Also nomask7 make ur own thread bro, I'd like to see your take on things.
I've been thinking about writing an autobiography but if I included everything I want, I'd also have to reveal my name and other people's names and other personal information. I'm unsure if I want to do that. Now a thread would be fine but obviously not as effective in communicating my ideas, and all the less effective & credible the less I reveal personal information.
Or I could just say stop believing gigantic nonsense and use logic, philosophy and science and see where that takes you. For example, magic can't work backwards in time, because there's no time in the block-universe sense and even if there were, events in the past wouldn't be causally connected to events in the present. You just can't get around the absurdity of such ideas.
If you're the kind of person who understands what I just wrote there, you can take it as a starting point and see how it's absurd to think that magic can work backwards in time - and once you get this far, you've pretty much admitted you're not in control, that your magic is essentially not your own. I'd say you were mind controlled to cast the spell after this same mind controlling force had already orchestrated the events that you would later ascribe to your own conscious effort to perform magic. At this point the question is open whether this great force resides within you or outside you.
If inside, could it be your subconscious mind? I think neuroscience would be the most useful science here. I've heard the idea from a few sources that psychic abilities or magic abilities are genetic, related to bloodlines and so on. So basically what they're saying is that your power doesn't come from a soul that travels from life to life, but from the brain and the kind of brain you have. The problem with this perspective is that there's nothing in the brain that would explain magic powers, and I personally don't think there's anything there that would explain a subconscious mind with agency of its own.
Could the force be a spirit of some sort? Whether inside or outside or both. Maybe a group of spirits working together?
Do spirits make sense in this world? Enter physics. No, they do not, unless you assume this is a virtual world with background processes we can't see. Then there could be spirits because they'd be nothing but inaccessible-to-us background processes manifesting as spirits. I've read about what those who believe in spirits say about this stuff and their ideas are unbelievable garbage, like some sort of a joke. Ever heard of vibrational state in this connection? That sort of thing. There was even a book about it by an intelligent sounding person. I would emphasise 'sounding'. The content was nonsense.
But if this is a virtual world - and this becomes pretty speculative - but wouldn't it make sense for it to be moderated and its inhabitants to be toyed with? I'm drawing on psychology and evolutionary theory when I say, Yes, it would. So spirits or not, to me such a world would likely have some boss force above them, so you could just skip spirits as an explanation and start believing in God or Zeus or something.
I find that things make more sense if you assume a lot of central planning regardless of what you think about anything else anyway.
The most pervasive phenomenon in my life for years has been all kinds of mind control being applied and demonstrated to me. All kinds you could think of: possession involving blackout, control so subtle you have to identify it indirectly by contemplating the synchronicities involved, emotional manipulation of all sorts, hallucinations, manipulation of sense of time, manipulation of understanding - in general all forms of manipulation of perception, and so on. I've read about demonic possession and I've read about schizophrenia but I've never read about the things I have experienced.
The voice always seems to know everything that goes around me. It draws my attention to things or has prepared some sort of joke that must be perfectly timed to what's happening around me or it says something with perfect timing just when something else happens, just as "Goddamn!" whenever there's a noisy thump, exactly at the same time with obvious foresight. This sort of thing is very regular.
It's also incredibly funny - just the tone/sound of voice and its 'character' is super funny. I've never heard or read about anything like it anywhere. Not in accounts about demons or invading spirits, not in accounts of schizophrenia. You wouldn't understand but I get the impression it couldn't have been created except by some sort of unbelievable machine intelligence. It's so comedic perfection and even the language it uses seems like made for it, it's just a perfect package. Nothing like it anywhere.
Anyway, I've also been made to see mind control around me, the people I interact with as well as society at large. For example, are people really so dumb that they don't understand fate implies mind control of the subtlest sort? I'm not sure otherwise bright people would fail to see the implication unless they were being mind controlled to some extent. Not that I know. I myself didn't see it for the longest time, so obvious in retrospect and so sudden an understanding that I ascribe it to revelation or the lifting of blocking. What's more though, fate implying mind control is an idea I've rarely come across anywhere, never in any writings of any religion or philosophy. I think the ancient Greeks may have been aware of it but I haven't read about it. I think the idea is expressed explicitly or at least assumed with full knowledge in Thackeray but I'm not sure. Charles Fort wrote a book about mind controlling aliens and destroyed it before it was published. Admittedly, I don't read much so maybe this is just my own inexperience and not people's blindness. Still, it seems like it's not just the average joes who don't see the implication of fate, it's our greatest thinkers and mystics who you don't hear commenting on it.
What this has to do with magic is that if fate is real - meaning, if at least some (important) parts or aspects of our lives are determined - then mind control is real. If mind control is real, then any magic requiring merely minds to be controlled could be seen as the result of this mind control and not your own supposed powers. Occam's razor.
Well, if my experiences were limited to mind control, they wouldn't be of much use in explaining all of magic. But the voice has not only demonstrated mind control to me, it seems to have demonstrated materialisation and dematerialisation as well. I've certainly had my cellphone teleported to my pocket in such a way that any other explanation than teleportation seems far fetched.
So, not just mind control but reality control. Control in general, it seems.
I could certainly understand the funny in watching little human apes hurting themselves and hurting others while chanting some nonsense and imagining they're powerful wizards, while in fact they're just toys and puppets. How cute and funny!
One thing I'd bet on is you're not going to understand much just by relying blindly on superficial medieval speculation about spirits and demons. It's the 21st century that gave us the proper tools to understand this stuff. Anything older you can probably discard safely as an explanation.
I'd recommend reading "Beyond the Occult" by Colin Wilson to get an idea of what strange things others have experienced that's already been written down in a book.