The Occult

Started by Nyela, May 15, 2017, 07:06:53 PM

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Various

I do not believe in magic.

 
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Oniya

Quote from: Various on June 15, 2017, 02:41:21 PM
I do not believe in magic.



Not even in a young girl's heart?  *cue earworm*
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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RedRose

I was raised with all kinds of stories. Did people really believe in them... lol. It depended who you asked, and the answer could vary  ::) Still. There are weird things.
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GothicFires

Real world magic definitely doesn't happen the way it does in movies and fairy tales. I can best be described as religious belief. It's a feeling that makes it real. I've felt the spirit of god in church and in the middle of the woods at night. I had a friend ask me to do a protective spell for her children. I choose the appropriate deities and shouldn't have had an issue, yet nothing would go right until I chose to also invite the deities of the man I was supposed to be protecting her children from. I almost forgot to dismiss them but the deity candles refused to go out until I thanked them. It's nothing that would pass a science test but potent for the people there who had a little belief to begin with.
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Sirian Eve

I'm not sure  I can call myself anything just yet. A spiritual seeker would be the best term for me. I work with angels, faeries and ancestors. All is with the intention for a better existence. That's  what I believe  magic is, it's to help draw out intention for the user's exact purpose. I have met interesting people with stories that are amazing. I lean more towards ancient african spirituality.




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Various

Quote from: Oniya on June 15, 2017, 03:50:21 PM
Not even in a young girl's heart?  *cue earworm*

Romantic love is a construction of Hallmark.
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Lustful Bride


Mathim

Quote from: Various on June 24, 2017, 11:24:11 PM
Romantic love is a construction of Hallmark.

Actually it's a detectable biological condition in the brain and other parts of the body. That's one less hiding place for the intangible or occult.
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Oniya

Quote from: Mathim on June 25, 2017, 12:06:24 AM
Actually it's a detectable biological condition in the brain and other parts of the body. That's one less hiding place for the intangible or occult.

And can also be simulated by appropriate doses of theobromine - found, coincidentally, in chocolate.  And you thought that heart-shaped box was what did it.  xD
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Mathim

Quote from: Oniya on June 25, 2017, 12:18:11 AM
And can also be simulated by appropriate doses of theobromine - found, coincidentally, in chocolate.  And you thought that heart-shaped box was what did it.  xD

Well, the heart-shaped box is actually a butt, so...
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RegretNot

Religion and Occult really don't have a pure connection from the history on it all, they might intercept at times but just because someone is a practicing pagan or a witch doesn't really make me think of the occult.  Semantics aside; media, stories, and second hand fables paint very different pictures of what you see when you touch into things that you see that you can't explain with science or logical facts that the adult world tells you are the confines that everything is supposed to fit.  I don't know what you would call me but I know of and have seen plenty that can't be explained by anything a man of science can put their finger directly on (looking at you infrasound).  That said, when you start really digging into it and get really deep it gets pretty grim and weird in my experience, that's why a few years ago I decided as interesting and cool it felt to just relegate myself to be a bystander and a watcher of sorts.  Most self proclaimed "occultists" are either complete bullshit or die mysteriously, and neither sound fun to me at all. 

SidheLady

Okay, I thought I'd chime in here.

I'm spiritual, very much so. I'd call myself a pagan shaman. I work mostly with spirits. I live in a home which sits on a lay line, next to some extremely ancient woodland, and my mom is a practicing clairvoyant medium and my brother has some talents as well. My home always has some kind of presences in it, ghosts and spirits (some of them totemic spirits and familiars, and family pets which have passed).

I do think this, scientists who go out and say "there is no such thing as X" are stupid. It's like they can't accept there is something they dont know, or can't explain yet. I mean, if your a ghost, are you going to do tricks for people just to prove you are there?

I mean, maybe if we looked at it in different ways, maybe such as energy fields
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Trigon

Quote from: SidheLady on July 08, 2017, 05:11:47 PM
I do think this, scientists who go out and say "there is no such thing as X" are stupid. It's like they can't accept there is something they dont know, or can't explain yet. I mean, if your a ghost, are you going to do tricks for people just to prove you are there?

I would say that their tendency to do this has much more to do with Ockham's razor, rather than with whether or not they understand an unknown phenomenon.

Lux12

Quote from: SidheLady on July 08, 2017, 05:11:47 PM
I do think this, scientists who go out and say "there is no such thing as X" are stupid. It's like they can't accept there is something they dont know, or can't explain yet. I mean, if your a ghost, are you going to do tricks for people just to prove you are there?

Indeed. Quite a good point. The Spirits and Ancestors do not have the exact same priorities as living mortals. They aren't inclined to show off just because and they tend to be more subtle in their actions.

midnightblack

Quote from: SidheLady on July 08, 2017, 05:11:47 PM
Okay, I thought I'd chime in here.

I'm spiritual, very much so. I'd call myself a pagan shaman. I work mostly with spirits. I live in a home which sits on a lay line, next to some extremely ancient woodland, and my mom is a practicing clairvoyant medium and my brother has some talents as well. My home always has some kind of presences in it, ghosts and spirits (some of them totemic spirits and familiars, and family pets which have passed).

I do think this, scientists who go out and say "there is no such thing as X" are stupid. It's like they can't accept there is something they dont know, or can't explain yet. I mean, if your a ghost, are you going to do tricks for people just to prove you are there?

I mean, maybe if we looked at it in different ways, maybe such as energy fields

Well, putting anyone of a different opinion together with "stupid" is usually not the best way to start things off, even if it seems justified by all laws of nature, common sense and reason. In particular, I'd say that anyone who is at least a half-competent scientist in the 21st century can be suspected of all the flaws inherent to man, except stupidity.

Now, the professional part of a scientist's life, which in my opinion needn't have any influence on personal/spiritual beliefs, is concerned with things that can be objectively observed, i.e. measured. If a phenomenon does indeed take place, its manifestation must leave some kind of observable trace. In turn, if properly understood, this trace will allow the phenomenon to be replicated in controlled conditions. This alone establishes the phenomenon as a part of objective reality.

Call it a professional flaw if you will, but in order for a scientist to acknowledge a "spiritual" presence, he would have to take laboratory measurements of its manifestation and rule out simple, mundane causes. In particular, those energy fields that you mention should leave some measurable trace of their existence.

In any case, as someone who on rare occasions touches upon the spiritual (I wake up in the dead of night with very vivid nightmares of bad things that I can read of in the news the next day, or discover that they happened to someone close to me), I still think that this and anything related to it is more of a matter of photon physics and the human brain still holding many, many mysteries, rather than it being something completely off the charts of how we learned to understand the world.
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GothicFires

There is actually a discipline of magic that is practiced without a dogmatic relief and many that practice it consider it in line with scientific practices. They call themselves magi. Their symbol is a seven pointed star with a continuous line. I knew one in my early 20s. In the past these men could have been called alchemist or an apothecary. Today that would be chemistry and doctors.

Here is the one thing you can walk away with no matter what you believe. The universe works by a set of rules. Some rules we understand some we don't. Practicing magic isn't going to change these rules. What it can change is yourself and your understanding of those rules. If you don't practice magic or believe in it's existence the laws of the universe still work the same way. 
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The Vessel

I consider myself Pagan: Disorganized Type. Throughout my life, I've been Wiccan, Druid, Taoist, Satanist, Xaote, and dabbled in several more things.

Nowadays I just cheekily refer to myself as a "New Age Crystal Waver".

That said, I've never had an experience with spellwork that unambiguously worked for me in a way that I can claim anything other than coincidence. I've seen others do some things that made me go "hmm", but for myself, in the clutch, the results have always been inconclusive.

I try to be very careful with my occult practice; I have a tendency towards suggestibility, so it's easy to get me riled up over bupkiss. The only practice I've had consistent, statistically significant success with is divination. Elder Futhark, Tarot, and to a limited extent Astrology (only working with natal astrology right now, haven't moved into horary) have impressed me and others on several occasions, and I'm one of those who calls it slop if you give me any information I could use to cold read you during the process.

I'm not against the idea of magic(k) in modern times, but I am pretty sure I can't do it.

Nyela

very interesting. thanks everyone!
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laurelverse

It was really interesting to read everyone's point of views. 

I now have a completely open mind.   As a teenager, Wicca and the tarot fascinated me.  During various periods of my life, I studied and dabbled in all kinds of spiritual paths, learned Biblical Hebrew, joined the Unitarian Universalist church but also a left-hand path organization.  I read Scripture, I read Anton LaVey, I read and talked about everything in between.  I've settled into a place where I think cognitive behavior therapy techniques and ritual magic use different forms to create the same functions.  I think that hateful or paranoid or narcissistic people are neither more or less likely to be occultists than anyone else, but when they put that negative mojo into faith or magic, it tends to hurt them and the people they love.  A lot. 

I embrace positive people who love/worship positive gods or Powers That Be, regardless of the Name or rituals involved.  They seem to embrace me :)

Serephino

I am Pagan.  As said earlier, I do believe a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  A person can't just read one book on magic and spell work and be ready to preform grand rituals.  I took my time, read lots of books, and talked to many other Pagans before I discovered what works for me and started doing spells.  I lived in a very haunted house most of my life and saw and experienced strange things.  I even got a spirit to communicate with me.  Then I got into doing tarot readings, and was told I was pretty accurate.  It really is too bad I lost the little book that told me what the cards meant.  I've done a psychic reading for someone and knew something about them no one could guess in a million years.

I am pro Science.  I feel that Science is a tool for understanding the world around us, and it works pretty well for the most part.  But as you can tell from the above paragraph, I also firmly believe that there are many things scientists cannot probe in a lab or explain with scientific means. 

DelightfullyMAD

I find the concept of occultism and the occult to be interesting, but more from the insight into human psychology rather than the notion of occultism itself.  Of course, as an avid roleplayer, the occult often plays a large role in many of the games I run, especially since I tend to like running Call of Cthuhlu games and the like.

But what really fascinates me is that notions like occultism, alchemy, astrology, and other such pseudo-sciences actually are interesting to me because they demonstrate a sort of 'Evolutionary Link' in our species growth of knowledge over the centuries.  When it comes down to it, all of these things were created by people in order to try and explain and exert some degree of control over the world, reality, and our immediate environment.  Of course, these disciplines were flawed, often flat out incorrect, but we had to start somewhere.  We didn't go from making the wheel to immediately creating NASCAR after all, there was a process.  In many ways, occultism is a vestigial remnant of that process.

Who knows, centuries from now what we currently hold as true and concrete may very well be regarded by the people in the future as being the very same as the occultism that we now consider just a fun little bit of imagination today.  But once upon a time, occultism, alchemy, astrology, all were considered every bit as scientific as what chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics are now.  Some things, such as math, are likely to progress most unchanged but merely built upon into the future, but other ideas like chemistry or astronomy could see massive shakeups in our understanding.  Hell, already we are discovering stuff out in the universe that pretty much makes us rethink a lot of our preconceived notions, so just imagine what a century or two would bring?
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Regina Minx

Quote from: DelightfullyMAD on August 14, 2017, 12:01:29 AM
But what really fascinates me is that notions like occultism, alchemy, astrology, and other such pseudo-sciences actually are interesting to me because they demonstrate a sort of 'Evolutionary Link' in our species growth of knowledge over the centuries.  When it comes down to it, all of these things were created by people in order to try and explain and exert some degree of control over the world, reality, and our immediate environment.  Of course, these disciplines were flawed, often flat out incorrect, but we had to start somewhere.  We didn't go from making the wheel to immediately creating NASCAR after all, there was a process.  In many ways, occultism is a vestigial remnant of that process.

It's not a vestigial remnant, though. Science rightfully enjoys a special epistemic status that pseudo-sciences and occult practices do not get to enjoy, even if they attempt to claim that they do. Astronomy is a science. Astrology is a pseudo-science and occult practice. It's not appropriate to say that when we were doing astrology we were doing the same kind of thing that astronomy tries to do, just less well. The difference between legitimate science and non-sciences isn't just a difference of degree or a difference in quality. It's fundamentally a difference in kind.

If you must use an analogy, it's not that astrology and occultism are vestigial organs of our quest for understanding. They're evolutionary dead-ends that weren't biologically fit to pass on their methodology and premises to the current population of knowledge-seeking behavior.

midnightblack

Quote from: DelightfullyMAD on August 14, 2017, 12:01:29 AM

Who knows, centuries from now what we currently hold as true and concrete may very well be regarded by the people in the future as being the very same as the occultism that we now consider just a fun little bit of imagination today.  But once upon a time, occultism, alchemy, astrology, all were considered every bit as scientific as what chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics are now.  Some things, such as math, are likely to progress most unchanged but merely built upon into the future, but other ideas like chemistry or astronomy could see massive shakeups in our understanding.  Hell, already we are discovering stuff out in the universe that pretty much makes us rethink a lot of our preconceived notions, so just imagine what a century or two would bring?


What happens when scientific understanding progresses isn't really a case of "previous conclusions being wrong", but rather defining the domain of validity of those conclusions and successfully generalizing them to a broader context. As an example, there's nothing wrong with Newton's insight nearly 400 years ago about the way things move, as long as you remain in a domain appropriate for his observations, namely velocities that are small in comparison to the speed of light in vacuum and dimensions much larger than the size of an atom. Einstein's broader theory about the way things move, developed about 100 years ago, reduces to Newton's results in the appropriate context. If need ever arises for a theory of motion beyond that of Einstein's, this new theory will encompass and reduce to it in the contexts with which we are familiar today.

This isn't true for methods lacking a logical structure that is grounded in observational data.
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DelightfullyMAD

Quote from: Regina Minx on August 19, 2017, 10:36:42 AM
It's not a vestigial remnant, though. Science rightfully enjoys a special epistemic status that pseudo-sciences and occult practices do not get to enjoy, even if they attempt to claim that they do. Astronomy is a science. Astrology is a pseudo-science and occult practice. It's not appropriate to say that when we were doing astrology we were doing the same kind of thing that astronomy tries to do, just less well. The difference between legitimate science and non-sciences isn't just a difference of degree or a difference in quality. It's fundamentally a difference in kind.

If you must use an analogy, it's not that astrology and occultism are vestigial organs of our quest for understanding. They're evolutionary dead-ends that weren't biologically fit to pass on their methodology and premises to the current population of knowledge-seeking behavior.

I wasn't necessarily suggesting that occultism and astrology were actual 'science'.  I probably wasn't clear on that.  More what I meant was that the intent behind them was basically the same, even while occultism, alchemy, astrology and the like were fundamentally different in their methodology.  Most of those either predated the scientific method, or were still in practice when science was still a bit fledgling.  It still stems from a fundamental need that humans have; to understand the world and make sense of it, even if the method used is fundamentally flawed.

Basically, what I wanted to express is that I find occultism and the like fascinating because it reveals something of human nature that I think is very interesting.  Even when steeped in superstition or flawed thinking, it was still an attempt by people to put some form of logic or coherence to the world.  My descriptor as an evolutionary link may not be correct, I grant you, but I'll be honest and say I wasn't too concerned with being terribly specific with my wording.  Calling it an offshoot may be a bit closer to the point, but that wasn't really my main intent on making the statement.  It was more of an observation on human desire for knowledge, a desire which can take many forms depending on just what tools and methods they happen to have available at the time.
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Curious to know about me?  Here's my introduction thread: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=266266.msg13136350#new

My schedule occasionally gets kind of hectic, so if I suddenly disappear for a period of time, not to worry, I am likely just working like a dog.  I will be back.

SaturnCeleste

#49
For the past year and a half I have devoted my life to the Tarot.  Not only is it a way of life, I am building my career as a Tarot Reader.  But I grew up in a family that was very strong with psychic connections.  My grandmother was an astrologer, my mom was a dreamer and psychic and I am who I am now because of them.  I am the only one left alive in my family except for my son (I'm divorced) and sometimes when I sit down at my table to read the cards, I greet my ancestors.  The occult is my way of life.  I live in a sanctuary of spirits.

As for Ouija boards, someone has to move the planchette.  I've never seen it move by itself, don't waste your time with the Ouija.  >:)

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