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Why is Modern Magic not supernatural?

Anziel_Merkaba

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Magicians have always had to work in spite of humanity - that is why the most effective magical workings are performed alone, and why, if you need to work with other people, rituals and suchlike are required to make sure everyone is on the same page and working as a unit. If you tell anyone not involved, about the magical act before it is complete, you've then involved them too, and their contribution is likely to just be noise to your signal.

What I discovered in my research is that success is nurtured by increasing a) the number of possible results that count as a success and b) the amount of ignorance that you have about how that success might happen.

On the other side, high speed communication through the internet has thrown into sharp relief how credulous people can be, as "a lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has its boots on" as Terry Pratchett put it.

Large scale magic nowadays is less about imposing your belief system directly and more about manipulating peoples' existing belief systems to get them to do what you want, in spite of any facts that might get in your way.

So, I believe that magic is just as potent as it ever was, but the methods used to successfully apply it have changed. All the more effective if the people you are manipulating by magic don't believe in it.
I was talking within the specific lens of "movie style magic"... things like throwing fireballs around and stuff, as per the question of the original poster. But I do agree that for things that are more subtle than a brick to the face, magic is still as effective as it always has been. It's the flashy stuff that got a hard nerf by societal changes.
 

Xenophon

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I was talking within the specific lens of "movie style magic"... things like throwing fireballs around and stuff, as per the question of the original poster. But I do agree that for things that are more subtle than a brick to the face, magic is still as effective as it always has been. It's the flashy stuff that got a hard nerf by societal changes.
Did anyone ever really throw pulsing spheres of qi, fling great balls of fire, &c? "After action reports" are a genre of fiction, as Hume subtly hinted.
 

Anziel_Merkaba

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Did anyone ever really throw pulsing spheres of qi, fling great balls of fire, &c? "After action reports" are a genre of fiction, as Hume subtly hinted.
I don't know, but I want to believe we live in a world where stuff like that at least used to be possible. Maybe it's just the long-lost adolescent dreams of a recently 30 y/o man longing for a life better than the one he has...
 

Xenophon

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I don't know, but I want to believe we live in a world where stuff like that at least used to be possible. Maybe it's just the long-lost adolescent dreams of a recently 30 y/o man longing for a life better than the one he has...
Forget the used to be. Nothing says one cannot work to bring back flamboyantly manifest magick. Or if something so says, it were worth while finding out.

In the meantime, it's not hard to find enclaves in the States where the locals will sling glowing lead your way in lieu of fireballs. In Messico, it's impossible to avoid such places. "Embrace the bullets," like our amigos say.
 

Robert Ramsay

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Forget the used to be. Nothing says one cannot work to bring back flamboyantly manifest magick. Or if something so says, it were worth while finding out.

In the meantime, it's not hard to find enclaves in the States where the locals will sling glowing lead your way in lieu of fireballs. In Messico, it's impossible to avoid such places. "Embrace the bullets," like our amigos say.
Alan Moore wrote a very interesting essay on the subject of nostalgia in magic (and other things) called "Fossil Angels".

I'm probably not allowed to link it directly here, but a PDF comes up as the first result when I google "alan moore fossil angels".
 

Xenophon

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Alan Moore wrote a very interesting essay on the subject of nostalgia in magic (and other things) called "Fossil Angels".

I'm probably not allowed to link it directly here, but a PDF comes up as the first result when I google "alan moore fossil angels".
Will have a look. One wonders about the efficacy of nostalgia as an emotion in magick. "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt," and all that.
 

Robert Ramsay

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Will have a look. One wonders about the efficacy of nostalgia as an emotion in magick. "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt," and all that.
A good example of the supernatural portrayed as the natural in fiction, with lots of occult overtones, is the TV series 'Sapphire and Steel'. In this series, nostalgia can be a dangerous weapon allowing THINGS to break through from outside. The first adventure has a book of nursery rhymes triggering present day re-enactments of the origins of the rhymes.
 

Xenophon

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A good example of the supernatural portrayed as the natural in fiction, with lots of occult overtones, is the TV series 'Sapphire and Steel'. In this series, nostalgia can be a dangerous weapon allowing THINGS to break through from outside. The first adventure has a book of nursery rhymes triggering present day re-enactments of the origins of the rhymes.
You mean like Satchel Paige said, "Don't look back: something may be catching up"?
 

Robert Ramsay

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Or The Ancient Mariner: "As one on a lonesome road
Who dare not turn his head
Because he knows a loathsome fiend
Doth close behind him tread"
 

Jackson

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Obviously, there are examples, or, at least YouTube documentary of... pyromancy and healing in Indonesia, requiring meditation techniques, vegetarianism, and taken with an attitude of secrecy. I also seem to levitating Buddhist monks, and German healer by the name of Bruno Groning. The answer is: there are, you're just not aware of them. Unless I was living in the woods, learning to burn something isn't an overwhelming motivation for me, and I doubt it is for most except as otherwise motivated by some immature excitation.
 

Robert Ramsay

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Obviously, there are examples, or, at least YouTube documentary of... pyromancy and healing in Indonesia, requiring meditation techniques, vegetarianism, and taken with an attitude of secrecy. I also seem to levitating Buddhist monks, and German healer by the name of Bruno Groning. The answer is: there are, you're just not aware of them. Unless I was living in the woods, learning to burn something isn't an overwhelming motivation for me, and I doubt it is for most except as otherwise motivated by some immature excitation.
My point is not that they don't exist, my argument is that these things are natural things that we have no idea how they work. If you assign them to the supernatural as an explanation, then you have two things to explain instead of one, and one of those 'explanations' boils down to 'a big boy did it and ran away'
Post automatically merged:

Or, put another way, 'supermatural' is just shorthand for 'I have no idea about this'
 
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Xenophon

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My point is not that they don't exist, my argument is that these things are natural things that we have no idea how they work. If you assign them to the supernatural as an explanation, then you have two things to explain instead of one, and one of those 'explanations' boils down to 'a big boy did it and ran away'
Post automatically merged:

Or, put another way, 'supermatural' is just shorthand for 'I have no idea about this'
Excellent point. The "supernatural" seems be popular among those for whom the natural sciences are daunting. Too many big words, maths, 'n s***. I am one of the science-challenged and fess up: my incapacity to master a topic does not justify me in positing a parallel "higher" universe accessible only to "sensitive" adepts like myself. As Bertrand Russell (in)famously opined, "Postulation enjoys all the advantages of theft over honest labor."
 

Amur

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Real Magick worked best before Jesus Christ was born. If you want to know real magick reincarnate before Jesus Christ. Because He stopped it and started a technological evolution. You can literally do anything with magick about but that's more of a secret than most know of in our modern world. The Galactical Spiral is built using Magick itself so.

These days Magick mostly is about personal alchemy, transformation and manifesting different life goals for yourself. That's about it.
 

Xenophon

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Real Magick worked best before Jesus Christ was born. If you want to know real magick reincarnate before Jesus Christ. Because He stopped it and started a technological evolution. You can literally do anything with magick about but that's more of a secret than most know of in our modern world. The Galactical Spiral is built using Magick itself so.

These days Magick mostly is about personal alchemy, transformation and manifesting different life goals for yourself. That's about it.
Jesus Christ technocrat? One more reason to excoriate all things Nazarene.
 

Robert Ramsay

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Real Magick worked best before Jesus Christ was born. If you want to know real magick reincarnate before Jesus Christ. Because He stopped it and started a technological evolution. You can literally do anything with magick about but that's more of a secret than most know of in our modern world. The Galactical Spiral is built using Magick itself so.

These days Magick mostly is about personal alchemy, transformation and manifesting different life goals for yourself. That's about it.
"This is Jesus Christ, inventor of the first telephone. If you have invented a SECOND telephone, please leave a message after the beep."

I am interested in your sources for this information. Apart from the last paragraph which is straightforward enough.
 

Amur

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"This is Jesus Christ, inventor of the first telephone. If you have invented a SECOND telephone, please leave a message after the beep."

I am interested in your sources for this information. Apart from the last paragraph which is straightforward enough.
The sources really is experience, divinity and spirit itself and a bit of Alex Grey's painting "The Cosmic Christ". Lemme find the painting:
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


You could say that "Modern Magick is Technology and Science" and that would be a 100% accurate thing.
 

Robert Ramsay

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You could say that "Modern Magick is Technology and Science" and that would be a 100% accurate thing.
Well, not really, as, putting aside things like people doing their magic over video conference, no technology needs to be involved to do magic.
And it's not a science until you have a theory that rigourously explains your observations.
 

Amur

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Well, not really, as, putting aside things like people doing their magic over video conference, no technology needs to be involved to do magic.
And it's not a science until you have a theory that rigourously explains your observations.
Yeah true. I'm not here to preach I'm here to LEARN. So my observations might not go hand in hand with the public, but atleast it's my own experience and world how weird it might even be. But good point about theory will have to think about that for a moment. Because in science there are always first established a Theory -> Observation -> Change of theory according to the observation -> New Experimental Observation, so these things never change so a very important point. This should be applied to magick also if you are into it so that you scientifically go through them.

Magick without Science feels a bit whacko to me since we always live with the logical circuit. So Magick WITH Science is what everyone should be striving for. Belief is the force that changes your current reality tunnel.
 

Robert Ramsay

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Magick without Science feels a bit whacko to me since we always live with the logical circuit. So Magick WITH Science is what everyone should be striving for. Belief is the force that changes your current reality tunnel.
I'm totally with you there, and it's what I've spent thirty years doing - reconciling magic and science 🙂
 

Amur

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I'm totally with you there, and it's what I've spent thirty years doing - reconciling magic and science 🙂
I'm just here on 21 years :) But always had a scientifical standpoint in this hellhole called a shamanistical initiation.
 
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