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| No one even casually aware of the character of the regime now in place in the United States (and of course, there is even worse in some places abroad) and the social, political and cultural changes that it seeks both to promote and to utilize can diminish the growing role played by religious and spiritual sentiment in that (and 'our') country. When asked the name of his favorite philosopher, the incumbent American Head of State unhesitatingly replied "Jesus Christ," as though that man were really capable of appreciating, much less apprehending, the Nazarene's subtle teaching. He - like his ideological fellow-travellers (and notwithstanding whatever protests he might make, we include in that category the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists) - seeks to promote a host of retrograde, classist, racist, capitalist and xenophobic values and agendas of the most life-denying and spirit-destroying coloring imaginable under the guise of "traditional values" and for the sake of advancing his philosophic paradigm (that, incidentally, of "Evangelical Christianity") to the exclusion of all others - almost as much as for material gain and ego-augmentation. We - their unwilling or perhaps unwitting - subjects can expect to see a revival and reinforcement of such institutions as the Presidential Prayer Breakfast and the National Day of Prayer, ostensibly for the purpose of calling into play incorporeal (if not Divine) forces and agencies to advance a political agenda. In the face of crime, poverty, disease and disillusionment - we are left with the bland assurance of their God's presence in the world and of the power of prayer (to Him). As corporate fascists seek to convert the economies of the globe into their feudal fiefdoms under the cruel guise of "internationalism," as the environment is poisoned and the food supply perhaps irretrievably tainted through genetic manipulation, as the fruit of injustice blooms in the form of crime and as crime (but not its causes) is treated with barbaric punishments of medieval severity and utter ineffectiveness - we can agree with these predators on one and only one point: spiritual forces do exist. They await only a summons to come to our aid. We refer of course to the forces of Magick: of sympathetic magick, of talismanic magick and of magikal evocation and invocation, and including the armamentaria of white mgick (where possible, and effective), of gray magick (where necessary) and indeed of black magick (where unavoidable). It may be that such methodologies are objectively ineffective, working only when and if their subjective environment, the mental states of their operant and subject, are conducive to an effect. Or it may be that such approaches to problem-solving are objectively effective and await only our earnest study and application. We - or at least, I - simply do not know for the moment. What we do know is that magickal approaches to problems of governance, public policy and social justice have not been tried and seen to fail - they simply have not been tried. We also know that, faced with a choice of doing something or doing nothing, the effective and affirmative choice is always to do something. The choice before us is between an authoritarian renaissance of fascism, feudalism and the theocratic God-State with its promise of a poisoned planet and a diseased and desperate population on the one hand, and individual freedom and liberty-with-responsibility on the other. Let everyone know and say that I -and my soon-to-appear comrades and collaborators of the Union of Radical Magi - choose freedom. |
| INTRODUCTORY REMARKS (Continued) |
| "Love is the Law, Love under Will. So Mote It Be!" Aleister Crowley, A:A; OTO |
