Is magic real? What are the most important books on magic besides pic related?

Wait, do you mean to tell us, you DON'T believe in magic?

>Of course it's not. Grow up.
glow harder

Don't even bother reading it in translation. Most scholars in this field say that even in the original you cannot know wtf is going on because these types of works are always written in code. Even if you are fluent in Latin, as the scholars were, you will never go beyond the veil.

>Is magic real?
Yes. Don't fuck with it.

Obviously magic isn't real but reading contemporary books on the topic can provide really interesting insights into how they thought the world functioned and show some precursors to modern science

There is a lot of types of magic. This isn't what you want to hear, but it's the truth. Illusion, music, hypnotism, drugs, imagination, compounding interest.
What do you think magic is? You will find something real in it and maybe in the mysticism around it.

Yes, it's very obviously real to anyone that pays even the slightest attention to the world. I've been down this rabbit hole - Don't do it, just accept that Christ is God to save the trouble.

Here's the thing: Magic is appealing because it promises to offer secret, deep knowledge about the cosmos. In many cases, there are some true spiritual principles sprinkled in there, that make the world make 500% more sense than just rank dumb 0 IQ materialism, and give you the beginnings of a comprehensive idea of history deeper than "monkeys do meaningless things and then do more meaningless things lul".

At the highest levels of any type of magic, it always involves direct participation in demonic possession of some kind - Godforms in Postmodern Occultism (derived from classical gnosticism), Yidams in Tantrayana, "surging with the energies of lucifer" in Manly P. Hall, and "Yeah, you're getting more and more overt suggestions from demons, don't worry about that bro" in the Evola-Ur Group's introduction to magic vol 2.

Don't do what I did and open yourself up to demonic influence through delving into this stuff - Skip to the end, accept Christ as God.

>endless string of unprovable and ridiculous affirmations built around random analogies (this planet means this, this sign means that)
Filtered

Magic defies causality, so there are no laws of magic, therefore no system.

Demons don't want to be here in any more than you. Why accept prison planet?

They have no choice, and are eternally seething at how they know they're damned, and want to drag as many people down with them before the end times.

You know people who fall to despair, want to kill themselves, and try to bring down as many people possible with them? That's a small taste of the mentality of demons - now lock that mentality into the same being that has lived for thousands of years, surrounded by beings with the same mentality, constantly seething, unable to die, and constantly wanting to drag people down into the same constant pain they're in.

This about sums up my experience, nicely worded

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Why not Allah?

Many reasons, but the theological reasons are that Islam falls to either deism(in most confessions) or pantheism(in Ismaili Islam, and sufism).

Deism makes it impossible to actually know God directly, making any claims about God indistinguishable from fiction by the standards of the deistic framework itself, and pantheism is what is at the core of most occultist belief systems.

it makes sense their suffering?. they just need a hug?.

Maybe.

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yawn

It really is if you're willing to have patience with it

I get the idea, but omg, that's probably the gayest thing ever written

No it doesn't, it's just faulty/unexplained logic how A causes B.
For example in sympathetic magic if I create an artistic representation of your face and I jizz on it while I'm in a liminal state (altered consciousness or on a crossroad etc), you'll supposedly wake up with salty taste in your mouth. This is what filtered OP, je didn't understand why analogies are important in magic.
So the system is pretty clear, but the only difference between anthropological and occultist perspective is whether it works *really* or *not really* (placebo, magic has latent functions etc).

Wow, this is exactly what Shia Imams said. Without the Imam, it would be impossible to know God without falling into ta'til ("agnosticism," believing an empty concept of God) or tashbih ("assimilationism," believing God is similar to His creation). If this is genuinely your only problem with Islam, then I would say check out Twelver Shi'ism.

Yes

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>magic isn't real
>thinks god and satan are real
holy fuck you're pathetic

Define magic

>logic how A causes B
Your understanding of causality is flawed. Logic only applies to propositions.

Idealism being correct means magic is real, just not something you can do because you don't have the right ideas :^)

Can you recommend a good book to read about it?

I'm settled into Orthodox Christianity, so I would be looking into this for curiosity - but I am interested in reading what Twelver Shi'ism makes a case for if it correctly identifies the problem of both of those sides.

>believing in causality
And what's the first cause?

You can't believe in laws if you don't believe in causality.

Allah and the Catholic God are the same one, those are just two names for the same thing

I could always ask why the first cause happened.

I can believe in laws that begin and end, existing temporarily, being non fundamental.

I don't actually believe in first causes nor causality, I'm just baiting.

I know they're the same name, Allah is just the Arabic name of God. I've heard Arabic Orthodox Liturgy before.

It's not honest to say that the Catholic God and the Muslim God are the same - you would have to subordinate one doctrine to the other to make that claim, and you cannot be a Christian and believe in Islam because the Quran makes countless repetitions that it's not fitting for God to have a Son.

I'm Orthodox btw, and so from one perspective, I would be happy to say that in many ways the RC Church and Islam have the same God, but not for nice reasons.

>I don't believe in causes
>Explains the final cause of his actions

user...

They're not laws if there is no necessity involved.
>I can believe in laws that begin and end
How? How can a law begin and end without a cause or reason? How would you know the law has begun or ended? How would you even know there is a law at all?

>>I don't believe in causes
"Believing in causality" in this case would implicate believing in causality as an exclusive fundamental way for things to happen, rather than causality at all?

The best academic introductions I knew of are "The Divine Guide in Early Shi'ism" and "What is Shi'i Islam?" by Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (I highly recommend reading both). If you happen speak French, I would highly suggest En Islam iranien vol.1 by Henry Corbin (unfortunately not translated to English).

i dont know but its fun to read

Could you rephrase your post to be less ambiguous? I don't understand how to parse it.

Meant to reply to

>How can a law begin and end without a cause or reason?
From my view, reality without any causes or objects existing that are necessitated is the cumulative attainment (per individual) of all creativity that has passed or happened. Things that exist simply cascade and utilize causality because, it's possible to make things whose consequences are not just in linear interaction but rather their varied flux, not because they have to. The actual fundamental nature of reality would be ineffable creative spontaneity that creates things that are (can be) consistent, observes and infers consistency of them and then moves on to something else. All "things" would be possible, they would simply need to be reached first and aren't already contained in a perfect God, because such a thing contradicts the creative potential of infinite creative progress that is, in it's truest word "infinite". This creative fundamental is completely elusive and isn't in any way hindered by it's creativity, otherwise it would require a creative-destruction aspect that would make reality incredibly pessimistic and chaotic or would lead to a possible "annihilation" of all reality. Every phenomenological experience (can) contributes to it. It is also not causally deterministic, and instead all things that seem causally deterministic are simply observed and logically simplified parts of the creativity, but the fundamental doesn't really need any of that. Hunger or primitive desires and needs are creative objects that man tries to fully observe and usually fails, and until they do so they relive them because creativity and infinity existing don't negate the possibility of patterns and repetition, quite the opposite.

Things can follow causality, but they don't need to. You can use a computer to make a program that loops infinitely but you can also make one that closes immediately, and even the looping program can eventually shut down, just needs to be done by a higher "authority" (ie Admin permission, or pulling the plug on the PC).

> just needs to be done by a higher "authority" (ie Admin permission, or pulling the plug on the PC).

That's a cause.

So is Muhammad the seal of the prophets or not? Is Jesus a god, yes or no?

in which part of introduction to magic volume 2 it says this? tell me the chapter(s)

In which case, the higher authority needs to cease without causality otherwise it remains active. If you don't have a non causative cessation, you end up with some kind of infinite regression.

No.
Neither in the pragmatic nor the spiritual scene does magic bring result.
If viewed from the pragmatic viewpoint, that is, the viewpoint of hard science, then a quick rundown through history will show that magic never EVER worked as an apotropaiic, cursing, love and money bringing, healing practice.
Magic and its ambassadors, the cunning men, didn't bring much solace, in the form of victuals and health, to medieval English peasants. Only the advances in medicine - the abandonment of the humoral theory for correct anatomy and the acceptance of germ theory with the concomitant development of vaccine and antibiotics - improved the lot of peasants, not some old wise woman Jenny who stole wafers and healed in the name of Cain, Divell and Christ.
And where was the power magic in that fateful 16th century, when Spanish conquistadors decimated hundreds of thousands of natives who are now regarded as incredibly spiritually advanced (the wise Indian trope)? Where were the Kanaima hiding and why, instead of attacking invaders, they beat up women and children, sodomized them with sticks, stuffed them with poison and, after their inevitable deaths, drank through a straw their putrefying flesh? Is this the power of magic? Necrosadistic raping of women and kids, mass murders in Tenochtitlan, pulling ropes through your dick, and all for nothing - is this what the awesome magic of America has to offer? The beating of children by the Anashinka - who believed that the best way to get rid of a sorcerous attack, their codewords for crop blight and disease, was to abuse children till they cried out of pain because their suffering implies release from black magic - didn’t help against famine, smallpox, and revolutions. And right now there are occultist in Western world, modern and civilized, who are attracted to this, literal and moral, shit. The Cultus Sabbati, has Witehead’s anthology and his book about Kanaima as recommended reading.
Why didn't tantric gods, dangerous, awesome, promising boundless power, failed to provide in the middle ages at least one ruler with enough shakti to destroy his enemies and erect an unified kingdom either in India or Tibet? Why didn’t they help the Indian kings, by tantrikas into their mandalas initiated, to repel the peristaltic waves of Moslem diarrhea? Why didn’t fierce tantric deities help Tibet against the read death of Communist China? Such awesome power, sequestred behind initiations, that amounts to less than dust in a wind. The tantric initiators who acted as power brokers in the medieval India and promised power to local petty kings via submission to their initiations make contemporary con men and their schemes look like kindergarten play.

And what about the famous magician of the 20th century, Aleister Crowley? Why didn’t the gods and spirits help Crowley acquire funds after he had squandered his inheritance? You would think the spirits would treat such an important asset as the “prophet of a New Aeon” with care instead of leaving him, penniless, to the vicissitudes of ordinary life: a sea in which many brilliant men had prematurely perished.
Or even the latest magical special kid Chumbley. Why didn’t the Sabbatic spirits, who have the power to kick inappropriate aspirant off their current, warn Chumbley that it’s not wise with his asthma to engage with animal material and incense? Why didn’t they help him with finding a job and getting rid of welfare? If the spirits had chosen him to initiate the Sabbatic current, why did they allow him to die at the age of 37?
If you try to analyze the spirit logic, you’d get a picture of something even more incompetent than human politicians, of something so dumb it’s a miracle it exists, if it exist at all: something that promises power but has none to give, something that chooses special people for special vatic missions but fails to guide them through life unharmed. Even the dumbest parents care more about their dumbest offspring than the all powerful, all wise, all knowing spirits about their chosen prophets.
To sum up this part, magic didn’t and doesn’t amount to anything in the hard physical world of matter and in the ineluctable sphere of the economical and social.
As a cope occultists focus on the spiritual, the Great Work, which results are even more ephemeral than the virginity status of an eighteen year old roastie. Even here, however, their claims amount to nothing.
In matter spiritual there is, in fact, a control group - people such as Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Chogyam Trungpa, Adi Da, Muktananda, both Krishamurtis, Ke Wilber, and their Western, educated followers who have experientially verified the teaching given to them - and the problem with Western magic, be it as a democratic system as Thelema or ultra-elite one like the Cultus Sabbati, is that it yet had to produce someone of the same caliber as Ramana Maharshi. Sure, magicians get a lot of vision, cross the Abyss on the reg, receive the benefice and malefice of Azhdeha, but neither of them, as is obvious through their teachings, has reached the same permanent state of realization as Wilber, Adi Da, or Maharshi.
And the reason is because they’re engaged not in spiritual enlightenment, but in self-hypnos and self-delusion.

What I mean is that they were the same originally but them people separated them as the religion spread. Then the old testament and the quran were written and the became even more different, then they fought against each other, etc. But essentially they are the same because there were only one religion at the beginning

What set Eastern religion apart is that the main method they teach - different forms of mindfulness meditation - works without the doctrinal superstructure. You don’t need to believe in the Buddha, avoid cows, eat grains and rays of the sun, in order for the meditation to work. You sit down, perform the meditation and, in proper time and depending on the severity of the practice, get results. I remember Yea Forums posting articles about roasties who went to a meditation retreat to think about life and stuff and ended up psychotic because they got more than they asked and because they didn’t know that meditation was always used as a method of spiritual development and inquiry rather than stress relief: an obvious example that meditation works even in people who know nothing about Eastern faiths.
While doing magic, however, you are always engaged in system that direct your visions. You’re never in a vacuum as with meditation. Being engaged with magic means reading books and, most importantly, learning about the gods, deities, demons, whatever gaseous invertebrates you want to invoke: a form of incubation: a subtle process of adjusting your expectations about the result. In magic you’re never dropped in the middle of action and given a practice to learn without careful long winded pedantic instruction. First, you read the books, then you do the work. The result of this obvious indoctrination is that every magic current sees whatever it is trained to see. You’re deeply in Thelema; you’ll have vision of Horus and Nuit. If you’re Typhonian, you’ll be haunted by the Qliphoth. If you’re in the Cultus Sabbati, you’ll receive the grace of Azhdeha and the Mothers and Fathers of Witchcraft. Never, NEVER, you’ll experience visions that are outside the bounds of the system.
Even the received texts betray that influence of the system. The Book of the Law is dripping with Crowley’s Golden Dawn training and Egyptological interests - it’s a reflection of Crowley, endogenously generated, not a text from some transcendental above. If it did feature material unknown to Crowley - like, for example, Newari tantra, Bon mantras, Buryat chants - then it would’ve raised some questions. But it doesn’t. This apply to every received occult text. They never bring anything innovative but seem a garbled gumbo of whatever boiled in the occultist’s head. And if there’s such a proliferation of systems, all with their prophets clamouring that they have the truth, then a certain question imposes: is it more likely that insignificant Earth has a an astral sphere as crammed as a Chinese slum, or is it more likely that all these vision and cults originate in the inflamed brains of the magicians?
The next point directly from this one: if visions are so personal and so obviously influenced by the host system, why do they must be real visions of real spirits? I

In order to accept the spirit model you have to dumb yourself down and forget the simple fact that human brain can generate lifelike hallucinations and imaginary worlds. Imbibe belladonna or datura and see for yourself how much power the brain has over altering reality. No one, even people with a below average IQ, accept that dreams are real no matter how realistic they are, and someone who had met people suffering from delirium wouldn’t believe that the victims are witnessing an alternate reality. Yet, the occultists, who drive themselves into hypnotic and hypnagogic altered states of consciousness by repetitive kinetic and mental actions - often using psychedelics or, in case of the Cultus Sabbati, deliriants like atropine - believe that what they see is real: an incredible example of cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics.
Another thing that further confirms that occultism is about self-hypnotism and nothing else is their training into seeing synchronicities and believing they’re guided by ancestors, angels, spirits, or whatever. Once engaged in a system, you’ll see details that you have previously screened out as relevant to you - like numbers or letters or names that are important in the cult - and they, in turn, will create a feedback loop that will further reinforce your belief. You’ll go into Thelema and in a matter of weeks you’ll be drowning in the feeling of being chosen by noticing 93 and Crowley’s everywhere. I myself had fallen into this trap when I read the Cultus Sabbati material and started noticing AZ everywhere…until I stopped reading and moved on. The whole premise is the same as the coin exercise of Prometheus Rising and the 23 noting of the Discordians - you attune yourself to receive certain signals which were always there but weren’t previously relevant to you. A step further and then all your life events will be filtered through the prism of successful/unsuccessful rites and angry/benign spirits.
And this is what high magic and occultism is about spiritually: self indoctrination and self-induced hallucinations.

No and no. They are just people who wanted to take advantage of the already existing religions

It's just as much real as any religion or ideology

If you’re really serious about spiritual work, then choose an Eastern discipline and stick with it. There’s a less chance to fall into delusions of grandeur because both modern masters - Ramana Maharshi, who said that visions happen when one loses connection with the Ultimate Reality - and old alike - Buddhist tradition speak of visions as connecting with the fault of dullness in meditation, which they equate with torpor close to sleep - agree that spiritual work isn’t related to any kind of visionary experience, no matter how grandiose.
The only thing that magic and occult produces are shoals of cancerous selves, each one a prophet, always warring with each other - it’s usual to meet a fat Cultus Sabbati practitioner who badmouths Thelemites for arranging rituals in a mall while believing that drinking menstrual blood from a skullcup and cumming in jars makes him superiour to them - and who are as far away as possible from what it defined as enlightenment in Eastern systems.
There is interesting material in the occult that can be employed in writing in the same way schizo rambling and dreams are a fertile ground for the imagination but, at its roots, the occult is spiritually barren, empty.
And not Nagarjuna empty.
Simply empty.

tldr
>if you want magic go east instead of west, westerns are INT builds while easterners are WIS builds

>Idealism being correct means magic is real, just not something you can do because you don't have the right ideas :^)
Elaborate or recommend me a book on this connection between idealism and magic.