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polycritical
Mar 7, 2024
withering

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Orbs
Apr 1, 2009
~Liberation~

polycritical posted:

We cast spells every day. It's just that, if we thought of it that way, we'd be like "dang, why do i keep casting these lovely rear end spells"
This. You already know how to cast spells, because everyone does; what you're really asking is how do I cast BETTER spells. And the simple answer to that is, work your daily/weekly/etc rituals with more focus and intention. Don't just drift around letting chance and society dictate your direction in life.

LITERALLY A BIRD
Sep 27, 2008

I knew you were trouble
when you flew in


I cast Regrowth

Sherbert Hoover
Dec 12, 2019

Working hard, thank you!
me: i want to cast spells

you: spells are what you do all the time actually!

me: ok spells suck rear end. i no longer want to cast spells

BONGHITZ
Jan 1, 1970

POWER WORD: SHIELD

SHADOW WORD: PAIN

Orbs
Apr 1, 2009
~Liberation~

Sherbert Hoover posted:

me: i want to cast spells

you: spells are what you do all the time actually!

me: ok spells suck rear end. i no longer want to cast spells
Too bad, you can't stop, unless you want baby-weak spells. Trying to stop casting just saps all of your magic.

Squizzle
Apr 24, 2008




babies are doing their best

LITERALLY A BIRD
Sep 27, 2008

I knew you were trouble
when you flew in

Bar Ran Dun posted:

Tillich ends the lecture on Origen describing how Origen’s theology causes a problem with Jesus having a preexisting existing divine nature, instead Jesus is like a container that fills up with Being then has unity with God. [...] If he does share this with Origen that’s the door, it doesn’t negate the event of Jesus, it potentially negates the uniqueness of the event of Jesus as the Christ.

Btw BRD what are you saying here? Are you saying that Jesus filling up with Divinity like a man-shaped God container is a thing that theologically speaking happened, and furthermore may happen again? Are you saying all of humankind is aspiring toward attaining that Christ nature, and thereby realizing the full potential of the inner Divine? I ask if you say this because it sounds to me like you do

Ohtori Akio
Jul 15, 2022
Filled By God

LITERALLY A BIRD
Sep 27, 2008

I knew you were trouble
when you flew in

Ohtori Akio posted:

Filled By God

& Loving It

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

Btw BRD what are you saying here? Are you saying that Jesus filling up with Divinity like a man-shaped God container is a thing that theologically speaking happened, and furthermore may happen again? Are you saying all of humankind is aspiring toward attaining that Christ nature, and thereby realizing the full potential of the inner Divine? I ask if you say this because it sounds to me that you do

It’s what Origen’s cosmology implied.

Origen is not the orthodox view, it gets rejected at Nicea. But the concept pops up all over the place even in people one would not expect it in. An example is CS Lewis’s obstinate tin soldiers essay in Mere Christianity. That filling up and becoming more Christ like over time.

Years ago when my wife was at seminary she would buy used textbooks. These would often come from other students some of which were close family friends (her side). The highlighting and notes of the other students, were in these textbooks. Reading these textbooks after her, I could see her notes, their notes, and occasionally her notes about their notes. a very funny one was what she realized that friend of the family was an Arian.

My hunch that Tillich was an Origenist is like that. That I believe in apokatastasis, I know that came from his ideas (among other things).

But setting Origen aside. The idea that anyone can be Christ-like (separate from Origenism) is extremely widespread and it’s a very core idea. Any person can be for all others. Salvation is having an answer to the question of: How to be in the world? That’s one way to understand a phrase like I have new life in Jesus. That’s the Good News that we can be like Jesus. The eastern folks even have a word for the process of becoming more like Jesus over a lifetime, Theosis. I mean it’s explicit in thinking like this: "He was incarnate that we might be made god" -Athanasius of Alexandria. that’s a Trinitarian church father saying that.

I mean that’s the evangelion, εὐάγγελος good-logos-messenger.

Bar Ran Dun has issued a correction as of 03:33 on Apr 14, 2024

LITERALLY A BIRD
Sep 27, 2008

I knew you were trouble
when you flew in

Origen sounds like he was a smart fellow too

So how might a person who believes in the Trinitarian God walk the path of theosis? Is it the same way that might any other person who knows the Ultimate Divine by any other name? That is to say, by personal mystic contemplation and study of other people's mystic contemplations, and the practice and development of personal Spiritual gifts discovered through those studies and contemplations??

Orbs
Apr 1, 2009
~Liberation~

Squizzle posted:

babies are doing their best
I'm sure they are, but to pursue the path of magic and spellcraft safely and effectively, one should have the maturity and life experience of at least a teenager, if not older. The tiny infant wisemind cannot endure the full force of the mystical Mind War that rages all around us.

polycritical
Mar 7, 2024
Alas

Orbs
Apr 1, 2009
~Liberation~
Alas is right, but it can't be helped. A lot of weight comes with having a fearless dreadnought wisemind. Too much weight for a baby. This is another reason we should master our spellwork, so that we can shield the children from such pain.

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




The eastern route is mystical, yep contemplation, they have a whole thing I don’t know much about. Also there is a created / uncreated glass ceiling of a sort, can’t be a hypostatis because humans are created, so sainthood is the limit.

my own feelings on it are more one follows the example of Jesus by living that example of being-for-others. if one is particularly successful at that they may kill one for it.

blatman
May 10, 2009

14 inc dont mez


due to modern licensing restrictions anyone claiming to be "practicing witchcraft" without undergoing the full apprenticeship is merely performing pointy hat sorcery (illegal, not to code)

LITERALLY A BIRD
Sep 27, 2008

I knew you were trouble
when you flew in

that's so interesting

Farg
Nov 19, 2013
the everfast ship of the theological gnostic mind struggles to perceive the omnipresent divinity of the universe, which could be seen in the Three-In-One concept practiced by early jesuit sorcerers.

Squizzle
Apr 24, 2008




isnt the everfast ship, the one that blocked the suez

Charlatan Eschaton
Feb 23, 2018

what was so magical about the magi? dudes see a starry sign lit up, drop off some treats for j-man then hit the bricks. could have just been a few polite truck drivers passing through that needed a place to stop for the night

Sherbert Hoover
Dec 12, 2019

Working hard, thank you!

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

what was so magical about the magi? dudes see a starry sign lit up, drop off some treats for j-man then hit the bricks. could have just been a few polite truck drivers passing through that needed a place to stop for the night

everyone can notice stars but only someone being paid to notice stars can do anything about it

Orbs
Apr 1, 2009
~Liberation~
.

Orbs has issued a correction as of 16:33 on Apr 17, 2024

041724_3
Apr 17, 2024
.

Somebody has issued a correction as of 18:22 on Apr 17, 2024

LITERALLY A BIRD
Sep 27, 2008

I knew you were trouble
when you flew in

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

what was so magical about the magi? dudes see a starry sign lit up, drop off some treats for j-man then hit the bricks. could have just been a few polite truck drivers passing through that needed a place to stop for the night

Isaac Bonewits, "Real Magic" (1971) posted:

Most people associate [the word magi] with the “Three Wisemen” who supposedly showed up to worship the infant Jesus at his birth. The visitation of newborn saviors and avatars by kings and wisemen is a common theme in nativity myths[...]

The Magi were Zoroastrian priests, devotees of a religion which, by the way, shaped much of Christianity. But they were far more. The 1768 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica has a lovely little paragraph on the Magi that is even better than the one in their 1968 edition: “The priests of the magi were the most skillful mathematicians and philosophers of the ages in which they lived, insomuch that a learned man and a magician became equivalent in terms. The vulgar looked upon their knowledge as more than natural, and imagined them inspired by some supernatural power: and hence, those who practiced wicked and mischievous arts, taking upon themselves the name of magians [sic], drew on it that ill signification which the word magician now bears among us.”

So a group of magi attending the birth of the savior is a legitimizing event. The specific gifts they bring have significance too: gold is a gift for kings, myrrh is used to anoint the dead, and frankincense is symbolic of divinity. The Christ-child receiving these gifts from the wise-men indicates their perception and endorsement of his legitimacy as messiah.

Something I learned recently which is related and I found very interesting is that the Egyptian and Akkadian name for Jerusalem, Urushalim, means "founded by Shalim," a Canaanite God who was identified with Venus as the Evening Star. While by the time Jesus was born the city had been known as "Jerusalem" for a few hundred years, the appearance of a brightly shining star to guide the magi to the child (whether historical or fully mythological) would be advertised as another mark of his legitimacy: the foundational Deity of the Jewish holy city itself takes time to not only attend the birth, but lead there those who also wished to offer gifts and respects.

Squizzle
Apr 24, 2008




its further complicated by the use of magos to refer generally to a broad stereotype of wise easterner—like how terms like shaman, priest, wizard, demon etc all have both broad potential uses but also, contextually, precise and culture-specific meanings. how contemporary audiences understood the gospel usage, and indeed what shades of meaning the author intended, have some breadth for interpretation. its definitely orientalizing but it could be orientalizing in any of myriad specific ways

Squizzle
Apr 24, 2008




to be clear, the zoroästrian aspect is always the semantic center and never falls out of currency. in this sense, it isnt like shaman, where most people are never thinking about the evenki, ever, even once, while interacting w the term shaman or otherwise; i guess the broader uses of the term zen might be a better comparison?? like the avg person knows that buddhism exists and zen is somehow associated w it, even if that isnt what they mean. if Some Guy wrote about a group of zen masters coming by, you would rightly look at that and go “not sure if he means buddhists or like...wise at-least-faintly eastern sages”

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Charlatan Eschaton
Feb 23, 2018

sounds like the magi were sort of an outline of the older eastern religions? long distance travel, celestial navigation, plant medicines, mineral refinement and respectful sharing of ritual offerings. multiple gods of earth resources sort of passing the torch and being merged into this other belief system of just one main guy and his mom.


interesting that they thought of evening star and morning star phases of venus as twin gods instead of one that disappears for a while and comes back on the other side like inanna.

i've heard mary translated as maryam 'star of the sea' for the north star? venus/aphrodite came from the sea but the "of the sea" part reminds me of early ocean gods nammu birthing enki or naunet mothering atum/ra.

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