Reminder that there used to be a $1,000,000 prize available for anyone who could display any sort of supernatural powers that remained unclaimed for 20 years. The challenge rules required that both parties agree upon the test setup, and several people actually tried to claim it and all failed. It astounds me that anyone still believes in this nonsense and that it seems to be becoming even more popular to believe in literal magic and other supernatural idiocy.
Everyone should read about James Randi he was a brilliant skeptic.
And he did special effects for Alice Cooper!
Also friend of Penn and Teller. Just a great guy all around.
There was that guy who could make almost anyone forget almost anything, he won the prize many times. :D
I am at the point where if anyone, ever, for any reason, asks me what my astrological sign is, I stop communicating with them.
They always turn out to be irresponsible, narcissistic idiots every time.
An exception would be if this interaction is taking place completely within the confines of an actually defined fantasy world like a video game or ttrpg.
But real life? People who actually believe there is, or could potentially be anything to astrology?
Dangerous morons.
devil’s advocate: there are people like me who don’t take it seriously. like I enjoy talking to astrology people because listening to anyone talk about anything they’re interested in is downright entertaining, even if I personally don’t believe planetary positions have any influence on humans
Astrology has one major and tangible benefit - it lets you easily remember when roughly are people’s birthdays coming up.
Lots of people doing something for fun but not taking it seriously is just an advertisement for people that will take it seriously.
That’s a fair point. The only time I’ve recommended/passed along business cards of those in the metaphysical entertainment industry (at least that’s what it is to me), have been to others I know are already into it on some level
But I guess I could do inadvertent damage talking about it with those who aren’t into it, if they also happen to be in a vulnerable state where the less honest members of that industry could really take advantage of them
That’s something to think about. I’m probably going to add “don’t bring up my unserious enjoyment of metaphysics to people unless they mention it first” to my personal rules
I’m not gonna tell you that you shouldn’t talk to, or shouldn’t enjoying talking to astrology people.
I just have a lower threshold for bs I put up, and do not personally enjoy listening to enthusiastic yapping about absurd nonsense, I infact fact it insufferable, assuming it isn’t a child who is in the learning/development process.
Were you and I to be friends, irl or otherwise, I’d respectfully ask you to not waste my time with astrology, unless you want to have a meta or academic level discussion about … the psych tendencies/profiles of astrology believers, the actual real world history of its growth and development (which is very often completely different than what many astrology practitioners believe), how you can track the general decline of literacy and critical thinking skills and the education system by using the proliferation of astrology as a proxy…
… I would find those topics interesting.
But generally speaking, in an irl, casual conversation scenario?
Yeah my rule of thumb is that if we are just recently met and you are ardently asking me what my sign is, you’re a person I would rather not know at all.
Nothing wrong with having a filter. I suppose mine is that I won’t be friends with anyone who insists on contact through social media apps instead of regular texting (maybe Signal if they’re cool)
I also have that same additional filter as well, haha.
Maybe… we could… be friends lol?
I am so very tired of trying to explain how awful social media apps are to everyone, how they don’t realize they’re addicted to a digital drug that makes them angry, depressed and misinformed…
And then you also try to explain how to actually do online security, and they usually get angry when you tell them that all the marketing and advertisments lied to them.
Probably lol. I’d wager most of us Lemmy dorks would get along with most of us Lemmy dorks IRL or otherwise
I suppose Lemmy is social media but its non-monetary, completely-volunteer-run nature really does make it feel like a different animal. At least I’m not horribly addicted like I used to be with Reddit, anyway
We of tend play choose your horoscope at work. We gather free or paid newspaper and around a coffee we read the horoscopes and chose the best or the funnier.
I’ve worked as a copy editor for a small newspaper.
You wanna know how the horoscopes are written?
Lead editor pulls them out of his ass, often laughing while doing so.
They tended to be based on the plots of, or scenes in movies he’d recently seen, shows he was watching.
I’m not even kidding, this guy would also bombard me with variations of the GI Joe ‘porkchop sandwiches’ memes, in all likelihood was an editor by day, 4chan shit poster by night.
My wife makes a newspaper about me for my birthday every year. She makes the horoscopes too and that’s one of the most entertaining parts for her.
My god did that smell good
Yeah and since we laugh reading them, we do full circle XD
Yep they are literally complete bullshit and you have to be an actual moron to take them seriously…
Also I edited in more to my original comment after you replied, did not expect you to reply so fast, haha.
He I see, yeah that what i though, their can’t be science behind this. I wonder when we will start to get “AI” horoscopes.
(I am waiting to enter a music festival, nothing more to do than speak or argue with people)
There are various complex systems, calculations, tables and such that people use… but there is absolutely no actual empirical science that backs up any of any of them.
Therr are no plausible causal mechanisms.
There is also an immense wealth of scientific evidence showing how the predictions are uselessly inaccurate, as well as a bunch of other studies explaining how and why such vaguely worded predictions are convincing to certain kinds of people.
If there is any science to astrology, it is a science of being a scam artist, of psychological manipulation tactics.
As for the actual purported mechanisms of generating a horoscope, they often have psuedoscientific levels of complexity that fools rubes who cannot think critically:
Its complex, and I had to learn it, therefore it’s true and worthwhile!
Nevermind that it often doesn’t even make testable, falsifiable predictions, and when it does, they are not accurate, they are wrong.
Throw it out like we did with bloodletting, ‘body humors’, ‘vitalism’, trying to solve disease with sacrifices and prayer, Lamarckian evolution, etc…
Sooooo
Your sign? :)
ïþæOphiuchus is usually my answer
This is the funny troll answer that tests whether or not the astrologer has modern, up to date levels of dedication to their woo woo bs.
Blawcked!
What if real life is a video game?
Then astrology would be the equivalent of an entire belief system that functionally is so complex it essentially contitutes a religion…
Astrology would be that, but built on urban legend, pre-internet era myths about older video games, like Mew being in the back of a truck in Vermillion city.
It would be fake cheat codes that don’t work.
Astrology is really dumb. I do have one curiosity with it. It’s a big deal for hockey players to be born early in the year to the point you find fewer pros born in December and in the later months compared to January through March born hockey professionals.
One other thing, kids have birthdays every year and if they have their parties outside that means some kids are having snowy birthday parties and others are having sunny birthdays and plenty of crossover. The kinds of interactions you have with your friends will be slightly impacted* by how much outdoor gear you have to wear, etc. (*maybe imperceptibly)
But the point is there are at least two possible differences that come depending on which month you’re born in. What if there are like a hundred of them and astrology is a really terrible way of trying to figure that out? Now I realize it’s not so maybe a better question is I wonder if there is any version of birth month based assessments, correlations, or analyses that might be fruitful or useful in some way or another.
Ok you seem genuienly curious here, lemme try.
So, yes, you are correct that the season you are born in will slightly effect the number of seasons a kid experiences.
But uh… what if you are born in a tropical monsoon climate that has no winter?
What if you are born in the other hemisphere, where the seasons are inverted?
What if you can’t afford a house, so you don’t have a yard for parties, don’t live near a park… or hockey rink?
And the biggest one: what do the actual stars have to do with this?
Say earth and the whole solar system are poofed out of the Milky Way, and into Andromeda. Solar system remains stable, all orbits the same, the Sun’s massive solar wind is strong enough to protect us from the ambient radiation of wherever we end up.
Seasons will be exactly the same. Stars will be dramatically different. … Do you think the stars being different would change… anything?
Beyond that, even back here on normal, real Earth, in the Milky Way… most Eastern astrology is based on the year you are born in. Not the month.
And also, throughout history… various cultures have kept a calendar, kept track of time… in many different ways. Solar calendars. Lunar calendars. Calendars based on the reigns of Emperors or Dynasties, calendars based off of mythical/religious stories for the origin of the universe/planet.
They also have not all recognized the same constellation patterns… as what we now recognize them as.
If you’re in the Southern hemisphere… you can’t even see many of the ones we see in the North.
…
You can try and number crunch statistical correlations between every possible variable.
Sometimes this can lead to an insight.
But to nail down why that correlation exists, to actually discover something true and useful… you also have to provide a causal mechanism that makes sense.
The object close enough to meaningfully directly affect Earth is the Moon. It causes tides, for example, alters many animal behaviors.
The only other thing is the Sun, of course, which gives the planet light and energy.
Nothing else inside of or outside of our solar system has any mechanism of directly impacting life on Earth in a regular, noticeable way…
… unless we get astounsingly unlucky and get hit by the radiation from a magnetar we somehow haven’t noticed yet, or something absurd like that.
I forgot the biggest laugh of them all. This YouTube astrology dude explains some different types of astrology, including one he called mundane astrology. He explained mundane astrologers attempt to explain entire society’s behaviors and fates using the stars or astrology or whatever. And the example that he gave was COVID. And also he brought up, believe it or not, elections. And said that there’s an election astrology.
So I think there are only three possibilities.
One is that astrology, including election astrology, is super effective. And a handful of people can do it. And they’re all billionaires.
Scenario two, the same scenario, except election astrologers don’t like to mix money with their craft. And that’s why we don’t know about the 30th through 50th richest people on the planet, all being astrologers, who enjoy the betting markets, the prediction markets.
Scenario three is that we don’t see billionaire astrologers. Not because they are too ethical to mix money with sky gazing (or whatever it is), but because they’re making it all up.
So to the astrologers out there, who amongst you are billionaires thanks to owning the prediction markets every day or every election cycle? Or what kind of ethical code prevents election astrologers from using prediction markets?
I mean, when I was learning statistics and econometrics, half of my professors stressed the limitations of various kinds of mathematical predictive models… by saying that we don’t want to go from professionals to turning into astrologers.
Of course, this doesn’t stop a lot of day trader dude bros and more recently crypto day trader dude bros from convincing themselves they’ve cracked the code…
But the point here is: Actual statisticians literally use ‘astrologer’ as a derisive slur.
And they are correct to do so, imo, lol.
Awesome, I didn’t reply yesterday because I had too much to say so here is a simple thank you to avert a common never-reply scenario :-)
Well, just a quick dictation, too. Apparently I forgot that stars were involved with astrology at all, so I slapped my forehead and searched YouTube. And I was hoping to find a skeptic who steel-manned astrology, but that would be pretty odd to spend your time doing such a thing if you were a skeptic. Unless, of course, it was teeing up an explanation for a teardown. But anyway, I listened to some goofball talking super seriously about astrology, and he made a claim about celebrity star charts and said that Iron Man, Robert Downey Juney, had foreseen that he would have a big change in his life. And then, sure enough, Iron Man came out and changed his career. Wow, great job, astrology. You nailed it. Once energy is just about free, and so is compute, it would be pretty easy to disprove that line of thinking by feeding the world’s celebrities into a system and analyzing all of their little charts. Anyway, I was only thinking about birth months and the idea of the positions of balls of gas having meaningful impacts on all of our lives is quite the stretch. Please excuse the lack of editing here. Thank you.
Apparently I forgot that stars were involved with astrology at all, so I slapped my forehead and searched YouTube.
LOL.
Astrology, ultimately etymylogically derives from… astron, meaning ‘star’ in Greek.
It literally means ‘study of the stars’.
hahahah!
But uh yeah, it is essentially impossible to ‘steel man’ astrology, because pretty much every practitioner of it has their own cust version of it, similar to… how one is supposed to use or read Tarot cards.
Then you’ve got a whole cottage industry of cranks, cranking out either 100% or 90% made up bullshit as their own spin on how astrology ‘works’.
Like, historically, you can trace various sort of family trees of actual astrological doctrines, but in the last 50 years, so many people have made up so much nonsense that you basically have to take any particular astrologer and ask them what they believe, because they won’t agree with another one, or they’ll just tell you that part of astrology is that it is a personal, mystical experience and practice, so there will be ‘reasonable variation of opinion’ amongst ‘experts’.
It is delusional narcissist nonsense that functions as an identity for people who have not otherwise managed to build or acquire one.
There are a lot of similarities between, and sometimes direct crossover with, actual literal cult leaders, and ‘very serious’ astrologers.
You sound like such a typical Leo
grumble grumble…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=75g0fjX0r4s
You’re lucky I have a thing for classic rock.
With pipe organs.
Ah yes James Randi, a man I have very mixed feelings on. He was a climate skeptic who would claim to have debunked people who never signed up for his challenge. A real scum bag in general. He was also a high School drop out with no training in the sciences.
Admittedly he called himself an “Honest Liar” and was motivated not by money but out of fear that people believed he had magic back when he was a magician.
Still given his character I tend not to take JREF too seriously.
I think the case for climate skeptic is a bit overblown. In his own words:
http://archive.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/806-i-am-not-qdenyingq-anything.html
The relevant quote:
My remarks, again, are directed at the complexity of determining whether this GW is anthropogenic or not. I do not deny that possibility. In fact, I accept it as quite probable.
Not sure what to make of the claim that he debunked people who never signed up for his challenge. There are a number of psychics and others that he has debunked that never signed up for the challenge (for example Uri Geller or Sylvia Browne) which this could be referring to, and I feel are valid debunking.
I could show quite a few unflattering articles about Randi’s controversies but I feel his supporters insist that the fact that the challenge existed was the end all be all. In and of itself.
When one must realize that Randi’s big claim to fame was the million dollar challenge and without that he had nothing.
Critical thinking should tell you quite simply that JREF’s donations required appealing to skeptics. If Randi went to bat for anything that seemed supernatural his fans would turn on him, and if his big claim to fame was an unwinnable contest then his bread and butter demanded that he never allowed the contest to be won.
It’s that simple.
Now one could say that he’d get famous and rich for confirming Magick exists but… why would he? The papers would talk about the psychic not the foundation and further studies couldn’t be done at JREF because it wasn’t a scientific research facility and James had no training in science at all…
It merely had people who were trained to look out for things like cold reading and the like.
There’s nothing to gain and everything to lose and the fact that 99% of people who applied to challenge were turned down and 0% of those who did even got past so much as a preliminary round. Well it’s a little sus.
Now I’m not saying magic is out there and JREF is hiding it. If it were then JREF wouldn’t have the means to hide it.
What I am saying is JREF and James Randi were not scientists they were showmen and that’s very important to keep in mind.
Sharing The idea that you can debunk a phenomenon by yelling “FAKE!” And doing a smug dance is something that offers more harm than good imho. Especially when you get people like Anti-Vaxxers who Mimic this behavior though rallying against medicine instead of faith and folklore.
What I am saying is JREF and James Randi were not scientists they were showmen and that’s very important to keep in mind.
Indeed. Randi said that a lot himself. He wasn’t a scientist, but a magician. Magicians figure out how something seems to work, scientists work out how somehow works. He explained numerous times that those are very much not the same.
Sharing The idea that you can debunk a phenomenon by yelling “FAKE!” And doing a smug dance is something that offers more harm than good imho.
He didn’t do that. He said “show me. Ok, now show me under controlled conditions”.
He didn’t do that. He said “show me. Ok, now show me under controlled conditions”.
Except no he didn’t. The challenge was heavily criticized for among other things, having overly strict standards (moreso than most studies reasonably have), Randi himself having final say (no impartial judge), faking his own research, and him downright refusing any participants that weren’t using the same three stage tricks he debunked again and again.
I am not saying Psi is real or anything of the sort. I am saying that those who promote themselves as skeptics must be willing to be scientific or they’re just kooks working “for the other team”
To pretend Randi was scientific about his approach in the slightest is an insult to the the scientific method itself.
While I do not endorse the views and research of parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake, he was asked about why he didn’t take on the challenge and what he had to say was deeply informative.
Now I’m not saying Sheldrake is anything amazing. I’m asking… why do we have a quack like Sheldrake sticking to the scientific method better than Randi? Why is Sheldrake the guy claiming dogs are psychic coming off as the guy talking sense?
How much ammo does that give woo peddlers?
It’s not enough to yell “FAKE!” As loud as you can and talk like you’re writing a rational wiki article. You need to actually stand for science and the scientific method otherwise you send horrible messages about what is and isn’t evidence and give New Age whackjobs the floor to say “Well if Randi has to fake studies, something Sheldrake caught him doing, to debunk psychic powers, why are we still questioning psychic powers?”
I have an interesting opinion on this. If someone displays “supernatural powers”, then those powers are not supernatural–just unknown. Therefore, it is an impossible prize to claim.
If you read the article, the rules were only that both parties have to agree on a test and if someone passed the test they won the prize. There wasn’t a “gotcha” clause like “Oh since you did it it’s clearly allowed by physics and we don’t have to pay up!” So like if someone showed they had psychic powers sufficient to pass an agreed upon test it doesn’t matter if there’s a natural explanation for it, they would have still won the prize.
I remember seeing piece of some TV show that invited both Randi and some “psychic”. The psychic showed his power of bending spoons, then Randi asked to do the trick again, only using one of his spoons. The fraud failed.
Or the guy moving things with “telekinesis.” He covered the table with tissue paper and suddenly the guy’s powers disappeared…
Well, in seriousness, and more interestingly, I’m not really willing to call supernatural powers real or fake, currently. There exist some stories I’ve come across, which are likely real, which contain absolutely unexplainable phenomenon. Just this morning, someone in a Discord I’m in (who wouldn’t just fake stories) was explaining how someone they knew had a psychotic break on psychedelics, and, in the ambulance, narrated the paramedics’ childhoods with disturbing accuracy. A trusted moderator of that space responded to my skepticism with “psychics absolutely exist, but the vast majority are just grifters”.
Note: Without getting into all the context, this moderator is not the kind of person to simply believe in conspiracy theories.
I used to be a Reddit atheist (ew), and I’ve gone from thinking I know everything, to being very serious about accepting different views–no matter how absurd. We’re unaware of so many more things than we’re aware of.
I’m of the opinion that if psychic abilities exist, they can not be on command. They might. They might not. I would rather be honest than claim to be factual–I don’t know.
Just this morning, someone in a Discord I’m in (who wouldn’t just fake stories) was explaining how someone they knew had a psychotic break on psychedelics, and, in the ambulance, narrated the paramedics’ childhoods with disturbing accuracy
I think it’s entirely possible this person is being honest while also just not having a firm grasp over what actually happened, due to having a psychotic break from psychedelics. The paramedic simply agreeing to whatever they said (if the conversation did happen—I’ve been unsure whether a conversation I thought I had was real or not just from smoking too much weed) could have been interpreted as much deeper and more profound than it was.
None of this requires ill intent. The mind is just incredibly bad at making and retrieving memories in the way we want (infallible, like a video) even when you aren’t on drugs.
It could also just be cold reading. People who haven’t been exposed to that can find it eerily accurate, even though it’s just a combination of random guessing with reinforcing the guesses that got reactions. It’s the kind of thing that both parties could participate in without either being explicitly familiar with the technique.
This is the probable explanation. However, all I have is the surface of the story. If it truly was an accurate reading (as in, the paramedics adding to what was being said), I’m unaware of it. I don’t really like pressing for details in others’ potentially traumatic events, though.
Most of that is just mentalism, which is effective and useful but works off a psychological and stochastic approach but is absolutely explainable and not supernatural despite its applications in manipulating people. See: Jacob Wysocki in the one year later episode of game changer
I probably will watch that. Thanks!
A LOT of mentalism is stage magic, and has nothing to do with psychology. That’s part of the set dressing they’re trying to sell you, they’re just magicians as with a 21st century coat of paint on top.
Removed by mod
Rude.
I mean no one even managed to display “unknown” powers either.
They were all explainable
There’s a term for this idea, “preternatural”. It means a phenomenon that is the result of the natural world, not magic or divine, but still unexplainable with our current understanding.
James Randi’s prize didn’t require proof of the supernatural, it was open to preternatural phenomena as well. Someone just had to prove it was a REAL phenomenon and not a hoax or random chance.
There’s a term for this idea, “preternatural”. It means a phenomenon that is the result of the natural world, not magic or divine, but still unexplainable with our current understanding.
So anything actually proven to exist would be “preternatural” then. Even it turned out to be the result of magic or the devine, it’s still something that exists in the natural world that we just don’t understand yet.
Sort of, assuming you don’t believe that God or magic are real. If I had premonitions of the future, and could demonstrate through testing that they come true, I’d be proving a phenomenon exists but not necessarily anything about the origins. They could be visions from God, making me a prophet. They could be something with a natural origin, like an energy or invisible spirits.
It’s a term used by occultists, ghost hunters, and other people who want to discuss / legitimize spooky shit without the religious baggage of the word “supernatural”.
Removed by mod
This is a warning for rule 5
I looked for the video and came across a reddit thread about it. Here are two really funny comments:
I think its rather silly to say the least especially since curses require a certain amount of anger and hatred that im sure next to nobody feels to this person.
Oh yeah that’s why it didn’t work
Magic requires willpower and intention to use properly. I doubt any of these randos on the internet actually possessed the genuine desire or emotional investment to actually curse a random guy on the internet who had heretofore never interacted with them
Anyone who actually understood this likely didnt rise to the bait.
No true witch!
So, they’re saying that the magic is real, but I can’t just go to a crazy old crone’s potions shop and purchase a curse on someone because that’s not how it works? Well, that’s disappointing.
Edit: “no true witch” = hilarious
It’s a take on the logical fallacy: No True Scotsman
I got it :) It was hilarious.
Well, yeah. Didn’t you see that documentary The Craft? There’s also that really old documentary about life in like 15th century New England about that family that gets cursed by the witch and then the daughter joins a coven. They have footage of her flying. I think it was called The VVitch.
Honestly though, it does point out how stupid rage-baiting is. This guy genuinely thinks that they must care about his opinion and when they ignore him for being a weird little tit he spends a whole lot of effort to try to say that that’s proof that their thing isn’t real. For one it’s trying to prove a negative, and two it’s just such a weird, self-absorbed thing to do.
Chasing hate from others is such a weird thing to do. I don’t think magic is real but I’d still rather be friends with some random person who thinks it is than be anywhere near this fuckin’ douchebag.
I’m not defending the guy here (he does seem like a douchebag) but I think I’d rather hang out with a skeptic than someone dumb enough to believe crystals have healing energies.
Plus, the videos exist because the witches didn’t ignore him. No shortage of magic-believers in the replies.
None of this is newsworthy but I’m cringing harder at the angry replies than the fact that he’s rage baiting
I think I’d rather hang out with a skeptic than someone dumb enough to believe crystals have healing energies
In the absence of any other information at all, sure I guess I agree, but like basically anything else is more important than this, like being a caring person, being fun to talk to, etc.
You’re right but I was just using the criteria they were to decide
The witches’ personalities are built on nonsense, sure, but I’d rather that than a person whose personality seems to be enjoying increasing hateful energy. It reads as someone who says that any and all criticism is “just people being haters”. I wouldn’t want to hang out with any of these people but I’m standing by my position that trolls are just pathetic, negatively impactful people.
He’s having a laugh. They’re the ones bringing “hateful energy” into the world… And it’s not like he’s the first one they’ve angrily hexed
Eroding your critical thinking to the point where your think magic is real can be damaging. I see this man as doing a public service no different than flat earth debunking. People need to understand BS when they see it and this guy is helping.
The witch subculture is on the same level as kids who start channeling their chi to kamehameha a bully
That’s not true, the kids will figure out they’re cosplaying eventually.
LIGHTNING BOLT
Anyone who watched that episode where Gohan taught Videl how to channel chi and didn’t try it at home was probably too old to be watching the anime
… didn’t we all do this?
This is just a high effort version of “…Then may God strike me dead!” but targeting a spiritual minority instead if the hegemonic national religion. Shouldn’t the amount of un-smited politicians indicate that there is no God?
it’s a risky thing to do,
the vast majority of cases, you’ll be right. but no one will care.
however, in the unlikely event where you suffer a immediate tragedy, like trip and break your nose, stroke, bird shits on you. you might start a new religion
Yeah, I got taken in like this for a while.
I grew up religious and one time prayed for a friend who was going to go though a couple of surgeries and would have to eat through a straw for a few months. I prayed that I could take some of the pain for him if needed. Turned out that I had a small accident and got my first stitches the next day and my friend was able to avoid additional months of recovery because the surgeon was able to do both operations at once. I took that as a sign that my prayer had worked and believed more strongly in God. For a while until I realized that coincidences can happen and that believing in God is pretty stupid.
And squander your magical talents for substitutional atonement??
Strangely enough, I could never get it to work again. Must’ve been my fault though, not God’s.
imagine there was a Messiah, god incarnate born on earth, but he didn’t believe any religious nonsense, and every one in a while he accidentally does some miracles. which he dismisses.
that’s you
Shouldn’t the amount of any un-smited politicians prove any spiritual group that claims to have the ability to harm people wrong? I mean why are witches so mad that they can’t hurt a random guy?
I can only actually name one politician that was smited
There’s this one Turkish politician that got smited right after he said that Allah will judge Israel
Not quite the same. God (hypothetically) has their own plan, so if I pray for god to smite you, and they don’t, then I can just say “well, I guess that’s not God’s plan”. Whereas, if you believe in hexes and/or curses as something fundamentally different to a bog standard prayer, then presumably the hexer and/or curser has more agency over the result than that.
It’s really funny how the “singular, omnipotent god” religions fucked up the logic behind prayers. When you had many gods and spirits and whatnot, a prayer not being heard could be taken as it not being stronger than another spirit/god, or the god of your choice ignoring you, or something else.
With omnimono, god has a plan, so prayers are either trying to convince him to change the plans (which, if assumed true, opens a very interesting can of theological worms), or will fall on deaf ears, as the plan won’t change.
I think if God has a plan, then telling everyone he can smite people, then never doing it isn’t a good look haha.
I wouldn’t ever do this because as soon as anything went wrong in my life I’d never be able to shake the question that it was super natural. I’m extremely skeptical and don’t believe in any supernatural things, but I have a fear of developing superstitions. Also when I get really stressed about my life and feel like it is particularly unfair I start to feel like there is some sort of external source of my problems and it’s malevolent. So, doing something like this would be a recipe for problems for me lol.
is skeptical and doesn’t believe in the supernatural
has a fear of developing superstitionSounds to me like you’ve been cursed, mate.
Hopefully if I’m ever cursed it’ll be in a cool way, like it’ll teach me some sort of life lesson then either go away or be useful after the fact. Rather than some sort of eternal punishment thing lmao.
Television has taught me it’s usually resolved within 30-45 minutes of hijinxs and adventures … or two episodes if it’s something really major
Sounds like you have a superstition about superstitions.
They aren’t superstitious, but they’re a little stitious
What a whelming comment
Mediumstitious.
No, I don’t think it’s “bad luck” to think things are “bad luck”.
I have a fear of developing superstitions
Ngl that sounds like a good horror-comedy
tbh I’ve just accepted that superstitions are part of the human psyche. I don’t believe in “chi” in the sense of some energy that can be measured but there’s definitely some kind of pattern recognition in the human subconscious that’s processing the flow of the environment around them and the people in it that way. And a lot of cultures worldwide have longstanding traditions that guide the way they deal with that both in the sense of soothing that part of the subconscious but also trying to address whatever threat or goal in the environment that that pattern recognition is trying to draw attention to. I really enjoyed “Feng Shui Modern” by Cliff Tan if you want a really great explanation of concrete ways in which principles of that practice tend to help people feel safer in a space. He talks about things like the most common paths people take take through rooms, wanting to have your back against something solid, and not liking having beams and lights hanging directly over your head.
And personally I just try to keep the less concretely beneficial things to fun cultural traditions and other stuff I can connect with people around and avoid things that have been like, objectively disproven by modern science in some way or that would be specifically harmful to some specific circumstance / situation. So like carrying around an evil eye talisman is fine but using an herbal remedy that’s been found to be harmful is not. And I find it’s also helpful to think of it less in terms of specific effects / outcomes such as hexing, and more in terms of good energy / bad energy or good luck / bad luck. So the evil eye ward isn’t protecting me from some specific thing, it’s just a general hope that I’ll avoid toxicity in my life. And there’s a big mindfulness component to these things too; the talisman is also a reminder to yourself to avoid negativity and try to put positivity out into the world around you.
I like your world view!
There has to be a fancy name for this phobia.
A phobia of phobias? It’s called Phobophobia.
Hmm, it seems “superstition” in Greek is “deisidaimonía”, so maybe deisidaimophobia? Or we could go with Latin for the much more familiar “superstitio” for “superstitiophobia”.
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I like the “headology,” or the idea that what people believe is what is real.
“So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you’re a witch and that’s why your magic works?” said Esk.
“That’s right,” said Granny. “It’s called headology.” She tapped her silver hair, which was drawn into a tight bun that could crack rocks.
“But it’s not real!” Esk protested. “That’s not magic, it’s—it’s—”
“Listen,” said Granny, “If you give someone a bottle of red jollop for their wind it may work, right, but if you want it to work for sure then you let their mind make it work for them. Tell ’em it’s moonbeams bottled in fairy wine or something. Mumble over it a bit. It’s the same with cursing.”
– Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett
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Hey, you never know!
Wicca was invented in 1954. They’re all fake witches.
That’s a linguistics debate. Are all Christians fake christians just because the god they believe in is an imaginary friend? Or are they real christians because they actively believe in their imaginary friend?
Or was your argument that the age of a belief lends creedence to it’s legitimacy regardless of its truth value?
I feel like the concept of magic doesn’t become any more credible if you use the archiac spelling “magick”, and differentiating between “spiritual” vs “supernatural” is splitting hairs. It’s close enough to the same exact thing that i don’t believe a person can call bullshit on one without calling bullshit on both. If brooms and cauldrens are fake then so is Beltane.
I think that you don’t think that there’s any meaningful difference between “spiritual” and "supernatural " then you’re missing the point.
I used to be an atheist anti-christian skeptic type that didn’t understand my partner’s beliefs at all, because why have beliefs if you know they aren’t real? sugar_in_your_tea’s above quote from Equal Rites actually fits it really well.
Your beliefs have an impact on how you act, and your acts have an impact on the world. Therefore I choose to live by a set of guiding principles and interact with the world in a way that fits what I want it to be like. The whole point is that you can only influence what you interact with, but also you never know what you’ll interact with.
That said, I think that people who claim to be able to influence the lives of others without interacting with them directly are on ego trips.
However, I also don’t think that anyone can say anything for certain, as we live in a universe driven by probability, where “spooky action at a distance” is an actual scientific phenomenon.
tl;dr: Spiritual describes how people interact with the world but supernatural describes hypothetical (meta)physical phenomena.
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Right. It’s all fake, regardless of age.
Sure, but just to clarify/reiterate my point, you can be a real member of a group that believes fake things.
It is a wholly constructed faith based partly on fragments of things that existed previously but with no input from those cultures so there’s no “authentic” Wiccan beliefs other than those from the 1950s.
Sure, but that could be said about any belief system depending on when you start the clock.
While I don’t personally believe in the authenticity of claims from any non-testable belief/faith/spiritual system, I do believe that any person who genuienly says they hold to one can fairly be called a member of that group.
Be it Wiccans, Christians, Scientologists, Saitanists, or Jedi. Hence why I say this is a linguistics conversation. An “authentic Wiccan” dosen’t need our approval, nor is the validity of their beliefs relavent to them using the term to describe themselves.
“genuinely” herein lies the key. Interesting to pick Jedi as an example because I think we can agree that people who out that on a census or whatever typically have their tongue firmly in cheek. Wicca probably sits somewhere on a spectrum between that and the major religions. You’d be mad naive to assume that everyone holds beliefs exactly as stated. My papi was a priest and we’re pretty sure never believed in god. L Ron Hubbard himself was for sure was grifting FFS. Add to that and most religions can’t even agree what authentic means for their community and LOL
Thanks for agreeing with and emphasizing my points! I thought using Jedi to elaborate the universality of my statement might be too subtle, so I’m glad you caught it.
But your last point about internal conflicts over authenticity within a religion did make me reconsider the necessity of “genuine” belief. Since spirituality is so personally definable, I guess all that is really necessary is for a person to claim the title. Technically, your papi was a priest despite a lack of a genuine belief.
We could (and people have) argue the requirements and definitions until we are blue in the face, but trying to get a working definition is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.
Sure, but that could be said about any belief system depending on when you start the clock.
Not really? We don’t have distinct points of creation for many faiths. With Wicca it can be set in a specific time and place. You aren’t going to find Wiccans from 100 years ago.
Wicca is a blend of multiple different religious ideologies that existed in Europe at some point in the past. If you took someone from modern day Colchester in 200ce they might recognize parts of their ancestral faiths but parts will be from other tribes and peoples. Hence Wicca doesn’t have an “authentic” set of beliefs as much as an intentionally created one. That’s different from something like Judaism or Christianity whose views weren’t created by people with the intent of creating a fait h.
That’s different from something like Judaism or Christianity whose views weren’t created by people with the intent of creating a faith.
I would disagree with this on a couple levels.
First off, we do have records of many faiths being created by compiling previously established beleifs. The Council of Trent compiling the cannonical faith of Catholic doctrine stands out as a great example.
And even if a faith was intentionally created, why should that undermine the concept that its adherents could claim to be real members? Buddhism for example was cannonically an intentionally constructed belief system.
I fail to see why a person who describes themselves as a Wiccan has any less right to choose their beliefs of their own accord, and then be counted as a real member of that group. Or alternatively, why a long standing faith system gets to be exempt.
That’s different from something like Judaism or Christianity whose views weren’t created by people with the intent of creating a fait h.
Maybe not “create” but Christianity was absolutely shaped and molded with purpose and intent.
Without question but there were centuries before that happened where it was more organic.
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Thelema was also intentionally created though they are unrelated as far as I am aware.
Wiccans are not a monolith. Some have claimed to be an ancient faith reborn while others are aware of the hodgepodge nature.
Wake up babe, new religion just dropped
I follow discordianism,which is actually newer than Wicca by a decade or two. But I’ll be the first one to admit it’s fake lol. It was written by a couple of guys while they drank beer and ate hotdogs at a bowling alley. The open and deliberate fakeness is part of what appealed to me.
Hail Eris!
fnord
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Pfft. They have had that covered for centuries.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways…”
Could one not say “witches work in mysterious ways”?
Magic works in mysterious ways.
That certainly explains why there’s no peer review of the magics
Thry work in witchy ways.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda…
I know there’s at least one dead fireman that proves god protected Trump or so I’m told.
Classic theurgy vs thaumaturgy
Well if he didn’t die, it was just part of God’s plan. Unless he did die. Then it was part of God’s plan, obviously.
Nothing fails like prayer. Or magic, which is just a different flavor of prayer and vice versa.
When I used to be New Age I believed that not believing in magic gave you a resistance to it because Quantum…
Accepting the truth that magic ain’t real was tough
Science is magic if you don’t know how it works so you can always re-establish your beliefs
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– Arthur C. Clarke
This simple statement explains the entire human history of religion.
I prefer… Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced
As a kid I asked a friend’s dad who was a chemist if magic was real and he replied “Do you think anyone would go into years of schooling for engineering if a shortcut existed?”
Like a reverse roko’s bassilisk. Interesting. I mean that way around is at least comforting/ gives main character energy.
I mean I’d say I don’t believe in witchcraft but I wouldn’t take on this challenge, so I guess I do believe in witchcraft
Mark Twain said he didn’t believe in ghosts, but they scare the hell out of him.
Witch casts fireball via an amulett (molotov)
I think that would be more of an oversized ampule.
“I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.”
Do I want a bunch of maladjusted internet weirdos to have a personal stake in my life going wrong? Do I fuck.
I’m not worried about Miss Cleo spoiling my aura, I’m worried about Charles le Sorcier finding my house.
i don’t believe in witchcraft but I’m not bold enough to challenge people to hex me. not because it might work, but because i might just be unlucky enough that something completely irrelevant would happen to me and that would forever convince them they were right and i was wrong and i would never live that down.
it might even happen while I’m uploading the update to say that everything’s fine. something would fall on my head or some shit, I can’t take that risk.
This reminds me of some work drama…
My coworker was cursed by our
bwitch of an ‘assistant manager’ for turning her down, and the next day his mom had hot oil splash up her whole arm and it looked bad.Not supersticious but he was and he was terrified. It was horrible to watch.
Sounds like a wonderful work environment
Yeah, are they hiring?
Alway! But mayhaps the revolving door retention style was actually a ploy to efficiently harvest soul energy for some unseen plot?
I barely managed to protect mine own. Beware!!
Hmm, maybe that’s my ticket to becoming a vampire, I hear not having a soul is a prerequisite.
Did you burn the witch?
Physically, no. :(
Mentally, yes! :)
I’m loosely pagan on a spiritual level and I vibe a lot with druidism and many of the things that witches do, but as much as I enjoy the culture, I never fail to cringe over the collective hubris of self-proclaimed witches. It’s always the edgiest 30-45 year old women who wear House of 1000 Corpses t-shirts and extreme amounts of eye shadow, who post “Proud Bitch” memes on social media and exude an undeserved air of confidence because they believe so deeply their spells are real.
While I admit that Wicca is quite beautiful and largely misunderstood, the things most witches/hexers are practicing only date back a few decades. They’re not speaking the ancient magicks or communing with old gods. I can’t speak much on the divine feminine because I’m not informed enough on that subject, but for the other half of their belief system they have taken the rather ambiguous depiction of Cernunnos and turned him into a sexy, big-dicked goat man, and have fabricated their own lore to explain the workings of something that is in reality unfathomably old and lost to man, with no surviving origin story and little to no oral tradition.
We can certainly make some educated guesses, but the bulk of that information died with the druids.
Wicca and paganism in general has always had those cornball types. Back in the 70s and 80s, every tool who renamed themselves after a cool animal and weather condition/celestial body claimed to have a grandparent who secretly initiated them into an ancient unbroken lineage of witches. In the 90s and 00s, it was appropriation gone wild with white ladies from Iowa claiming they had a lineage in closed religious communities like conjure and Vodou. Now it’s fucking deluded 20-somethings on TikTok who “godspouse” or work with Naruto characters.
It’s not important that it only dates back a few decades. At one point, all supernatural belief systems only dated back a few decades, and look how they proliferate.
People represent it origins as far older. And by doing so, claim a more authentic mode of being in the world.
This man is a true servant of The Emperor, the touch of Chaos must be resisted at all costs.
You know about Chaos? Time to exterminatus the planet to make sure this forbidden knowledge doesn’t spread.
You want to preform Exterminatus on Holy Terra? HERESY!
Moshi moshi, inquisitor-sama? Yes, these two up here, heretics
It’s just like any other system of belief. You can sit around praying for something, or you can cast more effective hexes, such as “hit this guy with my car,” or “actually give him poison.”
Lets hope all these internet witches don’t learn the power of
direct actionreal magic.
