Long ago, when I was going through some rough times, I was approached by a tarot card reader at a local fair. I don't remember what she said to me, but it resonated, and she gave me her card. I went to see her. Not because I even considered that she could tell me my future, but because I wanted a cold reading. Nothing I was trying seemed to help, and the last thing I needed was a counselor asking me what I thought. I wanted to be given advice, that I could take or ignore. I needed a fresh voice, a different perspective. And I could not afford to shop around for real therapy.
She provided me over an hour of solid attention, for far less than I would have paid for professional counseling, or even a massage. It was all a little bit silly, but she did pick up on my not taking care of my health. Within a few weeks, I had a bad boil lanced, and an abscessed tooth cleared out. She didn't know what she was picking up, nor did I, but I was prompted to investigate. Most of what she told me was certainly bullshit, but I don't remember. Just the conversation, guiltlessly all about me, was healing.
I've had my own tarot cards for over two decades. I never considered them predictive, but a randomized study of my own thoughts, based on old human archetypes. That I remember the accurate predictions is not a surprize. When I played the Tower, I thought deeply about ending the first marriage. Our minds react to the right stimulus. Nothing magical or fabulous about it, more like seeing mug shots, and reacting to the right face. "That's it, that's the problem." Finding words, finding the right image, identifying the problem that had been squirming away from me, is the mechanism. If magic is a trick, then it's magic.
Just as a good placebo can work, getting my head in the right place, by whatever means, helps. A subtle sidestep to recalcitrant thoughts. When stuck, use anything at hand. Mental lubricant.
No need to glorify it, though. It really isn't mystical.
Reading Paranormal America, whose authors study not the validity or lack thereof of other-than-rational convictions. Rather, they researched the people who hold these beliefs. And found no easy answers. Not just nutters, although there are some of those. Some of it is education, income, power, or often - lack of these. But not all. A very different set of people set out to find Sasquatch through fieldwork, than those who see demons in the eyes of every non-Christian, or the casual astrology user. I'm not quite done, but I can't see how they could come to any single conclusion. It's too big a question, like finding a cure for cancer, when there are so many different kinds. Or the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, much depends on the actual question.
I do suspect, though, that mainstream science's queasiness about the whole subject to be a huge detriment to understanding the human mind, and how we deal with being social beings and individuals, each strangers in strange lands. Dismissing the manifestation as ridiculous misses the point.
6 comments:
So many things have been dismissed and rubbished due to ignorance combined with a "we know best" attitude, that now are at least accepted as "well, there is something there even if we don't know what"
gz,
Not quite the message I'm going for.
I think UFOs are a mental and social phenomenon, not an externally verifiable one, for instance. We need to calmly, and non-jugementally study WHY people believe in ghosts, instead of trying to decide if it is real or not. Taking up either side of the rope does nothing to understand what the rope is there for.
It is too easy to dismiss that which we do not fully understand, whether it be ridiculous or not.
Paranormal is a much nicer term than "supernatural", since it seems to acknowledge that anything we do find will probably fit into or modify our existing understanding, rather than overturn the table (and invalidate what we've already discovered and built on).
Pacian,
It's for all those experiences out on the very edges of normal. But so often in science, it's the exception to the prevailing theory that sheds light on what is actually going on. Sometimes, it's a very tricky knot to untie, like finding the mechanism underlying scurvy.
Finding out if there are ghosts or angels or ets is neither interesting, nor possible. Finding out what it is that people are experiencing and calling a ghost or an angel or an et, now that says something fundamental about human psychology or society, or maybe biology, possibly geology. Don't dismiss the data just because some people are interpreting it as magic.
Pacian,
Or rather, the data should not be thrown out. Not that you, personally, should not. I'm not accusing you, just writing badly.
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