Praying To God Options

yeah so i was thinking in the shower
not about magic
yet for some reason i had some sort of idea.

Is praying to god magic?
is it magic under the paradigm that if you ask this enigmatic being for a favor that he will reply and help with good faith?

and then i thought more?

isnt ordinary magic the exact same thing, except instead of asking a being
we tell the universe...
and in some cases we do ask a being
like in a summoning of a demon?

And if that's true, then if you replace God with universe in the bible, it is more like things were guided into place by fate, and not by a bearded sociopath?
and it becomes something entirely different?

idk really
i just dont think much about Christianity because i am not a christian at all so

whatever.

yeah so i was thinking in the shower
not about magic
yet for some reason i had some sort of idea.

Is praying to god magic?
is it magic under the paradigm that if you ask this enigmatic being for a favor that he will reply and help with good faith?

and then i thought more?

isnt ordinary magic the exact same thing, except instead of asking a being
we tell the universe...
and in some cases we do ask a being
like in a summoning of a demon?

And if that's true, then if you replace God with universe in the bible, it is more like things were guided into place by fate, and not by a bearded sociopath?
and it becomes something entirely different?

idk really
i just dont think much about Christianity because i am not a christian at all so

whatever.

in a sense yes praying is a form of magick. but i would say more of a lower magick. due to the fact that when people pray it may be at times half heartedly or out of desperation. but good point, lol

I heard someone cant remember were. praying is a form of sending messages to divinity
and meditation is a form or recieving messages from divinity.

Prayer is a part of magic as much as candles and incense. I cant really see one without the other.

praying to god is 'usually' a form of magick.
it fits under the 'spirit model' of magical practice. you're soliciting a nonphysical being for something, it's just like summoning, except for an omnipresent being.

I don't personally believe in 'god', at least not in the same sense that abrahamic monotheists do. to me, what they actually work with is just a super-egregore. I used to be a devout christian, once upon a time. And when I was, I did get fairly deep into the practice of what I would now call "christian magick". In my opinion, directly channeling the energy force of their egregore-deity is MUCH more potent than just praying to it. Thus the impressiveness of miracle-oriented "wielding the holy spirit" styled christian magick, vs. the somewhat less impressive power of prayer. But both are a magick format in my opinion. In the case of channeling styled holy spirit magick, it is similar to energy manipulation + egregore INvocation, and it can really pack a wallop. In the case of prayer it is more similar to evocation based magick.

They're also fond of other magical practices, such as candle magick (I think the catholics invented it), ritual transubstantiation, mantra magick, music as ritual, etc.

of course, not all prayer is asking for something. Some of it is worship, adoration, etc. (charging the egregore & reaffirming contact with it). And some of it is seeking guidance, which I think is really more of a psychological exercise, in that 99% of the time when a person seeks guidance, they already basically know the answer, they just need to get past their approach-avoidance conflict with the answer.

And if that's true, then if you replace God with universe in the bible, it is more like things were guided into place by fate, and not by a bearded sociopath?
and it becomes something entirely different?

I may catch flack for this, but I don't think you can "clean up" middle eastern monotheism by replacing 'god' with 'the universe'. I have no problem with the idea of 'universe as divinity', like in the indian concept of Aum. But why would the universe want the hebrews to commit genocide on the canaanites? or make women second class citizens? or want people to ritually kill animals to relieve a guilt complex? or torture nice people on a bet? The storybook really only makes sense with a bearded sociopath as protagonist.

This post has been edited by Kath: Nov 2 2009, 02:26 PM

hay kath I dont know if you will read this.
Tonight I Sat in front of a candle and prayed the rosary one time and read some psalms.
THan I asked to talk to my guardian angel. because yesterday I did some banishing rituals and I read the 1st and 2nd enochian calls.
then I went to bed and I was pretty depressed and all of a sudden a warm feeling came over me and I saw an angelic face looking at me. I wanted to do it again.

So I sat in silence and sent the message out for and angel to come. but than I got all these frightful images in my head. and I got feelings of a dark angel wanting to hurt me and strangle me and all around me was evil. It was very scary i would of jumped at a pin drop so I had to come on here and try and zone out of it.

Is there any good way to avoid this. I mean yesterday I did LBRP and I didn't have any negative effect. but tonight all i did was pray the rosary and some psalms and no rituals just asking for guidance and I get an evil angel instead. any advice

Maybe its better to see nothing at all than open your eyes and be surrounded by evil. I still have yet to overcome the dweller on the threshold. but the fear is a little to real ya know what I mean. sometimes I wonder if its better to be ignorant to anything spiritual than open yourself up to things like this.

I don't like the demons In my head. they follow me. and I have a bad feeling behind my back. am I too sensitive and not sane enough to practice magic? what do you think?

This post has been edited by xXDaemonReignXx: Nov 2 2009, 10:08 AM

what do you think?

uhh
"fear is icky"
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

I dunno. my patron is every bit as much a 'dark angel' as she is a light one. Depending on what facet of her you focused on, she could seem utterly terrifying. But she's also sort of an ultimate radiant light too. Early on, she showed me somewhat more of her dark side. She did it in such a way that it kinda drew my lifelong repressed dark side to the surface as well. And most of the earliest visions & dreams with her were kinda focused on a jungian exploration of my shade. She's a 'balanced' being, I think any 'infinite' being must be. But my own 'balance' was off in such a way that I actually needed to add some 'evil' (and a little salt). Not that I actually believe in 'evil', just saying that I needed to come to embrace the antithesis of my superego, buried within myself, as a first step towards growing into a more 'whole' being. I don't think a motion towards balance would be exactly the same thing for any two people though.

I think that if I found myself in the presence of a dark scary angel and a hellish energy setting... I'd just shift towards the part of myself which closely matches that resonance, and enjoy the company. The same could be said for the more saintly warm light feeling you described. I personally find both of those extremes to be within the range of resonances which make up 'me'. I wonder if this might be true for yourself as well. I mean, if a thing contacts you and interacts with you at a particular resonance, is it possible that it is simply resonating with a facet of yourself which lies below the conscious awareness? Is it really perhaps just a case of 'like attracts like'? I dunno?

but experiencing fear is, in my opinion, always counterproductive. Imagine the worst possible thing that can happen to you, lock that image in your mind, and then say to it "so what?". Flip your fear the bird, laugh in the grim reaper's face, and get on with business of embodying your true will (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This post has been edited by Kath: Nov 2 2009, 02:46 PM

Its all well in good for me to think that its all in my head but when it happens. well. I start saying things like. you think some thing are evil on earth but you haven't seen evil until you've seen ancient and demonic supernatural evils. Its the darkest and most dreadful feeling to have that type of evil. its not from this world. its Darker than anything you can imagine. I remember a saying " there are more things in heaven and earth than you can possibly imagine."Do you think I just have a good capacity for things like this.

I don't use the psychological model to describe the spiritual world. I actually do really believe in the existence or good and evil spirits as well as a real God. I cant just shift it away because for me they are really there. Well God maybe teaching me a lesson or I may of spoken wrongly to an angel. I was talking to myself saying that God let free the evil angels upon the earth to deceive man after they were misusing the teachings of enoch. maybe I'm being punished.

I was thinking of more real methods to banish demons like asafetida herb or something. I may petition Archangel Michael with a nova candle on my alter. this is really an overkill but.
Form my Bad trip last night I need all the protection I can get (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) Hopefully it doesn't happen again tonight.

I don't know. not believing in visions and calling them imagination is such a self deception for me. maybe I'm right when I say If you don't believe it. it cant hurt you.
Perhaps it is far more dangerous If you actually do believe in the existence of spirits. It can lead you to full beak downs much easier. Its good to be able to switch off and say. oh your not real. just imagining it. as a safety device to. I will try this next time but I think they will only laugh and mock me if it is evil spirits.

This post has been edited by xXDaemonReignXx: Nov 2 2009, 06:03 PM

yeah so i was thinking in the shower
not about magic
yet for some reason i had some sort of idea.

Is praying to god magic?
is it magic under the paradigm that if you ask this enigmatic being for a favor that he will reply and help with good faith?

and then i thought more?

isnt ordinary magic the exact same thing, except instead of asking a being
we tell the universe...
and in some cases we do ask a being
like in a summoning of a demon?

And if that's true, then if you replace God with universe in the bible, it is more like things were guided into place by fate, and not by a bearded sociopath?
and it becomes something entirely different?

idk really
i just dont think much about Christianity because i am not a christian at all so

Well a loose definition of magick is its the practice of manipulating one's reality to produce some sort of intended gain, either for the self or someone else. When I think back to my Christian days as a kid when we'd pray at church, at least from my immature view of the world, when we'd pray at church we did it just because that is what I thought we were suppose to do. There wasn't any congitive awareness on my part that I was suppose to gain anything from it other than to be a good Christian.

So I think for the most part when people pray that only do it to be part of the crowd. In church everyone else is praying and if you do not also pray you kinda stand out. But even my Grandma still regularly says her roseries every night. She has dementia. I can't imagine that she is praying to hope for anything tangible that I could think of. On the other hand I do believe that people sort of use prayer as a way to try to talk to God and "ask" for something. Which any serious Christian who knows anything about Christianity knows that God only helps those who help themselves. That trading prayers for food or money is pretty silly and really not the point of prayer at all. As I understand it, since I myself am not a devote of Christianity, the point of prayer is not to gain anything from it but instead to honor God and the covenant made between man and God from the old testiment.

The practice of magick can overlap in some ways. Again, prayer is not suppose to be about personal gain. It can be for the gain of others as in praying for the poor or sick. So there you have prayer as a form of magick.

As for fate versus predestination at the hand of Gandolf... err God.... is there really a difference? Ultimately I think reducing God to nothing more than a human with incredible abilities really short changes the true nature of God. God is suppose to be a being that is beyond human wisdom. That is not to say aspects of God can not be used to achieve closeness to God. The point is in the infanite nature of God you could go to the bible and replace the word "God" with "Waldo". The word God doesn't not define God. Its simply our human expression for the nature of some insanely vastly powerful being/force that makes us and all our accomplishments look like fungus on a petrie dish. We could argue that all of nature is not already predestined to unfold in a certain way. But if you incorperate theoretical sciences the idea that all that is was and ever will be has already come to past and we are just at a finite point in time on space/time continuum then yeah.... predestination.

I don't use the psychological model to describe the spiritual world. I actually do really believe in the existence or good and evil spirits as well as a real God. I cant just shift it away because for me they are really there. Well God maybe teaching me a lesson or I may of spoken wrongly to an angel. I was talking to myself saying that God let free the evil angels upon the earth to deceive man after they were misusing the teachings of enoch. maybe I'm being punished.

I think this wasn't the point of what Kath was suggesting, exactly, though I may be mistaken. Perhaps the face this entity was showing you, was one which would resonate with that darker part of your own nature - whether to show you how much that part of yourself scares you, or in order to communicate on that level. This isn't a psychological model of a spiritual world, but acceptance of a psychological world within yourself, which must necessarily set the boundaries of how a spiritual entity can interact with you. It must be within the framework of your own psyche, or it will be outside of your awareness.

By making an internal psychological adjustment to yourself, you can transcend the fear response and achieve a companionship/comfort zone with the entity - or possibly simply the face that the entity is wearing - to reach some critical understanding that may only be possible by experiencing that part of yourself.

Like the universe itself, angels and demons, good and evil, both can be creative and destructive. We are always in awe and wonder at Creation, and we are always Terrified to the soul of Destruction. We are warmed by purification, and chilled by corruption. But these reactions, wither we hold a psychological or spiritual model of the world on any level, are purely psychological, not spiritual. Nothing your brain experiences is spiritual - its all chemicals making you feel things, and those chemical changes, while they do reflect spiritual pressures, are independant of spiritual phenomenon all together. In other words, you are able to have a sense of terror in the face of Creation/Good/Purification, as well as a sense of awe and love for Destruction/Evil/Corruption. Maybe your angel was attempting to show you something you could not otherwise discover.

is it magic under the paradigm that if you ask this enigmatic being for a favor that he will reply and help with good faith?

and then i thought more?

isnt ordinary magic the exact same thing, except instead of asking a being
we tell the universe...

whatever.

You made the distinction yourself between prayer and magic.

In prayer we ask.

In magic we tell.

Prayer is passive and is an act of devotion, of supplication, of worship.

Magic is active - and act of Will, Empowerment, and Transcendence.

When we pray, we hope that we will be answered by and in the limitless Wisdom of the Divine, for all the best.

We we do Magic, we ask to be Partners with the Divine, that they may work with us, not for us, to accomplish our ends.

You think the bible seems different when we replace 'God' with 'The Universe'? Try taking 'God' out of it all together - then it's a long history of madmen, endless bloody war, murder, chauvanism, mutilation, and natural disasters. A lot less pretty, isn't it? Funny word, 'God', isn't it?

peace

You think the bible seems different when we replace 'God' with 'The Universe'? Try taking 'God' out of it all together - then it's a long history of madmen, endless bloody war, murder, chauvanism, mutilation, and natural disasters. A lot less pretty, isn't it? Funny word, 'God', isn't it?

Yeah this is what I was thinking of before reaching out to conversation. Next time I will do banishing rituals and purification and meditation before doing something like this. even small and informal evocations without a mirror. I can still get negative results. at least If I go through all the processes I will feel stronger and more in control.

I'm taking a break from magick for a week anyway except for daily meditation and OBE work. Just to give my self a time to rest and recover.
I'm putting away the bible and the rosary and I'm not gonna be reading that for a while. IM gonna miss the rosary. it gives me a huge sense of calm but getting involved with the christian collective conciseness is not a good thing at the moment. to much fear of evil. the dark side is given real emphases in Christianity.
If I was satanist It wouldn't bother me and I would welcome such visions thus It would not happen as much because I would not be afraid and putting fuel in the fire with fear.

yeah so i was thinking in the shower
not about magic
yet for some reason i had some sort of idea.

Is praying to god magic?
is it magic under the paradigm that if you ask this enigmatic being for a favor that he will reply and help with good faith?

and then i thought more?

isnt ordinary magic the exact same thing, except instead of asking a being
we tell the universe...
and in some cases we do ask a being
like in a summoning of a demon?

And if that's true, then if you replace God with universe in the bible, it is more like things were guided into place by fate, and not by a bearded sociopath?
and it becomes something entirely different?

idk really
i just dont think much about Christianity because i am not a christian at all so

whatever.

What you mean by "magic" is ceremonial magick in fact(at least what your describing) and no it is not the same.
Why?
Because there is this thing called "Egregor" and thats actualy any god you can think of. In more energy based workings gods are just energy blobs(no offense to anyone) with personality that grew to be independent but are used to feeding on their worshipers. Even MCdonalds by this definition is an egregor, the only diffrence is the size and autonomy since it was not fed and worshiped for thousands of years.
What can they do for you?
Certain things they can provide, but mostly they just need your hope\emotion and the like as sustanance(or food xD). If your someone working energeticaly for a while now and can handle yourself there is no reason why not exploit the egregors if that is your field of interest. To boost your energy reserves and to handle simple matters which you really dont wanna(or yet do not know how to benefitialy work them out) do. Although as someone without the required tools to handle them(and limit them) you are no more then a tool for them and you will recieve maybe a good feeling while praying and perheps small miracle here and there or a "sign"(just to restore your faith and to keep exploiting you), but usualy untill you break there will be nothing more then a cold shoulder or some meaningless transmission via energetic communication.
So basicaly its a bad idea for you. Better learn how to achieve your goals without hoping for something "greater" above to do it for you, since these egregors may pretend to be the gods we hoped for long ago but they do not possess any remarkable powers(no more then basic things that manny of us are capable of), just the luxury of a diffrent point of view and abundance of spare energy being purely energetic beings without bodies.

Regarding "fate" there is no such thing other then where you want to go. You are the god of your life, there are just some bumps and mountains on the way that are harder to cross and take more time and effort and the right way to do it. Think about it.

-Also an interesting way to use manufactured egregors(intentionaly made) as used by some organisations i know of is as storage units. Since its basicaly an energetic pocket that can be given not only personality and autonomy but also certain ways to access, phisicaly anchors and such... i know of one specific organisation that lets students have a black box(which the phisical appearence of is of course of little interest.. since it could be a piece of poop for all we care though wouldnt be as pleasent to touch i bet xD) when they complete their paid for courses, and they can use it some manner to access the storage unit(egregor) of that specific organisation and get some energy from it, when they are feeling tired or out of the daily natural supply, to continue with training. Or something like that. Of course energy is energy and can be formed andused in manny interesting ways, i guess understanding and imagination are the limits. :3

-As for the parts regarding faith and god\gods.. It may sound as an insult to those of you following whichever faiths or deities out there reading this, but even though its a fact in my life.. it doesnt negate the good feeling you get doing your own thing so do not take it as negative or intended to slender your beliefs, just sharing my own expiriences and knowledge.

This post has been edited by Shimi: Feb 17 2010, 05:47 PM

yeah so i was thinking in the shower
not about magic
yet for some reason i had some sort of idea.

Is praying to god magic?
is it magic under the paradigm that if you ask this enigmatic being for a favor that he will reply and help with good faith?

and then i thought more?

isnt ordinary magic the exact same thing, except instead of asking a being
we tell the universe...
and in some cases we do ask a being
like in a summoning of a demon?

And if that's true, then if you replace God with universe in the bible, it is more like things were guided into place by fate, and not by a bearded sociopath?
and it becomes something entirely different?

idk really
i just dont think much about Christianity because i am not a christian at all so

whatever.

I believe in God (however I do not identify as "Christian" or any form of organised religion.) I practise angel and saint magic which can involve prayers to God.

It nearly is the same thing. I think with angel and saint magic generally is used to better yourself. For example: The use of colours and scents with a psalm to energise you in the morning.

There are many cases in the bible where rituals and majick are used. In fact, there were even men in priesthoods called Magus which nearly did the same thing as the pagan priests and priestesses did. Many reasons churches consider majick and rituals "black and evil" in the beginning was because people started trying to change big outcomes of things or try and cause harm to others. Mix that in nowadays with the fear of losing their handy-work (a converted soul) to another religion and you have a nice big stew pot of exaggerations and concern from many churches.

So in summary: Praying is more an affirmation then magick but can be used in majick.

When did I realize I was God?
Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
-Peter O'Toole, in "The Ruling Class" 1972

In my opinion, directly channeling the energy force of their egregore-deity is MUCH more potent than just praying to it. Thus the impressiveness of miracle-oriented "wielding the holy spirit" styled christian magick, vs. the somewhat less impressive power of prayer. But both are a magick format in my opinion. In the case of channeling styled holy spirit magick, it is similar to energy manipulation + egregore INvocation, and it can really pack a wallop. In the case of prayer it is more similar to evocation based magick.

They're also fond of other magical practices, such as candle magick (I think the catholics invented it), ritual transubstantiation, mantra magick, music as ritual, etc.

I'm curious to know as to how you did this?