Magic

[toolsofthetrade]

Magick. What is it?

Do believe in it? Is there any? Do you exercise anything related?
Have you had moments where you felt something (super)natural?

 

[blackeyed]

i like talking about this kind of thing. has anybody ever read The Alchemist? it kinda deals with similar themes. i believe there is magic (magik) out there, I believe its all in knowing the laws and codes of the universe and knowing how to manipulate them.

 

[Alwin]

Well, experiments like card guessing and transmitting/receiving thoughts have been conducted and there were more successes in these than is to be expected by chance. You can read this in the book The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin (PhD). More on parapsychology and online experiments you can try: www.parapsy.nl
There's a lot of stuff on magick on the Net, but when all rituals and ceremonial stuff is deleted magick seems to be nothing but setting a goal and making a serious effort to obtain that goal and to be sensitive to opportunities. Something like trics and tips for self-confidence and self-realisation. This also inlcudes LaVey satanism.
I belief in "knowing oneself". For me, this process also involves self-realisation.

 

[toolsofthetrade]

yes, just got meself "Eleven minutes" by Coelho as well.
it's a great book, The Alchemist, but it's not necessairily about magic or the occult.
to me it's about *blah mode* the Inner Quest and self-reliance basically.

but alchemy isnt the same as magic, is it?

 

[blackeyed]

I learned to read tarrot cards a few years back, some things freaked me a little though. i thought it was a bit of a fake at first, i just liked the idea of learning to read into things. but the more i learned and the more i did my exercises to get to know my high cards the more freaky things were happening. you are advised to try and make contact with teh card - the image on them, like step into the card and that. i did it with most of teh cards with little response really. it was the fool that i got the freaky shit from, it was quite powerful to be honest, things were a bit weird and i couldnt controil what i was seeing etc. infact i saw the cell a few years later and it reminded me of that expericence - inside that dudes head - not so much the sick sexual stuff but just the weirdness.

I didnt tell anyone about it incase anything happened. i used to keep my cards in a box tied with a red ribbon and they went missing after this. i saw it as an omen and i never bought a new pack of bothered trying to deal in other practices - someone clearly doesnt want me to do it.

i know there could be other explanations for this, imagination, somebody taking my cards - but still maybe what ever powers there may be out there use my imagination and other people as tools to put across messages.

all in all it was powerful and it convinced me not to take the piss with things like that. i would consider reading into the subject more but i dont know if i could bring myself to practice again.

 

[blackeyed]

no its not necessarily but like i said, and as alwin said its about the inner quest, knowing the code of teh universe - i believe that the real magic comes from the understanding, its putting your knowledge into practice

 

[toolsofthetrade]

aye i too see wisdom as applied knowledge, tho other ppl may see that differently.

i have this tarot deck by Giger, wonder i have to initiate the usage before i use it.
not sure, anyone? In some sort of way, i dont trust them cards. it's too satanic for me, as Crowley's and LaVey's theories are to me. it's too much self-centered, and thats not how i regard things - it's the interaction between ppl and 'living objects' (energy) that makes life interesting or not. Not only where you personally stand or what u do, i reckon. To me it's more like what you are/do in relation to everything else (universe) that makes you realise what you do/are

 

[Alwin]

i like talking about this kind of thing. has anybody ever read The Alchemist? it kinda deals with similar themes. i believe there is magic (magik) out there, I believe its all in knowing the laws and codes of the universe and knowing how to manipulate them.

Ok, here's a thought: what if magick is not "out there" but inside you and inside every human being. And if you peel off the layers of your personality, your beliefs and you find that what is left is a divine entity which is in every living thing. This would imply that the origin of all living things is the same divine principle. It is not your religion or mine, it is not your ceremony or mine, not your ritual or mine. When all dogma's and rules are deleted and the origins of the world religions are considered, they all point towards the same divine entity that connects all life. God, energy, magick, etc is within you...

 

[toolsofthetrade]

hail

 

[Bambi]

Magick is a card game,

oddly enough most of the founders of modern science were big on alchemy and that. Isaac newton and them

anyways all this occult obsession in the west is mostly bollix, just people looking for something weird and unique. unless you're a little tibetan healer or a javan running around the jungle possesed by monkey spirits I dont think its that relevant to your life really

So man is a spiritual onion?? is that why people cry when they have an epipheny??

 

[Alwin]

...and may I elaborate: this may seem quite selfish, the inner quest, just being concerned with your own inner world. But these are just exercises of getting to know your and everyone's divine nature. And as this knowledge grows and grows you will recognize the divine nature in others and be able to have meaningful encounters, i.e. you see the paths of others and are able to assist them in their quest. That doesn't seem selfish at all does it?

 

[Frodnat]

The old topic again. Magic... I think everyone experienced moments in which he got that "magic"-feeling. Something happens and you can´t explain it with logic or something else...

I personally don´t believe in such things and the more knowledge I get about psychology and neuroscience the more I can explain things that happened to me in my past. But sometimes it really is strange because everything seems to be just in the place it might had been if not something had been changed in the past... Those magical moments in which everything seems so clear, so pure...

...or is it just another illusion???


btw the new My Dying Bride got these magical moments. It is a killer, one if not the best MDB ever. Get it...

 

[Alwin]

Hey Frodnat, explain me consciousness in terms of neuroscience then. You probably think the brain (i.e. the neurons) causes the "feeling" or "illusion" of consciousness. But I don't think there is hard evidence of the causality in this direction, or is there?

 

[Frodnat]

Hard evidence? NO... The consciousness can be explained by something like up and downward modulation in the network, also integration between neighbouring areas on the horizontal scale. But there will decades or even centuries pass if someone is able to describe the whole network and all of the processes in it. Everything is still in its infancies

 

[blackeyed]

Ok, here's a thought: what if magick is not "out there" but inside you and inside every human being. And if you peel off the layers of your personality, your beliefs and you find that what is left is a divine entity which is in every living thing. This would imply that the origin of all living things is the same divine principle. It is not your religion or mine, it is not your ceremony or mine, not your ritual or mine. When all dogma's and rules are deleted and the origins of the world religions are considered, they all point towards the same divine entity that connects all life. God, energy, magick, etc is within you...

i think i see a juncture where both my ideas of out there are your point of inner magick correllate. I see and accept teh stripping down of the ego, being left with the primal stuff that is life, your essence, your being etc but i also see this stuff as being 'out there'
to take a thrid person viewpoint is to see yourself as being part of a universe, part of an 'out there' - to start and complete a path to the magick/essence/energy on teh inside is still to look to the same thing that is out there. what do you think?

 

[Alwin]

i think i see a juncture where both my ideas of out there are your point of inner magick correllate. I see and accept teh stripping down of the ego, being left with the primal stuff that is life, your essence, your being etc but i also see this stuff as being 'out there'
to take a thrid person viewpoint is to see yourself as being part of a universe, part of an 'out there' - to start and complete a path to the magick/essence/energy on teh inside is still to look to the same thing that is out there. what do you think?

Yes, interesting. I believe the inner quest makes you more sensitive to the 'out there' and leads to the conclusion that the 'out there' and the 'in here' are essentially of the same origin. Just as Pythagoras stated: "as above, so below" (above=the universe, the gods, below=the human beings). Right, juncture has been reached from 2 ends...

 

[blackeyed]

Right, juncture has been reached from 2 ends...

yay im glad because i actually hold your opinions highly

 

[Frodnat]

... the good old feedback-process... one world inside and one outside... different for everyone... this makes life less boring

 

[Alwin]

yay im glad because i actually hold your opinions highly

Well thanx! By the way, you mentioned you had some strange experiences with tarot cards. When I was at a party some years ago there was a girl reading tarot cards (she had the Crowley deck). The one I picked (Indolence) very clearly stated that my inactiveness was related to one of my parents. And this was exactly on the mark!!! (the full story of this relation I will not post here). I think tarot cards, like astrology and the I Ching can be seen as methods to order ones thoughts/feelings about a subject. There have been experiments in which atrologists were to predict the characters of a number of persons based only on their birth dates and times. The outcome was that they did no better than to be expected by chance. However, I do believe that when the client and the tarot card reader (astrologist, etc) meet (which they didn't in the experiment above), remarkable outcomes are possible. It is like the cards are then the focal point of attention of both client and reader and can serve as a way of communication with the inner world of the client.

 

[Achernar]

Well, to be honest most of Paulo Coelho's stuff makes me wanna puke.