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I'm a Wizard! Ask Me Anything

GenesisNemesis said:
Jarhyn said:
You can demonstrate to.yourself if you want that you can find no magic, no wonder and awe from the act of understanding; that you possess no arcane and useful knowledge to reshape the world around you.
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Are you trying to claim that without belief in magic I'm incapable of finding wonder and awe in things? Again, seems awfully similar to religious arguments.
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I'm saying that finding wonder and awe in things, and taking that wonder and awe as a nucleation point for interest and understanding that enables the ability to do useful work IS magic. If you don't want anything to be magical for yourself, that sounds more like a personal problem to me.

I don't "believe in" magic. I experience a thing and I call that thing "magic". There is no doubt that the things I experience are real. There is only the petty No True Scotsman of "That's Not Magic," as far as I can see here. You can feel free to define magic out of existence with words like "technology", even as you forget that you would probably be hard pressed to describe even a small part of how that magic wand that changes the channel on the distance viewer works. Which isn't to say it doesn't use a real, understandable set of physical relationships. But commanding the "secrets of the universe" to the ends of doing useful work was always what magic has been sold as.

Why don't you try asking something more interesting? You are so focused in your belief that I cannot possibly be what I claim while you aren't even asking what it is I claim to be.
 
Jarhyn said:
Politesse said:
I think you and I probably have similar approaches to the craft, albeit phrased and contextualized a bit differently. I do definitely feel that Magick is contingent on Will, and if someone is unwilling to work for their goals in the pragmatic sense, then they are obviously confused about what they truly will. Ergo, their workings are meaningless.

How did you get into lapidary? Are you a rockhound? I always liked watching the machines at work (my dad is a geologist, we went to a lot of rock shows) but I never learned the craft myself.

Have you read any of the works of the Gnostic hermeticists?
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As to lapidary, I still have to take the first step on that journey. My reasons, however, owe to the fact that I spend maybe 1000 bucks a year on sapphire ore from the Phillipsburg alluvial deposit, and want to have direct personal control over how the stones are cut, without comments from the peanut gallery that the way I have done it is somehow "wrong" because my goals are not for settable gemstones but rather to speak to the original form of the rough stones. I have no doubt that traditionally cut, many would be quite pretty. But they would be the same boring, magickless prettiness that any other stone has rather than creating a unique collection of things worthy of being held and appreciated for their unique properties and flaws.

As to will, yes, I think you're quite spot on there. Any task requires motive, means, and opportunity. I think distilled to it's core, being a skilled wizard comes down to maximizing your means contextually to your will, while being realistic about what opportunities exist, and then being patient and observant for the opportunity. It all starts with that goal oriented direction of will, though, as you say.
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Wow! Best of luck picking up the practice then. Don't start working on your baby until you have a fair amount of experience, but I think it's cool that you're committed to cutting it yourself. If you think about it, it makes the result a relationship between you and the stone rather than between you and a vendor.
 
Politesse said:
Jarhyn said:
Politesse said:
I think you and I probably have similar approaches to the craft, albeit phrased and contextualized a bit differently. I do definitely feel that Magick is contingent on Will, and if someone is unwilling to work for their goals in the pragmatic sense, then they are obviously confused about what they truly will. Ergo, their workings are meaningless.

How did you get into lapidary? Are you a rockhound? I always liked watching the machines at work (my dad is a geologist, we went to a lot of rock shows) but I never learned the craft myself.

Have you read any of the works of the Gnostic hermeticists?
Click to expand...

As to lapidary, I still have to take the first step on that journey. My reasons, however, owe to the fact that I spend maybe 1000 bucks a year on sapphire ore from the Phillipsburg alluvial deposit, and want to have direct personal control over how the stones are cut, without comments from the peanut gallery that the way I have done it is somehow "wrong" because my goals are not for settable gemstones but rather to speak to the original form of the rough stones. I have no doubt that traditionally cut, many would be quite pretty. But they would be the same boring, magickless prettiness that any other stone has rather than creating a unique collection of things worthy of being held and appreciated for their unique properties and flaws.

As to will, yes, I think you're quite spot on there. Any task requires motive, means, and opportunity. I think distilled to it's core, being a skilled wizard comes down to maximizing your means contextually to your will, while being realistic about what opportunities exist, and then being patient and observant for the opportunity. It all starts with that goal oriented direction of will, though, as you say.
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Wow! Best of luck picking up the practice then. Don't start working on your baby until you have a fair amount of experience, but I think it's cool that you're committed to cutting it yourself. If you think about it, it makes the result a relationship between you and the stone rather than between you and a vendor.
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Which is, I think, one of my primary reasons for wanting to do so. I want interesting curiousities, and this is the only way I believe I can get them. At any rate, I have like 200+ carats if stones to practice on, and they're all sapphires so they are going to cut slow and hard, regardless.
 
ideologyhunter said:
Can God load up a fart so vast that He Himself cannot suppress it? (This has long been the chief obstacle to achieving faith, for me.)
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Your question seems a little begged. Show me a god please? Let me prod it and poke it, and determine the nature and shape of the engine by which it exists in a way that may "fart" or "suppress" said "fart".

I've never seen a god, though I have seen a universe. Interestingly, while there are relationships written into the universe which work for us, and which suggest ways which we can work together to achieve goals more readily, none of those functional relationships speak in any way as to delineate what may be accomplished from a super-universal context by any entities, creator or no.

Let's ask a better question: can a programmer use a debug console to generate a contradiction in a program that leads to undefined or unresolved behavior? Most certainly, that is possible to do. Usually it results in crashing the whole program, corrupting the stack, or some other form of Bad Behavior.

Also interesting is considering it knowing that there are two contexts, one in which the answer is "yes" and the other "no". Because the universe of the program ends at the attempt without resolution, so within the context of the simulation, no, it can't be done; inside observers will be fundamentally incapable of observing it because "it" ends the universe before it could be observed, the nonsense fails to resolve, and the universe ends rather than generating an answer. From the perspective of the wrapping environment, the user absolutely did the thing, though. So it depends on which context you are bound to, as well.
 
Which wizarding school did you attend. And are you aware the Geico Gecko is a lizard who eats wizard gizzards?

Eldarion Lathria
 
Eldarion Lathria said:
Which wizarding school did you attend. And are you aware the Geico Gecko is a lizard who eats wizard gizzards?

Eldarion Lathria
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I went to a few schools, though the one where I did my degree work for the most part was all at the University big Wisconsin at River Falls.

Though to be fair a lot of it was the school of hard knocks, too.

And I will have to point out that you are not even wrong about the gecko. Rather he is an illusory construct, a servitor and image with no substance or mass created through such magicks as "computer graphics", a truly insane and twisted field of the arcane arts frought with peril, calculus, and linear algebra.

Generally, wielding such magics requires far darker sacrifices than mere gizzards, though I have no clue where wizard gizzards would be sourced anyway, seeing as we tend not to have gizzards in the first place.
 
WAB said:
I have two wrenches and want to give away most of them. What do I do?
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I suppose that starts with defining "most" as a return characterization when argument of your lambda function are between 0 and 2.
 
Oops.
 
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Jarhyn said:
WAB said:
I have two wrenches and want to give away most of them. What do I do?
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I suppose that starts with defining "most" as a return characterization when argument of your lambda function are between 0 and 2.
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Um...yeah but...about that lambda function thing? Well, the thing is...

Aw hell. I went and figured it out myself anyway. I decided I'll give one wrench away and just hold on to whatever's left.
 
WAB said:
Jarhyn said:
WAB said:
I have two wrenches and want to give away most of them. What do I do?
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I suppose that starts with defining "most" as a return characterization when argument of your lambda function are between 0 and 2.
Click to expand...

Um...yeah but...about that lambda function thing? Well, the thing is...

Aw hell. I went and figured it out myself anyway. I decided I'll give one wrench away and just hold on to whatever's left.
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Aw, look at you putting on your big wizard robes and figuring out what you accept as satisfying "most" when subtracting a nonzero integral quantity from a nonzero positive number less than 3!

I'm so proud of you!
 
Can we parse this a bit further? Are you a wizard and necromancer, or is necromancer the same thing?

Also, between wizards, necromancers, kahunas, warlocks, druids, muftis, swamis, gurus, and shamans (shamen?? eh?), who gets the best pay, perks, catered lunches, frequent flier miles, etc., etc.?

Do you have a wizard hat and if so, is it traffic cone shaped?

Does your mom know you're a wizard?
 
ideologyhunter said:
Can we parse this a bit further? Are you a wizard and necromancer, or is necromancer the same thing?

Also, between wizards, necromancers, kahunas, warlocks, druids, muftis, swamis, gurus, and shamans (shamen?? eh?), who gets the best pay, perks, catered lunches, frequent flier miles, etc., etc.?

Do you have a wizard hat and if so, is it traffic cone shaped?

Does your mom know you're a wizard?
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Good questions! I want to know the answers, too.

Also, does your girlfriend know you are a wizard? Is she also a wizard or witch or whatever? Oh, wait, do wizards actually have girlfriends??
 
Angry Floof said:
ideologyhunter said:
Can we parse this a bit further? Are you a wizard and necromancer, or is necromancer the same thing?

Also, between wizards, necromancers, kahunas, warlocks, druids, muftis, swamis, gurus, and shamans (shamen?? eh?), who gets the best pay, perks, catered lunches, frequent flier miles, etc., etc.?

Do you have a wizard hat and if so, is it traffic cone shaped?

Does your mom know you're a wizard?
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Good questions! I want to know the answers, too.

Also, does your girlfriend know you are a wizard? Is she also a wizard or witch or whatever? Oh, wait, do wizards actually have girlfriends??
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So, I'll just field these together, I guess? 2% so we'll see how far I get...

Not a necromancer. I don't even know whether necromancy is even possibly a thing, though arguably you might be able to count efforts to bring back extinct species? Though the reuse of oil for the sake of making robotics may also qualify.

I can't do any good regression comparisons on wages. I make a buck ten doing what I do, though I suppose certain shamans and witches and so forth make better money doing less, mostly lying about their magic. Arguably for most, their magic IS "lying about magic" though. YMMV.

Yes, I have a hat. It's a stetson, though, not a cone shaped hat.

Yes, my SO knows I am a wizard, though arguably my SO is a man. He is not a wizard, though he is supportive of my own wizardry. Most I expect, are not as well off.
 
As a bonus, I do in fact have a familiar. It started when I met the other half. He, like many in my life, brought a cat into the relationship. This cat is, generally, wearable as a scarf. That's how it started.

Then, I started just holding her on my shoulder, which she liked even more.

Before long, I started dancing with her occasionally. She enjoyed this very much.

But now, she insists on being up there as much as possible. She's sleeping there on my shoulders, right now. I stood up to post it, she climbed up my back, which hurt, and then she was up there. This is 90% of my night. Oh, she moved. Now:16049676816886524831582730154032.jpg
 
Hey wizard, my brother has this character in a game who's a wizard. This guy can handle three big balls in one hand and can whirl and swirl them around. Can you whirl and swirl three big balls around in one hand?
 
WAB said:
Hey wizard, my brother has this character in a game who's a wizard. This guy can handle three big balls in one hand and can whirl and swirl them around. Can you whirl and swirl three big balls around in one hand?
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Interesting that someone is ripping off Mike Motion. No, I cannot claim that I am proficient with this trick. Only goblin kings and juggler kings I'm afraid

Are you sure your friend is not a king?

Besides, in more proficient with poles. If you want to watch me do a magic trick I can make three (or more!) rods disappear (NO REFUNDS! Audiences 18+ only!)
 
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