talkmagic.co.uk

I'm a discordian. this does not change the way i perform magic or anything like that although it does give me a craving for Hot Dogs

I am Jewish, and involved in Jewish Education.

I feel that there is a strong pedagogic value to magic in the classroom setting. For example, certain effects where props are not all they appear to be (e.g. the disappearing deck) can teach about the assumptions people make about the world they experience. This in turn can impart humility about the limits of our knowledge and perhaps a greater respect for the mystery of creation. In a world where reason reigns supreme and even high school kids are often 'world weary,' I find that a little magic can cause a paradigm shift in thinking about big issues.

I am hoping to put together a book/pamphlet on the subject of magic and religious instruction (specifically Jewish, but probably equally applicable to other faiths) in the near future. If you have specific ideas about how magic can be used in religious education, please share!

I believe in infinity and eternity. Dotted throughout this blackness like mushrooms are a virtually unlimited number of universes, including our own 13.3 billion year old home. In that eternal blackness are rather large spirits who commission universes, like gardens, and the deities of humanity are the gardeners who maintain this great work.

Then there are the various levels of energy, light and dense, that make up the general physical and spiritual realms, each 'real' to themselves. I believe humans are a fusion of the spirit and physical realms. Death separates our elements, the physical staying here and our other aspects going elsewhere.

I see the spiritual realms as being similar to here in the idea of 'geography' and 'nation'. Religion is the tool for placing us where we need to be in the next world, and spirituality determines if we will or won't be welcome. Obviously, in the context of this image, not everyone needs the same spiritual values because not ALL of the same values apply in ALL communities.

So it's all a matter of determining what you want, where you'll be comfortable... where is 'home'.

Would you like to spend your time in the realms of spirit in a cottage by the sea? In a side show carnival? In a city of gold and pearl?

Arle Le'Quinn wrote:I believe in infinity and eternity. Dotted throughout this blackness like mushrooms are a virtually unlimited number of universes, including our own 13.3 billion year old home. In that eternal blackness are rather large spirits who commission universes, like gardens, and the deities of humanity are the gardeners who maintain this great work.

Then there are the various levels of energy, light and dense, that make up the general physical and spiritual realms, each 'real' to themselves. I believe humans are a fusion of the spirit and physical realms. Death separates our elements, the physical staying here and our other aspects going elsewhere.

I see the spiritual realms as being similar to here in the idea of 'geography' and 'nation'. Religion is the tool for placing us where we need to be in the next world, and spirituality determines if we will or won't be welcome. Obviously, in the context of this image, not everyone needs the same spiritual values because not ALL of the same values apply in ALL communities.

So it's all a matter of determining what you want, where you'll be comfortable... where is 'home'.

Would you like to spend your time in the realms of spirit in a cottage by the sea? In a side show carnival? In a city of gold and pearl?

This reminds me very much of the Phaedo when Socrates is about to drink the Hemlock. Especially given his argument for the eternity of the soul, based on non-dualism.

I'm curious, what's the non-duelist argument for an eternal soul?

Craig Browning wrote:
My faith -- my acceptance of a Higher Power that is not constricted by some book or the opinions of men (especially me) is what allowed me to know freedom from those things that once ruled my life; it is this rapport that has opened new doors to me as others became closed; and it is this connection that gives me hope -- knowledge -- in the fact that our world is changing, albeit slowly, towards a greater more Utopian state.
:

You mention not being restricted, (a fear of serving or being slave to, I believe.) Might I suggest though the idea I believe in, and has been mentioned notably throughout history; we are all always serving someone or something. Perhaps you do not serve a God, but do you serve pleasure? Do you serve your own happiness? In all that you do, does it not have a goal? Surely we are always serving something. How can you find one example where we do not?

sleightlycrazy wrote:I'm curious, what's the non-duelist argument for an eternal soul?

I shall do my best to remember it. The dialogue begins with Phaedo recalling his conversation with Socrates before he is to be executed for impiety and corruption of the youth. Socrates is in prison with many of his friends arguing the case for why they don't need to fear for his death.

His argument begins on the assumption of dualism (not non-dualism, I made a mistake), that is to say that the mind and body are seperate entities. Labelling aside, the belief which is at odds with the belief that the mind is a product of the physical body, rather than the physical body being a product of the mind.

He started out, I think, by talking about how we innatley know everything and learning is merley remembering. This is from other very interesting dialouges from Plato- but the argument then goes on to suggest that because we are remembering everything, rather than learning it that we had previous lives.

He then gives quite a circular argument, saying that going onto the underworld depends on how good a life you have led. In not fearing death, as he said good philosophers don't, because you are then a philosopher, you will go onto the underworlds.

As a piece of literature, the Phaedo is one of my favourite works of Plato, as in the 'interval' of the work, it appears Socrates' argument has been completley discredited. The opposing arguments were that a taylor could make many coats in his lifetime. The coats were much weaker than he was, and he could make many threadbear within his lifetime. However, just because the coats were weaker than him does not mean that he will always outlive them, there has to be one coat (the one he wears at the time of his death) which out-survives him. The soul may be stronger than the body, but you can never know if the soul will always outlive the body. The socrates triumphantly returns, returning to the earlier premises of his argument which were not in debate.

He argued that the mind and body are separate. He then argued that two opposites cannot turn into each other, unless they either a) stop being those two opposites or b) the opposing qualities 'retreat'. For example, fire cannot become ice unless it stops being fire or its 'fire-ness' (its participation in the 'idea' of fire) retreats of completley ceases to exist in it. In order to be fire, neccesserily and seemingly self evidently it must have the qualities that make it fire; heat. If heat is removed from fire it ceases to be fire. 'Forms' or 'ideas' will never become their opposite.

Following from this argument about opposites, if I remember it correctly, the soul is opposite from the body, assuming we are accepting dualism. The body is physical, the soul is not. The soul has given life to the body. The opposite of life is death. Because the soul is the causer of life, because opposites never can become their opposites- it will never partake in the form 'death' and is thus eternal. The body is mortal and destructable, the soul is immortal and indestructable.

His arguments are interesting, as they always seem to be. I don't agree with most of them, but they are thought provoking. The main reason why that post reminded me of this dialouge is not because of one comment about the eternity of the soul, but because of the fact it reminds me of some of Socrates final words when he knows he is going to die. He begins just talking about the way he views the afterlife and the geology of planet earth, not providing any reason for why he believes it to be that way or even expecting to be completley right, just giving his own vision unassumingly without egocentric conviction or dogma. It is quite poetic and interesting reading.

However my favourite part of the book is once Socrates' initial arguments have been discredited. His seemingly undogmatic confidence in his own beliefs and willingness to still place his ego behind him in persuit of truth even if it is concerning his contentment in his final hours of life are my favourite parts of the book. His insistence that argument (debate, not squabbling) is an important part of making life better and comments on how those who have lost faith in argument and choose to confine themselves to that 'cave' of ignorance and allow their convictions to be ruled by their desires and emotions instead of by reason, do a disservice to humanity.

Its a little bit of a digression but learning to debate impersonally, without ego, without letting our reason be governed by desire (as far as is possible!) and more importantly to not loose faith in the importance of debate and questioning are important lessons which some people need to take heed and listen to.

P.s When a 'higher power' is mentioned, I find it impossible that any man of 'reason' or 'science' could question that definition. Are the rules of physics not a higher power at play in the universe? Are the order and entrophy of systems now always powerful over something? Einstein used the term God, Dawkins desolves this as a metaphore. I completley empathise with this entity or essence which Einstein uses the term to describe, God does seem to be a much easier way of expressing it though.

'Science and Reason' are their own religion. They are just a snapshot of our understanding of fact. In this sense, I view them as 'truth', not 'fact'.

Experience trumps doctrine ('religious' or 'scientific'). Let me give some examples:
These are events from my history as I remember them.

In 1986 I was doing my second year of bible college and renting a cottage at $70 per week (paid Mondays). I mowed lawns for an income. Just once in that year did I get to the day before (Sunday) and not have enough money to pay rent. I was $30 short. I prayed at that Sunday's church service for divine intervention (not out loud-vocally). After the service a woman came to me, handed me an envelop and said that she felt God wanted me to have it. Inside was $32. Ok... I don't know what the extra $2 was for. Maybe crossed wires, or tax. But I do know that was the only weekend that year that I was short of cash, and the only time someone handed me cash in an envelop after church.

No longer professing Christ.

Some years later, I was looking after a family members house while she was away. All alone. In bed, lights out. Listening to the zipper on my overnight bag running its tracks. No I Didn't Look!!! I had my head under the covers. But hey, I was a lot younger.

Divination. Well I got interested in that due to some early successes. Did a reading for an Open Marriage couple. Three cards. Emperor, Queen (fire), Empress. I was a beginner, so I interpreted it as 'be careful or a younger flame haired woman would split them apart'. A year later and they separated because he over did it with a younger red head.

A little later and I was share housing with a group of goths. The mother of one of their friends was trying to find her because she hadn't been seen in a week. We hadn't seen her. As mother went on door knocking, we decided to see what we could each find out via our various divination methods. I was experimenting with runes at the time and got the message 'safe but on water'. She turned up safe after two weeks. Had spent it with a new boyfriend that she'd neglected to tell anyone about. Two weeks... on his houseboat.

About three months ago I dreamed that I was washing windows, but ONLY the insides. Next morning at breakfast my five year old reminds me to not to forget to was the outside of the windows.

He has his moments. Another time I was driving to town and thinking about a tree I wanted to remove some branches from. From his seat behind me comes my son's voice, 'Dad, you'll need a ladder and a chainsaw up that tree'. I wasn't talking about it out loud.
........................................
I love science. I love computers and modern medicine (well, some of it). But it is a limited paradigm. I view it as being like a couple of people cataloging artifacts in a warehouse at night wherein the warehouse is a mile wide and they are working by candle light, oblivious to what surrounds them. Is the sky blue? Or is that just how it registers to human eyeballs? What about an animal that only sees in black and white, or an insect that sees ultra violet?

I view the difference between 'truth' and 'fact' as 'fact' is what is without our perception or interpretation. 'Truth' is the story we make out of the bits and pieces we pick out of 'fact'. Religion is truth, but so is science. And science is limited. It's limited to what some microscopic humans have finally gotten around to thinking about, theorising about, testing, modifying their theories, retesting and reproducing, stating as fact, then having to revise again a few decades later when new info comes along.

But in the end, experience trumps doctrine.

How does this relate to magic? It is relevant to how we present psychic entertainment.

Arle Le'Quinn wrote:'Science and Reason' are their own religion. They are just a snapshot of our understanding of fact. In this sense, I view them as 'truth', not 'fact'.

Experience trumps doctrine ('religious' or 'scientific'). Let me give some examples:
These are events from my history as I remember them.

In 1986 I was doing my second year of bible college and renting a cottage at $70 per week (paid Mondays). I mowed lawns for an income. Just once in that year did I get to the day before (Sunday) and not have enough money to pay rent. I was $30 short. I prayed at that Sunday's church service for divine intervention (not out loud-vocally). After the service a woman came to me, handed me an envelop and said that she felt God wanted me to have it. Inside was $32. Ok... I don't know what the extra $2 was for. Maybe crossed wires, or tax. But I do know that was the only weekend that year that I was short of cash, and the only time someone handed me cash in an envelop after church.

No longer professing Christ.

Some years later, I was looking after a family members house while she was away. All alone. In bed, lights out. Listening to the zipper on my overnight bag running its tracks. No I Didn't Look!!! I had my head under the covers. But hey, I was a lot younger.

Divination. Well I got interested in that due to some early successes. Did a reading for an Open Marriage couple. Three cards. Emperor, Queen (fire), Empress. I was a beginner, so I interpreted it as 'be careful or a younger flame haired woman would split them apart'. A year later and they separated because he over did it with a younger red head.

A little later and I was share housing with a group of goths. The mother of one of their friends was trying to find her because she hadn't been seen in a week. We hadn't seen her. As mother went on door knocking, we decided to see what we could each find out via our various divination methods. I was experimenting with runes at the time and got the message 'safe but on water'. She turned up safe after two weeks. Had spent it with a new boyfriend that she'd neglected to tell anyone about. Two weeks... on his houseboat.

About three months ago I dreamed that I was washing windows, but ONLY the insides. Next morning at breakfast my five year old reminds me to not to forget to was the outside of the windows.

He has his moments. Another time I was driving to town and thinking about a tree I wanted to remove some branches from. From his seat behind me comes my son's voice, 'Dad, you'll need a ladder and a chainsaw up that tree'. I wasn't talking about it out loud.
........................................
I love science. I love computers and modern medicine (well, some of it). But it is a limited paradigm. I view it as being like a couple of people cataloging artifacts in a warehouse at night wherein the warehouse is a mile wide and they are working by candle light, oblivious to what surrounds them. Is the sky blue? Or is that just how it registers to human eyeballs? What about an animal that only sees in black and white, or an insect that sees ultra violet?

I view the difference between 'truth' and 'fact' as 'fact' is what is without our perception or interpretation. 'Truth' is the story we make out of the bits and pieces we pick out of 'fact'. Religion is truth, but so is science. And science is limited. It's limited to what some microscopic humans have finally gotten around to thinking about, theorising about, testing, modifying their theories, retesting and reproducing, stating as fact, then having to revise again a few decades later when new info comes along.

But in the end, experience trumps doctrine.

How does this relate to magic? It is relevant to how we present psychic entertainment.

Something particularly interesting to add to that I think...

I naturally do not attribute any 'supernatural' significance to your anecdotes, whilst they are very interesting however. On the other hand, Skeptics often site the Skinner experiment as an example of the animalistic propensities of the 'superstitious' to use fallicious reasoning namley relating to cause and effect. What the skeptics fail to notice is that scientific method is to look at experience and infer some hypothesis from that. It is a massive logical problem with cause and effect, that it is simply two things which seem to be found next to each other 'event'-wise and we call the first a cause and the second effect. If your experiences were all coincidences even then, according to the paradigm of science because of the way cause and effect works- it would not at all be irrational of you to infer (or 'hypothesise') some (as skeptics might call it) 'superstitious' reason for those very fascinating occurences, by skeptic's own logic.

Any hypothesis you make is just as irrational or rational as science in accepting 'cause and effect'. Scientists are pigeons too. To be completley honest, for people who try and dissuade everyone from 'faith' it evidently takes a lot of faith, imagination and unfalsifiable belief systems to 'explain away' such strange events.

I happen to agree with the skeptics mostly, I just despise their methodology and how hypocritical they are. The thing is, it is not that I am not a skeptic; It is that I am too skeptical. Skeptical used to be the philosophical doctrine of doubting all human knowledge. Then it was hi-jacked by some zealous and dogmatic Atheists who believe they have a monopoly on human knowledge. I am very skeptical of skepticism, in this respect.

I took the zipper incident onto a forum a few years ago that had 'religious' and 'scientific' folk arguing among themselves, to get an explanation from the 'scientific' side. Only one person had a go. He said that maybe someone under the house was using a super-magnet to play a trick on me.

By and large I agree with you. I guess I just add that anything that exists is within nature. So gods and spirits would be natural rather than supernatural. They just aren't factored in. Chemistry + Physics gives one picture. Chemistry + Physics + Spirits gives another picture.

Coincidence blurs the picture. For example:
I knew a professor who was writing a book. I met her in an arcade and she told me her thesis. I mentioned that I had a copy of the only title I knew of that addressed her interest from several decades before, but it was a rare book and I'd only ever seen two copies. The copy that alerted me to it's existence and the old battered paperback I was eventually able to acquire for myself. But I'd be happy to keep an eye open in case I could find a copy for her.

She walked her way up the arcade and I walked in the oposite direction. Being a bibliophile and knowing there were two bookshops in the direction I was heading, I casually looked in one of the display windows as I regularly did. On display amongst the other books was a pristine hardback copy of the book in question which I purchased and gave to her.

Hell of a coincidence

Arle Le'Quinn wrote:I took the zipper incident onto a forum a few years ago that had 'religious' and 'scientific' folk arguing among themselves, to get an explanation from the 'scientific' side. Only one person had a go. He said that maybe someone under the house was using a super-magnet to play a trick on me.

By and large I agree with you. I guess I just add that anything that exists is within nature. So gods and spirits would be natural rather than supernatural. They just aren't factored in. Chemistry + Physics gives one picture. Chemistry + Physics + Spirits gives another picture.

Coincidence blurs the picture. For example:
I knew a professor who was writing a book. I met her in an arcade and she told me her thesis. I mentioned that I had a copy of the only title I knew of that addressed her interest from several decades before, but it was a rare book and I'd only ever seen two copies. The copy that alerted me to it's existence and the old battered paperback I was eventually able to acquire for myself. But I'd be happy to keep an eye open in case I could find a copy for her.

She walked her way up the arcade and I walked in the oposite direction. Being a bibliophile and knowing there were two bookshops in the direction I was heading, I casually looked in one of the display windows as I regularly did. On display amongst the other books was a pristine hardback copy of the book in question which I purchased and gave to her.

Hell of a coincidence

A skeptic would say that there must be some form of explanation. But an explanation is just one explanation, if it was spirits intervening then that is one explanation if it was a coincidence or a coincidence which seems to be impressive but 'actually' isn't, then that is another explanation. The fact of the situation is that either explanation is assuming some 'a priori' circumstance whereby there is an actual matter of truth. In other words, the truth is that we will never know, nor can we know the truth.

Explanations are... just explanations. Truth is that a ball falls towards the ground when it is dropped. Einstein showed us gravity as a 'force' was just an explanation, it had no actuality. Truth is that you have experienced these things. That is was a coincidence or intervention from Spirits... are but explanations. Truth is the only truth; explanations seek to step outside of our perception and deduce from the shadows reality projects onto our perception her nature, but that is nothing more or less than a hypothetical impossibilty. The shadows are the only thing that are objective here.

But you make the mistake of imposing categories onto reality. Reality has no classification, labels, definitions, names, distinctions or divides. Reality is. If you study Chemistry, Physics or Spirituality you will soon learn they are all trying to explain the same thing.

So it's just a case of 'does it work?' or 'doesn't it work?'

Arle Le'Quinn wrote:So it's just a case of 'does it work?' or 'doesn't it work?'

Well... that would be one explanation.

You heard a zipper, you didn't see it. So how do you know it was a zipper? A cricket sounds very similar. So do lots of things. One thing we know, a zipper doesn't go up and down on its own.

For the record I am a proud atheist, and becoming more and more vocal about it. We are the second largest faith group in Ireland at the moment, and rapidly catching up.

Years ago I was watching Father Cyprian perform. He is a Capuchin Franciscan monk. He sat down to do his close up set complete in his franciscan atire. As he sat he looked around the room and said: "Cleanliness, I am told is next to Godliness. However it is not, Cleanliness is closer to cleavage, look it up in the dictionary".

As for me, I don't mix religion with magic. Every now and again I'll let it slide that all I have to is perform two more miracles and be dead for a few years and I will be a saint. Every now and again I try to create a new religion, but for some reason nobody wants to attend my church. I really want to be a tent-revivalist, because I so want to stand on a soapbox and yell about fire and brimstone and about smoting people, and having people walk with me through the garden, but watch where you step because the lord is my shepard...my german shepard... okay I'll stop before I start offending those without humour.

Other than that I am a non-practicing Jew, or as my wife (non-Jew) likes to tell people, I am Jew"ish". My sister believes that there are indeed kosher pigs and that is where bacon comes from.