Path: Supernews70!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: tyagi@veracruz-gw.customer.itw.net (nigris (333)) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.thelema,talk.religion.misc,alt.occult Subject: Art, Magick and Thelema Date: 28 Feb 1998 18:54:50 -0800 Organization: Access Internet Communications, Inc. Lines: 135 Message-ID: <6dailq$mue$1@shell.accesscom.com> Reply-To: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 14668@205.226.156.10 X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) Xref: Supernews70 alt.magick.tyagi:14875 alt.magick:128645 talk.religion.misc:348898 49971128 aa2 Hail Satan! E6 Andrew Spitzer talks about a concert: # ...Very exciting, high enrgy (especially for # him being such an old fart!) and hence very magical. I have often found the concerts in which I've participated (as singer, dancer, bodily experiencing the rite on stage, rather than being among the spectators or audience) were quite transformative, magical. # I feel there is something inherently magical in well executed art/music. agreed, and it is this element of art I'd like to attempt to analyse over the course of the next 10 years. your post inspires me to carry over some of the IRC conversation I had about it recently for seeded brainstorming. # The performer has created a change in accord with his or her will, and # that has had an effect in at least the consciusness of the audience. in IRC (EFnet #spirituality) we were comparing our ideas (which just happened to be compatible and in the comportment derived of Crowley) about science within the general discussion about magick and contrasting these with art. here is the supposition we seemed to agree upon at that time: science: the process by which, through interaction with and observation of phenomena, experiment and analysis lead we change our interior ideation patterns toward a predictive-quality matching between our knowledge-set and interpreted events art: the process by which we change external phenomena toward comformity with interior ideation patterns or consonance to it and its nature (emotional, intellectual, parallel, reflective, etc.). that is, science and art appear to be working with the same elements but in rather reverse manners. engineering -- artistry utilizing today's materialist science, is typically conflated with the pure scientific process, making the matter all the more difficult to understand. magick, by these (and, I contend, Crowley's) measures, is an exercise of BOTH science and art to achieve change in some medium in conformity to the Way of the cosmos, the Will of God, or, in the terminology of the liberated, the true will of the mage. comments/analysis/reflection welcome. # Some would argue that all magick is Thelemic by definition. this is rational if one does not require it be performed by a human being, qualifies by virtue of arising in response to volition, and does not require some guiding ethical standard of assessment. # ...Thelemicity can be defined (if one chooses) as using themes or # symbols from the idiom that we generally call Thelema. This would include # references from or imagery relating to Liber AL, Crowley's body of # rituals and poetry, etc. a very similar measuring standard as you have elsewhere suggested for the identification of 'Christian magick' (magick using themes or symbols from the idioom that we generally call 'Christian', of lesser or greater specificity). just as with the term 'Christian' we immediately enter into the controversy over what truly qualifies as 'Thelemic': which elements should be considered 'central', which 'grafted onto the core', etc. for any who attempt this assessment they may bring different criteria to bear in making it. your isolation of _Liber Al vel Legis_ and Crowley's work is entirely and logically debatable. just because Crowley seeks to enshroud his work and scriptural Evil Book in a mantle of Thelemic character says nothing about whether it truly serves this ideal or instead attempts to co-opt that same ideal for the purposes of his literal diarrhea and self-aggrandizement. one could suggest, for example, with some persuaveness, that Crowley was merely a writer and a visionary who, having noticed that the world culture was bound to pay greater and greater attention to individualistic and libertine philosophies in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, sought to enmesh his name and peculiar literary foci into its interior so as to preserve his ego, thumbing his nose at his detractors. one might select other, more convincing and original, philosophers to represent the 'Thelemic' ideal (say Berkeley, Hume, Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, Sartre, Rabelais and any number of Revolutionaries pursuing the cause or analysis of the individual) and take their themes and preferences for character as symbolic of 'Thelemic' ideals. it might not conform to the popular sludge that adheres to magick in the aftermath of Crowley's passage of 'Thelema', but it would be no less valuable for its Thelemic assertion. # This would make the work at least taxonomically Thelemic, based on linguistic usage, yes. alternatives might be, as I have said above, along philosophic parameters, or based on some other criteria for which 'Thelemic' is meaningful to the evaluator. # This other angle are those who's work relates the discovery of will # and the subsequent doing of said will, without using the themes # and symbols of the idiom that we tend to know and love as "Thelema". # This may be obviously show in the body of artistic works, as I feel # that some of the late '70s punk rockers did, or it may be more a # product of presentation of the work and even lifestyle of the artists. the idea of 'will' and speculation about it would form a kind of envelope of significance within which certain enshrining sources might be emphasized in this type of analysis. members of all the world's religious and philosophic cultures who center on 'will' or 'volution' of some sort could be valuable compared and contrasted, forming what could be a much more convincing body of argument and lore than what is otherwise maintained by the 'Thelemic' religious cultus. # There are many ways to skin this falcon. Any takers? I don't really like the idea of skinning falcons, but I have been keeping an eye out for philosophers and religious whose text focusses on the *individual* will. some of the names in the list above might qualify, but I'd have to do a much more thorough investigation into first Western and then Eastern sources before I think such a foray would yield valuable fruit. Crowley would likely become little more than a footnote in such a compendium of ideas and themes, given his penchant for emulating Christianity in his lack of innovative genius. E6/6/6 nigris (333) -- tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (emailed replies may be posted); 408/2-666-SLUG http://www.abyss.com/tokus FUCK http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi