Colin:
Lately I have listened to a number of podcasts in which Daniel has talked about magick, and in several of the discussions he has made comments about how people in power (e.g., political elites) use magick. I am trying to process that claim and am looking for some help in understanding what that means.
I want to be thoughtful about how I ask this question so I don't ask people to out others who are engaged in magickal practice, so let me cast this broadly as a question about what happens in the upper echelons of Western society--think captains of industry or political leaders, but not asking about specific people.
Daniel gives a very broad interpretation of magick as (I'm paraphrasing) consciousness combined with intent. Some of the examples of "ordinary" acts that can be viewed with a magickal lens include things like putting on a suit to portray a more professional image.
When talking about how people in power use magick, I'm not sure if I should understand that claim in terms of this broad interpretation of magick (e.g., political leaders engage in rituals like the pledge or participate in Masonic lodges with magickal iconography), or as more explicitly magickal behaviors. To put it crudely, are Western elites engaged in magick incidentally, in that they do things that have magickal significance without thinking of what they do in those terms, or are they actually thinking of what they do as casting spells and working formal rituals?
Oh, man, Colin, this is the rabbit hole that leads to a tar baby that leads to the sewer system. I did a round of this stuff some years ago and could only get so far, as I have a very weak stomach. I was reading mainly about the occult underpinnings of the Third Reich's ideology and elite culture. i have always been interested in the politics and sociology of spirituality, which requires a strong stomach to begin with, and I had started the train of thought with Theosophy and Crowley, and one thing led to another and next thing i knew i was in over my head in shit. Unfortunately, there is some excellent scholarship on the subject; this is not flakey stuff, necessarily, though flakes abound. Noah recommended Dark Star Rising
Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump: Lachman, Gary: 9780143132066: Amazon.com: Books , which, goddamn him, and you, I just ordered. I can't recommend the specific book that marked my deepest point in the sewer on the Nazi stuff, but
Amazon.com: The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology (9781838601850): Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas: Books looks good, the same territory covered by a legitimate scholar.
Cannot emphasize strongly the need for a very strong stomach, here, and a deep faith. To read history at all is always a very good test of equanimity in action; to read the history of spirituality and religion, a deeper test; and to read the appalling history of this kind of black magick . . . well, first do no harm, don't let it fuck you up. It's like the diseases in a tropical place: it will make you sick, and if you recover, you'll have some antibodies, so it may make you less sick on your next pass. If it doesn't kill you. Don't let it kill you; in fact, unless you find yourself highly motivated here, I wouldn't even recommend letting it make you sick. Take a pass, if you can. And if you can't, sit next to me, lol.