Physical Clairvoyance of Liber E.
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@RifRaf said
"(I thought this thread already existed, I must be thinking of an entirely different forum because this keeps happening
.)In Liber E Crowley talks about a practice that is suppose to help develop the student's Physical Clairvoyance. The practice seems quite simple, and in my eyes is a bit out of place with the rest of Liber E.
My question is who has practiced this, and what were your "results" like? Digging through my diaries I see that I did this exact practice as laid out in Liber E for 3 months daily, with 60 cards and made myself guess the Suit. I noticed that I did not get any "better", as in I was not able to pick out the correct number an astonishing amount of times (as Crowley says "you should be able to pick out the correct card [not suit] 3 out of 4 times."), but after the first month I never (not once) fell below the number I was currently at. For example, in April 2008 when I first began I was only able to pick out 13-22 of the 60 cards (the Suit), by June 1st I was picking 29-37, but I never got a lower number of correct guesses than 29 from that point on."
I did it for a few days once. It gets really tedious. The only thing that happened that was in any way remarkable was that once, just once, I got a clear picture in my mind of what the next card was going to be, and lo and behold it turned up. The rest of the time, nothing, nada, maybe a few correct calls with no noticeable phenomenon like that. The feeling accompanying the visualisation, and the clarity of the visualisation itself, though, was quite striking and spooky.
The usual sceptical counterpoint to this sort of thing woud be: "how many times did I have an unusual, spooky feeling and the card didn't turn up?" The answer is of course none - that was the one solitary occasion when I had a clear feeling of the next card, with a spooky feeling as an adjunct, and it just happened to be an occasion when I was right.
Of course it could still be random, but I think if one persevered and it happened several times, with only a few occasions when one had the feeling and the card didn't turn up, and many more occasions when one had it and the card did turn up, then one might be on to something.
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I think people miss the fact that this practice was decades before academic ESP testing along surprisingly similar lines. I wouldn't be surprised, in fact, to learn that the academic testing was modelled after this.
I think the practice simply points out to people that we have far more of this type of capability than they usually think, and gives a way to objectify it (thus an early attempt to apply scientific method to occult matters). For those who are too "inside the sensory box," so that they doubt natural human psychism, this can knock them for a loop. For those who think they're overly hot stuff, it can give them a more moderate perspective.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"I think people miss the fact that this practice was decades before academic ESP testing along surprisingly similar lines. I wouldn't be surprised, in fact, to learn that the academic testing was modelled after this."
I would be very surprised if Zener got his idea of cards from Crowley.
"I think the practice simply points out to people that we have far more of this type of capability than they usually think"
Is it really? And do we really have this type of capability? From all the reports Ive heard and my experience I would say absolutely not. Some people are absolutely astounding at kidding themselves though let alone the eternal plague of occultism, confirmation bias.
"and gives a way to objectify it (thus an early attempt to apply scientific method to occult matters)."
This I agree with - it seems fundamentally to be showing the reader that these subjects can be tested rigorously (although he makes mentions of harmonies between cards which are, in fact, 'outs' and not rigorous in the least).
" For those who are too "inside the sensory box," so that they doubt natural human psychism, this can knock them for a loop."
Oh give me a break. "Inside the box"? What kind of silly metaphor is that? Its like saying someone is close minded because they wont believe theres a hollow earth.
IAO131
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@Aum418 said
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"I think the practice simply points out to people that we have far more of this type of capability than they usually think"Is it really? And do we really have this type of capability? From all the reports Ive heard and my experience I would say absolutely not. Some people are absolutely astounding at kidding themselves though let alone the eternal plague of occultism, confirmation bias."
When originally doing it, I worked out the odds for each variation of the test I did - they're in a diary back around 1981, I'd guess. With persistence I was able to get enough right to vary by more than 3 standard deviations from expected. I don't think that's all that rare.
The hardest thing about the test is getting motivation up. It's hard to care about whether or not one is right. This can significantly impact the results.
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"and gives a way to objectify it (thus an early attempt to apply scientific method to occult matters)."This I agree with - it seems fundamentally to be showing the reader that these subjects can be tested rigorously (although he makes mentions of harmonies between cards which are, in fact, 'outs' and not rigorous in the least)."
Agreed. Or, more specifically, even when these are kept narrow and the odds are recalculated, it makes it so likely you'll get a right answer that it's usually impossible to get a statistically significant variance.
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" For those who are too "inside the sensory box," so that they doubt natural human psychism, this can knock them for a loop."Oh give me a break. "Inside the box"? What kind of silly metaphor is that? Its like saying someone is close minded because they wont believe theres a hollow earth."
I thought it was at least an adequate metaphor.
That is, the meaning was, I think, sufficiently decipherable. I meant that many people are so stuck in their physical senses that they don't notice that information routinely coming to everyone through other channels. -
@Jim Eshelman said
"When originally doing it, I worked out the odds for each variation of the test I did"
Were you using tarot cards, Zener cards, or some other? It's tricky to work out the odds with tarot.
@Jim Eshelman said
"The hardest thing about the test is getting motivation up."
Any tips for this?
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@gmugmble said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"When originally doing it, I worked out the odds for each variation of the test I did"Were you using tarot cards, Zener cards, or some other? It's tricky to work out the odds with tarot."
Tarot cards. Yeah, tricky.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The hardest thing about the test is getting motivation up."Any tips for this?"
Not really. Just whatever it takes to kick your Give-a-Shit into high gear.
BTW, I used to think that I did really badly on ESP tests - couldn't even get anywhere near average expectancy for pure chance. In my mid-20s, Zip Dobyns pointed out that (like her) I was actually consistently scoring so low that there was only one chance in many thousand that it could be by chance. That, in itself, was evidence of some other factor working, something actively keeping me from even scoring average. Apparently my negative-skepticism (of the "I must deny this unless it absolutely proves itself to me and none of this crap could really be true") was so strong, it was succeeding in producing this result. Just relaxing a bit and changing my point of view (letting the results speak for themselves) did wonders - almost at once I became totally average and unexceptional!
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Aum418 said
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"I think the practice simply points out to people that we have far more of this type of capability than they usually think"Is it really? And do we really have this type of capability? From all the reports Ive heard and my experience I would say absolutely not. Some people are absolutely astounding at kidding themselves though let alone the eternal plague of occultism, confirmation bias."
When originally doing it, I worked out the odds for each variation of the test I did - they're in a diary back around 1981, I'd guess. With persistence I was able to get enough right to vary by more than 3 standard deviations from expected. I don't think that's all that rare."
I dont really believe anecdotal evidence especially where statistics are supposedly involved that no longer exist.
I once saw a UFO. I dont think thats all that rare.
"The hardest thing about the test is getting motivation up. It's hard to care about whether or not one is right. This can significantly impact the results."
"I thought it was at least an adequate metaphor.
That is, the meaning was, I think, sufficiently decipherable. I meant that many people are so stuck in their physical senses that they don't notice that information routinely coming to everyone through other channels."The psychic information about what card Im holding up? I would absolutely love to test you on this ability.
IAO131
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It would seem to me that these so called tests of ESP always differ from pure chance because we are not using pure chance to in our thought processes to guess the next card.
That is we let notions like the gamblers fallacy determine which card we will chose next, or we imagine what card in will be, but this as more about hoping that it will be the card that strikes our fancy at the time, than about prediction.
In Jims example, if I always called say the ace of spades, out of a deck of 52 cards I would be wrong 51 times, which is well bellow chance. A more complex version of this would explain why human guessing will often to differ from chance sometimes above sometimes bellow. Our brains are simple not set up to produce the same results as random chance.
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@Froclown said
"In Jims example, if I always called say the ace of spades, out of a deck of 52 cards I would be wrong 51 times, which is well bellow chance."
Not true. In the task of attempting to guess the exact card, we'd expect you to be write 1 time in 52. That's exactly chance.
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then our means to discern chance are off.
It can not be equally as probably to get the card by guessing different cards each time the card changes as to guessing always the same card.
In any effect, a human would not guess the a card after it had been uncovered, where as random chance does not eliminate any of the cards taken out after previous trials.
Basically my point is I think our common notion of what chance happens to be is not well understood.
For one thing it seems than truly random results can only come from a totally open system with infinite degrees of freedom. And most systems we set up are closed systems with a very very large number of degree of freedom, but still finite. The holistic effect this has on chance would be difficult or impossible it realize, and a human interference influence these variables, just by acting as a self-referenced vortex which multiplies variable by interacting with itself.
Perhaps a study on how a parallel run recursive algorithm interacting with a random number generator (perhaps quantum based) might be effected. This would remove any notion of ESP, while comparing how recursion effects probability. (but still leaves the question of measuring chance itself unanswered).
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@Froclown said
"then our means to discern chance are off.
It can not be equally as probably to get the card by guessing different cards each time the card changes as to guessing always the same card."
With 52 possible cards, the odds each time are 1/52 that you will guess the right one. Whether you choose a smart or stupid way to guess doesn't change the odds. There are 52 possibilities at each step.
"In any effect, a human would not guess the a card after it had been uncovered, where as random chance does not eliminate any of the cards taken out after previous trials. "
Well, yes, if you look at the cards as you go then that changes how you have to calculate. Therefore, that's a silly way to do it. I never looked at them - just took the next card on the deck, looked at the back of it, and wrote down my impression - then checked accuracy when it was all over.
"Basically my point is I think our common notion of what chance happens to be is not well understood."
Admittedly, it does take some knowledge of the mathematics of probability.
"For one thing it seems than truly random results can only come from a totally open system with infinite degrees of freedom."
You raise several points that have been settled long ago by mathematicians specializing in probability. You aren't the first to have thought of these things
Besides, you're making too big of a deal of this little test. The only reason for introducing statistical methodology at all is so that an individual doesn't fool himself or herself that getting the suit right 20 times is a big deal.
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it just seems to me that for example when you have a mutable and a solid object interact, eventually they may reach a balance, but usually either the solid object erodes are the mutable viscous object disperses.
Where as when you have two mutable objects, they each give and take and mesh together more easily.
Applying this principle to statistics, it seems to me that if over time both the guesses and the cards are changing, they would mesh together with correct answers, more often than either if you change only the card selected but not the guess, (always guess ace) or if you always draw the same card but keep guessing differently, ie you have a whole deck of aces but you call out different cards anyway.
Of these 3 I would think the best chance is with both sides being mutable, you would get more matches.
Unless this is a form of gambler's fallacy, but I don't see how that can be.
I kinda thought the idea of this practice was that it gets the student thinking about the different attributes of the Tarot with teh kabbalah, by way of trying to self rationalize the desired power of clairvoyance. The ESP aspect a mere trick to fool the ego allowing the memory to build up the attributes, while the ego is distracted by the prospect of proving oneself unique and powerful. Rather like tricking a child into cleaning her room by convincing her that its a game.