This is how a Christian can practice magic

[John Sorensen]

First, I want everyone to know that this is just a very rough draft and will be frequently updated (as long as you're willing to accept me in your community--much of what I say may go against the grain of this forum.) I don't want to start any drama. If you would prefer me to stop posting, just let me know.

About 6 months or a year ago, I posted a few threads here. After much investigation, study, and thought, this is the tentative conclusion that I have come to.

I have now come to use what I call the Corinthians Meat Defense.

In one chapter, Paul's all like, "Yeah man, eat the meat (sacrificed to idols). It's cool."

Then a few chapters later he's like, "Whoa there buddy, (to quote the Beatles) You can't do that."

The meat isn't the issue. It's all about which Elohim (dis-incarnate spirit) you pledge loyalty to. In the first instance, the meat is in the market (post-sacrifice). In the second instance, since, “an idol has no real existence” it would seem that members of the Corinthian church went ahead and participated in the sacrifice, believing that since idols aren't real, it was OK. That's why later, Paul reminds them that even though idols are nothing, the entities behind them are in fact real.

My main problem with Occult/New Age/etc. philosophy is the insistence that Monism must include YHVH-Elohim. This is my conception of monism:
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YHVH | The ALL
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To borrow from Hawking, this is my brief history of everything:

--God (YHVH) exists
--He creates the heavenly host and the universe as we know it. The 2nd heaven of the ancients would seem to correspond with the astral planes and the 3rd heaven with the mental planes.
--The plural language in Genesis refers to God speaking to his Divine Council saying, "Hey, I've got an idea: Let's create man in our image!"
--The Hebrew verbs that follow indicate a sole Creator--not a group effort.
--God gives man dominion over the earth
--This pisses off the Cosmic Beings because they are ontologically superior to us.
--A fallen Divine being, the Nachash (see works by Michael Heiser) decides to remedy the problem
--He figures that if he can get people to sin, God will either destroy them, or at least kick them out of the Divine council.
--Then the flood happens because of the transgression of the Heavenly/Earthly separation (Divine Beings mating with human women)
--After the flood, instead of doing what God said, they said @#%$ it.
--They built the tower of Babel and God's like, well, "I thought the flood would take care of this, but, if you don't want me to be your God, I'm going to put you under the authority of lesser Elohim.
--This is where the ancient pantheons came from
--Here's the quote from Deut. in the ESV translation: "When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God."

The rest of the Old Testament is about Israel vs the Nations and YHVH vs the gods of those nations.

New Testament theology fairly clearly says that those loyal to YHVH and His physical incarnation (Jesus of Nazareth) will displace the current spiritual hierarchy in place today.

So, how can a Christian practice magic? As you will see in the bibliography of Jewish Magical Practices, it's not so much the methods used to make contact--it's whose on the other end.

In the old days, you had to pledge allegiance to a Mystery School and their Deity(s).

Now, just as Alchemy is divorced from Chemistry, thanks to Bardon, the Christian can maintain loyalty to the Creator, without pledging allegiance to any one else.

TO Summarize

--Gods original intention was to have a human and divine family--heaven and earth united (Eden)
--That got messed up
--Ever since then He has been slowly working to bring His original intention to pass
--The current spiritual hierarchy will be displaced by those loyal to the Creator God.

In one sentence: magic is fine, as long as the Christian doesn't work with spirits disloyal to God and "tests the spirits" to see if they are loyal to the Creator God or to the lesser gods and spirit beings. Also, the New Testament is FULL of adoption language. The Christian is adopted into YHVH's family--never becomes one with Him. They partake in the inheritance and are co-rulers. The key for the Christian is to remember that God is God and you are you and this will never change. You will be part of his family, but when you merge with The ALL, you are merging with the universe, not God Himself.

http://www.michaelsheiser.com/TheNak...bliography.pdf

Mods: if I can't post links, please repost this for me. It's an academic 131 page bibliography of Jewish magical practices from thousands of years ago until now. [Mod Note: Checked the contents of the link, and it's entirely legit and not a problem. Approved, even though member has fewer than the usual required number of posts, under the "with moderator approval" clause.]

While I don't agree with any of this, it is interesting to read, please continue posting and developing your ideas.

[QUOTE]

Ouch. The first statement totally misses the point. Nihilism rejects, philosophically, the meaning of opposing philosophical paradigms and does not speak to the awareness associated with Nirvana.

Hmmm, I misused the word, I should have said "materialism", which is more or less what I was thinking. I don't know bugger all about Nihilism. Except that in The Big Lebowski that German guy had a sword and seemed to liked leather a lot

[agapelove]

All right.

I had the day off today. I've literally been writing since about 11 or 12, it is now 9:15. I answered (to the best of my ability) the questions posed. The forum logged me out and didn't auto-save properly. It is my fault. I always back up what I write, and this time I got lazy.

I've literally been writing for 8+ hours and now, everything is gone. At this point, I'm just mad at myself. Next day off, I will re-write responses to your questions and also write a nice long post about the idea of Reversal in the Bible (it's pretty much what the whole thing's about.)

I'm going to let my rage cool off after just having wasted a full day, but let's look on the bright side: We'll say that what I wrote today was a rough draft and what I write next will be better.

Hanging my head in shame...

[John Sorensen]

All right.

I had the day off today. I've literally been writing since about 11 or 12, it is now 9:15. I answered (to the best of my ability) the questions posed. The forum logged me out and didn't auto-save properly. It is my fault. I always back up what I write, and this time I got lazy.

I've literally been writing for 8+ hours and now, everything is gone. At this point, I'm just mad at myself. Next day off, I will re-write responses to your questions and also write a nice long post about the idea of Reversal in the Bible (it's pretty much what the whole thing's about.)

I'm going to let my rage cool off after just having wasted a full day, but let's look on the bright side: We'll say that what I wrote today was a rough draft and what I write next will be better.

Hanging my head in shame...

Just write offline, save it, and then copy and paste into the forum.

[IA56]

All right.

I had the day off today. I've literally been writing since about 11 or 12, it is now 9:15. I answered (to the best of my ability) the questions posed. The forum logged me out and didn't auto-save properly. It is my fault. I always back up what I write, and this time I got lazy.

I've literally been writing for 8+ hours and now, everything is gone. At this point, I'm just mad at myself. Next day off, I will re-write responses to your questions and also write a nice long post about the idea of Reversal in the Bible (it's pretty much what the whole thing's about.)

I'm going to let my rage cool off after just having wasted a full day, but let's look on the bright side: We'll say that what I wrote today was a rough draft and what I write next will be better.

Hanging my head in shame...

Hi agapelove,
So sorry to hear your hard work did vanish into the syber, but I am so happy and proud of your self control...wow...thank you

Love
ia

[CFTraveler]

All right.

I had the day off today. I've literally been writing since about 11 or 12, it is now 9:15. I answered (to the best of my ability) the questions posed. The forum logged me out and didn't auto-save properly. It is my fault. I always back up what I write, and this time I got lazy.

I've literally been writing for 8+ hours and now, everything is gone. At this point, I'm just mad at myself. Next day off, I will re-write responses to your questions and also write a nice long post about the idea of Reversal in the Bible (it's pretty much what the whole thing's about.)

I'm going to let my rage cool off after just having wasted a full day, but let's look on the bright side: We'll say that what I wrote today was a rough draft and what I write next will be better.

Hanging my head in shame...

I notice this happened to a couple of people (I think) yesterday. There must have been something going on with the internet. However, this forum autosaves, so when that happens check before you start writing again in the left hand bottom corner for the legend 'restore autosaved content' before you start writing again. It's too late now, since it's written over, but keep it in mind (everyone).

[agapelove]

First, let me restate the purpose of this thread—and again thanks to CFT for her post which clarified what I'm doing here. I have 0% desire to disabuse of your beliefs, and 0% desire for you to disabuse me of mine.

This thread is for people who believe the following and who are not willing to budge:

1. You believe that the God of Israel is the only uncreated, ontologically unique and superior being.
   2.) You believe that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the only physical incarnation of the God of Israel.
   3.) You believe that there is something separating us from God and that in some way this was repaired, or at least began to be repaired, at the crucifixion and resurrection.
   4.) You believe that Christ is the only way of "salvation" (it's in quotes because who really knows what that means? We'll discuss it later.)
   5.) You believe in the literal death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

IA56
In your responses, you bring up the idea of evolution. First, we need to distinguish between micro-evolution and macro-evolution.

Micro-evolution is, quote, “evolutionary change within a species or small group of organisms, esp. over a short period.”

Macro-evolution is, quote, “major evolutionary change. The term applies mainly to the evolution of whole taxonomic groups over long periods of time.”

In the Judeo-Christian paradigm there is no macro-evolution. And this isn’t just modern, evangelical, Christianity—you will search the Scriptures in vain for the idea. This isn’t just something Christians made up to fight late 19^th and early 20^th century academic Biblical skepticism.

Now look again at these comparisons, paying special attention to the ones in bold:

Judeo-Christian:
Dualism: God is separate from everything else (creation).

Occult and New Age:
Monism: God is not separate, everything is a part of God, (The ALL).

Judeo-Christian:
God has a family and He wants us in it. He wants us as sons and daughters.

Occult and New Age:
People and other beings aren’t part of God’s family, they are a part of Him.

Judeo-Christian:
People are transformed and become part of the Divine realm through the work of Christ.

Occult and New Age:
People are transformed and become part of the Divine realm through slow evolution and spiritual exercises.

This is the point: both Occultism/New Age and Judeo-Christian say we’re (as humans) ending up in the same place—the Divine Realm. The difference is how we get there, and who gets us there. The other difference is that Universal Redemption is NOT, NOT, NOT, a part of the Judeo-Christian paradigm. I can’t stress this enough.
The Bible VERY clearly says that we (as humans) are offered redemption whereas “they” are not.
That IS the difference. We don’t “evolve” to become like them. In fact, our deal is WAY better than theirs—we replace them and they are literally thrown out like a piece of garbage.

This is why you never see Christians getting info from “the other side.” This is also why, in the NT, these beings are always referred to negatively—the idea being that their goal is to disqualify us from being eligible to take their jobs.

Now you may ask, “Why are we offered redemption and they aren’t?” The answer is actually quite simple: they are in the direct presence of the Shekinah Glory, we are not. Now, this does bring us back to the Garden. We were in the direct presence of Yahweh-Elohim and still &^%# up. I have an answer, both coherent and cogent, which we’ll get into on another post.

In Occult and New Age philosophy, we slowly evolve to the status of Bene Elohim (Sons of God) where with Judeo-Christian, the work of Christ instantly transforms us. In Judeo-Christian theology and philosophy, it’s an “already, but not yet” type of thing. What I mean by this is, does anyone (any Christian) want to argue that Christ isn’t reigning? Read Hebrews.

To use a marriage analogy, we, as Christians, are “engaged” to Christ. The final consummation hasn’t happened yet, but that in no way detracts from the reality. Where we’re at right now, is waiting for the final consummation.

I need to again stress the fact that in Judeo-Christian theology and philosophy, there is no macro-evolution. There’s micro-evolution, but the result of macro-evolution propounded by Occult and New Age philosophy, is, in Scripture, accomplished by the Work of Christ. As Paul terms it, Christ was the first fruits, the earnest money, the preview so to speak. When He returns, the transformation will be in the “twinkling of an eye,” not the “evolution” espoused by Occultism.

John Sorensen
You say, ”Awesome post, following the logic herein, how does an immortal being die?

Is this referring to a material being dying or a non-material being?

I ask, as either way energy "can not be destroyed", only transformed, as quantum physics demonstrates.

Also, what is the definition of the word "die" in your post as you choose to use it.

Does it mean:
*Transformation
*Non-existence
*Separation
*Unity
*Other?

Q.) How does an immortal being die?

A.) Mechanically, I’ve no idea—but this is what I think the key idea is: Only in the direct presence of Yahweh can one have unthreatened immortality. Adam and Eve, historical or not—according to the story, when did they actually die? The curse was pronounced in the Garden, but it took them around 1000 years to physically die (the point being that in order to live, they had to leave His direct presence—the flip side being that if they had stayed in His presence they would have died due to “Divine Exposure” after the whole Sin thing). My answer to your question would require familiarity with OT, Inter-testamental, NT, and Ugaritic literature (as well as pretty much all ANE literature). Basically, all of these sources say that the Gen. 6 beings are being held in Tartarus. This is an extremely unusual word in both the LXX and the NT.

This is what comes to my mind: Aleister Crowley says, or channeled, or whatever, “I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory… Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.

23. I am alone: there is no God where I am

That’s what I'm thinking—that however “they” lose their immortality is linked to their proximity (not physical proximity) or lack thereof to God. I do need to again stress that whenever I use the word “God” I am referring to the God of Israel.
So to sum up the answer to the 1^st question, Adam and Eve were immortal and they’re dead now (historical or not—it doesn’t really change the point of the story). Whatever happened that changed their status from “immortal” to “mortal” can happen to any being. I would say that the only being Who possesses immortality as an inherent trait is Yahweh. All other beings, from the Judeo-Christian point of view, if they are immortal, it’s a “contingent” immortality. The key is really to differentiate between inherent and contingent immortality.

Q.) Is this referring to a material being dying or a non-material being?

A.) Yes and no. Now is it perfectly clear? (Obviously I'm joking.) First of all, if we’re going to go with the premise that God (again Yahweh) is the only uncreated being, that means that everything (and everyone) else is made up of something. In other words, we need to define the word “material.”

When reading through Scripture, it would seem that when visiting Earth, the required “form of dress,” so to speak, is flesh. Probably the most familiar example is from Gen. 18. Two of the beings were “angels” and the third was the Pre-Incarnate Christ. They took on the appearance of flesh—they ate, did other physical things, etc. Flesh can do what flesh can do—whether naturally born into the world, or taking the form of flesh.

This is my personal theory—whenever the Eschaton comes, in some way these Cosmic Beings will be tricked into taking on flesh--and then will be vulnerable to death. If I knew how it worked mechanically and prophetically, these beings would too, and they’d figure a way around it.

Q.) I ask, as either way energy "cannot be destroyed", only transformed, as quantum physics demonstrates.

A.) I’ll repeat this in the next Q/A, but I don’t believe that any being ever ceases to exist. At the same time I reject as vehemently as possible anything even resembling macro-evolution. I believe that “everything produces after its own kind,” and when violating this principle, well, just look at Gen 6 and the non-canonical book of 1 Enoch. As I said earlier, I believe that the end result propounded by macro-evolution is accomplished instantly by the work of Christ—again, it’s not so much the end-result, but who and how we get there.

Q.) What is the definition of the word "die" in your post as you choose to use it?

A.) As far as actual mechanics go—I’ve no idea. However, I would go with the “separation” definition. To use an analogy, when people die, they lose something: their physical body. Whether you’re applying the term to mortals or immortals, it would seem to me that death is two-fold:

1.) Separation from God
2.) Separation from some part of yourself that you can’t properly function without in your natural realm. This means that once dead, people are no longer able to function in the manner or capacity that God (Yahweh) created us to function. I would draw this analogy to the "immortal," Cosmic, ruling Beings.

That’s all for now…

[IA56]

Hi agapelove,
I absolutely hope you will stay and keep going with your thought´s and I hope you do not take offence in my thought´s because my intention is not to argue about right or wrong...but...have an opportunity to freely express my feeling´s what I put in word´s and sometime I call it thought´s when it is an image I try to express in word´s...all are my way and it is not read from any book´s...I can tell that I am very surprised when I notice and find what come´s to me is already written...so nothing new under the sun

The strong feeling I got from my meeting with JHWH or Jehowa...I wouldn´t be able to know the difference between the infinit and duality without this experience...I do not know anything about evolution or devolution...more that what I got to feel in front of the JHWH...and I have tried to express it here many time´s and fail every time...
The strongest feeling I have is that religions as they are expressed here on Earth is twisted and are not at all helping to open up ...because LOVE does make you free...not fear as I have noticed religious persons....and as I read one of Leo Buscaglia´s quotes...that the opposit of love is not hate - it´s apathy, it´s not to giving a damn...
So for me hate is not that bad as apathy...because hate is also a strong emotion...but apathy is total not feeling a thing...and not caring about anything.
I Think that we have a huge job to remake our stiffen and hardened prejudices and out grown thought systems, as they do not work.

Love
ia