My most recent discovery should have been obvious in retrospect. But unfortunately it wasn’t 100% obvious. Even if I knew about it to some extent I didn’t appreciate it properly. I’m not convinced I appreciate it properly even right now. It’s hard for me to get this thought out in a very neatly structured manner, so there will be some meandering up ahead. I hope the idea will become crystal clear by the end.

I’ve been sometimes using speech as functional instead of as ornamental (and magick can be both ornamental and functional too, and hopefully I’ll get to that).

So this distinction between functional and ornamental is hugely important in my recent contemplation.

Functional is that which I need to work. Functional is that which is more fundamental. Functional is a load-bearing part. In terms of a conventional building, the foundation and the central I-beams would be the most functional components. The floor separators would be somewhat functional. And things like paint would be ornamental. A building would be usable with any kind of paint. Whereas it wouldn’t be usable without the floors, but the floors themselves wouldn’t be usable without the I-beams, and the I-beams would not be usable without the foundation (can’t stick them into raw unprocessed mud and hope they’ll stay vertical).

So then obviously the most fundamental (and thus most functional) aspect would be the mind’s threefold capacity to know, to will, and to experience. But that’s too abstract on its own. That on its own tells me nothing about the specifics of what’s manifesting. So if I want a reasonable manifestation I need more complexity than just that. So my commitment needs to be in a certain state, and since I must know what state that is, my knowledge is crucial as well. And then experience will follow, helplessly, for what choice does experience have?

So now let’s go back to my meat and potato observations.

I’ve been noticing that I often use speech in a functional as opposed to ornamental manner (mostly when it concerns politics). Of course since I don’t have a strong commitment to this specific emanation, my offense (with regard to my own judgement of myself) is a small one, but I still see (or am starting to see) how I have the wrong idea here.

So when I say something and I expect someone else to change their mind based on what they’ve heard, that’s a functional usage of speech. In that sense I want my speech to carry some load. And if I do this all the time (as opposed to a one-off), then my speech becomes a load-bearing part of my manifestation. And yet I don’t think speech is good as a load-bearing part. Using speech to bear heavy load is like building a foundation out of straw. It might work for a tiny building, but straw is not the best possible foundational material. We generally prefer concrete.

Ornamental speech is best exemplified by shooting breeze with friends. It can be low-brow or high-brow and anything in between, but the idea is that whether the two conversing people agree or not, they are relaxed, they don’t expect anything much from each other. Their only expectation is to have fun. Of course they do expect expressiveness to emerge in the form of a stimulating or relaxing conversation, but they don’t lean their expectations toward a specific follow-on on top of that expressiveness as a result of that expressiveness. So you express things just to be expressive, and that’s what ornamental expression is.

Another way to conceive of functional vs ornamental continuum is in terms of the “size” of the adjustment. And by “size” I don’t mean it literally, but I mean how subtle or unsubtle the adjustment is relative the big picture.

So for example, relative the physicalist picture of the universe, physical laws, the Earth and humanity, me going for a walk and coming back is a small adjustment. So it would be ornamental. On the other hand, if we were to move a mountain, or relocate an entire city of New York to another continent, all at once, instantly, that would not be subtle. That would be functional.

And yet another way to consider functional vs ornamental is to consider the expected frequency of occurrence. So if something happens rarely, it’s functional. If something happens all the time, it’s ornamental.

I’m using binary language here because it’s easier to type, but it should be clear that this isn’t a binary distinction. I’m talking about a functional-ornamental continuum here, even if sometimes it might be useful to split that continuum into distinct regions.

And yet another way to picture this distinction is as between a context (like a platform) and some elements inside that context (like dancing on top of a platform). The context is functional and the elements inside the context are ornamental. So the platform is functional and the dancing on top of it is ornamental. From the POV of a theatrical production I would absolutely want the platform to hold steady. I need platform to “just work.” So it’s functional. Whereas I don’t have that feeling to the same strength with regard to any specifics of dance. At most the dance specifics remain quasi-constant for the duration of a single production. They’re going to be different for a new production. But the role of the platform is necessary and steady for any number of productions.

So magick of a functional type will be setting up the platform for future use. This is big magick. This is the kind of magick that re-aligns the fundamentals of manifestation. But specifically because this is big magick, it can’t be aimed at something specific. This is foundational magick. It’s platform magick. When one is building a platform one need not worry about the specific dances that might or might not occur later on top of that platform.

And magick of an ornamental type is magick done for the pure enjoyment in the here and now. A perfect example of that is flying in a lucid dream. It’s just fun right then and there. And the state of lucid dreaming is the magickal platform for flying (and many other experiences).

So if I want my whole waking experience to become comparable to lucid dreaming, I have to do some massive and major realignment of many of my basic assumptions, habits, values, expectations, and so on. This is a separate task from wanting to achieve this specific result or that specific result. If I focus on the platform, I shouldn’t overly worry about the ornamental specifics. Ornamental specifics become important once the platform is reliable. And that’s another key: once the magickal platform is properly setup, all further ornamental magick should be easy to do. Just like it’s easy to fly in a lucid dream.

I am consciously oversimplifying to some extent and I am flattening out some nuances here. In reality maybe flying takes a bit of effort, but it’s not a tremendous effort once one is thoroughly lucid. But the effort in (a) attaining lucid state is vastly different from the effort involved in (b) flying. (a) is the platform, functional magick. (b) is ornament. Again, I am simplifying somewhat.

So basically moving from a low-magick to a high-magick realm is the functional magick. Before that’s done, every tiny bit of magick is going to feel like pulling teeth, by necessity. And I’ve been catching myself doing just that: lots of pulling teeth. I’m trying to perform magick on a platform that’s expressly designed by none other than myself to thwart magick. That’s clumsy.

And yet, maybe this kind of unreasonable trying is precisely one of the ways to move the platform to a different level. So puttering around the edges with this specific spell and that one is not necessarily a waste of time, but it might be inefficient if one’s commitment platform is still 85% physicalism (like mine).

That’s what I’ve been thinking about.

I also came up with a functional magick approach. I might call it “draining the world of its solidity.” The idea is to visualize draining importance, weight, and meanings out of the all appearances that might appear grossly and subtly as “this world.” It’s a bit like consuming the world. It’s like splattering the world-appearance with the digestive juices of imagination and vacuuming up the resultant goo. It’s recalling one’s own prior grant of weight and validity back unto oneself. That’s platform magick for softening the platform. So I am contemplating whether or not I want to be doing more of that. I’ve been doing some of it already, but I’ve also been doing lots of tooth pulling too by trying to elicit an effect that’s actually very difficult for me to elicit right now because of how discordant it is to all my prior background mentality.