Monday, December 10, 2012

Glamours

I once knew a woman that wanted a job. I saw her after the interview. Average had become stunningly beautiful. I knew it was a glamour but I could not see through it. The next time I saw her, she was as I knew her. To me, this is how a glamour should be used. There is a task at hand, glamour is needed for that task, use it then lose it.

I once knew another that used glamour to be perceived in a certain way by his friends and associates. This sort of glamour must be maintained on a permanent basis. The problem lay in the fact that if those qualities were actually possessed, the glamour would not be needed. This leaves one in the trap of living a lie. Worse, because people treat you as if you possess these traits, one tends to believe one's own press. This has several ramifications.

1.   The aforementioned need for more or less constant maintenance.
2.   The pressure of having to live up to said deceit  I don't care who one is, how smart one is or how clever one is, that is a strain. It is a strain because one is living outside who one really is.
3.   One never grows into what one wants to be or thinks one is because one falls victim to one's own illusion. In short, growth stops.

Glamours can be useful. They can also be traps.

4 comments:

Scott Stenwick said...

First off, let me say that I'm in complete agreement with you that this is precisely how a glamour should be used.

However, that leaves me wondering how you square it with what you seemed to be saying in one of your earlier posts, that you shouldn't use magick to get a job because that would be taking the job away from someone else who might otherwise get it. To me, a glamour used in a job interview fits the description of such a spell perfectly.

Physical attractiveness, more than any other quality, is given inordinate influence in the hiring of employees - to the point that it wouldn't surprise me to find that the path of least resistance for a general "get me this job" spell is going to be to make the candidate more attractive most of the time.

Or do you see the two cases as somehow different?

Robert said...

If you go back and reread, you may be surprised to find that I didn't say that. I said that the magician is responsible for the fallout. There is a difference.

I have used to magick to get someone fired that was trying to fire me. I have zero qualms.

My point is that in all magick there is fallout and I think magicians give that very little consideration after the magick is done. I've seen this smack too many people for me to be ok with just ignoring it. If your magick to get a job has unintended consequences, do some more hocus pocus to soften the blow on others. I think it is worth the extra effort.

Helen/Hawk said...

For years, my husband has used glamour re: his work. But in his case, the situation was a little different (he's retired now).

He worked in construction. The social structure in that workplace is very top-down, domination-type. My husband is/was very strong (aka muscled). But he hates dominance games. So he used glamour to make himself look less muscled. So there wouldn't be school-yard type "challenges".

Didn't affect his ability to do his job, since it was appearance. In fact, in some ways it inhanced it because there was less BS/bullies around him. And yes, it was worth it to him to maintain the glamour rather than deal w/ the BS. Became total habit.

Robert said...

I agree that seems to be a very good reason to hold a glamour. It seems that wasn't an attempt to redefine who he was in the eyes of others but reaffirm who his is to himself. There is nothing troubling about that.