Accidental mages?

[brenainn]

I'm trying to post once a week to this journal, and since I've been busy the past week and don't have much, I'll just post a brief thought for now. I'm re-reading John Michael Greer's excellent book, "The King in Orange." What I find myself wondering is, how many of the elites in the Western world are involved in the occult? Much of their power seems rooted in magic that they have used to keep the masses in line. But do they realize they're using magic? Or are they accidentally practicing magic? If that's the case, how many of us, the average Joes and Janes out there, accidentally practice magic?

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Sorry, but an addendum: Another way to view it would be as attention capture. Any form of informational exchange can be regarded as attention capture (that is, if you are reading this, and truly digesting the contents, I have captured your attention). So on an extremely basic level, any form of attention capture is magic.

That said, it's magic at its most basic. It does not employ, for example, the more esoteric correspondences of ritual high magic (for Catholics, something like the Mass, or Communion, for example, in which myths have been ingested over years in the audience, and then are "activated" through gestures and symbols).

[brenainn]

That's interesting. Would you say that someone who is emotionally or psychologically manipulative might also be practicing a form of magic?

[boccaderlupo]

If it's a form of communication, I guess it could be—but likely the manipulator has "seeded" the victim with thought patterns, or is aware of existing ones in the victim, and then "activates" those thought patterns to try to produce the desired result. Thus, any type of will training could in principle break the bonds between the mage and the subject, even if it merely allows the subject to become aware of what the mage is trying to achieve.