Urth Net
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↰ answers Gerry Quinn
· by quotation
2 quoted lines
Gerry Quinn: It’s not magic — it’s bad science
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: It seems to me that what the sorcerers in the woods do is "real" magic. .."psi" is a fancy word for magic.
I think the text duplicates this discussion:
2 quoted lines
The Cumaean looked up at Dorcas with eyes that seemed as bright as the stars. “Words are symbols. Merryn chooses to delimit magic as that which does not exist” and so it does not exist. If you choose to call what we are about to do here magic then magic lives while we do it.
Gerry Quinn: In a few cases in insular Melanesia, indigenous flesh-markets existed. And of course we know of cases when shipwrecked sailors or other groups of isolated survivors ate human flesh to survive.
My statement about cultural prescribed cannibalism not being for the purpose of nutrition stands. Famine and starvation cannibalism occurs despite cultural proscriptions against it. And Melanesia includes the Papua-New Guinea tribes I gave as examples. Human flesh-markets there were selling courage not protein, just as Chinese rhino horn dealers are selling sexual potency, not keratin for nourishment.
fwiw- Starvation really wasn't a problem for tribal Melanisians. They had so many pigs they occasionally had to engage in ritual pig slaughter and engorgement, vomiting up one pork meal to make room for the next one.