Past Lives

I've always preferred the more concrete realms of magick and the occult. Now this may seem contradictory to some of you (especially if you think everything needs to be tested in a laboratory to be "concrete"), but I assure you - it's legit. I prefer Tarot because it has results I can verify. I prefer spellwork, especially nuanced spells, for the same reason. I have a hard time getting into such nebulous practices as past lives.  How do you verify something like that?

I'm not talking about stuff like little kids that remember past lives, including things that only the dead person would know (like something private they shared with their spouse).  I actually find that rather fascinating.  But what I'm talking about here is past life readings - whether done intuitively, with tarot cards, or some other method.

Most of the time it just seems like one person's word against another's.  One reader tells you you were one person, another reader tells you you were someone else entirely.  Could you have been both?  Sure.  But you would think that at least once in a while two of the readers would pick up on the same past life. 

The problem I've run into is one reader contradicting what another two readers have said, and what my gut tells me.  One person says I've been male 9 times out of 10 in my past lives.  Another person says I've been female in all my past lives.  So what is the truth?  Or are both bullshit?

A lot of times when  I hear readings, the ones done for me included, it feels like the reader is telling you either what they want to hear or what you want to hear.  I think a lot of readers let their own biases influence the reading.  Close minded people are less likely to tell you you were of the opposite sex.  Or perhaps they just see you as embodying your gender so strongly in this life that they can't fathom it could have been different.  Or maybe they have strong ties to a certain heritage or time period and thus imagine that you were apart of it.  Or they just craft an epic story that they know will appeal to you, feeding off what you want to be true and hints you've dropped rather than any sort of true insight.  It becomes a matter of one person's "opinion" versus another's - with no way to prove who is right.  So whose fantasy will prevail?

I told a friend about my most recent reading.  I explained that I felt the reader was wrong because I'd had two readings to the contrary, and my gut has always sided with those readings.  He countered that my "gut feelings" could be explained by psychology and brain chemistry.  (Well, maybe I was born with such brain chemistry as a reflection of my past lives?)  I got a bit annoyed at this point (I'm sorry if I was rude!).  Proving that my gut feeling is the result of brain chemistry neither proves nor disproves what may be my past lives.  In fact, those readings neither prove nor disprove anything either.  All I really have to sway me from believing one person over the other IS my gut feeling (and perhaps a few dreams, as I am not one of those people who claims to remember past lives).  And for all I know, there could be absolutely no such thing as reincarnation, and even the little kids with clear memories of past lives could be explained in some other way. 

In summation, I just feel like this is such a nebulous and subjective field of study and it really aggravates me when people try to assert what's true or false and get really pushy about it.  Especially when it challenges my gut... because there is no objective evidence here.  So why would I believe someone else's opinions over my gut (if I'm to believe in any of this at all)?

This is my life

I'm sitting here in my Miskatonic University shirt and VS sweats... because apparently Cthulhu loves Pink? (And I just added Cthulhu to Blogger's dictionary. Really? Why was that not already in there?!)

In other news, I made a good score at Half Price Books yesterday, especially given the extra discount due to the Labor Day sale.

The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage and Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy

Now to find time to read all of this, plus everything else in my reading queue.