Individual vs Society - Shaping Reality

[fritterfae]

In continuing my thoughts from yesterday I want to raise something that came up in the last OHF Book discussion.  We read "God Is Not One" by Stephen Prothero. Among the two hours that we discussed the book we covered a lot of ground, and we started looking at this rubric of fundamental questions, answers, spiritual technologies, etc.  One of the

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[fritterfae]

Zahde: I give you blanket permission to cross post anything I write on LJ to the Wicca community. I'm mostly writing this stuff for myself, and if comments come, then great. But I'm not really going out of my way to push my thinking-out-loud to other people beyond those who bother to still read LJ. :)

And I want to clarify something. Just because I identify something as a conflict, does not mean that it is inherently bad. It just means that the state of things is out of sync with your personal desires or Will. That is a conflict. Just because it is a conflict, does not necessarily mean that it is necessary to resort to violent action. Pacifism is a consciously chosen method of resolving conflict. But it is a Willful act to choose a Pacifist stance when faced with a conflict. That doesn't negate the fact that the conflict exists.

When we talk about magick and enacting ones Will we are talking about making change happen. That means that the current state is not what one desires, and they act to change it. That is a conflict, whether or not it is minimal or major. If I have uncooked eggs and desire an omelette, that is a conflict. The act of breaking those eggs and cooking them into an omelette is enacting my will upon them and changing their condition into a state that conforms with my Will. That transformation is, albeit trivial, still a magickal act.