All specific religions aside

Who here believes that there is spiritual warfare going on. A good vs. evil/positive vs. negative/order vs. chaos battle on levels that are preternatural at best or truly cosmic at its most confusing? How much does human action and thought influence this battle and are their people who are actively trying to push things one way or another.

I personally have experienced things, visions, sensations and events that would defy more than a few accepted laws or mores of "normal" society. Some could have arguably been due to simple biochemical reactions that altered my perception, some were physical phenomenon that I actually have witnesses to and I suppose some could even be attributed to an over active imagination or I am schizophrenic, but we doubt it. Anyway these experiences have given me a different world view than a lot of my peers and I have intensely spiritual beliefs that currently aren't really bound by any religious dogma.

Still I believe in magick. Whatever you want to call it. To put it in my own pseudo scientific terms I believe there is an all encompassing original energy source to the universe. The life force which gave birth first to the stars and galaxies and then through natural cosmic evolution allowed those forces and those offspring to bear the more intricate life that exists here in nearly infinite variety and probably in most of the rest of the universe. I believe all members of this universal community play some role, influences things in some way no matter how insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I believe that higher cognitive beings can actually manipulate this "life field" in small ways to push "probability energy" one way or another, thus influencing events that relate to them. As I said kind this is kind of my half-assed explanation of magick so take it as you will.

Now we come to people who might actively want to push the world in some direction due to say what they think a book tells them should happen. When does adherence to prophecy become black christian magick. Is there some bizarre cosmic struggle of human wills that have created all these deities and myths about the end of the world and "final wars" going on that has actually shaped our whole society if even subconsciously to set itself up perfectly for self-fulfilling doom? Just rambling here but any like minded folks, or people who want to tell me I'm crazy chiming in would be cool.

I've had a few "shamanic" experiences myself, very eye opening, they definitely changed my world view also. But, you're probably crazy :)

It's not just the will of higher cognitive beings affecting this world ATM, it is direct action by large groups of people. There is another group who would use these religiously insane to their own nefarious ends, on all sides of the Abrahamic t(ri)angle. The ones pulling the strings have no religion, IMO. They think they are gods, compared to the rest of us.

Part brain washing, part black magic, part plain old murder for the enrichment of the richest people in the world. How to really stop it, that's the question.

I don't think it's in print anymore and I don't recall the author. It was about a supposedly true story of a gathering of the witches of england during WWII who performed a massive ceremony designed to psychically break Hitler's will and delay his planned invasion of Britan. Good read, I lost my copy and can't find it on amazon anyone else ever read this one?

<edit> Found the book I was spelling it wrong. Bad witch shadow!
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345295161/104-0256254-2428765?v=glance&n=283155>

I'll check it out. I think you can have an impact, to some degree, on the energy field - some folks call this the Gaia principle or somesuch - of the world. Science really hasn't looked at these kinds of energies - though (given quantum physics) they can't say positively that they don't exist. OTOH, it could just be the impact you have on the other minds around you that changes things.

Camber series, but I will certainly read this. I has a tremendous rating on Amazon. Thanks for the recomendation.

Night is an excellent book. I had an opportunity to have dinner with Ms. Kurtz and some other folks at a pagan conference some years ago and we talked about Lammas Night. She said that she got the basic background for it from people in England who had participated in the grand coven.

Of course some of it is fictionalized. The royal son of George V who dies in Lammas Night was fictional (George and Mary had 4 sons not 5 as in the book), but was based on IIRC Prince George of Kent who died in a flying accident in 1942 (and was a really interesting individual - intelligent, bisexual (he had affairs with Noel Coward and Florence Mills, a black cabaret singer, as well as being married to Princess Marina of Greece) and cultivated.

didn't ruin it for me but...<SPOILERS> IIRC wasn't the ceremony based on one that supposedly Sir Francis Drake had performed to defeat the Spanish Armada?

but in truth I didn't spoil much. In answer to your question about Drake, yes, that is the story. Francis Drake was supposed to be a mage or wizard and used ritual magick to turn back the Armada. The grand coven ritual in Lammas Night is supposed to be patterned after his. It's a good book. Some of the characters turn up later in her Adept series, which I like very much. I found her in college with the Deryni trilogy which is pretty good. She was young when she wrote it and now has more polish and depth. I have to say that I did not like the Camber books or the ones she wrote about the Deryni after Camber's death. Too dark for my tastes, but a good friend of mine absolutely loves them more than anything else Kurtz has written, so to each their own. :)

Authoritarian religion on one side, spiritual religion on the other.

I don't think magick plays a part because the basic fundamentalist error of taking mythical material literally prevents them from comprehending spiritual reality, and those who do perceive the greater spiritual realm tend to avoid conflict.

Needless to say, Bush is NOT on the side of Liberal Democracy in this.

come on DU I know we have some mystics on the board.

Ignorant Greed against all the common folks. Interestingly, this latest onslaught threatens to destroy the nature of our little blue planet and it is going to be that Nature that smacks down the Greedy Have Mores. (Unfortunately, the rest of us are going to be smacked down as well.)