Baby steps with understanding the paradigm of magic

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Here we are.

According to the materialsts, we are the perceivable matter and energy, and nothing besides. Maybe only according to the half assed materialists, but anyways, this is like one of the early steps of magic theory, which I will try to describe.

[1]:We are beings which do not totally understand or even sense what we actually are.
[2]:The unknown or invisible aspects of our own being are sensed more-so by some people than by others.
[3]:There is such a thing as a sage, which somehow has understanding much greater than the common average man.
[4]:The sage has offered advice, and even may have produced some sort of science out of it, such as the map of the body’s chi.
[5]:It is possible to make progress, to expand the mind, to expand the senses, to strengthen one’s inner vitality.

Prophets = psychics.

That is all for these first baby steps.

2

Some of us have already taken to our legs.

3

I expected to see posts like yours. No surprise.

4

How can we know this without having some sense of what we actually are? I don’t dispute that we probably don’t know everything there is to know, but I think we can get a naturalistic sense of what we are at least.

I have a couple problems with this. One was mentioned by HC - we don’t have a means by which to distinguish genuine from not. The other is the common argument that things like magic reveal themselves to people who are already “open” to them. People who are already “open” to these sorts of ideas are generally those who already believe in them, or want to, so they end up reading magic, or what have you, into reality rather than from it.

Some people are wiser than others. Why can’t that be explained in naturalistic terms?

Well that is perfectly possible and explainable in a material universe.

5

Then you know intuitively that you are on poor ground.

6

What we know is the tip of the iceberg of what can be known.

7

We know more like a tip of a atom in a galaxy … if that.

But we know enough to make thing go for us … let’s hope it’s enough.

And magic? Well :question: :question: :question: I’m all ears …

8

Actually as you do not know what you do not know, you are not able to make any accurate analogy.

9

It sure seems that way and has kept seeming that way for long time. IOW this was true over time for me.

Absolutely fits my experience.

Well, yeah.

Or the underworld or past lives, even helping others get the invisible into empicism.

Yes.

The presumption of no action at a distance has done some damage or, at least, limited perception.

10

There are other possible reasons why he would expect to see ‘posts like yours’ and these need not have any element of knowing intuitively he is on poor ground. What made you sure it was the reason you are putting forward? Are you psychic - and can thus know his unconscious motivations?

11

No he just knows that he is going to get a lot of lack on a “Philosophy” website, for positing un-philosphical assertions.
There is not need to deepen that problem by offering “psychic” as a idea, whatever that is.
So , within the current frame of reference is where the obvious meaning lies.

By suggesting something outside the frame of reference you are insulting him.

12

I am not sure what ‘getting a lot of lack’ means. I mean, I have a good guess, but I haven’t heard that expression before. Most assertions cannot be unphilosophical. An argument can be poorly made. An assertion can be false or not well supported. I don’t know what the list of unphilosophical assertions are, but I can’t see why Dan’s here are in that category. Philosophers have been theists, believers in eternal realms, believers in non-corporeal essences, eternal recurrance…why many even believe that consciousness is an illusion, of all things. There are many types of philosophy, certainly some of the classics make assertions that are similar to Dan’s.

It seems to me you have a pattern of trying to negate as valid as a category Dan’s posts. Previously on grounds that they were fallacies that I, obviously, did not think applied, and now, even more oddly that a certain set of assertions are off limits to philosophy, per se. Oh, no, not that idea. That is an idea that cannot be discussed by philosophers or people interested in philosophy. I see no historical or logical ground for putting this OP out of the bounds of philosophy. Or for making some topic off limits. Assertions being topics in simple form.

Psychic is the capability to read the minds of other people, in this case it was a claim to know the unconsciousness motivations of Dan. I would think you would have known what the term means, regardless of whether you think such a thing is possible or not.

You claimed that the reason he expected posts such as yours was because he knew intuitively that he was on weak ground. To me this does, in the abstract, seem like a possibly reason one might expect such responses. Sure, you might be right, in the sense that some people may expect certain responses because of an awareness of what they have not done well or did wrong, etc.

But I can think of other reasons he would expect that: for example that he knows there are people here with certain opinions and then approaches to expressing these opinions. IOW conscious observation and memory of what people say and do here in response to certain kinds of assertions. Personally I consider the latter motivation more likely ESPECIALLY given some of Dan’s recent threads. But I can’t be sure. I wouldn’t tell Dan that THAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION. Unless I was sure I could read his mind.

You on the other hand seemed sure enough to post in a way that certainly borders on the ad hom, and is in any sense ‘to the man’. Hence my question about whether you consider yourself psychic. Why do you get to implicitly make a mind reading claim while dismissing similar kinds of ideas?
So , within the current frame of reference is where the obvious meaning lies.

I cannot see how it is an insult to think that your sense of his motivation might be incorrect. I can’t see how my sense that he might have expected your kind of response because of his observations and experience here is insulting him. If Dan does feel insulted by this guess on my part I will certainly apologize. But then, I mainly present it as an alternative to your seemingly psychic guess and can imagine other possibilities that neither of us has mentioned for why he might have expected such responses.

13

In some cultures sages were held in very high esteem. That is part of how Confucianism started. Other forms of spirituality were also effected by sages and prophets. Also I believe that in some ancient cases the ‘gods’ [aliens] revealed things to society and they tried to basically memorize it, by elevating it to holy status. That is where magic and spirituality came from, in my view at least. It’s not exactly that simple, but it’s a big factor.

English moderns hold the idea that ancient spirituality is all crap. “Flim-flam”. All ancient cultures tell myths, and 100% of it is untrue. That is quite the pidgeon hole type of thinking. I think it’s a response to christianity. Christianity is like a wasp that was stinging science, so the so called scientific atheists decided to throw out all spirituality and religion and judge it as 100% false, one extremism reacting to another extremism. So, I naturally expect to see that kind of thing on the forum.

14

I think it is a backlash against the abrahamic religions, which in turn attacked pretty much every other kind of spiritual system they came in contact with. This backlash has been building up, as it gained the freedom from the oppressive (sides of) religions, and is not nearly over at all. There are still people who are seen to have talents in these areas by some Westerners.

15

So should we seek to go back to the long gone Age of Magic? Is that what you would like to see from us?

16

I’ll try to clarify. I could have included this in the OP, but if someone makes an OP that is too big, nobody will read it.

My intention wasn’t about whether magic is real or false. It is also not about going back in time, adopting older ideas and paradigms.
It’s about some baby steps, and first steps to understanding how the paradigm of magic started out.
Besides sages, aliens and prophets, herbal drug trips were probably another contributing factor in the formation of magic theory.
Some drugs change your sense of reality. Reality takes on a new light. It bends.

Even though I’m not saying magic is true in this thread, I am saying that sages, aliens and prophets are real. Not all prophets are good. Some are crap, but, they happen, and in some cultures prophets were treated way different than the moderns treat them and think about them.

17

Actually, I am a materialist and there is nothing in Dan’s outline that stands at odds with my materialist views of modular spirituality; or to say, how human spirituality works as a system of emotional and sensational leverages of self-regulation and evocation.

Dan, you might find some of what I wrote in Modularly Cataloging Human Spiritual Practices interesting.
It is an on-going piece of work in which I attempt to work out a means of categorically labeling the constituents involved in human spirituality, and how they do function upon the adherent from a materialist view for the benefit of providing means of emotional and state-of-mind evocation gainful to the interests of the adherent.

18

Do you agree with his assertion that spirituality came from aliens?

19

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dunglas_Home
Fake? Medium or rare?

20

Medium = Faker.

They might be able to do things that appear very clever, but what they claim they are doing and what they are actually doing do not match.

There are a range of debunkers that can replicate all apparent “mystical” phenomena, by mundane means.

You should look out for Derren Brown, he has systematically studied the Victorian Medium phenomenon, and demonstrated all the ‘clever’ things they claimed were actually tricks. He has a fabulous stage show in which he has duplicated mesmerism, hypnotism, seances, table levitation, mind reading and the whole shebang. He does things that look impossible. But not once does he ever claim to have mystical powers.

I really think that some of these guys started out really believing, and subconsciously using ‘cold reading’ techniques to contact ‘spirits’ and so on. Having convinced themselves of the truth of spiritualism, thinking is so important to convince others, then engage is deception and trickery to lend their demonstrations extra credibility.

If I had to sum up his life from the WIki article.
A steerage passenger, hard knock life; con-artist; do anything; fleece anyone; to avoid the sad fate that so many lives met, and so soon. despite all his efforts still died of a disease of poverty he had probably been carrying with him his whole life.
Along side him a new generation of prestigious, rich, privileged people skeptical of old time religion looking for new meanings and ready to believe anything, in an atheistic environment of victorian intellectualism.