The Cat in The Box law

[ThePartial]

Hello everyone,

A few days ago i started reading Fraters U.'.D.'. book titled "Where do Demons Live?" .
About 40 pages in, there is a question that cought my eye. Its about a situation where your magickal doing comes to succes, but it turns out it was a process that started before you did the ritual/spell/sigil etc.


For example, this happened to Aleister Crowley.
He was waiting for an important letter from a friend from Australia. As few days passed he did a ritual to speed the process up. Few days later, the letter came, but it had been sent before the ritual takes place. Now this is only an example, this could have easily been a coincidence, but i know from experience - and some of you who practice longer probably had this happen to you too , that things less likely to hapen, happen in this way after a ritual.

Now the question Is - would this had happened if you wouldnt have done the ritual? Wel, its hard to explain, but i want to shed a little light on it, even though its all just theory.

So lets imagine you need money. You go and make a ritual to get that money. An hour after that you get the money - it has been sent 4 hours later but the money transfer wasnt authorized up until now.
You were fully unaware of the fact it was happening. For you, before this moment, the transfer didnt exist. It didnt exist 5 minutes ago, nor 4 hours when it was sent. It could have been there but it could not wxist and you qould have no idea, probably you didnt even think about the possibility. Before the very moment you knew the transfer happened - the whole process did not exist.

Now let me give you a more simple example, that i have heard a long time ago somewhere.
Imagine you have a cat infront of you. The cat is old and sick, almost dead. You put a box over the cat. Now tell me, is the cat dead or alive? How can you prove it? You dont have any evidence for each possibility.
Now, there are two ways of explaining this:
1. The cat is both alive and dead at this moment
2. The cat is neither dead or alive, but in te middle of both, a passing state if you will.

In both cases, its like rolling dice, only when you lift the box, you get the result of the roll. I like to call this The Cat in The Box law, everything can be any and all of possible outcomes, you house when you leave it at night is being robbed and totally safe at the same time - only when you come back you will know what happened.


So is it the magick changeing the past to affect the future? Is it your intuition telling you that it will happen? Or is the cat in the box law in place, and your power or whatever you choose to call it choosing one of the outcomes and ensuring its true? Or is it all of them, untill we find a way to prove one

The Partial

[Ušušur]

Your cat in the box is clearly this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

As for your questions, I believe you answered them yourself. [grin]

[ThePartial]

Yes, thats definetly that. Thank you ^^

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

A great example of this happened in the Book of Daniel - ie. one of Nebuchadnezzar's sons Belshazzar decided to grab up a bunch of Jewish temple ritual items and have a party while drinking out of the chalice. While they were getting their groove down YHVH buzz-killed the party by a hand showing up on the wall writing 'mene mene teckel upharsin'. They couldn't figure out for the life of em what it meant so finally they reach out to Daniel who reads it, chews it over, and tells them effectively 'You've been weighed in the balance and found wanting'. That night the Persians redirected the river that acted as the city's defense mote, swept in, and the old Babylonian kingdom was no more.

While I don't know how much I trust Ezra's telling of history (probable author of so much of the bible up to that point) if this story were true it would mean that the actions of one man or at least a man, his ladies,and a group of his friends, set something in motion to happen that night which would have needed several months of execution by the Persians (diverting the river and marshaling the forces to go into Babylon) let alone all the strategic planning that made such a thing successful.

As it is I have my own ball of wax also. I unwittingly created a very powerful tulpa, thankfully quite benevolent as well, and six months later someone with her near exact appearance and mannerisms showed up. I really have no idea who initiated what, I know the template I started with in going in the direction of creating that tulpa but I can't help but wonder whether a) her higher self, which from what I undertand is VERY active, saw what I was doing and wanted in on the action or b) both of our higher selves were planning this from way back, link all of us to being different personality types of the one and it really gets lost.

Another that I almost forgot about but which showed me there seems to be an acausal terrain to the flow of reality - I went out of state to meet a girl, found out that she was married well after the fact, but the day that I got back every single one of my friends had intense drama whether it was the biggest fight with their girlfriend in years, one friend getting kicked out of the apartment because his friend wanted to smoke a bowl up there and the girl he was living with had a zero tolerance on that - it was a really wacky time for everyone involved and even though I was an atheist at the time I couldn't help but wondering if seeing life just plod along...and along...and along in an 'every day is the same' type of manner as if the rules have us all on house arrest and then for no explicable reason everything you would have counted on as bedrock reality not only goes out the window for you but all of your friends - even as a materialist at the time I could help but ask myself "wait a minute...." because it really seemed like the impossible.


My best shot at hazarding an answer to the question - time is an illusion. Linear progress is something we're all wrapped up in, our exoteric religions of the world really have done a great (or terrible in the qualitative sense) job of clamping that sense of past, present, or future as real things down and a lot of what we marvel at is most likely just a flaw in our questions or really a functional fixedness of sorts. I also have to entertain a possibility here - that whenever one is dealing with infinities it means that anything which could be infinite isn't necessarily infinite in the sense we think of but rather its infinity (ie. God being infinite space, infinite past and infinite future, infinite power, infinite knowing) shows that those very metrics are concocted but that it's real essence has nothing to do with those metrics - rather it can engage the whole spectrum of them because it created those spectrums but it's not bound by them at all. A worldly example would be that JK Rowling could write the Harry Potter series. If you were to try the exercise of putting yourself in the world of Harry Potter trying to reflect back on JK she'd seem infinite in respect to that world, also our watching that world as it self-analyzes we'd see that if a character in the Harry Potter series were to try and figure out 'Who am I? Where do I come from?' - they'd have a universe like ours with a beginning and end (whether written down by JK or not) but whatever their big bang was or whatever the big crunch or big diffusion would be - it wouldn't have anything to do with whether or not JK penned their reality and in essence they'd find no answers looking at the big bang and, like reductive materialists here, they'd find nothing but the matter that they're dealing with and no proof that JK exists.

I'm not suggesting by that exercise that we're all characters in a really big book, just that for me I think that exercise does a good job at framing in what it could be like for a God/Goddess to exist outside of time as well as create time. Similarly for a writer to decide to edit or tweak the story on page 10 which has a certain result on page 78. Its obviously a lot more complex when we factor in that there's an observer effect in what we do or how we carry out experiments (alchemy takes that ball and runs with it as far as it possibly can) but I do think that the writer/book-universe does perhaps frame some process at a particular level well and particularly somewhere up in the more categorically Briatic level (maybe Chesed?).


Sorry if that was a lot of rambling, just that the OP's question was one that's fascinated me for a long time as well. There was also a point where I truly believed that the whole universe was a mechanical Heron play, I have no proof as of today that our lives really aren't like wind-up DVD, quantum phsycists would claim I'm dead wrong for reasons too complicated to explain and perhaps at present too complicated for me to understand, but I did for a while imagine that God could technically show me some bizarre object like a very strangely shaped piece of ivory, tell me that it's our universe - the entire past, present, and future - but not to look to closely at it or try to figure out how it translates into that twisted block of ivory because if I can even peel the surface layer of understanding it would be instant migraine, vomiting, and likely anneurysm and death. An imaginary tale I know but it does seem like our circuits and capacitors are built quite meager for handling the full bore or even partial bore of what all of this really is.

[Hadit]

93.

Magickal ritual of a ceremonial nature changes your perception. When the letter came, Crowley had put the idea of receiving it in his mind. Magick and Shros Cat don't really go together. Ritual doesn't really accomplish anything outside of the mental level. In fact, the ritual of responding on a forum has more of a direct impact on the external universe than a ceremonial ritual. Ceremonial rituals can help strengthen the real world rituals and affect your perception of them, but not affect the events themselves like in Harry Potter or Skyrim. The simple fact is Crowley's ritual had absolutely no objective effect on the letter or its mailing progress.

[Rin]

93.

Magickal ritual of a ceremonial nature changes your perception. When the letter came, Crowley had put the idea of receiving it in his mind. Magick and Shros Cat don't really go together. Ritual doesn't really accomplish anything outside of the mental level. In fact, the ritual of responding on a forum has more of a direct impact on the external universe than a ceremonial ritual. Ceremonial rituals can help strengthen the real world rituals and affect your perception of them, but not affect the events themselves like in Harry Potter or Skyrim. The simple fact is Crowley's ritual had absolutely no objective effect on the letter or its mailing progress.

While that might be your opinion, it isn't the opinion of the majority of practitioners of occult spirituality or magic, it wasn't even Crowley's opinion, (although he veered towards it at times, as all people go through shifts in their worldview, he displayed a firm belief in the ability of magic to wrought change on the material plane, and in the existence of spirits and spiritual planes, for the majority of his career, and practiced to that effect - claimed he witnessed physical signs of the presence of spirits during evocation, that his (first, I believe) wife (and assorted other partners) were possessed by spirits and channeled to him, performed curses, attempted healings, performed astral projection into the material plane to explore certain areas then clarify the accuracy of his viewing through correspondence - notably on his sail to East Asia -, sympathetic magic, etc), despite it being popular among his more recent followers.

Much like the purely spiritual/psychological interpretation of alchemy (which is not the same thing as spiritual or internal alchemy - what the Chinese would call Nei Dan, as opposed to Wai Dan, which is physical alchemy - terms which are great metaphors on one side but confuse the subject immensely on the other), it's a theory which has popped up to allow people to fit certain ideas or practices into a worldview which doesn't allow for them. When the emergence of modern chemistry made historical alchemy seem like a mere delusional or misunderstood prelude, people concocted theories to fit it into their worldview by claiming that alchemical texts were metaphors for spiritual development or psychological growth, completely ignoring the fact that the entirety of archaeological and textual evidence demonstrating that from it's birth in Egypt, alchemy had indeed been a physical practice, taking place with physical components using physical tools in physical labs. Although there was and is a spiritual component on certain level (which I don't claim to have a deep understanding of), alchemy was not and is not a purely spiritual or psychological practice couched in metaphors about laboratories.

Likewise, over the last century or so - especially in the last few decades, more or less aligning with the rise of extremist atheism as a reaction to the rejection of fundamentalism in the Abrahamic religions, there has emerged an increasing number of individuals who feel drawn to the practice of magic for various reasons but cannot bring themselves to accept, or even maintain a neutral and open minded stance upon, the possibility that there is more to reality than physical matter and that we are more than machines of meat and bone controlled by a neurochemical computer.So they rewrite history and both the theory and practice of magic to fit this inflexibility in their understanding of the universe, claiming that magic is and always has been a purely psychological practice, that any results are either psychological phenomenon induced by altered states of consciousness or the use of psychosomatic tools to induce internal psychological changes, which in turn express as changes in behavior and lifestyle. In short, to these people, magic is a kind of ritualized mashup of hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. Of course the logical thing to do would be to skip the ritual part and just use those established scientific tools (relatively speaking), but... then they don't get to dress up and play magician I guess [gz]

They then wrote books which make these claims and spread their modified versions of magical practices. People, especially those already holding similar worldviews, picked up these books, took their word for it (because after all, they're a published author and they say they're a magician, so surely they're right), practiced these stripped down systems and twisted any results they did get to fit into their dogmatic materialist/reductionist worldview. Which would be fine, people are welcome to their opinions, except for the dogmatic part. And on and on. It wouldn't be an issue if they didn't insist on barging into every discussion of magic or spirituality they can, mocking actual practitioners for being ''deluded'' and confusing newcomers to by shoving dogma down their throat as the absolute truth.

[Hadit]

93.

When all evidence and all logic points to one conclusion, the proper term for holding to that conclution is "rational", not "dogmatic". Believing in a round earth is rational, believing in a flat earth is irrational.

Common misundersfanding, actually.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Yeah, the's arguments generally go nowhere. Most people have heard of PEAR, Global Consciousness Project, Double-Slit/Quantum Eraser, NDE stories that include observation of things that were impossible for the person to observe, and I've heard tons of people say that most of the above is either purely anecdote, failed attempts at science, or in the case of Double Slit religious nuts trying to twist it into something it's not. Beliefs both ways are stronger than facts and the facts can take on an amazing amount of malleability on context and what they mean based on what people do with them.

I guess in my own case for right or wrong it's easier to take the stance that reality's a trippy/glitchy thing and that it's very well likely that consciousness exists beyond human and animal nerve cells. Trying to work the other way and jump up and down on the oddities to make them fit a particular dogmatic mold (whether dogmatic theist or dogmatic materialist) seems like a Sisyphean effort. The anomalies in their slow trickle never seem to stop coming and orthodoxies of all sort seem to get increasingly brittle with each one they encounter.

[Rin]

93.

When all evidence and all logic points to one conclusion,

Except it doesn't. There's a ton of evidence (both scientific, peer reviewed & published studies and in my own case, personal and anecdotal) demonstrating a) that phenomena exist which would not be possible in the purely materialistic, reductionistic worldview purported by modern mainstream science, and b) that such a worldview is inherently flawed, held onto only because of to abandon it would require a paradigm shift of such magnitude that it would require many scientists to abandon their life's work and own personal worldviews, and as such there's an intentional (if possibly subconscious) pushback against any evidence which discredits it.

I'd suggest Nagels "Mind & Cosmos," which points out the many and varied flaws in such a worldview (although it offers no alternative, simply says that we need to start looking for one) and Radin's "The Conscious Universe," which explores extensively the evidence in existence for phenomena which could not exist inside such a worldview and discusses the reasons this evidence is ignored against all reason and proper scientific procedure (basically, as I said, the paradigm shift required would be be a reset on a huge portion of the last 50 - 100 years of building a scientific worldview on strict reductionism and materialism - which wouldn't be necessary if these flaws and phenomena hadn't been intently ignored from the beginning as an effect of the leftovers from the "Enlightenment" and the rise of dogmatic atheism in opposition to fundamentalism in the Abrahamic religions).

Of course that particular boat is already starting to leak at the quantum physics end of things, but that's pretty easy to ignore if you just plug your your fingers in your ears and 'nah nah nah we can't hear you.'

Believing in a round earth is rational, believing in a flat earth is irrational.

Right up until you fall off the edge - metaphorically speaking. Once that happens, to disbelieve in said metaphorical flat earth while plummeting down what I assume would be a very long waterfall would be self denial in the extreme.

I guess in my own case for right or wrong it's easier to take the stance that reality's a trippy/glitchy thing and that it's very well likely that consciousness exists beyond human and animal nerve cells. Trying to work the other way and jump up and down on the oddities to make them fit a particular dogmatic mold (whether dogmatic theist or dogmatic materialist) seems like a Sisyphean effort. The anomalies in their slow trickle never seem to stop coming and orthodoxies of all sort seem to get increasingly brittle with each one they encounter.

The problem is that a lot of people want to map out those glitches and explore those trippy sections, and have been doing so by one means or another since the beginning of time, which is why we have the vast variety of models (albeit all with a lot of underlying similarities) for a spiritual/metaphysical universe that we do. No one model is perfect, and very few of their proponents claim that they are, just that they're ways of mapping out the universe that help them build a worldview which fits their experiences and facilitates their practices.

Nobody could have an OBE or NDE (as an example among the many experiences which people undergo) without wondering what the hell they just experienced, and anyone who decides to write it off as ''some weird trippy brain thing,'' instead of exploring the experience and other accounts of experiences like it further must lack even the slightest sense of intellectual enthusiasm or scientific curiosity.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

I'd agree, just that even at the boiler-plate level of what we have in front of us it takes a lot of contortion for one to be a truly dogmatic materialist and hold to that for any length of time.

[Hadit]

93.

Ironically I never said anything about mainstream views. That'd be very out of character considering how much time I still spend ranting about how psychology has followed Freud when we should have followed Jung. Non no, I said we should follow the evidence and logic.

Good try though.

[Rin]

93.

Ironically I never said anything about mainstream views. That'd be very out of character considering how much time I still spend ranting about how psychology has followed Freud when we should have followed Jung. Non no, I said we should follow the evidence and logic.

Good try though.

Your views on psychology aren't even remotely relevant, just a diversionary tactic.

Good try though

[EternalReturn]

I thought I won't be understood if I said such things for some time now, but somehow I managed to plant a seed of doubt into the people. And everyone who tried but a little reading and investigating suddenly came to a collapse in their worldview. That's very interesting thing to happen and just might add to "societal programming" theory.

I was watching The Century of Self, 4 parts documentary about applying psychology and public relations to drive societal change and stability. After some grave mistakes of underestimating human nature, and well, WWII came this explosion of Reich ideas of expression of emotions that leads to rational behaviour. Some have gone even farther to complete deconstruction of human being which seems to me like and idea of enlightenment.

When this happens, a sudden change occurs in a person where nothing matters. There is no reaction to the outer world, no fears, no anything - a person is free in some kind of sense. I have experienced Reich's therapy firsthand and combined with meditation it can really bring great change in human behaviour for the better. It was at this point that my world started to collapse but I didn't panic. I just took "a step back" to observe what's happening.

What I have seen is that there are three major lines of thought that are tangentially talking about same things but are in complete other dimension. Mysticism, philosophy and religion. Philosophy and mysticism nullified itself in and organized religion, science came to a point where it can only revolve around itself and become even more dense that it is today. I cannot but feel a great stirring in collective human knowledge as a lot of self-help books, videos and everything suddenly came crawling and filling gaps. There is screaming from one side that this is not logically possible, there are new logical mistake artists that put everything they emotionally see as wrong into "strawman" or "god of gaps" or "ad hominem". On the other hand religion is devastated, giving up and conforming to the change - but people are still stuck in this dense state of conflicting worldviews that are somehow the basis of all the world's problems.

Mysticism on the other hand has never been so easily accessable to people, and as such, misused and mistreated. There is still present fear of "puls ultra", as we are doing something wrong. There is either surrender or relentless attack.

I just gave up when I saw that wherever you go to look for truth you'll find agression, passivity, arrogance and such things, when it is clear that no man can know everything, and mistakes are natural - I can only conclude that I have to read, have to practice and strive to know everything to be able to move from my predetermined position. All these things that I have not found to my linking are the very things I do myself and by that I am predetermined.

But then again, I read Rin posts, and agree with him (mainly because we came to the same conclusion) and then he/she calls psychology a diversionary tactic? I have a great desire to know why now

We seem to have similar worldview, similar conclusions, but we came to it from different points, moving by the different vectors.

Why should one toss off great part of human knowledge and stick to "one ultimate truth"?

[Hadit]

93.

Ironically I never said anything about mainstream views. That'd be very out of character considering how much time I still spend ranting about how psychology has followed Freud when we should have followed Jung. Non no, I said we should follow the evidence and logic.

Good try though.

Your views on psychology aren't even remotely relevant, just a diversionary tactic.

Good try though

93.

Actually you accused me of holding to mainstream ideology. The best example against this unsupported nonsense is my psychological views with are very Jungian based. No trying involved, but you keep trying at it, slugger.

[Rin]

Like I said, this isn't about your views on psychology, except in the most tangential sense. This is about magic and whether it does or does not yield material effects. You stated quite clearly that you believe it doesn't, which puts you in the aforementioned movement of individuals who've twisted the primary current and historical definition of magic to fit their own worldview, claiming that it's a psychological practice because they don't believe that magic in the traditional sense is possible - putting you more or less in the scientific mainstream in regards to magic. I don't care about your views on psychology (which are obviously fringe, on account of the lack of magical rituals performed during modern psychological treatment - and please don't give me that nonsense about every willful act being a magical ritual).

Anyway, you're obviously more interested in sneering misdirection than in a productive, civil debate, so I'm out.

94. 95. 96. 97.