Women and occult.
Woman vs man. Intuitive freeform vs repecting the system.
What do I want from my practices with the occult.
I want to cultivate my inner peace.
I want to express my creativity.
I want to facilitate that sense of interconnectedness to the world.
Set Ritual
Respect for Culture
A form of appreciation of history
It works like a machine
Strengthen “muscles” of a sort- like going to the gym
A feeling of belonging
Freeform
Spontaneous
Self gnosis
more relevant to self
Natural
Need to have sense of self mythology
Methaphor/archetype of the weaver- is traditional
More to the point.
I am a scientist, yet I treat my occult workings more like a religion. I can’t prove what I feel. I can’t prove that I manifest anything. I only have my happy coincidences. Also, I treat the scientific method in conjunction with magic as a hobby. Probably because I only care for what works, not proving that it works to others.
I used to see strength in ignoring the “rythyms of nature” only when I felt weak, did I wish to use astrological correspondences, as if the planets could push my will.
Ceremonial magic on surface looks like one of those trendy cookbook spells, also as a pagan with a Christian chip, didn’t like any refrerernce to god.
So yeah, this is what I have from an initial brainstorm. I'm hoping that someone will comment, and maybe I'll inspired with something concrete. Maybe there is a submission in there?
I'm trying to figure out why there IS a divide.
I don't have enough interaction with the occult world to even percieve that women writing on pure ceremonial magic are looked down apon, yet this is the impression many have.
One thing that strikes me from my experience is that ceremonial magic is like messing with a car, or computer hardware. I'm not sure why more guys than girls are attracted to such activities either.
When you see duality lists - how things are separated between male and female in theories of duality, you almost always see "logical" and "rational" and "light" and "sol" listed on the male side. I think that people in the West are very drawn towards valuing and praising those things, even as they utilize the others, but often don't want to admit to the inherent value or usefulness of "dark" and "secretive" and "irrational". Its funny because that behavior actually completely backs up the proposed duality. =p
I think maybe women are considered irrational because of the crazy hormone antics most women experience each month so its easy to put us into that category. And again, here in the West at least if not in the entire world, we seem to like to put things in neat little ordered boxes and pretend we've figured out how the entire universe works.
love your outline :)