Synchronous Serendipity

[panshiva]

So I'm interviewing this musician as one of the participants in the gaming design project I'm currently working on. Towards the end of the interview I comment on his Death in June and Lustmord album's and we get into this conversation of dark ambient music which leads to talking about experimental music which leads to Nurse With Wound and finally

Comments

[jonathankorman]

just about internal psychological states

The cosmos is so constructed that the effects of magickal practice will always be explainable as only a change in the practitioner's psyche. Early in magickal practice, though surprising things happen to the practitioner this psychological explanation is far simpler and tidier than believing in spooky æthers, deities, energies, and so forth. As the practitioner continues to work, explaining events in purely psychological terms requires increasingly elaborate justification ... until eventually one realizes that those “spooky” explanations are actually simpler.

Interesting Observation

[panshiva]

What experience has led you to this conclusion?

[jonathankorman]

There's a couple of things which feed into it. There's a touch of Robert Anton Wilson's influence, and a fair bit of this effect showing up in my own Work ... but it mainly comes from a broad observation across many folks' descriptions of their Work and experiences.

[nancyblue]

I've actually written something about this recently. The short version is that many people in our culture really want to deny a belief in the "supernatural" because it appears to run against this narrative of logic that we in the West have constructed for ourselves. In reality, we are really very much like the rest of the world in how we believe, but this rationality narrative makes it very difficult to discuss our experiences and sometimes even to understand them.

[jonathankorman]

Aye. Is there someplace where I can see this monograph?

[nancyblue]

It's currently under consideration from a journal but I'd be more than happy to send you a copy of it. Just give me a contact :)

I think I recall meeting you at the last ASE in Davis. We had drinks together, sort of. You were across from me, but, alas, we didn't get to chat.

[jonathankorman]

Yeah, I think your recollection of ASE is correct, though I cannot quite place you.

Please do zap me a copy of the paper, at miniver@gmail.com .

If you're curious, there's a feed of my much-neglected blog miniver.blogspot.com at cooper_korman. I plan to go back on the air daily in another week or two. I just friended your LJ, so if it's appropriate for likeminded near-strangers, I'd love to be inside your Circle O' Secrecy.

[nancyblue]

I will zap you a copy of the paper in the next few minutes! I would be most delighted to share my nefarious secrets with you :) I will also subscribe to your feed.

To refresh your memory, I believe I have recently posted a picture of myself in a lime green hat. It may or may not help your recall.

[jonathankorman]

Aha! Thank you, all is revealed!

[nancyblue]

And paper is on the way!

correction

[le_regard]

Speaking of synchronicity and serendipity... I made a very similar argument about 24 hours ago.

But it had the form of interrupting someone's longwinded speech about 'believing' in a 'collective unconscious' with something like "Well damnit then, which is REALER, the Goddess Isis, or the properties of triangles?"