Magick for materialists

[ciphergoth]

(This is something 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...

Comments

Re: I doubt it

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

I am making the controversial point that religious people are in fact quite rational but intellectually dishonest. They can see that god almost certainly does not exist, but are refusing to think about or discuss that matter.

So how do you respond to religious people who say "Look, you can quite obviously see the evidence all around that God must exist--you just want to pretend he doesn't, so that you can go on living an immoral and hedonistic life"?

Re: I doubt it

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

Their point is equally valid. I am hoping to convince borderline religious people of the "dishonest escapist" type, who might perhaps see and own up to their dishonest beliefs if directly confronted with them. Equally, the argument that you set out could convince a person who is feeling religious but denying it to own up and identify as religious.

We can, if you like, launch into a large discussion as to which of the two is most likely, or why I personally think the "dishonest escapist" theory is a more likely explanation of people's religious behaviour than the "true believer" theory. Since information is very sketchy, I don't think we can each do much more than state our intuitive opinions at this stage.

Incidentally, I don't see the corelation between religion and morality, so I don't get the second part of the argument. It would suffice to say "You know that God exists but you are denying it because you currently identify as atheist".

Pavlos

Re: I doubt it

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I think we should burn them all. (jk)
I really need a new user icon...