Magick for materialists
Sep. 12th, 2002 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciphergoth(This is something ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
purplerabbits and myself have thought for a long time, and I just got to writing up in an LJ comment. Copying it here with minor edits 'cos I'm interested to know what people think.)
I think I'm generally acknowledged to be a total screaming materialist and skeptic about magick, superstition, gods and so forth, and as such I'm not sure I see a reason why you shouldn't do a ritual to change the way you feel about something, if you think it might work.
It's not necessarily a step in the question of believing in all that - it's a willing suspension of disbelief, in order to do things to your head from a sideways angle that aren't always easy to do head-on. Our heads are full of irrational things, some of them undesirable, and you can't always make them stop doing their nasty work by saying "stop that, it's irrational!". You can use ritual and suspension of disbelief to turn them into something you can visualise, something tangible, and you can address them on their own territory.
The liberating thing about this, of course, is that you needn't invoke Innana, or Ganesh, if you don't want to - if it will work better, you can invoke John Lennon or Santa Claus.
When Alison and I decided to stop dithering and commit to running BiCon 2002, we did a ritual to mark the occasion - she found two blue smarties and two red ones, and we solemnly ate the red pills together...
purplerabbits and myself have thought for a long time, and I just got to writing up in an LJ comment. Copying it here with minor edits 'cos I'm interested to know what people think.)I think I'm generally acknowledged to be a total screaming materialist and skeptic about magick, superstition, gods and so forth, and as such I'm not sure I see a reason why you shouldn't do a ritual to change the way you feel about something, if you think it might work.
It's not necessarily a step in the question of believing in all that - it's a willing suspension of disbelief, in order to do things to your head from a sideways angle that aren't always easy to do head-on. Our heads are full of irrational things, some of them undesirable, and you can't always make them stop doing their nasty work by saying "stop that, it's irrational!". You can use ritual and suspension of disbelief to turn them into something you can visualise, something tangible, and you can address them on their own territory.
The liberating thing about this, of course, is that you needn't invoke Innana, or Ganesh, if you don't want to - if it will work better, you can invoke John Lennon or Santa Claus.
When Alison and I decided to stop dithering and commit to running BiCon 2002, we did a ritual to mark the occasion - she found two blue smarties and two red ones, and we solemnly ate the red pills together...
Re: And your point is...
Date: 2002-09-13 01:52 am (UTC)"OK, we accept that you and I believe different things. I accept that you believe in $spiritual_entity and you accept that I don't. Neither of us has any likelihood of convincing the other that the other is wrong, since we're both intelligent and well-read enough to be familiar with the relevant arguments. So long as it doesn't hurt or threaten me that you believe different things from me, that's not a problem. Just don't try to get me to run my life according to yuor beliefs, and I won't try to get you to run your life according to mine."
This won't solve all problems. Some people's beliefs (rational and spiritual) cause them to believe that they need to convert others to their belief, and do Bad Things to people who don't convert. And there is certainly the problem of what to tell the kids - in an ideal world you let them decide what's right for them, but they're inevitably goign to be more strongly influenced by the beliefs of those people closest to them.
Re: And your point is...
Date: 2002-09-13 02:57 am (UTC)Both my parents took the ideal world view you describe - let your children decide what's right for them.
All my schools, on the other hand, were strongly C of E (if that's not a contradiction in terms).
As it happens, my dad is atheist, and my mum is agnostic.
AFAIK, all my brothers and sisters are atheist or agnostic.
After a brief flirtation with christianity, I am now a confirmed atheist.
Does that show I've been influenced by close people?
J
Re: And your point is...
Date: 2002-09-13 03:20 am (UTC)I'd say so; I think your parents attitude of 'let you decide' had a strong influence. However, I'm suddenly uncomfortably aware that when I say 'influenced', I don't meant that they necessarily follow their beliefs - they may well rebel strongly against them - so I've just been rather dogmatic about something I'd find it really, really hard to prove. Oh dear.