- Some say belief
- is a prerequisite to their powers.
- Others need to believe in them,
- and they need to believe in themselves.
- However, I know people
- whose powers are not voluntary,
- who discover them accidentally,
- and whom others actively discourage.
- Geoffrey of Monmouth
- claimed that Merlin’s powers
- came from his birth by a moral woman
- sired by a non-human incubus.
- Paranormal powers take many forms,
- but all are some kind of ability
- to cause, control, or perceive things
- that cannot be scientifically explained.
- ESP includes mind-reading and telepathy,
- clairvoyance, and precognition of future events.
- There’s something odd about people who have ESP
- because they’re never able to scientifically prove it.
- Their ability must be linked, maybe genetically,
- to an evasive and contrary spirit in the orbitofrontal cortex.
- After a near-death experience
- people report floating above their bodies
- looking down on the doctors in the room
- or seeing someone discover their bodies.
- Some people say they have learned
- how to control this phenomenon,
- so they can travel anywhere, bodiless,
- even outside our solar system.
- If we can take these claims seriously,
- astral projection does not require brain injury,
- Alzheimers, schizophrenia, delusion,
- vivid dreaming, or hallucinogenic drugs.
- People say ghosts are disembodied spirits,
- but I don’t understand why they say that,
- because we have an instinctively negative reaction
- when encountering ghosts,
- but we don’t have the same reaction
- when encountering people or animals
- who have their spirits still inside them,
- at least not most people.
- Of course the separation—when a spirit
- is without a body or a body
- is without a spirit—maybe the separation
- is shocking in and of itself.
- But I suspect ghosts aren’t animal spirits
- but projections of another dimension,
- echos of a hellish other world,
- intended only to fool us.
- Because if a ghost looks like a person
- or speaks like a person, but it is not the person,
- it suggests more that the ghost can imitate a person,
- not that it is derived from the person.
- Otherwise, how can ghosts appear
- to wear the clothing of a dead person?
- Do spirits wear clothes? No, ghosts are only
- illusions and deceptions.
- You’d think, considering
- the myriad forms of psychic readings
- and their ancient roots
- there’d be something to it.
- You’d think there’d be something to astrology,
- even though it began before people knew
- the stars and the planets followed Newton’s laws,
- so it seemed perfectly reasonable
- to think the positions of the planets at your birth
- relative to their positions today
- affect your individual emotions,
- finances, and other practical affairs.
- You’d think there’d be something to palmistry
- given its roots in ancient Hindu astrology.
- Why shouldn’t lines and bumps on my palm
- be fair guides for making important decisions?
- At least palm-reading is more respectable
- if not more believable
- than bibliomancy
- (opening a book and blindly selecting a word),
- cartomancy
- (reading random arrangements
- of a deck of cards, often a Tarot deck),
- ceromancy
- (reading wax drippings),
- cleromancy
- (casting lots to choose a reading
- from a book such as the I Ching),
- haruspicy
- (examining entrails),
- pyromancy
- (reading flames),
- molybdomancy
- (reading molten metal),
- nephelomancy
- (reading clouds),
- tasseography
- (reading tea leaves),
- ureamancy
- (reading froth on urine),
- or using a Magic 8-Ball,
- which people use for amusement.
- Or how about scrying,
- where people go into a trance
- or pretend to go into a trance
- in which they see things,
- or pretend to see things
- in crystal balls (crystallomancy),
- or smooth bodies of water (hydromancy),
- or looking into mirrors (catoptromancy),
- or into glowing coals (anthracomancy),
- or rising smoke (turifumy),
- or opaque rounded stones (peep stones),
- or even whatever’s going on
- inside the scryer’s eyelids?
- You’d think these diviners were doing more
- than looking at you with cold eyes
- and interpreting your reactions
- to general and contradictory mumbo jumbo.
- Your professional diviner today
- should be regarded not as a mystic
- but as an entertainer.
- You shall see
- when we add up the numeric values
- of the letters of your name
- your importance in the universe.
- Each name, each number
- has a mystical significance
- from before the Pythagorian ideal
- unto the present time.
- Just as 666 is the number
- of the beast of Revelation,
- so then 888 is the number
- of Christ the Redeemer.
- These numbers show the divine origins
- of the alphabetic order
- of Hebrew, Greek, and English letters,
- and the infallibility of base ten.
- Your number is a sum
- of your past and your future,
- whether to be grateful, regretful,
- hopeful, or dreadful.
- A good curse is the result of a proper ritual.
- We are talking real serious here, including, possibly:
- a circle enclosing a pentagram with candles,
- display or creation of sacral symbols,
- blood and flame, also shadows,
- a witches’s cauldron, eye of newt, and all that,
- an invocation of lesser demons or compromised angels,
- repeating certain words sacred and profane,
- manipulation of certain objects sacred and profane,
- performance of dance, song, or sacred mumbo jumbo,
- or a custom-made voodoo doll with sharp pins.
- God and Jesus are exceptions;
- they issued curses without rituals.
- God cursed the serpent for convincing Eve to eat the apple,
- and he cursed Cain for murdering Abel
- and the earth where Abel’s blood was spilled.
- Jesus cursed the fig tree because it was barren.
- The best curses
- have the best justifications:
- retributions of wrongs such as
- murdering your brother,
- social ostracism, relentless bullying,
- financial ruin
- (where someone else is to blame),
- misappropriation of a throne,
- any of the seven deadly sins,
- or desecrations, such as
- grave robbery,
- or opening King Tut’s tomb
- (which was grave robbery).
- However, accidentally stepping on a crack
- should not break your mother’s back.
- Cursers are either outcasts or tyrants.
- Fugitives, gypsies, witches,
- and sorry loners lamenting their fates
- curse because they want to punish
- those who brought misery upon them.
- Tyrants curse to exercise
- their arbitrary and cruel power.
- A curse could be a metaphor
- for something unmentionable
- (which we won’t mention),
- or for something universal
- (such as random bad luck),
- or a plot device
- because some plots
- just don’t work without them.
- But all curses rely on guilt,
- the power of suggestion,
- and confirmation bias,
- essentially where stupidity
- validates superstition.
- The father of spirit photography
- (a well documented fact)
- deliberately doctored his photographs
- and relied on double exposures.
- He was exposed as a fraud because some of his ghosts
- were living people who could be identified.
- So many séance mediums were debunked
- that today séances are seen
- as a form of entertainment,
- not as a means of communicating with the dead.
- Harry Houdini was well-known for exposing
- the cheap tricks of mediums and psychics,
- but Arthur Conan Doyle exposed Houdini;
- Doyle said that Houdini possessed paranormal abilities
- that he used in performing his own tricks,
- and in preventing others from proving themselves.
- Furthermore, Houdini’s wife after his death
- hired mediums to communicate with him.
- Even if many mediums were frauds,
- it doesn’t mean that all of them were.
- If voices of the dead cannot be heard in a darkened room,
- if the dead cannot answer questions by rapping on tables,
- if they cannot rotate or levitate hair or tables,
- then they probably cannot testify
- against either frauds or debunkers.
- People say during a traumatic event
- mental and emotional energies
- are projected into rocks and other hard objects,
- and these energies can be replayed
- in the presence of a sympathetic soul.
- Our Native American ancestors spoke
- of something different;
- they said that the stones themselves
- speak to us
- but in a metaphorical sense,
- not literally.
- They elicit a reverence
- from shared love and belonging.