From: JOSEPH MAX Area: MagickNet To: JOSH NORTON 18 Nov 94 17:02:00 Subject: Re: CHAOS UpdReq -=> Quoting Josh Norton to Joseph Max <=- JM> [re: astrology] JM> If there's anything to it, I think that the planetary movements are like the JM> hands of a clock: a clock does not "make" time exist, it merely allows us to JM> mark duration and form some simbelence of simultaneous action. So in the JM> same way, the planets do not "influence" earthly events per se, but due to JM> "as above, so below" their motions allow us to see in them a higher pattern JM> of reality. Any other way of looking at it is like saying that fire alarms JM> cause fires. JN> I'm a little confused. In an unquoted paragraph, you said there was no JN> place in your theory for astrological "effects" to be magickal in JN> nature. But the rest of the paragraph spoke only of reasons why you JN> think it can't be caused by known, measurable, physical means. Are you JN> saying that all magickal effects occur through known physical JN> processes? OK, I can understand your confusion - let me try to clarify a bit. I was trying to use the oft-cited by astrologers idea that the gravitaitonal and/or magnetic "influences" by astronomical bodies can provide a "vehicle" for astrological effects was a highly shaky premise to base astrology on - and thereby I was attempting to cast doubt on the whole idea of such "influences" having anything to do with magick, much less astrology. As for the question you pose at the end of the paragraph, I'll address that further on... JN> While I don't demand a _causative_ relationship between planetary JN> movements and changes in consciousness, anyone with a modicum of JN> patience and self-perception can verify for themselves that, if JN> nothing else, there is a consistent, repeatable relationship between JN> cyclic changes in their individual perceptions and the movement of the JN> planets. I don't have any reliable explanation for why it happens, JN> though I'm not so quick as you to discount gravitational and JN> electromagnetic forces as possibilities. Just because there seems to be a "cyclic relationship" between the planetary motions and human behavior, it doesn't necessarily follow that one _causes_ the other. Examining the larger one may yield clues as to the behavior of the smaller (again, As Above, So Below) but that doesn't demand that one is _causing_ the other. They are parallel, not cause-and-effect relationships. I think I presented pretty damning evidence that gravitational and electromagnetic forces cannot have much of an effect - if such forces did, then that placement of the mother's body, and the birth attendants bodies, and the mass of the building the birth occurs in and so on, would have a far _greater_ effect, by several orders of magnitude! Gravity and electromagnetism follow certain modes of behavior, and there is no difference between the gravity exerted by one mass or another. A passing car on the street outside your house exerts more gavitational pull on your body than does the sun! If the earth itself were to somehow dissappear in an instant and leave all the humans behind and intact, we would not continue to orbit around the sun, but would go spinning off into space, carried by the momentum that the earth imparted to us before it vanished. The pull of the sun's gravity on our bodies would not be enough to hold us in orbit around it. We're too small, it's too far away, and gravity drops off to quickly over distance. As I said in the last message, I think the relationship isn't causal, if it exists at all. If anything, both our actions and the planetary motions are _both_ equally part of a _greater_ pattern, and studying the astrological patterns may help us discern the greater pattern. If there's anything Magickal to astrology at all (according to the AIT model) then it has to do with the psychic "field" being set up by all of the believers in astrology around the earth exerting a morphic effect on our consentual reality; "self-fullfilling" prophecy prophecy, if you can appreciate the multi-leveled metaphor at work here . JM> With my "pure information" model, the information is recieved aetherically JM> by the subconscious mind and percieved by the conscious mind in a manner JM> that can be sensed, since sensory information is all that the conscious mind JM> can deal with. And it is quite clear that the actions subconscious can have JM> startling effects on the conscious mind's perceptions! JM> [much stuff deleted] JM> Only if you have to switch models in order to account for all of them - JM> basic scientific method. AIT accounts for all with no problem. The model's JM> hypothesis can account for all the observed phenomena, which strictly JM> speaking, elevates it from hypothesis to actual theory. JN> Now hold on there, pilgrim! I think you're going a bit overboard here. JN> As you've admitted in other discussions, most of what you're trying to JN> account for here still lies in a subjective, scientifically JN> _unmeasurable_ area of reality. Let's not go elevating things to the JN> level of theory until you have an objective means of verifying that JN> your ideas apply to the area you are explaining with it. You've JN> already brought in at least one factor objective science would reject JN> out of hand -- the "aethyr". Reference by analogy to JN> already-measurable areas just won't do. Many things in cutting-edge physics are or once were out of the range of what can be measured objectively, but have been predicted using thoretical modeling and later confirmed. The work of J.S. Bell is an excellent case in point. Einstien proposed the Einstien-Rosen experiment in the early 1930's. Bohr and others thought that it could be challenged, even though on the face of it it seemed to be a logical trap that discounted the possiblity of the Uncertainty Principle being correct. It wasn't until 1973 that the experimental technology was available to put it to the test, and it proved Einstien wrong and the Quantum Physicists right. Neutrinos are another good example. Quantum theory predicted their existence, but according to the prediction itself, they would be damn hard to detect - they can pass through several miles of lead without being stopped - or at least only one in a thousand of them would be stopped and thence detectable. But eventually the technology became available to test for them experimentally and they were found to exist - and displayed the predicted behavior. So doing the theoritcal model _first_ is a tried-and-true method of obtaining predictive knowledge. So even the fact that "objective science" would reject the Aether theory "out-of-hand" is no reason not to propose it in the first place - quantum theory was rejected out of hand, too -- noble company, if you ask me... JN> By the standard you're using, JN> creationism or the discordian "law of fives" is just as much a theory JN> because they "explain" everything they apply to. Creationism can only hold water by _rejecting_ many things that have been experimentally demonstrated -- IOW, you must be willing to ignore anything that doesn't fit into the creationist model. My theory is attempting to explain phenomena that fall _outside_ causality, so causality doesn't enter into it. That's the problem that the "energy" theory of magickal action-at- a-distance has -- it's trying to build a case for "cause-and-effect" using the model of energy transmission, but positing an "energy" that doesn't _behave_ like energy. Aetheric transmission steps outside causality to constuct it's model, just like quantum theory steps outside classical physics to describe behavior of sub-atomic particles that classical physics doesn't even mention. This is not a contradiction. Using an energy model _is_. And the universe _is_ a complex place, after all. Quantum physics _says_ that gravity cannot exist - at least it allows no possiblity of a force that has no "negative" equivilent. IOW, since gravity is ONLY attractive, whereas all other forms of energy are both attractive _and_ repulsive depending on polarity, then the quantum model fails to explain gravity. (This is an over-simplification, but I think you get the idea.) However, General Relativity does a bang-up job of explaining gravity, but cannot account for Uncertainty and the dualistic wave and/or particle nature of energy. So which model is "true"? BOTH OF THEM, at different times and different situations. (This is the great contradiction that has been biting the ass of Theoretical Physics for decades, and is the big snag in developing a General Unified Theory.) But meanwhile, we use each model at different times because they both _work_, when applied to the right circumstances. The energy model of Magick is like creationism is to cosmology - you have to ignore a lot of _direct_ contradictions, not just applications in different areas, to make it make sense. Aetheric Information Transfer has the advantage of having actual experimental data to show that it DOES HAPPEN, at least with elementary particles. Astrology's "proof" is all statistical or anecdotal. Now since we can demonstrate that AIT does happen at the quantum level, why should we assume that the human brain can initate and/or control this action? Because the _brain_ also operates at the quantum level! The action of a synaptic jump between neurons in the brain -- the actual stuff of thought itself -- is the result of a few picovolts of electricity and about 400 molocules of neurotransmitter chemicals. _This is the Quantum level of existence_! And that micro-level, Quantum effects begin to manifest. There was a marvelous article in Scientific American a few years back about how this level of brain action could account for the very existence of "creativity" and spontaneous thought processes that lead to "leaps of intuition", because thought itself is a Quantum process and therefore subject to the effects of Uncertainty. Now, add to this the idea that Quantum level particles can be affected aetherically by other particles acausally, and we have the beginnings of a theory of telepathy and clairvoiance. Toss in the idea of the "butterfly wing" effect of Chaos Mathematics, and we have arrived at a workable theortical basis for Magick! Pretty groovy, eh? JN> Hmmm. As an alternative to Bell's theorem, I would offer the JN> explanation that events have to work their way "downwards" through the JN> magickal planes before manifesting on the physical level. And this JN> process takes time to occur, in physical terms. (This is observably JN> true of the "mass" changes in ideas I was speaking of previously, and JN> seems as true for my own internal processes.) If someone were capable JN> of "picking up" on a particular event while it was still working its JN> way into manifestation, he would give the impression of predicting the JN> future without anything having to travel backwards in time. JM> Fair enough, but in the end, we're _still_ talking about _information_ JM> transfer, rather than _energy_ transfer. JN> Hmmm....Most of the time, there's not a great deal of difference. In JN> the mundane world, all information is energy -- even if it's only JN> photons bouncing off the page of a book. (Come to think of it, all we JN> really know about _anything_ in the physical world is photons. ) JN> It's only in some extremely hard-to-set-up quantum events that JN> information _seems_ to be transfered without an exchange of energy. "Seems" is good enough. To quote Stephen Hawking, "A difference that makes no difference _is_ no difference." I'm sometimes surprised at the amount of resistance I get from occultists when I present these ideas. Most heavy physicist types that I throw these ideas at end up going "Hmmm, maybe you've got something there..." I would have thought that the Magickal types would be overjoyed and eager to adopt a model that they can confidentely toss in the face of "scientific skeptics" with a smile of satisfaction! What I'm positing is a theory of magick that materialists cannot punch big, gaping holes in. All it requires is that we rethink the ways in which it _appears_ that magickal effects exert themselves and accept the idea the subjective feelings of "ectoplasmic energy" and the like being transmitted or recieved by the body of the magician are merely that - _subjective feelings_, and owe their existence to the fact that the consciousness cannot interpret AIT directly, but rather "metaphorically". Is that so hard? ... ebius tagline. This is a moebius tagline. This is a mo ... ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Josh Norton Area: MagickNet To: Rose Dawn 20 Nov 94 00:00:00 Subject: Chaos UpdReq Hi Rose! RD> save to disk for future pondering. I did want to ask about RD> the 'getting serious' though...do you mean when your RD> practice went beyond experimenting and familiarizing RD> yourself with the basic schema 'as is' and RD> started pushing the envelope? I've heard--and my very VERY RD> basic and limited experience would tend to confirm--that RD> just about any sincere attempt to work with the Enochian RD> system will bring 'results' of some sort, even for an RD> inexperienced individual. I almost have an image of RD> "::sigh:: ...Ok, if you insist...here," and breaking off a RD> little corner of bread for a demanding kid...then later RD> the kid gets his own bread, and apples'n'carrots RD> and all that good stuff, and finally starts bringing it in RD> his own bad self. RD> RD> How long would you say it was before you 'got serious'? Or RD> was it an on-going process of 'deepening seriousness?' RD> It was actually pretty sudden. True confessions time.... There was a long time -- running from about '71 to '82 -- when I was getting most of my insights and initiations through other means: the astrological method I described in "Book of the Archer", conventional cabalistic invocations, inspirations through smoking dope and doing one- person sex magick, meditation on magickal and metaphysical writings, etc. I had plenty out of these methods to fill my head and keep me going forward. The enochian magick seemed unnecessary. And to tell the truth, I was afraid of it; it twisted up my head in ways I wasn't ready to deal with yet. I've always ridden the edge, psychologically speaking, and it would have pushed me over. I'd do one of the calls every few weeks, but just for variety from the other stuff, and without the intensity of will necessary for real effectiveness. Just playing around, really. But along about '82 I seemed to reach a point of diminishing returns with these methods. I got less and less that was new for the amount of effort I was putting into them. A period of dryness ensued that got worse for the next year or so. I wanted to move ahead, but couldn't get out of the rut of my habitual practices. I knew I was in a rut, but it was such a _comfortable_ rut, most of the time, that I was reluctant to leave it. The enochian magick was always hovering on the edge of my consciousness as a way out, but my fear of it kept me waffling. Finally the "dryness" got so bad that I was in a state of -- "manic desperation", I guess. Nothing mattered except getting OUT -- even if it meant blowing myself to bits, spiritually speaking. The mania overcame my fear, and I dove into the enochian magick as a full-time practice. Did an invocation every day, and tried to get a vision twice a week or so. Didn't get much of real significance out of it until I started getting really methodical about it a couple of years later, but at least I felt like I was moving again. (The fear, incidentally, burned itself out somewhere in the process.) > [re: the enochian god] > Aha! That's the pattern! (image of light bulb going on) Each time he > appeared, it was immediately after I had successfully extended the > enochian system beyond its original parameters, or transformed it in > some way that existed only in potential in the original system. And it > didn't happen when I first perceived the possibility, or when I wrote > about it, but only after I had "made it real" through hard work. RD> RD> Whew! Hardcore...don't think I'll be able to really grasp RD> this concept for a while. Heh--maybe part of my Job in RD> Life is to ask dumb questions which enable experienced RD> magicians to evoke light bulbs over their heads? ;> RD> It's certainly a useful function. That's why I like answering questions on the net -- anymore, it's almost impossible for me to conceive of an "ideal audience" as most writers do. It's takes interaction with real people to get things out of my head and into the world. ___ X SPEED 1.30 [NR] X 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Josh Norton Area: MagickNet To: Kai Mactane 20 Nov 94 00:00:02 Subject: chaos UpdReq Hi Kai! KM> However, I note that, bearing in mind that this is *only_a_metaphor* KM> and not an actual physical description, you *can* map those three "aspects" KM> to functions of electtromagnetic waves. The "force" is like amplitude, the KM> "quality" like frequency, and the information is similar to KM> any message that might normally be encoded into an KM> electromagnetic transmission, whether by frequency or KM> amplitude modulation or some more esoteric process. KM> Also, note that frequency, in its technical sense, is a scalar KM> quantity, while "frequency" in this magickal sense might be a more KM> complex variable better expressed as a two- or more- KM> dimensional number, a complex number, a vector sum or by KM> some other means. Or we might find that the range of KM> available magickal frequencies *could* be mapped onto a KM> linear scale. Interesting. I'll have to think about it. Hmmm. I know of a particular breed of astrologers who are treating the qualitative aspect of the planetary "influences" as if it were a complex wave-form. I.e., as a basic "note" frequency, with many other frequencies imposed on top of it. These other frequencies give the planetary "force" its quality, in the same way that the harmonics, etc., in a musical instrument's sound give it its distinct tonal quality. They've been trying to determine the exact "tones" of the planets by Fourier analysis of astrological data, but I can't make head or tail of their methodology -- the math is beyond my competence. ___ X SPEED 1.30 [NR] X 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718