The Veil as a Magical Construct

[MorningDove030202]

I had an interesting thought today while pondering Michael V. Smith, a charachter in "Stranger in a Strange Land". He was raised on Mars by a freak chance of fate, by aliens who existed, simply put, in a world with no veil. By "no veil" I mean that there was no wall between the spirit world and the manifest world. If someone was hungry, the living would die to give others food, and they would exist in spirt form, which could still be percieved by all. He could perform "miracles" or acts of magick to us pagan types, that other humans couldn't. Can you imagine that? A world with NO VEIL? That made me think that maybe, and this could be a plot to an interesting book, just maybe our veil here on Earth is a metaphysical construct created long long ago by either the beings of flesh or the beings of spirit (or both) to artificaly divie the two worlds for some reason....??? What would that reason be?
Maybe that's mystics (of many different religions) can at times peer threw the veil, and others can't. Maybe it's not suposed to be there at all?

Dove

[Meirya]

That's actually a fairly common theory among some metaphysical groups - that the veil was created long ago for whatever reason. Protection of one or both sides of the veil, or as a consequence to something-or-another, or somesuch.

I think one of the most interesting theories I've heard has to do with cycles. (I think it may have been inspired in part by the Hindu idea of the Yugas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugas).) Basically the theory is that the cycle begins with a very thin veil, so thin as to be nonexistant. Magic and spirits are a major part of life; technology is low. The unknown is explained by the mystic. It sounds like the Satya Yuga of Hindu belief - according to Wikipedia: "In the highest yuga, the great majority of the people can experience spirituality by direct intuitive realization of truth. The veil between the material and the transcendent realms becomes almost transparent."

As time goes on, people seek to discover the unknown and make it known, and science gains on magic. The veil thickens as a result. Because the veil thickens, the spirit world has somewhat less obvious influence, and people believe in it less, which causes it to thicken more, and so on.

There's a period where there's a glut of discovery and exploration of the world, its places, its pieces, and science; discovery and wonder, science and magic, reach an equilibrium at this point. (Proponents of this theory generally put the mid-to-late Renaissance as this period; they point to scientists such as da Vinci to support their idea.)

At some point, however, much of existance becomes discovered, known, catalogued, and explained, and the veil calcified to the point where people begin to feel too separate from the spirit world and wonder. (Very akin to the Kali Yuga: "Most people are aware only of the physical aspect of existence, the predominant emphasis of living is material survival, and power is mostly in the hands of men. People's relationship with the spiritual is governed predominantly by superstition and by authority.") People become disillusioned with tech and turn to religion, spirituality, etc. At some point everything breaks, or something (veil rips/falls, or there's some big cataclysmic event[s], or whatever) and the cycle starts over again with a thin veil.

Huh. Maybe the people I heard it from took it nearly directly from the Yugas. I'm looking at the concept of the Yugas and seeing huuuge similarities.

[David19]

I think the veil sounds accurate, i've heard it on some otherkin forums, and it sounds like ages ago, the veil used be very thin (or not there at all) and beings from other planes/realms could walk the earth (think Fae, elves (the Norse ones), other 'mythological' creatures, etc) as well as gods (the myths are full of gods walking the earth), and magic was easier then the veil was put up for some reason, and supernatural beings couldn't walk the earth and magic became harder, i think the Hindu thing does sound good.

BTW, i know i probably sound like a RPGer, but i don't play them :).

If you google the veil (or better yet, the veil and otherkin), it should probably come up with some cool things.

[9-2-2]

I've read and heard many studies and discussion on the veil between the worlds, and I have developed a practice of energetically "hearing" the veil to sense discrepancies, status, and it helps me scan others. I've learned to scry through this form of clairaudience, it's very neat. Have you ever "heard" the aura of a serial killer? A child? A mage? Someone dying? It's very interesting and useful.

Strange as it may seem, there has never been a point in my life where there was absolute silence. When there was no noise, I always heard the twisting ringing of the background (which I later discovered to be the veil). If something was coming through or going wacky with the veil, it always sounded loud, disruptive, or violent. Sometimes the veil pulses gently, sometimes the pulse is erratic, sometimes it "pops", or makes a variety of patterns in noise. When I listened to the aura of someone dying in the hospital, the high-pitched ring I'd normally hear from the veil would stoop to an exceptionally low pitch, and became sonorous and barely audible. The aura of a potent mage would just about crack my ears in two, the sound was brilliant, the ringing and patterns existed on multiple frequencies, and it was loud... it sounded almost like a chorus. :-)

The veil wavers just as something really big happens on the Earth. The focus of people on New Year's eve, 1999 made the veil unstable (but it returned to "normal"). The massive deaths of 9/11 and the tsunami rocked the veil. I think that something may happen in 2011 - 2013 to disrupt it too. I don't think it will be the end of the world, just a shift.

But yes, if there were no veil, a ghost could smack the shit out of you, and people could hurl fireballs. The fact that an energy ball right now doesn't burn people alive, doesn't mean it doesn't burn spirits alive too.