Greetings and salutations!

A Series of Fascinating Encounters

I think all the world's restless wanderers should be given their own country...of course...were such a place to exist...we'd just leave it first chance we got!

Note: I love the new blogger nav bar; anything replacing ads is ok in my books, and this is actually useful!

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I was watching the film, Waking Life, which I strongly encourage anyone interested in philosophy or dreaming to see, and there was one section of the screenplay in particular that I found so interesting that I decided to post it here for your reading pleasure:

"(Philip K. Dick) was really into gnosticism, and this idea that this demiurge or demon had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Christ was about to return, and the kingdom of God was about to arrive. And that we're all in 50 A.D., and there's someone trying to make us forget that God is imminent. And that's what time is. That's what all of history is. It's just this continuous daydream, or distraction....

So I'm walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time actually is just this constant saying No to God's invitation. That's what time is, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's 2001. There's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in." Then she tells me that actually, this is the narrative of everyone's life. That behind the phenomenal differences, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from No to Yes. All of life is like, "No thank you, no thank you, no thank you," then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in, yes, I accept, yes, I embrace." That's the journey. Everyone gets to Yes in the end, right?"
(For those requiring a disclaimer, it should never be assumed that I agree with the content referenced in this post or any other unless otherwise stated.)

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Referring to a different encounter I had this week, I was conversing with an English Satanist regarding different definitions and uses of magic (or majik for you neo-pagans out there). He brought up an interesting point which I hadn't previously considered. He said that the purpose of all magic is, fundamentally, to affect a change in state of a given subject. A basic illustration would be, if you were to hit someone, causing them to fall to the floor, you would have performed an act of lower magic. But if you could somehow cause something or someone else to hit that person, that would be an act of higher magic. Something to think about...

With Hope,
Joseph