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Autism and magic

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

17:32 / 11.12.03

MordantCarnival suggested that someone move this discussion away from the "David Byrne: Voodoo Vampire?" thread. So I'll put the question out there to people:

Do you think there is a connection between autism and magic? In what way?

I brought up the point that there was a recent study done of Silicon Valley programmers and their children that charted a marked rise in autistic tendencies and behaviors among these individuals. The tendency towards mathematical and programming skills of the parents, if accentuated in the child, could produce, coupled with an autistic individual's increased sensitivity to sensory stimuli, a greater skill with something like gematria or other mathematically-derived disciplines.

Illmatic raised the point of a pair of twins in Oliver Sacks' book of case studies, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat". The twins were severly autistic and communicated in 9-figure prime numbers. Illmatic then made the point that Crowley claimed that there were hidden gematric cyphers in holy books that pointed to a higher being.

18:16 / 11.12.03

An actual quote from a recent party, immortalized in Red Meat.

This is what I get for casually discussing the differences between Crowley's major arcana and the GD system, in relation to insights found by mapping personal sigels to patterns on the tree of life and examining the paths used to generate a tarot spread while others are trying to get high and have fun other ways.

So yea, just amused that this has come up recently for me as well.

And don't even get me started on pudding.

Back to topic, I think that gemetric practice absolutely benefits from autism. As seen in the Issian threads, it can involve creative use of math and relations in maddeningly complex ways. There is a certain attention to detail that speaks of the condition. Though I'll have to say that there is still a big difference between autism and autistic tendencies, as the former suggests a near complete inability to communicate with others or relate to reality in "normal" ways. It speaks of an obsession with a particular type of thinking to the point of disability in other areas.

Personally, I think the connection between mild scitzophrenia and OCD is stronger to magickal practice, what with the tendency to see patterns in things others do not, speak with things not there, and allow superstition to become a power of its own. But Autism may be present to some degree with the select branch of obsessive code breaking that exists in magical studies such as gemetra.

21:13 / 11.12.03

My sister is autistic. She would never be able to do gematria. Autism entails a lot of things other than attention to detail. Things like an extremely short attention span.

21:35 / 11.12.03

cusm, thanks for the fucking hilarious Red Meat link. That guy's a genius. Somebody has to set Fetch on that shit...

04:51 / 12.12.03

My deep seated loathing/respect for my good friend/tormenter cusm has resulted in me joining these forums as well. Glad you enjoyed my red meat creations

BTW who's fetch?

08:20 / 12.12.03

Welcome soulkry! Fetch is one of our resident Gematricians (nods to aurum23). If only I could link to Red Meat I'd be laughing, but since I can't share your fun (work firewalls) I'll just cry in the corner, on my own...

Following Lebra, I don't think autism and magic work well together. I think certain autistic personality traits (mild OCD, dreaminess, etc) are common in magicians, as cusm says above, but the full blown thing is too crippling to allow magical study.

13:03 / 12.12.03

I have always believed that magic could help autistic people in some way, since I perceive autism as people who are stuck in diferent state(s) of awareness, and some magical practices can modify awareness...

13:36 / 12.12.03

Bard: do you have any more info on the original study?

I'm a third-gen programmer (grandfather worked on scary vacuum-tube Room Things). I'm also a rather intuitive practising mage-sort, and exhibit quite a few autistic tendencies, if not a full-blown disorder.

I tend to consider it a Different Way Of Thinking, and, oddly, it helps me code.

15:16 / 12.12.03

Somebody has to set Fetch on that shit...

Its entirely his fault, too. After all that Issian malarky, my brain just hasn't quite been the same...

Though really, its just a demonstration that you can find occult insight in just about anything if you look hard enough.

*mutters about fractal intelligent reality*

17:18 / 12.12.03

Quantum: "I think certain autistic personality traits (mild OCD, dreaminess, etc) are common in magicians, as cusm says above, but the full blown thing is too crippling to allow magical study."

From what I have heard, though (and I know very little about autism, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong), there are certain types of high-functioning autism that are still considered to be "real" autism (not just "autism-oid tendencies" or something) but which is often not even diagnosed until late in life (if at all) - the person with autism just seems "very very odd," and might appear to be simply obsessive-compulsive about patterns and the like.

There was an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent (not the most scholarly source, I know, but they seem to put a lot of emphasis on researching their often obscure plot points) where a major one-off character - a forensic accountant - turned out to have high-functioning autism (a complete surprise to him, as it turned out). He was a brilliant accountant, with a tremendous analytic mind, but his thought patterns and behavior strongly suggested autism of this particular type (it had a clinical name, I think derived from the doctor who "discovered" it, but I can't remember it now). It also thoroughly shook up the main detective on the show, because of the many uncanny similarities with his own (often unconventional) thought patterns. Good episode. :P

Anyway, the point is: while people with what we usually think of as autism may not have the capacity for prolonged magical study, this character (yeah, I know...) was clearly capable of doing such a thing - if he could handle forensic accounting, he could handle gematria, yes? Now, perhaps L&O stretched things a bit for dramatic purposes, but I don't think they would have completely invented a "new form of autism" for the show? They could have just given him OCD or something, but they chose autism.

If anyone has any more concrete information about types of autism...?

~L

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

01:46 / 13.12.03

Unseelie, you to?

Unfortunatly I didn't think to keep the article. But if you go to the Globe and Mail's website you may be able to pull it up. I'm unsure.

I also notice several autistic tendencies in myself (I have a friend who has an autistic son, she made that observation), which is why I related somewhat to the article.