How long does any type of Root work last?
Savannahsmiles
Cacimar
>
An actual curse should always come back on you in some way...
Nightshade & Flat
"Savannahsmiles" <alice.s...@phms.com> wrote in message
news:fb69f6a3.02030...@posting.google.com...
> Can a curse come back on you? Or be reversed?
It is far easier to cast a curse than to reverse it. When you cast a curse
upon someone, you have established a connection between yourself and the
target, and there will always be some "leakage" that spills over onto you.
When casting a curse, it is wise to put a proviso in it for cessation, as in
the target fulfillilng certain conditions. It can also be undone by the
caster in a variety of ways, one of which is taking apart the physical
components (if any -- it's always smart to save the materials such as
candles, etc. used in the process in case removal is desired) and destroying
them. Divine intervention can be requested. One can also attune defenses
and shields to deflect/trap curse effect(s) and send them back to the
caster.
On a side note, I know one person who does a lot of curse magicks, and he
has said that backlash is not unwelcome because it indicates the curse is
working.
Hope this helps a little bit.
Love & Laughter,
Nightshade
Eoghan Ballard
"Cacimar" <cac...@terra.com> wrote:
> > Can a curse come back on you? Or be reversed?
> >
>
> An actual curse should always come back on you in some way...
más mierda de la nueva edad...
Cacimar
"Eoghan Ballard" <ebal...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote in message
news:eballard-A58959...@netnews.upenn.edu...
I've never been involved in new age and am unaware of it's popular tenets, I
avoid it like a flying skunk - perhaps you can elaborate on what you know of
it.
Specifically on how the idea of "reaping what you sow" is somehow a new
concept.
-
Eoghan Ballard
indeed reap what one sows, but seldom in so straightforward a manner.
The ethics of many magical practices contain a great deal more gray than
they do black and white.
I simply object when people blithly through around essentialist,
judeo-christian and (yes, often New Age) "white-light" notions of right
and wrong. I usually see far too many issues in a given situation to
find simplistic assessments adequate. Sorry, I don't really mean to be
on a high horse about this. It was just a gut reaction. no offense meant.
Eoghan
Josef
<ebal...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>No, but neither is it specifically an Anfrican religious tenet. One does
>indeed reap what one sows, but seldom in so straightforward a manner.
>The ethics of many magical practices contain a great deal more gray than
>they do black and white.
Are you saying that a practice can be neither ethical nor unethical?
That's hard to follow. A grey area in ethics exists when ambiguity and
vagueness exists, and there is room for interpretation. But then
you're back to square one and not actually dealing with "ethics".
Something is either ethical or it is not, the fact that the same act
may be ethical for one person but unethical for another depends on the
degree to which the relevant ethic may be subject to interpretation.
However, this does not take into account people simply being pig
ignorant. What then? Is that the grey area? What to do about that?
Education. Whose education? And so it goes on... not so much a grey
area as a can of worms.
Eoghan Ballard
it's own culture is the only valid point of departure for assessing its
ethic tenets. What is far too common, is the experience of people
judging other cultures based upon their own values. Western European
cultures have a really bad habit of doing this.
We both know that Hobbes finds all sorts of ways for dealing with such
ambiguities without going in circles. As for something either being
"ethical or not", that is a different can of worms. How many definitions
of the word "ethical" can you find. By the way, none of those
definitions tell you what is or is not ethical...
Cacimar
> No, but neither is it specifically an Anfrican religious tenet. One does
> indeed reap what one sows, but seldom in so straightforward a manner.
> The ethics of many magical practices contain a great deal more gray than
> they do black and white.
I agree with what you say here and below - except for it not being an
African tenet.
As you say, there are different standards for ethics for different systems.
The majority of systems tend to have a standard of basic good character or
what is considered abuse. Which is why I referred to an *actual* curse.
What is considered a curse, in my mind, is an effort to do undue harm (harm
defined by whatever system we're talking about). I think, for instance,
there's a difference between asking for justice after someone attacked you
and the police let them go and asking for someone who refused a date from
you to become deathly ill. I'm sure some would call the justice spell a
curse, but I consider a curse to be a negative attack. Negative is
ethically defined within that system. Justice usually isn't considered
negative. And of course, the person receiving the spell would always see it
as unjustified.
So, in African systems, I think there's a difference between a generic spell
and a curse. The departure with Nuevo-Euro systems would be where they tend
to say *any* spell that benefits you directly or harms someone in any way
(perhaps including justice) would come back on you, or variations thereof.
> I simply object when people blithly through around essentialist,
> judeo-christian and (yes, often New Age) "white-light" notions of right
> and wrong. I usually see far too many issues in a given situation to
> find simplistic assessments adequate. Sorry, I don't really mean to be
> on a high horse about this. It was just a gut reaction. no offense meant.
Understood. I supposed I could have extended myself to say:
An actual curse (assuming the definition of curse is a negative spiritual
attack according to the ethical standard of that religious or magickal
system) should always come back on you in some way (no matter how vague or
invisible, perhaps not even until after life and not necessarily visibly
related to this curse.)
But that's so many more letters 8-)
At the very least, like attracts like. If you aren't a well grounded person
and you pursue negative activities then similar spirits will dwell with you.
-
Eoghan Ballard
Again, I wish to emphasize that what I am most objecting to is the
application of non-African values and standards to African traditions.
It is impossible to characterize the vast diversity of African
traditions in a few paragraphs, but we get nowhere near an understanding
when we apply sui-generis western views. These assumptions which are a
part of western and especially American values are, like most else
voiced by Americans, unexamined and assumed to be fact. It is important
to always start by openly questioning what one assumes to be the
foundations of reality before examining the reality of others.
Eoghan
Eoghan Ballard
> On a side note, I know one person who does a lot of curse magicks, and he
> has said that backlash is not unwelcome because it indicates the curse is
> working.
>
> Hope this helps a little bit.
>
> Love & Laughter,
> Nightshade
Well, if you are working with a system that is effective, backlashes
are only what you use eyeliner for.
Eoghan
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
> The ethics of many magical practices contain a great deal more gray than
> they do black and white.
I think that's right. For example, Vodou-related magic can have an
objective that we would consider "malevolent", you know, make that
naughty guy suffer, make him get sick, make his livestock die, make
his next child stillborn, all kinds of stuff! And the people
commissioning such magic do not as a rule believe that it will "come
back on them".
> I simply object when people blithly through around essentialist,
> judeo-christian and (yes, often New Age) "white-light" notions of right
> and wrong. I usually see far too many issues in a given situation to
> find simplistic assessments adequate. Sorry, I don't really mean to be
> on a high horse about this. It was just a gut reaction. no offense meant.
I think that's right too!
The example I often give is of a person who comes to a Mambo wanting a
job. Okay, let's say I do magic to help this person find employment,
I feed his ancestors and his met tet and Ogoun perhaps, and I work to
make him find favor in the eyes of potential employers. If I am like
most Mambos, especially if the person has a particular job in mind, I
will also work to thwart his competitors, make them fail to gain the
job. Now, the man gets the job and his competitor does not. Did I do
good to the man, or evil to the competitor?
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian Proverb
The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index1.html
(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)
Tom
"Mambo Racine Sans Bout" <raci...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:fc61f8b9.02031...@posting.google.com...
>
> I think that's right. For example, Vodou-related magic can have an
> objective that we would consider "malevolent", you know, make that
> naughty guy suffer, make him get sick, make his livestock die, make
> his next child stillborn, all kinds of stuff! And the people
> commissioning such magic do not as a rule believe that it will "come
> back on them".
Yet, by steeping themselves in that sort of vindictive, spiteful, and
murderous thinking and behavior, they fix themselves in a matrix of hatred
and isolation. Everybody knows that anybody could become the next "naughty
guy" for any reason whatsoever. Tomorrow it could be you.
The only people who would willingly hang out with a person that dangerous
is another person who was that dangerous. This results in an increased
likelihood that they will both end up killing each other.
Is it any wonder that the ranks of Vodou practitioners are never very
large?
> The example I often give is of a person who comes to a Mambo wanting a
> job. Okay, let's say I do magic to help this person find employment,
> I feed his ancestors and his met tet and Ogoun perhaps, and I work to
> make him find favor in the eyes of potential employers. If I am like
> most Mambos, especially if the person has a particular job in mind, I
> will also work to thwart his competitors, make them fail to gain the
> job. Now, the man gets the job and his competitor does not. Did I do
> good to the man, or evil to the competitor?
Would it be wrong to go out and shoot the other job seekers, just to get
them out of the way? How about intimidating the employer into hiring the
person by threatening to kill his family, leaving his dog dead on the front
steps as a warning that you're serious? Hey, you got your guy the job!
Wasn't that a good thing?
Josef
Bout) wrote:
>Eoghan Ballard <ebal...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote in message news:<eballard-7049BE...@netnews.upenn.edu>...
>
>
>> The ethics of many magical practices contain a great deal more gray than
>> they do black and white.
>
>I think that's right. For example, Vodou-related magic can have an
>objective that we would consider "malevolent", you know, make that
>naughty guy suffer, make him get sick, make his livestock die, make
>his next child stillborn, all kinds of stuff! And the people
>commissioning such magic do not as a rule believe that it will "come
>back on them".
Do you think that is particularly intelligent of them? Do they still
believe the same way when, after a man's livestock has been poisoned
by an accidental spillage of toxic material into the stream running
through his land--after their enemy commissioned such "magick"--their
own home accidentally burns down and their children are engulfed in
the flames? Or do they rarely connect the two incidents?
>
>> I simply object when people blithly through around essentialist,
>> judeo-christian and (yes, often New Age) "white-light" notions of right
>> and wrong. I usually see far too many issues in a given situation to
>> find simplistic assessments adequate. Sorry, I don't really mean to be
>> on a high horse about this. It was just a gut reaction. no offense meant.
>
>I think that's right too!
>
>The example I often give is of a person who comes to a Mambo wanting a
>job. Okay, let's say I do magic to help this person find employment,
>I feed his ancestors and his met tet and Ogoun perhaps, and I work to
>make him find favor in the eyes of potential employers. If I am like
>most Mambos, especially if the person has a particular job in mind, I
>will also work to thwart his competitors, make them fail to gain the
>job. Now, the man gets the job and his competitor does not. Did I do
>good to the man, or evil to the competitor?
You sound like a rare Mambo to be considering such things. Good luck
to you.
nguyen
> Did I do
> good to the man, or evil to the competitor?
>
> Peace and love,
>
> Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
you certainly benefited him and harmed his competitor's prospects if
you suceeded. If you succeeded you also interfered with a competition
of merit by influencing perceptions unduly.
What you did could be considered unethical or unfair even without any
thought of good or evil.
nguyen
Eoghan Ballard
"Tom" <danto...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Is it any wonder that the ranks of Vodou practitioners are never very
> large?
Actually, apart from the fact that not all do what Racine suggests,
Vodou is a world religion with quite a large following.
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
> "Mambo Racine Sans Bout" <raci...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:fc61f8b9.02031...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > I think that's right. For example, Vodou-related magic can have an
> > objective that we would consider "malevolent", you know, make that
> > naughty guy suffer, make him get sick, make his livestock die, make
> > his next child stillborn, all kinds of stuff! And the people
> > commissioning such magic do not as a rule believe that it will "come
> > back on them".
>
> Yet, by steeping themselves in that sort of vindictive, spiteful, and
> murderous thinking and behavior, they fix themselves in a matrix of hatred
> and isolation.
Sooo... you've spent a lot of time in Haiti? You have lived in
communities there, and thus you know that most Vodouisants are "fixed
in a matrix of hatred and isolation"?
I suppose at worst, if everyone was living this way... and of course
we can observe threads of this in other tradiitons, too, Santeria,
Palo... Santeros in my experience are quicker than other people to
believe that so and so is "throwning brujeria at me".
But in practice, at least in Haiti, things don't usually degenerate to
that point. And again, people who commission malevolent magic against
an enemy do not believe that it will come back on them, they believe
that they are using a spiritual weapon to fight an enemy who wants to
hurt them too. If their "pwen" is stronger, they will not be harmed.
That is how most Vodouisants in Haiti view this issue, frankly.
> The only people who would willingly hang out with a person that dangerous
> is another person who was that dangerous. This results in an increased
> likelihood that they will both end up killing each other.
Oh, I think that is even more negativistic a view than the one you
decry.
> Is it any wonder that the ranks of Vodou practitioners are never very
> large?
WHOA! Who told you that? Vodou is the *majority* religion of Haiti,
there are millions of Vodouisants in Haiti. Vodou is a tradition
which gives life, not one which leads people to kill each other off.
(I wrote:)
> > The example I often give is of a person who comes to a Mambo wanting a
> > job. Okay, let's say I do magic to help this person find employment,
> > I feed his ancestors and his met tet and Ogoun perhaps, and I work to
> > make him find favor in the eyes of potential employers. If I am like
> > most Mambos, especially if the person has a particular job in mind, I
> > will also work to thwart his competitors, make them fail to gain the
> > job. Now, the man gets the job and his competitor does not. Did I do
> > good to the man, or evil to the competitor?
> Would it be wrong to go out and shoot the other job seekers, just to get
> them out of the way?
Tom writes:
> How about intimidating the employer into hiring the
> person by threatening to kill his family, leaving his dog dead on the front
> steps as a warning that you're serious? Hey, you got your guy the job!
> Wasn't that a good thing?
The acts you have described above are crimes, not magical
interventions. I want you to read me more carefully. I wrote, "If I
am like most Mambos, I will..." do this and that, etc. I have not
suggested it is acceptable to commit crimes! It is alright, in the
view of Vodouisants, to work to bar the door to the supervisor's
office to other candidates for the position, and open the door for the
candidate who is the client of the Mambo.
A specialist in malevolent magic is not a Houngan or Mambo, usually.
That person is usually not initiated, and they are often referred to
as "bokor". That is the person you go to if you specifically want to
hurt someone, you don't go to a Houngan or Mambo for that.
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian Proverb
The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html
(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
> Actually, apart from the fact that not all do what Racine suggests
Please, folks, read what I write - I have not suggested that anyone do
anything, I have described the behavior and outlook of the vast
majority of Haitian Vodouisants.
> Vodou is a world religion with quite a large following.
HOORAY! Why does Tom believe we are few in number, anyhow?
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian Proverb
The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html
(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
> >objective that we would consider "malevolent", you know, make that
> >naughty guy suffer, make him get sick, make his livestock die, make
> >his next child stillborn, all kinds of stuff! And the people
> >commissioning such magic do not as a rule believe that it will "come
> >back on them".
>
> Do you think that is particularly intelligent of them?
Sure, why not? Christians believe that evil will come back on them,
Wiccans have the "three-fold law", and so on, but empirical
observation will teach you that every playground bully that gives some
little kid a black eye does not get three black eyes in return. Each
belief has adherents and each can cite reasons and give anecdotes for
believing as they do. Haitian Vodouisants are not stupid, they know
why they believe what they do also.
> Do they still
> believe the same way when, after a man's livestock has been poisoned
> by an accidental spillage of toxic material into the stream running
> through his land--after their enemy commissioned such "magick"--their
> own home accidentally burns down and their children are engulfed in
> the flames? Or do they rarely connect the two incidents?
Do you mean to suggest that the events are connected, or not? I mean,
are you suggesting that the house burned down by itself or that
someone started the fire? I am sorry, I don't understand what you are
saying, excuse me.
> >Did I do
> >good to the man, or evil to the competitor?
>
> You sound like a rare Mambo to be considering such things. Good luck
> to you.
:-)
Thanks. I don't know if I am a *rare* Mambo, but I am an
international Mambo with a background in Christianity so naturally, I
sort of compare and contrast the two cultures and form questions, you
see?
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian Proverb
The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html
(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
To YOU! The vast majority of Haitian Vodouisants would disagree. I
mean, if you are going to do magic to help one competitor, then if you
were going to be "fair" you would have to do the exact same magic to
help every other competitor, right?
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian Proverb
The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html
(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
> It is far easier to cast a curse than to reverse it.
Oh no it's not! ::Giggle:: At least, maybe I just have a talent for
taking off malevolent magic or something, but I find it pretty easy to
break "curses" and hexes and stuff like that. I use a certain type of
bath, and I invoke the ancestors, and I do a few little things that
Mambos know, and POOF! No more curse, no more spirit banging around
in your house at night, no more bad luck or funny bruises in odd
places or horrible accidents, nothing.
The thing is, the person who sent it in the first place could always
send it again. That is why people either get a garde or become kanzo.
For more information on gardes, see;
http://mamboracine.tripod.com/gad.html
And for more information on the kanzo, see The VODOU page, there is a
whole section on the kanzo ceremony.
Josef
Bout) wrote:
I think that was my point, that essentially an act of magick to cause
harm to someone else could quite easily find retaliation in a
perfectly straightforward act of arson, *or* that the house burnt down
by "accident", *or* that it was a backlash against the original act
"by magick". What I am saying it that it is just as much a mere belief
to believe that an essentially evil act will not attract evil
consequences for yourself as perpetrator, and that the fact it was
done behind the veil of secrecy "via magick" is no guarantee against
personal repercussions. That simply underlines the cowardice of the
commissioned violence against another.
In fact, in my opinion such a skulking approach to attempt to have
power over others simply makes those repercussions more "fateful",
since Nemesis generally desires to teach the perpetrator of a heinous
act a lesson they will not forget easily, the perpetrator being both
the bokor and the commissioner of the act. Nemesis can wait years
before striking. Nothing to do with the threefold law of return, which
is merely girly wiccan dogma for those dense enough to need such a
stupid rule, who have yet to discover for themselves the benefits of
being a decent human being without needing to be held in check by fear
of evil returning to them.
Some people believe evil rebounds, others think it is karma free.
*Both* are mere beliefs. Personally, in my own life I choose to behave
decently towards other people not because I fear the consequences if I
don't but because I think it is a better way to live. Although I also
realise that every act has a consequence, and that consequence mirrors
the act. It always amazes me that other people don't see the
advantages of behaving like a decent person.
If you want to cause a woman's baby to wither in the womb, one of your
cited examples of a typical act of Haitian sorcery, then there is
little difference between employing a bokor to cast a curse and hiring
a thug to thump her in the stomach and run away. I trust I make myself
clear. I know some people here have problems with this concept.
>
>
>> >Did I do
>> >good to the man, or evil to the competitor?
>>
>> You sound like a rare Mambo to be considering such things. Good luck
>> to you.
>
>:-)
>
>Thanks. I don't know if I am a *rare* Mambo, but I am an
>international Mambo with a background in Christianity so naturally, I
>sort of compare and contrast the two cultures and form questions, you
>see?
I don't see Christianity as any yardstick of all that is decent. A
grounding in ethics would be more useful.
Josef
Bout) wrote:
>"Nightshade & Flat" <and.e...@eatel.net> wrote in message news:<zNti8.162108$pN4.8...@bin8.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com>...
>
>> It is far easier to cast a curse than to reverse it.
>
>Oh no it's not! ::Giggle:: At least, maybe I just have a talent for
>taking off malevolent magic or something, but I find it pretty easy to
>break "curses" and hexes and stuff like that.
How much would you charge, for example, to break Catherine and
Nagasiva's Yronwode's curse on Joel Biroco, or would you consider such
intervention in another Mambo's sorcery unethical?
And what if you intervened in a curse case like that, but Biroco had
already reversed the curse, would you know? Or would you be involving
yourself then in *his* sorcery?
It's a tricky old business the curse-breaking business. So many things
to take into consideration. And what if you try to lift a curse but
the original curser is stronger than you, won't that mean that you
become cursed yourself? It's a dangerous business this hex-busting
business. Do you have to wear special suits?
>I use a certain type of
>bath, and I invoke the ancestors, and I do a few little things that
>Mambos know, and POOF! No more curse, no more spirit banging around
>in your house at night, no more bad luck or funny bruises in odd
>places or horrible accidents, nothing.
>
>The thing is, the person who sent it in the first place could always
>send it again.
But don't you manage to kill them then? Don't people feel cheated
though if there isn't a death? Sounds like a lucrative business the
curse and counter-curse business.
Tom
"Mambo Racine Sans Bout" <raci...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:fc61f8b9.02031...@posting.google.com...
> "Tom" <danto...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:<sd8k8.83$jt4.1...@news.uswest.net>...
> > "Mambo Racine Sans Bout" <raci...@aol.com> wrote in message
> > news:fc61f8b9.02031...@posting.google.com...
> > >
> > > I think that's right. For example, Vodou-related magic can have an
> > > objective that we would consider "malevolent", you know, make that
> > > naughty guy suffer, make him get sick, make his livestock die, make
> > > his next child stillborn, all kinds of stuff! And the people
> > > commissioning such magic do not as a rule believe that it will "come
> > > back on them".
> >
> > Yet, by steeping themselves in that sort of vindictive, spiteful, and
> > murderous thinking and behavior, they fix themselves in a matrix of
hatred
> > and isolation.
>
> Sooo... you've spent a lot of time in Haiti?
As little as possible. Aren't they the folks with the succession of
murderous dictators and thugs running the country? Aren't they the
poorest, most desperate, and most isolated of all Caribbean islands?
> You have lived in communities there, and thus you know that
> most Vodouisants are "fixed in a matrix of hatred and isolation"?
People who wish stillborn infants on their enemies are murderous and
hateful. People who feel proud of that sort of activity are fixed in a
matrix of isolation and hatred. It doesn't matter if there's a cultural
basis for it or not.
> I suppose at worst, if everyone was living this way... and of course
> we can observe threads of this in other tradiitons, too, Santeria,
> Palo... Santeros in my experience are quicker than other people to
> believe that so and so is "throwning brujeria at me".
I don't care which label you choose for it or which group you think is
worse than which other group. Any group that sanctions murder, vandalism,
and mayhem as justified means for an individual to get his or her way is
mired in slime.
> But in practice, at least in Haiti, things don't usually degenerate to
> that point. And again, people who commission malevolent magic against
> an enemy do not believe that it will come back on them, they believe
> that they are using a spiritual weapon to fight an enemy who wants to
> hurt them too. If their "pwen" is stronger, they will not be harmed.
> That is how most Vodouisants in Haiti view this issue, frankly.
And If I'm faster with a gun, does that mean it's OK for me to kill you?
If I'm bigger and stronger, does that mean I get to prey on the weak with a
clear conscience?
> > The only people who would willingly hang out with a person
> > that dangerous is another person who was that dangerous.
> > This results in an increased likelihood that they will both end
> > up killing each other.
>
> Oh, I think that is even more negativistic a view than the one you
> decry.
Is it? In what way?
> > Is it any wonder that the ranks of Vodou practitioners are never very
> > large?
>
> WHOA! Who told you that? Vodou is the *majority* religion of Haiti,
> there are millions of Vodouisants in Haiti.
On a global scale, you're a mere handful. And you'll never be more than a
mere handful.
> Vodou is a tradition
> which gives life, not one which leads people to kill each other off.
The recent history of Haiti indicates otherwise.
http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99/americas/haiti.html
http://infomanage.com/caribbean/haiti/violence.html
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/haiti/haiti-vigilantes.htm
http://www.haiti-info.com/Htlm/news1201/ap19.htm
> > > If I am like
> > > most Mambos, especially if the person has a particular
> > > job in mind, I will also work to thwart his competitors,
> > > make them fail to gain the job. Now, the man gets the
> > > job and his competitor does not. Did I do
> > > good to the man, or evil to the competitor?
>
> > Would it be wrong to go out and shoot the other job seekers, just to
get
> > them out of the way?
>
> Tom writes:
>
> > How about intimidating the employer into hiring the
> > person by threatening to kill his family, leaving his dog dead on the
front
> > steps as a warning that you're serious? Hey, you got your guy the
job!
> > Wasn't that a good thing?
>
> The acts you have described above are crimes, not magical
> interventions.
So if you kill somebody by magick, it isn't really a crime? Is that what
you're saying? Or are you saying that murder by magick can't be proved, so
therefore no "crime" took place?
If someone deliberately sabotages someone's attempt to get a job and I can
prove it, it's actionable under law.
It's not a fair or legal tactic to win a race by drugging your competitors.
> I want you to read me more carefully. I wrote, "If I
> am like most Mambos, I will..." do this and that, etc. I have not
> suggested it is acceptable to commit crimes!
I think you've done just that.
> It is alright, in the view of Vodouisants, to work to bar the door
> to the supervisor's office to other candidates for the position,
> and open the door for the candidate who is the client of the Mambo.
As I say, it's not alright to drug your competition.
> A specialist in malevolent magic is not a Houngan or Mambo, usually.
> That person is usually not initiated, and they are often referred to
> as "bokor". That is the person you go to if you specifically want to
> hurt someone, you don't go to a Houngan or Mambo for that.
And if you're not a vodouist, you go to a hitman. The difference is
minimal.
Mike R.
wrote on 3/16/02 12:42 PM:
> Nothing to do with the threefold law of return, which
> is merely girly wiccan dogma for those dense enough to need such a
> stupid rule,
actually, the "classical" explanation of the threefold rule in Wicca is that
our actions have consequences beyond the physical, in the realms of mind and
spirit as well, in recognition of a threefold nature of reality, and that a
wise person considers these realms, not just the manifest material world in
contemplating an activity. it is not a reward and punishment based idea,
that is a corruption.
regards
mike
Josef
"threefold nature of reality": dogma.
There is nothing classical there. Unless you want to cite a source for
this belief in classical literature. I presume the inverted commas of
"classical" are intended to convey a belief emanating from behind the
Veil of Isis? I have always regarded that kind of thing as simply a
higher form of bullshit.
>
>regards
>
>mike
Omo Oshun
Mike R.
wrote on 3/16/02 8:07 PM:
> "threefold nature of reality": dogma.
i said "A" threefold nature of reality.. not THE 3fold nature of reality.
one persons dogma is another person's useful rule of thumb. relax.
> There is nothing classical there. Unless you want to cite a source for
> this belief in classical literature.
by classical, im not referring to Greco-Roman culture dude.. i'm referring
to "classical" in the sense of what elders of BTW trads teach their actual
students and not what pop-pagan subculture has promulgated among the
neo-pagan masses who have only read Llewellyn books. If you want a
reference, cf the Farrar's "A Witches Bible".
> I presume the inverted commas of
> "classical" are intended to convey a belief emanating from behind the
> Veil of Isis? I have always regarded that kind of thing as simply a
> higher form of bullshit.
your presumptions are inaccurate.. and man dude, do you have an attitude
problem or what? i didnt attack you, so whats your problem? why the flame?
peace be upon you.
mike
Joel Biroco
>in article v9t79ukm2r3sbtjn2...@4ax.com, Josef at a...@z.com
>wrote on 3/16/02 8:07 PM:
>
>> "threefold nature of reality": dogma.
>
>i said "A" threefold nature of reality.. not THE 3fold nature of reality.
>one persons dogma is another person's useful rule of thumb. relax.
>
It's still dogma. A or The, doesn't change a thing.
>> There is nothing classical there. Unless you want to cite a source for
>> this belief in classical literature.
>
>by classical, im not referring to Greco-Roman culture dude..
That was clear.
>i'm referring
>to "classical" in the sense of what elders of BTW trads teach their actual
>students and not what pop-pagan subculture has promulgated among the
>neo-pagan masses who have only read Llewellyn books.
There's a difference?
>If you want a
>reference, cf the Farrar's "A Witches Bible".
>
A reference is not needed to back up a wooly idea.
>> I presume the inverted commas of
>> "classical" are intended to convey a belief emanating from behind the
>> Veil of Isis? I have always regarded that kind of thing as simply a
>> higher form of bullshit.
>
>your presumptions are inaccurate.. and man dude, do you have an attitude
>problem or what? i didnt attack you, so whats your problem? why the flame?
This is not about "flame", but opinion. It's not about "attack", but
opinion. "Attitude problem", is that what someone has when they think
differently to other people? Like Winston Smith in 1984?
It is often pointless attempting to discuss other people's treasured
doctrines, freedom of thought to them is like going out into the big
wide world after years of institutionalization.
>
>peace be upon you.
And you.
>
>mike
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
> On 16 Mar 2002 09:13:23 -0800, raci...@aol.com (Mambo Racine Sans
> Bout) wrote:
>
> >"Nightshade & Flat" <and.e...@eatel.net> wrote in message news:<zNti8.162108$pN4.8...@bin8.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com>...
> >
> >> It is far easier to cast a curse than to reverse it.
> >
> >Oh no it's not! ::Giggle:: At least, maybe I just have a talent for
> >taking off malevolent magic or something, but I find it pretty easy to
> >break "curses" and hexes and stuff like that.
>
> How much would you charge, for example, to break Catherine and
> Nagasiva's Yronwode's curse on Joel Biroco, or would you consider such
> intervention in another Mambo's sorcery unethical?
They've cursed Joel Biroco? Why? Who is Joel Biroco anyhow?
If Joel came to me, I would probably charge him $101 for the work.
But, I mean, I like Cat, I wouldn't send it back on her. I might even
ask her what was up before I took the case. But if I decided to do
the work, it's not unethical.
> And what if you intervened in a curse case like that, but Biroco had
> already reversed the curse, would you know? Or would you be involving
> yourself then in *his* sorcery?
I would do a reading first, and that way I would know.
> It's a tricky old business the curse-breaking business. So many things
> to take into consideration. And what if you try to lift a curse but
> the original curser is stronger than you, won't that mean that you
> become cursed yourself?
No - it's like fixing someone's car, if you can't fix it you can't fix
it, but that doesn't mean your car will blow a gasket.
> But don't you manage to kill them then? Don't people feel cheated
> though if there isn't a death? Sounds like a lucrative business the
> curse and counter-curse business.
Oh goodness, no! I don't kill people or even do really bad things to
them. If someone is bothering you I make them go away, that's all.
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian proverb
Fu Man Chu
Bout) wrote:
>Josef <a...@z.com> wrote in message news:<hq379usnsaclie665...@4ax.com>...
>> On 16 Mar 2002 09:13:23 -0800, raci...@aol.com (Mambo Racine Sans
>> Bout) wrote:
>>
>> >"Nightshade & Flat" <and.e...@eatel.net> wrote in message news:<zNti8.162108$pN4.8...@bin8.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com>...
>> >
>> >> It is far easier to cast a curse than to reverse it.
>> >
>> >Oh no it's not! ::Giggle:: At least, maybe I just have a talent for
>> >taking off malevolent magic or something, but I find it pretty easy to
>> >break "curses" and hexes and stuff like that.
>>
>> How much would you charge, for example, to break Catherine and
>> Nagasiva's Yronwode's curse on Joel Biroco, or would you consider such
>> intervention in another Mambo's sorcery unethical?
>
>They've cursed Joel Biroco? Why? Who is Joel Biroco anyhow?
I believe he eez Chinese Mao Shan sorceror. He teach in ze Vest. Ze
Vronwodes are zee powerful sorceror's in zer own right, but if zay try
to curse "Ma Xia", as he ezz known in zee Chinese Triads of Hong Kong,
zen zay may be dead already.
>
>If Joel came to me, I would probably charge him $101 for the work.
>But, I mean, I like Cat, I wouldn't send it back on her. I might even
>ask her what was up before I took the case. But if I decided to do
>the work, it's not unethical.
He not need your help Mambo Racine, he is ze most evil man in ze
Vorld.
nguyen
> > What you did could be considered unethical or unfair even without any
> > thought of good or evil.
>
> To YOU! The vast majority of Haitian Vodouisants would disagree. I
> mean, if you are going to do magic to help one competitor, then if you
> were going to be "fair" you would have to do the exact same magic to
> help every other competitor, right?
>
> Peace and love,
>
> Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
<chuckle>
You've got it all wrong. I regularly use my powers to assist those who
serve my purposes or me in financial situations. Once I used them to
move an entire company branch halfway across the nation to a low
employment zone, and then used them to get jobs for them in the
company.
However, anyone who works for me I make damn sure they deserve the job
before they get it. It's a question of merit whether one should help
someone get an opportunity for which they are well qualified for.
nguyen
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
> I regularly use my powers to assist those who
> serve my purposes or me in financial situations. Once I used them to
> move an entire company branch halfway across the nation to a low
> employment zone, and then used them to get jobs for them in the
> company.
>
> However, anyone who works for me I make damn sure they deserve the job
> before they get it. It's a question of merit whether one should help
> someone get an opportunity for which they are well qualified for.
You're talking about working for you in an office or as a regular
employee in some fashion, right?
Now, when YOU work for a client, do you decide if they "deserve" to
have their company branch moved? How would you know, for instance, if
the man who wants his wife brought back to him, "deserves" his wife?
Maybe he was beating her up!
I mean, if I know someone is out to hurt someone else, an innocent
person, I turn that client down. That's not a Mambo's work anyhow,
you go to the bokor for that.
But how do you handle it?
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian proverb
Mike R.
bir...@nospamhotmail.com wrote on 3/17/02 11:30 AM:
> It is often pointless attempting to discuss other people's treasured
> doctrines, freedom of thought to them is like going out into the big
> wide world after years of institutionalization.
it is often pointless attempting to discuss anything at all with a guy with
such a pompous attitude as yours, who presumes so much and thinks he knows
everything about someone based on one post. the "Threefold Law" is not my
"treasured doctrine" since i am not a Wiccan. so you can give your cries of
"dogma!" and other insinuations a rest. so much for that smug
self-satisfaction.
finis.
mike
Joel Biroco
It's telling that you thought I was addressing you, as opposed to
speaking generally.
Hieronymous707
>It's telling that you thought I was addressing you, as opposed to
>speaking generally.
It's telling what? You really haven't said anything yet.
-hi-
Black sun blur
>> WHOA! Who told you that? Vodou is the *majority* religion of Haiti,
>> there are millions of Vodouisants in Haiti.
>
>On a global scale, you're a mere handful. And you'll never be more than a
>mere handfull.
There are infinitely more practitioners and devotees of voodoo than there are
practicing ceremonial magicians. If you
combine the numbers of people involved in
the various african-derived magical religions (voodoo, santeria,candomble,
macumba, etc.), you're into the hundreds of millions.
Time to take off those blinders, there's a whole big world out there
>> Vodou is a tradition
>> which gives life, not one which leads people to kill each other off.
>
>The recent history of Haiti indicates otherwise.
>
What kind of logic is this?
The religion is responsible, and not other factors? Why not blame the Eddas for
the nazis while you're at it, since cursing was an "accepted" part of norse
traditions for hundreds of years. In fact, in just about every magical
tradition , cursing figures one way or another. It's just more readily obvious
in some than others. Of course, your particular ethical perception is the
correct one, right?
>And if you're not a vodouist, you go to a hitman. The difference is
>minimal.
So, it seems you're acknowledging that curses can be effective, in the
paranormal sense (not as placebo).
Joshua O'Brien
>
> There are infinitely more practitioners and devotees of voodoo than there are
> practicing ceremonial magicians.
What are the numbers on these?
whitlow
wrote:
>tom wrote-
>
>>> WHOA! Who told you that? Vodou is the *majority* religion of Haiti,
>>> there are millions of Vodouisants in Haiti.
>>
>>On a global scale, you're a mere handful. And you'll never be more than a
>>mere handfull.
>
>There are infinitely more practitioners and devotees of voodoo than there are
>practicing ceremonial magicians.
>If you
>combine the numbers of people involved in
>the various african-derived magical religions (voodoo, santeria,candomble,
>macumba, etc.), you're into the hundreds of millions.
>Time to take off those blinders, there's a whole big world out there
>
>>> Vodou is a tradition
>>> which gives life, not one which leads people to kill each other off.
>>
>>The recent history of Haiti indicates otherwise.
i saw a great film on haitti it had loads of zombies in it they didn't
have any eyes.
>>
>
>What kind of logic is this?
>The religion is responsible, and not other factors? Why not blame the Eddas for
>the nazis while you're at it, since cursing was an "accepted" part of norse
>traditions for hundreds of years. In fact, in just about every magical
>tradition , cursing figures one way or another. It's just more readily obvious
>in some than others. Of course, your particular ethical perception is the
>correct one, right?
>
>>And if you're not a vodouist, you go to a hitman. The difference is
>>minimal.
i knew a hitman once, he like hit me and said "man". you hatta be on
acid man, it was so funny.
>
>So, it seems you're acknowledging that curses can be effective, in the
>paranormal sense (not as placebo).
placebo? is that the belly-button?
curses? you're scary dude. d'you like have tattoos? i got a tattoo,
it's of a great big arse. it's on my arse. i sometimes wippe the wrong
one arf arf..
whitlow the serious mr magick dude didn't i tell ya i was once
arrested for not being able to stand up straight. they put me in a
bleedin straitjacket and i said fuckin 'ell its a straitjacket but
then i woke up an it was jus a dream.
>
>
>
catherine yronwode
>
> How much would you charge, for example, to break Catherine and
> Nagasiva's Yronwode's curse on Joel Biroco, or would you consider
> such intervention in another Mambo's sorcery unethical?
The existence of such a curse lives only in your mind, where it keeps
bumping into and riccocheting off your manipulation of multiple
real-life and usenet identities (including Steve Marshall / Joel Biroco
/ Josef), your belief that you have been magically attacked by complete
strangers who you claim have sent you nightmares and gotten you fired
from your putative job at The Lancet, your belief that i am a "Mambo"
and that my husband is a "sorceror," and your attempts to entangle
usenet by-passers in your personal psychodrama of curse-workings.
Just stop, will you?
cat (and no, of course i am not a Mambo) yronwode
catherine yronwode
>
> My only question in all of this business is when did Cat Yronwode
> become a mambo?
cat (never been to Haiti, but i've been to Oklahoma) yronwode
catherine yronwode
>
Josef wrote:
> > How much would you charge, for example, to break Catherine and
> > Nagasiva's Yronwode's curse on Joel Biroco, or would you consider
> > such intervention in another Mambo's sorcery unethical?
>
> They've cursed Joel Biroco? Why? Who is Joel Biroco anyhow?
Joel Biroco is the alt.magick equivalent of Omijuba -- a chimera.
cat yronwode
Hoodoo in Theory and Practice -- http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html
Eoghan
more murderous thugs in the White House than have governed a dozen
modern Caribbean nations.
Eoghan
Eoghan
readers on filter.
Eoghan
Tom
"Joshua O'Brien" <jo...@localhost.localdomain> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.44.02031...@localhost.localdomain...
This person asserts that there are an infinite number of voodoo
practitioners and devotees. Obviously there are not an infinite number of
ceremonial magicians. So voodoo wins!
I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove, though. I mentioned that
people who espouse sneaky and malicious treatment of anyone they take a
dislike to tend to become isolated and don't tend to attract many adherents
who aren't equally vicious and underhanded.
Now much is made of the number of voodoo adherents in Haiti, but you have
to remember that Haiti is the poorest country on Earth and has been living
in virtually lawless squalor for some 200 years.
Tom
"Eoghan" <ebal...@sas.upenn.edu> wrote in message
news:eballard-44AC1C...@netnews.upenn.edu...
"Voodoo economics"?
Joel Biroco
****************************************************
This matter may be placed in the hands of a UK solicitor specialising
in International Defamation and Libel Law. No further comment to be
made at this time. Those contributing to this thread are forewarned to
bear in mind that their comments on Usenet can be considered
actionable, and that their ISPs may be informed that actionable
statements have been made through their gateway.
****************************************************
Black sun blur
>
>
>
>"Joshua O'Brien" <jo...@localhost.localdomain> wrote in message
>news:Pine.LNX.4.44.02031...@localhost.localdomain...
>> Black sun blur wrote:
>> >
>> > There are infinitely more practitioners and devotees of voodoo than
>> > there are practicing ceremonial magicians.
>>
>> What are the numbers on these?
>
>This person asserts that there are an infinite number of voodoo
>practitioners and devotees. Obviously there are not an infinite number of
>ceremonial magicians. So voodoo wins!
Oh please, it's obvious i didnt mean a literal infinity. It's poetic license,
an expression.
And for anyone who thinks it's an absurd claim, please point to a nation made
up of ceremonial magicians. One can adduce from the tiny #'s making up
organizations like the OTO, numbers of books sold on the subject, and the
propensity for a good chunk of those interested in the area to not do much more
than read books, it's an eminently reasonable statement to make. Study
ethnographic data on the various african-derived magical religions.
None of this ultimately matters, but it was you who first implied the religion
lacked some kind of validity because it only had a "handfull" of adherents.
>I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove, though. I mentioned that
>people who espouse sneaky and malicious treatment of anyone they take a
>dislike to tend to become isolated and don't tend to attract many adherents
>who aren't equally vicious and underhanded.
So, the entire population of haiti is "sneaky and malicious"?
And you ducked my question. Does all this moral outrage mean you think curses
can be effective in the paranormal, non-placebo sense?
>Now much is made of the number of voodoo adherents in Haiti, but you have
>to remember that Haiti is the poorest country on Earth and has been living
>in virtually lawless squalor for some 200 years.
and as i said before, you're attributing haiti's problems to voodoo. is this
sound logic?
again, do you blame the norse magical tradition for nazism? you dont think
people made
recourse to "sorcerers" in, say, china's most
prosperous and stable periods? are you saying socio-economic problems are
caused from the populace being involved in spiritual practices that include
cursing? or are you saying that only poor, ignorant people in a "backwards"
nation would embrace that? because either assertion would be assinine.
besides, religions similiar to voodoo (in the sense of being syncrestic,
african-derived, and including cursing within the
panoply of possibilities) are practiced all over
south america, other islands, and, in growing numbers, here. not all devotees
are poor and uneducated, either, dont kid yourself.
Satyr
<danto...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "Joshua O'Brien" <jo...@localhost.localdomain> wrote in message
> news:Pine.LNX.4.44.02031...@localhost.localdomain...
>> Black sun blur wrote:
>> >
>> > There are infinitely more practitioners and devotees of voodoo than
>> > there are practicing ceremonial magicians.
>>
>> What are the numbers on these?
>
> This person asserts that there are an infinite number of voodoo
> practitioners and devotees. Obviously there are not an infinite number
> of ceremonial magicians. So voodoo wins!
Obviously. To conclude otherwise would be elitist. Sun-sign astrology
has them both beat, by the way.
> I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove, though. I mentioned that
> people who espouse sneaky and malicious treatment of anyone they take a
> dislike to tend to become isolated and don't tend to attract many
> adherents who aren't equally vicious and underhanded.
>
> Now much is made of the number of voodoo adherents in Haiti, but you
> have to remember that Haiti is the poorest country on Earth and has been
> living in virtually lawless squalor for some 200 years.
Thanks, dude. I've been waiting a long time for someone to make this
point. Still puzzling over possible cause and effect, though. Is Haiti
such a wonderful place 'cause of the voodoo, or is the squalor just
providing fertile ground in which it may flourish? Personally, I favor
the former, but am still open to suggestions.
--
Satyr
Listen to the fools reproach! It is a kingly title!
-Wm. Blake
Kevin Filan
"Joel Biroco" <bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:is0e9uo2qr19ovk9v...@4ax.com...
Shut up, Spankard. Nobody gave you permission to speak.
Peace
Kevin "Banish This, Why Don't You?" Filan
--
You are a wasted life, Filan. True to tell. Go have a fucking drink. You
post ideas that could bring peace to this STUPID newsgroup, your "home turf"
instead of to the right people. YOU should have been hit bu that WTC
falling down then.
- the warmth and wisdom of Tani Jantsang
Joshua O'Brien
>
> tom wrote-
> >
> >news:Pine.LNX.4.44.02031...@localhost.localdomain...
> >
> >> Black sun blur wrote:
> >> >
> >> > There are infinitely more practitioners and devotees of voodoo than
> >> > there are practicing ceremonial magicians.
> >>
> >> What are the numbers on these?
> >
> >This person asserts that there are an infinite number of voodoo
> >practitioners and devotees. Obviously there are not an infinite number of
> >ceremonial magicians. So voodoo wins!
>
> Oh please, it's obvious i didnt mean a literal infinity. It's poetic license,
> an expression.
> And for anyone who thinks it's an absurd claim,
But it's not a claim yet. It's just 'poetic license', as you said.
> please point to a nation made
> up of ceremonial magicians. One can adduce from the tiny #'s making up
> organizations like the OTO, numbers of books sold on the subject, and the
> propensity for a good chunk of those interested in the area to not do much more
> than read books, it's an eminently reasonable statement to make.
So, what are the numbers?
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
> The existence of such a curse lives only in your mind, where it keeps
> bumping into and riccocheting off your manipulation of multiple
> real-life and usenet identities (including Steve Marshall / Joel Biroco
> / Josef), your belief that you have been magically attacked by complete
> strangers who you claim have sent you nightmares and gotten you fired
> from your putative job at The Lancet, your belief that i am a "Mambo"
> and that my husband is a "sorceror," and your attempts to entangle
> usenet by-passers in your personal psychodrama of curse-workings.
>
> Just stop, will you?
>
> cat (and no, of course i am not a Mambo) yronwode
LOL! Poor Cat! Maybe you and I should get together and do an
anti-delusional wanga for the guy.
:-)
Love,
Mambo Racine
Eoghan
Eoghan
Joel Biroco
Bout) wrote:
****************************************************
Tom
"Black sun blur" <blacks...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020319082628...@mb-fm.aol.com...
>
> Oh please, it's obvious i didnt mean a literal infinity. It's
> poetic license, an expression.
Don't use poetry in place of fact.
> And for anyone who thinks it's an absurd claim, please point
> to a nation made up of ceremonial magicians.
All nations are made up of ceremonial magicians. Name me one nation that
does not conduct public ceremony for the purpose of focusing national
attention and will, not to mention spirituality.
> None of this ultimately matters, but it was you who first implied
> the religion lacked some kind of validity because it only had
> a "handfull" of adherents.
That was not my implication. That was your conclusion and it's completely
irrational. I was not commenting on the "validity" of anyone's religion.
I don't even know what an "invalid" religion might be. I was commenting on
the consequences of certain actions.
> >I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove, though. I
> >mentioned that people who espouse sneaky and malicious
> >treatment of anyone they take a dislike to tend to become
> >isolated and don't tend to attract many adherents
> >who aren't equally vicious and underhanded.
>
> So, the entire population of haiti is "sneaky and malicious"?
Are you saying that the entire population of Haiti espouses the sneaky and
malicious treatment of anybody they don't like?
> And you ducked my question. Does all this moral outrage mean you
> think curses can be effective in the paranormal, non-placebo sense?
Was that a question you asked? I hadn't noticed it amidst all the "poetic"
blather.
Morality has to to with intent as much as it does result. An ineffective
attempt to do something malicious is as morally reprehensible as an
effective attempt. People react more when the attempt is successful, but
the moral obligation to refrain from that sort of behavior has nothing to
do with whether or not one succeeds in hurting people.
> >Now much is made of the number of voodoo adherents in Haiti,
> >but you have to remember that Haiti is the poorest country on
> >Earth and has been living in virtually lawless squalor for some
> >200 years.
>
> and as i said before, you're attributing haiti's problems to voodoo.
You were wrong before and you're still wrong.
I am attributing the tendency to accept vigilante justice to a condition of
lawlessness. In any place where the rule of law prevails, personal
vendettas and malicious mischief are immoral practices that contribute to
the breakdown of a society and the ruination of its people. This is so
because of the natural consequences of this kind of behavior, which reduces
trust and increases isolation.
> again, do you blame the norse magical tradition for nazism?
No more than I blame Christianity for Nazism. Nor do I blame Vodou for the
behavior of people who are sneaky and malicious. I blame people for their
actions, not some religious foldefol.
> you dont think people made recourse to "sorcerers" in,
> say, china's most prosperous and stable periods?
Sure they did, sometimes. And people murdered one another sometimes, too.
I realize that you haven't a clue what I'm talking about and so can't be
expected to stick to the subject, but you might try making a more sincere
effort before wandering off into irrelevancies.
> are you saying socio-economic problems are
> caused from the populace being involved in spiritual practices
> that include cursing?
No.
> or are you saying that only poor, ignorant people in a "backwards"
> nation would embrace that?
No. However, it is more likely to happen, and more often happens, in a
desperate population for whom the rule of law is ineffective.
> besides, religions similiar to voodoo (in the sense of being
> syncrestic, african-derived, and including cursing within the
> panoply of possibilities) are practiced all over south america,
> other islands, and, in growing numbers, here. not all devotees
> are poor and uneducated, either, dont kid yourself.
Cite your source for the claim that Vodou and "similar religions" are
growing in the USA. I want data, not opinions.
Black sun blur
>
>> And for anyone who thinks it's an absurd claim, please point
>> to a nation made up of ceremonial magicians.
>
>All nations are made up of ceremonial magicians. Name me one nation that
>does not conduct public ceremony for the purpose of focusing national
>attention and will, not to mention spirituality.
Alright, our definitions of what constitutes a ceremonial magician are clearly
different.
Fine. Amend what i wrote to mean "people working in ,or with the materials of,
the golden dawn, oto,other thelemic groups, aurum solis, fraternitas saturni,
martinism, etc etc".
>> So, the entire population of haiti is "sneaky and malicious"?
>
>Are you saying that the entire population of Haiti espouses the sneaky and
>malicious treatment of anybody they don't like?
You're quite expert at twisting things around. I dont think the magical
influence
of events (incl cursing) is ipso facto "sneaky or malicious".
Suppose a woman is raped, and legal recourse has failed. Would a curse upon
the assailant consitute "sneaky and malicious" to you? yes or no.
>Does all this moral outrage mean you
>> think curses can be effective in the paranormal, non-placebo sense?
>
>Was that a question you asked? I hadn't noticed it amidst all the "poetic"
>blather.
is that a yes, no, or maybe
>Morality has to to with intent as much as it does result. An ineffective
>attempt to do something malicious is as morally reprehensible as an
>effective attempt.
So, if the above answer is no, you're all worked up about people working off
their aggression in psychodrama?
nguyen
>
> You're talking about working for you in an office or as a regular
> employee in some fashion, right?
>
While I have weilded visible and worldly power of that magnitude, in
this case it was accomplished by invisible and other worldly powers.
> Now, when YOU work for a client, do you decide if they "deserve" to
> have their company branch moved?
Yes, even if it costs me business in this world or the other. It
doesn't seem to have been a problem however long term. Many
wise-persons throughout the world take into account community concerns
and larger social issues even when doing work for individual clients.
> How would you know, for instance, if
> the man who wants his wife brought back to him, "deserves" his wife?
Because one who weilds the invisible powers ought to have enough
perception of mind in order to see through a man and see if he is
sincere.
> Maybe he was beating her up!
>
When I get involved in a domestic case, it's a full service issue. I
don't just help him get his wife back - I address the underlying
problem. I help him learn how to deal with his anger issues, his
habits, his unemployment, whatever is leading him to take it out on
his wife. I help him become a better man.
And if after helping him do all of that, if I find out that he has
shown ingratitude for my help by beating his wife again- and it is
very hard to hide certain things from a person of power - then I make
sure he doesn't beat his wife again.
> I mean, if I know someone is out to hurt someone else, an innocent
> person, I turn that client down. That's not a Mambo's work anyhow,
> you go to the bokor for that.
>
> But how do you handle it?
>
> Peace and love,
>
> Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
Recently I had to sit in judgement of a case. In the end, I sanctioned
a follower of mine to have the spirits take a man from this world
before his time would have otherwise come.
I did this because the law had turned a blind eye to the man for
years. It was his legal right to poison the mind of his young son
because of custody. The young son had a new home with his mother a
good man, but the other father was a bad influence.
I did not care that the man was bad, or was a drug user, violent,
criminal, etc. I did care that he was teaching his son bad ways.
I judged that the situation, which they had tried to make work for
years using all reasonable methods had gotten nowhere. To save the
young son and give him a chance at a life, the father had to pass from
this life and quickly.
So I ordered my former student to use the invisible powers to arrange
so that he might pass from this world. The responsibility was mine.
With power comes hard choices in this world or the other one, but what
I did I did for the greater good - pro bono publico - and as a last
resort to save a young life and future in direct peril.
You cannot confuse the issue by bringing up morally ambigious cases,
Rancine, and playing a game of "who can tell what is good and bad".
People of power have been dealing with these situations for a long
time.
While I do not always show my power, but those who know it personally
show great respect for it. They respect it because people can tell
when you mean to do good. They can tell if you do it because you are
greedy. They can also tell when you are working for the good of others
when they see it for themselves.
Who judges? The sorcerer, wizard, magician who uses their power. They
must judge. They must search their heart and do what is necessary.
They must always question themselves and never think that they have
the right to do what they want or wish personally. They only have the
right to do what is necessary. No more.
That is why people follow me. I do not bind them. I do not ask them. I
only act for the greater good. They know it, and they choose to listen
to what I have to say.
That is why even though I weild the invisible powers for life and
death, they trust me.
Do not try to confuse the issue, what is in your heart - that decides
the good or evil.
nguyen
Black sun blur
>
>> And for anyone who thinks it's an absurd claim, please point
>> to a nation made up of ceremonial magicians.
>
>All nations are made up of ceremonial magicians. Name me one nation that
>does not conduct public ceremony for the purpose of focusing national
>attention and will, not to mention spirituality.
Alright, our definitions of what constitutes a ceremonial magician are clearly
different.
Fine. Amend what i wrote to mean "people working in ,or with the materials of,
the golden dawn, oto,other thelemic groups, aurum solis, fraternitas saturni,
martinism, etc etc"
>> So, the entire population of haiti is "sneaky and malicious"?
>
>Are you saying that the entire population of Haiti espouses the sneaky and
>malicious treatment of anybody they don't like?
You're quite expert at twisting things around.Clearly I dont think the magical
influence
of events (incl cursing) is ipso facto "sneaky or malicious".
Suppose a woman is raped, and legal recourse has failed. Would a curse upon
the assailant consitute "sneaky and malicious" to you? yes or no.
>Does all this moral outrage mean you
>> think curses can be effective in the paranormal, non-placebo sense?
>
>Was that a question you asked? I hadn't noticed it amidst all the "poetic"
>blather.
is that a yes, no, or maybe ..hmm?
>Morality has to to with intent as much as it does result. An ineffective
>attempt to do something malicious is as morally reprehensible as an
>effective attempt.
So, if the above answer is no, you're all worked up about people working off
their aggression in psychodrama?
Would you class mathers and crowley as immoral, sneaky, and malicious for their
alleged magical combat?
>I realize that you haven't a clue what I'm talking about and so can't be
>expected to stick to the subject, but you might try making a more sincere
>effort before wandering off into irrelevancies.
I dont believe these are irrelevancies. The fact that so many magical
traditions, including some very spiritual ones (the norse immediately springs
to mind), include curses as an intregal part of their
practices should at least give one pause.
Perhaps you could make a sincere effort to broach another perspective yourself.
Black sun blur
>> please point to a nation made
>> up of ceremonial magicians. One can adduce from the tiny #'s making up
>> organizations like the OTO, numbers of books sold on the subject, and the
>> propensity for a good chunk of those interested in the area to not do much
>more
>> than read books, it's an eminently reasonable statement to make.
>
>So, what are the numbers?
>
>
You and i both know -exact- figures are impossible to give. But, for the sake
of discussion---
I've seen scholarly estimates of the number of santeria devotees -in florida
alone-
as being 60,000
the caliphate oto has about 3000 active members, -worldwide-
Tom
> Tom wrote-
> >
> >> And for anyone who thinks it's an absurd claim, please point
> >> to a nation made up of ceremonial magicians.
> >
> >All nations are made up of ceremonial magicians. Name me
> >one nation that does not conduct public ceremony for the
> >purpose of focusing national attention and will, not to mention
> >spirituality.
>
> Alright, our definitions of what constitutes a ceremonial magician
> are clearly different.
Are they? What do you think a ceremonial magician is?
> Fine. Amend what i wrote to mean "people working in ,or with the
> materials of, the golden dawn, oto,other thelemic groups, aurum
> solis, fraternitas saturni, martinism, etc etc".
"Etc., etc."?
That's like saying Christianity is only Jehovah's Witnesses. Stop trying
to define something by merely pointing out examples.
> >> So, the entire population of haiti is "sneaky and malicious"?
> >
> >Are you saying that the entire population of Haiti espouses the sneaky
and
> >malicious treatment of anybody they don't like?
>
> You're quite expert at twisting things around.
You're not too good at it and got caught. That's all. You tried to twist
my statements about sneaky and malicious individuals into a blanket insult
against a whole country.
> I dont think the magical influence
> of events (incl cursing) is ipso facto "sneaky or malicious".
> Suppose a woman is raped, and legal recourse has failed.
> Would a curse upon the assailant consitute "sneaky and
> malicious" to you? yes or no.
Yes, it would be sneaky and malicious. Walking right up to him on the
street and shooting him would be less sneaky than trying to hurt him
without being detected. Getting on with her life instead of trying to
extract a sterile revenge would be less malicious.
> >> Does all this moral outrage mean you
> >> think curses can be effective in the paranormal,
> >> non-placebo sense?
> >
> >Was that a question you asked? I hadn't noticed it amidst
> >all the "poetic" blather.
>
> is that a yes, no, or maybe
It's a comment on the fact that you didn't actually ask that question
before you accused me of "ducking" it.
As for an answer, I don't accept any claim of paranormal power unless it
can be demonstrated under controlled conditions and careful observation.
I'm not some gullible, ignorant twit who runs to a jive-ass, big-talking
spell-hawker to solve my problems for me. Are you?
> >Morality has to to with intent as much as it does result. An
> >ineffective attempt to do something malicious is as morally
> >reprehensible as an effective attempt.
>
> So, if the above answer is no, you're all worked up about
> people working off their aggression in psychodrama?
Oh, don't pull that pop psychology bullshit. Stewing in bile is no way to
live your life effectively. The result of huddling in the dark muttering
futile curses is just as damaging as if the curses actually worked. This
isn't "working off their aggression in psychodrama" any more than whacking
off to porn works off the urge to have sex.
Tom
>>
> Would you class mathers and crowley as immoral, sneaky, and
> malicious for their alleged magical combat?
Certainly. Not to mention foolish and more than a touch nutty.
> I dont believe these are irrelevancies. The fact that so many
> magical traditions, including some very spiritual ones (the
> norse immediately springs to mind), include curses as an
> intregal part of their practices should at least give one pause.
How are you defining "spiritual"? What has spirituality got to do with
morality? Do you think that because you believe a certain action to be
"spiritual" that it no longer has consequences?
> Perhaps you could make a sincere effort to broach another
> perspective yourself.
What gives you the notion that I haven't held other perspectives at
different points in my life? Is it merely the fact that I don't hold your
perspective now? Isn't that awfully narrow-minded of you?
Joshua O'Brien
Thankyou, now we're getting somewhere. Taking those figures as
representative, there's a twentyfold (rather than infinite) ratio of
santeria to ceremonial magick populations.
I wonder if they're representative in the same way, though, because
they're so differently categorised. One's a regional grouping while the
other is ideological. Apples and oranges, perhaps.
In the interest of comparing apples and apples, Google.com reported 31,900
pages for 'santeria' and 12,900 for 'ceremonial magick'. However, it
reported 420,000 for 'magick'. Are santeria devotees just not as verbose
as magicians?
AgnosticGnostic
>Sure, why not?
Because there is nothing to gain in such self-limiting beliefs.
>Christians believe that evil will come back on them,
And so it would seem it does.
>Wiccans have the "three-fold law",
I am pretty sure they are getting screwed harder than the christians.
>and so on, but empirical
>observation will teach you that every playground bully that gives some
>little kid a black eye does not get three black eyes in return.
your on the mark now!
>Each
>belief has adherents and each can cite reasons and give anecdotes for
>believing as they do.
Usually because its what so-and-so told them was true. No fair play to figure
it out for themselves.
>Haitian Vodouisants are not stupid, they know
>why they believe what they do also.
Those who run a religion are seldom as foolish as those who follow a religion.
>Thanks. I don't know if I am a *rare* Mambo, but I am an
>international Mambo with a background in Christianity so naturally, I
>sort of compare and contrast the two cultures and form questions, you
>see?
Its good to see someone calling christianity a culture, not just a religion.
AgnosticGnostic
>To YOU! The vast majority of Haitian Vodouisants would disagree. I
>mean, if you are going to do magic to help one competitor, then if you
>were going to be "fair" you would have to do the exact same magic to
>help every other competitor, right?
That is very lucrative philosophy! I like it.
AgnosticGnostic
<snip some of the stuff>
>Why not blame the Eddas for
>the nazis while you're at it,
Sorry Hitler and Co. were christian using norse paganistic symbols.
However if you want to blame the Eddas for what the vikings did by all means go
for it, a god is only as good as its people.
>since cursing was an "accepted" part of norse
>traditions for hundreds of years.
And it had nothing to do with the Nazi's.
AgnosticGnostic
> Are santeria devotees just not as verbose
>as magicians?
Or just more incapable of designing webpages due to techonoligical levels or
financial capabilities.
The numbers are skewed methinks as to the ratio of santaria to ceremonialist.
Being that santeria is almost an umbrella to cover several groups lets throw
free masons and roman catholics into ceremonialist and the numbers suddenly
look different.
Joshua Geller
> Black sun blur wrote:
> > I've seen scholarly estimates of the number of santeria devotees
> > -in florida alone- as being 60,000 the caliphate oto has about 3000
^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^
> > active members, -worldwide-
^^^^^^^^^
>
> Thankyou, now we're getting somewhere. Taking those figures as
> representative, there's a twentyfold (rather than infinite) ratio of
> santeria to ceremonial magick populations.
How do you figure?
The Santeria people in the rest of the world don't count?
There's millions of them in the Caribbean, without even counting the related
religions in Haiti, South America, Africa etc.
> In the interest of comparing apples and apples, Google.com reported 31,900
> pages for 'santeria' and 12,900 for 'ceremonial magick'. However, it
> reported 420,000 for 'magick'. Are santeria devotees just not as verbose
> as magicians?
Most of them are in Cuba, and don't have reliable internet access.
Blazin' Tommy D.
Joshua Geller <dcl...@best.com> wrote in article
<ff6b3639.02032...@posting.google.com>...
> Joshua O'Brien <jo...@localhost.localdomain> wrote in message
news:<Pine.LNX.4.44.02032...@localhost.localdomain>...
> > Black sun blur wrote:
[snip]
Joshua O'Brien
>
> Joshua O'Brien wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.44.02032...@localhost.localdomain>...
> >
> > Black sun blur wrote:
>
> > > I've seen scholarly estimates of the number of santeria devotees
> > > -in florida alone- as being 60,000 the caliphate oto has about 3000
> ^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^
> > > active members, -worldwide-
> ^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > Thankyou, now we're getting somewhere. Taking those figures as
> > representative, there's a twentyfold (rather than infinite) ratio of
> > santeria to ceremonial magick populations.
>
> How do you figure?
(Overly) simple division. Just as Santeria is not limited to florida,
neither is ceremonial magick limited to COTO.
> The Santeria people in the rest of the world don't count?
>
> There's millions of them in the Caribbean, without even counting the related
> religions in Haiti, South America, Africa etc.
They're represented here by the Florida population, which is why it's
important to note that the ratio between Santeria in Florida and Santeria
worldwide very likely differs to that between COTO and all styles of
ceremonial magic.
It's not a very reasonable figure, but is far more so than infinity.
Maybe Secret Chiefs don't fill out the census anyway.
AgnosticGnostic
<snip snip>
>If you want a
>reference, cf the Farrar's "A Witches Bible".
thats hardly a reference.
Mambo Racine Sans Bout
>.. one who weilds the invisible powers ought to have enough
> perception of mind in order to see through a man and see if he is
> sincere.
> a follower of mine to have the spirits take a man from this world
> before his time would have otherwise come.
OH! Excuse me, I didn't realize I was talking to God.
> I ordered my former student to use the invisible powers to arrange
> so that he might pass from this world.
Teee hee! Uhhhh... okay.
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian proverb
The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html
(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)
Lisa Gardner
Nguyen, you do worry me at times. I do believe that you are powerful-
I hope you use that power in a modest way that is alignment with
what I would call god's will.
I feel that you are basically a good person... but the power you have
does worry me though. I don't want to see you misuse it and I do
hope that you are *very* careful about this, friend. And I do consider
you a friend.
Lisa
Gnome d Plume
Bout) wrote:
******Ask Joel about the Chinese sage who had his psychic powers
tested by his enemies in a most interesting and savory way.....*****
GdP
Joel Biroco
wrote:
I'm not sure I know which one you're referring to, but I can say that
the truly powerful Chinese sage exploits hidden dangers his enemies do
not see. Ko Hung, for instance, likened those who did not appreciate
such hidden dangers to "a man climbing up a rotten rope to steal
eagle's eggs". Something to ponder.
(And no, I don't accept that Crowley was the reincarnation of Ko Hung
before anyone asks or thinks I may be referring to him, I'm referring
to the real Ko Hung.)
And then there is Chonggui the demon catcher (incidentally, "gui" is
ghost/demon/spirit and "Mogui" in the film Gremlins is actually the
name of a real Chinese demon).
>
>GdP
Asmodeus
Hash: SHA1
Joshua O'Brien <jo...@localhost.localdomain> wrote in
news:Pine.LNX.4.44.02032...@localhost.localdomain:
>> How do you figure?
>
> (Overly) simple division. Just as Santeria is not limited to
> florida, neither is ceremonial magick limited to COTO.
You obviously didn't take a basic statistics course.
- --
"The world is populated in the main
by people who should not exist."
-- George Bernard Shaw
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use
<http://www.pgp.com>
iQA/AwUBPJm8NFDu+agosMXSEQK+fACfbBaL077Q0MDpTjYEXYzcB6Z+sE4AniWq
1l4LcE1X+oiLauvJ8mAVeZ9K
=1ToO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Renfield
>
> Nguyen, you do worry me at times. I do believe that you are powerful-
> I hope you use that power in a modest way that is alignment with
> what I would call god's will.
>
> I feel that you are basically a good person... but the power you have
> does worry me though. I don't want to see you misuse it and I do
> hope that you are *very* careful about this, friend. And I do consider
> you a friend.
NO! Don't listen to her! Misuse your power and become the Dark
Emperor of the Qipploth! Destroy this petty world and bring a new era
of decadence and fire!
-Geist
Lisa Gardner
you sure seem sure of yourself.
Lisa
Joshua O'Brien
>
> Joshua O'Brien wrote:
>
> >> How do you figure?
> >
> > (Overly) simple division. Just as Santeria is not limited to
> > florida, neither is ceremonial magick limited to COTO.
>
> You obviously didn't take a basic statistics course.
What do you mean?
Renfield
Once he sees the power of this FULLY ARMED AND OPERATIONAL battle
station, he'll turn to the Dark Side quick enough.
-Geist
nguyen
>
> OH! Excuse me, I didn't realize I was talking to God.
>
<snort>
Don't talk silliness Racine. I have met many individuals of greater
power and experience than myself in this respect. My abilities are
quite modest. The only advantages I have are that people consistently
underestimate me and that backed into a corner I become absolutely
ruthless.
Among these kinds of men, and the overwhelming majority are men for
some reason, I am considered quite foolish and silly for bothering to
talk with people like you.
> > I ordered my former student to use the invisible powers to arrange
> > so that he might pass from this world.
>
> Teee hee! Uhhhh... okay.
>
> Peace and love,
>
> Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
<shrug> Anyone who makes it through the training process has to know
and demonstrate their ability to defend themselves through unseen
powers. It is the sine non qua standard.
nguyen
nguyen
> > Do not try to confuse the issue, what is in your heart - that decides
> > the good or evil.
>
> Nguyen, you do worry me at times. I do believe that you are powerful-
> I hope you use that power in a modest way that is alignment with
> what I would call god's will.
>
'I believe in the sun when I can not see it. I believe in love when I
cannot feel it. I believe in God even when s/he is silent.' - a
paraphrase of a quote attributed to a scrawl in a bomb shelter in
Cologne.
<chuckle> Bruce Barhans wrote that most over-muscled body builders are
98lb weaklings in their own mind. I can sympathize with that.
When I was growing up I seemed utterly alone, ignorant, vulnerable,
and weak in an extremely callous and hostile world. So I spent years
on a quest to become knowledge, skilled, and as dangerous as I could
possibly become.
One day, I woke up and realized I had far surpassed every standard I
had set and that I wasn't weak and didn't need to act weak anymore.
> I feel that you are basically a good person... but the power you have
> does worry me though. I don't want to see you misuse it and I do
> hope that you are *very* careful about this, friend. And I do consider
> you a friend.
>
> Lisa
Then be my friend. At times, people close to me have screamed at me:
'Who gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies?' ... a
remark that Racine's attitude resonated with. It is arrogance to judge
others.
I can only say that when God's voice is silent, and nobody seems to
know what to do, then I will do something ... I will decide if no one
else will ...
Power abhors a vacuum.
But I don't believe that it is my right to impose my will upon the
least of persons.
If you are worried about me then be my friend, don't leave me alone,
speak your mind to me. For it is when it is that I seem utterly alone
that I tend to resort to means of power.
Personally, I'd rather talk things out anyday.
nguyen
William Tucker
"nguyen" <aik...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:5740c929.02032...@posting.google.com...
me too...
Wm
hy
> If you are worried about me then be my friend, don't leave me alone,
> speak your mind to me. For it is when it is that I seem utterly alone
> that I tend to resort to means of power.
:) that's a good point. It is a lot easier to do mean things when we
don't have friends balancing us out.
whitlow
hello nudjen i gorra agree wi ya power does abhor a vacuum that's why
we don't tend to get the hoover out too much cos it might upset the
power man. we got a lot of power where me an clint live nudjin our
gaff's on a ley-line connecting up with five henges and a kentucky
fried, and if you extend the line past druid's corner it comes out in
a chipshop on the coast where i once found a seven-sided dice outside
on the pavement, so like that's really freaky energy goin on there
nudjen i don't want to disturb it by gettin the vacuum out cos it may
deflect the ley-line energy unpredictably resultin in a chaotic
escalation of forces that result in turbulence in the ant world, cos
ants bein smaller are more susceptible to disturbance in the power
vortex of the ley-line, specially when it goes through a chipshop an a
kentucky cos that's quite rare to have both on the same ley-line. so
yeah you're dead on man power does abhor a vacuum so i generally say
to clint leave it in the cupboard man i'd rather live in a pigsty than
take chances on disturbing such powerful ley-line energy with
carelessly applied suction. and besides, patterns you get in dust can
tell you things man that'd blow your mind if you can read it.
whitlow, vacuumin's a bore mr magick oooo-ooooh
Casey Sheldon
> <shrug> Anyone who makes it through the training process has to know
> and demonstrate their ability to defend themselves through unseen
> powers. It is the sine non qua standard.
Among warriors there will always be the need to know who is strongest. In
this case, strength is not merely sheer ability, but also includes
ruthlessness, adaptability to circumstance, and other factors. I noticed in
the other thread that you were discussing the characteristics of true
psychic attack/curses. In the same line of thought, I have heard many
magicians discuss "magical duels." Is this anachronistic thinking, or do
these sorts of battles still occur? If so, how does one know when the
challenge has been issued? If these questions seem misguided, then chalk it
up to the fact that I'm asking based on things that I've heard from
delusional people as well as magicians that I would consider to be fairly
adept. It is my experience that, like you mention in one of the snipped
paragraphs, most magicians who have the ability to engage in such combats,
generally do not talk to people who are not at their level. I'm curious as
to why you do. Where do you break from their ideals and philosophies?
Anyway, the last time we conversed we were speaking of the natures and
characteristics of quintessence, and I've found your information to be
consistent with my experiences, so I figured that I would ask you about this
subject, seeing as it has come up here. Thanx in advance!
--
Casey Sheldon
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A man's ethical behavior should be based
effectually on sympathy, education, and social
ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
indeed be in a poor way if he had to be
restrained by fear of punishment and hope of
reward after death."
- Albert Einstein
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> nguyen
>
Eoghan Ballard
catherine yronwode
> "Mambo Racine Sans Bout" <raci...@aol.com> wrote:
> > "Tom" <danto...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > Yet, by steeping themselves in that sort of vindictive, spiteful,
> > > and murderous thinking and behavior, they [adherents of Voodoo]
> > > fix themselves in a matrix of hatred and isolation.
[...]
> > > Is it any wonder that the ranks of Vodou practitioners are never
> > > very large?
> >
> > WHOA! Who told you that? Vodou is the *majority* religion of
> > Haiti, there are millions of Vodouisants in Haiti.
>
> On a global scale, you're a mere handful. And you'll never be more
> than a mere handful.
This conversation led me to check out the figures at
http://www.adherents.com
("Adherents.com is a growing collection of over 41,000 adherent
statistics and religious geography citations -- references to published
membership/adherent statistics and congregation statistics for over
4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, faith
groups, tribes, cultures, movements, ultimate concerns, etc.")
Here are their basic stats:
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents
(Sizes shown are approximate estimates, and are here mainly
for the purpose of ordering the groups, not providing a definitive
number. This list is sociological/statistical in perspective.)
1.Christianity: 2 billion
2.Islam: 1.3 billion
3.Hinduism: 900 million
4.Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 850 million
5.Buddhism: 360 million
6.Chinese traditional religion: 225 million
7.primal-indigenous: 190 million
8.Sikhism: 23 million
* 9.Yoruba religion: 20 million
10.Juche: 19 million
11.Spiritism: 14 million
12.Judaism: 14 million
13.Baha'i: 6 million
14.Jainism: 4 million
15.Shinto: 4 million
16.Cao Dai: 3 million
17.Tenrikyo: 2.4 million
** 18.Neo-Paganism: 1 million
19.Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
20.Scientology: 750 thousand
21.Rastafarianism: 700 thousand
22.Zoroastrianism: 150 thousand
* Vodoun: Vodoun is classified here as a subset of Yoruba religion.
Technically, Vodoun may be more Dahomean and Fon in origin (these are
tribal groups adjacent to Yorubas in West Africa), but it may easily be
thought of as part of the same Yoruba-dominated African-Western
Hemisphere religious category.
** Neo-Paganism: Neo-Paganism is an umbrella term for modern revivals of
ancient ethnic and magickal traditions. These are usually polytheistic,
but many Neo-Pagans consider their faith pantheistic, and many other
concepts of deity can be found among Neo-Pagans as well. Subdivisions
within Neo-Paganism include Wicca, Magick, Druidism, Asatru, neo-Native
American religion and others.
--------------------------------------------------------
So, Tom, according to the statistics cited above, the ratio of combined
African/African diasporic congregants worldwide to the combined
neo-pagan/magick/Asatru/Wicca congregants worldwide is 20 to 1.
cat yronwode
The Esoteric Archive --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/esoteric.html
Renfield
> Ah, but there is no light or dark side, there is only ourselves.
Be very good or very bad, even if only for a week, and then tell me
what you have learned about yourself.
-Geist
Tom
"catherine yronwode" <c...@luckymojo.com> wrote in message
news:3C9E62...@luckymojo.com...
> African/African diasporic congregants worldwide to the combined
> neo-pagan/magick/Asatru/Wicca congregants worldwide is 20 to 1.
But, of course we weren't talking about every single variant of Yoruba
culture. We were discussing Vodou, which *may be* derived from Yoruba or
it *may not*. Trying to toss 20 million Africans into the argument, even
though they may have nothing whatever to do with Vodou, is just an attempt
to confuse the matter.
Using your argument, we might as well lump neo-paganism in with
"primal-indigenous" religions, from which they *may have* sprung. That
makes it 190 million to 20 million. Vodou loses again.
nguyen
> Among warriors there will always be the need to know who is strongest. In
> this case, strength is not merely sheer ability, but also includes
> ruthlessness, adaptability to circumstance, and other factors.
Correct.
> I noticed in
> the other thread that you were discussing the characteristics of true
> psychic attack/curses. In the same line of thought, I have heard many
> magicians discuss "magical duels." Is this anachronistic thinking, or do
> these sorts of battles still occur?
Yeah. Think of human nature.
You have a bunch of highly disciplined, radically disposed (wishy
washy people don't get very far), proud (by far more common than
humility), prone to strong disagreement (people who agree with others
all the time don't buck the crowd enough to learn real magic), and
somewhat paranoid (after you get to a certain level, invisible powers
generally try to knock you off because you pop up on their radar)
people with no social reconciliation or legal enforcement system to
scare or persuade them into "being good".
Sometimes it's worse than the wild west.
Only calling it a "duel" is a little bit of a stretch of an
imagination.
> If so, how does one know when the
> challenge has been issued?
When you survive the hit or some other poor bastard or object takes
the near miss. The more serious a magician is about getting someone,
generally the less they talk about any given effort. Unless you're
demoing for a student or something.
There is no formal system or code of dueling.
> If these questions seem misguided, then chalk it
> up to the fact that I'm asking based on things that I've heard from
> delusional people as well as magicians that I would consider to be fairly
> adept.
Sure.
> It is my experience that, like you mention in one of the snipped
> paragraphs, most magicians who have the ability to engage in such combats,
> generally do not talk to people who are not at their level.
Sure. It's one of the unwritten rules.
I think it happens because the better you get, the less interested one
generally becomes in lower level socializing and discourse because of
the general lack of understanding prevelant.
> I'm curious as
> to why you do.
The word belief will be used loosely here for convenience's sake, it
doesn't mean the same thing to me as it does to an average person.
Lots of reasons. I don't believe in the snottiness most magicians seem
to acquire. I believe that magic(k) is a brithright of humanity
coequal with art, science, and religion and that unlike them has
fallen into decay (religion's recent fate is instructive) and should
be rehabilitated and advanced. Most people forget that most of the
scientific advances that let them sneer at magical superstitions have
been developed in just *four centuries*. Take science and technology
back four centuries, and you'll see that it was in a similar
developmental stage as magic(k) is stuck at now and has been for about
four centuries.
As people get better and better, they generally hang around places
like this ng less and less. It loses interest with them. When you've
arranged mortal fates with gods, listening to some newbie whine about
what color to visualize an archangel's eyes or some idiot prating
about belief get's grating. They've got better things to do like
elections to tip or wars to set in motion or small countries to use in
pawns in their games. So why not? I'm still kind of the new kid on the
block among them. They're not listening here. If I thought my peers
were listening and responding, I might react differently. The angel(s)
of my better nature told me to do so. Arm wrestled is closer to it.
That wasn't meant as a metaphor.
> Where do you break from their ideals and philosophies?
Most people who get really far in magic(k) have to work hard, and they
generally have to either be recruited into an old tradition, stumble
over some operation and get adopted, or obsessively dedicated on the
order of 40 something hours a week for decades.
And they generally pick one system and go with that.
Even if you bust hump, syncrenists almost never make it because the
stress is too great and most pasted together ideas fall apart
underneath it. Most people don't have time to reinvent the wheel
either from scratch, a living tradition can represent the effective
learning of centuries or millenia.
Don't get me wrong, there are is a whole cascading pyramid of
graduated levels of 'advancement'. I'm talking about the far end of
the spectrum here, the one in a 100,000 or one in a million who is
*really* serious about magic(k) as in literally cut throat serious.
But I'm different. Basically, practically everything I know I either
was born with or learned on my own. I was isolated, had no teacher,
and basically invented everything on my own. Started when I was 11
seriously and met my first real magician when I was close to 20. In
retrospect, I think I may have scared or weirded the hell out of him.
So as someone outside the usual lines of advancement, I'm an anomoly.
I don't have the same kind of values that many other magicians are
taught or acquire. *Culturally* and *mentally* I'm just an
above-average smart guy off the street who doesn't believe at all in
most of the mindsets that people have to go through to get somewhere
in magic(k). I like 'ordinary people'.
Eventually I did meet "them". I was terribly disappointed. Generally
they're not very nice people.
Allot of magicians who get to a certain point generally get this
attitude that everyday people without magic(k) are marks for the
taking, or at best irrelevant idiots. They'd figure that most of the
people here are chumps who are dicking around and will never get
anywhere in magic(k) and thus would be worthy of their contempt, to be
ignored, or silent puppet master-esque manipulations.
I generally don't have that attitude.
> Anyway, the last time we conversed we were speaking of the natures and
> characteristics of quintessence, and I've found your information to be
> consistent with my experiences, so I figured that I would ask you about this
> subject, seeing as it has come up here. Thanx in advance!
>
> --
> Casey Sheldon
Remember what I've written describes a trend. The people you know
probably show some degree of it. For whatever reason, the attitude of
not explaining stuff tends to get markedly worse the more you get away
from the ordinary. Guess that's why they call it the occult. The
patronizing, dismissive, or outright exploitation of less advanced
persons also seems to become worse. You can see people playing at it
here. In turn, there are people who sneer at them. In turn, others
still from deeper shadows sneer at those people.
For whatever reason, being born outside this environment, coming up on
my own almost totally isolated from other magic(k)al practioners, etc.
I never got into that groove. Seemed pretty idiotic to me.
nguyen
catherine yronwode
>
> "catherine yronwode" <c...@luckymojo.com> wrote:
> > Western Hemisphere religious category.
> >
> > So, Tom, according to the statistics cited above, the ratio of
> > combined African/African diasporic congregants worldwide to the
> > combined neo-pagan/magick/Asatru/Wicca congregants worldwide is
> > 20 to 1.
>
> But, of course we weren't talking about every single variant of Yoruba
> culture. We were discussing Vodou, which *may be* derived from Yoruba
> or it *may not*.
Actually, this is a complex issue. When African people were enslaved and
brought to the Americas, they came from numerous
/national/tribal/language groups, with separate religons (separate
pantheons, modes of worship, etc.) that were all somewhat related in a
few basics (ancestor veneration, for instance).
Members of these different African nations wre deliberately mixed
together by their "owners" in an attempt to minimize inter-tribal
communication and thus subvert the potential for rebellions. Thus
Haitian Voodoo contains some elements of non-Fon/Ewe religions, just as
Santeria contains elements of non-Yoruba religions. A nation like Cuba
contains Yoruba, Fon/Ewe, and Kongo religios groups side-by-side, and it
is not uncommon for a person to belong to two of them, due to
intermarriage. In the New World, the incorporated pantheons of a second
African religion often appear as a secondary strain within religion
largely derived from a different African religion and they are is
deliberately preserved in the form of special rites for the other
"nation." This is a direct outgrowth of the forced mixing of the
"nations" that occurred under slavery.
You can find some material about this subject at Racine's Vooooodou
Pages site. You can also get a dramatized idea of how such accomodations
arose by watching the movie "Amistad," where you will see how a
ship-load of people from different tribes were forced together and were
trying to sort out their own national issues even as they were being
treated as chattel.
For these and other reasons, it seems to be the growing consensus to
categorize these religions as "African & African Diasporic." It is
almost impossible, after 500 years of intensive intermarriage in the
diaspora, to say that any African-Diasporic religion is the pure
offshoot of one African language-group.
Actually, i have been in correspondence with the webmaster of
adherents.com about his casual use of the term "Yoruba Religion," which
necessitated his footnote to explain that he included Vodoun in that
group. I suggested that he use the more general term "African and
African-Diasporic" -- as the DMOZ directory does -- to cover the entire
field. He wrote me that he thinks this is a good idea, and he will
probably implement it.
This would make "African and African-Diasporic" equivalent in scope to
"Neo-Paganism," which he refers to as an "umbrella group" because it
includes Wicca, Aatru, Druidry, and Magick (Thelema).
> Trying to toss 20 million Africans into the
> argument, even though they may have nothing whatever to do with Vodou,
> is just an attempt to confuse the matter.
You did not read the document correctly, Tom. The 20 million figure was
for Yoruba, Fon/Ewe (and presumeably Kongo) adherents in Africa AND in
the Americas (including Nigeria, Benin, Dahomey, Cuba, Haiti, the US,
etc.).
Counting the adherents of African and African-Diasporic religions
trans-oceanically, not regionally -- just as Christianity, Buddhism,
Hinduism, and the others are counted -- is the only reasonable way to
make a world-wide compilation of adherents. (The site does have
regional/geographic brwakdowns of religions, too, when they are made
abvailable through national census reports.)
In the case of the African Diasporic religions, many people do not
appreciate the fact that since the abolition of slavery and the rise of
cheap transportation, adherents of these religions from both sides of
the Atlantic Ocean have gotten in touch with their counterparts on the
other side. People who belong to lineages that had lost portions of
their liturgy sue to the oppression of slavery have in some cases sent
emissaries to Africa to re-acquire liturgical information. At the same
time there has arisen during the past 30 years a re-Africanization
movement" in some lineages of Diasporic religions. Thus we now see some
Yoruba-derived New World religionists identifying their religion as
"Santeria" (displaying an admixture of Catholic symbolism overlaid on an
Afircan theology) and some Yoruba-derived New World religionists
identifying their religion as "Lukumi" (purely African-allied, not
displaying Catholic symbolism). Likewise there are branches of Palo
(Kongo-derived religion) in the New World that are Afro-centric and
others which, by contrast, have adopted some Catholic symbolism
(although not a strictly Catholic theology or cosmology).
> Using your argument, we might as well lump neo-paganism in with
> "primal-indigenous" religions, from which they *may have* sprung.
> That makes it 190 million to 20 million. Vodou loses again.
That's specious. Neo-Pagan religions such as Wicca and Thelema did not
spring from "primal indigenous religions -- and, more importantly, they
has no functional relationship to those religions at the present time.
Yoruba, Fon/Ewe, and Kongo religions in the New World have not only a
lineal relationship to the same religions in Africa, they address
themselves to the same pantheons, utilize similar musical literugy, and
they share the same general symbolism (planetary, colour, foods) for the
pantheon-mamebers. For me, the real clincher that led me to understand
their functional relationship to Africa was when i learned that in many
Cuban houses the services are conducted in part in African languages
(preserved through 500 years of diaspora). In other words, these are not
"revivals" in the sense that Neo-Pagan religions are -- they are true
surviving lineages that are, in many cases, in the process of reuiniting
after a long diaspora.
The analogy between these religions and the various branches of Judaism
in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the New World should be obvious
to you -- and just as the adherents American Judaism are grouped with
the adherents of Israeli Judaism for the purpose of determining the
worldwide number of adherents to Judaism, so it is reasonable to group
the African and African Diasporic religions together to achive a
worldwide count of adherents.
cat yronwode
Freemasonry for Women ------- http://www.luckymojo.com/comasonry.html
catherine yronwode
>
[other, intersting things snipped to focus on this part:]
>
> Most people who get really far in magic(k) have to work hard, and they
> generally have to either be recruited into an old tradition, stumble
> over some operation and get adopted, or obsessively dedicated on the
> order of 40 something hours a week for decades.
I agree. Natural aptitude is also a factor, as is intelligence and
having a good memory. I don't think i have ever met a really solid
magician with a poor memory.
> And they generally pick one system and go with that.
Generally. Not always. For years at a time, anyway.
> Even if you bust hump, syncrenists almost never make it because the
> stress is too great and most pasted together ideas fall apart
> underneath it. Most people don't have time to reinvent the wheel
> either from scratch, a living tradition can represent the effective
> learning of centuries or millenia.
Syncretists also have a hard time communicating to followers or friends
because one would literally have to recapitulate the steps they took to
get to the same conclusion and that would be anathema to the next
generation of syncretists! :-)
In discussing traditionalism versus syncretism, i also find it useful to
mention in passing the huge spurt in human population over the past 250
years and the destabilizing effect this has had not only upon ecosystems
but cultural traditions. The devaluing of magical traditionalism is of a
piece with the sudden change from rural to urban environments. "The
future of magick," as David called it, is in some ways similar to "the
future of urban life" -- and i leave it to each reader to draw his or
her own conclusions about where that will get us.
> Don't get me wrong, there are is a whole cascading pyramid of
> graduated levels of 'advancement'. I'm talking about the far end of
> the spectrum here, the one in a 100,000 or one in a million who is
> *really* serious about magic(k) as in literally cut throat serious.
I'd like to put in a word for those who are serious but are not
cut-throat serious. Magical attainment, unlike warfare, can be practiced
in a solitary manner, without respect to opponents.
> But I'm different. Basically, practically everything I know I either
> was born with or learned on my own. I was isolated, had no teacher,
> and basically invented everything on my own. Started when I was 11
> seriously and met my first real magician when I was close to 20. In
> retrospect, I think I may have scared or weirded the hell out of him.
I think that this experience is not all that uncommon. I realized my
interest in magic around the age of 8 or 9 and began serious (albeit
childish) experimentation around the same age you did. I found that my
best companions and teachers in the subject were those whose voices were
recorded in books on ethnology and folklore, and i did not meet living
practitioners of these traditions until i was about 14. For reasons of
temperement and physical limitations, i have been unwilling and unable
to join any magical order (although i do belong to a fraternal order, in
which i participate as a fringe member without office).
> So as someone outside the usual lines of advancement, I'm an anomoly.
Being "outside the usual lines of advancement" may be the draw that this
forum has for some of us -- attendance is voluntary and conversation
here demands little in the way of formalism.
> I don't have the same kind of values that many other magicians are
> taught or acquire. *Culturally* and *mentally* I'm just an
> above-average smart guy off the street who doesn't believe at all in
> most of the mindsets that people have to go through to get somewhere
> in magic(k). I like 'ordinary people'.
I feel the same way. I think that this inclination of mine, and my bold
restatement of it now and again, is why i am characterized as
"political" by some: apparently having cordial relationships with
"ordinary people" is not a value shared by everyone here.
> Eventually I did meet "them". I was terribly disappointed. Generally
> they're not very nice people.
>
> Allot of magicians who get to a certain point generally get this
> attitude that everyday people without magic(k) are marks for the
> taking, or at best irrelevant idiots.
Cf. the Harry Potter books. :-)
> They'd figure that most of the
> people here are chumps who are dicking around and will never get
> anywhere in magic(k) and thus would be worthy of their contempt, to be
> ignored, or silent puppet master-esque manipulations.
>
> I generally don't have that attitude.
I generally *oppose* that attitude.
> Remember what I've written describes a trend. The people you know
> probably show some degree of it. For whatever reason, the attitude of
> not explaining stuff tends to get markedly worse the more you get away
> from the ordinary. Guess that's why they call it the occult. The
> patronizing, dismissive, or outright exploitation of less advanced
> persons also seems to become worse. You can see people playing at it
> here. In turn, there are people who sneer at them. In turn, others
> still from deeper shadows sneer at those people.
There is another trend working too -- siva identifies it as the trend to
actively shut down discourse about techniques and methods of magic.
Book-lists are given freely, but there are many here who specifically
seek to discourage newbies who ask how to *do* magic.
Like you said, "Guess that's why they call it the occult." And i also
guess that's why the newsgroup alt.occult.methods was created -- to
circumvent the tendency to revile techniques in this newsgroup.
> For whatever reason, being born outside this environment, coming up on
> my own almost totally isolated from other magic(k)al practioners, etc.
> I never got into that groove. Seemed pretty idiotic to me.
To me too -- i so greatly enjoyed what i could learn of magic on my own,
reading books and later meeting people, that i want to give that same
kind of pleasure to those who are younger than me. My joy in magic at
age 18 was simply grand -- i was at it all day, every day -- and i
learned a tremendous amount from kindly elders in the astrological,
GD/BOTA, hoodoo, and syncretist communities. Their attentiveness to my
newbie questions led me to aspire to be as accesible to others as they
were once to me.
cat yronwode
Hoodoo in Theory and Practice -- http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html
Lisa Gardner
I am your friend.
There is a place in the Old Testament where YHWH says something
like, 'I was amazed that there was no one to say anything'... or
something like this. I will have to get the exact quote - it is one
of the quotes that means a lot to me - because it talks of YHWH
seeing all of this shit going down, no one doing anything about
it, and him deciding that well, okay, *he* would do something
about it. The feeling I get from the quote is that he watched all of
this shit go down, watched so many makes excuses about it
(its the karma machine, its the way of the universe, its the way
things have to be) while reaping their profit from it all and not
caring about those whom they trod over to make that profit -
and it finally made him sick and he decided that *he* would
do something about it all.
So he did.
You're one of his, I think.
That is a compliment coming from me.
I did not see your post on google so I am replying to this
post here.
> >Power abhors a vacuum.
>
> hello nudjen i gorra agree wi ya power does abhor a vacuum that's why
> we don't tend to get the hoover out too much cos it might upset the
> power man. we got a lot of power where me an clint live nudjin our
> gaff's on a ley-line connecting up with five henges and a kentucky
> fried, and if you extend the line past druid's corner
The trees are great friends of YHWH in my opinion.
>it comes out in
> a chipshop on the coast where i once found a seven-sided dice outside
> on the pavement, so like that's really freaky energy goin on there
> nudjen i don't want to disturb it by gettin the vacuum out cos it may
> deflect the ley-line energy unpredictably resultin in a chaotic
> escalation of forces that result in turbulence in the ant world, cos
> ants bein smaller are more susceptible to disturbance in the power
> vortex of the ley-line, specially when it goes through a chipshop an a
> kentucky cos that's quite rare to have both on the same ley-line. so
> yeah you're dead on man power does abhor a vacuum so i generally say
> to clint leave it in the cupboard man i'd rather live in a pigsty than
> take chances on disturbing such powerful ley-line energy with
> carelessly applied suction. and besides, patterns you get in dust can
> tell you things man that'd blow your mind if you can read it.
On the other hand, if you see someone being beaten or
drowned, I would like to think that you might want to extend
some help. that isone of the main things for me. Other things
can start to kill the heart I think. The Eloi were innocent, but
they were also dinner... being taken all of the time and disconnected
one from another, continually letting each other drown.
Lisa
Lisa Gardner
Sure. It's all very funny. Anyone who thinks otherwise
is just 'way too gullible', right? And no one wants to seem
gullible.
Actually, I don't give a shit if I seem gullible or not.
Lisa
Lisa Gardner
Yet we can do mathematics and use calculus to build bridges.
these things are things we learned from the 'dual mind',
IMHO. A builder's and creator's tool, but a dangerous thing
as well.
Lisa
Casey Sheldon
>
> Only calling it a "duel" is a little bit of a stretch of an
> imagination.
***Yea, this has kind of been my experience with such things, also. The
dirtier one can fight, the better one is considered to be sort of thing. How
sad that in the upper eschalons of those who should be realising the Great
Work, Might still makes Right.
> There is no formal system or code of dueling.
***How would it even be propagated? (kind of a rhetorical, that is unless
you can think of a possible manner)
> Sure. It's one of the unwritten rules.
>
> I think it happens because the better you get, the less interested one
> generally becomes in lower level socializing and discourse because of
> the general lack of understanding prevelant.
***I'm somewhere in between by these terms, I think.
> The word belief will be used loosely here for convenience's sake, it
> doesn't mean the same thing to me as it does to an average person.
***I tend to adhere to your definition as opposed to Bruce's, though, so
that's okay.
> As people get better and better, they generally hang around places
> like this ng less and less. It loses interest with them. When you've
> arranged mortal fates with gods, listening to some newbie whine about
> what color to visualize an archangel's eyes or some idiot prating
> about belief get's grating. They've got better things to do like
> elections to tip or wars to set in motion or small countries to use in
> pawns in their games. So why not? I'm still kind of the new kid on the
> block among them. They're not listening here. If I thought my peers
> were listening and responding, I might react differently. The angel(s)
> of my better nature told me to do so. Arm wrestled is closer to it.
> That wasn't meant as a metaphor.
***That is in part why I am here also (Are you sure it wasn't a full blown
wrestling match?). I find most of the bickering to be futile and petty.
Nevertheless, some interesting people still manage to have interesting
discussions a bit more often than once in awhile.
> > Where do you break from their ideals and philosophies?
>
> Most people who get really far in magic(k) have to work hard, and they
> generally have to either be recruited into an old tradition, stumble
> over some operation and get adopted, or obsessively dedicated on the
> order of 40 something hours a week for decades.
>
> And they generally pick one system and go with that.
>
> Even if you bust hump, syncrenists almost never make it because the
> stress is too great and most pasted together ideas fall apart
> underneath it. Most people don't have time to reinvent the wheel
> either from scratch, a living tradition can represent the effective
> learning of centuries or millenia.
***True. However, I think it is possible to create such a paradigm with the
help of a deity that is so inclined. If it is necessary, whether I want it
or not, it will get done. And in the end, I really wouldn't have it any
other way. Gods tend to be able to make much better plans, after all...
(hmmmmm..... wonder why? ;-) )
> Don't get me wrong, there are is a whole cascading pyramid of
> graduated levels of 'advancement'. I'm talking about the far end of
> the spectrum here, the one in a 100,000 or one in a million who is
> *really* serious about magic(k) as in literally cut throat serious.
>
> But I'm different. Basically, practically everything I know I either
> was born with or learned on my own. I was isolated, had no teacher,
> and basically invented everything on my own. Started when I was 11
> seriously and met my first real magician when I was close to 20. In
> retrospect, I think I may have scared or weirded the hell out of him.
***I studied Christianity for 8 solid years (10-18). During that time I read
anywhere in between 2 and 20 chapters in a night (not to mention my fiction
novels) of the Bible or christian literature (C.S. Lewis, Thomas A Kempis,
Foxe's Book of Martyrs, etc...). I had the intellectual aspect down pat. I
sang my heart out in church and went to concerts (mainly christian music,
again, and primarily blues artists, when I could get to them) so that I
could get an emotional high. The two separately just didn't satisfy me,
though. I went in search of "my path" around 18 and didn't even get an idea
of what I was looking for until last year (it has been 5 years). So here I
am, 24, and I just met the first magician, who I knew was a magician, maybe
6 months ago. I recognise the rituals of Christianity as having
manifestational effect, but it seems to be mainly a gestalt form which
requires little to no actual ability from 90% of its adherents. That's just
not what I'm looking for. I self-initiated at 19, and did my first shamanic
soul-retrieval that night. I used to doubt, and wonder if it was all "real",
but about a year ago I had an experience where the "scales fell from my
eyes" as Paul put it. Now I can no longer doubt, and there is no turning
back. I really don't have any trad roots, or anything. Sometimes trad
outcasts have adopted me for a time, and taught me a few tricks here and
there, but generally I can't fully adapt their paradigms to my own, so I
throw a lot of stuff away.
> I generally don't have that attitude.
***I'm certainly glad. "All that is gold does not glitter..."
> For whatever reason, being born outside this environment, coming up on
> my own almost totally isolated from other magic(k)al practioners, etc.
> I never got into that groove. Seemed pretty idiotic to me.
***I would have to agree with you there.
Pearlz
> whitlow <whi...@momentarily.com> wrote in message news:<4drn9ukebc3rccvbj...@4ax.com>...
> > On 22 Mar 2002 14:04:20 -0800, aik...@yahoo.com (nguyen) wrote:
> > >lgar...@mbay.net (Lisa Gardner) wrote in message news:<a317c4b9.02032...@posting.google.com>...
> > >When I was growing up I seemed utterly alone, ignorant, vulnerable,
> > >and weak in an extremely callous and hostile world. So I spent years
> > >on a quest to become knowledge, skilled, and as dangerous as I could
> > >possibly become.
Well put. This is really good. There is a character like this on
the cartoon "Sponge Bob Square Pants". His name is Plankton.
- Peggy -
nguyen
[snip]
>
> So he did.
>
> You're one of his, I think.
>
> That is a compliment coming from me.
>
I'm a man Lisa. I want what men want. I want to get laid as often as
possible, status, and money.
My curse however is that I will not do just anything to get it. When I
think of all the women, wine, and wealth I've turned down on the basis
of principle ... it makes me sick. A lifetime of honesty and really
where does it get me?
Not far let me tell you.
Doing the right thing seems very noble and admirable, until about the
zillionith time you get screwed because of it. Then it just get's real
old. That old saw about virtue being its own reward runs pretty thin
after a while. And helping others gets pretty old when you feel like
you're always giving and not receiving very often.
Still, if I could do more for the sorry mess out there I would. Just
on the general principle that I loathe mendacity and stupid criminal
waste of potential.
You read up on the Pearl / Sheik Gilani bit in the news Lisa?
nguyen
catherine yronwode
>
>
> I'm a man Lisa. I want what men want. I want to get laid as often as
> possible, status, and money.
>
> My curse however is that I will not do just anything to get it. When
> I think of all the women, wine, and wealth I've turned down on the
> basis of principle ... it makes me sick. A lifetime of honesty and
> really where does it get me?
>
> Not far let me tell you.
>
> Doing the right thing seems very noble and admirable, until about
> the zillionith time you get screwed because of it. Then it just
> get's real old. That old saw about virtue being its own reward runs
> pretty thin after a while. And helping others gets pretty old when
> you feel like you're always giving and not receiving very often.
>
> Still, if I could do more for the sorry mess out there I would. Just
> on the general principle that I loathe mendacity and stupid criminal
> waste of potential.
If you want to know where a lifetime of dishonesty gets people, look no
farther than the evening news: It gets your the same place that a
lifetime of honesty does, but perhaps a little more spectacularly,
that's all.
It may seem an odd revelation, coming from old hippie me, but i like to
read the supermarket tabloids. Not the silly alien-invasion ones, the
ones about celebrities. Because i don't watch tv (except for one show,
ER) and buy no new music (i like acoustic blues and country music from
the 1920s-30s and buy lots of that), i only know who a few of these
celebrities are. J-Lo, P-Diddy, formerly Puff Daddy, I have not heard a
single one of their tunes. But i read about them ("Terrified Jennifer
Dumps Puff Daddy!"), and i guess you could say that i do so as a
discipline. I want to feel the waves of attachment and detachment
balance out. It's like riding a roller coaster.
I started reading the tabloids a long time ago -- decades ago. I don't
read them every week, or even every month, just when a headline grabs my
attention. Over the years, i have noticed that what these headline bring
me close to is a paradigm-shift, a vision of the path i didn't take and
the path that was barred to me because of Hitler's actions against Jews,
which threw my mother's wealthy family into poverty-striken immigrant
status -- but allowed my mother to become a beatnik and marry outside
her race and class. I am so grateful for my mother's bravery in
becoming a bohemian. I am happy that i too took that path. But
sometimes, when i look at my shabby old computer (ten years old, only
able to run netscape 3.0.1), i think, well, i could have gone for the
gold, or whatever they call it -- the mainstream life, the academic
life, even the life of celebrity. Women want that stuff too, Nguyen --
"to get laid as often as possible, status, and money."
And that's when i look at these tabloids, filled with stories of
celebrities -- and these stories are about children drowming in pools
(my first child died of sudden infant death syndrome in her crib) , of
drug addiction (my uncle was a heroin addict, i avoided such problems by
observing his decay), of broken marriages (i am on my third marriage
now), of suicide attempts (i only half-tried that once, when i was 13; i
never did it again), of mental breakdowns when dumped by a lover (been
there, done that, got over it), of anorexia and bullimia (never had that
problem; don't know why), of plastic surgery (that might be fun, if i
could afford it), of wonderful pets (i've had a few myself), of fancy
meals (me too, plenty), of dieting (i try to keep my weight within
reason and seem to do okay), of gun fights (never done that, hope never
to do so), of murders (no thanks), of death (well, i shan't be there to
read about my own).
And what i learn is this: money, fame, the fruits of dishonesty or the
fruits of natural talent and charisma -- it really doesn't matter. There
are only so many days to have great meals and great sex and cuddle up
with a good book and a soft furry pet.
A famous person recently died. My step-father, the sex-abusing asshole,
was once a gigolo for that famous person's wife. He lived with the
couple, in their Los Angeles mansion. They had those far-out wrap-around
shower sprayer things that rich people had installed in their mansions
during the 1920s. They collected expensive paintings. They had a pool.
They were nice to him. This was long before my step-father married my
mother; it was back in the 1940s, right after he got out of the Army at
the close of World War Two. But the woman stayed friends with him well
into the 1950s. He even took my mother to the mansion to meet her, and
she expressed satisfaction at their marriage.
Because of the stories my step-father told about these people, i always
felt a bit of fondness for this famous man, and a bit of curiousity. Why
did his wife want a gigolo? Why did the famous man allow the gigolo to
live in the house? What was my step-father doing being a gigologo,
anyway? Obviously there were some sexual discrepencies in that family,
no matter how rich and famous. I didn't know at the time, actually, how
famous this man realkly was, or what wonderful things he had done. It
was only later, as i was growing up, that i began to see his name
everywhere, among the gems and baubles of the world that i loved so
dearly. And i thought of him, creating these wonderful glimpses into the
human condition while my step-father, the sex-abusing asshole (but then
a much younger, more naive and inncoent fellow, i supposed) was at his
home, shtupping his wife, on the payroll.
What does a lifetime of honesty get you, Nguyen? It gets you the same
thing that a life of dishonesty gets you, the same thing a lifetime of
riches and fame gets you, the same thing that a lifetime of poverty and
obscurity gets you. It gets you a shot at happiness, a chance to create
a few interesting things, and a chance to play with the puzzle pieces
before they are put away again.
So rest in Peace, Mr. Famous Man. I hope you had fun. I still don't know
why you hired my future stepfather to fuck your wife, but i like the
famous jobs you did while he was toiling at his obscure job.
Nguyen, the world is really, really weird. Enjoy it while you can. There
won't be another one like it.
cat yronwode
Lucky W Amulet Archive --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/luckyw.html
William Tucker
Wm