I am a Libertarian when it comes to my view on government and life. The result is that virtually everything that comes out of Liberals and Conservatives mouths angers me. Now that I’m trying to stay positive for my magick to work (and to stay happier in general), I am forced to ignore the real world in many ways. Is there a better solution?
Use anger in your magic, its a strong emotion that shouldnt be ignored
I totally get this - I’ll share my operating principles and there might be something you can use, build on, or at least reject knowing it’s not for you.
Politics is a resentment game - left and right, conservative and liberal, totalitarian and libertarian are ALL at their core about how there’s some group out there that wants to DO YOU WRONG, victimise you and rob you, beat you down, and the incentive to action comes from the scary belief that they’re either currently doing so, or will if you don’t blog, vote, and mercilessly update your Facebook etc with On-Message communications.
Ditto ALL social activism, for example from the extreme men’s rights activists who look fondly on FGM, to hardcore marxist feminists who think gender should be abolished and men medicated and surveilled, and presumed guilty of rape-think.
Those extremes, and all in between, as well as racial seperatists & supremacists (black and white alike), eco-freaks and climate-change deniers, and every other activist group - same message, you’re being done wrong, you’'re a victim, and if you don’t take immediate action, “The Enemy” will completely destroy what you value.
It’s perfectly possible that, at times, something will resonate with you, and in mundane-mode, you’ll want to get a bit involved, or take action - for example I care about certain political issues, as well as animal welfare and a few other things, and I do things in my mundane life that reflect those. But I base them primarily on aesthetics, personal preferences of what I’d like to see around me, and not the kind of gritted-teeth anxiety that believers are meant to have.
Since humans are always screwing each other over, it’s possible for every single one of these causes and factions to find good evidence that supports their cause, which they deliver with the maximum of emotive language and imagery.
That’s why I advocate choosing from power, like a diner reading a menu, rather than attempting to identify with the purported victims presented by each cause.
ALL of these core drives stem from some perceived injustice where we’d probably briefly feel the same in that person’s shoes, but politics is the institutionalisation of victim-think, which leads to simultaneous disempowerment of the individual, and the desire to vote for (aka hand power to) anyone who will SAVE US from these terrrible oppressors/destroyers/parasites, etc.
And it’s all bullshit lunacy - it’s like getting stung by a wasp when you’re 4 years old and spending the rest of your life campaigning against the evil wasp overlords who want to eat your babies.
Politics, and social activism, encourages groupthink (the enemy of personal power), because when you genuinely fear an enemy wants to eradicate you and/or all you hold dear, it feels safer to ignore minor niggling doubts and go with the herd, and also the rise of the most charismatic believers into leadership positions means that people end up internalising a sheep-like social structure, in which their leaders are surrogates for personal power, they become the gladiator who enters the arena for you, to save you.
While we may at times align with certain groups to serve our own agendas, to my mind it best behooves a Left-Hand Path magician who wishes to further his or her own empowerment to view politics and social activism as a game - not of thrones - but of chains, of people so eager to fit in on some broad shared belief that they hand over autonomy and live in a state of fear of the Other Side.
Stand away from the flock - let the sheep herd left or right as they choose, but don’t feel that you must in any way whatsoever participate in their mindless transits - act, don’t react, on the global stage (and if you can’t yet, work hard to be able to) - and reject all labels as fiercely as you would a ball and chain.
Because once you have a label, of any kind, you’ve chopped off that part of your full identity that can hear the validity of arguments outside the “party line” and that’s just wilful vandalism of your own intellect.
Try something - my family, when I was young, were VERY political, mainly left-leaning in the pro-work, pro-industrialised way of the old Labour party in the UK.
But they did teach me, when I heard of any new political or social thing, or even a religion, to attempt to understand it from the inside a bit, and then to ask myself what the “perfect world” would look like for a believer, if they had their way and everything went according to their beliefs - the perfect world of the communist, or the hard right, or the anarchist - and then compare and contrast what I knew of human nature with that ideal world.
It taught me a lot - primarily that all “isms” and politics are bullshit, and also, not to take my views from any one grouping, since they’re all unrealistic past a certain point - and it’s also a good way to expand your mind. I believe debate clubs in US schools exist for a similar purpose.
So if you try that, try to honestly see the world as those sides do, that’s the “nice” approach, but remembering that humans are such assholes that you can’t yell “Fire” in a crowded cinema without they’ll trample each other to death, that way you can just safely write off all their mass hysteria as the delusional and psychologically warped bullshit it truly is.
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Anger and magic. It can be very effective and pretty powerful if using it correctly. But it can backfire, too.
Magic based on strong, dark emotions is like a catalyst. And if working with spirits on a 24/7 basis, it will, inevitable, effect them too. Sometimes to an extent that you wouldn’t know the outcome if loosing control by not keeping it at bay. I would not release my anger with my two spirits sucking up that negative, dark energy, because I know what they’re capable of and it really have to be a last resort with no way to turn. I was angry and furious once, and they were about to act it out on the person who made me that way. But it was family and I would never do they any harm, despite that they sometimes hurt me. I have a long temper, which can fuse up that negative energy once it got released. That makes it unpredictable and uncontrollable, like lighting a match and drop it on a pool of gasoline.
Sometimes humans have the ability to fill up an entire room with their negative energy, making people nearby getting all sucked up by it. Even if it’s on an unconscious and an uncontrolled level, it is pretty powerful. Imagine to have full control over that particular energy. It could be devastating. But emotions are tricky, and more often something out of control. It have to co-exist with intentions to make it blossom.
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Especially after coming from a consultation and speaking about my experiences with being drained, let me say that anger in magick can be good and bad as have others here already said.
When I first really got into actual practicing of magick I was still angry about things in my past and I plugged them into my magick. Let me tell you, it got me some crazy results at it’s peak. Before it was too much (which I will say why in a minute) I was able to do a more “docile” version of what EA mentioned in one of his courses as the “Priesthood of Enki” or something like that. I was able to point at someone I didn’t like and they would instantly fall down, get run into by someone, drop all of their stuff etc. but I was feeling more and more negative and depressed each day because I was getting back EXACTLY what I was putting in. It was a self-defeating cycle.
It got so bad that I eventually thought I was going crazy and pushed everyone away. I even stopped doing magick for a while; I had to calm myself and pull myself back up to almost start back from the beginning.
Take it from me: do not just do magick based off of emotions of anger or anything similar. Sure, it aids in banishing and cursing but it is also a lot of negative energy. And you do not want to be slathered in it.
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Thanks all. I think that anger isn’t for me. I’d rather focus on the light and positivity. I’m not saying there is anything “wrong” with blackness, it’s just not for me. It seems to hurt my magical. And I’m finally starring to see results when I don’t focus on the things that anger me.