I think that magick is about bringing change in accordance with will
I think that it can be a form of self psychology that involves getting into the subconscious and working with whats there
For that reason it is very potent. If used well it can be very beneficial and if missused it can be harmful. It can also be used to try to improve oneself or it can be used to control others.
We are on a website related to cognitive functions which have evolved from the work of Carl Jung who was a self declared gnostic with a deep interest in the occult and its power on the subconcious. Further to that this site also has threads on the enneagram which was a system made public by Gurdjieff who was a mystic who said he learnt from sufis in the middle east. There are also threads on astrology which as we all know with the star signs has relevance to personality as well.
So we are all bound up in an occult current whether we acknowledge that or not
Further to that, if magick is bringing about change in accordance with the will then we are all practitioners of magick
We all know that psychologists play a large part in creating and marketing the products made by corporations and in Public Relations campaigns for the media, politics or corporations looking to sell something.
We know about: cognative therapy, NLP, hypnotists, mentalists, hypnotherapists, confidence tricksters, 'big lies' (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie), techniques used in social psychology used to create propoganda (see a list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propoganda), 'black propaganda', 'white propaganda', 'grey propaganda' etc etc
We know that the pen really is mightier than the sword because if you can control the mind of a person then the body will follow.
In fact Edward Bernays the nephew of Sigmund Freud is known as the 'father of Public Relations' because he took the teachings of his uncle and moved to the United States and used his new understanding of the emotional inner world of people to set up a business whereby he could profit. He was hired by the tobacco companies to try and make women take up smoking so that they could double the size of their market. (interesting documentary by Adam Curtis on this called the 'century of the self':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM)
He did this by paying women to smoke cigarettes in a protest march and by paying journalists to photo this and to call cigarettes 'freedom sticks' in the press. Cigarettes became a symbol for women of freedom and in no time sultry actresses like Marlene Dietrich were sucking on cigarettes seductively in the motion pictures turned out by Hollywood the 'factory of dreams'.
Hollywood has itself been a massive shaper of the perceptions of the public for over a century; the perceptions are of course not those of the common man and woman but rather of the elites who own and run the big studios that make up Hollywood. if they want people smoking cigarettes, they can do it; if they want people hating arabs, they can do it.
Because like the people in Platos cave, people's perceptions will be shaped by what information is available to them and this depends on how widely they search for information. The 'mainstream' media is controlled by the corporations so if someone does not seek their information outside the mainstream then their perceptions of reality will largely be created by the corporations.
Everyone is now aware of how few corporations control the various media outlets, they know how much of a market share giants like Disney have, they know that most of the 'information' released in the press comes from a handful of press agencies, they know that lobby groups like AIPAC can basically switch on and off the flow of cash to potential political candidates and therefore act as king makers (much like the Roman Catholic Church did around Europe for hundreds of years)
Really society has become a giant hierarchical pyramid. If you want to control the base of the pyramid (the public), all you need to do is control the top of the pyramid as everything else flows down from there.
This can even be see throughout history. For example when the gold hunting conquistadors invaded central and south america they found highly hierarchic societies with royalty and priests at the top and farmers and labourers at the bottom. These peoples even worshipped on top of pyramids which acted as a physical manifestation of the structure of their very society and the method of psychological dominance.
The conquistadors understood this dynamic of power as they had come from fuedal states themselves and they pushed right into the hearts of the empires and physically grabbed the kings as they knew if you control the head of the pyramid you control the rest. If you control the mind the body will follow.
They slaughtered the elites of the empires virtually destroying the forms of writting and recording and put the rest of the pyramid to work on using the efficient road systems into transporting gold straight to them at the centre of the web.
The British did the same in India where they turned people aginst each other (divide and rule) and created infrastructure to more efficently tax the people and extract the resources of the country, the Romans did it around the med and would utterly destroy anyone who opposed their rule for example the destruction of the jewish revolt and their holy temple and it is being done today by the US who cut the heads off countries and put in place their own puppet leaders such as Mubarak in Egypt, Pahlavi in Iran, Hussein in Iraq, Karzai in Afghanistan, Pinochet in Chile, Castillo in Guatemala etc
If you control the flows of information you can control peoples perceptions
if you can control the money supply you can control governments.
its all a pyramid and all you need to do is control the top of it. Magick is about bringing change in accordance with will and is about getting intoi the subconscious and controlling whats there. We the people are being controlled by master magicians.
if magick is used to seek enlightenment then it is white magick. if it is used to gain control over others then it is black magick. We are being controlled by black magicians. The vigilent citizen site has an interesting article on NASA operation badges particularly relating to psyops. The ones depicting magicians standing over the globe are very telling, because that is exactly what we have:
http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-sinister-psyops-mission-patches/
I think Jesus was a high initiate in the Qumran community. I think that he was a man not a god. I think that Emperor Constantine who himself was a member of the Sol Invictus cult (the cult of the Invincible Sun) wanted a way to unite his disintegrating empire so he recognised the usefulness of religion as a way of controlling peoples perceptions.
There was no internet and no printing press around in those days. Most people were illiterate and would rely on sources such as their preists for information. Christianity was a rising religion as it appealed to the common man and women promising them salvation in return for faith. Constantine hijacked christianity by calling together religious leaders from around his empire to a council at Nicea across the river from his capital at Constantinople in order to standardise christianity
he sat in the middle of these leaders and directed the debates that followed. Some leaders argued that Jesus was a god and some argued that he was a man. Constantine knew that people wanted a powerful god to believe in as that had been the culture in the greek speaking world for centuries so he ensured that the standard set for this growing religion was that jesus was a god.
In reality jesus was a high initiate of the qumran community which was a jewish sect which had inherited their core beliefs from Egypt. He was justly angry at the Roman occupation of his country and dreamed of creating a free jewish land and a kingdom of heaven on earth. He gathered about him a group of bodyguards and ordered them to sell their clothes for weapons.
He fast-tracked them through the degrees of the community and began initiating members who were not members of the community in order to build a support base for his uprising; for example when he 'turned water into wine' at a wedding, which is an analogy for initiating people rather than an actual miracle of turning something physically into something else; it is much the same language used in spiritual alchemy when people talk about turning base metals to gold, they really mean enlightening people. This angered members of the qumran community who felt he was giving away their closely guarded secrets which caused a temporary rift with his family.
The qumran community used the idea of resurrection symbollically in their beliefs. They believed that until you were initiated into their mysteries you were dead and that to be initiated was to be born into life and the bible even mentions this process in the garden of gesthemene as Jesus waited to be arrested as a man coming in a blanket and leaving naked after jesus had resurrected him. Lazerus was thinking of leaving the community and therefore dying until jesus spoke to him and resurrected him to 'life'. John the Baptist was also a member of the Qumran community and was involved in these initiation ceremonies involving symbolical baptism in a river
As i have mentioned magick is about getting into the subconscious and working with whats there. For the initiate/novice/fool seeking enlightenment this means a process of purification. It means facing ones demons and dealing with ones complexes in order to become a more balanced person.
Kaballah talks about seeking balance and says: 'too much strength is but cruelty and oppression, whilst too much mercy but aids and abets cruelty'. These are the two pillars of strength and mercy which are the two pillars on either side of the tree of life and the two pillars of solomons temple which initiates seek to rebuild within themselves.
To rebuild the temple it is necessary to balance the two pillars of strength and mercy within yourself by dealing with your issues and defense mechanism etc and becoming a master of the temple.
These are the teachings passed down from ancient egypt via the qumran community
and this is the process Jesus went through during his initiation in the desert (qumran community) as he battled with his demons and came to his decision of what must be done.
His will was set and he would bring about change in accordance with it. He would free his people from the Roman oppressors and set out with his bodyguards initiating people and preaching the teachings of the qumran community throughout the land. He knew how dangerous this would be as he had seen his ally John the Baptist beheaded by the authorities. By keeping on the move he was able to avoid the authorities but eventually he decided to try to ignite the spark that would cause the uprising that would throw off the Romans.
He walked straight into the holy temple in jerusalem, with his trusted allies and overturned the tables of the money changers who were exploiting people by saying that they could only use a special coin in the temple to buy offerings and they charged a high interest on the exchange of that coin, growing rich off their greed and the piety of common people being the arch manipulators that they were.
He knew this scene that he had caused would provoke the authorities into action as the money changers demanded retribution from the authorities that protected their corrupt interests against the common people and he waited for them opposite the gate to the temple and the pillars at its entrance in the garden of gesthemene.
Jesus trial and punishment failed to create the spark he had hoped for, initially at least. His brother James became the leader of the qumran community and the first bishop of the Jerusalem Church wearing the mitre of the priests of Thebes which christian leadesr still wear to this day. James had more popular support than Jesus and when he sought to enter the holy of holies in the temple in jeruslalem as he believed was his right the priests of the temple attacked him and killed him.
This did cause a response from the people who rioted; they killed all those loyal to the romans and occupied the city of jerusalem. they believed that god would save them and deliver them from the oppression of the Romans. Unfortunately the Romans attacked the city slaughtering all those inside and dismantling the holy temple. They then crushed the qumran community who hid their scrolls so that their teachings would survive (as they have) and the romans seiged massada forcing the defenders to commit mass suicide rather than face the inevitable savagery of the imperialist romans (too much strength and not enough mercy made them imbalanced and cruel, just like the modern equivalent the US, whose empire will totter and fall just like all imbalanced structures).
I think Jesus was a brave revolutionary who sought freedom for his people. He was not a 'christian' he was a jew and part of an ultra-jewish sect. He was not a god, he was a man, which makes his efforts even more worthy of respect as far as i'm concerned. His teachings were taken and subverted by paul who was a diaspora jew who worked for the authorities hunting down members of the burgeoning christian sub-cult. He had close ties to the Herodian royal family and like Constantine 300 years later he recognised the power of this new movement and sought to coopt it which was why he argued with the members of the pre-existing jerusalem church and why he was lynched and nearly killed.
This process happens all the time. You can see it now with the way politicians are trying to coopt the occupy wallstreet movement you can see it with the way the white establishment coopts black culture whether it is rock and roll or hip hop because any message with potency is a threat to the establishment, so the establishment will seek to adopt it, water it down, subvert it and finally render it weak and less able to bring about change.
The establishment did this with the mysteries taught by jesus and fed people a 'big lie' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie ) that jesus was a god, that he actually walked on water, actually cured people of physical demons (rather than helping their mental health by undoing their cognitive dissonance) and fed people from a bottomless party bag and other assorted lies and manipulations designed to bend reality in peoples minds so that they will believe anything the elites and their priests will tell them whether it is that the romans are gods chosen people, or whether its that rome is the house of god, or thet the british empire was benevolent or that the US is alone blessed by god or that iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that the US is killing people around the world to spread democracy rather than to steal their resources etc
Human society is old and methods of manipulating people are old too. The secrets of control are passed down amongst elites and are applied to this day. The weapon against their black magick is the ability to question.
We should question everything including anything i say.
How does the holy spirit work? I believe the point is to seek enlightenment and to help others on that path. To seek to transcend the material plane (Jehovah) and to sever the silver cord (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_cord ). When Parcival is asked in Chapel Perilous 'whom does the grail serve' he answers 'it serves the one who serves it'
However the demiurge (architect) and his archons (agent smiths) will resist your transcendence. The holy spirit or sophia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(wisdom ) is a current and a way out of the matrix.
The challenge then is to seek the keys!
There are no guarantees but if nothing else it will make life an adventure! 
Just watch out for the party poopers whose perceptions are rooted in the material plane; sometimes they are annoying and sometimes they are a direct threat!
[video=youtube;MXQozTxQSiE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXQozTxQSiE[/video]
