What Do You Use Magic For? Options

Magic: the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature

In it's definition magic has endless possibilities....

does it?

For some strange reason. when i am thinking up "Incantation" or "various other techniques" I have trouble thinking up what to do.

"what exactly is the problem i'm facing now? How do i solve it?" are questions i ask,

but magic doesn't seem to come up as an answer often.

and when it does, i use my trusty tarrot deck and i get BAD RESULTS
BAD BAD BAD RESULTS

so the magic i do always ends up being pure white magic since everything else seems it would go bad.

that's pretty limited if you ask me.

Hey Xeno and Kath~

In response to the general use of the word nihilism, i'm kind of put off by that. My philosophical paradigm isn't what I understand nihlism to be (there is no purpose to the world and everything is nulled, and inevitable and foolish etc etc etc. Things Kafka would probably giggle at.) I feel that rather we as beings with egos are insignificant motes of dust in the face of the infinite, but, what we do have control over is how we react and change to the world. This by proxy does change the world, but I don't feel that as an entity that we have much right to claim these changes as our own, but a collective shift. But this deterministic (I didn't actually study this branch of philosophy so correct me if I'm using it wrong) business does not mean that we don't have what we perceive as free will, rather our free will is already apart of this grand machine (so pretty much wallowing in the inevitability of all of it isn't exactly a very productive or useful thing.)

As of now, my paradigm does think that as individuals, its a bit much to claim that our idea of better is okay. Maybe Hitler really believed he was bettering the human condition, as many people we consider genuine altruists did. I can't say which ones really did better the human condition: all I can see is what (in my perception of the world) brings beneficial results. Whenever I sink back into the source/the machine as deeply as possible, I'm honestly awestruck, and I realize how insignificant of a force individual agency is. We're all cells in the metaphorical tree, each one contributing and working together in a completely sublime way, and from what I picked up, in a sense beyond the understanding as the individual cells in the tree. Our individual actions are yes, individual dominoes, but without one of us or another, but we're feels like replaceable.

Right now, I agree to disagree with Xeno's paradigm. But this opinion may change since I'm still trying to figure out what the hell is really out there. I believe that without necessarily our validation, we're unanimously working towards something. That something is beyond my own comprehension, but what I do know is that compared to the infinite tide of we/us, the only way to really understand the nature of the infinite requires us/we to be infinite. Grounded as mortal individuals, we are very much (or what appears to be finite.) I think this is really just a paradigm that's in limbo, but its currently what I agree with.

I'm currently at what feels like the cusp or something. A 'veil' may fall, or something like that, but its fairly obvious I saw the shadow of the metaphorical tree, and we're nothing compared to it. I haven't seen tree itself, or truly comprehend that i've already seen it a million times,

On subjectivity~ I think that's really the only thing we have. I don't have a problem with it, but I don't think that its appropriate to claim that because I feel a trunk and he feels an ear, that we're inherently right or wrong.

So I think that what I really disagree with xeno about is (perhaps?) the basis of claiming agency for our actions. I don't feel we have any right to claim it~ what 'we did' was never really our doing, we were just there to put the cherry atop the cake then say we baked the whole thing. I think xeno, that you do claim we have it?

As much as your nihilist-style argument does a great job at nitpicking and hairsplitting, you are forgetting a fundamental concept: Magick and metaphysics is meant to create reality.

Just a really random but interesting in difference paradigm I felt the urge to point out, but it doesn't really make an immediate difference. I feel that reality is an illusion, but not in the sense you can wake from it like a dream, but that its fluid and bendy(?). It isn't static, magick isn't about making things real, given that nothing is static, magick is about crafting the illusion and allowing it to ebb in a way that satisfies you. Are we playing with semantics? It sounds like it if our definitions are actually the same (which they may be.)

Lots of edits~ Oh! I re-read your post xeno, and more wording threw me off and I felt the urge to show that I'm not Kafka 2.0 without the literary skill(z).

We cannot grasp it because we get in our own way. The human condition is that we cannot grasp what it is. The idea of bettering the human condition comes not just from the idea of improving quality, but more specifically building a world where trying to understand it becomes easier for all individuals.

This was in response to me asking about bettering the human condition. Is bettering the human condition by aiding others understand it? Is that all that is required, or does that implicitly acknowledge that individuals will change their paradigms and everything else once they draw closer to it?

By the perspective that it can be improved at all. Those that make the human condition worse, if you bother to look, are the ones that are the most cynical of it, the ones who feel humanity is doomed, and feel that there is no way for humans to better their own condition.

I'm under the impression that the machine has designs beyond our understanding. As individuals we can improve our own paradigm and make ourselves happy in the process. We aren't going to be ideologically damned or something~ its just I think we have no clue what's going on, and we might as well admit it and learn to just carry on with our lives as well as we can. (Reference to earlier stuff)

Then you misunderstood. I was trying to point out that you laid your premise that the human condition was a function of time, and that my beliefs, workings, views, and efforts stemmed from the completely inverse view that it is time that is a function of the human condition and experience. Got it now

Lol. Either my mind is subconciously shifting itself every time we talk about this subject, or I actually do agree with you every single time. That's my whole thing on subjectivity and why I don't think that we have to right to claim that one paradigm can claim that its bettering something. I also agree with the idea of micro/macrocosmic universes

The universe is as much a part of us as we are a part of it. By understanding the holographic parallels, and by looking within ourselves, you will discover that it is the degree by which we understand ourselves that reflects the degree we understand the universe.

This viewpoint resonates all over your post, so consider it me generally addressing the concept of self and such, and I'll sound redundant, but I promise you there is a point here I'm trying to make. My natural urge is to say that an individual cannot completely understand oneself as one cannot completely understand the universe. We can feel its flow and ebb, but to say that we truly know every spot and corner, from I know is inherently impossible (even from I think? modern psychology)

This post has been edited by kaboom13: May 31 2010, 07:51 PM