What is a magickal system?

"An “occult” magical system is typically a taxonomy of possible events, ordered and arranged with a hierarchical element, and also with a method by which components of the schema can be randomly selected, as in divination. It is in a sense a random-access ontology. Because the taxonomy comprises a whole, it serves to provide interpretations for virtually any event that can arise. It is not a taxonomy of specific things or objects; it is not exact, but rather loose. Each level of the system represents a role that is contributed to the total system: a kind of moment, a kind of encounter. Because any encounter can be cast into some role, interpretation within the human experience of duration becomes an interpretive filter for temporality. What is filtered out by the magical system becomes an element that enters into dynamic relationships with other selected elements. They are picked out by a synchronic filter, but are transformed by a diachronic progression, or mutation, of the selected elements that eventually results in transformational syntheses of these same elements into more and more elegant assemblages. As an analogy, take how the rules of chess are synchronic and transcendental elements of the game, which when progressed through a sequence of time-states (i.e. moves), result in an enormous number of variations. Patterns emerge, secrets are disclosed to the devoted. An esoteric, or divinatory system is a similar thing: as a synchronic system it selects elements that as a diachronic process, it unfolds, combines, refines and transforms. Alchemy. Magic of this sort is thus diasynchronic: a fusion of change and stasis."

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