Sunday, January 31, 2016

Why we often misunderstand people's personalities.



Do you love to watch reality tv, shows about relationships? Do you sit on the couch and like to tell other people why that person in the show is really likable or maybe totally not?

What makes that person so likable or unlikable? Is it maybe that we are trying to gauge the personality of that person? 

How do you define somebodies personality? How do you define somebodies personality in a relationship? 

We can go round and round but in the end we all give out a first impression that is really strong and we all place much importance to the first impression we got from people. 

The Halo effect sometimes makes us think that one attribute of a person defines that person completely. 

We are often too quick with judging a persons personality as something on its own.
We are often too quick with judging a persons personality by how they behave in a relationship.

As if that behavior is independent of the changing relationship and the other person/people in that relationship.

"OMG he is so weak." 

Maybe that person is responding submissive to that situation in that relation because the other person is too aggressive. 

The coping strategies that we use depend on the situation, the options we have, the risks we want to take, the outcome we have in mind, ext ...

"She is such a bitch" 

Maybe she is responding in such a way to defend herself from being seen as weak. 
If so how come that she needs to defend herself from others options.
Maybe the partner was responding aggressive to what that person sees as sings of weakness.

You begin to notice how all we perceive is a moment in a process while we tend to see that moment as the whole process of changing relationships, actions and reactions between different people. 

The halo effect seems to be present on this level of perception too. 

On a more macro level we see this too in how we think aout the "national character" as a fixed thing. 
This can be further studied in "ecology of mind" by Gregory bateson, from page 98. 

The more we can open up what seems like fixed things into open omgoing proccesses the more we can see how things really operate. 

Our understanding grows and our understanding of people grows with it.

Monday, January 25, 2016

All kinds of love.



So many love songs and so many definitions of love.
What borders are there on our concept of love? 
Where does it stop? 

Not so long ago there was a article about Louisiana: "Louisiana Upholds Ban On Oral Sex, While Necrophilia Remains Legal".

It seems that laws about sex and love aren't that easy. Some laws aren't revised for decades until some taboo seems to be broken and people get upset.

In a time where norms and concepts change faster and faster we could easily be trapped in a slippery slope fallacy. 

In earlier times the kind of romantic love that we know of now didn't even exists or was forbidden.
Marriages were arranged and were for political reasons. Research have shown nevertheless that people in arranged marriages are quite often more happier then those out of free will. 

Now LGBT people seem to have most of the challenges concerning marriage. 
People ask themselves if children raised in same-sex marriages could be missing crucial parts of their education and development. 


Now there is this article "New Study On Homosexual Parents Tops All Previous Research." that concludes : "The articles by Marks and Regnerus have completely changed the playing field for debates about homosexual parents, "gay families," and same-sex "marriage." The myths that children of homosexual parents are "no different" from other children and suffer "no harm" from being raised by homosexual parents have been shattered forever. "
With flashing titles for scientific research and bold claims as conclusions I suspect that the debate is hot as can be and I suspect that is not yet over. 

I don't think that raising children should be seen in such a black and white way and put a number on from 1 to 10 in efficiency to be honest. 

And as a friend mentioned to me on facebook, the people that fund a research can influence the results of the research, or as he responded to the New study mentioned above: "American Christian group funds the study and you get what kind of results? "

Transgender people have some difficult challenges too. 


I remember people telling me that homosexuality was unnatural, you know the kind of people I am talking about, but there is quite a list of homosexual animals out there when you want to counter that argument: List of animals displaying homosexual behavior.

You would think that with this diversity it couldn't get more complicated .. but it does.

There is still a lively discussion about porn and if it is damaging to the brain for instance. 

Young people in Japan date less and less while virtual relationships rises. 



This makes me think of a scene out the matrix where a program expressed his love for its daughter. 


And that is the question that will change how we think about love. With AI being more and more effective and sex robots being made will how we think about relations change too? 

It seems like our definitions of what a relationship are and of what love is, is changing over time. 

We can only wonder in what wonderful and strange directions love will take us. 



Sunday, January 24, 2016

Are you trapped in your own stories?


Stories are being used trough the ages to convince and persuade people.
Mostly by people who already have the most power.

Some stories come from people who are professional storytellers and other from fishermen at sea who wanted to explain natural phenomena with a supernatural explanation.

We like to follow stories as guidelines for our life. The stories of Jezus from Nazareth and of Mohammed are two stories that are followed by many people. Not as if there is one story for each guy, the more people you ask the more versions you hear.

After a messiah figure is gone the message can be used to fit every cause people desire.

We like heroes and think we are the protagonist in our own story. We like to feel in control.

Joseph Campbel studied mythology of different cultures all over the world and found a common thread wich is called the monomyth.

The Wachowski's showed us in the movie "The matrix" how such a story can trap us.
They used Joseph Campbell monomyth and then showed how it is a trap in the end.



George Lucas used the monomyth also when he made Starwars movies. He didn't realize how it was a trap.


This still comes from the idea that we are in the center of everything. That we are exalted above the rest of the earth and this universe. 

This creates blind spots in our thinking. Not only that but it can be fatal for us as species when we fail to notice the full ecology of the systems we are part of.  It will leave us very vulnerable for sudden changes. 

A great example is in the comic : "Crossed" (1-5) written by Alan Moore. 

So I give a story as example of how stories can trap us and can give us blind spots in our thinking and understanding.

It seems like the only way to alert people of the danger of clamping to stories is by stories.
That's why we shall make this like a Zen story. 

In Zen there are masters who have authority and who oversee the process of the students.
Portraits of those masters are originally almost always done as a caricature or joke. 
And that's how the master wants it because it is all about authority.



The stories that a Zen master uses to teach Zen are, when one is serious about learning what Zen is, not to be taken serious at all.

Having this kind of humor and self-relativisation keeps us alert and helps us avoid and get out of such narrative traps. 

So in all seriousness, don't take this blog post too serious. 


For more check out: The case against Mythology

Friday, January 22, 2016

Why the best content is not about you.



I have been thinking a lot about content creating.
I like creating content for people and share information that helps people in their life.

The question you could ask yourself when you create content is wether you like to create content just for you and share it in the hope that other people will like it too or to se what gap there is in the market, see what the audience wants and create that. Another question that comes with that is, is there a balance between the two that can be made?

This comes with another set of questions that are closely related to the previous questions. Questions about stability and money. Do you want to make a living with your content creating or is it just as a hobby?

All these questions can be considered when you create content and will change what content you create.

There is also another way of looking at it.
Creating a tribe.

When you have found your personal mission in life, what you want to put in this world, something that you can offer to the community, to mankind maybe, a change that you want to make, you can create a community around it.

This is why I started this blog.
To show how everything in life is connected.
And to inspire people.

When you think about what you want to do for others it will be more easier to create shareable content. It's not about the content creator, it's all about the community.

On the other side, knowing how your persoanal story motivates and inspires other people is crucial in communicating your personal mission. Well, now it's not only your personal mission but a shared mission with the community, the tribe.

Contributing to a community is the most sustainable way to create content.
Know what tribes you are a member and know what tribe you can lead.

With this in mind we can learn to improve content along the way.
I hope to write content for you as long as possible and improve as much as possible.


Hidden Heroes of everyday life.



Every day we use things that we take for granted. Every day we can go about doing our business without interruption we count on things being in place and working.

In order to have things that we take for granted, there are people working day and night.

Traffic, electricity, some safety.
We only think about the work behind it when things don't go as planned or as they are absent.
When there is a sudden change.

Rules and regulations that are in place so that we have a civilisation.

All the people that work so that we can have a "normal" day. Those are the Heroes of Normal.

In order to have stability, there are changes that have to be constantly made.
In order to achieve homeostasis, the body is constant making changes.

Let's take this even a step further...back.

The items we use have a history.

In order to have a glass there first had to be the art of glass making.
There were people that came up with the design.
There had to be people that are paid (I hope) to do the work.
Now there are machines that do a lot of the work.
Those machines needed to be invented. A science a mechanics is needed for this.

You notice at once how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Everything has a history and everything supports on something that already was in place.

When we look at the form of something we can see history.
When we look at somebody we see the result of decades of evolution. We see the results of interplay of genetics and circumstances from the person and the family that that person comes from.

Some decisions in life, that become a part of lifestyle can have a genetic impact over generations.
This is called Epigenetics.

You see the impact of the lifestyle and habits in a person,
True, you may not notice it always consciously.

This realisation can help us see the beautiful complexity of life and appreciate what there was in place for us so we can have some stability and go about our days.

Thanks Heroes of Normal.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Can we now get MAD , please?


As if every part of reporting needs to be done with silk gloves on.

I agree that we don't need some raging madmen to put fear into contestants in every competition on tv just so we can get a hardon from seeing people getting emotionally broken.

I find it disgusting when journalists try to interrupt politicians all the time and try to get the politician to say what they want. That's not a debate nor good conversation at all. Stop it.

Just try to be political correct. By  the time you know what that entails it has already shifted again.

Not every argument needs to have a nice counter balance so you what you say can go both ways. That's the same as saying nothing. That's creating confusion and confusion is good for people who don't want you to know what they are really doing.

It seems like we aren't allowed to react upset anymore when something happens. Like it's immature. When you get angry you must be childish.

Outrage is something else imo. Outrage is not very helpful, it spends our energy and attention is such a short time that we get desensitised for other important information. We get so emotional that we forget sometimes why exactly we were outraged. It creates mental blindspots.

Getting mad on the other hand is necessary from time to time so we don't get desensitised to injustice.
People in power count on it that others will just let it pass and forget it after a while. It blends into the confusion.



Before everything fades into some grey noise of confusion let's get mad when information is being deliberately made to confuse and bore people.

I am talking especially about laws, privacy laws, laws about  personal information gathering and sharing. Laws about warfare were the language is so altered that every possible word in the document has two meanings: How a regular person would define it and how the American department of intelligence and defence defines it. In that way, everything can be explained away and justified.

Give me some Charlie Brooker and John Oliver to shake me up anytime. Why not put some Penn Jillette in the mix too?

Let's get rid of this post-modernism "bleak circus" (video here) as Warren Ellis called it, where "nothing matters" anyway. Even if all change is temporary, sometimes they  ramp up.

Let's start meaningful conversations, let's create meaningful changes.

Let's start today.


Monday, January 18, 2016

Why you are making things worse.



Seriously. What is it with people?
Everywhere I go I meet people who want to change something and make it worse in the end. Some logic.

Some people have the tendency to fix what's right in front of them without understanding the underlying system. What happens is that the problem seems to go away, right away, but pops up somewhere else in the system. Sometimes even worse, much worse than before.

"Why did that happen? "

Because you are too busy trying to "look" like you are solving something rather than to solve something and sometimes you want to just get is out of the way, get it over with, get recognised for fixing a lot of things.

Whatever it may be, once you notice people doing it, you will find people doing it everywhere. Especially in workplaces imo.

It's called:

A naive intervention. 

That's what you get when you prioritize fixing something as fast as possible over making a sustainable and reliable change. But hey, the former looks cooler, right? It's all about how it looks, right?

That naive intervention can only cause problems for the people that come after you and you can always blame other people for the mess you left behind. It takes a while sometimes for the bad stuff to happen.

It seems more productive to me to take some extra time to make a change that is sustainable and ecological instead of having to fix a lot more after the quick fix. Seems like double work to me.
It costs more time and money in the end.

Think about it for a second, maybe some changes aren't necessary at all. Maybe intervening on a micro level every time something or somebody makes an error can make it worse.

How much do people learn when we take over every time that person makes a mistake? Zero.
You don't only take away the learning but also the will to learn. Let people learn.
Also, recognize self-rebalancing and self-correcting systems.
Micromanagement destroys more than that it contributes.

I have a great personal affection for 

silent heroes. 

Those are true heroes that go unrecognized most of the time. 

Those people save thousands of dollars or euros by NOT doing something. By recognising the risks.
Who can you thank that decided not to do something and saved you a lot of money, time or any other resource? 

Those are the people that save lives by NOT doing anything overhastily and risking lives.
It's a different kind of saving lives. Thanks to everybody who didn't rush to conclusions.
Maybe we need more of those people that are so close to a single red button that says "nuke them", if you know what I mean. 

What about the scientists that find that something is NOT true. Scientists that didn't find something they were looking for? Thank you too! Now we know where not to look and the search narrows down. Not finding something is as important as finding something in science. 

But those heroes don't make the news. They don't get published. They don't get headlines. They often go unrecognised. They walk among us. We do not recognise the immense value they have and we do not thank them enough.

Thank you! 

What can we learn from silent heroes? How can we improve how we make changes? How does it change how we think about risk and reward? 

We all like social approval and we all like that things get fixed as soon as possible. 

We must stay alert if we don't want to get fooled, by ourselves and by what lies directly in front of us.

Stay alert! 

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Why empathy is more powerful than being dominant.



It was for a long time the dominant view that power lies in overpowering others, in being aggressive and being dominant.

Research may suggest otherwise.

Primate psychology has observed behavior from bonobos in group and came to surprising conclusion.

Bonobos create social rules that they enforce and they reward bonobos that help each other.

These social rules are build on the principle of reciprocity.
"If you help me , I help you and If you cheat or hurt me I will punish you."

This was also observed in Vampire Bats.
The female vampire bats are the ones that suck the blood. They do that to feed their child.
They have a pouch on their throat that they fill with blood to give to the babies.

Baby vampire bats are fed by all the females the group.
The researchers took one feeding female and blew the blood pouch up with air.
After that, they released her back into the nest.

Now the other vampire bats believe that she has blood to give to the babies.
But when she doesn't give blood to the babies the mother of the baby thinks the other female doesn't want to give blood to her baby.

What happens when that frustrated female is now giving blood to the babies is that she won't give blood to the baby of the female that she believed to be cheating and holding back.

The reciprocity rule is in us humans a very strong present. It allowed for better survival of the ingroup. Without this reciprocity rule that allows for social rules we wouldn't have any society.

As social creatures, understanding this gives us a strong advantage.
But this reciprocity rule is only possible when there is something else in place.
Something even more powerful and fundamental to who we are as humans:

Mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons were discovered in a lab where they were studying monkeys.
One of the researchers took a break and put a peanut in his mouth.
On that moment the researcher heard a beep.
What was it ?

Just a few feet away from the researcher was a monkey that had electrodes that were linked to its motor neurons and on the other side on a computer.
The computer signalled that the neurons for action, putting something in its mouth, were activating,
but the monkey was just watching the researcher.

When the researcher ate another peanut the computer beeped again.

The motor neurons that were used to direct action in this monkey were activating by watching somebody else perform that action.

The researchers found out that a special type of neuron in the motor neurons was specialised in reproducing the same motor neuron activation as that of somebody observed.

This allowed for primates to recognise emotions in others.
What was first very important to spot if somebody ate something good or bad.
In this way the other monkey would not eat from the bad fruit and stay healthy.

It had another amazing benefit.
Now the monkeys can not only learn by trial and error but by observing others.
This accelerated learning in the group.

This is an essential component of creating a culture.

This is the basis of empathy and it made the survivability of a group much higher.
Groups that are more cohesive and cooperative survive longer.

How does that make you more powerful as an individual?

By acting according to that understanding you will understand people better.
Your communication will improve.
Your relationships will become stronger.

We need each other to accomplish the greatest things in life.
Relationships are one of the most powerful things there are.

Your power is not about you. It's about us. It's about the group.
Contributing to a group is what gives us power.

The power comes from the interactions we have.
It comes from the relations we build and maintain.

Power to the people!


Research links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

https://youtu.be/YWZAL64E0DI

https://youtu.be/GcJxRqTs5nk

https://youtu.be/t0pwKzTRG5E




The power of getting things done.



It's something I have a lot of trouble with.
Starting a project is easy but persisting until it’s finished is the hard part.

Overcoming the challenges of getting a project done can be quite demanding.
Often it is because we want to be too perfectionistic.

Perfectionism is the enemy of finished work.

If you want to start something allow it to be messy and get feedback as soon as possible.

Always go for prototypes!
Look at your work as a prototype and get it out there.
This allows you to have a lot of feedback.
Use the feedback to make a version 0.2.
Improve along the way.

Remember when you were busy on something on your computer and Facebook was on another tab?
What happened when you saw a number appear on that tab? How long did it take for you to look what's going on on Facebook?

Remember that time when that one website said: "Your profile is almost finished."?
What was your first reaction or impulse when you saw that?

This is called the Zeigarnik Effect.

We can use this effect to our benefit and set up our planning and work space.

Completing something also motivates us to do another task.
So dividing task in to smaller tasks motivates us to continue.

So divide and conquer!

Friday, January 8, 2016

Magick and self-expresion - part 01 - Intuition.



What kind of magick do you practise?

Wicca, Chaos, left hand, right hand, handstand? What mythology do you use Greek/Roman, Viking, Celtic, Skeptic?

So many direction to follow and so many ways to combine. It seems like cooking sometimes.
The best cooks have a really strong intuition and personal vision of what they want and how to get there.

Hell, every artist in his field that is doing great work has a strong personal vision, strong intuition and a personal mission. A person that leads in his field and drives it to improve can be seen as an artist too. That person brings innovation to that field of work. Always ready to take the next leap. Standing on the edge.

Intuitions are not always correct as you know but intuition from experts are very accurate.
Intuition is a physical response to a stimulus that lets the person know that there is something significant. It's a pattern that you recognize only by experience. The information can be so small that other should dismiss it. Because you have seen this pattern many times conscious or subconscious that neuropathway is so strong now that it takes almost no time for the information to travel.

That's important because strong intuitions let you react fast and automatically when in danger.
That's how we survived when we lived with dangerous animals.

A military flight control watcher was brought before the council and asked why he fired missiles to an unidentified plane. He answered: "The dot behaved strangely on the map."
All that he had to make a decision were blinking dots on a screen and the time to know if a plane is hostile or not was very limited. The dot was close behind a friendly identified plane on the map. What to do?
He recognised the behavior of the dot on the map as hostile and fired. He was right in the end, the plane was hostile.

The decision he made was not made on a single hunch but on years of experience observing these patterns.

We all make decisions with intuition from time to time. More than we think.
In fact. All decisions are made unconscious. Our consciousness is a general rapport of what happened after the facts and how to fit it in our model of the world.

Artists learn to act with less and less delay upon that intuition, to be more and more in tune with it. And when you are experienced, learn to trust on it.

There are many things that we got experienced in trough te course of evolution.
Many patterns we spot subconsciously and act upon automatically.

Some people are afraid of those automatic responses. Maybe they looked too much into Freud.

What would happen when you let go of trying to correct or judge what your subconscious wants to show you?

What if your Holy Guardian Angel was shouting all along? Your most natural self. Forget how High your Highest self is. Get in the Flow.



Monday, January 4, 2016

To magick or not to magick.

So what is magick? Is it real?

In a recent conversation about the topic it seemed a good idea to shed some light or rather bring viewpoints to the table.

Can you see the table in your mind that I am talking about when I say "to the table", btw?
You have an image in your mind of that table yet the image of that table is different for everybody depending on what kinds of tables you have seen in your life.

Look around, this is your reality. Look at an object that is close to you? What color does it have?
Now realize that there is no color outside there. It is a feat of the brain and your perception of color changes when the context of that object changes.

The color of the two slides are the same. You can see it when you cover the point where they seem to be different in the middle with your finger.

For the same reason square A and B or the same shade.


You may remember this dress as well. 

What we perceive is context dependent. Even when you know that the two squares are the same you can't stop seeing it different. 

We not only perceive in context but we filter out information that seems not relevant to our task.
This is beautiful shown in this task: 


Another effect of context-dependent meaning making is Change Blindness. This occurs when a change occurs but the context seems to be the same so we interpreted it as no change at all.


We don't experience the world as it "is" but by the map our nervous system build of that world. This is our reality. What we perceive is the map. We update that map when we become conscious of a change.

We don't experience the world as it is we experience the world is as we are
and 
The map is not the territory. 
but...

As Alejandro Jodorowsky mentioned: Even if the word "dog" can not bite... it can bite in a way when we use it to insult others. 


This blurs the rigid boundaries that were thought to be the reality that we perceive "outside there" and the reality we perceive as being "inside us" . You may even think that there is no such boundary at all.

Our nervous system is a system of abstractions.


Language is thus a very important aspect of our reality and of what magick seems to be.


When we can't express something it is as if it isn't really there. That is why politicians over the time tried to erase certain words out of our vocabulary. When we can't communicate it is as if we don't exist.

The extent and power of that are to be seen in the history of the color Blue. We weren't able to perceive that color because it was not in our vocabulary, it was just seen as a kind of green.

Sources: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/when-did-humans-start-see-color-blue
               http://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2

Changing language, changes how we perceive our reality. 

Therefore, it is important to understand how language works. 
We don't come with a blank slate of how we process and use language.
There are fundamental basics found across the world.

We seem to operate upon metaphors all the time.


For the full hypothesis on Embodied Cognition go to : https://youtu.be/WuUnMCq-ARQ

Even the clothes you wear change how you are able to do a certain task. This is called Enclothed Cognition. 


you begin to see how all what we perceive as reality is a matrix of context inside context. 

Magick, as defined as changing the consciousness of yourself and of others, seems to be a really strong framework to start with. This is what art does! And Magick was first defined as "The Art. "


You can make from something ordinary something extraordinary. You can do a task that seems ordinary in a extraordinary way and you have made it into an art. 

This Platonism and Neoplatonism thinking is a very early start of magickal thinking, in other words, to believe that there is an Essence in all that we perceive and that that Essence is the Real thing of what our Perception is the Shadow of. 

It is this Platonistic thinking that I personally use to say that : " we can take something ordinary and make it extraordinary. " as if everything ordinary has the potential to be extraordinary. 

(To come back on the idea of Platonistic thinking, you will see how animalism is very closely related to it. Animalism is the belief that everything has a personality and an a essence or soul. )

This idea of potential is crucial in understanding magickal thinking. The idea that we have in ourselves a part of God, the potential, is crucial for a kabbalistic magician. 

In platonic thinking, the Idea is the immortal part of everything and that is what Allan Moore was talking about in V for vendetta : 



The Strong concordance notices that the origin for the word Magician also has links with somebody with special knowledge, is intelligent and has great understanding (screenshot of the E-sword app below) 


In other words, one might say an expert. Somebody who has special knowledge and understanding of the sciences or skill. 

This might explain also why "blazing" was a Hebrew word for Magick. 
One who sheds light on things, hidden things most likely. One with determination. 

(The Mechanical Translation of the Torah - Lexicon of Hebrew Roots and Words

Edited by Jeff A. Benner - Published by Ancient Hebrew Research Center
Get it here free on his website: http://www.mechanical-translation.org (page61)) 

An expert can bring an "idea" to "reality" . Make a plan real. Be determined to get his/her idea into this world. 

As Jim Rohn said, an Immobilien salesperson and in-house decorator can point to an empty room and say: " And here you can see a beautiful salon where the kids are playing" or "Here is a window where you can see your kids playing in the garden" ,ext.. while there is nothing there, while there is no window there yet. 

So we are back to pictures in the mind as you can notice. 
The age of Alchemy was an age of mixing our perception with daydreaming and the art of how to influence those daydreams. It was an art of how to make the pictures in our head become more real. 

(Alchemical Dream: Rebirth of the Great Work by Therreance MCkenna )

The abilities of an magician are thus greatly those of understanding our nervous system to a great extent. According to Robert Anton Wilson, is Spirituality an map of Neurology.

That is why Neuro Linguistic Programming is so important in my understanding. Understanding how we can work together with our nervous system to get the best results possible is an art of its own.

There are still pieces of the puzzle missing and those are "no pieces" at all.
The question I want to raise here is: Is there something magickal ? 
The short answer is NO. 
Why? Because there is no such a thing as "a thing" on its own. 

The boundaries we perceive and make are arbitrary and a tool for convenience. 
You can cut the cake up like you want. 


We can not explain a system without explaining the observer, ourselves, also! 

The observer is part of the system and influences the system! 
(a further discussion of quantum mechanics should take us too far)

So, think about it for a while when you say :" Fuck the system" .
Our universe seems fractal and that is why little things reflect the bigger things and big things reflect the little things or as Qabalist like to say : as above so below. 

In this way also is the outer drama that is used for Ceremonial magick making changes in our inner dramas.

We can not change something on one level only. Belief systems, metaphors, neurons, atoms,.. these are all arbitrary boundaries. 

The power we have lies in understanding and utilizing relationships! 

The magickal circle has no power of its own. Spells have no power of them own. No item has power on its own. 

Old grimoires speak of cutting your own wand from a branch of an elk with a silver blade in moonlight. 
Why ? 

Because, you had to cut the tree, this is a personal act. 
You experience that you take a small part of something bigger.
The elk has a strong history for being strong, upright and reliable and was used  because of that to represent Kingship and Kingship was a God-given privilege and thus was also represent of Gods power.  (And that's True, Trust me ;)) 




So too had silver and the moon a connection to  using our imagination, as well as other connections.

So you see that it are those relations and connections that gave it its power. If any of these changed the power that person experienced changed. 

There is another effect of thinking like this and that is that of rethinking "effect" and  "Cause" .
I challenge you to see all your magickal deeds and results in the light of the Post Hoc fallacy: 



There is a the definition of magick as defined as The art of coincidences. To have coincidences that are conform with what we want. 

What would happen when we take on the Buddhist assumption that Cause and Effect are instead two ways to look at the same thing. Just as we would see a Dogs head from behind a fence and then a dogs tail and conclude that the dogs head causes the dogs tail as effect, that would be crazy. 


It challenges the same assumptions of boundaries we make. 

So in order to explain what Reality is and what Magick is, I have put some "pieces" together to alter the way you perceive and create your reality. It is not complete but I am somewhat tiered from typing and will resume in another post asap this topic. 

I wish you all the best in all the work you want to accomplish and may your life be wonderful and magickal. 

So mote it be.