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Comment by h1karu | Hacker News Reader

I suppose what I mean is that I don't think it's fair that fundamentalist christians don't get to post on HN about how they have a savior who performs miracles but yet it's relatively socially acceptable to have posts about "Magic" which is a reference to the same type of thing as miracles but yet it's considered "esoteric" instead of "religious" and is therefor socially acceptable. I mean lets not forget that with the discussion of Dee and Kelly we ARE talking about the scrying of the same Archangels from the old testament, so in some way it is related to the abrahamic religions. That's why I don't see why it gets a special category instead of being labeled 'religious'

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The history of religion is not religion, the history of magic is not magic, and to study a thing is not to advocate it. There is no issue here. Please stop.

Fundamentalist Christians are still seen in the U.S. as the "oppressing majority" that want to impose their belief system on others or want at least to make others feel bad for not adhering to their beliefs or not conforming to their moral code. This view is outdated.

The Evangelical+Fundamentalist Christians had their latest political and cultural heyday in the 1980's with the "Moral Majority" movement. They've been in steady decline since, with the book "The Great Evangelical Recession" (http://www.amazon.com/Great-Evangelical-Recession-The-Americ...) arguing that the U.S. population can count only between 7% and 9% as part of the "true believer" Evangelical or Fundamental Christian set. The other 30% to 50% that loosely associate themselves with Christian churches have only limited knowledge of what Christianity teaches.

Politicians, advertisers, tastemakers all are slowly realizing this declining influence and focus of Christian groups. Many "free thinking" folks though still see Fundamentalist Christianity as the big bogey-man. Those dabbling in the occult or most other religions are generally seen as interesting and as having no agenda to impose moral beliefs, and so are much less threatening and downright fun and interesting. The California occult even had raucous sex parties, yay!

> Fundamentalist Christians are still seen in the U.S. as the "oppressing majority" that want to impose their belief system on others or want at least to make others feel bad for not adhering to their beliefs or not conforming to their moral code. This view is outdated.

No, they're more often seen as an oppressing, politically-powerful minority that wants to do that. Which, while somewhat imprecise (Evangelicals/Fundamentalists and those seeking to impose conservative policies either based on religious motivation or by leveraging others' religious identity aren't identical groups, though there's significant overlap), isn't outdated in any sense.

> twith the book "The Great Evangelical Recession" (http://www.amazon.com/Great-Evangelical-Recession-The-Americ...) arguing that the U.S. population can count only between 7% and 9% as part of the "true believer" Evangelical or Fundamental Christian set. The other 30% to 50% that loosely associate themselves with Christian churches have only limited knowledge of what Christianity teaches.

That's kind of silly, for one thing because it presumes that every Christian who isn't a "true believer" in one of two closely-related subsets of Protestantism is only "loosely associated" with a Christian Church.

Doing any form of magic is political suicide in mainstream politics. You might win a spot here and there but you will never have any pull in this country if you practice magic.

And political aspirations tend to wither away when one starts working with the occult.

You realize how significant and how insignificant one is. And as well, you focus on the betterment of oneself and your environment. Political energy and fervor seems at best tertiary. There are much more important things, like finding oneself.

You're joking right ?

I see you are somewhat versed in Enochian workings. I'm a bit surprised, but the tech community has knowledge extending every direction. Yes, Enochian Magic was created by John Dee in reference to the apochryphal book of Enoch. It entails in working with both positive and negative angels under YHVH (Judeao/Christian/Moslem deity).

That's one of the reasons why I mentioned chaos magic. It is devoid of any deity worship, and is more that of being a sorcerer.Golden Dawn also used Enochian magic, albeit only the second book. And they also involved themselves with YHVH, Egyptian deities and Celtic deities. For no deity workings, perhaps Tantra or Chaos would apply.

I suppose if the original post had been about chaos magic alone I wouldn't have chimed in to refer to it as religious speech. I would even suggest that there are more and more scientific authors showing up who are helping to bridge the gap between "chaos magic" concepts and hard science (see Rupert Sheldrake, Bruce Lipton, Michael Talbot, and others)

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." – Max Planck. 1931.

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