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a big, contentious, people-flouncing-out-of-the-DM-group argument about astrology this morning has forced me to work out what i really think about divination. you may be shocked to learn that i& #39;m a hardcore materialist, just not, as i said to my astrologer pal once, a basic one
so, interested as i am in the ways our material world may be most usefully apprehended in terms of symbolic handles on subtle and marginal phenomena, i& #39;m always trying to figure out what babies are getting thrown out with the bathwater in Enlightenment fear and loathing campaigns
naturally i& #39;m delighted by insights like one that was making the rounds recently, where someone was hypothesizing that divination could be useful by getting you to pursue strategies you wouldn& #39;t otherwise, so it& #39;d break you out of attractor basins in your behavior
i have another claim of my own to add to that, that astrology could be reasonably predicted to become dominant among forms of divination because its advanced usage is in finding auspicious times to take specific actions toward your goals
even if the determination of auspice had no value whatsoever, constrained scheduling of specific actions toward your goals has the side effect of accidentally forcing you to take those actions *at all*, which is massively overpowered
but this was all to one side of the argument, which per usual centered around whether astrology can make predictions, which immediately devolves into what& #39;s a valid prediction, which anything inherently symbolically interpretive can always be disqualified on, rationally
and these are perfectly valid criticisms; interpretive results leave essentially infinite room for matching the prediction to the outcome, and a reasonable person could decide that& #39;s all that& #39;s ever going on
but, y& #39;know. i felt the need to work out what *i* actually think
but, y& #39;know. i felt the need to work out what *i* actually think
ya wanna know what i think? what i really, really think? well, i& #39;ll tell ya. this is best guess shit, here, mind you
i think the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is real. i think it isn& #39;t just someone who& #39;s been sensitized to some unusual pattern suddenly noticing it everywhere.
i think the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is real. i think it isn& #39;t just someone who& #39;s been sensitized to some unusual pattern suddenly noticing it everywhere.
i think frequency illusion from sensitization does happen. but that another thing that happens is that things like to happen together in ways and on scales that make no sense to a rational intuition, and perfect sense to an arational one. synchronicity, abused as the concept is
and that sometimes what that looks like is one individual who has never encountered a reference to Baader-Meinhof in their life suddenly running into it thirteen times in a week. this being some surface of a broader pattern moving through the world in an inobvious way
one thing you are doing, then, when you& #39;re performing a tarot reading, then, or casting a hexagram, or another randomization-based form of divination (remember, all randomness is pseudorandomness) is giving those patterns a way to surface where and while you& #39;re watching
contrariwise, astrology and other forms of divination that don& #39;t rely on randomness are trying to read these patterns directly in place, through metaphors that may have greater or lesser correspondence to the actual dynamics and be used more or less skillfully
