#37605 - 04/14/10 09:01 PM
Re: Proxemic Magic
[Re: Michael A.Aquino]
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MatthewJ1
member
Registered: 10/28/09
Posts: 529
Loc: Australia
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Yes I agree, let’s return to the original purpose of this thread.
I wanted to sum up Dr. Aquino’s article and make some comments and then briefly add something of my own to enlarge the consequences of this thread.
There are a number of points to be initially digested from the article:
• The “miraculous” effects of obscure (but yet objectively valid) aspects or principles of science may be regarded as magic by ignorant people.
• “Magic” or “Magick,” on the other hand, which is based on mysticism or superstition, is objectively useless unless the target is aware of the magical working and is superstitious enough to believe in it.
• The successful black magician must be highly proficient at using and choosing his or her tools and predicting the effect or outcome the tools will have when employed. Fear of tools and self – deceit are to be avoided at all costs. Calculation is the key and knowledge of the way the target ticks is essential: the magician should select the tool which best suits the target and the outcome to be achieved.
“The focus of this article, like so many Runes articles before it, is upon another aspect of science which is sufficiently obscure to warrant its being venerated as “magic” by the vulgar. Hence it is suitable for practical use by the Black magician. Because it is based upon objective principles, rather than ooga - booga tosh, moreover, it can be applied successfully whether or not the object of the working knows about it or believes in it.”
It seems to me that the functioning of magic or rather the way magic works, which is described in this article, is of a different order than the so called common definition of magic or the definition which functioned in the RHP during earlier periods of time. The great value of being a Black Magician is studying and employing Lesser Magic, which I believe Dr. Aquino is primarily looking at here in his article.
Pragmatism, or the calculation of the outcome to be achieved and the means used to achieve it is a primary consideration. The psychological makeup of the target is taken into account as well. The success of the working is guaranteed by the scientific validity or objectivity of the principles which underpin it and the successful employment of those principles in the specific magical performance.
This magic takes into account the fact that real human animals occupy a real material world, and that both human animal and world conform to objectively valid laws or knowledge, which can and should be studied, and then used to determine or rather structure magical performances, which then successfully determine the course of the targets actions and reactions and hence events in the magicians favour.
Mysticism is only useful if others believe in it and that belief allows them to be manipulated by the cool and detached magician. Mysticism has no intrinsic value as it is not based on objective principles.
One of my favourite books is Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.
This book is an attempt to write an archaeology of the rise and methodology of the mode of power known as disciplinary power and its place or function within western modernity.
One of the most prominent features of this disciplinary power besides the examination and the focusing, ordering, normalising and correcting of multiplicities is the all pervasive surveillance which underpins and makes possible its cold calculation and detailed procedures.
The Panopticon, developed and promoted by Bentham, is an ideal model for surveillance. What is important is the way the Panoptic model with its surveillance relation and the issue of visibility and space and the political theory of architecture became important and the way it infiltrated schools, workplaces, hospitals, prisons, the family home etc. and then had a cool and corrective effect on the body and hence on subjectivity or sense of self.
“The magician who succeeds in controlling or altering another individual’s “personal field” thus controls or alters that person just as assuredly as though he were able to control his conscious personality.”
I would add to this by saying that the magician who succeeds in understanding space and the way space has been and can still be used to survey, know and control the individual is employing some very powerful magic.
I recommend Foucault’s book to you as a worthy addition to your black magical knowledge and practice.
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#37659 - 04/16/10 08:45 AM
Re: Proxemic Magic
[Re: Michael A.Aquino]
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MatthewJ1
member
Registered: 10/28/09
Posts: 529
Loc: Australia
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I just wanted to add some additional thoughts on this by addressing the notion of Proxemic’s more directly and bringing in Foucault and demonstrating how his work carves its own place next to Proxemic’s.
Proxemic’s is defined as a term “…coined for the interrelated observations and theories of man's use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture."
Dr. Aquino has identified three basic components in Hall’s book, which are mentioned in the above article:
· Individuals from different cultural backgrounds do not experience in the same way, rather a person’s cultural background plays a determining role in what is sensed and what is not sensed, and structures the individual’s perception and experience, including space.
· Human beings possess distance fields or zones and these fields or zones are culturally constructed or influenced as well. The notions of Flight Distance (FD), Critical Distance (CD), and Personal and Social Distance (PSD) are mentioned.
· Human boundaries do not end with the skin. I can be found beyond myself, beyond my body and in my extensions, through the interrelations between myself and my extensions, in my personal and social distance. “Man and his extensions constitute one interrelated system. It is a mistake of the greatest magnitude to act as though man were one thing and his house or his cities, his technology or his language were something else.”
Hall’s book was written in 1966. In 1975 Foucault published Discipline and Punish.
The question of space and clear sight and knowledge of an objectified and isolated subject became of primary importance within western modernity from the 18th century onwards. This new form of organising and defining space as a space of surveillance and hence of calculation and of recording became the ground from which a new system was born.
This systems priority was to organise and to induce productive forces at the smallest possible expense and as continuously as possible, according to Foucault. Historically this system has been tremendously successful and has formed the backbone of the capitalist enterprise, the maintenance of institutions and quite possibly the core of subjectivity.
The majority of people in the western world function productively within workplaces, many of them in offices, which have been quite deliberately designed to be spaces where surveillance and clear sight can take place and hence where the tactics of discipline such as the examination and the maintenance of order are constantly functioning or being prepared or implemented.
Distance fields are real and I believe that human extensions are real. The type of space that these types of fields and human extensions exist within, in our western culture, tends to be the disciplinary site of the Panopticon in all its fluid and less than ideal forms.
Very few people can clearly articulate why they are what they are and understand the powerful role of disciplinary space and Proxemic’s in their lives and the very formation of their subjectivity. This may be a useful knowledge for the black magician to possess. I would certainly like to explore this more.
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