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here's a fun, spooky tidbit: i generated the image at the end of this post in Dall-E 2 AI using the prompt "photograph of a group of translucent human figures at night on the side of a mountain." that was the entire prompt. obviously, i had the Dyatlov incident in mind at the time.

how many figures do you count in the image?

i see nine.

there were nine victims at Dyatlov Pass.

pure coincidence, of course.

welcome to Phasmatopia.

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Great post! Have you given thought to the invocation of the concept of 'Titan' in the names. After all these were the gods defeated by the Olympians in the Titanomachy.

Perhaps invoking the defeated enemies of the Olympians whilst simultaneously pushing the limits of human hubris wasn't such a great idea.

I haven't seen any commentary on this point but it jumped out at me straight away.

Keep up the great work.

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wow! Jeff, that's an excellent connection that i hadn't even considered. it fits perfectly: "the vanquished Titans were banished from the upper world and held imprisoned under guard in Tartarus." i'm not too sharp with Greek mythology, but Wikipedia describes Tartarus as a "deep abyss." that's a *terrible* name to invoke for a giant ship traveling over "the abyss"—and how many people onboard the Titanic had previously been referred to, or referred to themselves, as "titans of industry?" then Stockton Rush doubled down by using a name that invoked both the vanquished proto-gods *and also* the original maritime disaster.

there's also something in here that dovetails with Rhyd's recent post about sacrifices: https://rhyd.substack.com/p/climate-chaos-and-forgotten-agreements

this is the analogy i was grasping for and couldn't quite reach when i wrote my post: some events (and their precursors) create vortexes in the psychospiritual landscape, the way planets bend spacetime around them. it looks like such a vortex is forming around "the curse of the Titans."

outstanding work, Jeff. thank you so much for the wonderful contribution.

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I adore that you are writing things like this.

I think the most blatantly obvious evidence of a successful human-driven curse is what happened to Jason Russell, the guy who made the documentary KONY 2012. Sure, we can try to explain what happened to him without recourse to "superstition," but even then it's really difficult to call it "just a nervous breakdown." Don't fuck with leaders surrounding themselves with magicians. https://www.tmz.com/2012/03/18/jason-russell-video-naked-meltdown-kony/

On the matter of place-specific curses, it's always been quite amusing to me how Americans seem the least likely to believe in them and yet relentlessly references Native American burial ground curses as a fictional trope in films, television, books, and even as jokes.

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ha! hadn't heard about Jason Russell, that's bang on.

of course, no witnesses reported Russell being pursued by a malevolent, sentient black cloud taking the form of a cackling skull, therefore it couldn't *possibly* be a curse. just a regular ol' psychotic break, happens all the time, nothing to see here, move along.

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What's also amusing is that many Christians who actually believe in curses somehow managed not to allow themselves to admit this is what happened. Because of course, Russell was on the side of Christ so how could "Satan's minions" have affected him like that?

That weird secular denialism even affects their thinking, too.

Also, Kony's still kicking it. And funny enough, he's a fascinating example of the same kind of syncretic Christianity one saw in the early church. Believes in the holy spirit and the ten commandments and hunting witches, while also channeling spirits and using local magical practices to keep from getting caught ...

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I remember attending several of Russell’s Invisible Children events as a college student, including a protest in Washington DC with my sister. I later heard he’d had a mental break but hadn’t thought about it in terms of him being cursed. You make an interesting point.

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Jul 17, 2023·edited Jul 17, 2023Liked by R. G. Miga

Uh, this is so good. So many memories from training come to mind, especially the day when our teacher smilingly told the T'ai Chi class that 'leaning was unlucky'. It is: you are much more easily tripped up, manipulated or unbalanced by an opponent, plus you are slower to move. So uprightness way 'lucky'. Obviously he laughed and explained the conceit, but nevertheless it worked. And most of the Taoist Classics have sections describing what practices are 'auspicious' or inauspicious'. These mnemonics make remembering best practice much easier and help the learner avoid common pitfalls. Perhaps curses are a somehow useful shadow aspect of 'using the false to cultivate the real' I need to think about this.

Interestingly, the feel of phasmatopia is strongly present in several of Marcel Theroux's novels, have you read them? Especially 'Strange Bodies', 'Far North' and 'The Secret Books'.

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Jul 17, 2023·edited Jul 17, 2023Author

yes! perfect example. from the point of view of the student or the sailor, the feeling of lucky/unlucky or auspicious/inauspicious has an emotional valance that makes it more resonant than a technical description of the various ways that elemental forces like balance, tides, winds etc. can affect us. luck is a survival within modernity of older metaphysical understanding: it's a non-material force with its own rules to which humans are subjected. even if we don't believe in it intellectually, we know what it feels like. it clings to us. for that reason, i would be cautious about the framing of "the false" and "the real"; it might be more accurately described as "the immaterial informing the material."

and i haven't read any Marcel Theroux yet, i'll definitely add that to my list. between these and Dougald's recommendation i have a lot of reading to look forward to!

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Agreed!

And also 'the false' and 'the real' have a different connotation here, than their everyday use, as in this sense the 'false' thing, is actually also real Perhaps confusing... but strangely useful for Taoism and T'ai Chi.

Really enjoying your work.

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Jul 15, 2023·edited Jul 15, 2023Liked by R. G. Miga

I like how you continue to make what appears impossible under a strictly rational materialist system seem plausible—this ability is a magic in its own right!

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thank you so much! that's the goal: i'm a big believer in liminal spaces, and writing has a unique power for creating them.

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I'd have thought anyone who was paying attention would understand that phasmatopia is a real phenomenon. Something like that has been part of my intellectual toolkit for a long time. Thanks for giving it a name which is both cool and appropriate.

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cheers! i agree—it's one of those annoying cases within modernity, where we need to re-invent words for realities that older cultures have always had.

unfortunately, i'm a dumb, monolingual American, so i need to come up with a fancypants Greek word to describe what I'm trying to talk about. i'm sure there are plenty of other cultures in which that would seem like a precocious toddler making up their own word for "sky." we do the best with what we've got.

thanks for reading and commenting, and keep an eye out for an upcoming piece that will explore "phasmatopia" as a concept more thoroughly.

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