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Sunday, June 8, 2014

Veering, and Chaos Magick

I feel like veering into more overtly esoteric territory, at the same time this is a "coming out of the closet" of a sorts. I choose not to forsake my critical commitment both to social/global justice as well as to the more "lineage-based" expressions of my spiritual/religious convictions (particularly with Buddhism), but I must admit that I have, as late, been more interested in particular metaphors of relationship to power and effecting change that I've adapted from "Chaos Magick".

From a wikipedia entry:
"[Chaos magick] is a school of the modern magical tradition which emphasizes the pragmatic use of belief systems and the creation of new and unorthodox methods."
Perhaps more succinctly, and this is my working and operative assumption and interpretation, I am inspired by the renderings of chaos magick which strategically use the power of belief itself in order to manipulate more interior and exterior realities in conformance with desired outcomes.

In one interpretation of the "pure form" of my motivation, then, this is about access to, or the accessing of power for the sake of itself, with the object and direction of the power being secondary. In other words, the power of belief (elsewhere described as "placebo effect", and scientifically used as a bogey man in order to render invalid certain practices that are unverifiable in their efficacy within a scientific framework to achieve their intended outcomes).

In the case, I am choosing to "politicise" the placebo effect, to harness the power of belief itself, or perhaps more accurately, the "suspension of disbelief" in order to effect a radical change in consciousness within myself and communities I am a part of, in the service of goals (that are to be determined, and that are somewhat separate from this suspension of disbelief... other than a vague sense this this suspension may "open onesself" up to new experience and possibility).

A less overtly "magic" association of this is in the everyday, integrated work of movies: Watching films.

We "rationally" understand many films to be works of fiction, but we may also appreciate that watching a film is a form of induction into a particular form of ritual, whether the film is purposefully fictive, or even documentary. We are inducted into a ritual that involves payment, attendance with friends, a community of "practitioners" (i.e. filmgoers) with whom to later reflect on meaning and substance, and the implications for lives changed or making a difference simply in the knowledge gained in the process.

To put it another way, we may recognise the works of film to be primarily fictive, or, in the case of documentaries, still edited to reflect the perspectives of the filmmaker(s). A film is housed in a contained context which may not have any immediate bearing upon what happens to our material reality when we leave the cinema, yet the ritual experience of watching a film is granted a modicum of both respect and consent from the viewer... We are willing to believe, for the duration of the film, that there are dragons and demons, that the Matrix is a powerful metaphor for the mundanity and listlessness of everyday secular capitalist urban empire, that there are little boys who can see dead people.

We are, contextually bound, yet inducted into a system of art and intrigue, which can "magically" reorient our relationship to the world once the film is over.

That's primarily what I mean by my burgeoning interest in chaos magic...

Frankly, this seems to have been the role of shamanic magic in its particular performative practices and ritualisations. Real healing can emerge out of these, particularly when some of the ritual inductions include actual, intentionally physical co-participation as part of an induction into a shift in consciousness, through, for example, long periods of fasting, or blood letting, or genital subincisions, or ritualised ingestion of semen as male secret, or the terror of being led into cavernous abyss to be taught new communal rites of passage which significantly mark the transition in the young person's life from one phase into new roles of responsibilities.

These rituals are not "mere placebos" in the shifting of the psyche in an orientation to "difference" or "newness" or "innovation". They are, in the language of the times, about magic. This is no more a "placebo effect" in the profound invention of culture and material outcome as a movie is a "placebo effect" that can induce mass hysteria, outrage, tears, or indignation in a captive audience, followed by endless praiseful reviews, or outcries, bannings, excommunications, and so on.

So this post is intended to notice the ways in which I have used an obsession with identity politics to serve particular ends which I am increasingly sensing are not actually best achieved through their particular underlying belief systems (which I broadly describe as Marxist, materialist, and postmodernist).

What if there is a necessary "regression" that I must insist upon in order to gain and sustain a modicum of respect for the work there is to be done, the sustainability that is required of eldership, and the transition away from heroism into the humility of meditative and interpersonal peace-practice?

That is:
To solve the world's problems not only by identifying the problems to be solved, but to begin with a different perspective:
Not that things are "perfect" (in some saccharine, NewAgey sense of the term),
but rather, from a melancholic and aesthetic perspective (admittedly privileged, yet still an emblem of the peace I want to practice):
That the world's "imperfections", our wars, famines, injustices, and so on, are but the weathered forms of "wabi-sabi" that is our ever-evolving plight as a planet, yet a symbol of our simple familiarity as a species... One which orients still toward perfect forms, yet emboldened for presentation by the glitches, the cracks, the inconsistenies across seasons, the variations in utility.

What does it mean to inherit a diverse range of religious, spiritual, political, meditative, cultural and linguistic systems, and to participate in a process of integrating and disseminating them all which is infinitely creative, and which, to add my own personal intention, would be in the service of:
healing, social justice, further seedings and fruitions of creative transformative possibility, for a more sustainable, loving, compassionate and welcoming society, in which existing divisions are both acknowledged, properly engaged with, as well as ultimately seen to be fully illusory from the perspective of mind, heart and gut?

YES: This is the practice of chaos magic, for me
in Art, in Scriptural recitation, in the setting of personal intentions in meditation, in the listening to disparate voices and attending to "whatever arises in the moment", in the willingness to make error and then to be held accountable to these not only by "others", but also from the parts of me which know integrity, dignity. To do "chaos magic" in borrowing/adapting from the language and thoughts and practices and traditions of people from around the world while keeping abreast of the extent to which my co-optations are both respectful and deviant (perhaps both), and to what extent the consequences (however expediently negative) may well serve an outcome more compassionate and in the service of justice than a simply ethnocentric traditionalism could allow.

I am more libertine than I realise, perhaps.
And this is, also, my strategically employed belief system
to elucidate the many points of this essay online,
nothing else.
I am free to abandon the entirety of the above
pretend that nothing, in fact had been written
nothing of substance had, in fact been shared
but perhaps somewhere on this way, a sunday night was well spent in ecstatic flow.

A whole new set of friends (which includes the ones I already have, albeit in fresh and evolving ways of relating).
A whole new set of possibilities.
I "fast" and I notice what it is that I really crave in my body.

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