Maybe It's A Curse?, Curse of the Mundanoeity Options

My life is...decidedly mundane. I have never seen anything magical, never felt any presence of any ghost, spirit or god, never found anything that couldn't be explained and understood. My delusions may be that there is magic, but no matter how I search, or how I look within myself, nothing emerges. I need to find magic in order to have hope again, but can't find it at all. Any spells, invocations, or summonings of will I try myself all seem to run up against a wall, and nothing ever happens. Any person I've met who claimed access to some form of magic turned out to be a charlatan, or a swindler.

This isn't some run-of-the-mill dry period. I've existed for nearly three decades without a single whisper of magic coming my way. It's not that I'm closed to it, or avoiding it. It's not that I just haven't been looking long enough. I know very well what magic is, so I can't be mistaking it for something else. So...maybe I'm cursed?

It would explain a lot if I was under some sort of curse. I sure can't live without magic, and there doesn't seem to be magic, and that contradiction... well maybe it's that I'm being blinded, or held off from it somehow? How would I tell if there was some influence preventing me from perceiving or running into magic?

I don't seem able to believe in anything, so maybe that has something to do with it?

never found anything that couldn't be explained and understood.

I'm guessing you'd find you actually have...if you really thought about it. The explanations that tend to get trotted out for *some* things by science are so laughably absurd that it's amazing how anyone can believe them. Case in point...they worked out mathematically a while back that the odds of the Earth having developed randomly were on the order of several hundred thousand trillion to one, given the number of different variables involved...yet there are still some atheists out there who think the planet did get here entirely randomly. One of the main reasons why I have so much respect for atheism is because as a belief system, it takes more real faith to believe in than I've ever been able to generate as a theist. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

My delusions may be that there is magic, but no matter how I search, or how I look within myself, nothing emerges. I need to find magic in order to have hope again, but can't find it at all.

That's the point...that you think it's a delusion...although then again, here's the trick. You're actually right.

You seriously do sound, however, as though your only real problem is a rather terminal case of empiricism. To use a cliched and horribly overused paraphrase, you've convinced yourself a little too thoroughly that there really is a spoon. There truly isn't, you know. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif) It's simply that the illusion genuinely is sufficiently solid that you only really start to see proof that it is an illusion once you've almost completely conquered it anywayz, I'm guessing. You probably wouldn't have much trouble believing that gravity wasn't all it's cracked up to be if you could already fly...but unfortunately, you don't get that ability to start out with.

With science, belief is generated by results...with magick, it's the other way around, at least to some degree...yes belief is still generated by results, but it's a self-perpetuating loop...and a certain amount of honest to goodness blind faith does have to come first...that's the whole reason why atheists can roll around laughing at us and calling us fools and on a superficial level get away with it. I'm guessing that until you start getting the siddhis, as an example, any kind of proof that they're able to measure is going to tell them that they're right, and that we need to be sent to a padded cell. For a long, long time however, the only proof you're going to get will be that recorded by your own senses...and if you're very lucky, the occasional corroboration from someone else...but I get the feeling that more than anything else, that's why madness can be such a risk for us as well. If you need to convince yourself at first that what seem to be delusions are real, then madness sets in when you can no longer tell which delusions maybe are real, and which ones definitely aren't. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif) Boolean logic's yes or no becomes yes, no, or maybe.

Use ontology (your perception) rather than totally hard empiricism as the source of your evidence...since truth be told, the empiricist model is actually broken anywayz, to some degree. If you had already seen a ghost, you'd already know that. The reason why the empiricist model is such a trap is because it genuinely does work probably 90-95% of the time, and so science in its' myopic arrogance tends to merely lump the other 5% under the heading of parapsychology, and then proceeds to conveniently forget about it altogether. You're never going to see empirical evidence (at science's current level, anywayz) for the existence of astral space in particular, and that is the main thing that magick deals with from what I've seen.

Any spells, invocations, or summonings of will I try myself all seem to run up against a wall, and nothing ever happens.

Fine...cool, even. Learn about sigilisation, and then do a sigil to influence the statistical outcome of something simple...let's say you want the sigil to cause your mother to have the idea to give you a phone call sometime that day. Don't get hung up on all the blather about the burning need (and supposedly insurmountable difficulty) of achieving gnosis for spells, either. Draw the sigil, and then enage in that activity which your parents might have once warned you would cause blindness. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif) At the critical moment, or as close to it as you can manage, get a mental image of the sigil in your head. Then after you've washed your hands, burn the sigil, and do something else for a while that has no relation to magick entirely.

Later on, if you get a phone call at any time during that day which happens to be from your mother, allow yourself to believe that the sigil worked. Yes, maybe there concievably are other possible explanations for why the sigil worked. Ignore those, for the time being, and tell yourself that it was the sigil...there are times when logic will help you, and there are times when it won't. Realise that your first spell, no matter what it is, isn't going to give you airtight logical proof that magick works...and that that's ok.

If you get to that point, you've successfully cast your first spell. 100 Harry Potter points, and lather, rinse, and repeat, until you get an outcome which you do find genuinely difficult to explain other than as the result of a spell. Eventually it'll happen.

In my own experience, anywayz, one of the single main defining elements of any kind of supernatural experience is that the explanation can nearly always actually go either way. A sufficiently determined muggle can find a seemingly empirical explanation for just about anything, even if the rest of us think his rationale is gonzo. Likewise, however, there's equally as much (and often, a damn sight more, actually) room for a magical explanation as well. Early on, at least, it's a case of realising that both the muggle explanation and the magical one are equally optional, and that if you want to get to the point of realising that magick genuinely does work later on, you simply have to choose the magical explanation for now.

I don't seem able to believe in anything, so maybe that has something to do with it?

*grin* Yep. It's got everything to do with it. Go forth, and muggle no more. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/00000008.gif)

This post has been edited by Petrus: Dec 2 2007, 01:51 AM

Case in point...they worked out mathematically a while back that the odds of the Earth having developed randomly were on the order of several hundred thousand trillion to one, given the number of different variables involved...yet there are still some atheists out there who think the planet did get here entirely randomly.

Oh They did, did They? I'd love to see this mathematical working that They used to prove stuff with. Seriously though, the Earth developed when the nebula that was our solar system collapsed into a star, and the gas got burned/blown off the inner planetoid thingies leaving only the rocky core behind. That's the most plausible explanation I've heard before. You could call that random I guess, but claiming the Earth's formation is random is kind of like claiming that the direction dice fall is random. It's not. They always fall downward.

you've convinced yourself a little too thoroughly that there really is a spoon. There truly isn't, you know. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

If I could get it to bend like Neo did, I'd be considerably warmer to the notion that you might be right. Besides, even in the Matrix there is a spoon; it's just not a spoon. It's a program that acts like a spoon. But believe you me, I'm trying my darndest to find a way to hack reality. It just seems not to have any chinks at all. Even here I'm trying to fix that.

With science, belief is generated by results...with magick, it's the other way around,

Er, science and magic are not at odds with each other. I think that's just something the church dreamed up. If you ever read some of those steampunk novels, there are lots of stories where magic and technology go hand in hand. For science, magic is like a release valve. It's the big escape clause keeping us from reasoning ourselves into a corner. The absence of magic therefore worries and distresses me.

atheists can roll around laughing at us and calling us fools and on a superficial level get away with it.

In my experience there are two kinds of atheist in this regard. The first doesn't laugh at you, but tries to clue you in with reality. The second doesn't laugh at you because they could care less. Atheists I've found laugh at comic strips, and only talk about religion in how they're worried about its effect on their legal system.

The reason why the empiricist model is such a trap is because it genuinely does work probably 90-95% of the time, and so science in its' myopic arrogance tends to merely lump the other 5% under the heading of parapsychology, and then proceeds to conveniently forget about it altogether.

Huh, so I've spent a whole year living in a reality that isn't governed by empirical evidence? Who knew!

I think the reason why the empiricist model is such a trap, is because some people just have to have an enemy. They make up foes and nemises anywhere they can, desperate to find someone to fight against, to oppose. Having a \"them\" is a very useful tool, because it motivates people to take your side without fully questioning your motives or reasoning. So people aren't confident about their own paradigm or way of seeing the universe, so they make up these scary monsters called \"empiricists\" and warn everyone against the dangers of falling into that trap. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/harhar1.gif)

Draw the sigil, and then enage in that activity which your parents might have once warned you would cause blindness. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif) At the critical moment, or as close to it as you can manage, get a mental image of the sigil in your head. Then after you've washed your hands, burn the sigil, and do something else for a while that has no relation to magick entirely.

Hmm, I could do that possibly.

Later on, if you get a phone call at any time during that day which happens to be from your mother, allow yourself to believe that the sigil worked...If you get to that point, you've successfully cast your first spell. 100 Harry Potter points, and lather, rinse, and repeat, until you get an outcome which you do find genuinely difficult to explain other than as the result of a spell. Eventually it'll happen.

Conformation bias is a messy thing indeed. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hmm.gif)

Seriously though, lately I've been trying out some good old Gypsy curses. Not much luck there though. Perhaps sigils will be different, but you just saying that without evidence or mechanism, is not really increasing my confidence that they will be different.