Pup
Philosopher
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2004
- Messages
- 6,679
You figure it out. Maybe sticking your face in a hat will help.
Speaking of that...
I have an old, worn reproduction common laborer's 1860s hat sitting on my desk, waiting for a new hatband, and every time I see it, I'm tempted. Well, last evening, I finally did it. Put a stone in the bottom of the hat and held it up to my face. I made Cat Tale promise not to laugh first.
Okay, I get it now. As silly as it seems, it would probably include all the attributes that would help induce a mystical or trance state or self-hypnosis in someone who was susceptible to that. One sees the same things across many cultures, from crystal ball gazers to meditating monks.
The stone seems superfluous--didn't really see the point of that, since once it's dark you can't see it anymore--but if you compress the sides of the hat slightly, it's a nice fit from chin to forehead. That excludes the light, the brim in front of your ears slightly muffles sound, and the smell of old fur felt and natural oils and lining material (not really unpleasant) changes the odor, so you get the typical darkness, sense of isolation and incense. But, most importantly, I noticed that as the carbon dioxide builds up, your breathing naturally becomes deeper to get enough oxygen, and therefore slows.
Like dowsing rods facilitating the ideomotor effect, it would facilitate whatever one calls the meditative/medium/trance effect. I've never been able to get the ideomotor effect to work myself, nor meditation either, but I could see that among susceptible people, it could catch on as a fad that "worked," like ouija boards suddenly becoming a new fad that "worked" to tap into the ideomotor effect.