One of the strange things I got into during my last retreat at the beach for the first 17 days in February was karma magick.

I had had some conversations about karma with a guy named Logan who is big into resolving karmic complexity, have been studying Chaos magick over the years in general, then listened to The Intention Experiment, which described a study that randomized sick patients to two groups, one of which was prayed for and one of which wasn't, with the twist that the sick patients had been sick some years in the past, and they still found a statistically significant difference in outcomes between those prayed for and those not. Anyway, make of that what you will. Then, I had a discussion about Lazaris (the modern spiritual teacher, not the guy from the Bible), who conceived of the Future creating the Present against a backdrop of the Past.

Then, while contemplating karma during my meditation retreat, which had heavy magickal influences and overtones, I suddenly decided to do some very strange temporal magick, except that it would be temporal magick that asked for the current outcome, thus dodging the thorny problem of creating some divergence in the time-stream.

Specifically, I started with the fact that this life has so far ended up going very well, at least at this point, knock on wood...

Given that, as some past life experiences I had in 2003, it would seem that this life presented a remarkable opportunity to generate good karma by service and meditation practice to counterbalance what happened in some of those lives, particularly the past one. In this very magickal way of conceiving of karma and causality, I sent a pulse of magickal energy back to the moment of my death in the last life to direct the rebirth to this one.

Even more magickally strange, and drawing on the multiple worlds theory, and presuming that there must be some quantum entanglement between each of the divergent possible lives that could have resulted from that bardo junction point, it is easy to imagine the collective resulting lives joining together to perceive the most optimal of all the possible outcomes, judging this life to be it, and so choosing this one as the one that would be represented in this consciousness.

So, this turns the typical sense of regret or disappointment that many might have for their lives on its head, making this life the chosen life by magickal means having reviewed all possibilities and determining that this was the best possible rebirth and lifestream to go down. This makes regret feel instead like a great relief that all the worse outcomes didn't occur, thus causing a great surge of relief and gratitude.

Further, by choosing a life that involved the opportunity for generating good karma and then using that good karma to retroactively and magically make that chosen life the one that occurred, it is hard to find the sort of paradoxes that arise in temporal magick, as I asked for exactly what occurred.

In that same vein, my current vantage point is vastly more sane, stable, emotionally balanced, and clear than most previous versions of me, particularly if I reach back to my childhood. I was lucky in my childhood in numerous ways, but, like nearly all childhoods, it was not all roses and puppies. It was a childhood that had the potential to go horribly wrong at a few critical junction points but somehow didn't.

On this retreat, after deciding to choose this rebirth, I decided to go back to some earlier points of difficulty and send strength, wisdom, fortitude, good judgement, endurance, perseverence and luck to some of the more key critical junction points that lead to this current outcome, thus making situations that at the time seemed like partial tragedies and trials into options that were vastly better than they might have been as a result of the magick sent back from this future time.

It is hard to explain the beneficial psychological effects of having done this. It feels like something was profoundly cleared out, lightened, eased, and made a source of joy rather than pain, like numerous bullets were doged, like numerous traps were avoided, like numerous pivotal junctures were guided in the right direction, that direction that lead to right now, and a now whose capabilities allowed those good outcomes to occur.

Anyway, might be worth playing with this sort of strange magick that asks for things to have gone exactly as they went and to end up precisely as they are and to delight in that outcome and ongoing causal stream.

Hey Daniel

I am a lot into research based magick-evidence lately and I am highly interested into the research paper you mention. Could you forward me the name or doi of the paper? 

Have you came across of the material of Israel Regardie? What do you think of his approaches e.g. the “One Year Manual“? 

DenDen

Hey, as I can't remember where the study was in The Intention Experiment, and I only have the audiobook and not a print version, it might be best to buy a copy and read it for the reference.

I am totally unfamilar with the IR material you mention. What is it about and where would one find it?

Very interesting, thank you.  I thought of "Journey of Souls" which I haven't read but have heard described by friends who were very into it. Might be worth checking out if you haven't.  Apparently it talks about an atemporal perspective on reincarnation - in which the soul is living multiple lives in multiple times (or worlds?) simultaneously.

Edit:  and it is based on actual research done by a hypnotist.  I have no idea how valid the research is though.

So, thinking about this post.... in relative terms, isn't prayer magick? Concentration + Intention = Magick. 

Granted, many/most people who pray have little or at least much much less concentration or clarity as a practiced jhanni, but still when it comes down to sick loved one and really strong intention, it seems like little mystery that medical outcomes may be effected by prayer, no stranger than any other magick  you have expressed experiencing?

in the same relative terms, is your temporal magick any different than deep heartfelt gratitude and acceptance of the life you have had the opportunity to live and the doors and opportunities it has opened to you, for which there is an abundance to be grateful for and by accepting your past without desiring to affect it, much of the past pain is temporally healed or assuaged. Especially given your current position in which dukkha doesn't cling or the mind doesn't cling to the dukkha.

all of that said. It sounds wonderful, I should be meditating right now to develop more clear concentration. On the topic of past lives / Bardo / current lives. Check out the account in this link. It's a prebirth experience that really speaks to the process of choosing which karma we're going to have the opportunity to work out in a given life

http://www.oberf.org/shelly_p_prebirth.htm

IR used to be a student of Aleister Crowley and was later a psychotherapist with a Ph.D.
His work is basically about a mixed western (christian) approache for the spiritul path but much of what he writes sounds pretty similar to buddhist ideas. The book or manual that I refere to can be found here: https://de.scribd.com/book/148609505/The-One-Year-Manual-Twelve-Steps-to-Spiritual-Enlightenment

I know the title sounds kinda cheesy, Israel acctually admits in the forwords that he didn't like the title himself but the editors did. Anyways, it is a very compressed practice manual covering anything from relaxation, breathing, middle pillar exercise to devotion to god practices. 

I found the book to be very well written and really interesting to read - lot's of great information. 
Would be great to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, I have and have gone through most of IR's The Golden Dawn as part of some work I was doing in 1999-2001 or so, haven't looked at it much since. What about it makes you think of his work in this context specifically? The problem with my reading list is that it has grown to encompass an entire 3-foot-long shelf and is filled with dense texts that will likely take me a few years to get through if I am lucky. Summary of interest?

Prayer=Magick: yes.

Daniel

howdy daniel,
seriously interesting tangent, take and results.

i posted a while back about having re-read some of the "Seth Material", a channel type series of books from the early '70s.

one of the recurring themes mentioned is that the multiple lives / reincarnation / karma theories of life are valid but not how we, in our limited, 3D materially focused life can understand it. it is given more precision by positing that time is not a fundamental feature of reality but an ordering process which we use to lend a sense of order to reality via our extremely limited rational conciousness.

your mention of the quantum mechanical term "entanglement" is interesting as is the concept itself.  so much of the results of quantum theory are baffeling to us.  i posit this is precisely because we are trapped in the "platform problem" of having to parse and express all of our experience through our concious rational minds which are forced to time delimit everything.

that's probably incomprehensible but nevertheless I think your experiment is a highly valuable method to integrate possible contemporaneous past, current and future life experiences to mutually reiniforce and improve "all" of them.

your evidence would be improved well being in this current focus; which you have.

QED  ;-)

post edit:  Oh yeah..another interesting part of the Seth theses is that nothing is permanent, fixed and complete.  this leaves the door open for constant updating, revision, improvement, perfection of everything , all of the time.  i think this ties in nicely with your experiment.

cheers

howdy noah,
i've read those books.

they are written by a hypnotherapist / psychologist who does hypnotic regression on his patients.  he brings them bak to "past lives" and in some cases the "life between lives" and listens to their descriptions and forms his own theories based on those "reports".

its pretty thought provoking material and a very optimistic take on life and death and dying but it is in direct conflict with so many other theories that its tough for me to find ultimate credibility in it.

so much of the reports' results are filtered through the hypnotists' own experience and editing that its tough to parse the report from the reporter.

a worthwhile read though.  i like 'lives between lives' best.

Thanks Tom!

Okay I take back my earlier comment, probably not worth adding Journey of Souls to the reading list.

That’s interesting Daniel. I like that a lot.

Just recently, I was playing with something similar, inspired by Noah’s discussion of the “examplar tantra” or "perfect parent" meditation.

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5715677#_19_message_6020070

I went back to all the major junction points in my life, the really crappy and painful and difficult parts of my life, the failures of character, and explored to what extent I was “protected” during those times.

What is interesting is that every fork in the road could have gone much, much worse – which is obvious when you look at it, basically a truism, but sometimes that’s hard to see that when we have more of a victim mentality and overly focus on what could have been better.

Then I traced all of those paths and lessons learned to my current abilities and wisdom and saw how all of these situations were a kind of purification and wisdom-creating event. And it is clear to me that my selfish and narrow-minded “me” in the past could never have gotten to where I am now without those hard, karmic lessons.

Looking at the past like this has a kind of atemporal/tautological feeling to it -- much like “victim mentality” does -- but it seems much less claustrophobic. However, it’s clear that “you were/are protected” could be taken as another extreme view.

So the middle path seems to be an attitude that’s much more accepting that “I am the heir to my karma”, yet also to see it as “workable” or maybe “evolvable”… and not to begrudge tough situations quite so much.

A lot of the medieval magic that has influenced the western mystery tradition is basicly catholic heterodoxy where you go like "Jesus Christ make the demon NN appear before me" and tell the entity to obey you, threatening it in the name of the trinity. So yes prayer is traditionally a huge part of magic.