Is there a genetic reason for second sight?
Recently I talked about my series of turtle omens. And we often share stories about knowing things we either shouldn’t know or that we know in advance (like when you avoid a certain road or get a bad feeling about a walk home).
Most folk have had moments like that, and, sadly, these moments are not experienced as magical at all – they are dismissed or explained away.
Science is finally taking these moments seriously
What I find interesting is that science is finally taking these moments seriously enough to study them.
Slowly, and with plenty of argument about whether the results hold up, questions about these phenomena are being asked in laboratories, which is more than you could say a generation ago.
One study circulating comes from the Institute of Noetic Sciences. They screened over three thousand people to find thirteen who they judged genuinely psychic, sequenced their DNA, and compared it with that of a control group.
Across the roughly 20,000 genes that encode our proteins, the two groups looked identical. The one difference sat in a non-coding stretch, the part we used to dismiss as “junk DNA,” next to a gene called TNRC18.
Non-psychics
An unusual variant showed up in the non-psychics. The psychics all carried the plain, original version of the sequence. The study by itself was small and might not mean anything, but it makes sense to me…
We now know that genes can be switched on and off without the underlying code changing at all, often in response to the environment, stress, and experience.
Christian Europe spent centuries teaching people to fear and hide anything resembling folk magic, witchcraft, healing, second sight, and prophecy outside of the control of the church.
Witch trials
The witch trials killed somewhere between forty and sixty thousand people, 75-80% of them women, across about three hundred years. Whole lineages learned that the safest thing to do with a gift was to bury it and say nothing.
My speculation is, what if generations of that fear left a mark?
Centuries of fear could have affected the genetics of entire families, keeping the door to psychic gifts safely shut.
If, as the research might suggest, there’s an epigenetic link to our magic, then perhaps it’s dormant or subdued rather than gone, waiting to be coaxed back and turned up.
And that’s what I find anecdotally in my work all the time. It worked for me, and I have natural gifts. I’ve seen it work for folks with no discernible “natural talent”. One lady described herself as having the psychic skills of a doorknob – she now reads for others all the time.
What are your thoughts on my musings (in I language, please)? 🥰