If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

-"If," by Rudyard Kipling

"You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape." ― G.I. Gurdjieff

"They conquer who believe they can."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

This book is 100% a work of fiction... and 100% a work of nonfiction...and both, and neither, and a superposition of every state in between.

To say that I've lived a life full of magick and adventure would be an understatement, but under no condition should anyone just hear that and accept it at face value. The majority of those times have past, and with the exception of the corroboration of some others who might have been there and seen some of it there is no way for anyone to prove that some of the crazy stuff that happened to me really did.

At this point, some other Wizards might say "I already said what I had to say. It's true! Now The burden of proof is on those who don't believe in magick!"

That's a funny statement people use sometimes, this "burden of proof, "especially in the God vs. Atheism argument. "The burden of proof is yours," the religious say, "because I KNOW God exists." But then the other side gives what is, for all intents and purposes, the absolutely correct answer: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!" You can't just say such a thing is so and then leave it to me to believe it. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not the person who doesn't believe or accept it."

The burden of proof we're talking about means specifically that, if you believe a thing and someone else doesn't, then you're the one who is burdened to do the work of proving it. You can't expect someone to accept something until you've made a good case that it's so. We'll get more into how the religious use burden of proof later, but for right now, I'm telling you that I've lived a magickal life. I've also said that I have no real proof except a few people who would verify my statements... which is also not to be accepted any more than the fact that the Bible says over 500 people saw Jesus after his resurrection.

The person who believes a thing is always the one with the ball in their court, and until the burden of proof for the claims I've made is satisfied, the ball is still in my court. The ball can never be in anyone else's court unless, by some chance, they happen to have an experience on their own that verifies my account to them. In that case, the ball is now only in our court.

Even if everyone in the world, minus one person, believed me, the burden of proof is on all of us should we want to prove it to the one.

A lot of people who believe either way will come into the "ball in the court" argument from the position that they don't believe proponents of the opposite position are correct, so the ball must still be in their court.

That's not quite what I said. The negative proposition can't be proven, so the burden of proof is not on the person who believes something is not... rather, it's on the person who thinks it is. The ball is in your court until you have evidence outside "I just believe it, so it must be so." You have to be able to make a proof for something in order to disprove that proof. You can't just assert that it is true.

Everyone has their own framework of understanding how the world works. No matter how you navigate reality, no matter what your belief system, the ball is in your court until you can prove your beliefs to yourself beyond just "somebody said it, or I read it in a book somewhere, and I believe it, and I can't think of anything else that may be true, so it must be true." The ball is in everybody's court. The only way to be sure you're right is for you to continually prove to yourself that you actually are.

The world is a lot weirder than most people understand.

In science, unless you've done an experiment an infinite number of times under a variety of different conditions, you can't know for sure if you're correct, because the infinity + 1th time you do the experiment, something may be different. Just because a variety of people believe a variety of things they don't understand and can't successfully explain doesn't mean there can't be a condition under which they may possibly be correct.

There are, in fact, conditions in which they are very correct... and in which they very much are not. There are conditions under which they may be both, and neither. There are an infinite number of possibilities... "superpositions" between these states in which every conceivable state is occurring simultaneously. It doesn't matter if your opponent is incorrect... just because your view is in opposition to theirs, it doesn't make yours correct either!

There's an episode of the original Star Trek titled "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." In it, the intrepid crew of the Enterprise find themselves on an asteroid that has been hollowed out, and inside the people are in a biome simulating being on the surface of a planet, complete with the inside shell appearing to be the sky and offering day and night cycles. It isn't until a native of the planet reaches the edge and touches the sky with their bare hand that they come to learn the truth.

So, the burden of proof isn't on them, or me, or science, or religion, or anyone else. It's on you, and only you, for everything, because the only person you owe evidence to is yourself.

YOU ARE THE ONE who has to touch the sky in order to know for sure.

This book exists to help provide you with the tools to do that, because, you see, this book isn't about pushing one concept or philosophy or religion or system of belief. It instead pushes the idea of you, and that you are the only person who can tell you what to think or do. This book is not about me trying to prove myself or my ideas to you. It's about me trying to prove yourself to you...

NOTE: For the pdf version, which includes footnotes to give you a deeper understanding of the real world of Wizardry and how to unlock it in your own life, head over to https://the-wizards-tales.itch.io/howtobeawizard

...because you arethe only person worth actually listening to. And once you figure thatout, magick can happen.

OhMe, Oh Life

by"Uncle" Walt Whitman

Ohme! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Ofthe endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with thefoolish,

Ofmyself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, andwho more faithless?)

Ofeyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of thestruggle ever renew'd,

Ofthe poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I seearound me,

Ofthe empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest meintertwined,

Thequestion, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, Olife?

Answer.

Thatyou are here — that life exists and identity,

Thatthe powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

You'll hear more about that in a couple chapters, sit tight.

(which is still only anecdotal evidence and is not sufficient for anyone to believe right out of hand)

That's not exactly fair... everyone has agendas and biases and preconceived notions and do the same thing, it's just that the idea of the religious version is specific to the plot here.

"After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep." - I Corinthians 15:6

Paul actually says, "We can't really get all these witnesses, but I'll just tell you about them to make it sound more believable." The Gospels, by the way, weren't written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John (by the admission of almost every Biblical scholar) and weren't written until 50 plus years after the fact. This could account for a lot of discrepancies, due to the ensuing telephone game.

And at that point, they are under no obligation, since that would be the logical fallacy known as Argumentum ad Populum, or the Bandwagon Fallacy.

(In other words, you can't prove something is false unless there's already some reason to believe it's true in the first place.

(religious belief, scientific proof, personal experience, the testimony of experts, etc.)

Even if you're a Christian... the Bible doesn't call for just blind faith, it also says "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." - I Peter 3:15

I'm not talking about any one particular group or idea... this one here is directed at everyone.

Superpositions (pl. n) "A bunch of overlapping possibilities."

Oh, well, that's a little sooner than I expected to get to that. I said it would be a while in Footnote 1...

Season 3, episode 8

Thank you to Robin Williams, playing John Keating in the beautiful film Dead Poet's Society for introducing me to this poem.