Is that the notorious ‘Ian Rons’ that wrote the immortal line:

“Let us frolic in fancy, but live not for wine!”?

http://www.themagickalreview.org/poetry/no_name.php

I think that piece demonstrates well what lives inside little Ian, under the trolly charade and the etiquette lessons he loves to give online.

I gave all for the light, for the good, for the just –
And I find in my darkness such love for thy life.
Though I care more than soul for the love of those floosies,
I will leave Earth to rust, and the Æon go fly!

Amen brother! :)

Is that the notorious ‘Ian Rons’ that wrote the immortal line: “Let us frolic in fancy, but live not for wine!”?

Yep, that’s the one.

Well I stopped posting or reading ‘occult’ forums altogether, except this one.

“Except this one”? That’s an insult, if you like!

I can’t really say I ever met anyone interesting in those sort of places. You are about the only guy I saw making arguments for objectification of the self rather than subjectification of the universe. The Crowleyites seem to consist of 99% the latter, people who never accomplished anything but worship themselves as being some sort of ‘god’. A scary thought.

Take a look at this pseudo-continuation of the discussion referenced in the main post, the post from “Camlion”:

Erwin is a classic example of an individual without benefit of the experience necessary to fully understand the subject to which he has dedicated his efforts.

The propensity of the occultist (especially this particular one, who has shown absolutely no indication of any kind of talent other than criticising me and then routinely parroting what he’s read on this blog) for getting things backwards is outstanding.

The problem with the “subjectification of the universe”, as you put it, is a simple one: the “reality” that one “creates for oneself” is incredibly flimsy. It never takes much for it to topple like a house of cards. The problem with these occultists is that they spend so much time in their dreamworld that they shut out the real world. If they didn’t, the crushing evidence against their fantasyland “personal realities” would quickly become too overwhelming to ignore. Anyone who has the smallest bit of talent for this kind of study is going to know that “experience” doesn’t support the “create your own reality” nonsense; it teaches you that these fake realities just don’t match up with the real one. It’s precisely because these idiots insist on hiding from the real world that they continue to believe in this garbage; they lack the actual real-world experience that would enable them to see how completely fatuous and silly their constructed “personal realities” really are.

As I’ve often said, the only reliable indicator of “experience” is how sensibly one can talk about one’s subject. People like this “Camlion” character can claim till the cows come home how much “experience” they have, but they don’t appear to have any experience that enables them to understand their subject. It’s just empty bluster. As I said earlier, the only time this Camlion character says anything sensible is when he’s repeating something he read here a couple days previously.

These sort of people are the prey of their ideas that come to them as an inspiration without reflection.

Precisely so, and not only that, but they don’t need reflection, because the fact that their inspiration is “subjective” just like everything else is all the proof they need to regard their random bullshit as being true. Despite the fact that they’ll believe something completely different next week.

All paul and ian do is whine all day about etiquette and kenneth anger.

I don’t think the two of them belong in the same category. The whole thing is Paul’s creation, so when he moderates, he’s not doing it because he has something to prove, but because that’s just the way he wants things, which is entirely his business. Ian on the other hand, not having such a benefit, turns into precisely the kind of “obnoxious moralist” that you describe.

But ‘the way he wants things’ is exactly the same sort of subjectivity. He doesn’t accept whatever appears to him, but thinks he can cherrypick what other people can or cannot do at his site. That’s perfectly alright in a case of a solo weblog, but rather irritating when its a community site. Its either one or the other: or its his personal site and he cherrypicks whatever he wants or its a community site and then its no longer about his subjective needs. It isn’t anyway, in fact, the worst thing anyone could do is censor people on basis of their superiority. Lots of development is really about finding people or even enemies superior to yourself, that’s the only way to learn to play chess too. As the whole core point of any type of magick system is the creation of a superior kind of person I can’t take anyone or anything seriously where the most intelligent people are banned for sluggish, moralistic and groupthink sort of reasons. Personally i really can’t detect any difference between these sort of places and the run of the mill religious forum. Same sort of moralism, same sort of people, same sort of annoying, dull censorship ponies. Crap, not going to waste any time there.

Lots of development is really about finding people or even enemies superior to yourself, that’s the only way to learn to play chess too. As the whole core point of any type of magick system is the creation of a superior kind of person I can’t take anyone or anything seriously where the most intelligent people are banned for sluggish, moralistic and groupthink sort of reasons.

I agree with you, but (1) I don’t think Paul does this, even if Ian might; and (2) even if he did, if that’s what he wants on his site, that’s entirely his business. The “community” may indeed have their own ideas about what they want from such a site, but unfortunately for them, they don’t get to make any decisions other than whether or not to attempt to use it.

The religious practice of trampling on idiots doesn’t really require the consent of the idiots, that’s sort of the whole clue here.

Ah, but no, you need to “trample down” all the bad thoughts in your brain, it’s all “esoteric” and stuff, yadda yadda blah blah blah. Thelema is just a watered down version of Christianity without actually explicitly praying to Jesus, don’t you know, but lapping up his morals all the same, etc. etc.

But ultimately its not much more fun than poking in an antheap with a stick, even though that beats sitting in one by far.

It’s mainly an intellectual exercise for me, an opportunity to frame arguments in response to challenges so utterly dimwitted that one would never have thought of them by oneself. There are people out there that actually do get the message, of course, but by and large these individuals tend to remain quiet, only speaking up once in a while to challenge some of the more egregious nonsense that gets spouted by these deluded flappers.

Yeah, but maybe you should search out people who are more challenging.

I’m not sure there are any. Most people who remotely approach being able to be “challenging” agree with me to a large extent to begin with, which kind of defeats the purpose. A lot of what I say isn’t actually very controversial, except to idiots and occultists who couldn’t locate a clue in a gigantic clue factory. A good deal of the value in what I write is tying together in original ways various bits of knowledge that are already extant, rather than coming up with entirely new ideas all the time. It’s only the religious believers and these dimwit fantasyland occultist fools who really take much of an exception to it.

You have some personal preference for philosophy, it seems, sometimes I wonder why you actually need the thelemic hangup.

Well, I’d obviously disagree with your “hangup” categorisation. A lot of what I say doesn’t actually explicitly reference “Thelema” as a body of doctrine. It uses concepts such as “will” but these can and often do exist wholly separately to that body. I don’t see much of a purpose in giving it a different name just for the sake of it, so I write with reference to existing terminology. Those parts of my writings that do explicitly deal with Thelema do so because I know a lot about it, and I’m interested in it, so I write about it. One of my underlying purposes is demonstrating that there really isn’t anything in Thelema that is mysterious or outlandish, and that it deals with real stuff in the real world. I don’t really talk about Thelema because I follow it, but because it’s the best existent philosophy which encompasses what I’m trying to say.

As far as philosophy goes, most philosophers are just as bad as occultists. Look at Kant, for instance; he talked himself into believing that since morality, if it exists, must take the form he described, then ergo it does in fact exist, and therefore so does God. Anybody who comes out with insane gibberish like that isn’t remotely challenging, and certainly shouldn’t be taken seriously. Your man Zizek appears to be somewhat of an exception to this, but I find all the fruity talk of socialism both irritating and intensely boring.

Anyway, not trying to tell you what to do, its just that this audience of dimwits might not be the audience you should ultimately be after. But that is a rather personal point that is tied up with what it is you actually want to accomplish with speaking out.

Yeah, as I’ve said on there, it’s not so much that I’m “after this sort of audience”, or any sort of audience, but I do read the LAShTAL.com forums from time to time, and if I see something that I think warrants an interesting response, I’ll make one. I really don’t put a lot much thought into it than that. Anything connected with “what I want to accomplish with speaking out” gets posted here, which is generally loon-free, unless there’s some entertainment value in allowing a loon comment, such as “jumbos” above.

The line between where fantasy and imagination ends and reality begins is a little different for all of us. This thread puts the realms of the former in a very negative light

Only to those not reading it properly, probably due to an excessive attachment to the imagination in the first place. What this thread puts “in a very negative light” is the mistaking of fantasy for reality. On the actual merits of fantasy itself, it is silent.

as if the imaginative processes are being regarded as a sort of dodgy appendix to the body of occultism

The entire body of occultism is a “dodgy appendix” in and of itself, as this thread again makes relatively clear.

I would like to hear your opinions on the constructive use of the imagination sometime.

They are largely well-known: mental rehearsal, construction of hypotheses, exploring alternative possibilities, reviewing and analysing past events, and entertainment, amongst others. From the perspective of the subject matter usually discussed on this blog, one of the most “constructive uses of the imagination” is finding out what’s in it.

“Isolated from a bunch of clueless occultists?”

No, basically everyone and your cohort M Benders.

I’ve come to the conclusion that occultism is largely a body of self suggestion techniques performed by people who have absolutely no idea of the mechanics of it all, and even less interest in finding that out.

Hugely ineffective and inefficient body of self suggestion, maybe.

However, you don’t flog the horse for having a dodgy rider.

No, you don’t, but you do shoot it when it’s lame, and doesn’t do its job.