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Here is the video of last night's Ritual Night Talk with more on magical metaphysics. The donation link is here.
This is Part Two of the conversation that I started on November 17th. When I mention what we discussed "last week" in the video, I actually am referring to the talk from two weeks ago. Last week was the Sagittarius Elixir Rite.
At any rate, this talk goes over how the basic metaphysical model that I use applies to the various models of magick proposed over the years such as the spirit model, the energy model, and so forth. I even talk a bit about the psychological model - just because I don't believe magick is psychology-only, that doesn't mean it can't work with psychological processes that you want to change within yourself.
Enjoy!
8 comments:
Good talk. It's kinda odd that the world is so weird, you'd think more people would pick up on it. Or it could be that a lot of them do, they just don't talk about it much due to the generally hostile atmosphere of public discourse on the paranormal.
Basically the problem is with weak effects, just like what you see in herbal medicine. Most medicinal plants do something similar to what alternative medicine practitioners say they do, but the statistical effect is not as strong as what you see with a manufactured pharmaceutical.
Likewise, parapsychology has made a lot of observations suggesting that some paranormal effects do happen, but not as reliably or deterministically as what you see in chemistry and physics. You need huge sample sizes to demonstrate a statistically weak effect using the formal scientific method, and that's hard to do with ritual work.
Also, secrecy has been incredibly damaging to the study of magick. Up until very recently much material on the occult remained unpublished and kept confidential by organizations like magical orders. There is a point to this in the specific case of dramatic initiations, such those we do in OTO, but absolutely no reason for it in the case of tech for practical work.
I dunno, magick seems pretty strong to me. If you take a look at how a successful spell manifested, the combined probability of that sequence of events is pretty damn low.
Also, a decent magician can call up paranormal effects after some preparation. How many studies have been done in conjunction with magick?
What I mean by strong versus weak does not necessarily have to do with how effective a particular ritual can be - they can indeed by quite powerful. What I am talking about is statistical reliability. A chemistry or physics experiment will result in the same outcome every time the conditions are met, which makes it easy to validate their results relative to chance.
Magick, on the other hand, is less reliable. That is because there are so many variables involved, including consciousness which we so far have no measuring instrument available. That does not mean that when it works it can't be powerful, or even very powerful, but not necessarily in a predictable way - which is what's most important in the context of the formal scientific method.
I have a question. I'm trying to calculate some lottery odds to compare what a spirit can do vs an unaltered control.
When you say a spirit can achieve a probability shift of 100 to 1, are you saying it can force a win in a situation with odds of 1:100? Or is it a situation of 1% probability?
And on timeframes, considering that effects take a while to work, what comes first? The lodging of the ticket, or the evocation and charge?
What I saw was that on the Powerball lottery, I could reliably get 1-2 of the 6 numbers with a spell, whereas in the control group the odds were random. At the time, the odds of getting 1 number out of 6 was about 1 in 8, 2 numbers about 1 in 100, 3 numbers about 1 in 1200. Keep in mind, though, that this is statistical. You still can't "force" a win - but you can make it likely.
Also, you need to keep in mind that you usually won't get the ideal probability shift. You'll usually get at least a little less. What I am talking about with the 100 to 1 is the "S" value in the operant equation, which you can read more about here:
https://ananael.blogspot.com/2008/07/operant-equation.html
Lottery drawings are entirely random, so the time it takes to work is irrelevant. You can cast ten minutes before the drawing if you want, or days before. The reason many operations take time to work is because of "degrees of freedom" when casting into chaotic systems. The probability shift can increase as it propagates - but with a lottery drawing, the degrees of freedom only manifest when they turn the machine on to do the drawing.
I also didn't find any difference between divining the numbers ahead of time and casting for the numbers on a "quick pick" to come up, so I usually did the latter.
I see why measuring magick is hard. You only have your personal measurement of how much gnosis you were in, and how active your energetic body was. Plus the spirit is affected by constantly changing variables in the astrological landscape.
I'd love to hear you talk more about degrees of freedom in chaotic systems in the context of practical magick.
What's a good magical link to use if you're entering online? And have you noticed a drop off in results for choosing to go multiple games?
I read an interesting reddit post by a witch, who said they preferred to choose numbers other people felt were significant. Prime numbers, birthday dates, etc. Their rationale was that millions of people played the lottery with their hopes, so there would be a decent amount of emotional/psychic energy floating around any given lottery that a spell could piggyback on.
I would say that if you are entering online, maybe take a photo of the screen or something like that? I always get paper tickets myself.
Every spell you have running simultaneously draws on your overall magical power. So if you were trying to influence multiple games at once, the power seems to get divided up between them. So I stick with one at a time.
I haven't noticed anything like a psychic/emotional effect around certain numbers myself, though maybe that's for lack of looking. Most people aren't natural blazing psychic talents, so they don't create much of a shift by hoping to win. If so, a bunch of those randomization tests that they do to verify the randomness of the numbers would probably fail.
Also, with the Powerball and similar lotteries, if you try to play numbers that other people are playing, you have a greater chance of having to split up the jackpot with other people playing the same numbers as you.
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