right, so i did not talk about this at all, lemme lay out some stories that seem plausible to me. in more detail, the “minimal but respectful take” here seems to me psychological: that tarot and astrology are two different scaffolds on which to hang intuitive psych reads
Reality is something much bigger than our ordinary senses are capable of perceiving, and learning to be in relationship with it requires us to enter the imaginal realm. Mysticism, magic, and animist frameworks are ways of doing that, so I write a lot about those topics.
when we tell stories about magic but coat those stories with a layer of "btw magic is impossible" we are saying that having power and helping people is impossible
I don’t actually care that you even know about the chakras. I do care that you remember your wholeness. I don’t care if you’re woo or not. I do care that you are moving in a way that creates a life you want to be living as the person you are.
I’m not saying material life isn’t a thing. I drink H20 and shit entropy like the rest of the species. I’m saying it’s a lot weirder than we’ve dreamt of in any of these peer-reviewed philosophies. Physics is great. I love satellites and semiconductor chips. But we are, um, aware it’s incomplete, and we can’t begin to describe more if we don’t even... See more
1/ In the mid-2010s my metaphysics nearly broke. A Bay Area VC friend introduced me & other nerds to an “energy healer.” Reaction: yeah, ok. “Energy” did not have a place in our scientific ontologies.