HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ba@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (B.A. Davis-Howe)
Subject: Re: Spirit in the house, and parents won't listen...
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 04:05:11 GMT

uphrrmk@Msu.oscs.montana.edu (Me) writes:

>DEAR JOSH..... Quite frankly, I think you're being an ass.  YOU might not see
>anything, because your mind won't let you see anything.  Just because you
>haven't been pelted with books doesn't mean that ghosts, spirits, etc. are all
>in the mind of other people.(though with a few people, it may well be.)
>Quite often, if you don't believe in something, you won't see it, and therefore 
>be insensitive to those of us who do see critters and have to deal with them.
>If you don't work with/ believe in magick, then why in all the names of the
>Gods, are you bothering to be a sarcastic git on this newsnet?  Get on the
>philosophy net, and stop wasting your energy being cruel to Magickers with
>problems...

Bran blinks a few times, wondering just how long this "Me" person has been 
reading a.m.  It may well be true that josh is an ass, but he is also the 
person who got a.m to exist in the first place.  He has posted many articles
which show that he does indeed "work with/ believe in magick".  Some of them
even I have found useful.  (Given that he and I are fond adversaries, that's 
quite the compliment from me.)

Yes, I could have taken this to email, but I wanted to make a point, and this
post seemed to be the most useful one to use as a springboard.

	Truth usually lies between the extremes.

In this case, the truth is probably not either that it is all objective, nor
that it is all false.  However, if you read josh's post *carefully* (this
requires treating the inflammatory language as inflammatory language, not as
content), you will discover that josh is not suggesting that it is all false.
Rather, he suggests that the individual *willfully disbelieve*.  This is very
similar to the D&D idea of "disbelieving" an illusion out of existence.  The
general rule of thumb is that fear and reaction only make things worse.  
Choosing to not react--to not even give it credence--is a very powerful way to
alter the situation.

On another level, a midgroud is between mindless acceptance and josh's vitriol.
This applies to a very large percentage of the responses in a.m.  Often, we
respond more to someone else's language than to the content of the post.  If
we try to find the midground before responding, we can spend less time fighting
and more time saying something meaningful.  This does not mean that fighting is
never meaningful, but that we get distracted into flames rather than real meaty
arguement.  (Note that "we" was used extensively in this paragraph.  Thanks, 
Shava!)


              Merry meet, merry part, merry meet again,
                               Br'anArthur

Queer, Peculiar, and Wyrd! :-)

******************************************************************************
Newage is hypoallergenic spirituality--
it's for people who are allergic to the word religion.
                                   --Jon Jay Obermark
Organization: Sophomore, Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 21:25:56 -0400 
From: Shawn Clayton Knight <knightster+@CMU.EDU>
Subject: inner circle

i gotta agree on this one ... i have often felt uncomfortable on
alt.magick ... because a lot of my views have been the result of my own
imagination and meditations, as opposed to the right texts.

Now mind you I am an avid Crowley reader, and am currently reading
Mathers' "Kabbalah Unveiled", but I still have many of my own ideas ...

Occasionally, alt.magick is kinda hostile and people seem to argue about
really petty things.

But most of the time it's ok.

-shawn
From: dgd@csd.bu.edu (David Durand)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Necromancy
Date: 8 Sep 92 17:30:12 GMT
	<JOSHUA.92Sep3101506@bailey.cpac.washington.edu>
	<1992Sep8.005601.18427@samba.oit.unc.edu>
Organization: Roberstool Research Labs
In-reply-to: shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu's message of 8 Sep 92 00:56:01 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.005601.18427@samba.oit.unc.edu> shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett) writes:
   In article <JOSHUA.92Sep3101506@bailey.cpac.washington.edu> joshua@cpac.washington.edu (Joshua Geller) writes:
   >Dee did exactly none of his experiments in graveyards. what
   >happened was that edward kelley and some third person were doing some 'black
   >mgick' (demonology as opposed to necromancy). when dee found out about this
   >he became very upset and made kelley promise to stop.


   Someone thought that they did.  I have a book on astrology which includes
   what looks like a period etching of Dee and Kelley in a multiply inscribed
   pentacle in the middle of a graveyard, calling on the spirits of the dead.

   The gentlemen themselves might not have done so, but their reputation 
   appears to have been expansive.  Why should this surprise anyone...?
   -- 
   Shava Nerad Averett				shava_averett@unc.edu
   /*  all materials (c)1992, Shava Nerad Averett, and have nothing significant
       to do with the University of North Carolina, a mostly owned subsidiary 
       of the NC Legislature, a mostly owned subsidiary of the DOT.      */

I've always been fascinated by this picture, but have never seen any
documentation that would indicate they did any such things (I'm with
Josh on that aspect). I wonder if it dates after Elizabeth's death,
when Dee fell strongly out of favour, as James apparently feared magic
and witchcraft of any sort... Anyone know the date of that engraving?

    --David
Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith)
Subject: Psychic attack/shielding/empathy
Reply-To: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 09:35:00 +0000

Hmmm.

Double Hmmm.


Well Amanda and Eddie.

Suppose that all this teenage psycho-melodrama WAS actually real (if
unconscious on the part of the sender) pschic attack, and the process
of 'realising it was the externalisation of internal conflict' was in
fact ACTUALLY the process of _internalising_ an _external_ process as
a *means of defending against it*.


Although the above model is NOT consistent with our 'normal'
worldviews, neither are most of our other 'magickal viewpoint'
either.


Internalisation of emotion is a very 20th century *technique* - but
is it TRUE....?
From: amanda@INTERCON.COM (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: about attacks and so forth as they pertain to empathy
Date: 7 Sep 92 04:52:05 GMT

mcmorris@vet.vet.purdue.edu (brandywine) writes:
> perhaps I was oversenstive....
> but reguardless, I don't see the point my age makes.
> I would prefer to take this to email if you want to explain it to me...

Well, it's like this.  There's a phenomenon that some people call "adolescent 
witch syndrome" or "psychomelodrama," wherein a fairly youg person (generally 
anywhere from 16 to 24, but not actually limited to a particular age group) 
will take what are to a large degree internal conflicts and externalize them.
In pagans or magicians, this generally gets put in terms of psychic or 
magickal attacks; for christians, especially evangelicals, it comes out as 
"spritual warfare" or "demonic attyack" and so on.  While I am probably more 
charitable than Josh about it, even I have to admit that this is what your 
posting sounded like.  It especially tends to crop up in bright people--the 
high school I went to, for example, had some prime examples, as did some of 
the people I hung around with in college.

I don't mean to belittle it--the conflict, whatever its fundamental nature, 
is very real, and learning to cope with it, and hopefully resolve it, is an 
important task.  If you do this by visualizing psychic shields against energy 
vampires, fine--the particular forms you use are unimportant, and 
externalization is often a good way to get a handle on things--witness the 
success that some people have in curing cancer by eternalizing the healing 
process through visualization (zapping cancer cells with silver bullets, 
etc.).

However, bona fide psychic attack is quite rare, since it is a great deal of 
trouble (it's usually quite a lot easier to apply rather more mundane mind 
games and other forms of pressure), and is quite unpredictable in its effect.
This leads to a certain amount of skepticism among people who have been doing 
psychic or magickal work for a long period of time, especially when faced 
with a description that, to be frank, sounds more like fantasy writing than 
real life magickal or psychic experiences.

For example, I have never noticed being the target of a magickal or psychic 
attack, even though to listen to some of my friends it would have been hard 
to avoid at some times of my life.  Now, perhaps this is because I "have very 
strong unconscious shields," or perhaps simply because I don't worry about 
it, and am quite confident in my ability to cope with any personal conflict 
that doesn't involve the direct application of of firearms or explosives to 
my person :).  Not being afraid of getting hurt may also be part of it; I 
don't know.

Also, you should be aware that Josh, probably more than anyone else on this 
newsgroup, is not one to hold back expressions of skepticism :).  In this 
case, he was being quite polite--I had to chuckle when I read his response.

 
Peace,

Amanda Walker
From: SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Easter's date
Date: 9 Sep 92 18:32:33 GMT
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

Josh asked for full references to Neugebauer's works on Ethiopian Easter
calculations and related matters.  Here they are.  Sorry for the delay.

The most important is: Otto Neugebauer, _Ethiopic Astronomy and Computus_
(Sitzungeberichte der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Philosophisch-historische Klasse, vol. 347), Vienna, 1979.  Three earlier
articles on the same subject, cited by him there, are reprinted in his
_Astronomy and History: Selected Essays_, New York & Berlin: Springer, 1983.
Of these, the one titled "Ethiopic Easter Computus" (pp. 523-538) is a sum-
mary of the larger book.  ]It originally appeared in _Oriens Christianus_
63(1979), 87-102, but the riprint is easier to find.(  Since then he has
published another book in the same Vienna series on Abu-Shakar's medieval
treatise on these same Eastern calculations, but unfortunately i can't put
my hands on the exact volume number and titlejust now.  A summary article on
the subject of the second book was published in _Journal of Near Eastern
Studies_ 42(1983), 55-58, under the title "Abu-Shakar and the Ethiopic Hasab."
In addition, he contributed an appendix on the astronomical theories in I Enoch
to the translation by Matthew Black, _The Book of Enoch or I Enoch: A New
English Edition_ (Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha, 7), Leiden:
Brill, 1985.  I recommend them all highly.

Shava commented briefly on the difference between Roman Catholic and
Greek Orthodox Easter at present.  The calculations I was talking about
are Greek Orthodox ones, and they were also Roman Catholic ones between
the age of Bede and the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582.
Many of the Eastern Orthodox churches still follow the pre-Gregorian
calendar.  There is now 13 days difference between them.  With the
introduction of the Gregorian Calendar came a new way of calculating
Easter.  These new calculations cut entirely loose from the date of
Jewish Passover, whether as the Jews actually celebrate it or as the old
Christian calculations claimed they ought to have celebrated it.
Gregorian Easter, as a consequence of this, can now actually fall
before Jewish Passover.

Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM
Xref: sparky alt.magick:4351 alt.satanism:1959
From: Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.satanism
Subject: Re: ritual curse against an enemy (help wanted)
Date: Tue,  8 Sep 92 14:10:22 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
  <Bu2MBH.JKF@news.cso.uiuc.edu> <joshua.715874327@coombs>

9209.08 e.v. [The Birthday of my Abyss!]


Josh has addressed this already, but nobody has dared post any
references, for which the original post asked.


LaVey does ok, especially in _The Satanic Witch_, yet most
curse-based magick is treated rather poorly, either by those
whose work is popular or, when they are published, they are
only by small-volume paperback outfits.  I've yet to see a good
book on what I would call 'anger-magick' which covers all the
bases.  Here's what I have in my library.  Perhaps you will be
able to find them in used bookstores.

--------------------------------------------------------

_The Black Art_, by Rollow Ahmed, Paperback Library Inc., 1968.

Actually a good book which covers more history than recipe.


_The Do-It-Yourself Witchcraft Guide_, by Luba Sevarg [E.S. Graves],
   Award Books, 1971.

A quaint, hard-seller.  I don't recommend it, but it has some nice ideas.


_The Modern Witch's Spellbook_, by S. L. Morrison, Citadel Press/Dell, 1971.

Actually worth looking at, and it has a very small section on 'black magic'.


_Mastering Witchcraft; A practical guide for Witches, Warlocks and Covens_,
by Paul Huson, Berkeley/Medallion, 1970.

This tome has a lot of gems hidden in its depth.  Chapter 6 is called
'Vengeance and Attack' and has some things on cursing.


_The Black Arts_, by Richard Cavendish, Putnam's Sons, 1967.

This is more history than practice, but it has a lot of interesting ideas,
and it ties in Satanism, Witchcraft and magick where a lot of other tomes
look away.

Most of the books I've found on 'magic(k)' warn against such attacking
spells.  Most mages are too afraid to face their own anger.  Many would-be
mages are simply programmed by our prophylactic culture into do-nothingism.

You might consult role-playing magic systems for ideas on visualization
techniques for aggressive, offensive spells.  There are many ways to
curse and harm.  I don't recommend it myself, but do understand that some
have need.  


Thyagi
--------------------------------------------------------
Access to information and the ability to use it is true power.
Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.satanism
From: joshua@coombs.anu.edu.au (Joshua Geller)
Subject: Re: ritual curse against an enemy (help wanted :-)
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date:  7 Sep 92 13:58:47 GMT

ba@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (B.A. Davis-Howe) writes:

>tedrick@melody.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick) writes:

>>Can anyone tell me (or recommend a source for) some ritual curses
>>to use against enemies (assuming this is legal, are we still free
>>to do this kind of thing these days?)

of course it's legal. unless you live in a jurisdiction that still has
witchcraft laws (in which case it would be fascinating to see the wording
of the indictment), or in a place where a traditional native population
buys into witchcraft (parts of africa and the navajo indian reservation
come to mind). in the latter instance, you might (saay in africa) receive
a suit for unauthorized practice from the local magicians and a demand fo
a share of your consulting fees (and suits of this nature tend to be very
direct) or (say in the navajo country) you might be hacked to death with
whatever sharp objects come to hand (navajos don't like witches).

>Well, I don't know about the legal aspects, but I can tell you that most 
>practitioners consider hexing VERY UNETHICAL in *almost* all circumstances.

actually, I am a firm believer in people doing exactly what they want to do.
so I wil give some methods of destructive magick here.

the simplest and seemingly most effective way is to perform an act of
autosexual sex magick with your 'telos' being the destruction of your
enemy. use the resultant semen or vaginal fluids to charge a sigil
embodying this telos (see the FAQ for a short discussion of this particular
general magickal operation).

if you can establish a magickal link with your enemy, any number of
methods (constructing an effigy which you destroy (the 'voodoo' doll)
and related techniques) should be effective. a magickal link is something
that has been in intimate (physical) contact (the more intimate the better)
with the person. see sir j. g. fraser's 'glden bough' for an intensive
(albeit scholarly) iscussion of this.

josh
From: SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Easter's date
Date: 4 Sep 92 22:10:05 GMT
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

Actually, the calculation of Easter in historic times is a bit trickier
than so far indicated, and since the introduction of the Gregorian cal-
endar (1582) has become even messier than before.  In the days before
1582, Easter was defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon
on or after the Spring Equinox.  Moreover, the Spring equinox was de-
fined as March 21, and the full moons in question were defined in terms
of a recursive set of nineteen dates for ninteen successive years; in
each case, the true astronomical dates of the Spring equinox and of the
full moons on or just after it were considered to be of no particular
interest.

At least the Greeks (I'm not sure about the Romans) who wrote on this calcu-
lation, moreover, referred to the 19 dates of the full moons in question as
the dates of the "Passover of the Jews," and the very few of them who hap-
pened to be aware that the actual Jewish calendar placed Passover on dif-
ferent dates than these (usually earlier, and there is no 19-year recursive
cycle either) simply asserted that the Jews had misunderstood how their own
calendar *ought* to work, and *ought* to celebate their passover when the
Christian computation said they should.  (Although this is simply arrogant,
as they put it, there is in fact some reason to think that the Christian
computation is also of Jewish origin, and that in the centuries just before
and after Christ that there was more than one Jewish calendar and more than
one way of computing Jewish passover -- the Christian bishops just adopted
one variant, the Rabbis another.)  The phrase "the first full moon on or
after the Spring equinox" is more or less equivalent to the formal definition
of Passover in the Bible, depending on how you define the equinox and the
full moon, and also on whether you observe them (and at what location) or
you calculate them (and by what mathematical process, from what assumptions).

So the part about the full moon comes directly from Judaism (but might be
taken by Judaism from some earlier source) and the part about Sunday, ob-
viously, from the Christian veneration of that day as the day of their first
Easter.

Unfortunately, there's no good account of all this stuff in English to which
I can refer you.  The best may be Reginald Lane Poole, _Medieval Reckonings
of Time_ (Helps for Students of History, no. 3), London: SPCK, 1921; and
Alexander Philip, _The Calendar: Its History, Structure and Improvement,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921.  In German, and much much better,
is Franz Ruehl, _Chronologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, Berlin, 1897.

Robert Mathiesen
SL500000@BROWNVM
Newsgroups: alt.magick
From: joshua@coombs.anu.edu.au (Joshua Geller)
Subject: Re: about attacks and so forth as they pertain to empathy
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date:  8 Sep 92 00:55:56 GMT

eddie@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Edward M. Averett) writes:

>In article <199209070354.AA10105@intercon.com> amanda@INTERCON.COM (Amanda 
Walker) writes:

>>Well, it's like this.  There's a phenomenon that some people call 
>>>witch syndrome" or "psychomelodrama," wherein a fairly youg person 
>Fairly nicely said, Amanda.  I was struggling with a way to basically say
>the same thing without sounding like even more of jerk than I usually am. -)?

it's amazing how much more you can get done when you stop
worrying about that kind of thing. it has the added benefit
of truly alienating the most egregious idiots,  so keeping 
their more puerile comments out of your view. those with any
sense at all (sooner or later) realize what you said and why
you said it.

josh
From: dgd@csd.bu.edu (David Durand)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Up and Down and Pentagrams
Date: 10 Sep 92 22:25:04 GMT
Organization: Roberstool Research Labs
In-reply-to: gnome@flash.ATC.Olivetti.Com's message of 10 Sep 92 19:45:36 GMT

In article <56062@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> gnome@flash.ATC.Olivetti.Com (Gary) writes:

   Up and down.  Inverted.  Bleh!

   It's just rotated 72 degrees.

   Now we could argue about which way it's rotated!  :-)
   (And which is good or bad...)

   Gary

   (
    :->=
   (

Actually n*72 degrees for any integer n. There are an infinite number
of exoterically indistinguishable point-up and point-down pentagrams.
Not only that, but the set of point up ones, the set of point down
ones, and the set of all taken together are isomorphic!
   So in fact there is no real difference at all -- as long as you
think in integers and maps.

    --- David
From: eburke@aludra.usc.edu (Kethry)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: authors not Crowley
Date: 8 Sep 1992 16:58:38 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu


I can't figure out how to copy the source, so you'll have to backtrack to
understand what I am trying to say.

I am Kethry, the only thing I have to do with this conversation is some
private E-mail that Friend of Erin and I have been sending.  All s/he
meant was that he and I were talking about Christianity and Catholicism
because I, too, had Catholicism and Christianity crammed down my throat
from an early age and since I live with my parents, I still do although 
I don't believe in it...

Anyway, that's another story.  I didn't mean to cause any confusion for
anybody.  I've posted a couple of letters, both now and when I went by the
handle "Christine Daae".  I haven't even been reading this conversation, 
my name just caught me by surprise.

So, I'm sorry for anyone that was confused.  BTW, Friend of Erin, I didn't
receive the letter that you were talking about in your post.  Maybe you 
should check my adress...

eburke@huey.csun.edu

		Blessed be,
		  Kethry
From: amanda@INTERCON.COM (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Shielding
Date: 7 Sep 92 05:41:37 GMT

I recently had a surprisingly extensive discussion on shields and wards on a 
local PODSnet echo (DCMAGICK).  I was surprised because the discussion 
quickly became notably more sophisticated than I am used to in a public forum 
(aside from a certain amount of "geek humor" regarding magickal software: 
"Microsoft Ward," "WardPerfect," Spell checkers, etc... :)).

In particular, one of the other participants and I got into a fairly deep 
discussion concerning different ways to conceptualize wards and shields.  
During this conversation, I came to an interesting realization.  In magic, a 
primary limitation is that you can only accomplish what you can 
conceptualize.  After all, you can only do on purpose what you can hold in 
your mind in the first place.  This implies, for example, that if the easiest 
way for you to conceptualize a ward is to think of a large brick wall, that's 
what you'll get.  If, on the other hand, you can conceptualize it as a five 
dimensional metric tensor, that's what you'll get (this, by the way, is 
roughly how I do it, after cramming my head full of math & physics in 
college).  If on the third hand :), you find it easier to feel the weight of 
a physical shield on your arm, or "Armor of Light" surrounding your body, 
that'll work too.  For that matter, you could think of your shields as an 
astral "missile command" video game.

The sensory mode(s) and particular models you use are irrelevant; how well 
you can use them to focus your will and attention is what matters.

So, does anyone else out there use tensor calculus as a magical tool?


Peace,

Amanda Walker

From: cal@otter.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low)
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 12:29:04 GMT
Subject: Re: Smalltalk
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.