Here, go read this.  I’ll wait.

tl;dr: a very long, quite well-written piece by a Christian author warning us about mandala coloring books being spiritually dangerous.

Okay, woo alert.  Since I am an Existential Mystic, my tendency is not to grant woo an independent reality, so perhaps it’s a little unfair for me to pick apart the writings of a Spiritual.  But the far ends of any scale are fascinating, so let’s dive right in.

One of the issues I have with die-hard Spirituals is that their belief in the reality of their particular woo is so absolute that it extends to all the other woo as well.  In this case, we have a carefully reasoned blogpost that provides proof of the dangers of simply filling in random spaces on a piece of paper: if you color a mandala, it will automatically open the door to your soul/mind/body and let demonic forces in.

Evangelical believers, particularly, are prone to this kind of thing.  Their understanding of God is that of a “personal God,” which does not mean (as most of them think it does) a God who is “mine”; rather it means a God who is “a person,” i.e., independently existing as an individual outside our reality.  The same applies for the idea of a “personal Satan” or “personal demons.”

This belief, coupled with some vague biblical literalism,¹ leads them to the understanding that not only do God and Satan have a real existence, but so do witches and demons and all those “other gods” whom generally our evangelical friends ridicule as nonexistent “false gods” but who really exist not really yes really.

In the same vein, they understand transactional magick to be real and effective: that’s the basis of their belief in intercessory³ prayer. They easily transfer that belief to pentagrams, Ouija boards, Dungeons & Dragons, yoga, and yes, mandala coloring books—just touching one of these things is enough to unleash the hounds of hell whether or not you believe they’re “real.”  Just joking around at a sleepover with “Bloody Mary” or taking a hot yoga class will press the On button on the remote control, and, well, you’ve seen enough horror movies to know what happens next.

Here’s the interesting part: the only proof they ever have is their own belief in the reality of belief systems that otherwise they will tell you are not real.  It never occurs to them to say, “Hm, those other people are trying make sense of the Infinite, too—I wonder how similar their approach is to mine.  Maybe I could get further in my own faith if I paid attention to theirs.”

Nope.  Instead, because their Tao is the only Tao—they can NAME IT AND EVERYTHING, KENNETH—all those other paths to the Infinite have to be wrong.  Demonic.

Coloring mandalas.  You may think there are 64 colors, but as we all know, there’s only one real Flesh.

Here endeth the lesson.

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¹ I say “vague” literalism, because no one reads the Bible literally literally.  No one.  They may believe it’s Adam & Eve², not Adam & Steve, or that Noah took a gazillion pairs of animals on the ark (including diplodoci), but quiz them about owning slaves or sleeping with the maid or stoning a bride who everyone knows has been living with her new husband for two years, and their literal understanding rapidly evolves into something more metaphoric/historical/pragmatic.

² NSFW LINK!

³ Or imprecatory.

As the title says, so what? We have a perfectly serviceable model for placing ourselves in a matrix to define our approach and response to woo. So what?

When I proposed the idea, we joked that we could create one of those Buzzfeed quizzes that would ask you 20 questions and place you on the matrix:

That kind of thing. And then you get your results:

Honestly, I can’t see any difference it would make in anyone’s life to have their self-knowledge confirmed, any more than it does to know that one is in fact a Slytherin or that one really ought to be living in Oslo. For one thing, and let me make this clear, the REMS scale is descriptive, not prescriptive. No end of the scale is pathological, so there’s nothing to “fix” in anyone who finds themselves to be a Spiritual Mystic.

Instead, we could use it l like we use the Myers-Briggs or the True Colors instruments: not only as self-knowledge but as a tool for understanding our interactions with others. Just as those of us who are “green” have learned not to rely on “reds” for planning and execution but instead to use their energy as a motor for the project, knowing that one’s significant other is at the opposite end of the quadrant would be helpful in understanding that no, they do not want to join you in the couples crystal workshop.

And that’s OK.

But but but, I can hear you sputter—mainly because my brain is doing the same thing—surely it’s important for them to understand that woo is/isn’t (pick one) real!

So let’s talk about real woo.

Recently an alert reader sent me this article to read and asked if perhaps this indicated that woo is in fact measurable, objectively provable. I replied that I thought that the experiment wasn’t measuring woo, it was measuring physiological responses. If it had tried to measure enlightenment, that would have been wootastic.

I said that at the risk of falling into the No True Scotsman fallacy, I thought that if it can be measured, it’s not woo.

In other words, the Woo that can be named is not the Woo.¹

I think that another strength of the REMS scale is that it frees us from the discussion of whether the woo is real—some people are inclined to grant woo an external reality, others are disinclined. Whether we’re talking past life regressions, or chakra balancing, or shamanic journeys, or the One True God, the REMS scale just sorts people into their approach and response to that.

Just as in the True Colors model, each of our types has its strengths and weaknesses, and perhaps with more discussion, observation, and thought we could develop a more complete picture of those. But, just as in the True Colors model, we have to disabuse ourselves of the notion that our type is the One True Type and those others need converting.

Discuss.²

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¹ I am particularly proud of that formulation.

² In discussion, tell me whether you think we’re done here. I always feel I have left something on the table when I write these things. But what?

Now we have our two axes:

The EXISTENTIAL <—> SPIRITUAL axis defines the individual’s inclination to grant woo an independent reality, the approach to woo. The REALIST <—> MYSTIC scale defines the individual’s willingness to experience or interpret an event as woo, or the response to woo.

You might suppose that all Realists would be Existential and all Mystics would be Spiritual, but that is—oddly—not the case. Although we will first examine the two obvious combinations, my four subjects actually represent the four possible combinations of the two axes.

Let us suppose that our four subjects, having gone to the wellspring of American New Age Woo, Sedona, AZ, have decided to pop in to the Center for the New Age and see what kind of woo they can experience.¹ The CNA offers a rather complete range of woo: besides the store full of crystals, candles, occult objects, books, and tarot decks, they have a large staff of trained specialists who can give you tarot readings, crystal work, aura readings, past life regressions, chakra balancing, and other psychic guidance.

At the main counter, you can flip through a notebook with the vitae of the psychics on duty and book your session there. Given our two scales of approach and response, we can expect different reactions to the situation.

The Existential Realist

The Existential Realist neither thinks woo is real nor is willing to acknowledge that he has experienced any such thing. In the CNA, he may browse the shelves and may even find a book that interests him, but the crystals are just pretty rocks and the candles smell.

If he’s an asshole, he may openly disparage the shop and its denizens. If he’s nicer than that, he may decline to book a session or evade the topic altogether. If he decides to enter into the spirit of the thing, he will politely endure the ministrations of the chakra balancer, but he will feel nothing and will chalk it all up to being a good sport.

The Spiritual Mystic

The Spiritual Mystic, on the other hand, feels acutely the spiritual nature of the place. In fact, he may be overwhelmed by it, or react negatively to this particular location’s vibe and seek his woo experience some place more simpatico.

If he decides to book a session, he will select a practitioner exactly as the staff has instructed—by using his intuition—poring over each page to see if he feels a connection with the man or woman in the picture. He will listen earnestly to advice from the staff about which service would be best to meet his psychic needs.

Once in the session, he will feel the energy of the room, the practitioner, and the process. The energy will inform his experience, and he will come away from the session feeling very different than when he went in.

The Existential Mystic

Here’s where our model flies in the face of logic but is actually a useful descriptive tool: The Existential Mystic does not think there is anything out there that is worth the name of woo. He can pick up any number of quartz crystals without feeling a single tingle.

However, if in his chakra balancing he sees specific images or feels a warmth/coldness/whatever in one of the chakras, then he is more than willing to acknowledge that he cannot—or does not need to—explain it away. He evaluates it as ineffable and includes it in his spiritual makeup.

The Spiritual Realist

This one is even odder than the Existential Mystic. The Spiritual Realist does believe in God/auras/the Force, but is apt to deny any manifestation of it unless presented with overwhelming evidence.

At the CNA, he glosses over all the items for sale as being irrelevant trinkets, but he does take the time to choose a psychic and book a session. He represses giggles during the chakra balancing, but then turns around and books an additional reading from the psychic, which he finds both impressively accurate and helpful. (He nonetheless inquires about the man’s credentials.) After the reading, he may feel the need to buy a crystal or two.

tl;dr

Faced with woo:

• The Spiritual Mystic says, “I feel it; my [choose one] chakra needs opening.”
• The Spiritual Realist says, “I believe in [choose a woo], but I doubt this is it.”
• The Existential Mystic says, “Honey please, but that one I felt.”
• The Existential Realist says, “Bah! Humbug!”

Next: So what?

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¹ Although the four subjects are real people, I am fictionalizing their responses to the experience. I do not presume to know the originals’ innermost thoughts, nor do I claim that how I portray their responses is in any way an accurate representation of them. To further muddy the waters, I am portraying all four subjects as male.

Yesterday I proposed a scale to delineate a person’s approach to woo, i.e., their willingness to grant the woo in question an independent reality, howsoever they defined it: New Age energy, the Force, mana, God. It’s important to realize that this mindset (Existential <—> Spiritual) is the subject’s “resting state,” in the absence of any particular woo encounter.

But after woo is encountered, what is the subject’s response? What is his willingness to experience or interpret an event as woo?

Before we define the scale, the question arises: can a person who is more Existential than not actually experience woo? I think they can, and I don’t think we can say it’s any less “real woo” even if we take into account that bane of social researchers, suggestibility.¹ As I said in yesterday’s post, we should not discount an inner reality just because it cannot be measured by calipers.²

Response to woo: the Realist

The Realist’s response to an encounter with woo is, in a nutshell, “Bah! Humbug!”  (For those who may not have ever thought about what this phrase actually means, humbug is quackery or bullshit.)

The Realist may be completely gobsmacked by a tarot reading or prayer session, but he is apt to put it all down to physiology or coincidence or, of course, suggestibility. He takes a good hard look at Marley’s face and sees that it is, after all, just a door knocker.

Once again, this is not meant to be derogatory, merely descriptive of one possible response to woo. Given the elastic reality of woo, it’s only smart to think that the disturbance in the Force which you felt may be an undigested bit of beef or a fragment of underdone potato.³

Response to woo: the Mystic

On the other end of the response axis is the Mystic.

The Mystic will emerge from an encounter convinced that he has encountered woo of some sort: his chakras are now balanced, the crystal has opened his Third Eye, God has spoken to him. Again, the question of “real woo” need not concern us at this point, only that the Mystic has interpreted his experience as woo.

The Response Axis

Now we have our second axis:

This scale is even more slippery than the Approach axis, because people definitely have different expectations and tolerances for all the various woos of the world. The same person who offers to pray for your illness may scoff at Reiki. Someone who loves a good tarot reading may look askance at a good smudging (although to be sure that is less likely than the first scenario). Those who speak in tongues do not practice Feng Shui.

As S. Elizabeth Bird found in her study of tabloid newspapers, people will often believe one kind of woo while rejecting all the others. (In For Enquiring Minds, for example, those who read The Weekly World News at all seriously were apt to do so for one topic. The Elvis believers thought the aliens were bogus, and vice versa.)

But even if we need to apply the scale on a case-by-case basis, it still allows us a descriptive, and I hope useful, framework.

Next: The four types

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¹ Thanks to Marc Honea for keeping this concept in the forefront of my mind.

² I’ll take up the issue of “real woo” in another post.

³ Yes, I know that by using Ebenezer Scrooge as my exemplar makes it look as if I’m disparaging our Realists as merely unconverted Mystics, but I am not. Besides, Scrooge’s “humbug” turned out to be real enough, wasn’t it?

Yesterday we looked—vaguely—at what we meant by the woo experience: that feeling that there is an “energy” other than/bigger than/inclusive of us, manifesting itself in things like chakras, crystals, auras, magick, and religion.  Today I want to look at the first of the two axes of the REMS scale, that of approach.

Approach to the woo experience: the Spiritual

By approach, I mean the individual’s inclination to grant woo an independent reality. On the far end we have those who have their horoscopes cast and consult with their psychic adviser on a regular basis. They sleep with crystals under their pillow. They post photos of a beautiful sunset on Facebook and give God the credit. They never step on a crack so as to avoid breaking their mother’s back.

These are our Spiritual members.

It is important to me to make clear that I am not denigrating those who are on the Spiritual end of the approach axis. On the contrary, their spirits are open to the unknown, to the infinite, and I do not believe that is without value. When I equate chakra balancers with the devout of any religion, it is merely to observe that both are willing to grant an external reality to their respective woos, an external reality that cannot be measured by any scientific instrument. Yes, it is faith.

Approach to the woo experience: the Existential

On the other end of the approach axis, therefore, we find the Existential members. These people do not “believe” in anything that cannot be measured. They are the coiners of the term “woo” to deride the other end of the axis. They are disinclined to grant any external reality to the woo experience: all of your woo is inside your head.  Existence precedes essence.

And let me say here, again, that this is a perfectly cromulent way to approach woo. I would caution the Existentials among us, though, that denying woo an external reality does not necessarily mean denying it an inner reality. It’s all in your head? That is a kind of reality after all, and a wise Existential learns to accommodate that idea.  (But that is more for the discussion on Response.)

The Approach Axis

So now we have one of our two axes:

Like most axes of this nature, most people would not find themselves on the absolute end of either side of the scale. If we consider it in purely religious terms, people will range from atheist through agnostic to devout.

This, by the way, provides us with the E and the S in our REMS Scale.

Next: Response to woo