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1 like = 1 magick, witchcraft and/or alchemy tip
i / magick is/can be literally anything you can describe magick as: this is one potential meaning you can read into magick being the art of shapeshifters and tricksters, mirrors and guises. make your definition good enough and it will become obvious precisely by you saying so
ii / the alchemical world is one where opposites can be reconciled, definitionally so. paradoxes, being seemingly impossible, are powerful magickal tools. some of the best insights come precisely from trying to grok a union of contradictions
iii / a necessary corollary to the idea that magick can be anything you say it is, is that magick is not that at all. this is also true, and by extension, is also a demonstration of the reconciliation of opposites
iv/ no matter how rebellious and non-traditionalist an occultist may be, there's often at least one (1) extremely boring and ye olde traditional branch of the occult that they get into and describe to laborious detail to anyone who will listen (mine is alchemy)
v/ folk say that in exploring the occult, you never really "get answers", which i disagree with: you can get these insights that feel so meaningful that it's embarrassing to even consider, but circumstances always, always prevent them being fully articulated before their time
v/(addendum) -- i feel like the fourth power of the sphinx, "To Be Silent", isn't necessarily an imperative not to share, reveal or communicate (though that idea is extremely valuable), its that communication is magic, and speaking about it often leads to crossed wires
v/(addendum2) crossed wires, of course, can be uncrossed
vi/ the idea that "ancestors" in magick means blood relations is, by necessity, a heteronormative idea: true to the extent that heteronormativity has made it so, but not so true if you can see through the trick. the circumstances that led to your creation are more than your birth
viii but also a bit of iv/ https://twitter.com/HxOvAx/status/1166154746052435970
ix/ if a spiritual system suggests there is some importance to the human body (it'd be hard finding a system that doesn't give it some significance obvs), but it omits the arsehole, its map of reality has at least one terra incognita in a fairly universal and mundane place
x/ to some extent magick is part-willed, part-elaborate dance of circumstantial factors that gives enough of a musical structure for things to crescendo in such a way that the outcome is unexpectedly obvious
xi/ modern discussion of magick as "science and art" stresses the "science" and neglects the "art" -- magick has movements, theories, outsiders, unstable categories, and to consider if it "works" through objective, means-based-testing, itself, doesn't always "work"
xii/ the magic mirror is one of the most resonant images of magic itself; talking about magic warps the way you talk about it, it reflects back on itself, conversational structure mimics the thing you're talking about. mercury rules both magic and communication
xiii/ i suspect that any system with any degree of randomness is always 100% accurate as a predictive system but not always easy to interpret (but i havent found a way of thinking about it that doesn't just kick agency into the long grass of the subjectiveness of interpretation)
xiv/ there are always some aspects of magic you find out about, uncritically accept, then vociferously reject, then come back to in a modified way that isn't quite accepting or rejecting but some other relationship to it that acknowledges something else behind it
xv/ if we understand "the end of time" to be a temporal event, it may then be the case that it happens to everyone, everywhere, in all times, all at once, constantly and quickly, now, soon, and forever, always; what else has this quality but living. it's always the End Times
xvii/ it is simultaneously the case that magick is a sacred special thing only for ye witches and also something that everyone does all the time constantly (and every ratio in between); none of these are cheapened by the others, and you can move between them whenever you need to
xviii/ as much as magicians are compelled to distance ourselves from "magic in media", many of us have that one fiction work that we just know came from The Other Place somehow, and will always be the scratch on the lens of any perfect view-from-nowhere idea of objective reality
xix/ most of the lessons of magick you can find elsewhere, especially just learning about yourself; if for example you've learned about gender performativity, you've learned something that is eminently applicable to magic (and is, to some degree, fundamental to it)
xx/ the best things to have during a magical operation are things that are Cool, which does not necessarily mean expensive, sincerely-emotionally-significant, proper, old, traditional, perfect, shiny, or Astrally Afire With Ye Mystic Aura
xxi/ any given occultist has probably made it much further along the path than they give themselves credit for - you don't have to have performed that one specific ritual for Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel to have experienced it, or its analogue
xxi/(addendum) this is evinced best by that One Person who not only Gets It always seems to have already Got It and articulates things so closely to magical terms but they're not even remotely interested in magic at all. different terms for similar things
i was fully expecting maybe 10 likes on this so i may have to call it a night here, appropriately enough with the number of the last major arcana, but i may end up picking this back up tomorrow, or in five minutes
xxii/ alchemy is a joke: not fraudulent, but a metaphysics of irony. the formulation of worthwhile (golden) responses to stupid (base) questions. what's black and white and red all over? what came first, the chicken or the egg? why is there something rather than nothing?
xxiii/ if when you hear the folklore of faeries whisking you away to a magical land where time in the real world passes by, and you feel a sense of wonder, glee, delight, relief or longing, maybe the warning about not stepping inside faerie rings isn't intended for you
xxiv/ there is more than one other world. the village now calls out for the cunning one able to give names to the spirits of 3am parking lots, solitary lights in empty office blocks, burnt and melted fast food mascots and the tinny rasp of bad phone speakers on the train
