The Laws Of Magick, Concepts under review. Options

The Laws of Magick are the basis for most spellwork and sorcery as far as the majority of us are concerned. These concepts are the longstanding observations from, well, probably as long as humans are capable of accurately recounting. I am starting a journal/grimoire to put my own observations in. I am taking the Laws of Magick and reviewing them to see what all needs replaced or removed, or quite possibly, added. I have already started and quite honestly I am not sure how to proceed. Any ideas on magickal testing to prove or disprove any Laws without associating any of the other Laws would be most helpful. If testing these Laws proves impossible without associating any other laws, please at least keep the use of other laws at a minimum. And if it really does prove impossible to keep other Laws unassociated within the testing of the various laws, then i will proceed as if I were facing the world's greatest Rubik's Cube. Trial and error, time and time again... and when I'm done(who knows how many years from now) I will be sure to report my findings to these forums so that everyone may question it, confirm it, ponder at it, or whatever the case may be. Thank you for at least reading, even if you think that I'm wasting my time.

hehe, yeah, Nanner is meant to be kinda tongue in cheek (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) but also to have some fairly serious points, humor with a serious message (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Are these discrete models - and I'm thinking here western esotericism vs. african tribal magic (in terms of the degree of difference, not specific traditions) - effectively utilizing and experience different mechanics all together, or are they really just adressing those mechanics in different ways?

very interesting question.
I think, that in some cases, it is true that people are doing the exact same thing but calling it something different, and using slightly different ritual "props", etc. So that what you have is two different traditions and one basic belief/method (underneath the dogmatic trappings).

And I think that in other cases, people are doing things which are actually quite different in terms of the functional mechanics of it.
I can think of a number of magical 'effects' which could be arrived at by more than one 'different' mechanical method, even within the same paradigm/system.
I think that frater u.d.'s little article on models of magick is basically an attempt to refine things down to a few core 'basic' mechanisms, or theories, about how magick works. I think he's doing, in a way, much the same thing as the original poster was hoping to do, but on a very generalized level.

Of course all of this is a matter of perspective... I am basing my opinion on my own experiences & practice as well as studying that of others. But as i pointed out before, successful magick & strong correlations & mechanisms & intricacies, etc. of my own working systems (plural), can be deceptively self-reinforcing, leading one towards a false sense of 'rightness'.
I'd sum up by saying that I have numerous ideas about how magick works, I don't think all magick is actually functionally 'done' the same way, at the most basic level, and I'm always open to new ideas about how magick works (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I suspect that until I achieve my spiritual goals, all of this will remain 'a matter of perspective' to me.

And then on a less cognitive level, I have my patron, with whom I interact intellectually, but when she offers input on how things work, I tend to regard it as somewhat more 'solid' than if it is just my own theory which proves reliable. But then she is herself pretty relativistic in explaining things, generally her input on a topic of magical practice is that the reality of it is something which cannot be 'perfectly' captured by any set of words, like any 'label' it will always fall short of fully embodying the entirety of the thing described. So you can have numerous descriptions ("complex labels") of the magick, which each perhaps contain 'some' truth, but none containing 'all' of it. ...Much like the parable of the blind men & the elephant, actually.
Anyway, I do regard her input as 'trusted' in a way which I can't logically substantiate though. I know her, very intimately, and I simply do trust her word. Her input gets sort of a 'free pass' on conflicts with my own understanding, as she has repeatedly been born out as having a much deeper and more accurate insight than I.

Are frater u.d.'s models of magick just the trunk and ears and tusks of a single elephant? I find that really hard to answer. I'm going to have to go with "I don't know". I would say that 'everything' in this universe (and any of it's subtle layers) is all part of one big elephant, so in that sense, the science of a flashlight and the art of summoning could be said to be all part of "designing an effect in the universe" and all one basic grand thing... but, I don't think they work on exactly the same principals... it depends on how 'generalized vs. specific' you choose to regard the matter I think. Sort of a categorizing affair.

kudos, my brain feels quite stretched out by your question & the resulting thought trains. if I have seemed to give an answer, I am misrepresenting my thoughts. I have instead found myself exploring a plethora of subsequent questions. merci beaucoup (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This post has been edited by Kath: Dec 26 2009, 04:04 PM

I have found that my own divinity tends to express itself through various facets and faces, each of which approach the myriad angles of life - not just magic, but the all inclusive experience of living and being - from drastically different angles. The only thing they are consistent in is that they tend to agree that the substance of creation can be grouped and regrouped infinitely, and from this cosmic alchemy arises every possible thing. At the same time though, the process by which that alchemy takes place, from the most gross and material level to those so subtle we hardly count them as created at all, is by most accounts apparently far less infinite. To me, that kind of paradox - the finite giving rise to the infinite in a finite expression of eternity - is the earmark of something worth investigating in earnest. When that was first 'quoted' to me, magic became far more simple in its execution, I think, for me, but more difficult in scale.

I think I want to define what I personally mean when I say 'mechanical' in relation to magical process. I do not so much mean the actual churning of the gears of creation which ultimately is responsible for the changes that take place in existence - all of which I consider, in the most broad and encompassing sense, to be alchemy and magic - as much as I mean the basic tools which we use to cause the gears to turn the way we want them, when we want them.

Take for instance the law of vibration, which we can narrow down to the law of names in a particular tradition. In essence, of course, to know the name of something is to be able to influence it in some way. To what degree is questionable and then there is the consideration of different kind of names and what they really refer to, and so on.

This mechanic arises in different ways throughout virtually every tradition. You can't affect something you can't name. But, it's not always as simple as knowing a person's given name - sometimes it requires a full name, sometimes a special hidden name, other times nick names or childhood names. Sometimes you need the mother's birth name in order to have power over a person's name at all.

But, of course, some of us do our magic without names at all. Or do we? If I want to effect some change on a purely energetic level, I process everything first in my phenomenal mind - that is, i think thoughts, I identify concepts, I order processes, all of this I do on some level and in various combinations depending on the effect, before I make contact with the energy, or energies, that I want to work with, which I identify in various ways from their emotional resonance to non-phenomenal qualities which can't be expressed in words, but equate none the less to a variety of conglomerative concepts that, although outside of my physical experience, identify those energies none the less.

In so many ways, these are as much names as spoken names are. In a way, the law of names is really just the law of labels, and everything - absolutely everything - experienced on any level is named in this way. We can say that some things don't have names, but really we just have to widen our idea of what a name can be - and I'm not the first person in human culture to say it - and on what level a thing is named. For me to work magic on or around a particular individual, for instance, I'm less concerned with their name than a direct connection to their energy. And when i can I do utilize the law of contagion but I prefer to be able to make a connection to the individual's 'true name' as it were - their energetic presence, the impact they create in the subtle realm.

So in a third revision we might make this law even more universal in calling it the Law of Identity - Law of Knowledge is considered the most general but I think for practicality Identity is one specific kind of knowledge one might find more easy to take into consideration.

This then is a univeral mechanic of magical practice - it may come in a different name (hah, no pun intended), or operate on various levels of consciousness, but the fact remains that in absolutely every tradition the Identity of the Ends intended, the individuals involved, the energies contacted in whatever way, etc., some or all of these and others are going to be necessities in any paradigm. "Names" are therefore an absolute essential to magical practice. Even outside of phenomenal consciousness there is identity, although it takes on a different meaning. Right up until the total Oneness - at which degree there is no law, no magic, no alchemical process anyway, so it becomes moot.

I believe that the understanding of magical laws - that is to say, those various essentials, the baseline necessities of magical operation - is not an impossible thing to achieve or apply. At the same time I also don't believe that collecting some grasp of these principles necessitates a self-reinforcing paradigm of personal 'rightness'. This is mostly because 'rightness' or 'wrongness' is moot. If you are able to cause magical effects, then you are applying magical law - you may not understand all the levels on which this is true when you cause that effect, but if a thing is happening, then there is a cause, and there is a relationship between cause and effect which must be necessarily describable in mechanical terms.

Your patron is correct, not that you need me to tell you, in saying that there are some elements of magic which cannot be captured by any set of words. But that doesn't mean that there are no absolute mechanics - just that some of those mechanics must be grasped on a higher level than the purely phenomenal mind. I loosely equate your experience with your patron as being similar to my own experience with what I express as my own Divinity. I'm hesistant to say that we share the exact same experience, but I understand what you mean when you say that her input gets a 'free pass'.

Almost all description of magical laws, must be allegorical by necessity. Its the famous axiom "That which is above is like that which is below; and that which is Below is like that which is Above" - the allegory which can be grasped by the lower or phenomenal mind, is similar to the actual thing which is in the Higher Mind, the non-phenomenal consciousness. I think that this caveat is a critical part of the discussion of magical laws, so that anyone approaching the subject matter can understand first that what they are 'seeing' is only a pale expression of the truth.

But it is still worthwhile to involve oneself in for two reasons. First, because when that 'lower form' of some law is passed into the lower mind of the student, they then have access, over time, to it's higher expression. That doesn't mean they can express that higher existence in words, just that within their own sphere they then can truly apply it. Second, I believe that if we are going to expand our ability to communicate things in 'words' as it were (even if 'words' takes on a new meaning itself) then it is necessary to pursue higher expressions of concepts and continue to try and discuss them phenomenally in some way.

However, to make this conversation more constructive, I'll pose this: Consider some magical effect of which you are capable, and of which you are comfortable describing you particular technique. Take into consideration possible necessities to execution, prerequisites, if you will, and allow us the opportunity to compare and contrast in what way we would accomplish the same and how, according to our own paradigms, we understand said magical effect to come to pass based on our own understanding of the mechanics of our magic - in those cases where, of course, we have any hypothesis regarding those mechanics. In the interest of escaping paradigm, I have been considering mechanics for well over a decade.

If you need to illustrate or even give birth to concepts in order to fully express yourself, feel free. We can pound out details and clarify things over time. What I hope to come to ultimately, is some common ground wherein we may expose the ways in which we think differently, and the ways in which we think similarly.

I suggest this, not in a way of illustrating anything akin to 'rightness', but as an exercise of analysis of things not commonly subjected to such, either because they elude analysis by their very nature, or because analysis doesn't traditionally serve any purpose.

peace