The magick of summoning

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Knowing about something, is not knowing it. With great study, gaining all that is known, is not doing it.

Doing will only show you are wrong, and persisting, after quiting the idea of, "The Right Way," and letting the work teach you, is still not mastery.

I made a thousand pie crusts, after a while I saw what I did wrong, yet no two were alike.

Growing plants from cuttings, over time, mastering my stroke, with sameness. Plants put down several weeks later outgrew those before, some weeks did nothing, some grew at twice the pace of most.

All was the same, results varied over time.

There is an edge of knowing, and there are various results from the same process.

It did match the phases of the moon, and the next month, moon in another sign, a different result.

The Old Masters of the Farmers Almanac, knew well what phase of the moon in what sign to plant.

Science says it is all the same, but they do not garden.

so I presume you made accurate recordings of the data that allow you to determine the above results, after all you wouldn't want us skeptics to be able to say that you could well have imagined the correlation because that is what you were hoping for?



No science has only managed to allow farmers and gardeners to grow more crops, of better quality, than ever before, silly old science.

Black mirror scrying is looking pretty interesting just as a training tool for developing clairsentience. I've already been staring at tarot cards for a few months and working on different ways to train my focus, quiet the chatter, etc..

Seems like from what I'm understanding all of it needs emotional and psychological contact which is the point of the 'ritual' in magick (ie. planetery correspondences, times, prayers, tools and implements, incense, etc.). What seems to be said about black/obsidian mirror scrying is pretty similar across the board: ie. if you initially see a black haze or purple cloud it's your eyes tiring, if you start seeing random known and unknown faces it's your mind just filling it up with chatter, eventually you start getting flashes of light, at a given point you'll start seeing something in front of the surface of the mirror (an inch away for example), your thoughts and imagination won't be able to mold it, and if you look away and look back it will still be there (ie. relatively autonomous). One person recommended imagining the tattva card imagery for simply using it to practice imaginative vision rather than try to perceive - that made a lot of sense as well seeing that the shapes and colors are simplistic, albeit there's obvious reasons why the 'black egg' of ether probably wouldn't work as well as the other shapes (hint: dark room, black mirror).

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faeries and crows that can turn into gossamer-winged girls and back again doesn't help much. The really useful magic is never available. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the real world we have to muddle through as best we can with science.

Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is often called 'Magic', and it doesn't work. This is because there simply is no 'magic'. There is only reality, more or less hidden. Science reveals the hidden reality. Magic conceals reality behind smoke, mirrors, and black silk handkerchiefs.

Science enables humans to carry out with confidence their important tasks, to maintain poise and mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of hate, of unrequited love, of despair and anxiety. The function of science is to focus human imagination, to enable his understanding in the victory of knowledge over superstition. Science expresses the greater value for humanity of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism.

What passes for 'Magic' is fit solely for entertaining drunken gamblers in casinos and sugar-charged children at birthday parties.

That's kind of like the argument when a person sees someone practicing martial arts for years and says "Pfff...I'd just carry a gun". One route works a lot of physical, neurological, and psychological self-improvement as well as self defense, the other just yields self defense and even at that does so only if someone can draw fast enough (FBI used to say 21 feet minimum, now they claim 31 feet) and has enough practice at the range to have the reflexes.

I'd say at a minimum, with things like esotericism, mysticism, etc. people are getting the ability to really hack their own experience and reassemble themselves in ways where they know how to grab hold of their most fundamental pieces and parts. In so many ways even if there were nothing else to it, a person who knows how to reach in to their own minds and at will and jump into a hypnogogic state where their mind would tell them that they're astral traveling, going between sephira on the qabalistic tree of life, or whatever it happens to be - people like that are learning to manage their own BS in ways that most people only wish they could. Most people are sandwiched between a world they can't change and a self they can't change, when at least one of those variables gives way a lot more becomes possible. So much of tarot study for instance is accessing your own archetypes and working with them, ie. lock-picking your own subconscious. Qabalistic pathworking as well seems like an exercise in self-discovery and self-unification. Any time I listen to various magicians on various blogtalk radio shows that's what continuously comes up as well - ie. the theme of self-discovery and self-improvement via the exercises involved.

I'd suppose at that the end result even if it's seeing full-blown manifestations of angels and elementals may pale in comparison to the miracle of who the person became and what pragmatic talents and abilities they gained in getting there.

So then, what is magick?

The manifestation of the will into material.

I scratched my last response because I missed the pot-shot at the end of his second paragraph.

At the end of the day I think I care more about the questions of 'Is it there, is it real, and is it happening?' when looking at a thing more than I care about people's systemic philosophical needs for it not to be there or for that matter the additional questions it raises by being there when we reflect it back across our world's problems. All of the later can be dealt with in it's own time.

Let's say you want to become president of the United States. If you believe in magick, you should be able to chant a spell and then you become president. That's how it works. Or a star, plutocrat, prime minister, doctor, lawyer, whatever it is. If you are a lawyer and want to be a judge, you can say a spell and then find yourself appointed a judge.

Let's say you are in love with someone and you want to marry them only they don't love you back. They barely know you exist or even worse, repulsed completely by your presence. Magick can work wonders here, too. You can say a spell and they will love you and want to be with your forever and ever.

There's a show on blogtalk radio you might get a kick out of - ie. Carroll 'Poke' Runyon's The Hermetic Hour. Somewhere in the episode archives you might be able to sort out an answer that works for you.

Another way to spell "fraud".

I don't know about that. Some people can manifest their will. Some cannot. We have all seen the ones who can. They are the ones you see fulfilling their dreams and destinies. Others flounder getting nowhere no matter how hard they try. Magick is clearly not on their side nor is fate. Why that is I have no idea. Probability? There are people who barely tread water despite giving their all so you cannot blame it on their laziness or lack of effort.

Then, there are others who succeed with hardly any effort at all.

There is nothing magical about ambition, dedication, education, and the ability to pay for it all.

Some people call it "luck" or "magic". I call it 50+ years of experience and hard work.

You see Fnord, lots of people have those qualities and apply themselves yet they don't all get the same results. Look at major league sports, for example. So many people start out wanting to make it to them but there are only so many spots open so not everyone who wants to be a pro gets to be one. It's pretty much up to chance who actually gets to realize the dream of playing professionally. The odds are very high most who want to will never get that chance, even ones who play college sports. You could argue ones who make it to the top can manifest their will better than the ones who do not.

The existence of inner-planes intelligences as well as the seeming genetically-fixed state of man in so many ways (ie. a guy whose not going to grow up to be 6'8" for instance and have reflexes like a deer to run circles around LaBron no matter how many hours a day or years he works out or meditates on it) seems like it has to be reconciled between the two as accepted parts of the human condition/experience.

Just my hunch - the realities of 300 years of science don't boil down neatly into two or three sentences that are worth anything to someone who might have grown up completely outside of them. For as complex as our world is I doubt the inner planes and consciousness/matter interface (as well as all the myriad 'why's) will be a whole lot simpler.

That is not good form. The post you scratched relates to why I asked "so then what is magick"

Which was in response to you asserting that Fnord had described that which is not magick, or something like that.