I agree with this.
For the rest, I think most of us here have imperfect lives, and yet we are capable of grasping the idea of possibilities and powers we’re nowhere near attaining.
To bring this back on topic, all of Donald Michael Kraig’s powers and all the people working to try and save him were unable to - however, I don’t think that means he wasn’t a capable magician. JMO.
There are 2 things no one can change : date of birth, date of death
Everyone who claim the contrary is deluding himself. Period.
Defectron, you may be right. But at the same time you may not be. Who knows?
Same goes with you Lady E.
And Eye, that’s technically submitting to something greater than you. You can change your day of death, depending on many factors.
The problem here is that everyone has a lot of views on something that, quite honestly, they can’t really explain. Some have fatalistic views (i.e. The Eye with his idea of date of birth and date of death) which can be spat on with several magic examples. From that point of view, it seems pointless to do any of this crap; if I’m going to die at 70, might as well sit on my ass doing nothing, because all this work really got a small shelf life that I can’t even extend. But if he likes that, it’s cool.
On the other hand, we got those of us who feel that it’s a bit weird that a magician dies of a disease when there are plenty of healing modalities that could clap up that particular disease. From that perspective, him not being able to cure himself might show that he was a bit more talk than walk, which should still mean jackshit to us if we can practice his shit and get results from our own practice.
As for me, I honestly think that there is an overestimation of our current abilities to understand certain things, primarily because many of us are far too ingrained within this current limit-based paradigm to start thinking about concepts like immortality. Moreover, due to that love affair with the paradigm, I think we all overestimate our ability to really understand just how far magick can go. I mean, we often believe that money magick involves a need to do something “physical”, when in reality that shouldn’t be necessary. But since we live in a paradigm that seems to necessitate rings of reality rather than live parallel with them, it probably is necessary for most individuals to get their stuff off.
So for this guy, he may have had a relatively capable hand with magick, but when it came to something serious, neither he nor anyone else could help him out. I can only say that is a lack of power and capability, due to what I feel is a lack of perceptual expansion on the part of occult practitioners, not to mention just that in honesty, most modern Western Magick is sorely lacking in scope and range of practice (i.e. mastering theta AND delta states, in-depth energy work, effectual pursuit or attainment of “superpowers”) comparison to some other cultures. So you know, it’s not really that surprising when those factors come into play.
[quote=“The Eye, post:22, topic:2848”]There are 2 things no one can change : date of birth, date of death
Everyone who claim the contrary is deluding himself. Period.[/quote]
If your scheduled to die 20 years in the future but decide to shoot yourself in the head with a magnum, what do you think will happen?
Whether or not that’s true, it raises some fascinating questions:
I’ve had a detailed birth chart made, and it was staggeringly accurate, and that was dictated by the precise time I was born - a week later or earlier, 12 hours later or earlier, does that mean my entire personality would be different? If so, my mother went into labour at that time and gave that final shove due to an almost incomprehensible cosmic web;
do we have a “death horoscope” - does the placement of the planets, even the constellations, at our time of death affect our post-life fate? Do we have that same connection? Everything in the universe seems purposeful from what I’ve seen, be almost astonishing if the coming-in stars were pre-ordained, the ones for when we leave/enter different realms are just left to chance…
do the choices that lead to our specific death (smoking crack and getting knifed in prison, dying in childbirth, dying aged 110 after a lifetime of good works and moderate living) somehow lead us towards our death horoscope? Euoi, if you’re reading this with your relationship with La Santisima Muerte - any opinions please?
And anyone else?
Sorry for all the questions, but this whole topic does raise a lot of them.
I’ve been told various people I loved died when they did because either they needed to reincarnate elsewhere in order to have that life coming available, or that their lives would have slowly decayed their souls if they’d carried on into old age along the route they were going, obvs. that’s only UPG but it’s possible isn’t it?
And of course the “seizing the root of reality” thing I proposed as a definition of godhood back on the first page could theoretically change your death stars, along with everything else.
[quote=“Sevarn304, post:19, topic:2848”]When did this conversation turn about me? I was speaking in general.
And I’m tired of the material. Remember that little bit? I’m more focused on an area I’ll be living in for quite some time rather than the vessel I’m using to get there.
The physical is nothing to me. It’s a training ground. And, like I’ve offered plenty of people, I am more than capable of ridding one of astral enemies. I attack defectron’s enemy legions in my spare time, but I could really use a new enemy.
Whatever, didn’t join to get into petty arguments, joined to become a god.
Eternally,
-Sev[/quote]
Wasn’t just about you, just used you as an example.
I’d be tired of the material too if I didn’t have the ability to change it. You don’t plan on being here for quite some time? Since hou were talking about defeating death I would think you planned to stick around here for a while. That’s why I got into magick. To make my life what I wanted, in both the spiritual and the physical. Trying to live in the spiritual and ignore or escape from the material is no less imbalanced than the fools who chase the biggest flat screen, fancy cars and empty relationships and forsake the spiritual. Lean too far to either side and you just go in circles.
If the physical is a training ground you should be able to answer the question instead of skirting around it with more of the same talk that led me to ask you to begin with. I’ve got an enemy to point you to, look in the mirror. Your pride and arrogance only serve to keep you in denial and stroke your ego.
I didn’t join to get into petty arguments either, nor did I join to get lectured by a jobless, shut in who’s insecurities keep him from actualizing his potential. I asked you to provide examples of you making physical changes and bending reality and you offered none so there is nothing to argue about.
But whatever indeed, I’ll let you get back to being the living god who has a sensitivity to sunlight and demands offerings of having his name on his juice box. I’ll get back to building something tangible and leave you to your astral kingdom.
Regards
TWF
As you said this is matter of belief. And if I cant proof I’m right, you cant that I’m wrong. We can only debate about what we’re believing in.
And I dont see the point in your example (or maybe I didnt understand what you meant, in that case I apologize)
Let’s say that I’m gonna die at 70. In which way would this prevent me from doing things in my life, to experiment things, to learn things that anyway I’m gonna take with me once I “die” and will be useful for my next incarnation ? Having a limited life time span on Earth does not mean that life is useless and that everything that I’ll do will have no meaning/utility.
@Defectron : Good point. In my belief, I see suicide as the grain of salt of the concept. The exception of the rule (every rule has at least 1 exception). The ultimate manifesteation of free will. We can’t extent our life time span since the moment we die is set in stone, but on exception to that rule we can shorten it.
In regards to refusing laws and reality I agree it works to an extent but there are limitations. Some mother refusing to believe her husband is abusing her kids doesn’t make the bruises go away nor does it make the child any less psychologically damaged. A guy who gets aids from a blood transfusion still had aids when he didn’t know he was infected .
I agree the will to continue and fight on makes a huge difference and not just give up in defeat but as I said there are limits.
On the subject of ancient texts listing examples of people living long periods I’m on the fence. Usually when people read these texts they like to pick and choose what is allegory and what is genuine. Take the Bible for example, people will clash Jesus never existed and its an allegory of the man being an example of divinity and in the next breath site his miracles as an example of him being a skilled magus…we can’t have it both ways. Seems like just a different practice of buffet Christianity where one picks and chooses what applies to them.
If you take 10 ridiculously skilled mages and have them assume god form and then hurl them off a 30 story building to hit the ground do you think any would survive? These guys manipulate reality to make their dreams come true but even then the likelihood of their physical body surviving is slim and none. Take a yogi or monk who can control his bodily functions to extreme levels but shoot him in he head and he’ll likely die or at best suffer severe brain damage. So as I said there are limits to what one can do.
I’m not saying don’t strive to exceed and break limitations but don’t dellude yourself either.
Agreed.
Makes me think about lucid dreaming and stuff where you’re told that either waking and dreaming lives are both dreams. All right, but it doesnt mean that because waking life is a dream that you can jump out of the 14th floor window of a building and not die.
We live in physical shells on a physical planes. There are laws that apply and if you can influence or alterate a bit them, you can’t bend them totally to your will. The examples of TWF were excellent on that matter.
Therefore, saying that we are god and that everything can be bent to our will and that death is BS and can be defeated is a very optimistic exageration of the truth.
Those are effects, not causes; sure, they cause other things, but the mother is refusing to change the cause, so what she thinks about the effect changes nothing, and the blood-transfusion guy was unable to change the cause - all he can do is firefight the effects.
Nothing is random - everything has a cause, and that’s where the real power lies in real life (you don’t walk through a slum at 2am wearing your most expensive clothes and watch, because you could guess the effect wouldn’t be good) and not in nancying about with effects - getting pasted all over the pavement after jumping 30 storeys is an effect.
Not being there in the first place would be the truly godlike act, just like the saying in self-defence - you win 100% of the fights you don’t get into.
Like I said, magick seems to always be deniable, aka outside the kind of proof someone like Randi would want, because it deals with causes, not hasty crossings-out of the end outcome that leave visible traces of what was changed, and how it was going to come out before magick was used.
You can see this depth in everything from prophecies to divination to spellwork, nothing just happens with no causal chain, divination (for example) gives you the godlike power to know the probable outcome of certain choices, beyond what common sense can tell you; prophecies and omens indicate that a prolonged series of events builds up before a major world-changing event, like the coming of a natural disaster, a war, or a major prophet; with spells, it will be a chain of events that could have just happened anyway that gets you the result.
Getting closer to that cause is the definition, in everyday life, of being in control of your life - “act, don’t react, be a doer, not a spectator” and so on, and the same thing goes for magick.
“Cause and Effect,” as a concept, is part of the physical and metaphysical laws that affect every single thing, seen and unseen, and it is therefore possible to deduce things from them about abilities we don’t yet have, the same way a knowledge of the universal law of gravity allows scientists to know the mass and velocity of stars or planets they’ve never even seen.
It’s the same way the Montgolfiers knew that the law “Hot air rises” was going to mean people could actually fly for the first time, even though ascent into the skies was the stuff of legend, and nobody had done it before - despite the fact hot air has ALWAYS risen, and people knew that enough to make holes in the roofs of their huts during the stone age…
How far can we go with this, based on these laws? I know one thing - focusing on the limitations and coming up with lists of proof about how they must be true isn’t going to cause anyone to try and push through them.
I personally want to be the kind of person to whom the things I want can believably happen, because I’ve put myself in the line for them, done all the things I become aware of that make me eligible, and made the choices that mean I’m not shooting myself down before I’ve even begun.
Further reading for anyone who wants it: The Kybalion PDF.
[quote="-TWF-, post:29, topic:2848"]In regards to refusing laws and reality I agree it works to an extent but there are limitations. Some mother refusing to believe her husband is abusing her kids doesn’t make the bruises go away nor does it make the child any less psychologically damaged. A guy who gets aids from a blood transfusion still had aids when he didn’t know he was infected .
I agree the will to continue and fight on makes a huge difference and not just give up in defeat but as I said there are limits.
On the subject of ancient texts listing examples of people living long periods I’m on the fence. Usually when people read these texts they like to pick and choose what is allegory and what is genuine. Take the Bible for example, people will clash Jesus never existed and its an allegory of the man being an example of divinity and in the next breath site his miracles as an example of him being a skilled magus…we can’t have it both ways. Seems like just a different practice of buffet Christianity where one picks and chooses what applies to them.
If you take 10 ridiculously skilled mages and have them assume god form and then hurl them off a 30 story building to hit the ground do you think any would survive? These guys manipulate reality to make their dreams come true but even then the likelihood of their physical body surviving is slim and none. Take a yogi or monk who can control his bodily functions to extreme levels but shoot him in he head and he’ll likely die or at best suffer severe brain damage. So as I said there are limits to what one can do.
I’m not saying don’t strive to exceed and break limitations but don’t dellude yourself either.[/quote]
Pretty much sums up my views on all this. It’s like ‘The Matrix’ – The rules can be bent, maybe a few broken, but you’re not going to tear down the entire thing.
There are rules to the universe.
As for the ancient texts, eh, some allegory, some truth. Read with a discerning eye.
Just because the Indiana Jones story makes reference to the Nazi’s, does that mean the Nazi’s were a fairytale?
@The Eye: With regards to death, you put forth the idea of another incarnation. If you are planning on learning things in this incarnation in hopes of taking the knowledge with you to the next incarnation, then this is just another form of immortality pursuit. But that is assuming that you actually even get to a point where you can take the stuff with you consciously, which should be something that a magician can do. However, I get the feeling that not as many can do that consciously as one might think, even though it may seem like common sense.
However, if one is not taking that stuff with them, then I don’t really see a point to it. Let’s take martial arts for example. For many people to master these forms, they have to dedicate large portions of their life to the pursuit of it’s perfection before even becoming “masterful” at that art. But let’s say you die at 70… if you were to go about that process, you are liable to spend 1/3 of your life just learning the art, around a couple decades at least.
If you started as a kid, you would have about 20 years to experience the art as a master in your prime before your “dying” starts catching up to you… I don’t know. That just doesn’t sound like a great investment to me. If you can take it with you when you die, then that’s great. But then who cares at that point, you have no real reason to give too much of a damn if you can take that knowledge with you. But unless that is a conscious skill, then you will be coming in a next incarnation to go through a lot of the same processes you did in this one… Just doesn’t sound like it’s worth the time at all.
But to address the idea of what is possible… I understand you guys perspectives, but realize that this is exactly what I mean by what I was talking about perceptual expansion. For example, TWF mentions the examples of yogis and monks who can withstand extreme and control their bodily functions… this sounds like advanced material. However, this type of control and activity is EXTREMELY basic level yogic and eastern alchemical work. This is the shit that they can show off and wow folks in the West with just to say, “Yea, there’s something to this stuff.”
However, those skills are really things you pick up at the beginning of exploration into legit yogic and Taoist Alchemical work. Whereas we evoke entities into non-corporeal form on this plane, there are millions of Tantric mantras that set aside for evoking physical beings and objects. There were many people in the streets of India when I visited as a kid who would sit there taking bites from King Cobras like it was nothing, and the bus driver was sitting there looking at this dude shaking his head in disgust. We asked him what was wrong, and he said that dude was a fake yogi. My father was like, “Oh yea, he’s not being true to the noble life.” The guy kinda looked at my dad stupid and was like, “No my friend! He didn’t learn any of the guru’s good stuff Mr. Michael Jackson sir (for some reason, going to India as a black person in '92 meant you were Michael Jackson, because everyone in my family was Michael Jackson on that tripe… including the children, babies and women). He is a BUM my friend, he can take the snake poison, it means nothing to him, but that is NOTHING my friend!!”
So the idea that a yogi with those skills could be killed by being shot in the head really depends on the yogi or monk. We never get to see examples of this for a few reasons. For starters, once you gain power like that, there is no real reason to start showing the shit off. Secondly, we are assuming that because plenty of yogis and monks have been killed by such methods means that such things are a staple for that breed of individual. Problem is, in this world most people suck at their life’s pursuits, and it would be no different Eastern occult workers.
However, perhaps the most telling reason is the one that we wouldn’t like to admit: many of us could not handle seeing something like that. If you saw a human being jump off a 30-story building and walk it off like it was nothing, I highly doubt that it would not have physiological repercussions. Many people do not show their shit off because to do so would violate a person’s perceptual paradigm to the point of doing personal harm to them. How many people would catch a heart attack just from seeing that, and how many more would go crazy? It’s like if electricity just stopped suddenly working for people; the shock of that reality would kill people off of shock alone, not to mention the amount of people who physically depend on it to live.
So you know, I get what you guys are saying, but for me and my experiences, it’s your perception really that has it going down. Like I said, we take ideas like assuming godforms (or what we call the practice anyway) and evoking demons and think that is all that impressive, when that still kinda basic level stuff. Everything we asking entities to do and help us with could be easily accomplished by ourselves by learning to consciously enter the delta state, but again, that’s not really a focus in our society of magick. Doesn’t make any of this stuff a superior practice, just saying that what we consider magick is kind of a very basic exploration of it.
Have you ever done that yourself?
It probably needs saying, that’s a genuine question. 
My first visit into delta involved what felt like a complete melting of the body. Upon coming back from this state, without invoking any sort of “conscious” intent of my owner, my knees were healed and felt like new (I don’t know how to explain how new knees feel, but when you get them after 10 years of “wrestling knee”, you know what the deal is). I also had a shitload upper body bone misplacement, including visible incongruence between the left and right side of my body. That was also rectified in a few visits, even though this problem was being worked on before I got into delta, but it is pretty much done, and again without conscious effort.
I’m not gonna mention too much here, simply because to be honest, I probably shoulda just shut up in the first place hahaha. I don’t even know what I was trying to prove with commenting haha, but hell maybe someone might gain a different perspective that can help them out.
[quote=“the1gza, post:35, topic:2848”]My first visit into delta involved what felt like a complete melting of the body. Upon coming back from this state, without invoking any sort of “conscious” intent of my owner, my knees were healed and felt like new (I don’t know how to explain how new knees feel, but when you get them after 10 years of “wrestling knee”, you know what the deal is). I also had a shitload upper body bone misplacement, including visible incongruence between the left and right side of my body. That was also rectified in a few visits, even though this problem was being worked on before I got into delta, but it is pretty much done, and again without conscious effort.
I’m not gonna mention too much here, simply because to be honest, I probably shoulda just shut up in the first place hahaha. I don’t even know what I was trying to prove with commenting haha, but hell maybe someone might gain a different perspective that can help them out.[/quote]
Did you experience a temporary obliteration of your conciousness when you did this? If you did I think you may have crossed the abyss, if not your describing the state you get in right before you cross it. Crossing the abyss is the secret behind making large changes to ones observable reality and is one of my major goals in magic.
[quote="-TWF-, post:27, topic:2848"][quote=“Sevarn304, post:19, topic:2848”]When did this conversation turn about me? I was speaking in general.
And I’m tired of the material. Remember that little bit? I’m more focused on an area I’ll be living in for quite some time rather than the vessel I’m using to get there.
The physical is nothing to me. It’s a training ground. And, like I’ve offered plenty of people, I am more than capable of ridding one of astral enemies. I attack defectron’s enemy legions in my spare time, but I could really use a new enemy.
Whatever, didn’t join to get into petty arguments, joined to become a god.
Eternally,
-Sev[/quote]
Wasn’t just about you, just used you as an example.
I’d be tired of the material too if I didn’t have the ability to change it. You don’t plan on being here for quite some time? Since hou were talking about defeating death I would think you planned to stick around here for a while. That’s why I got into magick. To make my life what I wanted, in both the spiritual and the physical. Trying to live in the spiritual and ignore or escape from the material is no less imbalanced than the fools who chase the biggest flat screen, fancy cars and empty relationships and forsake the spiritual. Lean too far to either side and you just go in circles.
If the physical is a training ground you should be able to answer the question instead of skirting around it with more of the same talk that led me to ask you to begin with. I’ve got an enemy to point you to, look in the mirror. Your pride and arrogance only serve to keep you in denial and stroke your ego.
I didn’t join to get into petty arguments either, nor did I join to get lectured by a jobless, shut in who’s insecurities keep him from actualizing his potential. I asked you to provide examples of you making physical changes and bending reality and you offered none so there is nothing to argue about.
But whatever indeed, I’ll let you get back to being the living god who has a sensitivity to sunlight and demands offerings of having his name on his juice box. I’ll get back to building something tangible and leave you to your astral kingdom.
Regards
TWF[/quote]
I’ll answer, as I tend to do, paragraph by paragraph.
Apologies, that was how I read it.
I’m preparing more spiritually than physically in case something happens to me. I have a nasty habit of not paying attention sometimes, and that’s ended badly for me more than a few times. I didn’t mean living eternally when I meant defeating death, I meant it metaphorically- defeating the likelihood that when I die, I’ll just fade away. I don’t want that. I’m getting more invested into the physical as I progress- keep in mind I’ve only been doing this for eight months, and the adrenaline from the whole situation is only now starting to wear off.
I’m working on it, despite my desire not to. I’m starting to stop being entirely centered on arcane development, Belial has opened my eyes to that.
Who said that I did not have a job? I am a shut in, but I prefer to be alone. “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.” - Paul Tillich.
That’s an odd thing to say to me. But you go ahead, build something in the physical which won’t last forever, while I evolve. You see, I’m not interested in building a kingdom, I’m interested in building myself. Because the stronger I astrally become, the more I will survive. All empires fall with time, but the individual who marks time exists eternally.
(Speak of the devil)
Eternally,
-Sev
EDIT/P.S: Hey, TWF, since I don’t take verification of your powers from you, but your customers, why should I ask you to do the same for me? If you’re that curious, I have a list- Belial, Ahriman, Azi Dahaka, even Odin at one point, but there are more- of entities that will vouch for me.
Because, if I doubt one of you (TWF/Oris/Icarus/someone else who offers services on this forum) I can just look at your customers and see the reviews from a job well done.
So why should I ask you to do the same?
Go ask some spirits if you’re that curious.
PPS- Oh, and by the way, if you build a physical kingdom or astral kingdom or whatever, I applaud you, because I know of the alliances you had to make and shatter, the friends you had to backstab, and the wars you had to wage get there. So if you actually do get to that point, allow me to be the first to be impressed.
But after that kingdom is stabilized, and your days are comprised of the peasants complaining to you about one domestic issue or another, and you don’t know what to do because you won- I’ll still be out there, carving a history, a tale for myself, and maybe one day word of me, still in the unknown, still evolving (one can never simply stop evolving) will reach your crowned ears.
So make your kingdom, and I will be the first to shake your hand on a job well done. But I will never settle for something material. I can’t even track how far I’ve evolved, apparently vamping people over the internet subconsciously in my early days, and I will continue to do so, continue to move forward, until one day the path ends.
Eternally,
-Sev
Thanks the1gza - you see in my worldview you found a way to cause that effect, so it happened like clockwork. Same thing happened when I first made contact with entities from one of EA’s vids - instant and permanent healing of a tendon problem.
This stuff can happen - hell, if I hadn’t seen a few things in my time, I wouldn’t be here.
Personally, I believe you can choose when to die. If you want to die at 150 or 70 it does not matter. Some biologists have concluded that, because the human body is a self sustaining system, that constantly renews itself, there is no reason why an exceptionally long life shouldn’t be possible. However, I have read accounts of Taoist masters who get a “memo” from the Tao (or universe, or void, whatever name you want to use) with the exact date and time they will leave the physical world, and when that date arrives, they go.
What does it mean? I haven’t the foggiest idea 
Your neighborhood omniscient fellow does!
That’s actually pretty easy to trace. Uncle Chuck talked about in one of his books, how fortune tellers would tell you the date/moon phase you would die in how many months from now etc. Adverse Therapy.
So if they think the universe tells them they will die on a specific day, they create a thoughtform that pretty much fulfills that.
JUST LIKE KARMA. COUGH. COUGH.