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ZetaTalk: Incantations
Note: written Jul 15, 1996


Permeating human culture is the notion that one can influence events with magical words - prayers, mantras, voodoo spells and black magic. Advocates point to what they consider results, where a practitioner mutters the right words and afterwards the desired effect occurred. Much of the desired effect is brought about in the human giving the chant or his audience, due to suggestion. The practitioner and his audience believe the effect will occur, and adjust their lives and actions to the degree they can so that this will occur. Thus if the chant was to make an ill person well, the person will announce that they indeed feel better and their care givers will affirm this. Since health is as much in the mind of the patient and his attendants as in the actual physical state of the patient, an observed improvement is quite possible. What lies outside of the practitioner's control falls in the realm of possibilities in any case, so that when things happen they are attributed to the chant, not chance. Thus an incantation to generate rainfall will be credited with the next storm that occurs where in fact rain was pending anyway.

Incantations can also be The Call, if done with a sincere wish for assistance outside of oneself. Ordinarily the practitioner and his audience are fervently desiring the outcome, and thus The Call is being given. Here something extraordinary may occur, as multiple calls have been given and all may be answered, simultaneously. Each individual in this drama may thus have a different mind-set as a result of their individual conferences. They may have received new information or new insight into matters. The synergy of this change within several individuals can result in extraordinary activity on the part of the group, activity that results in an outcome not previously possible. Should The Call have been from a seashore community suffering from poor catches, and many individuals in the community suddenly realize they have been fishing in the wrong place or at the wrong times, the catches may improve dramatically. All is attributed to the incantations, when in fact the exact words had nothing to do with the process.

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