Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Looking for demons in a disenchanted world
harpers.org
harpers.org
Often, as a programmer, the things that I do strike me as profound and mystical. I make incantations that affect the physical world around me. It quite is real world wizardry.
I would say that the more likely route into such a thing will be a profoundly shifting personal experience. For example, some kind of psychedelic experience (although for some it is just "fun" and doesn't trigger any spirituality), or more commonly, immense personal suffering and a desire to escape from it.
The shift from atheist and nonspiritual, to religious or spiritual is a dramatic shift. It's unlikely to be pleasant or comfortable. For me, it only developed as a coping mechanism because I was unable to accept the world from a nonspiritual point of view. As such, it probably isn't something you should desire.
Yeah, I found that after some point, after I realized that a strict linguistic (formal) outlook was rigid and unflexible and started to relax about it, that I started to reach into a wider pool of concepts to allow me to make sense of the world.
Also accepting that some beliefs which are not testable by science can still be judged in terms of what do they do for me; do they make me feel good? or bad? do they allow me to engage in actions with postivie outcomes? and so on...
The article in question (quite short), has this passage, which reminded me of your comment here:
>> Positivist dispositions can lead to the acceptance of claims because they have a scientific form, not because they are grounded in robust evidence and sound argument.
> I think what they are saying is that empiricism is not robust. Yeah, sure, facts are great, and all. But it’s easy to cherry-pick facts and find whatever conclusion you want. I guess if you only follow the branches that you like, you can convince yourself that reality is whatever you want it to be.
> I think that’s a fair point. In my opinion, the majority of non-fiction books are an exercise in finding some exciting-sounding thesis and then cobbling together random scraps of evidence to support it.
I have seen testimonies from more than one skeptic / atheist who witnessed something they "have no explanation for" but who remain atheist.
I think it goes back to that almost-religious commitment to only believing the reproducible.
Or, perhaps in some cases, to confirmation bias and a desire to believe there is nothing beyond matter.
As one who's had a few encounters with what I'd historically call God and is currently unsure what exactly happened in those situations, I can empathize with their perspective, even if it's not the explanation I'm leaning towards.
I think that's actually why they focus on reproducibility - that's their tool for reaching something approximating a consensus reality in the face of experiential subjectivity, human unreliability, and the strong limits on individual human knowledge.
Me, I think that reproducibility is really useful, but I'm not so willing to say that if it's not reliably reproducible it must be coincidence or delusion.
On a simple level, I was hoping for something more profound, entertaining, or interesting on some level. In all, the article was a prologue in somebody's journey of discovery where nothing really actually happened, spiritual or otherwise.
Nonetheless, I am atheist, but if there's one thing that challenges that regularly, it's the profoundly spiritual experience of powerful love.
I'm not an atheist by choice, or because I've resolved to be, it's just the only thing that truly makes sense to me. The beautiful, magical things in life are more beautiful and magical to me if they just exist for their own sake. "fate", "destiny", and "a greater power" feel to me like cheapening the beautiful, profound, steady nature of reality. I'm open to other ideas, and I love entertaining the thoughts, though. I'm a regular reader of theology, because it all fascinates me.
When King says at the end, "the key unlocks the door but you are the one who has to walk through it", he's partly referring to the preparatory but also imprinting process. The fact that one has to spend a lot of precious personal time and money (if one follows the directions of the grimoire to the letter) means that one becomes invested in the process with many changes happening in the psychological realm. Think of the whole preparatory process as ritual, acting it out strengthens and imprints the work. Or stated another way, one is constructing a new model of reality and simultaneously imprinting it.
When the time for the actual conjuration comes, which could be years after one first sets foot upon the path, the mind has been adequatly prepared to open the doors to the unconscious. Again, King seems to possess an understanding of this when he talks about the brain being the medium for the work. So, ultimately one can say that there's nothing supernatural here and people who have stayed at the supernatural level are either charlatans or deluded fools.
There's a good movie one can watch about ceremonial magic, called A Dark Song. Even though it does have some elements that can be superficially described as supernatural, it's -smartly- playing with the interpretation and does not rigidly impose a supernatural causality.