XPost: alt.magick
From: glass@panix.com
In article ,
Absorbed wrote:
>I wouldn't say you're trolling. Trolling yourself, maybe. Depends what
>you want to get out of posting here, I guess.
That's the best question of all.
We might slag the old newsgroup, but as old and occasionally frail as it
has become, it is still the most eclectic and highest-level open forum in
its field. What I mean by that is that there are plenty of web forums and
email groups, but they devolve into mutual appreciation societies of one
form or another.
One of the problems with mutual appreciation societies is that they are
often specialized in focus. All they care about is "our" jargon, "our"
club, the way "we" do things or imagine that they are done. These groups
tend to die off.
Historically, alt.magick avoided this sterile overspecialization by
focusing on the broadest mix of topics and types of discussion.
Participants were free to share what they liked and learn from people with
very different -- and even back then, often unique -- backgrounds and
training.
This cross-fertilization was the newsgroup's greatest gift to the theory &
practice of magick and still sets it well above everything else out there.
I like to bring things back to the newsgroup from my travels. There are
ways we could frame this in alchemical terms, but I'm resisting that right
now. The point is that in honor of the newsgroup's historical function as
a sort of "melting pot" of esoteric themes -- at a moment when you could
argue global communication was at its peak -- I like to bring a few
ingredients back to add to the pot.
These things may be old or new. Usually they are a weird mix because my
life is a weird mix of things and that's just the kind of stuff I have
available to me. I am also trying to seed the newsgroup with things that
would have intrigued or stimulated me as a boy. I am also thinking of
children of the future, in the unlikely event that they one day decide to
comb through the usenet archive for bizarre retro thrills. In a sense
this is a time-travel experiment.
You might find the stuff impenetrable, indigestible or just pretentious.
That's fine. While I usually understand most of what I'm throwing into the
newsgroup, I rarely get all the meaning out of it on the first reading --
or even in the first few years. Alt.magick is in many ways the cooking
vessel in which these observations need to simmer before they reveal their
real value (if any). To repeat for clarity, it is the "melting pot."
Naturally, this is not "debate," what I am doing. I will not belabor this
point with a long discussion of magical weapons, but I am not about the
sword. I am about the burin. This means I just etch this stuff into the
newsgroup and it's up to the reader to cut (or chew) it back into
manageable bites. Everyone can bite off whatever they can chew, or else
leave it in the pot to tenderize, as it were.
Occasionally the newsgroup does unearth an "advanced practitioner,"
by which I mean someone truly weird and exciting. (Who cares what kind
of rank or grade they claim? That's not the alt.magick way.) Many of these
people have gone on to other vistas -- online, offline and "way offline"
-- over the years, but maybe the lost ones will check in from time to
time. And maybe the newsgroup has the potential to generate more down the
road. This is not a teaching order, but arguably it has a society of
alumni to weigh in, reminisce and occasionally help out.
Am I deluded? Quite possibly! I have to admit I've been too busy over the
last decade to fantasize too much about anyone's motives, especially mine!
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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