Finally Putting Some Thoughts Down

[Arnox]

Before I even start this thread, I should say I don't think I'm gonna really reach anyone here with this, but I feel I should still write something anyway, both to fill the gap before I start uploading videos again and also just to get some of my own thoughts out there into the general public concerning just what the fuck I've been doing with my time for the past year at least, and it has been a packed fucking year. I've been keeping a personal journal of all my investigations, findings, and experiences for a while now, but sometimes, there just isn't a substitute to talking about your experiences with others.

And a small warning. If you haven't noticed yet, this thread is in Fringe Division. WE ARE GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT SOME OCCULT SHIT. Although I'm definitely going to try to keep things as grounded as possible and only talk about what I feel I absolutely need to get into, you have been warned. Sometimes, reality isn't the neat and sterile place we think it is.

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So... One of the big problems with talking about occult shit is that this field is filled with more than a little amount of flat-out insane people. And scammers. It's a very common misconception, even among some practitioners, that when one accepts the premise of magick at all (there it is, the scary 'M' word (and yes, the 'k' at the end is intentional)), one also needs to accept a bunch of other things like Atlantis, Bigfoot, and lizard people.

"Well, if you believe in MAGICK, you clearly must have stopped all critical thinking." I don't expect Sanctuarians to be any different in this regard. In fact, it'll probably be worse. But it should be known that even in the good old TOTSE days, these things were heavily discussed and even taken somewhat seriously. And as we all know, on Sanctuary, we do not shrink from something just because it might be strange and unorthodox.

Still though, while all that is well and good, that doesn't explain why I'M fucking around with this stuff. Well, for me, about a year ago, I had a spiritual experience that simply could NOT be explained by standard logic. This led me down a long, long, LONG rabbit hole which put me in the place I am currently at now, both for better and for worse. Regardless though, when that experience first happened to me, and when I was investigating things further, I was VERY harsh with what I read. Very cynical. Almost everything was put under the magnifying glass. "Why do spirits do this? Why do magickal practitioners do that? That's stupid. Oh wait, that makes sense. Hm, this is interesting! Oh wait, no it's not... But THIS right here... What the fuck is that... ?"

I had come from my experiences in the LDS church as a goody two shoes "mormon boy" to looking up Aleister Crowley and reading about how what an evil scumbag he was, but how he, nevertheless, advanced the field of magick by centuries. Which segues nicely into reputation. Magickal practitioners in popular thought often have a pretty bad one. They kinda get roasted on both sides. We're either delusional retards playing with nonsense who can't summon so much as a wisp of luck, or we're incredibly dangerous Satan summoners who need to be Inquisitioned. Short-bus riders or demon-possessed witches.

Tough crowd...

Another misconception is that magickal practice has stayed static throughout history and this is very much not the case. Like technology, magick actually has a pretty clear lineage of progression as long as you don't go too far back. From the shamanic days of the Stone Age to the deific days of the Bronze Age to the grimoire days of the Renaissance (probably what you immediately think of when someone mentions magick) to the renewal of interest it had in the Victorian era to the scientific-esque developments and experimentation in the Information Age. There's also many schools of thought surrounding it now and also a distinct debate of philosophy it invites.

Despite all that though, magick has gotten and is still getting dragged through the mud. Hell, I was the same way. Again, I was paranoid about all this even though some undeniable shit had happened to me. But as I got further and further in with my studies on this subject, my views on it softened more and more, especially with my own little experiments using it until I finally found myself talking to different pagan deities through a third party. And yes, more unexplainable stuff happened that verified these deities' identities. Ask a bunch of people about all this phenomena. Witches call it spells. Christians call it prayer. Spiritualists call it manifestation. Atheists call it the placebo effect. Scientists call it quantum physics. Everyone's arguing over its name, yet no one is really denying its existence though.

Do I have all the answers? No. I don't. Maybe one day, scientists will find out that reality is actually run by an infinite number of mice pedaling on mini-exercise machines. Or maybe I completely change my opinion on all this and say magick really is retarded or evil. Who the fuck knows? But at least for now, with many, many experiments under my belt and a ton of books read and looked at and a bunch of people talked to, I feel that I can at least safely say that THERE'S SOME REAL SHIT GOING ON HERE, FOLKS. But I don't feel that I'll be able to share all this with anyone here and not hit a big wall of inevitable skepticism, and that makes me both a little proud of you all and a little sad as well.

Cthaeh: Thats the price you pay for civilization though.
Kvothe: What price?
Cthaeh: Arrogance. You assume you know everything.

It is an often repeated practice at Sanctuary to question everything. And we all nod to that and pay such lip service, but do we actually fully practice that idea? I guess if one is going to take away anything at all from this giant thread, it would probably be that we should question our very reality sometimes. Our view in general is so narrow. We have this one perspective, and though we try and expand it as best we can, we are all still only human.

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody KNEW the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody KNEW the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow...

If someone asks, I'll do a followup on this thread with some more details, but otherwise, I'll probably just leave it here.

 

[Houseman]

When you start advocating for transgenderism, that's when we'll know that you're demon possessed.

 

[Arnox]

When you start advocating for transgenderism,

I mean, haven't I already, in a way?

 

[Houseman]

I mean, haven't I already, in a way?

 

[Arnox]

I HAVE BROUGHT PEACE AND PROSPERITY TO MY WEBSITE!

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

If you're going to say magick, instead of magic, you're going to have to define what you mean for both. It obviously has different connotations for different people.

Nothing supernatural exist, and if it does, it's natural. Like with the god(s) of the gaps, we've come so far in our understanding of the world that it leaves very little room for the unexplainable, outside "neURodiVergEnT" people, and that's all in their brain realm. Not reality.

 

[Arnox]

If you're going to say magick, instead of magic, you're going to have to define what you mean for both.

Ah, that is fair.

Basically, magick is used as a word to easily separate actual serious in-real-life magic from stage magic or fictional magic. When one says, "magick" you now know immediately with that one 'k' at the end that someone is talking about actual spiritual energy manipulation performed in real life. And I am purposefully being very vague here when I say "spiritual energy manipulation" because no practitioner truly knows for sure what exactly they are manipulating or how exactly the change is being carried out. Maybe it has a scientific molecular explanation. Maybe it's purely spiritual energy. I've heard a fair few theories, and I'm sure some would even say that they know for sure what it is without a doubt, but there's nothing really for sure confirmed about it, one way or the other.

Instead, I will simply define magick as summoning, banishing, or affecting change of some kind through one's inner willpower in real life and leave it at that.

Nothing supernatural exist, and if it does, it's natural.

This kinda goes back to our religious talks we have had. One thing I think you really should keep in mind is that even science doesn't have all the answers. I'm sure if we were advanced enough, we could fully define what magick is and how it operates on a molecular level, fitting it into a scientific model of some kind, but science clearly isn't there yet, so for now, we're all just going to have to accept the fact that science doesn't know everything, and neither do you, Vendor. Hell, the CIA used to run experiments on remote viewing that were even somewhat successful, believe it or not. Let me know if you need proof of that.

For further details (By the way, for some reason, the author clipped this video really badly, so it will repeat halfway through.):

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vBvJxx7Oqc)

Note again that I am NOT saying to abandon your critical thinking. In fact, in this field especially, critical thinking becomes even more invaluable as there's many lies, mistaken assumptions, pitfalls, and even massive fucking landmines that could make a practitioner turn quite literally insane and/or suicidal. Stumbling about like a monkey casting random spells that you found on the internet is liable to fuck you or someone else's life up in a fun rainbow multitude of ways. Best case scenario, nothing happens.

we've come so far in our understanding of the world that it leaves very little room for the unexplainable

Have we, Vendor? Tell me... What EXACTLY causes gravity? We know how gravity is affected, but what is actually CAUSING it? Tell me, how is it that a black hole, which is a star collapsed into itself, have literally zero volume? And how is it that black holes will still fade away, given enough time? Or, let's try something much closer to home. Why do we dream? Why is it that we still cannot find what exactly is causing Alzheimer's?

On their faces, these are just basic questions, but we still have no suitable answer to them to this day. No, man... Our knowledge of things is still very incomplete. But we DO have the tools of critical thinking which are quite invaluable (and which, I still need to make a thread on someday), so we can get there eventually.

 

[Gauche]

What EXACTLY causes gravity? We know how gravity is affected, but what is actually CAUSING it?

Yo Mama so fat

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Ah, that is fair.

Basically, magick is used as a word to easily separate actual serious in-real-life magic from stage magic or fictional magic. When one says, "magick" you now know immediately with that one 'k' at the end that someone is talking about actual spiritual energy manipulation performed in real life. And I am purposefully being very vague here when I say "spiritual energy manipulation" because no practitioner truly knows for sure what exactly they are manipulating or how exactly the change is being carried out. Maybe it has a scientific molecular explanation. Maybe it's purely spiritual energy. I've heard a fair few theories, and I'm sure some would even say that they know for sure what it is without a doubt, but there's nothing really for sure confirmed about it, one way or the other.

Instead, I will simply define magick as summoning, banishing, or affecting change of some kind through one's inner willpower in real life and leave it at that.

So in your definition, magic is the word for fake magick done through trickery and illusion, while magick is the "real" magic. Got it.

By the way, there's been countless scientific tests on the supposed existence of souls and spirits and ki/chi and aura's, and nothing of the sort exist. To be entirely fair, maybe we could affect our own bodies magnetic field though. Somehow. It still needs to be verified, and until such a time, most are likely just changing their own brains into thinking it's happened.

This kinda goes back to our religious talks we have had. One thing I think you really should keep in mind is that even science doesn't have all the answers. I'm sure if we were advanced enough, we could fully define what magick is and how it operates on a molecular level, fitting it into a scientific model of some kind, but science clearly isn't there yet, so for now, we're all just going to have to accept the fact that science doesn't know everything, and neither do you, Vendor.

I never said it does, but the area in which gods and magic..sorry, magick, used to rule undisputed have turned out to be smaller...way, way smaller than initially claimed. And it has yet to be proven it rules anything at all.

Have we, Vendor? Tell me... What EXACTLY causes gravity? We know how gravity is affected, but what is actually CAUSING it? Tell me, how is it that a black hole, which is a star collapsed into itself, have literally zero volume? And how is it that black holes will still fade away, given enough time? Or, let's try something much closer to home. Why do we dream? Why is it that we still cannot find what exactly is causing Alzheimer's?

On their faces, these are just basic questions, but we still have no suitable answer to them to this day. No, man... Our knowledge of things is still very incomplete. But we DO have the tools of critical thinking which are quite invaluable (and which, I still need to make a thread on someday), so we can get there eventually.

Gravity is a property of large quantities of mass. A black hole is a huge collection of compressed mass. So compressed that it doesn't take up volume. The atoms have broken down into their basic building blocks and become sub-atomic like neutrons. I fades away because the alignment of sub-atomic particles is unstable, and when atoms are broken apart it causes excess particles to be converted into energy, like radiation. Which feeds back into the black hole and only allows energy without mass to escape. We dream because it's our enlarged sapient brains way of categorizing memories into long-term storage, and to subconsciously learn what to do and not to do. Alzheimer's is the attenuation of myelin sheets and mutations causing protein folding to create blockages, ending with disruption of the neuron pathways.

Just because we don't have a complete answer doesn't mean it's demons or magick or supernatural.

 

[Arnox]

By the way, there's been countless scientific tests on the supposed existence of souls and spirits and ki/chi and aura's, and nothing of the sort exist.

Again, wrong. See the aformentioned CIA tests involving remote viewing. There's more out there that I can pull up, but that alone should really be the smoking gun you're looking for.

the area in which gods and magic..sorry, magick, used to rule undisputed have turned out to be smaller

It's like a car. We see the car (the universe). We see how it works (science). We see how we ourselves can drive it (technology). But just because we see and know what a car is and how it operates, it doesn't preclude someone else (deities) getting into the driver seat of that car and controlling it too.

As I said, dude, I have myself seen a lot of inexplicable shit since starting this journey, and if you go into the magickal community and talk to people in it, you'll hear tons of their stories too. Now, yes, not all of them are going to be true for one reason or another, but nevertheless, I know for a fact that some of those stories are indeed fully legitimate.

Gravity is a property of large quantities of mass.

Yes. Why is it a property of mass? Why should mass have such an attribute in the first place?

The atoms have broken down into their basic building blocks and become sub-atomic like neutrons.

But sub-atomic particles still have volume, and especially a star's worth of them. Where did it go, Vendor?

Which feeds back into the black hole and only allows energy without mass to escape.

Why energy without mass? How can energy not have mass? It would have to stop existing entirely to not have any mass.

We dream because it's our enlarged sapient brains way of categorizing memories into long-term storage, and to subconsciously learn what to do and not to do.

We don't know if that's really why or not. Just a theory. And for the record, I think that's wrong. I dream all the damn time and 99% of the time, the dream has nothing to do with the day before.

Alzheimer's is the attenuation of myelin sheets and mutations causing protein folding to create blockages, ending with disruption of the neuron pathways.

We don't know if that's the real root cause. Because if we knew, we'd at least be so much closer to solving it or at least relieving it somewhat. We have done pretty much neither.

Just because we don't have a complete answer doesn't mean it's demons or magick or supernatural.

Sure, I agree with that for sure. But that's not really my point. I don't know if any of the above questions I presented have a spiritual answer, but my main point there was simply that science didn't have all the answers either. For example, imagine if it's the 1800s and I start talking to a scientist back then about the general theory of relativity. They'd think I'd gone crazy. "Gravity affects the passage of time? Preposterous!" And now today, I'm talking to you about magick and how many people have had successful results with it in a vast multitude of ways.

"Manifestation through willpower? Preposterous!"

But believe it or not, it still happens... A lot.

 

[Houseman]

Basically, magick is used as a word to easily separate actual serious in-real-life magic from stage magic or fictional magic. When one says, "magick" you now know immediately with that one 'k' at the end that someone is talking about actual spiritual energy manipulation performed in real life.

You can tell that this is internet-only tomfoolery because there's no difference in pronunciation when the word is spoken aloud.

 

[Arnox]

You can tell that this is internet-only tomfoolery

No, this was actually established a long damn time ago. I think Aleister Crowley was the first to suggest this, though I might be wrong about that.

 

[Signa]

You can tell that this is internet-only tomfoolery because there's no difference in pronunciation when the word is spoken aloud.

I've seen it before the internet, but I always took it as just a flavorful way to say Magic in a fantasy setting.

 

[Arnox]

I've seen it before the internet, but I always took it as just a flavorful way to say Magic in a fantasy setting.

So, I did a bit more research, and apparently, magick was simply the ye olde way of saying "magic", but later on Crowley did indeed take that word, brush it off, and repurpose it in order to have a clear delineation between actual magic and fake magic.