From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan.magick Subject: Re: definition--High Magick vs. Low Magick--opinions please Date: 14 Sep 1997 12:18:56 -0700 Organization: Bay Junction Technology, Inc. Lines: 83 Sender: tyagi@news.bjt.net Message-ID: <5vhdb0$s1i@bay1.bjt.net> References: Reply-To: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) NNTP-Posting-Host: bay1.bjt.net Path: bridge!not-for-mail Xref: bridge alt.magick:118406 alt.magick.tyagi:14929 alt.pagan.magick:6461 49970914 aa2 Hail Satan! squeegee@your.third.eye (G Leake): # A local neo-pagan woman did this show on modern western Ceremonial magick, why shouldn't a ceremonial magician do it instead? # and she defined high magick as being ritual/ceremonial magick, and low # magick as shamanic. this is one perspective, though I think it is a conflation of categories typically employed. this is not to say it isn't valuable, depending on one's meaning, but generally it is awkward given what is added below. # She says that is the consensus in the magical community. is there such a consensus? more often I have run across the notion that "high" magick is any endeavor which attempts mystical/spiritual ends, "low" magick (often 'magic') being confined to gross material matters. we've got two categories we're throwing around here: (1) high/low -- sometimes associated with elevation, as in the case of 'high/low german', 'upper/lower egypt', etc.; sometimes related to classes; sometimes conforming to a cosmological scheme ('high' => closer to the 'divine'); and sometimes correlating with a class distinction in that it relates to bodily centers or cakras (the low being focussed on worldly, sexual, acquisitive concerns, the upper being intellectual and/or more 'spiritual'). typically the individual making the discernment places hirself on the 'upper' end of the spectrum and thus gives support to the notion that 'high magick' is most accurately associated with a kind of taxonomizing, intellectual elitism than anything else. occasionally you'll get the odd Satanist or or endarkened witch who is hip for the 'low', natch. (2) ceremonial-scripted/shamanic-intuitive -- neither is it a given that the ceremonial is always a scripted affair, nor is it necessarily true that shamanic rites are completely intuitive, though it does seem to be a prevalent attitude amongst the practitioners of each semi-ambiguous grouping. the terms themselves extend into one another. there are meanings for 'shamanic' which include what many ceremonial mages do, for example. and there are rites which some shamans do that should properly be described as 'ceremonies'. usually those who make this division have simplistic notions and mean to imply a kind of 'theater-play versus intoxicated drum-rite' division. # ...Georg Luck's idea in his book Arcana Mundi ... the ancient Greeks # defined theurgia (high magick) as any magic meant for divine union, # goetia (low magic) as any magic performed for selfish reasons. # What do you think? I think that proceeds from an outmoded paradigm of Ptolemaic, geocentric cosmology, in which Terra sits within a batch of rotating concentric spheres, She being the 'lowest' while the uppermost is the most 'divine' or 'spiritual'. fairly anti-terran and ascetic per my experience. generally I find an inversion of this to be more tasty, though both models are of course incomplete. the inversion goes something like this: 'low' magick is more connected to the divine (material) realm, whereas 'high' magick centers on the ravings and obsessions with figments of imagination seeded by star-demons aeons ago to enslave the human race to their chieftain Jehovah. tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) -- (emailed replies may be posted);join the AMT syncretism!!;call: 408/2-666-SLUG! see http://www.abyss.com/tokus; "Clement of Rome taught that God rules the world with a right and a left hand, the right being Christ, the left Satan." - CGJung