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

by James Randi

  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 then-burgeoning 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 full-scale 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 “mind-reading” 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 bee
n 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.

  The early interpretation of hypnotism was a sort of power that the operator had over the subject, as illustrated here.

  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 self-administered 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 A
leister 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.