Path: Supernews!supernews.com!news.spinne.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!jump.net!grunt.dejanews.com!not-for-mail Date: Sat, 07 Jun 1997 14:21:08 -0600 From: ondrejkd@genco.com Subject: Re: Off the wall question ( was: Re: Fluff-bunny Wiccans UNITE! (was other silly things) (fwd) Newsgroups: alt.religion.wicca,alt.magick.tyagi Message-ID: <865710685.17172@dejanews.com> Reply-To: vondraco@telerama.lm.com Organization: Deja News Usenet Posting Service To: marjorie@netcom.com (Marjorie Rosen) References: <33950886.1105@earthlink.net> X-Article-Creation-Date: Sat Jun 07 19:11:27 1997 GMT X-Originating-IP-Addr: 206.4.42.2 (gen-world.genco.com) X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/3.01Gold (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4m) via proxy gateway CERN-HTTPD/3.0 libwww/2.17 X-Authenticated-Sender: ondrejkd@genco.com Lines: 130 Xref: Supernews alt.religion.wicca:73305 alt.magick.tyagi:12650 Dear Marjorie, > I've got a question for the Satanists in the group. OK. > As a Wiccan, I have no problems with following the Ethic. I don't > consider it all that limiting, but rather as a call to mindfulness. That depends on your interpretation, I guess. As I have recently pointed, a Satanist could follow the Rede quite well -- or at least one interpretation of it. > But that aside, what type of ethical system do Satanists or Setians, or > whatever, use in their lives? Setians and Satanists certainly differ in the basic structure of moral beliefs. I consider Myself both, though probably more Setian as far as ethics is concerned. Do not generalize from My statements to either group, though; what I say is My own opinion, developed through personal study and practice. Others may have their own ideas! > If you simply go by "Do as you will", does this mean that you consider > humanity a hunting ground? Do you have *any* ethics at all regarding the use > of magick? I recognize Magus Crowley and his Word of Thelema as useful to Me. It is not a "do as you will" but "do as thou wilt;" have you been made aware of the difference between those two sentences? If not, either do a search on the Web for "Thelema" or mail Me privately and I will explain My own understanding and application of it. I consider humanity not so much a "hunting ground" as opportunities to learn and grow. Most of them I treat (and not unjustifiably) as machines: push this button, get this response. I try to learn which buttons do what on which machines, because I find the play fascinating. My ethics is purely selfish. I have learned through the years the truth of karma -- not the New Age, pseudo-Eastern claptrap though. Karma is a simple law of action/reaction -- no threefold law, no divine retribution, nothing like that. I phrase it this way: the more that you do something, the more you become the sort of person that does that sort of thing. For instance, the more you kill people, the more you become a murderer. The more love you give, the more loving you become. If you do an action several times then it starts to become a habit for you -- you change yourself by what you do. Your actions decide what some of person you're going to become. So My "ethics" involves deciding what sort of person I want to Become, then taking actions which will lead Me along that path. > Here's a senario: You meet a *very* attractive woman you'd like to date. > You ask, but she declines as she is in a relationship. You work magick to > compel her to transfer her affections to you. This works (for whatever > length of time you can control her). How does this differ from rape? Do > you care? Every act of meaningful communication is an attempt at manipulation. Rape generally uses force or the threat of force to accomplish penetration -- it is not primarily an act of desire but an act of violence. Manipulation uses less blatantly-physical means. Let's say We have the situation you describe above. Now, instead of using magic, I decide to "woo" her away from her beau. I am charming, considerate, well-dressed, and polite; I find out what her favorite candy is and send her a box of it, with flowers; I contrive to attend the same events she attends; I make use of whatever excuse I can come up with to speak to her. Eventually, she comes to "see" that I am a more desirable person than her current lover and throws herself at My feet. How is *that* different from rape? How is that different from magic? How both differ from rape is fairly obvious, I think: in the end (that is, after the spell or courtship), the woman actually believes that she is in love with Me. I would not expect a rape victim to harbour similar tender feelings. The magic may simply be a quicker means to that end. Make no mistake, Marjorie; someone skilled in the art of seduction can do what I have described with quite as good a success rate as any spellcaster. That is often called, in Satanic circles, "Lesser Black Magic" even though there is nothing exactly "paranormal" about it. Now, I do not care to become a callous person who can do something like that without regard to the feelings or thoughts of the person involved. When I do such a thing, I make sure that I am completely willing to love and cherish the other person entirely and without reservation. (Either that, or I make sure that I really have no respect whatsoever for them -- but that is rare.) Crude spellcasting -- trying to change someone's desires or thoughts all at once -- doesn't often work very well. Magic is an art, and there is a control and delicacy in it that is actually quite beautiful. Getting someone to do what you want to do usually involves convincing them from the inside, showing them that what you want them to do is what they really do want to do anyhow. This is true whether you are doing it with OR without magic. > Talk about differing opinions. I've always thought of Satanism as a > fairly fluffy bunny religion since 99.9% of the ones I've met have been > more into the idea of "I can do *anything* I want!" than they are in any > concrete philosophy or religious thought. And then there are those who > are obviously in it as a counter to Christianity, and their favorite > pastime is to try to shock the mundanes. Been there, done that, even got the T-shirt to prove it. (It's a nice white one with a clown's face on the front, surrounded by pentagrams, and says "REMEMBER KIDS...SATAN LOVES YOU!") I think it's a real howl. > Do you actually *use* magick regularly? Is this part of your religious > practice at all? Yes, depending on what you mean by magick. I've taken to doing Liber Resh daily, as well as performing the LBRP regularly, as per Crowley. The directed rituals (ie, magic for a purpose) are done...whenever I feel a need to. Sometimes not for a few months, sometimes two or three times in one week. I hope that helped answer some of your questions, at least according to My way of looking at it. -- Regards, VonDraco -------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====----------------------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet