Exercise Your Inner Eye

 Always good advice. 

Charmed Life

Divination is something I've been interested in as long as I can remember. Not that I believe that the future is set in stone - far from it, actually - but the methods used are fascinating.

Since I don't believe in a predetermined future or fate (in most cases), one may wonder why I have such an encompassing urge to go around reading arcane signs and symbols everywhere. But that's the answer, isn't it? Because they are arcane symbols. Not only are they beyond language, but often go where our conscious minds can barely reach. They tell us what's in the hidden parts of our psyche, the things we already know without knowing.

It's a bit like throwing dust into the wind. It makes the the invisible visible.

Given this, it's only  natural that I prefer forms of divination that employ meaningful symbols. Tea leaves and tarot are probably the best known of these, but charm casting falls into this category, too. In some ways it's even more so, as one can choose whatever charm seems personally relevant to represent a situation.

For instance, a bird charm can symbolize happiness to one person, industriousness to another and gossip to someone else. The important thing is to know what each charm means to you, specially. No good getting meanings out of a book, unless you happen to be in complete agreement with the book.

If you're anything like me, you're always collecting odds and ends and shiny things. Potential charms might turn up in the bottom of your pockets. your jewelry box or your junk drawer (unless you're one of those crazy neat freaks who doesn't have one). The best charms are the ones that come serendipitously, just when you need them. Some of the charms I use were found, some were given to me, a few I made myself - not very well, but good enough to get the message across.

Charms can be cast and read whatever way you like, but my preferred way is to make a basic (and in the example below, a very bad) sketch of the astrological houses. I don't bother with the more detailed meanings of the houses here, just a truncated version that tells me what's going on where.

(Seriously, what was going on with my ability to draw a circle here? I blame the cheap chalk and the rough paving stone. :p)

 After giving the charms a good shake and tossing them into the circle, we read where they fall.

So what of this fortune? Well, first of all, the charms representing the evil eye and jealousy are not in play, so that's a hopeful sign. Second, the 8th and 9th houses are empty, so death, taxes, sex, philosophy and religion are pretty much not happening right now. On the other hand, luck, spirituality, stability and secrecy/privacy are in the 1st house, the house of self. Longevity, personal power and information are in the house of material possessions. I suppose that means "hang in there, things will get better"?

Memory, energy and protection are in the third house - that's communication, so that makes sense too, but betrayal is in the 4th house (that little green thing is a coiled snake, by the way) and that's not so good - even though I know who it is. Gossip is in the 5th house, with deception just creeping in, but peace is there, too. This also makes perfect sense, for reasons better left unsaid (since I don't want to add gossip to gossip) and theft is nearly in the 5th house, but - mercifully - in the center of the circle, so I don't consider it to be a factor at this time.

Love, marriage and social life are in the 6th house, representing health and physical labor (too true) and transformation and money are in the house of marriage and partnerships. This could mean my husband will be paid for his work (*update* yes!) but that's also the house of enemies. Let's hope it's the former.

The female figure and the deer are in the 10th house, status, and it's anyone's guess what that means. My status is of  a woman who is shy and vulnerable? That I'm a woman who protects the vulnerable? Or that I'm simply a woman with a lot of deer visiting her yard? Well, all of these could be true, but the meaning is not clear. This is the only one that has me a little worried because it is hard to read.

The house charm is in the 11th house, community and groups, and since we are still considering moving to a new community, that fits as well. That's also the house of ambition and goals, and since that little pink house technically represents my "dream house" (literally a house I dreamed of, here ) that's also appropriate.

The 12 house, the unconscious, contains the symbol representing the world at large and the one representing attack or aggression. Well, one only has to open the newspaper to see the world is in some kind of crazy flux at the moment, that a raging undercurrent of something is at work. The collective unconscious must be in a right state about now. But the attack, aggression - whether that's something else in the undercurrent or something more personal remains to be seen. The 12th house is also the house of hidden enemies, so time to be on guard. Let's hope there are no other foes coming out of the woodwork

So, in essence, this fortune could be read as, cheer up, things could be worse. Also, beware of snakes and gossips. Well, that's good advice for anyone. ;)

...

How ever these charms fell and however accurate they may be, do I think that this is the work of an invisible hand? Not very likely. (Not saying it's entirely out of the question, just that it's not likely). No, I think what I'm looking at are the inner workings of my own mind. Those things, thoughts, ideas, and perceptions bubbling away unawares, potentially bursting into reality for good or ill. 

If you think about it, the idea isn't that much stranger than the concept of unseen forces intervening in our lives, which is a common belief worldwide. The universe is mysterious but so is the mind. The mind, I believe, is about as mysterious as anything could be. And I do love a mystery.

Especially when it's got a great plot.:)

Neuroscience Vs Philosophy, Again.

Neuroscience wants to be the answer to everything. It isn't.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7714533/brain-drain.thtml


Nice article by Roger Scruton in The Spectator, concerning a particular thorn in my side. Just one example, from the article:

"So just what can be proved about people by the close observation of their brains? We can be conceptualised in two ways: as organisms and as objects of personal interaction. The first way employs the concept ‘human being’, and derives our behaviour from a biological science of man. The second way employs the concept ‘person’, which is not the concept of a natural kind, but of an entity that relates to others in a familiar but complex way that we know intuitively but find hard to describe. Through the concept of the person, and the associated notions of freedom, responsibility, reason for action, right, duty, justice and guilt, we gain the description under which human beings are seen, by those who respond to them as they truly are. When we endeavour to understand persons through the half-formed theories of neuroscience we are tempted to pass over their distinctive features in silence, or else to attribute them to some brain-shaped homunculus inside. For we understand people by facing them, by arguing with them, by understanding their reasons, aspirations and plans. All of that involves another language, and another conceptual scheme, from those deployed in the biological sciences. We do not understand brains by facing them, for they have no face."

I have the argument mentioned in the article all the time, albeit from varying angles. There is a hard dividing line that seems very difficult if not impossible to communicate across. Most of my efforts have been toward finding a way to communicate this that extreme scientific systemizers (in my case, usually those with significant social deficits) will be able to accept, if not understand. The arguments in the comments section of the linked article are all too familiar.

While it may seem unrelated on the surface, I couldn't help but recall Brugger's experiments regarding apophenia and dopamine. Among other things:

"In his July 2002 report, Brugger stated that during the first stage of the experiment the individuals who believed in the paranormal were much more likely to see a face or a word when there was none. The skeptics were more likely to miss the real words and faces when they appeared on the screen."*

The link between patternicity and paranormal beliefs aside, I had noticed something interesting. When trying to communicate the nuances of interpersonal social interaction to these extreme systemizers and analyzers, I was being asked the same questions again and again: How can it be possible to understand another's motivations if it's not explicitly stated? What is the mathematical formula for friendliness? What is "flirting" and why should I believe it exists if I can't perceive it? Feelings are only a neurochemical process, so why should they matter in relationships? Trying to explain that many people experience empathy and emotional attachment feels like trying to tell a skeptic there is a ghost standing behind them.

There was so much missing of what was actually there that I thought of the apophenia experiment. One day I asked, rather frustrated, "when you look at clouds, do you ever think they resemble other things? Like, faces.or horses or ships...anything like that?" The answer was (and almost always has been since) a puzzled no. Clouds look like clouds, those other things are not clouds, so why should there be any resemblance? What's more, people who said they saw such things were either lying or crazy, or perhaps these stories of cloud shapes were just a peasant superstition cherished by the ignorant. Sort of like sasquatch or God.

It might only be anecdotal (and hence unacceptable to those same folks I'm talking about) but such consistency perked my interest. For all the mockery of those who believe in the paranormal (or who experience apophenia, pareidolia, cartocacoethes, synchronicity or what have you) such a consistent absence of such among a group who were not seeing, nor sometimes even believing in things like empathy or social nuance was intriguing. Could it be that detecting patterns plays a not insignificant role in successful social interactions? Thanks to my own tendency toward patternicity, it was pretty easy to see the similarities between the two groups. :p In my estimation, it's not so different from those who would see consciousness as simply a neurobiological process and nothing more, a "brain in a box" more than a whole person.

Personally - in all my crazed, irrational, philosophical unscientific-ness - I don't believe the views (and the theories) of those who are super-rational are the only correct explanations. Nor do I believe those who grab hold of any pattern (or convenient bit of mysticism, or worse, conspiracy) to explain their world are necessarily correct either. However, I do believe (and have been damned many times for saying so) that there is an added level of experience for those who are able to sense something beyond being a bag of water and chemicals, where everything simply corresponds to a precise formula. Being a synesthetic, for instance, I am a great test taker, always have been. Why? Because I'm using several senses to peg the answers in my mind. It's that much easier when you know how the answer tastes, feels, and what color it is. My friend over there, the non-synesthetic, has far less sensory information to help him out. Our experience of the senses and how they affect us is not the same. By the same token, a person who has a feel and understanding of philosophical concepts as well as the scientific is going to have an edge. Just because a person experiences something and you don't, it doesn't always mean they are a fool. Sometimes it only means they have a different experience than you.

Neuroscience has its place and it's an important one to be sure, but more is necessary to help us explain our experience as people.

*I've lost track of the source of this quote. Will find and add later.

Picnic Area #17 or, The Horror of Home

When you have been a strange child, nostalgia is a double edged sword. Walking through the park where you once spent so many hours is fraught with emotion. It's all fine one moment, recalling this bend of the road, the gravel beneath the swings, the water fountain where your hot and tired classmates lined up for a drink. Everything smells the same - the grass, trees and river still have the same sweet scent and you are amazed how much you remember despite having forgotten. When you have been a strange child, though, alongside comes an upwelling of old miseries.

Depression and alienation have effects that are hard to put your finger on. It's not so easy as cataloging a series of events. It means nothing to say. "I felt lonely in this spot" or "the bank of this creek is where I sat crying in despair". These are only expressions of things that happened The real horror is one of perception. Depression is like a wound in the mind

Amid the the sunnier memories, the feel of a nightmare emerges. The dense mat of live oak leaves crunching under my feet makes me nauseous. The webby light coming through the trees feels prickly. There is a yawning horror somewhere that I can't name, only sense its presence. It's here though, and comes back to haunt me in vague, uninterpretable dreams.

I had forgotten about picnic area 17. Reservations Only. It's always been there under the trailing oak branches, despite my forgetting. Snippets of far-off memory emerge - my sister's friends hoping to hide from prying eyes. My schoolmates in our Kindermaskenball costumes playing and clinging to branches like little monkeys in fancy dress, or sharing sodas with other girls whose names have been lost to me. It hardly matters. These are all just descriptions of things that happened. I had forgotten all of that long before yesterday as I was making my way to the springs, when suddenly it was there in front of me. The light coming through the branches was as it had always been, catching me in its sickening web.

There is no reason I can give, only that the wound in my mind makes it so.