Are you a warlock? As for the question about myself, recent research is showing a link between autism, which I have been diagnosed with, and schizophrenia. They appear to be opposite sides of a related process in the mind.
The commonly understood schizophrenic has a very outward oriented behaviour pattern. They read heavily into social situations, are hyper sensitive to suggestion, perhaps have too powerful a sense of “theory of mind” as they say. This is perhaps the cause of their religious delusions. They have a great deal of information in their heads of a religious nature. So with all the stories they hear of “the wicked one”, they start seeing evidence of that everywhere.
For autistics, the reaction goes to the opposite pole. They are equally overstimulated, have limited to no ability to filter stimuli, but they introvert their reaction perhaps due to a genetic disposition, and react primarily to physical things rather than mental. If they see a frog hopping across the yard their minds are going “OMG!! Frog!”, and every physical event winds up being a big trauma and a huge mystery. They don’t read intentions. The event itself has the same impact as the implied intention does for a schizophrenic. Thus, in a way, they seem to have even less logic to their behaviour than a schizophrenic. If you discover what a schizophrenic believes and what they perceive, then their behaviour will actually make sense. You can’t do that with autism. They follow a different “sense” or logic for things.
This is very difficult to manage, and that sense varies from autistic to autistic. Yes. It isn’t so extreme for some autistics as others.
I knew a schizophrenic and he always had reasons for his actions that made sense. The autistic also has reasons, but they are arrived at by a process of broken sensory perception. To visualize what that is like, if the world were a mirror, shatter that mirror and gather the pieces close together so they still reflect the same thing, and then try to make sense of that image in the mirror.
That video about autism in which she talks about responding to sounds and insects made sense too. For myself, the imagery in tarot cards make sense, because the flow of events in my daily life displays itself like that. The seemingly hodge podge collection of images is how I make intelligent sense of anything I see or hear. I hear a crow so I know the place I am in is hectic. I feel a cold breeze while the sun is shining in my eyes and then I hear a person raise their voice, I know this to mean that business is in full swing and I will get very little cooperation from people on the street here.
It sounds like a kind of blindness. They call it mind blindness, though I would argue with their understanding of what mind blindness means. It’s not that I don’t understand that you think differently than myself or have feelings or desires different than my own. That field of experience that gives you the picture of what you are thinking or seeing, of who you think you are or how you think you feel, or of what you want, that is for lack of a better term “distorted” in me. So no matter how smart I am, I still don’t have the dictionary that makes people’s behaviour or thought patterns make sense to me. I perceive other people, but it’s low resolution, perhaps like a cave drawing.
So, I will invite you my friends, does this relate to today’s topic on Warlocks at all? I could draw connections myself, but I fear I might just delude myself.
It does in relation to what you have described, both for warlocks and for yourself, but the final determination is your own I think.
As you were describing it, it seemed to make sense that what you described as a warlock would also perceive that way.
Since people were asking if you were a warlock, there must be some parallels, or a way to understand warlocks even if not exactly the same.
Were the old Greek Oracles also Warlocks? There seemed to be some similarity there, yes, and their intermediaries were priests. So perhaps what I need personally is to ground myself in a “haunt.”
I think this is your haunt. This class perhaps. Ah, I see. It is definitely a valuable touchstone.
How would it affect your role as a teacher and as a community member if we did perceive you as a warlock? How would it change your own perception of your role? Well, besides inspiring more material on the spirit world and my dealings with it, not radically. I still have my personal sense of how I should move among people, how I should properly conduct myself. I just don’t draw this from “socialization.”
Historically, did they take the children who seemed different and train them to be oracles or shaman or whatever? They did, yes, and occasionally even a warlock would adopt. The story of Baba Yaga? Likely an elderly female warlock.
Not all who feel different are potential warlocks. Many of us feel that way and have many other spiritual gifts and paths to follow. I fully agree. It is possible they have what the Chinese call an exceptional cognitive talent. Short hand we call them psychic, or possibly they have a spiritually empowered artistic gift and that is their path for exploring it, or any of countless other things.
Even if you take what could be considered a single gift in a broad sense, and spread it out over the whole spectrum of possible people and life experiences, you would have differences in exactly what they can do and exactly how their talents might impact them to the point that those examples on the fringe of the phenomenon would be challenging to classify as examples of that phenomenon. I still find having “families” of experience helpful though, is it not?
In the case of the warlock phenomenon, I think it would even be possible to train someone as one who is not otherwise innately disposed toward it. The practices of the Sufi dervishes and voodoo ritualists might be an example. Self-flagellation and piercing rituals can induce micro versions of near death experiences. In theory, it could even turn later on in life, naturally.
Your thoughts are welcome. I will wish you well friends, and hope nothing was too offensive in the topic of Warlocks.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~