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October 8, 2005 7:55am by David Farrar

NZ good place to study witchcraft

NZPA reports that a Taiwanese witch has been quoted as saying

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mikey bill

Well if you can study theology and get fees paid for learning about George Bush’s invisible friend in the sky, what makes studying witchcraft any different? It’s all for the sad and mad. But I agree, I can’t say with any confidence the report is wrong.Alas.
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October 8, 2005 10:05am
PJ

I’m with David on this one, but find mikey’s response offensive. While finding his response offensive I didn’t call him sad or mad for failing to accept that he doesn’t know everything.
There is a positive side. How much foreign money did we score in training this licensed mystic?
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October 8, 2005 11:55am
Jules van Cruysen

If you are talking about the acedemic study of wicca vic is brilliant.
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October 8, 2005 12:15pm
dim

Who teaches ‘wicca’ at VUW? I don’t know of any such courses.

I think mikeys point is very salient – what’s the difference between teaching wicca and Christian theology?
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October 8, 2005 12:56pm
mikeybill

Some of my best friends have very strong religous beliefs, honestly. Some are Christian, some Jewish, some Muslim, some Buddhist, some into “new age” – and calling them all sad or mad was a cheap shot I know, but I fail to see any real difference between them in terms of student loans, qualifications and so forth. Getting a Bachelor in Theology from St Johns College or its equivalent in practicing white witchcraft and tarot card reading – I fail to see any qualitative difference.
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October 8, 2005 1:13pm
mara

The Govmint acknowledges that we have Taniwha but who knows much about them?Bring on the degree course I say.
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October 8, 2005 1:33pm
Aaron Bhatnagar

And the left at Auckland City Council gave $2500 for seances earlier this year- communicating with the dead.
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October 8, 2005 3:16pm
Ordinary Kiwi

Aaron: Because Banksie’s political career wasn’t answering its calls?
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October 8, 2005 9:36pm
baxter

Then it is said or at least implied that there are good grounds to believe that a witches’coven commands the ninth floor of the beehive
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October 9, 2005 5:24pm
Logix

Actually I think if we are a little generous it may turn out that the term ‘witchcraft’ is a mistranslation. From what I can read the course could be best described as “fringe naturopathy”, something I have had a passing familiarity with over the years.

And before anyone goes sceptic over animal homeopathy for example, bear in mind that for those who use it routinely, it works. And in so working on animals, it demolishes the old “placebo” canard. There are plenty of things official medicine and science cannot explain. I’ve directly and personally experienced a few of these things along the way, so I’m inclined to keep an open mind about all sorts of naturopathic modalities, that at first encounter appear quite nutty.

How about giving this story the benefit of the doubt and go with the idea that the word “witchcraft” was a poor choice, where perhaps “naturopathy” or “natural healing” may have better served.

No news here, move along.
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October 9, 2005 10:13pm
Aaron Bhatnagar

Ordinary Kiwi – I think you mean Hekia Parata’s political career.
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October 9, 2005 11:03pm
dim

‘[homeopathy]. . . for those who use it routinely, it works.’

Pity it fails every properly run clinical trial – including those involving animals – it’s ever been subjected to.

If any of these alternative medicines could be proved to really work they’d become standard medicine and the people who provided the proof that ‘water has memory’ (or whatever) would all get Nobel Prizes and become millionaires. Hasn’t happened and I doubt it ever will.
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October 10, 2005 7:43am
Logix

> Pity it fails every properly run clinical trial

Not the time and place to go into a big discussion about it, but the very nature of homeopathy, and most non-standard medicine, is that being intensively patient centered it is very hard to device any form of clinical trial that makes sense.

Standard trials make the assumption that they same “medicine” applied to a large number of people will have the same effect, and is solely concerned with meaasureable physical symptoms. Homeopathy assumes the exact opposite, and regards mental symptoms as being the most important. For this reason clinical trials that are framed by the standard medical paradigm, fail to work in the other.

The standard western model of medicine is very good at some things, typically acute injuries, infections and surgery. Typically however it struggles to deal with the more chronic illnesses that are deeper seated. Any experienced doctor will tell you that there many things he/she does not understand, nor cannot treat, and if they are perceptive, will tell you that the human mind and body are deeply linked in ways the standard model cannot even reach.

Now I am not going to die in a ditch here defending every non-standard therapy I have ever come across, but at the same time it is worth remembering that even in the standard model, almost all the original breakthrough discoveries, were denounced by the establishment. It is a pattern as old as history, and should cause us to be a little humble making judgements on things we know little about.

And if homeopathy is just water or sugar pills, what is the harm, and why such derision? It is not like it kills people at the rate standard medicine does.
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October 10, 2005 8:38am
woppo

Chinese witch reads Harry Potter in NZ.
Homeopathy replaces homosexuality as subject of next moral panic.
50/50 chance we’re f*cked.
Bewdy.
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October 10, 2005 9:37am
johnie

Homeopathy has been shown to be ineffective in scientific tests, so its supporters deny the applicability of science to homeopathy. It must be a religion…
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October 10, 2005 10:08am
Logix

That’s ok johnie…you don’t have to use it.

Besides if

> It must be a religion…

can we apply for tax free status then?
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October 10, 2005 10:21am

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