by James Randi
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.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, near Cairo, in a nineteenth century stereopticon card photo.
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.
One of the famous grimoires, the Red Dragon, published along with another, The Black Chicken.
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 c
ontrol 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 Romania, 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 fortune-telling, 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 special-invitation 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 an
d 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.
