Thread: From Positive Thinking to Witchery: The Line is Where?

Where is the line between positive thinking at the one end and praying to the sky and invoking spirits at the other?

I would say it's around the area of lucid dreaming and making physical representations of desires.

Is that about right, d'ya think? Or is it just a case of any mental focus helping short of selling your soul?

Architects make models of buildings they intend to erect. Freemasonry/esoteric teaching seems irrelevant;

An up-and-coming actor pastes a photo of their head onto another photo so as to put her face next to the star of the show she wants to get a part in. She sees herself next to the star. She imagines herself on set with the crew. She talks to her photo friend. Wins the audition, gets fame. This sounds more like witchery. But isn't it almost exactly what architects do?

Is Tom Cruise a nutcase for believing in Scientology? Or is it that belief in SOMETHING gives structure and direction? Or could it even be that PRETENSE of belief is enough to cause a positive result?

Is there a line at all? Is it more or less all the same thing?

Originally Posted by Oscar K

Is Tom Cruise a nutcase for believing in Scientology?

Total.

Or is it that belief in SOMETHING gives structure and direction?

A belief in belief is what afflicts many people.

Or could it even be that PRETENSE of belief is enough to cause a positive result?

Is a negative result dismissed?

Is a negative result dismissed?

No, that possibility would be balanced against the expected positive result.

"Become a Freemason and we'll help you stop drinking and enhance your career prospects", might be the offer. "But you'll need to do some rituals and worship Lucifer and if you tell anyone we'll kill you". So you pretend to worship Lucifer and risk death but the drinking and recent job loss will kill you anyway.

If Tom Cruise is a nutcase then is Travolta one too? He seems pretty normal.

Cruise is arrogant, self-centered, ambitious, excitable, closeted, and maybe a tiny bit mad. But some people put it on. He is an actor, after all. Do you seriously entertain the idea that scientology 'got a hold on him'? Or that it's definitely a case of a looney doing looney things? Or could it just be expedient?