Path: typhoon.sonic.net!newsfeed2.skycache.com!newsfeed.skycache.com!Cidera!128.230.129.106!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: aikeena@my-deja.com Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.pagan.magick Subject: Re: Crowley's Failure as a Magician/Mystic (was something else) Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2000 18:53:51 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Lines: 107 Message-ID: <8k7tbr$kov$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <8huq6a$6vk@bolt.sonic.net> <8i2cf4$hrm@bolt.sonic.net> <8i3blt$h27$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <39454ad2.10143359@news> <8i6clj$u4u@bolt.sonic.net> <39470950.6562@sympatico.ca> <8idog7$tj1@bolt.sonic.net> <394AFB0A.5F85@sympatico.ca> <8jb242$che@bolt.sonic.net> <39598CFD.27BB@sympatico.ca> <8k4c02$4se@bolt.sonic.net> <3966B081.4F88@sympatico.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.165.237.210 X-Article-Creation-Date: Sat Jul 08 18:53:51 2000 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 95; DigExt) X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x51.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 207.165.237.210 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDaikeena Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.magick.tyagi:24090 alt.magick:201616 alt.pagan.magick:23258 In article <3966B081.4F88@sympatico.ca>, kteis@sympatico.ca wrote: > Then how else is such attainment measured? > Frater X announces he has become a "babe of the abyss", for which no > reasonable test exists. > Assume that (not uncommonly) the temple which he is a member of boasts > no individual with a grade even close. > Who will make the judgement, without actual understanding of the grade > claimed? > Hardly. > This suggests that the "man on the Clapham omnibus" is capable of > jusging whether Frater X has crossed the abyss. > This is a normative approach no different than that which currently > exists: the only difference is that to date no judges have been > appointed. > If a person must have an understanding of high initiation to judge, then > who can possibly claim to judge the judges? I should point out that their has been a fairly widespread if informal way of judging the brilliance of others in the realm of science for quite some time. Generally, the more pragmatic and productive of useful results a scientist can produce while (with no "tricks") stupefying and being incomprehensible to other scientists ... even with the reasoning process explained... then the more "advanced" they are judged to be. In this case, its intuitively understood that genius may well be beyond the abilities of lesser mortals to appreciate ... and thus the less one is able to comphrehend the genius while at the same the more useful the results and insights therefore the more advanced the genius. It's based upon incomphrehensibility rather than comphrehensibility. It was in this way that for instance Schwinger and Feynman were "judged" by the body of physicists. Both produced particularly advanced and terrifying mathematical and physical insights. Because Schwinger's was more mathematically formal, it was at first favored by Oppenheimer and the physics establishment. But Dylan (who is still alive and kicking btw) popularized the Feynman QED method by demonstrating its relative ease of calculation, and thus its "usefullness". Eventually history and the scientific community chose to laud Feynman over Schwinger (not only for this reason). Feynman's method was "better" not because it was mathematically "easier" but finally because it was realized that his genius or insight had made a certain degree of tortuous mathematics *unnecessary*. The essential problem in magic is that very few people are interested in pragmatic applications. When all you're talking about is subjective states of realization, then yes things are going to be messy in evaluation. This is why, to me, all this discussion of grades is utter bollocks and nonsense. What do I care if Crowley made Ippissumus? What good does it do *me*? I'm not talking about merely material rewards here, a clarified and improved methodology of altering consciousness would for instance qualify for me as a pragmatic and applied result of insight. And before anyone retorts about this being a limiting state of mind, let me remind them that Crowley was the one that wrote "magick is for all". In science, there are quite allot of big egos. But before other scientists kowtow to them, usually they have the nerve to ask "so exactly what did *you* do that was all that great?". nguyen Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.