Problems and Solutions.
“Happiness is not the absence of problems; its the ability to deal with them.”
– Steve Maraboli
Recently Aaron Leitch wrote a great piece on how people can sometimes magic and magicians ineffective because they still have problems.
People accuse Crowley of failure because he died “penniless”*. People accuse Vodou of malevolence because Haiti is a mess. People accuse Vajrayana of failure because China occupies Tibet.
Look. I have problems. You have problems. Aaron has problems. We all have problems. As Aaron states, magic is not designed to create a problem free life. There are really two reasons for this:
1. As Aaron states, magic is a method of handling problems, not a shield against anything bad ever happening.
2. Problems create conflict which is in turn creates learning and growth. No problems, no growth. This is why in Buddhism, the deva realms are considered less desirable than the human ones to take re-birth in. There is nothing but pleasure and thus no reason for spiritual growth.
So then, do we just abandon judgement and not connect the success or failure of magic with the evidence on the table? Should we, as many have suggested when it comes to colorful figures like Crowley, judge the writings and not the man?
No.
But we have to be careful what we are judging people by. When I purchase an item or a service, I don’t judge them by whether there is a problem or not – problems are bound to happen. I judge them by how well they fix the problem.
First of all, what are their goals? If someone has no interest in accumulating money I think its pretty silly to judge them by how much money they have. I know people that live as homeless wanderers as a spiritual practice. I know others that live close to the poverty line, but adjust their cost of living down so that they can do what they love. Are these people failures? No. Even if they run into serious suffering in old age, does that make them failures? Of course not, a life is measured by more than just how you finish.
If however someone does have that as a goal, and is pushing a message where money is a desirable thing, I think that it is perfectly normal to take money into account. Not that there are no problems mind you. As Biggie said “Mo money, mo problems”. It’s about how you handle those problems. if someone is claiming to be a powerful Sorcerer but is always complaining about their life without doing anything about it, they are clearly not a powerful Sorcerer!
When judging entire traditions and systems it gets murkier. For instance there are a lot of Vodou communities that give a lot to the Haitian community both in terms and magical and material support. A lot of good gets done. But, I myself have been privy to Haitian Mambos discussing whether the Petro Lwa, whose violent nature served well in the revolution, are not contributing to Haiti’s instability. This is also an issue in Tibetan Buddhism that Dudjom Rinpoche wrote about: do the Dharmapalas cause more trouble than they fix?
There is some truth to these things, but only some. There is good and bad in everything. It is about how you handle it. I know two practitioners who focus heavily on Santissima Muerte, another diety who gets a lot of blame** from people that don’t really know what they are talking about. Both practitioners live in very violent communities. For one of them, their spiritual practice helps them cope with the violence, sometimes help themselves and others, and in general give back to the community. The other one I can honestly say is just part of the problem and his spiritual practice only drives him further down that path. Is it the saint’s fault? I don’t think so.
Anyway, to sum up: problems exist and always will. Magic does not make problems disappear. It doesnt make you a good person. It doesn’t make you competant. If however your magic is not helping solve your problems, it is appropriate to take a hard look at the magic being done, and the people using it.
*which is actually not true. He used his fortune to do what he willed, and spent his last years in a perfectly respectable boarding house getting visits from all kinds of interesting and supportive people. We should all be so lucky!!
How his final resting place became someone’s back yard in New Jersey is another story…
** Another aspect of Muerte blame to keep in mind is that the more popular she and her shrines are, the less people visit and light candles at normal Roman Catholic shrines. It is a loss of money, not just believers that drives some of the protests.
