* Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "country dweller", "rustic") is a blanket term used to refer to various polytheistic, non-Abrahamic religious traditions.

* Local religions practiced before the introduction of Christianity; A class of religions often associated with nature rituals

* Pagan - heathen: not acknowledging the God of Christianity and Judaism and Islam

* Telling fortunes by lines on the palm of the hand

* Palmistry or chiromancy (also spelled cheiromancy, Greek cheir (χειρ), “hand”; manteia (μαντεία), “divination”), is the art of characterization and foretelling the future through the study of the palm, also known as palm reading, or chirology

* The art of reading palms for divination

* A theory that there is a mirror universe and when one makes a decision in this universe, an alternate 'you' in the other universe makes the opposite decision

An experience, sight or sound which defies all known laws of science.

Para meaning beyond or beside hence paranormal beyond the normal.

unexplainable by modern day science.

Not necessarily a ghostly or spiritual experience.

* Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method

* Parapsychological experiments have included the use of random number generators to test for evidence of precognition and psychokinesis with both human and animal subjects[2][3][4] and Ganzfeld experiments to test for extrasensory perception

* The study of that which cannot yet be explained; psychic or occult phenomena, such as telepathy and ghosts

* Parapsychologist - someone who studies the evidence for such psychological phenomena as psychokinesis and telepathy and clairvoyance

* Scientific investigation of the paranormal

The term pareidolia (pronounced /pɛɹaɪˈdoliə/ or /pæɹaɪˈdəʊliə/), referenced in 1994 by Steven Goldstein,[1] describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- — beside, with or alongside — and eidolon — image (the diminutive of eidos — image, form, shape). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.

Examples

Religious

There have been many instances of perceptions of religious imagery and themes, especially the faces of religious figures, in ordinary phenomena. Many involve images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or the word Allah.

In 1978, a New Mexican woman found that the burn marks on a tortilla she had made appeared similar to Jesus Christ's face. Thousands of people came to see the framed tortilla.[2]

The recent publicity surrounding sightings of religious figures and other surprising images in ordinary objects, combined with the growing popularity of online auctions, has spawned a market for such items on eBay. One famous instance was a grilled-cheese sandwich with the Virgin Mary's face.[3]

Rorschach test

Main article: Rorschach inkblot test

The Rorschach inkblot test uses pareidolia to attempt to gain insight into a person's mental state.[2]

Audio

In 1971, Konstantin Raudive wrote Breakthrough, detailing what he believed was the discovery of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). EVP has been described as auditory pareidolia.[2]

The allegations of backmasking in popular music have also been described as pareidolia.[2]

Explanations

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human being are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility, but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces.[4]

Clarence Irving Lewis

In his 1929 book Mind and the World Order, epistemologist and logician Clarence Irving Lewis, a founder of the philosophical school of conceptual pragmatism, used the question of how to determine whether a perception is a mirage as a touchstone for his philosophical approach to knowledge. Lewis argued that one has no way of knowing whether or not perceptions are "true" in any absolute sense; all one can do is determine whether one's purpose is thwarted by regarding it as true and acting on that basis. According to this approach, two people with two different purposes will often have different views on whether or not to regard a perception as true. [5]

Pareidolia (pronounced /pærɪˈdoʊliə/ pa-ri-DOE-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- – "beside", "with", or "alongside"—meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong (as in paraphasia, disordered speech) and eidōlon – "image"; the diminutive of eidos – "image", "form", "shape". Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.

* Also known as Reincarnation

* Literally meaning "to be made flesh again", is a doctrine or metaphysical belief that some essential part of a living being (in some beliefs only human beings) survives death to be reborn in a new body

* Hypothetical substance that the alchemists believed to be capable of changing base metals into gold

* The philosophers' stone (Latin: lapis philosophorum) is a legendary alchemical substance, supposedly capable of turning base metals, especially lead, into gold (chrysopoeia); it was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality

* The discovery of the philosopher's stone was known as the Great Work

* The pineal gland (also called the pineal body, epiphysis cerebri, epiphysis or the "third eye") is a small endocrine gland in the vertebrate brain. It produces melatonin, a hormone that affects the modulation of wake/sleep patterns and photoperiodic (seasonal) functions. It is shaped like a tiny pine cone (hence its name), and is located near the center of the brain, between the two hemispheres, tucked in a groove where the two rounded thalamic bodies join.