BOC: 777 was: Re: BOC, tBS: (Imaginos) Overture, sevens...

[Dan Clore]

Jon Browne wrote:
>
> In message <32B1ADEC.153C at columbia-center.org>, Dan Clore
> <clore at COLUMBIA-CENTER.ORG> writes
> >No, I have never practiced ceremonial magick, if that's what you mean.
> >I also don't belong to any Crowley cults.  Whether any of that stuff
> >works is a matter to be tested empirically (but then, that's what *he*
> >said anyway), and I haven't seen any evidence of anyone -- his followers
> >included -- having done so or doing so now.
>
> What evidence would one require? I don't quite follow the grammar of the
> last sentence. Are you saying no-one practises what Crowley espoused? Or
> that no-one has achieved anything through his teachings? There are
> hundreds upon hundreds of people who practise Crowleyan thought and
> ritual on a daily basis and who find it highly effective and beneficial.
> --
> Jon Browne

I just mean trying to perform the magick as experiments based on
scientific method, attempting to make controls for different factors,
and suchlike.  Of course many people practise magick.  (I'd guess the
number in the tens of thousands just for those directly influenced by
Crowley.)  What they don't seem to do (or at least don't publish) is
keep what Crowley called a "magick record" -- "I did such-and-such under
such-and-such conditions, and such-and-such resulted.  Then I tried
such-and-so under the same conditions, with this difference in the
results."  If a large number of those who practise magick kept these and
published them, comparison should easily show what works -- or if it was
all just chance that someone got good results doing something one way
rather than another.  Like sports figures who develop little rituals
because they happen to have had a good game after they did some
particular thing.
--
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord Weÿrdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
Welcome to the Waughters . . .