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Skepticism dies via mature technologies.
Take Hertzian Waves. Invisible messages floating through the air, passing through solid objects. Sounds pretty woo, right?
Today, they’re better known as radio waves, and everything from remote controls to wifi to cell phones depend on them. Mature radio-based technologies are ubiquitous, and only a crazy person would remain skeptical.
Mature technologies produce obvious results, experienced by everyone. That’s what kills skepticism.
Here’s the rub: Energy healing and magick haven’t produced a mature technology yet.
Can an expert use sigils or beliefs or ethereal software to create luck? It certainly seems so. Can we do it with the precision and reliability to create an obvious, media-friendly demonstration? Do we have something a layman can experience themselves? No and no. So it remains limited to stories at magick conferences, only convincing the already-convinced, and laymen never get the visceral, proving impact of a successful manifesting.
What about energy healing? A decade or more of scientific research suggests that an expert in Reiki or Therapeutic Touch can reduce pain for 24-48 hours. This is a great first version of a technology, and I hope it continues helping more and more people. But a mature version? That would produce fast, obvious numbing, or invert the technique to produce clear sensations. Mature energy healing would affect the long-term outcome of a disease, convincing people by saving their lives. And the healing techniques we have today, which right now is applied by an expert at $60-100 per session? It would be tied to a sigil that anyone could meditate on and experience the energy healing themselves, for free or a low monthly subscription.
Skepticism in magick is rational, and it has many causes: A history of mages and healers making false claims, which continues today. The language we use, and our misuse of science, particularly quantum physics. How even our solid, well-researched claims would require new physics. And more. We’ll have to address all of that eventually.
But when I look for solutions, I look for something that’s both necessary and sufficient. And getting all healers to stop making false claims? That isn’t necessary, it isn’t sufficient, and it probably isn’t possible. Same with getting everyone to use less-woo-sounding terms, or to understand that the “observer” of quantum physics is a photon, not a conscious mind. And developing new physics that explain our results? That happens after we’re taken seriously, not before.
But a mature technology? That’s necessary, sufficient (or nearly so), and can be accomplished by a small group of experienced mages and healers.
If we want to kill skepticism, we need a mature technology.
Moving forward, I’ll be performing studies on this blog, based on healing energies tied to sigils. They’ll be double-blind, placebo-controlled, solid research. I hope you’ll help. (If you live near San Francisco, I’ll also be doing in-person research, publishing the results here.)
And if you want to copy my design and do your own studies, tell me and I’ll help you publicize. Because we all benefit from building a community of researchers.
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.Tags: Healing, Manifesting, Science, Testing
How would this work for people who can’t see the sigil? That might be a loophole someone could use to try to disprove sigil based magick.
Sigils for the blind. I’m intrigued. Readers: Anyone got experience with a sigil-like technique that doesn’t rely on sight?
Braille sigils, perhaps? Actually, any sensory channel should be fine for signalisation; it’s really just pattern activation by association.
The obvious answers to that for me would be a tactile or audio sigil, but then we’re still left with the question of the visual sigil. These are the ansers I’ve been able to come up with so far:
The sigil is energy, and so is the light coming out of the monitor. If we go with the third-eye chakra being able to pick up on energies, perhaps the sigil would be transmitted through the chakra from the light. Of course, the person would still have to know where it was or if it was even there to begin with, and if they’re like me, they might have the monitor turned off.
Printing it would also be an option, and this is where it gets interesting because they have no way of knowing if the paper even has anything on it. That would be the ultimate test I think.
Some chaos mages already made a sound sigil. Energy is Vibration, Vibration is Sound. But still not tested if it produces the same result.
I’ve used voice to connect to people, so I’m thinking it should be possible to create an audio file of my voice and tie the software to that. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for all the input guys!
Hey Mike, what do you think about Bengston’s work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pryU2pKmJh4
Despite his amazing results with cancer healing and other phenomena, he says he’ll remain an (open-minded) skeptic…
I really enjoyed that video. Thanks! (Tip: Watch at 1.5x speed. It’s under settings, the gear icon in the lower right of the video.)
He identifies as a skeptic. So do I. Skeptic means that we make up our mind based on evidence, rather than coming in thinking we already know the answer. That’s different than the capital-S Skeptics you’re probably thinking of. Ananael did a good post on this recently: http://ananael.blogspot.com/2015/11/skeptics-versus-skepticism.html
Bengston’s results look great. If a pill did that, we’d be rushing it to market. It’s a shame that we aren’t exploring it more.
The image cycling technique he uses is described here: http://spiritgate.com/rapid-image-cycling-technique/
Basically, you write your goals, create an image for each goal, then mentally flip through quicker and quicker until you’re going through them all in one second. I tried it, and doing even 2-3 images in one second means you’re holding multiple distinct things in your head simultaneously, which produces a trance (in me, at least). It reminds me of AO Spare’s runes, getting an intent into the unconscious while distracting the conscious mind.
Does that trance itself produce the healing he’s seeing? I doubt it. (He doubts it, too.) I have guesses, but I’ll leave it there. At some point, maybe I’ll get the chance to work with him directly and help sort out the mechanisms behind the healing.
“…or to understand that the “observer” of quantum physics is a photon, not a conscious mind. ”
I appreciate this one. I had to explain this recently. :)
The Million Dollah Q: What would happen if skepticism in magick was killed?
Thanks!
Short answer: Research. Understand how healing energy influences cells, guide it with Western medicine and modern science, heal serious conditions.
But more broadly, exploring germs lead to modern medicine, and exploring quantum physics lead to transistors and computers. Science advances by exploring anomalies. I don’t know what happens once we understand ethereal forces in terms of physics, but I trust that it’s something miraculous.
More:
https://magickofthought.com/2015/02/chewy-ideas-on-magick-for-engineers/
https://magickofthought.com/2015/09/advice-to-a-teenage-energy-worker/
“Science advances by exploring anomalies.”
This is a great quote.
Here’s another, I forget who said it:
“How could a person really believe something that is so clearly untrue?
Here’s one way of answering that question. Have you ever noticed that a person always finds their keys in the last place they look? Why is that? Obviously, the reason is that they stop looking for their keys after they’ve found them. Throughout the history of science and exploration, that’s been the basis for a lot of beliefs. We found an explanation — an interpretation of the circumstances — that worked, and we stopped looking.”
Anyway, I just got inspired to write something up about the double slit experiment, thanks.
Hi Mike, as I was thinking about magick today a question occurred to me: Why isn’t magick more prominent in our world?
I suppose that religions have their own ethereal softwares that members of those particular faiths make use of (though they probably don’t think of it like that), but beyond that why do think magick isn’t more prominent?
Good question. My answer: https://magickofthought.com/2017/01/one-simple-reason-energy-healing-isnt-mainstream/