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Intro to Magick

To: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com
From: Polaris93@aol.com
Subject: Intro to Magick
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 16:17:20 -0400

Larry Mcmahon (mcmahan@nsa.hp.com) asked me to forward the following to you.
 In his own write (), 

>Please send this to tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com, the keeper of 
>many of the alt.magick faqs.  He could use some good material :-)
>
>Mockingbird

So here goes.  Hope you enjoy it.  Yael Dragwyla

_(From Internet correspondence with a new friend, 4/22/95)_:

Dear ----,

On ----, you sent:

>i am 16 years old and very new to this idea, but i would ~really~ 
>like to learn more about it...if you would be willing to help, please 
>let me know...thanks =j

   Well, since you _are_ new to it, maybe it would help to see what some of
the world's greatest authorities have had to say about the essence of Magick:

      1)  "Magick is the Art & Science of causing change in conformity with
Will." -- Aleister Crowley

      2)  "Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law.  Love is the Law,
love under Will." -- Aleister Crowley

      3)  "Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love
your neighbor as yourself." -- Yoshua bar Yoseph ha Noshri

      4)  "Every man and every woman is a Star." -- Aleister Crowley

      5)  According to Hillel, "Above all, the essence of Judaism is a life
lived in search of the answers to these three questions, and acting on them
appropriately:  (1) If I am not for myself, who will be?  (2) But if I am for
just myself, alone, what then am I? (3) And if not now, when? -- The rest is
study.  Go and study."

      Magick is the study and practice of the training of one's True Will,
what the Hindus call _dharma_, the followers of Muhammed call _kismet_ (the
path in life which Allah has given you for your destiny;  deviation from it
is, then, sin), libertarians call Liberty and the Bill of Rights, the ninja
call the Way of the Kami, the Eleveners call the Way of Life [the Eleveners:
 followers of the 11th Commandment:  Thou shalt not devastate Mother Earth,
nor any part of Her Life].  True Will has ten thousand thousand names in as
many cultures and on as many worlds, but always it comes down to this:  The
Way of Life, the Way of Life's Wisdom.  The Torah of the Jews is like the
containment vessel of a rocket, constraining the enormous, explosive force of
human spirit in such a way that it can reach the very Stars;  the Way of
Islam is another way of doing the same thing, in the environments preferred
by its followers;  the Way of the Gods of the Hindus, the Way of the Tao,
Magick, the Way of Life, Torah, Islam, the Bill of Rights, all are ways which
Life's children have worked out to optimize their well-being and endurance as
whole peoples (and therefore as the individual souls who are truly one with
those peoples).  Magick is a sort of trans-cultural study of all such ways,
and extraction by the Magickian over many years of a way of life for him- or
herself that ultimately makes him or her into a citizen of the whole living
world.  Black Magick is, when you come right down to it, a way of ecological
stupidity, of a preemption of the needs of all living beings, all of Life
over the long haul for the satisfaction of impulses of the moment, no matter
what form it takes.
      In particular, Magick uses the technique of conscious ritual invocation
as a highly articulated, elaborate form of prayer to establish and
continuously strength the strongest possible bonds between one's own spirit
or True Self and all aspects of God, and at the same time to rid that spirit
and its associated soul insofar as is possible of all forms of disease,
uncleanliness, ignorance, stupidity, and anything else that is an obstacle in
the way of establishing and perfecting complete harmony between one's self,
God, and God's Creation.
      Some Magickians see God as having many aspects, called Gods, Elohim,
Archangels & Angels, and so forth;  others believe there are absolute
distinctions between God and the Angels, on the one hand, and among the few
or many parts of God, assuming there is more than one.  They come from every
sort of cultural background and historical period, and therefore approach God
from very different directions, and thus each may need to work out a Path to
God not quite like anyone else's.  Magick is a way of working out such a Path
for oneself, regardless of one's cultural background, of coming to understand
that we, too, are living creatures and part of God's Living Universe like all
else, and that our neighbors indeed do include Brother Sun, Sister Moon,
Cousin Wolf and Oak and Mushroom and Alga and Virus, as well as any other
living being we see around us.  With that understanding comes understanding
of basic principles which allow one to construct a viable, individual Way of
Life for oneself that is in harmony with everyone's Ways.
      In a nutshell, that's what Magick is all about, or so I see it.  As for
the study . . . if you like, I can upload the bibliographies to my _New
Magicks for a New Age to you;  or you can find them on AOL, under "Interests
and Lifestyles"/"Religion & Ethics"/"Pagan & Metaphysical"/"Pagan II"
libraries, under my screen-name "Polaris93" (their file titles are "NM0C5.A,"
"NM0C5.B," and "NM0C5.C."
      If you are still interested, I'll be glad to answer your questions at
any time, and am delighted to see people taking a serious interest in Magick
as the Way of Life, the Way of God's Holy Creation.

NB to tyagi:  One additional quote I forgot to use up above there (# 6):
_See, today I set before you life and prosperity, death and disaster.  If you
obey the commandments of Yahweh your God that I enjoin on you today, if you
love Yahweh your God and follow his ways, if you keep his commandments, his
laws, his customs, you will live and increase, and Yahweh your God will bless
you in the land which you are entering to make your own.  But if your heart
strays, if you let yourself be drawn into worshiping other gods and serving
them, I tell you today, you will most certainly perish;  you will not live
long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.  I call
heaven and earth to witness against you today:  I set before you life or
death, blessing or curse.  Choose life, then, so that you and your
descendants may live, in the love of Yahweh your God, obeying his voice,
clinging to him;  for in this your life consists, and on this depends your
long stay in the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob he would give them._ Moses' departing speech to the Israelites,
Deuteronomy 30: 15-20

Path: shell.portal.com!svc.portal.com!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!1:104/825!heidrick_well_sf_ca_us
From: heidrick_well_sf_ca_us@hms.com (heidrick@well.sf.ca.us)
Date: 07 Jul 95 19:40:00 
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Black MAGICK - Question !!!
Message-ID: <28e_9507161324@hms.com>
Organization:  The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA 
References: 
Lines: 34

~From: heidrick@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Heidrick)
~Subject: Re: Black MAGICK - Question !!!
~Date: 8 Jul 1995 01:40:57 GMT
Organization: The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
~References: 
 <3tklgq$ps0@sundog.tiac.net>

mmarkish@max.tiac.net (Mark Markish) writes:

>> Is Black Magick a magickal system with...

>A follow-up question, if anyone can help:
>  is it true or false that the above spelling of the word "magic" has
>  been introduced by Aliester Crowly?

Skip the "Black".  Other than that, "reintroduced" is the correct term.
For most of the history of the English language, "magick" has been the
way of spelling "magic" -- the "k" was dropped a few centuries ago with
the modernization of spelling.  Blame Dr.Johnson for starting the movement.
Incidentally, "magickal" is unpronouncable.  "Magical is the correct
spelling, since English does not include the Inkosa "click" sound.

93 93/93
Bill Heidrick

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I believe magick to be....  Spotting patterns in the phonomenological 
universe, seeing how intangible mechanisms work, and using this 
knowledge to alter your own consciousness or somebody else's.

buckleya@cs.man.ac.uk (Adam Buckley)
------------------------------------

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