Do people believe that some people can actually manipulate the elements, like super powers?

Yes, but only if They let ye!

Yup, ditto!

Hmmm... I'm more of the thinking its a matter of belief... If you truly believe that you can, with every fibre of your being, then the universe will react acordingly.

Kinda depends if you're a 'living reciver' lol

Seriously, I think it depends by what you define manipulation as. For example, striking a match and using it to start a fire is technically manipulation of an element. I'm guessing you mean like controlling the way the wind blows and making fire dance. I suppose weatherworking would count too. I think it is possible but would require a very strong and tightly focused will. I would also think that a very healthy measure of respect for the element would have to be in play. occasionally, when meditating with a candle i try to make the flame move and would swear it does - but it could also just be a draught.

Hmm i don't think i explained that very clearly, but i suppose it will have to do.

how about you Paganboy, do you think its possible? and has anyone else experimented in this area?

Er okay, so what do you call magick?

Superpowers... no, in my eyes. For me magick is natural, our magick comes from nature and is part of nature hence Paganism being the natural religion. Therefore magick must work within the realms of nature and what is natural. It is unnatural for money to appear out of thin air as air cannot be made solid so as to create money. It is also unnatural for our hands to hold fire balls since our bodies are not fire resistant. But i do believe we can work with and manipulate the elements to some extent, and i do believe magick works... but again within the realms of nature.

Blessed Be
Rich
x

lol Yes you can and no its no superpowers!


That cheered up my day that did.

Is possible if your intent is strong enough.

Well i was thinking more of your biblical, awe-inspiring power. Like parting the sea and such. Calling down lightning from the sky and all that stuff.

is that possible!?

I've also experienced flame movement when meditating, sort of seems to follow and do strange things. And when i'm out walking and barefoot i swear i can "feel" the environment more, like i'm more in tune with it on a higher level. Difficult to explain.

No I don't think that it is possible to CONTROL the elements, they belong to nature and the dieties are in charge of that aspect of life. I do think that you can ask for happenings and that the Dieties may, or may not grant your request. But not I feel to the extent that you seem to be talking of.
Take for example the Red Sea parting as the Christian Bible says it did. The Red Sea at the time period talked about was not as the Red Sea is today. It was wider and shallower, more like a marsh, and DID according to local Arab custom have paths that you could walk across, like fords and causeways, that on the lowest tides became visible. They have long since been dredged by man, who has altered the coastline so much today that they no longer exist.
As to calling down lightning, well just try holding something that conducts upright in the right weather conditions and you will soon have lightning "called" to it, even the great flood and locust swarms mentioned have actual answers, the Nile naturally becoming red with natural materials carried down from its upper reaches, and locust swarms travelling northwards on the winds.
You can be intune with nature, but that does not mean that you will ever be able to control it. Just be thankful that you have been granted the gift of atunement as it appears to be rare in this modern age.

Yes, in addition to this, note that the Red Sea comprises of a series of tectonic "grabens", that extend up to both sides of the Sinai plateau. No doubt Moses and his entourage had the fortune of arriving there at a time of upheaval as would be indicated by the massive appearance of red algae in the sea, as it is this stuff thrives on sulfuric sodas. Remember that Moses was well read amongst the scribes of Egypt, who traditionally kept detailed accounts of such phenomena as they would in cycles of flooding, climatological and celestial events. Knowing the "signs" so to speak, it was merely a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Those of the knowledgeable were also the collectors of "parlor tricks" often gained from the travels and trade of the Phoenicians. Amongst these were such things as simple electric generators (employed in the arc of covenant), batteries, even large light bulbs and such. If you read through the Kabballah, it becomes quite clear that the Hebrews were notoriously into such alchemy.

As for superpowers, bear in mind the laws of conservation in physics where strong forces are concerned. Messing with strong force is no less foolish than the atomic bomb, because the overzealous have that ugly habit of not considering the long term effects, especially those involving intermediate vector forces.

Converse to this, yes, there are people who can, by what would seem magick, effect causality, but this is by a subtler process and knowing the nature of deterministic chaos. They know exactly when and where to stir that ripple that ends in a tsunami. In physical terms, they are known as "strange attractors".

So then what is the difference between physics and metaphysics? To me its all one and the same. I need no "magick spells" per-se, or any other placebos, just communion with the "spiritual web" (or whatever you might call it) for the proper instructions, with all due respect to the probable consequences. No matter what our role may be in causality our existence depends on our integrity in the overall construct we call "the continuum". Violating it will unquestionably bring one into the focus of entropy, thus subject to inevitable extinction. This is the path that civilization is on now. You may argue the consequences and who or what's to blame, but how ready are you to return to the basics of existence, whether you believe the ecosphere will die or not?

Now you've given me a headache!!

Ach son, then it's the Super Pills ye'll be needin'!

Strange that someone so well versed and academic cannot tell the difference between a theoretical philosophy and a material science?
Metaphysics is based purely in the mind, is solely subject to conjecture and limited purely by the percievers imagination, where as physics is a definitively verifiable science and works purely to strict limits. The difference is as plain as Aristotles and Einsteins writings and workings.
But this subject is purely muddying the waters of the base initial question, which I take to be "can people control nature".
The examples of the Red Sea parting and such, were not done as philosophical examples, as I did not believe the question was intended as a Philisophical question but a physical question. And so were used purely as examples of how people "spin a yarn" in the furtherance of personal power or belief by using natural and easily explained occurances to their benefit.
Mankind should just leave control of Nature to herself and the Dieties, and just learn to live with what they are given.

In the initial question the term used was "elements". Now you may interpret them as Nature, while assuming humans are neither. Physics is academic while metaphysics is theoretical philosophy. I am talking about the APPLIED laws of NATURE, not academic philosophy or theory...and when it gets down to what people like Nicolai Tesla and M.J. Feigenbaum conceived, that is where the line between the physical and metaphysical gets really thin. You can just as well call it all purely in the mind, much the same as that line between natural and unnatural. Is what comes from the mind unnatural? supernatural? or just a figment of what imagination from where? I did not learn these things in school, I learned them in Nature, so Aristotle can kiss my butt! There's no use trying to categorize me, this strange attractor is a "Heinz-57" living in the country of BOSCH!

Taken literally the word "elements" has many meaning, but since the question was posed on this site and so a pagan context, then the word would LOGICALLY be interpreted in the concept of its general pagan meaning which is THE ELEMENTS of Nature.
"APPLIED LAWS OF NATURE?", since nature is neither one thing nor the other it can have no "APPLIED" laws. Nature has no definitive form and so can follow no difinitive rule, it is everything and nothing.
If it is the application of THE LAW OF NATURE, then that again that is a man made concept, used to explain actions that are are considered unexplainable, basically an escape clause for reason. Equally "Natural and unnatural" are merely terms with perspective to a situation, just like good and bad.
Nobody can be, or should ever be categorised, they are what they are, and thats all, they are individual.

Yeah, yeah, trees grow by their own volition, therefore Nature applies no laws. I have to see elements as untouchable forces of nature (in which I should not consider humanity as an integral part) in order to be accepted as Pagan, under the "conforms of Paganism" in an arguement over my lack of distinction between the metaphysical or physical. Well pooh pooh on me for being so unpagan! Pooh pooh on me for expressing any independent POV that does not comform to the Laws of Paganism (if there is such a thing)! Yup, sounds to me like bullying on the fringe of the fanatical. Well sue me for not speaking your language, heh,heh!

pmsl

Well, I once sent away for a device which was supposed to allow me to demonstrate my psychokinetic powers. It turned out to be a wafer-thin aluminiium rotor balanced on a pin. You concentrated on it and it would spin round. I spent some happy times concentrating on making it go first one way, then the other. But how could I be sure it wasn't just the random air currents in the room? So I placed a glass bowl over the flimsy thing and tried again. No matter how hard I concentrated, it did not move.

So that waas my attempt to control the element of air in a very modest way, and I'd say it failed.

IMO no, I dont know what youd do to get a God to do it for you either...

The feeling the environment more thing is normal. Its coming in contact with the energy that flows through everything. Its the stuff thats built in energy work for spells (how I hate that word makes me feel like harry potter). The concept is present in most cultures its used in Tantra its the Ki in AiKido and the Chi in Tai Chi.

In GT we divide it into 3 parts:
Bri (energy of an old ritual place)
Bua (the energy left behind from general day to day occupation)
and Bru (the natural energy of the land)

I met someone recently who was pagan but had never felt energy in any form... so some people are probably born unable to feel. Id say thats rare among pagans because she is the only person ive ever met that couldnt feel energy.

What would you ask the gods to do?

Um... well

1) stop making every bank holiday a torrential down pour, maybe the odd sunny one would be nice.

2) make work start around about 10ish so that i can stand a chance of being awake in the morning

3) every so often make something really freaky (not nasty) happen. such as one day you are out walking and it starts raining marshmallows, or the gound beneath you turns into strawberry flavoured custard. That would keep you thinking and also make the world more random. Always fun.

Gee, I dunno, they seem to be doing everything they can, mind you, they could add a little more of the "special herb" between the rows of corn.

Or not Juliai,

If you were able to make the foil spin one way then another and you were consciously asking it to do that and it was working....

What Im trying to say is.. everything even psychokinesis (i have NO idea how thats spelt) works on the manipulation of energies... the energies that you build you direct.. you directed them clockwise or anticlockwise.. the fact that you stuck a ruddy big bowl over the experiment doesnt mean it doesnt work.. it means you created a barrier you havent worked out how to penetrate yet! Its like saying bullets wont kill me... and to prove it Im going to line 10 men up with machine guns, which they are going to point and fire at me... oh yeah.. and Im going to be standing behind a wall of solid steel...