3/13/2023 0 Comments The sinking city mystic tomes![]() The ultimate revelations suffered by his narrators are never clearly stated, the „forbidden books“ found in shadow – shrouded libraries neverreveal the truth, leaving only clues and giving rise to more questions. Lovecraft’s lore is a territory of hints and come hithers. They enter a world from which there is no turning back, bowed down by secrets which cannot be shared by others who have not experienced the revelation, or taken fully into the world of the outer beings and their allies. His protagonists enter these territories as outsiders, only to become gradually (and shockingly) aware of what is hidden there, until the full significance of the reality of the Great Old Ones impacts upon them, changing them forever. His descriptions of places and settings combine the precision of dreams with a degree of ambiguity that allows the reader to fill in the gaps, as it were. Lovecraft – the haunted hills of Dunwich, the woods of Arkham, the deep ocean and the maze – like urban areas portrayed in „The Horror at Red Hook“ or „Pickman’s Model“ – are replete with a sense of lurking presences, of a hidden sentience which pervades the atmosphere. ![]() In such ways are fanatics born those who have stopped enjoying magic, and suffer from it instead. Everything becomes sigificant, not merely personally, but also on a cosmic scale. It’s all too easy for the magician to drown in an ocean of heightened meaning, to the point where every chance encounter is a personal with an inner – planes adept where every song lyric has a personal message aimed at you where every animal is a familiar spirit and all your friends were magicians in a previous incarnation. For the curse of this sensitivity to significance is obsession. It is important to challenge, whilst at the same time cherish such experiences. Which is not to say that it cannot be questioned. What is important is that it is a personal truth – something that „feels right“. It is an experience which impels me to action, be it reflection, consideration or the opening up of a new area exploration. For me, significance is characterised by degree of gnosis or relevation. Once we enter a domain of magic, rationality becomes a limited tool, and it’s often difficult to communicate to someone else just why an experience is significant, even between those who shares similar perspectives. How do we gather meaning from this magical world of signs ? What makes one experience valid and another not ? Despite the claimed empiricism of modern magicians, this is not a rational process. The magician is hypersensitive to the sudden implosion of significances, which is at times a blessing, and others, a curse. A territory of fathomless symbol of mysteries lurking in the shadows. ![]() It twists you and skews your perceptions of the world, tipping you into a world of signs and portents. ![]() Magic is not something which one merely „does“. To enter the feary realm takes but a single step. The realisation that „everything is alive and significant,“ as William S. It quickly spills out into other life areas, occasionally catching the unwary off guard, propelling the practicioner into liminal space of heightened sensibility and awareness of other presences, other possibilities. Introduction Magic is not something that can be confined.
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