![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I like this list already. Here's a response to 'so how and why does astrology work?' The short answer is 'who cares? It just does' but this is a much meatier answer than that...
All magical and divinatory systems are based, ultimately, on arbitrary yet strangely consistent phenomena. It is the consistency which proves the veracity of the divinatory method, not the initial arbitrary decisions. Over time, the arbitrary assignments become charged as symbols and coalesce into a self-supporting, developing, flexible, and in some instances, powerful vocabulary.
The act of submission to training in any established system is to circumvent the need to -create- those associations, and to ride the wave of momentum by learning what the *system you are adopting* has to teach you in already defined and established connotative associations.
Which is why trad-inclined people like, oh, those on A&J, tend to learn the established systems first. It's tautological (it's true *because* it's true), but that doesn't dismiss its potency. If we wanted to invest the time and energy into reinventing the wheel, we could, but most of us in the BTW crowds, Seekers and Trad alike, have made up our minds to spend our time furthering the corpus of work available to the tools already created. We feel no need to invent our own language in order to attempt to write poetry. That can be a powerful, empowering exercise for an individual, but so can learning to write well in English (or other native language of circumstance.)
Dian's got it on the head... ultimately, everything is arbitrary. Ultimately, everything is connected. Ultimately, with enough time and energy and buy-in from others, depending on things like commitment and consistency, you can get damned near anything to work for you, magically, divination-wise, etc. But that approach, while poetic and certainly mystical in its apprehension, means that ultimately, whether it be a book at the mall or a lifetime of learning at the hands of a master, you have to decide where you're going to buy in, and which associations you're going to use as your own set of tools. As the level of mastery grows, what you can do with the tools, and what you can do *without* the tools, grows. And varies, on a case by case basis.
Arguments which attempt to justify magic via science are doomed to failure and frustration. Causality is in the eye of the beholder, and how you are taught to look determines what it is you'll see. Might as well argue whether the color red is red to everyone, for all the practical good it can do.
But for those who enjoy the mental exercises of unprovable or unjustifiable questions, by all means, sally forth. For me, though... the impractical implausibles are out of my current scope of energy investment.
YMMV.
-Adam
All magical and divinatory systems are based, ultimately, on arbitrary yet strangely consistent phenomena. It is the consistency which proves the veracity of the divinatory method, not the initial arbitrary decisions. Over time, the arbitrary assignments become charged as symbols and coalesce into a self-supporting, developing, flexible, and in some instances, powerful vocabulary.
The act of submission to training in any established system is to circumvent the need to -create- those associations, and to ride the wave of momentum by learning what the *system you are adopting* has to teach you in already defined and established connotative associations.
Which is why trad-inclined people like, oh, those on A&J, tend to learn the established systems first. It's tautological (it's true *because* it's true), but that doesn't dismiss its potency. If we wanted to invest the time and energy into reinventing the wheel, we could, but most of us in the BTW crowds, Seekers and Trad alike, have made up our minds to spend our time furthering the corpus of work available to the tools already created. We feel no need to invent our own language in order to attempt to write poetry. That can be a powerful, empowering exercise for an individual, but so can learning to write well in English (or other native language of circumstance.)
Dian's got it on the head... ultimately, everything is arbitrary. Ultimately, everything is connected. Ultimately, with enough time and energy and buy-in from others, depending on things like commitment and consistency, you can get damned near anything to work for you, magically, divination-wise, etc. But that approach, while poetic and certainly mystical in its apprehension, means that ultimately, whether it be a book at the mall or a lifetime of learning at the hands of a master, you have to decide where you're going to buy in, and which associations you're going to use as your own set of tools. As the level of mastery grows, what you can do with the tools, and what you can do *without* the tools, grows. And varies, on a case by case basis.
Arguments which attempt to justify magic via science are doomed to failure and frustration. Causality is in the eye of the beholder, and how you are taught to look determines what it is you'll see. Might as well argue whether the color red is red to everyone, for all the practical good it can do.
But for those who enjoy the mental exercises of unprovable or unjustifiable questions, by all means, sally forth. For me, though... the impractical implausibles are out of my current scope of energy investment.
YMMV.
-Adam
