How to explain this fact?

[Darat]

I believe spirits can eat, and they absorb energy from such food as fruit.

But I have no inside info on the matter of excreting waste. I seem to have the idea they do not, but I can't remember where I got that from.

Well to be frank (not a dead person with a name beginning with a f, or a sound like a f or a v or a t or th) I suspect you got it from up where non-spiritual bodies excrete material waste.

 

[Scorpion]

With regard to the opening post about a psychic drawing of a departed woman. I have tried to get evidential drawings from two so called psychic artists in the 1970's but without success.
I went to Coral Polge at the spiritualist association in London but did not get a drawing of anyone I knew. I went back to her three times, with the result I have three drawings of people I do not recognize. She is now dead herself but there is information about her on the internet and examples of drawings she did along side photographs of people which were subsequently supplied by relatives of the dead person. They had better luck than me.
I also went to a psychic artist called Ivor James. He drew a Japanese face which he claimed was my spirit guide, and he drew some supposed Japanese writing on it.
I took the drawing to the Japanese embassy and asked them to translate it and they said it was not Japanese, it looked like someone had pretended to write Japanese.

So my efforts to get evidence from two psychic artists failed, and they might both have been fakes.

 

[Darat]

Look at me!

 

[JayUtah]

That's pretty much the "standard" in urban fantasy fiction (like Scorpion's fictional spirituality).

Maybe that's why it has an intuitive feel to it.

It would be quite funny to think that that distinction grew out of English adopting two words rather than the one other languages use. Do most other languages only have a singular word for "ghosts/spirits"?

Yes, in the languages I feel competent enough to talk about. However, in Latin we also have anima, which more closely translates to "soul." Etymologically, spiritus relates to breath, which is the essence of physical life in the organism. But it has poetic, figurative application in languages that have a relevant cognate. So we talk about "the spirit of the holidays" when we want to describe some ineffable emotional nugget of the relevant concept. Or "the spirit of the law" in special opposition to the letter of the law. Vestiges of Plato, I'm sure you'd agree.

Similarly, anima etymologizes to the body of observation we make to distinguish life from non-life or death. You get an accurate picture of the original meaning from English cognate phrases such as "inanimate object," or "He had a very animated objection." The philosophical specialty we call animism is a bit ironic in that it postulates that everything has a soul. But yes, there are other words in other languages with similarly overlapping meanings.

 

[JayUtah]

With regard to the opening post about a psychic drawing of a departed woman. I have tried to get evidential drawings...

So my efforts to get evidence from two psychic artists failed, and they might both have been fakes.

You have a separate thread in which to recount your own anecdotes. This thread is about Cris' anecdote.

Insofar as your story relates to his, what do you think the purpose is of "psychic artists" is? Why express mediumship in such an inexact way? Unless a person is a very good artist, no drawing looks exactly like the model. Most such drawings lack enough detail to say with certainly that it represents one person to the exclusion of all others. We can point to lots of phenomena that affect facial recognition and recognizable sketching. Consider such things as police sketches, caricature. Also consider the occasionally embarrassing maxim, "All people of this certain ethnicity look alike to me." Among the many factors that contribute to our mammalian pattern-seeking perceptual system, those that affect facial recognition are the most fascinating.

 

[Scorpion]

You have a separate thread in which to recount your own anecdotes. This thread is about Cris' anecdote.

Good luck talking to Cris.

 

[JayUtah]

Good luck talking to Cris.

We can happily continue to debate Cris' anecdote in his absence without having to deal with you interpolating your own anecdotes into it, thereby transforming this into yet another thread where everyone has to pay attention to you. Case in point: I raised the issue about "psychic drawing" in general, asking questions that pertain to Cris' anecdote and at the same time touched upon the applicable parts of your post. There's meat for discussion there, whether Cris participates or not. You chose instead to ignore the on-topic portion of my post and instead latched onto the part that objected to you trying to hijack the thread to tell your stories.

Try to grasp that not everything is about you.

 

[Scorpion]

We can happily continue to debate Cris' anecdote in his absence without having to deal with you interpolating your own anecdotes into it, thereby transforming this into yet another thread where everyone has to pay attention to you. Case in point: I raised the issue about "psychic drawing" in general, asking questions that pertain to Cris' anecdote and at the same time touched upon the applicable parts of your post. There's meat for discussion there, whether Cris participates or not. You chose instead to ignore the on-topic portion of my post and instead latched onto the part that objected to you trying to hijack the thread to tell your stories.

Try to grasp that not everything is about you.

It says penultimate amazing under your name. Not Moderator.

 

[JayUtah]

It says penultimate amazing under your name. Not Moderator.

And under yours it says Master Poster, not Center of the Universe. Your off-topic posts have repeatedly been moved to the thread specially made for you to run rampant in. You admit you have been warned by the moderators for making off-topic posts. Not a great position from which to argue that you can do whatever you want in any thread you choose to post in.

You posted about your own experiences with so-called "psychic drawing." That's certainly pertinent to evaluating Cris' anecdote. But we're not talking about your experiences. We're talking about the general nature of psychic drawing and how that might fit into an overall pattern of fake mediumship. I raised a number of points that culminated in soliciting your views on the subject. Instead, as usual, you want to whine about how badly you're supposedly being treated. Do you have anything to say on the topic of this thread?

 

[wasapi]

So my efforts to get evidence from two psychic artists failed, and they might both have been fakes.

Ah. They may have been fakes?!!! Ya think?

 

[Scorpion]

And under yours it says Master Poster, not Center of the Universe. Your off-topic posts have repeatedly been moved to the thread specially made for you to run rampant in. You admit you have been warned by the moderators for making off-topic posts. Not a great position from which to argue that you can do whatever you want in any thread you choose to post in.

You posted about your own experiences with so-called "psychic drawing." That's certainly pertinent to evaluating Cris' anecdote. But we're not talking about your experiences. We're talking about the general nature of psychic drawing and how that might fit into an overall pattern of fake mediumship. I raised a number of points that culminated in soliciting your views on the subject. Instead, as usual, you want to whine about how badly you're supposedly being treated. Do you have anything to say on the topic of this thread?

Now you are turning this thread into a personal squabble. But I think my post about my experiences of psychic artists is entirely on topic. Since my view of psychic artists I have been to is that they are fakes, I would have thought you would approve.

 

[JayUtah]

But I think my post about my experiences of psychic artists is entirely on topic.

It was, until I tried to generalize between your stories and Cris's and discuss the topic irrespective of whose stories we used. That's when you stopped engaging.

Since my view of psychic artists I have been to is that they are fakes, I would have thought you would approve.

No. My approval, if it matters to you, is not based on getting the "right" answer, but upon the rigor of the process used to arrive at whatever answer was proffered. That's why I asked about "psychic drawing" in general.

What led you to conclude that the mediums in your cases were fake? Was it their unwillingness to provide evidence that would help you assess their skills for yourself? Why do you think mediums, real or fake, resort to such indirect mechanisms as drawing?

 

[Scorpion]

It was, until I tried to generalize between your stories and Cris's and discuss the topic irrespective of whose stories we used. That's when you stopped engaging.



No. My approval, if it matters to you, is not based on getting the "right" answer, but upon the rigor of the process used to arrive at whatever answer was proffered. That's why I asked about "psychic drawing" in general.

What led you to conclude that the mediums in your cases were fake? Was it their unwillingness to provide evidence that would help you assess their skills for yourself? Why do you think mediums, real or fake, resort to such indirect mechanisms as drawing?

I think I explained in my post why I concluded the so called artists were fakes. One drew three pictures I did not recognise, and the other drew fake Japanese lettering. I do not know why some mediums claim to do psychic drawings.
Maybe they went to art school and decided to use their skills. Coral Polge's drawings of people I did not recognise were never the less, quite competent pastel drawings.

 

[JayUtah]

I do not know why some mediums claim to do psychic drawings.

Put yourself in the position of a fake medium. What do you think drawing pictures would gain you, in terms of being able to fool the rube?

Coral Polge's drawings of people I did not recognise were never the less, quite competent pastel drawings.

Oh, sure. I can draw a competent drawing of a random human figure in several media. That doesn't mean I can draw a recognizable portrait of an actual person. The general principles of figure-drawing can be had from any number of books. But the talent of drawing a recognizable portrait takes a lot more time, effort, and practice. How does that dichotomy factor into the various hypotheses of why mediums choose to draw?

 

[Scorpion]

Put yourself in the position of a fake medium. What do you think drawing pictures would gain you, in terms of being able to fool the rube?



Oh, sure. I can draw a competent drawing of a random human figure in several media. That doesn't mean I can draw a recognizable portrait of an actual person. The general principles of figure-drawing can be had from any number of books. But the talent of drawing a recognizable portrait takes a lot more time, effort, and practice. How does that dichotomy factor into the various hypotheses of why mediums choose to draw?

Coral Polge charged a fee for her drawings, so it could just be she faked it for money.

Actually I went to art college and among other things was taught portrait painting by a member of the royal academy. So I know if a picture is competent.
The three drawings I have from Coral Polge are distinct faces with character, and if you had known those people you would recognise them. I know other people have said she gave them evidential drawings of their relatives, and there is a lot about that on the internet. I do not know why someone chooses to claim to be a psychic artist other that the cash.

 

[Axxman300]

The languages that derive from Latin seem to use their variant of spiritus when they need to talk about disembodied life, especially in the religious context. In those same contexts, German uses Geist universally, both as a secularish term for the agent of haunting, and in the trinitarian sense -- heiliger Geist.

Since English seems to have been composed by luring other languages into dark alleys and robbing them of bits of grammar, English uses both Holy Ghost and Holy Spirit relatively interchangeably for identifying the member of the Trinity. I honestly don't see a problem for a non English speaker to ask what nuances of meaning there might be between two words that we often interchange. And I have no objection to a taxonomy we might choose to impose, if we propose to have a discussion where any difference has meaning (even a hypothetical meaning).

There has been a lot of back-engineering as "Paranormal Researchers" look to old folklore for invisible beasties to match a set of - ALLEGED - phenomena which fall outside of the already arbitrary boundaries of what a ghosts is supposed to be able to do...even though none of it is real and what they are really responding to is someone's psychosis.

As I said, you guys don't need to know or care about the definitions as they are all Woo.

But those who believe and actively advance said Woo should know this stuff and most don't. The best thing about my ghost hunting background is I can spot the hacks just as fast based on their inconsistencies of their amazing claims of spiritualism. This thread was started by a guy who has claimed that spirits can attack person and make them sick, and that's just silly and it is inconsistent within the narrow band of Woo we're talking about here.

And as far as the original post goes it's all nonsense. Old school snake-oil, nothing more.

 

[JayUtah]

Coral Polge charged a fee for her drawings, so it could just be she faked it for money.
...
I do not know why someone chooses to claim to be a psychic artist other that the cash.

I think you're missing my point. Yes, there's the question of why someone would want to fake being a medium, and the money might be one reason. I can think of many additional reasons.

What I mean was that if one has chosen to pretend to be a medium -- whether one intends to charge money or not -- why might one decide to express the illusion of mediumship by drawing? Yes, it might be because the person has some training in art. But what is it about the process of drawing that might serve you here?

Actually I went to art college and among other things was taught portrait painting by a member of the royal academy. So I know if a picture is competent.

That didn't really have anything to do with the points I was hoping to discuss. Yes, I realize that there are grades of skill, both in the creation of art and in its appreciation. Consider the case where the fake medium/artist is only modestly competent and the rube has no artistic training.

The three drawings I have from Coral Polge....

See, you're just trying to drag the conversation back to you and your personal anecdotes. I'm trying to discuss the subject in general. Are you capable of doing that?

 

[JayUtah]

There has been a lot of back-engineering as "Paranormal Researchers" look to old folklore for invisible beasties to match a set of - ALLEGED - phenomena which fall outside of the already arbitrary boundaries of what a ghosts is supposed to be able to do...even though none of it is real and what they are really responding to is someone's psychosis.

Or twitchy needles, for the ghost-hunters who want to pretend to be scientific. Yes, I agree a lot of the lore these days tries to reach back to ancient times and map old superstitions into what's postured as a careful empirical exercise. And more often, ghosts are simply speculatively assigned properties based on what the hunter says he observes. The EMF needle twitches, seemingly inexplicably, and the ghost hunter circularly announces that this is because a ghost is making that happen. So out of nothing more than weak fluctuations in a natural phenomenon, we have some authoritative-sounding claim of what ghosts are capable of.

As I said, you guys don't need to know or care about the definitions as they are all Woo.

Aw, you're no fun! Seriously though, that's why I qualified my praise by saying it was "in-universe." Within the arbitrary rules made up by some fandom, we can certainly have lots of discussion of what's possible or impossible, what's reasonable or suitably congruent. Yes, that's all rendered moot when someone comes along and says, "You guys realize it's just a TV show, right?" I've heard well-qualified engineers and physicists have extremely erudite debates over whether NCC-1701D could best an Imperial star destroyer. I have no desire to eradicate that from our world.

And as far as the original post goes it's all nonsense. Old school snake-oil, nothing more.

Given the originator's past behavior, there's a good chance the original post was entirely made up. But that doesn't preclude thinking critically about the overall phenomenon of psychic art.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

The spirits have spoken to me.

MUCH BETTER!!!!

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Does it eat and drink and poop and pee?

...and you have identified the fundamental problem. Any person attempting to set down on paper the detailed definition of a spirit simply displays that there are fundamental conflicts, which indicate spirits come from fiction.

A spirit can pass through walls and bodies (not matter) but move air to speak ( made of matter)

A spirit can see and hear what is going on (receive environmental data) but has no tangible eyes or ears to receive real photons or sound waves.

A spirit wears clothes which were never living things.

A spirit experiences time and remembers things, but never need to get a haircut every month or so.