#Albert's effortposts

[petitalbert-blog]

Reject Discernment!

I've been thinking a lot recently about how needing "proof" is a real barrier to doing enthusiastic, meaningful magic. I think discernment should be like a 301 or 401 level Pagan topic, something you start doing 3 or 4 years into practice - it’s not a topic to discover or ponder early on.

I think New Pagans have a lot of work to do rediscovering play, imagination, and the sort of confidence that toddlers have when they declare "I am a fighter pilot!" when wearing swimming goggles, and the way they absolutely believe it. A lot of work overcoming prejudices they have about gods not being "real", magic not being "real", and wanting to see evidence that witches can fly or win the lottery, in ways that stops them from experimenting and discovering the very real ways in which magic can work. I think an early focus on discernment derails that process! For me, at least, it meant:

Wanting to do things "right"; being too cautious to practice in case I do things "wrong" and there are bad consequences; wanting to know the difference between "real" god contact and my brain talking to itself; wanting to know the difference between astral travel and vivid imagining. All of these have stood in the way of me doing a lot of regular magic/ritual, and at the end of the day doing the things

Helpful and Hurtful Traditions

I've been really encouraged recently by putting my focus back onto Western Esoteric and Chaos approaches. Both of these paths acknowledge explicitly the role of make-believe in ritual. There's a model where we are in the world of matter, and there are levels above and above us - imagination is a muscle we strengthen, but by making believe a lot we do slowly approach things which ARE very real.

For example: WET explicitly teach that imaginary visual journeys are the first step into slowly developing astral powers, and that would be my experience with it: I've done a lot of playing, but at some point that turned into something that felt wholly genuine; how I got there was the willingness to play and to buy into my beliefs as real and also not question too heavily.

This is a contrast with like hard polytheist approaches, which make it very hard to do this kind of playing. If the gods are real, then it IS very important to hear them true - and possibly blasphemous to be attributing false things to them. If spirits are 100% literally real every time, then toying with them is serious and even dangerous, and its good to be cautious - but caution, of course, means you'll never get anything done.  

And even the way many serious crafters talk about their spirits as things which are physically present, or talk about their rituals not as recipes but as prose poems, make it fairly inaccessible as a model to follow because one is constantly worrying they are experiencing something totally real, and what you are doing is not.

One great thing about pop culture magic is it often feels more low stakes than approaching real gods and demons, yet you are exercising the same parts of the mind and learning how to ritual and learning the importance of aesthetic and belief.

Rules for Discernment

So here are my new rules for discernment.

You need to practice discernment when:

1. OTHER PEOPLE ARE INVOLVED When you're on your own, it is paramount to believe 100% in what you are doing as a child does when they play or a method actor does on stage or you do when you're really invested. Buy into your bullshit. But buying into someone else's imaginative world is dangerous.

"The spirits tell me I am actually a child of a star goddess" = great! Fantastic! Believe that shit. Probably, technically, you're using god-forms or developing a powerful witchself, and those things are great for building confidence and power. In any case, go with it.

"The spirits told my friend they are actually a child of a star goddess" - be polite to your friend, if you like, but don't trust them, don't believe they are really a prophet or goddess, don't flatter them, etc etc. This goes for all sorts of claims - claims of skill, knowledge, patronage, magical ability, divine secrets.

I have seen on discernment lists before "You get UPG from a Power which is totally off base with their traditional meanings; i.e. Kali as a loving snugglesnoot maternal sort". I'm not sure I agree. This is certainly a good clue that that Power is not, in fact, Kali - but so long as you're working alone, why not go with it?

Believing someone else's version of reality above your own is dangerous; be alert to the ways people get a thrill and a sense of power from pretending to be Mage-i-er than thou, from implying they have hidden knowledge, from taking on roles as leaders and elders, etc etc etc. The Pope is just a bloke in a robe - it's the beliefs of others around him which invest him with supernatural power, he doesn't actually have any aside from that.

2. Your spirits/divination/whatever tell you to make a huge, irrational life change. This isn't the same as doing a tarot reading that says "leave your job" and you already wanted to kinda do that anyway. If the spirits tell you to leave a job you love, live in the forest, hurt people, anything extreme - discernment is important, and probably an outside perspective from someone you trust.

3. Health is involved. Discernment for herbalism yo. "My spirits taught me how to make this" no thank you. "My spirits told me to stop the medication and just drink mint tea" also no.

4. Children, animals, people who are not-you are involved i.e. don't then tell your friends you are a star goddess, and act as if they should be worshipping you. Be mindful of how you use information gained from the divine around other people, especially if it involves you being very important. I'm leery of people getting their children involved in magic period, but if you're making decisions for children based on messages from the beyond your discernment must be 100% watertight.

Beyond that, no discernment for the first 3 years! You rarely need to be that sure about anything.

The Hidden Gatekeepers

A while back I was chatting with Windvexer, who has changed their name now though I can't recall what to, and she said she envisages hidden "gatekeepers" of magic - spirits which prevent you from accessing things you are not ready for, and which you have to overcome. These figures are nameless, and more literal than you would suppose: "not wanting to get out of bed early" or "not making time".

I think one of my hidden gatekeepers was/is "discernment", and since letting go of that my ability to do anything at all has exploded. I'm doing lots of regular ritualwork, I've summoned some big stuff, I'm working with various energies, and its fantastic - and a big part of that is the combo of "this is all in my head so it doesnt matter if I screw up" AND "this is all real, I need to buy in 100% and take it seriously". Whereas previously, my discernment-led model was closer to "this is all real, which means it's serious if I get it wrong" and also "this is all in my head, which means i can't take it seriously and it doesn't matter".

tl;dr Practice strong self-belief, and mistrust of others; and don’t question how real things are unless the stakes make it important to know. Be OK with playing.

#Albert's effortposts #discernment #magic 101 #witchcraft 101