I Am Here

[rev0s]

Greetings everyone.

I initially found this site because of the images I now know to be "mirrors", and because I've got some memories of drawing some things that some of these images remind me of.

Not at all similar, mind you, but the interaction and intersection of straight lines always fascinated me, and when somewhere around 5th grade I found a compass, I was off to the races.

Then somewhere shortly after I began to be 'taught' the mathematics of geometry, and this love of the graphic I waved like a flag of victory as a child somehow faded and fell into the back of my mind, and my own proclivities regarding art and math and the world were bent more and more by what seemed to be absolutely pointless, mindless, and vaguely psychotically violent actions of seemingly every fellow human around me.

I descended into the dusty tomes of dense and materialistic, easy-to-question literature that is the hallmark of the Western world as I have come to know it, and in many cases had their 'truths' and 'rights' and 'wrongs' beaten into me, despite my oppressors' inability to answer my questions.

Childhood passed, puberty came and went, I found all the worldly things that could be found to keep a young man busy. You name it; drugs, work, sex, violence, and any and all combination of them and more. Whatever I could do to find more to stuff into the mouth in my mind that wouldn't stop asking these questions, which I had become certain were somewhere between insanity and what everyone always called 'evil', which I knew I must fear because everyone else was sure that would be the end of them, and how was I different from them?

Oh if only I'd ever counted the ways....

And time passed further, and the ways and means I'd used to shut that gaping fucking running uselessness in my head took their toll, and put me in places I'd have rather not have been. However, I lived, and I believe I am ultimately better for it.

But looking around on these images, and the things I've found discussed and that I've learned about from the research that started here or there on these forum pages, well, it started to fill in some blanks I skipped somewhere before I was ten years old.

Sorry for the whole biography, I just....had to relate it to someone, or I guess multiple someones in this case.

Thank you to everyone who has been even the smallest part of making this thing a reality.:)

[MythMath]

Welcome rev0s... :yes:

[m1thr0s]

thanks for the intro rev0s!
I think there's probably a few blanks going on with all of us...frustrating sometimes, but in a way, we come to recognize the really important things by their return rates anyway...
those things that haunt us and just won't ever quite go away tell us more about our true natures than all of our ambitions rolled into one I think.
hope you enjoy your time here at AF!

m1thr0s

[rev0s]

Thank you, fellows, for the warm welcome.

I've already enjoyed much of my time here, so I'm sure I will even more now that I can contribute. Not that I have a lot yet to add....but who knows? Certainly not me....

Hopefully as my knowledge continues to blossom so will all of our friendships.

[fr.novumorganum]

greetings and salutations

[izi]

Hopefully as my knowledge continues to blossom so will all of our friendships.


like cactuses

:yes:

[AfterViewer]

:dull:Hey revOs, Welcome To the AF! MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME! AV.

[rev0s]

After reading some other's intros, I guess I should probably actually try and give some specific information, rather than a sort of whimsical rant which probably could come from many mouths...

I have been a Christian my whole life because of the way that it was ingrained into my family/culture/society etc., but I've always been curious about other views and always hated the view summated in the age-old maxim "Curiosity Killed The Cat"; even as a fairly young child I can remember thinking "Why would God be "mad" or "upset" with me (just the fact human emotion could be superimposed on that which was supposed to be God seemed strange itself) just for reading this book, or asking these questions, or even pondering and wondering inside my own head this or that piece of esoteric/occult knowledge.

My faith has always been a part of my life, not so with 99% of those I embarked on the downward spiral with during early teenage years, and I still have a strong beleif in a single all-encompassing God who structured the Universe and all in it, but I have begun to try and break the links in the "religion" chain that I beleive to be inherently false, put in only to yoke those weak in the mind and fearful enough to be lead by their own blind desires.

Sometime after reading The Man In the High Castle the I Ching became a part of my life, and it never conflicted with my beliefs in my eyes (not so with some of those around me). So I have a little (read: very little) knowledge of that subject and how it is used/consulted, but I would say that is as far as my applyable knowledge of anything occult goes....I am and have been an omnivorous reader since a young age, so I have read much and had friends who told me a little about the Qabalah/Kabbalah, but in practice I've little idea how it is used to help us today, here, now (to quote my sig.)

Same with all the other occult traditions I've been reading about. There's terminology and things under discussion in most of the forum that I have no clue about, but I'm the last person you'll hear claiming to know something that they don't.

I can understand some of this as theoretical knowledge, as the progression of ideas but again, in *practice*, I've no idea about how one would go about grounding for example, or beginning a "spell" or incantation, or actually using any of these mirrors to producea an effect. I am very interested and fairly motivated, though, so I imagine it will not be long until I'm starting off down one of these avenues myself.

[m1thr0s]

I can understand some of this as theoretical knowledge, as the progression of ideas but again, in *practice*, I've no idea about how one would go about grounding for example, or beginning a "spell" or incantation, or actually using any of these mirrors to produce an effect. I am very interested and fairly motivated, though, so I imagine it will not be long until I'm starting off down one of these avenues myself.It may be helpful to think of these things as forms of meditation...some more on the *ceremonial*, or *ritual* end of things and others on the more *tantric*, or *yogic* side. In either case you're looking at a more proactive form of spirituality than would normally be possible just by going to church and doing whatever things are generally expected of you.

But...*why* people do these things is another matter altogether...in many cases they are responding to things that have happened to them that caused them to probe deeper into the nature of life, the universe, and everything than their religious upbringings would have been capable of resolving. Moreover, spiritual paradigms are always in a state of flux no matter where you go and the contradictions between *religion* and *spirituality* are pretty extreme all over the world.

So a lot more people are examining alternative ways of thinking about a whole lot of things. You don't see this happening as much in cultures still dominated by fear and violence. For all its limitations, Christianity has given rise to a lot of individualism over a great span of time so that as soon as people have the opportunity to think for themselves, they seem to gravitate this way - if not *en masse*, then at least peripherally. Christ himself was *radical* in his own time...how much easier it might have been for him to cow-tow to the status quo and just leave it to others to sort out their own salvations. This is fine if you are content to live with your eyes and ears closed to the world as it passes before you. Some can do this, others cannot and it's the ones who cannot who wind up making improvements in life that everyone might benefit something by. Not all...many fail...but even their failures are spent in the service of *The Great Liberation*, as the buddhists have coined it.

m1