Mercury Retrograde and Other Myths

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ninj

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OK. So I'm a sensible sort, not given to superstition, and I don't accept astrology etc. as anything but entertainment. I am a woman of Science.
Why then, when I know that a span of weeks known as "mercury retrograde" comes around (which it does a few times a year), I find that so much goes cafluey on me. Just one thing after the other in a way it doesn't seem to ordinarily. Things break down, communication breaks down, scheduling gets messy. S**t just keeps happening until it's passed. Why? Selective attenuation? Self-fulfilling prophecy?
Mercury retrograde isn't even really a thing. It just gives the appearance of going backward. Bogus.

Does anything like this happen to you?
Are there things, in spite of knowing better, you secretly believe in.
 
Are there things, in spite of knowing better, you secretly believe in.

Bigfoot/Sasquatch. I know that there's no lost species of huge ape living on the West Coast, or at least that the probability is excruciatingly low. But, damn, I'd be so happy to be proven wrong on that. The Yeti as well, of course, but Bigfoot is closer to home. I was fascinated by cryptozoology in general as a kid and have never completely given up on it.

(Just starting on Max Brooks' novel Devolution, which is about a village besieged by Sasquatches after Mt. Rainier erupts and cuts them off from the world so that's probably why this came to mind.)
 
There are things that I like to think of as more than just coincidental, although I don't know if I necessarily believe in them. One thing I will admit too, was less about really believing in it and was just more not having looked into it was the autism-vaccine link. Not that I thought oh vaccines cause it, but more just the trigger factor. It was just from hearing personal stories and knowing what has been experienced in my family with vaccines - probably my HAE with every one, then there was the neurological symptoms (although I do think that came afterwards) and my sister did have febrile seizures. So moreso just believing others with their medical experiences knowing I had issues with getting proper answers and care too (sometimes office staff refused to even do doctors requests, like fax through a titre test). I also used to think most people were a little more educated and rational than what I see now. In some ways I would like to go back to that worldview.
 
I have a good friend, from my teen years, who is a believer in "real astrology". The first astrologers and astronomers were largely the same thing, and a genuine star chart actually tracks the exact placement of quite a few heavenly bodies at the exact hour AND LOCATION of an event (such as your birth), or a "mercury retrograde". And before anyone starts in on the "but pluto isn't a planet anymore" I will respond that it still exists.

Humans look for patterns in other humans, among other things. We are a pattern-seeking animal. Astrology is only one of the first (and Chinese astrology is totally different, probably to do with their focus on family/culture/elders versus individuals, and I know nothing, and claim nothing about it; I feel the same way about a lot of TCM; I don't know if/why it works, but sometimes it does). Many have followed, from simple HR "personality type systems" (orange red green blue memories, anyone?) to the more complex Myers-Briggs based on Jung's work (and even more categories - 16, yay!). Then there's the Enneagram, based on spiritual types.

I dunno. I have an acquaintance, an old witch-y type (the last name is two words, one of them "Wolf", and she's no more indigenous than I, lol), an old white Hippie charlatan who reads the Tarot, sells crystals, etc.) She has a quick look at my star chart, reads some cards, and her consensus at the end of a long-ish, and somewhat expensive, conversation, is that my intrinsic fiery Leo-ness is drowned by all the Scorpio (water) signs in my other houses.
 
Then there's the Enneagram, based on spiritual types.

I looked into that a bit when I was listening to The Liturgists, who are fond of it, but didn't bite. IIRC, Richard Rohr is big on it, too. I am generally skeptical of any kind of shorthand for human personality, even ones like M-B that have some research behind them.
 
I dunno. I have an acquaintance, an old witch-y type (the last name is two words, one of them "Wolf", and she's no more indigenous than I, lol), an old white Hippie charlatan who reads the Tarot, sells crystals, etc.) She has a quick look at my star chart, reads some cards, and her consensus at the end of a long-ish, and somewhat expensive, conversation, is that my intrinsic fiery Leo-ness is drowned by all the Scorpio (water) signs in my other houses.

You just described my friends too :) That's it! Peer Pressure!
 
I am uncomfortable putting parameters on personalities, tempting as it is. I'm sure there's validity in some ways to the theories, but I guess I want to be more dynamic. Maybe there's a risk of turning into your personality type once you know what it is and then you're stuck. I can see it possible given that much of our personality is biological and might exhibit certain expressions consistently.
For some reason (not sure which) I respond very nicely to some homeopathics too. Two in particular that aren't explained by placebo. Apis for bees or stinging insects for one. Maybe my mind can keep a bug bite from swelling and itching????
I also accept as an agnostic the possible existence of subtle energies unknown to science because we lack the faculties to prove anything. For this reason, I won't discard the validity of any vibrational modalities. (Yes, that's it...science....Yeah right)
 
Bigfoot/Sasquatch. I know that there's no lost species of huge ape living on the West Coast, or at least that the probability is excruciatingly low. But, damn, I'd be so happy to be proven wrong on that. The Yeti as well, of course, but Bigfoot is closer to home. I was fascinated by cryptozoology in general as a kid and have never completely given up on it.

(Just starting on Max Brooks' novel Devolution, which is about a village besieged by Sasquatches after Mt. Rainier erupts and cuts them off from the world so that's probably why this came to mind.)
Well. Extinct species seem to be found occasionally to be still in existence. Maybe there's something deep in the rain forests of the West Coast. One thing for sure, this creature will have cypress moss growing on it.
 
Well. Extinct species seem to be found occasionally to be still in existence. Maybe there's something deep in the rain forests of the West Coast. One thing for sure, this creature will have cypress moss growing on it.

Maybe it is not really hairy. Maybe it's just covered in moss. Which would mean that absent the moss it would be ... :cool: ... the naked ape.
 
There are things that I like to think of as more than just coincidental, although I don't know if I necessarily believe in them. One thing I will admit too, was less about really believing in it and was just more not having looked into it was the autism-vaccine link. Not that I thought oh vaccines cause it, but more just the trigger factor. It was just from hearing personal stories and knowing what has been experienced in my family with vaccines - probably my HAE with every one, then there was the neurological symptoms (although I do think that came afterwards) and my sister did have febrile seizures. So moreso just believing others with their medical experiences knowing I had issues with getting proper answers and care too (sometimes office staff refused to even do doctors requests, like fax through a titre test). I also used to think most people were a little more educated and rational than what I see now. In some ways I would like to go back to that worldview.
And you tackled it like the scientist you are and discovered that while you had your experiences with reactions, you wouldn't necessarily accept all claims. I was just talking to a friend the other day about how frustrating it can be just to get basic information about our health, knowing it's out there.
 
I also accept as an agnostic the possible existence of subtle energies unknown to science because we lack the faculties to prove anything. For this reason, I won't discard the validity of any vibrational modalities. (Yes, that's it...science....Yeah right)

My agnosticism tends to not extend to things that should be testable hypotheses.

God is not, IMHO, a testable scientific hypothesis. Vibrational modalities and subtle energies are.
 
My agnosticism tends to not extend to things that should be testable hypotheses.

God is not, IMHO, a testable scientific hypothesis. Vibrational modalities and subtle energies are.
"God"?
 
My agnosticism tends to not extend to things that should be testable hypotheses.

God is not, IMHO, a testable scientific hypothesis. Vibrational modalities and subtle energies are.

Thus this attribute (vacant from reality) simulates intellectual-emotional non existence in the mind abstract of such qualities that we might label as abstract incarnate! I just isn't there now ...

This would carry my alien dimension of autonomous neurology into a fractured or other shattered domain of something we don;t have a clue about.

As the Roman Forte avered ... a thinking man that processes alien intelligence is dangerous to the status quo ... thus the stand down!

Reminds me of Moses recessed in a rock ... it is a generally MS Understood concept like nemesis ... byond us but a coming hole ... space as something cerebrally vacant? The essence of the miss'đ ... eh bi?
 
I was watching a vid by Russell Brand, wherein he talks about how humans are by necessity limited in what kinds of information can be studied. We can only perceive with our existing senses. Maybe God is in the "subtle energies".
 
I was watching a vid by Russell Brand, wherein he talks about how humans are by necessity limited in what kinds of information can be studied. We can only perceive with our existing senses. Maybe God is in the "subtle energies".

I don't know what could be more subtle than quantum fields and we can (and have) tested QFT. There are limits, but in the field of physics, they are getting pushed further and further out. Even dark energy and dark matter are testable hypotheses (though most hypotheses about the latter are currently failing miserably). Talking about "subtle energies" therefore strikes me as falling into "God of the gaps", using faith to fill perceived gaps in scientific knowledge and then having to find new gaps when science does fill them. At some point, you run out of gaps and have to admit you're running purely on faith, not science.
 
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