This post will act as a bottle thrown in the sea, a “Is anyone like me anywhere ?” as well as an occasion, i hope, to discuss a more serious topic with you. Some claims made here might push on your “pseudo-science” button, please read until the end.
Please allow me to start with a brief (not so brief) testimonial in order for you to grab the topic.
I’m a 21 baguette french person.
I consider myself as a rationalist, i believe in demonstration by facts and I believe I don’t have any superstition like telepathy, parapsychology or flat-earth BS. I love all kind of science and deductive/inductive thinking in general. I’m basically passioned by anything that can be interesting.
I am a student in psychology, i’m aware of the scientific methodology and aware of the ton of cognitive bias the human mind can follow. I like physics, astrophysics, human sciences as well as “hard” sciences.
But, and some of you might stop your reading here for what i’m about to say, I recently dove into occultism. please wait and let me explain.
First of all, it’s historically speaking a cool subject to consider, i read a lot of books about alchemy, tarot, mistery cults etc… There’s a lot to learn about epistemology, theology and more. But it developped something else in me. Some kind of beliefs in some king of… magic.
Again, i’m not in a new age type of thinking like “your intuition is the path everything else is wrong”, I’m an atheist and the magic i’m talking about is more like something I got from a lot of philosophical thinking.
To clarify, I believe in “The Verb” kind of magic, the symbol and the ritual. It can look something like a thing A. Jodorowsky calls “psychomagic” (what a marketing term again). I started to believe that most of the things we called magic in the history of occultism is just a beautiful and poetic way to talk about advanced symbolic speech and act, which can have an enormous impact on the psychologic, emotionnal, and spiritual mindset of the person who performs it.
We can find this in franc-maçonnerie, the ritual has no supernatural nature but the power which emanates from the performance engraves a lot of things in your person, and this kinda looks like what we called sorcery at some point in history. In the same mindset, i started sudying tarot, not because i believe in divination of the future or present, but because i think the figures present some kind of strong hermeneutic that can have a deep impact on your life, it can allow you to take a step back from your life easily and understand some life keys that makes you grow, a step back that is sometime difficult to get without strong symbols, and I ask myself more and more if this advantage can be consider as some kind of verb magic.
If you push this logic further (maybe a bit too much this time...), black magic things like “He did sorcery on me now i have no luck in life, i feel sad all the time and all the bad things happen to me at the same time” can be seen as a strong symbolic bound. Someone who believes in sorcery will allow the “wizard” to take a looot of space in his head, granting him an enormous symbolic importance in his everyday life until some point where it can affect his general mindset and therefore his acts and behaviors (this can lead to a general state of cognitive and emotional bias and a retroaction loop of “feeling weird” --> “acting weird” --> “Feeling weirder” --> “acting weirder” --> “Loopin’ again baby”. The wizard would then just be an eloquent, charismatic person who leads with rhetoric, status and psychological sway.
I find this way of considering magic in general healthy and it’s new to me. Please try to understand me, There is a lot of superstition regarding magic and there will always be, let’s just say that from this perspective superstitions are a heritage of our scientific ignorance and the “real magic” underneath all of this would be the power of symbol, which we human can’t live without.
This leads to a problem to me. I was always seduced by occultism and, let be honnest, it would be so great if magic was a real thing. I’m stuck here on a rope streched across a wide gap, and maybe i’m doing all this cognitive gymnatsics just to convince myself that this is a real thing but I can’t prevent myself to think that this is maybe a stable philosophical claim.
I feel weird about all this, mostly because I couldn’t find anyone who can relate to my position. I feel rejected by science to even insinuate these topics and i also feel rejected by serious occultists, serious “philosophical spiritualists” and less serious “new age people” because i try to reduce magic and spirituality to just the power of symbol (I lack intuition blabla). (I have a tendency to read through religion, spirituality and “energy” related topics with my “It’s so clever and powerful if you see it as symbol” glasses, this is my believes and i’ll be glad to discuss this in comments but it’s another subject).
So am i granting to much importance to symbol and hermeneutic ? A great example is psychoanalysis (please don’t kill me). This hermeneutic reading can be a great tool and sooo powerful sometimes when you apply it to myth, society or the indidual. But my rational mind can’t help itself to scream “boooo not proven booooo pseudo science”, And i’m always furious when a dude claims the omnipotence of this theory like a fanatic. Believe me, this is a really an inconfortable position …
What do you think ? two questions, an epistemic one, in the chart of this site and a personal one which does not belong here but please light my lantern guys...
1. What do you think about this hermeneutic point of view regarding magic and occultism in general ? Am i going to far to convince myself that my dreams are somewhat true or are there really some interesting questions raised ?
2. Do you people experienced or experience this kind of epistemic gap, which can be really inconfortable and makes you think that you somewhat belong nowhere except somwhere in a weird middle, a place where you’re alone and can’t find a damn person to fully accept your position ?
An unconfortable epistemic position regarding “Verb Magic”.
Hello Guys,
This post will act as a bottle thrown in the sea, a “Is anyone like me anywhere ?” as well as an occasion, i hope, to discuss a more serious topic with you. Some claims made here might push on your “pseudo-science” button, please read until the end.
Please allow me to start with a brief (not so brief) testimonial in order for you to grab the topic.
I’m a 21 baguette french person.
I consider myself as a rationalist, i believe in demonstration by facts and I believe I don’t have any superstition like telepathy, parapsychology or flat-earth BS. I love all kind of science and deductive/inductive thinking in general. I’m basically passioned by anything that can be interesting.
I am a student in psychology, i’m aware of the scientific methodology and aware of the ton of cognitive bias the human mind can follow. I like physics, astrophysics, human sciences as well as “hard” sciences.
But, and some of you might stop your reading here for what i’m about to say, I recently dove into occultism. please wait and let me explain.
First of all, it’s historically speaking a cool subject to consider, i read a lot of books about alchemy, tarot, mistery cults etc… There’s a lot to learn about epistemology, theology and more. But it developped something else in me. Some kind of beliefs in some king of… magic.
Again, i’m not in a new age type of thinking like “your intuition is the path everything else is wrong”, I’m an atheist and the magic i’m talking about is more like something I got from a lot of philosophical thinking.
To clarify, I believe in “The Verb” kind of magic, the symbol and the ritual. It can look something like a thing A. Jodorowsky calls “psychomagic” (what a marketing term again). I started to believe that most of the things we called magic in the history of occultism is just a beautiful and poetic way to talk about advanced symbolic speech and act, which can have an enormous impact on the psychologic, emotionnal, and spiritual mindset of the person who performs it.
We can find this in franc-maçonnerie, the ritual has no supernatural nature but the power which emanates from the performance engraves a lot of things in your person, and this kinda looks like what we called sorcery at some point in history. In the same mindset, i started sudying tarot, not because i believe in divination of the future or present, but because i think the figures present some kind of strong hermeneutic that can have a deep impact on your life, it can allow you to take a step back from your life easily and understand some life keys that makes you grow, a step back that is sometime difficult to get without strong symbols, and I ask myself more and more if this advantage can be consider as some kind of verb magic.
If you push this logic further (maybe a bit too much this time...), black magic things like “He did sorcery on me now i have no luck in life, i feel sad all the time and all the bad things happen to me at the same time” can be seen as a strong symbolic bound. Someone who believes in sorcery will allow the “wizard” to take a looot of space in his head, granting him an enormous symbolic importance in his everyday life until some point where it can affect his general mindset and therefore his acts and behaviors (this can lead to a general state of cognitive and emotional bias and a retroaction loop of “feeling weird” --> “acting weird” --> “Feeling weirder” --> “acting weirder” --> “Loopin’ again baby”. The wizard would then just be an eloquent, charismatic person who leads with rhetoric, status and psychological sway.
I find this way of considering magic in general healthy and it’s new to me. Please try to understand me, There is a lot of superstition regarding magic and there will always be, let’s just say that from this perspective superstitions are a heritage of our scientific ignorance and the “real magic” underneath all of this would be the power of symbol, which we human can’t live without.
This leads to a problem to me. I was always seduced by occultism and, let be honnest, it would be so great if magic was a real thing. I’m stuck here on a rope streched across a wide gap, and maybe i’m doing all this cognitive gymnatsics just to convince myself that this is a real thing but I can’t prevent myself to think that this is maybe a stable philosophical claim.
I feel weird about all this, mostly because I couldn’t find anyone who can relate to my position. I feel rejected by science to even insinuate these topics and i also feel rejected by serious occultists, serious “philosophical spiritualists” and less serious “new age people” because i try to reduce magic and spirituality to just the power of symbol (I lack intuition blabla). (I have a tendency to read through religion, spirituality and “energy” related topics with my “It’s so clever and powerful if you see it as symbol” glasses, this is my believes and i’ll be glad to discuss this in comments but it’s another subject).
So am i granting to much importance to symbol and hermeneutic ? A great example is psychoanalysis (please don’t kill me). This hermeneutic reading can be a great tool and sooo powerful sometimes when you apply it to myth, society or the indidual. But my rational mind can’t help itself to scream “boooo not proven booooo pseudo science”, And i’m always furious when a dude claims the omnipotence of this theory like a fanatic. Believe me, this is a really an inconfortable position …
What do you think ? two questions, an epistemic one, in the chart of this site and a personal one which does not belong here but please light my lantern guys...
1. What do you think about this hermeneutic point of view regarding magic and occultism in general ? Am i going to far to convince myself that my dreams are somewhat true or are there really some interesting questions raised ?
2. Do you people experienced or experience this kind of epistemic gap, which can be really inconfortable and makes you think that you somewhat belong nowhere except somwhere in a weird middle, a place where you’re alone and can’t find a damn person to fully accept your position ?
Thank you for reading
Hijol.