BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Temple >

Why no proof?

  
  

Page: (1)2

 
 
some guy
12:24 / 30.09.02
I've had a few entry level experiences in chaos magick, but the results have been largely inconclusive (yeah, I got the intended result ... but I probably would have anyway). I'm walking that thin line between wanting to believe and finding it all just a load of bullshit.

So my question is (and this is not meant as a troll, but rather is a genuine question), If magick is real, why is there no proof? Why has nobody ever photographed a servitor or demon? Why don't governments use magick in combat? Why doesn't Anubis appear for a chat on the Today show?

Is the magickal community a collective of emperors with no clothes, professing individual success to keep up appearances, or is it the real deal, with hard proof that would satisfy third party observers? How do you convince those on the fence?
 
 
Bear
12:41 / 30.09.02
I started writing a reply to this and my PC switched off, magick or was it because my foot hit the loose power supply cord, you decide?

I don't have much to add here but I'd be interested to see how this turns out, because I'm pretty sure this wont turn into the usual shit storm about "You can't understand, your not an all powerful mage".

Personally I've experienced things that proved to me personally that "there was something going on" I don't think I'd be able/or want to prove it to someone else.

Have to add though there is allot that I find pretty bullshity.
 
 
Papess
12:47 / 30.09.02
Not that I want to convince anyone at all, I am not about to proselytize, but you can always run your own tests. How objective that would be is anyone's guess, but it may be convincing enough for you.

One way to do this is to keep a dream diary and magickal journal and look for the anomilies.

I think the variables are a bit hard to control in magick as most of the time, we are dealing with intangibles. Thus, alot of results might seem inconclusive.

~MT

~MT
 
 
some guy
12:55 / 30.09.02
I kept a journal for a few weeks, but the problem I had as a fence-sitter was that non-magickal explanations were easy to come by. I guess my point is that if some of you really are speaking with Hermes, for example, is should be simple to prove it by sitting him down for a videotaped interview, or having him appear on Oprah.

Grant Morrison claims to have a giant, spherical servitor protecting his house. But can he ever produce a photograph of this servitor? No, he can not. Is magick purely a matter of belief?
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
13:38 / 30.09.02
Could be. But belief is a pretty powerful thing.

I went through the same thing. To some extent, I still go through it (although it's no longer "is it magick or just me wanting it to be magick", it's now "is it magick or am I insane"). I eventually had an experience that left little room for doubt in my mind, and the desire for objective proof of any kind left me.

The problem is, so much of this stuff goes on in a place where "objective proof" has little meaning. Once you start exercising greater control over your immediate reality, things like "proof" start losing their value. Oddly enough, once I got to this level, I had much greater success using magic...

Hmmm. Not very helpful, I imagine. Maybe you'd have better luck asking a christian or muslim about their faith and where it comes from.
 
 
ciarconn
13:44 / 30.09.02
Is sicence a matter of pure belief? do we decide to consider it truth until it is demonstrated to be false (Popper)?
Rationality is one way to understand things, and magic does not funtion (fully) if you do not decide to belive in it. It implies changing your cognitive system. If one of them is fully embraced, the other is inaccesible. There can be a middle point, but it's a mixing that doesn´t come easy.

I fyou keep trying at it, you eventually will get to the point where probabilities stop explaining thing, where normalcy is not the rule
 
 
illmatic
14:41 / 30.09.02
Hi Lawrence - interesting question. I don't think you can prove magick incontovertiblely. If someone is determined not to believe they won't, and a lot of people from a scientific background seem to be coming from this point of view. Ramsey Dukes argues in his book SSOTBE that if they were to do this (believe), they cease to be scientists.
(As an aside, you might find this an interesting read to answer your questions, or you might find it maddening, if you want certainty). Our culture reflects this bias as well, so it would be very hard to convice a third party as they may well have this scepticism.

I don't think you can photo things like Servitors or summon Hermes to visible appearence on Oprah. Most evocation/invocation works in the mind's eye, in very different conditions from that of your average TV couch potato, even if you did pull off a successful possession in front of the camera, you'd just look like any other fantastic actor/street lunatic.

For me, proof came from using divination systems (see the I Ching Thread for me blabbering on about this). Try this or another method for 6 months and see what you think. Another proof was having parts of my psyche come alive in dream. Subjective again but so powerful, I knew that there was something in these books and techniques.

I think scepticism's really healthy anyway, a lot of magicians do get caught up in deluding themselves. If you stick with it, you'll find your proof. Maybe I'm just inviting you to join our collective delusion, but it's one I find inspiring and enriching...

On the whole "proof" thing, a phenomona that some Fortean researchers have encountered is video equipment packing up, at the exact moment when they're trying to record events. As if the firm proof, would be too much for reality to bear somehow... anyone know any more about this? Anyone got any opinions?
 
 
some guy
15:27 / 30.09.02
I don't think you can photo things like Servitors or summon Hermes to visible appearence on Oprah. Most evocation/invocation works in the mind's eye

So the way I see it is that we have two options:

1) There is no Hermes, but instead we (perhaps subconsciously) draw on elements of our mind to create a sort of mental avatar in a type of lateral thinking technique.

2) There is an actual Hermes, but he only communicates via the mind.

My next question would be: Does it matter which of these is the "truth" provided the results are the same? I tend toward the first explanation - especially in regards to sigils in fact being self-fulfilling prophecies because we subconsciously change our mindset after the activation of the sigil. Is magick merely a framework for seeing the world? Or do things like scorpion loa exist in objective reality?
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
16:20 / 30.09.02
Isn't it more of a paradigmatic thing? It's not that Hermes is real or unreal, it's that he's an organism composed of ideas & actions associated with those ideas. One of those ideas is a caduceus-bearing hardass with a round hat and winged booties; 'hacking' is another. Believing in Jesus or in quanta is based on the same process. The non-magickal explanations are just as real as the magickal ones.

The thing about 'science' is that it's based on some pretty irrational assumptions, such as that observing phenomena has no effect on the phenomena, and that knowledge is perfectible -- ie, that there are perfect, immutable laws governing nature, and we can discover them. I'm not saying these're wrong assumptions, but they're unprovable things that you just have to believe if you want to do science. When you talk about things in a rational, scientific way, all of your talk is founded on these assumptions, but as far as we can tell it's all coincidence. Magickal thinking is a techinique for approaching those coincidences in a nonrational way that is sometimes fruitful.

This is all talk, though. When I sit down (or stand up) to do magick, I have a hard time getting past the absurdity of it.
 
 
Rev. Wright
17:10 / 30.09.02
They're coming to take me away, He He, Ha Ha.
 
 
some guy
17:15 / 30.09.02
Isn't it more of a paradigmatic thing? It's not that Hermes is real or unreal, it's that he's an organism composed of ideas & actions associated with those ideas.

This is kind of what I'm getting at. In the description above, I would argue that Hermes is not real, yet the net effect of a belief in Hermes makes that irrelevant. I guess that's why I'm sitting on the fence, because if we're to assume that no, Hermes is not a real being, but believing in him anyway produces (for whatever reason) various effects, then fine, I can take that and run with it. But if we're too assume that yes, Hermes is real, then I would probably laugh and ask why nobody ever seems to be able to summon him for objective observers, and further wonder what he does in his time off, and whether he has to shave.

Is magick like Santa Claus? Santa Claus is not "real," yet the constant repetition of actions associated with Santa Claus have tangible results - i.e. every Christmas millions of children wake up to find gifts from "Santa." In other words, the results of the Santa Claus 'meme' is more or less identical to a world in which Santa Claus literally exists.

So, is magick merely a useful mindset, or a literal contact with intelligent powers and SFX spells?
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
17:47 / 30.09.02
Why can't it be both?
 
 
some guy
18:01 / 30.09.02
No reason it can't be both. But if we're talking literal magickal beings ... well, show me the money. We get back to the question of photographs. If Osiris is real, you'd think someone would have taken him to Times Square by now...
 
 
Papess
18:11 / 30.09.02
Well tons of people see the Holy Virgin Mary. Does that make her real? Perhaps they are seeing Isis, they do look alot alike.

I think it takes a certain mindset to see these beings in the first place.If I could not even concieve of a god/dess or servitor as being real, how could I actually percieve him/her/it as being real?
 
 
vajramukti
18:20 / 30.09.02
there are at least four kinds of validity claims, dealing with subjective and objective experiences of the group and individual.

Most inquiries for proof in magick fall flat because they are looking for objective truth in a subjective/intersubjective phenomenon. Which is not to say that a servitor has no objective correlate, but it would be difficult and/or impossible to identify it as such.
 
 
illmatic
18:37 / 30.09.02
Is magick "a literal contact with intelligent powers"?

In the limited experience that I've had, I'd say that's what it feels like tho' these may just be parts of myself creeping around in disguise. They're certainly external to my concious mind and, in a position to give it (me) good advice. I do actually tend towards your option 1), but I think there's depths and depths to myself I don't know.
Having said this, lots of people have other experiences which might contradict me here. I'm thinking of stuff like the encounters reported in John Keel's The Mothaman Prophecies (template for The X-Files). A lot (but not all) these experiences happen away from human habitation - which is perhaps the reason why you don't see Osiris strutting round New York with a camera. Then again, you could argue this is just people projecting their boogeymen onto the wilderness.
I've no idea really, as to objective reality of this stuff or not. Fortunately, it doesn't matter in terms of what I do. To be all Chaos Magick about it, believe what you feel most comfortable with.
 
 
w1rebaby
18:58 / 30.09.02
Interestingly, the sense I am getting from this (very promising) thread is that, in some ways, the magickal lot here are more objective and empirical than traditional scientists consider themselves.

Those with a traditional scientific bent (such as myself) are usually very concerned about the theory behind what they're observing. The whole point of gathering evidence is to form a theory as to the "reality", presuming there are laws there. But if you can abandon the "is it real?" question to an extent and concentrate on "what does it do?", less concerned with the theory than the practice... that's in a way more empirical.

That's something that's not really hit me before, and it's making me think. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding here.
 
 
XXII:X:II = XXX
19:37 / 30.09.02
I've not read the entirety of this thread, so forgive me if I'm redundant, but I think the paradox inherent in such a proposition as trying to "prove" magick via traditional means is that magick is, almost by definition, that which defies explanation and measurement via the traditional methods of observation. It's almost like trying to navigate the London Underground with a map of the New York subway system: the likelihood that you can accurately correlate the two would be more of a miracle than either of them taken on their own merits.

In the end, I'd say that if you need to have magick "prove" itself to you by becoming mundane enough of a creature to be "captured" (read: tagged, classified and dissected), then what you'd have captured isn't magick at all, and you mightn't even know it to see it.
 
 
some guy
21:16 / 30.09.02
if you can abandon the "is it real?" question to an extent and concentrate on "what does it do?"

Yeah, this is what I meant with the Santa Claus example. Does it matter if Santa is real or not if the effect (kids getting Christmas presents every year) is the same either way?

I've not read the entirety of this thread, so forgive me if I'm redundant, but I think the paradox inherent in such a proposition as trying to "prove" magick via traditional means is that magick is, almost by definition, that which defies explanation and measurement via the traditional methods of observation.

But surely this is a cop out? Grant Morrison, for example, claims to be able to speak with Mercury in his living room in broad daylight. Shouldn't the mailman see him through the window? I can accept chaos magick as a mental framework - one which appears effective sometimes - but once we get into the "Yeah, they're real!" thing, it just gets really silly. Does Mercury lounge around watching TV in between trips to Morrison's house? Does he wear Nikes? How come there hasn't been a disaffected magical teen somewhere who manifested an actual scorpion loa to terrorize his school?

And yeah, people claim to have seen the Virgin Mary. But funny - they've never taken her picture, either.

I want to believe in magick, but I'm getting more convinced that chaos magick is the way to go. If anything it's a decent system of positive visualization and an adequate replacement for therapy. There's a lot of strange shit trapped in our heads that we don't understand, and I can get into that type of thing. But meeting an actual god? I'm thinking "bullshitters..."
 
 
Warewullf
21:43 / 30.09.02
Couple of things:
!) Magickal visions generally take place while in an altered state of conciousness. so while the magickian may see a shining vision of Apollo, the guy next to him won't see a damn thing. And there ain't no camera that can capture what's seen in the mind's eye.

2) I've read a couple of theories which basically boil down to this: People create their own reality. The Magickian seeks to change his reality by changing his belief. Thus, he will see visions of Gods, spirits, etc. because he believes he will.
If he tries to do this in front of others, his belief will have to strive to over-power the belief of everyone else in the room.
(ie. magick-is-real versus magic-is-a-sham). They will try to keep reality the same (ie, non-magickal) while he will be trying to prove otherwise.
 
 
Rev. Wright
21:54 / 30.09.02
Consequently all notions of absolute truth only exist if we choose to believe them at any time. The obverse side of the principle that "nothing is true" is that "everything is permitted", and Chaos Magicians may often create unusual hyperscience and sorcery maps of reality as a theoretical framework for their magic.

Peter J. Carroll
 
 
w1rebaby
23:31 / 30.09.02
Does it matter if Santa is real or not if the effect (kids getting Christmas presents every year) is the same either way?

I'd say no. As long as there's nothing to disprove the Santa belief in the mind of the perceiver (no email forwards about the thermodynamics of Santa's sled etc). What is the difference?
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
00:04 / 01.10.02
LLBimg:
if we're too assume that yes, Hermes is real, then I would probably laugh and ask why nobody ever seems to be able to summon him for objective observers, and further wonder what he does in his time off, and whether he has to shave.

Well, he's not real in the same way that Brad Pitt is real. I mean, there's a guy named Brad Pitt who lives in Hollywood, performs in movies and presumably has sex with Jennifer Aniston. I don't think anyone seriously suggests Hermes is anything like that. But there is a real set of ideas and behaviors associated with the image of a person named Hermes.

Inasmuch as Brad Pitt is a sort of cloud of chemical and ideological memes adding up to the creature who appears to beat the shit out of Ed Norton in Fight Club, Hermes is a cloud of [etc] who appears to [etc].

But anyway, no, I don't think you need to believe in Hermes the way you believe in Brad Pitt, for Hermes to help you with stuff. You can be exploitive and act on assumptions and have it still work. Sociologists do it all the time -- so do computer engineers.

Vladimir:
if you need to have magick "prove" itself to you by becoming mundane enough of a creature to be "captured" (read: tagged, classified and dissected), then what you'd have captured isn't magick at all,

I wouldn't be so sure about the first part. Stephen King thinks that the publishing industry is a means to effect telepathy. Just because it's 'science' doesn't mean it's not magic.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
00:04 / 01.10.02
And, PS, Santa Claus is very real.
 
 
illmatic
07:57 / 01.10.02
"But surely this is a cop out? Grant Morrison, for example, claims to be able to speak with Mercury in his living room in broad daylight. Shouldn't the mailman see him through the window?"

I think the important question here is, do YOU believe him? I think personal experience is paramount in magick and if something doesn't tally with your own experience and judgement then reject it. That's why you've gotta do your own research. Myself, I take magicial writers with more of a pinch of salt than I do say, the newspapers (tho perhaps it should be the other way round - they made 300'000 people disapper on Saturday (anti war demo)). But then I like to keep myself open to peculiar possibilities as well 'cos ya never know....
 
 
The Natural Way
08:51 / 01.10.02
Interesting thing about magic: when you start off it's all "oh, that's just in my head/wish fulfillment/etc..." And then something happens that muddies the line between subjective and objective so completely that yr blown out of the water.

This is very important. I think this experience is essential if we're going to talk meaningfully about the whole thing. It's fun to talk theory, but practice is very different.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
14:51 / 01.10.02
It's very hard to supply any objective proof that magick works. I've been at it for a while now, and whilst I've had certain experiences that convince me that magick is real in the objective sene, I've nothing I could stick in a lab book and hand in for marking.

All I can suggest is that you keep boshing away at it. Eventually you will have a Grade-A, no-messing, Oh-fuck-this-stuff-is-real moment. Might take a while, but it'll happen.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
17:16 / 01.10.02
Mordant's right. If you keep at it, you'll go through something I think a lot of us have been through: that first experience where you realize you're not just playing games with yourself anymore (or that if you are, you can no longer tell the difference). It's very scary, but very empowering too.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:36 / 01.10.02
Empowering? Yeah. Once you've showered and put on some clean underwear, that is.
 
 
Wrecks City-Zen
21:03 / 01.10.02
Sounds to me that you need to read P E I Bonewits Real Magic.

Really.
 
 
Rev. Wright
22:53 / 01.10.02
Ho Ho.
 
 
XXII:X:II = XXX
15:08 / 02.10.02
Stephen King thinks that the publishing industry is a means to effect telepathy. Just because it's 'science' doesn't mean it's not magic.

Pay more attention to your own phrasing: Stephen King "thinks"... but I think you'd have a hard time quantifying this suspicion to a majority of his colleagues, at least as anything more than a flowery metaphor for the publishing industry's memetic role in society. You will see certain things with the scientific perspective that magick does not afford you, and vice versa, but obviously there will be some overlap, even if these two perspectives view the same object from opposite sides, but the language itself may render the overlapping ideas incompatible. Someone ought to write some sort of emulation program.
 
 
penitentvandal
19:31 / 02.10.02
How does Stephen King reckon the publishing industry brings about telepathy? I'm just curious.

You've heard this before, 'Aurance, but your viewpoint reminds me of myself a few years ago (and even now, every now and then). It is perfectly possible to view magick as just the unconscious, wish fulfillment &c. And then, lo and behold, something comes along and fucks with you to the extent that you realise that actually there may be, um, more to it than that...And your major test as a magician is whether you weather this, or wind up getting sent off to Lovecraft-land. An objective viewpoint is a real help in that (see PKD's Valis books for a heroic example of trying to maintain objectivity in the face of major-league wyrd shit).

For some people the experience comes from messing around with one of the various Pseudonomicons; for others it comes from voodoo; for yet others it's those hard lads who hang out in the Goetia who bring on the major-league craziness. For me it was a combination of two things - an encounter with yer actual otherworldly entities who stuck some kind of magickal implant in my throat, and then, a while later, a bit of bother with yer actual 'evil' magician. Both these events 'confirmed' for me that, yes indeed, magic happens.

I've always assumed that when Morrison talks about chatting to Hermes that Hermes exists for him in the way Harvey existed for Jimmy Stewart - he's 'real', and provides useful help and information, but only Grant can see him. Presumably the postie would just think 'ach, there's that crazy comics blokey talkin' to himself again' if he had a look inside. My criterion would be whether or not 'Hermes' gave Grant useful information. Likewise with the protective shell - does it matter if you can photograph it or not, as long as the house isn't burgled?

It seems like you are a bit hung up on binary oppositions, either/or thinking and the idea of 'objectivity'. Crowley always said that it doesn't matter if the Gods are 'real' - what matters is that 'by doing certain things, certain results follow'. A heuristic viewpoint. Consider also Spare's idea of the 'neither/neither'.

My Impish side is telling me to recommend you practise Goetia, incidentally. It thinks an encounter between your mind and the Lords of the Howling would be productive. But my 'Counsellor' programming does advise caution...

Oh, go ahead and do it. If they're not 'real', they can't 'hurt' you, eh? (snickering? Moi?)

Oh, and you wouldn't understand, of course, 'coz you're not an all-powerful mage...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:48 / 02.10.02
Hold on, hold on, hold on-- there are people round here who understand this shit? We have all-powerful mages in our midst?

Nobody told me. *sniffle*
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
00:43 / 03.10.02
How does Stephen King reckon the publishing industry brings about telepathy? I'm just curious.

I can only paraphrase what I remember from his On Writing: A
Memoir of the Craft, which is a pretty good book if you're interested.

Say Steve describes a room. It's a dark room, with only a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, dingy walls, dark floor. In the middle of the room is a table, and on the table is a largish cage. It's the kind of cage you might find in the back of a kindergarten classroom, made of cheap chrome & lined with shredded newspaper. In the cage is a white bunny. Someone has stencilled (sp?) a bright blue number 5 on its back.

Steve has now transmitted an image into your mind across time and space. (I've acted as one of those receiver/transmitter thingies that boosts a signal, and surely there's some distortion.) Et voila! Telepathy.

He does have something up his sleeve, of course.

When I was in high school, our ideosynchratic slang for a real dweeb was 'telepathetic'.
 
  

Page: (1)2

 
  
Add Your Reply