#pseudoscience and mystic bullshit

[tuulikki]

Hello star seed ✨✨⭐️

I’m a star seed empath

I’m sending blessings and greetings 🙏🏽 seasons greetings

This website's hatemail game is insane

[greencheekconure27]

Sigh.

I was listening to Lithuanian folk music on YouTube and made the mistake of looking at the comments and it's all "We don't need Jewish gods since we have our own! Greetings from Poland"* and "we're losing true white European culture" and "what has Europe become we need to go back to [idealized conservative pagan past that never existed].

This is why I'm suspicious towards neopagan religions y'all.🤦‍♀️

*verbatim

** pretty sure I even know what "pagan" cult the Polish guy is from😒

[katistrophe]

I am so annoyed at my new shower gel right now. The only cheap non-floral-but-still-scented shower gel I could find was a „detoxifying“ one with activated charcoal and lemon.

And… okay, activated charcoal taken by mouth works against some types of poisoning, so technically yes, but no. And the scent isn’t my favorite.

But that’s not even the worst part.

The worst part is that the Spooky Creachure part of my brain LOVES it because the charcoal makes it look like corruption sludge of doom.

[57sfinest]

something i’ve been thinking about is the intersection of racism & fascism with conspiracy theories/pseudoscience and the supernatural in disco elysium. it’s a well-documented phenomenon irl and i think the game is very good at easing you into the “levels” of how these things are inherently related.

on the surface you have the racist lorry driver, who literally has “racist” in his epithet and is the most out-and-proud racist-fascist you could possibly meet, and measurehead, another open racist and fascist whose nickname is given to him by his belief in phrenology. here we see these people as pretty much cartoonishly racist and very vocal about *why* they believe these things: it all comes down to pseudoscience. these are people who have been convinced that racism is just a fact, justified by science that others are just too “soft” to recognize. we all know about measurehead and his phrenology and such but the RLD also espouses pseudoscience to justify his racism:

and, in addition to this “supporting” his racist beliefs, on top of this he believes in conspiracy theories like an immigrant *Invasion* and an anti-Occidental (anti-white) “cultural victory”, which sounds suspiciously like real-life “white eradication” conspiracy theories:

okay, this is some obviously deeply racist and fascist shit. but it’s not just this. measurehead goes beyond this and believes in other conspiracy theories unrelated to race supremacy, like his thing with semen retention, which is also a real-life conspiracy thing:

i’ll tie this all up at the end, so let’s move on to the next layer. gary is explicitly identified as a cryptofascist by his epithet. a cryptofascist, for those unfamiliar, is someone whose beliefs and ideals align with fascism but who doesn’t openly identify as such because they’re aware of the social unacceptability of it. if you play the fascist route, you’ll have to play as a cryptofascist in order to maintain positive relationships with NPCs and not take constant morale damage from saying fascist things. gary also says blatantly racist things, and here’s where it gets a little deeper than RLD and measurehead: the very basics of what he says are factually true-- that seol exports microtechnology, for example, which ties them to a lot of global governments-- but these actual facts have been spun by fear and *conspiracy theory* into a load of racist bullshit:

and you can actually see in that half light line at the bottom how the fear leverages belief in this stuff! you can argue against gary this whole time and still, an appeal to *fear* can start to slip in through the cracks. gary opens with facts and logic, devolves into fear and conspiracy spinning, and we get another layer of how racist rhetoric and belief spreads. then, to add another layer to the fear angle, you have plaisance. it’s not fear of immigrants with her, though. she’s afraid of this curse-- the supernatural-- that she thinks will be responsible for ending her business, and in her fear she turned to racist caricature and stereotypes:

it’s not the same as the direct “you’re seolite, fuck you” that RLD directs at kim or the “non-occidentals are inferior” he and measurehead parrot or “immigrants are trying to take over the world” that they and gary all buy into. it’s a far more insidious thing: this is something she takes as fact, so deeply that she doesn’t even *question* it. these nonwhite people are special mystical people with magic and that’s just how it is! while it’s not quite conspiracy theory, it’s supernatural, which functions the same as conspiracy when you talk about how racism is rooted in some fundamental disconnect from reality. and this brings us to our final subject, lena. lena comes in from the same angle, a belief in the supernatural (cryptozoology) that ultimately results in racism. (the juxtaposition of cryptozoology/cryptofascism with morell and gary was not an accident!) she seems like a regular sweet old lady who likes cryptids, until you’re randomly slapped across the face with this:

she believes that seolites are a different *species*, and that’s just a fact to her. you point out the racism and she just doubles down-- no, she’s not trying to be offensive, it can be a good thing actually! that’s just nature, just like the cryptids she loves! it’s just fact! and we see this echoed by plaisance and even gary, where they’ll say something deeply racist and follow it up with “but [x group] is very intelligent/crafty/etc as well!” as though saying this somehow cancels out the racism (when in actuality, these “good traits” are part of what they use to fearmonger about these “other” groups they’re so afraid of).

in general this group of characters serves really well to demonstrate how people who are out of touch with reality in other ways (conspiracy, magic, the supernatural, and some extreme forms of spiritualism) are frequently deeply racist as well, and some of them aren’t even aware or doing it intentionally. it really just comes with the territory, and some people choose to lean into it while others aren’t even aware of it, which is why the process of recognition and unlearning is so important when considering the latter population.

[creature-wizard]

Reminder that you can:

Suspect aliens exist

Seriously believe in aliens

Attempt to talk to aliens via mystical means

Suspect or believe that you, yourself, have an alien soul

Without also buying into spiritual eugenics, spiritual colonialism, racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, easily-debunked pseudohistory and pseudoscience, and general QAnon bullshit New Agers go for these days.

[corpsepng]

I just finished this book, and I hesitate to articulate the totality of my feelings toward it because of what it did for me personally (knocked me out of what was, in hindsight, a 13 year long delusional/dissociative thought bubble that was, at severe times, spiritual psychosis).

That being said, I fully recommend that everyone, and I mean everyone, read this book. It’s almost 30 years old and its content is still, if not MORE, necessary now. It illuminates the shadows of pseudoscience, logical fallacy, misinformation, new age mysticism (and its unbreakable ties to harmful ideology), and intellectual control. It criticizes politics and religion while not denouncing their value to society, and conversely, does not place science on an untouchable pedestal. He is an astronomer that spent his life’s work seeking signs of extraterrestrial life, so more than anyone knows that wonder and curiosity are vital to the human experience, even if current UFO conspiracies are bullshit (very vehement chapters plural about UFO bullshit lmao). 

It is not a quick read. It is not an easy read. At times, it is an objectively dense and difficult read. He is, of course, a scientist who includes scientific, first hand, and historical references to properly bolster his argument.

And he does not shy away from sensitive topics; chapter 9 titled “therapy” discusses the fallibility and manipulability of memory, mainly the harmful methods of regression hypnotists and ill-intentioned psychologists in regards to sexual assault.

The thesis of this book is plainly: the more we know, the better we are as individuals, and as a collective. Knowledge IS freedom, and those who seek to oppress you will (intentionally or unintentionally, often systematically) misinform you and deny you access to education. To know what the truth is, you must also know lies. He encourages skepticism at all fronts. 

If you feel like you’re going crazy, I think this book will make you feel sane. Also, the audiobook is well narrated. 

For a quicker related read that is just as phenomenal, I recommend this essay by Ismatu Gwendolyn about reading and knowledge as freedom. I have a long list of nonfiction I'm getting through (mainly science), so if any more (or, any more essays) feel pertinent I'll share here!

[boeing747]

i share your vision. reid should talk like cooper but still in his delivering nerdy facts voice there should be no more acknowledgement of the mysticism than there is of the psychobabble bullshit in the show

OKAY RIGHT. LIKE THE SHIT THEY DO WITH REID SPECIFICALLY. That one episode in season six i think where it's the whole thing about afro-carribean indigenous religions with that professor guy ? like that was bordering straight up into just magic and they barely tried to write it off. like the intention, it feels like to me, was for you to see this and go yes, this is clearly magic, and were being coy about it being real or not and this is narratively important. you know ?

like inherently the moral of criminal minds isn't even that like cops win the bad guys lose because of how weird and out there it is with some of the like pseudoscience psychology like so much of it's narratives are obsessed with the truth and like not even the actual physical truth of the events but the really specific moral truth which is sort of a narrative thread that works really well with the kind of basis that twin peaks seems to be built on you know? You could really get somewhere fanfiction wise with this i think. you could do some cool stuff if you put lynchian new age magic in criminal minds.

disclaimer: of course you could read all of criminal minds like any weird cop procedural as saying that the justice system and federal government have some deep fundamental access to truth that it doesn't matter how silly we think the methods are because the law is infalliable and copoganda blah blah blah but thats fucking boring yawn i dont care about society or critical thinking. anyway

i love magic and the idea of these fbi agents standing as anubis-like figures watching the souls of these killers get weighed against the truth you know. its more fun. they should make profiling but it's twin peaks. and yes it 100% needs to be played fully and entirely straight otherwise it doesnt work. this is all very serious.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Professor Dave Explains: Quantum Mysticism is Stupid (Deepak Chopra, Spirit Science, Actualized.org)

[will-o-the-witch]

I'm part of several magic geared discords run by popular youtube practitioners (tried smaller ones but they were somehow more awkward) and when I first started getting into magic 8 or so months ago they felt like such a boon. So many books to look into, so many resources for who to avoid, so many people to learn from. But as time went by I started to feel really awkward and couldn't put my finger on it.

Recently though I've started to realize that there's a lot of performative activism in the groups. Lots of Heathens will make giant posts, cut people out(nike and georgina rose), make podcast episodes about how horrible white nationalism and na*is are, but then when someone pops on to ask about Lilith, these same people talk about how she's so powerful to work with and all this (legit one of the mods across 3! severs is a host for a heathen podcast and said she grew up in a Jewish household and she doesn't care if people worship Lilith because no one she knew ever cared). People go out of their way to be respectful to Indigenous practices (mostly in regards to land spirits and white sage) but there's not a lot there to help bring attention to the rampant anti-Semitism in magic spaces.

They constantly publicly shame people who share their UPG while also suggesting books that are by and large just the authors UPG. (Or low key really appropriative but somehow it's okay because they are so popular *cough Jason Miller cough*) The same mod as I mentioned above has gone on long tirades about how if you say something is part of your practice you NEED to have *facts* that back it up, but the facts she wants are like random correspondences from a book she "trusts" (honestly, if we're not talking 100% historic stuff what facts are there most of the time? (and even then history isn't static and changes based on new information))

My question is how would I even start a conversation (if I choose to, which tbh probably won't but it'd be nice to know what to do about it in the future) with people like this? These people think anything not in a published book aren't worth looking in to. Anyone from tumblr/tik-tok/instagram is considered a joke regardless of how good their information is (which is hilarious because these people mod on discords for youtube witches). I'm starting to realize this is just a really common thing and I don't know what to do. You seem to have a lot of (probably unwanted) experience with this kind of stuff and I don't want to leave the discords because there is some good information if I dig. It's just getting harder and harder not to say anything when people do icky stuff.

This is a great question!! Unfortunately performative activitism and anti-intellectualism can worm their way into any community space, but I think the latter tends to hold firmer in magic/mysticism spaces because it's been used to try and justify SO much pseudoscience(which feeds back into it) and magic work is so esoteric and subjective anyway that so much information can't ever be formally verified.

I think the best thing you can honestly do is just rise above it. Be picky about your sources (I usually don't touch a book on magic with less than 3 pages of works cited,) study your history and science, read original sources when you can, etc. Not only will it help you out personally but you'll be better equipped to point out WHY something is bullshit if you need to. (And reminding people that Llewellyn and other publishing companies don't necessarily have a quality standard, it's about whether they think a book will sell enough copies.)

Leading by example and speaking with confidence is good, but you also don't have to rot your brain trying to change every mind. Some people aren't interested in being corrected, and you don't have to make them their problem. If a group is frustrating and draining to you, just leave! Find your tribe of like-minded folks who have the same values as you. They're out there, sometimes it just takes hunting!

[hearthhag]

hi, in mundane life i’m a history/humanities student! i study disability, fatness, queer life, magic, and all the intersections those entail; particularly (at the moment) when they intersect with fascist movements and ideology.

why am i telling you this? because we need to talk about nazis and fascism.

why? because unfortunately fascism has a long history of using occultism, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory to spread white supremacist ideas, racism, antisemitism, ableism, & antiziganism.

before i get started, i wanna make sure we’re on the same page about what these things are.

occultism - the study or practice of non-mainstream or novel belief systems, especially as they pertain to the supernatural, mystical, magical, and metaphysical.

pseudo- (prefix) - not based in any accepted fields or findings.

pseudoscience - ideology that has been “translated” to sound scientific. not based in real science.

pseudohistory - ideology that has been “translated” to sound historical or like historical fact, or uses historical motifs. not based in real history.

let’s break down what that looked like in the 1930s: (we’re going to be looking at untranslated documents from the NSDAP— if you don’t want to see that, i completely understand, feel free to scroll to the point where there’s red text like this.)

so here we have the two big, prominent, fonts used by the NSDAP; Futura and Fraktur.

futura was— and is— the font of choice for scientific [sic] writing, reports, and ‘good’ modern art.

fraktur was the font of choice for history [sic], ideology, ethics, morals, and emotional writing, and aimed to appeal to a sense of historical german glory. it’s also known across europe as the nazi font for this very reason.

these two documents are from the same year. which one feels older or more foundational? if its the antisemitic book set in fraktur, you’re like most people.

here is the line of red text for people avoiding triggering content.

fascism relies on calls to history, especially one where we [sic] were better off in the past than we are now. (see: Make America Great Again)

fascism also relies on looking toward a future where its scapegoat no longer exists. (see: drain the swamp)

when we’re studying marginalized people and their history, and when we’re studying pre-christian and early christian european practices, we need to be particularly careful of white supremacist ideas, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory.

let’s say you wanted to learn about your personal heritage and what folk practices you might want to reconnect with. you decide to look online for something like a human migration map. (again, scroll away to the green text like this to avoid.)

you find this.

i mean, it looks legit, right?

wrong. this is a map by prominent eugenicist madison grant.

he made all of this data up to confirm his ideology— that’s pseudoscience being used to create pseudohistory.

this is a line of green text for people avoiding triggers.

so, now that you’ve been throughly inundated with primary sources, let’s discuss this.

one, the nazis straight up did not come up with nordicism, they took it to its extreme. nordicism has its origins in the us, as does eugenics as a whole.

two, look how innocuous all this bigotry is. you are not immune to propaganda isn’t just a meme! the point of propaganda is to blend in and to be subtle. it’s not going to stick in your head if you think it’s bullshit.

three, just like how nazis used american white supremacy, they co-opted a lot of ideologies from a lot of different cultures. some they took to use for hate and didnt change much, others they took something that wasn’t hateful (like an alphabet) because it just looked cool, and they made it hateful.

four, and really this is where i cut this post off to make a part 2 because #4 is so large, nazis justified co-opting symbols and ideologies with their belief that there were these vast, connecting elements and traditions and this former glory of “the aryan race” that were being covered up or polluted by whoever the marginalized group of the day was, usually jewish people. anything that even seems a little like that is probably fascist.

my goal here is to help you develop your nazi detector. america has been parroting fascism for a long time, and we’re in serious trouble. remember, if you’re not actively against them, you’re for them, or you might as well be.

i’m going to leave you with umberto eco’s 14 core elements of fascism and some further watching (videos that do a good job explaining what i’m talking about but in different ways) while i go write pt. 2.

eco grew up under mussolini’s regime, and these are from his 1995 essay Ur-Fascism.

The cult of tradition.

The rejection of modernism.

The cult of action for action’s sake.

Disagreement is treason.

Fear of difference.

Appeal to social frustration.

The obsession with a [secret] plot.

The enemy is both strong and weak.

Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.

Contempt for the weak.

Everybody is educated to become a hero.

Machismo and weaponry.

Selective populism.

Fascism speaks Newspeak.

dissecting turning point usa’s americafest

let’s talk about broadway

how did the nazis even happen in the first place

what does eugenics even mean

why do all of today’s op-eds sound really similar

[tuulikki]

Ooohhhhh my god I can't believe

Homeopathy? For real? You're telling me to take a pill/cream from the people who believe that water has a memory?

Just in case anyone needs a refresher on this bullshit:

Homeopathy is based on the law of similars (‘like cures like’) which states that a substance that causes specific symptoms in a healthy person can be used to treat those symptoms in a sick person. Remedies undergo a process called ‘potentization’ which describes stepwise dilution from the ‘mother tincture’ combined with ‘succession’ (vigorous shaking). The underlying assumption is that the more dilute a remedy the greater its potency, even though according to Avogadro's number, with potencies beyond 12C (12 centesimal dilutions) the chance of a single molecule remaining in the final solution tends to the infinitesimal.

TL;DR: If you were bitten by a snake, homeopathy would try to cure you by giving you the venom from the snake. But don't worry! They also believe that diluting the active ingredient makes it more potent!

"As world-renowned scientific skeptic James Randi put it: 'this would be tantamount to grinding a grain of rice into tiny particles, dissolving it in a sphere of water the size of our Solar System, and then repeating this process about 2 billion times.' One of the ways by which followers of homeopathy deal with such criticism is their claim that water retains a memory of the substance: even after it is gone its properties are embedded in the water molecules."

[wastelandimperiatrix]

I've been on the go lately, and also deeply frustrated. After a visit to my mother's place for the weekend, I'm feeling exhausted and triggered from everything that happened on the weekend.

My Grandmother decided she had magically gotten better, and had decided to sell her oxygen tank. She has also stated that she still wants to drink, despite being told in no uncertain terms, that if she continued to drink, her liver would fail.

I've done what I can to try and persuade her, to coax her into looking after her health. But, she has fallen deep into the facebook new age conspiracy hole, and I'm afraid there's no coming back for her. Pseudoscience is going to kill my Grandmother.

I'll be the first to admit, I am a Witch. I grew up a practicing pagan, and it's a very important part of my life, including various herbalist traditions, ethnobotanical studies, and pharmacopoeia. I have experimented with mandrake, datura, and henbane, I have studied the chemical composition of plants, things that can heal and things that can harm, and I have come out the other end embittered by the wider witchcraft community for endangering the lives of people - turning them away from peer reviewed, scientific medicine and insisting things like crystals, collagen, and prayer will heal.

I am fucking exhausted with this rhetoric.

When do we draw the line between denialism, new age mysticism, and anti-intellectualism? Where do we draw the line. Where faith can heal liver damage, and drinking absolves you of the burden of facing yourself in the mirror. It's easier to admit that doctors lie. That natural products are better. Than it is to admit that you are dying, that you are trying to heal something the same way a child slams a toy cube into a circular shaped hole.

The misappropriation of aboriginal cultures, of eastern religions, of repackaged consumerist essential oils, all dolled up touting that they can cure cancer, that they can stop the passage of time, that they can magically cure autism. It's smoke and mirrors and consumerist ideology packaged into a sleek, minimally designed eco-friendly $80 product.

And what am I to do? Stand around as my Grandmother kills herself slowly and painfully? unwilling to admit that she needs mobility aids, unwilling to admit that she is getting older each year, that each of her decisions had led to cirrhosis of the liver, to a pulmonary embolism. To organ failure. All for her to brush it off with something more akin to 13 year olds role-playing as fairies and mythical creatures.

This is where the new age cult ends. With lives taken all for monetary gain, where spiritual enlightenment can be bought for $40 plus shipping. This is where it ends, with a child watching their Grandmother, sick with fear, saying that a crystal will heal her body. That light work will heal her body. That homemade snake oil will cure her, de-age her, and absolve the burden of facing the facts head on.

To those who have spread lies, misinformation, and other pseudo scientific bullshit, I hope you suffer a thousand deaths, I hope each day the lives you have taken in your ignorance haunt you until your dying days. I hope you are never absolved in your guilt, in your complacency, in your cultural appropriation. I hope you all fucking rot.

[calvin-af-crone]

These mystifying images on IG provoked me into looking up biodynamic farming to see how it differs from other organic farming methods. Seriously. What the fuck is that guy burying?

I hit Wikipedia and discovered Biodynamic Agriculture was first conceived by Rudolf Steiner in 1924. Oh boy! He was a philosopher who combined mysticism & science. Most conventional thinkers describe his efforts as pseudoscience. He was also the guiding light for the first Waldorf School, which is a wondrous education method.

The first link has the answer to the mystery in the photos above:

Biodynamic agriculture uses various herbal and mineral additives for compost additives and field sprays; these are prepared using methods that are more akin to sympathetic magic than agronomy, such as burying ground quartz stuffed into the horn of a cow, which are said to harvest "cosmic forces in the soil".

Oh yeah. Notice the "500" on the photo on the left. That's the number of this "Field Preparation":

500: A humus mixture prepared by filling a cow's horn with cow manure and burying it in the ground (40–60 cm below the surface) in the autumn. It is left to decompose during the winter and recovered for use as fertilizer the following spring.

This cosmically energized fertilizer will be added to the piles of compost in the photo on the right, illustrating the complete 3-step process. Today is a Full Moon. I wonder if they'll have a drumming circle at the Cow Horn Burial Ground tonight & wish I could be there.

Calvin's interest in esoteric bullshit amuses me because earlier in my life, I "been there & done that". I probably went deeper into the Occult than he has—yet. A fascination w/ Chakras & alternative medicine won't usually hurt you but I worry about him doing his first Vegas show if he hasn't gotten a Covid vaccine.

<heavy sigh>

[samwisethewitch]

Wait I don't understand that one post about runes you reblogged. Is it saying to not mix up runes with tarot? Or to not treat them like tarot cards? I have made my own runes and I want to continue doing divination with them, I'm confused.

The post I reblogged from @skaldish was part of a thread on their blog where they discussed the inherent cultural appropriation in the Elder Futhark divination system used by a lot of modern Norse Pagans. This system, which originated in the 20th century, is not only inaccurate to how we know the runes were used in ancient times (which admittedly isn’t much), but it uses elements of Hermeticism (based on appropriation of Jewish mysticism) and the I Ching (a Chinese divination system). Very little of it is genuinely Norse in origin. 

On a separate but related note, the reason I personally do not use the Elder Futhark runes in my practice is because a lot of modern knowledge about the runes and their meanings is based on “research” done by Nazis. Nazis were, obviously, absolute garbage human beings in general, but they were also infamous for pseudoscience, straight up bullshit, and twisting the evidence to fit their fucked up worldview. 

I do not want to engage with a practice based on Nazi sources. When I do use the runes in my practice (which isn’t often these days), I use them in spells and as sigils, which seems more in line with historic uses. I also use the medieval rune poems as my main source, which means more vague definitions for each rune but also means that I’m not running the risk of accidentally incorporating Nazi propaganda into my practice. 

[rhythmic-idealist]

Doubting scams and pseudoscience is good, but prioritizing only knowledge that can be stated under the Western medical model, prioritizing specific names created by Western scientific tradition and using it to completely discount traditional knowledge as stupid, fake, and the same as someone trying to sell you snake oil to cure autism, is really, really bad

Scams and pseudoscience are out there. Vaccines are real and safe, medication is real and many people cannot live without it. Nutrition is also real. Traditional knowledge is also real and studied.

A lot of snake oil nonsense comes from people pretending to have traditional knowledge, people pretending to be "shamans" or know "ancient [insert Asian country] wisdom" or what have you, people who use the exotification of those places and cultures as ~mystical~ in the Eurocentric eye in order to sell their fake bullshit. Let's not perpetuate that harm in our movement against it?

[knowerofuselessfacts]

Just had someone tell me that they didn't want to tell a chronically ill person what to do without it but also tried to tell me to look into some mystic medic person and when I said I'd stick with peer reviewed medical stuff they tried to convince me otherwise, saying that I was discrimitoty for dismissing anything that isn't mainstream

No, I do not want to go into pseudoscience and mysicism for physical problems because a) it's bullshit. B) the only times it "works" is if you believe in it. And c) if I'm going to spend a ton of money that doesn't cure me I'd rather get it closer to treatment or a paper trail for actual disability accomodations than some nonsense