“You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very
close-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those
people as yourself and your friends.”
– Robert Anton Wilson
Magick has been sold to you. Modern magick was developed in
the Victorian Era and to its detriment, was influenced by the dominant thought
currents of the time. Those being, produce a product and sell it. Since then,
Western books on magick have focused almost exclusively on instructing
individual magi to practice on their own. The magus was reduced, as the public
relations field advocated, to an individual atom of consumption. They were told
that if they went into their basements and performed the exercises in the book,
they would become master magicians.
This is a lie.
While the magick instruction manuals coming out of the
English Magical Revival were originally written as training manuals for magical
orders, when they reached the publishers that changed. They wanted to sell
books to as many people as possible, not just to a select group. So the myth
was born that magick could be a solitary, masturbatory concern. We wish to
disabuse you of that notion.
Not that you shouldn’t practice magick on your own. In fact,
it will serve you well in developing skills. You can be a solitary magus, but
you will never be as good as if you work with a group. Just like every organism
more complex than a worm, you can only fulfill your purpose by joining with
others. It is only through working with others with a magical consciousness will
you flower as a magus.
We stand guilty as charged of the crime of producing another
magical instruction manual. However, we will not lie to you and say this book
alone will make you a great magus. It won’t change your life, get you laid,
make you $3,000 a month, or remove unwanted blemishes. But being a member of
your own tribe will.
We offer the example of the Order of Emergent Magi for
instructional purposes, and if you find the Gutter Bible to be inspiring, we
suggest you contact us. Most will not, and that’s okay. But you now have the
task of either finding a magical tribe or forming one of your own. We hope you
find our examples and advice useful.
As people have moved to the cities and the nuclear family
has become the dominant social structure, our entire species has lost important
values and abilities. Small to mid-sized groups of people, from a dozen to around
one-hundred-and-fifty, make for more stable and less stressful lives. When you
have something that breaks and you don’t know how to fix, in the nuclear society
you have to pay someone to fix it or go without. With a strong tribe, chances
are you know someone who can fix it, or can borrow you a replacement until it
can be fixed. A strong tribe shares education, food, and living space, making
the individual less dependent on outside sources (governments and
corporations).
Those who wish to sell you things do not like tribes for
obvious reasons.
The disintegration of tribal structures in our personal
lives parallels a disintegration of belief in magick. We propose that magick is
the necessary component in tribal structures. Magick, through the performance
of group ritual, is what binds a tribe together psychologically and
spiritually.
This information should come as a shock to no one. Which is
why people join churches and masonic lodges. Sadly, those institutions have
failed us by becoming moribund in outdated social mores that focus more on
control than bringing people together. With magick, you can make your own,
based on your values and modern concepts of acceptance and love.