I've seen it all now. Elostian and lolcats.

There's a very large gulf between the assertion that "there are some ways that the mind can influence the world which we don't fully understand yet" and "a few trivial coincidental metaphorical similarities between string theory's explanations and concepts somewhere in some occult theory suggest a fundamental, real connection".

The former is almost certainly true, simply because there jillions of possible vectors and we don't understand everything. Out of any million different ways people have claimed the mind can directly influence the world, even if 99.9999% of them are complete and utter bunkum (which is probably about right), that still means there's one that does, indeed, work, and which we will probably someday understand. Once we've weeded it out from the other 999,999.

That out of the thousands of different symbolisms in all the occultisms in human history, some of them happen to involve the numbers 10 or 11, and a few similarly irrelevant coincidences, is not only meaningless without some actual understanding of what string theory, the observer effect, etc. are actually saying; it's actually positively inevitable given how many such systems of thought have existed. If the metaphor doesn't hold up to scrutiny by anyone but the excessively credulous, it is without value.

Yeah, you have a point here. Of all the links and books that I could dig up which glorify these connections (of which there are -many-, and some of which that go way deeper into it than my attempt at explaining it), the truth is that these things are still just numbers and numbers can lie. Any advertiser who uses lines like "9 out of 10 agree" and "clinically tested" can agree to this. It's like the rule of fives in the Principia Discordia which simply states that "all things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5. The Law of Fives is never wrong." When one looks for fives in reality, one finds them, so will one find conspiracies, ways to determine when the apocalypse will come, and so on and so forth when one decides to look for them. It cannot be wrong, because it proves itself reflexively when looked at through this lens.

( If you get a chance, read this. It might not be completely relevant to what we're talking about, but It's very entertaining and also somewhat Zen in it's fnord of glory. http://www.principiadiscordia.com/ )

Hold on a moment..."the logic is circular" is not proof of anything.

Except false logic.

(1) Perhaps when you look for fives in reality, it is your mind that devises them. It takes from the world around it using the senses available to it and subjectively categorizes them into dark and light, hard and soft, etc. according to its nature and mechanism. I am, humbly, inclined to say that when (2.) becomes the case, the lens needs to be polished. That things happen in fives seems to me no different than them happening in threes, fours, odds, evens, or onions- relative to perceptions of reality (which may be, or inevitably are flawed) and therefore (humoring my terms and definitions) neither true or false, but 'untrue'.

I might have read to much into it, but I thought this was what Dakkhan was confessing above.


In the spirit of the first post, I generally applaud Lusternia's usage of basic occult concepts. Obviously they could be called more than a little watered down, but I dare to see them as having been carefully trimmed and uprooted, then planted to populate an alternate reality. The Chakras and Kabalah (as I was taught to spell it!) feel as natural to the Basin as they are on the third rock from the Sol, and that takes at least some degree of finesse to accomplish. Many games just cut and paste the names/symbols with no reference to their respective ethos, logos, and mythos.


@Estarra: You alone are the backbone of the creative development? Quite a role, though it explains the overall coherence of the game world for me, not being a large fan of 'committees' in creative design.


Oh- wands should be phallic symbols and the staff substitute for male Mages, and women should be confined to wearing silver cords, whereas men may choose between silver or gold.

Well, I did stumble across this a month or so ago. Rituals, anyone?

Right. Patterns arise whenever one wants them to, and whenever it is convenient to "prove" a point. For example, in a book about the 'upcoming apocalypse'. Like the media-hyped 2012 stuff. It's in the Mayan Calender, the Bible Code, Hindu Prophecy, one of Edgar Casey's writings, Hopi Indian Prophesy... and more recent scientific things like a massive upcoming Solar Storm, a Galactic Alignment, a possible pole shift of the geomagnetic field, and the supervolcano under Yellowstone Park being due for an eruption. All in 2012 (which happens to add up to 5). Yet, this very well could be completely bogus. You can take a hundred unrelated coincidences to "prove" your point, then get a British guy to sell it on PBS and you'll make a ton of money even if the apocalypse doesn't arrive.

Back to Esoteric Science, I don't think it matters if you use the Qabalah or Battlestar Galactica in your magickal work - because logic has nothing at all to do with magick except for it's uses. I'm of the opinion that the synchronicity in String Theory/Qabalah can trick you psychologically into a more immersive trance state... thereby empowering ritual work. If you cast a spell to bring tasty sandwiches into your life while in this kind of trance, like self-hypnosis, you may unconsciously seek out tasty sandwiches and "prove" that magick works even though it's really just psychology. But in essence, since you used magick to successfully bring tasty sandwiches into your life, you can't say it didn't work. Now you have a paradox like the Rule of Fives - it proves itself reflexively when looked at through this lens.

...I shouldn't have read this. It's too early in the morning and I have insomnia. Now I won't be able to sleep until the end of time.

Whoa, nice catch!

And this, my friends, is why anecdotal evidence is shoddy at best.

Actually, I've been reading a bit of related stuff, and I came across this a little while ago, you might find it an interesting read. It's a bit confusing at first but if you read the whole thing it actually starts making a lot of sense.

Imma go to sleep now to see if I can regain lost sanity.

Do that, I actually find that it helps me sleep easier!

This really clarifies your point! Some people will be dissatisfied with using the word "work", myself included, because it can be taken to imply that things your means to the end functioned as you envisioned them- which is not the case in some of the instances you sight. Nevertheless I believe that I get where you are coming from now and would agree on at least a very basic level.

I think that what you mean by "proves" is more or less interchangeable with "persuades" or even "deceives". The context I have typically heard that word used in is that of logic; one thing deductively follows another, or a group of things are inducted together to support the possibility and probability of something, therefor 'proving' it. Circular reasoning fails to 'prove' anything by those standards, but it does give the mind a diversion from disbelief if it goes unexamined. I suppose you could say that it would be "subjectively proven", if you argue that each individual has their own, variable sense of logic. Things like this are important to catch because there seems to be a trend of switching definitions and terms around under the table, so as to make something seem more plausible to the ear.

you just wish that you had tasty sammiches like me

And that is a really nice catch.

*snip*

That is what I see when I close my eyes. That is the site that occupies every folder of the bookmark tab of my brain; that is the screensaver of my mind. (The Magic Roundabout theme is the soundtrack that accompanies it.)

...I stopped reading when that guy started babbling incoherently about race/racism and how Obama should resign for endangering us all with solar power or some claptrap like that. Do you actually take this guy seriously?

You poor creature.

Here. Take one of these and get some sleep.

Blue Pill

Red Pill