Making Occult Studies more Accessible

[Mangrove]

Netaungrot - Enjoy the Newcomb book. 

Another one that might work better for you is 'Monsters & Magical Sticks'. It was written by an Eriksonian hypnotherapist and is thus devoid of both occult or NLP stigma.

(For those out there not familiar with NLP - the founders of the method, Richard Bandler and his buddy, were studying Milton Erikson. Erikson was a hypnotherapist and psychotherapist who seemed to get unusually good, long-lasting results and quite quickly.

They tried to copy everything he did and then figure out what was therapeutically meaningful and what was just Erikson's personality. The distillation of techniques they observed formed the basis of NLP.)

I've seen some great stuff with NLP but alas, much asshattery also. Monsters & Magical Sticks (published by New Falcon) gives you the Erikson vibe minus the NLP dorkiness or 'woooooo, spooky occultiness'.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It seems that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to making progress in occult studies is the tradition of mystery (or dare i say mahdjgickque?).

Well, other than the fact that it is undiluted bullshit, yeah.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Bump.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This was a retaliatory strike.  Cramulus pushed the button.

And Cram, don't think I'm afraid to go totally nuclear and start bumping EvT/Prince Tao Jones threads.

I'll do it, man.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

That's what you meant by occultism, right?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

That's what you meant by occultism, right?

That's about all it's good for, besides getting hippies laid with Trustafarian chicks.

[Cramulus]

I bumped Burns' McLuhan thread because it discusses the Playboy interview I've been reading today. I also find it fascinating. I wasn't trying to start a bump-war or something.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I bumped Burns' McLuhan thread because it discusses the Playboy interview I've been reading today. I also find it fascinating. I wasn't trying to start a bump-war or something.

So you say.  You've been eyeballing our border for months, lowlander.  Be aware that our entire defense department is high on crack and will have no problem responding to your aggression in what would be politely described as an "extinction event". 

We don't even have to launch.  We could just roll the shit downhill.  You'd have no fucking idea until the damn things crossed the New York state line and sent Ticonderoga into the stratosphere.

[Cramulus]

So ... this thread is about finding the useful stuff buried in the occult field while ridding ourselves of the mysticism and delusion. Great intent!

To that end, I'd like to submit a link to the opening chapter of the Art of Memetics: http://artofmemetics.com/memetics/page7.html

Over the years, most of the ideas that were once confined to magical theory and practice have been isolated and reformulated in different fields of study. Magicians are left guarding only a few nuggets of practical application that remain unique to magic.... Even these few ideations are being carted away into other disciplines. So why not just study those other disciplines?

the rest of the chapter illustrates how all jobs that wizards supposedly performed still exist today.. most of them are just under the banner of marketing and entertainment. The ability to wage war using symbols, influence a populace using words and gestures, and make oneself more powerful and spectacular are all well-established marketing techniques.



and on another note,

I don't believe in anything Tarot, astrology, etc etc...

but a few years ago, my girlfriend's roommate was trying to teach herself about Tarot, and she asked if she could give me a reading. Of course she could!  And while nothing mystical took place, her reading did give me some fresh insight on my situation. It's like LHX mentions in the OP - stuff like tarot is able to draw a portrait of an analogous universe, and show you yourself inside that analogy. And this gives you the third-person perspective you often need to work through some of your challenges.

[Telarus]

 

Phil Farber (one of the only active "Madjiiqueueue" authors who actually understands the position held by the majority of this forum) has recently opened a forum for his website:

http://meta-magick.com/interact/?page_id=4

Phil knows his shit, and would probably make a very poor trolling target. But, he's more than willing to discuss actual technique, (and tries to keep the jargon as a reference to the classical occultists techniques).

Ticks, Meditation and State Management
By Philip H. Farber

In the part of New York State where I live, Lyme disease is at an epidemic level. Quite a few of my friends, family members and acquaintances have experienced this illness. One friend holds the record, as far as I know, having contracted the tick-borne illness a total of four times so far. I'm not far beyond, having received Lyme-infected tick bites on three different occasions over the last seven years.

The last time was in June of 2010. I found a tick on me just a couple days before I was scheduled to leave on a trip to Los Angeles, where I was teaching a weekend seminar. I carefully removed the tick using a tick-puller and figured that I'd done a good job and that the tick hadn't been on me long enough to pass along any illness. I was extremely busy finishing up work, packing and getting ready for the seminar so I put the tick bite out of my mind. The seminar went very well and when I returned there were clients and other seminars to prepare for, in England, Europe and other parts of the USA. The bug bite didn't itch or hurt and I forgot about it for a while.

In late August things started to get a little strange. I noticed that I was getting a bit weepy and nostalgic – and those are two words I'd never, ever pick to describe myself. And not only was it odd for me to feel that way, the emotions were being triggered by very unusual things. One day I found myself feeling sentimental about a dishwasher that we used to own. Man, I really missed that old machine. That is, I missed it until my wife reminded me that I always hated the noisy monster. I reflected on that. It was true. It was a strange thing for me to experience nostalgia, let alone for a piece of kitchen equipment that I never actually liked! The weepiness was followed, somewhat randomly over the next couple months, by other emotional outbursts, including anger, fear, and despair, all triggered by thoughts that, considered later, were really not worth the response – not to mention that I'm generally a calm, secure and optimistic person. What was going on in my brain?

What was happening in my brain was that a colony of Borrelia spirochetes, the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease, had taken up residence and was, apparently, pushing buttons that messed with my emotional state. It was around that time that other Lyme symptoms started to show up and I went to the doctor and got my diagnosis. The emotional effects of Lyme disease are rarely discussed by doctors, but a quick search of medical literature turned up over a hundred studies that recorded psychological symptoms. For instance, one study (Functional brain imaging and neuropsychological testing in Lyme disease. Fallon BA, Das S, Plutchok JJ, Tager F, Liegner K, Van Heertum R. Clin Infect Dis. 1997 Jul;25 Suppl 1:S57-63. Review.) reported that "Patients with Lyme disease may experience short-term memory loss, severe depression, panic attacks, unrelenting anxiety, impulsivity, paranoia, obsessive compulsive disorder, personality changes marked by irritability and mood swings, and rarely, manic episodes or psychotic states." Nothing specifically about dishwasher nostalgia, but we can file that under "personality changes" or "mood swings."

I've spent the last thirty or so years of my life practicing meditation and studying state management techniques. Back when I began meditating, I was told that one really starts to notice the results of meditation after 20 years. That seemed like an inordinately long time, back in my youth, and I was quite pleased to notice positive affects fairly quickly in my practice – increasing calm through the days, better sleep at night, ability to relax at will, and much more. But now, decades later, I'm pleased to say that there was also some truth to the advance hype. The long-term positive effects of meditation, for me, amount to, in large part, more of the same, a calmer mind and generally more relaxed mental state. But beyond that, the greatest benefit from all those years sitting and breathing is an understanding of the processes of my mind and an increased ability to observe those processes. Metaphorically speaking, the process of meditation has taught me how to better step back from my own thoughts and observe, listen, and feel what my own brain may be doing. While I'm not sure I'd refer to this as "enlightenment," this ability has certainly saved my sanity more than a few times.

So, while Borrelia bacteria were messing around in my neurons, I found myself in an odd situation. While part of my consciousness experienced a roller coaster of unusual emotions, I was also sitting back, observing my thoughts and behavior. I suppose I've been doing this increasingly all along; now the rapid bacterial shifts in emotion threw it into high relief. Part of my mind, at least, was maintaining its cool. As in a meditation practice, when I became aware of the changes in state, I was moved to accept the change and return my attention to the present.

I think it might be important to reiterate the basic process of meditation here. The meditator attempts to hold attention on a word, symbol, breathing, sitting, being present or any of a thousand other techniques. In mindfulness meditation, one holds attention on the process of consciousness itself. The mind, through its tendency to form associations or because it just likes to wander, will stray from the object of concentration. These breaks in concentration may start from a physical sensation (my foot itches!) or a thought (did I leave the toaster plugged in?) or a daydream (imagine meditating like this on top of a remote Himalayan peak!) or from any of a thousand other distractions. The meditator notices the break in concentration, accepts it without judgment, and then returns to the intended concentration.

It's the same process that we use throughout our lives, on long-term projects or life goals. We set out with our minds focused on one thing – a way of life, a job, a certain kind of family – and we become distracted and must regain our focus. It was this life-process-as-meditation that Lyme disease kept bringing into my consciousness – and my daily life that I had to continually return my attention to. Without the years of meditation practice, I could easily have become lost in the seeming reality of these emotional shifts.

I also found great benefit from short-term hypnosis and NLP techniques to deal with pain and to change state. First, though, I had to realize that my state had changed, which sounds like a simple thing, but when it happens the shifts are so subjective that they are easy to mistake for legitimate mental processes and not the result of illness. Some of the state management techniques that I used can be found in my forthcoming book Brain Magick: Exercises in Meta-Magick and Invocation (Llewellyn Worldwide, October 2011).

So it took a few months of powerful antibiotics, prescribed by my doctor, to get the bugs out of my system. Because of the physical symptoms of the disease, I wasn't able to work for a good part of that time, but now I feel like my mind and body are mine again. It was a difficult few months, but I can only imagine how awful it might have been if it weren't for meditation and hypnosis.

With the benefits of 30 years of meditation on my side, or with the tools of my trade in hand, it all came down to being prepared. In life we often take it for granted that we should learn the steps of driving a car before getting out into heavy traffic, or that we'll do better in a fight if we've practiced martial arts previously, or that our violin recital will go much better if we learn the pieces and perfect them first. How about being prepared for whatever life throws at you – from changing circumstances, financial difficulties, family problems or whatever – by practicing and perfecting our ability to change state beforehand?

I'll leave you with a quick meditation. It's about as simple as it gets, but can be as deep and effective as any other form of meditation:

Simple Zen – at least 10 minutes
Sit in a position with your spine vertical and straight (a chair will do nicely). Allow your breathing to become relaxed and natural. Let it set its own rhythm and depth, however it is comfortable. Focus your attention on your breathing, on the movements of your chest and abdomen rather than on your nose and mouth. Keep your attention focused on your breathing. For some people an additional level of concentration may be helpful. You might add a simple counting rhythm, spoken in your head as you breathe: "One" on the inhale, "Two" on the exhale, and repeat. Or you might visualize your breath as a swinging door, swinging in on the inhale and out on the exhale.

[Cramulus]

The other thing which this thread brings to mind is Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach.

The Strange Loop is a system that contains itself. Hofstader says that consciousness is essentially a system that builds an internal (and imperfect) copy of the external universe. Our ability to analyze the past and future is related to how well we've mapped the universe inside ourselves. IE - I don't need to actually hit my thumb with a hammer to know what's going to happen, my internal universe has enough overlap with the external universe that I can just simulate it in my head and figure out what the outcome is.

So consciousness, to some extent, is the fact that the person building the internal universe is also in that universe. "Selfhood" comes from the fact that you have an internal image of yourself in your model of the universe.

[Cramulus]

and it also occurs to me that my RPG writing has a similar chord ----

my goal in designing any RPG setting for my players is that I want there to be a number of inexplicit parallels to our world. As Hofstader says in GEB, once you have drawn a connection between reality and an isomorphic set of symbols, you can't stop the meaning from bleeding through.

That is to say---- when I was running my Venice campaign, I threw a lot of hooks in there that were sort of populist in nature. It resonated with the Occupy protests that were going on at the time (bankers vs citizens). And I think my players enjoyed it (on a deeper level than typical gameplay) because they could personally relate to the themes of the campaign - it was something we were all talking about passionately already. We weren't writing fiction about Wall Street, but we did create a fictional world that has similar problems to ours. And by exploring these problems within an analogy for our world, people were able to think and express things about the real world that hadn't previously been accessible.

That's why I've always kind of wanted a tarot deck specifically for designing game settings. Those symbols--and the interpretation of those cards--can be very personal and interesting.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This thread makes Occult Jesus cry.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

This thread makes Occult Jesus cry.

Occult Jesus makes Baby Jesus cholera spray hose.

shutup it's totally a verb now.