Tuck Detchon Writes

Labor = Magick

Crowley is excessively problematic, but OpenCult as an occult arbitrary belief paradigm would be remiss not to address him. I recently finished reading his Magick in Theory and Practice. I think I’m good on Crowley for the time being, and I don’t see myself converting to Thelema. But that person’s work went a long way toward systematizing Magick as an Art and a Science. I believe Religion, Spirituality, Mysticism, Magick, Occultism, and Esotericism are or can be important tools and weapons in the Holy Class War for the Commune of Heaven. Crowley wasn’t Proletarian or Radical. He was a deeply reactionary enemy — but if my enemy advances the science of the implements of production or war, I would be foolish not to engage with that material.

Anyway, Crowley defines Magick as follows:

“Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the Will. … “Every intentional act is a Magical Act. … Magick is merely to be and to do.” (Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice)

“For [Crowley], ‘magick’ (with a ‘k’) was a broad term encompassing both mundane and ritualistic acts that align with one’s purpose, and it was meant to be a practical system of self-discovery and transformation. His definition includes both the systematic knowledge (science) and skillful application (art) necessary to achieve a goal through the focused direction of one’s will.” (Google AI Overview)

Let’s take a closer look at the definitions in that first quote block. To rephrase it: Beings as subjective and active agents do operations on reality (including themselves/each other) in order to change it (including themselves/each other).

“Beings” expands to “entities, beings, and persons.” This “scale” appears to be a hierarchy, but its purpose isn’t to rank types of beings into exclusive categories, or even to place them on a relative continuum. Our point here is to include different types of beings fundamentally as beings by widening our scope. Entities are beings are persons. OpenCult adopts the Panpsychic Multimind Panentheism (PMP)* view: all of reality is made out of numberless beings, or, every possible “thing,” every possible system, process, or set of cosmological data/information, is actually a being — and all of Reality and its constituent elements are part of the a unitary, monistic whole.

* PMP might be both Panpsychic and Cosmopsychic. This latter is a new term for me. Panpsychism proposes that primordial consciousness inheres to all matter which all adds up to the Cosmic Mind, and Cosmopsychism proposes that all particular, individual minds are aspects or facets of the holistic Cosmic Mind. I feel that both can be true.

In The Prayer DLC, we considered The Panentheon, a PMP system, where: “The Panentheon is an expansion of God, Panentheistically. In Pantheism, God is identical with the Universe of Nature, or Reality. In Panentheism God encompasses and surpasses Reality: God is fully immanent and fully transcendent. … Reality is made up of infinite groupings and divisions of numberless beings. Everything is made out of beings. This is the Pantheon. … God = God + Pantheon = Panentheon.”

Above, Crowley specifically and narrowly uses “Will” to define magick, but we can use OpenCult’s expanded set of Basic (Psychological (P)) Operations (which comes to us in its original form from Peter J. Carroll) and their corresponding Classical Magickal (Parapsychological (PP)) Operations (also from Peter J. Carroll), where Will and Perception are not truly separate (but only appear that way). Even so they define the difference between Enchantment (Will) and Divination (Perception), and just as the rest of the Basic Operations derive from the interaction and interpenetration of Will and Perception, the remainder of the Classical Magickal Operations likewise derive from the interaction and interpenetration of Enchantment and Divination.

For a more detailed look at the relationships and interrelationships among the Basic Operations of Belief, Will, and Perception, etc. (BWP+, “boop plus”), see the beginning of PSI-PHI SCHEMA DLC. For now I will include that diagram here:

Belief, per PMP, reflects not just the subjective-qualitative assumptions underpinning most of what we experience, but also the objective-quantitative states and status of all Matter constituting Reality as a physical Cosmic Mind. Will (interaction-heavy) and Perception (state-heavy) are unified in Belief, and Belief decomposes them into a binary, and from there BWP recursively and dynamically combine and recombine into the full complement of BWP+ (the full/extended set of Basic Operations). There are a great number of them and their relationships are not as static and linear as the schema suggests — the schema is a map or outline of the general and apparent descent and ascent of these psychological powers radiating out from every point in the Cosmos and collapsing into every point from the entire Cosmos as a whole. OpenCult takes a Hermetic-inspired view that, sort of like a fractal (but more literally), “the whole is in each part,” that the entire infinite Cosmos exists within, or as, each infinitesimal point within the Cosmos.

The PSI-PHI SCHEMA diagram above partially describes the relationship between the general, greater Cosmos or Macrocosm (Ψ, Psi) and the specific, localized structure of particular, individual beings or Microcosm (Φ, Phi). Ψ might be considered the “innate global potential” of all Matter and Being, and Φ might be considered the “particular local structure” of all Matter and Being.

Intellect and Creativity would be somewhere in the “caesura” or zig-zag near the bottom above Φ. Φ would represent the apparently independent activity of individual beings.

As we have cited on several other posts, the Classical Magickal Operations (from Liber Kaos by Peter J. Carroll) are:

1. Enchantment: “Includes all those practices in which the magician attempts to impose will on reality.”
2. Divination: “Includes all those practices in which the magician attempts to extend perception by magical means.”
3. Evocation: “This is work with entities that may be naturally occurring or manufactured. The entities may be regarded as independent spirits, fragments of the magician’s subconscious, or the egregores of various species of life forms, according to taste and belief structure. In practice, evocation is usually performed for enchantment, in which the evoked entities are made to create effects on behalf of the magician. Evoked entities also find some application in divination, when they are used to discover information for the magician.”
4. Invocation: “This is the deliberate attunement of consciousness with some archetypal or significant nexus of thought. … Invocation creates states of inspiration or possession during which enchantment, divination, or occasionally evocation, can be performed.”
5. Illumination: “Is deliberate self-modification by magic, and may include spells of enchantment cast at one-self to repair weaknesses or increase strengths, and divination and invocation performed for inspiration and direction.”

And OpenCult’s custom modified correspondences between the Basic Operations and Classical Magickal Operations are here:

In Mythic Meta-Gamification, in the context of “The Work: Work, Good Works, and The Great Work,” we define Labor as follows: “One of the main definitions of ‘matter’ is ‘everything that actually exists,’ which is close to Carl Sagan’s definition of the Cosmos as ‘All that is or was or ever will be.’ … Work is Labor: Metabolic, intellectual, and creative physical work i.e. the intentional/willful movement and transformation of matter (mass, energy, space, time, consciousness/information), especially as defined in physics as, “energy transfer that occurs when an object is moved over a distance by an external force …” (Encyclopædia Britannica). We can conceive of every application of embodied will and perception as Labor/Work, as even thinking and feeling transfer energy and move mass within the brain (albeit at small scales). Biology, chemistry, physics etc. are also like this. Furthermore, intellect and creativity are present in all applications of will and perception. All Labor, or “Work,” is intellectual and creative. 

Science and Art are Labor, and Labor is intrinsically Scientific and Artistic. (That this doesn’t always or even usually seem or feel to be the case is caused by the alienation of exploited and oppressed Labor under class society.)

Especially considering PMP, is Labor/Work defined by the activity of Beings? Or are Beings defined by the activity of Labor/Work? Could we entertain the view that both are true and that Reality is the collective, cooperative, communal Labor of the Panentheon?

The Cosmos is Beings doing Operations to Change The Cosmos (which is Beings) — and this all is Labor, or Work. We also see that this is basically Crowley’s definition of Magick. Magick is the Work or Labor of internalizing and/or externalizing Φ inward/outward to Ψ and back, across the (imaginary) “boundary” or “barrier” defining a discrete being or “self.”

We conclude that (per PMP) Labor = Magick, and vice versa. 

Para/Psychological M/M Cycle Formulas

“The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is C—M—C, the transformation of commodities into money, and the change of the money back again into commodities; or selling in order to buy. But alongside of this form we find another specifically different form: M—C—M, the transformation of money into commodities, and the change of commodities back again into money; or buying in order to sell. Money that circulates in the latter manner is thereby transformed into, becomes capital, and is already potentially capital.” (Karl Marx, Capital: Volume One, Transcribed by Martha Giminez and Hinrich Kuhls, marxists.org)

“Hegel’s method is basically as such in simple terms. You have an idea which comes into being, then that idea comes out of itself and develops outside going through ebbs and flows, and then it finally comes back into itself at a higher stage being informed by all the ebbs and flows it went through.” (A Comrade on a social media platform)

As we’ve discussed elsewhere, OpenCult’s PMP view points to a worldview where Reality is a grand, mythic, ritual, persuasive debate, where the views, beliefs, and physical system states and interactions of numberless beings contradict and challenge each other until an instantaneous consensus, from moment to moment, emerges and then continues to evolve, embodied as our experienced “worldline” or the timeline our shared world follows, twisting and turning through hyperspatial dimensions. This is a view of the Cosmos as a literal Materialist Dialectic, according to the OpenCult game-kernel or ruleset of 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT (Tenth Dimensional Dialectical Materialist Chaos Magick Theory).

My vulgar, profane Marxism is showing. Yet, there is more.

Marx famously defined two complementary formulas defining Capitalism: the Simple Commodity Circulation (C-M-C’), and the General Formula of Capital (M-C-M’). He explains them in the block quote from Capital: Volume One at the start of this second section, above. Here we riff on these to define the basic formulae of Mysticism/Magick (M/M):

• The Magickal Cycle Formula: P-PP-P’ (or, Φ-Ψ-Φ’)
• The Mystical Cycle Formula: PP-P-PP’ (or, Ψ-Φ-Ψ’)

In the above two formulae, “P” refers to the Psychological Operations (“Basic Operations” in the first section above) of the Microcosm, and “PP” refers to the Parapsychological Operations (“Classical Magickal Operations” in the first section above) of the Macrocosm.

Above, we argued that “Magick is the Work or Labor of internalizing and/or externalizing Φ [P] inward/outward to Ψ [PP] and back, across the (imaginary) ‘boundary’ or ‘barrier’ defining a discrete being or ‘self.’” This process describes the Magickal Formula, where the particular, specific, individual being sends or “casts” operations out (or in, or wherever) into the Cosmos to change it, often to thereby change themself.

The Mystical Formula is the inverse process of dissolving the Self and merging it with the All, or God, etc. This is the method described by mystics, saints, and bodhisattvas throughout history. This formula implies that it is not just the individual being who is transformed or “self-noughted,” but that through this dissolution and merger with the ground of being the All is also itself transformed.

Magick desires change and attainments characterized as tangible results and worldly powers. Mysticism desires change and attainments characterized as wisdom and divinity. OpenCult defines, in its Mythic Meta-Gamification (MMG) framework, the victory conditions or “Win” as constituting both in a complementary fashion: Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment must occur at the physical, spiritual, individual, and collective levels; and all of these levels support each other: we as individuals require physical needs to be collectively met (socially, economically, politically), including saving the world, freeing its people, and realizing their potential (materialist Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment); from that basis we can all pursue the perennial soteriological spiritual goals (spiritual Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment) of the various world religious wisdom traditions as a unified species.

The two formulae meet and merge the more humanity does magick and mysticism, forging alternating chains of psychological and parapsychological operations (and remember, the whole Cosmos is the psychological and parapsychological operations of the Panentheon). Humanity should do more magick and mysticism to advance The Holy Class War for The Commune of Heaven.

In the Magickal Formula the individual or group mind projects itself out through the Classical Magickal Operations or M/M generally into the Astral/Aether, or Akashic/Morphic, and then it returns as results, perhaps as Illumination (self modification through spells). In the Mystical Formula, the Astral/Aether, or Akashic/Morphic works through the individual or group mind by means of inspiration or possession — this assumes special M/M potency or powers of the human mind that say, gods, daemons, or spirits might want to exploit, or the cosmos in general just wants to speak to us or speak through us and so on. The first formula originates in the individual/group mind and projects into the Cosmos/occult realms and the second formula originates in the Cosmos/occult realms and projects into the individual/group mind of beings. 

Ψ is universally everwhere and all pervasive, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. It has a global value of 1/1. Φ is locally everywhere, each coordinate point and compound system or process having a different value between 0 and 1 (exclusive).

To explain the Astral/Aether and Akashic/Morphic terms we used above:

• Astral/Aether: Peter J. Carroll defines Astral Magick as “magic … performed by visualization and altered states of consciousness, or gnosis, alone. Physical paraphernalia is not used,” (Peter J. Carroll, Liber Kaos). The “Astral Plane” is typically associated with hidden or higher realms accessible through trances or related practices known as “astral projection.” The light body or astral body is projected through spiritual realms that intersect with, interact with, and correspond to our typical mundane realm of day-to-day life. The dream world is often considered to be an intermediary between the astral and mundane realms. Regarding Aether, Carroll writes that “Ether acts as though it were a form of information emitted by matter that is instantaneously available everywhere and has some power to shape the behavior of other matter. It appears to be broadly analogous to what have been called morphogenetic fields or non-local effects in physics. … The ether serpent represents the non-local organizing force of this universe which keeps physical laws more or less uniform at all points of space and time and is also the medium of magic. The ether serpent is analogous to the morphic field which selects and preserves negentropic forms,” (Peter J. Carroll, Liber Kaos). In OpenCult’s game-kernel 10THDIM-DIAMT-CMT, Aether is conceived of as available and accessible everywhere in the 10 “key” spatial dimensions of Rob Bryanton’s Imagining the Tenth Dimension system.
• Akashic/Morphic: “The Akashic Records” are an omniscient library, a field of information available and accessible everywhere (like the 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT interpretation of Aether, everywhere and everywhen in the 10 “key” dimensions). It contains records of all possible events and occurrences, all possible truth and knowledge, all consciousness and information. This is part of the idea that “the whole is in each part,” that the 10D indeterminate point or hypersphere “loops around” back on every 0D point — which idea we discuss elsewhere on this blog. The Morphic or Morphogenetic Field is the idea that there is a field, like the Akashic Field, that instead of describing and defining cosmic activity, encodes, stores, and reproduces “negentropic forms,” in such a way that once a specific shape/form or kind of shape/form chaotically emerges or evolves in a timeline or worldline, from then on the probabilistic likelihood increases that the same or similar shapes/forms will occur again. We see that the Akashic and Morphic Fields are two sides of the same coin, like Will and Perception, and are unified in Cosmic Belief.

In Carroll’s PP operations, the fifth operation is “Illumination,” or self modification through magick spells. Engels’s first law of Dialectical Materialism is “The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa,” (Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature). A common example is the increase or decrease of temperature of water causing it to boil or freeze. Here, I propose that incremental Illumination should tend towards Enlightenment, just as in Zen Buddhist practice Zazen and Shikantaza should tend towards Satori and Kensho:

• Illumination → Enlightenment

Furthermore, increased and improved objective and subjective quantity and quality of “knowledge and conversation” and commerce across the Microcosm-Macrocosm boundary of any given “Self” generates a lesser or greater Godform. 

In B.U.T.T.S. DLC, near the bottom of the post we define some terms as follows:

1. Thoughtform – Code-body/agent (usually conceived of as a subtle system though inclusive of gross physical forms in B.U.T.T.S.)
2. Servitor – Internal subsystem and/or smaller unit relative to the primary frame of reference i.e. evoking host body
3. Egregore – External supersystem and/or larger unit relative to the primary frame of reference i.e. invoking host body
4. Godform – A thoughtform “vertically integrating” servitor, evoking/invoking host, and egregore

In that Crowley book, he writes: “To invoke is to call in, just as to evoke is to call forth. This is the essential difference between the two branches of Magick. In invocation, the macrocosm floods the consciousness. In evocation, the magician, having become the macrocosm, creates a microcosm. You invoke a God into the Circle. You evoke a Spirit into the Triangle. In the first method identity with the God is attained by love and by surrender, by giving up or suppressing all irrelevant (and illusionary) parts of yourself. … In the second method identity is attained by paying special attention to the desired part of yourself: positive, as the first method is negative.” (Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice)

You’ll notice this closely resembles the binary between M/M above.

Carroll writes: “White Magic leans more toward the acquisition of wisdom and a general feeling of faith in the universe. The Black form is concerned more with the acquisition of power and is reflective of a basic faith in oneself. The end results are likely to be not dissimilar, for the paths meet in a way impossible to describe.” (Peter J. Carroll, Liber Null & Psychonaut)

We see a dualistic pattern here, between M/M, White Magick/Black Magick, Evocation/Invocation, etc., that our current up-to-date version of the following graphic might help to illustrate:

We can also imagine integrating across systems at different social scales, accumulating and circulating M/M and Religious/Political (R/P) power in desired patterns on desired networks, as desirable for any Radical Magus.

From B.U.T.T.S. DLC (click through for a detailed description — it’s not a very long read), B.U.T.T.S. is:

1. Spime – Object
2. Gene – Organism
3. Beme – Person
4. Meme – Market
5. Right – Class
6. Law – State
7. Ideology – System

FORCES

Early on in my read-through of Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice, the following occurred to me, and I massaged it into an acronym.

F(ORC/SSS) (“forces”):

• SSS = Symbol, Schema, System (OpenCult: STORIES)
• ORC = Operation, Ritual, Ceremony (OpenCult: GAMES)
• F = Formula (MAP (SSS) → BLUEPRINT (ORC))

ORC/SSS are both relative scales of complexity, where a system is made of schemata is made up symbols, and a ceremony is made of rituals is made of operations.

A formula is a “pathway” through an SSS, and this “map” then becomes the “blueprint” for an ORC. So an ORC follows an SSS in a specific way traced out by an F.

For operations I like Classical Magickal or “Parapsychological” (PP or Ψ) Operations and their corresponding Basic or “Psychological” (P or Φ) Operations (BWP+, “boop plus”).

This is a sliding scale so you might call an entire ceremony an “operation” or refer to an entire system by one of its symbols, and so on.

Evolutionary Parapsychology

Finally, Evolutionary Parapsychology. 

Basically, if we accept the idea of, basically, telepathy and parapsychology generally, then how does that relate to biology and biological evolution? One way is that telepathy or some kind of a soft hivemind would obviously be adaptive under aeons of selective pressures (cooperate in split-second circumstances like hunting or war, or more extended circumstances like finding lost comrades … or now you’re dead), but on the other hand it would be adaptively disadvantageous for an ingroup or for strangers to hear or know everything they thought about themselves or each other — whether flattering or unflattering (probably usually unflattering). 

Soft telepathic empathy among outgroups would also be advantageous: treat your neighbors and strangers as your own family, and everyone prospers.

But it is also necessary to consider in Evolutionary Parapsychology, beyond social animals’ (e.g. humans) in-group and out-group cooperation and conflict, is “Competitive Evolutionary Parapsychology,” where different species, chiefly in predator-prey relationships, will benefit from “stealing” consciousness information from each other but suffer from “being robbed” of that information.

So what might Evolutionary Parapsychology develop to be? Subconscious-to-subconscious telepathy. Basically my idea is that if the subconscious mind mediates telepathy, then that dynamic might convey prioritized information through a filter — losing fidelity but enough of a signal gets through to secure some measurable advantage while suppressing conflict with one’s in-group or strangers. Predators and prey would equally evolve relative parity in their theft and protection of privileged consciousness information.

M/M training might then enable subconscious-to-conscious, conscious-to-subconscious, or conscious-to-conscious telepathy.