ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Awesome, dude, really, as in the bona-fied, pre- "Bill & Ted", pre-ironic, 
uncorrupted, original and virginal defintion of "Awesome". 

        Monte Davis:

        It's important to understand that 
        every bit of special relativity can be
        expressed purely in terms of what 
        happens to clocks and meter sticks, 
        with no one along for the ride. Every 
        bit of quantum mechanics can be expressed
        as instrument readings. Every time they 
        have been tested, they've come through with 
        quantitative precision -- in the case of 
        quantum electrodynamics, to twelve 
        decimal places. Their weird phenomena 
        "really happen" in the everyday sense that 
        they can be replicated anywhere, any
        time, by anyone (whether skeptical or 
        credulous, Grand Cohen or bored
        undergraduate following a lab manual), 
        recorded and played back, etc. This
        is as far as can be from Magick, in 
        which the cool stuff always seems to
        depend on a properly enlightened 
        practitioner with the right attitude,
        operating at midnight in the dark of 
        the moon with just the right kind of
        candles burning... and, of course, 
        no skeptics around to interfere with
        the vibrational aura... 

Now, I ain't coming directly from personal experience right here (I've tended to 
get involved with the "set and setting" type of crowd, more distaff than 
left-handed, real old-fashioned types, you find a lot in Oakland and the 
remaining redroods around Garberville and Northwards and sure enough there's 
Magick going 'round, but it veers towards the "Magic Theater" class of action, 
intended for local spiritual consumption, true conservation and other forms of 
entertainment more than "the shit that works" actions like what Geli Tripping 
[one of my all-time favorite Witches] was working with, though every now and 
then. . . .) but I've had more than my fair share of personal interaction with 
O.T.O. types (gotta be T.W.I.T.S., just gotta be) and their matching literature 
as to suggest that there was some drug-addled vision in Weird Uncle Al's 
occipital lobes that displayed  his Magickal System as correlate to Quantum 
Physics. From the "Book of Thoth": "Unimportant to the present purpose 
are tradition and authority. Einstein's Theory of Relativity does not rest on 
the fact that, when his theory was put to the test, it was confirmed. The only 
theory of ultimate interest about the Tarot is that it is an admirable symbolic 
picture of the Universe, based on the data of the Holy Qabalah." Whether their 
actions be thought Holy or Foul'ly, a certain leap of faith and an overabundance 
of mental energy are required for practioners of that particular "Great Work". I 
suspect a little background check might be in Order for the Grand Cohen.


        Yes, at their outer reaches relativity 
        and quantum mechanics *do* raise
        fascinating questions about consciousness -- 
        how could it be otherwise when they 
        challenge our Kantian categories, the very 
        deeply ingrained conceptionsof space, time, 
        and causality? But it takes a lot of humility 
        and care to open the mind that far without 
        your brains falling out.

        There's a remark that comes up occasionally
        in fundamental physics (I don't know the 
        original form or the source): 

        We're trying to understand extravagantly large 
        and small, rapid and slow, far-away and 
        long-ago phenomena with nervous systems and 
        language that evolved to locate the ripe fruit and 
        chase the hyenas away from the freshest
        carrion.

        So patience and caution are indicated.   

That's really brilliant and true.