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From: robin@winternet.com (one star in sight)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Egyptian Gods
Date: 31 Jan 1996 20:39:05 GMT
Organization: And the Stars shall rain Freedom's Fire.
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sv (sv@mbha.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: Effective invocation (as opposed to just a bit of casual worshipping) 
: of any God Form requires a depth of knowledge and an environment which 
: is specifically prepared for the invocation of _that_ particular 
: deity. It is for this reason that I (and, I suspect, my friend who 
: posted as a follow-up) say that you cannot effectively absorb Egyptian 
: deities into what is basically a folklore system such as witchcraft 
: and expect to get any benefit. Indeed, you should not try. I suspect 
: it may even be blasphemous to disregard the whole cultural and 
: attribute context of the deity.

This is a nice bit of logic.  But I don't beleive it is so.  While an
individual God-form certainly has a set of identifying characteristics
from the well of our heritage, in my experience my Osiris is not your
Osiris, my Pan is not your Pan.  Many of us are invoking the Gods of our
choice in our bedrooms and dens surrounded by what looks to be 20th
Century Earth, which bears little resemblance to any place where the idea
of a given God was first born and worshipped.

It appears to me that sv has made the error of ascribing the quality of
'truth' to what is actually an opinion or observation.  Perhaps his
theories explain his observations to his satisfaction.  Fine.  But there
are other possible theories.  Let's not stop trying new ones. 

Frankly I think that if we were to impose sv's concept of the correct
method of invocation virtually none of what passes for modern Magick and
occultism would pass the muster, as it's all been cobbled together by
creative eclectics from those bits and pieces that they found most useful. 
I think the glue that holds a successful system together is something a
little more unversal than the 'cultural and attribute context' of our
traditions.  I suspect it is something closer to the universal capacity of
humans to believe. 

: If you are a witch then stick to witchcraft. Not to be offensive but 
: it is better not to get involved in things you clearly don't understand.

Learning stops when we convince ourselves we understand something.  If we
were all to take sv's advice and not get involved in things until we
understood them, we'd never attempt our own experiements, never try
anything new and never have an original thought.  Instead we would spend
the rest of our lives shopping for better and better models to describe
something that will forever remain a mystery. 

-----robin