I remember when I first encountered magic back during childhood as shown in various television shows and cartoons.
Magic was most often talked about as "magic power(s)", and frequently portrayed as a kind of energy that wizards, witches, etc... used.

While intrigued and attracted to the topic far more than others I knew at that time, I found myself increasingly bothered by how magic was discussed and portrayed. I didn't know how to clarify why I was bothered by it back then until I realized that, the way it was presented, was as a quantifiable resource that seemed a lot like money: some people had more of it, some people had less - and those with more could make more things happen compared to those with less; some people constantly schemed about how to acquire money; some people tried to short-cut the earning process by making counterfeit money; and although some people wished they could have nothing more to do with money, their lives were inexorably affected by it nonetheless. Magic was discussed/portrayed similarly to money in all those respects (and inevitably more, but I am mindful that the analogy has limits) - and I came to comprehend that I didn't like that because the point became a kind of greedy and petty power grab, most often for fulfilling ignoble purposes.

A turning point for me about magic came when I hunting for more by started exploring books about it at the local library, and eventually stumbled across explanations for magic from an occult perspective which clarified Magick as a process one had to learn how to master - instead of being some sort of sparkly-beaming-zapping-etc... quantifiable plasma power one hurled around to manipulate the Physical Plane to show off and/or to gratify mundane desires.


Seems to me that Psientific studies/practices are suffering from the same sort of discussion/portrayal as magic once had been predominantly discussed/portrayed way to me way back when.


By and large, the general perspective and approach regarding Psience is stuck in a zany "saturday morning cartoon" mode - where people are trying to develop the ability to hurl around objects, set stuff on fire, play catch with "psi balls", etc... and otherwise earn "psionic power(s)" so that they can perform dramatic "tricks" to affect the Physical Plane. Wishcraft (as I've explained elsewhere) has dug paws into it as well, giving a kind of ambitious motivation for learning it while tainting it all further with that brand of absurdity.

Now sure, there have been and are some folks who have impressive lucid bursts and approaches which attempt to take it further. I have read and encountered a few people who tackle Pscience with not only a passion, but also with pursuit that goes beyond the self-inflicted limiting theories of "academic psychology" and/or beyond struggling to reproduce the flash and bang pyrotechnics of Dragon Ball Z. Instead, they heroically challenge the zeitgeist about Psience like seals swimming against a tsunami - but they have been very, very rare in my experience.

And that is really unfortunate.
Because there seems to me to be an authentic opportunity here for this field to become something much profoundly more.


Is there anyone else who gets the gist of what I mean here, and also intuits where this could go upon being approached, explored, and developed with more gravitas?


As a suggestion for a direction that I can see could assist with evolving such an approach to Psience - I will venture here to make a parallel:
If Magick can be approached and considered as The Art - Psicence could be approached and considered as The Discipline.


Other perspectives welcome.

This post has been edited by Praxis: Nov 14 2011, 12:00 PM