But the story of the cards is interesting. Most of us probably learned about them from Ghostbusters, where Bill Murray uses them as a pretext to reward an attractive female test subject and punish another subject who doesn't meet that description. Dr. J. B. Rhine, who had the idea for the tests, was a curious man, and inspired by a talk from Arthur Conan Doyle. He had a hot streak and then things started going cold for him.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. This includes weird science stuff and more spiritual matters. We'll never know everything, but we can always learn.
2 comments:
Althogh the Zener cards are thought-provoking I'd be sceptical of any methods purported to prove psychic abilities in recent history. Nevertheless I do believe such capacities may have been fairly common in the past. Our civilization has been so swayed by technology it's hard for people to imagine any other way.
I once read about an anthropologist who during a visit to an indigenous tribe in Brazil asked how they communicated with their hunters at a distance ie, 'Bring back pepper berries.' The tribal woman said they had a special tree where they would speak their needs and went on to say 'We don't have phones like yours.' Unverifiable for sure but it sounded reasonable in the circumstance.
In the early 20th century a man named Edward Cayce was known as the sleeping prophet for his ability to diagnose medical conditions while talking in his sleep. He foretold the stock market crash of 1929 and how ww2 would unfold with the unlikely alliance between Germany, Austria, and Japan. He also spoke at length about the Dead Sea Scrolls which weren't discovered until two years after he died. Undoubtedly an interesting man it's never been been proved he was truly psychic, but neither has it not. Some things are best left as mysteries.
Numb asked me to show you his favorite psychic prediction cards:
img.icons8.com/color/1200/playstation-buttons.jpg
Zener cards are certainly a neat curio. I think there's a good chance that psychic abilities exist but are difficult to measure, certainly with any consistency. People before the Bronze Age may have used them more, but of course that's a long time ago now.
That would make the spectral tree a kind of common focus for the indigenous tribe. I could see it working, especially if it were a common belief.
Was Cayce a psychic, or just a visionary? And what is the actual difference? It sounds like he would have been a very interesting man to know.
Heh, Playstation buttons. That would tell you something about a person.
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