my whole life i believed in atheism, facts and reason, and i lived in the city. i moved to the country and it is so dark and quiet at night i feel cursed. every part of my brainpower begs me to not give into thoughts of leylines and bone nosed voodoo witch doctors, but when i am alone by myself... i can't keep my higher cognition functioning. bad stuff keeps happening exactly like if i got cursed, things getting unplugged at random and sometimes the cat gets mad at something i can't even see in the room with us. i looked in the mirror and suddenly my face looked so old, like it wasn't me.i suddenly identify with all the shit in love craft and Stephen King about fear that i thought was just flowery bullshit. how do i take control of my own mind againp.s. the whole area i live in is devoided of birds. you can walk 2 miles in any direction and see hundreds or thousands of songbirds, hawks, and other species, but never a single bird around my dwelling
>>316924721) Magic is not real.2) Our mind is not a trustworthy character. That is why it is important to distinguish what you can measure and what might interpret, because things that may appear meaningful to you, might just be a result of natural randomness.All of that being said: You don't sound like you're in a good mental state. Maybe see what you can do about that.
>>31692472Appreciate the natural world that can induce that kind of shit in your mind without the supernatural actually existing.Nature is majestic.
>>31692489>All of that being said: You don't sound like you're in a good mental state. Maybe see what you can do about that.Measured by unseen hands, sanity flickers, a candle in the storm. I, the vessel of contradictions, adrift, battling phantoms of magickal making. Is it divine insight or devil's deceit, a whale’s wisdom or Ahab’s curse? I know not.>>31692512If that's true i almost want to be anti environmentalist.i can see why mankind refused science for so long, it seems like our progress is directly tied to urbanizing the entire planet so things like this can't happen anymore.
>>31692472Ayn Rand, James Randi, and their ilk, are con artists. They are supposedly objective and honestly skeptical, until the mask slips and you see they have their respective agendas.There is indeed a metaphysical aspect to reality. The proper approach is to face it with curiosity and openness rather than dogma.
>>31692472you sound like you're going through a manic episode, call family/friends. To answer the question, it really depends how you define magic, are rainbows magic? I mean in a way but they're also compeltly understandable.
>>31692472Magic isn't real.yeah this could be the beginning of a mental health break, please seek trusted company in family/close friends/a mental health professional
>>31693525Also, as far as birds go: Make the area feedable for them. They spend all day looking for food.
>>31693525>There is indeed a metaphysical aspect to reality. The proper approach is to face it with curiosity and openness rather than dogma.I have been thinking about this. Not to get whole hog into it but I do think the esoteric tradition lasted so long in western culture we are ignoring a lot of how the rational things we do today are still shaped by things people thought were spiritual... like how in college they just want to talk about Descartes cogito and not the fact he was inspired to think of it in a dream by a great and powerful entity>>31693529>To answer the question, it really depends how you define magic, are rainbows magic? I mean in a way but they're also compeltly understandable.i dunno, i mostly mean my brain is much more prone to come up with explanations that aren't scientific. they might not be considered magic, i guess. like when i went to think of reasons as to why the birds left itd be like: >pollution or environmental damage in this area (scientific) >magnets or crystals in the earth making it unpleasant? (half magical half scientific) >buried demonic amulet or talisman from centuries ago on my property? (magical) >disputing ancient burial ground (magical) >bad ley lines intersecting (magical) >evil entity bound to this place (magical) >elemental imbalance from old magical catastrophe? (magical) like i know overwhelmingly a scientific explanation is more likely, and when i lived in the city, my mind would go there and stop, but now whenever i hear a bump or see something from the corner of my eye i find like one scientific explanation and immediately 5 magical explanations right after. that's never happened since i was little and afraid of the dark
magic may not be real but there are interactions between the imperceptible and the perceived--your interpretation of reality is just as disreal as magicepistemology is as narrow as our scope of measurement tools and it makes sense that cities -- where you are surrounded things built under conditions we understand and plan -- have a different metaphysical texture than the country -- where plants and animals build the landscape on completely different axes of perception and construction
>>31694513>>There is indeed a metaphysical aspect to reality. The proper approach is to face it with curiosity and openness rather than dogma.>I have been thinking about this. Not to get whole hog into it but I do think the esoteric tradition lasted so long in western culture we are ignoring a lot of how the rational things we do today are still shaped by things people thought were spiritual... like how in college they just want to talk about Descartes cogito and not the fact he was inspired to think of it in a dream by a great and powerful entityThe thing is that the "magic isn't real" people will move the goal posts to suit their position. They also always beg the question, assuming the truth of what they say without any scrutiny.A percentage of modern life would appear magical to people of some arbitrary time in the past, a la Clarke's Law, and so it will be in the future. For example, it appears likely that "enlightenment" is real after all, but the so-called skeptics* would be the last people to ever acknowledge it. * They're also dishonest: a sceptic is by definition someone who doubts something and asks for evidence. Okay, that's consistent with having a curious and open mindset. But the label is invariably adopted by materialist zealots who use ridicule and whose mindset is ignorant dogmatism.Getting back to the birds: A garden and a lawn will always attract them.
>>31692472Former atheist/strict materialist here, and I’ve come to the conclusion that magic is very much real, though it may not entirely be supernatural; some of what is called magic is just science falling behind usefulness, as it entirely possible to reliably use something without understanding why it works, whereas modern science is much more “If it doesn’t work in our model or can’t be measured with our current tools than it can’t exist” ironically enough. The Spirit World as explored by the CIA is one such example, but so is placebo and malcebo. When it comes to straight up supernatural, you’d have to look at the Buddhists meditating on peace and it’s correlation to murders, or the Great Meme War and Kek the patron god of 4chan and his role in the Great Meme War of 2015/2016, which I personally view as a magical act.
