From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (tyaginator)
Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.answers,news.answers
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Subject: alt.magicK KfaQ#01: Magic-K? (kreEePing oOze faQ)
Date: 7 Jun 1995 13:59:46 -0700
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============================================================================



william_dunlavey@ptltd.com (Phoenix) writes:



|I was just wondering how the word "magic" came to be spelled with a "k."

|Does the letter "k" have *radical* significance?



____________________________________________________________________________



Revised 9503



A.M Krreeping Ooz FAQ Question #1: "What is magic(k)?  (etc.)"

______________________________________________________________



Magick has been defined by many people in many different ways.  There

is no universally agreed definition, so it is best approached obliquely

or en masse.  One popular mage defined it as "the Science and Art of

causing Change to occur in comformity with Will."  (Aleister Crowley)

Yet that same author (if Soror Virakam may be relied upon) is said to

have adopted "the old spelling of MAGICK...in order to distinguish the

Science of the Magi from all its counterfeits." (_Magick_, eds. Symonds/

Grant, p. 45 note).



Some see magick as a kind of energy which pervades the cosmos.  Some

see it as a psychic tool by which one may influence the material world

through the use of symbols and ritual.  Some see it as a means of coming

to unite with the divine, and some see it as simply a way to exercise

will or Will.



Many have posited the differentiation of magical 'currents' or 'energies'

based on style and/or intent.  Some describe that which intends harm

as 'black magic(k)', yet there is no consensus among mages by any means.



Whatever magick is, this is the subject of the alt.magick newsgroup.

For that reason it is best left without absolute definition and will

constantly be discussed and imagined anew.



tyagi

-----



Magick ...is the belief that we can make a difference in our own life as

well as helping others.  Magick unfortunately is not shielded from

negative forces and the "belief" does not condemn these people who want

to study the black arts....



keith@foresnt.com

-----------------



"Magick" was a common spelling of the word in the Elizabethan period.

It appears spelled with a K in John Dee's diaries which date from the

1580's.  I suspect that this in particular held an attraction for Crowley,

as he believed himself to be the reincarnation of Edward Kelly.



scott@solutions.solon.com (Scott Stenwick)

------------------------------------------



"In English print, the -ick ending began to change to -ic about 1700;

by about 1730 -ic was much more frequent than -ick; by 1800 -ick was

effectively extinct in English print.  Johnson's 1755 Dictionary views

-ick as a lost but noble cause.  Americans were about 40 years behind

the trend: -ick can still be found in American print until about 1840.



How to test this yourself: do a key-word search thro' title-pages in

yr University's collection.  Try "Gothic/k" if you want a slaughter

(504:1 favor of -ic in the 18th century, for our library; domestic,

politics, ethics, etc., are equally diagnostic.)



David Ross Mcirvine (drm3p@darwin.clas.Virginia.EDU)

____________________________________________________



Symonds and Grant, in their introduction to _Magick_ (_Book Four_,

 Parts I/II/III), write:



"The Anglo-Saxon *k* in Magick, like most of Crowley's conceits,

is a means of indicating the kind of magic which he performed.

K is the eleventh letter of several alphabets, and eleven is the

principal number of magick, because it is the number attributed

to the Qliphoth - the underworld of demonic and chaotic forces

that have to be conquered before magick can be performed.  K has

other magical implications: it corresponds to the power or *shakti*

aspect of creative energy, for k is the ancient Egyptian *khu*,

*the* magical power.  Specifically, it stands for *kteis* (vagina),

the complement to the wand (or phallus) which is used by the

Magician in certain aspects of the Great Work."



Page xvi.

___________________________________



I thought this was a most remarkable statement by Tim 'the Enchanter':



I can't believe people are =still= saying that Crowley spelled "magick"

with a "k" to distinguish it from stage magic.  Hasn't anyone read

MAGICK IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, surely the most widely reprinted of his

books?  He used the new spelling to distinguish his system from

everyone else's Golden Dawn magic, which he thought had given the whole

enterprise a bad name through its various idiocies.  This deliberately

archaic spelling had diddly-squat to do with stage magic, and

everything to do with Crowley's hatred of his contemporary competitors.



tim@toad.com (Tim Maroney)

==========================



Some people think of magick in terms of 'laws', like (another!)

Tim here, who quotes some Whitcomb:



Well, I thought that this might apply to the current thread, it is found in

the Axioms section of _The Magician's Companion_, by Bill Whitcomb, which

reads as follows:



[The Law of Labeling:

____________________



When you label something, you exclude information about it.  This is

because the thing becomes obscured by other information stored under

the label for the thing.



If i were to say, "I study magic," this would immediately bring up all the

associations and stored data under the label "magic."  Some people would

believe I am a stage magician; some people would think I am a satanist, while

still others would decide that I study magic as a historian.  Yet none of

these things actually has anything to with what iwould mean by the word

"magic."



When you symbolize something, you impose the deep structure of the symbol

system used on the way you pereive the thing symbolized.  There is a japanese

proverb which relates that to confusing the Moon finger pointing to the Moon.



People tend to believe that they understand something when they have a

name for it.  This is called nominalization.  It enables people to take very

ill-defined concepts and continuing processes and talk about them as if they

were concrete things.  The problem is that frequently even the users of these

terms (names) do not know what they mean.  Nominalization is an important tool

but we must realize when we are using it.





The Law of Information Packing:

_______________________________



The more information contained in a symbol, the more general (vague) it

becomes.  The more specific a symbol system is, the more information it

excludes. ] - end Whitecomb quote



I dont know if this helps, but to me it demostrates that definitions are

important for communication, but a balance must be struck between defining

something, and limiting something with the said definition.



Tim

---



When you Throw a stone in to the water, it finds the quickest

way to the bottom of the water. It is the same when Siddhartha

has an aim, a goal. Siddhartha does nothing;he Waits, he Thinks

he Fasts, but he goes though the affairs of the world like the

stone though the water, without doing anything, without

bestirring himself; he is drawn and lets himself fall. He is

drawn by his goal, for he does not allow anything to enter his

mind which opposes his goal. That is what Siddhartha learned

from the sammans. It what fools call magic and what they think is

caused by demons. Nothing is caused by demons; there are no

demons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach there

goals, if they can THINK WAIT and FAST.



(Hermann Hesse from _Siddhartha_)



Thinking is controlling your will.

Waiting is being able to not destroy your concentrated will.

And fasting is not letting worldly pleasures cloud your goal.

Of course these skills dont have to be mastered to perform Magick,

but the more they are the more powerful the Mage is.



guion@ix.netcom.com (Awake)

---------------------------



For more information on magick see the various REFs and FAQs that will

appear in alt.magick from time to time or access them directly at the

following ftp site: ftp.portal.com/pub/ss/Usenet.  For Witchcraft, see

the alt.paganFAQ (which you may request from: bansidhe@wixer.com).



=============================== End of ALT.MAGICK KREEPING OOZE FAQ #01



This document is Copyright (c) 1994, authors cited.



All rights reserved.  Permission to distribute the collection is

hereby granted providing that distribution is electronic, no money

is involved, reasonable attempts are made to use the latest version

and all credits and this copyright notice are maintained.



Other requests for distribution should be directed to the individual

authors of the particular articles.

_________________________________________________________________________



This is from a series of frequently-updated posts responding to recurrent

questions in this newsgroup.  Please debate anything in here which seems

extreme and add your own response to these questions after the post.  I'll

integrate what I can.  Thanks.



nagasiva, tyagi

tyagI@houseofkaos.Abyss.coM (I@AM)

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