I have to admit to having a weakness for a good superhero/ine film or book - a "superhero/ine/ix" story can be quite inspiring, I find. BUT .... I can and do recognise when they are a story that may not have much to do with the real world.
Magical book series may be quite entertaining, but they have little relevance to the magical work most witches, Wiccans, etc I know do. Casting a spell to bring calm and/or enlightenment to a political world leader may not be as spectacular as some of the things in books, but it is no less special or lacking in the right to be considered a "superhero/ine/ix" act.
Actually, some of those fictional events raise an issue I would like to touch on: "keys". Keys, in the magical sense, are - I was taught - anything which can help you to change your state of consciousness. They can be things like incense, music, moving in a ritual way (e.g., the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram [see my post at http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/06/psychic-attack-energy-protection-and.html], or Tai Chi or a circle dance or some sort of physical hobby that puts you into a reflective/meditative mood [such as painting or gardening]), chanting, visualisation, wearing robes or any of the aspects of ritual work. In my case, one of the earliest things I used as a key was to build an association between a word and a thought form/visualisation.
The act I wanted help with was what is called flaming: using visualisation or similar skills to cleanse one's aura of negative or disharmonious energies (see the post I have already given a link to). In my case, I used a visualisation of bright golden light flowing from my centre outwards through my aura and flushing/burning it clear. I would meditate, using the alternate nostril breathing exercises of Lobsang Rampa (a VERY controversial person - I'll post of Rampa and the breathing exercises at some stage down the track), and also (mentally) chant the word I wanted to build the association with - in this case, the God name associated with the Qabbalistic sphere Kether, which is Eheieh.
Effectively I was creating a thought form which I could activate by (mentally) chanting Eheieh (if I had built the association with a spoken word, I would have had to speak the word - not always possible when in a stressful situation such as a confrontational meeting at work). I found it effective then, over 20 years ago, and I have continued to find it effective and it is still effective today. I have also created the same sort of thought form with objects such as crystals I wore, or perhaps a ring, which I tended to use when I wanted to work on some aspect of my personality (that's a topic for another post in the near future).
The technique worked very well for me, and it seems to also work for at least some other people (I commend it to you). In fact, as a species (or smaller groups within the species), we seem to have created such associations - and to have changed them, from time to time. As examples of this, consider the associations with the Christian cross, the pentagram (whether inverted or not) and the flag of whatever your country is: would those reactions occurred had that object been seen a century ago, a millennium ago, or ten thousand years ago?
I am going to be interested to see if any of the phrases used in popular series start to develop some potency of their own. (There is an interesting article at Witchvox, "Say the Magic Words: From Movie Magic to Personal Power" by witchdoctorjoe , at http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usca&c=words&id=10815, which touches on something similar to this.)
I actually like the learning that is there in some series of books for those who look. Particularly interesting to me is the illustration of what people's actions can do to others - character arcs can be quite illustrative. (There is another excellent article on this at Witchvox, "The Peril of Solipsism in Magical Practice" by Taylor Ellwood, at http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usor&c=words&id=11855, which I STRONGLY recommend you, dear reader(s), peruse.)
This issue crops up in everyday life frequently. I was recently abused by a woman walking down a street near my workplace: she was obviously being as deliberately offensive as she could, trying to hurt me enough to provoke a reaction. The simplistic reaction would have been to bite - to say something to her which was also hurtful. However, tuning in to some of the energies involved showed she was actually suffering from self loathing, and was seeking to hurt herself in as many ways as she could to punish herself (possibly out of guilt). I think she would have been, in a perverse way, happy if I'd crossed over the street and hit her.
That very real woman, and some of the fictional characters, are very good examples of how deciding people are "bad" is not as simple as it seems.
Something I learned from Buddhism, which was reinforced by my Wiccan studies, is that we all have a negative or shadow self: all the parts of ourself that either a potential weakness or are what we wouldn't like paraded around the dinner table at a family meal. Not some of us, or most of us - ALL of us. There is a parable (claimed to be American Indian) about the two wolves inside us: one good and one evil; the one that grows and is strongest is the one that is fed most.
ANY one of us, if we are not aware and alert, could potentially be driven to commit acts that we consider wrong, bad or mad. If I remember it correctly, criminals in Tibet used to be (before the Chinese invasion and occupation) locked in stocks and unable to feed themselves, but did not starve to death because other people would feed them - partly to earn "good" karma, and partly because the Tibetans recognised something similar to the sentiment of the saying "There, but for the Grace of God, go I". On this world, we are not that far away from serious errors: a moments carelessness when driving could lead to someone else's injury or even death, and that could possibly land us in jail. I get very wary of people who are smug, and see themselves as inherently different or superior to others who commit acts of great evil. If you had been in their shoes, how different would you have been? (There are people who I am confident would NOT repeat the mistakes of such people: without exception, those people are not arrogant about their difference/"superiority".) In fact, have you committed acts which you consider innocent or harmless "fun" which may actually have contributed to someone else's character being harmed?
And this leads us back, eventually, to the topic of superheroes/superheroines/superheroixes. In the world of the superhero/ine/ix, things are always fairly clearly black and white - even in the case of flawed so-called "anti-hero/ines/ixes". What I would like to see, is a superhero/ine/ix who lives in a recognisably everyday, mundane world, dealing with everyday, mundane stresses such as working to pay the bills, who uses whatever super powers they have and has to deal with the consequences, and learns from the mistakes.
As an example, perhaps they force a brash loud-mouthed yobbo at work to be quiet, and then find that this was an act to help the person to cope with being picked on, bullied or abused as a kid (if I wanted to make the story particularly poignant, perhaps the person concerned would commit suicide after the superheo/ine/ix's intervention). Or maybe they stop a boss at work being so arrogant, and as a result the company doesn't win as much work and goes bust. If I chose an environmental example, perhaps they bring rain to one part of the country which needs water, and as a result somewhere else suffers drought. (This point is emphasised in the Earthsea series; and the heroines in Kate Forsyth's excellent Witches of Eileanan series [see http://members.ozemail.com.au/~kforsyth/] are very human.)
Everything is interconnected, and everyone and everything has layers of meaning and motivation. (I read an interesting science fiction story years ago, which I think has been turned in to a film, about people who travel back in time to hunt dinosaurs which would have died just after the hunters killed them anyway; one of the hunters steps on a butterfly, and creates a sequence of events which changes - destroys - the time they came from.)
I personally would still find such a superhero/ine/ix inspiring; in fact, I may just happen to find them even more inspiring. (In fact, I found the idea so inspiring I started work on such a story some time ago :) )
May you find and manifest the superhero/ine/ix in your life, and may it be a wise, inspired and understanding manifestation.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This posts photos are of the "Australian Standing Stones", at Glen Innes, NSW. See http://www.australianstandingstones.com/ for more information.
Tags: cross-fertilisation (ideas), cross-training, myths, symbology, keys, personal characteristics
First published: Saturday 1st September, 2007
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