Monday, May 25, 2020

Sorcerous Thoughts: Relationships & Solitude





We are a communal species much like the insect world of the ant or bee where we dwell among others of a like mind. While we may not all have queens to serve, most of us reside in communities of close proximity to one another with a tiered governmental system to guide our conduct.

Our modern mainstream religions evolved from ancient cults which were communal as well because people of a like mind who believed in the same deity, spirit or philosophy gathered to commune together using the same rites and observances. Some of these cults and religions grew out of a desperate need for identity while others grew from a base of the lust for power and dominance.

Today even the non-mainstream belief systems seek members whom seek to assemble themselves together for numerous reasons from learning more about what it is they believe in to security and safety in numbers. It is safe to say that all of the African systems are community based belief organizations and many of the western European ones such as lodges and Witch covens are growing of their own accord as well.

So with the notion that it is better to be part of a group than alone, why would anyone decide to go off on their own in the first place? There are reasons and they are not all occult nor metaphysically oriented. Sometimes the reasons are just plain as day.

Many may think the idea of being alone is antithetical to being a human however it is not.. History shows numerous great minds and thinkers spent a great deal of their lives alone contemplating and working alone often so that they could get more of their work accomplished. Mathematicians, alchemists, astrologers, artists such as painters & sculptors, musicians, composers, engineers and inventors, scientists, poets and many others all left the hubbub of the world at large and sought refuge from the noise to be alone with their thoughts, ideas, beliefs and work.

It seems to be only within the world of religion where you are expected to conform and become like everyone else: docile, respectful, accepting, obliging, giving, and of course, obedient. You’re not expected to question the status quo let alone the religion’s philosophy else you run the risk of expulsion from the community sometimes called ‘excommunication’ - which often meant death for an individual since no one else in the community was allowed to do business with them by religious decree.

The few who chose to resign themselves to either lead a dual life of a self-centric spiritual believer who chose to question the community’s dominant paradigm or the rare individual who left the community all together and wandered off to find their own plot of home for themselves out in the wilds had a tough time of it to be certain. We do know there were Sorcerers in France operating as alchemists who often sold poisons to nobles and aristocracy while they plied their work seeking to both illuminate their souls and obtain the Philosopher’s Stone which was believed could turn base metals into gold.

There are tales of Cunningmen and wise women who eschewed many towns preferring to live by themselves while they worked their Sorceries for clients and performed whatever magics they did for themselves. This may seem a stretch to some however is it really? We can look to the Old West in the US where Mountain Men got tired of so-called civilized life and went into the mountains to live many years alone with a few being outlaws but numerous ones being scarred by their time serving in the American Civil War. If these men would just up and leave civilization all together especially with numerous angry Native American tribes disliking any white settlers on their lands, it’s not a stretch to imagine how Cunningmen & Wise Women of old could easily do the same for various and sundry reasons of their own free choice.

Here are some of my reasons as to why a serious practitioner would want to disconnect from the world today and venture off into parts unknown by themselves. You may judge for yourself yet understand these are simply my thoughts on the subject and are not definitive by any means.

1. Peace & Quiet. Above all, removing oneself from being tapped into “The Grid” s many are wont to say is to forsake the typical noise of the idiot box (i.e. television) and the communication devices such as the modern telephone. After a while the peace and calm one’s mind obtains is wonderful and very stilling. It allows for your mind to have its own thoughts rather than to be bombarded with the miasma of trauma by so-called news reporters, pundits whose opinions mean nothing and slick advertising conditioning you to believe you are not cool/hip/pro/chic/etc IF you do not purchase their products. All of this can be lived without.

2. Difficult Family Members. Nothing is more aggravating to me than a bunch of ungrateful family members whom you’ve done work for or helped previously and when you need them, they’re nowhere to be found. Family is supposed to stick together however this often is not the case. In most families, there’s one members who is the dominant one who tries to bully you into submitting to their whims & desires. This is not a good family setting rather it is a bully situation and regardless of the fact they are blood relations, when they have consistently demonstrated unable or the unwillingness to help you when you need it then why bother to worry about them any longer?

3. Friends, Acquaintances & Who are you again? After Family come those who toss around that dreaded word willy-nilly “friend” especially when they desire for you to help them with the heavy lifting, the ride, or the money loan. I dislike the word “friend” because I tell folks I have 2 real friends and everyone else I know is an acquaintance of one degree or another - usually to the lesser degree. Once I had someone ask me, “So how do you define a ‘friend’?” and I stated “a friend is someone whom you can get a substantial amount of money from without ever fear of having to repay it as well as someone who will immediately get up in the wee hours of the morning during a blizzard to come and rescue you; that is a friend.” In reality a friend is someone you can impose upon if need be and they will have your back without question. Know anyone who loves or cares about you enough to take a bullet for you? THAT is a friend. Everyone else is just an acquaintance.

Occasionally I run into this third type who I label, “Who are you again?” because these are people I seriously do NOT remember ever meeting let alone ever knowing and usually they are trying to wheedle something out of me whether it’s $$$, something free or just my time for them to tell me about their interests. You may even know the type yourself and they are severely aggravating.

4. Political Rhetoric. Ugh. “Vote for so-&-so because they’re gonna fix everything!” Really? Then why didn’t they fix everything when they held a lower public office? Why are their state’s finances in a shambles now and how many unwed mothers have been kicked off any sort of financial assistance while they served as their state’s Governor? Yet this all knowing candidate is going to fix everything if s/he becomes Senator or (worse) POTUS? Really? Then my friend you’ve been drinking too much Kool Aid but if you add a little strychnine to it, you won’t have these silly beliefs any longer.

People want to believe in politicians more then they want to believe in Jesus, Allah or UFO’s and it’s really scary. Oh certainly every politician starts out “honest” (cough, cough) which is utter nonsense because no one in their right mind leaves their multi-million dollar a year corporate job to take a political position that pays just over $100K/yr?!?! I call BULLSHIT! They are in it for the financial gains they can get from the power structure which will be at their beck and call. Yet simpletons believe in the errant stupidity of what some candidates spew their sewers with promises of reforms - all of which only ever help the top one percent of the wage earners. Trickle-Down Economics is idiotic, it does not work and Ronald Reagan sold us that No-Sale nonsense 40 years ago.

5. The Lunatic Fringe. Here I dump the religious lunatics who run around trying to save us all from ourselves. The one who refuse to pay attention to their own kids, what they are doing, where they are, who they are with and so on yet these religious knights want everyone else to suffer by instigating harsh community rules of conduct and decorum for anything and everything which they believe flies against their faith. This did not work in the Cromwellian era of Britain and it is not working in the Muslim world today. When force is applied it eventually it encounters resistance and if the force is increased then the resistance will also increase and the result will become catastrophic. Such is inevitable.

Not only must we deal with the lunatic religious maniacs in our society but also we have to deal with aggressive sales people fostered by corporations whose desires are to expand, increase and surpass previous records in their gluttonous rage to corner the market so they get all of the $$$. Sadly this leads to unethical sales tactics, outright cons and often lies about their competitor’s reputations.

We are even seeing these old straw hat tactics being used today by door-to-door knockers representing so-called utility companies such as electric and/or gas utilities in the hopes of switching you over to their (surprise!) lower rates offered by the firm they represent. However once you show them your utility bills, they now have the info off of it so they can sign you up without your consent and you are in one helluva mess to get the issue resolved.

Getting just as bad are the aggressive kids selling scout cookies or church youth groups preying on the adult for sympathy to buy their wares yet when you spend the $ on the items, no one ever shows up with your merchandise.

And of course we have the local political parties who reach out by going door-to-door which in itself is not normally bad IF the door knocker is a rational individual and can keep their cool but many of them are hyper religious kooks and get offended easily if you refuse to pray with them or tell them you don’t like their candidate because he’s a born-again fundamentalist.

6. The Ever Growing Police State. I have known more than a few who have left the comforts of civilization seeking solace out in the wilds after they purchased land and had a cabin or ranch steading built. Why? Because these folks were afraid of the ever growing Police State being weaponized, trained and fueled by the Military Industrial Complex.

Today we have a Police State who take in trainees, give them a few weeks of training then send them out with loaded weapons on patrol. Yet a hairdresser must go through a full year’s worth of training before s/he is allowed to cut hair! I may overlook some of this IF these new Police recruits were former Military Police but often these men and women are just average high school grads who have had very little training when compared with our European brethren’s Police forces.

Do not get me wrong, I respect our police because I come from a family with former police members, my late best friend was a 20 yr retired sheriff’s deputy and I got to know a number of officers, highway patrolmen and deputies when I was a firefighter. Even many of my old retired officer friends are astounded at how our modern society has shifted towards police because of all the hard work they did in their day to make things better between police nd citizens yet today young hot-shot officers pull their guns and kill the tiny yappy dogs of homeowners or baby kittens in front of young children who wre tending to them - and sadly this behavior is ALWAYS justified by their respective police departments.

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So is it really that difficult to want to pack up and leave town? Or just remove yourself from society’s grasp? Yet we hear religions claim you need “community”. Yet if you’re a practitioner who can raise a few livestock animals, tend to a small garden, know how to smelt metals in a forge, have your own solar &/or wind power to suit your needs, then you should be able to get along fine all by  yourself.

Sadly though people who are self-sufficient like this are often labeled by the establishment as kooks, odd, strange, weirdos, coots, or worse, “anti-establishment”. For what? Just because you want to be alone with your thoughts? Tell that to DaVinci, Emerson, Tesla and many others who enjoyed their time alone so they could think, create and invent.

I also find it amusing how many so-called occultists today pay lip service to wanting to perform the Abramelin ritual yet none of them want to leave society to actually go and do it properly. Everyone wants to do this ritual while still living and working in our modern society. And still that’s NOT how Abramelin the Mage laid it down to his son. Imagine if you had a steading or cabin where you could be self-sufficient and be alone? Think how much and how far your magical abilities would go.

Even if you didn’t want to perform the Abramelin rite, you could still do your Liber Samekh for an extended period of time thus allowing you the golden opportunity to see within and to meet your higher self. Or perhaps you cared to spend time simply working the Uncrossing Ritual for an extended period of time? Removing all of that crap you were embedded with from your past childhood upbringing with limiting beliefs, doubts, fears and worries which you could resurrect each one, examine it carefully then expel it and replace it with something better.

THIS is why unplugging from The Grid is an ideal thing for the Sorcerer who does not wish to remain handcuffed to societal norms. With services like Amazon you can order virtually anything online at a local library and have any book sent to you for your studies. Your magical work would increase by leaps and bounds. I know this because years ago when I was still in college in Florida, I used to take sabbaticals from work and just read/study and practice Sorcery & Magic - when not in school and finished with my class studies. It was fantastic! I’ve been thinking about doing this again except I am considering investing in some private property out in the country somewhere and setting up shop.

Something to chew on.

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