"That non-occultists are not adept at occult language styles and metaphors does not diminish the value of the metaphor, language style or of the occult. The fact that some do not understand a part of reality that others enjoy, does not make that part of reality any less relevant."
-from the "Chaoist Jihad Conspiracy" (a group of 23C affiliated tracts)
Overt intolerant monotheism, in the forms of Christianity or Islam, may have been debunked by the various scientific fields, but that affects Fundamentalists only to the degree that they now must fight legal battles to get their mythology taught in public schools. The more insidious form of intolerance which was born from monotheism has transplanted itself into the modern secular world in the form of a fanatical materialism which twists the scientific idea that phenomena must be measured and observed in order for us to determine its probability of existing. Many people assume that this means that the materialist paradigm is the be all end all of science (though science says nothing of the sort about the be all end all of anything).
The possibility of the existence of magic offends rational materialists as much as it offends their monotheist cohorts, not because it implies that their paradigm may be faulty, but it implies that they may not have all the rules of the game covered. God-worshippers can get appalled that they have no monopoly on the miracle business. Materialists can get appalled because, though they have rightly exposed the hucksters who pretend to have various "powers," it seems that there may be something to certain phenomena that their paradigm cannot account for. To a monotheist, magic is heresy. To a materialist, magic is still heresy but they would be laughed at for using a word like "heresy" so they have to resort to psychological explanations. The problem with materialists who detract from magical viewpoints is that they have a narrow view about the "material" world which they claim to know.
The magical world view (more interesting than any of the various tricks and tools of the various groups of magical practitioners), states simply that the world is malleable. Reality is bendable. You can take charge of your life and co-create your future along with all the other things that make up who you are. One salient point that is forgotten by many people who just get into the occult is that in the magical world view, there is nothing supernatural. Read that again. It is the most important part of most magical paradigms. Many practitioners of the occult, at least those who actually know a thing or two about it (as opposed to the majority of people you will meet who will claim to), see that we have more potential and some more abilities than we are used to dealing with. So they seek to cultivate certain arts that may enhance perceptions of those things. The magic user thus becomes like a full vision person surrounded by those who are color blind. The color blind people will argue and hem and haw about the absolute insanity of the existence of a difference between green or red (the two colors usually affected). In fact they may even argue that either green or red are fabrications, a false split, made up by deluded people who cannot handle "reality as it is."
Why not? They can't see the difference so they naturally conclude that there is no difference. But the magical person is caught in a bind because they can clearly see the difference for themselves, and contrary to the perceptions of many people, they see the "extra" differences and perceive the "extra" differences in a coherent and consistent way which cognitive scientists have tested. It's just that due to the focus of most people, the languages most people speak do not have a vocabulary for any of the "extras." Thus you get a bunch of magical people running around all talking in different ways about phenomena you may not have any clue ever existed. Thus, you also get a high level of bull shit and chicanery because it's not as if there is some standard oversight committee like certain scientists have, now is it?
If you don't want to see something because you think it is impossible than you obviously are not going to see it. And if by chance the phenomena comes into your visual field, you will no doubt explain it by using ideas designed to maintain your current belief-comfort zone. Wouldn't it be better just to not waste any mentality on beliefs at all and just remain open minded, without rushing to seek conclusions about those things which may be uneasy to understand at first?
If you deny that certain magical phenomena exist, I challenge you to explore not the experiences and the long torturous rites (that some ceremonial types insist upon performing). I challenge you to look at magical paradigms which actually say nothing about the existence of god(s) or the existence of other things as well. They usually simply spell out that the world is much more than we can know and see and that part of learning any art is learning how to perceive more phenomena than you are used to habitually perceiving and of learning how to do more things than you are habitually used to doing. Don't simply collapse into your fortress of habitual perceptions, thoughts, and actions and thus insist that those ways, or ways similar to them, are the only correct take on reality.
The magical worldview was responsible for the maintenance of open-mindedness, hidden and despised as that was, throughout centuries of religious dogma and domination. It's child was the development of the sciences which have benefited human beings immensely. It's other child was the realization that we are all "divine" if anything could be said to be, and thus the individual human being has certain inalienable rights. (And that idea is one difference between a true magical practitioner and those hucksters with their guru-complexes, etc.)
The detractors will cite all sorts of idiotic ramble by the fluffy bunnies who read witchcraft and Wicca books and then make all sorts of waves, but those sorts say nothing about the validity of any magical practice. They simply speak to their own incompetence. If you wish to label all magical practitioners in that light, you would simply be committing prejudice. There are fools in every aspect of human activity and philosophy, would you take the same standard of judgment and label all of the other fields of human endeavor as stupid or foolish simply because of those idiots who ramble a lot yet know little about what they speak of?
The magical world view is still vibrant and developing beyond its former reactive and defensive constraints simply because most societies in the West are no longer enthralled to religious dogmas. Who knows where it will go? Look at science and how far it has come in just decades of being free of dogma. It may be that one day, our materialist brethren may develop the means to measure and replicate magical experiments (such as certain physicists; they are actually nutty enough to try and succeed) and the paradigm will then become something else. But that is the ultimate goal of magical practice in and of itself, to become something else. To live in a world that is realized as "something else!" (It's also the name of an Ornette Coleman album I enjoy.) To realize that there are more choices than just "this" or "that." To learn that there are more ways of perceiving the world than any mind could contain- and to try to experience as many of those as possible. And to see the subtleties and nuances that many people glance at from time to time, but quickly forget in their narrow-minded neuroses.
Then again, I could be lying.
Never mind. We know what you want.
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Under the influence of Ornette Coleman's music.)
August, 30th, 2005