Dragaera

Witchcraft

Sat Aug 24 13:55:42 PDT 2002

On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 01:46:12PM -0500, Sunny Han wrote:
> Are there such things as practicing witches? I've heard all of the arguments

There are people who call themselves that, certainly.  A fraction of them,
size unknown to me, do seem to believe they can have real effects, beyond the
self-control described by NyteMuse.  On the Buffy list someone commented on
how the magic in the show was the opposite of the real world, with easy
transformation of humans into animals and hard protection spells.  I suggested
that in the real world, transformation and physical protection (against, say,
a bullet) via spells were of equal difficulty, i.e. impossible.  This did not
go down well with the original poster, and a friend who's into Wicca for
psychological and 'spiritual' reasons (to simplify, for fun) says he knows
others in the physical change through magic crowd.

James Randi has a million bucks for anyone who can prove anything
paranormal...

> from scientists about how it's physically impossibile to make things happen
> based strictly on desire. Are there any arguments fro it? I've read a book

There's the theoretical arguments, and there's also the lack of repeatable
evidence.  Strong evidence, say Talia Winters or Spock reading ten-digit
numbers out of someone else's head, would trump theory.

-xx- Damien X-)