Kabbalistic thought asserts that there are 10 dimenions to human thought. (i.e. every action and thought happens in 10 different coneptual spaces at once) It also asserts that the human mind is a microcosm for all of creation. I'm not sure why the idea of 10 mathematical dimensions isn't something to gloat about. For too many centuries people have been trying to figure out how the 10 sephirot match up with only 4 dimensions of action. Now they don't have to



I agree that anybody who suggests that you can change say gravity, based on your thoughts is loopy. However to say that the way you look at the world doesn't affect the way things happen in it, is also loopy. By now, anybody interested in the topic should know that your attitude can greatly affect say, job performance, or overall health levels.

I think Gwylifar is talking more about notions such as "willing" a dice to roll differently on a quantum level or something, and indeed the study I think Simimi is talking about involved thousands of people "willing" a random X to do Y in the hopes that large enough numbers should overcome probability; the results they got convinced them that the people willing for Y actually made a miniscule difference in favour of that. I can't find the criticism of that study I have in my memory so I won't comment much about its validity, but at any rate it's a different thing to well-known psychological, neurological and physiological phenomena like the placebo effect.

Yes that is the one Shiri.

THIS, however, gets me. From "What the bleep do we know" a documentary on quantum physics. "Messages in Water" research done by Masaru Emoto. You can see it on youtube or whereever, but that fascinates me. I am doing research on his research for my thesis in computational mathematics, and this is some impressive stuff, from a math point of view anyway.

Wouldn't that only have an affect if they were "observing" the dice on some level?


Then again, there is that device in some basement which claims to be able to detect "massive human trauma" becasue the random number generator starts to spit out sequences instead of random noise.

Uh...I don't know. I don't think it was an actual die, I think it was something like willing a blob on a computer screen to go either left or right or just not caring either way (also I may be confusing this with a house episode, but it was something like that.)


Something like that, but with a bunch of "scientists", a control group and a lot more participants.

Thanks for noticing!

For better or worse, I'm pretty much the sole creative designer of Lusternia (in terms of developing history, races, skills, etc.) and certainly my varied esoteric interests have influenced the design. There's more hidden around if you look for it!

I like your thinking even more, Estarra. Don't you ever lose your job, or else!

Prepare for another long, confusing post.


@Gwylifar - Daganev said it best. The sephirah are really ten schools of thought and fall much easier into philosophy than science, which makes it very difficult to argue against what you said... Especially with things like the double slit experiment and even more so with the ideas of electromagnetism in the brain and how it applies to 'telekinesis'. Something so real like the forces of electromagnetism in the brain, at first glance, -should- be able to be controlled and directed outwards in an way that occultists use when they cast spells and such. But the science asserts that the forces rarely even escape cell walls, making such things impossible... Unless of course you get into the theory of scalar waves, but that's a whole different topic. My point here is that although these things do coincide, technology still has no way of proving anything esoteric yet (or even string theory for that matter), but there's no reason to discount it at our currently limited understanding. I've heard stories of children who can bend spoons with their minds, of Tibetan monks who make fire appear in their palms, and so on and so on. Science of course doesn't back it up, and neither does popular thought... but everything is fringe before it is accepted. Just look at Galileo.

Further, a few tidbits for you about Dark Energy and Dark Matter which seem to be on topic... "The latest WMAP results show that more than 95% of the universe is composed of invisible non-baryonic dark matter and energy. -NASA" There is evidence showing the gravitational effect that this has on Earth and our Galaxy, and it's proven that particles of Dark Energy and Matter rain down upon Earth's gravitational field every second. To sum up one theory about how this applies is a bright man named Jay Alfred. He proposes in Dark Plasma Theory, 2006, that...

"..our visible Earth is gravitationally coupled to counterpart dark matter Earths composed of low density plasma. These "sister Earths" were co-accreted with the physical-dense Earth about 4.6 billion years ago from dark matter components in the embryonic Solar System and supplemented with dark matter carried to Earth by incoming meteors, comets, asteroids and dark matter particles raining down on Earth over the past 4.6 billion years. Plasma life forms evolved on these interpenetrating counterpart Earths, just like it did on the visible planet. These life forms were as varied in scale, structure and intelligence as carbon-based life forms - as different as a microbe from a whale; a mosquito from a tiger; a giraffe from a crocodile; an ant from a human being. Their degrees of intelligence and awareness were as different as a centipede's awareness to the awareness and intelligence of homo-sapiens. The taxonomy of these plasma life forms is wide and varied. Some of these plasma life forms have interacted with us in the past (intentionally or unintentionally). The entities that we have loosely identified as ghosts, angels, demons, deities (for example the Marian apparitions in the atmosphere), aliens (associated with UFO sightings in the atmosphere), fairies and sightings of the recently deceased (on the surface of the Earth) are all exotic plasma life forms from interpenetrating counterpart Earths."

Do the laws of String Theory support this idea? Not directly, but it doesn't rule this kind of thing out either. That's what is so interesting about it - String Theory leaves things open to both the imagination and research. Our comprehension of String Theory is so limited and primitive that someone is going to have to go further and design some kind of provable experiment before everyone jumps on the boat. They -are- getting closer to this as we speak. We just don't know yet, and that's really what Dark Energy and Dark Matter are. Things we don't understand. There is more on this topic involving Supersymmetric Plasmas, Charginos, and the Weak Force in Jay Alfred's book.

Now, let me just note that I don't necessarily believe any of this stuff. They're all theories and just interesting stuff to discuss. I'm a born skeptic, and as an occultist of sorts I try to distance myself from any firm beliefs at all in favor of a more scientific approach towards magick. I'm open to all different viewpoints, and many times before I've dropped what doesn't work in favor of things that do. Results are what matter in Modern Esoterica. I'm not talking about things like affecting the way dice fall or foreseeing the future, but instead more of a psychological viewpoint.

For instance, I'll take as an example the "Cursing in the Public Square" form of magick, AKA War Magick if we are to follow Peter Caroll's Liber Kaos. A woman is paced on the gallows and branded a witch. The whole town gathers around her and throws stones at her, and the masses are swayed that she really is a witch, even if she isn't. The woman laughs hysterically and curses the town leader with some kind of awful prediction. The fear this generates psychologically in the village ripples outwards and actually brings the leader's downfall through whatever means.

Another example is modern Sigilization. This is also known as Memetics to psychologists. When someone sees an image, they subconsciously relate it to something, like hunger for the McDonalds arches or patriotism for the Eye of God on the back of a US dollar bill. I won't go into the details of how to make your own, but let me assure you that it is possible to do so. You basically take a portion of your psyche, or energy, and 'invest' it into Sigils to charge them and make them so. Like an affirmation, but a bit more macabre. Some people go further and make these images into servitors, or living and breathing personal spiritual servants which do things for them. I tend to be practical, like teaching servitors to find my car keys. Technically, it could be just an affirmation to remember where I put my car keys. Purely a psychological illusion and not really esoteric. But if it gets results, who cares if I use a pentagram or five? And if it gets results, then maybe it IS esoteric after all. (On an unrelated note, this knowledge of memetics has been known for a -very- long time. You can see it all across America from advertisements to national monuments)

You can say this with any type of magick. Belief seems to be what powers the mind into making it so. Devout Christians will see their God in a grilled cheese. Buddhists will reach their personal enlightenment. Satanists will craft Ragnarok Engines. (No, really, they will. It's in the series of videos somewhere. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5x0993GBMQ ) What I'm trying to say is that sometimes Science and the Esoteric really do get into a gray area, and in the coming years of Scientific understanding we're going to see it more and more.

@Estarra - I've noticed many things, and I don't know if I'll ever cease being amazed at the depth and awesomeness of Lusternia! Seriously, kudos and my deepest thanks for making such an immersive game that can spark conversations like this. No other game can do that.

DnD used too ...

Aah, my apologies, I misunderstood. There is definitely a corroboration there, in that Aristotle thought the "first principles" of philosophy undergirded the natural, physical world of his Physics.

Anyway, back to the occultism...

I am put in mind of C.S. Lewis's concept of "hyperextended rice pudding" here.

That which cannot be found in context on Google does not exist.

I like rice pudding, but I've never played DnD

William Tiller has made similar experiments where they "have repeatedly been able to change the acid/alkaline balance (pH) in a vessel of water either up or down, without adding chemicals to the water, merely by creating an intention to do so." It seems rather credible for me.

I'm not sure if "credible" is the word you mean, but do you have a link to the actual experimental report on that? 'cause on the page they just assert it as if it were true and then don't explain their methodology, whether it was done double-blind, actual statistical results, etc.

He propably meant something along the lines of 'plausible'?

Yes, I meant that. Of course it's possible that they are a bunch of huge liars or just mistaken with inaccurate methodology or something, but I just mean that the idea seems believable for me.