The United States has a president whose mind veers from whether the former POTUS wiretapped him, to whether Arnold Schwarzenegger really quit or was fired from Celebrity Apprentice.
This is not normal.
Although it is possible that FBI Director Comey could have gotten a warrant for wiretaps if there was significant evidence of possible wrongdoing, Trump's allegations that Obama ordered any such a thing is without grounds (so Trump--is either inadvertently telling on himself, or a total fabulist).
I don't think we even need to address what happened to the Celebrity Apprentice in light of that. It seems...small.
5 comments:
Hi Vixen, I confess to keeping a distance from politics these days. I'll tune in again a year when we approach an election.
I agree that this allegation in respect to President Obama is disturbing. Many of us are suggesting that a special investigator be appointed to get to the bottom of these allegations. Should it come to pass that President Obama is not responsible for wire tapping the president's phone, then it can all be dropped with the happy assurance that the events never transpired. On the other hand, if there is something to it then conceivably a special prosecutor should be considered.
Vixen, reverting to the subject about which I have some legitimate expertise, a note about the witches. As you know an attempt is being made by a number of covens to perform nefarious rituals at the time of the waning moon. These rituals include the invocation of demons.
Now frankly, to practice magic effectively requires years of serious training, and very few people stick it out unless they have a vocation for the subject. It is a specialist's vocation and is not open to everyone who might be captured by the sort of 'sword and sorcery' fictional romance of it all.
Therefore, it is very unlikely that these witches could do much damage. (Unlike the Haitian voodoo practitioners who managed to mess up the plumbing in the Clinton White House and who also had a small private aircraft come close to smacking into it.)
However, there are people born with natural mediumistic tendencies, and should these people engage the ritual then some effectiveness could possibly follow.
It is utter madness to try and evoke demons into your circle. This means that you are intentionally attempting to invoke Qlipothtic forces into your personal psychology. We have enough of this spontaneously without trying to make it happen. (There is a difference between invocation and evocation.)
In technical magic one would not invoke anything but a god force into the circle. Even archangelic forms would be invoked into a crystal surrounded by protections on the altar. Even benevolent forces lower on the hierarchy than archangels would be evoked into a triangle outside the circle. As I say, invoking demons into your own circle is simply suicidal.
You might be interested to know that normally legitimate lodges stay out of political arenas. However, because of the very dangerous nature of this “hex craft” you will be pleased to note that the witches' metaphysical matters have been closed down and reversed. After all, black sorcery directed at society cannot be allowed to have an effect beyond plenty that happens naturally without an attempt consciously to direct it.
I've been looking at the mass binding evocation with some amusement--it's sometimes hard to separate people who view ritual magic as a kind of role-play experience from people who might be using this activity as a kind of avant-garde protest, from well-intentioned people who practice and see this as a kind of necessary left-hand deviation to remove what they perceive as a threat to the natural order. The text of the binding ritual ("orange candle" marked with Trump's name? unflattering picture of Trump?) have some put-on qualities, while other elements ("use the spirit of your choice", "raise circle of protection") operate within familiar white-light ritual schemes.
Personal guess--"mostly harmless". Much of human activity has ritualistic qualities--chanting at protests raises considerable energy, and because the participation is much more random, it ups the likelihood of natural charismatics or mediums to turn up. These types of gatherings have been not-infrequent and well-attended, so I suspect they might be a bit more successful. (Not mind you, as an "antisocial" activity--as a specific anti-current government activity. I'm all for lesser magic myself.)
An odd thing struck me with respects to accidental magic--the Trump logo. In the course of his business, he's put his name on buildings, etc, etc. in big letters. It's been suggested this is narcissism, but whether inadvertently or "advertently", he's repeated a sigil before many eyes very often. This has been done for much of the last four decades without necessarily being about political ambition in a direct sense. I'm not sure Spare would have approved, but it sort of fits his theory. In the interest of chaotically reversing the effect, dispersal of unflattering pictures of Trump, or of "busted" Trump logos (such as those taken down from bankrupt or sold properties) and other viral memes could chip into the border wall erected around his persona.
But that's just theory. The effort involved to make a working of it would not really be conducive to living a full life outside of the circle.
Hi Vixen, you make a lot of good points, and I would agree with much of it. You'll recall that empiricists believe that all knowledge comes through the senses, and rationalists believe that knowledge comes from the mind. In the magical universe imagination is added to those two. In the magical arts and in the gnostic philosophies and theologies with form the underpinnings of magic, the imagination is regarded as a valid epistemological vehicle by which the truth can be ascertained.
This is why Basil Wilby (Gareth Knight) defined magic as a technology of the imagination reconciling science and religion. In the West a needless division has grown between science and religion as each has reacted to outrages perpetrated by the other. Actually this was not necessary.
Witchcraft does not go back very far historically, as you can find out in Occultism Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions by Mircea Eliade. And yet it has been considerably distorted even in this short time. What started out as a fertility cult has been twisted into such deviations as all feminists, covens made up only of women. I suppose the horned god got kicked out of the religion. I appreciate that in witchcraft the circle is constructed in order to raise a cone of power and not for protection. And if one were to envision this working it would not be a bad thing to attempt the contact with forces to promote healing or help someone having a tough time or some other benevolent activity that would not require the contact of malevolent forces. Obviously this ad hoc thaumaturgical construction is not based on any historic principles of witchcraft. When the Alexandrians entered the fray they did bring magical techniques from Franz Bardon and other sources that introduced practices that Gardner never envisioned. Witchcraft began to deviate early on.
You're completely right about the counter-cultural aspect that attracts some. You are also correct that much of our cultural life incorporates various “magical” practices. Our political conventions are gigantic pep rallies designed to raise huge amounts of energy through enthusiasm, and this energy then hopefully fills the thought-forms also generated, and sends people out with a Jesuitical fervor for enacting the support for their candidate. Frankly, it's all a little ostentatious and jingoistic for my taste, but that's what we've got so I'll work with it.
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You're right about corporate identification mimicking Austin Osman Spare's ideas of sigils. Naturally in traditional high magic sigils are a physical designation of an angel or spirit constructed on the basis of the Hebrew or Enochian letters when the spelling is traced out as a graphic. You will recall that in the Golden Dawn it was said by names and symbols all things were awakened and reawakened, and so the idea of short-order signals to try and engineer some often preposterous change in the physical world is more like the activities of a good-for-nothing younger brother than the activities of high magic.
Chaos magic was intentionally inspired by the idea that one could simply reject all philosophy, theology, or gnosis and come up with a bunch of rule-of-thumb devices to affect the unconscious. Some of this is OK, but it demonstrates that its advocates never stepped into the Greater Mysteries. The Greater Mysteries one of the objects and purposes of magic. It's where the representations that were known only as symbols then open out for the adept in real mystical and inner plane experience. It is said that a magician eventually has to worship in an empty temple, which means that a firm scaffolding has been built through study and practice. So now what was known only in token will be known in the fullness of experience.
To dismiss all of this in favor of some techniques designed for physical changes is not so much bad as a little misguided. Just because one has a low-paying job doesn't mean there are not those who achieved great financial success (a bad metaphor admittedly) but the whole point about the Qaballah and some other metaphysical venues is that one has an implicit and accurate guide into the deepest levels of mystical experience. This is something that chaos magicians don't realize. It's a little bit like rejecting music without realizing that one is tone deaf. It's not bad, but it leaves out the most important features of the Path.
I would like to clear up one thing I said in my earlier comment in respect of protecting oneself from angels. People don't understand that forces can be deleterious sometimes when they descend from the heights of consciousness, just as they can when they arise from the depths of consciousness. It is absolutely benevolent and even should be encouraged if one wishes to pray to angels or archangels or celebrate them at Mass. It's benevolent to pray to saints. Because then one is simply asking for assistance, aid, comfort, or help from these beings. That is different from inviting them into the circle where they become you. The invocation of a god form is the highest kind of theurgical practice, and for a brief time one's consciousness is expanded commensurate to the god's consciousness. (See debates between Iamblichus and Porphyry.) That is a very different matter from attempting benevolent contact with these forces. In other words, just because you go to a priest or pastor that does not mean you want to become the priest or pastor.
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