Chymical Wedding

I'm sure that at least will have some sort of thoughtful reply to this post, but I'd really like it if anybody on my friends list with a spiritual or occult bent would comment with their thoughts and opinions on the subject.

One of the reasons why I broke with chaos magic is the attitude toward paradigm shifting espoused by most schools of postmodern magical thought. While I still consider the technique to be useful to a certain extent, I think that it's limited to being a learning aid and nothing more.

One of the main issues I have with the modern Neopagan and occult movements is that nobody seems to ever train beyond a very basic level in any one system. Neopagans typically feed from the buffet of occult systems from whichever angle strikes their fancy at any given moment, while practitioners of magical systems which are not specifically Neopagan tend to never go beyond what they've learned in Kraig's Modern Magick or Carroll's Liber Null & Psychonaut. Even most experimental magicians' personal systems tend, from what I've seen, to be pretty basic and at around a beginner's level. Even those who do choose one system or other to focus on, such as students of the Golden Dawn system, or Carroll's extensive chaos magic training system (Liber Null, Liber KKK, and perhaps add in Wetzel's Liber LLL) almost never seem to finish it.

Magical traditions are important and useful for the very reason that they require focus and discipline. Paradigm shifting is a good way to explore other ideas and techniques, but I find that it's best to take those techniques and ideas and find ways of integrating them into whatever system you use. Even self-created systems (which are almost always based on techniques lifted from Carroll and Phil Hine, it seems) must follow a path of development and advancement, or they won't at all be effective in actually training the magician beyond the level of sigils and spells.

I'm not even saying that it's all bad that people aren't going beyond “the basics”. For a lot of people, that's as far as they want to go, and as far as they'll ever need to go, and that's just fine. Those who wish to go further, however, seem to get stuck on the discipline and getting bored parts. Sometimes magical development is a bit tedious for a stretch, but that's usually just when we're on a plateau. Instead of getting bored and going to another system, effectively starting from scratch, it will help a lot more if we just push on and see what's just over the horizon.

One of the main reasons for this is that a system of symbolism and certain modes of thought need to be assimilated fully before they can work most effectively. Kabbalah is a complex system, and only a cursory glance at a reference table will not allow a person to perform a fully functional kabbalistic ritual; similarly with Enochian magic, natural magic, and so forth. The postmodern approach of “take what looks pretty” has not borne much useful fruit, for as hip as the idea seems to be, and explains to me why so many occultists look askance at anybody who claims a powerful spiritual experience, or who place such hard and fast limitations on the possibilities of magic (and many do this without consciously realizing it, simply for lack of experience).

I'm far from saying that my way is the only way; rather, I think that whichever way a person is called needs to be explored to the utmost, instead of only serving as a weekend tourguide book to the realms of infinite experience. Otherwise, the practitioner risks a lopsided or entirely arrested magical/mystical development.