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Talk to the Cynic.

  
  

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Evil Scientist
10:42 / 12.07.05
Although I used to have a lot of faith in spiritual matters back in the day I have, over the course of my life come to the conclusion that there is no higher power in the universe. That the only thing that gives the universe meaning is that which we instill it.

I've never seen any evidence that I'm wrong.

But a good scientist knows that lack of evidence does not necessarily mean these things don't exist. I'd like to think I'm reasonably open-minded to the possibility that they might.

So, with that in mind, I'm curious to hear from people who've witnessed things in their lives that couldn't be explained away as sheer coincidence, or by rational means. Things of a magical nature.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:37 / 12.07.05
over the course of my life come to the conclusion that there is no higher power in the universe.

I think you're approaching it from a misleading angle. The way I see it, the universe is what I work with. The Powers I engage with are fundamental aspects of that universe, or in many cases, fundamental aspects of the human experience that we're all involved in. They're not a detached additional supernatural higher power, but the building blocks that make up our reality itself.

The writer Ramsey Dukes would situate Magic as one of four methodologies for understanding and engaging with these things, the others being science, art and religion. To illustrate this, you could say that the lifedrawing student has a different understanding of the human body to that of the medical student. Neither one is less "real", they are just different angles of understanding. Similarly, magic is a different way of understanding reality from science. Saying magical thinking is unscientific is as much of an error as discounting science as unartistic. Things can be grasped and understood about the nature of reality and the human experience through engaging with magic. These things are quite different to what you might understand as an artist or as a physicist, but that doesn't make them any less "real" as experiential phenomena.

That the only thing that gives the universe meaning is that which we instill it.

Why do we give things meaning? What is behind that human compulsion? What purpose is it serving? I think the act of creating meaning and narrative out of the seemingly random events that befall us is a fundamental human need, and magic is closely connected to this. We weave stories all the time. Much of what happens to us does so because of stories going round in other people's heads. The food we eat developed out of stories in the minds of restaurant owners and TV chefs. Bombs are planted on buses because of stories in the minds of terrorists. We live within a web of narrative and attributed meaning. Magic is about playing around in that and trying to pull whatever strings are closest to us for our benefit and the benefit of those closest to us.

So, with that in mind, I'm curious to hear from people who've witnessed things in their lives that couldn't be explained away as sheer coincidence, or by rational means. Things of a magical nature.

I always try to look for a rational explanation for things that happen in a magical context. I've seen some damn well impossible things appear to happen in front of my eyes that I really struggle with. Sometimes to the point that the rational explanation I grasp towards seems far more unlikely and disconcerting than the magical one. In situations like that, I tend to keep an open mind.

The main thing for me is whether my magical practice is a positive thing in my life. Does it make me happy? Do I feel that it is helping me to develop as a human being? Does it appear to work in a way that is beneficial to my life? Is it helping me to gain an understanding of the universe, reality and the human condition? Do I enjoy it? Can I say with any degree of confidence that positive things have happened in my life that might have been less likely to happen without the magic? Has it given me a set of tools for processing and coming to terms with negative things in my life in a healthy manner? Does it stimulate my creativity and give me a deep appreciation of both nature and the urban environment I exist within? Do I love it?

The answers to all of those questions are unanimously YES. So I keep on.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:14 / 12.07.05
Some good points raised there. I don't want anyone to feel that I'm trying to take a pop at magic practitioners by the way. I am genuinely interested in hearing about people's experiences. The last thing I want to do is offend people's beliefs.

I understand and accept the school of thought that magic is another way of looking at the world. But does that mean that magic is nothing more than an alternative mode of thought? Why does it differ from religious belief then?

If you don't mind my asking, what sort of impossible things have you witnessed?
 
 
Quantum
12:23 / 12.07.05
That the only thing that gives the universe meaning is that which we instill it. evil scientist

Strange, I believe exactly that and that is *why* I believe in magic. We construct plausible explanations for our sense experiences (i.e. external reality of the physical world, other conscious beings similar to ourselves, natural laws) that are all based on faith, not reason.
To philosophically justify that, let me point out that induction is based on experience of the past reflecting events in the future. Why should the future resemble the past? We have faith that it will. (If you say it always has in the past, that leaves you where you started)

Anyway, there seems little point in providing examples of magical experience- they can all be explained away by definition like miracles (as Hobbes famously showed IIRC). What is a miracle but a violation of natural law? It will *always* be more rational to disbelieve somebody else's testimony, or even that of your own senses, than accept the violation of natural laws.

For what it's worth though, I've made a fairly comprehensive study of coincidence (from a psychological/statistical stance) and it just doesn't explain the world sufficiently. When reading Tarot for example, often I will predict a card and be right. That's a one in 78 chance that crops up much more frequently than that (in fact about 50/50 in my estimation) which defies conventional explanation. The fact that divination works at all is a puzzler for a rationalist materialist model of the world.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
14:30 / 12.07.05
I'm curious to hear from people who've witnessed things in their lives that couldn't be explained away as sheer coincidence. (evil scientist)

taking this up, I don't believe in randomness (provided that's what you mean by "co-incidence" which is essentially two things happening at the same time).

having looked at chaos theory, emergence, and different systems for measuring time, yet coincidence, happenstance, and random don't add up. I have found that they are used to dismiss phenomena, rather than explain them (away or otherwise). I find serendipity far more satisfying (but that's less of a rational response).

the rational explanation is only part of the picture, and isn't the be all and end all. I find that magic is most effective when it incorporates as much as possible into itself. Call it the ultimate antinomy.

however, as the sciences, like any esoteric system, seek to explain observed phenomena in the universe, anything observable should have as much of a scientifically explainable component as occult.

Here's one:

I was sitting in a field, taking a break from some intense physical labour (digging up rocks). As I sat there in the sun, I noticed the intricate patterns in the bark of this tree. There were tiny bits of moss, and insects crawling around the details of the rough surface.

my rational mind woke up, essentially reminding me that the tree I was looking at was about forty feet away, and I have pretty bad astigmatism (and no glasses on at the time). Suddenly, I saw the distant tree I had only a moment before scrutinised at close proximity.

so wtf? it can be explained away as hallucination (which is pretty dismissive). Whatever you want to call it, I've never heard of anyone else having this experience (mind you, I doubt it's unique to me), and I've accepted that it's one of those things of which we are capable that we forgot we could do.

now all it takes is practice.

you can call it magic. you can call it nonsense.

labels don't make the thing.

but I hope you enjoy all the ties between alchemy and modern science. like nuclear physicists being able to turn lead into gold (at prohibitive expense).

>pablo
 
 
Digital Hermes
17:07 / 12.07.05
When you said, 'That the only thing that gives the universe meaning is that which we instill it,' I thiink you're hitting the nail on the head of what magic is and can be. It's not D&D fireball-throwing, or limited to rabbits in hats (though that's a form of it), what it comes to is information.

Meaning and information are pretty closely linked. If anything, after the physics and atoms that rule our mundane world, everything that is overlayed on top of that is information. The attribution of the word 'coffee' to what I'm drinking right now is as arbitrary as the tarot card of The Fool. Magic, as far as I can tell, is flexing information, bending it a little, either for yourself or others.

So yes, the universe is this enormous blind contingency, rumbling it's way through time and space to the eventual heat-death that eschews any meaning but The End, but between that end and the beginning, our minds are entirely enmeshed in a network of fiction and information, of our own making, that we are all agreeing is The World. That's kind of jumping all over the place on the subject, so, any thoughts out there, to help me make this clearer?
 
 
Charlie's Horse
19:42 / 12.07.05
I think you're being pretty clear as is, DH. I like it. Very in a nutshell.

Pablo - I've had a similiar experience. I was once walking on the northern campus of my wundarful University when I heard a dial tone, as though someone had left a phone off the hook. Now, there was a building next to me, but the windows were painted shut. Besides this sounded as though it came from in front of me, unmuted by walls or windows. I walked directly forward, listening - the dial tone didn't seem to shift direction, or doppler up or down in volume, which was really strange - I was in an omnidirectional halo of dial tone. The sound was still before me when I got to Broad Street, a four-lane road particularly busy and active near this school. It was also still equally loud as when I first heard it. I crossed Broad directly, following the sound rather than the crosswalks. About halfway across it cut off, and I found myself on the sidewalk, a block or so from where I started, facing a phone with its receiver off the hook, silent. As I picked it up it started bleeting out the 'phone off the hook' noise. It was kinda strange. Unless I happened to hallucinate a dial tone from the direction of the nearest phone that happened to be off the hook... yeah.

Interestingly, I had done a sigil a few weeks before that for 'incredibly sensitive hearing.' Very little effort, such a strange little impossible effect. The universe conspired to make me hang up a phone. Cheeky bastard.

Evil - I understand and accept the school of thought that magic is another way of looking at the world. But does that mean that magic is nothing more than an alternative mode of thought?

It's more than an alternative mode of thought. It isn't just how you think; it's how you experience the world, how you let the world influence your behavior, and how you influence the world. Obviously this has lots to do with how you think, but to say that magic is an alternative way of thinking is to limit it to the inside of one's skull. It's a good bit bigger than that. It's not just how you think, even if that is the foundation; it's what you do, what you see. Same with science, which is why experiments happen.

Why does it differ from religious belief then?

There's a doozy. I think that the experimental urge inherent to both science and magic tends to seperate magic and religion, which doesn't really favor a personal, direct knowledge of God so much as getting to know the big guy through reading, faith, and thought, meditation on the divine, sacrifice to the divine. Which is exactly what magic involves. Crap. At this point I'm too hungy to go on, and must run.
 
 
grant
20:13 / 12.07.05
Why does it differ from religious belief then?

Religious stuff tends to involve interactions between the known world and the unknown -- afterlife, Heavenly Kingdom, bardos, underworld, whatever.

Magicky stuff might rationalize itself using that religious framework, but it involves effects in this world here, the one we see and experience (or create via seeing and experiencing) every day.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
21:06 / 12.07.05
Evil scientist:

I'd like to recommend some reading (can never seem to get enough reading recommendations on Barbelith).

an ethnobotanist by the name of Wade Davis, who wrote the Serpent and the Rainbow, but I suggest reading One River if you have the time. He writes beautifully. More to the point here, he's travelling throughout South America, visiting with Indigenous tribes, learning about the plants with which they have interacted for millena. His approach is one of Western science, however, he has such an open mind and respect for the ways of these folk that he never ceases to find wonder and amazement.

and magic.

i don't think he ever refers to it as such, but it's the closest i've read to a scientific description of it.

and it's a damned fine read.


Charlie's Horse:
thanks for the audio story. nice piece of thaumaturgy.

10 IX
 
 
Charlie's Horse
00:02 / 13.07.05
Y'know, grant, I'm tempted to agree with you, but I've gotten too many 'Christian prayer mats for cash' in the mail recently...

Seriously, though, you can find plenty of 'religious' people praying for earthly effects - jobs, health for the family, stuff like that. My parents regularly pray for my soul, which involves the ideas you associated with religion - dealing heavily with other worlds. But it definitely would also involve a very big change in this world - to wit, me becoming a good 'normal' Methodist again, here and now. These different worlds are closer together than one might naturally suppose.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two (religion and magic) is that religion typically sees this other world as 'out there' (beyond ourselves, this world, and this universe) while magic tends to posit these other worlds as 'here' (within ourselves, this world, this universe). Though this dichotomy will probably deconstruct itself with more thought or more posts. (or perhaps even both)

The seperation of magic and religion calls to mind a conversation with my parents about this sort of stuff - they pray for things in this world, as do I, if in a different fashion. When I told them that what I do is like prayer, they always ask, "Who do you pray to?" Whereas the biggest question in my mind, regarding results magic, was "What do I pray for?" Of course, as I've develop stronger relations with certain spirits, this has changed.

I feel like I'm going in deconstructive circles with the whole magic/religion conception, seperating in order to more fully weave together. I guess that's the nature of this beast.
 
 
Digital Hermes
01:33 / 13.07.05
Charlie, I think there might be more to religion then the general 'outwards' perspective you were discussing. There are reconginzed religions, (aside from Jedi) that do not focus on an external afterlife, but on internal development. This is kind of threadrot, but I just wanted to ensure it doesn't become a religon vs. magick dualism.

It seems safer to see them on a spectrum. At least for me.
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:59 / 13.07.05
Thanks for your replies everyone. Tenix, I'll certainly check that book out.

Waaay back when I was reading The Invisibles first time around I was spurred to read some of Carlos Castanada's works and found them fascinating. Not just as a discussion of the use of hallucinogenics, but also how experiencing altered states of conciousness can open a person's mind to other modes of looking at the world.

I tend to find myself automatically viewing subjects such as magic with the same scepticism I eventually came to see the Christian faith in. But I am fascinated with belief systems, and to be honest probably a little jealous of people who can embrace such systems without requiring empirical evidence. Faith manages (to slip a B5 quote in amongst the monkeys).

Magic seems to be a much more personal thing than religion, am I right? Is it a case of picking and choosing how you practise, or is it more common to follow a specific path? Or, like Soylent Green, does it vary from person to person?

Gold from lead's good. Personally I always chuckle when I remember that we can make antimatter. I don't know why, but antimatter amuses me.
 
 
Quantum
14:47 / 13.07.05
Magic seems to be a much more personal thing than religion, am I right?

Yes, it has been described as a religion of one.

BTW using antimatter as an example, you know it is normal matter going backward in time (according to Feynman etc)? How plausible does that sound? Would you believe a magician saying the same thing as a theoretical physicist? Just a thought in a conceptual magnetic bottle...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
14:58 / 13.07.05
But I am fascinated with belief systems, and to be honest probably a little jealous of people who can embrace such systems without requiring empirical evidence.

See, speaking just for myself--I'm not really accepting anything without evidence. Sure, it's all experiential and completely subjective; I couldn't show anything to you or anyone else to convince them of magic's objective reality, and in truth I deal daily with the fact that this could all be a psychotic episode or a freak formation of epilepsy. But there's enough there to keep me coming back for more, digging deeper.
 
 
unsubscribe
09:24 / 14.07.05
93,

Coming late to the thread, but here's my perspective for you.

I came to magick from Atheism when the proofs I obtained no longer fitted my model. I still maintain a healthy scepticism.

So to me your post is saying 'give me proof' but I am not sure that this is the best approach to take.

I'm with Thomas, I want to stick my hands in the bloody wounds of Christ. For me that is the magickians method. Take nothing on faith, only direct experience will do.
Certainly I'll find the Work of others suggestive and inspiring but it is MY Work which is of importance.

So, you can muse and read but that won't get you further than an intellectual experience.

I suggest you experiment, record the results and see where that leads you.

Best regards,

Will
Love

Peter Grey
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:49 / 14.07.05
I wasn't really asking for proof. This being a message board it's pretty easy for someone to make something up and stick on here. I have to trust that the people who reply to this thread are genuine, and so far I believe they are and am grateful for their replies and patience.

I suppose I started this thread in order to provide somewhere where someone like myself can discuss magic with people who do believe in it, and in fact use it in their day-to-day lives.

I have experimented a little with magic. I tried launching sigils with little effect, although I'm prepared to accept that I may not have been looking hard enough for evidence of the sigils impacting on the world. Or maybe looking too hard.

Does cynicism itself act as a barrier? If so, how could someone with my mindset ever be brought round to accepting the existence of magic?
 
 
Quantum
10:54 / 14.07.05
Good question, but I came from the same place so it's not unlikely. More when I've thought it through clearly...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:57 / 14.07.05
But why? If you're such a big ol' skeptic, why do you need to get into magic? You surely have other ways of affecting the world around you. What are you looking for?

If you're really keen to give this a go I'd say start with the psychology model and work with that. If you keep at it long and hard enough, you may find that something shifts...
 
 
Unconditional Love
12:05 / 14.07.05
i dont think sigils are a good beginning, take up yoga, tai chi, or a physical practice that suits you and if you can at the same time find a meditation teacher or teach yourself, if your lucky enough a tai chi or yoga instructor may actually be able to teach you meditation, but many dont because it seen as being undesirable to westerners. from what ive read meditation on the mind, with an idea of awareness of consciousness may help integrated with some grounding physical exercise designed to relieve tension that will also aid the meditation.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:06 / 14.07.05
I'm not saying I "need" to get into magic. I find it curious, so naturally I investigate. My investigations have led me to the conclusion that magic, like God, doesn't exist except as a philosophical concept that cannot influence reality (except in the mundane way our thoughts influence reality by our physical or social actions). However, I'm still interested in discussing it and understanding it.

I'm curious, that's all. Surely that's enough?
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:18 / 14.07.05
I took tai chi lessons for a few years and found it to be an extremely energising practise. But I wouldn't classify it as form of magic. Our teacher often used Buddhist teachings to explain how a certain move helped you, and explained the flow of breath energy. We did a little Chi Kung as well. However, when it comes down to it, it is a combination of posture and breathing. Damn good exercise, but nothing mystical about it.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:27 / 14.07.05
Sort of depends on those pesky definitions again, though, doesn't it?

Watching a 90 year old stick thin man effortlessly throw a 220 pound muscle machine 15 feet across a dojo is either 'mystical' or not, depending on your sense of wonder and possibility. Exercise doesn't really account for it, I feel.
 
 
illmatic
12:41 / 14.07.05
My investigations have led me to the conclusion that magic, like God, doesn't exist except as a philosophical concept that cannot influence reality

Funny, my own investigations convinced me of the opposite! Horses for courses, I suppose. The thing that "got" me more than anything else was using the I Ching. There's simply too much convergence between the hexagrams received and the life situations I'd asked about for it to be a coincidence. Other stuff happened also - of which the most striking was dreamwork - but this was the one.

Once I accepted this, it became a lot less important for me to try and "prove" it. Just because our scientifically orientated culture doesn't accept it, so what? We're been wrong about plenty of other things. I think the whole issue of trying to "prove" these things misses the point to a degree. I'm interested in insight, not miracles or "proving" something exists where our culture says it doesn't.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:46 / 14.07.05
True enough. I don't deny that tai chi can be a frighteningly effective form of self-defense. I find it wonderous precisely because I don't believe that it's achieved through mystical energy.

I'm more than willing to admit that my background in science creates a certain bias against spiritual explanations. I like to know the how and why of things, spiritual explanations sometimes seem to stop the questioning. I like to keep on asking.

(Twelve years later, Evil Scientist is protesting against the unveiling of Unified Field Theory because it "Answers too many questions." Heh).
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
13:08 / 14.07.05
My investigations have led me to the conclusion that magic, like God, doesn't exist except as a philosophical concept that cannot influence reality

In terms of scientific rigour, the investigations that have led you to that conclusion have been slightly half-arsed though, really. If they just amount to having done a few sigils, it's a bit like proving love doesn't exist by going out and fucking a couple of hookers and then feeling nothing afterwards.

It's a bit of a cliché, but magic is often referred to as both a science and an art. You have to approach it in the manner you would approach art, as much as approaching it as a scientific experiment. You have to really engage with it, live it, breathe it, experience the numinosity, the beauty, the sorrow and the joy. You can't just stand at the sidelines with your cock in one hand and a little drawing in the other and expect to grasp the Mysteries. You have to step through the door fully, take up a regular practice, allow it into your life openly without judging it, let it breathe a bit, see where it wants to take you and what it wants to show you. Keep a totally open mind and see what happens.

You're not really talking to "believers" in this forum, as much as you are talking to people engaged with long term exploration and investigation of the vast and varied gamut of practices and disciplines that are collectively - and sometimes misleadingly - grouped together under the heading of magic.

My personal investigations have been ongoing for over ten years, whilst I have proven certain things to my own personal satisfaction, I wouldn't be as bold as to categorically say that I know "the truth" about any of it. The exploration is what it's all about. You could maybe draw a vague parallel with a quantum physics student who has been studying a difficult and obscure aspect of physics for ten years. He might have proven certain elements of theory to his own satisfaction, but the ultimate mysteries of the universe remain elusive. The investigation might be a lifetime's work.
 
 
illmatic
13:14 / 14.07.05
spiritual explanations sometimes seem to stop the questioning. I like to keep on asking.

Yeah, but sometimes this "keeping on asking" equals asking until you reach an answer that accords with current scientifc consensus, and in the case of magic, that is it doesn't work, and that it's practioners are totally deluded. In the case of my I Ching experiences, it would be "obvious" to a scientist that the desire to create meaning and perhaps, a "romantic" dispostion intoxicated by the "mysteries of the orient" has led me to delude myself. Now, I have nine years worth of experience, thorough diaries kept throughout, that say otherwise, but would our hypothetical Richard Dawkins be convinced? Not on your nelly.

BTW, don't read me as saying I never think people involved in the occult are deluded, or that science is the "enemy" (a trap a lot of self-identified "spiritual" people fall into). Both are absolutist positions, something I try and avoid.
 
 
illmatic
13:25 / 14.07.05
You're not really talking to "believers" in this forum

Very apposite. I "believe", but so what? It's not something that I really care about, y'know. I'm not interested in if someone "believes" or not - I'm more interested in what they can make out of their experiences and practices.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
13:46 / 14.07.05
Very apposite. I "believe", but so what? It's not something that I really care about, y'know. I'm not interested in if someone "believes" or not - I'm more interested in what they can make out of their experiences and practices.

Well yeah, it depends what angle you're looking at it from. In terms of my practice and my religion, I fully believe in the reality of it on its own terms. As far as I'm concerned, it is real. But I'm also aware of the possibility that I might be wrong. Even when I'm seeing some impossible stuff happening in front of me, the sceptic is always present. I think a sceptical mind is an open mind, not one that is trying to prove a predetermined theory or belief. To take up the physicist analogy again, I think you can genuinely "believe" in a certain theory about the structure of the universe, and simultaenously accept that you might well be wrong. That scepticism does not, however, preclude your ongoing research or negate your personal beliefs around it.
 
 
Evil Scientist
13:52 / 14.07.05
I'm certainly the first to admit my experimentation with magic hasn't been the most rigourously scientific to date. Although, as you yourself have pointed out Gypsy an utterly scientific investigation wouldn't be the way to go about it anyway. The sigil thing was a spur of the moment thing I tried out after reading a little about it.

So in your opinion is there no way to observe magic or perform it without devoting yourself to it entirely? All or nothing. A possible explanation for the lack of response. Well...except for the stains...heh.

Curious, some points of reference about these things suggest sigils as an ideal way to introduce yourself to magic. Some say the opposite.

So is it a case of there being no one right way of experimenting? Whatever works for one individual may not work for another?

One other question. Have any of you tried performing some kind of magic only to find it didn't work?
 
 
illmatic
13:55 / 14.07.05
To clarify, sometimes when people like Evil Scientist ask these sort of questions it's often framed as "do weird, (acasual) things happen or not", as if thats the whole debate, which is a very narrow frame of reference. A bit like looking at the finger and missing the moon. The phenomena that accompany events or, the fact that they occur at all, aren't as important as the wider engagement and resulting changes, insights or whatever.
 
 
illmatic
13:57 / 14.07.05
Have any of you tried performing some kind of magic only to find it didn't work?

Yep. Teh sigils again.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
14:12 / 14.07.05
Have any of you tried performing some kind of magic only to find it didn't work?

*Groan* oh yes. Teh s1gIlz for one, but my most egregious faliures occured back in my fluff-wicca days when I hedged around every spell with lots and lots of complicated harm-it-none-y escape clauses. "Oh, I really want to win this poetry contest!--but only if there's no one who needs the money more than me, or is really talented and unsung, or..."

My success rate is gradually improving.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
14:20 / 14.07.05

So in your opinion is there no way to observe magic or perform it without devoting yourself to it entirely? All or nothing. A possible explanation for the lack of response.

Yeah, pretty much. You have to really jump into it with both feet to get it working to any significant degree, just like anything really. The personal effort, investment and involvement you put in is what determines the results you get out. But you have to balance this with a more scientific, observational stance, which can happen afterwards in your journal where you record what you did, what happened, how you felt about it, and whether it appeared to 'work' to any degree. It's a juggling act of total belief and reasoned observation.

Curious, some points of reference about these things suggest sigils as an ideal way to introduce yourself to magic. Some say the opposite.

Depends. "Sigils" can mean many things. I'd be willing to bet a fiver that you wrote out a statement of intent, turned it into a drawing, and then masturbated whilst looking at it, yeah? That road works for some people, but I've always found it a bit mechanical and uninspiring. There's not much scope for involvement there, not much that's going to put you into the sort of territory where magic happens. Not much to really get your teeth into.

One other question. Have any of you tried performing some kind of magic only to find it didn't work?

Again, it's a little like asking a group of artists if they have ever tried drawing a portrait only to find that it didn't work, came out looking like a monkey or something. You don't get it right every time. You don't have ultimate control over anything. Certain things are beyond your scope of influence. It seems to be more a case of nudging things and pulling strings. You work with what is already there and try to conjure something more favourable out of it.

More often than not, it will work in a way that you were not expecting. It'll come at you from an angle you least expect, sometimes when the situation that caused you to do the work in the first place has changed so radically that you're just not really bothered by it anymore. You'll suddenly look around you and go "fuck! This is exactly what I wanted 6 months ago! I didn't see any of this coming together at all!" Magic seems to take place in a way that defies conscious observation, which is one of the problems you will encounter when trying to apply scientific observation to it. It doesn't like to be pinned down, and results often only seem to click when you're looking in the other direction, when your conscious mind is totally distracted elsewhere. When you've genuinely stopped giving a toss - it suddenly slides into place.
 
 
Unconditional Love
16:00 / 14.07.05
what do you make of that idea of breath energy?

and i am intrested, how devoted to science do you have to be to become a scientist, what steps do you have to take to become a scientist, could you break down the process for me.

also how do you develope a scientific view point, what philosophies is the scientific view point rooted in, and what philosophers/scientists have been involved in magickal/mystical practices, or taken vision from these areas?
 
 
Katherine
17:05 / 14.07.05
One other question. Have any of you tried performing some kind of magic only to find it didn't work?
Yep, when I had doubts about it. Belief is one of the keys to magic working.
I personally haven't had experience of magic not working due to clauses put into the whole working, but it's a fairly common theme in a lot of magic sites.
 
  

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