I'm really skeptical

[Lampshade]

Okay hello, let me introduce myself as an extreme skeptic to what goes on here, but I'm very curious about the things posted here nonetheless. I'm a Christian as well.
There are people here claiming to talk to demons, succubbi, the devil, perform magic, be psychic, and such things like that. This is my one question to anyone who claims to possess these powers, this information could be reasonably obtained through any one of those abilities- what is my height? (In feet and inches). Im sorry if this is disrespectful, but it's really hard to believe what I read here. By the way my name is Noah and I live in Illinois. Again, sorry to seem like a dick, thnks for any responses.

[Lampshade]

Also I think that people will be like "why the hell should I waste my time for you blah blah" it's okay, i don't really care I'm just saying I would take this all a lot more seriously and be amazed if someone actually got my height right.

[Zelder]

Okay hello, let me introduce myself as an extreme skeptic to what goes on here, but I'm very curious about the things posted here nonetheless. I'm a Christian as well.
There are people here claiming to talk to demons, succubbi, the devil, perform magic, be psychic, and such things like that. This is my one question to anyone who claims to possess these powers, this information could be reasonably obtained through any one of those abilities- what is my height? (In feet and inches). Im sorry if this is disrespectful, but it's really hard to believe what I read here. By the way my name is Noah and I live in Illinois. Again, sorry to seem like a dick, thnks for any responses.

Dearest Lampshade, I see that you attempt to be respectful so as a baby occultist I will just say this though I am no advanced person: There was a study where someone by the name of James Randi offered one million dollars to anyone who can prove the paranormal or psychic experiences. It would be evident that no one in the world won the competition. True psychics are not the con men that go and do "magic," read minds for cash and so on. The popular conception is that a psychic can read someone's mind and tell someone what number they're thinking of and so on. There are many psychics with different abilities and not every one of them will be able to do everything one person can do.

Also, I am just joking, but I'm guessing 5'6" for your height.

I for one only saw things to be true that are physical and can be proven by science or by the physical five senses. The people who do attest to seeing paranormal on this forum do not do this to "prove" to anyone that they saw them, rather they see it and know to exist like every day life. People who talk to succumbi, well, this means they have felt the beings or seek to contact a being. "The Devil" is usually not synonymous with Satan, Beelzebub, or Lucifer here and I believe like some here that The Devil is a made-up religious concept, and just a word for anything spiritual that is un-Christian. Performers of what you see here is interpreted as "magick" which defines as:

1. An effort to make a change in ones life by using ones own personal energy and the energy of surrounding elements.

Although the wording and definition is very much debated, the popular notion of "magic" in media is optical illusions and sleight of hand i.e. pulling a rabbit out of the hat, making cards disappear.

As someone once put it: Do not joke around with these things, they are very real and can hurt you if you mess around.

When you say

this information could be reasonably obtained through any one of those abilities

I think you do misinterpret the meaning of all these practices. We are here for learning, not to guess people's heights as if this some bar. This place, as the word Occult implies Secretiveness and away from people that may deem it "evil" is a refuge for many people. Another mention as to why you may not get other replies is that many have heard these phrases so much, someone will just point you to twenty different topics started with the same misinterpretation as to "what goes on here," as if this is some spooky secret teenage-rebellion mad house! *spookyness* <== Very Spooky
My feeling is that you may be a Pastor, or someone that came to see how we'd react. I also sense curiosity but no, we're not (all) spooky and some will be happy to answer any questions you have.

I define as Left-Hand Path and I under some circumstances will call myself a Satanist (note the Inverted Pentacle on my avatar), so I hope I left a nice first impression. [happyface]

Perhaps if you focus too much on only Satanism or Demonaltry, maybe a person who practices Angelic or Pauline (from Apostle Paul, not a female) Arts may be more comfortable. I picture the forum to be a giant safe haven for every to be free from persecution and practice their way of life.

Either way, I bid you Wealth of Truth

My names River btw

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Lampshade;

You'd probably want to separate out some of the things you said.

I take this field - ie. esoteric philosophy and occultism - as something that's first and foremost the endeavor of hacking your own brain the way many people out there like to hack computers.

Admittedly I'm very early in the threshold of opening up to my own subconscious, I have experiences that I could easily understand people of all ages and walks of life taking as signs that they're talking to noncorporeal beings. At the same time I realize too, as vivid as they are, that I have no proof that they aren't aspects of my own deeper self, even on my own neural circuitry, and thus for as much as I want to explore it and answer these questions myself I also know that I have no proof of any sort of natural panpsychism in the universe based on what I've experienced. Panpsychism seems to make for a wonderful model of the universe, much like the idea of reincarnation seems to lend a very encouraging modicum of sensibility to the universe and the pain it inflicts on conscious life, just that as far as I can tell - while they're great working theories they're just that; theories. To call the subconscious an incredibly powerful supercomputer is no mistake, to say that it can create synchronicities all day long by calculating much farther out than we could ever imagine our own minds doing and directing our attention accordingly doesn't really surprise me either.

I'm not at all meaning either to shut down or discredit people who firmly believe that these are entities outside of their own nature or who've truly found proof of that by their own subjective empirical tests - and to be fair the empirical testability of psychism may not be either here or there. What troubles me about the situation regarding psychism though, and what makes it hard to shake my own skepticism, is for one - no one ever claimed James Randi's money. There might be a few fakes with reputations but for everyone tested to be fakes, if the seeming 'psychic' dynamic is what people think it is seems a little far out. it's either a) this is our subconscious minds interacting with us in ways that modern psychology has never let on to us or to date believed that it could or b) there's some holy conspiracy by the Most High to keep most people either in agnosticism, atheism, or very secular forms of popular religion to keep them on the evolutionary path, reincarnating into the same lessons, and only a small socially discredited and generally laughed at as foolish few are able to take the esoteric step and ascend toward the divine - and all their powers come to naught in the face of empirical tests or under the watchful eye of a rational atheist because God, all of the angels and saints, the inner schools, etc. demand that the world have no evidence that this stuff is real. Possibility a) seems like it comes together pretty easily, possibility b) seems incredibly needy and while I can't disprove it I similarly would not at this point want to live my life and organize my belief structures on that outlook unless I had significant hard evidence to that end.

Welcome to the forum and perhaps let my post here be an acknowledgement that you won't necessarily find everyone agreeing on what can be done, what can't, naturally it makes sense that people's beliefs will be fitted to their experiences. Someone may want to take a shot at your height and they may be 100% correct - I don't know, I can't discount it, just that I feel its worth phrasing the occult and esoteric in this manner instead - that it's first and foremost an attempt by a person to get a hold of their own lives at the most fundamental levels, exploring the depths of their own subconscious minds (a level that speaks in symbol and doesn't really care if our preference is discursive logic), get to know the subterranean gatekeepers of their own potential and what those gatekeepers want, and finding ways even to sort of program our own brain-apps. There may very well be very real entities, angels and archangels, divas, daemons, elementals, etc. appearing to a person as they dive deeper into those depths - just there's really only one way I think that's satisfactory for answering those questions which is to get in, do it yourself, practice, and try to understand these experiences as they begin to happen to you in comparison to everything you've come to unshakably believe about reality thus far.

[Lampshade]

Okay thanks for both of your replies. I was just hoping someone could ask their demon companion to tell the height of Noah from Illinois, or something like that, I understand that this is not the purpose of what you guys practice. It seems you guys try and understand things to their deepest extent, even beyond what people generally are able to know.
I still hope one of the forum members that always talks with demons or a specific demon could guess my height or even my age, it would be cool [eg]

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

It seems you guys try and understand things to their deepest extent, even beyond what people generally are able to know.

Heh, well, there are plenty of guys working at CERN, NASA, MIT, etc. who are trying to go beyond what people generally are able to know - just that they're working at this from the objective side of things and they get block grants and stipends for it too. Must be nice.

[cyberdemon]

I still hope one of the forum members that always talks with demons or a specific demon could guess my height or even my age, it would be cool [eg]

Are you 19 years old and living in Hilton, New York?

[Lampshade]

Lol Cyberdemon not quite. This thread is getting long so I'll just tell everyone. I'm 16, I live in Chicago, and I'm 6 foot 1 inch. Thanks for everyone's replies [grin] [crazy]