AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CLAIMS, FRAUDS, AND HOAXES OF THE OCCULT AND SUPERNATURAL – read online part 4 –

16APR

by James  Randy

Faustus, Dr.

(stage name) See ‘ Hoy, David’.

Faustus, Dr. Johannes

(also, Faust) A possibly mythical German sorcerer of medieval times, pictured by Rembrandt in a famous etching. Faustus had the reputation of being a powerful magus and the author of many books on magic. One book was Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis, subtitled The Three-Fold Harrowing of Hell.
Faust is mentioned by name in a letter written in 1507, and from that and other references he appears to have been a wandering charlatan who made his living by professing magical powers and performing various such services for paying customers. The character may also be a composite of several such actual persons.

The persistent legend of Faust and his interesting pact with Mephistopheles/Satan, in which he exchanged his soul for a guaranteed life of riches, pleasure, and debauchery, along with magical devices such as a cloak that would fly him anywhere he chose to be, has been perpetuated by such writers as Christopher Marlowe in his play The Tragicall History of Dr. Faustus and by Goethe, who introduced the idea of Faust’s eventual salvation, or escape from the frightful contract, mostly due to the inferior quality of the demon Mephistopheles and the legally shaky contract itself.
Musicians Berlioz, Gounod, and Schumann added to the Faust myth with full-length operas on the subject.

Fay,  Ana Eva

(Anna Eva Heathman, 1851 -1927) A spiritualist faker who was very popular in vaudeville in the late 1800s, where she was billed as, “The Indescribable Phenomenon.”
She attracted the very favorable interest of Sir William Crookes in 1874, but Washington Irving Bishop, who had worked with her as an assistant, chose to expose her methods to a newspaper. She was also investigated by conjuror Harry Houdini, to whom she eventually admitted many of her tricks, after her retirement. The Magic Circle of London, a very prominent organization of conjurors, made her an honorary member, carefully designating her an Honorary Lady Associate, since women at that time were not eligible to be regular members.
Her son, John Truesdale Fay (1877 -?) also had an act with his wife, called simply, “The Fays.” The William H. Fay who worked with the Davenport brothers act was not related to this family of Fays.

Filipino Psychic Surgery

See ‘psychic surgery’.

Finger  Writer

See ‘thumb writer’.

G

Ganzfeld Experiment

From the German words ganz and Feld, meaning “entire field,” this system attempts to use sensory deprivation of the subject as a “noise” reduction method, so that any psi input may more easily be detected. The subject may be equipped with headphones delivering “white noise,” halved Ping-Pong balls placed over the eyes to diffuse light, and a comfortable, relaxing environment, thus deemphasizing any regular sensory input.
Charles Honorton and many other parapsychologists from 1972 through 1981 performed extensive ganzfeld tests. The work came under fire for alleged discrepancies, particularly from Dr. Ray Hyman, a psychologist who has been a persistent, skeptical critic of psi, and also from Dr. Susan Blackmore.
As with all such tests, there are a great number of possibilities for errors in actual implementation of the conditions, data recording, and interpretation and statistical considerations. Previous ganzfeld tests
had been found faulted, though at first it appeared, as it often does, that the long-sought breakthrough in parapsychology had been made.
Ganzfeld techniques continue to hold promise for parapsychology, and much more labor and money will be dedicated to that promise.

Garlic

This herb is said to defend homes from witches and demons when placed at the door, and when worn on the person, to repel attacks by vampires and to protect the wearer from the evil eye. It is absolutely effective for those purposes and is also known to impart a delicious flavor to certain foods. It is occasionally used in this minor role.

Geley, Dr. Gustav

(1868-1924) A French researcher who was best known for his investigation and endorsement of the medium known as Eva C., the stage name for Marthe Béraud / Eva Carrière. However, in 1954,biographers discovered among his papers the evidence in the form of photographs, showing that he had actually exposed the cheating of Carrière, but had suppressed the facts. Charles Richet and baron Schrenck-Notzing, both co-investigators with Geley, along with Jean Meyer, the wealthy sponsor of the investigation, insisted that the evidence be suppressed.
Though it might be difficult to believe that serious researchers would do such a thing, the field is full of such events. Perhaps Geley’s own words, expressing his philosophy in 1919, can best express his own very strong need for belief in the hereafter :

  ” Robbed of its illusions, individual existence seems a real misfortune if it endures only from birth to death.”

To accompany this sadly shallow outlook, Geley said that he also believed in reincarnation, for which he coined the term “palingenesis.”

Geller,Uri

(1946 – ) Undoubtedly the “psychic superstar” of the century, whose name has become known in every language in every country. He has asserted that his powers are absolutely real, that he has never used cheating to achieve his results, and that in any case he is incapable of using sleight of hand to do conjuring effects.
Mr. Geller’s major claim to fame is his ability to bend spoons using, according to him, only the power of his mind. He has also demonstrated, countless times, that he is able to ascertain the contents of sealed envelopes and to “see” while blindfolded. These are also part of the repertoires of many mentalists, and though Geller denies he uses their methods, it is interesting to know that he has attended conventions of magicians.
Reaching back as far as the sixteenth century, the handsome young Israeli, a former fashion model,borrowed and improved upon such basic demonstrations as Blindfold Driving and the Obedient Compass (see compass trick), though he claims that his performances are genuine, not using any trickery. Along with these numbers was a relatively current novelty in which a scrap of metal foil held by a spectator becomes too hot to hold, seemingly through the mental powers of the performer. Again,Mr. Geller says that his version of this demonstration is not a trick. (For the conjurors’ method, see hot foil trick.)

In Israel, where the public was not quite as susceptible as in America, Geller was accused by a complaintant of doing tricks when he had promised to do genuine psychic feats. The Israeli court assessed him costs, and the price of the plaintiff’s ticket was refunded to him.
But it was the newest marvel that he later performed — seeming to bend and break metal objects by mind power — that made all the news. That, it seemed, was original with him, unlike the other rather standard routines. However, in 1968 a conjuring magazine available in Israel published the instructions for a spoon trick that was indistinguishable from the Geller demonstration.
Insisting that his demonstrations were the real thing, in 1974 Uri Geller traveled the world with his story of having been given his powers through a distant planet called Hoova in another star system,and a UFO called “IS” or “Intelligence in the Sky.” The unsteadier portion of the public ate up all this stuff, which sounded very much like bad science fiction, flocking to his performances and making him unquestionably the most charismatic and successful mentalist in history.

The magicians, with very few exceptions, were quick to offer solutions to Mr. Geller’s numbers. In 1985, Australian conjuror Ben Harris published a definitive book on metal-bending methods, and in Norway,  magician/author Jan Crosby amplified that to include a method of doing the “watch trick” (in which a watch advances time by apparently supernatural means) and an analysis of the bent spoons records. In Sweden, Trollare och Andra Underhållare (“Magicians and Other Entertainers”), a book on the history of magic by author Christer Nilsson, expressed no doubts about the nature of Geller’s performances. Writing on the requisites for an effective approach to conjuring, Nilsson said :

 ” Certainly the first and last point to be made is that the quality of a performance is what decides whether it is good or bad. No one nowadays takes a magic trick as a fact; no one believes in black magic. Even though some commercial texts state the opposite, we know that Uri Geller is just another illusionist, nothing more.”

But there was more to Uri Geller than just his unquestioned skill; he had the charm and charisma to convert admirers into worshipers. The portion of the public who believed him to be a real wizard were so fervent in their belief that they would defend their convictions even when confronted with
incontrovertible evidence that he used conjuring methods. Scientist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who was at one time said by Geller supporters to have been convinced by his demonstrations, said of that aspect :

 ” One thing, however, remains to be explained — the Geller effect. By this I mean the ability of one able though perhaps not outstanding magician (though only his peers can judge that) to make such an extraordinary impact on the world, and to convince thousands of otherwise level-headed people that he is genuine, or at any rate, worthy of serious consideration.”

Dr. Clarke’s observation is well drawn. Even the U.S. scientists who first encountered Mr. Geller were aware of his conjuring tendencies. Parapsychologists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, who studied Mr.Geller at the Stanford Research Institute (now known as Stanford Research International) were aware,in one instance at least, that they were being shown a magician’s trick by Geller. They described it in their book Mind Reach, where they said that they –

  ” had every confidence that Uri could do that trick [the blindfold drive] as well as any of the dozens of other magicians who do it.”

Targ and Puthoff issued a lengthy and quite positive scientific paper extolling the psychic abilities of Geller. Their protocols for this “serious” investigation of the powers claimed by Geller were described by Dr. Ray Hyman, who investigated the project on behalf of a U.S. funding agency, as “sloppy and inadequate.” In response to this criticism, Dr. Targ retorted, “Bullshit!”
This is a technical term often encountered in parapsychology. Geller has claimed that he is paid large sums of money ($1 million,nonrefundable, just to try) by mining companies to use his dowsing abilities for finding gold and oil, sometimes just waving his hands over a map to do so. He celebrates his claim that he has become a multimillionaire just from finding oil this way, though he declines to identify his clients. “It’s nice to have money, because you don’t have to worry about paying bills and mortgages,” he says.
Some of the other claims made by and for Mr. Geller are even more difficult to accept. In 1989, he says, he contacted the USSR Central Administration of Space Technology Development and Use for National Economics and Science and offered to repair, by his psychic powers, their ailing Phobos satellites. The project never took place. He also said he was contacted by NASA in the United States and asked to help unstick an antenna on the Galileo space probe by means of his powers; NASA’s public relations office denied knowing anything about him. He offered to recover from the Moon, by psychokinesis, a camera left there by NASA astronauts; the camera is still there. In articles and books written about Mr. Geller, it has been said that he has created gold from base metals by alchemy, has discovered the location of the lost Ark of the Covenant, and has many times materialized and dematerialized objects.

A decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals on December 9, 1994, in a libel suit brought by Geller against James Randi and the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, said that “[James] Randi has set about attempting to expose various Geller feats as the fraudulent tricks of a confidence man.” The lawsuit was subsequently dismissed.
Uri Geller may have psychic powers by means of which he can bend spoons; if so, he appears to be doing it the hard way.

Gematria

See ‘kabala’ and ‘numerology’.

Genii

See ‘djinn’.

Ghost

From the German geist, for “spirit.” A specter, phantom, apparition, shade, or wraith. A figure, often described as semitransparent, believed to be the remaining trace of a deceased person. Ghosts are the favorite subjects of scary tales designed to impress children and some adults.

Ghost Photography

See ‘spirit photography’.

Ghost Portraits

See ‘spirit portraits’.

Ghoul

Originating in Arab demonology, this is a one-eyed fiend with wings and an animal shape with the reputation of devouring dead bodies. The term has come to refer to any person who deals with the dead in an obscene or diabolical fashion. Grave robbers or “resurrectionists” who unearth bodies for the illegal use of medical experimenters are also known by this name.

Glossolalia

Many Christian evangelists encourage their audiences to engage in “speaking in tongues.” While engaged in this practice, performers (both preachers and worshipers) mumble gibberish which is believed by the faithful to be a secret prayer language understood only by God. The fact that each person mumbles differently matters not a whit. God, angels, and anointed ministers, we are told, are able to understand.
Technically, this psychological phenomenon is known as glossolalia. Early Methodists, Quakers,Shakers, and Mormons adopted it, then de-emphasized it. It fell into disuse until about 1830, when it reappeared in England among “females of excitable temperament,” Until recently, there was not much
emphasis on it in Christianity but now the Pentecostal sects have revived it.
Scripturally, glossolalia is traced back to the Bible in Acts 2:4, and a meeting of the apostles, wherein –

 ” they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to talk in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them power of utterance.”

Non-Christian glossolalia predates the modern version considerably, being described in very ancient religions and known in primitive societies untouched by Christianity. It was known to Plato, who described it in use in his day: Greek and Roman oracles spoke in tongues. Virgil wrote, in the Aenead,Book Six, about a Roman Sibyl who babbled that way. Moslems embraced the idea, too. Non-Pentecostal fundamentalists believe that their Pentecostal brothers might be inspired to glossolalia by Satan.

It says in 1 Corinthians 14:2 that :

  ” when a man is using the language of ecstasy he is talking with God, not with men, for no man understands him.”

This is an exact use of magical spells and incantations, an intrinsic part of magical methodology, and is indistinguishable from it, though it is called “religion” by today’s priests.

Gnome

(from the Greek gnoma, meaning “knowledge”) An elemental spirit of the earth, delighting in mischief.

Gnostics

(from the Greek word for “to know”) A mixture of astrology, kabala, Christianity and Egyptian mysticism formed the philosophies of a number of Gnostic sects. They attempted to reconcile Christianity and the philosophy of Pythagoras. A preoccupation with rather heavy orgiastic rituals alienated them from some of the Christian churches.
These sects were inordinately fond of magic talismans of various kinds, usually carved on gems.
Among the various Gnostic sects were the Albigensis, Carbonari,Carpocratians, Cathari, Lollards, and Paulicans. All were looked upon by the Christians as heretics and sorcerers. The magicians Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana are said to have been Gnostics.

See also ‘charms’ and ‘Secret Gospel’.

Golden Dawn

See ‘Order of the Golden Dawn’.

Golem

In Hebraic mysticism, a monstrous automaton given life through magic. Many such robots have appeared in Hebrew mythology. The sixteenth-century kabalist Elijah of Chelm wrote a mystical,divine name on the forehead of his android to bring it to life. Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague made a Golem to protect the welfare of the Jews, but in order to prevent the creature from working on the Sabbath, he removed the secret life-principle from it on the Sabbath eve. Rules are rules.

Grand Catholicon

See ‘philosopher’s stone’.

Grandier, Father  Urbain

See ‘Loudun, Devils of ‘.

Graphology

(also, graphiology, a spelling invented by the practitioners) Graphology is not to be confused with graphoanalysis, the art of identifying samples and classifying styles of handwriting for legal and forensic purposes.
Graphology is a pseudoscience by which it is claimed that the character, disposition, fate, aptitudes,and potentials of a writer may be determined. Slant, flourishes, pressure, size, regularity, and curvature are some of the features that are believed to reveal characteristics of the writer.
To quote John Beck, secretary of the National Society of Graphologists in the U.K., some practitioners are so accurate that “sometimes they can tell what a person had for breakfast that morning.”
Graphology, he says, is “the most precise of the ‘ologies,’” and it has shown that “99 per cent of persons in the U.K. are not in the right jobs.” He also says that graphology is a brand of psychology. In contrast, Professor Michael Rothenberg of the Department of School Services, City College, New York, defines graphology as largely “pseudoscience, closer to fortunetelling than serious research.”
In Israel and in Europe, many companies rely on graphologists to make decisions on employment,promotions, contracts, and other business matters. French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911), the originator of a well-known IQ test still in use, embraced graphology as genuine and published material on the idea in 1906.

Though certain very obvious physical traits and failings of the subject (tremors, lack of co-ordination,dyslexia) can clearly be established by studying the individual’s handwriting, graphologists claim that hidden thoughts and attitudes, weaknesses and hidden desires, can be revealed through their pursuit.
The fact is that double-blind tests of graphology have shown that it cannot perform as advertised, and certainly does not serve to indicate career choices or capabilities. The percentage quoted by Mr. Beck is perhaps more indicative of the failure of graphology to correctly determine proper career directions.
However, Susan Morton, who professionally practices graphoanalysis (not graphology!) for the U.S. Postal Service Crime Lab in San Bruno, California, can indeed tell the future of one whose handwriting she identifies. If it matches what she is looking for, she says, she can clearly tell where
the writer will spend the next four or five years.

Great Arcanum, the

See ‘Arcanum, The Great’.

Great Pyramid  of Giza

Known to the ancients as Khuit, meaning “horizon.” Believed to be the intended tomb of Pharaoh Cheops (Khufu, circa 3000 B.C.) this is the largest of all the Egyptian pyramids, located at Giza, five miles from Cairo. A remarkable engineering feat consisting of over fifteen million tons of limestone,it is evidence of the superb skills of the ancient architects and engineers.

Some mystics like Erich von Däniken have chosen to claim that the early Egyptians were incapable of building this structure without extraterrestrial assistance. The methods of constructing the pyramid are well known and understood, and though an enormous amount of labor and skill was expended in the task, it was by no means beyond the ancients. One reason given to prove that the task was impossible is that the limestone used in the building had to be brought from a great distance away. Recent discoveries have shown that not only was the stone quarried locally (some three hundred yards from the base of the pyramid!), but that an entire small city, with all necessary amenities, existed there to support the large crew of workers who worked on the monument. The rubble from the ramps that were built to convey the stones into position as the structure rose in height was used to fill in the vast hole in the quarry at the conclusion of the project.
What makes the Great Pyramid seem much more of a riddle is that the mystics indicate certain aspects that they say make the Pyramid a secret record of the world’s history — past, present and future. This all began in 1864 when a Scottish astronomer named Charles Piazzi Smyth, an otherwise competent  scientist, seized upon the notion developed by an English publisher, John Taylor — who had adopted it from one Robert Menzies — that there was a cosmic message concealed in the measurements of the Pyramid. When the Royal Society of London refused to consider Smyth’s passionate promotion of this absurdity, Smyth resigned his valued membership in a grand snit.

Aficionados of pyramid prophecy point out all manner of relationships in their chosen measurements of the edifice. For example, they say that by multiplying the height of the Pyramid by one billion,figure is obtained that is close to the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun. That figure is quite close, 98.5 percent of the actual distance. Also, the figure pi (3.14159…, the ratio between the diameter of a circle and the circumference) shows up in an apparently mysterious fashion. The Earth
to Sun figure showing up is no surprise, since with enough tries anyone can discover many such relationships. If, however, the width or height of a pyramid side is used, or the edge of the edifice, or the diagonal of the base, figures are obtained that are of no significance at all. The figure pi showing up is no mystery, and has been shown to be simply an artifact of the type of measuring tools and methods used by the designers and builders.
As author Martin Gardner has shown, relationships between obviously unconnected events and structures can always be found, as when he demonstrated that there were just as remarkable coincidences to be found when correlating the measurements of the Washington Monument and events in current history.
The claims of astounding accuracy of alignment of the Great Pyramid, long pointed to by the mystics as evidence of its extraterrestrial or divine origin, have been shown to be the result of overenthusiastic
reports by amateurs. There is, as would be expected, the usual lack of precision, though this in no way detracts from the accomplishments of the builders and designers of this quite remarkable monument.
The Great Pyramid of Giza does not represent a monument to wishful thinking; it is a monument to our species and to our ancestors.

Grimoire

A “black book” of magic, a manual for invoking magical forces. There are a number of famous examples of this type of document.
The grimoire of Pope Honorius III, titled the Constitution of Honorius, was written in the thirteenth century and printed in 1629 at Rome, the earliest known such book. The book describes methods of calling up spirits(conjuration), including the sacrifice of a black cock or a lamb as part of the procedure.
A grimoire titled The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis, actually of medieval origin) was a popular reference work in the Middle Ages, giving instructions on summoning demons, finding buried treasure, proper magician’s costume, perfumes, and how to construct the magic circle. An extract from this tome reads (I:7) :

   ” Come ye, Angels of Darkness; come hither before this Circle without fear, terror or deformity, to execute our commands, and be ye ready both to achieve and to complete all that we shall command ye.”

No doubt hundreds of expectant magi chanted these lines until blue in the face without any other noticeable result.

Other famous grimoires were Little Albert, Necronomicon, the Red Book of Appin, the Red Dragon,and Zekerboni.

Guppy, Mrs. Samuel

See ‘Nichol, Agnes’.

Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch

(1877?-1949) Still a major cult figure today, this enigmatic, colorful Russian guru was, for a while, a close friend of Peter Demianovich Ouspensky (1878-1947), another but rather less picturesque mystic.
Gurdjieff organized the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, near Paris, where he managed to talk his followers — artists, writers, rich widows, aristocrats and common folk who could afford it — into laboring freely for him in exchange for his convoluted wisdom on every imaginable subject.
He was a charismatic, unpredictable character who praised and damned with impunity; constantly declared obscure, indefensible opinions on science and on mankind; and left behind him a bizarre philosophy that charms perhaps because it seems at first to be thoughtful but upon close examination looks more like a colossal joke.
Wondering what qualities of Gurdjieff enabled him to so captivate and control his disciples, U.K. psychologist Christopher Evans remarked :

  ” Was it the long black moustaches, curled fiercely upward or the vast, dome-like shaven head? Perhaps it was the short, squat, gorilla-like figure? Or the one eye strikingly, but indescribably different from the other? . . . Most likely it was a combination of Gurdjieff’s weird physical presence plus the special talent he displayed of uttering just about every remark he made,however commonplace, as though it was pregnant with great meaning and significance.”

The guru published All and Everything, more than a thousand pages of his rambling philosophy, and required his followers to read it and live by it. He still has a large following internationally, and the man who was known as “G” to his devoted disciples has managed to command their continued respect well after one of his frequent automobile crashes led to his premature demise in 1949.

Guru

Derived from the Sanskrit word gur, meaning “to raise.” A general term for a teacher or guide involved in spiritual matters. Today, loosely used to describe almost anyone who has some strange philosophical idea to sell, preferably involving incense, chanting, and surrendering all worldly goods.

Gypsy

(also, Bohemian and Romany) A designation for the ethnic group popularly believed to be originally from India, but now widely dispersed around the world. They are said to have first shown up in Europe in 1418. A rowdy group of them presented themselves at the gates of Paris in 1427, but were
refused entrance.
Gypsies have, as part of their philosophy, a view that all non-Gypsies are fair game for their fortunetelling,curselifting, and other superstitious ministrations. Very class-conscious and fiercely partisan,they essentially live outside the cultures of the countries in which they choose to reside, almost invariably marrying within their own people and practicing a seminomadic existence.
The name came from a misunderstanding that Gypsies were from Egypt, while it appears from anthropological considerations that they are actually of East Indian derivation. The Hungarian term for the group is Pharaoh-nepek, meaning, “Pharaoh’s people.”

H

Hag Stone

See ‘charms’.

Hag tracks

See ‘fairy rings’.

Hahnemann, Christian Friedrich Samuel

See ‘homeopathy’.

Hand of Glory

A pickled and dried hand cut from one who has been hanged. It is used in casting spells and finding buried treasure, often in conjunction with a magic candle made from the fat of a hanged criminal.
Sir Walter Scott, in The Antiquary (1816), had a character describe it thus :

  ” De hand of glory is hand cut off from a dead man as have been hanged for muther, and dried very nice in de shmoke of juniper wood.”

Hanussen, Erik Jan

(Herschel Steinschneider, 1889-1933) He was born in Vienna, the son of Siegfried Steinschneider, an Austrian-Jewish traveling comedian. As a boy of fourteen, he toured with his father, learning the tricks of the variety artists and circus performers. Soon he was performing mentalism, specializing in making objects move, apparently by mind power (psychokinesis).
At the age of twenty-one, he made an abrupt change of direction. He became chief reporter for a newspaper called Der Blitz, which had a reputation among the public of making its money by blackmailing celebrities. Apparently Herschel was suited to this kind of work. Then along came World War I.
Out of the army in 1917, he took the professional name Erik Jan Hanussen (written in a German book on his life, “van” Hanussen) and at that point he joined a small circus. In Kraków he published a booklet titled Worauf beruht das? (“What Is This Based On?”) which dealt with subjects like
telepathy and clairvoyance and in the spirit of an exposé labeled them all as frauds. In 1920 he wrote and published (in Vienna) a second book, Das Gedankenlesen (“Thought Reading”), for the second time in print calling the idea of telepathy, clairvoyance, and mind reading a hoax.

Then, amazingly, he did an about-turn and threw himself into that very business, now treating it as if it were genuine; he claimed clairvoyant and telepathic powers. The Austrian police labeled him a swindler, but before they could proceed further, Hanussen went off to Czechoslovakia, which he now chose to claim was his homeland, but he was no more welcome there, soon being charged with using trickery and taking money under false pretenses.
By 1929 he was in hot water again and found himself in court charged with fraud, but the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence. His own version of that episode in his life was somewhat different from the facts; asked about it later in his career, he said that he had appeared in court as a sworn expert witness for the state.
The newly emerged mentalist moved into the cabaret scene and then began giving public shows at major theaters. He had expensive full-color posters printed up and was soon playing to packed houses.
The price of admission was almost double the regular price of a variety show, and Hanussen also gave very costly personal readings for his customers. On the stage he was a striking figure in stark white make up and a tail suit.
He went off to Berlin, and within a few months he had captured that troubled city with his tricks. He played a long run at the Scala Theater and was a celebrity. The news media built him into a major psychic figure, though from the descriptions given, the tricks he was performing were obviously derived right from extant conjuring sources.
He became Adolf Hitler’s favorite Hellseher (“clairvoyant”) and served the Nazis as one of their most vehement and savage anti-Semitic propagandists, even turning out a weekly newspaper for the party which trumpeted that theme. Though he had to convert from Judaism to Protestantism in order the join the party, Hanussen did so willingly.

He was moving in powerful company at that point, even working with the secret police. He became so influential that in 1931 the Berlin am Morgen newspaper, through its editor Bruno Frei, began a serious campaign to discredit him. Frei had discovered Hanussen’s Jewish origins and declared him in print to be a “charlatan, deceiver, swindler and exaggerator.” The psychic immediately brought a defamation lawsuit against Frei and the publisher Kosmos-Verlag, and the investigation ceased,though the lawsuit went on.
By the end of 1932, Hanussen was living very, very well. He had a large mansion outside Berlin which was referred to as the “Palace of Occultism,” and everyone was talking about him. At a specialinvitation party at this place in February 1933, the cream of Berlin society was present. Host Hanussen announced a séance, turning down the lights and seeming to enter a trance in which he announced his visions that Adolf Hitler would lead Germany to great glory, but that there would be several calamities before that moment arrived. He assured all present that Hitler would crush impending leftist attempts to disrupt the government.
Then the audience was stunned when Hanussen suddenly leaped to his feet and began screaming about a disaster involving a massive fire. He said that in a vision he clearly saw “a great house burning” — and when asked, he did not deny that it was the Reichstag.
The Hellseher, in his incautious ambition, had now became a great danger to the Nazi cause and had outlived his function of charming those dilettantes that the Nazis needed to finance their cause. It happened because his close association with top Nazis, particularly Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels, had given him some very specific and guarded inside information; he had prior knowledge of the party’s secret intent to burn the Reichstag that very night as a “proof” to the German people that the Communists were trying to disrupt the government. Hanussen knew that the fire would be set within less than twelve hours, and he couldn’t resist using that inside knowledge to demonstrate his prophetic powers before Berlin society, now at his feet.

The Reichstag fire took place the next morning in accordance with the Nazi plan. There was great public excitement at the apparent accuracy of the seer’s vision of the event, and the Nazi brass took note of that fact. Hanussen went on with his plans for even greater notoriety and power, but he was secretly arrested and spirited away on March 24.
On April 7 a workman came upon his mutilated body in a shallow grave in the woods outside Berlin.
He had been murdered, shot twelve times, on the same day he’d been arrested. Who gave the initial command for the murder has never been discovered, though papers recording amounts in excess of 150,000 marks owed to him somehow disappeared from the Palace of Occultism and were never found. The palace closed and never reopened.
His story continues to fascinate; in 1955 and 1988 two major motion pictures based on his life appeared. The screenplays were highly fictitious in both versions, a condition that also applied to a biographical treatment of another “psychic” that was produced in 1994.

Hare Krishna

A cult originated in 1948 by a mystic of Calcutta known as A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada,born Abhan Charan De in 1895. It was introduced to the Western world in 1965, and by 1968 the first saffron-robed disciples were swaying down London streets chanting and ringing cymbals in a nowfamiliar orgy of magical bliss.
(Krishna (also, Kistna) is one of two incarnations of Vishnu, the Hindu god. The story goes that Vishnu plucked out two of his hairs, one white and the other black. The black one became Krishna. No one really believes this, but there it is.)
The object of the “Ha-re Krish-na” chant, repeated endlessly, is to bring to the attention of the world the teachings attributed to Krishna. The actual Krishna philosophy, as outlined in the Bhagavad-Gita,calls for an end to wars and for universal love and food for all. No modus for achieving these ideals is given. Except chanting.
The actual, complete chanted mantra used by the Hare Krishna disciples is:

  ” Hare Krishna/ Hare Krishna/ Krishna Krishna/ Hare Hare/ Hare Rama/ Hare Rama/ Rama Rama/Hare Hare.”

It is repeated 1,728 times a day by each devotee, who keeps count by means of 108 beads carried in a pouch around the neck. There are sixteen “rounds” of 108 “sets” each. It is very boring.

Hecate

(pronounced Hek-ah-tee) Hecate is the daughter of Perseus and Titan and the patron goddess of witchcraft in both Greek and Roman mythology. She goes about accompanied by two black dogs and the souls of the dead, and other dogs howl at her approach. Understandably.

Hellströmism

See ‘muscle reading’.

Hermes Trismegistus

(Hermes Thrice-Great) One name for a god also identified as the Egyptian deity Thoth. He was master of alchemical knowledge and wrote secret books on alchemy, astrology, and magic.
In 1455, a manuscript from the cultural center of Florence titled Corpus Hermeticum began to circulate among the intellectuals of Europe. The ideas expressed in this book — believed to have been written between A.D. 250 and 300 — had been mentioned even in manuscripts of the late Middle Ages, though knowledge of the written Greek language in which it had been preserved had been all but lost in those times.
It was said to be the compilation of the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus. Scholars who regained the use of Greek promoted this treasured, arcane knowledge and it became prized as a privileged key to the occult. Printed copies of the Corpus spread throughout the civilized world for the next half century and appeared in the libraries of the intellectuals.
Mostly concerned with magic spells and other such trivia, it is of interest only as an example of early thought and philosophy.

See also ‘Hermetic’.

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

See ‘Order of the Golden Dawn’.

Hexagram

(a) The six-pointed star formed by extending the sides of a regular hexagon. Also known as the Star of David and used as the motif on the Israeli flag. Sometimes called the Shield of Solomon.

(b) A six-barred figure formed by combining two trigrams. For this application, see ‘I Ching’.

Holloway, Dr. Gilbert

A Spiritualist/clairvoyant who established the Christ Light Community in Deming, New Mexico,where he preached his ideas of metaphysics. Though he seldom made specific prophecies, in early 1968 Holloway confidently predicted that Hubert Humphrey would succeed President Johnson in the White House. Wrong.

Hollow Earth Theory

In 1692, English astronomer Edmund Halley, after whom the famous comet is named, suggested the possibility that the Earth is hollow and that other civilizations might live there. The famous New England witch-hunter Cotton Mather, no genius by any standards, defended the Halley idea in 1721. It
was developed further by John Cleves Symmes in 1818, and by a mechanic named Marshall B.Gardner in 1913. Gardner thought that the Earth was hollow, with a second sun inside to provide illumination.

As bizarre as this idea was, it was improved upon (?) by Cyrus Reed Teed (1839-1908) in 1870. He was convinced that not only was the Earth hollow, but that we live on the inside of it. There is nothing at all outside, he said. The sun at the center of the Earth, said Teed, is invisible, but we see a
“reflection” of it, and it is half dark, half glowing. Thus he explained day and night. The planets are :

   ” spheres of substance aggregated through the impact of substance through the dissipation of the coloric [sic] substance at the opening of the electro-magnetic circuits, which closes the conduits of solar and lunar “energy.”

Teed founded the town of Estero, Florida, and predicted he would fill it with eight million believers;he attracted two hundred. Since he had promised to rise from the dead and take the faithful to heaven with him, when he was killed by a Fort Myers marshal during an altercation, his disciples refused to bury him. After a week, when it began to be very evident to the senses that the man was not going to rise again, health officials insisted upon proper burial. His tomb, along with Teed, was later washed away in a hurricane.
During the Nazi rise to power in Germany, Teed’s absurd idea attracted much favorable attention and was known as the Hohlweltlehre. There are numerous supporters of this idea, even today, in Germany.

Holy Inquisition

The civilized world in earlier centuries was by modern standards a savage, brutal, and terrifying place.
It is no surprise that offenses against religious laws and customs were especially severely dealt with.
The medieval Inquisition first came into existence in 1231, when Pope Gregory IX commanded this inquiry into the religious preferences and practices of everyone within his authority. In its early years it was mostly active in northern Italy and southern France.
In 1252, Pope Innocent IV authorized the use of torture to encourage extravagant and satisfactory confessions and valuable denouncements of others from the accused. Peter II of Aragon enhanced the effectiveness and novelty of the public trial-plus-sentence procedure known as the auto-da-fé (“act of the faith”) when he introduced public execution by burning alive at the stake. That process was referred to in official documents of the ecclesiastical courts as “relaxation.” It was witnessed by high
church dignitaries and noble personages who applied long in advance for passes to attend such events.
Executions were frequently delayed so that prominent guests might be accommodated.
Specific tortures such as the “strapaddo” and the “rack” were adopted and preferred by the Inquisition,along with methods of execution such as burning, strangling, and hanging, because they did not outwardly produce quantities of blood. This was to comply with a rule that said “Ecclesia non novit sanguinem,” or “The church is untainted with blood.” The fact that these procedures were also more agonizing and prolonged did nothing to detract from their appeal.

Coming into its fullest and most terrible effect with the appointment of Tomás de Torquemada as Inquisitor-General of the Spanish arm of the Inquisition in 1483, this holy office became inarguably one of the most horrid inventions of our species and was not likely to ever be matched until the blind,mindless mass slaughter of the Holocaust.
The Spanish Inquisition itself claimed three hundred thousand victims. This distinctly barbarous and terrifying arm of the holy office was established in 1478 by Pope Sixtus IV. In the Spanish version of the process, the accused went through a macabre trial which they seldom survived. In 1827, Juan
Antonio Llorente, former secretary of the Inquisition in Spain, revealed the horrid truth of the judicial process that was used to place the accused on the bonfire :

” Never has a prisoner of the Inquisition seen either the accusation against himself, or any other.
No one was ever permitted to know more of his own cause than he could learn of it by the interrogations and accusations to which he was obliged to reply, and from the extracts of the declarations of the witnesses, which were communicated to him, while not only their names were carefully concealed, and every circumstance relating to time, place, and person, by which he might obtain a clue to discover his denouncers, but even if the depositions contained anything favourable to the defence of the prisoner.”

Llorente went on to explain that there were several options open to those who had been convicted and sentenced. To escape the torture which was usually used to extract a final confession — a confession was felt necessary to justify the execution — miscreants could admit to sins they had never even countenanced and win immediate death. In some cases, if the condemned wished to escape the horror of being burned alive, they could confess and then submit to strangulation before their bodies were consumed in the bonfire; when convicted heretics thus opted for a fireside confession, the spectacle was made far less entertaining for the witnesses.

In only one manner could death be avoided, and it was a fiendish method whereby the Inquisition perpetuated its own existence and obtained fresh fuel for its fires. By choosing to implicate other innocents and condemning them to the authorities, a victim could, under some circumstances, earn a
commutation of his or her sentence to a long prison term, loss of property, and expatriation — if the victim survived the dungeon.
Though in France the Inquisition never attained the ferocity it displayed in neighboring Spain, it was only the border between the countries that protected the accused from the distinct possibility of the physical tortures of the ecclesiastical courts. Just across the Pyrenees, suffering and death were the rewards for the same transgressions.

Home, Daniel Dunglas

(1833-1886) His middle name, Dunglas, was an invented affectation, obviously an attempt to dignify his name by association with Scottish royalty; it does not appear on his birth certificate.
Home (pronounced Hume) was born in Scotland. He was adopted at age one by an aunt and they moved to the United States. Thrown out of school for treating his fellow students to demonstrations of “poltergeist” activity, which had just become internationally popular through the efforts of the Fox sisters in New York State, he developed a reputation as a spirit medium. At age twenty-two, Home went traveling to the United Kingdom, then to France, Italy, and Russia, performing as a spirit medium.
In 1858 in Russia, he married his first wife, a wealthy socialite. She died in 1862, but Home found that due to interference from her suspicious family, he could not inherit her fortune. Shortly after that, in the United Kingdom, he met Mrs. Jane Lyon, a very rich widow who was promptly advised by the spirit of her husband (through the mediumship of Home) to adopt Home as her son and to give him huge sums of money. This arrangement went on for some time, but it all backfired on Home when an English court convicted him of “improper influence” and ordered him to return the money.

D. D. Home had, and still has, the reputation of never having been exposed as a fake. Since he carefully controlled all aspects of his séance performances, never admitting those persons who might not behave themselves, and since accounts by witnesses of his feats vary greatly, this reputation would not be surprising. He actually was discovered cheating several times, though these events were not made public.
One of the features of his act was the playing of an accordion which was locked in a cage located beneath the table at which he sat. An “accordion,” in that day, was not what is usually pictured today;
it was a concertina, a rather small bellows affair with a simple keyboard at one end. When Home produced music, it was said to be very thin and faint, in character with its purportedly etherial origins.
But another possible origin is to be considered. Since a number of tiny one-octave mouth organs were found among Home’s belongings when he died, and he wore a very full “soup-strainer” style mustache, it might be suspected that he was able to play the music by means of such an instrument hidden in his mouth. That suspicion is further supported by the observation that the only two identifiable songs reported to be played at a Home séance were, “The Last Rose of Summer” and “Home, Sweet Home,” the latter just possibly a pun on the part of the spirits or of the medium himself. Both tunes are limited to a range of nine notes, and both can be played on the small oneoctave mouth organs.

The eminent British scientist Sir William Crookes declared Home to be genuine in 1871, but his own accounts show how careless his investigation was. He was also an intimate friend of Home.
The books Incidents in My Life (two volumes, 1863 and 1872) and Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism (1877) have been credited to Home, though it is now generally accepted that these books were written for him by his lawyer, W. M. Wilkinson, who later testified that he was the actual author.
D. D. Home appears to have suffered most of his life from tuberculosis, and he died at the age of fiftythree.

Homeopathy

This claimed healing modus is included here because it is an excellent example of an attempt to make sympathetic magic work. Its founder, Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (1775?-1843), believed that all illnesses develop from only three sources: syphilis, venereal warts, and what he called “the itch.”
The motto of homeopathy is “Similia similibus curantur” (“Like cures like”). It claims that doses of substances that produce certain symptoms will relieve those symptoms; however, the “doses” are extremely attenuated solutions or mixtures, so attenuated that not a single molecule of the original substance remains. In fact, the homeopathic corrective is actually pure water, nothing more. The theory is that the vibrations or “effect” of the diluted-out substance are still present and work on the patient. Currently, researchers in homeopathy are examining a new notion that water can be magnetized and can transmit its medicinal powers by means of a copper wire. Really.
The royal family of England adopted homeopathy at its very beginning and have retained a homeopathic physician on staff ever since.
The only concern of homeopaths is to treat the symptoms of disease, rather than the basic causes,which they do not recognize. Thus homeopathy correctly falls into the category of magic. And quackery.

Homunculus

Originally meant to refer to an artificial man that could be made or grown by alchemy. Now meaning any small representation of the human form such as may be found in a plant or mineral, or is described in various forms of quack medicine in which the ear, the iris of the eye, or the foot are said to represent a distorted human form.

See also ‘acupuncture’, ‘iridology’, and ‘reflexology’.

Honorton, Dr. Charles

(1946-1992) A prominent and respected parapsychologist, in 1979 the director of the Psychophysical Research Laboratories in Princeton. That project was funded by millionaire James S. McDonnell, who also supported the “MacLab” in St. Louis where the Alpha Project took place. See psychokinete.
Dr. Honorton became very much involved in ganzfeld tests (which see) and published his first results in the 1970s. In 1990 he and his colleagues published the results of extensive tests of an automated nature which have met with the continued criticism of Dr. Ray Hyman.

Hopkins  Matthew

(?-1647) In 1645 this English Puritan lawyer of Manningtree, Essex, took the well-paid title of “Witch-Finder General.” He toured England in the company of a team of assistants who were charged with searching the bodies of suspected witches for Devil’s marks that indicated their involvement with
Satan. He was spectacularly successful at his work and became responsible for the execution of a large number of accused persons during the brief year he served in the position. Estimates vary from about sixty to several hundred persons who perished at his hands.
However, his atrocious and senseless brutality finally stirred up enough opposition that the office was called into question and finally abolished.
Though the titillating legend has it that Hopkins himself was accused of being a witch, was subjected to one of his own tests, failed, and was hanged, he actually died peacefully at his home at Manningtree, near Ipswich.
A writer of the day said of his career :

” Nothing can place the credulity of the English nation on the subject of witchcraft in a more striking point of view, than the history of Matthew Hopkins.”

Hörbiger, Hans

(1860-1931) An Austrian cosmologist who developed the absurd World Ice Theory ( Welt-Eis-Lehre),which says that most of the matter of the universe is frozen water, which periodically drops into hot stars and causes explosions. There are other, equally odd aspects to his theory, which was very popular with the German Nazi party.

Horoscope

The astrological chart of the zodiac, done from a geocentric point of view, upon which the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets are located for a specific time and date. If that date is a person’s birth date (or, indeed, even the “birth” date of a nation, company, idea, event, or animal) the chart is a “natal” horoscope, used by the astrologer to predict important characteristics of that subject.
Each astrological sign is said to confer certain general characteristics. The rising points of the heavenly bodies, their relationships to one another, and various other correlations are all believed important. Events in the subject’s life, conditions of health, and fortune are said to be found in the
horoscope.
Definitive, carefully conducted tests of the idea have shown it to be false.
The first written horoscope dates from 409 B.C., and it is a Mesopotamian specimen found among less that twenty known from that period.

See also ‘astrology’ and ‘zodiac’.

Hot Foil Trick

A minor conjuring trick, not commonly used, in which a scrap of aluminum foil is crumpled and placed in the spectator’s hand, then the performer suggests that it will become very hot. It does, since a chemical (often a dangerously poisonous mercuric salt) has been surreptitiously rubbed onto it to induce rapid oxidation of the metal, an exothermic reaction producing much heat in a very short time.
The trick is not in the repertoire of any reputable conjuror but has been used by psychics.

Hot Reading

See ‘cold reading’.

Houdini, Harry

(1874-1926) Born Ehrich Weiss in Budapest, Hungary, Houdini made a fabulous reputation as an escape artist and magician, traveling internationally and earning top money in the field. His is probably the best-known name in conjuring.
The escape act that Houdini himself developed was inspired by an act he saw in 1887 when he was just thirteen years old, an act based on that of the famous Davenport brothers. The budding young magician who was to revolutionize the art of conjuring realized that the performers were freeing
themselves in order to carry out their clever deceptions, and he decided to make it clear to his audiences that what he did was accomplished solely by dexterity and skill. That he never failed to do.
Late in life, following the death of his mother in 1913, Harry Houdini developed a serious interest in spiritualism and the question of survival-after-death; he turned his attention to the claims of the thenburgeoning
spiritualist trade and investigated many of its popular stars. Houdini conducted successful and effective investigations of fakers in the field and published his findings in such books as ‘The Right Way to Do Wrong’ (1906), ‘Miracle-Mongers and their Methods’ (1920), and ‘A Magician Among the Spirits’ (1924).

Late in his career, Harry Houdini went on the road exposing spiritualistic frauds by means of a fullscale stage show. His answer to the question, incidentally, was “no.”

At one séance in which he tried to establish contact with the spirit of his mother, he was astonished to hear her speaking English, a tongue she had never used. The medium was unfazed. “In Heaven,” she reported, “everyone speaks English.” This rationalization was rejected by Houdini.
Before his death, the great magician arranged a secret code which he said he would try to transmit to his wife Bess after his death. He had hardly taken his last breath before mediums all over the world began trying to guess the secret. The correct code was provided by medium Arthur Ford (which see) but the feat was not convincing to those who knew the facts behind it.
The code itself consisted of the word Rosabelle, the title of a song that Bess had been singing when their first meeting occurred at Coney Island, New York, and the word believe. A ten-word “mindreading” code was also involved.

Hoy, David

(1930-1981) Known professionally as Dr. Faustus, Hoy was an ordained minister who opted to follow mentalism instead. He invented many clever and original mental effects and later in life decided to represent himself as a genuine psychic. He sold horoscopes and other “magical” equipment.

Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald

(1911-1986) A science fiction writer who founded the religion known as Scientology, based on his theory of Dianetics, the subject of one of his science fiction stories. Dianetics was a sort of pop psychology idea that claimed everyone was aware of the outside world immediately after conception,was affected by that experience, and could be treated by “auditing” procedures supervised by proper experts.
A person who had passed through the entire therapy was known as a “clear” and was said to have total recall and other superpowers, as well as being free of illness. The first of these persons displayed at a press conference by the Hubbard staff failed simple tests rather dramatically; the standards for the status of “clear” were dramatically reduced at that point. (Parapsychologist Dr. Harold Puthoff (see ‘Uri Geller’) is both a Scientologist and a “clear.”)
Editor John Campbell, Jr., said, in a 1950 article in Astounding Science Fiction, that Hubbard had cured him of chronic sinusitis through Dianetics, but up until his death twenty-one years later, he continued to take medication for the condition, constantly sniffing from an inhaler. Campbell always endorsed Dianetics enthusiastically.
Incredible claims and statements were Hubbard’s trademarks; a 1963 bulletin to his followers announced that he had visited heaven :

 43,891,832,611,177 years, 344 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 40 seconds from 10.02½ P.M., Daylight Greenwich Time, 9th May 1963.

Since Daylight Greenwich Time is like saying “Eastern Standard Pacific Time” and the rest is mathematical nonsense, the import of this statement escapes most persons.

Hume, Daniel Dunglas

See ‘Home, Daniel Dunglas’.

Hume, David

(1711-1776) A Scottish philosopher who taught that all human thought processes are the product of mechanical/chemical systems in the brain. James Boswell declared him “the greatest writer in Britain,” and in recognition of that fact, the Roman Catholic church in 1761 placed all of his writings on the Index of Forbidden Books.
Hume’s Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1748) contained what has become known as his “Essay on Miracles,” in which he stated that because of its definition alone, “a miracle cannot be proved by any amount of evidence.” (The piece was retitled in 1758 “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.”)

More frequently, he is quoted as saying :

  ” It is more likely that testimony should be false, than that miracles should be true.”

Hurkos, Peter

(Pieter Van der Hurk, 1911-1988) A Dutch psychic who claimed that at age thirty he fell three stories from a ladder onto his head while painting. Miraculously, he not only lived through the fall, but he also found that it had made him psychic.
Discovered by parapsychologist Dr. Andrija Puharich and wealthy patron-of-psychics Henry Belk, he was brought to the United States, where he began performing before live audiences and on television with great success.
Many reputable parapsychologists requested that Hurkos submit to controlled tests, but he adamantly refused all such overtures, except for that of Dr. Charles Tart of the University of California at Davis.
Dr. Tart’s tests were negative.
When the famous Stone of Scone was stolen from Westminster Abbey in 1951 just at the height of Hurkos’ fame as a psychic, the French press gave very detailed accounts of how he had been called in by Scotland Yard to apply his powers to their investigation, had enabled them to find the object, had provided the names of the guilty persons, and in turn had received his expenses for the visit. A simple inquiry resulted in an official statement from a police spokesman that Hurkos :

  ” came to [England] at his own expense and was given the chance to exercise his powers in discovering the Stone; but his efforts produced nothing that could help the police.”

The Home Secretary, Mr. Chuter Edge, commenting on Hurkos’s claims in the matter, said :

  ” The gentleman in question whose activities have been publicized (though not by the police) was among a number of persons authorized to come to Westminster Abbey to examine the scene of the crime. He was not invited by the police, his expenses have not been refunded by the Government, and he did not obtain any result whatsoever.”

Hurkos’s methods, when he appeared to have any success at all, were essentially cold reading, which see. At one point, during an investigation of a murder case, he was stopped in his car and a number of pieces of false identification were found, indicating that he was obtaining information by that means when he posed as a police psychic, so that Hurkos obviously had recourse to “hot” reading techniques as well.

Hypnotism / Hypnosis

One of the most controversial subjects or phenomena in psychology is hypnotism. It is said to be an altered state of mind a subject enters into at the instruction of the operator, a trance condition in which the subject is amenable to suggestions made by the operator. Stage demonstrations of the phenomenon may or may not be genuine.
Since there are no adequate definitions of trance and no means whereby one can test for that state, it appears more likely that hypnotism is a mutual agreement of the operator and the subject that the subject will cooperate in following suggestions and in acting out various suggested scenarios. As such,hypnotism may be a valuable tool in psychology.

Certainly the picture of the hypnotist (operator) as a figure of power with control over the unwilling victim is the product of ignorance and superstition.
Anton Mesmer, who gave his name to an early version of hypnotism, “mesmerism,” played with the notion of animal magnetism and then began to realize that the various objects he used — such as iron scepters and vats of chemicals — had nothing to do with the experience his subjects underwent.
Recent research has shown that weight loss and cessation of smoking, both popularly advertised as curable by hypnotism, cannot be accomplished without the earnest desire of the sufferer to achieve the desired result; this leads to the question of whether or not the results might be as easily attained by some other form of approach, such as religious inspiration, the caring of a family member, or the intervention of another mystic-sounding but ineffective therapy. This is an idea that professional hypnotists do not care to hear.

I

Iambilicus

(also, Jambilicus, A.D. 250-325) A Neo-Platonist philosopher who wrote The Mysteries of the Chaldeans and Assyrians. He gave formulas for invoking magical powers, one of which was plagiarized almost verbatim by Nostradamus and used for his first quatrain, I-1. He has been quoted and plagiarized from by many subsequent writers on the subject of magic.

Iannes & Iambres

The two magicians who challenged Moses in the biblical account of a magic contest at Pharaoh’s court. They are known in Arabian lore as Sadur and Ghadur. Losers.

I Ching

(formerly written, “Y-Kim” or “I King,” and pronounced, ee-ching) Scapulimancy, an ancient form of fortune-telling, involved burning the shoulder blade of an animal in a slow fire, then examining the
cracks thus produced, in order to divine the future. Through the Chinese, this evolved into a much more attractive method known as, and described in, the Book of Changes or I Ching, ascribed to an early emperor of China, Fu Hsi (formerly written, “Fo Hi,”) who is generally supposed to have lived
2953-2838 B.C., though that is unlikely. The book first appeared in English in 1882 and attracted much attention among the occultists, who were eager to adopt anything of Asiatic origin.
This basic idea involves two directly opposite forces, “yin” and “yang,” the yin being the female/negative/receptive/dark/earth force and the yang the positive/active/bright/sky (or heaven) force. The yin force is said to be stronger in the winter and the yang in the summer. Both are equal at the spring and fall equinoxes.
For purposes of divination, the permutations of 64 hexagrams, each formed from a pair of trigrams,are consulted. Each is formed from a set of solid or broken lines. The yin is represented by a broken line and yang by a solid line. Sets of three yin and/or yang lines are known as “trigrams,” and there are eight possibilities (23). Each has an attribute and a name :

Combined in sets of six lines (pairs of trigrams), there are 64 (26) possible combinations, and the figures are known as “hexagrams.” The I Ching contains detailed meanings for these diagrams, and a complicated system exists for shaking inscribed reeds from a container (or, in an alternate mode,tossing coins), then referring to the I Ching and trying to make sense of the results.

The success of the I Ching lies largely in its rather flattering and generally nonthreatening messages,along with the vague language it uses. Almost any meaning can be derived from a configuration and the very vague, poetic and general book interpretations, and it is probably as a form of selfadministered pop psychology that the system finds its greatest value.

See also ‘sortilege’.

Icke, David

In March 1991, a former U.K. soccer star, spokesperson for the Green party, and broadcaster named David Icke called a press conference in London to announce a number of upcoming world-shaking events revealed to him personally, he said, by Socrates, “the Godhead,” Jesus Christ, and various other spirits. They had chosen him, he said, to be the “channel for the Christ spirit.” The press paid close attention and published lengthy interviews with Mr. Icke.
Mr. Icke declared that “disruptive thought vibrations” originating with the Sicilian Mafia and the Tiananmen Square massacre in China had combined to set in motion a cataclysm that would first be evidenced when Mount Rainier in the United States would explode. No date was given. This would be followed, he said, by the complete disappearance of New Zealand, the collapse of the Channel Tunnel,the fall of Naples Cathedral, and an unspecified failure of the Texas oil fields.
These events would be brought about by the “archangel Ak-Taurus,” who, he said, had previously managed to thwart an attempt by the citizens of Atlantis to avoid the submersion of that civilization.
The Atlanteans, said Mr. Icke, had been urged to tune in to the “power point” at Stonehenge, but they did not heed the warning and were thus destroyed. He also revealed that both King Arthur and Merlin,along with the archangels, have now turned off the power at Stonehenge so that Ak-Taurus cannot use it against mankind. What a relief!
By Christmas 1991, Mr. Icke predicted, Cuba, Greece, the Isle of Arran, the cliffs of Kent, and Teeside would be hit by a great earthquake (8.0 on the Richter scale) that would submerge them.

Mr. Icke has since stated that at the time he made these predictions he knew they were crazy. I have no disagreement with that evaluation.

Ideomotor Effect

This is the psychological phenomenon that underlies dowsing, automatic writing, table tipping, and the Ouija board. Quite unconsciously, the participant is moving the hand enough to make the movement of the involved device occur, though he may attribute the motion to the divine or supernatural force in which he believes. In all these events, nothing in the way of information is revealed to the operator except what he already knows. The effect is very powerful with some personalities, and no amount of evidence will disabuse believers in the magical nature of the phenomenon.

Ideoplast

Differentiated from ectoplasm in that it is a materialization formed by the mind rather than by spirit forces. A term invented by Schrenck-Notzing.

Illuminati

An identification generally adopted since the fifteenth century by those who believe they have a special understanding of mystical, occult, and obscure matters. The official Order of the Illuminati,though it had its origins much earlier, was a secret society founded in May of 1776 by Bavarian university law professor Adam Weishaupt (1748-1811). Originally a group of republican freethinkers loosely related to the freemasonry movement, it really lasted only a decade or so, but interest in the group was happily rekindled later by authors such as Aleister Crowley and today a plethora of dunderhead conspiracy nuts such as Texe Marrs — publisher of “Power of Prophecy” — ascribe to these underground agents — as well as the freemasons movements — every sort of imaginable,rascally, devious, action against humanity.
Certainly, the Illuminati notion must be the most adaptable and wide-reaching of all conspiracy theories. It takes in such subjects as communism, the French Revolution, kabala, the Ku Klux Klan,the Mafia, magic, pyramids, Satanism, spoon-bending, Stonehenge, UFOs, witchcraft, Zionism, and many other silly pursuits and philosophies. The UK’s David Icke who has never hesitated to plunge into any conspiracy idea, has declared that the Illuminati are reptilian aliens.

Who knows? Does anyone care?

Incubus

(plural, incubi) A male demon that visits women at night for purposes of copulation. Among most husbands, not a generally believed story.

See also ‘succubus’.

Inquisition

See ‘Holy Inquisition’.

Intuition

Knowledge or feelings about events, conditions, or other data without apparent direct evidence,regular sensory input or previous training. A faculty often ascribed, by tradition, more to women than to men.
There are two ways of looking at intuition: The mystic tends to consider it a paranormal or divine attribution, the pragmatist sees it as an unconscious drawing upon basic instincts, previous experience,and available clues to arrive at a probable decision or conclusion. Persons highly skilled in various arts often exhibit remarkable abilities to know facts and subtleties about various substances, people and circumstances, skills that may appear almost supernatural to the uncritical observer.
For another example, a mother’s ability to “know” of danger to her child may be triggered by sounds that are audible to the mother on an unconscious level, but which suddenly change or cease in a manner that shows a difference to which the mother is sensitive.
A supernatural explanation is not parsimonious when examining such matters.

Imp

A juvenile demon or child of a devil.

Immortality

The state of eternal life, or at least living far, far beyond normal expectation. Cagliostro, Mary Baker Eddy, Saint Germain, and many other mystics claimed they would live forever, and gave formulas for doing so successfully. That is, they successfully gave formulas; the formulas were unsuccessful.
It will suffice to give just one such formula in order to illustrate the practical difficulty of following the plan. In the 1660s, one Eirenaeus Philoponus Philalethes, an alchemist, outlined his system for attaining immortality. He suggested the following concoction :

” Ten parts of coelestiall slime; separate the male from the female, and each afterwards from its own earth, physically, mark you, and with no violence. Conjoin after separation in due, harmonic vitall proportion; and straightaway, the Soul descending from the pyroplastic sphere, shall
restore, by a mirific embrace, its dead and deserted body. Proceed according to the Volcanico magica theory, till they are exalted into the Fifth Metaphysical Rota. This is that world-renowned medicine,whereof so

  It would appear that the apothecary who wished to prepare this substance might need immortality in order to look up the various substances and terms needed.”

Immortality appears to be still unattainable.