I believe in some things some might call "pseudoscientific bullshit", yet I'd like to think I'm thoughtful about it.
@Ulfra_Wolfe same, although I feel that the word "believe" is somewhat stretched here. Merely because I find value in a concept doesn't mean I "believe" in it, in the conventionally understood way.
@Ulfra_Wolfe Take, for example, my growing curiosity about devising a personal alchemy. One person's "pseudoscience" is another person's deeply felt mythology--at long as it's acknowledged AS mythology, and not as a statement about the nature of physical reality.
@codeawayhaley @Ulfra_Wolfe I want to learn more about the second aspect, truthfully, especially the work of the Muslim alchemists. They seem to have been a lot more systematic than the Western practitioners, and gave us a lot of our chemical terminology
@kara_dreamer @codeawayhaley First steps might be the cited works here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_and_chemistry_in_medieval_Islam#Alchemists_and_works
@kara_dreamer @Ulfra_Wolfe The first aspect of Alchemy is actually one of the aspects that turning a human to vampyre involves as the process is merging their tutelary angel and demon into themselves (often with the assistance of a vampyre, most often a prima or a vampyre created from an angel in physical form)
@kara_dreamer @codeawayhaley @Ulfra_Wolfe
I will say you'd be remiss to overlook the Daoist alchemists as well :) especially if you are more interested in internal alchemy.
Sufi alchemy is very interesting, i rather like like pouring over Avicenna in general though :3
@Irick @codeawayhaley @Ulfra_Wolfe you're better informed than I am then! can you recommend any sourcebooks
@kara_dreamer @codeawayhaley @Ulfra_Wolfe
I'd recommend getting a translation of the Hui-Ming Ching (it's less crazy symbolic) and Understanding Reality by Chang Po-tuan (crazy symbolic, but foundational and beautiful)
@kara_dreamer
Actually, it wasn't too hard to find them, here: Hui-Ming Ching is the second work on this page: http://www.rexresearch.com/goldflwr/goldflwr.htm and here is a translation of Understanding Reality: https://terebess.hu/english/Cleary-Thomas-Understanding-Reality-by-Chang-Po-tuan.pdf
@Irick @kara_dreamer OMG KARA, thank you for channeling lrick's message. Daoist mysticism is interesting to me since I have been getting into yijing! Thank you for the content, lrick, I am anxious to get reading!
@Filene @kara_dreamer
:D
I'm glad I could aid your Craft!
@Filene @Irick ah, glad to be a conduit :] I try to keep my eye open to what my familiar @kel likes to call xer magickal "shinies", although for xem a powerful magickal "shiny" might be, for example, a piece of costume jewelry found by chance lying in the street. but texts and authorities also count
@kara_dreamer @kel @Irick Collectors of useful arcana!!!<3
@kara_dreamer @Filene @kel
Found objects are some of the most powerful ones! At least as far as Oberon Zell-Ravenheart seems concerned. :3
*Has the power of making everything about books*
@kara_dreamer @Ulfra_Wolfe this is even true of textbook physics
@kara_dreamer @Ulfra_Wolfe
Yeah, I've been building an entire personal woo system that on the surface resembles psuedoscience. So much of my research involved other "theories" that were often direct refutations of current science in favor of dictating a different physics.
Only difference with mine is that I'm not trying to do that. :-)
I'd rather build a fiction that includes my alternate universe physics (and metaphysics), and practice that as my own truth.
@emanate @Ulfra_Wolfe I was trying to think of a hypothetical example of a "pseudoscience" or old, refuted scientific model that could nevertheless be reimagined as a source of metaphysical meaning...I can just about glimpse, for example, using the long-discredited phlogiston model as a way to assign magickal meaning to substances.
@kara_dreamer @Ulfra_Wolfe Mine's aether. In the original sense, from early models of electricity, it was the proposed medium that light and electric particles traveled through.
Basis in science history, spun off into broader stroke: aether is the 4th dimension (spatially, not counting time), explains magnetism, electrons leave traces in it. Thoughts are electronic, so thoughts and idea leave more complex traces...etc.
@kara_dreamer @Ulfra_Wolfe Alchemy is made up of two fields one being modification of ones soul, the other is what likely evolved into early chemistry.