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'm a hardcore materialist, just not, as i said to my astrologer pal once, a basic one
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ya wanna know what i think? what i really, really think? well, i'll tell ya. this is best guess shit, here, mind you i think the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is real. i think it isn't just someone who's been sensitized to some unusual pattern suddenly noticing it everywhere.
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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
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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
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one thing you are doing, then, when you'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're watching
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contrariwise, astrology and other forms of divination that don'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
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so, yeah, i do Actually Think That Something Is Going On There. i don't seem to need spiritual dualism or undiscoverable energies to do this, so that's encouraging, i guess. but feel free to banish me to the woo realms now anyway
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End of conversation
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