Does divination prove that we don't have free will?

[𝕳𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖊]

Is everything we do predestined?

 

[cmdrjamz]

Predestined? Not at all.

I actually ran an experiment once with a series of predictions about the same binary-outcome event, trying to gauge how strong a prediction was over time. The purpose was to both see if predictions changed, as well as see what the modulation was of strength of predictions as they got closer to the time of the event. Predictions changed over time. It was proof of concept, but valid all the same.

I've posted my theory in a bit more detail previously, but my theory is that we have free will and it doesn't matter 90% of the time. If you eat chicken or fish for dinner, it's not changing the outcome of your life 5 years from now. It's not predestination, it's that we rarely want to really rock the boat and do anything that will result in big changes over the long term.

Then 10% of the time we have significant free will and changes are well-known points of decisions that impact us. It's not your wedding day, it's the singular moment you decide to get over your nerves and talk to that pretty girl. It's not the day your kids are born, it's the day you made a decision to schedule a work trip two weeks earlier than usual, making your child a Pisces and not an Aquarius. It's not that you change how you drive home some days to avoid traffic, it's that one day your gut TOLD you to turn left and go the long way, and you didn't listen, and got in an accident that paralyzed you from the waist down.

Some people act in ways where they never get on a sort of autopilot track that will run a certain way no matter what, and their lives are always full of big ups and downs. Every day they do stuff that might change how their life goes, but that's because every day they have no attachment to the path to prevent them from dropping everything and going to Vegas for a month because their buddy was driving that way. It's a great way to live in your early life until you find a path that leads somewhere better than you are. It's why (IMO) a lot of people live crazy lives and suddenly, shockingly, settle down out of nowhere.

To @FireBorn 's question about being pre-programmed, sure, in a sense you're right. But that's something else taking advantage of your free will. You haven't lost it, you've lost agency over it. The effort put into manipulating people and their decisions shows that free will is a thing, and that it takes work to convince someone to use their free will how someone else wants.

Beautifully said! That makes sense. Life is often predictable because we live predictable lives. We perform specific actions to achieve specific predictable means so it might feel like we don’t have free will. However, if we activate during decision points like approaching a girl, or stopping at a red light, we can exercise our free will. I would argue that those ‘acts of free will’ don’t necessarily imply free will. To me, it would be more accurate to call that your sense of agency. You may feel a stronger sense of agency(SoA) during those moments that may still just be a product of the intricate wiring of fate. After all what if their was some cue for you to have those feelings. In my opinion, their is no homunculus.

Anyways it was still a good point.

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 5:55 AM

Everything that is now is the result of what came before. Why would this be any different if you shifted your focus one second into the future? A year? 50 years? The world is causal. Your thoughts and actions and determinations are instilled in you because of that which came before in your life. You may not be able to point the finger at the direct or indirect causation, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

Right! It’s like you’re honing yourself against the stoniness of reality. What you were affects what you will become. I always thought the “I didn’t choose to be born” argument was great example of how we don’t have free will. You’re born and you have no choice. Before you know it your biology kicks in. Instinct, form, behaviors are all forced on you and have no choice in the matter. Does that make sense?

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 5:55 AM

Everything that is now is the result of what came before. Why would this be any different if you shifted your focus one second into the future? A year? 50 years? The world is causal. Your thoughts and actions and determinations are instilled in you because of that which came before in your life. You may not be able to point the finger at the direct or indirect causation, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

Right! It’s like you’re honing yourself against the stoniness of reality. What you were affects what you will become. I always thought the “I didn’t choose to be born” argument was great example of how we don’t have free will. You’re born and you have no choice. Before you know it your biology kicks in. Instinct, form, behaviors are all forced on you and have no choice in the matter. Does that make sense?

 

[moonbow]

I don’t believe there could ever be such a thing as free will to begin with, if you look at it from the perspective that we all exist and there are parallel dimensions of us, and we have no idea how many there really are, then the version of you that exists could do anything any of them have ever done. That, and it’s physically impossible for you to do something that you just can’t do, then that’s really the parameters you work with. You have as much free will as your body would allow on this plane of existence.
Since that might seem a bit gibberish, let me give you an example; take for instance your hand, now, you can manipulate your fingers any which way you choose but you can not do so in a way that is impossible, and the extremes will leave you suffering the consequences, and if you have no hand at all then that’s the end of being able to conduct it how you choose. And I think that’s basically how it works

Yeah but that's only in this very limited dimension, right? And only as long as you are still unawakened? Just a little shift from this dimension to another one (lets call it the astral) would already allow to do almost infintely more things with your astral body and energy. And saints and immortals are said to be able to change their bodies and do "impossible" things even in this physical dimension because of their enlightenment and ability to manipulate energy. So are we just limited by our own ignorance? It would seem like the higher the enlightenment, the freer the will?

 

[intensity4ever]

Kindred,

Divination doesn’t conclusively prove we lack free will; instead it maps tendencies, probable branches, and constraints so we can see where choice matters most. Many good points were raised here: some events and conditions (birth circumstances, biology, conditioning) limit options and feel “predetermined,” while our moment-to-moment agency still exists — whether we call that full free will or constrained agency depends on your model. Divination often reads the most likely if-then branch given current causes and attention (Ziran, Mannimarco, nargile57), but those branches can change as consciousness, intention, or unexpected actions intervene (Swampdweller900, Aldebaran). Conditioning and external forces bias our choices (FireBorn, Digiquo), which is why occult work aims to break default patterns and expand real options rather than deny choice exists. Practically: treat divination as guidance about probable outcomes and leverage it to increase your agency — push back when you want to, follow the flow when it suits, and remember that some constraints are real while others can be shifted by focused will and context.

In solidarity,
The Shamanic Unicorn Seer
“She Who Knows”

 

[Ohana]

My opinion is best described as: we are all actors in a play. The set is predetermined, the roles are predetermined, but any actor at any time can go off script

That is a really interesting idea the fact that we are players in a play. I kind of wonder what going offscript would entail? Would it be acting out of the character that you built up?

I'm just thinking of this scenario what if someone went off script for the entire production and then in one moment when on script but because they went off script for so long it looks like thier going off script?

Or what about if there's limits. Like depending on your role you have more option to go on or off script. What would ad-libbing be then? A mix of on and off script or improvisation?

Its really interesting to think about fate like this where your set and role are predetermined but how much you are on script is not.

Post automatically merged: Thursday at 5:06 AM

But that got me thinking. Can you gi offscript the entire time?

Can you escape yourself?

Can you escape your role? Can you just leave the story and never follow a script, a character again?

Or is that accounted for and part of the script? Is it even escape at that point. Can people change?

 

[Veracity]

Yeah but that's only in this very limited dimension, right? And only as long as you are still unawakened? Just a little shift from this dimension to another one (lets call it the astral) would already allow to do almost infintely more things with your astral body and energy. And saints and immortals are said to be able to change their bodies and do "impossible" things even in this physical dimension because of their enlightenment and ability to manipulate energy. So are we just limited by our own ignorance? It would seem like the higher the enlightenment, the freer the will?

I mean, can you sprout wings? Unless you’re able to do something completely out of the realm of what you would physically be capable of, I’d say that still holds true. It’s just kinda physics at this point, while strapped to the physical plane, you must adhere to its parameters. I’m not doubting your ability of ascension or anything, but unless you can pull something back from an alternate dimension or higher plane to your physical body, I’d say you’re still acting within the confines of not-free will. Not to say it’s predetermined, there’s a lot of variables.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 5:18 PM

Yeah but that's only in this very limited dimension, right? And only as long as you are still unawakened? Just a little shift from this dimension to another one (lets call it the astral) would already allow to do almost infintely more things with your astral body and energy. And saints and immortals are said to be able to change their bodies and do "impossible" things even in this physical dimension because of their enlightenment and ability to manipulate energy. So are we just limited by our own ignorance? It would seem like the higher the enlightenment, the freer the will?

one other thing I’d like to add to this is that’s why I believe we can document begin with, if we were 100% plane locked I don’t think we’d be able to divine and talk to higher beings, but it is because we are 4th dimensional creatures housed in 3rd dimensional shells, and we are capable
Of traveling elsewhere, but not with our physical form.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 5:19 PM

I mean, can you sprout wings? Unless you’re able to do something completely out of the realm of what you would physically be capable of, I’d say that still holds true. It’s just kinda physics at this point, while strapped to the physical plane, you must adhere to its parameters. I’m not doubting your ability of ascension or anything, but unless you can pull something back from an alternate dimension or higher plane to your physical body, I’d say you’re still acting within the confines of not-free will. Not to say it’s predetermined, there’s a lot of variables.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 5:18 PM

one other thing I’d like to add to this is that’s why I believe we can divine to begin with, if we were 100% plane locked I don’t think we’d be able to divine and talk to higher beings, but it is because we are 4th dimensional creatures housed in 3rd dimensional shells, and we are capable
Of traveling elsewhere, but not with our physical form.

 

[Durward]

Is everything we do predestined?

Everything we lived before, and are reliving as if it were current reality?
Or was this the prison planet where you are fooled into participating in a fake reality unfolding with suffering?
Or was this dimension with the puppet show we designed from behind the scenes, I forget...?
Do the 3 fates exist in this dimension? If so, yes all things here are a woven destiny, and the future can be seen in your tapestry of life.
Time here likely serves the purpose of supporting linear function, we can't even read this or type it without using a linear function. Our memories are linear to us. Time is part of the borders of this dimension. Solid and real to the physical body and ego mind.
But, in all seriousness, all it takes to make precognition / divination happen is for the quantum vibration of the current moment and the future moment to resonate. The only reason we get to experience time at the rate we are experiencing it, is likely the gravity solution, and that makes it relative to your own subjective experience of reality and time balancing out with the experience of this planet and nature, or everything else out there.
Time keeps your ego mind company and gives it something to fret about.
But, in my reality, all of this has already happened and we revisit it, and the decisions made, likely out of boredom, but also because we miss the things we can't feel in our other formats of existence. There is not much that compares to being physical with a ticking clock nagging you onward.

 

[dcwilson]

Prophecy and Divinization, are ways of seeing the concrete future vs. the "Free Will" everyone babbles-on about but few understand. That's someone's religionist definition which actually means something like 'you must join our sect or be damned forever.' Magick is for breaking out of those Fixed Futures that have been Decreed by TPTB on (very) High, that are ordained from the Beginning of the World, and Certain, rather than manipulating probabilities for different, better Outcomes that are more Uncertain -- and They don't like you breaking up their nice and neatly arraigned Futures at all!

 

[moonbow]

I mean, can you sprout wings?

I can but I can't. I can't sprout them yet, but I can vegetate them, and that too would take quite a while. On the astral it's much easier and quicker.

In our physical world, I believe I suggested this before that beings with a high level of enlightenment and power would also be able to. And it's possible to become one of them.
But even if someone did, you would maybe see it for a split second before your mind blocks completely and forces you into your default reality where nobody can grow wings. Because humans are not supposed to see or even believe such things. If I sproutet, your mind would instantly throw you into another timeline where there are no wings, and no magic, and no will. That's the programs normal humans operate on which unfortunately includes most "occultist" you ever meet. Before you can even sprout wings, you first need to believe, then you get understanding, and then maybe you can see, and then sprout yourself.

 

[Sunnylil]

I believe that we can choose among possible branches of how events may unfold. However, the number and quality of these branches are predetermined. That is, we can improve or worsen the quality of our lives up to a certain point. Beyond that, no matter how hard we try, nothing will work.

I also believe that there are people with stricter karmic limitations. For them, there is either no choice at all or it is extremely limited—both in terms of achieving great heights and in terms of human degradation.

Politicians, geniuses, billionaires, world-famous stars, murderers—the same Oedipus, who, no matter how hard he tried to escape his fate, ended up, with each new decision, bringing what was destined into reality.

 

[moonbow]

I believe that we can choose among possible branches of how events may unfold. However, the number and quality of these branches are predetermined. That is, we can improve or worsen the quality of our lives up to a certain point. Beyond that, no matter how hard we try, nothing will work.

I also believe that there are people with stricter karmic limitations. For them, there is either no choice at all or it is extremely limited—both in terms of achieving great heights and in terms of human degradation.

Politicians, geniuses, billionaires, world-famous stars, murderers—the same Oedipus, who, no matter how hard he tried to escape his fate, ended up, with each new decision, bringing what was destined into reality.

This just seems like mundane dogma and the usual limiting beliefs which shape our reality. Might as well put my own dogma against this and say that while everything may be predetermined and must come to pass, it doesn't have to be you. Once Free Will comes into play your "fate" and "karma" which you will not fulfill or can't fulfill anymore will be pushed to another you from another timeline who will have to deal with it. It will happen to you but not You. Choices are real.
This relates to what I wrote somewhere else I think about awakening, Will and re-writing your fate. Also a lot of spiritual practice is designed to clean up your "strict and limiting" karma. Even basic breath work and meditation.