Re: Trees and stones with powers to throw? | Forum

Trees and stones with powers to throw?

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Sanctuary May 10, 2012 15:59:53

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

True I don't have to experience what she feels - but then I don't have to be able to experience it myself for it to be proved real. She may well be able to detect something somehow. The test would prove she was genuinely picking up something. Unless, as Nigel suggests, she wouldn't be able to do it with the encumberence of a blindfold.

I feel a bit like James Randi, I end up feeling a bit sorry for the people who come on his show because some of them are so earnest, it's not really that he wants to make them look foolish so much as make a point about scientific evidence. It makes me feel bad for insisting on evidence. But that's science for you. So I still want it. Otherwise how can I make an informed decision whether to believe such things or not? Or does it not matter and everyone should just believe whatever they like. See I just can't go for that.

I understand totally Rhiannon and take it as it comes. My friend doesn't push her thoughts or feelings onto anyone she keeps most of it to herself because of reactions such as this. She belongs to a small group of 'like-minded' folk who interestingly she says can all experience different 'feelings' for the same object/situation!!
I was at Stannon stone circle a couple of weeks ago and saw what I took to be an 'offering' on and next to the off-set central stone. It was a silver coloured chain necklace with charms on it and a broken flat stone with some sort of painted drawing on it. I emailed her some pix I took of the whole shebang including one of the 'offerings' but made no comment on any of them. They were just pix I sent to a few people and to the Fieldnotes I put on TMA. She mailed back picking out the offering pic saying how sad it was that someone so young (20 she said) had parted from a 17-20 year-old and had left something in rememberance of him/her. I assumed it was an offering but she saw it as something else without me even suggesting anything. That's it.

Littlestone May 10, 2012 16:38:38

Replying to Sanctuary

It makes me feel bad for insisting on evidence. But that's science for you. So I still want it. Otherwise how can I make an informed decision whether to believe such things or not?

Evidence is a tricky concept. What is evidence? One definition is - The quality or condition of being evident; clearness, obviousness. That’s very different to knowing how something works. We might be using something (medicinal plants and minerals are a good example) for years before science is able to explain the chemical properties of a substance, synthesize it and then market it as a ‘proven’ and acceptable medicine. Long before aspirin went through that process it was ‘evident, clear and obvious’ to people that chewing willow bark (the active chemical component in aspirin) relieved pain.

I think it’s rather simplistic to expect a dowser to find water, or whatever, in a ‘controlled’ test. Why simplistic? Because the control itself (at least the ones I’ve read about) are simplistic. Asking someone to locate a buried bucket of water in a field is not the same as detecting an underground stream where other factors are at work - flow being the most obvious one.

I keep an open mind on dowsing by the way – although I do believe in telepathy, telekinesis and being able to travel 10,000 miles in the blink of an eye :-)

Edit: Sorry, that was intended for Rhiannon’s post. I was obviously travelling in the wrong direction when I hit the send button.

Rhiannon May 10, 2012 16:47:19

Replying to Sanctuary

Fair comment. I think I like a bit of order and sense in my world (though you'd not believe it looking at my desk) and maybe that's a human thing isn't it. Wanting firm explanations and reasons and sense. But not everything is easy to make sense of, maybe lots of it won't ever make sense.

This is slightly off at a tangent, but I was reading this rather interesting account of an expedition in the arctic
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/100355#page/25/mode/1up
(a few pages back there's an excellent account of building an igloo)
but that page talks about them watching the aurora borealis. And they think they can hear it, but they're not sure. They're not sure it's their imaginations or whether it's real.

And so I thought I'd have a quick google about it and it seems it's still a contentious thing - maybe they DO make a noise, or maybe they do something that means some people can detect it and some maybe can't
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-sound-of-the-aurora/