A Fork on the Floor, a Woman at the Door

Part two. Superstition to Magick. Writers Are Witches series

Did you know if you drop a fork on the floor of your kitchen, a woman will show up at your door? This is a real superstition in some cultures.

One morning my wife --who had never heard of the belief-- dropped a fork on the kitchen floor.

A woman's going to come to the door, I said.

And sure enough, less than an hour later, her stepmother came to the door, delivering some chili colorado she had made.

That’s crazy that it really happened! my wife told me later, holding up a fork full of pork.

The day this superstition was confirmed is burned into our memories, because it was a novel and surprising event, the two pillars of episodic memory.

But let’s go deeper:

Thanks to the work of neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, we know that memories are not encoded according to the details alone, but by the meaning they carry for us. Quiroga is famous for discovering the Jennifer Aniston Neuron –a neuron that fires when we see, hear about, or remember Jennifer Aniston. People who never heard of her don’t have one, but we all must have a Donald Trump Neuron, which sparks neurons in our brains dedicated to Trump.

The Trump neuron fires when you see his image, hear his name, or think about him. In fact, you don’t have a single neuron, but a network dedicated to him and what he means to you. Some people might protest and say, I don’t have a Trump neuron! He means nothing to me! But as long as you know who he is, one of your 86 billion neurons will fire and spark other neurons connected to the meaning of him. Memories are not important to us because of the facts, but because of the meaning.

If you dislike him, the neurons may trigger activity in your brain that will cause anger or disgust. If you love him and think he’s the savior of the world, like this T-shirt I saw in Bowie, AZ, when the Trump neurons fire, you might get a hit of dopamine that will animate you and put you in a positive mood.

So back to fork on the floor.

I have neurons dedicated to the memory of my suegra showing up at the door after Jolene dropped the fork, and every time they spark, they lights up other neurons, like the Chili-Colorado Neuron, the Jolene Neuron, the suegra neuron. At simply recalling the event, my brain lights up like a Los Angeles Freeway, and when you have neuronal paths that you use over and over again, it creates metaphorical “ruts” in your brain and makes it hard NOT to use those paths. My brain cannot discard the idea that a fork falling means someone will come to the door, and if it happens twice, which is statistically possible if you consider how many times in one’s life they drop a fork on the floor, I will encode that more than I will those times when no one shows up at the door.

Science knows, without much doubt, that the world we experience, the landscape or the arena, is not the “real” world. We don’t see the real world, like the radio waves passing through our bodies from every direction or the thermal radiation glowing from the leaves of a tree, because there’s no reason to notice. We are aware of what serves our evolutionary imperatives, to continue to be and to flourish. The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman writes, ". . . organisms that saw truth went extinct when they competed against organisms that saw no truth, only—what evolutionary theorists call—'fitness payoffs.'" That is to say, we see as real the things we think we need or want.

Dropping a fork means a woman will show up at my door. Even though sometimes I’ll drop a fork and no woman will come, my brain does not encode that information as much, because it’s not directed towards my Will or beliefs. If I were a scientist and my will was to test a hypothesis, the first time a woman doesn’t show at the door, I will no longer accept it as a plausible theory, and even if it happens again, I will know that to believe the fork caused it would be a logical error called the Texas Sharp Shooter fallacy. If I shoot 100 bullets at a target and two of them hit, I ignore the other 98 that missed and proclaim myself a sharpshooter.

Ten years later I could drop a fork again, a woman shows up, and once again it “proves” the superstition is real.

Superstition is like magick, because if you believe you can predict something based on an action, you cause that action. You change the arena. In fact (and this is an important step), you can amplify the definition of “comes to the door.” You can think of it as the doors of perception or a memory door opening up, so that when you drop a fork, a door will open in your brain and you will recall or think of a woman, and you will find that every time this happens, the meaning of that person that pops into your head is aligned with and can reinforce your goals. You can create thoughts that work in parallel with other mechanisms that create your reality. If the first “door” to open is an image flashing in my mind of a colleague, Sylvia, I can consider her image like a sigil that can be used to cause change. I might realize that in order for me to achieve a certain professional goal, I should seek her help. That’s why she walked into my mind. She’s the one I need.

One of the more obvious examples of this phenomenon is this scenario from Get-Rich Philosophy:

If you go on a trip BELIEVING that you are going to meet a person who will provide a great business opportunity–or whatever it is that you seek -- you will be aware enough all day to be able to identify that person when they cross your path, even if it’s only to overhear a conversation that sparks a million-dollar idea.

Superstitions becomes magick when you take control of the data.

That’s how the Law of Attraction works.

That’s how Intention works. Manifestation. Think and Grow Rich.

Want to be rich?

It’s easy.

(Part three will look at The Law of Attraction and how to convert structures into scaffolds, swords into ploughshares.)