I’ve been thinking recently about the LHP and free will recently. Most people will say that free will is what the left hand path stands for. I definitely agree with the concept free will. But one thing has been on my mind. Usually baneful magick is done using the LHP. Baneful magick includes mind manipulation in my opinion. And if your manipulating someone’s mind in some way, aren’t you taking away their free will? It’s hypocritical to say you support free will but you also take others away. Unless if you don’t consider mind manipulation a breakage of their free will. Then the question becomes, what do you define as free will? I define it as the ability to make whatever choice you want to make. But if you get influenced to do a certain choice, do you really have free will? Then I thought perhaps it’s not because they do technically have the choice to shield themselves from mind manipulation. Everyone and anyone can practice magick, including shielding. So share your thoughts on free will below. How do you define it? Do you think mind manipulation is a violation of it? Why or why not?
I do think people have influences upon them. I mean, I used to think love conquers all, and all of that, but now I see that duty for some people seems to be more important, even if it seems completely misguided and otherwise makes no sense. I mean, that is why sometimes spells to influence people in various ways do not work on them, because they have other forces upon them.
Its just like that sometimes mind tricks just won’t work on people because they have other forces stronger than you working against you.
And physical death!
The lhp, My Path is about me! Everyone else can go penetrate themselves.
Yeah, but they’re too busy watching television and getting their Double D Cup thrills from perving on the little Hooters’ girl. Homo normalis are worth about a dime a dozen on the hoof. Fuck 'em! They’re not endangered - just look around. Everywhere!
Al.
Gotta say that’s a slightly more formal way to tell people to go fuck themselves. Your reply is as strange as always Al. But from what I’m getting is that you don’t really believe that the average person really has free will, as the majority are just sheep. That correct?
life is about choosing, you and i have willingly chosen this path for ourselves despite the consequences and any potential gain. I think Corwin Hargrove said it best when you smile at someone you influence them. Tbh there is (just about) nothing that you could do with magick that you couldn’t do with money 
think about it let people know how wealthy you are and watch them willingly do thing agnst their morals
There is no free will because there is no room between determinism and indeterminism to slide it in. There is will though. Will means self control.
'Trick Slattery has good definitions for determinism and indeterminism.
- Determinism: All events have a cause.
- Indeterminism: Some events do not have a cause.
I am in the Indeterminism camp.
Take a good, hard look around. What do you think of John and Elsie Lunchbucket and their braindead kids?
Nation States kill millions, largely with immunity; collateral damage, depleted uranium, etc. So I’ve adopted that as my morality. Fuck 'em! When these ambulatory turds die do you feel the intellectual vacuum? Nah, me neither.
Al.
I like to think of myself as a reasonably nice guy. Weird, fucked up but essentially good natured. As a Magician I’m lhp. I’m striving for my own divinity; my isolated Godhood! As such, everyone else can go penetrate themselves, because what others do isn’t important to me. I’m interested in my race, no one else’s. I just don’t have the time.
The only reason I post here is because there’s so many of them and so few of us.
Al.
Off topic abit, but I’ve been thinking about the subject of fate vs free will. After watching the Netflix show, blood of Zeus, an episode gave me the idea that the two concepts coexist. Humans have free will. But we are bombarded by influential forces at every moment.
Picture a pin ball machine. Imagine the ball as representing free will, and the various flaps that push it around as these outward influences. Fate is the totality of these outward influences.
I believe in something that I call the spectrum of action, or just the spectrum. Ones spectrum represents all the various choices a person can make on their own with as little outward influences as possible. I assume that the concept of apotheosis is basically the act of widening the spectrum.
In a moral or ethical argument, I tend to say that freedom is the right to be selfish in an selfless world. Selfish being defined as not being obligated to do things you don’t want to do or make sacrifices you don’t want to make. The reason behind this is that a person’s actions only have meaning when they are of ones free will, but they need to be able to choose not to commit the action in the first place.
Going back to your topic, particularly in using magick to influence others, I’m afraid that you are becoming one of those influences mentioned above. Unfortunately it can’t be helped. I think people make the mistake to think that the left hand path is about helping people. It isn’t. It’s about helping ourselves. So, we are not necessarily required to help enlighten others. And I’d hope not, because so many people believe they are serving a higher power or greater purpose, but instead they end up acting on their egos, and can easily end up doing harm to the very same people they try to help.
Humans live in a interactive world where people can help you or harm you. Survival of the fittest. Magick to me is a tool we use to gain the advantage in life. And with out it, we presumably are powerless against others with greater attributes. And all magick involves the manipulation of someone or something. And if we don’t use it, we may instead be the ones manipulated.
Power may corrupt, but it’s a worthwhile risk to avoid being someone’s victim. It is simply better to be in a position where you’re in control. And if that position breeds temptation, then it’s your choice whether to follow or resist.
The world isn’t fair. You could die here right now as you’re reading this and the sun will rise tomorrow as if nothing was lost. All anyone can do is look for whatever advantage they can to not only survive but thrive. All I can say is that you need to decide in which situation is it okay to manipulate others. What can you get out of it? What are the risks and consequences? You are never free from consequences. But you are free to decide what Is worth the trouble.
For example, I choose not to use magick to directly make women love or desire me. I’d rather use magick to become someone of who’d they lust after on their own. If given the choice between dating Aphrodite vs gaining her attributes, I’ll always pick the latter.
On an added note, I have no obligation to use magick to influence you. And just the same you could use it to affect me. We may be on this site, sharing a dialogue, roughly involved with the same stuff, but that doesn’t mean that either of us won’t cast spells on eachother if we saw a good enough reason. Same with anyone else.
It’s not hypocritical when you understand that the LHP is a selfish path.
We all have the ability to choose internal states – emotions, mindsets, paradigms, etc. – but being able to execute our will and intent is a different matter entirely. viewed through this lens, the average human has very limited free will. we’re constrained by our environment, or the consequences of breaking laws or social rules. I can choose to pilot a cross-Atlantic flight this very evening… or can I? 
certainly I have the freedom of mind to decide to do it, but whether it’s actually achievable is another matter entirely. I don’t have a pilot’s licence and I’d probably get arrested and imprisoned for hijacking a plane. Free will won’t be much good to me in a jail cell. (Obviously this is hyperbole and I promise I have no intention of hijacking a plane. 
)
The crux of free will is in the first part of the phrase – free. How free we are to do as we please, or how many options are realistically available to us. So, on the LHP, we manipulate circumstances in our favour to open those avenues of opportunity to achieve what we want.
That rambling aside –
I don’t think so personally, because I certainly don’t subscribe to the idea that everyone deserves free will, i.e., the ability to act without restraint and/or without facing consequences. But I do support the selfish view of my own “free will” trumping that of others – which is to say, my view of LHP philosophy is focus on the ego-self, or the operator, above all other things.
But of course it always boils back down to personal morals. Contrary to (probably) a lot of people on this site, I, for instance, have absolutely no problem with love or lust magick.
If it helps, and some might say this is simply major cope on my part, I lean towards multisolipsism and reject the notion of linear time. So in my mind there are “timelines”, or other realities – however you want to describe it – where the person I’m attempting to influence simply goes about their business and my manipulation has no effect whatsoever. There are countless versions of that person existing simultaneously in a superimposed state, so if I can, via magick, align with the “timeline” where their will and intent match my will and intent, then I’ve achieved my goal. Am I manipulating and forcing my will on someone else, or am I simply selectively choosing a reality where my desires and theirs align perfectly? I find the idea that we can only influence “the future” is limiting to anyone on the path of the page.
Unlike my views on love/lust/manipulation, I personally don’t jive with baneful magick, like to the level of causing physical trauma or death, which BALG at large seems very OK with. I certainly don’t judge anyone else for doing so, and I’m sure I could be capable of it given the right circumstances, it just doesn’t sit right with me – the same way love/lust/manipulation does not sit right with others. However, I do use the aforementioned views to give myself the satisfaction of knowing that there’s a version of me out there somewhere who has punished the people who do deserve death and trauma, and in that timeline, they’re suffering greatly. 
This is something I have been thinking about as well and yesterday I had the relevation that free will is just an illusion. I was watching D.H. Thorne’s video and one thing he mentions is how our magick sometimes “fails”. So why don’t we get what we wanted if we were just executing our free will? If we’re the ones in control? Well maybe because what we thought we wanted isn’t what we really wanted. That’s what made me realise that my ego and my true self or higher self have been in dissonance, following contradictory goals and that ultimately my ego is subjegated to my higher self’s will.
Now technically my higher self’s will is my free will, isn’t it? But then there’s also the theory about the past, present and future all existing at the same time. So how could someone shape their future if it already exists? This leads me to believe that all the choices we’ve made, are making or will ever make are predetermined by our higher selves while the ego just gets to experience them. All of this might sound very fatalistic, but I also find it liberating because it means that no matter what life throws at you, you can take it.
All my free-will-doesn’t-exist-rambling aside, I think that’s just a question of morality. Assuming free will does exist though, you can execute your own free will while infringing on other people’s free will. Would stopping a child predator be considered immoral since you take away their free will? Not to me. And I think most of us are guided by our individual moral codes and our magick would “fail” if we subconciously thought what we’re doing is wrong.
I’m not sure if any of this makes sense to anyone but me, but I tried to keep it short.
Many people won’t hesitate to do this to you if they had the power so why should you? I’ve lately been looking at it and it’s not that bad.
True but just remember, you’re aware of this they’re not. So while they leave it in God’s hands, you are God 
Majority of people aren’t there truly but are just machines to lower level patterns and programs of reality. Even those with more advanced faculties fall into this pattern either because it is just easier to go along for a given time or to put our lower level selves on autopilot while the higher aspects are gone doing some other work. If you can manipulate someone easily it is safe to say they didn’t have free will to begin with at that moment. If there is resistance outside of pre-established programs then they are aware.
You have free will as long as your neocortex is stronger than the other parts of your brain; In other words, your will, the human part of yourself.
It is not easy to manipulate the strong and experienced, even with banefull magic. A magician who does not follow some other way of achieving mental and spiritual fortitude, is as vulnerable as everyone else.
Is it really free will if you don’t have freedom from consequences? I know that’s a silly question because anyone can choose to break the “rules” and suffer the consequences but when it comes to those who live in fear of the consequences do they really have free will? Does something like fear prevent a person from truly having free will or is fear a product of free will because a person chooses to be fearful? Then again it circles back to consequences and I think most sane people would do everything in their power to avoid anything that would cause them to suffer from the consequences of their actions but doing this can also cause suffering. So if we spend our whole entire lives trying to avoid suffering does this mean we still have free will? Also does this mean free will is a euphemism for suffering and consequences? I’d like to hear everyone’s opinion on this. Thanks in advance.
@anon48079295 @Dralukmun @Lady_Eva @DarkestKnight @anon39079500 @mavi @Keteriya @ChrisK @Veil @snortoncat
LHP is basically “I have free will but not you unless I say so” or “I’m the main character and you’re all NPCs”
I would say that the whole life cycle, for all living things, is based on free will. Even single-cell organisms make decisions on which way they will go for instance, which will lead to differing outcomes and when done by enough of them, it may lead to large consequences in the real world.
For instance, when the Prime Minister of England caught covid, the actions of a relatively small number of single-cell organisms and several multi-cell organisms along the way had a cascading effect and could have easily changed history by taking out a world leader at a pivotal time. This is called Chaos Theory, I believe and is the ultimate test of free will. The fluttering of a butterfly’s wing in China, under very improbable cirumstances can lead to a Hurricane in Florida. All actions have consequences, no matter how insignificant they may seem.
Now, it is true that we are constrained by the limitations of our environment and our natural and genetic makeup, but within those limits it would certainly appear that we have free will.
That does not mean that there are no consequences, natural laws, such as that of cause and effect, or in a more sophisticated sense, Karma, still apply. Actions have consequences, but we choose what actions we undertake, even if some of those are preselected by the subconscious before we act. But, it is the very essence of sentience and intelligence that we get to choose what action to take and at what time, although lower orders of living things act mostly out of instinct, but even then the consequences of previous actions they chose to take will accumulate over time.
How does free will exist if you’re under duress? I would say that we’re all oppressed by suffering and under duress because of it. If we’re trying to make the right choice - the path with the least resistance/least amount of suffering then is that “right” choice really ours to make? This brings up another question. Does morality stand in the way of free will?