"Who knows, but someday they will discover something extraordinary in Man!" I get paid to say that kinda stuff occasionally.
When I am not running the teams, I do a little bit of teaching on the side. Believe it or not, even though I do not have a degree-level certification in psychology or something similar, I occasionally give lectures at a local tertiary institution about human intelligence and capacity to come up with solutions when pushed to the limit. In some ways, I am uniquely qualified to speak about this subject. My life experience has been where I constantly profile and analyze the personalities of those I meet sometimes as a hobby, sometimes for fun and sometimes professionally.
Over the years, I have learned many different methods of divination. I have done card readings and divinations when the appropriate occasion arises. Depending on who I meet, I either do a "reading" or a "psychological profile/test". However, the actual methodology is really based on occult principles. Thanks to the proliferation of TV dramas like CSI and Criminal Minds ( a series about criminal profilers ), the people I meet do not find it strange that I can pick up stuff about their personalities and character traits. They all just assume that I have been trained in some kind of psychology or thinking methodology. And with a part-time lecturing job that sorta gives me some pseudo-academic credibility, yeah, its pretty hard not to believe that when I am doing an occult divination, I am not actually "cold reading" the person. That is, picking up on the subject's subtle and often unconscious body-language.
Why do I go through with the subterfuge and tell certain people that my divinations are based on psychological principles? It's simply because the large percentage of mainstream people out there are unable to accept that there is an occult/spiritual reality and that we are constantly interacting with it, whether we know it or not. Besides, when someone comes for a reading with a genuine problem or question, I think it is important to put the person at ease instead of frightening him/her with the notion that they are getting advice from someone that does that whole "black magic" stuff. I mean, if it works, who cares what it is called? Far as I'm concerned, I'm a consultant, and they are getting a consultation.
Unfortunately, this whole divination thing is not something that I do often. Mostly because I tend to tell the people I meet, things they need to, but often do not want to hear. For instance, a lot of people come to me to ask about their spirit guides. They want to know the identity of their guides and how to communicate with them and so on... Fact of the matter is, 99.999999999999% of people do NOT really have beings around them which are able to provide them with useful or enlightening information. I do try my best to let them understand that they do not need to "communicate" with these "guides" to know how to make better decisions in their lives. However, no matter how diplomatically I put it to them, the fact is that they leave me knowing that somehow they were given some bad information by someone else (usually another reader) and that the "special" beings they believed existed around them really are not all that special or helpful after all.
(Just to clarify this, I DO NOT put down other readers. Most people are smart enough to come to that conclusion even if I go through great pains to remain neutral and say nothing at all.)
You can see how that does not encourage people to want to come to me for a reading. I mean, seriously, who on earth wants to go to someone and be told that something they thought was special is really not helpful at all, and they have some personal issues which they might want to look into. No, most of the people I meet really want to be told that they are special or have a great destiny or are powerful. And unfortunately, I am the kind of person who can spot these types a mile away and personally I don't like dealing with them.
The reason for that is simple - sometimes they remind me of me. Like just about every other person in today's world, I'd like to believe I'm special in some way. Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel special or believe that you are special. Heck, I encourage people in my lectures to find that "special" something about themselves - to believe in themselves. I really hate it when the search for something special turns into some kind of megalomania and the person becomes ungrounded and loses a sense of reality..... What I really mean is when the person starts thinking he/she can take over the world... that sort of thing.
Anyways, I find it pretty ironic that I end up going to classes where I am the person saying "there is something special... even extraordinary in all of you!" Sometimes I feel like the universe is deliberately putting me into the position where I am forced to say something I'm currently facing a terrible conflict about.
To most people I meet, the ability I have to do the divinations amounts to some kind of magic. I remember doing readings for some people over the December holidays and they were pretty amazed. Unfortunately, because they were mainstream people, I had to call it "psychological testing". :P However, to me at least, being able to do unbiased, accurate divinations is quite simply the practice of occult principles at the primary / elementary school level. It is one of the stepping stones on which other occult ideas or practices are built. It is a tool and not an end in itself.
It is useful. But it is not entirely what I am looking for when I decided to step on this path.
Unlike most others, I did not become a magician because I watched too much "Charmed" or played too many fantasy games. I stepped upon this when The Shark (that's a moniker for one of my friends) made me realize that there is a reality that is around all of us, unseen and unexplainable by our current scientific understanding. The Shark is a big believer in occult powers and actually employs it in his business practices.
My initial curiosity towards the unexplained led me into some personal trouble and even physical pain. However, I will never regret delving into this because it has allowed me to fully understand and embrace the person that I am. And unfortunately, magic and doing magic is part of who I am. And the thing is, I am unwilling to accept some popular modern interpretations about magic.
There is a notion today that magic does not work because a great deal of people do not believe in it. In the view of those who hold to this notion, somehow the skepticism of the general public creates a kind of subtle "energy" or a "bad environment" that causes spells to fail. I personally DO NOT BELIEVE in this because I have seen strange spiritual phenomena occur whether anyone believes in it or not. When the impossible happens, those that it happens to try desperately to find a "logical, scientific explanation" and I have seen the whole "tell me everything is normal" look on the faces of those who have experienced it.
There is also the notion that the casting of spells is nothing more than subtly altering one's personal viewpoint so that when your perception of reality shifts, it seems as if something incredible is happening. I also DO NOT ACCEPT this mostly because it is terribly insulting to think that whenever I cast a spell, I am actually brainwashing myself! :P
Am I deceiving myself? No because unlike many others, I have actually seen the faces of some of these spiritual entities. I know the spirit world exists through painful, crippling experience. However, it truly annoys me to think that all the magic that is available to humanity is limited to forces that cannot be perceived and results that are uncertain at best. I KNOW that all the magic that we see self-professed, modern "witches" and "wizards" practice today is NOT really magic. There are still glimmers of true magic I think, in trackless jungles among rarely visited tribes and in some very traditional societies, but that's all that it is... glimmers. A shadow of the true glory of what it used to be.
Unfortunately, despite the strong feelings that I have about this, I have no quantifiable proof that there is some power running around in certain quarters of humanity that can alter reality. I suppose that is why sometimes it hurts to go into a lecture and say that there is something extraordinary in mankind when I'm not able to come up with undeniable proof that there is. It's like the universe is ... I'm very sorry to say this... slapping me in the face.
And I said that phrase again this morning....:(
Some people might say... but wait, what about the success that you have had in your practice of divination? Well, sadly, like visitations of the supernatural in dark forests of faraway lands, it is only a glimmer of the knowledge that is part of magic, and something that certain individuals would gleefully explain away with my subconscious use of psychological techniques. Well, if that is so, then I guess I must be a pretty successful psycho-analyst who doesn't know he is employing the tools of psychology.
At this moment, I am recalling the image of Agent Mulder from the X Files. I think of all the TV characters I have seen, I feel a strong sense of empathy of what the character went through. Like Mulder, I WANT TO BELIEVE. However, it seems that proof of my beliefs is not always forthcoming.
PS: I really HATE "Heroes"... for a multitude of personal reasons... nothing to do with the content of the show... But I thought it was appropriate to have a graphic from that for this entry.
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