At the risk of annoying people for copy-pasting my reply to someone else:
That’s a really good question, and I’m not really sure. Part of it is the wide variety of interpretations on what it is which makes it hard to decide where I’d go with it. I think part of it would be just finding neat objects, whether they’re rocks, sticks, gems, whatever, and attributing some kind of secret power to them. Tbh I think as someone else pointed out, it’d really be more of a roleplay thing than actual belief.
Part of what’s eating me up right now is the realization that under known physical laws, free will doesn’t exist. You don’t make choices, you don’t make decisions, these were all things the universe already knew would occur because at the end of the day, you’re a big chemical reaction. All those bigots, all those dictators, they never stood a chance. They never became good people because the conditions necessary for them to change never existed; it was merely an illusion.
I kinda want to believe in free will again, but I’m not sure how to convince myself that free will is possible. I’ve even explored the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, but I realized that even then, free will is an illusion. If every possible reality occurs, then does free will actually exist? Probably not.
I know that doesn’t fully answer your question, but that’s kinda where my brain is at right now.
Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
It’d probably be best for OP to flesh out what they mean, but when I responded I took it to mean occult ideas - magick, correspondences, projecting personal intent via ritual activities, etc.
An example I’ve seen in the Tiktok world is manifesting, where you do some sort of ritual or whatever activity with the goal of trying to obtain some boon (money, romantic interest, whatever).
Quite a few people dismiss this stuff out of hand, which I get - I personally don’t think a manifestation ritual, for instance, will get you much by itself- but I think these things can be useful for some people in a limited sense. My opinion is activities like this can put you in a state of readiness to notice real things you might otherwise pass over, or provide you with some sense of solace or control over your personal circumstances.
This isn’t getting into things like high magick and other activities, which again I feel have a place so long as you keep yourself grounded.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
my problem with a lot of this stuff is how exploitable it is by unscrupulous people, and how it can train people to stop critically examining things.
rituals and spirituality can be great for mental health, but it makes me so incredibly sad to see people who follow some shitty scam artist and believe what they’re doing will magically fix things for them.