QUOTE(Acid09 @ Jun 8 2009, 08:20 PM)
I guess a few questions come to mind:
1. What sort of ideas do you have? Like what direction would you like to go with this? What type of site do you want to make?
2. Are you looking for anyone with credentials? Like a degree in psychology or someone actually certified in some aspect?
3. Can anyone join?
4. What sort of pay are you talking about (like are you talking about paying people to post articles, review books, take surveys, moderate the site... I don't know)?
5. Do you have a plan for security? (to protect against identity theft)
6. You are not asking for money right? You plan to build this web site yourself and gradually hire/pay people to be part of it?
Aside from that I like to make money so lets see whach'ya got! (IMG:
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The vision for the site is a news and information magazine and portal geared toward occulture and the magickal lifestyle. There will be a bit of content for everyone but the majority of the site will be geared towards magickians and forward thinking terrestrials like ourselves (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/wink.gif). The topics I'm planning on covering are a broad range of things related to the occult, magick, fringe/mad science and technology, life, art, and everything in between. Check out the articles over at realitysandwich.com, that should give you an idea of the direction I plan on heading with this project.
I'm not worried about credentials. I'm looking for people with passion about the occult, who have great ideas, and who can put those ideas into words and share it with others. The authors will have unlimited space and freedom to write about the topics that they would like, and get it read by a large amount of readers. I'm also looking for those people who specialize in a certain area, for example, if you are a chaote, and want to write strictly chaos magick articles, then have at it! If you do have credentials, or are actually certified in something, I'd be more then happy to accommodate (IMG:
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The site will have open registration, so anyone can join, read, comment, and discuss your articles amongst each other. The site is also going to have some social media aspects tied in to aid to the user experience.
The pay is going to be based entirely off of our advertising revenue. I can't pay you out of pocket right away but, as we start posting more articles and gaining a user base and our revenue goes up the paychecks will start rolling in. I want to give everyone equal shares of the revenue, after subtracting the small fees I pay for hosting the site. I really can't say how much this will be but, I know several people that write for realitysandwich.com, and they are making a pretty good living doing this.
I really don't think identity theft will be a problem, as no personal information will ever be transferred over the site, unless for some reason you chose to post your personal info but, that just seems like a bad idea to begin with. The server that the site is hosted on is very secure, as well as the software the site was built on (I'm using the wordpress platform) so there should be no problem with any hackers, etc. Things can go wrong, even some of the biggest websites out there have been hacked but, since there will be no personal info stored on the site, this shouldn't pose any problem.
I'm definitely NOT asking for money in any way, shape, or form. I'm a web designer and I've built this site from the ground up.
Also, the name of the site is Metamancy, and when it's up can be accessed at metamancy.com. I chose that name because I think it fits the mission of the site to be an all encompassing, forward thinking web magazine of pure awesomeness, and because it has some very cool and unique magickal connotations. The word has been very rarely used and really opens up the doors to a whole new world of magickal thinking. The original idea cam from this article:
QUOTE
Metamancy and the Bewitchment of Perception by Means of Language
by Pharaon
The problem of defining ‘magic’ perhaps has its greatest
allure and paradoxicality because in order to define that which
appears as the violation of expected definition, the nature of
definition itself would have to be understood. To be confronted
with the self-referential in most cases paralyzes rational,
discursive thought so completely that (more often than not)
rather than the magician defining what is meant by magic, some
particular concept labeled as ‘magic itself’ comes to define
the mage. This seems to be the ultimate irony, as the ultimate
mage would be one who could redefine any aspect of reality at
will - if that mage is hirself enslaved by hir own tools
(conceptual patterns) this goal becomes not only impossible due
to practical restraints, but also impossible due to conceptual
limitation. The more the magician becomes an embodiment of a
particular definition, the more potentiality is excluded until
at last there is no magician left: only the linguistic virus,
which has consumed all of the informational resources and
possibilities of his consciousness, remains.
The term ‘spell’ itself embodies the nature of magic as
a process of linguistic constraint; the magician ‘spells out’
hir desires by means of manipulating basic concepts which could
not be manipulated unless conceived; yet in most cases this
comes at the cost of sacrificing the possibility to process
information beyond those linguistic constraints. To continue
the analogy, although being multi-lingual allows for greater
variety and flexibility of cognition, it does not remove
dependency on language altogether, nor does it - on its own -
grant the ability to perform ‘metalinguistic’ manipulations;
that is, conscious, deliberate manipulation of language from
beyond its confines.
This suggests that those magicians who allow themselves
to be conceptually bound to such a degree that their own beliefs
remain inflexibly tied to labels which are not expressions of
organic experience will ultimately cut themselves off from their
own source of power.
“A is A” is a tautology, and “A is B” describes only a relation,
rather than anything about the essential ‘nature’ of A and B.
All too often, however, the magician’s understanding of magic
itself, not to mention hir own nature, becomes a label alone.
Once this occurs - and for many “magicians” it occurs instantly
as soon as they assume the name - it is essentially impossible
to undo completely, in as much as no child taught language can
‘forget’ verbal consciousness without extreme damage to the
brain. Rather than submitting to the apparently inevitable
process of becoming more and more trapped by conceptual thought
as a thrashing man becomes further mired in quicksand, however,
the magician might learn to manipulate and utilize concept
and belief in the same fashion that the visceral energies of
reality can be manipulated by will. If magic can be understood
as an act of literal ‘redefinition’ which ‘spells’ a new
description of perceptual experience, then the most subtle
magician is the one capable of ‘metamancy,’ the manipulation
of magical definitions (those concepts which are to most
‘magicians’ core beliefs) with sufficient finesse to ensure
the freedom of consciousness and will from the results of its
own acts of redefinition. It is in the possibility of
metamagical manipulation that magic distinguishes itself most
completely from religion, although religions may indeed produce
apparently miraculous effects. The truly “religious” individual
either cannot or will not allow certain basic presuppositions
to be subject to manipulation by hir own will; the skilled
magician, however, takes advantage of the flexibility of all
language, conceptuality, and belief, particularly hir own.
An immediate difficulty with this method is the
possibility of producing philosophical relativism, an obviously
irrational and self-negating proposition for the chief reason
that relativism cannot by definition claim to be objectively
true. It is this condition that makes the metamagical
perspective literally necessary to any coherent functioning as
a magician unbound by religious superstition; without conceiving
of magic as so self-referential that it can be utilized both
to redefine its own processes and the mage hirself, there is
a choice between the assumption of arbitrary and irrational
beliefs or consumption by a perceptual chaos which produces
only deranged pseudo-linguistic babble.
Although the primary use of the concept of metamancy is
simply to guard against these cognitive disasters, it does offer
a number of interesting possibilities in both the realms of
theoretical explanation and practical application. To begin with,
it explains the often perplexing observation that at least in
the beginning (and within a defined arena), superstitionists
tend on the whole to be more effective than those who are
supposedly using a rational and sane paradigm: the superstitionist
is practicing techniques accommodated by hir belief which are
understood viscerally and not merely conceptually. The
superstitious belief is either not in the way of the function of
these ‘routines’ (an impressive achievement for any belief,
really) or actively supports them. The magician attempting to
function in the modern world (driven by a linguistic structure
which is independent of cultural mythology) has no beliefs
which make magical manipulation inherent to hir expectations,
and of course must adopt provisional beliefs even to consider
‘magic’ at all. This creates the obvious problem that for the
most part these ideas are merely concepts, and the discovery of
correct magical technique (in the rare cases when it happens at
all) happens accidentally. Hence, the concept of metamancy also
explains the extreme propensity toward magical success exhibited
by those who tend to have extreme meditational or perhaps
philosophical/scientific training, as in their non-dogmatic/non-
superstitious forms these activities grant the mind an
unprecedented comfort with self-referentiality and redefinition.
Thus, even if only on an intuitive level, one who has become
accustomed to the requisite perceptual method can rearrange
cognition and even perception to accommodate the necessities
of magical techniques alien to hir own linguistic and
cultural structure. It might even be suggested that while
it was easier to become a functional magician in almost any
culture other than the linguistically and mythologically
disordered modern world, those who do manage in spite of the
lack of all modern context to persevere in developing the
power to manipulate reality directly will far excel their
predecessors in flexibility, adaptability, and inventiveness.
Indeed, given the conditions here explained, this argument
could be taken as far as the suggestion that only those
capable of what is here termed ‘metamancy’ should be
considered magicians at all; to everyone else, the term
‘magician’ merely describes another form of superstition
comparable to a cultural term for a sort of ‘priest.’
As to how metamantic awareness might express or
manifest itself practically, that could be the subject of
another essay or even a series, yet this essay would be
incomplete without some practical notes, though its purpose
was simply to establish the utility of the concept. The
first obvious effect such cognition has upon the magician
is that the standard perplexity regarding ‘the nature of magic’
simply disappears; the usual discontinuity between applying
‘mundane’ and ‘magical’ methods to a given task simply
disappears. This is not to say that the metamancer is no
longer capable of distinguishing ordinary and nonordinary
conditions of perception, as would someone permanently under
the influence of hallucinogens, but rather to suggest that the
metamancer is capable of blending and interweaving any symbolic
systems encountered. This absolves hir not only of the
conflict between the use of ‘actual magic’ and ‘simple psychology’
in attempts to manipulate human beings for example, but also
of the classic ‘magic vs. science’ debate. In the realm of
personal psychology, it eliminates the paralyzing conflicts of
desire that often arise from attempts at ‘magical manipulation,’
such as the classic inability of so-called magicians to affect
certain elements of reality without experiencing severe
disappointment or discomfort in the process. The perennial
example of this would be the supposed argument that “the
‘love-spell’ is self-negating since anyone who could be
subjected to a love spell would no longer be an object of
love;” such a statement would seem silly to anyone so capable
of manipulating the very concepts by which all such
interactions take place to such an extent that both hir own
thoughts/emotions/preferred target area and those of the
victim of the spell are seen as equally malleable.
In essence, metamancy becomes the utter disassociation
of the magician’s will from any conceptual restriction, even
the conceptual restriction that it is the ‘magician’s will,’
however it may be defined. Any attempt on a magician’s part
to define ‘magic’ within a particular linguistic reality
context, and believe that definition implicitly, results
either in disempowerment or priestly superstition. Only
by understanding magic as an explanation for the function
of all manipulation of perceived reality by will can these
traps be avoided. From the perspective of metamagical
awareness, all sentience structured in a linguistic form which
cannot manipulate itself completely is either superstitious,
insane, or both.
If you have any more questions feel free to ask (IMG:
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- Trevor Andrew Belmont
This post has been edited by T. A. Belmont: Jun 9 2009, 01:43 AM
The Next Big Occult Website., Claim your piece of (hopefully) internet history, hehe.
Jun 8 2009, 12:28 AM
