An Experiment, Updated

[ecosophia]

Earlier this month I posted a few words here about a curious effect I'd discovered -- that sharp points of iron or steel seem to have the same power to dispel addiction to television, the internet, and cell phones that they traditionally had on faery glamour.  I wasn't expecting anything like the passionate response I got -- that entry got more comments than anything else I've posted here, including the very lengthy debate over the inept attempt at anti-Trump sorcery I critiqued a month ago, and a great many people agreed to give it a try. 

At this point some of the results are in, and I've been able to draw some tentative conclusions and draft a hypothesis on which further experimentation can be based: 

1) The effect seems to be real, and not just a matter of the placebo effect. Quite a few readers have reported immediate effects, not only on themselves, but on people who had no idea that the experiment was being tried, and who suddenly lost interest in television. 

2) The effect isn't guaranteed. Not everyone noted effects. In particular, when someone else in the household was using television, the internet, or their phone as a drug to avoid dealing with personal problems, that person's addiction was pretty reliably not affected by the presence of sharp iron. 

3) The effect can generate opposition. In a significant minority of cases, people who weren't in on the experiment found the sharp iron objects and removed them, even when there was no obvious reason to do so. 

My hypothesis is as follows: we're dealing with a genuine effect here, but the glamour it appears to counter is only one of the factors in the phenomenon of television addiction. Some people watch television or use other electronic media obsessively for personal reasons unrelated to the glamour. There may also be other variables that influence whether a sharp iron point will decrease the hold electronic media has on people.

At this point, I'm going to propose a few changes to the experimental protocol. First, if you have housemates who aren't in on the experiment, use an X-acto knife blade or a steel pin taped to the underside of the television, internet router, or other object, rather than a knife -- the knives are too visible, and can get noticed and removed. Second, try to assess whether your housemates' addiction to electronic media may be a way they use to avoid major issues, and keep that in mind when assessing your options. Other than that, if you feel inspired to join the experiment, give it a shot and see what results you get. 

Comments

Not quite

[(Anonymous)]

If the sharp, pointy object is loose, yes. If it's taped to something, it's pretty obvious that someone put it there intentionally, so I'd expect anyone finding it to ask around a bit before removing it.

[ecosophia]

Nope. As Dion Fortune points out in The Cosmic Doctrine -- and she could have had an enjoyable discussion on this point with any competent student of taijiquan or aikido, or for that matter any decent boxer -- direct opposition is the weakest way to face a hostile force, as it locks the force in place and gives it strength. Given that we're discussing an incoherent working that uses bunny-slope techniques, it needed the opposition of something like Griffin's "battle magic" to give it any coherence and effect at all, and Griffin and his wife then took the brunt of that. Mind you, he succeeded in his intention, as that would have discharged a good deal of what energy the anti-Trump working had -- and you'll notice that right about the time he and his wife had their accidents, the Trump administration started really getting the upper hand on its opponents.

There are many other ways to mess with hostile magic. Given the way that the opposition to Trump seems to be running around in self-referential circles these days, shrieking about Russians under every mattress until even liberal humor mags like The Onion are making fun of them, while Trump's approval ratings rise and Democratic prospects for the 2018 election sink alarmingly, I have every reason to think that those other ways are getting a thorough workout just now.

[ecosophia]

Interestingly, not all metals have the same effect on etheric substance. Iron seems to be unique in its disruptive power; I don't know whether anybody's done experiments with nonferrous rare-earth alloys that are easily magnetized, and that would be worth doing.

The possibility that eletromagnetic fields are disrupting things like ghost sightings is extremely interesting; if you find that source again, please let me know! The possibility of etheric pollution has not been given as much attention as it deserves...

Re: rules

[ecosophia]

It would indeed. Are you interested in pursuing such a project?

Re: How does it work?

[ecosophia]

That's certainly plausible.

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for the data points! If you're using text messaging deliberately, to do something you want to do, that's one thing; it's the obsessive, almost unconscious nature of television addiction that made me think of glamour, and seems to be the thing that's disrupted by iron. I suppose I could summarize by saying that the point of this working isn't to abolish the technology, it's to make it a servant rather than a master.

Re: Glamour

[ecosophia]

I don't have a strict definition in mind. In the faery lore of northwestern Europe, faeries are believed to have the capacity to confuse, delude, and project illusions onto human beings, and this capacity can be disrupted by cold iron or certain other things. My hypothesis is that some similar effect seems to be generated by television, and so it's worth trying to disrupt it in a similar way.

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for the data points!

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for these data points as well.

[ecosophia]

And that's one hypothesis for what's involved. Further testing may be in order to figure out if that's all it is.

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for the data points!

Re: rules

[syfen]

Very interested, but where would I start?

Re: My attempt, and some considerations

[ecosophia]

Thanks for the data points, and also for the reflections on the underlying technology. What generates the effect is a fascinating question which I haven't even begun to explore yet -- ascertaining whether cold iron has an effect on television addiction is the first step, and from there any number of further investigations can proceed. As for the waiting-for-comments effect, that's fascinating -- I suspect my Aspergers syndrome shields me from that, as I don't experience it.

[ecosophia]

I've had a few similar reports -- sharp iron causing the technology itself to malfunction. Whether it's a related effect, or some other confounding variable, is a question I can't yet answer!

Re: rules

[ecosophia]

That's a challenge! One way would be to start researching the effects of material substances in magic and folklore, looking for common ground between widely separated cultural traditions -- for example, if you find that vinegar (let's say) is credited with similar magical properties in Chinese and Italian folklore, you may have an effect that's etheric in nature. There may be other angles as well, but that's the one that comes to mind.

[jenniferkobernik]

Yeah, for some reason my cell phone touchscreen got a bit glitchy after I taped the pins to the back--when I try to type, it doesn't pick up every letter. Annoying when I actually need to use it, but not a deal breaker.

Routers

[(Anonymous)]

Wi-fi is a very tricky technology to implement in a form that can be used by consumers.Wi-fi antennas in particular are tricky beasts, and a lot of routers depend on their not being put on electrically conductive surfaces in order to function. It doesn't surprise me a bit that taping a needle to the bottom of some routers would disrupt the antenna.

I have a knife underneath my laptop, but I live alone and the closest router (which I don't have access to) is about 10 feet away.

John Roth

[(Anonymous)]

Another good example of the kind: https://politics.theonion.com/startling-report-finds-evidence-democrats-may-have-atte-1819908378

This has made me think of a rather humorous and potentially quite explosive counter to some of the anti-Trump workings: a number of them are trying to expose the "foreign influence that got him elected". The counter is to embrace it, and call for all foreign influence on American elections to be exposed.

[(Anonymous)]

It was years ago and may have been either a book or article I came across rather than something online. The closest I came with a Google search is this old article by the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,3604,1238030,00.html

As a side note, iron is the end point for giant stars burning through their fuel. It takes more energy to fuse iron than it releases and so a supernova blast is triggered (at least according to current stellar theory) when the star collapses in on itself. So Cold Iron is what finally does it in.

JLfromNH

Re: Glamour

[packshaud]

I think giving this a reply to this particular post will avoid it being excessively off-topic. I posted a reply here, commenting that I am using two needles inside the cover of my cellphone and a bowl of vinegar in my sleeping room.

I noticed good effects in my mood from the vinegar, but I am not too sure about the etheric effects. Maybe I read Monsters and the books in the Annotated Bibliography too much. But I went to sleep at midnight on May 19th and I woke up a couple of hours later, after I had a very long dream where I was tricked into a vehicle that took me to Fairyland.

There were lots and more lots of death flags and things in the dream that I was failing to get scared of or notice, to an absurd degree that I can only explain by glamour. Small things like not caring about a woman half my height, with a fuzzy, somewhat featureless face, and it seems that she has no legs or hands, but that's not strange. Nor arriving to a hall with more humanoid versions of the thing that attacked me in the "bus" that took me to the tunnel that gave access to the hall, etc etc, I don't want to make this more of a litany, I should just report this to the Fairy Census.

experimental protocol

[(Anonymous)]

(Deborah Bender)

I'm observing this experiment without participating. I just want to say that I approve of trying magic with a specific result in mind and collecting reports on the results, in order to figure out whether the magic worked and whether some change would make the method more effective.

That sounds obvious to the point of being lame, but I've participated in a lot of healing spells where there wasn't any way I could tell if the outcome was affected by our efforts. People who are more psychic probably could tell but for me it is like drawing without looking at the paper, which is a good technique to learn how to observe and loosen up, but in the end you do want to see if you drew something recognizable.

[packshaud]

Something purely physical may be the cause for this. < a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/226582/pcb-90-degree-angles">Here is an example of something trivial that may cause problems in poorly designed devices. With the glorious tradition of corner-cutting, there could be several instances where a piece of iron near of a weak point in a bad project maybe the factor that just pushes it over a non-working state.

In computer repairing and assembling, where I used to work, there are too many horror stories of problems caused by static electricity or incompatible parts.

[packshaud]

A sad example above with the broken link: There are no errors this time, I will just hit "Post Comment" and I don't need to proofread this.

[amritarosa]

Whatever the metaphysical equivalent of a cartoon light bulb popping alight above my head might be, it sure has been happening as I read "The Cosmic Doctrine".

There is so much in that first chapter that I have had to slow way, WAY down in my reading, and go over small sections of it several times. I even visualize it before I fall asleep at night. The description of the three spheres genesis and information on good and evil have been particularly impactful.

Thanks again for recommending it - I look forward to the discussions.
Bonnie

[ecosophia]

Oh my. The Onion scores another direct hit.

Affirming a spell a little more generally than the sender intends is in fact a very nice counterspell. There are all kinds of judo tricks like that, especially when the spell's poorly designed -- and even more so if it's founded on a lie, as in the case you've mentioned. (I'm quite sure the people who are shrieking about Russians know perfectly well, in their heart of hearts, that it wasn't foreign influence that put Trump in office; their language is too shrill to be grounded on anything honest.) I gather that all kinds of dirty Democratic laundry is on its way to a very public viewing in the months ahead...