tagged together in 2 photos
magic + smoke + fire
appears with…
My skeptical & scientific exploration of magic & ritual very quickly gave way to a mystical & non-rational exploration of magic.
"Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" - Robert Anton Wilson. The Thinker is the non-language-based, right-hemisphere of your brain. Whatever it believes is true, the Prover, the left-hemisphere of your brain will seek to parse out of reality. Tim Leary called these reality tunnels.
All the way back back to Egypt: As above so below.
Mind precedes Matter.
"Every event in the visible world is the effect of an 'image,' that is, of an idea in the unseen world. Accordingly, everything that happens on earth is only a reproduction, as it were, of an event in a world beyond our sense perception." - Wilhelm Reich
The Primacy of Consciousness. An argument as to why the ultimate nature of reality is mental not material. Peter Russel David Bohm's Implicate and Explicate Order.
"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl
In all my reading, I was pleasantly surprised to make the connection that magic is similar to meditation in that it's fascinating to read about or discuss, but you don't actually get any benefit from "believing" in it. You actually have to practice it. Over and over again. It's like getting a prescription from the doctor and reading it everyday instead of taking it to the pharmacist and taking the actual medicine.
If you believe magic doesn't work, it won't. You probably already live in a "reality tunnel" where belief in magic = superstition. That is the place I was coming from at the time. What's interesting about magic is that it doesn't require that you believe in it, it just requires that you actually practice it.
When you first start out practicing any kind of magic ceremony, you're probably going to feel stupid. You won't really "belive" that it's going to do anything. But if you "fake it until you make it" and stick with it a few times, and over time as you repeatedly suspend your dis-belief, what you're actually doing is practicing tricking your brain. And when you're brain gets tricked, you'll start noticing strange sychronistic events in the real world. Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. Magic is the western-tradition of re-programming your mind.
Ever had the experience of learning a new word and then suddenly hearing it spoken everywhere? What if that happened with more than words? (Not just the Extreme song)
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!
TLDR: I burnt some paper, reprogrammed the non-language side of my brain, and felt better.