Fragments of the past.
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Alright. Just hold on a minute.
Let's take a good long look at yourself in the mirror before you start in with all the reasons other people believe dumb things. So far, you're the only person here claiming any abilities at all. You showed up at the door saying, "I have the ability to receive precognitive dreams. And you all are most likely crazy and stupid for believing in magick - please justify your belief." Before you go all empirically self-righteous, remember that your perceived precognition is the only claim on the table. You have no idea what the rest of us believe or practice.
You believe that you have repeatedly dreamed of future events. This has happened to you to the degree that you are no longer able to deny your own completely subjective experience, no matter how at odds this is with your own epistemology.
So how about you hop down off your soapbox while you're here asking us liars and fellow lunatics questions? You are as guilty of believing your own private truth as any of us. Do you think that accepting nothing but what you have personally experienced makes you unique among the lunatics of the world?
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@nknownperson said
"1.If Aleister Crowley was such a great magician, why did he spend the majority of his life in such terrible conditions and financial situations."
You assault other people's failure at reasoned thought, and yet you start with an enthymeme. You appear to have the hidden or suppressed premise, "Great magicians do not have lives of terrible conditions and terrible financial situations."
If this were a court of law, I'd be objecting to the question while apologizing to the court that I didn't know where to begin in enumerating the facts presumed but not in evidence; but your question lacks substantial foundation.
Just to mention some of the points:
A. You haven't defined "terrible conditions" - or, for that matter, "majority." For example, does "the majority of his life in... terrible conditions" include routinely living well above his apparent means? How many of his 72 years (or of his half century or so after leaving his parents' home, or of his 32 years following attaining the grade of Magus) are you counting as "majority"? Etc.
B. What do you mean by "terrible... financial situations"? You do know (don't you?) that he was sustained by a trust fund from his original inheritance - down to the very end of his life? Obviously the relationship of money available to him to how he spent rests on choices he made (e.g., choosing to devote his personal wealth to publishing The Equinox and other books in a superior form that was never covered by what he charged for them; or to devote most of the rest of his liquid inheritance to establishing the abbey in Sicily).
C. You haven't provided a basis for the hidden premise (or presumption) that great magicians would live one particular kind of life and not another.
"He died a terrible and lonely death."
Not so lonely. And yes, he had an illness that he had mostly held at bay for 60 years or so, and his body was weak at the end.
"Surely he could of at least manifested himself some money."
He did that all the time. And, as I said, he was sustained by a reliable (but not large) stream of money all of the way to the end.
"Surely that should be possible, for an all great all powerful magician."
Crowley made what I consider one serious magical blunder early on when he was a Christian young snot and didn't know better; or possibly it wasn't a mistake, but was something necessary that forged the conditions of his life - I suppose I shouldn't judge that part of it. In any case, the action was an enormously powerful and successful magical act: He swore that if he attained the enlightenment he sought, that he would pay for it with every bit of his wealth, every hope for love, even his health, etc. He didn't need to make this pledge - such things aren't actually required generally - but such a magical pledge, once taken, is irrevocable. He got what he sought, and the price was collected. One might even say that Liber Legis was the written receipt! - He made this pledge when he was a young man with no small amount of wealth and the promise of a significant career and reasonable health and prosperity.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Crowley made what I consider one serious magical blunder early on when we was a Christian young snot and didn't know better; or possibly it wasn't a mistake, but was something necessary that forged the conditions of his life - I suppose I shouldn't judge that part of it. In any case, the action was an enormously powerful and successful magical act: He swore that if he attained the enlightenment he sought, that he would pay for it with every bit of his wealth, every hope for love, even his health, etc. He didn't need to make this pledge - such things aren't actually required generally - but such a magical pledge, once taken, is irrevocable. He got what he sought, and the price was collected. One might even say that Liber Legis was the written receipt! - He made this pledge when he was a young man with no small amount of wealth and the promise of a significant career and reasonable health and prosperity."
Jim - I think you meant to write when "**he **was a Christian young snot".
That's a really interesting observation. It indicates Crowley made this blunder because he was still under the influence of the Old Aeon. Another way of looking at it, Liber Legis might not have happened if he did not make this "blunder" - a sort of damning answer to his well-intentioned vow.
It reminds me of the Islamic tale of Iblis who made a vow to only worship God. When God created mankind He ordered all his angels to bow down and worship this newborn creature. Iblis, because of the vow he had taken, refused this divine command and for that he was punished and cast out of heaven. All of human history since then has been a game being played being God and Iblis, the latter's role being to continually seduce and tempt mankind and thus prove to God that there is nothing divine within humanity (thus confirming his original vow to only worship God).
The cautionary tale echoes Goethe's version of Faust. The famous Faustian pact is overlaid with numerous misinterpretations and the idea of a man who sells his soul to the devil for wealth and fame completely misses the point - which is really about the power of the magickal oath. In Goethe's interpretation, Faust is the ultimate medieval scholar and knows everything there is to know about the world, but his knowledge only leaves him unhappy and suicidal. Mephistopheles appears and tells him that his knowledge is only academic, not real-life experience. He promises to satisfy Faust's soul so completely that after 24 years, he will be willing to surrender his soul to him. Faust does not believe anything can satisfy him and he is willing to risk his soul, suffer eternal damnation, to prove the devil wrong.
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@he atlas itch said
"Jim - I think you meant to write when "**he **was a Christian young snot"."
Why, yes I did.
(Though I wouldn't be surprised if many of us were Christian young snots at the same time.) - I'll correct the typo."That's a really interesting observation. It indicates Crowley made this blunder because he was still under the influence of the Old Aeon. Another way of looking at it, Liber Legis might not have happened if he did not make this "blunder" - a sort of damning answer to his well-intentioned vow. "
I doubt that. There's nothing incompatible between sacrifice and Thelema. In fact, Liber Legis (like the facts of existence) demands it. He may also have attained as much anyway. Or maybe not. Honestly, I don't know that we can know.
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@Frater LR said
"Alright. Just hold on a minute.
Let's take a good long look at yourself in the mirror before you start in with all the reasons other people believe dumb things. So far, you're the only person here claiming any abilities at all. You showed up at the door saying, "I have the ability to receive precognitive dreams. And you all are most likely crazy and stupid for believing in magick - please justify your belief." Before you go all empirically self-righteous, remember that your perceived precognition is the only claim on the table. You have no idea what the rest of us believe or practice.
You believe that you have repeatedly dreamed of future events. This has happened to you to the degree that you are no longer able to deny your own completely subjective experience, no matter how at odds this is with your own epistemology.
So how about you hop down off your soapbox while you're here asking us liars and fellow lunatics questions? You are as guilty of believing your own private truth as any of us. Do you think that accepting nothing but what you have personally experienced makes you unique among the lunatics of the world?"
Did I upset you? That wasn't my intention, I am merely sharing my thoughts. We clearly have different beliefs.
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I do not believe I have any abilities. As I stated I have yet to ever experience astral projection. And I do believe everyone has precognitive dreams.
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I dont define it as subjective. Since i have spoken to a number of people who have had similar experiences. And I'm not talking about deja vu. I shared these predictions with people before they have occured, and the events occurred exactly as planned. I believe that this is simply the effects of synchronicity and the human minds natural ability to draw knowledge from the collective unconcious.
Thus far I am the only person to have shared my experiences that had attracted me to this field of study. It seems as if everyone is scared to talk about their own experiences. Why is this? Humans by nature share knowledge and information. By telling no one that information not only do restrict human progress but also prevent anyone else the ability to tell you, your wrong. What's so bad about someone giving a different opinion or idea, or telling you your wrong. It wont change anything if your right. Silence is simply a way of letting lies run rampant and defending the ego from reality.
I placed my beleifs on the line. why is no one else prepared to?
Jim Eshelman: Are you saying crowley traded great magickal skill and knowledge for his earthly success and wealth?
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Prophetic dreams generally are a case of you find what you are looking for, like the infamous law of fives and the 23 enigma.
which combined with the fact that dreams are often abstract and vague, and they don't hold well in memory such that the way we remember dream content tends to change more than our memories of waking life events. Thus, there is kind of a give and take, where dreamed material effects how we experience waking events in the future and the waking events changes how we remember the dream. Changing the memory is subjectively like changing a past event to make it look like a prophesy of the present of future happening. Since the brain activity is plastic and malleable on both sides, of this equation, their is no way for you as the subjective observer to know if your dreams are actually prophetic or not. It's just not possible to discern from the inside. You have to have an external record in a medium that does not change, like write down your dream soon after it happens. And you need an unbiased third party observer who is not tempted to interpret the future events in terms of the dream. Thus a blind observer situation would be optimal in this case. Which is in my understanding the purpose of one's superior in the A.'.A.'. to act as this voice of reason and objective observer, who carefully studies your diary and records with scientific scrutiny.
That being said, just because your dreams are probably not actually prophetic of future events, this does not matter. Magick is not about divining the future from morpheomancy. Rather their are psychological indicators based on the sort of dreams you have and in your tendency to seek out proof they are prophetic, the nature of the things you seek to prophesize about, and most important it helps you to be more directly aware of one way in which your brain mis-perceives or creates illusions, such as the ability to divine the future. The correct attitude of a magician is not to obsess with these seeming supernatural powers, but rather to look past these illusion, no matter how REAL they seem personally and to deny them based on science. To destroy illusion, while at the same time deconstruction the illusions and in destroying learning the methods by which you can create these delusions and illusions in yourself and others.
This way you develop the TRUE magick power, the control of an aspect of your own mind and knowing its limits and abilities and methods to realize when your nervous system is confused or mis-representing reality and to work around those common misconceptions which others do not realize they have and base a great deal of their behavior upon. There are many aspects of society and our modern lives that are still built upon superstition, irrational emotionalism, sentimentalism, and the failure to recognize the brains cognitive mistakes, and just plain breaches in logic due to a failure to ground education in the teaching of logical reasoning and scientific method.
Of course, at this time it seems those trained to discern truth from illusion are at a disadvantage since their social and economic life relies on playing along with the delusions of the troglodytes who unfortunately outnumber the reasonable men of science and even more out number the men of Thelema. In times past the position of power was available to those who know truth and the elite class deserved their position. But since the inversion of such values in the modernist era and the rise of western individualism and liberal democracy, the position of power in politics, religion and society are those who most appeal to the delusions of the vulgar masses. They only perpetuate superstitions, that have dragged the world to the brink of the abyss, economically, politically and socially on which the whole western world not teeters.
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@Froclown said
"Prophetic dreams generally are a case of you find what you are looking for, like the infamous law of fives and the 23 enigma.
which combined with the fact that dreams are often abstract and vague, and they don't hold well in memory such that the way we remember dream content tends to change more than our memories of waking life events. Thus, there is kind of a give and take, where dreamed material effects how we experience waking events in the future and the waking events changes how we remember the dream. Changing the memory is subjectively like changing a past event to make it look like a prophesy of the present of future happening. Since the brain activity is plastic and malleable on both sides, of this equation, their is no way for you as the subjective observer to know if your dreams are actually prophetic or not. It's just not possible to discern from the inside. You have to have an external record in a medium that does not change, like write down your dream soon after it happens. And you need an unbiased third party observer who is not tempted to interpret the future events in terms of the dream. Thus a blind observer situation would be optimal in this case. Which is in my understanding the purpose of one's superior in the A.'.A.'. to act as this voice of reason and objective observer, who carefully studies your diary and records with scientific scrutiny. "
I would of agreed with you, but i had kept a dream journal 3 weeks before the event. And just as was written in the journal, it manifested in reality. When those events did occur i noticed that there were so many variables that affected whether it manifested or not. For example how i felt that day where i went what i thought why i thought why i acted in that certain way. None of these things made sense during the dream but I understood them after it manifested. Many things that were beyond my knowledge were variables that lead to that event: if i stood there, such and such would happen if i done this such and such would happen all of these must of connected leading to the event that was prophecised. And this is why i believe in determinism, its like a big plan an unbreajable chain. And even though i had thought to myself "I wont ever let that happen" It came just as it said it did.
Thus proving synchronicity and the concept of a collective unconcious that every human brain access during sleep. But whether we can retain the information in that sleeping state is what i believe to be helpful.
I would of thought it was either the brain adapting memories or the subconcious creating the events. But the dreams were so intact and precise that it rules out such possibilities.
We do not choose what to dream, but we choose what we do in life. What has your magickal rituals bought you that can be presented as physical evidence to suggest outside forces or "hacks" existed.
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@nknownperson said
"
@Frater LR said
"Alright. Just hold on a minute.Let's take a good long look at yourself in the mirror before you start in with all the reasons other people believe dumb things. So far, you're the only person here claiming any abilities at all. You showed up at the door saying, "I have the ability to receive precognitive dreams. And you all are most likely crazy and stupid for believing in magick - please justify your belief." Before you go all empirically self-righteous, remember that your perceived precognition is the only claim on the table. You have no idea what the rest of us believe or practice.
You believe that you have repeatedly dreamed of future events. This has happened to you to the degree that you are no longer able to deny your own completely subjective experience, no matter how at odds this is with your own epistemology.
So how about you hop down off your soapbox while you're here asking us liars and fellow lunatics questions? You are as guilty of believing your own private truth as any of us. Do you think that accepting nothing but what you have personally experienced makes you unique among the lunatics of the world?"
Did I upset you? That wasn't my intention, I am merely sharing my thoughts. We clearly have different beliefs.
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I do not believe I have any abilities. As I stated I have yet to ever experience astral projection. And I do believe everyone has precognitive dreams.
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I dont define it as subjective. Since i have spoken to a number of people who have had similar experiences. And I'm not talking about deja vu. I shared these predictions with people before they have occured, and the events occurred exactly as planned. I believe that this is simply the effects of synchronicity and the human minds natural ability to draw knowledge from the collective unconcious."
lol... I agree with you so much more than you know. YOU disagree with you, and rather high-handedly so. I'll leave the true materialists here to demonstrate that for you. They will be the ones accusing you of being either a liar, a lunatic, or of using bad logic (they'll decide). Do you think you kind of people are drawn to occultism? lol... Occam's razor cuts both ways, my friend.
"Thus far I am the only person to have shared my experiences that had attracted me to this field of study. It seems as if everyone is scared to talk about their own experiences. Why is this? Humans by nature share knowledge and information. By telling no one that information not only do restrict human progress but also prevent anyone else the ability to tell you, your wrong. What's so bad about someone giving a different opinion or idea, or telling you your wrong. It wont change anything if your right. Silence is simply a way of letting lies run rampant and defending the ego from reality.
I placed my beliefs on the line. why is no one else prepared to?
"Fear. Modesty. Prudence. There are many reasons. Why don't you let us finish getting to know your mind first?
Peace.
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@Frater LR said
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Fear. Modesty. Prudence. There are many reasons. Why don't you let us finish getting to know your mind first?."Because even I don't know it yet
Maybe i can gain better understanding of myself by trying to understand the minds of others, beginning first with the most interesting of minds that of an occultist's.It seems as if the world completely ignores the occultists. the media acknowledges nothing of occultism except for its symbolism. Either their in on it or they fear occultism spreading. I mean you probably dont want everyone thinking your like this guy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeJVUbpF8Mg
do you? -
lol... That's a perfect exhibition of a magick duel. It's just that one of them doesn't understand that he's working magick too.
About the other bit. I don't know what to tell you. You seem just like one of "us" to me. It's just a matter of how serious you want to be about your experimentation. That, and how far you'll let your experience truly inform you about your own existence versus how skeptical you choose to be about it.
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@Frater LR said
"
...You seem just like one of "us" to me. It's just a matter of how serious you want to be about your experimentation. That, and how far you'll let your experience truly inform you about your own existence versus how skeptical you choose to be about it.
As far as I can figure, there are three basic kinds of result: temporary sense phenomena/altered perception, synchronicity/coincidence, and then there is that thing that no sensible person would believe unless they saw it themselves - some repeatable and testable act of mind affecting the actual state of matter.
The only thing that I've personally had experience with is synchronicity. For me, so far, I think if our creative wills can affect our realities, it's on the level of influencing the likelihood of the possible. I can come to no other personal conclusion but that there is an inexplicable relationship between consciousness and time that has its roots in Being itself. ...
However, when my eye is clear, so to speak, it can feel as if the entire rest of the Universe is focusing and willing something good through me. And there have been such unexpected and drastic coincidences of change in my life that I can no longer doubt some sort of meaningful connection between the first event and the second, even though any truly empirical explanation of cause is impossible. ...
Now, I can do a pretty good job of explaining that experience to you from a skeptical psychological perspective, and I can do a pretty good job of explaining that experience to you from a more metaphysical perspective, but for the life of me I can't tell the difference when it's happening - or that a difference even exists. I just know there are two ways of looking at it, and both ways serve their purpose. And either way, it certainly feels as if I am learning about my self and the "nature and powers of my own being," as well as my connection to everything else in existence on a deeply meaningful and satisfying level. And that's pretty much it for me.
So that's me putting mine out there."Great post. The last part sounds like the same things I have talked about to friends who are interested but skeptical. In the end, we came to the conslusion that unless you experience it directly, no one can tell you about it convinvlingly. I'm sure many people here could write about their metaphysical or spiritual experiences but would it really make any difference? When I told a good friend about an experience that, to me, was amazing, she listened and tried to appreciate it. But, rather than close the door, she reminded me of the quote from the The X Files; "I want to believe."
Oh- and UnknownPerson- it might help people to open up if you didn't use terms like, "mumbo jumbo".
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"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
That goes for personal conviction of any kind, no matter how you feel when you actually see something, proves nothing, those feelings are just chemical markers in your brain, and they MAKE you believe. The make you feel an event was inspiring, deep, mystical, or whatever other way in which it may strike you. Those feelings do not exist in the world of facts and truth at all. They are delusions are distractions from reality and the brain creates all manor of deceptions to preserve those personal feelings.
in short You can NEVER trust yourself, You are the arch fiend lies to your soul and inspires fascination. There is not in truth anything GREAT or TERRIBLE just plane old ordinary mechanical run of the mill events, Things just are as they are, no supernatural hocus pocus, and we would all be wise to systematically strip all such adjective of aggrandizing the mundane from our minds, that we may actually see truth though our thick skulls of maya.
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" Book of Lies [99]
{Kappa-Epsilon-Phi-Alpha-Lambda-Eta Mu-Epsilon} CHINESE MUSIC "Explain this happening!" "It must have a `natural' cause." \ "It must have a `supernatural' cause." / Let these two asses be set to grind corn. May, might, must, should, probably, may be, we may safely assume, ought, it is hardly question- able, almost certainly-poor hacks! let them be turned out to grass! Proof is only possible in mathematics, and mathe- matics is only a matter of arbitrary conventions. And yet doubt is a good servant but a bad master; a perfect mistress, but a nagging wife. "White is white" is the lash of the overseer: "white is black" is the watchword of the slave. The Master takes no heed. The Chinese cannot help thinking that the octave has 5 notes. The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the more certain it is that I only assert a limitation. I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on awaking; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning."
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@he atlas itch said
"It reminds me of the Islamic tale of Iblis who made a vow to only worship God. When God created mankind He ordered all his angels to bow down and worship this newborn creature. Iblis, because of the vow he had taken, refused this divine command and for that he was punished and cast out of heaven. All of human history since then has been a game being played being God and Iblis, the latter's role being to continually seduce and tempt mankind and thus prove to God that there is nothing divine within humanity (thus confirming his original vow to only worship God)."
Very interesting. What is your source on this? All other references I know of say that Iblis refused to bow down because he simply believed he was better than Adam (being created out of fire, and Adam out of clay), and I cannot find any reference to this vow that he supposedly made.
@Qur'an 7:11-12 said
"And We created you (humans), then fashioned you, then told the angels: Fall ye prostrate before Adam! And they fell prostrate, all save Iblis, who was not of those who made prostration.
He said: "What hindered thee that thou didst not fall prostrate when I bade thee?" (Iblis) said: "I am better than him. Thou createdst me of fire while him Thou didst create of clay".]"