Sorcery and Hyperstition?

Sorcery is always an anomalous pragmatics of intensification, using maps of intensive spaces, and bringing about engagement with deeper or wider levels of reality. This is the sense in which Deleuze and Guattari say 'we sorcerers'. Sorcery is the war-craft of freedom, and it is contact with the Outside of constricted, transfixed perception. The pragmatics involves a melting of 'scanning' and habit patterns and an intensification of groups and individuals in relation to perception, action, abstraction, envisaging, navigation...

At the combined levels of the will (the overall directional activity of an energy formation), and of belief, sorcery is a question of having the courage to explore all hypotheses, no matter how bizarre, and no matter how much they involve being willing to become part of the experiment in order to deepen contact with the world. And, in the face of something anomalous, no matter how disturbing or exciting, it is a question of having the courage to neither believe nor disbelieve (see Castaneda's Tales of Power, 'The Dreamer and the Dreamed' 2nd page, for his statement of this point).

So this is hyperstition? A hyperstitional field is an anomalous map of intensive spaces that includes elements that pass fundamentally beyond current knowledge. A hyperstitional field going into effect is not sceptic drift, and it is not dogmatic belief, rather it is dedicated exploration or navigation.

How do you know that something is a hyperstition, a sorcerous map? See if, on initial reading, it includes elements that effectively delineate intensive zones of the world, as with the Don Juan point - taken up by Deleuze and Guattari - that human engagement with the world is blocked by four main de-intensificatory modes: fear, clarity, power and death. Afterwards, see if the map works, and dont worry about details concerning things like whether or not specific figures existed. Work at the levels of practices and navigations. Discover if the map is a diagram for the intensification of contact with the Outside.

Posted by scanshifts at July 22, 2004 01:35 AM