Is anyone on this post going to Mindvention? Ill like to talk more about..

Jerome,
I appreciate your perspective. I think that we are using different definitions. As I said, I am a beginning reader so I may not have a completer understanding of what everyone means when they say "cold reading."
-"using clipboards, CT's, peeks, stock readings and other methods to feign intuitive abilities."
I don't use any of these and they seem more appropriate to a 'standard' mentalism show than to readings. For example Herb Dewey, in "red hot cold readings" teaches to read the aura by looking at a client and intuiting what color there aura is a giving a reading based on that. That is exactly the same type of advice given in occult and metaphysical books on reading the aura. Richard Webster, in his audio CDs, makes a big point about never using gimmicks of any sort during readings (as opposed to mentalsim routines). Webster also talks about using 'stock lines' to keep patter flowing, not for the whole reading.
-" memorizing the Barnum Statements/Forer Effect and reciting them over some cards "
Again, in my limited study, this doesn't sound like cold reading. Sure a "Barnum statement" could thrown in here and there, to make the reading more satisfying, but all of the (good) books I have on cold reading emphasize learning your system for real. A real Tarot reader or (fill in the blank) reader, learns their systems traditional meanings and methods, and then practices until they can apply those meanings to the situation and client at hand through intuition, do you agree?
As for mnemonics, perhaps I was sloppy with my use of terminology, or simply not clear. I wasn't referring to memory pegs or the like (although, like you said, that could help too), but using to key words to learn the basics of a system while you learn to apply your natural intuition to it. Any real book on tarot or astrology will give simple key words as "mnemonics" to help you learn the deeper meanings. I don't know what the "KEN system" is, but it sounds similar.
I'm not sure if we disagree or if we're using different terms. Perhaps my terminology is sloppy based on my limited reading. I certainly find your story about the teenagers and the "sun dance" disturbing and understand why you are sensitive to the situation.

Thank you for letting us know Brane.

My first experience with this was as a child, bones were tossed as well as other items, and it stuck with me. I've seen this throughout my travels in Asia and Europe as well has in North America. Casting of bones seems to have been a universal concept in divination and gambling, touching most every culture and people.

I'm very interested in reading what has been put together at MEVPRO.

Tony

Mu.


just suck your victim dry of any emotions, using whatever method, then collect your cash.


93.

Great posts Jerome! I think I feel the same as you do..when it comes to dreamwork and tarot. I have nothing to add here, as I see a lot of my thoughts in your posts..thanks for taking the time to type that out..great stuff as usual JF.

Rick~

Jerome=a living god--er, daemon. salud.

Gollee! What a surprising lot of words over the bones. I find it interesting to hear all the concern about the dilution and/or over simplification of various cultures traditions. I suspect a historian would point out that this dilution, simplification and degradation has been going on forever.

It seems that each new generation is blasted by 'the orthodoxy old timers' of their established tradition for simplifying or modifying the 'old ways.' Or ignoring them. Or explaining them to the undeserving.

Remember what a lot of heat and anger was generated when currently available religious books were first translated into the local idiomatic languages of Europe! Heck, the 'common people' could then read them, if they were literate. That was completely unthinkable to the 'older generations.' (Heresy! See William Tyndale 1536.)

I am of the personal opinion that whatever the current traditions are of ANY culture they, in themselves, are evolutions, accretions, and certainly syntheses.

I agree that it does seem rather sophomoric and 'cheap' to very brazenly steal a few recognizable elements of some tradition, a ceremonial dance or other complex historical ritual process and present it to the unknowing as 'the real thing' - for a profit!
It would seem that the best nonviolent way to respond to this is to point out the misrepresentation going on. Education.

Sadly, I suspect that some large share of the public would not be sophisticated enough to see and appreciate the difference between the real and the counterfeit. They will probably be happy with the fake as it's all just a passing thrill and fad for them, anyway. (And the copy will likely require less real 'work' and focus than the real thing. Just a matter of using your charge card!)

On the other side of this thought, it might be also recognized that every single one of these traditions, whether tarot, feather ceremonies, use of bones, cowrie shells, melted candle wax, turtle shells, choosing of particular colors or words, dance steps, use of smudges, incense, oils; all of these sorts of things began as a single idea in the mind of one person someplace back in ancient history.

This person communicated that idea to others who adopted it - and added to it, modified it, changed it over the centuries, through many generations. That's how it became the tradition that now no one wants to change or update.

I figure that it is equally valid for a new idea to arise in MY mind, too! Why not? And if I can find a way to make it work and transmit that idea to others who also find an affinity for it and can also make it work for them, well, then, the worst I could say is that there is now a NEW 'tradition!'

I probably wouldn't attempt to explain to people that it was 'just the same' as something that presently existed. Actually, I'd prefer that it incorporated new elements and that it contained knowledge that was advanced over older forms. It should, I would think, have some advantage; some reason for it's existence. No matter, evolution will out! If no one finds it of use, it will disappear in time.

I figure the bones method that mevproshop.com will release will definitely be as valid as any method of sortilege - (rune casting, casting of lots, yarrow stalk shaking, Chinese coin tossing, dice throwing, cowrie shell throwing, and so on) and perhaps more complete and systematic than many!
Yes, it will mean that someone with the patience to learn and practice will be able to throw the bones. And do a great job of it, too!

I can find no 'desecrating' going on. (i.e., 'to declare something as being NOT holy, dedicated,revered or set apart for religious use.') I would think that if something was, indeed 'entitled to reverence or veneration because it was designated by a divine sanction' to be so, then little I could do could probably change that!

Of course, as I have been asked to assist with that bone manuscript, I am surely somewhat prejudiced!

American 'Hoo Doo' is most assuredly an American syncretism of African folk magic, native American traditions and European magical practices and grimoires.
The first printed use of the word Hoo Doo in American English was in 1875.
About this trans-cultural form of folk magic, Wikipedia informs me that "Regional synonyms for hoodoo include conjuration, conjure, witchcraft, or rootwork."

There is NO structured hieirarchy at all, practitioners are often lay people with some specific knowledge of some fraction of the total knowledge available.

There really is no 'orthodoxy' to Hoo Doo. Hoo Doo is a collection of magical practices. it is NOT the religion Voo Doo; that's completely different, though they may share etymology.

Hoo doo is NOT solely reserved for the specialist, nor has it ever been so. Many of its practices are within the realm of 'folk magic' and 'folk remedies' and are well known in some Southern and South Eastern areas of the United States.

Some of the early printed materials came from English translations of John George Hohman's "Pow-wows or the Long Lost Friend," an 1820 German language collection of EUROPEAN magickal recipes and advice on midwifery, healing farm animals, and more esoteric occult subjects. Many of the rituals involved the use of Christian imagery and names.

Anyway, Throwing the Bones will see print in a while. Those who want to do such a thing will like it, I'm sure. A NEW tradition!
brane

This may be quite true, but that certainly does not justify our doing so.



Of course this is true; cultures are not static, but this is far different from extracting isolated (and poorly understood) elements, watering them down, mixing them with extraneous ideas, and presenting the mish-mash as something it is not.

I don't entirely disagree with you on this, Brane, but I wonder how people (in our culture, of course) would react to the same being done with our church services, masses, funeral rites, or even our nationalistic rituals as the Pledge of Allegiance. I don't think people would appreciate even mucking around with our graduation ceremonies. Is this really justified when it involves another culture's sacred traditions?

Bill L;

Yes, I think I understand your viewpoint. Were I claiming to be a revered dignitary with some other countries' magical religious training and belief system and was duplicating their religious rituals, I expect that I'd fully agree with you.

As it is, I have seven and a half minimally marked chicken bones (KFC!)that are tossed randomly onto a surface and are then 'read' based on the positions they have formed.
As unlikely as it seems, I can draw a lot of information from these.

I have, in one case only, seen a few short pages describing a system of casting bones. It is nothing at all like what will be in the forthcoming book.

I think the bones and their positions can offer me more information than just runes do, for example. They do not require a book to look up patterns, as might I Ching. They can easily provide me with as much information as a deck of playing cards, for example, and probably a tarot deck.

Over the years I have tossed runes onto a surface and 'read' them, based on the patterns they formed and the symbols that showed. (One set of these was, by the way, carved from deer bones.) I never did get negative mumbles from any Celtic/ Viking magical people, either.

I have tossed cowrie shells onto a surface and 'read' them, based on information privately revealed by someone from the Santeria tradition. This information had nothing at all to do with religion or gods, but rather the positions of the shells, whether they were face up or face down, and the numbers of each. A hidden, and not publicly mentioned, system. No one felt that I was trying to 'pass' as a Santeria priest or whatever I might be called.

You can see this system of 'letting the universe arrange the symbols' - sortilege - is found throughout the mantic arts. Arrangements of shuffled cards, cracks in heated bones, lines on a palm, randomly chosen pages in a book; all 'universe arranged' and human interpreted.

I have no idea whatsoever what other people do with their bones - nor do I know what sort of bones they use or how many of them - nor do I know if they mark their bones as I do. (I suspect that if they did all of that as I do, they are duplicating my method! HA!)
I seriously doubt that they use the same procedures to choose and throw their bones, too.

I am willing to bet large amounts of cash . . well, smallish amounts of cash, anyway . . .that they have NO idea what my process of throwing the bones is. Nor do they know of the inner workings of my systematic approach to the information that I can glean.
In short, this is MINE!

I do not profess it to be anything else. I am Throwing the Bones. (Note that I purposefully didn't even want to say 'casting' the bones.)

Anyone who feels that this is encroaching on their own exclusive mantic magical territory is speaking without having any idea whatsoever of my system or it's workings.
I DO find it curious that no one asked about what sort of bones, how many, how they're marked, what the process is for throwing them, etc. etc. before there was any hint of possible criticism. I am not quite sure how to view that attitude.
Is it just the use of BONES as opposed to chewing gum? Is it THROWING them as opposed to bouncing or flipping them?

I think, if you asked the 'person on the street' about my 'Throwing the Bones,'
they would have NO idea whatsoever what religious or magickal culture that it comes from! At least almost none of the people I've asked so far. The usual answer I get is 'Voodoo,' with 'Hoo Doo' only in one instances, and she was a real 'root worker!'
Given this near complete lack of public recognition I don't see that I can be trying to mislead potential bone throwing clients about its origins. (I do it in fully American middle class clothing; no costume, by the way.)

So, there you have it. A unique - and very practical and useful - system. If, in some very vague way, someone might feel that it resembles something else, or sounds kinda like something else in verbal description, well that's unfortunate, but unintended. I do not intend to alter it to suit what I see as hypersensitivities of others.

With reference, Bill, to your hypotheticals at the end of your words:

There are traditions, religious, political, cultural and so on, that are different than those than I am familiar with. Obviously.
But how much veneration or reverence I will show them is a rather personal choice. (In general, I suppose if I felt them truly worthy of very much veneration and reverence, I'd join up!)
There are also a number of groups out there with some very strange - and I feel dangerous - views. They get NO veneration or reverence!

Believers can pretty much do as they wish, from my point of view. They do NOT, however, have the right to impose their restricting rules - based on their religion or culture or politics - on me.

In a country where one religion dominates, for example, I would find it wrong to insist that all of the minority religions follow the majorities religious clothing or eating prohibitions. (Yet this does happen.)

I would not expect that I should be prevented from marrying someone of a different religion, based on the decrees of the majority religion in power at the moment. (People are killed for this very thing in some countries.)

When I was young, I sometimes could not get meat at the high school Caféteria on Fridays, because the majority of students were Catholic. I wasn't, but that didn't matter, I had to live by their rules.

Not being a member of a group, to me, means that I do not have to live by it's purely social, religious or political 'rules.'
Oh, yes, I realize that people are a bit crazy about having anyone disagree with their religion or politics - it is easily one of the major causes of strife and wars over the eons! So I would be careful what I said or did, I suppose. Up to a limit.

But I do not expect others to live by MY philosophical rules - although certainly they would benefit greatly from it. (HA!) Nor would I prevent my son from marrying their daughter. Nor do they have to eat or dress like I do. (Well, except for those guys with the summertime shorts and the knee high black socks!)

I would love to hear a wise philosopher talk about the relationship of the rigidity of social, political and religious rules in a society with other factors like freedom of expression, voting, press and so on.

Anyway, you see my thoughts on this. It's purely my system of Throwing the Bones. No one else's. I do not intend to modify it.

brane

Brane, I don't see that I have any disagreement with you. My only concerns are those relating to misrepresentation of religious and spiritual systems and their meanings to their followers, and the lack of respect paid to these systems. I, myself, have some routines that relate to specific religious systems. However, I try to represent these systems correctly and to present them with respect. Systems of divination are universal, and even their details can be surprisingly similar. If you present your own system of Throwing the Bones as just that, I see nothing wrong. If you represent it as "Zulu" or whatever, I believe there is a problem. Should you present it as "Ancient Egyptian," there is no real problem in most cases other than academic inaccuracy, which probably can be ignored, although Mr. Chelman would probably disagree. I respect his feelings about this.

I am not suggesting that you or anyone else should venerate other belief systems or hold them with reverence. I am suggesting that they should be considered with the same respect that one hopes will be shown toward one's own belief system. Personally, although I am not a Christian, I would not perform a "trick" with a crucifix, a glass of wine and a bread wafer (although I might come close).

Bill

Much respect to you all for these thought-provoking and articulate postings.
I look forward to Brane's work on this. Personally I would not try to fit it into any existing historical cultural or spiritual belief system, a more fable-like, Deep Woods/Old Magic theme works better for me. More story-telling, Joseph Cambell mythic. Then, light or dark, it's my world and my rules. This is not to minimize an intuitive reading by giving it a fantasy background, just to keep it on a little more neutral ground.
Bill, I truly hope we can meet some day, I've got this old Exorcisism ritual box, it seems something went wrong during the ceremony, and..well, you've gotta see it--
OG 2010?

But you can interlace the Fable World and the so-called Real World. I've done that with many tales (Alice, Peter Pan, the Grimm tales, the 1001 Nights...) and I'm a big fan of that approach. In this case you should respect both the codes of original tales and the location/era of the real world, and create your own interpretation, your own variation.

And you do such an exceptional job with such, Christian!

Brane,
I was speaking and replying specifically to the original poster when he asked about ZULU bone casting - not your system - not reading dice, dominos or tortoise shells, casting runes, crystals, yarrow stalks, etc. I should have asked first and I think it would have prevented some of the confusion and misunderstanding in this thread. I read things as I see them and when I saw your reply, 'Loren at MevPro will be coming out with a book ON THIS VERY SUBJECT' with the poster's ZULU SPECIFIC request in mind I was led to believe your book was about Zulu bone casting. My apologies. Though I may have jumped the gun my posts still accurately represent my feelings regarding such things.

Your product sounds great now that I actually know what it is (or rather what it is NOT) and I wish you all the best with it. A good system for reading bones is something the private reader, bizarre magician and mentalism community will benefit greatly from.

Warmly,
JF

Balaram, it is within the realm of possibility that I might make it to OG 2010. I'd like to meet you and the rest of the OG folks, too. The biggest problem will be dealing with six cats, one dog, one bird and a mother-in-law.

Brane, I am looking forward to the book, too -- with bated breath as well! Please keep us posted.

Bill

Feed the 6 cats, the dog and the bird with the mother-in-law. She should last 2 or 3 days...

You tempt me, Curator, you tempt me!

Speaking about Fables and Bones, it should be possible to use a mythical creature's bones for divination. Griffyn pawn bones or Dragon ? Maybe a unicorn ?

Warning: the following post is largely intended as a thought experiment.

Brane seems to be suggesting that his upcoming mevproshop book on bone reading falls within the broad framework of CR-cum-sortilage techniques that many of us have studied.

Jerome seems to be suggesting that he feels that the religious or shamanic system of working in whiuch he trained may be in danger of cultural appropriation.

Bill Ligon wrote "I am not suggesting that you or anyone else should venerate other belief systems or hold them with reverence. I am suggesting that they should be considered with the same respect that one hopes will be shown toward one's own belief system. Personally, although I am not a Christian, I would not perform a "trick" with a crucifix, a glass of wine and a bread wafer (although I might come close)."

Portraying an "exotic" persona for magical entertainment purposes is a tradition of long standing in our field, and it has been re-popularized through the development of bizarre magic.

Must we confine our explorations of mental theatre to the past -- to Medival wizards, tuxedo'd Victorians, and Art Deco hauntings -- or risk "political incorrectness"? Must we spcifically exclude African shaman personae and Catholic priest personae?

I don't know about you people, but I would pay good money to see Bill L. performing the "miracle of transubstantiation" while dressed in Benedictine robes or Brane throwing bones for clients at a private party while clad in a leopard skin loincloth with a bone through his nose.

Julieannjohnson, no need for "good money" to be spent, that is just another Saturday night at the Plastic Bat.

:cheers:

Julieannjohnson:

ME? In a leopardskin loincloth and a bone in my nose? Uh . . that would be a quick way to clear a room! I'm sure it would be illegal in a few states, anyway. Considering I'm an oldish, gray haired . . uh . . 'round' guy, I'm not so sure it would be good for the retina's of otherwise healthy people.
And my poor nose!
Now Bill . . that's surely a different story!
brane