On the Topic of Divination

    I've been very much into science for a good portion of my life, but in High School and amidst the awkwardness of adolescence I had a mystic/spiritual/thing phase. It started in seventh grade but didn't really manifest completely until my sophomore year in High School. Something happened that year that just made me not give a shit about a lot of things and I had to find something else to turn my energy towards. I was really into new agey "celtic" stuff, lots of tarot,  cryptozoology, paranormal things including ghosts and auras, even started to look up "spells" at the chagrin of my older brother. If it had anything to do with the exact opposite of what I'm doing now I was all about it. No proof if it even exists? No problem! I used the excuse of keeping an open mind to justify everything while the entire time my brain was saying "you know this is bullshit, right?" In a time when a lot of people I knew started doing heavy drugs to find better understanding I turned to fantasy and probably would have played D&D if I knew more people who played it.What started as an interest ended as a means of some comfort and guidance when I otherwise couldn't get any. To say I became obsessed with the idea of being able to tell the future wouldn't be quite right but it always was something I had strong feelings toward since my first feeling of Deja Vu when I was six or seven. I turned my back on religion when I was pretty young and since the science thing wasn't working for me at the time I guess I had to turn to other means of guidance, lord knows I couldn't turn to family.This lasted into my early twenties and then I just gave it up, believed in nothing for a year or two, then found science again.
    It's tough not believing in something, looking back on the experience it gives me insight to those who turn to religion, sometimes we just need that comfort of something else making our choices for us. I still have fun with the I Ching every so often but the tarot cards and "magick" books are long gone, buried in a trash heap along RT 94 in North Jersey with a lot of other things I used to believe in. Adolescence isn't easy, [for guys anyway] it starts when you're thirteen and goes until you're twenty-three. Ten years of uncertainty, frustration, and severe lack of guidance is enough to drive most people mad, no wonder personality disorders manifest during these years. As far as divination goes, it's just another thing and has about as much hold as organized crime, religion, and mathematics [Great Gauss, who may or may not be in a heaven or any afterlife for that matter but we do know you are quite dead unless of course reincarnation is a thing, hallowed be thy theorems], it's something to get behind and something to believe in, and a lot of times people need that.