Tuck Detchon Writes

Mystical Susceptibility to Magick

It occurs to me that Mystical practice may make adepts (here meant as persons with any level of attainments) susceptible to Mystical/Magickal influence. Likewise, the inverse seems true as well, that Magickal practice is associated with some inherent Mystical progress and attainments. These two categories (Mysticism and Magick) are linked, unified, and condition and interpenetrate each other.

Abrahamism and Buddhism hold prohibitions, similar but different to each other, against Magick. Abrahamism punishes witchcraft and conjuring with death, and Buddhism generally prohibits Magick and dismisses results such as powers and Makyōs (visions, downloads, etc.). Vajrayana and tantric practices are obvious exceptions.

I think this may be partially because Mystical practices chiefly meditation open us up to powers, results, attainments, and rapport with intelligences.

In other posts such as PSI-PHI SCHEMA DLC we have considered BWP+ (Belief, Will, and Perception, etc.). Mysticism may be said to be more concerned with cosmic and divine harmony and unity and therefore be more perception-heavy (or “state-heavy”), whereas Magick is more concerned with powers, results, attainments, and rapport — typically operations to achieve desires and intents — and therefore is more will-heavy (or “interaction-heavy”).

Besides being distractions from the soteriological “Religious Path”, Magickal powers, attainments, and results may represent temptations for Mystics and divert mental and spiritual resources from that path. Mysticism subdues the ego/self in “self-noughting”, and opens one up to the spontaneous and unknown events of life as it is. Both Mysticism and Magick subdue the Psychic Censor responsible for all limitations on the intrinsic Morphic (“Morphogenetic” or Omnipotent form and action) and Akashic (Omniscient description and identity) superlative properties of beingness i.e. Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence; but the Censor is also responsible for ignorance and amnesia in general and specifically that ignorance and amnesia governing dreams, visions/auditions, psychedelic trips, synchronicities, peak experiences, etc.

So we can see that personally Mystics may become obsessed with powers, results, attainments, and spiritual rapport, and also that interpersonally Mystics may be “opened up” to the powers, results, attainments, and spiritual rapport wielded intentionally or unintentionally by other Mystics/Magi. This represents a discouraged set of tools/weapons for Mystics which I personally believe they should actively cultivate and use pursuant to the several Mystical and secular codes of virtue, ethics, and morality on one hand, and an identical set of tools/weapons which Magi may exploit for similarly motivated operations or operations divergently motivated by their own selfish personal and social goals.

I think an Occult-Communist movement will promote both Mysticism and Magick.

Meta-Belief and the Secular Wisdom Tradition

Chaos Magick advocates what is sometimes called “arbitrary belief,” which is the “meta-belief” that belief itself is a tool to achieve ends or results. Belief may then be conceived as harmonizing us with Symbols, Schemata, or Systems which are compatible with those beliefs and act on our behalf or link our BWP+ with the rest of Reality. Our beliefs may be pleasant to intelligences or Occult entities, beings, or persons; or the whole Cosmos and God. Or our beliefs may “resonate” with the Cosmos for other reasons. For example, beliefs may be compatible with objective properties of Reality whether or not the beliefs themselves accurately describe Reality even as they resonate with it.

Truth appears as a contradiction to arbitrary/meta-belief which we may actually try to make compatible with it. A truth-value motivation will give us ideas which are compatible with the habits of the Cosmos that emerge from aeons of the unfolding of the dialectical constructive discourse and interference among the numberless entities, beings, and persons that constitute all Matter in the Omniverse (per OpenCult “doctrine”).

So, if we don’t want to be denied by Fact, nor by the most influential emergent groupings of beings which determine the facts of how the Universe works, then Scientific Praxis becomes incumbent. Yet all knowledge is theoretical and for reasons we can speculate about but maybe never know, counterfactual beliefs of various kinds may or may not be more “pleasant” to or compatible under different sets of circumstances with the intelligences, entities, beings, or persons responsible for and mediating all Cosmic inputs, outputs, and effects — results and attainments.

Given the choice of pursuing the Truth (and Justice and Beauty and Wisdom and everything else), then we can take a look at the historical and prehistorical wisdom texts and oral traditions and see that they retain much of their initial wisdom and power even today.

But, I honestly think in this day and age, accounting for other Spiritual factors, reading a given dictionary in your first (or second or third) language is equivalent to reading a primary wisdom text like the Bible. Even further, reading a multi-volume encyclopedia is equivalent to reading an entire (if compressed) canon such as the Tipitaka/Tripitaka.

After all, we can see the whole world turning on the transformative power and utility of quantitative, objective, empirical, falsifiable and materialist and secular Symbols, Schemata, and Systems. Any Religious/Spiritual (R/S), Mystical/Magickal (M/M), Occult/Esoteric (O/E) system that chooses to ignore the landscape of real transformative power is distracted by the whispers in the dark of the lesser transformative power of self-deception.

This is barely a choice. We don’t put Science on a pedestal for no reason. In any age, consciousness is defined by the influence of the larger inclusive system. If we ignore that language, ideas, material relations, and so on shape our internal emotions, thoughts, speech and communications, and experiences, then we are running around in circles. We believe we have such a tight grip on tomorrow based on our individual activities but we are ultimately relative nodes in a larger system, and our internalized contents of consciousness are placed there as a simulated model of the larger system itself. That means, we as individual beings navigate our own personal lives and our very identities through the tools and weapons which are implanted in our brains through our relationships with each other and with the world as social organisms.

For example the language we use to contemplate our internal worlds is inherited from our respective cultures.

So it becomes apparent to us that there is tremendous value in navigating arbitrary/meta-belief with some significant consideration to relative and/or absolute truth value. We participate in the co-construction and maintenance of historico-cosmic bodies of approximate and provisional knowledge which in our era has explicitly built-in revision and self-correction methods. Chaos Magick attempts to address incompatibility among different traditions and mythologies through “pure” magickal theory which seeks to, almost scientifically, strip away cultural context and distill objective methods for performing parapsychological operations directly on Reality. 

(Ironically, the cultural context itself is one of those main methods, if not the main method.)

The chaotically shifting foundation of arbitrary/meta-belief yields an important point we can revolve around: if belief is a tool for accomplishing results, and we are seeking out the scientific kernel of different Mystical and Magickal traditions, then pure magick involves privileging possible, plausible, probable, and proven views to believe in because they accurately describe reality and they demonstrably achieve results.

Yet science itself has a kernel defined by empirical falsifiability surrounded by a cloud of unempirical and unfalsified and even unfalsifiable theory. People in general regard mathematical models which are compatible with existing theory, for example from theoretical physics, as science when strictly speaking they are not science.

This weakness of theoretical science actually provides the magus with an opportunity to improve the relative truth-value of their paradigm of choice, transitioning from the bizarre and outrageous up through the possible, plausible, and probable consistent directly and indirectly with the proven. Yet nor is science philosophically ever complete: science is effective primarily because it “proves” — as in tests — theory, and only secondarily because it “proves” — as in accumulates — a living body of true theories and facts.

And any given theory of everything has explanatory power on one hand yet on the other hand contradicts other theories of everything. What I’m getting at is that the magus may syncretically and eclectically switch among or combine theories or parts of theories (scientific, religious, or other) which choice is informed by evaluating and interpreting those theories or parts of theories against a personal rubric of truth and validity, and other motivations.

Skepticism, the view that no knowledge is certain, makes hypocrites of us all because we depend on our assumptions to accomplish anything. We might not believe in anything at all but we still have to act like we do, and in any case belief sneaks in through heredity and the environment below the threshold of conscious analysis. We are set up with sets of tendencies mediated and modulated by the constant changes to our world- and self-concepts which we undergo as physical, chemical, biological, psychological, and sociological systems interacting with the physical Universe.

All activity in our brains and the rest of our bodies change us. Every perception, thought, feeling, and action we execute as bodies in the Universe changes the brain. These things are changes to the brain. In one sense they don’t occur to the brain, they are something the brain does to itself in concert with the environment. Interpersonal and social interactions with others and ourselves, most frequently at the symbolic and linguistic levels, constantly transform us. (Strokes, head trauma, dehydration, volatile blood glucose, and other stressors on the physical brain likewise transform us and our consciousness. The inverse, a fit and healthy brain, is also valuable to “keep in mind.”)

All inputs and processing within the brain are “active code,” we don’t quarantine the color red in a special bus or sterile processing area walled-off from the rest of the brain when we are coping with looking at an apple or autumn leaves. When we hear an idea, even if we ultimately reject it, it is still processed by the brain, and I would say that the whole brain is more or less changed in complex and mystifying ways.

Another way of saying this is that all experience is brain food. But not all experiences are weighted the same. Some experiences deeply and profoundly change us in radical and transfigurative ways, for good or ill.

Yet, if reading a dictionary or encyclopedia is active code or brain food for a human and even a mystic or magus, then it strikes me that we can control and structure the inputs into our brains and minds for our benefit and for “results.” Meditation is the obvious candidate to offer here.

But intuitively, injecting the brain with toolsets and logical ideas from Art, Science, Religion, and Politics appear potent. We’ve been discussing Science, so I’ll point to math, psychology, and biology as possible ideal candidates for intervening in our own minds in this way.

Because while in Politics the individual suborns and commits themself to the group and the greater good, the inverse is true in Religion, where the group arms the individual with the equipment necessary to cultivate their own personal relationship with Others, the Cosmos, and the Divine. This line of thinking implies that where in Politics praxis necessarily requires the active combination of theory and real activity and organizing, for the mystic and the magus, engagement with theory alone is a kind of subsistence praxis.

So when we attempt to extract the pure theoretical kernel from the traditional forms of Religion/Spirituality, and do so with an analog to the Scientific Method, we can dissociate a bit and directly combine the ideas of pantheons of daemons and the history of the scholastic, philosophical, and scientific tradition. Here we will do so by proposing a new pantheon of demons to be invoked or evoked or otherwise conjured which come directly from philosophical and scientific thought experiments. The Wikipedia article “Demon (thought experiment)” (en.wikipedia.org) includes the following examples:

• Darwinian demon
• Evil demon (René Descartes)
• Laplace’s demon
• Maxwell’s demon
• Searle’s demon
• Morton’s demon

With this inspiration we can define any number of other daemons and put them on our altar or think about them from time to time or what have you.

In fact, in other posts we’ve:

• Considered Panpsychic-Cosmopsychic Multimind Panentheism (PCMP), where everything is matter with the intrinsic nature of consciousness and all possible systems are beings, with numberless infinitely groupable and infinitely divisible constituent beings.
• Considered thoughtforms, particularly servitors (multimind entities forming the internal structure of each being’s mind), egregores (collections of minds and their information and energy), and godforms (where servitors and egregores are integrated across the boundaries defining a being or self).
• Considered hypersigils, which are complex sigils acting over time such as a work of art, a dance, poetry, this blog, or Mythic Meta-Gamification (MMG).

Two observations follow from these ideas.

First, letters, punctuation, numbers, mathematical operators, and other symbols and characters are sigil-thoughtforms, as are elements in, say, the composition of a piece of art or a body’s movement through spacetime. Texts for example become grouped into syllables, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, volumes, etc., and both their symbolic and semantic contents support what we can imagine are living composite information-beings which live in documents, media, as well as geometric space and our brains and minds.

Second, if sigils represent simple operations and hypersigils represent complex combinations of operations over time, then the human beings and their lives and relationships are megasigils.

How much do we integrate received information-beings into our Spiritual practice, and how much do we invent? This is an open-ended and participatory question we have to answer ourselves, individually and collectively.

The Moral Equation

In the first section of this post I observed that different Religious/Spiritual traditions have their own respective moral and ethical codes. Like most people, virtue and wholesomeness is a big concern for me — I would love to have the aid and support of virtuous and wholesome occult intelligences, and be a node boosting those signals into the human world. I would appreciate their guidance and protection, and their participation in my “illumination” or Mystical/Magickal self-improvement. I also desire their approval and to resonate with their respective egregores, pantheons, and powers.

But I have a simple moral code of my own: The Prayer DLC.

In that Prayer, I pray to be used and wielded as a tool and weapon “for Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution; for the Holy Class War and the Commune of Heaven; for The Work of Work, Good Works, and the Great Work; for the Good and the Great; and against Bad and Evil.”

Being mindful of morals and ethics, we can describe, interpret, and evaluate any given event (whether caused by humans, animals, or naturally caused) as Evil (E), bad (b), Neutral (N), good (g), or Great (G):

Evil is worse than bad, and Great is better than good. We might theorize about Perfection beyond Greatness — but until we can prove these supernatural theories about God, the Soul, and one or more afterlives, the best we have is suspicion and some indirect, anecdotal evidence to consider. But first we must finish our explanation of the moral continuum defined by the “number line” above.

All circumstances represent the convergence of many, really all, causes; and all circumstances converge together to cause other circumstances. So in reality our “number line” above branches off in every direction. But the main observation here is this: good and bad follow each other like the left and right feet of Time. We may try our best to be and do good or Great but we will probably be frustrated and defeated sooner or later.

But we still have to try, and basically what this means is navigating the tangled webs of our relations and possible world-lines (the “path” our world travels through time), and devoting our intention and effort for the kinds of outcomes where Evil and bad are transformed into good and Great. Our ideal is perfection, approached more and more closely in our lives and history. Obviously we are never likely to achieve perfection, but we have to try and never give up.

This permanent struggle is akin to operating on values and variables to solve a “moral equation.”

So then our goals and methods resemble something like, “Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution; for the Holy Class War and the Commune of Heaven; for The Work of Work, Good Works, and the Great Work; for the Good and the Great; and against Bad and Evil.”

We are to wage the Holy Class War in order to establish and maintain the Commune of Heaven, with the goal of turning this Universe (and maybe beyond) into a Pure Land where the Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment of all entities, beings, and persons will be assured by their incarnation into this realm.

The Holy Class War → The Commune of Heaven is also summarized by the formula 1EM+K+:

• One Earth (we have only one Earth; we should unify as One Earth; and One Earth is a unit of sustainable ecological/resource consumption where greater than 1 Earth is unsustainable, less than 1 Earth is regenerative, and 1 Earth is exactly sustainable); 
• Maslow’s Plus (meet everyone’s Maslow’s (Hierarchy of) Needs, most basic first), Mysticism Plus, Magick Plus;
• Kardashev Plus (advance on the Kardashev Scale(s) of a civilization’s techno-cosmic mastery), Carrying Capacity Plus (increase the population Earth can support), Kia Plus (increase and improve individual consciousness and the number of consciousnesses).

In Parapsychology Proof we started by assuming that synchronicities are real and then examined some of the implications that follow from that assumption. The arguments in that post are a little stronger than the following, which are more tentative.

Above, in this post, we speculated that beliefs may resonate with other elements or aspects of reality, including occult intelligences with influence over the world.

If the Cosmos or Omniverse is a unified and integral mind (and subdivided into further minds which are themselves thoughts within the One Mind), we can guess that similarity and continuity are among the primary links which define things — including things like beings and selves. We may choose to define a being or self as: “(from most to least coarse/gross or least to most fine/subtle) body, mind, spirit, and soul”. These are patterns which resemble each other and continuously morph from one state to another over time. (Our relationships to others and the world also define us.)

These two main indicators of Akashic and Morphic “resonance” therefore may suggest a basis for such a thing as a self and a mechanism for the transmigration of this self across space, time, universe, and incarnation (afterlife).

Yet if, as the South Asian and broadly Eastern traditions believe, our existence as beings is cyclical, beginningless, and endless, then across infinitely many lifetimes we are dealing with the spontaneous ripening and fruition of infinite karma of all qualities (good, bad, etc.). And if as the Abrahamic traditions believe, we have one life and one afterlife, then we are all born innocent — so-called Original Sin notwithstanding.

So first of all there is no basis for believing that humans and other beings “deserve” to experience bad and evil events like “Damage, destruction, pain, suffering, harm, trauma, and death” — least of all if they are innocent or wholesome in their conduct. Second of all, this means we have to make the most of this life: 

We have to try to solve the moral equation in one lifetime, in one human history, and on one Earth.