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
If you’re looking for a good entry point into woo land, I recommend this book as a practical way to investigate the territory for yourself. It makes no big claims about reality. It just gives you some linguistic games to play that highlight the boundaries of the simulation. https://t.co/gRRXdX3E6Y
just let go of needing to explain it at all, and just go with it as an experience. There is something there, but we don’t really understand it, and maybe we can’t really understand it. And that’s OK.
my go-to definition, that comfortably dismisses much the nonsense that often gets caught up in ‘woo’, is “experiences that cannot be articulated by the part of the mind that can only understand experiences by articulating them”
It wasn’t about the cards, not half as much as it was about that person already having access to the latent knowledge somehow. The cards just gave them a way to reel that knowledge in from the unconscious, or the aether.
Similar with astrology, as another example. You can learn all the significations and symbols and signs and everything else and... See more