Being a living representation of the AoR

[Roni Jean]

I would like to remind folks that once you hit a certain level of living Magick, you yourself become walking propaganda.

Throughout my life, I have often been the exception. I was the pagan that could get the Christian to listen, without them even realizing it. I was the chick wearing goth makeup that some for some reason looked beautiful, not scary. I was acceptable in almost any situation. I began leveraging this even as a child to "broaden perspectives." Since I could get away with it I would bring up the opposing position, the odd concept, or the outright defiance of what someone was familiar with.


By the time I hit adulthood, I was practicing healing Magick & divination, and had parsed (out of necessity) empathy and basic premonition (primarily from dreams). This only served to increase the eccentricity of my presentation. Oddly enough, it also increased the breadth of application for this phenomenon of being the exception. So I leveraged it harder. I could offer insight, and folks would consider it first and question it later, if at all. I had enough parlor tricks by late high school that I could push the perceptions people had of reality just by practicing my Magick. It was entertaining, so they would volunteer to be guinea pigs.


During more philosophical discussions, I discovered I could get people to consider the "impossible." All I was doing was speaking openly from my own perspective. I had had a very different experience with the world, I was good at conveying that experience in terms they found familiar, because I took the time to learn a bit of their personal language. I put time into understanding them, and then helped them understand me. It just so happened that I exist external to most people's paradigm.

I have learned to keep grounded enough that folks continue to consider me rational, sane, and realistic. I present the strangest subject matter, while being excited about it, or passionate, but without striking notes of the fanatic. I also allow people their safe paradigm. I stand just at the edge of that security bubble and talk about wonders. I show hints, little glimpses of Magick in my stories and in my interactions. I "shine" at them just a little bit, by letting down a couple of the walls between us for a time. (Shine too brightly and the freak the fuck out, so careful there.)

Now, I have progressed to a place where my entire existence is laced with my magickal practices. There isn't anything I do that isn't magickal. I live it. This has also come with the side effect of people constantly telling me that there is a way about me, or and energy to me, or just something... I have moved into personally being a baseline interruption of people's expectations.
My point is that all along the way it has been possible for me to leverage my experience against other people's experiences, and effectively shift their paradigm. Presentation accounts for a fair amount, but being magickal counts for way more.

So remember, you are a living representation of the AoR. The most effective way that you can create materials for the AoR is by bringing your own understanding into the propaganda. Make it personal to you - they don't have to know who you are, their subconscious will catch the authenticity of your work. You have experienced the unknown - leverage that experience.

[Moon1ight]

This was quite interesting to read. (Mark the text so that the colours invert, then you can read it, folks :) )

Did you make it black on black intentionally? If not, would you mind changing that? (I considered changing it myself, apparently I can do that now, but decided not to, in case you want it to be hard to read :) )

A parallel view: With a friend we recently discussed that one can only easily take advice about life from people who live well, who can follow their desires. So yeah, if I suck and am miserable, why would anyone take my views about AoR or "Magick is Real" or "Happiness is a Decision" ( https://www.dkmu.org/forum/index.php?topic=380.0 ) seriously? Conversely, if you "live your magic", you automatically show that there is something to this entire "business" ;) So I totally agree with you. Thanks for the inspiration  :)

[Ringtail]

The coding for posts in this forum is quite clunky, especially if you copy paste from somewhere else. It tries to preserve the original formatting and kind of falls on its face. If nothing else it, will cause paragraph breaks to double or triple space.


Like this.


Fortunately it clears up if you go back and hit the edit button. At most you have to delete a lot of extraneous end tags.


While I agree with that about considering the person who gives you advice before taking it, the way it was put to me was to consider whether you want to become this person, as well as the subject of the advice. So like, if you grew up with abusive parents and you don't want to continue that cycle, don't take their advice, look for a different role model who embodies something better. Similarly, I wouldn't ask a homeless man for career advice, but I would certainly listen to him about which areas of the city are safe and which are particularly dangerous, or the locations of particularly fertile dumpsters (after all, he's a living homeless man). But then, you also have to consider the differences between you and that person. I, a small female, would have to seriously qualify the advice from this man about what is or isn't safe, just as a six foot black dude would have to qualify any advice from me about what to do at a traffic stop.

[Roni Jean]

Thank you, Moonlight, both for leaving things intact and for the additional perspective. I wonder at the application in terms of world views. I think at that point the ones "living well" may have some of the greatest cross-over between differing views. This could mean that rather than being an absolute of greater ease in listening to others, it may be more of a higher rate of compatibility/greater ratio of such.


It's sort of a subconsious aspect to the conscious differentiation regarding source and audience that Ringtail was speaking of. (Good to see you, Ringtail.)