[UA] Old groups and power

[James McGraw]

The way I see it, the whole "why isn't there any more old-school magick"
question can have two answers.

1) The collective unconscious (as reflected by the Statosphere) changes
(possibly with each ascension), making magickal schools based around
obsolete concepts & paradoxes more difficult (& eventually impossible)
to use. This has the disadvantage that most of the magickal schools
currently in print are based around a Western mindset.

(2) While the nature of reality hasn't changed significantly during
this incarnation of the universe, the fact that the average 20th century
adept has a different worldview to a typical Bronze Age shaman, or a
16th century kabbalist, or whatever, means that the magick that he can
do is affected by this worldview. So if the aforementioned kabbalist
suddenly found himself in the 20th century, then, sure, his magick would
work fine. But he couldn't teach it to anybody else, because the mindset
is just too entrenched. I prefer this explanation, as it places the
emphasis more on the individual than on the greater society, which, to
my way of thinking, is what magick (as opposed to avatarhood) is all
about.

Oh, and just to harp on a little bit more, some people have suggested
that old school magick could work completely differently to pomo magick
(multiple taboos, gaining charges over time etc). I really don't like
this idea. The way I see UA is represented quite well by a fine piece of
work by the ineffable James Palmer, to be found at
http://lists.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ua/1999-July/003265.html. It's
about the occult underground in Ancient Rome, and is a perfect example
of how, with magick as with everything else, the more things change the
more they stay the same.

james the cat

"Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a book.
Inside a dog, it's too dark to read"
                                  - Groucho Marx

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua