"Anysufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic[k]."

-ArthurC. Clarke's Third Law

"Millenniaago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you areasking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into thedark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? NO!"

-CaptainJean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise

StarTrek: The Next Generation S03E04- "Who Watches the Watchers"

"Thereare more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of inyour philosophy."

-WilliamShakespeare's Hamlet,Act 1 Scene 5

Have you everimagined yourself on the deck of a starship,commanding a stalwart crew of adventurers throughout the galaxy on acontinuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out newlife and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no one has gonebefore?

Ihave, many times. Not just because exploring space would be awesome,but because the ideals of the Federationare something I think the world could greatly benefit from aspiringto.

I'llprobably be discussing Star Trek quite a bit throughout this book. Ihave episodes on lockdown for just about every possible object lessonI could ever hope to want to give. Not many people know this,but Gene Roddenberry was an occultist and even had an occult-themedscreenplay in the works at the time of his death.The colors of the uniforms and the very positioning of Jim Kirk, Mr.Spock, and Bones on the screen at any given time all have deep andmeaningful occult significance.

Butthere's something very interesting about the world of Roddenberry's24thcentury. In that universe, there are no religions any more that areconsidered "civilized." From the quote in the intro to thischapter, you can see they aren't looked on too favorably in theextended canon of Star Trek. Directly from the mouth of MichaelOkuda, one of the head consultants on Star Trek after Roddenberry'spassing,

"Thiswas an important part of Roddenberry's mythology. He, himself, wasa secular humanist and made it well-known to writers of Star Trek andStar Trek: The Next Generation that religion and superstition andmystical thinking were not to be part of his universe. OnRoddenberry's future Earth, everyone is an atheist. And that worldis the better for it."

Yet,there are still supernatural things that happen in the Star Trekuniverse. All the bloody time, in fact, because, according to anothergreat humanist thinker:

"Space[says the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] is big. Really big. Youjust won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. Imean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's,but that's just peanuts to space."

Ininfinite space, there are an infinite number of things to experience.We will, if we explore space long enough, eventuallyrun into a magickal dude that can turn the air around you into hotwomen and force you to smoke a cigar while he dances around like anidiot in a serape and sombrero playing a trumpet with a mariachiband.

We'lltalk more about how that means there's plenty to find right here onEarth, or even in your own back yard, throughout the rest of thisbook. But for right now the point I want to focus on is this: in theStar Trek universe, every species have their own beliefs, and in alot of these cases, they have very good reasons for having thosebeliefs. The Vulcan idea of the katra,or living soul, which is verified when Spock transfers his intoDoctor McCoy,the discovery of the DNA of the original Kahless,and the various "supernatural" abilities possessed by variousraces like the Betazoids, Vulcans, and the Q are all examples ofthis.

Still,these alien species have cultural rituals they follow, similar to areligion, which don't always seem to be necessary for theirscientifically-observable "magick" to properly function. A greatexample of this are, once again, the Vulcans, who although they claimto be logical above all else alsoseemto follow a lot of unnecessary rituals and traditions.

We'llget to that later, too.

Fornow, I want to explain why I've gone through all this. It willtake a lot of the rest of this book to fully explain where I'm comingfrom, but the thing I've learned from Star Trek that warranted itsheavy inclusion in the introduction to this chapter is that everypossible thing ISpossible.

InfinitelyInfinite Infinity

Sohere's how this works. As Douglas Adams mentioned for me alreadyearlier,space and time are infinite. As certain quantum physicistshave brought to the public eye, there are not just the dimensions wecan perceive, butmanymore that we can't.Let Neil DeGrasse Tysonor Carl Saganexplain higher and lower dimensions to you sometime, it's fascinatingstuff.

That's not what I'mhere to do right now.

Othercertain quantum physicistshave popularized the idea of the Multiverse. In this model of theUniverse, every action of every single thing that has the possibilityto act branches off in some alternate direction, creating a momentDoctor Who fans might call a "fixed point in time." At thispoint, all of the things leading up to that point have alreadydefinitely and measurably happened, and all the possibilities of theoutcome for that situation based on all those possible inputs branchoff, like wires entering and exiting a logic circuit.This then creates a number of alternate timelines in which the onlydifferences are those caused by the effects of the outcome of thatone single event and the things that led up to it.

Space is big. Andtime is long. If you take all of the droplets of water that all thecrazy theoretical mathematicians ever allowed to drip off the back ofthe all the wrists of all the pretty scientist ladies trapped in allthe dinosaur-themed attractions in the entire Universe, you realizeinfinity times infinity is still infinity. The number is so big thatyou can't perceive that it changed when you multiply it by itself.

Butwe aren't just dealing with one infinity times another. There areinfinite mathematicians, infinite scientists, infinite possible spotson the wrist, infinite Jurassic Parks, and infinite universes. Thereare an infinite smaller number of variables in that moment and in themoments, days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes, cultural histories,and world histories also involved that led up to the moment when theevent in question occurred. Add to that any differences due to everypersoninvolved... and those of every molecule present in the entireuniverse....

Itgets more complicated when you think about all the infinite momentsof time that led up to this moment of choice which were allowed to bealtered in an infinite number of ways. That becomes the result ofinfinity to the infinity-eth power to the power of infinity aninfinite number of times over again...

That's,like, nuts, man.

Then,you also have to take into account quantum scale. We have no idea ifthere are entire little mini-civilizations of people living on theatoms in our body as though they were planets,or civilizations existing on a supermassive scale that wemay be related to in a similar way.All the things that happen in those various micro- and macro-scalesmay, like the wings of a butterfly, totally be ruining everybody'sdays every moment of every day somewhere on a completely differentscale.

Whatif science alone can't explain everything? What if there's more toreality than we can measure?

Letme reiterate the entirety of this last section in three simplewords...

Everythingis possible.

Whatis Magick?

We started off witha pretty thorough investigation of the word "Wizard," its originsand meaning and implications... But there is another word in thetitle of this book that may require a little bit of considerationbefore we can move on: "Magick."

In order to be aWizardyou need to know some magick, right?

Meh.

The title of thebook should answer that question for you... you can become a Wizardwith or without magick. But how, if a Wizard is a wielder ofmagickal powers, could this possibly be true? Well, that is asimple answer. Everything is magick. It will take the rest ofthe book to explain that,so let's just talk about magick the way we all understand it and theway which, most likely, is the one that drew you to this book.

"Magick" is, asdefined by Aleister Crowley, the "Science andArt of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will."This by itself sounds like a deep and mystical idea... if, forexample, your Will demands that you have the ability to create andhurl fireballs through the air,then Magick is the science and art by which you might accomplishthat. But, let's look at it from a more broad perspective.

Whenyou decide you are going to get a new job, or attract the eye of thatlovely redheadfrom accounting, or impress your boss by becoming the best in yourdepartment, or build up the courage to ask for a raise so you canmarry that redhead, your Will is demanding that Change occur. Magick,therefore, would be considered the "Science and Art" by which youaccomplish those goals.

What,then, is Science, and what is Art, in this case? We're talking aboutMagick, so one could assume that Crowley is talking about the spellsor rituals employed to help achieve these goals. Well, now we'retalking about what spells and rituals are. It keeps "rollingdownhill" so to speak until you find yourself back at square one,asking what Magick is all over again.

Bythis definition, we should understand that "Magick" could easilybe defined as "any step you take toward the furtherance of yourgoals and the establishment of your desires." In this way,"rituals" and "spells" take on a much more mundane definitionthan one was probably expecting when coming into this text.

Inother words, that's most likely not what you came here to hear.

Don'tworry, it gets a lot deeper than that. There's one more word we'reoverlooking...

Whatis the Occult?

Ah, there it is.Don't worry, it's not as scary as you may have been led to believe.

When talking about"Magick," we often distance the word "occult" from it,because too many people in our society think this word is associatedwith dark and evil practices.Aleister Crowley used the word "Magick," with the spellingincluding a superfluous letter 'K' at the end, to differentiatebetween stage magic (the type of "magic" performed byillusionists such as Penn and Teller, David Copperfield,and Harry Houdini) from the kind he meant. It's interesting tonote that most of the famous practitioners of Magic fromaround the world and throughout history have made serious attempts todisprove the work and ideas of practitioners of Magick.

One good reason forthis is the harm Magick can cause when hopeless romantics andidealists or angsty teenagers who want to rebel against the religionof their parentsget a hold of the concepts some people might consider occult, andanother is due to the fact that there are certain people who can usemagickal ideas to manipulate hopeless romantics and idealistsor angsty teenagers. They are right to hunt down "magickalthinking" wherever they find it and cripple it so it can't be usedto have such a negative effect on people and society on the whole,especially the weak and the vulnerable and disenfranchised.

However,rather than the strong taking these concepts and using them tocontrol the weak,the true purpose of that which is considered "occult" is for theweak to be able to take back power from those who have usurped itfrom them.

There's an entirelydifferent reason why the word "occult" is used to mean "bad"or "evil" or "dark" or even "Satanic," and it's becausethe actual word "occult" refers to something that could toppleall world religions and modalities of spiritual belief overnight ifpeople truly came to understand it.

The actual meaningof the word occult is...

"ThatWhich is Hidden."

That's it. The truedefinition of "occult" means "hidden" or "to hide." Themoon goes through stages of occultation we refer to as its phases,and both the moon and suncan be occulted in the event of an eclipse.

So what exactly isbeing hidden when people refer to "the Occult" as its ownstandalone concept, and from whom is it being hidden, and by whom?

The answer to allthree of those questions are very similar to one another. Everythingis being hidden from everyone by everyone else.

Rather than explainthis in a long and boring series of expositional paragraphs, let metell you a little story.

The Old Kingdom ofEgypt is believed to have been around 2686 BCE to 2181 BCE, a500-year spanalso known as the "Age of the Pyramids." Around 2500 BCE wasabout a half-century of frenetic building during which the Egyptiansbuilt a number of wondrous and gargantuan structures to solidifytheir place as the greatest and most powerful civilization in all ofhuman history.These dates have actually recently come into question, and there aremanywho believe these dates may be off by about 8000 years.

Regardless of thedates, picture if you will a civilization that, although ancient and"backwards" by our standards stood as the greatest and mostpowerful in the world at the time... and all of history... and onewhose many marvels academic, scientific, artistic, martial, andarchitectural remain unshadowed by many that have come since. Uponentering the region alone you become aware of giant structures andsculptures the likes of which can't be seen anywhere else in theworld. Within the city limits of Memphisyou could behold people who seem like ants on a massive andwell-designed anthill, and who go about their daily lives with justabout as much fervor and sobriety.

The Pharaoh, what wemight refer to in the modern day as an Emperor, is brought out on agolden palanquinbefore the crowd, and everyone stops what they're doing, turn towardhim, and takes a knee. The God of their little corner of the worldhas made his presence known before them, and all silently fall beforehim in worship and adoration.

The Pharaohthen describes a dream he had of a golden pyramid which would harnessthe power of the sun on the Fall Equinox to act as a beacon of gloryfor the world to see the true strength and audacity of the Egyptianempire for the remainder of time. While he continues sitting on hiscomfortable golden throne on the raised dais in the middle of thecity, he explains how the people of Egypt would come together tobuild up this great temple which would indicate to all that thePharaoh was a god among men, and would be lined with massive statuesof the other Egyptian gods and goddesses which had bestowed thishonor upon him.

The work beginsimmediately, and everyone of a working age drops everything to beginbuilding these mighty edifices to the Pharaoh's demandingspecifications. Together, they figure out how to accomplish thistaskand begin the arduous, almost century-long task of fulfillingPharaoh's dream.

This is the story asit is often told, and it often ends there as well... they built itall, and the rest is history which revolves around the rulers of thisancient and powerful kingdom. The Pharaohs, the Gods, and thebuildings and statues made by one for the others are what historiansand archaeologists are most interested in discussing andmemorializing. What we often don't hear about are the people whospent their entire lives in dedicated servitude to make the lazyposer in the golden chair's dreams come true, eating scraps while heate... well, whatever he wanted to, really.

Throughout thearchitecture of Egypt, we find hieroglyphs which tell the story ofthese great Gods and Pharaohs who shaped the ancient world, and theoften incredibly preposterous stories about how they did so. Theseservants of Egypt, who often dedicated every day of their entirelives to this projectand who were responsible for writing the tales of the glorious Godswhich commanded their formation all over every inch of the edificesthey constructed, would often hidethe image of a small honeybee among these great and epic tales.

In ancient Egypt,the bee was a symbol of royalty. We often associate mighty animalswho are in charge of a pack as symbols of kingship, such as thelion,which leads one to wonder how a little bee would be considered asymbol of power. In ancient Egypt, however, the bee was the perfectsymbol of such power. The bee was born from the very tears ofAmon Ra, the god of the sun and creation, and the ruler of the lowerkingdom was often referred to as "He Who Belongs to the Bee."

More importantlythan that, however, is that the Queen Bee is often one insect whosepower comes from the fact that hundreds of drones and up to 80,000worker bees surround her, essentially making her "powerful" bybeing her eyes, ears, hands, and feet.Thus, the symbol of the bee wasn't a worshipful symbol of the powerof royalty, but rather an occulted symbol of where the truepower lie.

SoWhat is "Occult," Then?

Wouldn't you like toknow?

No, seriously... the"occult" refers to those things which are hidden, often in plainsight (like those bumblebees), as a way to show people that thethings being presented to them as true in their daily lives maynot be as true as the people presenting them would like to haveyou think. The rest of this book is going to be filled with examplesof this, most of them being directly from the supposed "source"of most of our modern Western culture: the Bible.

The thing peoplerefer to when speaking about "the Occult" is essentially the mainfocus of this book, but the very fact of it being occulted is onlyimportant so far as it indicates to you that there are people whodon't want you to have this information. If, in fact, the populardefinition of "occult" (ie. magickal, demonic powers) is real, itwould stand to reason that the powerful people in this world wouldbenefit from the public's ignorance of it, and would lead to attemptson their behalf to keep it hidden secretly and safely from pryingeyes.

Even if it weren'ttrue that you could study the occult for a few years and suddenlyhave the ability to hurl fireballs from your hands,this is still a message that is dangerous to the people in power.It's dangerous because the message which has been being left hiddenin plain sight for every person who comes upon it since the dawn ofcivilization is that all power, including power rivaling that of thegreat Pharaohs and Gods of Egypt, is already there in the palm ofyour hand.

WhichFinger?

Anyone interested inmagick and wizards has probably seenthe 1988 fantasy film Willow. In it, the titular diminutivefarmer goes on a quest to save the world and learn how to be awizard. In one of the earliest scenes in the film, Willow goes beforethe High Aldwinto become his apprentice. He and the other "Hopefuls" are broughtout and lined up, and the High Aldwin comes out to appropriatefanfare.

After a briefspeech, he holds up his hand and says "The power to control theworld is in which finger?"

Going down the line,hopeful after hopeful use their index fingers to point to theirguess, and each time, the old wizard shakes his head somberly. Witheach choice, the number of possible fingers is reduced, but astill-nervous Willowawaits his turn at the end of the line. When the High Aldwin reacheshim, only two fingers are left. Willow hesitates, looking around,questioning his choice.

Finally, he selectsa finger, and after a moment of disappointed silence the High Aldwinangrily shouts "No apprentice this year!"

Later, after thequest which sets the stage for the remainder of the story is begun,the High Aldwin escorts Willow and company to the edge of thevillage. "When I held up my fingers," he asks, "what was yourfirst impulse?"

"It was stupid,"replies Willow.

"Just tell me."

"I wanted tochoose my own finger."

Immediately, theHigh Aldwin's face brightens, and he stops short, turning quickly toWillow.

"Aha!" heexclaims, "that was the correct answer! You lack faith in yourself.More than anyone in the village, you have the potential to be a greatsorcerer."

There isn't reallyanyone in the world who doesn't have the potential to be agreat Wizard. I know, I've seen some blank-faced people that barelyseemed to be there, whose personalitywas a single yellow sticky note tacked on to them like anafterthought, and who could barely seem to make a cup of coffee(nevermind an alteration in the fabric of reality) actually make realchange in themselves and the world around them.

Youmay have even been one when you picked up this book, but hopefullyyou'll soon be able to see that there is nothing wrong with youthat keeps you from becoming your best possible self, outside of yourown continuing decision notto be.

TheDunning-Kruger Effect

Inpsychology, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias,described rather dryly by the discoverers like this: "Themiscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self,whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from anerror about others."In other words, stupid people think they're smarter than theyare, while smart people assume more people are smarter than them, orat least as smart as them, who actually aren't.

TheDunning-Kruger Effect was first defined in 1999 in the above-quoteddry research paper discussing the 1995 bank robbery committed by oneMr. McArthur Wheeler, who, due to a complete misunderstanding of thechemical properties of lemon juice as it applies to making invisibleink, covered his face with the stuff prior to the robbery so as notto be seen by the camera. He even smiled and waved at the camera, sosure was he that his "invisible ink mask" would work.

Theexperiment done to define the theory was a test in which a number ofstudents were given a self-assessment quiz covering several areas.Part of the test was to judge how well you thought you did, and howwell you thought everyone else did. It turns out the students withhigher scores judged that they did about average, thinking thateveryone else in the class did around as good or slightly better thanthem. The students that did poorly guessed that they did much betterthan they actually had, and that the rest of the class did much worsethan them.

Themechanism by which the Dunning-Kruger Effect works is this: imagineif you will the universe as a giant box. Now, imagine that everyonein the universe has around them another box which indicates exactlyhow much of the universe around them they have knowledge of.

Nowtake two people, say someone with a relatively large base ofknowledge and one with a very small base of knowledge. The firstperson would have a much larger box around them than the second,indicating the difference in knowledge.

Theperson with less knowledge about the world around them doesn't havethe knowledge to know how much more information out there there isto know, they think they havequite a bit more knowledge in their box than they actually do. As youcan see, there is much more outside the box for both of them. One ofthe key differences in the more intelligent is that they know howmuch they DO NOT know.

Theproblem with many people in the world is that they just don'tknow how much they don'tknow. In the words of DavidDunning, who wrote the paper in question, "Ifyou're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent... The skillsyou need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need torecognize what a right answer is."

HaveYou Become a Thinking Human Being?

Inmost Christian beliefsthere is the idea of the "Moment of Salvation." It's that momentin which you decide to change from being a regular, spiritually deadindividual and move into the realm of being a "quickened"soul that now can live with the power of God in your life. Yourprevious body, which was a vessel for a long-dead soul, has beengiven life by embodying the Holy Spirit.

Inmy church growing up, the elders would often ask not if you were aChristian, or if you had been "saved," as they and many otherscalled it, but rather if there was a particular time in your life youcould look back at and say "I definitely, on this date and at thistime, realized I was a sinner beyond my own ability to repair, and soI asked Jesus Christ rightthen and there toforgive my sins, enter into my heart, and become my Lord and Savior."

Forthose of you paying careful attention, yes, that IS a very sneakyway to manipulate a person to get stuck really,really hardinto your system of belief. Anyone who's ever done a Twelve-StepProgram like Alcoholics Anonymous will see this pattern emerging. Thetwelve steps start with, much like Christianity, accepting the factthat you have royally ruined your life and that it's now beyond yourability to control, and then goes immediately into making a firmdecision to allow another, higherpower to change you... foryou.

There'sa good reason for this besides a long period of research intomanipulation techniques which involve making someone feel worthlessabout themselves, separating them from their current temptations,and having them create a specific moment in time in which their liveschange. It's because, apart from putting your faith in something elseto redeem you, there's something very definiteabouthaving a particular moment in time wherein you decided to make such achange. It stands as a landmark on the roadmap of your life that canbe identified as a "point of new beginnings..."

...andwhich one can look back at and memorialize to form an anchor to thatfeeling.

Therest of the twelve steps are absolutely garbage. If you are going tomake a change in your life, it's youthat'sgoing to make it, and anyone who has gone through a twelve stepprogram has only themselves tothank.It was their determination and resolve, their decision to stop beingperceived as trash, that caused them to come to a "moment of truth"decision to become better people. Theyarethe ones who changed their own lives, by being brought to a pointwhere they decided in that moment to crawl their wormy bottoms into achrysalis and emerge as the beautiful butterfly they always weremeant to be.

It'stoo bad that they had it foisted upon them that there is no way theycould have done it on their own, and that the change they worked sohard to make in themselves had to be forcefully and surreptitiouslymisattributed to something outside of themselves... something theorganization "helping" them is in control of speaking andinterpreting for...

ComingTo That Point

Thereis always that point in everyone's life when they decide there'ssomething wrong with them which needs to be fixed.Without it, nobody would ever change or grow, but more often thannotthese moments of truth and self-realization are tiny and meaningless.You could say "Boy, I'm garbage at drawing hands," and startactively attempting to make a difference in that part of yourself,but this isn't a life-changing enough situation to merit itsimportance as an integral part of our lives. If you become aworld-renowned artist, you probably won't remember the day you choseto buckle down and learn hardcore how to draw hands the way aChristian can recall the time, date, and place where they made thedecision to be saved.

No.For that, you would have to skip to deciding to be the greatestartist you possibly can be.

Thenstart with the hands.

TheAha! Moment and the Test of Resolve

Theimportant takeaway from the past few sections is that most peoplearen't aware of how little about the Universe they actually know.They often don't realize how their skills and abilities pale incomparison to that of others, and don't really care because they arefine with being "just good enough," even though "enough" isheavily subjective, and they very likely have never encountered atrue test of their merit. They often fail to understand they could bea better person, a person others can look up to, be impressed by, andeven fall madly in love with.

Evenif they do have this type of "Aha!" moment, when they realizethey could become much better than they are, there often is not afollow-up moment in which they decide "NOWis the time that I resolve to change this." Most people justcontinue on from there in a state of depression and self-loathing.

That'swhy it's a Test... it's a puzzle, like when the professor puts

"Name:___________________

Instructions:Only answer every odd question or you will fail the test."

You'dbe surprised how often people fail those.

Andagain, even if they do make some kind of change, it's normallypredicated on the idea that they are not only imperfect, but aflaming pile of dumpsters that can only be changed by externalforces... external forces introduced to you, expounded to you, andcontrolled by organizations with their own agendas to push.

Thisdoesn't need to be necessary. From what I've said about theDunning-Kruger Effect, and looking back on your own life experiences,you should be able to come to the conclusion pretty readily that youare NOT the best YOUthatyou can possibly beright at this moment, and that there is so much more you could bewithout having to settle for self-doubt and self-deprecation.

Youdon't even have to have any help, not from me, not from somepreacher, and not even from some God.But if you don't decide to make that decision right now, at this verymoment,then "NOW" will never come.

Okay,What's After "Now?"

Slowdown, homeslice, you have a whole book ahead of you.

Thetitle of this chapter was "Of Magick and Science."We've talked quite a bit about magick, its definition and some basicthoughts about it. I didn't get very much into the mechanism of thismagick, and I never really touched on the science part.

Thething is...it's all science. Everything is science, because science hasabsolutely nothing to do with what we normally tend to consider"science." People who believe in Young Earth Creationismoften like to point to evolution, the Big Bang, and abiogenesisas being "just theories." This betrays a serious misunderstandingof what science even is, and what the word "theory" even means.

Inscience, a "theory" is a set of ideas used as the best possibleexplanation of a thing by means of our best current understanding ofthe science available. The word "theory" is often confused bylaypeople for "hypothesis,"which is an educated guess based on observation beforeexperimentation is done to prove the hypothesis, at which time itbecomes a theory only if the experimentation is held to rigorousstandard and proves to be true every time.

"Well,it still isn't a law," you might say, and you'd be right.That's because laws are something entirely different, akin to themathematical formula...A law tells us how we can expect things to act under certaincircumstances, because every time you apply it, the results can bepredicted in advance. Hypotheses use laws in order to becometheories, and because of this, theories have 100% predictive powergreater than that of any prophet or psychic. Every technology ormedicine you use is based on the fact that, at some point, a theorywas used to predict that it would work, and it did.

Wait,what?

"Oooh,"you may start saying now, "I thought I was gonna learn magick here,but it seems like you're trying to tell me magick isn't real at all."Nope, not at all. Remember the subtitle of this book: "With orWithoutMagick." I mean to show you how magick works evenif you don't believe in it. Rememberalso Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advancedtechnology is indistinguishable from magick."

"Science"is the method we use to get to this point, a rigorous systeminvolving taking how what we know works and applying it to otherthings so we can learn how they work too. Unlike religions, itdoesn't make any pronouncements about truth. Rather, it tells us howto get to what's true, and encourages us to keep looking in case ourcurrent ideas aren't correct or complete.

"Magick"is just a very advanced technology that uses the oldest and mostadvanced techniques known to humankind, a technology so advanced thatit has its own branch of science, and even the top scientists in itsfield can't begin to understand many of its sub-branches.

It'sthe human mind.

TheBrain is Wider Than The Sky

EmilyDickinson

TheBrain—is wider than the Sky—
For—putthem side by side—
The one theother will contain
With ease—andYou—beside—

The Brain isdeeper than the sea—
For—holdthem—Blue to Blue—
The one theother will absorb—

AsSponges—Buckets—do—

TheBrain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound forPound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable fromSound—

Don't worry, this isn't where we start talking bad about religion.

(That's Chapter Seven.)

Sorry, sorry... I know this goes completely non-sequitur from the end of the last chapter, but we'll get there. Patience is a virtue.

Ohhh, god, he's a Star Trek nerd, too...

Although maybe not as awesome when you consider we may have to travel a while before we find a single sentient nebula that can destroy us with a thought. They won't be popping up once a week during peak television hours. It is an infinite universe, though, so... they will show up eventually.

(...at least its ideals as upheld by the Captains we all know and love. There were some real pooburger admirals in there.)

(...even though it's very publicly available information)

I believe it's called The Council of Nine, although I can't find much information about it. It was found on one of his old hard drives. The title seems to indicate to me it may have something to do with the oligarchal patriarchy known as the Nine Unknown Men that is presumed to run the world from the shadows.

I can't find the video about Star Trek specifically anymore, but a good video series to look up is Essentials of Practical Alchemy by Aubrey Forest, who refers to himself as the Modern Alchemist. He makes learning the basics of alchemy so fun I suggest watching the live class episodes so you can see him interact with his students to get the full experience. I can't vouch for everything he says, and he has some theories about an electric universe that I haven't explored yet but which by his own admission go against currently accepted scientific theories. Then again, I'm doing the same thing...

From an AOL Chat in 1997, recorded on Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, under its entry on "Human Religion."

(Douglas Adams)

(should we not destroy ourselves in the process (RIP Carl Sagan, who said this...))

Like Q does to Riker in Deja Q, episode S03E13 of Next Gen.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan into Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Klingon Jesus, from Star Trek: The Next Generation S06E23, "Rightful Heir," as portrayed by my favorite Batman, Kevin Conroy, who unfortunately died during the writing of this book.

(although this time it will just be a bit later in this chapter, so hold tight...)

(as I've said a few times already)

And the good things are worth working hard for without trying to take shortcuts.

(or was it I who mentioned it for him in this instance?)

"Oh boy," they start to think, "here he is now mentioning quantum physics. It's another friggin' Deepak Chopra!" No, no, hold on still...

Eleven by most modern count, I think, although who knows? That's just as many as our limited minds can figure to exist.

(without help)

(...who is admittedly a fartknocker)

(...who very clearly is not)

(and many of the same ones, such as Hugh Everett, Bryce DeWitt, Erwin Schrodinger, and Brian Greene. I'm not sure Feynman ever got a chance to hear about it, and I believe it would have blown Einstein's mind)

(and Dan Harmon)

For those of you who've never dabbled in electronics, it's like coming to a particular page in a Choose Your Own Adventure book where it asks you what you want to do next.

Even though Einstein also said time was an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Today and tomorrow don't exist, except as something happening in a different dimension of the now.

(...and T-Rex)

(...times infinity.)

It gets even worse when you realize the answer is still just a number called "infinity" no matter how much math you do to it.

If you blow up all the atoms in the universe to the size of the planets, the distance between them would still be equivalent to the distances between the actual planets. Mix that in with your Old Toby and smoke it.

As in, one sneeze from the giant nose we actually inhabit could lead to the destruction of mankind, and this is a fact that actually has a real mathematical chance of being true.

Just like you might accidentally step on an ant and not even know it, the mathematical possibility that our entire UNIVERSE could be stepped on out of the blue one day is, also, not zero.

IMMEDIATELY many think "I smell woo-woo BS!" But hold on. The link between science and magick has always been strong. Some of the greatest scientists, writers, mathematicians, and thinkers have been occultist, from Paracelsus to the father of modern physics, Sir Isaac Newton.

Who, while having written the foundational works of NEWTONIAN physics, also considered his magnum opus to be a massively multi-volume treatise on alchemy.

Yes, I meant to spell it with a 'K.' Hold your horses, I'm getting there.

...which I'm sure you must have some interest in if you're reading this book, unless you're a dirty, rotten debunker!

No, I'm just joshing you, you're welcome to be here too. Like I said, by the end of this book you're going to realize there's nothing to really debunk. I already said that nothing I'm saying is true... in a way...

I need to just chill out on this. Literally every concept I have to express in this book is really going to require every other thing in the book... but this is important... that's how you understand the world, how Sherlock Holmes understood the drop of water I mentioned before... If you understand everything as much as possible on a larger scale, you stand a better chance of understanding smaller things.

Magick in Theory and Practice by, like I said, Aleister Crowley

Will is a real jerk for expecting you to be able to do that...

(I love redheads)

(...but that doesn't mean we aren't gonna discuss tossin' around some good ol' fashioned fireballs)

(and other certain religious groups claim the term for their own when it is not)

(...not the Charles Dickens character)

And also your occasional bloody psychopath...

As they do in everyday life, right in front of all of us, and to every one of us.

It wouldn't necessarily topple certain spiritual beliefs or atheism, as it does not, in fact, require anything that either would find offensive or incorrect (although certain spiritual groups may feel a bit threatened by the fact that it's proves their beliefs to be scientific...)

(and certain little clusters of stars in the background)

You see why this is going to take an entire book now, I hope...

Double the average it takes for most world powers to rise and fall

Ostensibly, that is, and until the Greeks and later the Romans came along...

Including journalist Graham Hancock and geologist Randall Carlson

Putting it much older than we had believed possible for our species.

(Near modern-day Cairo, not the one in Tennessee)

(Those mobile golden thrones carried on the backs of servants)

Khufu, in this case...

(using methods even modern man often attributes to magick or alien assistance when he underestimates the ancients according to his own limitations)

(...up to and possibly including his citizens, if he felt like it)

The alternative was death, after all... although the work in the scorching desert sun was just as likely to kill you.

...or "occult..."

(which became the symbol of the Empire of Britannia much later)

(err, wings... or whatever...)

The point of this book has nothing to do with secret societies, so I won't get too deeply into this here, but the legendary origins of such societies is said to have begun in ancient Egypt with the stoneworkers who built the pyramids, hence "Freemasons."

In case you never drew the conclusion, a "mason" is another word for a stoneworker.

Which is absolutely not what I'm saying, by the way...

(or at least should see)

Chief of the village, and a Wizard himself...

Played by the amazing Warwick Davis, who also played Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi, and is almost any little person when a movie calls for one, and who even runs an organization that helps little people land roles in films.

(or lack thereof)

A cognitive bias is a systemic error in thinking caused by a person not using proper epistemological methods to come to a conclusion about truth, often using the first conclusion their minds come to rather than attempting to get at truth through a proven methodology. In other words, "I already think this thing is true, thus all my thoughts are already geared toward continuing to think it's true.")

Epistemology, by the way, is the study of the methodology used to separate truth from opinion.

...specifically Protestant Christianity, but there are a number of other traditional systems that use a similar technique.

"Quickened" in Biblical terminology means "to be made alive."

(but powerful)

(which may often include the family and friends that led you to reach this point)

And, coincidentally, the point of no return...

This has changed a lot recently. There's been a big push in the world about accepting everybody just the way they are, and to not even mention words that could make people feel lesser. While this seems noble on the surface, what's really happening is we are being taught to be happy with not being as good as we could be, because we are already absolutely fine according to ourselves and everyone else we meet. Thus, we don't see that we need to become better, and stay perfectly ripe for control and exploitation by the people telling us we're already fine how we are. We're told we have the power to become anything we want as long as we believe it, but the all-important steps of cutting out the bad parts and installing "new software" to make it work is conveniently left out.

(especially if you've never been indoctrinated into a religion)

And that would make you a victim of what I call "Dunning-Kruger Syndrome," on the "better" end of the spectrum.

...or spirit, or entity, or djinn, or loa, or fairy, or whatever...

By this, I don't mean right now while you're reading this... but if "now" never comes, that's when you find yourself trapped in an endless cycle of not living your best life and always waiting for "now" to be some more convenient time... just know that until you make the time convenient, it never will be.

(...with an ellipsis before it, of course)

(...I do use a lot of those, don't I?)

The very unscientific idea that a God, normally the Judeo-Christian one, created the entire Universe out of nothing between 6-12,000 years ago.

The natural process from which life originates from non-living matter.

So much so that evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins proposed in his book The God Delusion the use of the word "theorum" instead of theory, borrowing from the mathematical concept equivalent to a mathematical law, so as to avoid confusion.

Which, admittedly, makes it all the more confusing.

  The scientific method itself proves we can never truly know anything 100% for sure. If you do an experiment a million times, the million-and-first time we never get to could be the one that fails and disproves everything. Going back to Richard Dawkins, he states in his books and talks on evolution that evolution isn't necessarily fact, but it's our best understanding of fact, and if we ever find out it isn't true, whatever the truth turns out to be will likely have been arrived at using the basis of evolution.