Angels

I've talked earlier about spirit, souls and bodies, and somehow I believe in angels. How could i possibly connect that as they are more than just material creatures and still manage to exist somehow on the material plane (you can call it the "dimension" of matter).

Well, inspiration for my view on angels come from the "His Dark Materials"-trilogy by Philip Pullman.

Angels are ancient and immortal beings whose true form is composed of intelligence and feeling, since they are structures of Dust. 

Angels are creatures with a spirit, a soul and a body, but their body is an abstract something. They don't consist of material, so their form is not fixed. They appear to us as we think they should appear, we see them as we expect them to be seen.
If you think they are all sexless and winged, then they are. If you think they are all child Putti like many baroque painters imagined them to be, then they are. There are many ways to perceive angels because they are immaterial, our minds give them an appearance.
What that appearance is is not important to them, but they still need some place in the world to occupy, otherwise they would not exist.

Believing or not believing doesn't matter. If your mind cannot give they an appearance they'll be just a voice if they need to transfer a message to you, or a bright light if they need to show you something or whatever you more can imagine, as that's what limits your mind from seeing them.

Why would they need to be seen, why would they need to contact us, why do they exist?
Those are big questions we can't even answer for ourselves, but important is that they with their knowledge and their existence in this world can transfer messages from forces even greater than ours.
So why?
God knows why, and we can only guess.

There's one angel that I find interesting. This idea is not exactly from the above-mentioned trilogy, although a slightly inspired. Death.
Yes, Death too is an angel.
Maybe a bit of rephrasing is necessary: Your own death is an angel.

There are many stories about people meeting their Death. Greek mythology had Thanatos, we have the Grim Reaper (not necessary cloaked skeleton with a scythe) and there are many more personifications to be found on wikipedia and seeing most of them predicts an untimely death, sometimes even creating a "self-fulfilling prophecy" (man sees his Death-vision, runs from it and because he ran he dies/passes away/causes a lethal accident/dies of a stroke).

A few interesting examples are the Japanese "Shinigami" (very close to the western Grim Reaper they represent a horrible creature, not necessarily a skeleton (not even humanoid) and haunt people dealing with death or who are about to die), the "Doppelgänger" (an unexisting twin who is often just seen by the person he's impersonating, sometimes by more, puzzling all of them, sometimes no more but a shadow of the person), known deceased friends (calling to join them in death) and many more.

Reason for so many "visions" of death?
They are angels.
They bring the message of "You're going to die" or "Remember you're mortal" which are basically the same.
Don't get me wrong, they don't kill people, they just tend to be present at those moments. And again, they rely on the mind of the person to be perceived. Some may be accompanied constantly by their Death, others may never see it. Or they may see one after they passed away to guide them to wherever they go after this life.

I often think immortal people are in constant company of their own Death angel. These immortals would have to find a way to live with their Death, even though they can't experience it. They can hate them and try to run away from them, or they could accept them and see them as an old friend.

Speaking of immortals, there is this Dorian Grey, a guy who sold his soul for immortality and transferring his aging to a portrait of himself. In some way this portrait also could've been seen as an angel of death, as it reminds Dorian of every year that has passed without him aging and keeping every wound that was inflicted to him.
This lasted until Dorian Grey couldn't bear to look at it anymore and put a knife into the portraits heart and so killing himself.

I have no idea what I will do if I ever see my own Death. Now I think I could live with it, but I'm afraid that may not be the case when the moment actually comes. Anyways, I'll write some more until that moment comes, so I'll see you next time.

-ThOR

Magical additions

After posting my previous post on this matter I remembered I forgot some things.

For example the wands/staffs many link to magicians.

In my opinion I think they don't hold any real power by themselves, they merely are a way of focusing. For example instead of visualizing yourself focusing on something you can use for example a wand to point at what you're doing  and it will help you keep your focus.
Of course some may "cheat" and add some life power or some thinking abilities to it so it helps out with performing the magic I'm describing (more on that in a future post).

Of course, once you figure out the atomic changing you can do pretty much anything.
You could, for example, figure out how an eye is build, figure out how it's connected to the rest of the body and give yourself a third eye.
You could improve your body, you could adjust things that never were adjustable before... but this would be very dangerous as you could accidentally kill you in the process.
This atomic fiddling is of course not the easiest thing to do, so only great masters of concentration would be able to do this.

Also knowing that most magic is basically the manipulation of energy big magician cities should have some kind of energy pool, a central place that can store energy for magicians to use. The hardest part of having this is being able to use it from a distance. Your spirit is in general only able to manipulate energy in your body. A magician is already able to manipulate things outside his body, still close enough to focus on.
Anyone wanting to use the energy pool needs to be able to focus on (reach with his spirit to) that energy pool. The easiest way to circumvent this problem is to come closer to the pool, so you can easier access it or carry some container with you or using your body as one. The last one is again very dangerous, as you could drain too much from your body and die from it (gee, I've got a lot of dieing in this post...).

Anyways, there will be at least one more post on this subject, but not now.

Until the next one.

-ThOR

Magic

We all have heard about it somehow, somewhere, mostly in stories (like movies, books and games).
But what is it?

Well, I don't know and I won't tell you that, I'll only tell you what I think it is.

But first I'll have to explain to you guys how I think living beings live.
If you hadn't noticed: this post will be a quite philosophic one.

In my opinion any living being exists out of 3 main components. A soul (the energy), the spirit (the thinking ability) and a body (a "vessel" for the other two). Please note these terms have nothing to do with what a dictionary says they mean (I didn't search it), I use these terms because they are the closest to what I mean when using them.

So the soul contains the energy a being needs to think/live/be, the spirit is a term to describe the thoughts and the consciousness while the body is "simply" the embodiment of the immaterial parts of the being.
Despite the many abilities a being has it's limited to what the it can do. A spirit without a body or soul can't do much more than think (and therefore only "be"), a soul alone would only be energy floating around and a body on itself would fall apart. On the other hand a being without a soul wouldn't have the energy to do something, a being without a spirit either and a being without a body wouldn't exist in this world all together.
So every part needs all the other parts for the being to be functional and every part needs all other parts to be functional. Because of this every part is limited to what all other parts can do. A spirit can't influence anything outside the body, a soul can't "power" anything because of the same restrictions.

But imagine someone who can use his spirit to influence energy. This someone could take energy from other places (or his own body) and use it to influence something else.
This someone (from now on called "the Magician") would firstly be able to control temperature by moving energy away from whatever should be cooled and towards whatever should be warmed/heated/combusted. Yes,in my opinion that should be all it takes to make something burn. It may be a bit of a problem to gather enough energy for something to catch fire but within this frame of reference it's the easiest and most imprecise way because you just "put" a lot of energy in on place or take it away from another.

The next step would be to move something. Since temperature makes atoms move faster or slower the Magician already does this, but now he should apply this energy in such a way that it actually becomes a force that influences his subject. Making a ball roll, making a Rubix Cube solve itself and making things fly are all in this category.

The final step is taking a material and changing it into something else. Why should this be one of the hardest things? Because it involves manipulating energies on a (sub)atomic scale.
To be able to do this kind of stuff the Magician first needs to know what he's doing exactly and until now some parts of quantum physics are by (the real, existing) scientists explained as 'magic' for lack of a better word. (For example electrons. Once you try observing them as particles they'll start behaving like waves. Try observing them as waves they'll start behaving like particles. Why? Magic!)
Once the Magician has figured out what he's doing he has to manipulate energy in such a way it affects that atom just in the way he wants it, which requires some serious focus.
For some decent results he also needs to do this on quite some atoms, so I can imagine real atom Magicians would be very rare.

I say it again: this is just how I think Magic would exists, if it would happen to be real. I don't know if it really does exist, I wouldn't know if it doesn't.

Anyways, I think I wrote enough for now.

See you a next time.

-ThOR

Religion

I want to tell you about my opinion on religion.

I believe in a God, in an allmighty being. How to call this being doesn't matter to me, be it God(s), Allah, Jehovah, Zeus and Hades (and an entire parade of other characters), Mystical power(s) of Nature or whatever name you want to give it...
I call It for convenience God.

But I admit I do not (and can not) know for sure what It is, or even if It's aware of us.

To clarify this I've heard a very good comparison:
So you have the 3 dimensions. you can observe these 3 dimensions, move in them, feel everything that's in those 3 dimensions and manipulate it with the right tools.
Now, if you think logically the next dimension is time (as I said in an earlier post). None of us (beings in these 3 dimensions) have control over Time. We know it's there, we know it goes on, we can name it and imagine grasping it, but we can't control it.
Now imagine a being that HAS control over time. It lives within these 4 dimensions and can  observe it,  move in it and manipulate it. This being is everywhere, knows everything and can observe the limits of our 3 dimensional space.
This being would be God.
This being may also be not only in his kind.
But we don't know all of this because we're like the Flatlanders looking at the 3rd dimension.

Remember Flatland?
The world where everything is two-dimensional.
Where two-dimensional beings reside, live, die, ... are.
We can kinda imagine something like it, because we can represent it by taking a sheet of paper and draw something two-dimensional on it.
But still, these Flatlanders...
We've never seen them and we don't know if we ever change things in that Flatland they live in.

And that may be the same with the 4th dimensional beings... They may have the freedom over Time, but they may have no idea if and how they influence us...

Or they may, we can't know...

But anyway, back to religion.

As I'm raised as a Christian (Greco-Catholic I think, it's hard if you have eastern European roots) I know and accept Christian faith as my own. Yet I do not judge others based on religion or from the point of view of the religion.
As my friends tend to be quite various in their belief: Mostly atheïst, a few Muslim, some Christian and even a Jehova's Witness, all in one group of friends. Yes, we do have differences in opinion and we acknowledge them, but we won't fight each other just to get the others to believe something else.
This is how I would see the perfect community.

But then again. We aren't more than people, we have flaws and that's why the Perfect Community will never exist on a bigger scale.
These imperfection is also why I don't believe in the Church as an institution. Going to church isn't that important for me, actually believing is harder and gives you more...

On a side note: I don't quite believe the "God creating us after his image". I think this is humanity giving God a relatable figure, as we tend to personificate quite a few things...

I see believing or not believing as a matter of opinion. It's completely personal and it shouldn't be used to attack and kill others because they tend to disagree with your belief/opinion. Just accept that other people may tend to disagree with you...

Heh, turns out my opinion on religion is that it's an opinion.

Phew, I think this post deserves the label "long"...
If you tend to disagree with things I said you may use the comments to tell me what you didn't like about it...


-ThOR

P.S.: Let's add something:

tl;dr: I believe and that's an opinion. Face it.

Writesel

 Some time ago (and this "some time" could've easily be a few years) I wrote something. I'll paste it here.

One

He's awake, but doesn't move out of lazyness

The warmth, the scents, the sounds of the world, ...
He registers all this until his mind is awake.

He slowly stretches to get rid of the sleep in his body.

Finally he stands up.
He goes outside.
The world is, Like always. Alight, but also with shadows.

He is all-one. His all is one, not more and no less.

Why is he alone?

He hasn't found anyone to be two with.

Is the two-being necessary?

No idea, He'd like to experience it, but if there's no-one it won't be possible.

He actually isn't looking anyway.

You look for something when you lost it.

You can't lose what you never had so you can't go and search for it.

Is he happy?
Why not, he is, and he will be. Is more needed for happiness? He's alone with himself, he isn't chased, he isn't missing anything, so why shouldn't he be happy?

He loves Silence. No, not silence, ...

Traquility.

He loves tranquility.

As long as there is tranquility, it is. Worries aren't present. Als long as there's tranquility he doesn't have to worry. As long as the tranquility is present.

How long will it be?

No idea, but if would've known therewouldn't be any tranquility because he'd be worrying.

Tranquility makes time, tranquility makes tranquile, tranquility makes more tranquility.

Tranquility makes time. Who has little time can use some tranquility to make some time. Who has more time has more tranquility, and with tranquility comes less worries.

...

He's hungry, he has to eat.

You have no idea how many folders I opened and closed before I found this. Folders I haven't opened in a few years... If computers had digital dust it would've been clouding my computer right now...
So I wrote this "some time ago" and send it to a few people, saved it in some folder and forgot about it. then some folderchanges, some reorganisations and some years later I forgot how it was called. Not only was it hard to find, I had to translate it, which wasn't easy. Original was in Dutch (I'm from Antwerp in Belgium), if anyone wants to have a look at it I can post it...
The translating wasn't really easy. For example the "tranquility" I refer to is something like "peace of mind", "quiescence", "calmness" or "quietness" or something... In dutch it's simply "rust".

Anyways...

Now it's made it on the World Wide Web and I'm actually quite happy it's here.
My main reason for writing this was an idea. First I had this story of some unknown creature that doesn't get described throughout the story. Then I made it more extreme by abandoning any description of place, time, object whatsoever, only reflecting thoughts.

Yes, it says "He goes outside", but there's absolutely no way of telling where this outside is, or what the inside is. Maybe he just went outside his "room", maybe outside his "home". And the "alight" is also arbitrary: what is the light? Might be the sun, but an electrical lamp is also a possibility. And what if some other sensorial organ (other than the eye) registers something as "alight"?

But still, while reading this I keep comparing it to a human being, I keep imagining it being human. I think this mainly is because we only know ourselves of reasoning this way, we can't possibly know how some other creature (or human being for that matter) processes this information, or reasons as here described.
Even I don't really know what this creature is or what it's supposed to be. I only know what I wrote down.

This was one of my "writesels". Maybe I'll write down more. There's an entire world evolving in my head... But it'll take some time to write them out. Anyways...

Any suggestions of what you think of it are always welcome.

Till the next time

-ThOR

Time

Looking around on the Internet I found a little blog. Reading around I found an small post on Time.
Time.

What IS Time?
I'd say Time is the fourth dimension, the one we (as human beings) can observe, but have no influence on, we can't change it, we can't hold on to it, we can't even comprehend it entirely.

Look at the escape button.
Now look at the escape button again.
The escape button you see now is not the exact same button you saw first, it's parameter 'Time' has changed. This results in never being able to have the exact same thing again if you take Time in account.
You'll have to be satisfied with only having the exact same molecules again. Maybe not exactly the same molecules, because even those change over time. No, the exact same concept...

Will we ever be able to travel to the past?
I think not.
Well, I think not, unless we start a new Timeline, a new universe so to speak. (yes, I support the multiverse theory).
Why do I think so?
Just the paradox you can create by travelling in Time and by doing so disabling yourself from doing so is terrifying (I think it is). The only possible  way out of this is splitting the Timeline in one where you disappear the moment you travel and one where you appear in the past and change everything.

Will we be able to travel to the future?
Easy enough, just by being.
Other ways may be freezing yourself in and defreezing at the required moment, being warped to the future or any other science-fictiony way of getting there.

Any other Time related questions may be asked...

-ThOR