Witchvox Article

Author: Blaze Phoenix
Posted: July 8th. 2007
Times Viewed: 2,058

How does a Witch decide what he believes?

I have long been on the problem of discerning the actual Truth, by which I mean to say, that which is at the core of a matter, person, spirit, legend, God, or any other representation of the Source, (the originating causative) in this world of personal experience. It is ever thus that I find myself stuck between a yes and a no, because arguments can be made for so many cases.

Any postulation must, of necessity, come from our own personal experience, and thus will have certain commonalities with the actual Truth. The absence of this property is called madness in the common vernacular. However, to the madman who deludes himself that the entire world be covered every inch in demons of all sorts, your lack of terror is itself madness.

To restate, the perspective of the postulant is both influenced by and different from the Truth.

I believe that I may have stumbled onto a process, if you will, for moving towards a greater singularity of perspective with Truth. By processing a postulation in a specific, consistent manner on a regular basis, recording and comparing results, and reprocessing the comparative results received one may arrive at a greater sympathy of perspective so significant to the Seeker after Truth.

Bearing in mind that this is by no means a set formula for rote, but a means of considering mystical ideas and arriving at useful rungs in a long ladder of understanding, I present it to you.

First, one must divest himself of as many unnecessary perceptions as possible, and from amongst the wheat that has been violently separated from the chaff, find by trial and error the kernel of Truth. Upon lifting a kernel up for examination, one may have such a postulation, as "Truth is determinable." One then begins to consider its fractal presumptions and ramifications.

First, the Seeker asks of the kernel, "Who were your assumptive forbears?" and, if he finds no fault in the parents, asks after the progeny. Of course, this process must be repeated on the whole lineage before a status of affirmation ought to be levied, but there are certain expediencies of non-infinity.

Therefore, once the Seeker has satisfied himself to the best of his judgment as to relative authenticity, but never establishing dogma, compares it to other such postulations. Many a time these "affirmed postulations" will seem contradictory, or breed contention amongst their united progeny.

There are two possible answers to this confoundity: one that there was a flaw in the Seeker's application of this Divine Logic, and he affirmed something falsely; the other that he has actually reached the pinnacle of the practice, which is Paradox: one has reached a form of Truth so high that human understanding breaks down.

Within the fundaments of the process itself are many such postulations, and it would seem beneficent therefore to study them by means of the process described, so as to establish (to the best of human understanding) self-consistency.

The first postulation is that there is such a thing as Truth; and within, that of an originating causative of which the Truth is postulated to be an avatar. Another such contained is that the Truth is not the same as personal experience.

To the first, the implications of the existence of Truth are tied inextricably to the rest. If Truth, then Source. If not Truth, then what?

The Truth, if such a thing exists, must take into account not only one's personal experience of the world, but also the experiences of all mankind, past, present or future, every animal and plant, every rock, planet, star, emotion, law of nature... in short, the whole of existence. Because humans in their mayfly existence cannot even begin to fathom such complexity, one has only a piece of the Truth.

However, because one is amongst those things that the Truth must account for one does indeed have a piece, however small.

From the perspective of Truth, every individual serves some purpose to its fulfillment. Therefore, even ones most mundane actions can be seen, from his own perspective, as action or inaction with purpose. The Seekers actions will have ramifications for the rest of his fellow particles of Truth, and will in turn reverberate back to him through a changed existence.

It would be foolish to say that one should then fear action as it runs the risk of detriment, because ones sheer being has the same possibility. Furthermore, one does not have the perspective to know whether any given action or non-action is detrimental to existence at large, or only the part of the elephant he has a hand on. Sometimes one must skin ones knee to avoid a car accident.

This does not alleviate the Seeker from ethical standards. If we are to live together in a community of any kind, we must treat one another with a certain level of mutual respect, or be forced to altar the standard of behavior over-all, to re-define our social mores to the degree of barbarism.

As we have evolved through natural processes into social creatures that find our greatest strength in unity, and natural processes are amongst those things included in the Truth, it is wise to accept this role as a part of our unique human perspective on the Truth.

Additionally, anti-social behavior tends to lead to isolation and/or actual confinement, which may or may not help the Seeker on his path toward the Truth.

As to an originating causative, there is certainly support in modern physics for the theory of beginning. If there were no beginning, then one must be prepared to accept an unbroken continuity of existence (as it is understood) to infinity in both directions.

However, there is no reason to affirm that this universe is the first or even only current one in existence. Before our "big bang" was there another "big crunch" to make way for it? Mustn't the Truth also account for this?

Conversely, if this is the first such universe, before it must have been nothingness, an absence of all and thus a state of infinite possibility. This state would also have to be accounted for by Truth.

Either way, from nothingness or a former collapsed reality, there must have been some event that preceded all others. Perhaps conscious, perhaps not, perhaps beyond anything resembling human consciousness to such a degree that, were one to encounter it, one would assume it dumb, blind, perhaps even non-sentient.

There is not enough information to state anything with certainty about what the Source was, but one can know certain things about it by studying its effects: this existence.

One could draw these considerations out further, but for the sake of brevity I will assume the careful reader sees the nature of the process. It may be restated very simply after this manner: a Seeker may obtain greater sympathy of personal experience with the Truth by examining his individual assumptions regarding it and by comparing them with other such assumptions for consistency and paradox, with the understanding that the greatest teachers he will ever have are the paradoxes.

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