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Traditional Catholic Faith => General Discussion => Topic started by: Graham on October 16, 2011, 09:32:44 PM
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Several times in my relatively short life older women have said things to me - and about me - that were startling and that seemed inordinately significant, prescient, or weirdly mystical. For example, one time a woman in a crowded subway car loudly declared me an extraterrestrial. There's no need to tell me that only a crazy old lady would do something like that - I know that; all the same, it felt and still feels like an oracular event - whatever it truly means (oracles always need interpretation). Another example: I was returning to civilization after having spent several weeks alone in the wilderness, and I ran into an old German immigrant out for a walk. She stopped me and looked at me knowingly. We had a short and very weird conversation about Jakobsweg (St. James' Way), but mostly what I recall is how she looked at me, like she knew exactly what I am, and was trying to explain to me what I am, just by looking at me. And in a limited way she succeeded.
There are a couple more I could relate. Am I just credulous, or do some older women - and more than one might suspect - have a peculiar oracular gift?
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but mostly what I recall is how she looked at me, like she knew exactly what I am, and was trying to explain to me what I am, just by looking at me. And in a limited way she succeeded.
What did you think she knew about you, and what do you mean by 'what I am'? You're a man, a Catholic, etc etc -- but was there something particular about you that she noticed or called attention to?
I'm asking because it's not that I think old women have oracular gifts; rather, many elderly women have an uncanny ability to 'read' body language and personality very well. Depending on how you were holding yourself, conducting yourself, speaking, what you were carrying, etc, it's entirely possible you may have run across some rather astute older ladies who know how to 'read others' very well, without it being oracular in nature. :)
For example, once I was in a train station, and an elderly lady sat down beside me and said 'don't be anxious or frightened, dear, things will be alright". I wondered how she could have known I was either, until I realized that the way I was sitting, the look on my face, and just the general tone of my body language would have been picked up by someone who'd made a lifetime habit of studying human nature.
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I have a different take on this -- I think a lot of middle-aged and older women become very lonely and like to imagine themselves as being wiser than they are. They begin to pose as oracular, wise old owls. This becomes their way of getting attention, the way that they used to get attention through their looks and bodies. But in some cases, especially outside the Church, it's totally phony.
No, I don't think old women are any more predisposed to being oracular than anyone else. I think they are more predisposed to vanity than almost anyone else, though, because it is often terrifying for vain women when they see their youthful sɛҳuąƖ power disappearing and age creeping up on them; and women tend to be more susceptible to vanity than men, in my opinion ( although not by as wide a margin as some may think, LOTS of men are vain ). When this happens they naturally try to replace that physical power, which once got them lots of attention, with another kind of power. They become "wise women" i.e. white witches. At this point they may stop focusing on men, and may pose as leaders of youth, teachers in general, or counsellors of other women... Think of the neighborhood friendly New Age granny whose house all the kids go to after school to eat cookies... A very bad situation.
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Librarians.
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Several times in my relatively short life older women have said things to me - and about me - that were startling and that seemed inordinately significant, prescient, or weirdly mystical. For example, one time a woman in a crowded subway car loudly declared me an extraterrestrial.
Am I just credulous, or do some older women - and more than one might suspect - have a peculiar oracular gift?
I don't know... Will you tell us where you were born?
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The weird sisters were oracular, weren't they?
The most I can recall in recent memory that was anything like that was a evangelical lady (could tell from the bumper stickers) that I pumped the gas for.
She said something about "you're wearing a crown of glory" or something like that. I was doing a lot better back then, to be sure.
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but mostly what I recall is how she looked at me, like she knew exactly what I am, and was trying to explain to me what I am, just by looking at me. And in a limited way she succeeded.
What did you think she knew about you, and what do you mean by 'what I am'? You're a man, a Catholic, etc etc -- but was there something particular about you that she noticed or called attention to?
To be honest, I suspect it's somehow related to the other episode I described, the 'extraterrestrial' one (she actually used the word "alien", but I put extraterrestrial to avoid confusion). The two episodes are linked in my mind: I can't think of one without the other.
I'm asking because it's not that I think old women have oracular gifts; rather, many elderly women have an uncanny ability to 'read' body language and personality very well. Depending on how you were holding yourself, conducting yourself, speaking, what you were carrying, etc, it's entirely possible you may have run across some rather astute older ladies who know how to 'read others' very well, without it being oracular in nature. :)
For example, once I was in a train station, and an elderly lady sat down beside me and said 'don't be anxious or frightened, dear, things will be alright". I wondered how she could have known I was either, until I realized that the way I was sitting, the look on my face, and just the general tone of my body language would have been picked up by someone who'd made a lifetime habit of studying human nature.
I don't like this explanation - it makes it sound as though these women were like Sherlock Holmes. The idea that there are any significant number of women who study human nature as empiricists is one I can't give much credence to. On the other hand, the idea that some older women - maybe even a noteworthy percentage - have a mind that, as it were, shades gradually into the psychic atmosphere around them, giving them a confused, weak, intermittent oracular power ... is something that makes perfect sense to me. As funny as that may sound to you.
To put it another way. Sometimes it may simply be an experienced woman who has tallied up a number of physical clues and formed a picture of your personality. I think, though, that sometimes the personality impresses itself directly without any need for sensory mediation in the form of physical clues. And I think older women may be peculiarly susceptible to such things.
Another: I remember a story a priest once told me about his youth. He was visiting a small town with a friend, walking along the cobblestone street, when an older woman approached them, seized them both by the arms, and declared that one of them would become a priest.
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That is pretty weird, Tele, being told you have a crown of glory, if you were in fact in a state of grace.
However, if what I know about the devil means anything -- and I know a lot, not to toot my own horn -- sometimes he will "inspire" people to mislead us or to puff up our pride. Growing up I was constantly told I was special and a genius and brilliant and all along the devil had me right where he wanted me.
We live in a world that is brimming in mortal sin. When people are in mortal sin, they are essentially puppets of the devil. Without necessarily being possessed, they will often do and say exactly what he wants. Rock stars would be a good example of this; they aren't necessarily possessed, but in their lyrics they are channeling the devil, almost all of them.
So it doesn't surprise me that people are coming up to Catholics on the street and seem to "know things." I would say this is more of a witchy, negative thing than anything good. We're not talking about Padre Pio here, reading our minds in the confessional, but about non-Catholics, for the most part.
It depends on who the "oracle" is. If a woman who I respect as a good Catholic had a premonition of some kind about me, it would have weight. But with what certain others say, I remain skeptical. People are far too superstitious these days, they forget that even true seers and prophets were RIGOUROUSLY questioned and investigated by the Church for every word they uttered. You can't just believe prophetic-sounding stuff unquestioningly, you have to remain on your guard.
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Graham said:
I don't like this explanation - it makes it sound as though these women were like Sherlock Holmes. The idea that there are any significant number of women who study human nature as empiricists is one I can't give much credence to. On the other hand, the idea that some older women - maybe even a noteworthy percentage - have a mind that, as it were, shades gradually into the psychic atmosphere around them, giving them a confused, weak, intermittent oracular power ... is something that makes perfect sense to me. As funny as that may sound to you.
To put it another way. Sometimes it may simply be an experienced woman who has tallied up a number of physical clues and formed a picture of your personality. I think, though, that sometimes the personality impresses itself directly without any need for sensory mediation in the form of physical clues. And I think older women may be peculiarly susceptible to such things.
Yeah, even if it's demonically inspired, oracular moments are still based on spiritual perception, not on psychological observation. Like the woman saying Tele had a "crown of glory," whether he did or not, there's nothing in his body language that could have tipped her off about that. If it were true, she would have seen a certain glow that he had, she would have perceived his soul somehow in the state of grace. But my hunch is that that was an inspiration of the devil. While Tele was in a state of grace, you don't get crowns of glory until you're dead, from what I understand. For instance, you can't get the crown of virginity until you die a virgin... It sounds like it could have been an attempt to puff up his pride, which frankly I can see is happening constantly in his life.
There are many tricks the evil one can pull. Another example, on the subject of oracular pronouncements, is that we can be thinking something that is wrong; but then the devil will send us someone or something to confirm our bad thought, a sign or a wonder. You will hear a line in a rock song that relates exactly to what you're feeling at that moment and urges you to make a radical change in your life, such as leaving your husband and following your dream to go to Uruguay to be with your drug-running boyfriend, which in turn further puts you into the chains of Satan.
We can be so self-obsessed that we get ego gratification when someone notices us and seems to care about what we're thinking. We WANT to believe what they say, because we want to be special. Graham apparently wants to be Ziggy Stardust :cowboy:
Something else I've seen that the devil does, is he convinces people they are martyrs. Then they go out and irritate everyone, and when they end up isolated, they think it's because they're martyrs, instead of seeing that they are acting like twits. I'm not talking about Tele, by the way, I have a Feeneyite in mind. This is a masterful way to stifle spiritual development in people. But with true humility, you can't be fooled this way, because you will never be impressed by whatever sufferings you undergo, you'll always be more impressed by Christ's sufferings and yours will always be minuscule in comparison.
These are just some various ways that the devil can use oracular-sounding gobbeldygook to influence us for the worse.
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Was this the old woman Graham? Sure, she looks pretty young here, but maybe she was a shapeshifter --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9aPp2ldO_k
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Graham,
I was serious when I asked you where you were born. Was it earth? If so, why in the world would you think an old lady on a crowded city subway car declaring you an alien being is somehow an oracle? Why did it "feel like an oracular event?"
You should take the warnings others have given you above very seriously because it seems that you are in danger of being seduced by the modern paranormal hype and the Satanic mysticism that has become so very popular--especially during the month of October.
It sound as if you are being tempted by Satan to abandon true Faith in God to chase after fantasies.
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You guys take women too seriously. :laugh1:
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Well, yet another woman has told me she gets the sense that I'm from another world. This one was fairly sane by female standards.
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We can be so self-obsessed that we get ego gratification when someone notices us and seems to care about what we're thinking. We WANT to believe what they say, because we want to be special. Graham apparently wants to be Ziggy Stardust :cowboy:
I think we can relate on this. I've thought ruefully for a few years that I effectively belong to another species, and it is somewhat flattering to have other people confirm it. It's every thorough-going narcissist's dream, really.
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Graham,
I was serious when I asked you where you were born. Was it earth? If so, why in the world would you think an old lady on a crowded city subway car declaring you an alien being is somehow an oracle? Why did it "feel like an oracular event?"
Well, when I say I felt it oracular, I didn't mean I think it's literally true. These things have to be interpreted; women are vague and associative at the best of times. Alien could be a metaphor for being in a different state from others.
You should take the warnings others have given you above very seriously because it seems that you are in danger of being seduced by the modern paranormal hype and the Satanic mysticism that has become so very popular--especially during the month of October.
I do take them seriously. If there's a danger to my soul here it's something much more quotidian than seduction by paranormal hype - more to do with pride.
It sound as if you are being tempted by Satan to abandon true Faith in God to chase after fantasies.
No, no, have no fear. I appreciate your concern, and sorry I took so long to get around to responding.
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Librarians.
What?
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Old women tend to witness people doing a wider range of things because people tend to be less guarded around people they don't feel are aware of what they're doing.
Older women have had more experiences than people half their age. It makes sense that those extra years might count for something.
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What this thread really cries out for is a scientific elucidation of foundationalism, i.e. an explanation of the criteria by which we may ascertain to what species a given experience belongs. Certain experiences are authenticated on the strength of that part of the soul to which they make their appeal. However mundane or confusing the prima facie experience was (like being called an extraterrestrial -- who can say what that means in itself?), the fact that it came in a knowing sort of way and struck you in a special manner, means that it needs to be taken seriously. It pertains directly to question of your fundamental identity.
Such experiences can be of either the dark or the light variety. The dark variety exposes weaknesses. When somebody else seems to have an uncanny and disturbing sense of your shortcommings, it will make you feel as if you were exposed, naked, and helpless before all the world. On the other hand, the light variety seems to confirm us in our most cherished aspirations, reminding us that we really will become the person whom we most desire to be. Yes, the devil can manipulate these feelings, but he would not be able to do so unless there was something true there to be manipulated. There are people in the world, especially a certain type of woman, who will play off the vanity and vulnerability of men, discerning who they truly want to be and then flattering them that they really are so. But those women are ultimately hoist with their own petard. She would not have been able to discern who you are, unless there was something there to be discerened. Ultimately the experience of being discovered, of being "found out," is beneficial to you in either case. You have been revealed to yourself; you simply have to face the facts and decide what you're going to do about it.
Graham, have you read my essay concerning the epistemology of miracles? It has a very crude an tangential relationship with what you are decribing here, but I trust you will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and draw the moral. The PDF is available here. (http://www.docstoc.com/docs/75070030/Epistemology-and-Miracles)
Now getting directly back to the subject at hand. The urge to cast about in the world looking for oracular pronouncements, may indeed dispose us towards superstition and fanaticism if it is over-inflamed. However, the urge itself is natural and salutary within its proper limits. We all need a lot of help along the path of life; we all need people wiser than us to tell us who we are and what to we need to do. It is healthy for us to be attentive to those experiences which ratchet our powers of being up to a higher level. Ideally most of this work should have been done by our family members and pastors and spiritual advisors, but who is so lucky nowadys to have such helps? I certainly am not. Yet if we don't get it from them, we still must get it from somewhere. Thus begins the long quest for soulmates, for friends and lovers and fathers who will really be to us what we need them to be.
To be known and loved is to experience intimacy, which is the deepest of all desires. Practical charity aims at this feeling of intimacy. To be first of all caught up in the pure being of God, and then to extend this love to our neighbor, is the essence of all goodness and the most that anyone could want. That is the criterion by which everything else has to be measured; that is the foundation. A true oracular pronouncement convinces us that we are understood through and through, but moreover that we are loved, that he who understands us desires the best for us. The locus of this love is not always (nor even often) found in the person by whom the pronouncement is made, but comes as it were from behind them, as if they were the mouthpiece of something deeper than their own creaturely potential.
Should anyone doubt this, I would simply ask him, Are you married to someone whom you know loves you? How do you know that they love you? Did you ever have a mother or father or a friend whom you cherished for their goodness? How did come to believe in their goodness? It is not through rote sensory perception that such knowledge comes, for the sensory data is ambiguous, incomplete, and insufficient at best. It comes by a direct spiritual intuition, the foundation of which is the experience of intimacy. Oracular pronouncements are a special case of this intimacy. In the ordinary course of things our day to day interactions with loved ones are enough. But sometimes circuмstances call for an extraordinary inspiration. When we are known and loved unexpectedly, this expands our awareness of our true nature. The oracle reminds us of who we are by entering into a self-revelatory constellation with us. The statement "You are an alien" would not seem meaningful at all unless something lept up inside us and said "Yes, I am!"
Finally, we must recognize that the desire for intimacy is really the desire for God, and therefore a divine providence obtains over all of our intimate relations. We want to be loved by God, but we need to be loved by God through His creatures. The whole economy of salvation depends upon this mediation. If it were not so, there would be no need for us to be charitable with our neighbors, there would be no reason to actually work and sacrifice for another's salvation, and there would be no way for us to gain any merit or to show God, by our own initiative, that we really loved Him for His own sake. When we abandon our self-will to be used as an instrument of God, then God loves other people through us. When we experience intimacy in ordinary or special ways, then God loves us through other people. We are all exhorted to practice charity; let us not forget that we have need to receive it as well.
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On the other hand, the idea that some older women - maybe even a noteworthy percentage - have a mind that, as it were, shades gradually into the psychic atmosphere around them, giving them a confused, weak, intermittent oracular power ... is something that makes perfect sense to me. As funny as that may sound to you.
While searching for information on the humours I cam across an interesting passage in a book called Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. I've gathered a few sentences below. Apparently the philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages made similar observations about women, and determined that the propensity to oracularity was because women were more "porous", less "dense", than men:
"The notion that women's bodies were more open to exchanges with their environments provides a fascinating counterpoint to the conception of spirit possession as involving a literal entrance into the body. For porous bodies were especially open to spiritual penetration and exchanges. The openings inherent in the porous body type provided spiritual pathways that [divine and demonic] spirits could exploit. ...
From this perspecting, the assumption of an elemental porosity or openness to the female body may be seen as a translation, into medical terms, of an inchoate idea that propels the logic of women's relationships with the spiritual realm in the medieval texts. ...
The construction of male bodies as dense, compact, and sealed rendered males more impervious to spiritual possession, for their surfaces could not so easily be breached." Pp 155-7.
More details here (http://books.google.ca/books?id=RK9MxaSqhyEC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=in+women+the+humours+are+more+abundant&source=bl&ots=WhGvqva0Yb&sig=UJDVkmHAedzvD9bj1sWEO43FEKE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ay1eT9WPCerA0AGlm6GiDw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=in%20women%20the%20humours%20are%20more%20abundant&f=false).
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Several times in my relatively short life older women have said things to me - and about me - that were startling and that seemed inordinately significant, prescient, or weirdly mystical. For example, one time a woman in a crowded subway car loudly declared me an extraterrestrial.
Am I just credulous, or do some older women - and more than one might suspect - have a peculiar oracular gift?
I don't know... Will you tell us where you were born?
From what I've been reading from his posts, somewhere around 90 and 180 degrees between the Alpha and Beta Quadrant, perhaps one of the twin planets near the Kolaran solar system .
Of course if I could get a close-up view of Graham's forehead and ears I could venture a better guess.
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Several times in my relatively short life older women have said things to me - and about me - that were startling and that seemed inordinately significant, prescient, or weirdly mystical. For example, one time a woman in a crowded subway car loudly declared me an extraterrestrial.
Am I just credulous, or do some older women - and more than one might suspect - have a peculiar oracular gift?
I don't know... Will you tell us where you were born?
From what I've been reading from his posts, somewhere around 90 and 180 degrees between the Alpha and Beta Quadrant, perhaps one of the twin planets near the Kolaran solar system .
Of course if I could get a close-up view of Graham's forehead and ears I could venture a better guess.
You seem to have a lot of insight on this. Are you an old woman?
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Several times in my relatively short life older women have said things to me - and about me - that were startling and that seemed inordinately significant, prescient, or weirdly mystical. For example, one time a woman in a crowded subway car loudly declared me an extraterrestrial.
Am I just credulous, or do some older women - and more than one might suspect - have a peculiar oracular gift?
I don't know... Will you tell us where you were born?
From what I've been reading from his posts, somewhere around 90 and 180 degrees between the Alpha and Beta Quadrant, perhaps one of the twin planets near the Kolaran solar system .
Of course if I could get a close-up view of Graham's forehead and ears I could venture a better guess.
You seem to have a lot of insight on this. Are you an old woman?
Are your ears pointed?
Just tell us already Graham.
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Feeling porous? I'll TM you.
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Feeling porous? I'll TM you.
I don't like the sound of that.
I've never been "TM'd" before, is that an alien thing?
If so, maybe you can translate this for me; "hwiiy nohtho"