Interpreting mysterious signs
I get angry about this one. I suppose in Pagan circles where people explore arcane things, the idea of secret, mysterious knowledge at least makes sense, kind of. Even then I still find it offensive when it is used to justify otherwise insane leaps of logic. Would that it were just a Pagan issue. It turns up all over the place: People who assert that they can interpret the runes, the stock exchange, the entrails, or whatever else they latch onto, and tell you what it really means, based on no more evidence or logic than their own assertions. That might be harmless when it’s your handwriting, but far less so in other circumstances. I’ve no issue with a reasoned argument, logically developed, it’s the great leaps of illogic that make me reliably furious. A+B clearly equals nine hundred and fifty kind of logic. 2+2 equals a Freudian metaphor. You get the idea.
It happens a lot in books about history. You’re offered a piece of evidence, and then the author says something like ‘clearly what this means is that…’ what follows is often neither clear, nor obvious. It’s amazing the kind of logical leaps that can be made this way. It’s a nightmare when the statement goes ‘clearly this is pagan’ because other things will then be figured out based on that. Assuming for example that violent death signifies sacrifice, not murder or formal punishment and that this in turn means something about beliefs for example. Where would that leave the hanging, drawing and quartering of Guy Fawkes and his friends? Strange rituals can exist with no reference to religion.
When it’s a case of being down the pub and listening to some random person asserting random things, this is merely irritating. I hear it on the radio in the way politicians interpret and use data. I hear it in every selective bit of journalism, of which there are many. So often when we start ascribing meanings to data, what we do is roll out the story we had all along, the prejudices we cherish most, with a view to making the data fit. Look at anything long enough and you can join up the dots in it to get a nice unicorn shape. When bullshit comes from people who claim or hold authority, disbelieving it is a hard sort of job. How can I, with no doctorate, no formal training, no proof that I am clever, go up against the words of academics, politicians, media folk and the rest? Well, I do anyway, because I have to.
Hallucinogenics in a grave do not prove Druidry and divination practice, for example, although I’ve seen that one claimed in newspaper reports. They could just mean we’ve dug up the world’s oldest raver, for example.
There’s a whole chapter in Druidry and the Ancestors about how to deal with the melons. How to go in as an unqualified reader and work out if a line of logic and explanation is dodgy and should not be trusted. I wrote it with an eye to shoddy history books, of which there are many, but it works for other things too. Try it on news reports and pretty much anything the politicians say. Try it on advertising jargon too. In fact, try it anywhere someone who claims more authority than you is trying to ram an idea down your throat without having the decency to explain it properly.
You see, if an idea or an argument is good, the logic of it can be traced through. The person who invokes secret hidden knowledge that they alone understand, is bullshitting you. The person who claims that they alone are capable of making the all important interpretations, based on their vast knowledge, is not playing fair. We are smart enough to understand. If there’s a sleight of hand magic moment to make the argument work, you’ve been conned.
From which we can obviously conclude that I was hatched out of an egg and spend my waking hours constructing BDSM toys out of old cheeses.
Trust your own judgement. Read closely. Do not accept the magic tricks and claims of secret knowledge. Demand the details, and if they are not forthcoming, know not to trust what you’re seeing.
