#like I've predicted the dates of deaths y'all

[tehjmastuh-rants-101]

So, this blog is not a RANT against God in anyway, this is strictly purposed for the wrong ppl who over thinks the bible and who God is. Needless to say, as a fellow Christian myself, this is a post to them. I will NOT ever step foot inside a church or attend another service. Everyone can say all they want that I keep attending the wrong churches. All of them are about the same. Here's why I won't attend. I am not trying to go to church to hear preachers talk about politics, and telling us that we are all going to die. There's a fine line between being a conspiracy theory cult activist, and actually praising his name for everyone every Sunday morning. If you are not going to talk about other things, help people who are in desperate need and set goals and help them, even they do offend God sometimes by cursing or going against your disbelief's rather it's in the bible or not, then maybe you should re think your church's attributes are on the common problem with other churches.

Preachers - They have a job. The job is to preach his name and teach those how to pray and to help people welcome God into their life’s. The shady thing I've heard about most churches. Not all of them. The preachers are predators, and they cheat on their wives and other B.S. I wish I could believe it, but i don't know. However, it's really messed up for people to even say that about any preacher because I don't believe it would be in their nature to do so. In my defense, they would really have to have something mentally wrong to be doing it.

Jehovah's witness. - They are the most annoying people that the churches ever hired voluntarily to go door to door and bang on my neighbor’s door just to shove the bible down their throats by telling them that if they don't stop sinning, they’re going to hell. And I applaud every one of those ppl who slams the door on them. Needless to say, I can't stand a bible beater. And I am talking about strict Christians who think that they are capable of damning people and crucifying them for not attending their church when we really all know that there is only one man who's allowed to that. That's God! Let's face it, nobody's perfect. I'll be damned myself if I am too. Prayers are unlimited, God's forgiveness is unlimited. His biggest sin is your denial in your life. I am proud that I have God in my life. You may persecute me all you want because I don't praise his name enough. But I don't need to do it all the time. I can't always rely on God for everything like Most y'all can. Like they say in the movie “Bruce almighty”, “It's everyone’s problem but you keep looking up”. In my opinion, the only thing God can really do is Judge your life when you're on your death bed or when you're sleeping at night. Tomorrow is never promised, and your death date isn't on the calendar.

Don't let horoscopes, palm readers, or fortune tellers predict your future to you. Because I believe that it's the devil doing their work for you. I never cared for stuff like that, Same with hypnotism. Any demon needs to be properly dealt with. Thanks for reading this rant all the way through, and I do challenge anyone to tell me that what I am saying about God is wrong. But we all have our own beliefs because even the atheists will be more than glad to tell you that you are. And I am NOT an atheist. RANT OVER!!

[hillbillyoracle]

How Magic Works and Why It’s Important

I realized recently that some people may not understand the main underpinnings of how magic works across different paradigms. The psychological model is so widespread that much of Witchblr seems to think that it is the basis of all magic which brings them into conflict with folks who are working in fundamentally different systems. When the psychological model is taken as the only model, it leads to folks being disrespectful and then reactive when they're told as much. I really hate to keep seeing it happen like this so in an effort smooth out the dialog a little, I thought I'd let people know the lay of the land a little so people know what they're walking into.

Psychological Model

The psychological model posits that magic works by changing our inner world. Some people go so far as to call it a placebo effect. To be clear, this isn't to say that people who hold to a psychological model of magic believe it isn't real necessarily. It's more that that they tend to see the reality of magic is primarily cognitive.

This is quite a bit of mainstream Witchblr. It's also one of the most recent and modern and isn't rooted in many long standing traditions as far as I can tell. Spells for confidence or for self care. Astrology that's primarily focused on explaining your personality. The emphasis on intent alone as what manifests change. All of this is psychological and self oriented in nature.

Spirit Model

The spirit model is one of the oldest models I know of. There are a couple variations and I can't claim to know the finer points of them all. A lot of ceremonial and traditional witchcraft folks fall into this category. It mainly posits that magic works by getting spirits to carry out work for you.

Sometimes this is through offerings, pacts, or worship. Sometimes it's through binding. With many practices in between. Different systems often work with different spirits. Local dead, planetary spirits, angels, saints, spirits of the land - the spirit model posits that they are real and can act on the material and spiritual world.

Belief Model

The belief model posits that our belief in something makes it so. That's an oversimplification but at it's core, that's what it is.

It is distinct from the intent model. The intent model is built more on individual will that doesn't necessarily have a distinct belief accompanying it. This model also isn't psychological. People who use this model aren't saying well I believe it and it changes how I perceive things and that's how I make things work. No, this model says belief warps the fabric of the universe.

As you might have caught on, this is the basis that a lot of chaos magicians work from. Belief isn't simply a conviction in this model, gnosis is key. Gnosis is a type of single pointed concentration  or altered consciousness harnessed through various methods to essentially hack the source code of the universe. The belief model cannot be separated from the concept of gnosis in my book. It's foundational.

Why It Matters

While yes, it's definitely possible for these models to overlap and they aren't inherently incompatible, where I see so many people going sideways is when they assume everyone is working from a psychological model. This is especially bad because many folks are taking the aesthetics of magic born of the spirit or belief models and passing it off as if it is all psychological and then frustrated when those groups both point that out and say it won't work.

Sigil magic is a really good example of this. One thing I was completely stunned by when I came back to Tumblr was how many people believed that just inscribing a sigil on something would be sufficient for change. Sigils are found in both belief oriented systems and spirit oriented systems and how they work is so far beyond what is presented so often. So many writers here argue essentially "it works because I think this is how it should work" - which isn't how any other part of life works as far as I can tell and I don't know why magic would be different. This is where the idea that magic is in the mind conflicts so heavily with these other models.

This is related to the other issue I have with how wide spread the psychological model is it's aversion to proof and reproducibility which are highly valued in spirit and belief systems. I have not talked to any of people who've used sigils with the intent model successfully in a reproducible and externally verifiable way. I'm not saying they're not out there, like maybe it's possible.

But usually when I talk to folks about this, the conversation quickly devolves into validity. "But this is valid" people will say. The problem is each of these models have differing ideas of what valid is. A lot can be valid under the psychological model. But much less is valid in the other models. A wide scope of validity is great at making people feel better about themselves which makes sense for a model so focused on the self as the beginning and end of magic. But a narrow scope is much more effective for folks looking to reliably enact change in the physical world.

And this is such a difficult line to tread because so many people hear that and get defensive. This is where shadow work needs to come into play. People need to really be honest about what they're doing and where they fall in these groups. What are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want? How do you know your spells are working? What role does your ego/narrating self play into your perception of what's possible with magic?

Since I talk a lot about shadow work on this blog, let me leave you with this question in particular. Are you lowering your expectations of what's possible in magic to support your narrative that you are doing magic? I'm not shaming anyone with this. I absolutely was at one point in my life. And that was even after having direct experiences with possession and remote viewing. I lowered my expectation because I wanted to feel like I was good enough. I was good enough as a person, but that didn't make my magic effective. And I could hold both those truths at the same time. I really encourage folks to see what happens in their practice when they explore the same.

Know your model. Know the others. Focus on your craft and your aims.

That's what I try to do anyways.

[doubleddenden]

I've done it. I've 100%ed affection for everyone, even the GGO side story characters. I won't spoil much for anyone watching or playing the game, but there's an interesting bit of background for Pitohui and she's my easy favorite of the four new people now.

Below will be kind of spoilers relating to the game. Some rants, as usual, but surprisingly some raves.

I fought a bullshit boss with a party of all healers now that I don't have to worry about affection. It was SO bullshit because this one boss is already a nightmare by himself, but then they throw in a mini boss when you get his health down low enough. TRY not to die from that, while the other guy is killing you, then kick his ass and- oh look! Two more of the same mini bosses to help him at the same time! I SCREAMED so much I was so mad because I beat the main guy, then his minibosses took me out and I had to redo the entire thing. Luckily I glitched out his last segment the last time and didn't have to fight those guys. The next... idk, 3 or 4 bosses? Definitely not as tough. Even the Flugel guy was child's play compared to it.

Then the story starts taking all sorts of weird turns. Good weird. I'm definitely intrigued by Itsuki because I had been convinced he was Death Gun, but it can't be if he's never been in SAO. Still, he pulled something that I WISH I could have my character either say something about or punch him or something. Then he created drama within the harem and suddenly I'm down 3 party members. I'm glad romancing isn't an option now because Kureha just... that was such a childish move. It's human! Don't get me wrong, but I definitely don't feel guilty if I had to choose Zeliska over her.

Speaking of romance, you know what's weird? Out of the mc's dateable friends (9 last I counted), 4 outright essentially admit their feelings for them. I don't count Zeliska because she's more of the flirty type. I barely count Strea because I'm very sure she loves everyone, and Rei may or may not mean she loves you in the platonic way. However Premier straight up describes her feelings (to which our stupid protagonist doesn't understand) and Rain literally tells him "I love you!" several times. Like in the message subject, twice in the message itself, kind of indirectly with her song to them, like god damn get on her level, y'all. It's a shame we can't really do much beyond the bed scenes, same with Philia.

However I will still be forever miffed at not being able to romance Lizbeth or some of the others. Yuki I'm pretty sure kind of hints to some crush, but you can't go beyond that. Not to mention with how much everyone says you're a lot like Kirito, I would have thought that either Silica, Lizbeth, or at the very least Leafa would hop on that train. Like come on Leafa, this is exactly what you thought you had in the Fairy Dance Arc before things got double incesty.

Not like it really matters anyway since all of this is just typical harem shenanigans and the mc, despite being us and a custom character we imprint onto, plays his role as a harem protagonist to a T. There's "romance" in the sense that people get all flustered over you and can go on dates, but nothing committal or even anything that affects the story other than what's required for the true end. It's sad but I'm already predicting that the next game (probably based on Ordinal Scale) will either do away with this guy or pretend it never happened if Dimps somehow DBXV2's this.

Anyway, the side stuff for the characters has been challenging to get but mostly good, especially Agil and Klein's side stuff. However it's so good to finally be back in the story and things are getting a lot more dark in tone now that happy friendship time is finally over. I'm calling it now, Itsuki is going to try and pull a Kayaba in GGO.

But that'll have to wait for Kirito mode. I really hated the gun and sword but I guess we do what we gotta do. I sincerely hope that my character isn't just pushed to the side for Kirito and Sinon's spotlight, but at the very least it is my favorite arc of SAO so I'll give it that. Apparently I have to look for an item anyway to get the true end so hopefully that won't be a hassle.

So far I'm giving the overall experience a 6.5. That could change depending on the story and where it goes from here. However as great as the graphics and gameplay are for me, I'm starting to hit lag and game crashes. It probably runs better on the PS4 PRO verses my regular, but that's still saddening for me. However the saving grace is the oc and the newer characters, and basically getting to pretend you're a pimp for a few hours before realizing Bazalt Joe will never return your feelings.

I am very tempted to lift elements of GGO and my character, Ten, and create my own story. I already have an idea for it too that combines elements of .hack gu and SAO/GGO with a bit of other bullshit sprinkled in. That way Ten can be as cool as I want him to be and not at all be under the false choice persona the game gives you.

Blogging over.