#60

Where we don’t know what’s going on, it’s best not to speculate. Especially about things like schizophrenia or mind-altering drugs. Not everybody who talks to gods is, not to put too fine a point on it, out of their minds.

Intense religious experiences are something that one is primed for – but my personal experience says that study, world view, beliefs, ritual, group bonding, and imagination are sufficient.

I’ve read books by chaos magicians suggesting a drug trip as a rapid shortcut. I’ve also read warnings against that by others. I can see some sense in either approach and I think it just depends on the person.

The group I was part of required you to be clean, sober, and in a good emotional state to participate in anything, and it worked for us.

…

I think some people assume there’s a whole IMAX 3D extravaganza to religious/mystic/occult experiences, but it tends to be a lot more subtle. Though sometimes startling or unsettling, and occasionally pretty hilarious.

Outside of a ritual context, there is not one experience I can name that a skeptic couldn’t easily dismiss as coincidence. Some of those had pretty deep emotional resonance regardless. But I think the gods love plausible deniability :wink:

(I won’t speak of experiences inside of ritual context.)

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#61

I may have already said too much? :wink: (sincerely, there are reasons for the esoteric to remain so)

But look into ayahuasca if you want to learn about some of the more well known instances. Uniao de Vegetal is the most well established ayahuasca religion.
http://udv.org.br/en/
But it is just an example, not an endorsement. You may find the Christianity off-putting if you are expecting an indigenous purity of some kind. There are less well known and more traditional practitioners but you may need to travel to Peru to learn more.

And then there are all the far more esoteric eddies to wade into.

I personally prefer to maintain a tension between an autonomous form of exploration and learning, and that of seeking guidance from my elders. I neither want to get locked inside or outside of myself. I feel there are unique things my person has to offer, and that I am also limited and can always learn from others. So far this has made most religions a poor fit for me, but I’ve had some exceptional experiences here and there. Just never enough to make me say “I am a religious person” (not since childhood anyway). But I don’t rule out the possibility I might say something different in the future.

Edit: I will say that decades of a wide variety of psychedelic experiences have taught me that sleep deprivation combined with intense repetitive activity such as dancing to a beat, is the most psychedelic thing I’ve ever done with or without “drugs”.

Dancing in stone dance (a gentler off-shoot from sun dance) is probably the longest conversation I’ve ever had directly with Creator. 24 hours of dancing (no piercing as in sun dance). I was completely sober.

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#62

I sometimes make an appearance with the band Forktail, which explores themes of paganism and folk horror. See the track ‘The Wake’ as an example:

I use a Buchla Easel and Cocoquantus. I’m often reminded of the Arthur C Clarke quote:

‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’.

Patching the quantussy circuit definitely falls squarely into this realm.

#63

Hey man, I work in the group NOKO210. Our next podcast is about sigils and especially sound sigils and data sonification re ritual. I think you might find it interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1t0HBSfsqKtG13D-s1zi6g
this is the link to the ist 3 pods.
there are links from this page to some of Barry William Hale’s 2d art as well.
Our Bandcamp page has some tracks up that u can play for free a couple of times also.
the music includes alot of data sonification from the Enochian tablets etc.
sequencing is often ChucK coding feeding into hardware.BWH performs ritual and vocals.

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#64

the concept of “barzakh” i come back to a lot in my artistic practices (modular, and otherwise). in lay terms it translates from arabic to isthmus, and in Islam it’s used to refer to the place where souls reside awaiting judgement day (between earth & heaven or between heaven and hell, similar to She’ol or limbo). Its about the idea of barriers and separations and the ways in which any two things in the world are separated by a barrier. The space between any two things is a third which separates them. It doesn’t exist outside of that interaction, it is intrinsic and identical to both of the things it separates, but it is neither of them.

In sufism this became an idea similar to Nietzsche’s idea of an ubermensch – a barzakh could be personified as someone who is a conduit between God and the world. There have been a few barzakh’s throughout history who were all prophets. A person could enter a state of betweenness by entering a dream state through prayer, sleep, or mental difference (what is now medicalized as schizophrenia or developmental disabilities have been thought of as signs of divinity in Islam throughout most of its history). i don’t want to ramble too long but this metaphysical way of conceiving of the interaction between things (with other people, with the divine, etc) i find really appealing.

art as both a conduit and a barrier between artist and audience, art as both a conduit and a barrier between artist and the divine (which i think is a completely valid form of artistic expression which relates what was said above about music becoming a private act and not necessarily the mode of community building it is sometimes foregrounded as). i think even the simplistic slice of this idea that says that something that is a barrier is also a conduit, where both sides of a coin are unreconcilable opposites and yet are one, is useful

a bit rambly and more metaphysical and esoteric than occult, but maybe interesting

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#65

the great Z’ev (rest in peace) has given the world an awesome tool in the form of Rhythmajik, a method for parsing rhythms into meaningful phrases articulated to perform specific tasks. i used this method in my (now sleeping) project Eggregora, every liveset was opened by parsing an “ouvre barrié” Papa Leghba invocation and was ended by closing the gate. additional parsing was performed inside the performance for specific tasks. the ritual belonged to no specific tradition but freely sampled from above mentioned Z’ev work, from the work of Michael Bertiaux\Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua\La Couleuvre Noire and from the work of Kenneth Grant\Typhonian OTO.
this is the only properly released track by Eggregora,as found in the eleventh benefit compilation to support The Hermetic Library:

another thing worth mentioning is that i used for a couple of years the Harvestman Tyme Sefari mk2 + A Sound Of Thunder as a scrying tool in conjunction with a DIY black mirror.
i have compiled an album aptly titled “Music for Scrying”, i’d like to release it sooner or later if i find a viable label.

worth mentioning also the work of Martin Howse, in particular the ERD modular series and, most of all, the Dark Interpreter series.

EDIT: patch notes for the Eggregora track above:
meditation on the doo spirits.
bansuri: tones, micro overtones and percussion
found animal bones instruments: percussion, textures
modular system: delay, pitch shifting
daw: recording, editing, spatialization

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#66

I guess it is a tool for coming up with ideas that are novel to the ruminator but, honestly folks; you’re grown-ups.
Hard sciences and the process of true discovery as to how the world and physics actually work is what allows airplanes to fly and modulars to function. Candles and wish-thinking are conceits and don’t yield much to which one can point.
They can be useful for focusing attention and providing a path but, um… you’re selling yourselves something.

The American extreme cultural phenomenon of extreme allowance in ‘letting you do your own thang’ (a.k.a. “you do you” and other terrible clichés) has led to the nation being the birthplace of more religions in the past 100 years than anywhere on earth and at any time as well allowing for complete nonsense to not be ridiculed. This American (and somewhat more broadly North American) cultural artifact has led us to being in the pool of nonsense and culture clashes that we are mired in.

The real world and cosmos are fantastic enough as they are. We hardly need to import magical nonsense and unproven & untestable revealed wisdoms into this. I know that it is ingrained into the minds of some persons (false positives, pattern seeking, etc. are a part of us) but leaving this kind of childish nonsense unchecked is detrimental to society at large.
Let’s place all of this bunkum in the same bin as alchemy and move forward with the real discoveries that await.

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#67

What do you propose we do now? Close this supposedly childish thread, seeing as you’ve given us the correct path out of it?

If your personal conviction is so strongly held, I do question why you needed to step in here at all.

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#68

I dont think i’m 100% with you but Im really glad somebody said it. A debate like this could be a really good read. Nip the personal attacks out at the bud though.

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#69

You don’t have to read this thread if you’re not into it, and I suggest you treat everyone else’s interests and ideas with respect if you do choose to read it.

In my experience and life, occultism is much less about explaining the world as an alternative to science and much more about exploring the inner psychological regions of the mind. It’s poetry and storytelling, not fact finding.

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#70

agreed.

But, and I don’t wish to pick a fight, this looks to me as an assessment of quality (or lack thereof), which, in my view, defies the very point you’re making.

Alchemy was part of science, and led to something (in the “real” world).

Safe to say ritual, however well founded, is part of art, and leave it at that?
Massively enjoying this thread.

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#71

Some of the ideas here are part of the oldest religious traditions on earth - traditions that are so old that they are intertwined with our language and inseparable from our behaviors. These frameworks for understanding consciousness are far older than written language and far older than what is currently described as science. You could argue that the character of these religious traditions have shaped the development of our minds, and made humans human.

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#72

To my thinking we need poetry and storytelling as much as science… right/left brain stuff maybe…

What I have problems with is mistaking one for the other…

Also, science doesn’t really address questions of meaning particularly well, not for me anyway…

Good topic!

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#73

Music has no rational purpose either, yet here we are.

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#74

Indeed. And pretty much all music can be seen in a storytelling and ritualistic light, even the most rationalized. It’s about expression, community, interpreting the world through senses to make something “more” from it all…

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#75

We can all love music and poetry without believing in ghosts though.

Enjoying the more lengthy nuanced additions to the thread, but I do understand some of the criticisms.

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#76

the Unknown, is Unknown

to science and to our human brainzies

that’s a fact, how do you fill the void between your brain’s capabilities and what is real.

I mean, why would you assume you’re capable of understanding everything that is important.

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#78

I think @Kent started this thread down an unproductive path.

Nobody here has claimed belief in ghosts or other things in a literal sense. So I don’t see the relevance other than using a straw-man to undermine the legitimacy of the conversation.

We’re discussing ritual, occultism, and different views in relation to music making and modular synthesis…

There’s a lot we can learn and experience about humanity and the world that are not about science, explanation, or literal belief and understanding… they can be about emotion, communication, poetry, and finding meaning and community.

The only place this poses a real problem is when people force their ideas on others or it impedes our ability to make meaningful change for the betterment of the world. I don’t see any of those issues in this thread, and I’d love to keep taking about how occult and other ideas can inform how we work with and relate to our instruments and art.

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#79

Also very much recommended, Elaine Pagels professor of religion at Princeton. For a scientificaly minded aproach to finding out what is real in religion and why we have it.

A quote of her’s related to the supposed incompatibility of science and religion: “Just because you can’t see the pond, doesn’t mean the frogs aren’t real.”

At the moment I’m making a new equipment setup and trying to figure out my workflow and mental process. I like this subforum, it helps to get new ideas.

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#80

I do think any perpetuation of things like astrology is pretty toxic to society and general critical thinking, but I do apologize if I put words in anyone’s mouth.