[quote=“the fool”]i think that in some ways it’s a matter of having their own worldview. balg has the potential of being to the magickal world what gracie jujitsu and the ufc were to martial arts: a wakeup call where the venerated old mages of other traditions have their kung fu put to the test, and many well-respected gurus end up getting knocked the f*ck out and carried out on a stretcher by others who they had never heard of previously.
if you know anything about gracie bjj and the ufc, you realize that in the last 20 years a whole new generation of fighters have come up in the new system, and many of the masters that existed previously have lost a LOT of credibility because neither they nor their students could hack it in the octagon. as a result, today’s fighters are faster, tougher, have more endurance, cross-train more rigorously, and have much more of a killer instinct than the fighters of the past. only the very very very best of the best managed to make it in the modern bloodsport.
ea is doing exactly the same thing with balg: he’s creating a leaner, meaner, and more prove-it-effective generation of mages here. a lot of the older mages are going to have to come out of hiding, show their true faces, and have their skills put to the test. and because ea spent so many years as a satanist and lhp prac, he has enough pride to openly mock and deride anyone who doesn’t have the skill to back up their claims.
furthermore, many of the gurus in magick may possibly be replaced by some of the students, subscribers, and posters on this board. the internet may be directly responsible for wringing the last bit of refried catholicism out of western magick in the 21st century.
there’s a change afoot in the magical world. a world where some of the students can put it on the teachers and the theorists will be torn to pieces in the magick circle and pressed for their lesser magick skills and the results thereof.
if balg goes the way ea planned, it’s not going to be pretty.
maybe that’s why the mages say no. even if they won’t admit it to themselves.[/quote]
Well, I can see where the analogy comes from, but a lot of this is surface. For example, bjj is fitted to work very well as a combat sport. Certain traditional martial arts, like karate and kung fu, are not sport savvy because the moves are designed to inflict mortal damage. Granted, many public figures are made to be charlatans, but if Bjj’ers were to walk into a Shaolin battleground and test those fighters in unrestricted combat… not a smart move. I’m not saying that MMA doesn’t have real-world fighting capability, but it is applied to a sport that has rules.
You can’t claw, headbutt, throw certain elbow, open-hand strikes, chops, nut-shots, eye-gouging… so we have to take stuff like that into context. Fighting in the octagon is a sport, even if they fighters are good in a holistic sense. Traditional martial arts were designed to incapacitate and kill, and as people in the West need to realize, most of what we see is absolute garbage in comparison to what is available.
This is somewhat of the same thing with traditional spiritual arts. Now, I am not condoning what goes on with traditional spiritual systems, in fact a lot of the secrecy is not smart at all. However, certain things, primarily purification rites, have their application for reasons that have nothing to do with morals. I mean, I see a lot of folks getting ready to throw curses at people who I wouldn’t waste an ounce of energy on. It has nothing to do with karma, “right” or “wrong”… none of that whatsoever. Rather, it’s more about “why”, why would I curse someone who, in all honesty, is no threat to me unless I consign myself to being as weak as that dude?
We are doing new things, but it’s gotta have some thought as to the practical application of the work beyond what we read and resist ourselves. We wouldn’t want to do the right because it sounds long, drawn-out, and we want things done fast. This is as much of a slope to foolishness as staying rigid and closed like the old folks, and in the end it can fail just as easily. I mean, BJJ worked well with a 1-to-1 fight, but how about needing to fighting 5 or more people? You’ll get stomped recklessly trying to armbar one guy, so how much did it really evolve?
I’m just saying this because while we may hail what we are doing, we can’t necessarily just denounce people because they don’t like what we do. I used to think the same way about a lot of yoga, then I practiced some of it and was like, “… Oops. Guess I was being a pompous ass.” I was so intent on trying to summon, that I didn’t get to see how my desire was screwing me up. So there was some practical reason as to why folks need to “remove desire”, not for any moral impurity, but to let the shit get done.
I’m just saying that this focus on debunking old work seems pretty useless, when we would be much better off for working with what we have, and breaking barriers that way. We can address it, but not seek to continuously try to “reveal” to the world that “this way” is the ultimate way. As great as BALG work is, there is someone who is working with traditional means that is breaking barriers just as fast, while there is probably someone utilizing “The Right of Slapping Nuts” to get the same barrier breaks. So I’m just wondering, why spend so much time worrying about traditionalists? If they refuse, that’s them and it’s over. Anything beyond that is conjecture that not only is unverified, but useless in investigation. African Voudon seems extremely verbose, unnecessary, and reckless in its practices and paradigm activities, but that doesn’t mean it’s not powerful.
