Saturday, August 27, 2011

Laws of Magic IV: Law of Relative Truth

IV Law of Relative Truth
Every statement is true, false, and/or meaningless. This is a function of one’s vantage point (Worldview). It is possible for a concept or act to violate the truth of a personal universe and still be “true,” provided that it “works” in a specific situation. (This law is closely allied to Law VI: the Law of Paradox and Law I: The Law of Worldviews.) Essentially, The Law of Relative Truths allows personal worldviews to overlap and also to interact with the nominal universe which underlies all other existences, bridging the gap between Laws I and VI.

According to Law I, there are two kinds of Truth in the cosmos: one Absolute and the other Relative. The Absolute Truth is the unchanging and eternal Tao which underlies the world(s) we know. Relative truth, or what we consider reality, is faceted by the perceptions and desires of individual wills. It is ever changing because it is illusory. In our world of competing realities, it is a constant war of wills. If your will is strong enough, you can rewrite another being’s reality, but the price can be high. Every Worldview is real to those who have conscious awareness of it or give it credence, shaping it by their belief or disbelief. This is a very important Law as it pertains to sanity. If you cannot accept the idea of other realities, it is very possible that your mind could break when confronted by a truly alien Worldview, especially if that Worldview has the backing of multiple minds. If you have no option but to function within this worldview, it is best to go with the flow, but you must maintain your own Worldview at the same time as the Absolute to which you will eventually return. Most people do not have the strength of mind to segment their awareness in this fashion (explaining both the growing number of people who are diagnosed with mental disorders and the ease with which Slenderman seems to rewrite the minds of His victims).

Consider that water is wet only to creatures which do not live in water. We do not think of our habitat as “dry” any more than a fish thinks of its home as “wet.” The terms are meaningless to beings who have no reason to know them. In order to function within the parameters of another creature’s Worldview and cause changes there, you must be willing and able to suspend your own Worldview and accept the vantage point of that other being as true. This is tantamount to the adage that you must walk a mile in someone’s shoes before you can understand their choices; you must walk that "mile" before it is possible to make changes which the other person will accept as true and acceptable within the parameters of their own Worldview. It is impossible to change another being’s Worldview without first adopting their viewpoint and using it as a common stepping off point. The greatest danger here is that in adopting another's viewpoint, you can easily lose your own, permanently trapping you within the Worldview of the other (at best, making you schizophrenic).

To dismiss another person’s Worldview as false is to assume that only yours is true. You can still change some aspects of the other being’s Worldview, but this will depend largely on your will. In most cases, this will pertain only to the minor elements of the other being‘s viewpoint. This is a very difficult Law to put into practice and a very dangerous one to get wrong.

The Law of Relative Truth has far reaching ramifications however.

It explains the power of suggestion. For instance: someone tells you that you have been cursed. If you believe it, then your belief lends truth (and power) to the existence of the curse. Positive reinforcement, in other words. If you believe there is no curse, you have the power to negate its effects. If your will is strong (stronger than the person who has placed a curse on you), you can dismiss the curse completely as untrue.

It affects divination and visions of the future in what is referred to as self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are made aware of a possible future, that future is more likely to come to pass because you know of its possibility. This is especially true if you adopt a defeatist attitude of waiting for it to come to pass. Consider the “curse” a prediction of ill fortune. If you accept its existence, you have already lent energy to the creation of a future where its existence is validated.

It also pertains to the power of names. The power inherent in names is something the ancients were more aware of than we are today. Essentially a name has the power to call a thing and control it. The more names, or information, you have connected to a specific thing, the more control over it you have. Names, descriptions, even origins and dates, give you a better understanding of a thing and therefore more power over it. It can even allow you to create a thing.

Despite the fact that modern humans no longer take into account the power of names (forgoing the tradition of secret names, adult names, and the intentional destruction of names in order to harm the spirit of the dead), there has been some modern experimentation into this aspect of the Law of Relative Truth. Talking about a ghost or spirit gives power to that spirit to interact within the parameters of your Worldview. If someone is told that a house is haunted, even if they say they do not believe in ghosts, any doubt they may silently harbor gives a real (or imagined) spirit a window into the world of the observer.

This spirit may even be created by the belief of the observer (or it may be a spirit which uses the parameters of the belief to clothe itself in the trappings of our reality). (This is the Core Theory mentioned by many who know of Slenderman.) Even if someone does not know a house to be haunted, the fact that someone believes the house to be haunted allows anything there to make itself known. This logically extends to the creation of Thought-forms (also called Tulpas, servitors, egregores, golems, etc). Essentially, you can create a spiritual entity with the power of your belief, and this effect snowballs based on the number of observers who believe.

In the 1970s, The Toronto Society Of Psychical Research experimented with the concept of thought-forms, creating a spirit named Philip. They were extremely successful, though the groups were never able to explain the results of their experiment scientifically. (Unfortunately magical laws are inadmissible in scientific arguments!) Though this experiment was performed simply to ascertain “scientifically” whether it could be done, in magic, thought-forms or Tulpas can be given various tasks beyond simple séance-type interaction. Thought-forms can be asked to ward a place, person, or thing, to attack others psychically, gather information… essentially a thought-form can do nearly any task you set for it within the parameters you initially envisioned. It is very much like a computer program, or if ignored, like a virus or even a vampire. The danger lies in not assigning such a creature any function. Ignoring it will not make it go away or dissipate. Awareness of a thing lends power to its existence, however small a contribution that power may be. It will draw energy from you by making you notice it or through more direct means.

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