Somebody tried to cold read me.

[immoderate]

I go to a weekly drum circle, which is an attraction for woo types. I consider it their turf so I'm not confrontational there. But last Saturday a few of us stopped into Applebee's for a beer afterward. In the conversation, I mentioned that my father died when I was twenty four, a long time ago. A little later a young fellow starts to talk about his beliefs and mentions an acquaintance with Sylvia Browne. I mention James Randi, offer to take him to one of JREF meetings.

A little while later, out of the blue, he starts to tell me that my father loved me very much. He said, "I see that he didn't always show it, but he really loved you a lot." So I know what's coming. I am determined not to give him any feedback. I was surprised at how difficult this was. There is a strong tendency to nod and give cues. It made me very self aware. I remain motionless and silent. He starts to cast about.

He says, "I see a wooden box that contains items." He pauses. Nothing from me. "It could have been made of something else." I allow myself to say, "Go on."

He says, "It may not have been a box, but something that you put things in." I'm silent but he flails around, asking me if there was something that I put things in. Finally, I say, "It's hard to imagine anybody that doesn't have something that they put things in." At this point, others interrupt this conversation. So I don't know where it was going. I guess he's trying to develop his cold reading skills, and decided to try them out on me. I could see how this could be very effective on people who don't know what is happening.

I may see him again on Saturday. I think I'll ask what he was trying to do if I get the chance. The drum circle is about jamming with no mysticism, and not much time for conversation. The lady who facilitates it, self describes as a pagan atheist, starts off each session with rhythms for the four elements, the male and female deity, and then says, "Let's jam!" And that's what we do. How utterly weird that this guy is trying to tell me he is in touch with my dead father.

--IMM

[realisticphish]

1. pagan atheist?

what?

I've never been cold read. i like to think i could give no feedback, but i HATE seeing people squirm (which is why I hate pretty much every modern sitcom).

[Book Lover]

2. I used to call myself a pagan atheist

when I sort of practiced some ancient Roman rituals some years ago. I liked having a lararium in my home; not so much the believing in numen and Jupiter and so forth, though. It was a phase :-)

[realisticphish]

3. lol

i've always wondered about the people who profess to be pagans, and I'm not attacking you or anything. I mean, do they REALLY actually believe that the trees have spirits or whatever, or is it more of a "hey, that's kind of cool and it's not christianity" thing? I have zero problems with pagans/pantheists (well, no more problems than I have for any religion), I just find it odd when I hear people talk with scorn about the "magic sky daddy" and then casually mention casting spells in the name of the Earth goddess.

Again, not attacking, just pondering :shrug:

All that aside, I love ancient religions. I have a collection of various religious artifacts, mainly Egyptian, and Hopewell and Adena, which are the ancient Native American tribes from my area

[Book Lover]

4. No worries here, friend

For one thing, I gave up on all theist thinking years ago. The pagan atheist thing, for me, was a transitional phase, very much the "Well, catholicism sucked. What else is there? Oh, hey, what about the religion the RCC stole in Europe? After all, I'm Italian..." etc, etc, kind of thing. I realized that I felt silly performing *any* kind of ritual for whatever reason, including simple tradition. Exactly as you say, what kind of reasoning is it that rejects transubstantiation, yet embraces spellwork? And it is even less logical (if that's possible) to do it while knowing there are no gods to hear. So here I am, an angry atheist (TM) :-)

[realisticphish]

5. actually, same here

as i was leaving christianity, i started calling myself a deist, and briefly looked at Buddhism, until I realized that they were exactly the same from a logical standpoint. Now I'm agnostic, but call myself atheist to avoid explaining what agnosticism means ;)

I think that it's rare for someone to just go flat out to atheism. It's a big transition, and the unease one feels with it tends to get channeled into a different religion, rather than none.

And it's weird. I still feel a connection to Christianity. I don't think I'll ever truly stop having a place for it, since I was raised Christian, and had an overall positive experience with it. Part of me really hopes that Christianity is right, even though I know that the odds are it isn't.

[onager]

6. "And I see a wooden box that contains..."

"...your corpse if you insult the memory of my father one more time, asshat."

Please follow up and let us know how this all comes out. So this is the result of all those come-ons claiming "everybody has psychic powers."

Like many of you, I guess, I'm fascinated by religion.

If you ever come and visit me here in Alexandria (Egypt, for any newcomers), you can see one of the absolute coolest shrines I've found, in a city full of ancient cool shrine-ness.

Down in the depths of the el-Choquafa Catacombs, there's a display case full of jumbled bones. Look closely, and you'll notice that most of the bones are from horses. But there are some definitely human bones mixed in as well.

The site was once a shrine to that eminently cool goddess--Nemesis! Along with the obvious attributes hinted at in her name, Nemesis was the goddess of jockeys and horse racing. Which accounts for all the horse bones at the shrine.

Here's a bit of ancient local lore that I THINK I'm remembering right: there was a jockey in ancient Alexandria who fell off a horse and was nearly killed. He survived but was told he would never race again. That turned out to be a bad diagnosis. He not only raced again, but won many races and became extremely wealthy. In gratitude, he built a huge temple to Nemesis somewhere in Alexandria. IIRC, there are parts from that temple in the Graeco-Roman Museum here.

BTW, don't come and visit until they get that museum open again. You don't want to miss it. The place is currently closed for renovation, and has been for...er...about 2 years now.

[immoderate]

7. I always find your posts informative.

I,m sure I'll see this guy again, not sure when though. I'm going to avoid being confrontational though, in keeping with the nature of the drum circle. But I'll get 'em.

--IMM