Pysical limits of magick

[lostnponder]

I was curious about the physical limitations of magick. I've been hearing a lot about magick bringing circumstances into your life like a job interview for example, but I rarely hear about physical changes from magick. Most would agree that magick can heal you, but where is the line? Can it make you taller for example?

[Desecrated]

It can make you appear taller. Both you and everyone else will think that you are taller. But technically, your not.

[Frumens]

There are highly realized Tibetan Buddhists who can turn their physical bodies into rainbow light and fly away to other dimensions. Anything is possible.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_body

[Haelos]

I'm not too sure about physical limits, as to what it can and cannot do, but all magick, at least on our lower planes, come with a price every time.
To quote a fantastic anime, we have "the Law of Equivalent Exchange" at work in all of our lower practices.
For instance, healing is a very simple task for most practitioners of energy work, but after healing yourself or someone else a lot in one day, you might find yourself quite exhausted and tired. I've been made to sleep for days at a time for over using my own Will.

Like someone else said, you can perform spells that would make you *appear* taller (among other things), but to biologically make your body taller may take more work than a simple illusion, *if* it's possible.
You have your own physical and mental limitations to overcome every time you do anything. Some could say spiritual limitations as well.

The magick that works best is the kind that "goes with the flow." You bring a job interview into your life, not the job itself. You have to influence events in the right way, so as to seem natural. I don't see any feasible reason or purpose to effect things on such a gross molecular scale.
...You only posed one example though, so offer some more ideas on what you mean and I may have something more to offer.

[Urscumug]

From Peter Carroll, The Octavo (Roundworld edition)

Thus we arrive at the sobering conclusion that although this universe contains enough Chaos to allow magic it doesn't contain enough to permit gross miracles in a hurry.
The magician will need to target events which depend on very small energy or entropy changes and the results won't often look much like spectacular parapsychology, they will look more like a series of events going somewhat improbably in the desired direction.

[Shinichi]

This is like asking what the physical limits of Martial Arts are. Yes, there are limits, but they depend largely on the style of craft and the individual using it. The limits of a Shaolin Monk that trains 8 hours a day or a Bagua Master that has practiced two hours every day for 60 years are much different than the limits of a 30 year old Boxer or someone who has been studying Sport Karate for two years.

Magick is the same. The limitations of some teenager that's been dabbling in Chaos Magick for a couple of years are grossly different from someone who has been training in The Craft or the Hermetic Arts every day for decades.



~:Shin:~

[Rin]

Magick is the same. The limitations of some teenager that's been dabbling in Chaos Magick for a couple of years are grossly different from someone who has been training in The Craft or the Hermetic Arts every day for decades.

This. It's all down to how hard you train and what kind of system you're training in.

From Peter Carroll, The Octavo (Roundworld edition)

I like Discworld as much as the next guy (obviously), but Carroll's books are rambling pseudoscience. I've never seen anyone stretch so little meaning out among so many words.

[palindrom]

Magick is the same. The limitations of some teenager that's been dabbling in Chaos Magick for a couple of years are grossly different from someone who has been training in The Craft or the Hermetic Arts every day for decades.

This. It's all down to how hard you train and what kind of system you're training in.

...and which kind of system would you recommend especially to go beyond your physical limits?

[Haelos]

Magick is the same. The limitations of some teenager that's been dabbling in Chaos Magick for a couple of years are grossly different from someone who has been training in The Craft or the Hermetic Arts every day for decades.

This. It's all down to how hard you train and what kind of system you're training in.

...and which kind of system would you recommend especially to go beyond your physical limits?

I wouldn't know a particular path, but I'm sure some of the more rigorous Martial Arts will have you moving in the right steps.

You do, however, have physical limits set in place by your own brain (which would count it as a mental limitation), in that, your brain protects you from doing anything too overly damaging to your body. If we didn't have this metal block in place, we'd over exert ourselves at any limit and do serious damage to our physical bodies.
ie. Go to open a pickle jar and instead you shatter it, along with tearing the ligaments in your hands.
Some limitations are important.

[Shinichi]

...and which kind of system would you recommend especially to go beyond your physical limits?

There are some physical limits that you are just going to have to accept and live with. No matter how awesome a magician you become, you are going to have to eat, drink, and breathe. No matter how high you jump, and even if you learn levitation, you will eventually come back down. No matter how long you manage to stay awake without feeling fatigue, eventually you will have to sleep or practice deep meditation for the same amount of time you would have slept, to rest and nourish the body.

You are mortal. Your limits may grow or shrink as you as a person grow and shrink in skill and maturity, but you are mortal and you will always have limits.



~:Shin:~

[Rin]

you are going to have to eat

There are quite a few yogis out there who would disagree with you on that point :p

[Stukov]

There are highly realized Tibetan Buddhists who can turn their physical bodies into rainbow light and fly away to other dimensions. Anything is possible.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_body

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I would say the key word missing here is "if", if they can do that. While "anything is possible" the likelihood of physical changes through non-physical means is one of low possibility, at least in direct correlation. Direct changes to the physical world are best done, through the physical world. If you want to change yourself or the world around you, your own physical effort will always be the most significant way to do that.

With that said, there are things you could do in the non-physical way that could augment or enhance your physical endeavors. Many non-physical paradigms require concentration, focus, and determination. Not only do these skills transition between the physical and non-physical easily, but say you set yourself a goal of where you want to be in life. You can't simply follow one of the non-physical paradigms and likely succeed. Might you? Yes, anything is "possible", but if you not only work hard in the physical realm, but also work hard in the non-physical the statistical likelihood of success can increase. The physical will make changes directly, and the non-physical indirectly. In my experiences when you open up to the non-physical you become more keenly aware of the eb and flow of the mechanics of the physical world. The cause and effect of the physical, but not just the instant drop a glass of water and it breaks, but all the little things that lead up to that moment. How much you was distracted from a conversation at work. The placement of the glass because a phone call you received at a certain time. How fast you got home from work and got caught behind in a traffic light. And so on. These things all add up to the moment you drop the glass of water on the floor, not just the final cause-effect.

The non-physical can help through a variety of ways nudging all those events in minor ways to cause major change by the end, but it can't do it all on its own if you are working against yourself in the physical. Finally the biggest change from the non-physical is your increase of knowledge about yourself (probably the most important) and the people and world around you. Self-awarness or increased self-awareness is something beneficial no matter the paradigm or belief system (unless a cult/religion that functions on ignorance and enslavement). Sometimes gains are hard to quantify in the non-physical because the changes in your life that you seek are only attainable by YOU being changed. Prepare for some hard lessons if that is the case, most resist.

[Shinichi]

you are going to have to eat

There are quite a few yogis out there who would disagree with you on that point :p

If you use your Life Force a certain way you can fast for a really long time, but even there you will need to take in minscule amounts of nutrients here and there. Herbal thingies are most common during training like this, but it is still necessary for most of us, and long fasting is something that I have done. There are probably less than a dozen or two living human mortals in the entire world that have cultivated true Haadi Vidya and do not have to eat. And those people are usually very old, very high adepts who have mastered other ways of providing nourishment to the body, and now have to practice those other ways regularly or else they will have to eat again in order to provide that same nourishment.

Everything is like that. There are adepts who seem to never sleep, but they are doing deep meditation instead that gives the body the same level of rest. There are adepts who eat so little that a nutritionist will wonder how they are alive, but they are doing high level life force exercises that give the body the same level of fuel.

It's not that these things really surpass "human limits." You're just swapping out one necessary lifestyle habit for another. Unless you find a way to become immortal, you will always be bound by one mortal chain or another.



~:Shin:~

[palindrom]

...actually, i'm fine with having to eat, i love eating : D

it would be great if i could lower the amount of hours i have to sleep though - more time for studying [yay] no, seriously, i sometimes think to just have four hours more a day to read all the fascinating books and learn languages and practice imagination and so on would just be great.
it's just a few times so far that i woke after four hours of sleep, completely rested, and i hope to experience this more often in the future...

nevertheless, as shinichi wrote, as a human i'll probably always be human, even if i stretch the boundaries as far as possible. which i think is a very interesting project.

...where was it that i just read that humans are this interesting kind of cross-species, not purely elemental and not purely spiritual, but both?*
to take this challenge and live it to the fullest seems to me to be a good description of going to the limits of human magic.

* don't remember where i read it, pity... i think it's in apu kuntur's "der flug des kondors" (the flight of the condor), or else its nick farrell writing it in "magical imagination".

[Rin]

you are going to have to eat

There are quite a few yogis out there who would disagree with you on that point :p

If you use your Life Force a certain way you can fast for a really long time, but even there you will need to take in minscule amounts of nutrients here and there. Herbal thingies are most common during training like this, but it is still necessary for most of us, and long fasting is something that I have done. There are probably less than a dozen or two living human mortals in the entire world that have cultivated true Haadi Vidya and do not have to eat. And those people are usually very old, very high adepts who have mastered other ways of providing nourishment to the body, and now have to practice those other ways regularly or else they will have to eat again in order to provide that same nourishment.

Everything is like that. There are adepts who seem to never sleep, but they are doing deep meditation instead that gives the body the same level of rest. There are adepts who eat so little that a nutritionist will wonder how they are alive, but they are doing high level life force exercises that give the body the same level of fuel.

It's not that these things really surpass "human limits." You're just swapping out one necessary lifestyle habit for another. Unless you find a way to become immortal, you will always be bound by one mortal chain or another.



~:Shin:~

Of course, I was just pointing out that there are alternative ways to attain those various forms of nourishment. Personally I don't see the appeal - if it happened as a side effect of other practices, fine, but to me it doesn't make much sense spending a good part of your practice just compensating for not having to take in physical food. Of course there could be a purifying aspect to it, I'm not certain, I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of Hindu yoga is fairly weak.