Eques Peregrinus
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Posts posted by Eques Peregrinus
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Short solution:Delete the cookies in your broswer to log out.Longer analysis:I guessed it was bug in the session handling on the server side, so I made a few tests:It seems that pressing the "Thank you" button or posting prohibit us from logging out.Simply reading posts does not trigger that mechanism.If we delete the cookies (thus ending the session browser-side) after posting or pressing the "Thank you" button, we are of course logged out (browser-side). But if we log in afterward we can no longer log out of the new session even if we touch nothing during this new session.I wrote this post after pressing the "Sign Out" button.The following observations were made:The site registers 5 cookies at login:session_id (128 bits integer) coppa which (integer) ipsconnect_[number] (integer) pass_hash (128 bits integer) member_id (integer)
By doind certain actions or under certain conditions, new cookiees are registered.modtids (string) mqtids (string) rteStatus (string)
In a normal situation, member_id is set to 0 when logging out and some cookies are deleted.
None of their values change at the log out when the bug occures.Removing the session_id and member_id cookies permit us to log out.-
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[random philosophical rambling=on]If we assume time exists as an abstract quantity before being "materialised" as a duration as we generally perceive it. And that there is an intellect which exists in the same level of abstraction which "materialise" as reason. Then determinism and free will can coexist, all free-willed decisions being taken by the intellect "outside" of the time which pass. The decisions being taken by reason "inside" of the time which pass, however being determined, therefore not part of free will.A corollary of this hypothesis is that intellect, being unbounded by time, has no beginning nor any ends, it is therefore eternal.[random philosophical rambling=off]
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An other IT guy! \o/
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Recently, Marina Abramovic's "spirit cooking" has been brought to the greater public's attention.
This involves artistic-ceremonies where she takes menstrual blood, semen, breast milk, etc...and paints with them, consumes them, possibly individual participants bleed themselves during it, etc. According to her, when done privately, it's an occult working.
I don't think this subforum has a catch-all thread for fake occultism, and the discussion of it...which I would say this is. Part of this would also include what people consider today to be the Illuminati.
It's interesting to consider that the black magic concerns of the public are really a cheap, unintelligent bastardization of Western occultism...perhaps entirely ineffective, merely ridiculous, and gross. Yet, the power hungry and corrupt (in entertainment and perhaps politics) flock to it, and thereby give it the appearance of legitimacy.
Using erotic performances is not new in contemporary art. Without particularly searching this subject, I remember of an artist selling paintings made with her whole naked body in the 60s or 70s. A more recent example performance is a woman who was dropping eggs filled with paint from her vagina, while standing naked on two ladders. (I even found her with a fast Google search \o/: http://www.artfido.com/blog/plopegg-vagina-egg-paintings-by-artist-milo-moire-nsfw/ [NSFW])
Now, there are artists who are genuinely inspired by mystical themes. Of course, their art would not be interpreted as such in general.Considering the "power hungry and corrupt" guys, I suppose you mean stuff like the "Bohemian Club", that is: occult more in the sense of "involving secret societies" rather than "mystically oriented". -
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The overwhelming ephasis on personal power is a distinct product of 19th century magnetism. This sentiment is best expressed by Jules Dupotet Sennevoy, a highly influental but underappreciated figure of the occult revival. I have selected the following quotes from an abbreviated translation of his work going by the name "Magnetism and Magic".
As we have seen, the soul is considered the efficient cause of all magical operations - later, in the development of animal magnetism, willpower and imagination came to play a pivotal role. A reading through Arthur Schopenhauer's "On the Will in Nature", specifically the chapter entitled "Animal Magnetism and Magic", will shed a great deal of light on the structure of modern esoterica. It can be found here;
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Will_in_Nature/Animal_Magnetism_and_Magic
It is quite unfortunate that Dupotet's statement "indeed, we ought to substitute the word Magism for Magnetism" never became a reality. Instead, there is an underlying tendency, a culturally ingrained meme, which follows the sentiment of the early magnetisers - to interpret traditional magic through the lens of magnetism. Magnetism and traditional magic have quite different operational frameworks. It is important, I believe, to consider the magic of the oldtimers through their operative framework, not through a modern reinterpretation.
I wish to emphasize: magnetism is a subset of traditional magic, in particular of Graeco-Arabic Neoplatonism as it was expressed in the Renaissance. This post is long enough as it is, and I do not have a sufficent education in Platonism to continue further satisfactory, so I digress.
An excellent example of "ex opere operato" would be the occult virtues of minerals, plants and animals; Agrippa relied strongly on the "Marvels of the World" by the 16th century Pseudo-Albertus, who himself drew on the 4th century Hermetic treatise "Kyranides". The application of this philosophical doctrine is perhaps best known through contemporary Hoodoo rootwork.
Another example of "ex opere operato" would be De Imaginibus by Ibn Qurra, which is an astrological treatise dealing with the creation of talismans, some of them specifically suited for ones natal chart. Instead of employing the inherent powers of nature as in rootwork, one employs the power of the stars through astrological technique, which has nothing to do with "magical training" in the conventional sense.
Another important consideration we must take into account is the Pythagorean Quadrivium, being the four sciences of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. It doesn't take much imagination and willpower to see how these disciplines extends smoothly into the sphere of traditional ritual magic.
With that said, the operator is never seperate from the operation - on the contrary, the two melt together. I will finish my ramblings with this: while the operator has a soul with it's own inherent powers that can be utilized, the operation too is constituted of elements with their own inherent powers.
On an interesting sidenote, in consideration of the Catholic mass, I believe it might be fruitful to consider the meaning of the Biblical Greek word power; dunamis.
https://gotquestions.org/dunamis-meaning.html
True, natural and astrological magic works by the operation. But, concerning the sacraments, at least in the case of the mass, there are no astrological considerations and only tidbits of natural magic, like the use of frankincense. There is some sacred geometry incorporated into the architecture of churches (at least the traditional ones) and some sacred music, but they are not mandatory for the rites. This is why it surprises me that they are meant to work "ex opere operato".
I've been raised as a catholic.
The clear understanding of each devotee is that his salvation doesn't depend on the spiritual level of the priest: a common saying is "Do as I teach, but don't follow my example".
A clear political reason: even if the Pope himself do wrong, the Church is a source of purity and salvation.
Also, there are plenty of Eucharistic miracles in which bread becomes real flesh, but none of them is dependent on the priest himself. I remember a couple of them: in one instance, the priest later admitted that he didn't really believe in the ritual and he was amazed as the miracle happened in his hands. In another instance, bread became flesh in the mouth of a devotee known for her sainthood.
Stories? maybe...
I still believe that there's a sort of egregore behind the catholic church which prevalently acts in the mind of devotees and trough priests, but sometimes it can manifest creepy magic like blooddripping statues, stigmata and demonic possessions.
The term "egregor" is a translation from the French "égrégore" which was invented by Victor Hugo, the greatest french poet (unfortunately), for his master work "La Légende des Siècles"....
C'est à Malaspina de parler. Un vieillard
Se troublerait devant ce jeune homme; il sait l’art
D'évoquer le démon, la stryge, l'égrégore;Il teint sa dague avec du suc de mandragore....This term itself seems to come from the greek "grigori", which means "watcher" or "guardian", and seems to have been used to speak of the spiritual beings we call today angels.Now, the question is why did some guys in the 19th century decided to use this term to describe a kind of group mind entity? -
We live in a culture of imitations, simulacra, illusions, as-ifs. With the sacrament in particular, the real thing used to be performed by a shaman chosen by the spirit world, not appointed by the church authorities. The sacrament was an entheogen, which did not require faith or qualifications from the lay folks partaking of it, it worked for the same reason your ignition works when you turn the key.
Magical technology works like any other -- you have to know what you're doing when you use it. Some magical technologies are more user-friendly than others, anyone can press a button -- and, provided they know which button to press, the thing will be turned on. Others are not user-friendly and require an expert to operate. Even if it's just driving a car, it is not obvious how to make it work if you have never been told or shown how to start it, and don't know that you need a charged battery and some gas in the tank. Once you know, it's a no-brainer. With magical technologies, however, information is withheld -- part of it, or all of it. You are told that you can drive a car if you pour "the blood of a lamb" into the gas tank, so to speak. And then you take an imaginary journey in a car that never started. That's how our organized religions dispense magical procedures -- just so that they don't work.
Of course lay folks are unlikely to stumble upon the absolutely correct magical technology by going through whatever motions without knowing the whole deal. Something will be missing, something will be amiss in a typical case. The real deal is kept secret. And a lot of it is not dabbler-friendly.
It's very easy to convince people that it's not real when indeed what they are left with is simulacra. They are asked to "have faith" -- that's something you need when you are dealing with a non-working model. Have faith, be a child, play the game, use your imagination, put together two chairs and have faith that it's a car to take you places. No faith is required in the case of the real thing. It just works. But you have to have the real thing, and the real procedure. That's as rare as a real BMW on the shelf in the nursery where a 3-year-old's toy cars are kept.
These paragraphs made me think about the golden calf story in the bible, precisely the moment where Moses destroys the tablets after seeing the people misbehaving.I looked it up, in the Exodus and realised that I did not knew the story well (this well known film is to be blamed for that). Moses does not simply sit on top of the mountain for 40 days then went down with the tablets with 10 commandments. I emit the hypothesis that at least 3 versions of Moses ascension to the Sinai were compiled and more or less stitched together.In Exodus 21 to 23, Moses has to wait for 3 days before ascending the Sinai, the 10 commandments are given, then the description of a altar, then a list of laws are given (concerning servants, social responsibility, etc...). Note that there is no mention of tablets in these chapters.In Exodus 24 to 33, Moses has to wait for 7 days before ascending the Sinai, then he spend 40 days on the top. The chapters 25 to 31 describe the material and consecrations needed for the rituals, then in the last verse, the tablets are given. In this version the people waiting for Moses on the top of the Sinai build a golden calf and when Moses came down the mountain and saw the people dancing with the calf, he broke the tablets. Their content was therefore never disclosed.In Exodus 34 to 40, Moses ascend the Sinai in a morning with tablets he made himself, at the top of the mountain, he got dictated a set of commandments (different than the first set of 10) and the chapters 35 to 40 describe the ritual stuff, much of the material was already described in chapters 25 to 31. Note also this version is (rather crudely) stitched to the previous one: At the beginning of the chapter 34, it is claimed that new tablets are to be made, then Moses is instructed to build them and to go up the Mount Sinai. However, the large similarity between chapters 25 to 31 and the 34 to 40 let me think they originally were separate versions, in the same manner there are two versions of the creation of the world.If we restrict ourselves to the chapters 24 to 33, then claiming that the tablets are containing the missing parts to make the rituals effective fit nicely.I am now wondering: If we take a sacrament/ritual as a recipe (or as a color book), with some parts missing (which prevent its successful realisation), am I correct in thinking that these missing part were communicated verbally, or learned through an initiation, and therefore not present in texts?
However has anyone read any accounts of untrained people or even trained people performing magical rituals without due respect or the appropriate inner orientation? I have, the mechanics of the operation worked but it ended badly for them.
I have read here and there about untrained people dabbling with occult stuff like Simon's Necronomicon and being frightened by nightmares or physical manifestations like knocks or objects moving, but it is still possible that they are making up stories. Concerning trained people, Josephine McCarthy wrote recently that her work with the Arbatel caused her problems. It seems that the structure of this grimoire contains unequilibrated elements which she missed in previous readings.-
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I think you might benefit from reading the writings of different saints that who got a real kick out of the eucharist. A great number of them didn't even like the priests or were troubled by their lack of dutifulness or strict morality. But, even so, they were always ecstatic about the eucharist.
You probably wouldn't like the flowery quality of the devotional page and the psychodramatic quality of what is written. But, anyways, I was thinking a little bit about Gemma Galgani (though there are many similar saints)---there were times when she didn't want to go to the confessional because she was spiritually sensing that the priest wasn't....priestly. But, in accord with a vision she had, she went anyways because there was a strong presence of spirit in the church.
http://www.stgemmagalgani.com/2008/09/eucharist-and-st-gemma.html
I dunno, there was a time when I looked very in-depth into catholic theology. It was like a science of how their religion worked conducted primarily by people who couldn't feel what was at work. It was informed, to a great extent, by the spiritual lives of the saints. So, personally, I am inclined to think that it is an accurate description. It probably doesn't capture the nuances of a direct experience but it is a survey-science of the mystical experiences of devoted Christians.
There is definitely room for abuses of the doctrine but, if you know how doctrine was formed and formulated, I am fairly certain that you will see that control was a feature that was twisted out of something authentic.
Reading the saints is a nice idea, I am going to look at this link.
Note also, that I am not particularly against the Catholic Church. Many parts of their dogma make sense, either in general, either if we undestand it from a restricted viewpoint of a clergyman living in the middle-age. Sometimes, even when the doctrine is about control.
For example concerning exorcism: The Church consider than any baptised person can perform a valid exorcism, however, the exorcism is considered legal only if it is performed by a priest. Which make sense, since we not want to mess up this operation.
Then of course, there are the Inquisition and witch burning stuff, which the Church inherited from the roman laws, abolished, then re-established.
"On this last point, in case of magic, from which we can expect tangible results, there exists a very large number of spells and rituals to gain money, to get sex, to curse, to find buried treasures, etc... Of course, they were created as an answer to a demand, and some people cast spell after spell, and perform rituals after ritual without success."
So this means that in this case is applied the law of statistics: if you repeat something in a very large number, then the phenomenon that you seek, even with a very low probability to happen, it will happen eventually. But again just because this is how statistics work.
This is precisely what is bothering me. These statistics are far too low to consider that the operation itself is producing the result. It seems they work "ex opere operantis" — the result is produced by the operator.
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In the catholic doctrine, and, I suppose, also in most esoteric orders, there exist the concept of "ex opere operato" — the result is produced by the operation. For example, if a sacrament is made by a priest as indicated in the missal, then, according to the catholic doctrine, the sacrament will be valid, the "ability" of the priest being irrelevant to this operation.This last point bothers me. I only see a few reasons why an unskilled priest (or magician in case of a loge) would suddenly be able to do the same work as a skilled one. One of them would be that the sacrament itself is a kind of spirit's "contact form" (in the catholic doctrine to God itself) which does the work for the priest. An other would be that the sacrament is a kind of recipe which permit anyone following it to achieve a similar result.However, I also find many reasons for "ex opere operato" to be a superstition. If you excuse me this sophism, there is an very good motivation to invent it. In the case of an organised religion, without that concept, there would be no guarantee that a priest could perform all sacraments (and even with the guarantee that a priest could perform them, nobody would be sure that he is not slacking on his job).A better reason to doubt this concept is that certain sacrament were changed through time. For example in the case of the baptism, it was first performed on adult people which were naked and completely immersed. Later the baptism was mostly performed on babies, with the complete immersion replaced by a sprinkling of water on the head.An other reason is the intangibility of the result of most sacrament, which is therefore impossible to verify (which led some people to doubt the sacraments themselves, but this is not the topic).On this last point, in case of magic, from which we can expect tangible results, there exists a very large number of spells and rituals to gain money, to get sex, to curse, to find buried treasures, etc... Of course, they were created as an answer to a demand, and some people cast spell after spell, and perform rituals after ritual without success.Therefore, I tend to view the "ex opere operato" with a certain amount of skepticism, even if I can entertain the idea that there might exists certain rituals which are effective in themselves.What is the opinion of other bums in this matter?
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What is that "Demon Lover" story?
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I was not quite right!
Now for something completely different.
It surprises me that this thread did not go more in-depth in astrological magic, like Agrippa's planetary talismans.
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I think that I understand the circle, but I am not sure about the octagon. Tell me whether I got it correctly.The circle represents the divinity, the "Source of all", the "One", "All that was, is, and will be", etc... Which is beyond all understandings.The octagon represents the whole World, the manifestation of the divinity. More specifically its emanations as the 8 trigrams which rules the formation of the World. Which, in a western context, is represented as a cross for the 4 winds, the 4 rivers, or the alchemical transmutations in the scale of 4.Am I correct?
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The Qabala is a cosmological system, the I Ching is an other one, the Egyptians used an other one, so did the Greeks, so did the Sumerians, and plenty others. It is not surprising that there exists some similarities and differences between these systems. If we compare "mapping the cosmos" to "cutting a wheel of cheese", finding a similarity between two systems would be equivalent to finding a similarity between the wedges in two different cuttings.
Actually, I am making a mistake by speaking of Qabala with the singular form (I just wrote "The Qabala"), even if we restrict ourselves to the traditional Jewish Qabala. There are many different systems build during the antiquity, the middle age and the renaissance, by putting together different philosophical elements that their authors felt interesting to add.
Note also that "ideological impurity" does not necessarily makes a bad cosmological view. Neither does it necessarily makes a good one. I do not know any system which was not roughly mangled by someone at a moment or an other, neither do I believe there exists one (If anybody know such a system, feel free to tell, I am always curious).
The Jewish Encyclopedia has an article on Cabala. It is long, I would be lying if I said I read it completely, but it is interesting.
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There are mysteries, arcanes, etc... all these terms are synonymous for secrets. The difference between their usages comes from their contexts. "Mystery" is generally used in a religious or mythological context, while "secret" is more often used in hermeticism, and "arcane" in the tarot or in certain paracelsian texts.The intellectual knowledge is what can be discussed, and the experimental knowledge is the secret, because it can not be shared.(I suppose this is what Zhuangzi means when he wrote about that wheelwright telling a nobleman that his readings made by ancient philosophers were dead guys' shit.)
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Yeah especially occultists.
Well, if nothing was occulted, the guys who seeks that stuff would not be called occultists.
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You might be already aware of this study, I post it just in case.
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Spoon feeding?....
The term "spoon feeding" is used, because speaking of "breastfeeding someone" as a male could leave a weird aftertaste.
PS: This book is great. It was available online for a while on the author website, but she had to remove it when it was published on paperback.
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Rain...
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I use Chromium, mostly for the javascript execution performance. Everything seems to works correctly.
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These US elections seems like a bad TV debate where the participants throw constantly ad hominem at each other.
In your opinion, who is Scylla and who is Charybdis?
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Generally, when it is claimed that gods fight, it is actually their clergy. That is why atomic weapons are kept by politicians instead of religious authorities.
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I hope that I am correct in assuming that this, is in relation to this:
Yes, you are correct.
The theoretical structure which was lost in the period from 1600 to 1800 is basically that which Cornelius Agrippa expounds at great length in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy. I have often compared these three books to a three volume textbook of magical engineering, in which just about every aspect of the theory of magic is dealt with, and in so far as possible, illustrated with examples. This theoretical structure is applicable to any magical practices from any culture or time, and can contribute an understanding of the whys and wherefores of any type of magical practice, and allow one to understand and work successfully with the practical, magical aspects of anything from shamanism to Tibetan Buddhism, and of course my personal favorite, Ritual Daoism. I don't have time now to enter into a long discussion of why I say this, but again I have posted in great length about Agrippa and the deficiencies of neo-magic on the Dao Bums. A simple search of my posts using the name “Agrippa” will produce a lot of information as well as searching my posts for rational and ratonalism, because I consider Agrippa's theoretical structure to a rational theory of magic, and there are many posts that explain why.
Agrippa is definitely a great resource. His examples are a bit dated, which make them confusing when I began reading the Three books. Tyson's commentaries added to this confusion. Finally, when I began to just take them as examples to illustrate the actions of virtues in a neo-platonic world view, it became clearer.
By the way, E. Purdue is going to publish his translation of the Three Books, in 2017.
As for practice, I brought up the topic of the Golden Dawn. I consider the Golden Dawn to be the high point of neo-magical thought and practice. It is practically the only aspect of Western magic in the last two hundreds years that I consider worthy of deep study. In this regard what I said here is relevant:
I approached the Golden Dawn Temple and its ritual system as if I were retro-engineering a complex circuit board, and in the process I learned a great deal about the structure of magic and its practice. On many levels it was well worth doing. People who wish to dismiss the Golden Dawn are welcome to do so. It is their loss, not mine.
You don't need to join a "Golden Dawn" organization to study this material, all of my study of this was in the 70s with Regardie's first treatment of the Golden Dawn tradition. It does, of course, require a lot of thought and reading in related literature to understand it, but it is worth the effort.
This is golden!
Prayer.
Yes!
Be obedient to good Admonitions: avoid all procrastination: accustom thy self to Contancie and Gravity, both in thy words and deeds. Resist temptations of the Tempter, by the Word of God. Flee from earthly things; seek after heavenly things. Put no confidence in thy own wisdom; but look unto God in all things, according to that sentence of the Scripture:When we know not what we shall do, unto thee, O God, do we lift up our eyes, and from thee we expect our help. For where all humane refuges do forsake us, there will the help of God shine forth, according to the saying of Philo.
I CAN'T sign out!
in Forum and Tech Support
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Client-side, your browser will keep about 200 bytes to store the cookies. So it is really negligible.
Server-side, the framework used to run the forum needs to track the active sessions, so it will have more work to do.
I suppose that the statistics on the active users are also going to be wrong. If so, it might be possible to find accurately the moment where this problem began by checking if there is a sudden increase of active (registered) users.