Those Double Take Moments

[TeaDidikai]

I was giving a lot of thought to what causes Mr. Darks.

One (perhaps overly) simple explanation is that people want to feel validated.

A number of external factors can catalyze a deeper desire for validation- Establishing independent identity, exploring unknown or unusual interests, trauma- really too many things to list (though if my old Psych 101 Teacher was here, she'd expect all of them for me to get full credit wink )

I began to think of how this can be a deep disservice to folks entering the Pagan Scene.

It's fair to say that most Western Pagans come to the scene from Christian households. I have heard often that what appeals is that they "get to be their own clergy". I can understand how someone might feel a lack of connection with their god sitting in a pew listening to someone they aren't inspired by- and I can understand the desire to have a more "hands on role" in their religious expression and development.

Makes perfect sense.

I could understand how a lot of people would be looking for a direct knock your socks off spiritual experience to validate their new direction.

It might help folks to know that some of the people in the scene I respect and love the most have only had one or two of those "Whoa- did you just see that!?" moments- and the odds are that these people are anywhere from two to four times the age of the average person in this guild (some of these folks have children that are older than I am).

I'm hoping this thread does three things.

1) I want to welcome people who would otherwise not post in the guild to do so. Maybe you could explain one of your "double take" moments, or perhaps talk about the transition from one style of faith to your current one and how it meets your needs better.

2) I would like some of the regulars- the folks who are good examples of what we tend to think of as an "unfluffy" Pagan to post some of their double take moments. I feel that often these moments, while powerful for the person experiencing them, are not as dramatic as others might expect. Maybe this might help put some experiences in perspective.

3) I'd like to engage in a discussion of what makes a faith-experience fulfilling. While I hold those "double take" moments to be fun, they aren't a foundation for faith. My observation from years working in a book store, attending festivals and the like suggests to me that the feeling present in a sacred moment is as powerful as a double take moment.  

[TheDisreputableDog]

What exactly do you mean by "double take moment"?

Do you mean things like your Odin sculpture hanging upside down for 9 units of time in your oven? Or the clover and street lights thing? Or strings of "coincidences"? Or seeing or hearing entities?  

[TeaDidikai]

I was thinking of moments where people saw and heard something that was completely unexplainable.  

[LesbianWetDreams]

I think that was the reason I looked further into paganism. I hated having nothing to do but pray. I guess Srw's Wicca seemed much more appealing because I could do something and actually make it happen.

I guess I'm the steriotypical Once-Christian girl. It took a lot of support from a few good friends because according to my grandma, I'm going to be haunted by demons for the rest of my life. I was terrified for so long. Although I'm glad I learned that Srw's Wicca was not Wicca at all. It's somewhat hard because not only do I have to hide my books, cards, basically everything that could be considered "Occult" To my mom but I don't get any family support other than my father.

I remember there's been a few times the same cards have popped up in the same position and place. I don't know if that's normal but it doesn't always happen to me.

I think many people have "Double Take" expieriences when they use the Ouija Board. Me, I've tried it once and it killed all curiosity when my friend was pushing it. I've been curious to use a "Oracle Board" or "Angel Board" But I'm a bit skiddish about trying anything that might possibly bring an unwanted presence in my house.  

[patch99329]

Anything that has altered my faith has always been a gradual thing. A gentle push in a particular direction. I'll notice something, do a really slow double take, and eventually accept whats been happeneing.
I'm happier when I stop ignoring stuff. wink

Non faith altering double take moment was my disappearing doorbell man.
He looked right at me, walked round the wall and disappeared in explicably fast surprised  

[Deoridhe]

It's winter.

Our car is old and the electrical system is going. Most notably, it fails in the drivers' side window.

We, or rather the father of my best friend, manages to get it up once after it is stuck down. We drove hours with freezing rain blowing in the window. It was unpleasant.

Four days before she's due to drive to a northern state, during a brief breath of summer in winter, my mother impulsively rolls down the window.

It gets stuck down.

I have the car the day before she's due to leave. I try rolling up the window multiple times during the day, varying every possible thing I can think of. I try it when the car has just turned on, when it's been on a while but idle, when we're driving, when I'm about to turn it off. The window doesn't budge.

I'm driving down to the metro station to pick my mom up. She'll be leaving for the north that night. It's already getting cold again, and the idea of her driving for hours, at night, in winter, north, makes me very upset.

I remember Thor deals with lightning.

As I'm driving to the metro, I speak to him aloud. I explain what the situation is. I apologize for things said of him in the past which were not friendly. I tell him how much alcohol I will offer in his name, and that I will honor him ever-after as kin-guard and noble warrior.

I press the button to raise the window.

It goes up.  

[TeaDidikai]

Deo gave a perfect example. Thanks!

SummerStar is run by one couple I am good friends with.
Another couple has been there since the beginning (to my knowledge) and helps out so much that some people actually think the other couple are the ones who run the festival!

The two women have been up for hours... and hours.... and hours. Sleep dep set in but they kept going.

On their way up to the main gate- the stopped dead in their tracks. They saw something. They looked at each other and then back at it, and then carried on.

This is one of the two "amazing" things that has happened to a woman who has been in the scene since before I was born.  

[RedRoseSpiral]

I haven't had any double take moments that have done anything for me religiously, but I have had a few that are of passing interest.

For months on end I would do tarot card readings for myself either with my own physical deck or with the online deck that originally got me interested in tarot cards and everything I would get the Tower in one of two places in the spread when I did the Celtic Cross spread. There were other cards as well that I would get time after time. Strength was one of them along with the Queen of Pentacles. Known of those would come up as much as the Tower though. For me that was rather freaky.

Another double take I had was when I was in 10th grade. Me and a very good friend were on the bus going to school. It was Friday the 13th, but neither of us really cared. I'm not really superstitious or anything so I didn't think much of the day other than I get to mess with my friends who are. The bus goes past this little field that has one very large tree in it. I'm looking out the window, everything is rather dark and in the field walking a good 40 feet in front of the tree is a being that had to of been at least 8 feet tall if not a bit taller. At that point in time I had already been considered a really weird and ******** up person, so I didn't say anything about what I saw. My friend on the other hand tapped me on the shoulder and was totally freaked out. She had seen it also.  

[TheDisreputableDog]

Thanks for the clarification. smile

When my girlfriend was moving to a new apartment last May, we bribed my friend and now roommate to borrow her dad's minivan to help. We had to move her bed (which is from Ikea so the frame breaks down, but the mattress and box spring do not), her dresser, her bookshelf, and her table (which also breaks down).

So we decide to take the box spring first because it's the biggest and most unwieldy. And of course, it doesn't fit through the back of the van. My friend suggests we can tie it to the top of the van if my girlfriend has any twine. She goes and looks--no luck.

So as we're carrying the box spring back into her apartment, her neighbor walks up to his house. I don't know how well she actually knows this guy, but she asks him if he has any twine. He says he isn't sure but he'll look. So we park the box spring in front of his place for a bit, waiting for him to come back out, with twine or not.

He comes back out with his roommate, who hands my girlfriend a new package of twine after taking off the plastic. When she thanks him and asks if he wants anything back for it, he says:

"No...I bought two things of twine, and I didn't know why I did that. Now I know. It was for you."

We went to Thirsty Dog after the big stuff was all moved and I offered my pizza to Wepwawet in thanks for an opened way. I don't remember anymore whether I had asked for one at the time.  

[Bastemhet]

Well, recently I've had a couple of "whoah" moments when praying to Bast. There were a couple of times in my life when I've felt desperate, and prayed to anything to just help me and feel better. At those times a calming feeling came over me, giving me the strength I needed to overcome my sobs. I never knew who or what gave me that feeling. When I was very afraid of a presence I felt in my room, I prayed to Bast to protect me and banish whatever was there. That calming feeling came over me again and after that I no longer felt that presence. I also realized that Bast had been watching over me all along.

Again, I prayed to Bast to help me find the way to worship her as she should be worshipped. Later that same night while searching on the internet I found a nearby Egyptian reconstructionist group. I e-mailed the man in charge and what he described sounded exactly like what I was looking for.

And another one not related to Bast. I had just become certified in level 1 Reiki and was at a Reiki share. Although after my attunement I felt incredible, I still felt a little cynical as to whether it really would work for me. I laid my hands on a man's right side, and immediately felt the warmth surge to my palms, so strong that they began to sweat. Afterward, I asked him if he didn't mind telling me whether he had any problems in that area, and he admitted that he has chronic kidney stones. That really solidified my belief that reiki really works.  

[godhi]

My favorite moment involving the supernatural? I've been told several times in my life by witches and psychics that I'm a materializing medium--and this may very well be true, as weird things often happen around me and in places rumored to be haunted there is often an increase in paranormal activity when I'm present.
For example, Disneyland is rumored to be haunted by several ghosts, one of whom is a perverse poltergeist who loves playing pranks on the employees in Tomorrowland.
(she is believed to be the ghost of an employee who was crushed to death on the America Sings attraction in 1976)
In the summer of 2003 I was working as a retail clerk in the Star Trader, a gift shop located in Tomorrowland. It was about 11:00 PM in the middle of the week and the shop was almost deserted, and most of the other employees had either gone home or were on break. I was at the cash register cleaning up my work area when one of the drawers used for storing plastic bags suddenly slammed shut on its own--right in front of me.
These are big drawers made from thick plywood and are quite heavy, and it takes considerable effort to open and close them.
At that moment my "sixth sense" went off, and I knew the poltergeist had played a prank on me. It should be noted that there was no one else in the shop at the time, and I made it a point to look around and see if anyone was playing some sort of practical joke. I also examined the drawer for anything out of the ordinary and just found a wooden drawer filled with plastic bags. Definitely a "double-take" moment! sweatdrop  

[Reynai]

I've had a few of those moments myself; but I can't be fully certain about all of them, much of them tends to be a matter of 'I look and I see X, then look again and it's suddenly Y', so I can't be certain whether it's changed, or whether I merely mis-saw or mis-read things.

There are a couple of potentially post-cognitive moments that I have had, however. Both happened years ago, but I still remember them well. The first happened while I was at work at a library. My grandfather was deathly ill, and it was expected that he wouldn't live out the month. While I was working, I found myself humming 'eonia imnimi', one of the church's memorial service hymns. And perhaps ten or twenty minutes later I'm told I have a phone call. And I knew before I picked up the phone that my mother had called to tell of his death.
Admittedly, one could say that it would be a fairly easily-intuited thing that the call to me would be about that, but it still was a double-take moment for me.

And the second was with regards to my Priest at the time. Saturday night, I had a dream of going up to him and his wife during the coffee hour and telling them congratulations. Sunday, during announcements, he relates that his wife is now 3 months pregnant. I suppose she might have started showing prior..but I really hadn't seen a whole lot of her.

Nothing to that degree has happened since, though.  

[Myythren]

When I first "discovered" wicca ( of the worst fluffy kind) I had a lot of things happen. However, looking back, I'm pretty sure I had something else going on. Although I'm not sure if it was that that was already happening that drew me to (fluffy) wicca (since I was looking for an explanation) or that (fluffy) wicca just made me worse. Definitely a break with reality, and probably some minor psychosis or something. Pretty much: Hearing and seeing impossible things and realizing a bit afterward X just didn't or could not have happened.

But I knew it was nuts. So I started to try and ignore it, and I would guess it went away.

But even now, I really have to wonder if there were kernels of truth. I was really open, like I've never been otherwise. A really freaky encounter with Kali for example, and a few more minor ones.

So I don't know. I think the need for validation would be a big part of Mr. Darks. But I also think teens (more so than older people) do feed off each other. So what one person would have brushed off, a group might read as a sign, if that makes any sense at all.  

[Ethermus Prime]

Quote:

My favorite moment involving the supernatural? I've been told several times in my life by witches and psychics that I'm a materializing medium--and this may very well be true, as weird things often happen around me and in places rumored to be haunted there is often an increase in paranormal activity when I'm present.

I'm the complete reverse. I've a number of people tell me that I am a "Bright-soul"; and when ever we go to these places where there are rumored to be particurally violent spirits.....Nothing; and this feeling of "someone is hiding" manifests itself in everyone.  

[Ulfrikr inn Hrafn]

Heilsan Allir,

There were two very powerful experiences very early on in my work with Runes which solidified my 'belief'. As you can probably guess, I am a natural born sceptic, and am very dubious on 'those' types of experiences. That being said...

Experience 1: As much as I loathe D J Conway, the book Norse Magic has 'prayers' in the back of it. Very early on in my practice (we're talking probably 1992) I recited said 'prayer' to Freyja and there was a palpable prescence there with me at my side. Now, the sceptic in me states that I could have brought on such an experience myself, however, the intensity of the feeling far outweighed anything I am consciously capable of. My unconscious mind also is very firm on the experience being 'other-worldly'.

Experience 2: One evening around the similar time frame, I was visited in my room by a dark presence which, I have come to the conclusion was a landvaettir of some description. The entity was just checking me out, but I must say, it's one of the few times in my life I have felt true fear. Indeed, I've not had an experience like it since. Once again, the sceptic in me considers that this could be a self induced experience, however, once again my unconscious mind is adamant that the experience did indeed occur, and that it was indeed a landvaettir.

Ver thu heil