If not, don't worry, your day is coming.
In recent discussions about the Four Powers of the Sphinx, spurred on by Patrick's article over at Rending the Veil, I felt a lot like the guy trying to figure out the backwards b.
I couldn't figure out why "Daring" was a big deal. It's really not. If you want to be a magician, be one. If you don't, then just go the fuck away. Don't whine to me about how scary it is to do magic because it really works, or how humans are inherently afraid of change. Bah.
I know, it's all valid, it's all true. People can go nuts about doing magic. People can have bad things happen physically, like blowing out their gall bladder or something. You can try to make a Moon Child using Goetic Spirits and Enochian Angels, and end up obsessed over numbers. Weird shit can happen. Seriously. Weird shit.
Ok, but...
So what? Who giveth the flying fuck? There's nothing any more scary about magic than anything else you do in life. It's no more dangerous than waking up, and I do that almost every single day! Chances are, you do too. Anything can happen, at any time. You're just waiting there about to die every second, in blissful ignorance most of the time, until its for serious for real. You don't know what tomorrow will bring.
But! We do know that people with no interest in the occult get haunted and possessed. We know people who aren't magicians ALSO have been known to have mental breakdowns. People who don't do magic have their gall bladders go up all the time. Obsession with numbers happens a lot, check out OCD statistics, and autism reports. No "occult" study going on, just normal people going through the exact same shit magicians go through.
The difference is that people are just more likely to blame shit that happens on magic if you're doing magic. That's all.
A lady broke down in tears this year at school when she dropped off her kid. She was doing "Day Care" during the day to three other kids, and the stress was grinding away at her sanity like corn between he mill stones. That's not normal.
If she was a magician though, if she'd ever worked with the Goetia, that's what would get the blame.
Are there risks in magic? I suppose. Should you be careful? Definitely. But should you need any more courage to face magic than you do the rest of your life?
I think not.
{I'm working on a structuralist analysis of Dunn's article for 1 July, but you've tapped into something I really wanted to touch on in my article...}
ReplyDeleteYes, if you do magic and you're "not right", that's what will be blamed. In fact, it's a very common diagnostic question per DSM4 and probably will be in DSM5 - but it's packaged as "do you believe you have powers..."
The idea behind illuminist magic - which the goetia is a part of via it's connection to theurgy - is that the practice improves YOU, the magician. As in, eliminating various mental pathologies. As in, getting it together and keeping it together.
What I'd really love to see is an academic study showing that magicians are actually better off for their practice than non-magicians... As if that will happen. There's too much to profit from the marginalization of the esoteric.