Bear...it's time for you to move to Romania!

So you will agree that there is such a thing as "luck"? Some sort of dynamic energy or something that affects the odds if only through the power of positive thinking?

If I give you a charm for good luck, and because we both believe that in creating that charm it was imbued with some form of sacredness, and then unlikely events transpire favourably; then is it truly unreasonable to consider that there might be something to it? Now factor in that the symbols and such are based on historic ideas as well as modern notions.

But like I said at the beginning, you'd toss the O.R. rationale out as a trump. I know differently.

Dan never owned a lucky anything. You had a boring childhood.

No luck socks. No lucky glove. No Lucky Charms. (They're magically delicious!) No luck day. No lucky hat.

Luck?

You make your own luck.

Relying on luck alone will fail every time.

So you didn't have a lucky helmet? Lucky jock guard? Lucky elbow pads? tell me.

Its usually like added ammo. Not the sole support.

Dang!!! I was right.

You can believe in lucky as deeply as you want but if you don't have the skills to do 'X' luck will probably fail you.

Dude, that's where the luck comes in. Like if your opponent or a key player on the other team drops dead.

That's damn lucky if you were losing.

Sure but it's rare.

I mean yeah sometimes you get lucky. It happens to everyone but I'll say it again: "Luck favors the prepared."

You'll say it?

SIMPLE EXPLAINATION OF THE HUMAN MIND AND WHY MAGICK HAPPENS:

Consider that all matter is energy. The difference between what exists as a material, measuable object and something we theoretically "cannot percieve", then, can be subject to the concept that parallel dimensions, for example, can therefore exist at a different energetic "frequency". The brain (of any animal) acts somewhat as a radio reciever of sorts, picking up the vibrations around them. Each person, plant, rock, whathaveyou has thier own personal frequency of existance, which is in truth thier "reality". These things are constantly giving off energy and recieving energy, whether in the form of communication, emotion or whatever.

Humans are especially sensitive to the energies and vibrations, mostly due to the large amount of grooves on the brain (more grooves = bigger surface for energetic reception. Fish brains are practically smooth). THis explains the fact that humand have become the dominant species, not to mention our uncanny ability to CREATE. We INVENT things. We have the ability to conjure fantastically things from what we see around us. This stems from out ability to actually control the energies around us to a degree. I'm sure no-one in the world can say that they've never "gotten a bad feeling" about something, without knowing anything about it whatsoever. Intuition is a form of magick.

"Magic(k)" is essentially doing the same thing, but on a much more subtle level. Magick manipulates the energies within and around the object it is intended towards, whether through herbal remedies, focused intention or simple communion with the intended. As has been said; it's just giving the course of the energy a little "nudge" in the desired direction. A favourable crosswind with an unseen fan, if you will.

As for the notion of selling remedies for profit, as soon as a person makes a conscious decision to do something or not do something, the fates are already tipping. No good luck charm will work if the person isn't wholly involved with the intent. If they don't believe it will work, it won't. The more desperate they are, the more they're willing to give. There's a very fine line between offering help and taking advantage. However, in a lot of cases, paying way too much for something will either make you believe it will work (in sheer denial that you paid that much) or teach you a valuable lesson: Not to buy anything you don't really want. If they want it that bad, and will pay that much, there's a high likelyhood that they gave great faith in the power of the charm or healing. Thusly, it WILL work because they believe in it so much. The placebo effect is not an evil thing until you realise that you didn't get what you paid for. Once you realise it worked anyway, you might still buy it.

You fail at imagination, Dan. Fail.

You're just weird. This is why you never get laid.

it's his head.
The fuckin thing is HUGE!

That's the key there, not "it happens" or even "it is more likely to happen", but "it has happened".

When retrospectively looking at something you can always find low chance situations which happened simply because odds do say that unlikely things will happen from time to time. There will be people carrying pendants who had unlikely things happen, there will be people who prayed to their god and had something happen. There will even be people who went in expecting the odds to not fall in their favour who had something unlikely happen.

It is extraordinarily easy to test statistics in experiments, if there was any effect which did tilt odds in peoples favour it will extraordinarily easy to demonstrate.

Even if it only worked in 1/10 cases, if it had any more effect than any other factor it would be easy to prove.

Not so much. If you want to believe in some unprovable magick then have fun, just don't try to give it a scientific explanation, because the instant you do you open it to scientific scrutiny.

There's no such thing as low key magic. It's all a bunch of bullshit.