will skip threads about "The Universal Truth about the Universe and Everything"

Yeah, I dislike totalizing models.

My in-progress totalizing model (Daimonic Idealism) is just more than happy to include everyone else's models and worldviews from their own dreamed-up reality pocket universes. Even the so-called "laws"of physics are dreamed up by us all, per Kastrup.

But it is also true that everyone is selling you a worldview. The only difference in them is whether you went to college or not.

Not to be too mean, but their 'psychic witch' training and "paganism" is just there to introduce a state of suggestibility by pulling an Anglo-esoteric worldview over your left brain for a bit. Catholicism, or any faith with an animist layer - can work just as well here. You are getting psychic, but only because you are more calm and suggestible, and have a new story to suspend disbelief with.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Others, like myself, simply avoid thinking about the work between ritual and result.

For me, this is one example where theory informed practicality. I won't bore you with my theories, but they did explain to me why we do this keeping silent.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 6:14 PM

Personally I'm not interested, I will skip threads about "The Universal Truth about the Universe and Everything" and prefer practical discussions, sharing resources and helping others out in specific matters, but to each its own.

But without those threads, how else would I keep entertained?

 

[ewiz]

I feel these stories become more important before you have your own. You can sort of 'quantum' piggyback on the results of others to get past that initial hump. If you were raised in a more traditional religious background, you can just use those stories. I just did not have any, except for a few watered-down ones.

This is similar to my experience with a lot of this, and its really where I found the most value early on in old internet forums like EvocationMagic. Reading other peoples first hand accounts and record logs can be extremely influential and inspiring when starting out. I think it might be good if more of us thought about it in this way, and looked for ways to share our experiences. Usually, things I explicitly share had that baked into the intentions from the start. I want to try doing more of this, but at the same time I feel like my writing comes across as boring so it may not be as inspirational as the stuff I read when I was new

For me, this is one example where theory informed practicality. I won't bore you with my theories, but they did explain to me why we do this keeping silent.

My thoughts as well

 

[unlight]

For a while, I was quite enthusiastic about answering questions, but you know how it is—newcomers come and go, always asking the same questions, or sometimes just for fun. When we look at the bigger picture—say, three years down the line—what are the people asking questions now actually doing? That’s the question.



One day, I was talking to a skeptical, dedicated practitioner who was very enthusiastic. He had a bad habit—or rather, a personal bias—of being eager to expose scammers. He always liked to compare his own experiences and theories with the scammers’ claims, then publicly mock and expose them—perhaps in the hope that those who had been deceived would wake up. However, as I listened to his personal experiences, a strange thought suddenly crossed my mind. Those who are easily deceived rarely gain enlightenment simply because others have deceived them. Yet scammers, compared to their victims, are sometimes more eager to learn than I’d imagined. Perhaps in the moment, you can use your experience to easily refute them, but they’ll obviously bounce back quickly. Then they’ll study your theories, make your experiences their own, and in the next moment, that scammer becomes even more polished. This is truly infuriating!



When we look back at history, swindlers have never been in short supply. Not to mention, now that we have artificial intelligence—just imagine it—there’s no doubt it’s collecting data from practitioners to provide answers in the realm of the occult. So now we even have AI “masters,” and the bar for deception has been lowered even further. A disaster for the naive? Therefore, whenever someone brings knowledge that was once discussed only offline into the online realm, they inevitably take on some risk. That’s why, at times, silence is undoubtedly meaningful—especially in public settings.

 

[solxyz]

I just wrote this over in the other thread, but I suppose it is actually more relevant to the central theme of this thread, so I will say it here too:

It is important to keep both philosophy and practicalities in mind at the same time. If we don't have our philosophy straight, we are like chickens with our heads cut off - although perhaps very effective ones. Without philosophy we can't pick or design our practices well. We're either taking drugs that someone handed us at a party without even knowing what it is we're taking, or we're just acting out our unconscious and unreflective assumptions. On the other hand, philosophy that is disconnected from practice does tend to lead to vistas of wonder that have become unmoored from our actual life and experience and are impossible to operationalize.

Practices come with philosophies baked into them. Learning how to do things is good and important, but we need to keep our eyes open about implicit worldviews that we're taking on board when we accept 'practical instruction.'

Also, if we are actually doing magic, it inevitably opens up new realms of experience. These new experiences call for new understanding and often for a major re-evaluation of our previous worldviews. Declining this task and just doing more practices is going to make one increasingly blind and fragmented in their approach to life. Discussing these matters together is important.

And personally, I see lots of threads on this forum about 'How do I do X?' or 'I had this experience, what is the next step?' If that's what you're looking for, go participate in those conversations.

 

[Wintruz]

The difficulty is that lived practice is innately personal and often defies easy language.

I can talk about how undergoing Khalwa for forty days forced me to confront multiple, hardcore voices ("demons" if you prefer). How, beneath all of that, I was led to my confronting a phantom of myself as a crying eleven year old feeling utterly unloved and then seeing the vampire as a figure which would freeze youth in time and armour him, precisely so that I could revisit that younger self later from an adult place. Then having to hand all of that over to Ya Haqq.

WF is still the internet and opening oneself up like that invites the time wasting responses (usually coming from those who have done nothing and who know nothing) of "Ha! Gay!" or "ackshually..." or probably more often, well-meaning bafflement. The magicians here who have done the work and who have been in similar places (and there are some) would read it and think "Wintruz is doing Work, nothing more really needs to be said". Newbies wouldn't really understand it but a fair proportion would start apeing the terminology and ideas to present themselves as knowing more than they do (something which is endemic at the moment).

I'm not averse to the personal angle provided that the threads that stem from that don't turn into having to explain everything. That means other users (myself included) covering for the OP by telling those who relentlessly ask "what does this mean?" that "It means it's not for you". By and large though, I understand why the more experienced here don't go there. They recognise that the same experience couldn't be replicated anyway, the same path cannot be trodden twice, so the only thing really to do is redirect others to practices and ideas so they have their own experiences and cut their own way through the jungle.

 

[KjEno186]

I did a Tarot reading for myself today. The reasons and results matter to me. Already I feel I've shared enough writing that. People who want to share more details about their practice often write public journals, and there's a place for that in Wizardforums.

It is popular to discuss theory and models because, despite globalism, culture still varies widely enough to encompass varied ways of thinking. You've arrived at the buffet. Now it's up to you. In some post on some thread you read a comment or see mention of a book. Instead of glossing over it, you dig deeper and it changes your life.

 

[Frater M.M.]

LOL, right! I blame 2000s Koetting here.

He started out a fine magician, but figured he could monetize young Millennials by basically pulling a Kenneth Grant. So the merest fart is Belial coming for everyone's soul in a warehouse with a neo-Nazi bouncer. I'd say, if you are hanging out with neo-Nazis, you already have no soul and that demon will be elated to find such an empty vessel to express through .

Conversely, we Gen-X magicians, raised with Crowleyian intellectual caution., never seem to share our experiences much, which sometimes makes me wonder if they have any. Not naming names.

Yeah, it seems to have gone from “To Know, To Dare, To Will, To Keep Silent” to "Film yourself sitting in a circle in the desert shouting Latin at demons and put it on YouTube".

It's exhausting on the other side too. Too much lack of discernment. Or too much discernment. Not sure what the middle looks like.

Good question. I'd say it looks a bit like this in the King in Yellow thread. A report of an experience without flattening it completely into imagination or inflating it into the King in Yellow definitely manifested physically.

For me, the whole thread was pretty interesting, full of people comparing notes plus it inspired me to read up a bit on Kenneth Grant, who I'd never really looked at before. If you insist on either extreme and don't allow multiple interpretations or exercise some "epistemic humility", there's no real room for discussion to breathe or a thread to develop, IMO.

I don't know to this day if that was the stressor that caused my imagination to bleed into my consciousness in an hallucination; I had been under immense stress and sadness before I even came to the bleakest house in the world and read an insidious book. I don't know if I fell asleep and dreamt. I don't know if it was real. A tall figure floated through the open bedroom door wearing a green toga. The "head" was normal sized though it wasn't a head but a sun and on the face of the sun was a beaming smile that communicated genuine delight. Being in the presence of this thing felt like I could see the perimeters of my mind changing. I remember nothing else but when I did wake up, late in the morning, the power in the house was down.

Over the years, when I think back on that night, I see reading The King in Yellow had been an unconscious working. I had engaged in magic simply by reading it.

 

[MorganBlack]

A report of an experience without flattening it completely into imagination or inflating it into the King in Yellow definitely manifested physically.

Yep, yep. I wish I could track down the quote, but I think it was chaos magican-animist Gordon White who said:

"When in ceremony, treat it all literally; when out of ceremony, treat it all as metaphor."

This is what I did early on, even as as a secular-brained person. Fully step into the mythos. Treat spirits, demons, saints, and forces as objective, living entities. For me this was in the 1990's with the Grimorium Verum - long before any of the excellent academic knowledge we have now on the history of the "true nature' (cough) of the GV daimons. Dumb GV works just as well. Full faith, imagination, and immersion just works. Even if you have to fake it.

I think what we're trying to get at is that all this snarky, post-modern detachment or suspicion inside ceremony kills the necessary state of focus and right-brain immersion.

Personally, I like just being a regular person most of the time, and maintaining a 24/7 religious devotion or alt-lifestyle wackiness is not fun for me. I have morning and evening prayers to maintain connection with my allies and the living reality of my mythic-religious framework. But for most of the time, I am just me. A regular, if a bit spooky dude.

That said, I do have deep mysteries that are very sacred and sacramental to me, which I do not share much online. But watch out. As I say, beware the myths you are living. They will become, quite "alive" and be very, very real. And for all practical purposes, they are - so choose something that doesn't make you into a total monster or asshole.

There is always an element of story to these things. If one can maintain self-coherency and not fall into complete nihilism I highly recommend paranormal writer Joshua Cutchin's work on the fluid and liminal nature of the paranormal / sublunar reality.

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[ahathoor]

RIght now the thing I am most confident sharing is a system of attention manipulation using short utterances composed of vowels. It is a work in progress and I have yet to discover a hard "use-case", so to speak. It's in the spirit of reasoning and building from first principles.

I feel you may have demonstrated why there is relatively little discussion of practice and method. The most anyone can say to this account is "sounds fascinating." Because sure it does, but also it sounds like you are doing exploration not firmly rooted in any widely accepted tradition, making its discussion hard.

Even if you shared all your notes, one would have to make a decision putting in the effort to understand and follow your thought processes and the entire ontological context you are working in. This would be fair to expect in an in-person cabal where we can sip amanita wine discussing and arguing our worldviews, or even in a small, closed online community. Here, less so.

In truth, in open forums like this, a deep information dump often makes me more suspicious than careful hints. Like... "Sure, thanks for the ten-page list of Hebrew letters associated with deep-sea cephalopods and your misadventures in the Fifth Aethyr, go write a grimoire, pitch it and if it's good I might be tempted to read." Distillation is hard work, and sharing the process is vulnerable and often difficult to do meaningfully.

If we were in a closed group, I could bring my expertise in the field of hypnosis and trancework experiences, someone else might bring gematria to the table, etc. We'd trust each other, have an understanding of each others' gnosis, and a history of in-depth good-faith arguments about a/theism, ontology, the mystical meaning of the human condition, all that stuff.

On the open Internet, none of that is given, or even possible for the most part. Instead we get people posting page upon page of monomaniacal rants, and an endless crowd of scoffers talking about how "everyone here" or "you specifically" lack the first idea of what magical work even is.

Data logs of experiments/attempts, descriptions of exercises, elaborations of systems (but more on the pragmatic than theoretical side), lists of mystical/spiritual names, protocol specifications, useful digital tools, effective responses to specific metaphysical situations, etc.

I'd argue that in this context (as described above), most of these things have little value. A correspondence table could be AI generated in a few minutes with the intention to gain clout, or be a labor of love of a teenager, with all their misunderstandings and gaps in knowledge baked in. At this point, lists of names give me the hives, and I fail to see the point of them. Stories and distilled grimoires are a different thing. but again, those take effort.