How much of fate do we really control?

General Discussion
#1

I’ve been reflecting a lot on how my life has turned out and became disturbingly aware how little control I’ve had in the overall path it’s taken – mostly in the form of miraculous misses, but it does include other things such as random people coming into my life needing magickal help every. single. damn. time. I try to simplify my life by going full-on atheist materialist.

I feel like I’m on a damn boat and The Three Fates control the water. Am I reading into my past too much or is there an undercurrent continually influencing us we have little control or awareness of?

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#2

I am not sure if fate exists or not.
However if fate or destiny does exist, your pre-destined decisions are illusions.
Fear not, however because like a dance or like music, the purpose of hearing it is not to reach a particular spot in the floor or the finale.

The purpose is to dance and listen to the music; if feelings are involved, all the better. You decide on what to believe, whether fate exists or not.

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#3

What is fate? Ask yourself that question, what is the “will” of fate? Why does it work?

Once you know that, for sure, you’ll know for sure how much power over it

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#4

Hiya OP! The simplest way to explain this is to look at yourself, here, now. What events made you who, and what, you are? For the most part, everybody’s observed events are structured to turn them into who and what they’re supposed to be; getting conquered by enemies or sold by slavers notwithstanding.

The level of fate an individual controls, as a general configuration rather than a hard and fast rule, is thus as follows: Creative control - enemy action * necessary events to be who you are.

In other words, it gets messy! :slight_smile:

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#5

Humans are a miniscule part of the small 4% of matter that sits in the foreboding shadow of the 96% of dark matter, both of which the cosmos is comprised of. There are laws and millions of variables beyond our control and beyond our immediate observation that “exist” externally of us. To think that something as infinitesimally small as the homo sapien race can dictate where it starts and where it ends is illogical and romanticised.

I often avoid the use of destiny or fate because they are synonymous with the grandiose and transcendental. While it is possible that a man’s destiny is to become a king, it is also possible that another man’s destiny is to never achieve anything and die alone in the gutter. Determinism: the belief that external and biological factors determine one’s passage through life regardless of how much one may kick back against, is therefore a better term.

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#6

Here is an interesting qoute. “Something Cannot come from nothing” all things happen and all things hold purpose. I personally believe there is no free will. Even the choices we make are already known. There is many ways to cook chicken but its still chicken.

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#7

Meaning?

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#8

You have as much control over you fate as your enemies do, minus the necessary events to shape you into who you are. :slight_smile:

In other words, it’s just an approximation! :slight_smile:

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#9

N ud say it gets messy if we have more control over fate?

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#10

“It gets messy”, as in, the forces competing for prevalence that comprise the fabric of an individual’s fate, yes. :slight_smile:

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#11

Who sets these up?

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#12

Beautifully put .:+1:

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#13

We do! Or should I say, our highest selves do. :slight_smile:

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#14

This makes more sense :thinking:

#15

The thing about destiny is that whatever your destiny is, it’s the end result of all of the choices you will make. You have the free will to choose for yourself, but your destiny happens because you choose the path that leads you to it.

TL;DR you are predestined, but retroactively through your future choices.

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#16

I sympathize. I don’t see it as I have no control, but think I have to hit certain markers in life and what I do the rest of the time is mine. If I miss one, another of a similar sorts comes around, until I do what I should’ve done to begin with. I have the option to keep missing them, but that hasn’t worked out well in the past.

So, I think it’s a combination of both.

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#17

A few weeks ago, Odin guided me to the Norns and they told me that fate is what we make it BUT it’s influenced by our present which is influenced by our path and from this I realized that the only way to control our fate is to fix our present and this is hard.

@Qayos is spot on too as many events shape us into who we are. Say losing your long term girlfriend to a soccer player, you can either pick yourself up and become great in your field and attract a better partner or you can bitch about how soccer players such and your ex is a hoe. As you can see this is how I think some people have more awesome destinies than others. I’m working on shifting mine and it’s not easy.

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#18

Exactly! This is why I laugh when people insist that mythical entities are individual beings, because for the most part, they aren’t- any character, including the characters of spirits as depicted by myths and magical records- is a set of conditions that can be met in order to be that character. When “practitioners” try to illustrate that such beings are “factually one individual”, they overlook the fact that there are countless spiritual entities in this world, and that many spirits can take many different roads or even the same ones to the same outcomes! I mean, seriously- it’s such an incorrectly human-centric viewpoint to assume that there can only be one of everything, from yourself to the deities you work with! :slight_smile:

Anyway, @anon96217651, Determinism as a philosophy is inherently flawed from a magical perspective, because unlike that defeatist stance, external and biological factors can be overcome through sorcery! Not always, though, because some events are necessary to shape who and what the individual observer is. IME, the concept of “contested creative control” is far more accurate. :slight_smile:

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#19

Stop being silly. You cannot change Newtonian physics, Einsteinian principles, thermodynamic laws or nature. You are not a god, and “magicians” have no more control over their existential trajectory than anyone else. This is why people should read science textbooks while studying alchemy and the occult.

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#20

That is a very interesting perspective! It might go well with a theory I have, but haven’t put it into practice… it’s off-topic, but have anyone worked (evoked or invoked) with spirits as “places” instead of being “persons”?

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