I can tell you totally sincerely that being an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I realize that if a human being is seeking for an easy supernatural mystery, even the pigeon's feces will tell something to such a human being - but that's because the invisible forces will do all the work. As a good example, the first tarot card that I got in my life (thanks to the smartphone app) was the one whose existence had embarrassed me most because of my religious background. Yes, it was the Devil card. Soon I saw it all and understood that interpretations of the cards are too broad... 

What are your impressions and experience on the topic? 

Absolutely agree with your words. Still, there's this tiny lair of truth in all such stuff. Like, I don't believe in astrological prophecies, but I do believe in short descriptions of people according to their astrological signs. I have no idea why they really usually tend to be true, but they do - I mean, the astrological signs' descriptions applying to people's characters, etc. Stalin, Zhukov and Churchill were Sagittarius, Lenin and Hitler were Taurus - there's some reason to it. Oh, and Keith Emerson was Scorpio vs Kerry Minnear is Capricorn. 

Similarly, I suppose, in some situations some Tarot cards may definitely mean something, prophecy something - but, on average, it's all lies. Now, that's my opinion. 

 

However, I think there are some people that do have a certain strong link to the "unknown" that are quite a bit more accurate in predictions than most amateurs that try to make a buck by fooling others.

you have to look at tarot cards the right way. no, they will not tell you about your fate or what to do; why should they? but while trying to interpret the meaning of the tarot cards you will get insights into yourself you didn't have before. it is not the cards that tell them, it is yourself; the cards are but a means to get to your unconscious.

it is the same with horoscopes or other methods of divination, by the way. I am not speaking of newspaper horoscopes here, I am speaking of the real McCoy

Thank you.

I was about to write that the cards are just the medium that the message comes through, like a radio or tv or any words, which, for all intents and purposes we "translate" into something that ... more often than not is "not" what we think.

One of the most important things that we learn in DIRECTING for theater and film, is that what you do will be seen differently by everyone that you show it to, and some won't get anything out of it. Others will.

Having done several "psychic shows" in Seattle and Portland in the late 80's and early 90's, I can easily say that there are some very good ones out there that are very honest about their trade and their work, and they don't fool around ... and a good friend of mine that did a lot of readings and lectures, always had a funny way in shows ... I'm not the one you want to talk to ... and of course, someone asked why? ...

The biggest issue for all of these situations is how "closed" so many folks are to hearing/listening to anything ... if it doesn't apply, it doesn't apply ... but saying outright that the person that sees this and that about you is wrong ... I'm not sure is the right thing ... it's like saying that the person over there sees you emanate BLUE ... and you deny it because it is never blue, and you hate blue!

The Tarot is fine ... the reader and the user is the issue. In my case, I never used "defined layouts" and always created a new one for each and every person in a reading. I don't seem to be good about "superimposing" this or that over someone else's image!

you may get really stunning revelations that way. I know because Friede and I occasionally use the cards. we really learned things about us we didn't know before, at least not in a conscious way. but when we learned them it was like "of course! why did I never notice this before"?

we usually use the Crowley Tarot. but we have other tarot sets too like a kabbalistic tarot or an I Ching tarot which we use for special questions we have

I used to play the card game; it's a proper intelligent medium complexity card game, one of those I love most. Unfortunately I don't have much contact now with the people with whom I used to play it, so I haven't done it for quite a while. In the proper card game there are just suits and values and numbers, no crazy names, esotericism, or psychology. Or rather, only the psychology required to win a game.

I'm probably with BaldJean regarding the cartomancy thing, but these things interested me at the age of 18 or so and there isn't much of that interest left. Not because I think it's all too wrong or silly, I just got interested in too many other things.

I also have a tarot game app for Anroid on my smartphone, but still haven't learned all the details. Nice design of the cards, anyway. 

By the way, I have recently tried to make the http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=123043" rel="nofollow - GG-themed playing cards ... Not the tarot deck, though. 

Hi,

Not quite ... since a "seer" or "clairvoyant" does not rely on anything historical or specific ideas about how something is done and when. They are simply "interpreting" the signals that the energies provide, and these can be visual, aural and other kinds of energies, which might not necessarily come from the cards, but THROUGH the cards, as an interpretation.

However, I have to admit that the best I have ever seen and heard, they will not always "credit" any occult aspects at all, since that is the one thing that scares people the most. The "art" itself is not occult at all, but the religious models that we know think that your ability to "see" something inside is not something that you are allowed to do because you are not sanctified to be its speaker. Thus, card reading, and any psychic consultation usually runs into problems with people that only believe a book, and ideas that were given to them and force fed all their life.

The "so-called" knowledge, is, for the most part, a sort of history of the way things were seen, and you can compare the greatest mystics known for similar thoughts and threads ... and you will find that the main concern is the LANGUAGE ... which today is way better defined through use and interaction, than it was 500 years ago, let's say ... so a lot of that stuff seems "occult" ... and it only is because no one can quite get/understand what it is saying.

IF, the inner self, was all about "secrets" ... it would be a huge problem. But, in the end, there are no secrets, except that we keep believing that we are invisible and no one can see us! The craziest thought ever, since we are "energy" beings right from the start, and children of the universe!

^ No secrets true, only consciousness expansion. Advanced mathematics is not a secret but one must go through the arduous process of disciplining oneself in order to understand the higher concepts. Same goes with occult aspects of human psychology.

You're correct about psychics and their ilk simply reading auras and energetic frequencies.

The English language seems to have evolved to be intentionally ambiguous which allows wiggle room for sophistry and psychological manipulation.

Of course such disciplines like Tarot card reading are also corrupted to seem like mere entertainment rather than legit sources of self-discovery. If one is open to mind expansion then such things as Tarot cards aren't even necessary. It's just one tool out of many for self-psychological explorations.

It's all in the process and the cranes are still active so the helmet is required and so , but here are a few examples below. As usual, it is obvious that I am not Beethoven and not Van Gogh. Everything is of amateur quality, the concept is what matters here.  

As I'm Russian/Ukrainian-speaking, there are names of the cards in Russian and English. 

Although it was intended as fun and joy and good laugh, I almost had no doubt that there would be people who could really use that deck for cartomancy and other occult purposes. Like any other sets of symbols, after all. 

At minimum, it's funny and unexpected. I hope so. 

Hi,

All languages do, for the most part and the Romantic languages are the worst in this aspect, since there are subtleties of grammar and language that the Italians might use that the Portuguese don't for example, and it all adds up to a bit of confusion about the same thing ... it's like you are all around one tree but everyone's description will be different and in different languages.

This is a difficult thing to get over ... but conceptually, it is the same thing ... but we think that THE BARDO is any different than all the other books, or what the original BIBLE was about, since that book has suffered the worst translations EVER, and in the various different translations it does not even say the same thing about various events!

This is one of the most difficult things about translating anything to those languages ... however, these days, due to the Internet, English seems to be leading the way, and I think it is helping show folks how the parallels exist on these books ... but it's gonna be a long day in hell before anyone tries to compare some Aleister Crowley to The Bardo, and to the Aztec Indians mythology, or Aborigene mythologies, all of these much older than the Greek horrible translations which are one of the biggest cases of turning people away from their "source" than anything else in literature ... but we don't care anymore! The similarities are astounding, given the different "paths" ... but we only see these things as completely separate internal process ... and while, YES, we are all different, in the end, the majority of the inner stuff has similarities, with the problem being that we are not capable of keeping track of it properly or learn to take notes from it!

siLLy puPPy wrote: ... Of course such disciplines like Tarot card reading are also corrupted to seem like mere entertainment rather than legit sources of self-discovery. If one is open to mind expansion then such things as Tarot cards aren't even necessary. It's just one tool out of many for self-psychological explorations.

-------------
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com

Hi,

There is much more "charted" than we will ever want to accept, or admit. The problem is that in many cases, so much of it has suffered horrible translations that have removed it from its "source", and this is the major problem with linguistics ... your culture is used to this or that, and you are reading something that does not see it that way, and their description throws yours off kilter. In essence, and this is the most important part of it, it is exactly the same thing as what you see but from the other side of the same tree!!!!!

I'm not sure everyone is seeking answers, and there are people whose adventures are "pre-destined' and they simply have to get to the right street signs and corners, and a lot of these "answers" help define that movement ... but this is not something that we can understand or appreciate. Here's an example ... a friend went to a psychic lecture, and he had a choice of a couple of them to decide on ... and he walks into the first one and immediately the lady points to you and says ... Mr. SuchandSuch ... you are wanting to go to the other lecture across the street. Thanks for coming in and saying hello. And he left and went next door and the rest is history!

The whole thing about people "believing what they want to" is a scary thought and idea, since all too often much of this is about something else, and not exactly the inner thing ... it is stuff that comes from someone else and it usually is about some form of control and making sure everyone is on the same path ... when it is well known that each path is DIFFERENT and there are no teachers or guides that can help you going around the mountain to the top!

As for "death" ... in my book, we all simply become the same matter as what the universe has and was made of and from ... we came from there, and we return to it ... and all else is just words top describe ... nothing!

Only have a minute to respond. European tongues are languages of conquistadors which seems to coincide with intentional obfuscation of meaning. I.e. words have two meanings, secondary contexts etc.

If however you delve into indigenous languages ranging from Native American to African and even ancient Sanskrit and its derivatives, words and concepts are much more precise and offer no chances of ambiguity as the focus of cultural development didn't revolve around control of the masses. This is an extreme generalization of course. Even German is much more precise than English. Where an English sentence can be interpreted many ways due to context, German almost always makes it quite clear what the actual meaning is.

Why would you think that all languages are the same in this respect? If you look close enough, you can always find differences. I indeed think that German tends to be more descriptive and English works (maybe just slightly) more through metaphors and allusions. The ubiquity of compounds in German has to do with that. A compound is basically a description put together from other terms.

In the Russian-speaking world of the former USSR republics, there's a common opinion that English is perfect for business, made for business, developed for business. Made to sell goods to people. 

The problem is that Russian or other Slavic languages have no less than six noun cases, each requires own ending of the word. There are many prefixes and suffixes that change the meaning of the word. There are other situations where the word may be modified, and not all such modifications appear in the vocabulary. If we count them all, the number would reach one million, I think. 

For good example, you may listen and watch this definitely 18+ video by the Russian band Leningrad. Using one Russian swear word khuy (that more or less sounds like English hooey) which means d*ck, by adding different prefixes and suffixes to it, they tell the story. By the way, if you are studying Russian and want to learn how to pronounce the Russian letter/sound x (though it is marked with kh in English and usually pronounced like k, it's not k, at all, it's rather English h, but produced a bit differently!), it's a good tutorial then: 

Lewian is right about all this. English has more words but most are synonyms. Think about how many ways you can say big: large, huge, enormous, colossal, gigantic, mammoth, immense, massive, ginormous, elephantine, vast etc. Although there are shades of meaning they basically mean big or large.

In German you have groß, schwer, wichtig and a few others but not nearly as many

Correct that German fuses words together where in English we put a space between compound nouns often: ice cream, television set, repair kit etc even though they are really one concept.

Try learning Navajo or Zulu or Cherokee. Every concept is a particle and can be strung together. In Inuit you can make whole paragraphs into one word. Same with Finno-Ugric languages such as Finnish and Hungarian. English requires a series of descriptive extras to make a word whole whereas there are 50 words for snow in Eskimo! Likewise European language have pretty much been cleansed of higher spiritual terms insofar as they need to borrow from languages to stock the vocabulary. There was no avatar, akashic, Buddha, prana, asana, ayurveda etc before it was adopted into the European vocabulary stock whereas other languages they are woven into the concepts of the culture through words. We have lost those as the occult practices have been held back and only given to those who seek them out in mystery schools. That means that many mainstream languages of the West have been sterilized to fit the agenda of those who wish to create obfuscation. This is a totally different matter in law though. Older English terms which made the language much richer are still used ubiquitously. Archaic terms like whereby and other prepositional constructions as well as a rich lexicon of Latin terms makes legalese much more precise than colloquial English which is indeed more expressive in a conversational manner. German is very much a technical language which is why it is perfect for science and technology.

It's a pervasive myth propagated by Franz Boas circa 1911 who wrote (as an aside), illustrating a point about how languages resemble each other that there are: "four lexically unrelated words for snow in Eskimo: aput 'snow on the ground', qana 'falling snow', piqsirpoq 'drifting snow', and qimuqsuq 'a snow drift'".

Benjamin Lee Whorf added another layer of misinformation in 1940 by claiming Inuit had 7 words for snow. Enter one Roger Brown in 1958 who claimed a paltry three. This rolling ball of specious sh*t now found it's way into the arts via Lanford Wilson's (fifty) in his 1978 play Fifth of July and mainstream media via the NY Times who claimed a lofty 100 in an editorial. I'd love to be a linguist or an anthropologist as they have at their disposal an entire demographic credulous enough to believe and pay them. Yep, the sort of people who take the Tarot seriously.(plus they're about as reliable as fortune tellers)

Not only a myth but a joke. The joke is that there is no language called Eskimo. It is a family of languages referred to as Eskimo-Aleut languages that covers a spectrum of dialects over the Arctic regions. Since Eskimo can generically refer to Aleut, Yupik, Alutiq, Inuit, Greenlandic and all the dialects, if you add up all the words for snow in all these languages then you will surely exceed 50 but it's kind of a linguists phrase for a helluva friggin lot of words!

You sound very confident about this, however I don't see in your posting how many words there truly are for snow, and I wonder whether and how you know better than all those whom you Sl*g off here.

I love how these threads on PA meander all over the place

Part of the reason the 50 words for snow myth has come to be is the fact that Eskimo-Aleut languages are agglutinating languages known as polysythesis. This means that verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives and virtually all grammatical particles can be thrown together to make whole sentences, therefore in Siberian Yupik for example the base word for "boat" is "angyagh" and can spiral out into a monstrous word like "angyaghllangyugltuqlu" which means "what's more, he wants a bigger boat."

Given this unique feature amongst these Arctic languages, the exact number of variations of all words meaning snow with all other grammatical particles would result in thousands of variations. As far as base words in each language, who knows.

You can simply check out the number of Eskimo-Aleut languages and the dialects and conclude that the true number of variations of the words that refer to snow could easily branch out into the six figures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo%E2%80%93Aleut_languages" rel="nofollow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo%E2%80%93Aleut_languages

I wouldn't call the idea of 50 words for snow a myth as much as it is an enigma of how other cultures have a much more sophisticated delivery of language than any Indo-European language ever has. I've studied dozens of languages in detail and many many superficially. Some of these Arctic languages are amongst the most efficient in conveying highly complex subject / verb / object relationships with all kinds of nuances attached.

This article is extremely well written and explains this quite well.

I wouldn't pretend to know better than those who are paid to but I do know cosmiche hippy w*nk when I see it luvvie.

Yes, we have diverged from the topic at hand but all said, it's a damn site more fun than debating the merits or otherwise of the Tarot with bewildered hippies. It seems self evident to me that if you choose > 50 from any family of purportedly related languages or dialects you're gonna get 50 different words for the same thing. Bring on the identical twin snowflakes I say

^ read that article i posted. There really are dozens of words for snow and other words in EACH language. The 50 words for snow term has simply been kept in use to demonstrate how languages broaden vocabulary for the reality they evolve in. It's all quite fascinating.

I enjoyed the article though I don't pretend to understand its more technical aspects. Thanks for posting this.

However, whenever I see the words spiritual and science joined in holy wedlock I can tell a mile away that it's an arranged marriage that ends in misery and divorce for both parties. Cut to the chase: what the f*ck is testable or replicable about the results of a Tarot reading?

There is nothing in the definition of science that mandates testability or replicability although that is usally the preferred methodology, however as far as spiritual sciences go there are many who have delved into these once esoteric phenomena. Wilhelm Reich for example made discoveries about orgone energy which is equivalent to the East's notion of kundalini energy or prana. There were many Soviet scientists who did great research on pyrmaid technologies and other strange phenomena we call spiritual or supernatural. Spiritual in tandem with science refers to subtle energies that exist outside the realms of our five senses that affect both consciousness and energy fields. The tarot cards are indeed psychological in nature but work in tandem with subtle energy fields that remove blockages and increase flow of chi. There are many such etheric methods that seem to work even if nobody understands exactly why. Gravity was once considered an esoteric force until Newton "discovered" it. What i'm referring to are aspects of nature that remain mysterious but are clearly real.

sci·ence

 (sī′əns)

spir·i·tu·al

 (spĭr′ĭ-cho͞o-əl)

Maybe. There's snowflakes, blizzard, snowfall, snowstorm, sleet, snowdrift, snowman and snowball however 50? Maybe if we can use hyphenated words which would be equivalent to Arctic languages do basically.

Piss-yellow-snow

Footprint-snow

Snow-house

Snow-castle

Well, who has the authority to define science?

From Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

The scientific method is an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical" rel="nofollow - empirical method of acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science" rel="nofollow - science since at least the 17th century. It involves careful observation, applying rigorous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism" rel="nofollow - skepticism about what is observed, given that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science#Observation_inseparable_from_theory" rel="nofollow - cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception#Process_and_terminology" rel="nofollow - observation . It involves formulating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis" rel="nofollow - hypotheses , via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning" rel="nofollow - induction , based on such observations; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment" rel="nofollow - experimental and measurement-based testing of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning" rel="nofollow - deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are principles of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises.

You may have a broader concept of science, but I as a scientist would still ask anyone who wants their theories to be counted as scientific to derive some nontrivial statements from them that can be tested, and then test them. 

My major focus in college was biology so i'm quite aware of the scientific method and Eurocentric concepts. All that you present is true but given the lack of a controlled system that is replicable and tested doesn't mean one cannot deduce certain phenomena through sheer observation. For example humans evolving from apes cannot be tested in a lab therefore is that science? Of course the concept is scientific although untestable concepts usually have theory attached because they are unprovable and knowledge is gleaned through piecing together disparate concepts i.e. carbon-dating, archeology etc. The term science has acquired a much more focused definition in the modern era but as a general word it still serves as a wider umbrella term. English is filled with these nuances in words which is why we add secondary words such as METHOD to science to distinguish it from the general historical concept. When it comes to spiritual things you can still employ a scientific analysis although replication or testablility may prove impossible. Things still exist even if we haven't created an instrument to measure it.

Also from Wikipedia:

@siLLy puPPy: No disagreement with what you write, however if a Tarot card reader actually claims themselves that they can say something that will turn out true in the future (or even the Association of Tarot Card Readers, or whatever official body may exist), there is a possibility to test it scientifically, and no reason why one shouldn't. (Unless of course people believe they have better stuff to do.)

The Tarotist can of course say, that's not what we are about, which is fair enough, but how many of them say such a thing?

Hi,

And this is the real problem ... you can not "test" the interpersonal communication ... so here is a test for you ... your dreaming ... start testing ... and before long you will not have a science since at every turn it goes a different way ... and you are going to say that a part of you is "not valid" because it isn't "test'able"?

There is a lot in our thinking that is beyond bizarre ... we're but one little piece of sand in the middle of a huge universe, and you are stating (like so many sciences and religions do, btw) that what you "think" is more important than what is already there and has been for many years ... going back to the earliest writings that the human experience can connect to, all of which dealt with things that many times we now consider "occult" ... and of course, then came the idea to turn many of these histories into stories for children that we still believe because of one book or two, and we don't even know, or have any idea how it relates to your own inner self!

This is a tough subject ... yes it is, no doubt about it ... but the worst side of it all is the negative idea that some of these things were a joke, or stupid ... there are hundreds and thousands of books about these inner explorations and there would be more if one church did not spend over 1000 years destroying even more books to make sure no one doubted their word, or some other religions in the middle east that make sure and destroy all the past history to try and have people only believe in them, not anything else.

All of this hurts the human spirit, in our modern form ... the studies that could be made end up destroyed and later (in some Christian circles) considered "fake" because they adhere to one story and form that was devised and created 300 years after JC ... which kinda also went along with the destruction of the famous library which is occasionally said to have been done by "christians".

All I ask, is that you put history and thoughts into some kind of perspective. Science has no life or backbone without its "source" and its source is not quite definable, beyond some ideas and some mathematics that not everyone agrees with.

In the beginning, for me, science and thought/religion is ONE ... not two separate entities, mainly because you can not separate your INNER SIDE from your OUTER SIDE and thinking ... but we have separated it all and in the end ... as the good man has said ... "we lost our father." ... and that meant ... we lost the connection to the real spirit and source of it all that brought many of these books and stories out in the first place.

The problem with some of the so-called spiritual disciplines is that they are not based in our physical reality whereas science is primarily concerned with physical phenomena measurable by physical instrumentation. Did gravity not exist before we discovered it as a viable force of the universe? We know it exists but there is really no way of proving where it comes from. Tarot cards are very much a tool to provoke a psychological response and as of yet there are no ways to measure such things which is why it is so easy for many to jump on the bandwagon. I honestly don't know how it all works but we are catching up to the older sciences that the ancients were much more advanced. When i have time i will compile a list of works of scientists who have indeed tackled the etheric realms and had good results. There will be a day when these disciplines will be more understandable on a scientific basis but the intellect seems to be the lowest realm of our ethereal bodies which is why ancient Chinese medicine and ayurveda and other Buddhist / yogic practices could yield consistent results from intuitive processes. It's all quite fascinating how all this is being bridged in the modern day with quantum physics and all.

Only some of the ‘spiritual disciplines’!  Care to tell us which of these are based in physical reality?

siLLy puPPy wrote: When i have time i will compile a list of works of scientists who have indeed tackled the etheric realms and had good results.

The what disciplines now?

siLLy puPPy wrote: There will be a day when these disciplines will be more understandable on a scientific basis but the intellect seems to be the lowest realm of our ethereal bodies which is why ancient Chinese medicine and ayurveda and other Buddhist / yogic practices could yield consistent results from intuitive processes.

‘There will be a day’ and ‘could yield consistent results’ are not statements that should fill anyone with confidence.

This is obscurantism.  You are expecting the reader to believe there exists a body of scientific knowledge somehow kept secret from'the masses' - a group that evidently includes actual, qualified scientists.

siLLy puPPy wrote: An easy shorthand way of understanding the universe is to understand that all matter is nothing more than energy vibrating at a certain frequency in which our five senses can perceive. Everything outside of that spectrum could be considered esoteric or etheric.

This is pseudoscience, just like all the previous talk about astrology, orgone energy, etc.  Sprinkling it with a few actual scientific terms and concepts doesn't change that.

siLLy puPPy wrote: My roommate for example has a doctorate in Chinese medicine and acupuncture. He spends a lot of time going to Native American reservations and donating his services. He gets excellent results but results do vary and absolutely nothing is 100% guaranteed and one has to spend years understanding the complex web of interconnectivity for a lot of this to make sense.

Neither Chinese medcine nor accupuncture have ever been demonstrated to the necessary level of assurance to be medically effective.  Your mate may have a bit of paper with the word 'doctorate' on it, but he is not a doctor, nor is he - for good reason - permitted by law to pretend what he does is medcine.

Yep, a succinct exposé of baseless quackery. The worst of all is the apparently unwitting condescension of terms like 'the masses' and 'shorthand way of understanding' as if suffering stoically the chore of explaining the danger of fire to toddlers. That said, I still prefer my term 'hippy cosmiche w*nk'

Ah, the unbelievers who don't want to delve into the wealth of research on these very subjects. Call it what  you will. Easier to dismiss than investigate. There are countless research projects that have been conducted all over the planet in these fields. Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they don't exist so i guess you'll just have to cast me into a category that makes you feel like everything you don't understand is total bunk and then carry on with your day. It makes me no difference either way.

Didn't you know that if there isn't an officially sanctioned scientific study confirming such things that they don't exist? Someone forgot to send you that memo.

^ out of your body or out of your mind? If you get air miles with astral travel, count me in. On a less flippant note, I do get the whole 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' thang y'all but will always sound a massive note of skepticism hereabouts when it comes to the paranormal

‘Eurocentric science’ was the one that really turned my stomach.  Apparently empiricism is now indistinguishable from imperialism!

siLLy puPPy wrote: Ah, the unbelievers who don't want to delve into the wealth of research on these very subjects. Call it what  you will. Easier to dismiss than investigate. There are countless research projects that have been conducted all over the planet in these fields. Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they don't exist so i guess you'll just have to cast me into a category that makes you feel like everything you don't understand is total bunk and then carry on with your day. It makes me no difference either way.

I agree, I don't think this "experience" is supernatural or paranormal. Yet, it might have some mysterious aspects, again within the scope of the mind and psyche. It would take too much of my time if I began to give details about those probabilities, let's f.ck it for now. All in all, they are all probabilities. 

This isn't a convention. I'm simply sharing my conclusions based on my own research and many years of digging into the nitty gritty. I'm not here to convince you or anyone else of anything. To lay out years of research in a silly music forum thread is ludicrous. If you are really interested in learning about these things, all the info is out there awaiting your attention otherwise i really don't care what you think about any of this to be honest!

There's a whole universe of a lot to say on this topic, of course. Everything is much complicated by the Soviet period and the transitions to it and from it - they all left marks on modern Russian language. 

"sheep infected with scrapie" - you probably mean parshyvaya ovtsa... A man that farts is perdun, no matter if he's really little or old, but this term is often used for old men, yes. Stary perdun - old (farter). If it's what you've been asking about. 

To me there are several obvious features quick learning materials for foreigners do not want to mention. 

First, softening of consonants. It is critical in sounding like Russian and sometimes in understanding each other. In Russian the word for "grandfather" is d'ed, it doesn't sound like English "dead", at all. When the adequate respectable foreigner says ded, he/she may be taken for the Russian-speaking terrorist from places like Chechnya, those people tend to have problems with softened consonants, too...  

I think that learning how to soften any possible consonant is critical and must be done in the very beginning of the course. Especially, with such exotic cases as soft k as in the word tk'ot - he/she/it weaves. 

Second, the letter/sound that is marked with kh (I fully understand why it is marked quite so!) in English, DOES NOT sound like k. It's absolutely not k! The leader of the Soviet Union between Stalin and Brezhnev had a last name xrushsh'Ov, not krUshchev. And the second largest Ukrainain city is not kAkiv, it's xArkiv. The Russian consonant sound x may be described as the same as in Scottish dialect in the words like LOCH (since I have no idea of Scottish, I simply rewrite what the internet sources massively tell on the topic) or, probably, as the voiceless English h. The problem is that English voiceless h is produced a bit differently than Russian voiceless x, but the difference is not that important usually. Notice that English h becomes voiced in the words like aha or behind, while Russian x-h is always voiceless. Like a breath of air. 

Third, Russian have quite enough false friends (linguistically meaning), but also have more than quite enough connections, ties, links with languages like English. 

There's a funny case with the word for "sock" - nosOk, derived from the verb nosIt', to wear. It seems like, English cut the first two letters at some point of its history. 

There's a case of familiarity with the word "sputnik". It's not as alien a word as you might think: 

 s(o) - co; 

 put' - path; 

 + nik !

Sputnik is the one that goes the same path as you. Sputnik is Copathnik or Copathney, if you like. 

One more example of the closeness of Russian and English (and Latin): Russian for "future" is bUdushsh'eye: 

bu - fu;

du - tu; 

shsheye -> zheye -> zhe -> rzhe (like in Polish where rz sounds like zh) -> re. 

It's the same word, actually! 

Fourth, English has ee-sound and i-sound. Sheet and sh*t are not the same and have to be distinguished in speaking. Russian also has two sounds of a kind, but they are almost impossible to not distinguish. One is short ee, another is ih. Like when one is hit in the stomach, or vomiting or burping or whatever. Not that theatrical of course, but ih sound is not English i. I would say that I personally hear ih sound in the words like this or enough, but that's me. 

Bliny (Russian pancakes) is not blini, it's blee-nih. Blee-nih is rather closer to blee-neh to give you an idea. Russians always transcribe the ih sound with y, while foreigners think it's all the same, like i and y in English. 

Fifth, to make the conflict of the cultures deeper, Russian has a distint letter for the sound [j] and I think it would be better for English texts to put x for Russian h sound and j for Russian y=[j] sound. How else is then possible to write adequately an archaic Russian word for "neck" vyya? It's vih-ya, vYja in my transciption. There's a distinct Russian leter for ih and another one for y =[j], and in Russian it looks like this: в-ы-я (the last letter stands for ya). 

Yes, I remember, we were talking about Tarot, and I agree that in the recent years every verbose Russian speaker in the west may be perceived as a suspicious person. Still, hope, I was useful. And not, I am not working for Russian special services. And by the way, speaking of special services, the overwhelming majority of the former Soviet citizens have never had any real fear of KGB. But that's to the other question of how the people from the outside see the Soviet reality. 

Thanks for your patience, thanks for your attention! 

There are several funny adventures concerning the Russian words: 

k'Edy - plimsoll shoes for sportsmen, from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keds" rel="nofollow - Keds trademark. 

unitAz - flush toilet (mainly, the ceramic bowl in it), from the company that produced toilets or the model of the toilet named Unitas. 

ksEroks - any copy machine, at all  

Yes, I forgot the third word for "to fart"! There's a commonly used verb pUkat' (funny parallels with "to puke"). Pukat' is a nice little word. 

Then there's a rougher, more brutal word p'Erd'et' (even more funnier parallels with words like perdue or perduto). 

And yes, there's also a rather archaic word bzd'et' that I forgot about. Because in today's life bzd'et' usually means in a slang "to be afraid of smb/smth". 

As of descriptors, there're no such nouns for pukat' - probably, pukatel' or pukach, but I've never heard such words. Perdet' gives the word p'erdUn. Bzd'et' gives "bzdun". Bzdun also means both the person that farts and has a slang meaning of "a coward". 

Perhaps, you meant the word "bzd'El'nik" - that's something strange and slang-wise, though. But such a word exist.

Though, perhaps, I've missed something in my in-brain vocabulary. 

Davesax1965 wrote: (At this point, I'd say "ni za chuoy sobachi" and you'd correct me with "ni za khuy sobachi", of course.  ;-)

 

Wow, such complicated swear skyscrapers!  I personally would correct you with "ni za xuj sobAchij",  because I try to mark accents in the words and give the most accurate pronunciation possible. Not sure, it is so necessary, though. 

The sequence of Russian swear words that I have personally made once is: "N'e, nu n'e job zhe tvOju, nA xuj, sUka, bl'at', mat'!" which more or less corresponds to the phrase "Why not say f*ck you to you".

There's another song by the band Leningrad that demonstrates the use of the word bl'ad' (wh*re): 

Davesax1965 wrote: I'm OK with d'ed, which gets Anglicised to "dy-ed" over here. I'm told I sound OK speaking Russian, but you're right, the consonant pronunciation makes it sound very different when a Westerner says it (especially from the SuShAh ;-) ) I'll never quite get my pronunciation correct. You absolutely have to think "Russian" to sound Russian. ;-)

I'd rather say, Seh-Sheh-Ah, it's how I pronounce it ;-). As for thinking, for example, Russian kids traditionally do not see the difference between the terms "letter" and "phoneme". They even try to pronounce the (non-existent in reality) corresponding sound to the letter "soft sign", something like very short [ j ]... Also, many Russians would feel shocked when they get to realize that their letters for ts and ch actually represents two sounds each, not one. Nobody thinks of the sounds ts and ch this way, usually - because there's one letter for each. Also, by the way, the verb realizovat' in Russian means not "to realize", but "to implement", "to make real", "to make concepts material" so to say. 

Davesax1965 wrote: Absolutely right about the Komitet, ditto the history of the Great Purges as seen from an internal Russian perspective. (I got detained by the FSB at Sheremetievo once. Accidentally ripped my visa in half. They were quite nice about things, considering. Ya tikho sral v shtany.)

 

As a citizen of Ukraine, I can tell a few words on the Holodomor issue, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933. Certainly, in the Soviet times until 1988-1989 that topic was hidden and forbidden. However, even after that I personally have never heard any real life talks about it from my relatives, grandparents, friends' relatives, etc. My granma once told me that there was oh so terrible famine. However, NOBODY in our family has died from it, as far as I can see. NOBODY of our family had been anything more than an ordinary poor peasant in 1932-33, and mysteriously nobody died... Which leads me to believe that the whole thing is a bit overreacted, hyped and overblown... Reckoning the permanent Russian chaos, many people simply realize now that there was such a mess, such a mix of everything back then in the 30s that it is almost impossible to track down what's really happened with that famine. I have no doubt that the Ukrainian people died from hunger, I also have no doubt that Stalin was cruel and cynic - but I find it unbelievable that he actually wanted to kill millions of potential working hands in times when the country desperately needed new workers for the newly built factories... Plus to that, not a special secret that the people who created the term Holodomor (in Canada in 1978, if I remember right) wanted it to look and sound like Holocaust, so they even continuously try to increase the number of victims. Most moderate evaluation is 3.5 million people, at maximum. But Ukrainian sources pretend to say it was 6 mln (sic), 10 million, or so... In result, the tragedy obtains geopolitical and political overtones. 

Davesax1965 wrote: Westerners do not understand Russia, and vice versa. I've had some very interesting discussions with Russians (in Russia) about a number of subjects, I thought I understood Russian history having studied it for years at University. No, not really, I have the vaguest idea of facts, figures and general happenings from a country which disappeared for three generations. ;-)

 

That's the way the progressive rock movement went. From the mystics to the underground. 

The theme of this thread is the tarot. I've simply laid out a ridiculous amount of insights that i have personally attained through years of research that have shown me that not only the tarot but many esoteric concepts are rooted in reality and in many cases have undergone scientific scrutiny with some examples panning out and others still a mystery. Indifference comes from the fact that some newbie comes here and expects me to prepare a college level presentation that will most likely go over the heads of many due to the fact there are prerequisite concepts to master before delving into some of this stuff at a deeper level. Given that any source i could potentially present would be scrutinized and a gazillion questions would arise, i simply don't have time to go down this rabbithole. Like i said, if anyone is interested in pursuing any of these topics, there are universities out there that offer degrees as well as thousands of books on any given subject including the tarot. Some are better than other but this is the kind of esoteric research where you really have to invest the time and energy to come to any conclusions. Nothing anybody presents to you will matter one iota. I just wanted to chime in that i personally have been convinced that these things are quite real and that there have indeed been scientific studies that would blow your mind. I will compile much of this and put it on a website some day but things have not allowed me to accomplish that quite yet.

I studied Russian for four years at a university level and have kept it up independently. Read much better than speak it but i can get by. In my experience Russian is easier in some ways than German. Noun genders are much more predictable and all that however the declension system is much more intricately designed. Where Russian spirals into complexity is with the idiomatic phrases and strange sentence structures. For example you can't say "I have a book." You would have to translate literally as "By me there is book." German has some similar features but often can be traced to Middle English which was very similar.

That problem only applies to "I have" and "My name is". In theory, though, you may use both of these expressions translated directly. It would sound strange in most situations, but you may use them. 

"I have smth" and especially "I have smb" may have another, colloquial, sexual meaning. "To have somebody" may mean colloquially "to have sex with somebody", implying that the speaker is in the active position and the mentioned somebody is passive...  In the days of my childhood there was a vulgar poem: 

Yesli b ya imel konya - eto byl by nomer, 

Yesli b kon' imel menya - ya b, naverno, pomer. 

(more or less: If I had a horse that would be great, if a horse had me - I would probably die). 

However, especially speaking of inanimate objects, you may easily use the direct "I have" construction. It is simply much less popular. The direct translation of "My name is..." is even more much less popular than saying "They call me...". 

If this is all rubbish maybe you need to visit the other threads then. You're like someone who protests something just because you can't fathom the idea that someone actually gives credence to it. Move on! Go visit a music poll where the subject matter isn't too difficult to grasp.

What gets me about Russian are all those particle words.

Terms like https://en.openrussian.org/ru/мне" rel="nofollow - Мне некогда https://en.openrussian.org/ru/быть" rel="nofollow - бы́ло https://en.openrussian.org/ru/об" rel="nofollow - об https://en.openrussian.org/ru/этот" rel="nofollow - э́том https://en.openrussian.org/ru/думать" rel="nofollow - ду́мать . I didn't have time to think about it.

Well, you can also say it translated directly: Я не имел времени подумать об этом. But, yes, I see what you're saying. 

Russians also find (expert level) English complicated. 

 

 

and this video about Russians abroad (since 2:15 there begins English speaking) 

^ Очень смешно! Английский также имеет странные характеристики. Точно.

A friend and i went to the city

Translated literally: We with friend went to city.

The omission of the word THE in Russian causes great difficulty for Russians learning English!

Here's a video in the spirit of Soviet era glam metal!

Nobody here is failing to grasp what you’re claiming.  Likewise I’m sure nobody has missed that you’ve been asked repeatedly to substantiate your extraordinary claims, and instead replied first with obfuscation, then evasion, and now insults.  It’s not even original; you’ve resorted to the same lines to which every peddler of nonsense retreats when challenged.

Does it not maybe reveal something to you about these things you have chosen to believe that you simply cannot engage with sceptics by providing evidence to substantiate your claims?  This is how real science works; you literally make my point for me when you fail to do this.

Seriously.  You’re an adult human being who is pretending on the internet that the future can be predicted with magic playing cards, and that you possess secret knowledge somehow too complicated for the wider world to comprehend.  Is this really what you want to be doing with your life?

siLLy puPPy wrote: Here's a video in the spirit of Soviet era glam metal!

Maybe, you know the Russian band NOM. 

Here, for example, I see visual parallels to Monty Python, though whether it was the real influence on them is unclear to me: 

And here is just an enthusiastic tune: 

... re-sung twenty years later: 

Regarding your opinion and your inability to understand that which has been written:

NOM is hilarious! I've been on a former USSR exploration in the last year or so. Love Scald (doom metal), Regnat Horrendum (symphonic black metal), Grazhdanskaya Oborona (punk rock), Yegor i Opizdenvshie (psychedelic rock), Sergey Kuryokhin (avant-prog, avant-garde-jazz) and many more from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other former republics. Shocking how much quality material came from that part of the world and still does!

Speaking of the latter song(s), the guys have simply sung a very unknown Soviet song from a very little known Soviet movie: 

 

I love the bands 

AVIA

and Dyeti (Children) 

Pol McCartney...  

In Russian, pol means: 1) floor; 2) gender; 3) half a; 4) Paul. 

They used the third meaning...

There was a game for Sega Game Gear (another occurrence of GG, yeah!) dedicated to it: 

^ continue any Russian music conversations at this thread. That region of the world needs more attention. So many brilliant artists for sure :)

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=112868&PN=4" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=112868&PN=4

Absolutely! Then to leave the Tarot deck for the game of the same name, which is elaborated enough, and has one more line of Jacks. 

Interesting. I’ve just given up on a Tarot forum. I didn’t do so well with the regular Tarot cards, didn’t understand the archetypes and occult philosophy, or New Age oracle cards, but much better with cards showing subjects I knew more about, even though not designed for divination, such as the solar system, chemical elements and natural history. Drawing cards from more than one deck and looking for common ideas threw up enough shocking coincidences to convince me something was going on, but as I’ve done more it seems more likely I somehow just draw the cards I want, there have been a few instances of thinking which card I’d like to get then picking it out. Also it doesn’t have any great effect on my life, gave me a lot of exciting ideas but I’m quite content with my situation and it’s remained pretty stable.