What are you talking about? From the headline on, "Former New Ager Explains Potter Danger," to her stating her expertise as an expert on the occult, that is exactly what she is saying.
I see a FReeper obstinately clinging to an opinion that has no basis in the author's words.
What did the author say?:
So, for those readers who believe Harry Potter's world to be a harmless fantasy or the science of magic to be the stuff of educative fairy tales, let me dispel those myths (no pun or magic intended) right up front....Truth be told, I graduated from these authors in my early teens into more meaty topics such as ESP, ghost hunting and parapsychology, experimenting with Ouiji boards, telepathy games, and automatic writing.
So, you don't believe someone who admits to believing in "ESP, ghost hunting and parapsychology" and who experimented with "Ouiji boards, telepathy games, and automatic writing" as having problems distinguishing fantasy from reality? I do.
This you both accomplished by distorting the grammatical contruction of the author's words in this passage:
"...may I introduce myself as a former New Age "healer" and advanced yoga practitioner. Many of the delightfully described magical arts in the Harry Potter series were pretty standard fare in training courses I mastered to some degree or another, including telepathy, divination, energy-work, necromancy, geomancy and time travel, to name but a few. I was quite close friends with wizards, warlocks and witches alike - all of us (psychologists, physicists, & other professionals) being in the business of the new science of the mind, defending our studies together as being of the white magic category, much like the wizardry school of Harry Potter.
Clearly, the author's word "mastered" takes as its object the "training courses" she engaged in as a "New Age 'healer' and...practitioner" (a phase of her life to which she refers with...dare I say it?...irony).
Clearly, she is NOT claiming powers of telepathy, necromancy, time travel, and other occult "arts," but rather an understanding of the the BUSINESS of hawking them.
So the passage quoted above, by any adult reading (by an adult conversant with grammar, that is), is not some wacko listing of the author's success in witchery, but a demonstration of her qualifications for judging the Harry Potter enterprise by listing her experience in the "business of the new science of the mind."
For J.K. Rowling is doing the same thing the author used to do: hawking the occult as a business.
The main difference between Rowling and this author is that Rowling is hawking her occult wares to the young and impressionable. AND, that Rowling is making multiple millions at it.
You are again committing misrepresentation of the author's meaning, though this time you do not use grammatical legerdemain as noted in post 154, but sheer dishonesty.
The author does not "admit" to currently "believing in" ESP, ghost hunting, etc. (Nor does she say she ever "believed in" those things, for that matter.) She is speaking of her past dabblings in these practices as a teenager -- again, for the purpose of demonstrating her experience in the same areas of the occult as Rowling purveys in her books.
An honest reading of the author's article would lead to the conclusion that the author definitely does NOT now "believe in" these practices, if she ever did.
Your post 153, OTOH, again provokes the conclusion that you are, indeed, a superior person. You have never, since birth, had a foolish thought, taken a foolish class, or "believed in" a foolish thing. I bow down to your superior wisdom!