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Time Tree

 
  

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Gypsy Lantern
11:33 / 03.10.03
As seen in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 and extrapolated by Morrison at the end of The Invisibles. I’ve read a recent interview with Alan Moore where he brings the subject up as well. You know the drill – if we could observe our lives from a position ‘outside’ of time we would see ourselves as one solid object snaking back through every moment of our existence, straight into our mothers womb, and her back into her mother, and so on. All the way back to monkeys and fish, and shit like that. All of life on Earth – when considered from this perspective – is quite literally one single organism.

This throws up massive implications for magical practice, as everything from ancestor worship, Spare’s atavistic resurgence, past life regression, telepathy, sorcery as a form of sympathetic contagion throughout the system, and so on, seem to be simply and eloquently explained in physical terms using this model.

I think the theory itself comes from an earlier source than Vonnegut. Possibly Charles H Hinton’s (1853-1907)fourth dimensional writings or Edwin A Abbott’s (1838-1926) novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, but I haven’t had the time to wade through these writings to confirm that.

Anyway, I think it’s a very interesting area for discussion. Does anyone have any thoughts, opinions, or information to add?
 
 
cusm
14:00 / 03.10.03
I had come to a similar conclusion, but in reference to the tree of life (More Yggdrazil than the quaballa, which is more the Dradle of Life anyway). That is, in drawing the before mentioned lines back from child to parent all the way back to the mythical origins of life, the end result of the lot would look rather much like a tree, wouldn't it?

Suddenly, all the bits about how the tree is the support of all life and is all life made sense. Its roots are in the past (Urd), its branches in the heavens, and that bloody squirrell has the run of it. This also brings the thought of extending the lines forward in time. For if the totality of the tree exists outside of time, then "looking up" in the tree to higher realms which are said to dwell there is looking forward along our own evolution. If heaven is on a higher branch of the tree, then this is poetic in saying that heaven is a state we will evolve to, and awareness of the ex-temporal totality of the tree allows access to these higher realms.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
14:33 / 03.10.03
Totally agree with your comments on Yggdrasil perceived in these terms. Certain parallels with the idea of the central pole in Vodou, and the concept of 'totem poles' in general. I've been giving a bit of thought to the Quabbalistic Tree of Life as a possible metaphor for this process as well. As you say, it's not as immediately elegant a fit as Yggdrasil, but it's an interesting train of thought to follow.

Essentially, if we as human beings, along with the rest of the universe, come into being through the densification of the 10 Sephiroth from Kether to Malkuth. This could be considered as the 'substance' of the time tree. Like when you cut through a tree trunk and count its rings to see how old it is. The 'rings' would be the Sephiroth.

This came out of recent meditations on Malkuth - I received a sense of Malkuth being a name for the physical biological component of the Time Tree. But the Time Tree itself is also composed of the other Sephiroth of the Quabbala – they are a means of understanding its essential substance. The Norse concept of Yggdrasil refers to the growth and structure of the physical biological tree, and the Quabbalistic Tree of Life gives an insight into what this Tree is made of and how it works.

Does that make any sense? It's all fiendishly difficult to try and put into words, but I think you can arrive at a very workable reconciliation of the ideas expressed by both the Norse and the Quabbalistic ideas of a ‘Tree of Life’. Which is food for thought, if nothing else.
 
 
Quantum
14:37 / 03.10.03
This is reflected in Quantum physics, where the concept of the world-line of subatomic particles is pretty essential to any understanding of their behaviour. Also eloquently expressed visually in 'Concrete- short stories' a funky comic spinoff.

The sticking point for me is the idea that an object has a boundary. If you can do it with a person, then the food they eat (that becomes them) should be traced as well, and the dust they shed, and the air they breathe etc.- you end up with the universe, considered from outside time, as a single object. It's all interconnected because it's one thing.
Having said that it's a great image, and aids greatly in visualising the contagion between objects (once together, always together) as you can imagine their world lines converging in the past.
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
14:46 / 03.10.03
What I find really interesting about the "Time Tree" model is that I personally came to the conclusion that that was how the universe worked long before I read anything about it at all. And when I did read about it, it was an "Oh, dude! I'm not the only person thinking this way!" So for me, this model of the universe is truer than say the gnostic-Hologram idea.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
14:53 / 03.10.03
The sticking point for me is the idea that an object has a boundary.... It's all interconnected because it's one thing.

I don't think the lack of boundaries really puts the overall concept into jeopardy - if anything it strengthens the idea, particularly if you're considering stuff like Yggdrasil and the Quabbala as models for the same process. In both of these systems, the 'Time Tree' they are describing is thought of as the Universe in its entirity.

and aids greatly in visualising the contagion between objects (once together, always together) as you can imagine their world lines converging in the past.

Which of course, makes things like sorcery possible. If, according to this model, there are these physical lines of connection between everything that exists in the universe - then it would follow that changes made in one area of the 'tree' would be able to cause effects in another part of the 'tree'. Not to mention stuff like psychometry or memories of 'reincarnation'. It seemingly does give a fairly pragmatic explanation of a host of 'magical' effects and phenomena.
 
 
Seth
11:52 / 04.10.03
It's a fascinating model. Quantum is right on - if you're tracing your own path back through the tree you have to acknowledge that the matter which forms us came from stars, that there is no dividing line between ourselves and our environment. This dovetails with my conception of shamanism: I've had lightly warmed conversations with people who say that only *living* objects have a representation in journey states and an inner life with which the shaman can interact. This runs contrary to my experience, in which anything can be consulted or used, regardless of whether it is or was once *alive.*

Dude. Every time I think about being descended from the stars it makes me all wide-eyed with wonder.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
12:06 / 04.10.03
Dude. Every time I think about being descended from the stars it makes me all wide-eyed with wonder.

Every man and woman is a star - in a very literal sense of the term.
 
 
gravitybitch
15:51 / 04.10.03
[best stage-style voice-of-power]

"I come from the Big Bang. I leave here to spread out over all Infinity."

[/voice]

Gotta love it.... And while I'm more comfortable with the idea of looking backwards to connections down the Tree, it might be more useful to consult the future and see what my component atoms have witnessed in the interim. Any thoughts?
 
 
Lyra
18:20 / 04.10.03
The sticking point for me is the idea that an object has a boundary.... It's all interconnected because it's one thing.

It depends on where you set your boundaries. I find it tricky thinking of time relating to people and objects but if you take it on an atomic scale then I find it easier to get my head round. It also ties in nicely with energy conservation theories about nothing being created or destroyed, just transferred and rearranged.

This is why this model fits in with my way of thinking. If everything is connected in the here and now then going fourth dimensional is a logical progression. However, whether this technically infinite amount of material can be influenced or have any sort of discernable memory is debatable and I haven't heard any explaination that satisfies me yet.

By the way, I thouroughly reccomend the Flatland book mentioned above to anyone who hasn't read it. It does a neat job of describing dimensions in understandable terms and helps with the visualisation process.
 
 
Seth
11:04 / 05.10.03
And while I'm more comfortable with the idea of looking backwards to connections down the Tree, it might be more useful to consult the future

Yeah, and I guess that's really the acid test of this particular line of thinking (unless the model is only descriptive of the past up until the present, ie: the crystal is still forming). It also strikes me as a brilliant excuse for a longterm project, one that will build up some underused muscles.

You're absolutely right in saying that it's easier to associate connections back down the tree. Pushing awareness into our future is much more of a test of our perceptions of our magic and our ability to self-critique. The past exists for us in a concrete manner, a manner in which the future does not - making it that much harder to to accomplish decent work because it's that much more of a test of our beliefs about what is and isn't possible. Of course, it's not as cut-and-dried as that: memory is only very slightly more concrete than that-which-has-not-yet-been-experienced.

It's also an exercise fraught with potential pitfalls. I always groan inwardly when I read the Impending Doom threads, cringe when I read someone's apocalyptic ass-scrapings. It strikes me that those ideas are very similar to that whole "I'm a reincarnation of (insert self serving bollicks namecheck here)." Maybe if we focus on the inconsequential to begin with and build up from there, not being afraid of some decent analysis.

So would anyone be up for this? We can piece together a few variant exercises, so that everyone participating had a tool they were happy to use. If we post results here we can compare notes and get a sense of what works. Didn't Morrison crib his psychic time travel ideas from Bertieaux' Voudoun Gnostic Workbook? Has anyone read it? If so, is there anything in there that can be adapted? I'm pretty sure that shamanic techniques can be useful (in fact I have a hunch that there may be correspondences with future events and aspects of the Upperworld, although I'd have to put that to the test). There's also some exercises on future pacing that might be adaptable, although I'll have to look into this in more depth. Ideas?
 
 
illmatic
08:05 / 06.10.03
There's a meditation on the Future lifelines ec in Dave Lee's book which is quite interesting. I'd be up for playing around with it - it's framed in the self-development, setting/acheiving goals etc - this is an interesting point of constrast - would it be easier /more preferable to work inside or outside the personal goals thing?

Reifying a positive future is also something that occurs in the works of Typhonian magician Soror Nema (Magaret Ingalls) in her Maat Magick - she postulates an entity called N'Aton as a future self-aware collective entity comprised of all the individuals alive - a kind of self conscious time tree. I think this is an interesting idea just on a practical level, developing some kind of sonsciousness of others, suffering, needs, desires etc seems a vital step. Anything in Micheal Bertiaux might be adaptable, but will also probably be 9/10ths incomprehensible. I don't have the book though.

To backtrack a bit though, one of the most interesting ideas about the time tree for me is that it brings to consciousness the reason why we're all here - because two people made love. We don't normally see ourselves as the extensions of our mothers and fathers, I guess in part because of some deep rooted discomfort with sex, amongst other things - but we are. It also brings to mind Alan Watts writings, his work addresses a lot of our existential problems - our tendency to view oursleves as disconnected, discreet entities, who appear uniquely, almost as if we are self-created, tortured because of our finite life span. He actually says somewhere "we don't come into the world, we grow out of it, like leaves on a tree".
 
 
Quantum
08:48 / 06.10.03
Seth- I'm in, but I always see the future as the branching of the tree into possible futures, so we may have to resolve a common metaphor :-)
Talking to our future selves? We could resolve to perform a working in the future, and do a working now to connect to that working. What I mean is, we could do one half of a ritual now to receive the information (replete with symbolism of one half of a whole and time) and then at a later date do the other half to send the information.
We could start small, do the rituals a few days apart, then seperate the two rituals by longer and longer to look further into the future.
Feedback? Am I being silly? Is it better just to stick to divination by other means?
 
 
gravitybitch
14:12 / 06.10.03
Sounds cool - count me in.

I can definitely see shamanistic practices working for this, but they're not really in my magickal tool-box... I'm not particularly good at journeying without assistance, and have a lot of trouble bringing anything back to the here&now if I do use a plant or fungal ally.

I like the idea of a group working, but we may run into timezone troubles if we want to synchronize. (I operate on California time...)
 
 
Aertho
14:25 / 06.10.03
Detroit checking in. I'm in for some magick. I've been wanting to write in with this thread, but keep deleting cuz I can't collect all my thoughts I'll post eventually folks...
 
 
The Tower Always Falls
00:55 / 07.10.03
After an all too long absence from posting on this board, I have to say as well, I'd love to be in. I doubt my journeying skills are up to task, but I'd love to try...

If for no other reason that I would really love to ask my future self if my novel ever gets published...
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
05:01 / 07.10.03
great thread...

If for no other reason that I would really love to ask my future self if my novel ever gets published...

Once when I was in grade school (?) we had some new-agey demonstration in the school library where some lady had us put ourselves into a trance...I think everyone was supposed to be finding power animals or whatever, but instead I found myself having a conversation with my future self, who looked just a bit like I do today but with white hair (back in 6th grade I don't think I knew I was going to have the beard & long hair)...anyway, and I don't remember what he told me except that we'd meet again at "the Tired Horse Saloon". I've been looking for it on and off over the many years, and never found one...only recently did it occur to me that I might have to build it myself.

anyway, I'm in for the experiment if you'll have me.
 
 
illmatic
07:06 / 07.10.03
Couldn't "Tired Horse Saloon" be allegorical language for getting old? As such it's a wonderful piece of poetry.. reminiscent of the "last chance saloon" and the final showdown... I think that's a great piece of poetry.
 
 
Seth
08:15 / 08.10.03
Erm... I may have bitten off more than I can chew here. I'm gonna take a couple of days to think about whether I want to get involved. Life is difficult and unpredictable enough at the moment, without charging headlong into a fairly massive experiment (just considering that this might be a lot more involving than I'd anticipated).
 
 
illmatic
09:01 / 08.10.03
What I suggest we do is have a talk about it at the next Magick Forum meet at the end of the month. I might take the lead on it, rather than lumbering you with it like last time (the Global Workings thread). So more info after the 24 folks. But any ideas and so on welcome.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
13:11 / 29.11.03
I thought I'd cut and paste this extract from a recent Grant Morrison interview that discusses his spin on the time tree model, or 'biota' as he calls it. Some interesting stuff. Any comments?

So based on my own experience, I've come to the conclusion that the individual human body is no more, no less than one of the billions of skin cells we lose every day. Each of those cells was once bursting with youth and health before it lived its allotted span, shriveled and then fell as dust. Now, if a skin cell became conscious and forgot that it was only a temporary and recyclable part of a much larger living body, it too would no doubt feel the same existential trauma experienced by all living, sentient creatures. It would fear its own demise as we do, because it would have forgotten its purpose and function within a larger context and become trapped in the illusory yet painful cage of individuality.

Like skin cells or perhaps more like immune cells, we as individuals are all part of one immense intelligent living creature which has its roots in the Cryptozoic era and its living tendrils - including us - probing forward through the untasted jelly of the 21st Century. The body of this vast and intelligent lifeform - the biota as it's known - is still in its infancy and still at the stage in its life cycle where it must consume the planet's resources like a caterpillar on a leaf. What looks like environmental destruction to us is, I believe, the natural acceleration of an impending metamorphosis; just as a caterpillar gorges itself to power its transformation into a butterfly, so too does the biota consume everything in its path, in preparation for its own imminent transformation into adult form.

Quite soon now, possibly within ten years even, the infant creature in the body of which we are all merge cells will awaken to its true nature, the concept of individuality will vanish overnight, as the imaginary walls separating our minds collapse, we will realise there is only one mind, and our mega-maggot will metamorphose, leaving the planetary cradle and the four dimensions of spacetime to be born at last as a fully-formed adult creature designed for existence in a higher dimension fluid continuum or informational supermembrane. As immune cells inside this gigantic, living, tree-like body that's currently huffing and puffing its way towards maturity, it's our job to do everything we can to keep the larva healthy and developing normally. That's if we want to be born as adults into hyperspacetimelessness and quite frankly, I fancy the idea.

That's my religion and it didn't come from a book and it's not based on my blind faith but on my own direct experience of and conversation with my "God." "Grant" is an immune cell in the body of "God" - the biota - does its thinking and its sensing through tiny, self-replicating cell-creatures like me and you and all the other examples of life on earth. All life is the same life. All thoughts are the same thought. No one dies at all, except in the way that a baby has to "die" for a child to be born and the child has to "die" for the adult to be born. That's all death is at every stage - scary transformation. And, although individual "bodies" seem to wither, fall away, and be lost, consciousness remains as a function of the biota.
 
 
gravitybitch
15:48 / 29.11.03
I'm profoundly annoyed at the idea that it seems to be acceptable/necessary to leave the planet a wasted husk...

Beyond that... We have a recycling of Teillhard de Chardin's noosphere with updated imagery (we're immune cells? we're all part of a mega-maggot? sure to appeal to every 10 year old boy out there...) and the promise of imminent transformation and transcendance.

I just hope everybody figures out that we're all connected and all one mind before we have to stew together in our cocoon. It could get really messy, otherwise.
 
 
gravitybitch
06:07 / 02.12.03
y'know - I think I've killed the last three threads I posted in.

Do I need a psychic shower or something?
 
 
Quantum
08:57 / 02.12.03
we're all connected and all one mind
if you do then we all do
 
 
Seth
16:14 / 02.12.03
I'm honestly not sure that Morrison has grasped the implications of the idea. The idea that there is a dividing line between what he terms biota and inorganic matter just doesn't seem to hold true. If there's to be any moment of grand awakening (which seems a bit twee and simplistic, unecessarily Utopian), surely it should be the universe waking up?
 
 
Aertho
18:54 / 02.12.03
Oh what did Alan Moore say... In the Birth Caul, he says that humanity is "mud that sat up." There is no division between inorganic matter and the biota, much less a division between the biota and the human awareness.

I really don't think Morrison thinks there is this single lifeform in the universe, he probably and I'm pretty sure he thinks that the universe IS the single lifeform, and as humans possessed of consciousness versus Hollywood, we are the latest evolution of that lifeform. It SEEMS humancentric, but what does Management say in Carnivale? something like: You{Ben Hawkins] have the belief that it is not your place to decide good ffrom evil, to choose who lives and who dies... but that is simply not true, because you DO have the power to choose in that regard. But there is no choice in whether or not that you should be that way, only accepted.

We're conscious mud. Gotta keep growing.
 
 
iamus
00:25 / 22.10.04
It would seem to me that the structure resembles more of a brain than a tree. We don't only branch off from one another but are also endlessly recombining with each other to create new branches, like interconnecting neurons that spark off each to generate new and unique thought. The process is both biological and mental.

It happens when two, long-seperated branches recombine to have sex and produce offspring. And Internet forums like this are another form of node where many branches recombine to form new ones, like an organism that's continually fertilising itself.

The sixties hippy ideal, under this paradigm, would represent a mass re-connection of the physical and psychic sides of many branches. Free-love and expanded conciousness being just two examples of the physical and mental cross-fertilisation, resulting in a whole bramble-bush entanglement.
Increased communication in today's information age is similar, with the entanglement of minds from all across the globe on the net and through TV etc.

The increase in the frequency and complexity of these connections increases the development of conciousness in the overall organism, the same way a baby becomes more aware the more physical connections its neurons make. Of course, as noted above this is going on on more levels than just the human one.

Ugh. Talk like this increases complexity in sentences too.

Whatever happened with this? Did anybody try working together under this system? Or did the branches dead-end here?
 
 
--
01:07 / 22.10.04
Well, I don't know much about Vonnegaut, but I do have a lot of interest in evolution. I've always had a fascination with the early years of Earth, the Archaic era, whatever you want to call it. Genesis P-Orridge, in RE/SEARCH's "Modern Pagans", says how he thinks that the primal slime that we evolved from is probably the closest thing to "God". See "Mother Dirt" in "The Filth".

Speaking on a personal level, I keep thinking back to that vision/download I had upon waking up about a year ago, when I saw this rapid-fire montage of the evolution of life on Earth... cells and replicaters and fish and reptiles and dinosaurs and birds and mammals and monkeys and humans and things beyond human... Giant tentacled Lovecraftian monstrosities, like aliens from another universe. This didn't really make sense to me until I read the writings of Kenneth Grant and Frater Nema months later, and how they're always going on about the next phase of evolution, how humanity is the inbetween period between the Typhonian Teratomas of the old days and the Homo Veritas of the next age. I think I may have gotten a glimpse of some type of future-body. Regarding Bertriaux's time travel system, it's a very interesting concept but I've only read the basics... I'll be getting the VGW soon so I'll be able to read into the subject a bit more then. But GM did take a LOT from Bertriaux and KG's screeds.

Regarding the Gnostics, I consider myself a gnostic in some regards so I tend to favor their worldview. I think they and Philip K. Dick were on to something. At this point in time I feel that this world is a hologram formed by the overlap of two 4D disks, one being Nuit, the other Hadit, but I disagree with Dick's idea that the globes are drifting apart. I think they're actually moving together, and in 2012 they'll completely overlap and the time egg of the universe will hatch, the universe rising into the Plemora as some type of 5D butterfly entity. I like to think of the "Grand Conjunction" from that old film "The Dark Crystal", when the two opposing sides (The Mystics and the Skeksis, or however it's spelled) merged when the moons were right into one race of glowing white star-beings (I saw that film when I was very young... Not surprising years later I'd take up an interest in alchemy). The so-called "Union of Opposites", Hadit & Nuit uniting to give birth to Horus/Set. Of course, this is just a quick summary of my thoughts on this... Obviosously the closer the 4D globes get the wider our hologram becomes, which appears to us as expanding consciousness and open-mindedness.

The time caterpillar concept, I feel, is sound. That's why I believe that the universe that'll hatch fully born from the time egg will be a giant type of Fifth-Dimensional Butterfly existing in the endless oceans of light of the Plemora/LVX/5D Dimension, or whatever you chose to call it. Now, they appeared to me as butterflies whose heads were that of a giant eyeball, which puzzled me a bit, but if you think of things like Ayin and what not it kind of makes sense. The universe opening it's eye and seeing one vision (rather then the two visions we're accostumed to via our two eyes... Perhaps Odin needed to be blind in one eye to achieve wisdom in this manner).
 
 
LVX23
04:54 / 22.10.04
Mr. M, that's pretty much where I'm at, especially with the Crowleyan Egyptian overtones. A dynamic oscillation between Nuit and Hadit, giving rise to the Kingdom.

A couple notes, now that I've gotten caught up on this very interestng thread.

Perhaps sorcery and magick succeeds by stepping out of time, through ritual, trance, chemognosis, etc... Not only glimpsing the continuum to recover patterns and occulted streams of information, but also being able to seemingly move in and out of time, reliving the past or affecting change in the future.

So, is the future of the tree - all of the branches and twigs extending from this point on - already predetermined, already fully grown? If so, is there any free will? Or maybe the tree grows just ahead of us, sort of a fuzzy silhouette of probability that only resolves once we've made our desicion and collapsed the waveform into "the formality of actually occurring". In other words, if it was possible to travel into the future, which future would you end up in? Surely there's more than one possible future...?
 
 
--
05:14 / 22.10.04
Or maybe the future is creating the past. Backwards Causality and all that.

I sense a headache coming on. Time to go watch a repeat of "Perfect Strangers".
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:14 / 22.10.04
Great post, Meludreen.

It would seem to me that the structure resembles more of a brain than a tree. We don't only branch off from one another but are also endlessly recombining with each other to create new branches

Yeah, I'd agree. I think the "tree" image is best considered a shorthand for visually describing a more complex process that is vaguely tree-like in its growth pattern. Also river-like, artery-like, and so on. A drawing of a tree just gives us a certain poetic expediancy when visualising this process. I think the Quabbalistic "Tree of Life" is so called for similar reasons.

Whatever happened with this? Did anybody try working together under this system?

It's underpinned my working model of reality for years now. I tend to consider every aspect of "magic" in terms of it, from my relationship to the ancestors, to my relationship with my community, to concepts such as atavistic resurgence and shamanic power animals, to ideas like past life memory and telepathy, to things like sympathetic magic (which begins to make sense if everything is part of the same organism), to ideas about evolution and the nature of human consciousness.
 
 
iamus
12:04 / 22.10.04
So, is the future of the tree - all of the branches and twigs extending from this point on - already predetermined, already fully grown? If so, is there any free will? Or maybe the tree grows just ahead of us, sort of a fuzzy silhouette of probability that only resolves once we've made our desicion and collapsed the waveform into "the formality of actually occurring". In other words, if it was possible to travel into the future, which future would you end up in? Surely there's more than one possible future...?

The way I would think of this is not in possible futures or pasts. Remember that from where we stand right now, in the moment, the past is just as undefined as the future, so to imagine that the future is writing itself, by extension I would have to also imagine that the past was doing the same thing. I think if the organism is growing at all it's growing all over at the same time. Also I would see the parts of the tree/brain that were currently "ahead of us" not as the future per se, but as a different structure in the overall thing.

The analogy of a tree, roots to leaves, is functional, but I would argue that the hemispheres of the brain is a better one. I would say that the varying levels of human conciousness throughout our evolution would be seen as different structures in the overall thing. Our primitive ancestors being likened to our own reptile brain, while our possible future descendants (with their liquid logic hard drives and meta-personalities) would represent the higher more intuitive functions. On the brain, not a single one is really what the others are there to support, they all work with each other to produce our minds.

I might start a thread to compare the function and structure of the human brain to this, but Firstly, I'd need to draft in Laboratory posters and Secondly, I reckon it could collapse into conjecture pretty quickly. Anybody be interested in this?

As for free will, I'm not so inclined to believe in it in it's current accepted form. An innoculation of Vonnegut at an impressionable age was what started me on this until I realised that, fuck me, Giovanni Minestrone's Invisiderisibles was going on about the same thing. As he said at the end, there's no difference between fate and free will.

I would see magical ritual (as a means to realisation of a directed will) to be another structure within the system. Both the ritual and the outcome exist simultaneously being both the cause and effect of each other. The ritual is performed to facilitate the outcome, just as the outcome is manifested to facilitate the ritual. If this is true, it makes the rituals outlined in posts above all the more intriguing.
What's that Quantum term again? I think it's something other than backwards causality seeing as it works both ways. I forget.

Thanks for starting this thread Gypsy. I'd be interested if there is anything more about your workings with this that you'd be willing or able to share. It's a model that my brain has been using for a long time, but my use of it is pretty much limited to my writing. If there are any trance techniques or rituals that you (or anybody else of course) find particularly interesting and/or enlightening, I'd love to hear.
 
 
iamus
12:10 / 22.10.04
As I reread that I want to add something else.

If the structure is complete and full and every organism feeds into each other, would that make individual conciousness, a single lifespan, a spark that runs through one strand? Like the way electricity passing through neurons creates an idea (which could be seen as a microcosm of conciousness)?
Does that make sense? I think I need diagrams here.
 
 
sine
14:01 / 22.10.04
Sure, I had that idea too, years back when I first read about the Many Worlds Hypothesis. Like the ion channel of a neuron - consciousness as a macro-electrical pulse.

Used to do a meditation with it where I tried to will the shunt of the pulse onto another fate-channel by psychokinetically altering the electrical potential of the Universal Brain.
 
 
sine
14:13 / 22.10.04
I sure hope this means I'm a mega-maggot.

 
  

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