An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

by James Randi

  Cereology

  See crop circles.

  Chakra

  In tantric anatomy, one of several “points of power” located in the human body, to and from which psychic forces flow.

  The chakras of the human body.

  The seven most accepted chakras are the base of the spine, a spot just below the navel, the solar plexus, the heart, the throat, the brow, and the top of the head. There are three others, all located in the lower pelvis; these are not used except in black magic, as might be expected.

  See also kundalini yoga.

  Channeling

  Beginning in about 1980, jaded celebrities began gravitating to a new notion that was actually spiritualism rewarmed. Instead of sitting in a darkened séance room holding hands and singing hymns, however, channeling consists of buying a $600 seat in a fully lit theater and listening to gurus expounding the wit and wisdom of great personalities who expired as much as thirty-five thousand years ago. One of the most prominent public figures to embrace this idea was the superbly talented actress Shirley MacLaine. She chose, for a while, to support the claims of J.Z. Knight, who spoke as Ramtha, a warrior from thousands of years ago.

  There are a number of other channelers in the business, such as Jach Pursel (who channels Lazaris), along with Jane Roberts and Jean Loomis (who did and do Seth), Pat Rodegast (with Emmanuel), and Elwood Babbitt (he does Vishnu — along with Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, William Wordsworth, Jesus Christ, and others!) and dozens of other minor actors. They are or were all essentially amateur thespians speaking in strange, strained voices with very bad impressions of foreign accents and making even stranger faces and gestures, delivering mindless pap to the gullible who can afford them.

  There even is published by Barbara Bell, out of San Anselmo, California, a Barbie Channeling Newsletter dealing with a channeler who claims to contact the “archetypical feminine plastic essence who embodies the stereotypical wisdom of the 60s and 70s.” In other words, Ms. Bell is bringing erudition from a polyethylene doll by tapping into the emotional reservoir of countless little girls who have given their devotion to Barbie. This claim seems to fit in well with the other claims made by those who contact folks from Atlantis.

  Conjuror Jamy Ian Swiss has an excellent comment on channeling. He refers to it as “just bad ventriloquism. [The channelers] talk funny but their lips move.”

  Charms

  The verbal version of a charm is a short verse or expression offered to confer protection or a wish. “Gesundheit!” (“Good health!”) is a simple form, often said in response to a sneeze, a moment when a demon is said to be able to enter one's body through the nose. Also, “Good luck!” or “Bless you!” are common informal charms. In ancient Greece, the words aski, kataski, and tetrax were charm words used to ward off enchantments. A more involved, formalized charm might be termed a prayer.

  As a material thing, a charm can be any sort of an object; a substance such as herbs or medicines contained in a bottle, bag, or vial; beads; medallions; or an amulet (an amulet being more specifically designed to ward off spiritual evil). A crucifix or a bit of hair in a locket, an ankh, or any number of Buddhist symbols represent commonly used charms. In the Buddhist religion, the use of an amulet is pretty well universal.

  An amulet (the word derives from the Arabic for “to carry”) is usually an inscribed charm of metal, stone, clay, wood, or bone, worn about the neck or otherwise carried on the person. A “hag-stone” (called a “mare-stone” in Scotland) is a bored stone worn to avert nightmares. The amulet can also be in the form of a gem, colored threads, a ring, a key, or a knot.

  “Magic squares,” mathematical matrices that exhibit peculiar qualities when summed, are often inscribed on amulets. An example is:

  In this basic square, any line of three figures — vertical, horizontal, or diagonal — adds to fifteen. Such an attribute is thought to confer magical security on the bearer.

  The Hebrew mezuza is another example, inscribed with the name of Jehovah, though this charm is usually affixed to a doorpost as a bar to various demons. Amulets can be specially designed as protection from the evil eye, imprisonment, loss of property, or other misfortunes. The figure of a scorpion covered with appropriate symbols is said to protect against nightmares, incubi, and succubi. The Triskelion, a symbol consisting of three legs bent at the knee and joined at the thigh in a circle, is said to protect against the evil eye. The Isle of Man incorporates the Triskelion in its heraldry.

  Some amulets are designed to protect only on certain days, their potency being determined by astrological means. Some are merely scraps of paper with magic symbols written on them; they are crumpled up and swallowed. Amulets obtained or made at a crossroads or a burial ground are supposed to be particularly effective.

  There is a Yemenite charm against mice. You have the imam write the name of the prophet or some text from the Koran on a piece of parchment, have him say some powerful prayers over it, roll the piece of parchment up very tightly, wrap it and attach it to the collar of a cat. No guarantees.

  Roman sorcerers prepared amulets specifically designed to prevent or cure diseases of the eye, headaches, toothache, tumors, fevers, epilepsy, or poisonous bites. In Hindu mythology there is a powerful stone which is made into an amulet called Salagrama. Its powers are almost unlimited.

  In the Middle Ages, Carmelite monks were permitted to sell “conception-billets,” which are bits of consecrated paper to be placed at thresholds, attached to domestic articles, or simply swallowed to offer protection against theft or disease. Placed into a child's cradle, such a billet is believed to guard against the child being stolen by a witch; we don't know of any children so protected who have been reported as stolen by a witch.

  Feathers from the wings of the angel Gabriel were sold as charms by medieval monks to fend off the plague. No record exists of a customer asking a monk how he obtained the feathers.

  In his Dr. Faustus, Christopher Marlowe says of a potent charm:

  Within this circle is Jehovah's name

  Forward and backward anagrammatized

  Then fear not, Faustus, to be resolute

  And try the utmost magic can perform.

  And we all know what happened to Dr. Faust, don't we? Or do we?

  See also abracadabra, angel, and talismans.

  Cheating

  (derived from escheator, the term for an official who collects taxes) A process — physical, sensory, or psychological — by which psychics are able to produce for inexperienced observers the effects of genuine psi. When the performers are caught cheating, the officially recognized scientific researchers — known as parapsychologists — conclude that they were forced into doing so because their powers failed them or they did it unknowingly in trance; when the performers are not caught at it, that portion of the research is said to be genuine.

  An interesting euphemism adopted by researchers is the use of the term “mixed mediumship” to refer to mediums who are caught at fakery, since the remainder is assumed to be the real stuff.

  In his satire Hudibras, author Samuel Butler wrote:

  Doubtless the pleasure is as great

  Of being cheated as to cheat;

  As lookers-on feel most delight

  That least perceive a juggler's sleight,

  And still the less they understand

  The more they admire his sleight of hand.

  Cheiro

  See Warner, William.

  Chela

  See adept.

  Chimera

  (also, chimaera) A (hopefully) mythical beast that the Greek hero Bellerophon, astride the winged horse Pegasus, is said to have slain. It was a lion up front, a serpent (or dragon) at the rear, and a goat in the middle. It had the three heads belonging to these creatures.

  The term is used today to describe an unrealistic goal such as squaring the circle, levitating by Transcendental Meditation, bending a spoon by looking at it, or parapsychology.

  Chiromancy

&nb
sp; See palmistry.

  Chiropractic

  The American Medical Association has referred to chiropractic as “an irrational, unscientific approach to disease causation.” Originated in 1895 by one Daniel David Palmer, it was made into a thriving trade by his son, B.J. Palmer. The major claim of the art is that “subluxations” (misalignments of the spinal column) cause illnesses.

  The various schools of chiropractic differ in what they claim can be cured by manipulating the spine, some having almost no limit (asthma, bacterial and viral infections, migraine, cancer, AIDS), while others are satisfied to relieve muscle spasms — for which such massage is probably beneficial. Some obviously renegade chiropractors sell their patients on “color therapy” in which applied kinesiology is used to determine the victim's sensitivity to specific colors, and they also use “polarity reversal” in which magnets are used to change the “bioenergy” field of the body. Both systems are perfect examples of expensive quackery, having no basis whatsoever in fact.

  Chiropractors have been known to bruise and sometimes more gravely injure their customers, but often these people go right back to receive more at the hands of the operator, seeming not to learn from experience. Chiropractors are fond of pointing out that regular MDs are far from perfect, a fact that in no way validates what they themselves are doing and that appears to be only a method of misdirecting the attention of the detractor.

  While there doubtless is some value to chiropractic in respect to massage relief of strains and muscle spasms, statements made by chiropractors include such howlers as specifying that a subluxation of the sixth dorsal vertebra brings about diphtheria. Such a notion is another classic example of quackery.

  But having your back rubbed does feel good, and the pops produced by being flexed and stretched do sound impressive.

  See also osteomyology.

  Christian Science/Scientists

  This is a religion founded by Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) in Boston in 1879, based on a theory she said she developed after she believed she was miraculously healed in 1866. She said that she had fallen on the ice and had been given three days to live, but that she healed herself solely through reading the Bible. However, when he was questioned about this, her doctor denied her story and under oath he repudiated the claim. This had no effect at all upon the believers.

  Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-1866), a “magnetic healer” whom Mrs. Eddy had studied with, was an originator of the basic idea that disease is all in the mind, a notion that Mrs. Eddy adopted as her own.

  The Christian Science church does not record the date of Mrs. Eddy's death.

  See also faith healing and malicious animal magnetism.

  Christopher, Milbourne

  (1914-1984) Christopher was a magician and a well-known and respected writer on the subjects of conjuring and the paranormal. He also served as president of the Society of American Magicians.

  Three of his books, Milbourne Christopher's Illustrated History of Magic, Panorama of Magic, and Search for the Soul, are highly recommended reading.

  Christopher was heavily involved in investigations of Lady Wonder, the horse accepted by Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine as genuinely telepathic, and he also looked into the claims of Uri Geller. He was associated with the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

  Church of Christ, Scientist

  See Christian Science/Scientists.

  Clairaudience

  (from the French for “clear hearing”) The claimed psychic power by which certain persons say they can “hear” information from occult sources such as spirits.

  The voices heard by Joan of Arc are examples of either clairaudience or hallucination. The latter is a preferred and parsimonious choice.

  See also clairvoyance and Doris Stokes.

  Clairvoyance

  (from the French for “clear seeing”) The claimed psychic power by which certain persons say they can “see” information about living beings or even about an insentient object or location without using the ordinary sensory means. Related to clairaudience. A clairvoyant — a person possessing this ability — often uses a scrying device to perform the act. Crystal gazing and even tea leaf reading can be included in this category, and each works equally well.

  Clever Hans Phenomenon

  In 1900, a German named Wilhelm von Osten displayed to the public his horse, Clever Hans (Kluge Hans), who was apparently able to perform mathematical calculations. The horse was examined in 1904 by a committee headed by professor of philosophy Professor C. Stumpf, who reported that they could find no evidence of direct signaling being done by the handlers, as if that were enough to endorse the wonder. People flocked to see Hans perform. Then Dr. Albert Moll, who had examined the horse the year before — but was subsequently refused permission to see the animal again — declared that Hans was a perfectly ordinary animal who was being unconsciously (?) cued by his owner, as well as by the small movements and sounds made by observers who were standing by.

  Clever Hans, a horse apparently able to perform mathematical calculations.

  An astute experimenter named Oskar Pfungst, a student of Stumpf, did the really definitive tests of Hans under Stumpf's direction, and the results of those observations gave rise to the discovery of the existence of the process of involuntary/unconscious cuing now known as the Clever Hans phenomenon. Stumpf thereupon retracted his claim of the remarkable ability he believed he'd detected in Hans.

  Hans was not the only horse (or other animal) to react to secret and/or unconscious cuing. There have been many such. In 1591, in England, a horse named Morocco became famous and made his owner rich. The horse called the totals on a pair of over-sized dice, added and subtracted, and pointed out letters and persons in the audience. The animal even showed up in Shakespeare's play Love's Labour's Lost, Act 1, Scene 2, as “the dancing horse.”

  In 1927, Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine, considered the father of parapsychology, witnessed Lady Wonder, another horse said to have psychic powers, and though he was not convinced that the horse could calculate, he did believe it was telepathic. Lady Wonder's owner used toy alphabet blocks which the horse knocked over to spell out words being thought of by the spectators, but the words were always known to the owner who handled the horse. Rhine believed he had eliminated all possibilities of trickery and error, and reported:

  There is left then, only the telepathic explanation, the transference of mental influence by an unknown process. Nothing was discovered that failed to accord with it, and no other hypothesis proposed seems tenable in view of the results.

  Despite an investigation by Milbourne Christopher which indicated that the horse's owner was cuing Lady Wonder with movements of her whip, and a second, better designed set of tests of his own that produced no positive results, Rhine decided to stick with his original conclusion, offering the explanation that while the horse had once possessed ESP powers, it later lost them and trickery was resorted to. Such naivety in a parapsychologist is not at all rare.

  The excellent book of Ricky Jay, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, discusses other animals who were considered miraculous.

  See also cheating.

  Closed medium

  (also, shut-eye medium) A term in opposition to “open medium.” A “closed” medium does not confide in other performers or admit to them any trickery. In some cases, such a medium actually believes in his or her powers, and does not purposely perform trickery. He or she chooses to conduct business in isolation, not making use of advice or information that might be obtained from other mediums.

  Cold Reading

  Among practitioners of the occult arts, there is a technique known as “cold reading.” When the performer is faced with an audience that is entirely strange to him, he uses this tried-and-true method of guessing names, relationships, events, and situations that might relate to audience members.

  The technique is differentiated from “hot reading,” which is used when the reader has obtained specific, hard inform
ation about a sitter and merely has to reveal it in a convincing manner. U.K. author/historian Ian Wilson looked into the methods of one Doris Stokes, a prominent U.K. clairaudient, and discovered that the people for whom she had produced “evidential” messages were people who had contacted her in advance of the show, had given her information, and had then been invited to attend her meeting. The information she'd received from them was then given back to them and embellished upon. Mrs. Stokes's work serves well as an excellent example of hot reading.