Magik or luck?

[DragonsFriend]

A philosophical question: Can one believe in LUCK and Magik or are they exclusive of each other?

If you believe in luck then how do you know magik exists, perhaps you are just lucky?

[MaskedOne]

Re: Magik or luck?

Why should luck and magic be mutually exclusive? You don't cast for every single lucky break in life. You sure as hell didn't cast for the series of events that brought your parents together and resulted in your birth. I could see luck and fate being mutually exclusive depending on just how overwhelmingly powerful you intend to think of fate as but people get random good or ill fortune all the time without any direct mystical effort.

[October]

Re: Magik or luck?

I see magick as the things you work for, luck just happens.

I can see luck and fate coexisting. In that case, it would be a matter of perception. What happens is going to happen anyway, it's just that if we don't see it coming, it could be either good luck or bad luck.

[DragonsFriend]

Re: Magik or luck?

I am not fatalistic in my beliefs. I see cause and effect in all that I am and all that I do.
I believe magik as a cause in everything in my life through the conscious and subconscious workings of my will.
I believe that we can allow ourselves to exist in a way that allows a general will to determine where we are at any given time or that we can use our own will to be where we want to be.
Because of that belief I cannot accept "luck". Fate, on the other hand, may determine my ultimate position in the overall cosmology but not the path I take or what happens along the way. Within that belief is a contradiction whereby your ultimate position in the cosmology must be fixed by the lessons learned along the way, then your "fate" is not fixed either.

My spirituality and religion both agree that we are partners with the gods in the creation of our reality. For me it would mean that I would have to disregard a part of my life to have it determined by anyone but me.
My belief system requires that I take responsibility for all that happens in my life, good or bad.

[thalassa]

Re: Magik or luck?

Randomness happens...its a matter of statistics. True randomness (stochasticity) actually produces more clusters and "patterns" than people-led andomness (which is what would happen if people were using "will" to get through life). Good luck is stochasticity you like....bad luck is stochasticity you don't like. Because you can't control all the independent values at work in your life. Magic is the alignment of yourself with the would around you (whether one thinks its deity-fueled, feel-good psychobabble, or something else) as one more method in our arsenal to corral true randomness into people-led randomess (which isn't random at all). Magic is the tool of the dispossessed. It is power for the conventionally powerless. Its control (or the hope for control) for when we know that we have no control.

[anunitu]

Re: Magik or luck?

As I am prone to say,just go with the flow....(And you most likely said "Another damn hippy"),but you would be way off to think that...its just my swerve is all.

[DragonsFriend]

Re: Magik or luck?

The uncertainty principle allows for randomness but it also shows that the act of observing can modify the outcome.
That begins to sound like magik, to me.

I have had a few Streghan friends, for me to think "hippy" about anyone without some experience to back it up would be "out of character".
I choose to accept people for who they are, as it changes from moment to moment.

[thalassa]

Re: Magik or luck?

Life is Fundamentally Uncertain.

(I might add that I'm neither talking about Heisenberg or "true randomness" from a physics standpoint)

[DragonsFriend]

Re: Magik or luck?

While I agree with you, I would surmise that the cause we hold is likely different.
Water always flows in the direction of least resistance, it has no will to be other than what it is. People can exercise their will to be different, though not all people do. At the same time there are very few who can exercise their will all the time. Even those that can do not always keep the same target in mind.

[thalassa]

Re: Magik or luck?

For me its a matter of Too Many Variables.

There are almost 8 billion people on Earth, 360 million of them in the US, and we are one of 8.7 +/- 1.3 million species with trillions of members. This is just the Life part of the equation. Then you have the inanimate variables--wind speed, humidity, soil type, prevalent flora and fauna, etc (lets call this landscape just for ease of writing) where one lives, the landscapes that they pass through, and the landscapes where the people and other Life that they encounter through out their day and throughout their life exist. Granted, some people and things and organisms have more impact, more lasting impact, etc than others, but still...

It is impossible for any person to exert their will over this many variables for any length of time. There is always randomness in the system.

[Gleb]

Re: Magik or luck?

I say both. In case magic screws up, you'll have luck. Or otherwise. I use Heka as a type of magic. Sometimes I'm tempted to use a love spell but I know it's not fair towards the "victim" and against the laws of Ma'at. So no love spell for me. I don't really need it. I mean, I'm a cat person.

[SleepingCompass]

Re: Magik or luck?

If you believe in luck then how do you know magik exists, perhaps you are just lucky?

How do you prove that anything exists? The only thing that I can know for absolute certain is that I exist at this very moment. Everything and everyone else could be an illusion. All we can do is rely on our experiences of the world and what we have learned to decide if something exists or not.

Personally, I believe in both luck and magik. Magik to me is influencing the world through force of will to make luck happen where as luck by itself is just happy stuff happening without any of my will being involved.

My spirituality and religion both agree that we are partners with the gods in the creation of our reality. For me it would mean that I would have to disregard a part of my life to have it determined by anyone but me.
My belief system requires that I take responsibility for all that happens in my life, good or bad.

I can see how this belief system would be beneficial in helping you overcome the bad things in your life by allowing you to believe that you have complete control over it, but it doesn't fit with my world view.

There's just too many people out there who have experienced horrific things for me to say everyone, in partnership with their god(s)/dieties, have complete control over their reality. I think we all have the power to influence our reality and change our reality, but I don't think complete control is possible. If there was complete control, truly bad things wouldn't happen. I don't think the gods like to see us suffer and I don't think we want to suffer to an extreme level, even if it's subconsciously. Plus, if there was complete control, it wouldn't really be living.

I see reality as being a place of learning and exploration and you can't have that when there is total control.

[Rae'ya]

Re: Magik or luck?

A philosophical question: Can one believe in LUCK and Magik or are they exclusive of each other?

If you believe in luck then how do you know magik exists, perhaps you are just lucky?

I'm mostly with Thalassa on the subject of 'luck' as understood by most people. I won $100 on a scratchy the other day... neither Torey nor I have been doing anything particular about trying to gain money (aside from the natural citrine chip that lives in my wallet). Torey bought the scratchies (one each) and forgot about them so they sat in the car for a week. We each picked one at random and scratched them. I won, he didn't. I call that random chance rather than any concept of tangible 'luck'.

However, I do believe in hamingja, which is a concept that is similar to 'luck' and accounts for some of the things that people often attribute to blind luck. Hamingja is a build up of energies that attach to you based on your interactions with the people around you. It is specifically amassed or lost via the way that people external to yourself see you... and is earned mostly through good-will type actions, integrity, generosity, hospitality, helping others, that sort of thing. It's often described as a sort of 'luck', because having good hamingja can attract beneficial things to you. But I personally think that's a bit of a misnomer.

[DragonsFriend]

Re: Magik or luck?

The universal law of return states that you get out of life what you put into it. That is a paraphrasing but it gets the point across.
If you go to a ball game and do not get yourself involved in the game and the excitement of it then you will wonder why you went. You will have had nothing "fun" happening for the two or more hours you lost sitting on the hard bleachers being ignored by the people you went with. You put nothing into the time and got nothing out of it. The folks you went with are not likely to invite you again because you didn't enjoy it.
You have just, sub-consciously, used your energy to affect your life.
If on the other hand you had gotten involved in the excitement of your friends and taken the time to get into and understand the game and why others found it exciting then you could have enjoyed the time with your friends. You might be invited to other things that you find fun to do as well. Again, you have affected your life using your energy.

Affecting changes in your reality through the use of energy is magik. If you use it enough it becomes second nature to expect the best outcome from any situation.
There are some caveats to this; you can easily affect others who are sympathetic to your energy or otherwise under directed or undirected in their actions. You cannot control the directed will of others. If you attempt to do so you will only affect those close to your target to whom your target is sympathetic. That will interfere with those actions being taken toward you but only as long as the distraction continues.

You have complete control over how you respond to any event in your life. You should never take control over any other life. Be the best "you" that can exist.