I remember that @Zapdubious mentioned a current he named “Philos” which had him go through the Greek Philosophers in order to ascend, mentioning that he was placed before the feet of Athena.
I think that the practice of philosophizing can be magical in itself because it draws on certain energy patterns or currents that provides it inspiration. Most of the people here follow the mindset that they would rather have practical techniques rather than the theory, because they think that the theory is at most an impediment created by other people to provide a flawed account of spiritual experiences/occurrences. When most people use the word philosophy on this forum, I believe they mean something like “ideology” or a mere “system of contingent beliefs” that really amounts to little more than subjective opinion.
However, there is a crucial point that I have to lay out here that crystallized my involvement in Magick as opposed to only Mysticism. I am now 18, and for about a year before this I was introduced to self-help “Enlightenment” mysticism. I was drawn into it because it promised Truth and Beauty by reuniting with the Absolute Infinite. All you had to do was remove your ego, and I accepted it because that sounded fair; after all, why not remove the spiritual middleman?
However, I was still infatuated by the philosophical beauty and power of concepts, because at the time I was also studying literature and philosophy. People talk nowadays about intellectual masturbation and the pointlessness of intellectual life, about the dominance of practice and experience and the wisdom of age, about the depths of human emotion gained through life itself. What people don’t talk about is the eventual weaving together of practice and theory, of mind and spirit, about the intellectual fire and sublimity that only comes from using your mind to work with concepts and see the play of ideas reveal something new.
It’s an energy that pulls my being towards higher and higher levels of intellectual truth and complexity, it’s so full of light that I just can’t think that a healthy spirituality would reject the mind. Just as a human might enjoy the beauty of the sunset, we should use our minds to enjoy the beauty and struggle of ideas in their formation and in their full determination.
Thoughts are never just “mere” thoughts; they develop, there is an active spiritual movement of thoughts and ideas which can be traced through culture and which can be apprehended only with the intellect.
Although this movement of thoughts it not absolutely true, it is still true, and is still a part of world in which we live; thus, it is a part of spirituality.
I didn’t come to Magick just because I wanted more power, I came to Magick and the Left Hand Path because it promised knowledge. It was the promise that I didn’t have to give my ego up to the Source forever to get at the Truth. Indeed, I was surprised to discover the themes of Anti-transmigration, that Source had a spiritual will that pushes itself into the lower planes, that there was an intention to constantly push the horizons of what’s possible.
If that’s true, then I had finally found a place for philosophy, that there is a place for the coexistence of intellectual and spiritual life in my own life. You see, I know that Philosophy would not be able to rationalize outside of our own circle of subjectivity, that there would be some limits. However, I now know that philosophy was meant to evolve along with our other, spiritual abilities. I know this because the Absolute never intended for us to know it, unmediated by our minds. The gap between us and the absolute itself is part of the absolute. Then, it is from this standpoint that we are meant to evolve to greater levels of knowledge, spiritual attainment, and power about reality.
[/quote]Our knowing is irreducibly “subjective” not because we are forever separated from reality-in-itself, but precisely because we are part of this reality, because we cannot step outside it and observe it “objectively.” Far from separating us from reality, the very limitation on our knowing— its inevitably distorted, inconsistent character— bears witness to our inclusion in reality. [/quote]
Moreover, @BB44 posted an experience which goes as follows:
My goal is the intellectual/spiritual apprehension of the grand structures and natures of reality, and I will do whatever it takes to obtain that perspective. Not merely to experience and then go “Aw shucks, too much for my pee-wee brain. All hail the Infinite! Shoots self in the head”
Do not get me wrong. I will not forget the importance of practical powers and other forms of experience/gnosis. The ability to shape the world around me and evolve my powers adds to the majesty and the beauty of our experience of reality as I seek to go beyond the realms of normality set by our culture and standard perceptions of what’s possible.
Even when you are telling yourself that you don’t know something or that there limits to your perception of reality, you presume to know less than you really do. That’s my take.
To that end, I want to know about the magickal currents behind the great philosophical traditions, how to contact them, how to work with them, and how to go ahead with my philosophical and spiritual development.
I crave that intellectual fire, that inspiration. Moreover, I know it will energize my practices in more ways than I could imagine.
