How to start someone on Enochian?
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It's an issue of balance if both points of view are accepted as valid. For reasons stated, I accept both as valid parts of a larger truth and IIRC you do not; so I understand how your last paragraph is true within your modeling of things.
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@David S said
"Some argue just for the gratification of being right and making others wrong. And, between the two sides here, these arguments will go around and around and around incessantly without ever moving forward, because the dialogue is ultimately chasing a priori starting points as if they were necessary conclusions of reason. "
Could it be that some argue because they are trying o advance new and novel ideas? If what you said right here is true, we would have never learned anything. We'd never know why weather is caused by axial tilt, and not by demons. We'd never know we revolve the sun, and that it doesn't "go away and die" every day. We'd never have learned any of the majorly important things that have contributed to our progressive advancement and evolution.
Every single time throughout history, we could have moved a lot faster if it wasn't for the people like "you guys" who are clinging on to primitive superstitions. Granted, the silly beliefs are somewhat necessary otherwise we would never have felt the need to out grow them and learn new things.
@David S said
"I, for one, presume that the real is more splendid and expansive than we can know. That's where I start from. Apparently, you don't. "
I wouldn't say "than we can know". I would say "than we can presently understand". A lot of atheist chemists, biologists, physicists, neurologists, etc. all agree with you. The difference between you and them is that they haven't thrown their hands up in the air and said "mystery solved, it's god!"
@Davis S said
"I accept, admittedly on faith, the possibility that the thousands of mystics and magicians who have walked these paths before me, who have perceived these potentialities and powers, and who have shared their gnosis over time *might *have been onto something, and *might not *just be a bunch of charlatans and nuts, as you presume."
All of those people you are talking about were limited by the amount of conventional wisdom available in their day. You may say they attained despite living amidst a very repressive and superstitious environment.
You don't live in that time. There is no reason to accept the theories and dogmas of cavemen, or even bronze age men, anymore than victorian or mediaeval men. Maybe in 1000 years from now they will know something different and our paradigms will be obsolete. I'm sure we'll be moving forwards and not backwards towards a belief that weather is caused by capricious spirits. For now try and live in the present and equip yourself with the best knowledge available. As I and Los have done. That's all we are suggesting.
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Actually, that's all we've been suggesting also. You're just using a much narrower meaning of "knowledge."
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@Jim Eshelman said
"For reasons stated, I accept both as valid parts of a larger truth"
And what reasons are there to accept them as true claims, again?
I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I think that any impartial investigation will reveal that these metaphysical claims are not supported. But I'm willing to be convinced.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Actually, that's all we've been suggesting also. You're just using a much narrower meaning of "knowledge.""
This is where we disagree then... What you are considering knowledge in your case, most would consider a delusion. A fantasy. An error in judgement.
Now since it appears that you have some free time to "waste", care to answer how you determine the difference between a delusion and truth? Or are you just popping in to promote your own point of view?
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So to return to the subject, let's say someone has read the basic texts (crowley's enochian writings, Duquette's books on the subject); what would you say is the first thing someone should do?
Alternately, what would be the simplest and fastest way to start actually doing enochian work?
93!
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@Los said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"For reasons stated, I accept both as valid parts of a larger truth"And what reasons are there to accept them as true claims, again?
I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I think that any impartial investigation will reveal that these metaphysical claims are not supported. But I'm willing to be convinced."
Experience organizes life in terms of both types of ideas. There is no basis for preferring one over the other.
The dichotomy is false from the start. All things we think we know about physical aspects of the universe are from phenomena in mind, and there is no unimpeachable basis for believing those ideas to be more true than any other idea. "Evidence of the senses" is a misleading (though useful) phrase: there are no phenomena evident to the senses except as they arise in mind.
Nobody perceives the whole of reality. Even in a physiological model, the human nervous system is incapable of registering, let alone organizing and interpreting, more than a tiny percentage of the whole. Our picture has more lacunae than letters.
We (each and all) have only the vision - the story - the conversation - the map. These distinguish us from each other. These both define and express us (each and all).
You and I completely agree that experiences have no power to explain. We differ on whether the experience or the explanation is more important. That's a decision that defines and expresses each of us. Experience - and especially how we organize and model experience - is how we disclose ourselves.
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@chioa khan said
"What you are considering knowledge in your case, most would consider a delusion. A fantasy. An error in judgement."
Bravo!! It's remarkable how well you are playing Mr. Gradgrind!
There's a difference between the knowledge a biologist has of a dog and the knowledge of someone racing the Iditarod, a difference between the knowledge of the anatomist and that of the lover. The Cartesian worldview you favor has its benefits, for sure, and has allowed some advancements, but it is in no way in and of itself complete.
Mozart, Whitman, Piccaso, Michelangelo and the like, for instance, could be called magicians in their fields. Each apprehended a truth, held a knowledge, which no logical techniques could access or convey. And as Pascal said in my favorite quote, “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas.” As I see it, the non-rational metaphysics of the experience do not make the lover or artist delusional or her understandings unreal. Rather, the worlds she has made in mediums of paint or sound or flesh or language or feeling or awareness have power, and they can color, inform and influence my own.
"Poetry," for instance, comes from a word meaning "to make." Can't you see how magick is a kind of making too? How different, really, is a muse from a so-called goblin here? (I have witnessed neither evoked to physical manifestation, but am sure both have a certain might). How different is the operation of a poem that frames another's vision, or a song that shapes a generation, or a book that carries an epoch, from the incantation which reaches for a consciousness beyond one's own? Are you so sure you know the methods and the mindstuff from which changes in consciousness (or history) are wrought?
You guys play at being fancy scientists advancing the zeitgeist of this forum with your incredulous skepticism. But I can't say I've learned anything from you yet. No new discoveries. No interesting anecdotes. I just see you repeatedly and blithely passing judgment on others, drawing them out so you can make them wrong, and pretending the metric you prefer is the only way to measure. Your, "just the facts," arguments and deconstructions go nowhere, they just effect a reach around to to the swaggering non-belief you brought in with you from the start, and you hammer away with it, seeking acquiescence instead of a new understanding.
Look. We got it. Nothing can be true outside your own present frame of reference. Magick isn't real. You've made your point. Again and again and again for weeks now you've made the same point more times than I can count.
Can we please move on now?
Recognizing that people have different views as to its value and utility, does anyone have anything interesting to relate about the introduction of Enochian magick to a beginner?
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@Jim Eshelman said
"You and I completely agree that experiences have no power to explain. We differ on whether the experience or the explanation is more important."
You're missing the point. The point is that you explain things by claiming that there is some kind of metaphysical reality. I'm asking you for your justification for that one particular explanation of yours.
I completely agree that we experience only a tiny fraction of the universe, but that mere fact, all by itself, in no way suggests that your metaphysical claims (explanations) are true.
So I consider my question unanswered, and I will politely ask you again: what reasons are there to accept these metaphysical claims/explanations as true claims/explanations?
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@Los said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"You and I completely agree that experiences have no power to explain. We differ on whether the experience or the explanation is more important."You're missing the point. The point is that you explain things by claiming that there is some kind of metaphysical reality. I'm asking you for your justification for that one particular explanation of yours.
I completely agree that we experience only a tiny fraction of the universe, but that mere fact, all by itself, in no way suggests that your metaphysical claims (explanations) are true.
So I consider my question unanswered, and I will politely ask you again: what reasons are there to accept these metaphysical claims/explanations as true claims/explanations?"
Did you not just answer yourself? You admit there is MORE to the universe than we know. So there you have room for something else like magic to be possible. Your looking at the whole thing a particular way, such as my explanation for an influence on chance.
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@Jason R said
" You admit there is MORE to the universe than we know. So there you have room for something else like magic to be possible."
Of course it's possible that magic works. It's also possible that Bigfoot exists or that leprehcauns are stealing my socks when I seem to "lose" one.
But if you ask me what I think is true, then based on evidence, I don't think that leprechauns are actually stealing my socks, even though I admit it's technically possible, and based on evidence, I also don't believe that Bigfoot exists, even though it's technically possible that he does.
And in the same way, based on evidence, I don't think that magic works, even though I admit it's technically possible that it does.
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@Los said
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@Jason R said
" You admit there is MORE to the universe than we know. So there you have room for something else like magic to be possible."Of course it's possible that magic works. It's also possible that Bigfoot exists or that leprehcauns are stealing my socks when I seem to "lose" one.
But if you ask me what I think is true, then based on evidence, I don't think that leprechauns are actually stealing my socks, even though I admit it's technically possible, and based on evidence, I also don't believe that Bigfoot exists, even though it's technically possible that he does.
And in the same way, based on evidence, I don't think that magic works, even though I admit it's technically possible that it does."
This makes me curious then why you seem to show such strong contempt for those who believe. Imagine people in the past before flight was understood, those who smirked at those who said "I think we can fly", were eventually proven wrong, yet, as you admit now, it was admittedly "possible."
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@Los said
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@Jason R said
"This makes me curious then why you seem to show such strong contempt for those who believe."Because those people believe that magic works without any good evidence to support their beliefs."
It's just that your definition of magic refers to things that don't work. You're expecting fireballs and dragons. So yeah, your magic doesn't work. I understand why you might want to distance yourself from that. It might be that you have the wrong concept of magic.
Dude, you gotta make these symbols work for you and not the other way around.
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@Deus Ex Machina said
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@Los said
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@Jason R said
"This makes me curious then why you seem to show such strong contempt for those who believe."Because those people believe that magic works without any good evidence to support their beliefs."
It's just that your definition of magic refers to things that don't work. You're expecting fireballs and dragons. So yeah, your magic doesn't work. I understand why you might want to distance yourself from that. It might be that you have the wrong concept of magic.
Dude, you gotta make these symbols work for you and not the other way around."
Thank you! Yes, exactly what I had said before, magic does not happen with the bells and whistles of D&D fame lol. Come on, anyone knows this with just a basic understanding of the occult.
Plus, the comparison of the analogy of someone in the past before flight, having contempt and laughing at someone believing in it, because their was no evidence it was possible. There are thousands of things we do today and know exist, that at some point there was no known evidence for. The absence of evidence one would expect for a possible ability in nature may not take the form we think it should either. It may br right there in front of us and totally misunderstood. Again, I point to the unknown laws BEHIND what governs "chance".
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EVEN if we proved people wrong who make various supernatural claims, that does not mean magic itself is not possible. If a doctor made claims of curing cancer, yet was proven a fraud, it does not mean ALL doctors, or the science of medicine etc., should be laughed at, nor use that doctor as "evidence" to support your disbelief in going to the hospital. Likewise, this fraud (completely hypothetical BTW, and in no way is this hinting at anyone here being a "fraud") doesn't not prove cancer cannot be proven itself, and perhaps does not necessarily prove the method claimed a success untrue either. Your judging "claims", and a particular persons failure to explain, or THEIR explanation for it.
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@Deus Ex Machina said
" You're expecting fireballs and dragons."
No, I'm not. I'm evaluating claims that I've been presented with.
When I say that no one has evidence that magic works, the "magic works" I'm talking about is "I found money in the street after doing a spell for money!" or "Grandpa learned that his cancer diagnosis was an error after I did a spell to heal him!"
That's the sort of "magic" I'm talking about. It's indistinguishable from "prayer" in other religions, and it doesn't work. Or, to put it another way, there's absolutely zero evidence that it's anything other than the coincidences that happen to people all the time.
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@Jason R said
"If a doctor made claims of curing cancer, yet was proven a fraud, it does not mean ALL doctors, or the science of medicine etc., should be laughed at, nor use that doctor as "evidence" to support your disbelief in going to the hospital."
Of course not. But in the case that we're talking about on this thread, I'm not basing my conclusions on magic on any one specific instance...I'm basing my conclusions on the fact that nobody has ever -- not even once in the history of humanity -- produced any evidence that "magic" is anything more than the regular ol' coincidence that happens to people all the time.
Again, I'm not asking for "fireballs and dragons." I'm asking for any evidence -- at all -- that the ol' "We prayed for grandpa, and he got better" is anything other than regular ol' coincidence.
You don't have any such evidence...nobody does, and nobody therefore has any reason to think that these prayers...er, excuse me, "magical rituals"...cause anything at all to happen.
I'm willing to be proven wrong, but it's going to take a lot more than bald assertion to make your case.
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I always liked the saying "the magic of today is the science of tomorrow". Maybe at some point our technology, or science will be at a point where we can present a valid model that explains the mechanics of magic, but that empirical evidence doesn't exist today. What we are saying is that the simple "facts" of nature we take for granted (as many did in the past) can be misunderstood, and so hinder our ability to observe the phenomena at work.
Magic, I keep trying to say, works on the "mechanism" or whatever we want to call it, that effects chance. Observed from a rational limited perspective, the effect disappears into a vague thing called "luck" or coincedence. The ONLY objective "proof" is then the consistency of results. This though is hard to show however and use as evidence based on the fact we have such a wide range of variables to consider, including how this consistency is recorded and the subjective nature of it all. This fact of recording and the subjective nature etc., does not make the actual "reality" invalid, just hardly something easy to quantify.
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@Jason R said
" that empirical evidence doesn't exist today."
Right, so on what grounds do you accept that it does work? As I've been pointing out, you don't appear to have a means of distinguishing its so-called "results" from the regular ol' coincidences that we know exist and happen all the time.
