paolo

Mechanical phantoms
He was standing in a studio with a telly showing the lottery draw live and some balls beside him turned so that you couldn't see the numbers. Apparently he'd been obsessing over the lottery for a year or so and worked out how to predict it. When the numbers were drawn on the lottery he turned his balls round (steady now) and they had the same numbers as the actual lottery draw. I didn't actually see this bit as I was taking a piss but my brother said that's what happened
 

paolo

Mechanical phantoms
I'm a wee bit sceptical as he only showed the numbers he'd picked after the lottery was drawn - surely if he'd got them right he could have shown us just before?
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Just a wee bit...

Does he get paid for this? Because if he does, I want to be a magician. I've got a trick, too:

I can predict how the DOW will close for the day. 10 minutes after it closes.
 

mms

sometimes
that reminds me i just got this thru the post, finally got post at last, its been about 10 days


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http://liminalnation.org/

good read.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
writing for me is a magic(k)al practice
in the interests of full disclosure
im not asking anyone to offer themselve up for ridicule.

Magic (or magick) is what you'd call a floating signifier in that what it means will vary vastly depending on who is speaking. For those who are really into it, the word seems to become a repository for all that is positive and numinous in their lives.

Since I've got back into record collecting I've been struck by parallels between this and the UK occult scene. They are both funny little scenes, that might appear bizarre to outsiders full of egotists, eccentrics and nerds (the latter two often a good thing IMO). They can also both offer up the most amazing transformative moments - if you're lucky. :p

(Not so sure about record collecting there - in the broadest sense, music and all you can do with it).
 

martin

----
I was first taught Magick in the infant's, by a 6-yr old called Daniella - who was from some foreign clime and had a scar down one cheek. Here's a simple spell she showed us - when rainclouds gather, form a posse / coven of 3-4, and repeatedly chant RAIN RAIN GO AWAY / COME AGAIN ANOTHER DAY. This ALWAYS works - the rain will clear up in 5 minutes. But be aware there's a karmic payback - I can't count the number of times I was out in a t-shirt or light jacket, and it suddenly started to bucket down from nowhere. This is known as 'raincloud retaliation', and it even happens to dub witchdoctors, so deal with it.

The best place to do magick in London is on the Underground system - don't bother hanging round woods or graveyards or any of that crap. Stockwell to Brixton on the Victoria Line is a potent place to do it. I've conducted experiments with 'text magick', using SMS and SIM cards, but the results proved inconclusive.

Here's an old trick for gatecrashing your subconscious - get a pen and paper, and scribble down a couple of paragraphs while counting, out loud, from 100 down to 1.

The only thing that pisses me off about the whole magick scene is nobody can tell you how to win on the horses. Fuck Azathoth, I want the dosh.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Writing is totally magical as well. For lots of magicians I know, writing is a big part of their practice. (See Alan Moore and Grant Morrison also). There are various Gods of writing and speech who tend to occupy central roles in pantheons, Crowley was a committed poet and diarist and saw the diary as an essential magical practice. I think it was part of his on the grand scale - crafting this enduring compeeling image that has inspired a thousand bedroom satanists.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
The only thing that pisses me off about the whole magick scene is nobody can tell you how to win on the horses. Fuck Azathoth, I want the dosh.

This is probably 'cos most of 'em are sensitive souls who've never been inside the emotional slaughterhouse that is a bookies.It's a cultural background thing. There's loads of weird stuff in Hoodoo (American folk magic) about winning at the horses, dice etc.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
I hate white magicians, they're fools. All magic is black magic.

the christian church would agree with this.

but the problem with black magic and satanism, which i dabbled with in my teenage metal years, is that it just ends up reinforcing the bullshit dualism of christianity.
 

martin

----
Ask any evangelical Christian why God let the Holocaust happen, and they'll go to great pains to explain how God created free will, and how man must ultimately account for his own actions. Life itself is but a trial, and man must decide which path he chooses - but rest assured, the buck for the horrors of Belsen and Treblinka will stop somewhere, come judgement day. To argue otherwise is to request God to create a species of pre-programmed clones, unable to make decisions for themselves.

Then, in the next breath, they blame the world's ills on the Devil! Very biased, if you ask me.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
the christian church would agree with this.

but the problem with black magic and satanism, which i dabbled with in my teenage metal years, is that it just ends up reinforcing the bullshit dualism of christianity.

Ah it's less that, it's the fucking "myeh, my magic is only to do things that are positive in the world, I use positive energy' fucking brigade. Oh really, do you? How do you do that exactly? You're that fucking good that you know exactly what's gonna happen, do you?

Aside from the fact that you have to go through the dark to get to the light anyway. It's such a fucking arrogant position to take. If you put all the witches in all the world in one room, they couldn't boil a kettle.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I'm a wee bit sceptical as he only showed the numbers he'd picked after the lottery was drawn - surely if he'd got them right he could have shown us just before?

I like Derren Brown (modern TV sorely lacks brilliant showmen, and he's certainly one of those), but the trick is therefore transformed into not "How the hell did he predict that??" into "How did he get the numbers onto those balls/How did he get those particular balls into place in time?" Which is infinitely more prosaic, and less of a headfuck than the age-old saw/box trick.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
One of my favourite weird English language things is the shared etymology of 'glamour', 'grammar' and 'grimoire'. The connection between magic and the power of spoken and written words is deep and very ancient - think about putting a 'spell' on someone, or about what we mean when we call something 'en-chant-ing'.
 
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