Treating Spirits with respect.
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further more I am not being weasel worded or mean spirited.
If you want to see that sort of thing, try reading Crowley's opinions on things.
If I took Crowley's perspective I would say.
Self castration is not only foolish but an act of treason against the divine source. The Phallus being the source of semen, the divine seed. It is to defile the Eucharist, the blackest act of magick he could imagine. But I do not take Crowley's perspective.
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Froclown,
That "outward form" is seen by YOU to be a male form because you seem to be of the perspective that those physical characteristics, predefined by our typical western povs, are of the inherent natures they present themselves as to you. I would use a physical constant to make it easier for you to see how the True Will can be applied in this transgender case: the True Will is the natural tendency for everything in the omniverse to reach the state of least potential energy charge.
I.e. if there was always a voice inside luxinhominefactum that told her the present state of her body was wrong, then the fruition of that inner calling was to have an operation. All in conformity with Will. And if the voice inside was content with that, then why do you (in being another person) use that example to point out the fault of that person's choice?
To my mind, this is the same fault as literally interpreting the Bible and defending that notion with "this is the word of God" and forgetting that "but this is my personal interpretation of that word". Sorry if I come off as harsh, though. Just stating my observations as usual. -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
@Malaclypse said
"if there was always a voice inside luxinhominefactum that told her the present state of her body was wrong, then the fruition of that inner calling was to have an operation. "
with respect, yes and no. the body and social role was not where it needed to be, but the actual "operation" - the vaginoplasty - as i said in my rather (and perhaps overly) lengthy post, wasn't actually necessary and hasn't been done. of course, it is for some people, just not in my particular case.
what was necessary was to become, in the unfortunate gender-binary myopia of early 21st century american societal eyes, apparently female but actually a kind of hermaphrodite.
the actual fruition thereof was "going full time" as a woman and taking the hormone replacement therapy in my case.
so, woman? Yes. female? No.
Love is the law, love under will
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I see. Thanks for the clarification!
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@Edward Mason said
"
Quote:
It is my opinion that the lead is not gold by default, nor is the genitalia a means of expression by default.I'd respond to this, but I don't understand your meaning.
"What I was trying to say, is that you should not mistake what lead/genitalia symbolize and what they are.
Though lead has the potential to become gold, you are not going to go out and start making ornaments of lead, are you ? Gold still being more worthwhile than lead because of the effort (energy) put into it during purification.
The same logic (if I am managing to be clearer) can be applied to the genitalia. While the genitalia can be utilized to create a bridge of union during a ritual , it is the ritual itself that turns it into a bridge of union.
In other words, you can have sex because it feels good or you can have sex in order to unite the divided. Sex, you could say, is always sex. A penis is always a penis. However, your intent, your Will can change its function and what it represents.
The genitalia transcends being a mark of our differing sexuality and becomes the instrument by which we are united.
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Do you mean "sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken" (Tyler Durden)
Because that sums up my whole point.
A thing is what it is, derived from its physical properties, and can not become other than it is.
Lead is lead and will always be lead, you can not refine lead into gold.
That which is shall ever be as it was.
I know that on a quantum level under very extreme circumstances we can fuse protons into a lead nucleus, to make gold atoms. That is besides the point.
It is best to use lead for its properties, and gold for its properties.
Do not summon the gnomes of the earth to teach the art of the sword, nor the Salamanders to stir the waters of insight.
You can not summon change the nature of the water of water cherubs to obey the seniors of the fire tablet.
Well, you can mix the planes, and attempt to force and constrain spirits to act in ways they are not fit, just as you can yoke your chariot to a school of fish, but dont expect positive results.
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Uni_Verse 93,
"
In other words, you can have sex because it feels good or you can have sex in order to unite the divided. Sex, you could say, is always sex. A penis is always a penis. However, your intent, your Will can change its function and what it represents. "Yes, agreed.
Thanks,
93 93/93,
EM
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EDIT : Was a response to Froclowns post
Yes, we both say "lead is lead" ; but we are talking about completely different things.
Everything in the universe is in constant flux and change.
You are not you , as what defines you is constantly changing. Waking up this morning, you were a totally different person. As, today you are "you + whatever happened yesterday." In an infinite loop. Tomorrow you will be "you + whatever happens today."
That is why YOU are going to die.
Me ? I was never alive to begin with. I am nothing more than the ghost left behind by a transition. An apparition. Sure, you could pass me by on the street and say hello. But the second you do, you are talking to a completely different person.You are talking to "me + knowledge of you"
:runs around in a spiraling pattern:
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@Froclown said
"
A thing is what it is, derived from its physical properties, and can not become other than it is.
"A small number examples of things that completely flout your premise. Nasty things..
Energy.
Atoms (and everything that is made of atoms which I gather is most things- ah well on we furrow)
Acorns.
Oak.
Sperm/Ovum.
A house after a fire.
A river.
Everest.
The earth.
The universe.
My opinion of you after reading your opinions on the trans gendered.I had a long long post but In retrospect I've given one of the oddest phrases I've encountered on a board the simple 'er I think you missed something' answer. Since, y'know, magicians base their entire ethos on 'change'.
Seriously. Did you read everything R.A.W wrote and then think 'Hey I'll diametrically disagree with him? That should bring some good discordian arguments!' Oh and I must use 'IS' at every opportunity.Time and place man. Time and place.
Oh and some of your moralizing really stinks. -
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
"
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