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Now a question: As a practitioner do you believe you access or interact with something basically preternatural? Or maybe a Jungian-esque frame work/philosophy?
If we're talking Magic(k) with a capital "M" then we're generally looking at historic occult esoterica. No matter the particular syncretic mix, when we're talking the "real thing" then we are talking altered states among other commonalities.
Erickson is fascinating and pivotal in seeking where our modern understanding might be, but altered states and hypnotism go way back and are, as we know, associated with ritual magic and priesthoods. Hypnotism a little hard to trace, but there's good evidence for ancient Egypt. Then we have trance and self-hypnotism!! The relationship, too, between trance and hypnotism extremely close and sometimes intertwined.
And then there's, um…communication. Contact. LAM-ville. (Are you going there, Klass?) Daemons, Elementals, Spirit Guides…Whether the elementals be other intelligences or bugaboos and avatars of our own bisected, occluded-consciousness--that is to say the mysterious thing we call the subconscious--becomes moot for the moment as we realize whatever "magic(k)" is, some form of hypnosis has pretty much always been associated with it, eh?
Seems you also wonder at times as well, if I read you correctly? Hence my "prevarication" love tap heh. Crowley kind of flip-flopped like Jung--and you--too.
Not to say I don't pretty much agree with the subtleties of your observations and the complexity of trying to define such things. This is a very interesting topic that leads all sorts of places. I wish I had more time right now. There's only one more thread I have any interest in doing and it's largely about hypnosis with a good dose of black magic seeping through That's why I was attracted to this thread. Research and notes are mostly done and actually in a single folder. The organization stops there though. Ooooh it's a grand thread I tell ya', if only…
originally posted by: TheLaughingGod
And if it's a dark magician mind controlling billions of people? Is that magic?
Don't you find it interesting that one of the most proficient magicians of the 20th century would flip flop like that? What does that mark, when one of the greatest magicians of the age is insecure(?) in his craft? I mean Crowley wrote of turning himself invisible. That is blatant magic. Yet, just a couple of hundred years ago belief in magic saturated every aspect of most societies. And did supposedly happen according to untold stories, you couldn't throw a stone without hitting some demon in the ancient days. Why do you think that is?