Strange, But True

[Wisewoman]

Hi there, folks.

Wow, this place is really hopping! It's been some time since I've come across a forum so active. Let's hope this level of activity and enthusiasm can be maintained.

Now, as for me, I'm a 54 year old female living in Vancouver, BC. I really, truly am an INTJ, as countless MBTI and Keirsey Temperment tests have shown.

However, I'm also a gifted Wiccan empath.

Plz not 2 b running screaming from my posts. kthxbai

;)

[Firelie]

What does a Wiccan empath do? Does it go against your personality?

Oh, and welcome! ;D

[Wisewoman]

I've found a lot of INTJs to be too rational to be heavily involved in any religion, let alone a neo-Pagan religion like Wicca.

Similar situation with being an empath. Although I have to say that a lot of what people interpret as "empathy" can be explained by being gifted...and many INTJs are gifted, in one way or another. If you can read non-verbal cues from someone you've just met, analyze and synthesize them instantaneously into a capsule description of that person's personality and probable life path, from the outside it looks like some kind of psychic skill, but it isn't, at all.

8-)

[rwyatt365]

Welcome!

Maybe you can use your skills here.

[Wisewoman]

Maybe you can use your skills here.

Hmmm. Doubtful, but I'll certainly give it a try :thumbsup:

Thanks for the welcome.

:)

[jellosubmarine]

Am I correct in assuming that you believe in things unseen? I have been having trouble with that lately.

[Wisewoman]

Trouble with things unseen, or trouble believing in them?

[aqua9air]

i do play with tarot cards sometimes, but i find myself not suitable to wicca at all ;D

[More Tea]

Nice to "meet" you! I can relate to what you are saying about being an empath/having Pagan (for lack of a better general term) spiritual interests. I tend to score INTJ more often than not and relate most strongly to INTJ descriptions, but I am also into some less-than-deductively-logical things, like Jungian dream and symbol work, listening to those quiet hunches, and, yes, some aspects of Wiccan practice. :)

[Wisewoman]

Thank you! Good to know I'm not completely atypical for an INTJ.

;)

[jellosubmarine]

Trouble with both really. Faith is belief in things unseen and which could mean anything to anyone. If there is something out there again I have no proof and no reason to make up an explkanation for anything. "Sister moon" sounds nice and thinking I'm not alone even when I am alone might be comforting but I am leaning more towards the buck stopping here. I will admit that I am in a transition and not 100% there yet.

[Wisewoman]

I hear you. About 5, almost 6 years ago, I had a brain aneurysm burst and almost died from the subsequent subarachnoid hemorrhage. I was unconscious for ten days and had neurosurgery to clip that aneurysm, and another one that broke during the surgery.

During that, I didn't have any great spiritual epiphanies or Near Death Experiences. There was just nothing. A big, black, blank hole in my life. I passed out one day and ten days later I woke up with no hair, and my head looked like "a badly stitched-together baseball," to quote a friend.

I had what you might call a crisis of faith after that. It's difficult to maintain any sort of belief in "Sister Moon" and the pixies and all that, once somebody's had their fingers in your brain. I spent three years as a cold, hard, sceptical, Atheist and Secular Humanist. And I knew I was right. I knew that Science and Truth were on my side.

But man, I wasn't happy. It got so that I felt I was depriving myself of a lot of what had made my life interesting and fun, and certainly a lot of the beauty there had been in it. I just needed something, anything, to hang a rational belief on. I found Dave Chalmers.

Chalmers is a Philosopher of Mind. He came up with the Hard Question of Consciousness. The Hard Question doesn't concern how we have consciousness, or how consciousness operates, both of which will probably soon be explainable. The Hard Question is, why should we have consciousness at all? Not consciousness in the sense of being awake rather than asleep; but consciousness in the sense of an internal experience of qualia. To explain this, Chalmers invented the Philosophical Zombie. A p-zombie could be a being that was identical to you in absolutely every way, except that it did not have the internal experience of consciousness, of qualia, that you do. Would there be any way that the p-zombie could be distinguished from the real you?

So, to try to explain this, when you look at something that is the colour red (provided you are not colour blind) you see what you have been taught is red, but you also have an internal experience of "red;" red means something to you; it feels like something. But there is absolutely no reason why it should. There is no reason why that internal experience should have evolved. A p-zombie that doesn't have that internal experience would be identical to you, and behave identically, and it would not be possible to tell you apart. So what is that internal experience of consciousness?

Chalmers never comes right out and says it, but that internal witness is a good candidate for the soul. That's good enough for me. I can easily accept that the internal witness I experience as the "me" of me might represent some sort of eternal beingness, and if that is the case then everything else I need to be a practising Wiccan falls into place.

So my crisis of faith was over and I happily returned to life among the crackpots. It may not work for everyone, but as Alfred Bester wrote, in The Stars My Destination, "It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief."

8-)

[jellosubmarine]

Awesome! Glad you made it and have more opportunities ahead of you. Nothing like first hand experience, huh? I will check out the book you reference and hopefully keep in touch.