Thread by @owenbroadcast

been thinking a lot about what is called ritual magic and the souls natural response to hands on spiritual practices that seem cringe, weird, or just creepy. [...]

i really like the phrase “hands on” spiritual practices because, it has the connotation of a person doing something that affects their spirit or the world around them, in some way. this is a much nicer clear designator to deal with than the highly problematic term of “magic”.

if youre someone into the academic study of esoterica, you could see how something like praying the rosary could technically fit under the designator of “ritual magic”. if youre not that type of person, youd probably (maybe correctly) think someone saying that was being idiotic.

the word “magic” has so many contradictory definitions and terrible associations that, i dont really care to enforce any one standard of what it means. really its almost always just a question of what ur spiritual background is and how much of a esoterica nerd you are, basically.

so when talking with people, ill often use the phrase “golden dawn style ritual magic” to refer to, well, exactly that. the kind of thing where youre casting circles of protection around yourself, wearing a robe, tracing pentagrams in the air, that kind of thing.

what i find fascinating is that the spirit naturally recoils from such things in a way that defy any strictly intellectual interpretation. almost everyone would agree that someone doing this stuff is just being creepy and weird. but why?

dont misunderstand my angle. im obviously not about that type of thing, i think its bad, but over the years ive tried to look deeper into why things like that, in the most general possible sense, prompt the soul to recoil, regardless of the practitioners background or motivation

you could say, well its because its not aligned with god or something. okay. but if someone was doing that type of thing as a christian in a christian context (golden dawn style ritual magic, this exists actually), it would still be creepy and weird. so its not just that.

you could say, well because its fake and those powers arent real. okay. but if the person doing it explained that it was just symbolic or just a way of augmenting their prayers or something it would still be off putting and deeply strange. so its not just that either.

u could say its because it lacks a lineage + is just made up. but i know lots of people that run the whole spectrum of being a mystical weirdo. people that do dowsing and actually think they can find things in their house like this, people that do and believe all kinds of things

for these people its not a question of lineage. they didnt get their weird semi-magical things they do from a guru with proper documentation of his lineage. they dont care about that kind of thing at all, + these people also think the golden dawn style ritual magic stuff is weird

there’s like this line that you cross where the soul naturally begins to recoil. this recoiling might be expressed as cringe or thinking something is ridiculous or being creeped out but its such a tangible barrier that is interesting as hell to analyze, it means something.

its not even a question of the principle behind why such practices work. for example. i go to the store and get clay and make some clay amulet with a hexagram and writing that is meant to have some effect and i wear it out in my regular life. that would be kind of weird, right

but then i meet someone who has some amulet with st michael on it that they think has some effect and its not creepy at all. but its the same principle, that of a talismanic object. yet one causes the soul to recoil and one does not.

you could do the same thing with GD style ritual magic. we could easily reason out that, well if your environment and actions affects your psyche and your psyche affects your relationship with god and the divine and if praying works, then yeah we can reason out [...]

that yeah maybe someone setting up these rituals and doing them in their bedroom would be logically sound and make sense.

but its still fucking weird

its still profoundly creepy and strange

i think about this barrier a lot.

back in the day when i was western occult boy i got some tools and read about doing certain work, but i always had this barrier i could never cross. i actually got this black mirror once and was all amped to use it (this is common in western occult) but when i finally set it up..

i was just like... nah man. this is weird and also just kind of lame and creepy. but at the time, i couldnt reason out why. there was really no intellectual reason for me not to be “about that” at that time because it didnt conflict with my worldview at that time at all.

in fact, based on my worldview, i should have been all about that. but i just wasnt. my working theory is that the spirit naturally recoils from practices that are [self aggrandizing] + about [gaining power]. i think that is the key to understanding the phenomenon i am describing

people responding that its cultural conditioning, i dont really think so, because i wasnt raised christian or christian before or into christianity + was the maximum level of invested in all this stuff being real + good for a super long time so, really it should be the opposite.

just to be clear at the time im describing, years ago, i had probably never seriously considered for even a moment that christianity had some validity to it, so i dont really think you can appeal to cultural conditioning. anyway..

i think the spirit naturally recoils from practices that are about gaining power or about aggrandizing the self. even in lots of shamanic communities the people that are shamans are often looked at as freaks that are just kept around out of necessity (sometimes).

i guess ive been thinking about all this a lot because i do think there is some aristotelian mean to be found between doing hands on manifestations of spirituality that are obviously bad, and doing nothing.

science can be used for good or bad. you can study karate and hope to protect people or beat up little kids. you can study the field of law and help poor people or help people do evil. seems like all fields or arts are like this.

if i was talking to a group of people that studied esoterica in an academic sense i might say it seems like magic (defined academically and not in the popular improper senses ie not “black magic”) also has this aristotelian mean and propensity for positive or negative engagement.

this has been an episode of laundry thoughts with owen cyclops but my raiments are dry now so i must get folding and stack this paper (my folded clothes).

no, something i also think about a lot + wanted to get to was why theres a subset of the population that doesnt have this + what it says about them. not to generalize but have u ever hung with a group of dudes that do this stuff? theyre often really weird

https://twitter.com/thecozygenie/status/1176145964236759041?s=21

you can usually tell from their videos or podcasts or books or hanging with them that there is some weird vibe there. im obviously not one to dislike weirdness, in fact i seek it out, but its almost like the vibe is “off” in some way. im sure some people know what i mean.

theres usually a creepy edge that i think is non-coincidentally linked with their involvement in the system (whether its caused by it or they sought the system out because of it, who can say). i felt this back in the day as well when i was looking for IRL occult groups and people