Skeptic

[Bragador]

I was wondering, why would spirits, demons, whatever WANT to help you in your magic tricks.

I don't believe in magic, for me it's all placebo but I hear a lot of people saying they need to call upon X or Y to do Z.

Why should these powerful entities, if they exist, actually care ?

Don't they have anything better to do ?

[pip]

For example : To make you dependent on them

Actually Demons tend to teach you do thing for yourself .

[lamia]

First,they don't come in by theyselves. We call them for the holy names. They don't come for they love us,it's just nescessary if u use the wright way.

We can ask them any question,if they know it,they must answer,cause of the holy names.
Of course they can easily trick u.

Why we call them? Because they know something we don't know and can't learn from anywhere or anywho.
If you don't know something,don't u ask it someone who know? :question:

[Bragador]

Mmmm... "to make you dependent on them"...

Fair enough this makes sense.

Now of course this brings the question of "why" but I guess it would bring them power and popularity.

Thanks

[bloodsong]

"Demons" "angels" "higher self" all are simple psychological concepts.  Calling upon these things simply puts one in charge of speaking directly to parts of repressed subconsciousness that is usually out of reach.  This sort of forced psycho speaking is useful in self-medicating mental repressions and suppressions that are normal in all people.

Invocations simply put one in touch with different parts of themselves that the subconscious would stop you from reaching if you called it a part of yourself.  The appearance of these "beings" is simply a manifestation of how much of a problem a certain part of oneself is.  The scarier the manifestation, the more trouble that part of the mind will be for that person.

Bloodsong

[Bragador]

Bloodsong, are you saying you don't believe in out of body experiences and all that stuff ?

Also your answer is really close to what I would call self hypnosis. You enter a trance state where you can interact with yourself in certain ways.

Unless you were referring to something "bigger" ?

[bloodsong]

It is really a wash, in my opinion.  In my experience, or at least my opinion of the divine, it is all the same.

You see, I see science as a way of looking at God, and God as a way to question science.  Hence, what is true of science is true of God, in my opinion.  Thus, simple Newtonian physics dictates that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, simply made to change forms.  Since most religious descriptions demand that before the divine creation, nothing existed save the Gods of Creation, it stands to reason that perhaps everything is simply a changed form of God.

That means that you, me, the rocks, your car, the sun, a fart, everything is a part of God and thus divine.  Therefore, if you follow anything and study it steadfastly, you can see the Ultimate within it.  Kind of like the man who practiced the misheard mantra of "The jewel in the latrine" and achieved enlightenment.

Now, as for it all being in your mind, well, what if it is?  Have you ever dedicated some time to actually spending time inside your own mind?  I think you may be surprised to find out just how large the inside of your mind is!  It isn't something spatial, so stop thinking of the matter resting so dormantly (no slight to intelligence, just to motion) between your ears.  You too, are divine, and your mind is the link!  Most modern forms of psycho-therapy agree with this, be they Freudian (Super-Ego), Jungian (Collective Unconscious), or others, even Quantum Field Theory, says that we are all connected, it is just that no one knows by what!

As for the legitimacy of calling OBEs by that name, I feel it is totally legitimate.  You see, most don't realize just how large and infinite the mind is.  And how connected the mind is to everything else.  When you "go out of body" perhaps you are just detaching your mind from its normal conscious constraints, thus allowing your mind to truly roam freely.  The shifts in "planes" that are possible are due both to varying states of consciousness into unexplored regions of the mind, as well as into states of material existence that are normally hidden to us due to preconceptions.

Is it that same as hypnosis?  Perhaps, but I haven't ever been formally trained on the topic, so I can't comment.  Neither have I ever been placed under hypnosis, so I can't give a comparison, either.

Was I referring to something bigger?  Well, yes, I was referring not only to we as people, but to people in the fullest potential.

Bloodsong

[peaceful warrior]

Bloodsong

wow that is very interestingi have never thought of it like that. But the newtonian law has been proven wrong on extreme levels. Such as parts of the universe or as small an atom or quark. Matter can be destroyed. An example would be the atom bomb. Einstine also stated that E=MC squared. Which tells us the amount of energy that comes from changing an object into mass by multiplying the mass of the object by the only constant(speed of light) squared.

[bloodsong]

It has been disproved in the dawn of Quantum Physics, but honestly, that doesn't really disprove Newtonian Physics empirically.  Only on the quantum (i.e. really flippin' small) level.  As far as "destroying" a quark, sub-atomic particles wink in and out of existence at all times, and the destruction of an individual quark has been shown to be only temporary, if I read the CERN web-site correctly.

I used Newtonian Physics as my model only for simplicity's sake, I assure you.  I know a bit about the Quantum theories as well.  They, if anything, prove more emphatically, the necessity of the model that I argued above.  Hell, if you break it all down to its most basic, what I said above was "Quantum Theory for the Mystic Soul."

As for the "Relativity Equation" of E=MC`2, this isn't destroying matter to create energy, it is a description of causing a perfectly controlled chain reaction to release the energy inherent in the matter to begin with.  Take a nuclear reactor, for example.  When the matter enters, it is one form, it is introduced to other, destabilizing material to begin the chain reaction in slow motion.   This release of energy can be equated, somewhat, by the above equation.  The basic components are still there, in the original proportions, just separated to create different elements and isotopes.  The reason I say that it is only somewhat calculable by E=MC`2 is that the current technology reactions in operation in the United States are only about 0.10% as effective as they ideally could be, which is what the equation figures, ideals, not reality.  The disparagement between the actual and the ideal is the measure of efficiency.  If you really want to get further into the nuclear reactions (although, admittedly, they are completely off topic) check out last month's issue of Scientific American magazine.  It follows the chain reactions and tells you basically where the sub-atomic particles break to.

In short, nothing in Quantum Theory really disproves anything in Newtonian Physics, any more than the rules of Soccer impinge on a decision in American Football games.  They are two completely different animals, at least for the time being, and spirituality, separated from religious dogma, is our best theory for synthesizing these disparaged siblings, in my opinion.  The secret lies in looking at the relation of micro/macro-cosms

Bloodsong

[PirateBoB]

I was wondering, why would spirits, demons, whatever WANT to help you in your magic tricks.

I don't believe in magic, for me it's all placebo but I hear a lot of people saying they need to call upon X or Y to do Z.

Why should these powerful entities, if they exist, actually care ?

Don't they have anything better to do ?

For the newbies at magic, much of the "magic" they do is nothing more than psychological placebo.

However, there are 7-ish billion humans on the planet right? How many spirits are there? Could be ten for every human, could be a thousand for every human, could be a thousand humans for every one spirit. So why would they help? Well, why would you help someone with something if they asked you for help? (boredom, of course )

Now, that is just counting on the spirit's own motivations to help you, but a stronger magician can command a spiritual entity into service (though out-right domination is generally a bad idea as spirits have a lot more free time to get you back in a thousand ways you'd never think of). It is generally preferred by magicians, both of the Left Hand Path and the Right Hand Path to either get help from entities out of the goodwill motivation of the entity's own desires or to make pacts with entities, for rather common-sense reasons (ie, they're not ticked at you, won't be continually trying to "dodge" or rewrite-into-a-different-understanding every request/command you give them, etc).

They probably do have other things to do, but then so do magicians. It's mostly a matter of where the path of the magician and the path of the spirit cross

Of course, this only applies in summoning magic. The various forms of other magic out there don't even have to touch upon the existance of spiritual beings at all.

~kakkarot

[greatoutdoors]

Bloodsong, Great post! I agree with what you have written 100%!

I am firmly convinced that OBE's, in the sense we commonly discuss, are actually travels within our own minds. I have had one true OBE where, while fully awake and in the "normal" world, I was suddenly outside my body looking at me. It ended as I realized what was going on. I don't know how I did it and have not been able to repeat it.

On hypnosis, in my experience, it is a method of focused relaxation and mind clearing. You can do it yourself or allow someone else to talk you through it. In recent years I have become extremely leery of letting someone else hypnotise me. In general it seems to be more effective than most passive meditations I have tried.

Peaceful Warrior, Quantum Physics hasn't disproved Newtonian physics, but only attempted to explain, as Bloodsong already said, that things work differently on the level of the very small. The laws of conservation of matter and energy are still very much alive and well.

An interesting tidbit on E=MC2: The speed of light is actually not constant, except in a vacuum. Physicists have been able to slow light down to a virtual stop, causing items on which it is focused to disappear. (I assume they still exist in the physical, but the article I read didn't addres that one.) Those scientists theorize this ability may lead to working time machines at some point. Weird, huh?!

PirateBob, for me, whether spirits actually exist is still up for grabs. If there is a "real" God, with angels and such, then there is every reason to believe a myriad of other spirits also exist. However, if the "energy sea" (I have explained this in other posts) is just a physical manifestion of natural law, then there is no reason to believe in "real" spirits. In that event, they would be just manifestations of our own desires.

[bloodsong]

Outdoors, Here's another mind-bender from scientific frontiers:  the old theory of "liquid ether" may come closer to describing how space-time truly reacts than Einstein's Relativity Theory!

Check out Scientific American for more information on this than I can fit in this area for convenience's sake.  Basically though, the current theory on space-time seems to want to break down, and cause light, which flows through space-time, to react more like water in a high-pressure flow nozzle than an unimpeded system!  Black holes are what act like the high-pressure nozzle in this case.  Check it out, seriously, interesting article.

Bloodsong

[absinthian]

Slowing down lightspeed, until a total stop. I have to read that article!! Could you tell me where you've read it?

[bloodsong]

Scientific American is where I read that article.  It was a month ago, though, the magazine is no longer current.  You can check your local newsstand if they carry back issues, the www.sciam.com website, or order the back issue itself to check out the article. I am not 100% sure the black hole article is in the web site, so you are warned on that one.

Bloodsong

[absinthian]

Thanks. I'm gonna check it out.