Feng shui truly deserves to be bashed, but there are lots of bogus New Age felchosity that should be roasted as well.
Let’s take psychics. A few months ago my wife and I went to this “Psychic Fair” just for a lark to see hwo good they were. I cannot believe how badly they sucked. The “psychic” who did my wife’s “Reading” may as well have been reading a box of Corn Flakes for all the accuracy she had. The one who did mine was apparently talking about someone else. I could have done a better job. As cold readings went, they were fucking atrocious.
How can anyone possibly believe it this bullshit? I don’t mind the county fair psychic who jsut does a cold reading for fun and a few bux, but people like this Van Praagh guy who are taking advantage of people and making millions are lying squirrelfuckers of the worst sort. The thing is that the Uri Geller scam artists of the world wouldn’t get anywhere if people weren’t so goddamned gullible.
We waste millions - hell, BILLIONS of dollars for all I know - buying products and services from ass-heads claiming to read minds, speak with the dead, bend spoons and any number of absolute bullshit claims. What a colossal waste.
I edit for a magazine, and this situation has not yet come up (thank goodness) but I expect it will someday.
If we ever interview or quote someone who refers to herself as a “psychic,” I am going to insist we change it to “self-professed psychic,” or " . . . who claims to be a psychic." I can see fights over this in the boardroom, but I mean, Really.
IMHO,people have a need for feeling connected to something greater than themselves mixed with a desire to attribute blame for problems on the forces that control their lives. If they can’t do this with church attendance and prayer, they turn to psychics, healers, and other magicians.
In addition, people seem to gain a feeling of power and significance if they can talk to spirits or channel past lives.
Folks who say they’ve been reincarnated inevitably claim wonderfully exotic or notorious past lives. They’re always Cleopatra or courtesans, but you never see anyone claim to have been a nameless 14th century Serbian peasant or a 20th century farmer.
mmm Squirrelfuckers. Can you send me their address?
One other thing, if you are going to complain about psychics, keep it to the big guys who tell the future. There is always a bunch of crap involved with that. Most tarot readers don’t read the future. There is no way to tell that for sure.
As for magic, if you follow one of the several pagan religions that utilizes it, then you would know that magick is basically what skeptics would call a natural phenomena. For example, it is magickal that a tree can grow out of a seed. It can be explained scientifically but the process is still magickal. If you think of Magick as being less concrete it will make more sense. I always think of magick as being synonomous with the word “wonderment.”
I had a friend once that called one of those “psychic hot lines”. The first thing the “psychic” did was ask him a question. He said to her, “you tell me, you’re the psychic.” She hung up on him. So much for all that “tell your future” bull shit.
Why don’t they just stand on the street corner holding out a cup and asking for money. Or holding up a sign that says “will work for food”. It all amounts to the same thing, which is playing on the gullibilities of the mass public. It’s all bull shit, I tell ya, bull shit.
The one that really pisses me off lately is the faux-Jamacian Tarot card reader that’s been popping up all over the dial. Am I the only one that notices she keeps forgetting her accent when she’s actually doing the reading?
Once, just for laughs, I set up an ‘Ask The Psychic’ chatroom on AOL. I, of course, was the psychic. I would ask people their sign and then paraphrase thier horoscope from the back of the TV Guide. You wouldn’t believe how excited these people were that I could give them a ‘reading’ for free. I would also answer their questions. I had a lot of fun, and even hit the nail on the head a few times. I had a friend in the room with me, and she was shocked at their reactions to my ‘accuracy.’ All I was telling them was either common sense or just rational advice. After a while I started feeling guilty about it, so I said my powers were fading, and I had to rest a while.
People who believe in psychics want to believe, and take a psychics advice seriously. Too bad I didn’t figure out a way to charge them…I could have made a fortune
Rose
RickJay:(Sleight? I before E except after C, but “slieght” looks wrong.)
It’s “I before E except after C, or when sounded like A, as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’.” So that spelling’s okay. Do you get it, RickJay? [Help, somebody stop me! :)]
As a “magician” myself, I agree with Penn and Teller that the term “magic” suggests something that we don’t do, “sleight-of-hand artist” is too bulky, and “illusionist” has that pretentious Doug Henning connotation to it. Therefore, like them, I prefer “rip-off artiste”.
(BTW, every time I see RickJay, I think of Ricky Jay, my personal favorite magician.)
As for psychics, I think it comes down to the attitude. A friend of mine has always been interested in the tarot, and I am sort of “producing” her act right now. She doesn’t believe it any more than I believe I can make little balls disappear under cups, but we like to entertain people by making it look like we can. When you do it just to bilk money out of people, on the other hand, that’s wrong.
It’s like the difference between the card magician demonstrating poker cheating in his act and the guy actually cheating in a poker game. The line can be a little less fine with psychics, though.
I honestly didn’t know there was a Ricky Jay. Have to look him up. I love good magic tricks.
I guess it’s not really taking money I mind, though. Caveat emptor, a fool and his money are soon parted, etc. What really bothers me are the likes of James Van Praagh who claim to speak for people’s dead relatives. That, to be perfectly honest, is pretty goddamn horrible.
And if you do, get me a copy–it goes for up in the hundreds on eBay. I’m begging for a reprint. They did just re-print his other book, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, which is a history of bizarre entertainment.
Ricky Jay has also been in several movies, including The Spanish Prisoner, Boogie Nights, and Tomorrow Never Dies. His off-Broadway show Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants was one of the finest displays of card magic I’ve seen in a while, and I only saw the one-hour HBO version. (He’s researching another show, and I will go to NYC to see it.)
back on topic…
I think the question with psychics comes down to your purpose–are you entertaining people, or taking advantage of them? The difference is not all that easy to define, but I know it when I see it.
