From: cward@Think.COM (Christopher Ward)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: "do[ing] stuff" (was Re: Is Magick worth the effort??)
Date: 22 Aug 92 22:24:53 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: godot.think.com

In article <Bt8r5y.K4F@acsu.buffalo.edu>, oispeggy@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Peggy Brown) writes:
|> Note: "Do stuff" I now refer to as "bending chance," which is 
|>       what I would have called it in the first place, if I had
|>       had the foresight to know how this thread would take off.

I'll preface this by agreeing to your rewording of "bending chance", though I'm
not fully sure that we mean the same thing by it.  Such is the nature of
language!  When I used the term "doing stuff", I refer to any conscious working
whose manifestation is extrenal rather than internal.  Below you exclude healing,
but I would put it in a grey area of "doing stuff" along with hypnotism and
syncronicity events.

|> 
|> >Why does this surprise you?  I wouldn't say I could "do stuff" routinely but
|> >I've "done stuff" before and fully believe I could "do stuff" whenever I had 
|> >the need.  
|> 
|> You're still sitting on the fence with that statement.  I can't 
|> tell whether you're saying you believe you can bend chance routinely, 
|> or you can't.

Let me give you a better example.  I believe I can run a multi-mile marathon to
completion.  Perhaps not everyday or at a moments notice.  However, I am sure I
could do it with some forwarning, knowledge of the course, distance, climate
(i.e. what is expected).  It is a stressing activity to accomplish, perhaps even
grueling so I have to weight that versus the projected outcome.  

Relaxation, short astral projection for meditation, even some healing may not
fall into your definition of bending chance/doing stuff.  Perhaps because it's 
too easy or maybe because the affects can be duplicated by other "non-magical"
means or just plain faked.  Perhaps that is best left as another discussion.
But to hop squarely off the fence let me give you a past example I have personally
particpated in.  One summer I was working at a farm in El Paso which collected
and grew food for the poor in Juarez, Mexico.  During one of our visits over
the border we had set up our food distribution station for the day.  I was
in charge of handing out cans of evaporated milk.  I personally unloaded the
boxes from the truck and set them up.  I counted every can and then counted the
people lined up.  And figured we were going to have to just give each person
one can and we would still run out.  Normally we handed out two to each person
and three to mothers with small children.  I mentioned this to the leader and 
was told to stick to the original distribution despite my assesment that we
would run out even earlier.

Now I have a Master in Computer Science so I can count and divide with the
best of 'em and to make matters worse I noticed more people lining up than 
when I first counted.  Before the line moved I prayed an evokation to multiply
the cans of milk.  Then the line started to move.  I am *absolutely* certain
no one handed out any cans but be and no one added to my stock.  But at the
end of the hour or so I stood over the stack of cans and passed them out by
two's and three's I still had cans left over.  Not a single person passed by
without at least two cans and I packed the leftovers into the original boxes.
No, I didn't end up with more than I started but I only had two empty boxes
to throw away.  This happened to me personally only once where I had total
control and noted the situation but it was an often occurance at the center.

This isn't bending chance, this is physical manipulation of solids.  I'm not
sure of what a good "bending chance" example would be.   

|> Now, why does it surprise me that people would claim the ability to 
|> bend chance routinely?  Because there is no way to reliably prove 
|> that the same outcome would not have happened anyway.

That is the reason magic resides in the realm of the religious and not taught
in Physics class.  Perhaps that is why many people, myself included, class
magic as an art and not a science.

I'd liken causual magic to riding in a canoe down the rapids.  Now, most people
in life just sit there and drift with the current, fast, slow, they hit rocks
or miss them or just ram into each other.  They do not understand the river
the hidden currents.  Sometimes they curse the river, sometimes the rocks,
sometimes the canoe, and sometimes them jump out and try to swim it.  The
adept (hell just the conscious person!) is like one who paddles his canoe.  He
directs the course within his skill at paddling and reading the river and
the prevailing conditions.  Large deviations from the mightly river's course 
(like upstream or cross stream) are very difficult but he usually fairs better
than the bloke in the water ro adrift without a clue.  Would he have missed 
crashing into that rock anyway?  Would he have landed at the shore of an
excellent camping spot for the night?  Maybe, but knowledge and skill assure
the desired outcome - bending chance.

As for God or your HGA, various theories aside, could they be the hand at
the rudder for some or a passenger with good river knowledge?  Not to stretch
the analogy too far but perhaps you get my point.

|> What harm does this do?  Well, if you spend years thinking you've 
|> reached whatever and you really didn't, its a big waste of time 
|> and you end up restricting your own development.  Also, I've seen 
|> people act on their belief systems in a way that either caused 
|> them problems or restricted them.  The most notable example of 
|> this is someone who worked for the federal government as a 
|> chemist, but was a Castaneda style sorcerer on the side.  He had 
|> (or thought he had) an ally relationship with LSD, so he decided 
|> to make the drug in his garage and got busted.  I could give lots 
|> of examples of this happening to some degree, to people from all 
|> different belief systems.  Remember Son of Sam?

I'm not sure what this means but I agree that self-delusion is a major danger
when treading the mystic path.  This is why I recommend and have a Spiritual
Director who you check in with to be sure you've "got both oars in the water",
to mix my metaphors a bit.

|> [my example deleted]
|> What's the point?  Are you comparing magick and physical reality?

Nope, just saying that the difference in world paradigms between yourself and
others may be similar.

|> That's fine, but do they know its crap?

Again, as with art one mans crap may be another man's Picasso.  Still, there
are master today who do know crap when they produce it.  The others are called
egotists. :-)

|> Healing involves one corporal being working on another corporal 
|> being.  I think communication on different levels, between 
|> physical beings is easier and more likely than bending chance.
|> 
|> Of course, the potential for crap to be produced is much higher 
|> too.  Turn on any bible-smoking xtian show.  I suspect that fake 
|> healings are more common than real healings and occur among all 
|> the belief systems.  I know someone who goes to a catholic mass 
|> given by the "healing priest," who visits her parish.  She is 
|> convinced that when she "falls back" from the power of the 
|> blessing that she is being healed.  But her account of the 
|> healing matches exactly the description of "healing" in the 
|> Brainwashing article Josh recently posted.

I'll not dispute healing fakery goes on.  But in all fairness, fakery is
certainly not limited to the christian genre.  Ever been to some of those
psychic fairs.  A trip to any new age books store or event will show you that
"fake-healing" is a major industry that wears many overcoats.  A fool and
his money...

Still, I have witnessed and actively assisted in true healings.  I'll grant you
that many head-aches, back-aches, and even minor illness healings are no more
magical than kissing a scraped knee to make a child's pain go away - still that
is a kind of magic in itself and one I am happy to apply.

I have seen burns and lesions vanish upon touch, limbs lengthened, cancers and
tumors disappear - all verified by scoffing doctors.  I don't always know if
I will heal on demand - if I could then you'd see me on the news wandering from
hospital to hospital.  Still it works often enough for me.  Psychology? maybe.
Magic? maybe.  Mystery? definitely.
  
|> [syncronicity examples]

As I said above, syncronicity falls into a grey area - another mystery!

Sorry for the long post, folks will think I'm Tagi! :-)
From: cal@otter.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low)
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 12:58:40 GMT
Subject: Re: Necronomicon <-- Legit?
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.