Practical Information Magic

In the comments to my last post, Ater asks how I would go about doing practical information magic.  What, in other words, makes it different from energy work.  Ater writes:

What I’m really interested in is how one would go about doing direct/mental magic in the Information model? Why do you consider this model more useful than the others? For example, if I wanted a new camera I would sit down, relax and raise energy. I’d form this energy into a ball between my hands and I would visualize the camera I wanted inside the ball and so on. Then I would just tell the energy ball (or thoughtform) to go on its merry way and get me that camera. That’s pretty simple and straightforward. How would you go about casting this spell using the Info model?

The glib answer to your question is, you just did.   What did you imagine you were doing when you “told” the ball to do something?

The longer answer is, you have a point: my first book is not so specific about how the information model works out in practicalities.  My second book is better at that.

To see how it works, imagine that your spell failed.  You didn’t get the camera you wanted?  From an energy model perspective, the failure may have been in not raising “enough energy.”  That’s where you’d be inclined to look, if you were trained in the energy model.

From the information model perspective, you’d be more inclined to look at how you conveyed the desire.  Were you clear?  Was the channel clear?

The energy model cannot explain why we must be in a certain state of consciousness, or why we must use symbols.  But the information model can.  The state of consciousness is our channel of communication; it must be clear.  The symbols are our language; they must be shared.  Moreover, the Communicant is very good at reading us: if we don’t fully and completely want what we’re asking for, we’re less likely to get it.  None of that can be explained with the energy model.

Another place the energy model totally falls down is explaining divination.  The closest people come is talk about cards “absorbing energy” and “vibrating,” all of which strikes me as rather contrived when the obvious nature of the cards is that they’re symbols interacting in a symbol system to communicate information (well, more accurately, meaning — but that’s my next book).

The symbol of energy is a fine and dandy one.  If I wanted a camera, I’d probably do something rather similar to what you did.  But I’d think of it very, very differently.  The important bits would not be the ball of energy for me, but the symbol I used to describe the camera and my actual, real need or desire for the camera.  And if the spell didn’t work, I’d treat it as a failure in communication, not as a failure in mechanics.  (And if the spell did work, I’d say “thank you,” as one does when someone gives you something you want)

I don’t want to replace energy work or argue that those who use it are somehow not doing real magic.  I just want to point out that the information model shifts our focus to other areas of our work that we too often ignore, and it includes the energy paradigm as well.

You also mentioned that “everything is a symbol” is pretty obvious to you.  After all, you said, Aphrodite is clearly a symbol of love.  But the point I’m making is, you’re a symbol too.  Not just gods, but people, life situations, cars, music, and socks — all are symbols.  They’re all information we understand by placing into symbolic frameworks of meaning, and they all can be affected by a greater or lesser degree by magic therefore.  I don’t deny the existence of an external world: but we experience it only through symbols.  For all intents and purposes, our experience of reality is one of symbol.

I hope that clarified.  My second book goes into a bit more depth, I think, on the symbolic nature of things and stuff.  And I’m really glad that you read my book and disagreed with me.  One of my main goals is to get people talking and thinking critically about magic, not just rehashing the same old ideas.

Idealism and Panpsychism

Idealism is the belief that the only thing that exists is consciousness itself.  Bishop Berkeley summed it up in a bit of pleasant Latin: “Esse est percepti” — to be, is to be perceived.

The only experiences we have are mental experiences.  We seem to drink, say, a glass of wine, but really we only perceive the wine.  The wine exists — as far as we are concerned — only insofar as we are conscious of it.  We form an idea of wine and then externalize that idea into the wine.  “This is earthy and unassuming, with a citrus finish,” we might say.  But until we tasted it, the wine was no such thing.  The wine was, Berkeley would say, nothing at all.

Samuel Johnson, my good buddy and trusted friend, was once walking with some friends who were discussing Berkeley’s idealism.  One said something along the lines of “Yeah, of course it’s nonsense, but how do you refute it?” meaning, of course, in the philosophical sense.  Johnson aimed a square kick at a stone and said “I refute it thus!”  But what Johnson (a man smarter than me by a factor of ten) failed to recognize is that he still only recognized the solidity of the stone as an idea.

I’m a flavor of idealist who admits to the existence of a world outside my mind.  Otherwise, I’d be a solipsist, and they’re terrible party guests.  However, this world outside my mind is, itself, a world if ideas.  The world is a mental, not a physical, construct — the very idea of physicality is just that, an idea.  This particular flavor of idealist is labeled panpsychist, from the Greek pantos, all, and psyche, mind.

Why do I think this?  That’ll be another post — this one is already too long.

Quotidian Stuff

I have two new interests.  Money, and power.

Money fascinates me because I can’t figure out what it symbolizes.  Not time, not effort, not work.  It seems to symbolize “value,” but if that’s the case, it’s a concretization of the abstractest of abstracts.

Power interests me because it doesn’t seem to exist.  If you define it as the ability to achieve desires and act with maximum freedom, for every desire you achieve you have to give up others.  I’ll never be a rock star; no time with my writing and my other work.  And every freedom you gain comes with attendant responsibilities; just ask any teenager who grew up and found out that staying out until four in the AM wasn’t always such a good idea, even if you could.

So those, and trying to buy a new house, are my interests.  I’m also kicking around new book ideas.  Maybe one on divination, or better yet, one on “sane magic.”  Like, how can one be a critical thinker and still believe in magic?  I’d enjoy writing that book.  I’m not sure anyone but me and my friends would enjoy reading it.

A World With No Rules

I like to think about things that everyone takes for granted in new ways.  For example, rules.  Everyone always says “You’ve got to have rules.”  Even so-called mavericks like to say (and god, I’ve said it), “You’ve got to know the rules before you break them.”

Why do we need rules?  To control behavior?  But if that’s the case, then that implies that there’s something in humans that is irrational and randomly swerving, and rules keep us straight.  Neither of those assumptions seems true to me.  Even a lunatic can construct a chain of cause and effect for his or her actions — they might not seem rational to us the sane, but they’re connected at least from the lunatic’s perspective.  And rules certainly aren’t just made to govern the insane, or only they would have to obey them.  No, it seems like the rules are made to govern the sane — in fact, a true lunatic might not have to obey the rules in the same way, under our laws!  So the sane are, by definition, rational, and have rational reasons for doing things.  Why, then, rules?  Are there certain kinds of rational reasoning that are more acceptable than other kinds?  Sure, maybe, but acceptable to whom?  And by which chain of reasoning?  And can we judge the reasoning that leads to the judging of the original chain of reasoning, with another chain of reasoning, and so on?  There’s really no ground to stand on.

The other need for rules, to keep people behaving “right” — well, that works well, doesn’t it.  No, it certainly doesn’t.  Crime fluctuates, but has nothing to do with the establishment of rules — instead, it has more to do with economics, civic identity, and so on.  In other words, you give people rational reasons to behave “well,” and they behave well.

Moreover, if we all obey the rules all the time, we can never change them, because we can never test a new rule that might be better.  Or, if we do change them, we must therefore do it blind.  Again, even the American legal system enshrines this method of changing rules — one way to challenge a law is to disobey it and challenge its legality in court.

Maybe it’s not so much a matter of rules themselves, but obeying and regarding rules mindlessly.  For example, last night I found myself — driving home tired — stymied by some construction.  Someone earlier had swerved into the cones marking the new lanes of traffic and scattered them randomly about.  There was no path through them.  What do you do?  Get out of the car and rearrange the cones?  It’s against the rules to park in a street, even at 3 AM.   Drive over the cones?  Not optimal.  Try to pick your way through them?  Back up and find a detour?  Every option breaks the rules.

Rules try to take the places of solutions.  A solution is something you figure out yourself; a rule is a solution calculated by others.  But rules ignore contexts.  And all meaning derives from context.  A life without rules might be the only kind of life that’s truly meaningful.

What a terrifying thought that is.

Via Boingboing — Who’s Minding the Mind?

The New York Times published an account of recent studies about psychological priming.  We learned about this back in college, as I recall — if you’re primed to exhibit a certain behavior, you’re more likely to do so.  Not exactly rocket science, I guess.  Still, this paragraph is interesting:

Using subtle cues for self-improvement is something like trying to tickle yourself, Dr. Bargh said: priming doesn’t work if you’re aware of it. Manipulating others, while possible, is dicey. “We know that as soon as people feel they’re being manipulated, they do the opposite; it backfires,” he said.

Yeah.  Well, maybe that’s all magic is — a way to tickle ourselves.  Still, no . . . I’ve seen magic have effects that can’t be explained by mere psychological tricks.  Even if it were all psychological, though, it’d still be darned valuable.   After all, if we prime ourselves to notice opportunities for jobs by doing a spell to get a job — the result is the same.

Grimoire for sale

Looks like everyone is blogging on this already, but I’d be remiss not to include it. A 400 year old handwritten grimoire is up for auction at Sotheby’s, projected to go for 12,000 pounds which comes to a hair over $24,000. Everyone is agog about a spell involving a frog and some ants — and the weird thing is I know this spell. I remember it. I don’t remember where I read it, but somewhere, in some book or another, I remember a spell involving a toad, an anthill, and looking through the bones of the toad’s head for a special bone or stone. But I’m pretty sure it was a toad, I don’t remember if it was a love spell, and the floating against the current thing I don’t recall either. Maybe there’s a whole genre of these.

Symbolically, the frog to these people would be a symbol of generation from nothing, since they didn’t really understand tadpoles. It’d also be a symbol of water giving forth life. The tongue might give them some notion of potency or constancy, and the bone flowing against the current ties it all back to water again. The ants are easy — it’s a simple way to deflesh an animal without introducing fire. It also invokes the chthonic powers.

Dude, I so want this book.

Rigorous Intuition

An interesting post on Rigorous Intuition.  I particularly like the quote from George Hanson, whom pretty clearly I need to read more of:

It is commonly assumed that there is a simple, objective correspondence between the signifier and the signified even thought they are separate entities. It is assumed that language is only a set of names for things, events, and concepts. These assumptions are incorrect, but few recognize the extent of the implications. This lies at the heart of deconstructionism, and magic.

Natural Semantic Primitives

I find this theory that all meaning can be broken down into 61 semantic primitives — atoms of thought, if you will — intriguing.

I’m not sure this theory is about language, so much as it is about thought, however.  Could it be that we conceive of only sixty-one main ideas?

More interestingly, it’s about culture — it seems a clever tool for unpacking meaning, and whether these 61 words are the atoms of thought or not, it’s a handy algebric notation for trying to undertand a complex concept.

I’m tempted to try my hand at it.  Keeping in mind, of course, that I haven’t really read much of the theory in any formal sense, just surfed the page and glanced at a few articles at this point, so I’m probably doing it wrong.

Magic=

I want something to happen.

I do something like this thing.
This thing happened because I did something.

But something’s wrong there, I think.  Because this script could work for lots of things.  I mean, it could work for writing a letter.

I want to say something.

I cannot say something.

I do something like saying something.

Or it could work for superstition.  Or any number of other ideas.  What is it about magic that makes it not superstition and not writing a letter or acting in a play or doing some other symbolic action?

And of course each paradigm of magic would write a different script.  For example, the spirit paradigm:

I want something.

I say words to something/ something does not have a body/ something does not live/ something thinks.

Something makes something happen.

Or the energy paradigm:

I want something

I move something/ something often does something/ something does not live/ something does not think/ someone cannot touch something/ something is inside all things/ because of this, things happen.

This something makes something happen.

I’m sure I’m doing this wrong, but it is sort of revealing.  After all, the closest I can come to the energy paradigm makes me wonder if this isn’t just the same as the spirit paradigm.  I wonder if we boil down all paradigms to primitive semantic units, we might not find that they’re all the same.

I might have to pick up her books.

logofernando

logofernando

An exploration of a rather more traditional Qabalah than most people are used to. Some of this may be revolutionary; I haven’t decided yet. There does seem to be a strain of one-true-way-ism, though, in the undertow. But he’s right: this arrangement does appear more logical.

Two insights

One:  I spend far too much bloody time in front of this computer.  It’s a beautiful day out and I should go play.

Two:  Reasons why not should always be judged with a greater degree of skepticism than reasons why.