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Sunday, October 23, 2005

The skill set NOT on most resumes...

Alchemical Braindamage:
"What is magick?

-Magick is a skill set. It is typically a toolbox designed to use internal states to induce change in accordance with the will. Yes it's fuzzy. If everyone does it or acknowledges it's efficacy it's not magick anymore, it's science. Magick is science that doesn't have the blessing of the consensus yet. There is a lot of overlap with spiritual practices largely because the same skills are applicable in both areas. ie; getting what you want, and transcending desire altogether. Yes that's a paradox. Life sucks, get a helmet."

...How does spirituality relate to magick?

- Tricky but fairly clear. Spirituality is an end, magick is a means. Magick is useful for getting things you want, it could be getting laid or knowing god. 'this technology is morally neutral'. You can be a magician without a whiff of spiritual understanding, but it's pretty likely a spiritual person will have some magickal skills, even if they tend not to use them. Why? Magick works partly as a result of broadening one's views of reality. Achieving spiritual insight is necessarily a broadening of views by quite a bit. Magickal skills are frequently a byproduct of this process. As I've said elsewhere undertaking spirituality as a way of gaining powers is regarded as a perversion of the path. Undertaking magick as a way of gaining powers is just like any other way of gaining powers. Your ego with superpowers is still your ego, and you still have to deal with it.

...Is spirituality a valid topic for evangelisation?

-Generally speaking, no. Spirituality requires critical thinking and self examination. Being evangelised tends not require either one very much. If you're capable of being evangelised, your hold on whatever reality set you had before was probably pretty weak, which implies you weren't using your critical thinking before, and probably aren't now.

The important thing to remember is that spiritual practice is not based on changing your concepts. It is based on changing your expeirence of life, beyond the reach of conceptualisation. Evangelism doesn't touch this area, and tends to deal entirely in the change of opinions and viewpoints. Most traditions council to let potential converts come to you. If you go to them, it's not really their idea or intiative, and that will cost them later on in the practice.

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