It takes some experience with meditation and dichotomies such as paradoxes and contradictions before one can seeminly become comfortable with the actual act of just existing, being able to slough off belief and adopt it willingly, to just enjoy life as a mythic journey.

If anyone must beware anything, it is belief itself.

On the note of ceremonial magic, has anyone else read Ceremonial Magic & the Power of Evocation? Dr Lisiewski makes some interesting claims and lays done some great work. I hope to begin working from it later this year:—

Ciao.

-tc

“There’s only pleasure and pain”
-Jane’s Addiction

Still comes down to your Will/God’s Will… apple or garden, takes yer pick.

-tc

I’m getting really into the practice of being able to hold two completely contradictory principles in mind at the same time and have them be both as right or as wrong as one another.

I love the paradox. Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” in college gave me an all new respect. Now I find them yummy.

do you have to “believe” in magic for it to work?

Think about belief. It’s a personal thing. You believe it –otherwise it woudn’t be a belief of yours. If you’re only trying to believe something, it’s not really a belief, more like a wish, which with the right mindset will keep itself far away from you (if you always put this idea as something in the future or “someday”–that’s exactly when it’s going to happen–never in the present).
Your world is driven by your perception of it. A very large part of your perception is put in place by your beliefs.
Look at Quantum Physics, which says that everything is really only a “possiblity” at the smallest level. What determines how you go from “possibility” to “reality”? One could say action, but what prefaces action? belief.
Belief drives your actions, and stronger belief will drive your actions further.
(and emotions drive your belief, but i won’t get into that tangent…)
But just believing in something won’t make it true if other of your beliefs don’t fit with it, or work against it. You may want to be rich and try to believe: I AM RICH in order to make yourself so, but if you hold another, deeper set belief (that you may not be aware of) that you feel you are “worthless” then your rich belief won’t go anywhere. the worthless belief is stronger in this case (as it has put you in your current situation of not being “rich” and wishing to be so)
So just believing won’t work, but I think if your beliefs are all going toward the same goal it can and does.
It’s not really “magic” or anything. it’s how we operate every day of our lives, we just are most of the time completely unaware of it.
Life is made and broken in the details. Silly little details.
my 2 cents…
(and tim thanks for the great website–i’m hooked)

————–

You can get things that are wrong for you and it takes you months to recover.
that’s why you have to ask your spiritual guides and your ancestors what would best for you first.
nobody can make you pick what would be best for you but why would you want to pick something wrong?

I always pray for guidance before I do anything
If my spirits say no i don’t do it
i often found out why later

then again too many people are mired in short-term thinking and play now pay later sort of mindset
those people should not practice magic as they will get burned
then they come out of it and convert to fundamentalist Xianity and denounce magic as something evil
when the truth is they never were able to take responsibility for themselves in the first place

you can get guidance, you can have the ability to make changes
but the responsibility is still on you
abuse it, misuse it, do evil things
God will get pissed off that you disrespected him
and surely you will learn a valuable lesson from that too

the only pitfall is, getting what you want is not neccisarily the best thing for your growth