Chaos Magic

[Schrodinger's Cat]

I'm not getting the reference but I hope it involves Master Blaster. That/those guy/guys was/were wicked badass.

I was just picturing your old brain duking it out with your new skeptic brain .

 

[Sledge]

Guys, guys. Can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?

 

[KingMerv00]

Guys, guys. Can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?

I agree.

None here are without sin. But I have an honorable compromise. Just walk away. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.

 

[AkuManiMani]

The only real knowledge we have is our immediate experiences; all the other stuff are just lenses thru which people interpret and relate to their experiences.

While I see what you're saying, I don't think that the only thing we have to go on is personal experience. The scientific method is a very good tool for determining the true nature of reality, and it does this by eliminating, as best it can, personal experiences, "lenses", etc. It works, too. Trusting personal experiences has contributed very little of substance to the world. The effectiveness of the scientific method is evident all around us all the time.

However you or I might experience reality, there is an objective reality. You and I might perceive the same event differently (in fact, we're almost certain to do so, even if the difference is only small, but create a hypothesis that's testable, replicable and which makes predictions and, as a community, it's possible to determine whether it's true (or, at least, consistently determine it's not untrue enough to make it being anything other than true extremely unlikely).

I agree with you, for the most part. Science is ideal for gaining knowledge about the patterns and regularities of reality. I do not deny the objectivity of the world that we share. However, I think do I differ with you on some significant points.

IMO, it isn't so much that there is a distinctly objective reality; the objective and the subjective are just two interdependent aspects of one reality. Each exists within the other and neither exists absent the other. One can have a science of the 'internal' subjective world, just as theres a body of scientific knowledge concerning the 'external' world.

Also, based off of some of my own experiences and musings I think that the physical 'consensus' world, thru which we interact with each other in our daily waking lives, is just a subset of a much much larger reality. What we currently consider to be the laws of physics are no more fundamental to reality than the laws of the road. They just happen to be how this local space-time evolved from it's big bang conditions. Things that don't appear to act in accordance with the apparent laws of physics as we know them we call paranormal or supernatural. In reality, all it really is is just weird **** beyond our current ken. The work of science is never complete

 

[AkuManiMani]

Limbo, the man who purposely makes as little sense as possible in order to draw out a thread that has at this point said nothing concrete. No need to thank me for the clarification.

Me, on the other hand am simply not doing what he wants ,which is for me to put a giant well thought out reply, to which he will reply with a cryptic grammatically anarchistic 2 line post. Then snicker because he made one of those uptight jref'ers waste time replying to him.

Once limbo starts putting actual content and effort into a post, i will reply in kind.

Maybe theres another method to his madness?

 

[Limbo]

While dreaming, there was a flash of light and a feeling of "oneness with the universe".

Yeah that was me. Sorry I was just passing through on the way to another dream.

 

[PixyMisa]

Things that don't appear to act in accordance with the apparent laws of physics as we know them we call paranormal or supernatural.

No, we call them lies.

 

[Limbo]

Pixy! What a surprise! I have my canned response to you all ready to go. Here goes,

"No."

 

[Halfcentaur]

Dimethyltryptamine, LSD, psilocybin,... these substances and more have all revealed many things to me in the 15 years I've dabbled with them. They have exposed the limits of the placebo effect connected to all spiritual experiences. Awe and wonder and beauty are worth living for, for their aesthetics alone. All meaning is subjective, absolute purpose is an illusion, merely a frame of reference by which we've learned to make sense of the sensory input our very physical and material minds are able to sense. There is an infinitely awe inspiring quality to the universe, right there waiting for us to appreciate it at all times. The trouble is we need to be reminded of it periodically through various means. But we're no more capable of altering the physical world through incorporeal means than a rabbit or a grasshopper or a turtle is. Or a stone or a tree. The miracle is that an object in the universe has developed the capability to be aware of itself and the universe it is a part of. Why people are starving for more than that knowledge alone is a tragedy. You don't need to spice things up pretending to be a magician. You're a walking conglomeration of billions and trillions of improbabilities, and this isn't enough?

 

[Sideroxylon]

Can anyone remember the case of a fairly famous person taking some sort of drug and recording what they considered to be a deeply profound thought only to find it was nonsense upon sober reading?

As I remember it there was a mention of the colour blue in what he wrote down.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

IMO, it isn't so much that there is a distinctly objective reality; the objective and the subjective are just two interdependent aspects of one reality. Each exists within the other and neither exists absent the other.

I can't agree with that. There's plenty of objective evidence that the universe existed long before consciousness did. I'll agree that consciousness is dependent on the existence of the universe, but I can't agree that the universe is dependent on the existence of consciousness. It's just not supported by evidence.

One can have a science of the 'internal' subjective world, just as theres a body of scientific knowledge concerning the 'external' world.

Then why haven't we? Science, as it's now known, has been around for a couple of hundred years. The idea of falsifiability has been key for less than a hundred. Many of the early scientists believed the beliefs of their time and did experiments in order to prove things like the existence of the soul. It took many years, but they eventually abandoned the idea of the existence of the soul because they could only find evidence to the contrary. Science reaches a consensus on the matters its investigating. It doesn't do so quickly, it doesn't do so without different theories fighting it out with each other, but it does do so.

The spiritual, paranormal, mystical - whatever you want to call it - on the other hand, has been around throughout all of human history. Going by the studies into such things as superstition in birds, it's probably not unreasonable to say that it's been around since before mankind was what we would recognise today as mankind. And yet there's not one single consensus amongst believers about anything. If there were a science of the "inner", then wouldn't there be a consensus?

And, of course, any time science has been applied to spiritual matters in good experiments, applying the same standards as to testing reality, the results have come up negative. Unfailingly.

Things that don't appear to act in accordance with the apparent laws of physics as we know them we call paranormal or supernatural. In reality, all it really is is just weird **** beyond our current ken. The work of science is never complete

Science has thus far not discovered anything paranormal or supernatural at all. Nothing of that kind has ever been shown to exist. Ever.

 

[Sledge]

No, we call them lies.

Pixy! What a surprise! I have my canned response to you all ready to go. Here goes,

"No."

To the surprise of no one, Limbo's response made no sense. What was surprising was his keeping it short and not using "grok," "sheep/goat effect," "paradigm," or "the trickster archetype."

 

[Limbo]

You don't need to spice things up pretending to be a magician.

Well, I'm really more of a mystic. And not a very good one, at that. I'm like a pearl diver who doesn't know how to swim, and so pearls have to be brought up to me. For a mystic, I'm really rather atypical and clumsy in many respects. I don't have a guru or master, or a particular tradition. They are all mine.

I have only cast one chaos magic spell, and it was designed to open my inner eye. I took a leap of faith, betting that faith is a required ingredient in the mental alchemy. It turns out it is.

 

[Resume]

Well, I'm really more of a mystic. And not a very good one, at that.

A point of agreement! But fear not, there are no good "mystics."

 

[Dancing David]

Even your own scientism idols will tell you that there is a bizarreness to time.

Nice lack of even a vague citation, so a speculative strawman at best.

You need better teachers.

 

[Moss]

Well, I'm really more of a mystic. And not a very good one, at that. I'm like a pearl diver who doesn't know how to swim, and so pearls have to be brought up to me. For a mystic, I'm really rather atypical in many respects. I don't have a guru or master, or a particular tradition. They are all mine.

I have only cast one chaos magic spell, and it was designed to open my inner eye. I took a leap of faith, betting that faith is an ingredient in the mental alchemy. It turns out it is.

Not having a guru and conglomerating everything subjectively significant in the field of religion and the "occult" (which it obviously isn't anymore today) seems to have been the whole point of Liber Null et al.
Chaos magic seems to me to be the more honest version of the Wicca "build your own religion from whatever tickles your romantic fantasy" business.But that is at the same time why it is no different to stuff like "The Secret".
Maybe it helps with psychological issues you have. Maybe it also aggravates them. (People like Fries with his "Visual Magick" pretty much admit that it is indeed psychological stuff you are doing.) I'm not sure it's a good way to mess with your psyche. (But then there are a lot of rubbish "psychotherapy" theories around too.)
The funniest part is: if you need "tools" like drugs to get into such states that signifies to me that it is not a normal or even an intended state to be in. It's like playing around with the frequency of your CPU: Maybe it helps, maybe it makes your CPU burn out. But in that example at least you have the guidelines of physics. In playing around with drugs and your psyche you actually have none.

 

[Dancing David]

Then I suggest you make a sigil to that end, charge it, and set it off. Then wait. If you can keep yourself from getting in your own way, then maybe you will receive a boon that shows you how screwed up your understanding of consciousness is.

This is bad advise Limbo and your teachers are to blame, just like channeling spirits, you are messing with electricity without insulation.

You should really learn about that which you suggest other people do, it looks as though you have very poor teachers who have not instructed you properly.

Sigils have meaning, without the understanding of the meaning and the derivation there is no power to the sigil. There are no keys to the process without that meaning. The first sigils should be constructed based upon the personal meaning of the individual, they should also be used in a ritual space with boundaries.

Your teachers have failed you, I suggest you find better ones.

 

[Dancing David]

It was a spontaneous vision that happened some days after I achieved gnosis. I'm not good enough to have conscious control over it.

Um, spontaneous vision?

This is a bad sign Limbo, and why I blame your teachers.

You should not, and I repeat not be having any sort of visions or events outside of the ritual space and boundaries. This is Shamanism 100, not even 105 or higher in the course work.

You are playing with electricity without even following the guidelines to preserve the integrity of your selfhood. This is bad very bad, humans in the ritual world posses the ultimate jewel and you are allowing it to be trashed by lack of control. This path leads to delusion, possession and fascination. One should not just allow the forces and spirits to come along randomly, the human in the spiritual sense has the ultimate jewel and you are not caring for it.

Find better teachers.

 

[Dancing David]

Which granted, doesn't mean the experience was meaningless, it had a very profound impact on me that will probably last the rest of my life. It just doesn't make it magic.

That is the magic.

 

[Dancing David]

Sounds like a beautiful experience. Too bad there wasn't more of it that you could take with you, to keep you from falling too far back into the dominant paradigm afterwards. Oh well. Baby steps. Keep your mind in a receptive state.

More evidence that yo do not understand Shmanism 101!

Journeys to the 'spirit realm' are dangerous and taken only after preperation and great caution. Why is that Limbo, why is that what the traditions teach?

Find better teachers.