The Occult/Fantastical Beings/Etc.

[Aven]

Let's have an open minded conversation about all things occult, from tarot to fairies to dragons and vampires.

No subject is barred, you can of course agree or disagree with people, but everyone gets to be heard and said YES to. So:

Assuming [X] is true, what would be the repercussions in reality ? Is there evidence for it that might be substantial? Another dimension? What sort of creature could weave itself under our noses and still be able to live among humans?

I am fairly aware that some or most of this would only be theory or fantasy, I want to analyze the possibility of it not being a fantasy and assume it's real.

[Ptah]

I read Tarot semi-professionally. I neither believe nor purport anything whatsoever occult qua "real" about it.

[MacGuffin]

Someone (before I was banned) at TypoC claimed to be INTP and used "fairie" in her name and talked about paganism and other subjects.

I about lost my shit.

[Faust]

My obsession with John Zorn was in no small part due to the sheer mystical, occult nature of some of his more projects, both the avant-garde and romantic. What seems mystic also seems less 'flawed' somehow, such that it carries an aura of magic, or sanctity, or evil, or something else.

[MoneyJungle]

I really like Reptilians, black-eyed-kids, shadow people, etc. The mirror they hold up to our times and the continuity or lack thereof with the mythical creatures of old. Alien abduction vs trolls snatching people under a bridge. I really miss Art Bell in his prime.

[Charde]

Someone (before I was banned) at TypoC claimed to be INTP and used "fairie" in her name and talked about paganism and other subjects.

I about lost my shit.

That's probably Greenfairy, and I think I put her on Ignore eventually.

[kari]

I believe in Magick. It is the manipulation of reality according to will, to a degree, a sort of applied psychology.

I think people are not aware of the purpose behind the rituals and spells found in grimoires. They are simply to train your psyche to immerse in a particular goal, through representation (in the case of voodoo dolls) or just fortification of thought. It is about training your body to exceed limitations. Do you know there are monks that can survive freezing temperatures because they can meditate to raise their own body temperature? Magick is self-fulfilling prophecy, it's placebo, it's will-to-power.

[Starjots]

Assuming [X] is true, what would be the repercussions in reality ? Is there evidence for it that might be substantial? Another dimension? What sort of creature could weave itself under our noses and still be able to live among humans?

I am fairly aware that some or most of this would only be theory or fantasy, I want to analyze the possibility of it not being a fantasy and assume it's real.

I will try to write in the spirit of the OP.

**I throw UFOs and aliens into the genre. Here the possibilities are infinite, the other dimension you speak of is the other 99.99999999.....% of the universe that is not here. Now, many think aliens would be studying us and I guess maybe you might need some field work for your PhD on Omicron Cygni 4. More fun is the tourism angle. If you are a zillion years more advanced than us and bored live it up among an entirely different species. Mind expanding, and a brief visit, say fifty earth years (a tiny fraction of the typical alien life) you don't have to be uncomfortable, go first class as a powerful human. Or try being a factory chicken to experience brutality. Who knows how kinky they are.

The 'evidence' is easy - point to anything whacky that doesn't make sense and say it was an alien in disguise on holiday.

**Tarot Cards and Ouija Boards and other Hoodoo - If real, these are just manifestations of lots of 'connections' between minds, past present and future. Large scale quantum entanglements and reality collapsing to a single entity at some level.

Evidence? Brains pick up a lot of weird shit. Skeptics call it coincidence, false pattern matching and noise and wanting to believe. Which means critics are giving a probability distribution function approach to interpreting nature and they are drawing the selection line in the best part of this curve and the spook lovers aren't. Claim is only reproducible physical phenomena applies as proof and yardstick for setting where the line goes which yields only physical phenomena. A strange loop isn't it? The mystic could say only mystical stuff is proof of reality and this would yield a selection line on the probability distribution function that selects only mystical stuff - the trees have spirits, the rocks have spirits.

If you one then says, the physical is true because we can change and control our physical reality because now we have science and technology from our choice of where we draw the line this is true. But what of mental and spiritual states? Is the dweller of the highlands of New Guinea more in touch with this reality because he listens to a shaman? Modern humans are by their own admission generally fucked up and clueless about why they do what they do.

**Magic, as mentioned by Kali. I've been digging this guy's explanation of fate, free will and magic from the POV of Norse Mythology. http://norse-mythology.org/concepts/magic/ The altering of fated reality by some agent we possess (free will) is magic, even the savages realized there had to be a little extra something to make us more than machines. The Norse invented an entire cosmology to explain it (as probably did everyone else).

[skip]

I really miss Art Bell in his prime.

+1

[Charde]

I'm actually someone who loves the study of the weird and unusual, including horror and supernatural and paranormal elements, and I much prefer fantasy to science fiction. Religious studies and experiences are also of interest to me. I'm also an avid gamer in those kinds of genres, enjoying weaving stories and playing "let's pretend."

All that being said, though, my actual mental orientation towards those things is skeptical in nature. I find them fascinating to explore, but there is a certain standard of proof that needs to be reached to justify belief in such things, and so far the fields seem speculative and clouded with doubt.

I believe in Magick. It is the manipulation of reality according to will, to a degree, a sort of applied psychology.

I think people are not aware of the purpose behind the rituals and spells found in grimoires. They are simply to train your psyche to immerse in a particular goal, through representation (in the case of voodoo dolls) or just fortification of thought. It is about training your body to exceed limitations. Do you know there are monks that can survive freezing temperatures because they can meditate to raise their own body temperature? Magick is self-fulfilling prophecy, it's placebo, it's will-to-power.

See, I don't consider that supernatural. Supernatural violates and/or acts outside the natural order of things, where those people are still just "training their bodies to exceed the average limitations." There are event horizons past which the "will to power" cannot go, and at that point the supernatural (exceeding the natural) would be relevant.