Apech

Ok. I'm going to talk through this and the next two stages (from the papyrus of Khonshu-mes). Sorry about the title I couldn't think of anything better. It's from a papyrus written in the 21st Dyn. in Thebes for the priest Khonshu-mes. It is one of the so-called mythological papyri which were produced in this late period which consist of almost entirely illustrations with little or no text. We are starting in the West which means the body. With death and mummification. Sorry the pic is a bit blurred but I probs with the image capture and getting it big enough. I'll go through what it shows and try to explain what it means in subsequent posts. Questions welcome (but please try to stay on topic if at all possible).

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?

Nagajuna's shunya and Xuanxue match quite closely and in a way Wang Bi and his school paved the way for an easy entrance for Buddhism into China. I wonder how different Daoism would be without Xuanxue? Can we ever know?

No need to apologise ... all is in the spirit of good natured conversation as far as I am concerned. I will answer your PM. I don't want to talk too much about vajrayana on this thread because as you say the topic is Chaos Magic.

I'm not sure what you are implying I haven't had in a while Just to clarify ... vajrayana is quite hermetic (with a small H) theurgy = sadhanas astrology = auspicious days and years, planetary influences etc. alchemy = internal mixing of winds, substances etc. ... also channeling by oracles and divination. Buddhist monks also practiced magic from the earliest times (despite what they would have you believe).

Vajrayana is a magical system

I think you might find the dates reflect when the wiki article was written. If you read the article it says that Chaos magic started in the 70’s in England.

“One cannot attend a single thread on the Dao Bums, where cultivators of every lineage and temperament are gathered for the great ball of spiritual discourse, without being entertained by the most delightful rumours: that Master X has secretly attained rainbow body in a cave near Chengdu, that Adept Y has fallen into deviant qigong and married a fox spirit, and that poor Neophyte Z is violently in love with the teachings of the late Master Ni, while everyone insists he is promised to the Complete Reality school! How such reports arise in a forum where people ostensibly have nothing to do but discuss the Dao, I protest I cannot imagine.”

My balls have always been followed by gossip.

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r-11cv4x{0%{transform:rotate(0deg);}100%{transform:rotate(360deg);}} @-webkit-keyframes r-imtty0{0%{opacity:0;}100%{opacity:1;}} @keyframes r-11cv4x{0%{transform:rotate(0deg);}100%{transform:rotate(360deg);}} @keyframes r-imtty0{0%{opacity:0;}100%{opacity:1;}} .r-24vbc0{position:absolute;visibility:hidden;top:0;width:50px;pointer-events:none} .r-24vbc0.loaded{visibility:visible;top:50vh;width:50px} Chaos magic (also spelled "chaos magick") as a distinct modern magical paradigm first emerged in the late 1970s in West Yorkshire, England.Key milestones: 1976–1977: The foundational ideas began circulating in a loose group of occultists in Yorkshire. Early figures included Pete Carroll, Ray Sherwin, and others who were dissatisfied with the rigid hierarchies and dogmas of traditional magical orders (Golden Dawn, Thelema, Wicca, etc.). 1978: The first public statement of chaos magic principles appeared in Pete Carroll’s book Liber Null (published privately at first) and Ray Sherwin’s The Book of Results (also 1978). These two short works are considered the “founding texts” of chaos magic. In them, terms like “chaos magic,” the rejection of belief systems as tools rather than truths, and techniques like sigil magic derived from Austin Osman Spare were formalised. Late 1970s – early 1980s: The loose network called the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) was formed (initially as a mail-based pact in 1978–79), becoming the first formal chaos magic organisation. So the commonly accepted “birth year” of chaos magic as a self-conscious movement is 1978, with the publication and private circulation of Liber Null and The Book of Results.(For context, Austin Osman Spare’s sigil techniques from the early 20th century and Discordianism in the 1960s are important precursors, but chaos magic proper begins in 1978 with Carroll, Sherwin, and their circle explicitly branding and systematising the approach.)

I wasn’t talking about the nature of numbers but about how complex systems of large numbers of things ( eg raindrops hitting a windscreen) can be described. As random and chaotic for instance.