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Re: Magical Theory 101

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 4:08 pm
by Einarr
This is very helpful information. I'm very new and in the process of gaining knowledge on this subject. I really like the way it is presented. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Magical Theory 101

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:18 pm
by HopefulChild
I would like to contribute to this discussion because I have slightly different approach to magic.

I am attempting to be as concise as I can with this. I get kind of long winded. So as you read through this, understand that I have only studied magic from a theoretical and research standpoint. I've never attempted any magic ritual other than a generic room to room house cleansing for negative energy, and a sympathetic candle spell that seemed to not work.
I have spent most of my adult life actively researching religion, magic, cryptozoology, and the paranormal, though admittedly from the side of the skeptical science nerd.

It was stated by the OP that " Behind all religion is a small piece of science. Though oft times ignored it remains." - The Judge

I say that is backwards. The first thing you are taught as a student of the sciences at university level is that all science comes from religion. Religion being humanities first attempts at understanding the greater complexities of life and organizing them so they could be applied and used to benefit everyone.
Astronomy, the oldest science, and the oldest religion.

My sources are Buckland, Gardner, Crowley, A.E. White and Agrippa.
One thing I would like to remind everyone of before you read my concepts of magic. Arthur C. Clarke - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Technology also applies to thinking and applicable thought models. Just as taking matches to a caveman would have been magic, teaching thermodynamics to Jesus would have also seemed as though information from the gods was being directly delivered.

It is my firm assertion that magic has to fall within specific categories of function, just as any other task is accomplished by means fit to result in the "work" you want or need done.
Trying to make a toaster change a flat tire on your car will have no results. Ever!
Is there a failure in faith that causes this? A failure to understand the toaster enough that you can make it bend to your will? Did you not provide enough offerings to the toaster that it may be appeased and pleased and in so do great works on your behalf?
No. It's a toaster. It was never intended to change a flat tire on a car.

So what are the traditional schools of magic? We can only reliably look at magic back to the 12'th century. Cuneform and Sumerian tablets dating back more than 2 thousand years have been found, but they were specific spells for an individual and don't cover information about the type of magic being performed.
Agrippa is the most prominent Magician to publish in the post dark ages, around the 16'th century. History does not hold him in high regard, though it should because the man explored all aspects of life and the universe as voraciously as the Greeks did a thousand years before him.

Crowley and Gardner were only 20 years apart in their search for magic, and both were influenced by the concepts and teachings gathered up by the Golden Dawn , though Gardner spent time studying "country" magic, or covens of witches who practiced almost entirely from oral tradition and ceremony and books of shadow that were copies of a copy of a copy and so on and almost all of that was natural magic.
Before the renaissance, the occult studies and science were the same thing. The Ars Notoria is the oldest set of spells written in a format they can be used by other magicians and they were first mentioned in the 13'th century. Oddly enough these spells are to help a magician have a photographic memory and to be able to apply what we now call uniform learning. Comprehension and theoretical application, simultaneously.

There are 3 schools. 3 schools is my opinion. There are so many names for different kinds of magic, but essentially they fall into these 3 categories if you break them down into constituent parts.

Divination: This is prediction in so many forms. I will in due time write a complete accounting of why I have faith in divination and how I believe divination is literally, written in all of science, but for now, I'll say that everything I know about science and physics allows for divination to exist. Quantum mechanics, string theory, and even general and special relativity do not discount the concept that events and results can be predicted. Divination is less spooky than it sounds when you break it down from a general understanding of predictive analysis. Even if you are asking a specific god or goddess to aid in your divination, it's still just divination.
**Special note about Ouija Boards/Talking Boards/ Spirit boards: While these are 100% a 19'th century invention to be used as a parlor game, that does not force them out of use for divination. You can use a Quija board just as effectively as long as you are willing to allow yourself to be the medium through which information is passed. And that is why a lot of people who believe in the supernatural don't use them. Imagine if you had to pass the electricity through your body just to make or take a cell phone call...doesn't sound good does it...

Natural Magic: Quite literally this should be considered the type of magic Wicca is most often associated with, though less often in the form that it was understood by the earliest of scholars who wanted to understand magic and the occult.
Alchemy, Herbalism, Drawing down of the Moon, Pulling energy from the cardinal directions by way of the principle elements, sympathetic/candle magic, and using your own "energy" to shape/send magic into the world to do "works".
Natural magic, or folk magic, is what kitchen witches, and even entire covens practice on a regular basis. There is some high ceremony attached but that should be understood in the context of the last school and how it applies to workings.
**There are other forms of physical magic, that I don't list in Natural Magic because it is expressly forbidden in the terms of use agreement for the EUTM Forums. I personally feel that they are valid, and required learning if you want to really understand the bigger concepts that have kept magic from being marginalized and ignored for the last century.

Invocation /Ceremonial Magic:
Invocation is any attempt at gaining the attention or favor or command of some form of spirit that would otherwise, "do its own thing"... Does that make sense?
Ceremonial magic requires faith. You can't call for a spirit if you don't believe spirits exist. All of those that are considered historical magicians have a similar stance. -"Do not attempt magic just to see if it can be done, or to prove to someone it can be done, most likely nothing will happen. Do magic when there is real need for when done properly it is hard work".
Invocation is just this. You must have faith, you must be able to focus that faith as a beacon to call out beyond this plane and into the plane where spirits can hear that call. Even then there is no guarantee that the spirit you want to invoke will get the message or be so inclined to do anything if they do hear it.

Imagine that someone got your cell phone number last night at a party. They spent all night being told what an awesome person you are. So the next morning after the party, they have a hangover because they drank too much so they start calling you and asking you to come make them pancakes and serve them breakfast in bed because they have a hangover, and someone told them you are an awesome person.
How quickly would you hang up on them? How quickly would you block their number? How likely would you be to go ahead and go to their house and trash the place as an object lesson to them to not hassle people they don't know because they were lazy or couldn't control their drinking?

The concept that gods and powerful spirits are all benevolent sunshine and rainbows answering prayers because they don't have anything else to do is....gibberish. Where it came from or how it got started is beyond my understanding.

Some of the oldest ceremonial magics are based on how to call the spirit of the dead so they can be questioned about the afterlife. Most of that came from the Lesser Key of Solomon, which is considered now to have been compiled right around the 17'th century, though the parts are cited by different sources going all the way back to the beginning of the 13'th century, so again the earliest you can really look at magic as a system to be taught to other people is around the 12'th century.


If you can describe another magical practice that falls outside those 3 classifications, then I would be happy to hear it.
But even energy of the "self" is spirit, and you don't have to invoke yourself, you simply need apply yourself, so that falls into the natural magic category because even a neolithic hunter would have imagined himself slaying his prey in order to prepare for the hunt, and as Buckland points out, that is the essential preparation of doing self magic.


So the next step is applying what magic is good for what situation. Theoretically of course.

If you want a new job...how exactly is natural magic going to help you with that? How is earth and fire, wind and water, going to help shape an opinion in the mind of another human, in such a way that they see you more favorably than they would have before?
And if you can't call on the elements to change or influence the mind of another human, should you imagine yourself calling on spirits or gods and asking them to nudge another persons thoughts in a way that can help you...remember the Pancake Hangover analogy. What are you willing to risk to attempt magic.

Ceremonial magic uses symbols in layers on layers of protections to encapsulate the practitioner from the very thing that they are trying to contact. And most of the ceremonial spells have a similar counter layer specifically for the spirit you are conjuring to commune with. So the practitioner is in a protective circle, summoning a spirit into another circle, inside a triangle. Why the double layer of protection if all you are doing is asking a favor?

COMMUNE...that's an important concept. Sharing. Community of Sharing. To Commune with Spirits is to share with them. What are you willing to share? What would you share if you don't know what a spirit would want.

This may sound alarmist, or too cautionary but I think just telling people to go do magic however they want, is similar to sticking someone in a fully stocked Chemistry Lab and saying, "Make Something Cool, everything you need is in the cabinets...even the deadly stuff".

Re: Magical Theory 101

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 1:38 am
by HopefulChild
Something that I found really difficult to comprehend when I first started reading about Wicca and Witchcraft was the consistent yet vague insistence that you needed to "be in tune with nature"..walk barefoot. Drink water from a pond. Go out naked in the moonlight.

Sounded ridiculous.

So I disassembled the elements of the phrase. Nature. Tune. Tune in to nature? Sure, lets run with that as a concept.
How do you tune in anything. Musical instruments, you adjust controls so that the sound that gets made, matches a preset frequency that is accepted by the collective as the "right" sound, in order to play in harmony with the other musicians. That concept is understandable, but how plausible is it?

What is another way we tune...We tune in radios. We modify the gain on our antennae (power supply) so that the interruption of incoming wave patterns climbs down the metal as interference and a series of components translates that interference by removing our own gain pattern and what is left is applied to the speaker and the waves we picked up are once again sound.
Those sounds were transmitted from the broadcast unit, traveled through the air, and inside the electromagnetic shell of the planet, a carrier wave, and hit that metal rod attached to the receiver and were converted back into information we could understand.

Ok...how plausible is that? Is there any narrative I can think of that support this, even anecdotaly? Well, there was that episode of Giligans Island where Giligans metal filling in his tooth was picking up radio signals and his ear canal turned into a speaker so when he opened his mouth music came out.
And it's funny because that is a TV version of real information from the 1920's and why the formulation of teeth fillings was changed. So research that.
How good of an antennae is a human being for radio signals?
Turns out we are terrible at picking up standard RF waves. Too much water in our body. We have out own overlapping and collapsing electromagnetic field densities that interfere with the signal and we have no way to filter our own power supply out of the combined signal so it would be gibberish anyway.

But wait...just because we are a bad antennae, does still mean we are an antennae!

You follow?

Every living thing, is an antennae. We DO receive and Broadcast radiation signals every moment for our entire lives from the moment that our brain chemistry ignites synapses.

Now we have known for a long time scientifically that humans generate multiple forms of radiation, EM fields, and infrared radiation in the form of heat.

So we know for a fact that humans are broadcasting 24 hours a day, all of our lives, low levels of radiation, RF waves, EM Fields, and IR waves.

Can we receive?

Well let's look at other animals. The oldest information about looking to animals for answers comes from Augury. This is the practice of getting information in the form of omens from the flight of individual birds, or flocks of birds.
Now flocks of birds are interesting. They fly loose formations in sometimes massive numbers, and still all seem to follow a "good enough" path to get where the want to go together.
Fish, Insects, mammal herds.
It seems many animals do this big follow the leader game. Is it random? are they just following the butt in front?

Funny thing about that. Mathematical and Computer simulations of bird and fish and herd movement patterns had historically been terrible. Just terrible for hundreds of years with math and decades with computers.
The problem is that in any given flock pattern the growth of the flock increases the potential follow targets lead times, to the point that a large flock could essentially create an infinite loop of following themselves inside a small space and never actually Go anywhere. In predictive computer models each bird is autonomous and is able to (in programming) search and index the position of every other bird in the flock so when it decides where to go, it knows where everyone else is already.
And STILL flocking didn't really work. Some kid at MIT in the late 80's was working on flocking algorithms for task optimization and he was getting nowhere so he kept digging into flocking math. Eventually he wrote a function that essentially worked as a "secret" signal. This signal was transmitted back through the ranks of birds and didn't give any specific position information, but it implied when a change was going to happen and that signal focused the birds and they narrowed their scope of attention.
Once this function ran through the first half of the birds the pattern started to stabilize and the flocking actually worked like bird and animal group movement.
During interviews he said that he was making a short cut. He had gotten so frustrated that he basically decided to shortcut the process and give the fake birds a way to communicate that wasn't sound, or sight. It was a "secret signal".
Doesn't matter how he imagined it worked. He was just trying to resolve his problem within a set of limits that didn't break his program.
It only matters that it worked.
That discovery implies that in the real world there is information being broadcast and received between animals that we can't yet measure.

Another simple example. For reals this one will be simple.

Forest Fires.
We all have an image in our minds of forest fires right? Animals herding and running for their lives away from the blaze.
Animals do this for miles around forest fires. They run into the highways, and back yards, and supermarkets. Whatever it takes sometimes.
There is an assumption that the smell of fire is what sets this off. OK...but animals up wind from a forest fire also run. They are up wind. They can't smell the smoke.

If a tire factory catches on fire, animals for miles around aren't running away. Animals only hundreds of yards away aren't running away.
Why is that?

Well, lets go to the tree of life. All living things are connected, genetically, and through the history of evolution. We know this. We see the genes. We measure them.
So just make a small concession if you will. If we can broadcast signals. And birds can, and fish, and buffalo, then maybe, something similar can happen with trees and insects. We know also that trees and insects all put out radiation, and EM fields, and IR waves.

So look again at the forest fire. Now in a single acre of forest how many living things are there? Hundreds? Yes if you are only counting mammals. So if you count everything, hundreds of thousands? let's go with a low number. One Hundred Thousand living things in one acre of forest if we count bugs, and birds and plants. If each of those living things broadcasts even a insanely weak signal..like, 0.01 kHz, but all of them start broadcasting at the same time, that is a signal strength of a little over 1 mhz. That can travel up to 30 miles....That signal is as strong as the CB radio in a big truck.
Collective signal strength.

So if we can broadcast, which we do already.
And we see that other animals can receive secret signal information...

What keeps humans from being able to receive more easily?

I don't know actually. But based on everything else I believe it is possible. Well, I'd say I know it is possible. I just don't have a functional methodology of teaching myself how to improve my tune in ability.

But I'm working on it.

Re: Magical Theory 101

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 6:47 am
by Seraphin
It was stated by the OP that " Behind all religion is a small piece of science. Though oft times ignored it remains." - The Judge

I say that is backwards. The first thing you are taught as a student of the sciences at university level is that all science comes from religion. Religion being humanities first attempts at understanding the greater complexities of life and organizing them so they could be applied and used to benefit everyone.
Astronomy, the oldest science, and the oldest religion.
Religion is an attempt to understand the purpose and essence of life, the world and the universe, while science is an attempt to understand how the purpose and essence of life and the universe works. Well, if there's a purpose and essence, that must have something to do with how it works. So yep it is more appropriate to say, "behind all science is small piece of religion."

In addition, all science started on one's 'belief and faith' and scientific people call them postulates or theories and people believe in them but we can't prove them yet. And sometimes these postulates or theories are wrong.

Science cannot operate except by belief and faith, even if they can't be verified. There will be no such thing as technology unless certain physical laws from ancient times are accepted, even though there's no guarantee that the law will repeat itself.
My sources are Buckland, Gardner, Crowley, A.E. White and Agrippa.
One thing I would like to remind everyone of before you read my concepts of magic. Arthur C. Clarke - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Technology also applies to thinking and applicable thought models. Just as taking matches to a caveman would have been magic, teaching thermodynamics to Jesus would have also seemed as though information from the gods was being directly delivered.

It is my firm assertion that magic has to fall within specific categories of function, just as any other task is accomplished by means fit to result in the "work" you want or need done.
Trying to make a toaster change a flat tire on your car will have no results. Ever!
Is there a failure in faith that causes this? A failure to understand the toaster enough that you can make it bend to your will? Did you not provide enough offerings to the toaster that it may be appeased and pleased and in so do great works on your behalf?
No. It's a toaster. It was never intended to change a flat tire on a car.
Bearing your examples in mind one will realize that there can be no real conflict between any scientific theory and magick. Magick is an abstract science and like introducing a match to a caveman or teaching thermodynamics to Jesus, it cannot be understood by most people if they don't change their perception and consciousness. The caveman has a prehistoric mind and he would never understood the science behind the match because his perception and consciousness is trapped in his own prehistoric limited logical categories and assumptions.

Another analogy, I would like to bring here is this: let's say you were a green tall blade of grass inside a morning mist. The mist condenses onto your stalk as droplets of water. What would you know of that mist? You can't see, hear, smell or in any other way perceive the mist until it reaches your stalk. But you know it's liquid as you feel the wetness of this droplets. But would you ever know what really is a mist? Obviously not.

The caveman's perception towards match, Jesus' perception towards thermodynamics and people nowadays perception towards magick are all limited in a similar fashion. Although, unlike the grass, humans are capable of seeing beyond themselves.

Magick belongs to fourth, fifth or perhaps sixth and seventh dimensional reality and nearly all people attempt to explain and understand it on the basis of three-dimensional concepts, assumptions, categories and tools only. Magick cannot fall within such methods and categories just like the science of match cannot fall within caveman analysis and thermodynamincs within Jesus' philosophy. A careful study of the findings of modern science and their philosophical meaning shows a convergence and harmony of science with Magick.

But don't worry, with every advance in science, magick has become more and more clearly discernible (just like how the match and thermodynamics become clearly discernible to us); so much so, that science is now searching for the ideal formula which would explain the nature of subtle energies, forces and such. With a little further insight it can be seen that the subtle energies and forces is the reflection of true magick in its pagan concept.
Imagine that someone got your cell phone number last night at a party. They spent all night being told what an awesome person you are. So the next morning after the party, they have a hangover because they drank too much so they start calling you and asking you to come make them pancakes and serve them breakfast in bed because they have a hangover, and someone told them you are an awesome person.
How quickly would you hang up on them? How quickly would you block their number? How likely would you be to go ahead and go to their house and trash the place as an object lesson to them to not hassle people they don't know because they were lazy or couldn't control their drinking?
This is exactly how most of my Deities (most belong to Daemonic pantheon)would react when I treat them as a divine answering machine or a fairy godmother. :lol:

This is the reason why I don't give advice to people when they're asking how will I offer petition and seek specific help to my Patron Deity? "I ask Him/Her but it seems I'm just talking to the wall!" The truth is, I can't really outline effective responses to various aspects of calling to our Deities. This is because first, I have no interest in providing pat formulas for divine answering machine success. Having your Deity is already your success. No power is intrinsic to the words or order of words in my prayers and other people's prayers. And second, our Deities can do whatever They want whenever They want. They are NOT subjected to us!

We should instead learn how to hear Their voice and not just how to ask and how to receive positive answers. We can't ask anything according to our selfish desires.
The concept that gods and powerful spirits are all benevolent sunshine and rainbows answering prayers because they don't have anything else to do is....gibberish. Where it came from or how it got started is beyond my understanding.
Aaah... most of my Deities do send 'evil' upon men. The idea is that all my Deities employed Themselves to dispense blessings to humans and to inflict themselves. They can be sunshine and rainbows but They can be darkness and storm too!

I also don't believe that there are Gods and Goddesses who are plainly negative and force for evil such as the adversaries in some mythos like Loki, Hades, Satan and Lucifer. That idea is anathema to my perspective because of the whiff of dualism inherent in it. Deities act in many different ways, but there are no two forces in the full sense or the word.

It was during the intertestamental period that the idea of 'malevolent Deities/ Spirits' and 'benevolent Deities/Spirits' spread among the people from different cultures. The inspiration for this thought or belief was the encounter with Zoroastrian dualism. This cosmology postulated two warning spiritual camps controlled by their leaders, the Zoroastrian 'God' and the 'Devil', and commanded by archangels and archdemons and their descending ranks of lesser spirits. They fought over the loyalty of humans, loyalty expressed in righteous and unrighteous behavior and evaluating in eternal life or everlasting punishment. Eventually, however, there would be an end, a victory by 'God', a savior to bring opposing powers to destruction. We all thought that Adversaries of some ancient mythos do act in this kind of (Zoroastrian) framework.

I always looked at my Deities (and I believe all of our Deities) as source of opposites. Even the God in the Bible YHWH. The prophet Isaiah said: "I form light and I create darkness; I make wholeness and I create evil".

I know this idea that our caring and loving Patron Deities could be the source of evil too is difficult to accept given the old view of Christian God as god of righteousness but it is actually impossible for my Deities not to do harm in one way or another. I believe my Deities endowed me the free-will to select or choose between creation and destruction. When I prefer the latter, my Deities have no choice but to set out my path towards destruction. It's not a question therefore of some Supreme Being cursing or harming me. It's merely a natural divine response to establish my steps towards whatever path I choose. I think this is more logical than the old belief in a vengeful god that distributes evil.

The study of this leads one to realization of man's essential oneness with His/Her Deities. In other words, it leads one to higher consciousness, the inner realization that all duality is illusion, that good and evil don't exist.
Some of the oldest ceremonial magics are based on how to call the spirit of the dead so they can be questioned about the afterlife. Most of that came from the Lesser Key of Solomon...
Hmm... spirits of the dead? Most ceremonial and ritual traditions incorporate some form or another of spirit work, but the entities aren't really earthbound human spirits or restless souls.

The type of spirits I'm working with when I'm practicing Solomonic Magick are planetary spirits, celestial beings, angels and Daemons -- Goetian and Teurgian entities.
So the next step is applying what magic is good for what situation. Theoretically of course.

If you want a new job...how exactly is natural magic going to help you with that? How is earth and fire, wind and water, going to help shape an opinion in the mind of another human, in such a way that they see you more favorably than they would have before?

And if you can't call on the elements to change or influence the mind of another human, should you imagine yourself calling on spirits or gods and asking them to nudge another persons thoughts in a way that can help you...remember the Pancake Hangover analogy. What are you willing to risk to attempt magic.

Ceremonial magic uses symbols in layers on layers of protections to encapsulate the practitioner from the very thing that they are trying to contact. And most of the ceremonial spells have a similar counter layer specifically for the spirit you are conjuring to commune with. So the practitioner is in a protective circle, summoning a spirit into another circle, inside a triangle. Why the double layer of protection if all you are doing is asking a favor?

COMMUNE...that's an important concept. Sharing. Community of Sharing. To Commune with Spirits is to share with them. What are you willing to share? What would you share if you don't know what a spirit would want.
As I said, magick is an abstract and perhaps the most complex science of all as it requires all the branches of it!
I always believe that there's a deeper reality that exists prior to what we can observe. We're living in a reality purely of potentials.

All physical things we use in magick such as herbs, crystals, stones, woods, animals, oils, etc. and even the abstract things such as elements, symbols, shapes, numbers, geometric figures and colours are essentially a force, a spirit.

The force and the spirit in these things is enclosed in several sheaths or layers of substance of increasing density, manifesting itself ultimately in the material world as the physical body or vessel or intelligence in the most abstract sense. As man advances in development, his consciousness passes from lower planes to the higher and he becomes more and more aware and able to utilize the energies, forces and spirits within the things in nature.

The spirit in all things contain within all kinds of properties and potentialities, and as man progresses, he unfolds the hidden powers of things, esoteric qualities, into the light.

But before man can unfold these things, I would agree that he should know how to commune with these forces and spirits first. By doing this, he's conquering and dominating the lower principles of material things.

Since magick is a science, I believe there's always a scientific reason, explanation and answer on how exactly is natural magick going to help a man with particular spell? How are the elements of nature going to help him with it? And why does he need to use certain symbols and shapes and place many shields when summoning a specific entity?

Why is it a witch would recommend for instance a blend of myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, calamus and olive essential oils in order to purify and cleanse one's aura from negative emotion and thought.

These particular herbs have many medicinal properties -- they are highly antiseptic, a good sanitizer and disinfectant, remove toxins, poisons, and heavy metals, make cells more permeable and have shown effectiveness against broad spectrum of viruses and bacteria. As the blend physically disinfect the physical body so as to energetically cleanse the aura of unwanted thoughts and emotions.

Since our physical body has counterpart in our astral body which interpenetrate our physical body and which exists in other plane, we can say that when our aura, energetic body or astral form is sicked so as our physical body.

If we allow a negative emotion for instance to dwell in our mind (which will eventually radiate and vibrate in our aura) and astral nasties and psychic leeches attach themselves to feed off this negative emotion, we cannot shake them off without injury to our aura. These entities brings energetic injuries and sickness to our aura. And as I pointed out earlier, our etheric and astral body appears to have characteristics similar to our physical body, with own vibratory rates and its own vital energies. Thus, if our aura is found to be sick, then the same will certainly happen to our physical body.

Our aura which is the source of our life-force exerts a tremendous influence over the physical health of a person. When our aura are positive and healthy, there is a complete flow of energy throughout the body. When our aura is negative, dis-ease, stress and blockage occur.

Now, the dominant classes of compounds in the aforementioned oils are:
  • Sesquiterpenes – Oxygenating capabilities can create an environment that makes it difficult for cancer cells to survive.
  • Monoterpenes – Hostile to microbes, boost the body's natural defenses.
I believe these physical compounds have astral and energetic counterpart too, it is the vital force, the spirit or the prana that is present in all matter. It is the one that cleanses the aura. It may be projected by willpower and thought. And the function of our astral body is to serve as the vehicle of the prana when one need's some magick. Like for example:
  • Sesquiterpenes – Because of its 'oxygenating' capabilities, I would reckon that this particular compound has the air element and air represents human mental level or the realm of thought. That being said, this compound is also capable to create an environment that makes it difficult for negative thoughts to survive. It means it can be used to clear one's mind or elevate or uplift one's mood. It's medicinal property also said that it helps to stop further growth of cancer cells, and interestingly, homeopathic doctor believes that cancer is caused by negative thoughts. For instance, cancer in the left breast is said to be born out of feminine issues. Cancer in the right breast is spurred by relational conflicts usually caused by chaotic, confusing and scattered thoughts. Cancer in the small intestines is a result of prolonged depressive thoughts. Angry thoughts, meanwhile, can result in cancer in the large intestine.
  • Monoterpenes – It is said that this compound fight microbes and boost body's defenses. It could be compared therefore to soldiers who tend to rise, like flames reaching up and out to consume and conquer alien forces of our body. Since it is "offensive and defensive" substance, clearly this compound has fire element which is represented by the life force and through the heat of our bodies. This firey compound combats the entities that have attached themselves in our aura or electro-magnetic field and strengthens our shields.
Thus, the oils serve us on two levels: astral and physical. If you want to use them in more levels, spiritual, mental, emotional, etc. then you can utilize it as long as you know what you're doing. The same principles I believe applies to all sort of spellcraft and magick. All things have its own physical compounds (medicinal properties, physical uses, etc, etc.) and all these compounds have astral counterpart and are sustained by forces and energies like the prana. However, in our physical world, 100% of the time, they're in a very disguised and hidden fashion. The subtle and magickal properties of these physical compounds are concealed and encoded and this is comparable, perhaps, to the way an e‑mail or an image might be encrypted and encoded when sent over the Internet.

Every material compounds contain some glimmer of spiritual or energetic spark. If you choose to utilize magick, then you could reveal that spark within each thing. I really hope I'm making sense here. smiley_dance

Anyway since I don't want to bore you anymore with my scientific magick explanations, I want to end this novel by saying that if you’re going to identify yourself as a "Magickian", then you have to have a modified version of the reality. There is a established order that governs mundane and magickal works.

Re: Magical Theory 101

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 11:01 am
by HopefulChild
I find this fascinating, and amusing.

It was very enjoyable to me, to read your lesson Seraphin! You are a good teacher. I feel like we were saying the same thing. (save for the explanation about object spirit and your lesson in alchemy/herbalism/essential essences)

My intention was to lay a frame of reference for people with an 8'th grade comprehension level, which is what the average American is working with.

I said "Molecules are important because molecules make up all of the things we know about , How many things do you use every day that are made of Molecules?"

You said, "Yes, molecules are important, Now i'll explain unified particle theory and why it's important also".

You may be making assumptions about how quickly people can integrate information.

I agree with the reality that all materials share or have spirit. But just stating that, isn't the same as building a model inside the individuals mind from smaller steps, so that they can then ask the questions themselves that bridge the aspects of information either correctly or incorrectly because even incorrect results, result in learning, once you apply the information and discover you are incorrect.

I'm applying Llaurilard's Theoretical Conversational Model of learning. In this venue, it seems the best application since we don't really have a captive audience.

My second deployment was the next thing I posted about sending and receiving signals and information throughout the platform of living things.

I would urge anyone who read Seraphin Murmurs lesson, or other lessons, and feels lost or not smart enough to understand, to keep at it. Don't give up. Pick ONE or TWO things out of it, and research those. Trying to acknowledge it as a whole would be difficult for anyone who hasn't spent a decade or so studying these principles and sciences already.

Thank you Seraphin for such a broad and expansive lesson. It's a fantastic example of how information integration creates palaces of understanding from all the individual bricks we are picking up and moving as we learn.

Re: Magical Theory 101

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2015 10:44 pm
by Seraphin
HopefulChild wrote:Something that I found really difficult to comprehend when I first started reading about Wicca and Witchcraft was the consistent yet vague insistence that you needed to "be in tune with nature"..walk barefoot. Drink water from a pond. Go out naked in the moonlight.

Sounded ridiculous.

So I disassembled the elements of the phrase. Nature. Tune. Tune in to nature? Sure, lets run with that as a concept.
How do you tune in anything. Musical instruments, you adjust controls so that the sound that gets made, matches a preset frequency that is accepted by the collective as the "right" sound, in order to play in harmony with the other musicians. That concept is understandable, but how plausible is it?

What is another way we tune...We tune in radios. We modify the gain on our antennae (power supply) so that the interruption of incoming wave patterns climbs down the metal as interference and a series of components translates that interference by removing our own gain pattern and what is left is applied to the speaker and the waves we picked up are once again sound.
Those sounds were transmitted from the broadcast unit, traveled through the air, and inside the electromagnetic shell of the planet, a carrier wave, and hit that metal rod attached to the receiver and were converted back into information we could understand.

Ok...how plausible is that? Is there any narrative I can think of that support this, even anecdotaly? Well, there was that episode of Giligans Island where Giligans metal filling in his tooth was picking up radio signals and his ear canal turned into a speaker so when he opened his mouth music came out.
And it's funny because that is a TV version of real information from the 1920's and why the formulation of teeth fillings was changed. So research that.
How good of an antennae is a human being for radio signals?
Turns out we are terrible at picking up standard RF waves. Too much water in our body. We have out own overlapping and collapsing electromagnetic field densities that interfere with the signal and we have no way to filter our own power supply out of the combined signal so it would be gibberish anyway.

But wait...just because we are a bad antennae, does still mean we are an antennae!

You follow?

Every living thing, is an antennae. We DO receive and Broadcast radiation signals every moment for our entire lives from the moment that our brain chemistry ignites synapses.

Now we have known for a long time scientifically that humans generate multiple forms of radiation, EM fields, and infrared radiation in the form of heat.

So we know for a fact that humans are broadcasting 24 hours a day, all of our lives, low levels of radiation, RF waves, EM Fields, and IR waves.

Can we receive?
You call it radiation, I call it "vibration". But I think we're just saying the same thing after all.

Are you aware about the "String theory" in physics? Ooops :oops: Please excuse my scientific, reasoning mind and ramble again, but your comments are provoking me :lol: . It says the universe is made of multiple sorts and types of vibrations, movements and lights. The vibrations and movements are called "strings." And vibrations of the strings generate material, a matter.

How does that work? Well, string theory postulates that vibration translates into energy -- the higher the frequency, the greater the energy. Energy, Einstein has already explained, translates into matter -- as in E=mc2. So, using the speed of light as the exchange rate, these vibrations generate particles of matter.

All matters, corporeal or non-corporeal, sentient or non-sentient, are tune being played by a string. And according to the tune a string plays, so will be the properties, compositions, qualities and attributes of the particle it generates. There are many attributes and properties to a particle, and string theory tries to explain all of them, partly by vibrating these strings through multiple planes and dimensions. But the main fundamental property of the string is its vibration frequency.

We as human beings that have material body (matter) too have our own vibratory rates too. Our vibrations are greatly influenced by our will, intentions, thoughts, emotions, feelings and words.
So if we can broadcast, which we do already.
And we see that other animals can receive secret signal information...

What keeps humans from being able to receive more easily?

I don't know actually. But based on everything else I believe it is possible. Well, I'd say I know it is possible. I just don't have a functional methodology of teaching myself how to improve my tune in ability.

But I'm working on it.
We can receive signal info not only to animals but to the woods, trees, plants, stones, rivers, springs, heavenly bodies, and even to our self-made symbols and crafts.

I think the metaphysical concept "like attracts like" is sufficient enough to explain how humans be able to receive vibratory information easily. If your will, intentions and thoughts are focused on knowing and understanding the messages that the animals or rivers are telling to us, you will attract their thoughts too. Our vibrations attract others of similar vibrations to us and we notice this because we're sensitive enough to these subtle qualities.

Many ancient texts and writings described how the people at that time hear the songs sung by the stars, the moon, the rocks, the waves of the sea, the leaves of the trees, chickens, dogs, toads and many other critters. Each critter, it seems, hums a different tune.

The notes of each being's song can only be understood in my opinion when we tune into them and hum like them. It's not learning the language or words of rock or the animals or the moon as we know words, but a manifestation of a spirit-inspired creative thought. As each thought of the spirit or force within the matter oscillates, and it is perfectly bonded with our will and thought from which vibration is generated. When our will and thought amplifies its signal, their song is magnified and we'll understand their messages. Should the signal decrease, our understanding winds itself down too.
You may be making assumptions about how quickly people can integrate information.

I agree with the reality that all materials share or have spirit. But just stating that, isn't the same as building a model inside the individuals mind from smaller steps, so that they can then ask the questions themselves that bridge the aspects of information either correctly or incorrectly because even incorrect results, result in learning, once you apply the information and discover you are incorrect.

I'm applying Llaurilard's Theoretical Conversational Model of learning. In this venue, it seems the best application since we don't really have a captive audience.
I understand that. I'm just merely sharing my views and principles I acquired over the years. It's been a while since someone (unintentionally) aroused me to share something like this again here but you may notice that I'm a bit longwinded!

Also I am not meaning to sound frighteningly intelligent folk here (I really hope my comments will not sound that way). I just feel sometimes I need a challenge to know to myself how broad I am when in regard to these sorts of topic. :|

I'm not really more intelligent than other people. It's just that I probably have more experience and focus. So my advice listen to Hopefulchild's advice, keep learning hard, read more, study what the best in your path or magick, and stay focused.

Re: Magical Theory 101

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2015 8:07 pm
by HopefulChild
Yeah there is a reason I doubled up on analogies when I didn't really need to.

The forest fire information illustrates the living things broadcasting concept. I used the musical instrument analogy to preface the later connection to string theory.

It's one step to activate someones imagination with the idea that living things can and do communicate whether we know it or sense it or not, by way of energy that we can only kind of measure with our current technology. Anyone who isn't a sociopath and who has even a minor amount of empathy for another living thing has experienced the wave sympathy of communicating with our energy and not just the "sign language" we see and hear and feel with our physical senses. If you are talking to someone who has been fortunate enough to have experienced a real love connection in their current life, then it's much easier to explain and they pick it up faster.

But then to tell that same person, AND you can do that with a rock!!! Or a star. Or a galaxy if you really wanted to.

That's when the dull look crosses through their eyes when they've withdrawn into their own mind and you can almost hear them saying, "Oh man...this one is nuts. I was interested till he went crazy pants on me, I'm out".

In my BOS for my kids I do something similar, but by the time I broach the subject of "broadcast & receive" in my book, I've covered a much larger range of physical science topics and my person cosmological model so that they can understand why I have the beliefs I have.

Me personally, I think string theory is compelling but it isn't a solution, to a problem that only exists when you choose to believe that string theory is a solution to any problem. Can you follow that?
String theory has moved away from what was originally a "bridge" concept to help show there was continuity and some harmony between relativity (S&G) and quantum mechanics. But more and more of the principle discoveries and extrapolations of string theory have driven string theory fans into the string theory camp.

As soon as you set up camp and plant your flag, you've stopped exploring. You are just building a fort from which to lob heavy objects at some other fort and to defend heavy objects being hurled at you.

I find that the more interesting ideas come from those people who have decided that the search for a unified theory is a waste of time. Just like computer scientists who have decided that the search for Ai is also pointless and should be abandoned for a much more functional and rewarding concept of literal state management.

So classical physicists are still chewing on the cyclic universe issues, and string theorists on the infinite dimensions universe and a smaller group of people are looking at the possibility that the reality is a combination of the two with Endless Universe theory. And this is oddly enough bridged by quantum mechanics, to which both relativists and string theorists have to concede different avenues of hard truth in respect to their chosen path.

It's very similar to what I have witnessed in learning about my path toward obtaining faith. I was so overwhelmed with possibilities when I started researching Wicca, that I really don't know what I am trying to achieve and the more I learn the more it seems like I am supposed to specialize. But I already know from science that narrow field specialization can lead to new territory or extinction, so I've been trying to take a step back. That's when I start to see patterns where people start pagan as a blanket term, then say, wiccan, then shaman, then they decide shamanism isn't right, so they say wiccan again but now their gardnerian wiccan, then they break up with their boyfriend and they are dianic wiccan, or they decide that they are changing directions and nature isn't enough, so now they are working with spirits.

It's very interesting to see the similar patterns repeated, but in relation to aspects of the world that mainstream science has decided must be avoided and isolated and made into "superstition".

And I don't blame science for that actually. It was a survival technique. Science had to make a choice at one point and it decided it wanted to survive and live on and see and learn and do more. So it decided that anything to do with the more subtle aspects of humanity that could possibly interfere with what the church deemed the exclusive property of the church, (the soul, divine right, determination of species) were 100% off limits.
I blame the church. But that is another conversation.

And I don't think you are being a smarty pants or superior, I just don't want people to feel intimidated. Once you reach a level of understanding where you are integrating ideas into your model really easily, theoretical conversations really become exciting little side trips and new concept or the blending of concepts in new ways is as you stated, a challenge to your model and it's always exciting, even when it's frustrating.

I spent a long time, feeling superior to anyone who was superstitious in any way. I pitied their ignorance and sometimes fancied myself a benevolent force trying to free them from their self inflicted mental slavery. So yeah. I was a jerk.

It took a good year of contemplation about why I was so unhappy with the world to understand some hard truths of my own. And one of those truths was that everything about the world and the systems I had studied and currently study in science all pointed in the direction of MORE. But everyone around me kept saying that there was no more.

The only people talking about more, were the crazies who wanted me to pay money to their imaginary friend in the sky who really needed a private jet for his extra special pals to ride around in.

So I'm trying to break the concept of magic down in the way I wish I could have read it.

Even my "wicca" for dummies books were almost functionally useless in giving me any kind of opinion on mechanics.
I just wanted a simple answer from which to start learning. "Where is it that magic is supposed to come from".

No where did I read, Magic comes first from yourself, then from nature, then the wider expanse of reality where other forms of existence are possible and also possibly accessible to you.