If we evolved, how can there be magick?

If there is no guiding divine intelligence, if there are no spirits, if we all just evolved perfectly naturally from single celled organisms, into reptiles, into early mammal-reptiles, into mammals, into primates, and eventually into humans, then how can such a thing like magick work? 

It must be superstitious nonsense, right?

I suppose that depends on what we mean by "magick."

For me, in the most simplest terms, magick means consciously affecting my subconscious in such a powerful way that my subconscious mind will help lead me to "what I want." 

The conscious mind, however useful in day to day functioning, can often times be an enemy to long term goals.  It voices too many "negatives" for one thing.  "What if I can't ____" or "What if I fail?" etc.  The conscious mind can be a real PITA, let's face it.  Also the conscious mind can only be aware of a few things at once--any more than that and the external stimuli is pushed into the subconscious. 

So for me, magick is a technology for utilizing the power of the subconscious mind, which I believe contains *naturally evolved powers* that we do not yet fully utilize.  Even when using "demons" or "genies" all I am doing is using my conscious mind to tap into energies floating around in my subconscious, and if you were to extend that, to a universal subconscious, where our mythic archetypes are stored (ala C.G. Jung).

Magick for me is constantly evolving.  I don't claim to know how it all works, anymore than modern scientists really have a grasp of how all the layers of human consciousness work and relate to each other.  I experiment, and stick with the most effective methods while disregarding the ones that don't seem to work. 

I don't believe in "hocus pocuses." I believe in effectiveness, and I judge a magick's effectiveness on its consistent ability in improving the quality of my life and those around me.  Simple as that. 

I don't think a belief in other realms, such as heaven, or a belief in "souls", or ghosts, or spirits flying around, or a belief in life after death are necessary to magick--and in many ways I feel these beliefs can be disingenuous to magick as they take the focus away from the present--from our evolved humanity--and from basic scientific principles. 

Magick should never go against established facts of nature, only enlighten them and lead them in new directions.

 

xoxoxo,

Izabael DaJinn

 

Technorati Tags: magick, science, jung, subconcious, genies, demons, spirits, evolution

Comments

[Nion]

I liked all you had to say. Although, it does somewhat go without saying that there are many faith-driven magicians as well. As a result, sometimes interaction can get tricky.

peace

[Prexus Nexus Maximus XIV]

You can be faith based and still be scientific about it.

I don't think that ANY belief system for life after death is any more valid than any others. There is just no way to know. There is no way to know a lot of things. So you can fill in the blanks of the "unknown" with anything from Buddha to Star Wars.

I can take or leave all of it really. Nothing stops the fact I'm gonna croak one day. That's the only thing I do believe for sure. I think the human race will croak too, while most insects will live long past the time of human extinction. Yet, we are so arrogant when we look upon them. Centipedes are some of the earliest forms of life. They dwarf our species in longevity.

That said, religion and such help sooth the ache of our human consciousness, however, and for THAT reason I think they are useful and powerful.

[harry666t]

> The conscious mind (...) can often times be an enemy to long term
> goals. It voices too many "negatives" for one thing. "What if I
> can't ____" or "What if I fail?" etc. The conscious mind can be a
> real PITA, let's face it.

#include "disclaimer.h", I might be wrong, etc. I think it's our subconscious beliefs that are causing this lack of faith in ourselves. The conscious mind, no matter how powerful, has a narrow bridge between itself and the rest of the world - the subconsciousness. Everything we see, hear, feel, taste, smell or otherwise perceive must be partially filtered out by our subbie, or we'd freak out because of information overflow, as you stated. As we all know, ku can also filter out the things that on the long term would be beneficial to us, letting the non-beneficial things get through.

So, I am 100% sure that one can get rid of this self-disbelief, as one can do with any other complex.

Cheers :)

[Izabael]

I don't disagree with anything said.

And for me...sometimes I vacillate.

Nuit for example can be very vividly a "goddess" with an actual presence, but at other times for me she is simply a symbol of all those things outside myself.

Same thing with reincarnation. I do tend to believe in reincarnation, but I also see how it is by no means certain just because I feel it makes sense. It could just be more satisfying to my psyche than say being an atheist or even a Christian. Just because one of these paradigms works for us doesn't make it "real." The idea of reincarnation, for example, seemed to spread AFTER the rise of the Aryan class system (before the caste system as it is now though). In other words it would give the elite a reason to say, "well you deserve where you are now. Don't uprise against me, and maybe next lifetime you'll be doing as good as me."

Izabael the genie comes off as perfectly real to me, but she may just be a personification of my higher self. It's possible. I'm open to many ideas on what things "actually" are as opposed to what they feel like. Maybe in the end what they feel like is more important than what they actually are.

Maybe old priests had a higher success rate of curing mental diseases as "demonic possessions" than psychologists do now by calling them psychosis and handing out drugs. That's why I think the bottom line of magick should be: Does it help us now? Does it help the self as well as the society? These questions are very important, because what if....just what if, each other IS all we have? You never know. There could be a great God of It All, or it could just be us humans, plants, and animals. I like having a belief system that covers both, I guess.

*iza