So to clarify the title, I’d like to discuss everyone’s different personal gnosis on what you consider to define as “alive”.
What makes a living being living?
Probably going to be an ongoing debate for the scientific communities but I challenge you to investigate your definition against the likes of ;
Animistic beliefs like wilderness spirits, rocks, trees, fungus, extradimensional, extraterrestrial, ghosts, viruses, planets, stars and whatever else you might what to bring to the discussion.
For example there’s a constant debate in the scientific community regarding weather viruses should fall into the category of alive or not.
As this is a forum to discuss magick, I think the ideas discussed here should be less about the scientific communities usage, which will be limited to the nonspirtual and kind of off topic here, and more focused on the spiritual and esoteric side anyway.
In that case the definition depends on what application you care about.
If alive means “I can communicate with it”, then absutely everything manifest is alive to the mage and this is how animism works, because it contains spirit, and all spirit is sentient, so you can speak with the spirit in anything.
If alive means “Is incarnate into a physically alive vessel” then this aligns with the more conventional mundane view.
If alive means, “is a sovereign spirit that will persist as an individual between vessels “, then you have a situation where, while you can talk to a pencil, it’s not alive because it won’t reincarnate.
I’m sure there’s other ways to delineate but personally I use the first. The pencil is alive as long as it exists and a pencil that you can point to and go “that’s a pencil”. When it has been shaved and rotten back into the Earth it no longer exists so it’s not alive.
Note: I don’t agree death exists exactly. The spirit that was in the pencil does flow through other things, it’s not dead just because the vessel is gone.
Death is a useful term that is well understood to mean that a pattern of energy is no more and will never return in a given timeline. But it’s not really the opposite of life, it’s a marker for change.
Just to make that clear, plants and fungi are considered alive by scientific definition, too.
(Reproduction, made from cells, growth and development, response to stimuli, metabolism, motion)
These are the attributes of what is considered alive on this planet in a physical sense, nothing more and nothing less.
I think that’s a good explanation.
Then again, we probably would differentiate between more complex, intelligent life and simpler life forms, but this differentiation exists in the physical definition, too (bacteria are as much alive as humans), so a pencil being only a pencil, does not mean it cannot be alive, by that definition.
Yes. According to the law of conversation of energy, energy can not be created or destroyed, it can only be changed.
Illuminism considered as “alive” only complex organisms with the ability of self awerness and counsciousness.
Imho while they had some point right, i do not think rationality is the only relevant parameter to consider.
Everything has a reason, even animals, trees and rocks could have souls.
Obviously some human groups have superior connection to source.
Life is the experience.
Infinite becoming finite, spirit becoming matter, immortal mortality.
@Caesar Please do not bring political opinions into BALG discussions. I have edited your post to remove the offending line, please be more careful. Do NOT bring talk of of physical violence especially in connection with children to this forum. If you do that again you will lose your account.
I don’t think science cares enough to do any proper research. But someday in the future I’m sure we will have more projects on it. Hopefully we get some real machines later.
Thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions.
Actually, maybe Reactions should be the first one.
Whether it’s a rose bush that’s been pruned at the end of the season, where it’s reaction is to then heal and sprout new growth the following year or the reactions we can see due to the evolution of all kinds of creatures over millions of years.
Then, in a similar way to how Mulberry put it, anything that can be energetically connected to can be considered living. A rock, a mountain. When rainwater finds it’s way through rock the water collects minerals and the rain itself gets filtered along its way through the rock and where the mountain springs are, the water is in a lot of places life giving to it’s surroundings.
Where rock formations have given way by geological reactions you might find crystals here and there… and many people connect with crystals with thoughts, feelings and emotions. Which you could say all start from a reaction, be it geological or evolutionary or by the intellect of the observer.
Thoughts are things and they can cause reactions too. Most people on here can accept that thoughts can travel and make things happen.
If anything can cause a reaction and if anything can be changed by an action or reaction then I say it’s a living thing.
Yeah I’m a microbiologist sometimes I try to bring things there due to muscle memory. But really what started me on this was when we made organic molecules from none organic molecules in the lab.
Most people get irritable talking about science and magic in the same sentence and I get it. However I believe if we can connect the two healthily and see where they meet, we can move mountains and give people some extraordinary results.
For this discussion however we ARE in agreement as I would prefer if people focused more on the magical rather than just quoting boring old science laws to try and own the competition or come off as a closed minded know it all
That’s awesome, from my point of view. They’re not so very different. It’s just if it goes into only science and ignoring magick that it’s off topic.
The good old placebo effect is such a strong one that is clearly magick (imo) they had to give it a name and box it in. Can’t have people experimenting with how to reliably get a stronger placebo effect now. Why? Don’t know.
Astaroth went on about the microbiome, and how people just ignore it when it is the tiny forms of life that are just as important as the big ones. That is basically why we can’t really bring extinct species back yet, because they came with their own microbiome that we don’t understand.
Probably so “Western Medicine” can have too much power to pretend to “cure” people or “treat people” but in some cases just make them more and more miserable.
sometimes I try to bring things there due to muscle memory. But really what started me on this was when we made organic molecules from none organic molecules in the lab.
