Excerpt from Cherotic Magic Revised, “Reality Shaping”, Section 15, by Frank Moore.
In the primitive world, reality shaping was the function of magic and of the shamans. The shamans used rituals and myths as dream boats to travel outside of the normal frame of reality into the web of all possibilities to communicate with the gods and to shape reality for their tribe. Sometimes through the myths and rituals, the shamans took the whole tribe into the web. But often the shamans went deeper into the web alone…alone because of the increasing dangers that exist in the web. This magical activity was seen by the tribe as vital to their survival. The shamanistic activity was not limited by the reality frame, by what was practical, although the practical reality was shaped by the shamanistic activity. As a result of these common mythical journeys, the frame was very flexible for all in the tribe.
But this began to change in the modern cultures, especially in the West. The shamanistic activity began to divide into philosophy, religion, art, science, and the occult. Each of these areas began to subdivide into sects, schools, disciplines, mediums, etc. They also divided into “pure” and “applied.” “Pure” activities are done for themselves to explore, shape, create reality, to travel outside the normal frame, to capture possibilities not enclosed within the frame, to bring these “new” possibilities into the frame to magically widen or shift the frame of reality.
The “applied” activities try to use, to control, harness these new possibilities into the service of the established frame. This is the washte brain activity. In the modern culture, the pure activity is seen as being of value only as it relates to the applied activity. This severely limits the magic change of reality shaping which is what the pure activity is meant to be. What also limits the shamanistic magic in the modern world is the fragmentation of the pure activity. There is a holistic myth developing in science, in philosophy, in art and theatre, in religion, in psychology, in the occult. But this myth cannot get into the frame because the modern myth travelers are talking, thinking, and seeing in different technical languages, depending on their fields. Because of this, they do not realize they are visualizing the same myth. So the new possibilities contained in this myth cannot get through except in fragments.
