A rant : Magic (possibly Spirituality to)

[NotPublished]

You should do whatever works for you. Magic doesn't require arcane tools, Chaos Magic makes use of modern archetypes or whatever works for the practitioner the specific tools used by the practitioner are unimportant... the mindset and how most reliably to achieve it is what's important. Antero's 'Paratheatrics' uses nothing resembling arcane tools, but its still following the same formulas.

Aye, its how I've been targeting it. I guess deep down I am a Chaote. I do what works for me - Over time I have observed over at TCC and made my own definitions up, so I am very distant from terms.

The way I see it is;
Anything I use in the process to make manifest of my Will/Intent are my tools. Each tool will have a specific purpose...

So if I am dressing up with the intent of what I think looks good so I can trap someone/thing (XD), I will choose the clothing carefully. The clothes are the tools. My intent is to lure someone.

Of course I don't say this all out loud :P .. it may just ruin the magic

However to say that they're all the same thing is like saying that (to steal the example above) PHP/C#/FORTRAN/Java/Cold Fusion/PERL and BASIC are essentially all the same thing.

Especially as your favourite programming language today, will likely be the COBOL of tomorrow.

Very true... and there is limited usability for COBAL today... much (IMO) like a lot of traditional magic psychological metaprogramming systems.


(Better?)  

So true

In one sense the programming languages are similar, that you can easily go from one language to another (And learn another faster), but the meaning behind Magic in the modern day sense is much different than from the past. Not to be a self-promoter but here is a quote from earlier

The basics haven't changed, but the entire method of it has (thats just imo). Is there still a view magic that is this transcended force that isn't in ours to control?

Why is there a need to chant needlessly? I have never done a chant, perhaps I've recited a poem or two but I was forced to.

The idea I have grasped is that it is a means of a way to manifest results, I personally have little reason to talk to myself (When I am mad I vent to some unknown entity .. the side pavement for instance). I have no reason to call on the arch-angels. They have little to no meaning to me. Apart from sounding cool.

The magical thinking paradigm is one thing I DO like however, throw out all of the crap about rules, boundaries, reality itself and just keep at it to a simple thing as; a method to manifest your intention. Anything you use to manifest this intention are your tools. Then re-add all the rules of life itself.

Using this mindset, I am working magic. I am writing a message here, my intent is to push across what my understanding it. I am using the internet to express my will, I am writing words which will meld together on the readers view - maybe they will grasp something, maybe they won't. In the end, my intention isn't far enough to care what another may think.

Magic itself is a tool, another branch in the ways of working in the world. I like using the paradigm, since I can think very well in it. But this could be the programming side in me.

I think this one is also ok to express; posted this on TCC a while back.

Every act I do or take part in, is an act of Magic, I am living apart of it. Whether it ranges from the mundane to the fantastic. It is a simple process which involves using my intent to make a manifestation of my will. There are many processes to achieve the same goal, it is my choice as the practioner to use what tools I have access to - to make do.

(edited to fix my rush mistakes)
[fixed most of them atleast .. but shit, talk about not reading what you write]

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Then why call it magic?  "Mind Hacks" works better. 

Unless your intent is to watch rational empiricist's heads explode.  Then "magic" works much better.

I don't think our heads explode.

Mostly we just rage.

potato/potahto.  "rational rage" is still pretty damn amusing, whatever you want to call it.

Why?  Any rational person rages all the time.  Look around you.  Anyone that isn't raging is delusional.

[NotPublished]

That, or they're drugged up.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

That, or they're drugged up.

No.

I am drugged up, and I am still raging.

[Kai]

That, or they're drugged up.

No.

I am drugged up, and I am still raging.

TROOF.

[Kai]

However to say that they're all the same thing is like saying that (to steal the example above) PHP/C#/FORTRAN/Java/Cold Fusion/PERL and BASIC are essentially all the same thing.

Especially as your favourite programming language today, will likely be the COBOL of tomorrow.

Very true... and there is limited usability for COBAL today... much (IMO) like a lot of traditional magic psychological metaprogramming systems.


(Better?) 

Psychological metaprogramming works for me.

[Kai]

Or maybe even, psychosomatic metaprogramming.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Or maybe even, psychosomatic metaprogramming.

PILLS HERE

[NotPublished]

 
*casts level 10 shine*

[Kai]

Or maybe even, psychosomatic metaprogramming.

PILLS HERE

GRABBIN PILLS

[Telarus]

Good discussion so far. I'll jump in with a few thoughts. I've been reading Peter Carroll's new book, Apophenion, and he has really condensed and laid out in simple terms the basis of his Chaos Magic paradigm (recently refined). Let's see if I can give the bullet points, and then I'll take responses and elaborate:

Chapter 1: Apophenia

-"Physics means no more than a set of ideas about how the world works; everybody has some sort of theory of physics, based on anything from simple experience and intuition to sophisticated experiential and hypothesis. As magic works, at least occasionally, it must form part of any complete theory of how the world works. I regard physics as that subset of magic that works fairly reliably. I regard magic, in the traditional sense, as a kind of physics that we strive to understand and render more reliable. So it all comes down to the same thing, a quest to understand and manipulate the world with a self-consistent and coherent theory." [Fr. Stokastikos here lays out the GAME RULES that the rest of the book should be read by. 1) Magic is a real phenomenon that does _something_, usually not reliably, 2) Physics is the magic that we have Named and Bound to repeatable circumstances and actions.]

-"If the word 'Magic' sounds too outrageous, then substitute psychological and para-psychological technology instead." [Here we have an echo to Arthur C. Clarke's quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" which people tend to misinterpret all the time.]

-"Apophenia means finding pattern or meaning where others don't. Feelings of revelation and ecstasis usually accompany it. It has some negative connotations in psychological terminology when it implies finding meaning or pattern where none exists; and some positive ones when it implies finding something important, useful, or beautiful. It thus links creativity and psychosis, genius and madness." [Here we have a restatement of both the Hodge and the Podge sides of the Law of Fives.]

Chapter 2: Panpsychism - Philosophy

-"Metaphysics means the set of assumptions underlying the way we interpret the phenomena that we perceive. Big assumptions like the existence of mind, matter, gods, causality, and randomness fall into this category. The word phenomena (or phenomenon for singualr), merely denotes events that we perceive. By refraining from talking about the 'things' we perceive we avoid making too many initial assumptions, in particular we avoid the questionable concept of 'thing-ness'. [He goes onto elaborate the complete illusory nature of 'thing-ness' with an example of a simple stone. Stones are constantly in flux, simply less violent flux than say, water. Stones molecules vibrate, it leaks vibrations as waves of the electromagnetic spectrum. It constantly interacts with it's environment or matrix, exchanging energy through light/sound/kinetic energy/inertia/gravity/etc/etc. Yet because most of these details cannot make it through the censor of our physics senses, and our mental image is an abstraction of an already filtered sensory experience, we are taught not to think of a stone as a _process_ but as a _thing_. This is why I find Roger, et al's, invocation of Teh Quantum really amusing in these discussions. Our recent science has allowed us to examine such 'things' as stones(molecules, arraignments of molecules) with enough detail that this illusion of 'thing-ness' that we have built with language breaks down. All is transitory, all a process.]

-"We cannot really ask what a stone 'is', we can only ask what it does, or what it resembles, or how we feel about it. We have no reason to suppose that it consists of anything other than the totality of what it does." [He then goes into an overview of the current state of physics, with special attention to the use of _operational language_, basically E-Prime.]

-"Thus I conclude that I do not have any sort of 'being', I consist only of the totality of what I do. I proceed through time as a process."

-"If we want to philosophise with clarity we can not say that any phenomena 'is' any other phenomena. We can only speak of actions, resemblances, differences. .... When we speak of what any phenomenon 'does' we actually imply what we think it has done and what we think it will do. 'Being' exists only as a neurological and linguistic hallucination."

-"The concept of 'being' implies some kind of metaphysical essence or quality in a phenomenon which exists somewhat independently of what we actually observe it doing. This being-doing duality leads directly to the misconception of a spirit-matter dualism which underpins nearly all religious ideas, and to a mind-matter or to a mind-body dualism which gives rise to insoluble but illusory problems and paradoxes in philosophy, psychology, and in our ideas about consciousness."

-"The abandonment of the language and concept of 'being' leads to a strict Monism, which eliminates any kind of spirit-matter or mind-body dualism. If we assert the reality of both spirit and matter, or of mind and matter, we should only do so in terms of what these phenomena actually do, not what we suppose the 'are'." [He then sets aside 'spirit' as meaning 'the mind of supposedly superhuman creatures', and as our medical science gives us no reason to assume the body consists of anything other than matter, focuses on the mind-matter duality. After an overview of 'theory-of-mind' (i.e. when children realize that phenomena in the world can act with intentionality of their own) he concludes with, "Perhaps mind constitutes a fundamental property of matter, and all matter does mind activity of some kind, and we should not regard it as dead and inert."]

I'll stop here for a while. I'm still digesting this material myself.

[singer]

That's OK.  It's just about time for someone to start flinging barstools.  I may need to hoist one myownself... you know... as a 'being' who is considerably more than a 'collection of processes'.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

-"Physics means no more than a set of ideas about how the world works; everybody has some sort of theory of physics, based on anything from simple experience and intuition to sophisticated experiential and hypothesis. As magic works, at least occasionally, it must form part of any complete theory of how the world works.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I can't wait for LMNO to see that.  He's gonna rupture his quantum gland.

[LMNO]

I've already written off most of this thread as Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc.



LMNO
-If I don't read this thread, it may not exist.