Apech

That is interesting. Although one could question the idea of deliberate rather than inspired belief, to the extent that the person doing the operation must struggle to convince themself that they really believe something they have deliberately set up. However you could argue that all belief is like this, it is an act of will, a choice to believe. That this initial belief may be reinforced by pragmatic testing such that, if the results work for you, your confidence and thus belief strengthens as you go. Agreed. I can see belief shaping reality and as I suggested above perhaps this is what we always do (?) I think that knowledge is hermeneutical in that it is about how we interpret reality to ourselves. So that two things may operate together. If we practice trial and error pragmatism then faith and confidence come from a kind of higher empiricism. When I was young I was kind of obsessed with this idea … that it must work… be effective and not just philosophical or religious. But I think also that for instance if there is a HGA then this must operate from the beginning. In other words a higher power guides your hand even if you know it not. So for high magic it is more like revealing the truth rather than manufacturing it. You may think you are inventing beliefs without being fully conscious of what it is that attracts you to them in the first place if you see what I mean.

Is there any chance we can discuss chaos magic? Does anyone have anything intelligent to say about it?

Maybe it’s a generational thing - I was aware of chaos theory for at least a decade before Jurassic park.

yes let’s get past it - there’s an interesting discussion to be had here if we let that go.

I am English but I live in Portugal. Oak is Portuguese but lives in England. It’s a kind of yin yang non duality thing.

Sorry I don’t really follow you - but all good. It’s an English obsession as to what is the North/ South which goes back to the Wessex/Danelaw division more than 1000 years ago.

hey you can’t give up 1000 years of history just like that.

You know it’s a big deal in England what’s north or not. I don’t make the rules.

‘North’ 😃

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Welcome.

Hi and welcome.

Yes.

Pre-philosophical shamanism????

The use of the word Dao was fairly universal in Chinese philosophy wasn’t it? Like the other schools such as the Naming School and so on. So we would have to identify a purely daoist Dao distinct from others? And also where are we placing the origin of daoism anyway?