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Mental Cause to Physical Effect?

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan.magick,alt.magick
From: nagasiva 
Subject: Mental Cause to Physical Effect? (was where to start?)
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 00:17:10 GMT

50010816 VI! om Hail Satan! Hail Yes!

Joe Cosby:
>> Nagasiva has started this whole thread by stating flatly to a
>> newby "if you work without material tools, you will not get real
>> results".

I think the comment was to Steven King:

"Steven King" :
>> ...for my purse-string, I'm hoping to be able to make some level of
>> progress without the use of any physical tools.

nagasiva:
> immaterial results with immaterial tools, apparently. why do you have
> hope of any kind of "progress"? how will you measure this progress,
> and how will you keep yourself from the horrid pitfall of self-delusion
> to which so many Hermetic mystics have succumbed?

without having considered such things as a magical link between nonphysical
cause and a physical result, the mage may enter into self-delusion. so many
Hermetic mages focus on "spiritual" results, but these can be faked, are
not as susceptible to review, and few seem to have ideas about how to go
about ascertaining one's success other than self-evaluation.
 
sri catyananda :
> I thought siva simply cautioned (rather than predicting) that those who
> work in imagination, without material tools, MAY get or may be SATISFIED
> with achieving only imaginary (non-material) results. 

I'd like to know why there would be any material results at all. what
about the magical link? if the nature of the magical spell and the
desired results are fundamentally different (one physical, for example,
chasing one's neighbors out of the county, and one nonphysical, being
a sitting meditation context for casting a 'Hot Foot' spell), how will
the purely mental spell affect the people so targetted? 'by magic'? :>

> I don't think he said that this was a foregone conclusion, however, 
> and i don't think he said that "imaginary" results equate to "not 
> real" results. 

it didn't start with me. Hermetics dissed folk magic because of its
material basis, from subjectivist dogma, and I realized that the
abject dualism of mind/body makes mental spellwork difficult if not
impossible to describe, metaphysically, if one wishes a physical
result. one option is to discount Crowley and the Magical Link. that
is a legitimate rebuttal. another would be to explain how one's spell
would be communicated to ground and to the target (e.g. describe
magic as a kind of electricity-like energy that courses from the
magician to the target through a medium). another would be some kind
of astral connection, I suppose, via the target's name or location
(if known). perhaps it requires some kind of channel through the
magician's body and moves out through the fingers through the air
to the target. another is that one's God arranges it for the 
magician as a result of a longstanding agreement.

> Perhaps he'll elucidate (or enoxerate) further?

the challenge to the folk magician is to explain why particular
formulae are effective and tools are required at all. the
challenge to the Hermetic magician is to explain how their
mental machinations get turned into spell effects.

more often than not the Hermetic is so focussed on mysticism that
their response will be either that "Low Magic" doesn't work or
is supported by the belief-battery they describe in their preferred
metaphysics. more often than not the folk magician had not even
considered abandoning the tools (because they seem to be where the
power lies) and has some other means by which they enjoy mystical
or religious 'progress' (e.g. hoodoo church-goers).

blessed beast!

nagasiva
-- 
emailed replies may be posted  -----   "sa avidya ya vimuktaye"   ----- 
"that which liberates is ignorance"  http://www.luckymojo.com/nagasiva.html
    hoodoo catalogue: send postal address to catalogues@luckymojo.com

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