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Pictures from the Past: Art and Symbols of the Neolithic and Bronze Age |
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vlad
Joined:
13-05-2006
Messages: 1284
from Stockholm
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|  New Message Posted!2013-05-19 10:39
All agressive ignorants in history accused people, who trained and used their intuition, of being magicians. But in the broadest sense, all acts of individual will, unless dictated by God, - were magic, actually. Consequently; religious rituals, if not coming from a God-inspired founder of a religion, - could have been also treated as magic.
[ This message was edited by: vlad on 2013-05-19 10:48 ]
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ledgehammer
Joined:
29-06-2011
Messages: 722
from Surrey
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| New Message Posted!2013-05-19 09:37
So much information has been offered here around dowsing, some of which are personal observations / experiences, The definition of magic:
Quote:
| Magic is the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation, ceremony, ritual, the casting of spells or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature |
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Note "desired effect", this could be showing the location of something via using the forces of nature, technically George is right.
The piece he quoted maybe a representation of the duality around skeptisim and dowsing, except in this time there was a religious element associated with this perception.
He never tried dowsing by his own admission so I don't feel he's qualified to offer anything to this debate, the mythology doesn't have a bearing on work probing into the phenomena.
stating that dowsing is a divinatory art would be dismissed by most modern religions as non so, all we are dealing with here is the way dowsing has been viewed, in superstitious terms due to the perceptions at that time.
Have you got data to back up that dowsing doesn't work, that subtle energies do not exist, and are undetectable if they may do. Simply palming off on this superstitious account of things doesn't have any bearing what so ever.
Best
Tom
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tiompan
Joined:
09-01-2005
Messages: 2634
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| New Message Posted!2013-05-18 11:22
The “ I can dowse everything” rings hollow if you are unwilling to actually do anything to prove it .
"a detectable series of signals that correspond to where megalithic constructions are to be found "
Cart before the horse there .
Dowsing unrecordable energies at megalithic sites is hardly in the same league , anyone can make that claim particularly if you have a bunch of megaliths on which to base it .
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tiompan
Joined:
09-01-2005
Messages: 2634
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| New Message Posted!2013-05-18 11:14
If you don't believe that dowsing is rooted in magic and the belief in it's efficacy in magical thinking then maybe it's time you read Keith Thomas .
It is divinatory i.e. a magical practice , see Agricola for the use of incantations etc ,from John Dee to contemporary dowsers the magical law of sympathy is used as an explanation for the movement of the rods .
One of the most obvious signifiers used by stage magicians is the “wand “ where do think that came from if not rhabdomancy ?
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megalith6
Joined:
28-10-2001
Messages: 128
from London UK
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| New Message Posted!2013-05-18 01:02
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "
~ Hamlet [1.5.166-7]
Superstition: there are I feel some revealing comments on this thread and I am reminded of some of the Puritan criticisms directed towards Roman Catholicism from the 16th century onwards such as 'popist superstition', yet I have to pinch myself to remind myself that I am reading such comments in the 21st century.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=ha008623520
This is a problem that I see with science which is a word borrowed in from another language and means knowledge. Knowledge is a good thing, a healthy thing. Science is a perception of reality, a perception which accepts empirical knowledge and rejects, for want of a better word, intuition.
This is the mechanical Newtonian universe which William Blake criticized. However it took centuries until 'Newton's Sleep' was disturbed by Albert Einstein and the unrest continues with the dawn of Quantum Physics, and I see this as light upon the horizon.
At least I hope that is day light upon the horizon and not the antique lantern light of the iconoclastic and intolerant Commonwealth period of the seventeenth century:-
"Oliver Cromwell took the field for Protestantism against ... 'popery, prelacy, superstition...and profaneness'."
- 'Anatomy of Swearing', A.Montagu, p167, 1967.
[ This message was edited by: megalith6 on 2013-05-18 01:18 ]
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vlad
Joined:
13-05-2006
Messages: 1284
from Stockholm
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| New Message Posted!2013-05-17 21:58
P.S. Tiompan; I`m an admirer of the French Historical School - "Annales". And it`s Jacques LeGoff, who stands for such summations of
cultural evolution, within my personal frame. I really do not exchange him for your Keith Thomas.
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cropredy
Joined:
01-01-2006
Messages: 5525
from Oxon
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| New Message Posted!2013-05-17 21:24
Tiompan,
You are obsessed with trying to divert away any comprehension of dowsing, and constantly try to take the argument into buried objects.
I have said too many times now how I can locate buried objects, and did just that for years, but over the past seven or eight years I have stayed focussed on something else.
I have little to no interest in finding buried anythings at all, especially to perform for You like a performing seal.
I am not talking here about buried objects, if I wanted to become a walking talking sort of metal detector thats what I would be talking about, but I am not.
Can You not grasp this simple senario?????
I am totally focussed on a detectable series of signals that correspond to where megalithic constructions are to be found, I do not focus on whether stones once were , or are buried, it is really difficult to stay totally focussed on just this series of signals, but I manage to.
I will not therefore be performing any such crap as finding buried buckets or any other such lunacy.
Is that not plain enough to understand?????
I will demonstrate freely what I am focussed fully upon.
cropredy
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vlad
Joined:
13-05-2006
Messages: 1284
from Stockholm
ON-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-05-17 21:23
Of course dowsing is not magic. There`s simply a lot of concepts lacking in Western vocabulary, which are perfectly everyday meal in other cultures. Those self-appointed "scientists" of XVIII c. succeded with ridiculing and/or eradicating native folk cultures all over NW Europe.Therefrom comes this void, not from our stupidity.
What a pity that those raving puritan-colonialists had not time enough to eradicate Hindu and Chinese cultures!? - Only therefore we can still read vastu-shastra and descriptions of feng-shui techniques, whose analogues our European ancestors applied too. Did anyone of you has ever read Nigel Pennick`s books, e.g. "Earth Harmony"!?
Keine Gleichschaltung; tiompan, please. Keith Thomas is a primitive propagandist in my eyes. And his books don`t fit my library, which contains only those, in which one can discover new knowledge on one`s own, - again and again under whole life... At the end, didn`t I said that I do not value high the modern "fragmentary" people, not to say about fundamentalist-fragmentators, which you call "scientists".
[ This message was edited by: vlad on 2013-05-18 07:14 ]
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ledgehammer
Joined:
29-06-2011
Messages: 722
from Surrey
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-05-17 20:45
Quote:
| Tom , I don't know why you should dowse various petal shapes . I could ask you the same question about my own experiences . Whatever the shapes , why imagine that the reason you are coming up with these shapes has anything to do with "energies " or signals " , from stuff .
George |
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George,
I am trying to understand how I am able to dowse these geometric patterns, based on your refutals of dowsing. I.E If its not the ideometer effect, then where are the patterns coming from.
If there is no phenomena as you have suggested, I am trying to establish what these patterns are as I see it highly inconceivable that they are a product of my own, and I mean this.
If you have a suggestion of how i am creating this that I have missed I would love to know, as its baffled me. (These are genuine questions)
If you have a way of me checking somehow on how they are provable to be a construct of my own, I would wholeheartedly undertake this - I am convinced.
Best
Tom
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ledgehammer
Joined:
29-06-2011
Messages: 722
from Surrey
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-05-17 20:39
Quote:
| Dowsing /divining is and was a magical practice , Agricola notes some of the accompanying paraphernalia .Why should he not note that dowsing doesn't work , it was what some German dowsers did in mines . Yes he sees the incantations as mumbo jumbo , maybe if it worked he would have a different view .
Odd that Dowsers mention Agricola as an early example of writing about dowsing , they don't quote or fail to find the relevant sections . What we get is an early view and thus an insight on the subject , maybe if he had said how effective it was you might have had a different opinion . |
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George,
I don't agree that dowsing is anything magical, its just unexplained -labelling it as magic is a failure to understand it. Again, he fails to understand dowsing and labels it as "incantations" and is presumably either fearful or incapable to understand it further than this.
If I said that there was a god at the centre of the earth pulling items towards it, would this have anything to do with gravity or what we know today?
It doesn't matter whether he thinks dowsing works or it doesn't, His statements don't show any insight into it in any context or reality or reliability by todays standards (not to take anything away from him, I have respect for the guy for what I have read, he contributed greatly)
I don't tend to quote these days and you are right its quite wrong for dowsers to quote in this way, its a natural thing to do when all of the information says otherwise and you have direct experiences that contradict this. Does this invalidate dowsing or merely show a normal human desire to express what one has felt and seen, attempting to share this with others. Like anyone else dowsers are interested in the history and heritage of the art.
Best
Tom
[ This message was edited by: ledgehammer on 2013-05-17 23:29 ]
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