There are the practices of yoga meditation, dervish dancing, psychotherapy, Zen Buddhism, Ignatian, Salesian, and Hesychast methods of 'prayer,' the use of consciousness-changing chemicals such as LSD and mescaline, psychodrama, group dynamics, sensory-awareness techniques, Quakerism, Gurdjieff exercises, relaxation therapies,the Alexander method, autogenic training, and self-hypnosis. The difficulty with every one of these disciplines is that the moment you are seriously involved, you find yourself boxed in some special in-group which defines itself, often with the most elegant subtlety, by the exclusion of an out-group. In this way, every religion or cult is self-defeating, and this is equally true of projects which define themselves as non-religions or universally inclusive religions, playing the game of 'I am less exclusive than you.

• religion
• self
• awareness
• consciousness
• prayer
• buddhism
• zen
• meditation
• lsd
• hypnosis
• yoga

Mardi Gras I arrive at the beginning of February. A good time to visit, for it is the weekend leading up to ‘Fat Tuesday’, the literal English translation of Mardi Gras. In Britain we call it ‘Shrove Tuesday’ and celebrate with pancakes. In more observant times this day preceding Ash Wednesday was when the faithful said their goodbye to meat, for it signalled the start of Lent and forty days of fasting and prayer. The Latin for ‘goodbye meat’ is carne vale. Hence the word ‘carnival’.

• definition
• etymology
• latin
• holidays
• time
• prayer
• english
• translation

Christians and Buddhists both realize that without concentration, without abandoning distracting thoughts, prayer and meditation will not bear fruit. Concentration and devotion bring calm, peace, stability, and comfort to both Buddhists and Christians. If farmers use farming tools to cultivate their land, practitioners use prayer and meditation to cultivate their consciousness.

• buddhism
• christianity
• consciousness
• meditation
• peace
• prayer
• will

The magical effect of the rite is factual enough, and in no sense illusory.  Moreover it actually works out, just as primitive man supposes, in his hunting successes; only the effect does not proceed via the object but via the subject.  The magical rite, like all magic and indeed every higher intention, including those of religion, acts upon the subject who practices the magic or the religion, by altering and enhancing his own ability to act.  In this sense the outcome of the action, whether it be hunting, war, or whatever else, is in the highest degree objectively dependent upon the effect of the magic ritual.  It was left for modern man to make the psychological discovery that the operative factor in magic is the 'reality of the soul' and not the reality of the world.  Originally the reality of the soul was projected outwards upon an external reality.  Even today prayers for victory are commonly regarded not as an inner alteration of the psyche but as an effort to influence God.  In exactly the same way, hunting magic was experienced as an effort to influence the quarry, and not as an influencing of the hunter himself.  In both cases our enlightened rationalism misunderstands the magic and prayer as illusory, in its scientific pride at having established that the object cannot be influenced.  In both cases it is wrong.  An effect that proceeds from an alteration in the subject is objective and real.

• magick
• prayer
• religion
• causality
• reality
• soul
• god
• victory
• war
• ritual
• intention
• pride
• psyche
• influence
• narrative
• narratization

Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

• humanity
• prayer

The gods either have power or they have not. If they have not, why pray to them? If they have, then instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it? Clearly, if they can help a man at all, they can help him in this way. You will say, perhaps, 'But all that is something they have put in my own power.' Then surely it were better to use your power and be a free man, than to hanker like a slave and a beggar for something that is not in your power. Besides who told you the gods never lend their aid even towards things that do lie in our own power? Begin praying this way and you will see. Where another man prays 'Grant that I may possess this woman,' let your own prayer be, 'Grant that I may not lust to possess her.' Where he prays, 'Grant me to be rid of such-and-such a one,' you pray, 'Take from me my desire to be rid of him.' Where he begs, 'Spare me the loss of my precious child,' beg rather to be delivered from the terror of losing him. In short, give your petitions a turn in this direction and see what comes.

• god
• lust
• power
• prayer
• stoicism
• desire
• will
• terror
• loss
• gods