Magick: Subjective, or Objective.
-
@Jim Eshelman said
"
@Nudor said
"The thread is not "what is the definition of subjective or objective." The thread is "Is Magick subjective or objective.""The thing is, you can't answer the second question until you answer the first."
I'm surprised no-one has quoted Crowley himself on the subject:
"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."
Liber O, vel Manus et Sagittae.
I am also mindful of an AC argument that I can't source at the moment, that cashing a cheque at the bank is a magickal act. My first imprsssion when I read this was that it was a typical reaction of someone trying to reconcile a continuing belief in macic[k] with the ever more certain scientific world and that it is obvious that conjuring a spirit and cashing a cheque are acts of different orders.
However, having read arguments such as John R Searle's in the sober and unmagical "The Construction of Social Reality" (1995), I appreciate what was possibly Crowley's point. The value of money "exists" only as a result of a social agreement, and we have recently seen how fragile are agreements on the value of things like "a debt owed to me, which I will sell to you".
So: Magic[k] is as "objective" as banking; no more, no less. That's my subjective impression anyway. I can forget that money is not real and use it very effectively to "cause change [no pun intended] to occur" for weeks at a time.
Sephiroth, Spirits, Gods, etc ditto.
And no, Google, I do not want you to find me banks in Crawley
-
@RifRaf said
"Any ideas?"
Yes.
Of Equilibrium, Book 4, p. 184:
Any idea that is thus in itself positive and negative, active and passive, male and female, is fit to exist above the Abyss; any idea not so equilibriated is below the Abyss, contains in itself an unmitigated duality or falsehood, and is to that extent qliphotic and dangerous. Even an idea like "truth" is unsafe unless it is realized that all Truth is in one sense falsehood. For all Truth is relative and if it be supposed absolute, will mislead.
-
When I read this thread I find myself looking at Magick from the perspective of the search for Objectivity.
The "grand mystery" being Objectivity and whether a thing exists free of the mind.
An answer, which cannot be questioned until reaching some higher state of conciousness, a 'super Samadhi.'
As invariably, to percieve is to subject to ones subjectivity ; to view objectively requires not to view, to step aside and absolve to one-self ; a lack of attachment, viewing-while-not-viewing, a perspective-that-is-not-perspective.
To step outside the bounds of reality, which is inheriently subjective, as ones perspective hinges on the thought "I am," while attempting to objectively state "That is." The unfolding of the objective from the subjective.
Elaborating on my earlier statement, that "magick is both subjective and objective"...
I formulate an idea, or accept the idea, that there exists a Holy Guardian Angle. I then postulate that this HGA exists outside of my self. Essentially taking something subjective and pushing it outside of my self in order to posses it of objective reality. In other words, though the idea of its existance comes from my mind, I assign it no qualities (the name being a place holder, easily x or y, higher self, lower self, other self, the cup from which I drink my coffee...). It is an unkown variable, invariably defined over time through my subjective experieince of it. A slow drawing of the idea from outside my self, back in (the Knowledge and Conversation thereof).Anyway, enough rambling for now. Getting carried away, having not been able to post
-
Rifraf - if you really believed there is no objective “reality” you wouldn’t be asking others for their opinion. So your question presumes a belief in objective reality and others.
I am guessing that what you meant is that your belief in the non-existence of objective reality is a method for interrogating the grandiose claims of other magicians you encounter, the validity or lack thereof, and that is somehow related to your question on the objectivity and subjectivity of magic.
I think skepticism and scientific method should be applied to assessing magick. I do not believe in miracles and unnatural events - I believe everything in the universe is governed by laws and its only a question of time before we understand them.
*
"The common Mystic affects to despise Science as "illusion": this is the most fatal of all errors. For the instruments with which he works are all of this very order of "illusory things". We know that lenses distort images; but for all that, we can acquire information about distant objects which proves correct when the lens is constructed according to certain "illusory" principles and not by arbitrary caprice." *Knowledge, Little Essays Toward Truth, p. 63
-
@RifRaf said
"When one comes into contact with a Christian "
Would this be an objective Christian or a subjective Christian of your own imagining?
-
@RifRaf said
"Are we that dense we need to nit-pick things like this?
If you come across some other person (and this person is obviously not you)who is a Christian, they are their own person, not of you, detached from you, Objective. A 3 year old can recognize the difference."
Well there you go. According to AC, magickal stuff is as objective as that. There's a funny quote, I think in Magick Without Tears, where he says:
I have seen people turn fish-belly pale in the face, and come near fainting outright, when it has dawned upon them suddenly that magick is a real thing!
Me, I'm not so sure (I'm more sure of the mystical side of things), but there's the canonical late AC for you.
There would seem to be a contradiction between that and the bit at the beginning of Liber O; but then again, maybe there's no contradiction, and with time and experience he simply plumped for the objective side. It does seem to be heavily stressed in his later writing, and the balanced agnosticism of Liber O seems to be forgotten.
-
@gurugeorge said
"
@RifRaf said
"Are we that dense we need to nit-pick things like this?If you come across some other person (and this person is obviously not you)who is a Christian, they are their own person, not of you, detached from you, Objective. A 3 year old can recognize the difference."
Well there you go. According to AC, magical stuff is as objective as that. There's a funny quote, I think in Magick Without Tears, where he says:
I have seen people turn fish-belly pale in the face, and come near fainting outright, when it has dawned upon them suddenly that magick is a real thing!
Me, I'm not so sure (I'm more sure of the mystical side of things), but there's the canonical late AC for you.
There would seem to be a contradiction between that and the bit at the beginning of Liber O; but then again, maybe there's no contradiction, and with time and experience he simply plumped for the objective side. It does seem to be heavily stressed in his later writing, and the balanced agnosticism of Liber O seems to be forgotten."
Because somethign is 'real' doesnt mean its objective. A pain is subjective but its real. Its quite simple and Im amazed that you ahve such a hard time understanding the difference between subjective and objective.
IAO131
-
Take Chris' reply:
Nothing is objective.
Is that an objective or subjective statement?
-
@RifRaf said
" I still firmly believe that everything is subjective, although I have had various experiences to show otherwise. For one instance, I did an evocation of an Earth Kerubic from the Enochian tablets. I got my vision, the magick "worked", etc. Exactly 4 minutes (I know the exact time from my journal) after giving an Adoration, but not yet closing, my girlfriend comes running out of our room saying that she seen a "half-panda bear, half human creature" in her "mind" and then heard her name repeated over and over from a female voice. This is exactly how I seen the Kerubic (except half of his body was buried in sand in my vision), and heard it. So how is that explained subjectively? I some how influenced her mind to take in whatever it was that happened while I was performing my ritual?"
I would consider telepathy to be a more likely or “simpler” explanation than that your girlfriend perceived the same objective entity as you did.
I was going to mention “Occam’s Razor”, then I realised that William of Ockham, as a devout 14th century Christian, would probably have considered the objective Kerub to be a simpler explanation that that one human could see into another’s mind. That’s how objective explanations about subjectivity v objectivity are
You seem to me to be conflating two questions; (1) is the Kerub an objective entity separate from my mind? And (2) is its “half-panda, half-human” nature one of its objective attributes? Are you assuming a ‘yes’ to question 2 in order to cite that as evidence for a ‘yes’ to question 1? That seems to me to be getting things backwards.
A rainbow is a real entity (light is really being refracted through raindrops) but dependent on various people’s colour vision, it presents itself in different ways. “Two stripes, one yellow, one blue, both sickly” is as valid a description (by a person who would conventionally be called “partly colour-blind”) as is the conventional ROYGBIV. Objective existence and subjective perception are two different things.
(Or perhaps objective existence, the way the entity wants to present itself and the way it is perceived are three different things, but let's not get too complicated.)
An experience of mine has some loose parallels with your situation, except that the thing I saw was undeniably “objective”. It possibly carried a “force” beyond the normal, since the organisation involved in the event did have its esoteric aspects, which tended to filter into everything it did; but this was a piece of its exoteric ceremonial (a funeral).
I was present at the event; my then girlfriend was not, and knew nothing of the traditions of the body involved; but nonetheless she “saw” it in her mind, in what she called a “half-waking dream”.
Now I think you’d agree most of us have idealised visions of ceremonies that are meaningful to us; they take place in temples of the mind rather than shabby rooms with hangings obscuring the tasteless wallpaper; the officers glide about in smooth choreography, never stumble over their words and tweed trouser cuffs don’t show below the hems of their robes.
In this case, we had to modify one part of the ceremony because of a perceived fire risk; but what my girlfriend saw was the unmodified or idealised event. I therefore unhesitatingly labelled it “telepathy” rather than “clairvoyance”.
Why is telepathy not an acceptable explanation in your case?OP
-
@Oliver P said
"
I would consider telepathy to be a more likely or “simpler” explanation than that your girlfriend perceived the same objective entity as you did."In accordance with the known facts about the physical world, your explanation would require more assumptions. I.e. that telepathy is possible, the mental forms are objective, they can be transferred person to person, etc.
"I was going to mention “Occam’s Razor”, then I realised that William of Ockham, as a devout 14th century Christian, would probably have considered the objective Kerub to be a simpler explanation that that one human could see into another’s mind. That’s how objective explanations about subjectivity v objectivity are
"Using an ad hominem to refute occam's razor... never seen that one before.
IAO131
-
Chris says nothing is objective, which is a subjective statement, so I am consistent. Not necessarily correct, but consistent.
In L.V.X.,
chrys333 -
@Chris Hanlon said
"Chris says nothing is objective, which is a subjective statement, so I am consistent. Not necessarily correct, but consistent.
In L.V.X.,
chrys333"Reminds me of the old self-refutation: "All general statements are false."
IAO131
-
@Aum418 said
"
@gurugeorge said
"
@RifRaf said
"Are we that dense we need to nit-pick things like this?If you come across some other person (and this person is obviously not you)who is a Christian, they are their own person, not of you, detached from you, Objective. A 3 year old can recognize the difference."
Well there you go. According to AC, magical stuff is as objective as that. There's a funny quote, I think in Magick Without Tears, where he says:
I have seen people turn fish-belly pale in the face, and come near fainting outright, when it has dawned upon them suddenly that magick is a real thing!
Me, I'm not so sure (I'm more sure of the mystical side of things), but there's the canonical late AC for you.
There would seem to be a contradiction between that and the bit at the beginning of Liber O; but then again, maybe there's no contradiction, and with time and experience he simply plumped for the objective side. It does seem to be heavily stressed in his later writing, and the balanced agnosticism of Liber O seems to be forgotten."
Because somethign is 'real' doesnt mean its objective. A pain is subjective but its real. Its quite simple and Im amazed that you ahve such a hard time understanding the difference between subjective and objective.
IAO131"
I'm not sure I agree with that hard and fast a distinction between "real" and "objective". The real part of pain is the objective part (C-fibre stimulation or whatever it is, plus the resultant brainstorm), the "ouchiness" of pain, the subjective aspect, isn't real, it only *seems *to be real (same as there *seems *to be a self).
-
As with any Duality, there is a "Transcendental Reality" that is simultaneously "Both" and "Neither", that is 2=0 or classically, +1-1=0, or better still as i prefer, -X+X = 0
-
Everything a man perceives is to a certain extent subjective, either as an individual or as a phenomenon within the confines of human experience; from a quantum perspective phenomenon requires an observer to exist within the confines of "Time-Space".
Your question therefore relates to the nature of "Time-Space" itself.
I maintain there is that which transcends "Time-Space".I hope I have clarified my position with this answer.
-
@Scapegoa said
"Everything a man perceives is to a certain extent subjective, either as an individual or as a phenomenon within the confines of human experience; from a quantum perspective phenomenon requires an observer to exist within the confines of "Time-Space".
Your question therefore relates to the nature of "Time-Space" itself.
I maintain there is that which transcends "Time-Space".I hope I have clarified my position with this answer."
Quantum perspective requires an observer to determine the position or momentum of a particle; it exists before this observation (or more correctly, this measurement) but in, according t teh Copenhagen Interpretation, in a superposition state. It exists though before it is perceived. That doesnt mean tehre isnt ;that which transcends Time-Space"
IAO131
-
IAO131
would you say that this indeterminate position or momentum exists within linear time, moving from past to future?
-
@Scapegoa said
"IAO131
would you say that this indeterminate position or momentum exists within linear time, moving from past to future?"
93,
Most certainly.
Look at the two-slit experiment which confuses the layman endlessly. An alpha particle or photon or electron is shot from somewhere through the 'slits' and ends up being measured by photosensitive paper (or geiger counter etc.) This all occurs in normal time, i.e. it starts somewhere and ends somewhere. What it "is" in between there is a subject of intense debate and how it "ends up" as particle & wave is a subject of debate (Copenhagen Interpretation: wave function collapse)
IAO131
-
"The principle of superposition claims that while we do not know what the state of any object is, it is actually in all possible states simultaneously, as long as we don't look to check. It is the measurement itself that causes the object to be limited to a single possibility.
As Feynman concluded, each photon not only goes through both slits, but simultaneously takes every possible trajectory en route to the target, not just in theory, but in fact.
In order to see how this might possibly occur, experiments have focused on tracking the paths of individual photons. What happens in this case is that the measurement in some way disrupts the photons' trajectories (in accordance with the uncertainty principle), and somehow, the results of the experiment become what would be predicted by classical physics: two bright lines on the photographic plate, aligned with the slits in the barrier. Cease the attempt to measure, however, and the pattern will again become multiple lines in varying degrees of lightness and darkness. Each photon moves simultaneously in a superposition of possible trajectories, and, furthermore, measurement of the trajectory causes the superposition of states to collapse to a single position."
I am inclined to concur with Feynman's conclusion, which makes it impossible for me to confine particles to linear Time-Space.
True enough there is no consensus as to the exact nature of either "Time", "Light" nor "Mind"; but in the mind of many, including Einstein, there is a direct relationship between the two(or three). To my mind "Linear Time" is the creation of "Linear Mind", hence primarily subjective."The alternative physics is a physics of light. Light is composed of photons, which have no antiparticle. This means that there is no dualism in the world of light. The conventions of relativity say that time slows down as one approaches the speed of light, but if one tries to imagine the point of view of a thing made of light, one must realize that what is never mentioned is that if one moves at the speed of light there is no time whatsoever. There is an experience of time zero. So if one imagines for a moment oneself to be made of light, or in possession of a vehicle that can move at the speed of light, one can traverse from any point in the universe to any other with a subjective experience of time zero. This means that one crosses to Alpha Centauri in time zero, but the amount of time that has passed in the relativistic universe is four and a half years. But if one moves very great distances, if one crosses two hundred and fifty thousand light-years to Andromeda, one would still have a subjective experience of time zero." Terence Mckenna. New maps of hyperspace.
-
@Scapegoa said
""The principle of superposition claims that while we do not know what the state of any object is, it is actually in all possible states simultaneously, as long as we don't look to check. It is the measurement itself that causes the object to be limited to a single possibility.
As Feynman concluded, each photon not only goes through both slits, but simultaneously takes every possible trajectory en route to the target, not just in theory, but in fact."
This Feynman's specific interpretation of quantum mechanical events, traditionally called "path integral formulation."
"In order to see how this might possibly occur, experiments have focused on tracking the paths of individual photons. What happens in this case is that the measurement in some way disrupts the photons' trajectories (in accordance with the uncertainty principle), and somehow, the results of the experiment become what would be predicted by classical physics: two bright lines on the photographic plate, aligned with the slits in the barrier. Cease the attempt to measure, however, and the pattern will again become multiple lines in varying degrees of lightness and darkness."
They are measured but that at the same point - if we measure which slit the photon is coming through it will appear as a particle formation. If we do not do this and let them hit a photosensitive sheet, it will make an interference pattern which is indicative of waves.
"Each photon moves simultaneously in a superposition of possible trajectories, and, furthermore, measurement of the trajectory causes the superposition of states to collapse to a single position.""
That is a traditional interpretation, yes.
"I am inclined to concur with Feynman's conclusion, which makes it impossible for me to confine particles to linear Time-Space.
True enough there is no consensus as to the exact nature of either "Time", "Light" nor "Mind"; but in the mind of many, including Einstein, there is a direct relationship between the two(or three). To my mind "Linear Time" is the creation of "Linear Mind", hence primarily subjective."Our perception of time is most certainly a product of our nervous systems (and therefore our Linear Mind), but it is kind of absurd if you think about it. If time is an illusion, what about the formation of stars and planets and evolutionary history? All those occur in a sequential order.
""The alternative physics is a physics of light. Light is composed of photons, which have no antiparticle. This means that there is no dualism in the world of light."
"The short answer to "are there anti-photons" is "yes", but the disappointment here is that anti-photons and photons are the same particles. Some particles are their own antiparticles, notably the force carriers like photons, the Z boson, and gluons, which mediate the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong force, respectively."
Terence McKenna was not a physicist.
"The conventions of relativity say that time slows down as one approaches the speed of light, but if one tries to imagine the point of view of a thing made of light, one must realize that what is never mentioned is that if one moves at the speed of light there is no time whatsoever."
Actually Einstein realized that if you ride on a beam of light and see a beam of light it would be traveling at the sped of light, not equal to oneself. Confusing, I know.
"There is an experience of time zero. So if one imagines for a moment oneself to be made of light, or in possession of a vehicle that can move at the speed of light, one can traverse from any point in the universe to any other with a subjective experience of time zero. This means that one crosses to Alpha Centauri in time zero, but the amount of time that has passed in the relativistic universe is four and a half years."
This seems like a total confusion. Light travels at a certain speed and distances are measured in this (i.e. light-speed). "The relativistic universe" is the one we live in and are aware of, not a 'time zero' one. Light is not infinitely fast.
"But if one moves very great distances, if one crosses two hundred and fifty thousand light-years to Andromeda, one would still have a subjective experience of time zero." Terence Mckenna. New maps of hyperspace."
That is debatable. People in a fast-moving space shuttle will have their clocks move 'slower' than people in a non-moving station but will the people's subjective perceptions of time be equally skewed? This is not answered by physics.
IAO131