So I read this story (http://en.mercopress.com/2011/05/22/amazon-tribe-first-contacted-in-1986-has-no-abstract-concept-of-time) today and thought I would share with you. It seems that an Amazonian tribe known as the Amondawa, which was first contacted in 1986, has no concept of time. They know characteristics associated with night and day, seasons and whatnot, but they do not operate on years and merely change names as their lives progress.

So what does this have to do with the occult? My question is whether someone like an Amondawa tribe member, raised with no temporal concept, would have an easier time performing magick that alters or warps it, similarly to how a person raised without Western standards of civility would have an easier time walking around naked. That is to say, I can't help wondering whether someone who was raised without time would be able to attain the ability to transcend its confinements much more easily.

This post has been edited by Cloudgleam: May 22 2011, 06:29 PM

In a Kantian sense - no, they would have no greater or lesser aptitude for any magical pursuit.

I use Kant as an example here because (personally) I find his philosophy of time to be most coherent and versatile with regards to the human condition.

The people you speak of have a concept of time. If they understand and recognize change, they necessarily grasp time in at least an intuitional sense. They are therefore thoroughly acquainted with their own mortality, and the concept of things being inevitable or things being "scheduled" viz. waking up, eating etc. It is literally impossible for a human being to not have a concept of time; time is one of the first concepts developed and inherent to human cognition. To not have a concept of time would be to understand the world in a way which is inhuman. You cannot see a thing in of itself, only a thing set within human cognitive boundaries of space and time. It is theoretically possible to have a different perspective on the world, lacking one of the other of the former, but it is practically inapplicable and inconceivable.

For reference, if you ever saw the movie Watchmen (or read the comic), the character Dr. Manhattan views the world without temporal boundaries. He sees the present, past and future simultaneously. There is no time for him.

Now, it's important to recognize the difference between conceptualizing and intellectualizing. One is a priori and inductive, the other is a posteriori and deductive. They may not intellectualize time, or even romanticize it in the same way the civilized world does, but they most certainly have a concept of time and know of it. It may not be scientifically extrapolated in a theory for the tribe, and it may not have a word assigned to its existence, but each member of the tribe understands what "not now" means, even if its only on a mental level (and not a linguistic one). Elsewise, they would be the same as the noble savage of Rousseau.

Sosorius