Hermetic Qabala meets cognitive science

For those so informed, recall Aleister Crowley's infamous injunction: "Invoke often. Inflame thyself with prayer." A focused mind must engage the emotions to effect a change in consciousness to achieve dissolution of the self identity into that which one invokes. And it must be done repeatedly to inculcate the desired result. He also notes that one doesn't necessarily have to believe in the objectivity of any entity so invoked, only to proceed as if it is true by at least temporarily suspending disbelief. 

Some like Regardie finds interpreting such beings as aspects or archetypes of the psyche that one takes on from our cultural milieu or even from genetics. Modern cogsci sees them as pre-conscious prototypes of embodiment. In any event, following the injunction produces a desired result.

Lakoff has also adamantly advised a similar injunction to frame our language in emotional value judgments and to repeat those frames constantly. Just framing in dry facts doesn't generate the necessary e-motivation to change people's beliefs or actions: We must be inflamed. Hence the inflammatory spin from conservatives, as they are well aware of this scientific prerequisite. Granted they do so based on our lower drives, like racism, fear etc. But progressives can use science and reason but it must be framed and inflamed in higher emotional values like love and compassion.

Then there's the issue of the first case being about magical thinking in supernatural beings so therefore easily dismissed. As noted though, it can be interpreted in more modern terms as psychological aspects of one's psyche obtained via cultural inculcation. And the cogsci of rationality itself has proven to require emotion and feeling as part and parcel of its enactment. Enlightenment reason mistakenly assumes itself to be apart and above from all that to the point of detachment, hence assuming if one is presented with the right reasons then they will change. Experience has proven this result to be false, as well the the false assumptions about reason itself. We can use science and real reason to frame effectively too, but must do so with passion. 

Relating the two domains above, magick as well as cogsci are about using language to motivate action and enact results. In that sense cognitive framing is word magic. And magick is scientific in the sense of doing an empirical phenomenological practice to achieve a desired goal that be objectively measured. They are not so far apart as might seem apparent. And we can learn from both of them, separately or in conjunction, to engage passionately with our political and/or spiritual agendas to effect the sort of change we want to see in this earthly domain.

Note:

Recalling this discussion, we do not have to modernize hermetic qabalah nor magicalize cogsci. Per the referenced thread both have their own normative and soteriological components that make them unique and self-contained.

What we're doing here in this forum is contextualizing different traditions with a worldview defined by an IPS. Such a worldview is a cosmopolitan, metatheoretical and syntegrative one which can include elements from the various religions and spiritual traditions but is itself not strictly or completely any of them. Hence my comparison of the two traditions above is more about my synical paradigm worldview than trying to force one into the other.