(no subject)

[johnpalmer]

Those of you who are into magic and ritual, how do you raise power?

Chanting helps, right? And music, even a good sing-song voice, right? Rhymes, gestures, dance, they all help, right? And if you have a group doing it, so much the better, right?

And, here's the thing. One one level, that power is real, because it can change you, and it can change other people, who are also involved. Only the densest of people would deny that these can be powerful, even life-changing, emotional events.

Would you say that's relatively indisputable?

What's my point? This is my point:

Childhood teasing is hostile magic.

'nuff said?

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Excellent insight, and one which deserves a wide audience. I hope you don't mind that I passed this along to my pagan mailing list.

Of course, a larger part of the problem is that the people most guilty of either doing this or failing to discourage it generally don't believe in "ritual magic". Even though a lot of them believe in bad luck from breaking a mirror, or good luck from knocking on wood, and even though they may still practice ritual magic under a different name. They'd say this was all hokum, and what they do has no similarity to it at all. I don't know what to do about that side of it, but I'm happy to do what I can about spreading the concept.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I definitely don't have a problem with your passing it on.

And, you're right... even if you discount the ability to affect the world, magical workings can have power, but people who've never seen strong ritual won't understand it.

It's really kind of funny... most pagans I know would be strict about not letting children they were responsible for do any nasty teasing, even without this type of insight. So, it's an idea that has its best effect on those who (I imagine) least need to hear it.