Treating Spirits with respect.
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Fine, if you insist on denying the continuity of your existence, and define yourself as a progression of disconnected particulars, that is your option, but I was unaware that we where attempting to live our lives in the abyss.
but you can not deny that at a particular instant of time you are a particular way, with particular properties. and the progression to the next instant of time can only occur according to the properties you posses of the present instant of time.
That is everything is always changing, progressing according to its particular nature, but each thing is not infinitely free to change in any way whatsoever, but only according to its nature and the nature of the forces that act upon it.
You can not squeeze blood from a turnip.
A pumpkin does not just transform into a carriage.Things have specific qualities, and can only change in certain ways.
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Yes, I agree that it is possible to change physical sex. theoretically, if the DNA of every Cell were changed, and the whole body re-fabricated on the cellular level, including the physiology of the brain, the sex would be changed, but so would the psychology and identity of the person.
You would basically have taken apart one person and used the materials to make another person, with similar genetics, only lacking the Y chromosome, and adding an extra X, maybe a clone of the original X.
Painting a lead bar yellow doesn't make it gold. You have to change its whose atomic structure, in which case everything lead about it is lost, not just its color.
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@Froclown said
"Fine, if you insist on denying the continuity of your existence, and define yourself as a progression of disconnected particulars, that is your option, but I was unaware that we where attempting to live our lives in the abyss.
but you can not deny that at a particular instant of time you are a particular way, with particular properties. and the progression to the next instant of time can only occur according to the properties you posses of the present instant of time.
That is everything is always changing, progressing according to its particular nature, but each thing is not infinitely free to change in any waywhatsoever, but only according to its nature and the nature of the forces that act upon it.You can not squeeze blood from a turnip.
A pumpkin does not just transform into a carriage.Things have specific qualities, and can only change in certain ways."
I have no problem with the way you have put that just now. It is when you get all absolutist or reductionist and move the goalposts I have problems.
In any case it is a good model to be setting out from but I am prepared for that model to change. -
"Postmodern" Attacks on Science and Reality
Victor J. Stenger, Ph.D.Recent trends in some academic circles have called into question conventional notions of truth and reality. The claim is made in these circles that all statements, whether in science or literature, are simply narratives -- stories and myths that do nothing more than articulate the cultural prejudices of the narrator. In this view, one narrative is as good as another, since each is expressed in the language of its particular culture and thus contains all the assumptions about truth and reality embedded in that culture. Texts have no intrinsic meaning. Rather, their meanings are created by the reader. The conclusions are then drawn that no narrative can have universal validity and that "Western" science is no exception..
Today's college students, in the United States and elsewhere, hear this line of reasoning from many of their social science and humanities professors. "Alternative medicine" proponents often use similar arguments to reject science as a method of determining health-related truths.
The assertion that "Western" science is unexceptional begins with a plausible, though ultimately misleading, notion that we humans lack access to any mechanism by which we can learn the truth about an objective reality that exists independent of human thought processes. Certainly, science relies on thought processes and does not always follow a clear, logical path to the conclusions it makes about reality. True, it never proves the correctness of these conclusions. Science knows nothing for certain about the world and must always couch its results in terms of probabilities or likelihoods. Often the choice between competitive scientific theories is based on taste, fashion, or subjective notions of simplicity or aesthetic appeal.
Agreed. Scientists can never be certain of the "truth" of their theories. Nevertheless, the predictions of scientific theories are very often sufficiently close to certainty that we all bet our life on them, such as when we are in an airliner or on an operating table. When predictions are that reliable, we can rationally conclude, if not prove, that the concepts on which they are based must have some universal validity. That is, they must somehow be connected to the way things really are.
For example, we cannot predict with complete certainty what will happen if we jump off a tall building. It is always possible that we might land in a crate of feathers that, by luck, just happens to protrude from a window on the floor below. However, based on the law of gravity, we can predict with high likelihood that we will pass that floor and hit the ground with an unhealthy splat. The law of gravity has been tested with enough experiments to safely conclude that the concept of gravity is "real."
Reality acts to constrain our observations about the world, preventing at least some of those observations from being completely random, arbitrary, or what we might simply like them to be. Although much of what we do in fact observe is random -- far more than most people realize -- not everything is. And while we humans can exert a certain amount of control over reality, that reality is not merely the creation of our thought processes. In a dream about jumping off a building, we might float to the ground unharmed. In thinking about jumping off the building, we can imagine whatever we want about the outcome. Superman can fly by and rescue us, in our fantasies. An airplane with a mattress on its wings can appear just in time. But, in reality, we fall to the ground no matter how we might wish otherwise.
Without getting too pedantic about defining reality, let me just say that our own observations in everyday life make it quite clear that we and the objects around us are subject to externally imposed constraints that neither we nor those objects can completely control. If I could control reality with my thoughts, I would look like I did when I was twenty and still be as smart as I am now. I don't. In science, we use our observations about what happens when we are not dreaming or fantasizing to make reasonable inferences about the nature of what supplies the impetus for the constraints we record with our measuring apparatus.
Modern physics strongly suggests a surprisingly uncomplicated, non-mysterious "ultimate reality" that may not be what we wish it to be, but is supported by all known data. Furthermore, this reality is very much like what was inferred by some remarkable thinkers in the ancient world: a universe composed of elementary objects that move around in an otherwise empty void. I call this atomic reality.
This proposal flies in the face of current fashion. That fashion repudiates all attempts, within science and without, to describe a universal, objective reality. I repudiate that fashion. Where the validity of certain ancient and modern concepts of truth and reality are denied, I affirm them. Where arguments are made that Western science tells us nothing of deep significance, I assert that it remains our foremost tool for the discovery of fundamental truth.
Many natural science professors, with their heads buried mainly in research, have ignored the attacks on science and rational thought. When they happen to hear assertions that science is just another tall tale, they typically dismiss the notion as nonsense. Instead, they should be speaking out.
I am Pope Froclown Von Hogwasher, and I approve of this message.
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@froclown said
"
but you can not deny that at a particular instant of time you are a particular way, with particular properties. and the progression to the next instant of time can only occur according to the properties you posses of the present instant of time
"I will not deny that.
@froclown said
"
Fine, if you insist on denying the continuity of your existence, and define yourself as a progression of disconnected particulars, that is your option, but I was unaware that we where attempting to live our lives in the abyss.
"I never denied the continuity of my existence. I am still me, it is just the definition of what I am that is constantly changing.
@froclown said
"
That is everything is always changing, progressing according to its particular nature, but each thing is not infinitely free to change in any way whatsoever, but only according to its nature and the nature of the forces that act upon it.
"In a singular moment, I agree. Within a broader perspective, there is no limitation.
...
If I am in the Abyss, have to say it is not that bad a place.
Pardon my silence on the objective. -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
the objectivist nonsense posted above denies the possibility of magick, among other things. just because the author doesn't look like he's twenty doesn't mean it's not possible - it means he's not doing it right - or, more likely, that he hasn't really tried.
"When predictions are that reliable, we can rationally conclude, if not prove, that the concepts on which they are based must have some universal validity."
no, you Can't.
for ages we believed that life depended on the sun. all of our evidence supported that. everything we knew about matched up with that idea. of course, we now know that this is not the case.
it's like saying "because ships that sail over the horizon don't come back, they must have fallen off the edge of the earth. every ship i've seen that goes that way doesn't come back, so the earth must be flat."
all we can really say is that "these sets of predictions have proved accurate." i'm sure this author would have written articles denying general relativity, too.
as for "the concept of gravity is real," i refer all pseudo-scientists in the room to this article from scientific american a few years back, entitled "the illusion of gravity."
"Without getting too pedantic about defining reality, let me just say that our own observations in everyday life make it quite clear that we and the objects around us are subject to externally imposed constraints that neither we nor those objects can completely control."
snicker
nothing can break the speed of sound! it CAN'T be done!
"Modern physics strongly suggests a surprisingly uncomplicated, non-mysterious "ultimate reality" that may not be what we wish it to be, but is supported by all known data."
no, it doesn't. modern physics Actually suggests a universe much more in keeping with the concepts presented in liber AL vel Legis.
for those of you who don't know who this "stenger" character is, he's the guy that wrote the "the failed hypothesis: how science proved god doesn't exist." very fashionable book, very sexy in some circles, and i haven't seen a bigger load of populist, popularizing Crap since the last time carl sagan squeezed one out of his constipated, flaky cakehole. i suggest, for those of you who wish to be informed as to the general specious nature of this man's "sciene," that you pick it up after christist season in your local bookstore, where it's sure to be lagnuishing on the "final closeout" shelves.
briefly, stenger flies off from a relatively reasonably argued hypothesis - that the "god" envisioned by the mosesites, christists and muhammadists does not exist because there is no evidence that he does - to sweeping statements about the problem of evil and other classic spiritual issues that are based on nothing but his own clumsy rhetoric. it's not a bad read until you get about halfway through. at that point he starts spewing the kind of unscientific garbage we see quoted above.
we shouldn't be surprised that the lower types of scientists deny magick - after all, this has been the case for centuries.
Love is the law, love under will
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It does not deny magick, It denies that magick effects solid objects via strange powers.
Rather magick effects the perceptual gestalts of pattern recognition, the value systems, the access to stored memories, the brain states, etc.
Math has no supernatural effects, yet we can do amazing things by creating numerical models and manipulating them symbolically. This is a form of magick.
Also altering the state of mind while dealing with the memorized associations of the Kabbalah in the form of physical objects which acts as symbols. This has no supernatural powers, but it does have the same kind of "power" as mathematics.
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93,
From www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/stenger.htm
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And, yet again, because I can predict the line of criticism that this book will generate, I need to make it clear up-front that I am not claiming that the absence of evidence eliminates all possibilities for a god to exist in every conceivable form. And, I am not evaluating all the theological and philosophical arguments for or against God. I am simply evaluating the scientific arguments and claimed scientific evidence for a deity according to the same criteria that science applies to any extraordinary claim. I conclude that, so far, they fail to meet the test.
-- Vic Stenger, on life growing up in New Jersey, in Has Science Found God? (draft: 2001)"
This is a strong opinion, but it is not absolutism. In the other quotes on the site, Stenger clearly wants and tries to make such an absolute claim, but being trained as a scientist, he is caught by his own profession's rules. Science addresses matter, energy, and the dimensions within which these appear to operate. It cannot, as Stenger is forced to concede, make a final or definitive statement about metaphysics since, by definition, the metaphysical lies beyond the boundaries science has defined for itself.
93 93/93,
EM
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
i personally believe that steiger is simply trying to avoid having to answer the sagan argument that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." it's where his whole line of reasoning falls apart and is a much-used point against ideas like his.
throughout the book, he pays lip service to an idea that he's only after a sort of omnipotent demiurge - an "intellgent designer" - in the tradition of the modern monotheists, but his actual rhetoric puts the lie to that.
for example, he makes the extraordinary claim that if what are commonly known as "religious experiences" - trances, visions and so forth - were real, there would exist evidence that would convince even the greatest skeptic. since he does not believe such evidence exists - an obviously and amusingly faith-based claim, given that reams upon reams of documents that discuss just how to achieve these states - he poo-poos the entire concept of mysticism.
when one suggests the simple application of the methods described in this literature, low scientists like steiger claim that such a thing is asking them for faith, which they will not give, as it is unscientific. a better argument against this point of view than i could ever make is given in the editorial of Equinox I, ii.
Love is the law, love under will
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93,
No argument here. My only point is that science is about process (who else said this? Probably about six people) not definitive conclusions. The scientific method <i>has</i> to allow for uncertainty.
93 93/93,
EM -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
i couldn't possibly agree with you more - the thing that gets me that so many of science's shrillest advocates seem to believe that science is Finished, you know?
"this is what science says! bow before science! Science! SCIENCE!"
my high school physics teacher approached the idea very simply - his catch-phrase was "physics - it Works, and that's all!"
Love is the law, love under will
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I fail to see what is unscientific about trances, it is well knows biological fact that certain types of activities and environments induce theta brain wave states or hypnotic states.
Also the effects of cognitive dissonance and how it effects judgments, and perceptual gestalt is well known. The effects or certain patterns of shapes and colors to produce optical illusions, even the illusion of motion are well known. These can also create vertigo, nausea, and even seizures, which can be in the visual cortex meaning the afflicted will see visions.
All that from normal waking conscious awareness of motionless 2D patterns.
Now, when we include, a full 3D environment, symbolic meanings, trance inducing chants, music, or tapping. We put the whole mind into. the psychological and perceptual effects multiply, and the expectations of the stated intent Prime the mind to interpret these effects in a certain way.
There is nothing unscientific about any of this.
The whole point is to understand how it works, how the brain processes these states, to deconstruct the nuero-biology and discover exactly how each aspect of the ritual achieves its effect. There by unlocking the secret science of ritual, just as upon finding a robot one would take it apart carefully learn what makes it tick and start building ones own robots.
What you want to do is look an the robot and shout, its a miracle, a metal man, it must have a clock work soul, how beautiful. Praise the unknown divine for this amazing unfathomable thing before me, It is no great and amazing, like wow man, there is no way we con understand it, its just neato supremo man.
Well I spit on such absurdity. Nothing is beyond understanding. Everything can be torn apart and rebuilt, its mystery swept away, like a cloud of dust.
Preservation of mystery = worship or ignorance.
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Objectivism is indispensable for human fulfillment because it reveals reality and necessity that people have to deal with in order to fulfill themselves. Objectivism is imperative because the way we understand and deal with the world has life and death consequences. Life and death consequences follow from whether there really is global warming; whether cholesterol heightens the risk of heart attacks; whether poverty leads to impaired cognitive functioning; whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2003; whether psychosis is due to social stress; whether an elderly person is incompetent to make medical and financial decisions about/by herself; and whether your spouse loves you. Humanizing life requires being objective about these things. Denying objectivism -- which is fashionable among some who call themselves humanists (e.g., social constructionists, postmodernists, philosophical idealists) -- obscures real conditions, factors, principles, processes, and problems that debilitate us, and that need to be transformed in specific new directions. Objectivism is humanism, and anti-objectivism/anti-realism is anti-humanism.
Carl Ratner
If we deny objective reality, then maybe your reality is that bullets kill people, but in my reality shooting people with bullets makes them healthy.
If that is the case, who are you to stop be from doing the world a favor by taking my AK-47 on a health spree? I mean I don't stop people from selling oatmeal, even though in my reality its deadly poison, They claim its healthy in their reality, who am I to question it. I mean its not my reality, how can I judge? How can you say bullets kill, you don't know my reality.
Oh wait? THERE IS ONLY ONE REALITY!!!
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@froclown said
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If that is the case, who are you to stop be from doing the world a favor by taking my AK-47 on a health spree? I mean I don't stop people from selling oatmeal, even though in my reality its deadly poison, They claim its healthy in their reality, who am I to question it. I mean its not my reality, how can I judge? How can you say bullets kill, you don't know my reality.
"No one forces you to buy oatmeal. It is placed on a shelf and you are given the option of paying the purchase price or not.
If you want to stand on a corner selling AK-47 shots to the face, by all means do so. As long as you do not force it upon others.
In another thread, I mentioned the 'golden guide' ; so if you think bullets heal people, shoot yourself first. If you are miraculously healed, then I suppose you might have something going there (personally, I do not have the balls to find out).
You talk of destroying the mystery, discovering the secret...
To do that would not only obliterate Magick, but make life pointless. I have always thought the mystery, the secret was the experiences we have along the path. A thousand people could be told what happens during a ritual, but it would still be mysterious, it would still be a secret until they experienced it themselves.
Even then, how do you put those experiences into words? How do you explain to someone what blue looks like ? How love feels? Any attempt to put those concepts into words fail. That might scare you, but it just reminds me of how wonderful it is, and that indeed I am alive and an individual. Of all the things that is uncertain, the one certainty is that this is MY life, and it is MINE to choose to live as I Will.
Magick is an art and a science. So go paint the science as you see fit, always remembering that it is just that : YOUR painting. As beautiful as it may be, it is only one of many paintings. Without those other paintings, what meaning would it have?
Alright, I have ranted enough
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If I can test out my shot to the yace theory, that means that I must actually have a face, that there is a gun, that a gun is a thing that shoots, etc.
The point is that I know their IS something that exists, that just because I believe something does not make it so, na matter what ritual I use to fool my reasoning capacity.
yes, there are things that can not be experienced by experiencing the words that refer to them. The word blue is not the color blue itself, thus when you say blue to a blind man, he experiences the sound patterns, not the light waves that make up blue.
However, if we follow this lack of objective reality theory, then shooting myself in the face proves nothing, because, The gun, my face, and the bullet that is shot is just a subjective illusion. If you are having a lucid dream about shooting yourself in the face with a dram gun, anything can happen as a result. You may die, then get up not dead, you may blow your face off, then wake from the dream, the gun might turn into a snake and bite you.
However, waking reality is an objective world, guns don't just turn into stakes, your face does not become bullet proof, you don't wake up before the trigger is pulled.
There is a REAL gun, a REAL face, and the act of shooting has REAL consequences.
Just because we may not see reality clearly or directly, does not mean that a Thing becomes something else just because I have fooled my brain into seeing or thinking about it differently. If your eyes get blurry the objects do not actually smear into one another.
Thus, Reality itself consists of entities with specific properties, one of these entities is our nervous system, which is effected by other objects to produce experiences of them.
When I think of a tree, it does not make a tree grow, It is only when a tree is already growing some where That I can form opinions about the nature of that tree.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"
@Froclown said
"It seem s to me that Hitlers proper place was as an artist, but this was denied to him, and his political career was nothing but a tantrum in responce to his failed art. "According to his horoscope, his actual nature was involvement in acquiring and wielding power, especially through means such as the political, economic, and militaristic, with a particular emphasis om the imperialistic and on the purification and restoration of the underlying mythos and mass archetype of his people.
]"
wow! what would Wilhelm Reich have to say about this?
First and foremost he would say horoscopes are mystical nonsense and the result of body-character armour/ yearning as created by (old Aeon) society's conditions. He would say that all of humanity's macho Patriarchal irrational impulses would have cumulatively manifested in the 1920s ad 1930s a la Mussolini/Hitler/Franco/Imperial Japan especially mythical/mystical race concepts.
Thelema is about health. Hitler was a sick. Look at his shaking hand as Berlin crumbled about him. What about his fear of intimacy with women? Intimacy with anyone? Surely Hitler is a prime example of "the word of sin is restriction". Blind Patriarchal restriction of any natural Thelemic social phenomena including love across racial boundaries, the free musical expression in jazz improvisation, in art.
Also his motives are acrimonious to everyone being a star in perfect orbit e.g. jewish folk were indiocrimately restricted by the state.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"If they are objective beings, then it is our role, as magicians, to contribute to their following their own Will. "
This was said, what, 5 yrs ago, but interesting nevertheless.
I wonder, Jim, how many spirits did you invite to your triangle and contribute to their following their own will.
Could your elaborate, pls? -
Classic evocation was never a major interest of mine. I basically learned it as an assigned grade work assignment - to pass examination and acquire what was to be gotten from the task. Never used it much, somewhere between a dozen and two dozen times.
OTOH I've done considerable work with large clusters of spirits, primarily orders of Q'lippoth. There are methods that come rather natively in the 6=5 grade. Thes are a bit hard to articulate (meaning, I've never bothered to write it out or thought through how to communicate it). It think it's more in the form of one of those power that is acquired naturally when moving into a particular grade. The karama-clearing (or, rather, coming to consciously walk through the field of karma as the fabric of reality) that is part of the on-ramp to 6=5 is a lot of what empowers it.
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Personally, I've had better results when not using the triangle.
Evocation has always been a major interest of mine since I got seriously interested in magick.
