This was originally a comment on Facebook, but I\’m preserving it here, because it\’s important to remember and things get lost:

The whole \’hero of our own story\’ thing is also bullshit modern Western enculturation. I love Joe Campbell as much as the next guy, but the monomyth is just a cultural comparison tool. We are not solo-creatures, not individuals at all. The narratives which are our lives are merely portions of a greater saga, one that includes our ancestors and (potential) descendants.

There\’s a fundamental misapprehension of what stories are, borne of the false idea that story=fiction, when instead what it is, is a recounting of events. When we start thinking like that, then the stories of indigenous cultures are once again understood not to be simply metaphorical, but a fundamental way, in a very precise and particular way, of transmitting and refreshing vital information to a people.

This is why the recounting of a particular story or ritual not only passes on information, but reconnects the participants, or story-teller and audience with the primordial world of the powers, allowing them to participate and maintain the ties which hold their universe together.

Thus, there\’s a fundamental difference in perspective – your experience, your personal narrative is not solely personal but trans-personal. It exists because all of those who wove their actions together, consciously and unconsciously to create a place for \’you\’ to emerge.

Without that understanding, things get fucked up. We get beings thinking they can do what they like, without consequences, believing in lie of endless progress that does not need to connect to the wisdom of the landscape, heart and soul. We get beings who slaughter people who believe this way, or call them savage and seek to \’educate\’ them in schools and destroy their culture, or label it a \’life-style\’ choice instead of what makes us human.

Most magicians/spirit-workers/witches/occultists (a large proportion of those who self-identify as such in the West) do not realise that a fundamental longterm change in epistemology, ontology, ‘conciousness’ and awareness is necessary and inevitable if you’re not just playing mental masturbation games.

You are – you become – pitted against fundamental logocentric, trancendentalist/escapist  ‘progressive’ and materialist ontology which forms the basis of Western culture, which requires massive deconditioning to even achieve.. It’s not just about going ‘into trance’ or ‘doing astral work.’

You can’t switch it on and off – it’s not yours to switch off, to lock away when things become uncomfortable. Not just your personal fantasy playground. It’s bigger than you, wilder than you, and it will fuck you up. When indigenous societies say this shit can kill you, or drive you mad or steal your soul?

They’re completely fucking right. That’s not just ‘primitive superstition’ but a fact of existence in a living Kosmos. It’s not a fucking role-playing game, any more than a disaster-porn movie is anything like a real tsunami or a nuclear explosion or an asteroid strike.

So the question is – are you prepared to risk everything you think you are, to take your place in this Weird and Terribly Awful universe?

Would you know more, or what?