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Magick
This nOde
last updated April 8th, 2008 and is permanently morphing...
(2 Ik (Wind) / 5 Pohp (Mat) - 2/260 - 12.19.15.4.2)

magic
magic
(màj´îk) noun
1.The art that purports to
control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking
the
supernatural.
2.a. The practice of using
charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects
or control events in nature. b. The charms, spells, and rituals so used.
3.The exercise of sleight of
hand or conjuring for
entertainment.
4.A mysterious quality of
enchantment: "For me the names of those men breathed the magic of the
past" (Max Beerbohm).
adjective
1.Of, relating to, or
invoking
the supernatural: "stubborn unlaid ghost/That breaks his magic chains
at
curfew time" (John Milton).
2.Possessing distinctive
qualities that produce unaccountable or baffling effects.
verb, transitive
magicked, magicking, magics
To produce or make by or
as if by magic.
[Middle English magik, from Old French magique, from Late Latin magica, from Latin magicê, from Greek magikê, from feminine of magikos, of the Magi, magical, from magos, magician, magus.]
Magic (conjuring)
Magic (conjuring), art of
entertaining with tricks that are in apparent violation of natural law.
The principles of deception that magicians use are psychological; the
methods
are manipulative and mechanical. The psychological principles are
misdirection,
suggestion, imitation, and concealment. The spectators do not see
everything
that happens, and they believe they see things that do not happen. Such
faulty
perception
leads to false assumptions, fallacious logic, and, in the end, to the
conclusion
that the performer has achieved an impossible result.
The first magicians of
recorded
history were those of ancient
Egypt.
Jacob Meyer, whose professional name was Philadelphia, was the first
American
to achieve an international reputation as a conjurer. Italian Giuseppe
Pinetti was the most imitated magician of the 18th century. French
magician
Jean Houdin revolutionized the art of magic with his ingenious stage
mechanisms
and effective presentations. His textbooks were the first to treat
magic
scientifically, and he was the first to use
electricity
as an aid in stage mysteries.
One of the outstanding
inventions
of French magician Joseph Buatier, known as Buatier De Kolta, was the
vanishing
birdcage trick, in which a live canary and a metal cage disappeared at
his fingertips. American magician
Harry
Houdini won world renown by effecting sensational escapes from
handcuffs,
straitjackets, and
prison
cells. He frequently jumped from bridges in shackles, releasing himself
underwater.
One of the greatest
box-office
attractions in the history of magic has been the feat of appearing to
saw
a person in half. In 1921 British magician P. T. Selbit cut through a
box
that contained an assistant who emerged unharmed. Several months later,
Horace Goldin presented an even more
puzzling
variation of the act, in which the head, hands, and feet of his
assistant
were in full view throughout the performance.
During the 1970s German magician Siegfried Fischbecker and his American assistant Roy Horn began performing in acclaimed productions in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canadian Doug Henning and American David Copperfield performed in films and stage musicals as well as on television, and American Harry Blackstone, Jr., produced lavish touring shows and a Broadway show.
Magic (
sorcery)
Magic (sorcery), art of attaining objectives, acquiring knowledge, or performing works of wonder through supernatural or nonrational means. Techniques of magic typically include chants, spells (special gestures and actions), and use of supposedly magical substances.
Types of Magic
Anthropologists distinguish
three types of magical practice: homeopathic magic, or the use of small
portions of a thing to represent and affect the whole; sympathetic
magic,
in which a symbolic action affects an object; and contagious magic, the
influencing of one thing through
contact
with another that is believed to be magically charged. Magical
practices
are based on a belief in hidden relationships among entities within the
universe.
Magic is widely practiced in primal and traditional societies. In such contexts, it is often associated with religion. However, religion is generally regarded as the public acknowledgment of spirituality, while magic tends to be private and oriented toward power and gain rather than toward worship. Magic, both for good and bad ends, is sometimes referred to as witchcraft. Magic in the supernatural sense is different from stage magic and divination.
Origins and History
Euro-American traditions
of magic can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and
Rome. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), science,
religion,
and magic often were not clearly distinguished in Judaism and
Christianity.
From the 15th century to the 18th century, during the period of the
Renaissance,
the Reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment, the relationship between
science and magic underwent a fundamental readjustment as Western
society
entered the scientific era. The Roman Catholic church and
Protestantism,
as well as the new scientific models for understanding the world,
undermined
belief in magic. By the end of the 18th century, magic had lost many of
its believers. Folk magic and so-called underground magic, however,
have
continued.
magic (adjective)
super: super, superduper,
fantastic, way-out, out-of-sight, fabulous, fab,
groovy,
magic
magic (noun)
influence: occult
influence,
mana,
magic, spell,
sorcery
sleight: magic, sorcery
instrumentality: occult
power, paranormal power, magic, sorcery
miracle-working:
miracle-working,
wonder-working, spellbinding, magic, sorcery
prestige: prestige, aura,
mystique, magic
sorcery: magic, jugglery,
illusionism, sleight
occultism: secret art,
esoteric
science, occult lore,
alchemy,
astrology, psychomancy, spiritualism, magic, sorcery
magic (verb)
bewitch: magic, magic away
Magic
Indubitably, Magick is
one
of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is
more
opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in
any other branch of physics.
Aleister
Crowley (1875-1947), British occultist. _The Confessions of
Aleister
Crowley_, ch. 20 (1929; rev. 1970).
Music
Great music is that which
penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the
memory
with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.
Sir Thomas Beecham
(1879-1961),
British conductor. Quoted in: Sunday Times (London, 16 Sept. 1962).
Cars
I think that cars today
are
almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the
supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists,
and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which
appropriates
them as a purely magical object.
Roland Barthes (1915-80),
French semiologist. Mythologies, "The New Citroën" (1957; tr.
1972).
Exploration and Colonization, 1926
The rocket launched March
16 by physicist Robert H. Goddard is the first liquid-fuel rocket; it
demonstrates
the practicality of rockets and convinces Goddard that rockets will one
day land men on the
moon
(1921). Goddard sends his device on a 2.5-second flight from a field on
his Aunt Effie's farm near Auburn, Mass., it travels 184 feet at a
speed
of only 60 miles per hour and reaches a height of only 41 feet, but
Goddard
writes in his diary, "It looked almost magical as it rose, without any
appreciably greater noise or flame." He continues his research, and
beginning
in 1930 will get financial support from copper heir Harry Guggenheim.
Sigmund Freud
Science is always
discovering
odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its
cleverness.
Aleister Crowley
(1875-1947),
British occultist. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, ch. 64 (1929;
rev.
1970), referring to Freudian theories.
Menstruation
In man, the shedding of
blood
is always associated with injury, disease, or death. Only the female
half
of humanity was seen to have the magical ability to bleed profusely and
still rise
phoenix-like
each month from the gore.
Estelle R. Ramey (b. 1917),
U.S. scientist, educator. "Men's Monthly Cycles (They Have Them Too,
You
Know)," in The First Ms. Reader (ed. by Francine Klagsbrun, 1972).
Sex
Sex pleasure in woman . .
. is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or
movements
oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
Simone De Beauvoir
(1908-86),
French novelist, essayist. The Second Sex, bk. 2, pt. 4, ch. 3 (1953).
Psychoanalysis
Freud thought he was
bringing
the plague to the U.S.A., but the U.S.A. has victoriously resisted the
psychoanalytical frost by real deep freezing, by mental and sexual
refrigeration.
They have countered the black magic of the Unconscious with the white
magic
of "doing your own thing," air conditioning, sterilization, mental
frigidity
and the cold media of
information.
Jean
Baudrillard (b. 1929), French semiologist. Cool Memories, ch. 2
(1987;
tr. 1990).
Rivers
A river seems a magic
thing.
A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself- for it is from
the
soil, both from its depth and from its surface, that a river has its
beginning.
Laura Gilpin (1891-1979),
U.S. photographer. The Rio Grande, Introduction (1949).
Promises
Magic trick: to make
people
disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.
Mason Cooley (b. 1927),
U.S. aphorist. City Aphorisms, Sixth Selection, New York (1989).
For tribal man space was
the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that
occupies
the same role.
Marshall
McLuhan (1911-80), Canadian communications theorist. The Mechanical
Bride, "Magic that Changes Mood" (1951).
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Criticism and the Arts
It is critical vision
alone
which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.
Marshall McLuhan (1911-80),
Canadian communications theorist. The Mechanical Bride, "Magic that
Changes
Mood" (1951).
Genius
Better beware of notions
like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should
be
used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
José Ortega y Gasset
(1883-1955), Spanish essayist, philosopher. Notes on the Novel,
"Decline
of the Novel" (1925).
Life and Living
Life is like
Sanskrit read to a pony.
Lou Reed (b. 1944), U.S.
rock musician. "What's Good," from the album Magic and Loss (1992).
Photography
The magic of photography
is
metaphysical.
What you see in the photograph isn't what you saw at the
time.
The real skill of photography is organised visual lying.
Terence Donovan (b. 1936),
British photographer. Guardian (London, 19 Nov. 1983).
Cats
Cats exercise . . . a
magic
influence upon highly developed men of intellect. This is why these
long-tailed
Graces of the animal kingdom, these adorable, scintillating
electric
batteries
have been the favorite animal of a Mohammed, Cardinal Richlieu,
Crebillon,
Rousseau, Wieland.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
(1835-95), Austrian novelist. Severin, in Venus in Furs, "Confessions
of
a Supersensual Man" (1870; tr. 1928).
Mental Illness
It is thus that the few
rare
lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find
themselves
at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic
and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the
formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will
soon
be seen appearing openly in social behavior.
Antonin
Artaud (1896-1948), French theater producer, actor, theorist. Van
Gogh,
the Man Suicided by Society (1947; repr. in Selected Writings, pt. 33,
ed. by Susan Sontag, 1976).
Artists
The product of the artist
has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to
absorb
this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic.
In our society this person is much more important than anything he
might
create.
David Mamet (b. 1947), U.S.
playwright. Writing in Restaurants, "Exuvial Magic: An Essay Concerning
Fashion" (1986).
Witchcraft
Why not walk in the aura
of magic that gives to the small things of life their uniqueness and
importance?
Why not befriend a toad today?
Germaine Greer (b. 1939),
Australian
feminist
writer. The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause, ch. 16 (1991).
The Arts
As the unity of the
modern
world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair,
the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight
into
the real direction of our own collective purposes.
Marshall McLuhan (1911-80),
Canadian communications theorist. The Mechanical Bride, "Magic that
Changes Mood" (1951).
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Magic
The profession of
magician
is one of the most perilous and arduous specialisations of the
imagination.
On the one hand there is the hostility of god and the police to be
guarded
against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as deep as poetry,
as
ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the manufacture of high
explosives,
and as delicate as the trade in narcotics.
William Bolitho (1890-1930),
British author. Twelve Against the Gods, "Cagliostro (and Seraphina)"
(1930).
Insects
That is your trick, your
bit of filthy magic:
Invisibility, and the
anaesthetic
power
To deaden my
attention
in your direction.
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930),
British author. The Mosquito.
Medicine, 1080
Medical research
progresses at the Benedictine school associated with the monastery
established at Monte Cassino in 529. Arabian, Jewish, and Greco-Roman
medical works are translated into Latin by Constantine the African, a
physician who has studied medicine and
magic
at Babylon and who is now disguised as a monk. His translations of
Galen and Avicenna help to emancipate medicine from the religious bonds
that have held it.
Humankind
Man, became man through
work,
who stepped out of the animal kingdom as transformer of the natural
into
the artificial, who became therefore the magician, man the creator of
social
reality,
will always stay the great magician, will always be
Prometheus
bringing fire from heaven to earth, will always be Orpheus enthralling
nature with his music. Not until humanity itself dies will art die.
Ernst Fischer (1899-1972),
Austrian editor, poet, critic. The Necessity of Art, ch. 5 (1959; tr.
1963).
_Courtald Talks_ (1989)
by
Killing Joke -
Jaz Coleman delivers a monologue and is
eventually backed by constant percussion and sporadic guitar. His talk
on demonology and numerology suggests that only the present day
magician (sometimes masquerading as musician,) can hope to survive the
imminent arrival of the "elder
gods."
In one of the most
celebrated feats in magickal history,
Jack
Parsons and pre-_Dianetics_
L.
Ron Hubbard performed ‘The
Babalon Working,’ a daring
attempt to
shatter the boundaries
of
time and space and
intended to bring about, in Parsons own
words, "love, understanding, and
Dionysian
freedom [...] the necessary counterbalance or correspondence to the
manifestation of
Horus."
Alan Kay's emphasis on magic
indicates that the
supernatural
metaphors that saturate technoculture may have a more substantive basis
than the fondness that many
hackers
have for
_Sandman_ comic books or
D&D.
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These metaphors arise and
take power because, as William Irwin Thompson noted in a discussion of
computer games, "the conventional worldview of materialism is not
subtle
enough to deal with the complexities of a multidimensional universe in
which domains interpenetrate and are enfolded in one another." The
science-fiction
author Vernor Vinge came to a similar conclusion in
_True
Names_, a brilliant novella whose vision of a
networked
virtual world predates _Neuromancer_
by three years. Unlike the bright neon grid of Gibson's
cyberspace,
the Other Plane of Vinge's story is a Tolkienesque world of swamps,
castles,
and magic, a half-
dreamed
environment that is generated partly through electronic cues that
stimulate
the "
imagination
and subconscious" of its electrode-wearing users. The hacker
denizens
of the Other Plane band together as covens of witches and warlocks, and
at one point, a few of them discuss how magical metaphors came to
dominate
"data space":
The Limey and Erythrina
argued
that sprites, reincarnation, spells, and castles were the natural tools
here, more natural than the atomistic twentieth-century notions of data
structures, programs, files, and communication protocols. It was,
they argued, just more convenient for the mind to use the global ideas
of magic as the tokens to manipulate this new environment.
- Erik Davis -
_Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism In The Age Of
Information_
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Magical realism already denotes a strain of
Latin American fiction exemplified by
Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, and Isabel Allendein which a fantastic dreamlike logic melds
seamlessly and delightfully with the rhythms of the everyday.
Lovecraft's Magick Realism is far more dark and convulsive, as
ancient and amoral forces violently puncture the realistic surface of
his tales.
H.P. Lovecraft constructs
and then collapses a number of
intense
polarities between realism and fantasy,
book and dream, reason and its
chaotic
Other. By playing out these tensions in his writing, Lovecraft also
reflects the transformations that darkside occultism has undergone as
it confronts modernity in such forms as psychology,
quantum physics, and the existential
groundlessness of being. And by embedding all this in an intertextual
Mythos of profound depth, he draws the reader into the chaos that lies
"between the worlds" of magick and
reality.
- Erik Davis - _Calling Cthulu_
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When
Data Became
Dada
If
information
was no longer the known statistics of dead data but fresh experience --
spontaneous, unknown and alive -- then twentieth century culture began
with its creative assimilation. What the scientist finds out through
thinking,
the artist discovers through new ways of perceiving, hearing and
feeling.
While
Einstein
made scientific history with his theory of relativity and Heisenberg
with
his
uncertainty
principle, the
Surrealist
"dada" revolution (Dali, Cocteau, Satie, etc.),
James
Joyce's omnicultural _Finnegans Wake_, and the music of Jazz
brought
the living experience to the people. Both scientists and artists
recognized
this dynamic shift from a "
reality"
that was once "predictable, solid and set" to one that seemed wilder,
more
plural, malleable and unfathomable. To those minds awakening from the
slumber
of nineteenth century "certainty"
trance,
our so-called "reality" entered the realm of immeasurable possibilities
with countless interpretations. Any culture failing to assimilate this
transformation in
perception,
never enters the twentieth century let alone, the twenty-first.
-
Antero
Alli - _Occulture: The Secret Marriage of Art and Magick_
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604 release _The Technical Use
of Sound in Magick_ compilation CD
(1996)
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to
enable us to understand the new The mind, like a
computer with unlimited access to any programs, roams freely. A
present event becomes charged with profound emotional significance, a
cosmic phenomenon becomes identical with some personal
quirk.
Metaphysical
realities are juggled and bounced around. Listening to this music
initiates us into illumination, the power generated by the absolute
universal goddess, a heady mix of exaltation and horror that
accompanies her. Each party a ceremony, each piece of music a
ritual which blasts us through
dimensions,
galaxies unknown, to places deep within our own consciousness.
Dedicated to the
spirit of
Timothy Leary.
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604 track _Black
Magic_ off of _Black Rhino_ 12"x3
on Flying Rhino (1997)
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samples - from the film _Strange Days_ (vhs/ntsc)
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604 release
_Dance,
Trance
& Magic Plants: Otherworld_ compilation 12"x2
on
Transient
(1997)
Led Zeppelin’s
album, _Presence_ 12"
(1976),
featured a strange object of the cover— an obelisk that many
wondered what it was, and what it was supposed to symbolize. In the
‘of the Furnishings of the Temple’ section in _Magick and
Theory and Practice_, an obelisk is mentioned. When speaking about what
should be on the altar, Aleister Crowley states, "on each side of it
should be a pillar or obelisk, with countercharges in black and white."
[p.345]
THE CYBERPUNK AS MODERN ALCHEMIST
The baby boom generation
has grown up in an electronic world of TV and personal computing
screens.The cyberpunks offer metaphors, rituals, life styles for
dealing with the universe of
information.
More and more of us are becoming electro-
shamans,
modern
alchemists.
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Alchemists of the Middle Ages described the construction of magical appliances for viewing future events, or speaking to friends distant or dead. Writings of Paracelsus describe a mirror of ELECTRUM MAGICUM with telegenic properties, and crystal scrying was in its heyday.
Today,
digital
alchemists have at their command tools of a precision and power
unimagined
by their predecessors. Computer screens
ARE
magical mirrors, presenting alternate
realities
at varying degrees of abstraction on
command
(invocation).
Aleister
Crowley defined magick as 'the art and science of causing change to
occur in conformity with our will,' and to this end the computer is the
universal level of Archimedes.
The parallels between the
culture of the alchemists and that of
cyberpunk
computer adepts are inescapable. Both employ knowledge of an occult
arcanum
unknown to the population at large, with secret symbols and words of
power.
The 'secret symbols' comprise the
languages
of computers and mathematics, and the 'words of power' instruct
computer
operating systems to complete Herculean tasks. Knowing the precise code
name of a digital program permits it to be conjured into existence,
transcending
the labor of muscular or mechanical search or manufacture.
Rites of initiation or
apprenticeship
are common to both. '
Psychic
feats' of telepathy and action-at-a-distance are achieved by selection
of the menu option.
- Erik Davis
One of the most compelling snares is the use of the term metaphor to describe a correspondence between what the users see on the screen and how they should think about what they are manipulating ... There are clear connotations to the stage, theatrics, magic; all of which give much stronger hints as to the direction to be followed. For example, the screen as 'paper to be marked on' is a metaphor that suggests pencils, brushes, and typewriting....Should we transfer the paper metaphor so perfectly that the screen is as hard as paper to erase and change? Clearly not. If it is to be like magical paper, then it is the magical part that is all important...
Alan Kay,
"User
Interface: A Personal View"
"Magic, in
light of modern physics,
quantum theory and probability theory
is now approaching science. We hope that a result of this will be a
synthesis so that science will become more magical and magic more
scientific." -
William S.
Burroughs
In the 1960s the CIA
became interested in the
Voynich Manuscript because the CIA
is in the business of code making and breaking, a huge amount of energy
goes into this. If you know anything about the enigma project in WWII
you know that vast energies go into the making of unbreakable codes and
so they very systematically sought out all examples of encrypted
material throughout history and just lickety-split deciphered it, one
after another. All occult and magical codes known to exist in Europe
can be traced back to one person, virtually to one person, to
Trithemius, Bishop of Spawnheim who was the great teacher of Henry
Cornelius
Agrippa.
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[...]
As far as the
relationship
between
John
Dee and
Giordano
Bruno, the relationship is that they were both derivative of the
school
of magic that can be traced back to Henry Cornelius Agrippa Von
Nettleshine
who was another model for Faust. Agrippa wrote De Libro Quatro De
Occulta
Philosophia, four books of occult philosophy, and that was the core
work
for European magic. All European magic can be traced back to the
Agrippan
system and Agrippa was the direct student of the Abbot Trithemius of
Spawnheim
that we mentioned yesterday as the source of all the magical codes of
the
middle ages. If you're interested in a brilliant but fictional
treatment
of John Dee and Giordano Bruno, I'd like to recommend a novel to you.
It's
called _Aegypt_, it's by John Crowley, the same gentleman who wrote
Little
Big which is a wonderful novel about the magical
interface
between two worlds. But his book _Aegypt_, fully half of the book is
given
over to a wonderfully rich retelling of the relationship between Bruno
and Dee. Some people have wanted to say that Dee and Bruno actually
crossed
physical paths in London but I've looked into it and they missed each
other
by about two weeks. Bruno was setting sail for England as Dee was
setting
sail for France and the Rosicrucian enlightenment episode that I talked
about.
-
Terence
McKenna lecture on
Alchemy
The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.
- Terence McKenna
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The emphasis in house
music
and rave culture on physiologically compatible rhythms and this sort of
thing is really the rediscovery of the art of natural magic with sound,
that sound, properly understood, especially percussive sound, can
actually
change neurological states, and large groups of people getting together
in the presence of this kind of music are creating a telepathic
community
of bonding that hopefully will be strong enough that it can carry the
vision
out into the mainstream of society. I think that the
youth
culture that is emerging in the nineties is an end of the millenium
culture
that is actually summing up Western civilization and pointing us in an
entirely different direction, that we're going to arrive in the third
millenium,
in the middle of an
archaic
revival, which will mean a revival of these physiologically
empowering
rhythm signatures, a new art, a new social vision, a new relationship
to
nature, to
feminism,
to ego. All of these things are taking hold, and not a moment too soon.
- Terence McKenna - liner
notes from ollaboration: The
Shamen
and Terence McKenna on the track _Re:
Evolution_
off of _Re:Evolution_ 12"
(as well as _Boss
Drum_)
"In some sense Magic is
merely a way to know the future and know where to stand next." -
Space
Time Continuum w/Terence McKenna
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Trance
music in Morocco is magical in origin and purpose, concerned with the
evocation and control of spiritual forces. In Morocco musicians are
magicians. Gnauoa music is used to drive out evil spirits. The music of
Jajouka evokes the God
Pan, God of Panic,
representing the
real magical
forces that sweep away the spurious. It is to be remembered that the
origin of all arts -- music, painting, and writing -- is magical and
evocative, and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result.
[...]
"Magic, practiced more
assiduously
than hygiene in Morocco, through
ecstatic
dancing to the music of the secret brotherhoods, is, there, a form of
psychic
hygiene. You know your music when you hear it, one day. You fall into
line
and
dance
until you pay the piper." -
Brion
Gysin
[...]
"The Master Musicians are a special caste
exempt
from farm work. The sons and grandsons of Master Musicians, they
have done nothing else since birth and perhaps before. While they
differ widely in age and appearance, they all have the mark of the
professional,
of someone who does what he does superlatively well. Musicians
are
magicians in Morocco, and they bear the mark of the conjurer, the magic
man. They are evokers of the djenoun
forces,
spirits of the hills and the flocks and above all the spirits of music."
- liner notes from _Apocalypse Across The
Sky_ CD
by
Master Musicians Of Jajouka
on Axiom (1992)
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Besides providing ideal
fantastic maps,
SF and
fantasy work in MUDspace because the magic and future science of these
genres bend the same rules of
reality that
MUD code does. In MUDs, you can communicate
telepathically,
shape-shift,
teleport, create little machine selves,
and conjure birds and pleasure domes out of thin air. As Vernor Vinge
recognized in the novella
_True
Names_, which placed his (pre-
_Neuromancer_
) vision of cyberspace in a world
of
D&D
medievalism, magical imagery functions as paradoxically pragmatic
metaphors for the odd laws that rule the digital astral planes of
VR.
Even the binding spells
wielded
by 13-year-old necromancers in combat MUDs express of that virtual fact
that changing
language
changes the world, for the world itself is made of language. And both
poets
and programmers have the power.
- Erik Davis - _It's A Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World_
"...the word
maya,
by which this peculiar un
reality is
described, is not necessarily a term of contempt, as if the world were
merely an illusion to be dismissed. Maya also means art and magic, and
thus a seeming solidity evoked by divine power. But under the spell of
this power, one does not feel oneself entirely a victim. However
obscurely, one knows or feels that the source of this enchantment is in
some roundabout way oneself - as if being alive and human were to have
got oneself deliberately lost in a labyrinth."
Alan
Watts, _The Two Hands of God_, 1963
Peter Carroll points out
that his conception of
ether is merely a
model to explain existing phenomena, and should not be thought of as
necessarily having an independent existence outside of this conception,
just as physicists make models to explain events in physical
interactions. According to the magical model, ether 'acts as though it
were a form of
information
emitted by matter that is instantaneously available everywhere and has
some power to shape the behaviour of other matter' (Carroll, p21). This
vision of a fundamentally interconnected, dynamic universe is in a
sense a return to an ancient, Aristotelian vision of an organic,
interconnected cosmos; it is also a concept of
reality which is particularly apt in terms
of
chaos
theory, with its
fractal maps
of
infinite space.
Edward Witten calls this
deeper understanding of
superstrings "
Mtheory," with M standing, he says wryly, for
"mystery, magic or
matrix, my three
favorite words." Before, string theorists
envisioned strings and
loops. Now,
those strings and loops are anchored to sheets
and
bubbles. Hence the term matrix: Mystery and magic are self-explanatory.
The animating purpose of
Dada and
Surrealism
was to smash all accepted values and expectations; to
jolt
perception awake from robotic sleep and into seeing the world in a new,
fresh way that is nonlinear and multidimensional. Picasso's _Man with a
Violin_ depicts an ordinary scene, but from all sides and angles at
once. In
Marcel Duchamp's _Nude
Descending A Staircase, No.2_, we see what the title descibes, but from
a perspective of nonlinear
time.
The Surrealists investigated dreams and the unconscious, automatic art
and writing, the art of "primitive" peoples and the art of children
and
schizophrenics. They were
on a quest for magickal
perception,
a
shaman's view of the world.
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Dance
was performed in the original labyrinth in Crete as the magical act
that would enable the spell of the Minotaur to be broken.
[...]
The Greeks even had two
words
for these two types of
time:
khronos, meaning clock-time, and kairon for this other, suspended,
magical,
party time.
[...]
Rave culture allows
the
hologram
of another
dimension
to shoot out of the two-dimensional poster of everyday existence.
When the lone dancer connects with the collective experience by moving
to the music, the latent magic of life becomes blatant. It is an
experience accessible to anyone prepared to let their 'self'
go.
-
Roger Griffin - from the liner notes of
_Deep
Trance and Ritual Beats_ CDx2
on
Return To The Source
"The belief in the
magical power of
language is not
unusual, both in mystical and academic literature. The
Kabbalists - Jewish mystics of Spain
and Palestine - believed that supernormal insight and power could
be derived from properly combining the letters of the Divine
Name. For example, Abu Aharon, and early Kabbalist who emigrated
from Baghdad to Italy, was said to perform miracles through the power
of the Sacred Names."
-
_Snow
Crash_ by
Neal Stephenson
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"The second definition of
a melody is *expressionistic*. In its primordial aspect it is magical
or sacromagical. In its modern individualistic aspect it is meant to
communicate transformative states of consciousness -- the struggles and
passions of individuals... In their transpersonal aspect beyond
individual passions, expressionistic melodies assume a deliberately
transformative function, reviving at a higher level of human
evolution the magic of ancient chants
associated with evocative tones.
- Dane Rudhyar,
_Dissonant Harmony, Pleromas of Sound, Music Physician for
Times to Come_ an anthology by Don
Campbell, p. 281.
Kenneth Grant, a British
magician, has made some -- to say the least -- astounding
inferences
about
Jack
Parsons'
Babalon
Working. He writes that: "The Working began in 1945-46, a few
months
before
Aleister
Crowley's death in
1947,
and just prior to the
wave
of unexplained aerial phenomena now recalled as the "Great Flying
Saucer
Flap." Parsons opened a door and something flew in...."
...in the
Vedic classic, _The Mahabharata_, we
read that
Maya was the name of a noted
astrologer-astronomer, magician, and architect, as well as the name of
a great wandering tribe of navigators. - Jose Arguelles - _The Mayan
Factor_
Sufi
term for spiritual power.
(Sufi.) Blessed Be.. A baraka is a blessing or power used by the Sufis. Baraka is another name for the X-Factor, conceived as a magickal fluid that pours forth from the saints.
All occult and magical
codes known to exist in Europe can be traced back to one person,
virtually to one person, to Trithemius, Bishop of Spawnheim who was the
great teacher of Henry Cornelius
Agrippa.
-
Terence McKenna lecture
on
Alchemy
"The universe is full of
magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." -
Bertrand Russell
[Emotion] is a
transformation of the world... We try to change the world, that is, to
live as if the connection between things and their potentialities were
not ruled by
deterministic
processes, but by magic. - Jean Paul Sartre
The
nam-shubs suggest a magical theory
of
language, in which the only
kind of utterance that can cause the breakdown of language is one which
also happens to talk about the breakdown of language. In other words,
the surface meaning of the incantation is crucial to its deep effect.
Words do make the
world. This is the basic teaching of all the magical traditions
I've encountered; each takes a different approach to broadening the
lexicon of the postulant. - Mark Pesce
Historians have been
wrong in concluding that magic disappeared with the advent of
"quantitative science." The latter has simply substituted
itself for a part of magic while extending its dreams and its
goals by means of technology.
Electricity,
rapid transport, radio and television, the airplane, and the computer
have merely carried into effect the promises first formulated by magic,
resulting from the
supernatural
processes of the magician: to
produce
light, to move instantaneously
from one point in space to another, to communicate with faraway regions
of space, to
fly through the air, and
to have an infallible
memory at one's
disposal.
- Ioan Couliano
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"What you can do, or
dream you can
do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it." -
Johann von Goethe
Quantum
mechanics has given rise to the modern semiconductor technologies
behind the new computing and
information
infrastructure. When considered magickally, a workable
interface between
psi phenomena, consciousness, bioenergetics
and
synchronicity is
established. We're getting quite near to where we've been trying to
hasten us: the frontiers of science, where mathematics and mysticism
almost visibly blur. Mathematics is the universal
language of physicists, and as such perhaps
the most powerful magickal language in daily use on this planet. A
language in which 'work' '
force' 'power'
'acceleration' 'field strength' 'energy' 'mass' and 'current' all refer
to well defined concepts, and observable quantities. Mathematics has
provided the most effective magickal framework yet for enquiry into the
nature and structure of matter (which we now know to be a form of
energy, and vice versa.)
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Magick is an
archaic spelling of magic, revived by
Aleister Crowley
to differentiate
"true"
magic from illusion or stage magic. His definition treats magic in the
context of the paranormal and magic in the context of religion as
special cases.
Crowley defined magick as "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will." By this, he included "mundane" acts of will as well as ritual magick. In Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter XIV, Crowley says:
What is a Magical Operation? It may be defined as any event in nature which is brought to pass by Will. We must not excludepotato-growing or banking from our definition. Let us take a very simple example of a Magical Act: that of a man blowing his nose.
Some in the Neopagan and occult communities have amended this definition, using the word "magick" in an exclusively paranormal sense. However, "Uncle Al" still appears to wield significant influence in these circles.
Concentration or meditation plays an important
role in Crowley's system. A certain amount of restricting the mind to
some
imagined
object (or will), according to this theory, produces mystical
attainment or "an occurrence in the
brain characterized essentially by the uniting of
subject and object."
(Book Four, Part 1: Mysticism) Magick, as defined previously, seeks to
aid concentration by constantly recalling the
attention to the chosen object (or Will),
thereby producing said attainment. For example, if one wishes to
concentrate on a god, one might
memorize a system of correspondances (perhaps
chosen arbitrarily, as this would not affect its usefulness for
mystical purposes) and then make every object that one sees
"correspond" to said god.
Aleister Crowley wrote:
Now what is all this but to do in a partial (and if I may say so, romantic) way what the Yogi does in his more scientifically complete yet more austerely difficult methods? And here the advantage of Magick is that theprocess of initiation is spontaneous and, so to speak, automatic. You may begin in the most modest way with the evocation of some simple elemental spirit; but in the course of the operation you are compelled, in order to attain success, to deal with higher entities. Your ambition grows, like every other organism, by what it feeds on. You are very soon led to the Great Work itself; you are led to aspire to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and this ambition in turn arouses automatically further difficulties the conquest of which confers new powers. In the Book of the Thirty Aethyrs, commonly called 'The Vision and the Voice', it becomes progressively difficult to penetrate each Aethyr. In fact, the penetration was only attained by the initiations which were conferred by the Angel of each Aethyr in its turn. There was this further identification with Yoga practices recorded in this book. At times the concentration necessary to dwell in the Aethyr became so
intense that definitely Samadhic results were obtained. We see then that the exaltation of the mind by means of magical practices leads (as one may say, in spite of itself) to the same results as occur in straightforward Yoga.
(Crowley, Yoga for Yellowbellies)
Crowley also made claims for the paranormal effects of magick. However, he defined any attempt to use this power for a purpose other than aiding attainment as "black magic".
Systems of Magick
Modern practitioners of magick often rely on
one or more systems of magick to produce their effects. These include
Chaos magick, Enochian
magick, Grimoire magick, Goetic magick, Astrology, Tarot,
I Ching and
Qabalah. These magickal
systems often intersect, and modern magicians are fond of drawing from,
and creating correspondences between, different systems.
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