by James Randi
Dr. Thouless considered the development of this test his greatest contribution to parapsychology. To date, no one, alive or dead, has succeeded in solving the second message. Of course, the failure does not mean that Thouless did not survive death.
Many sittings with spirit mediums attempting to obtain the two key words from the ghost of Dr. Thouless have failed; though the mediums claim they make contact with the ghost, it tells them it has forgotten the two words. That seems strange, since Dr. Thouless wrote, in his description of the test, that those two words were “easy to remember.” The ghost is able to recall all other aspects of Thouless's life, such as names, addresses, events, and quotations — all details that are easily available to anyone who might want to know them — but not the two simple words upon which the entire test — and proof of survival — depend.
Any attempts at a solution should be sent to: Society for Psychical Research, 1 Adam & Eve Mews, London W8 6UG, U.K.
Thumb Writer
A device fitting on the end of the thumb (or, as with the “finger writer,” on a finger, usually the index) which enables a medium to secretly inscribe writing upon a pad, card, or slate. Often, the performer will pretend to write a name or number, then place the pad (for example) facedown upon a table, ask the sitter to give the word or number sought, and upon picking up the pad will use the writer to quickly and secretly write out the word or number. The pad is then shown, as if the word had been written there previously.
Trance
A poorly defined “altered state” of consciousness loosely described as a sleeplike condition, daze, or stupor. In some definitions, voluntary action is suspended. No definition of the hypnotic trance has been arrived at, nor are there tests to establish it. Psychics and spirit mediums usually claim to be “in trance” when they work, but there is no good evidence for this.
Transcendental Meditation
(TM) Becoming very popular after its introduction outside of India by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918?- ) in the 1960s, TM requires devotees to meditate twice daily, repeating their individually assigned mantras. TM is a philosophy that also teaches siddhis such as levitation (flying in the air by mind power) and invulnerability (safety from all assault, physical and spiritual) along with an assortment of other supernatural claims.
Study of the siddhis is an aspect of the Maharishi's “Science of Creative Intelligence,” which has no scientific characteristics at all. Though wide claims have been made for the effect of TM on the world, none of the claims have stood examination. One of the Maharishi's attractive analogies — in which he equates the solar system with the structure of the atom — is not only crackpot science; it is very bad crackpot.
TM obtained a brief surge of great interest when the Beatles embraced the idea for a few months in 1967. They were quickly disillusioned when the promises of the Maharishi went unfulfilled, and dropped out. However, Beatle George Harrison again joined the TM political party and ran for Parliament in the U.K. in 1992, as did many other TMers, including Canadian conjuror Doug Henning. None of the TM candidates won office, though they'd been told by the Maharishi that their election was assured. In 1993, Henning tried for political position as a TM candidate again, this time in Canada; he was unsuccessful.
The Maharishi claims to have discovered the secret of age reversal, though his own ripening process appears to be continuing at the expected rate. Tens of thousands of students have taken his course in levitation, but none have flown, which would appear to have been the eventual goal. And tests of the “invulnerable” siddhi have not been successfully conducted, as far as is known, in spite of the fact that such a test would appear to be easily designed and implemented.
Currently, the growth of TM has slowed, though Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, still functions as the center of the movement in the United States.
Transvection
See flying.
Trial By Ordeal
An early system of judgment in which the accused was pitted against a person who had been appointed by the court or by the accuser himself, in combat or some other form of competition. Divine powers were believed to regulate the outcome. In cases where, for example, a maiden was unable to battle with a man, a “champion” might be assigned to her. Other ordeals, such as handling hot metal, plunging a hand into burning embers, or being submerged under water might also be ordered by the court. In tests of witches, if the accused survived the ordeal, he or she was guilty; if not, he or she was innocent. The testing process was not an ideal one.
See also Bible.
Trigram
A set of three parallel lines, either broken or solid, which can be combined with another set to form a hexagram.
See also I Ching.
Try-ons
In the process of cold reading, this is a subtle prompting technique whereby the medium introduces an uncertainty to the statement, an unspoken invitation to the sitter to direct the attempt. Such phrases as these are used:
I want to say that . . .
I feel that . . .
Possibly . . .
It might be that . . .
I'm led to say that . . .
I get the feeling that . . .
I'm being told that . . .
Why do I say that . . .
Why do I feel that . . .
Also see the reading in Appendix I for examples of this technique in action.
Tut, curse of King
An international myth started by the press and carefully nurtured by them ever since.
When the tomb of a minor pharaoh of Egypt, Tutankhamen (circa 1350 B.C., died age 19), was discovered and opened in 1922, it was a major archaeological event. In order to keep the press at bay and yet allow them a sensational aspect with which to deal, the head of the excavation team, Howard Carter, put out a story that a curse had been placed upon anyone who violated the rest of the boy-king. The fact that this “curse” was accepted as traditional for all royal tombs escaped the notice of the eager press.
The man who had financed the project was Lord Carnavon (né Herbert, 1866-1923), and after he died in Cairo the following year, the curse of the Pharaoh was in full bloom. The fact that Carnavon was chronically ill, and particularly so when he arrived in Egypt from England to view the tomb, was ignored. Since the electricity in Cairo also went out that same night (it frequently failed at that period in the city's history), the curse seemed to be working very well.
The story arose that many of those who had been connected with the tomb died violently and prematurely. The awkward facts are that the average duration of life for the twenty-two nonnative persons (those who can be traced) who might be said to have had anything to do with the tomb opening or excavation — those who should have suffered the ancient curse — was more than twenty-three years after the “curse” was supposed to become effective. Lady Evelyn Herbert, Carnavon's daughter, died in 1980, a full fifty-seven years later. Howard Carter, who not only discovered the tomb and physically opened it, but also removed the mummy of Tutankhamen from the sarcophagus, lived until 1939, sixteen years after that event, and British soldier Richard Adamson, who slept in the tomb as a guard for seven years following the opening, was alive and well in 1980, fifty-seven years after the violation of the tomb.
This group died at an average age of seventy-three-plus years, beating the actuarial tables for persons of that period and social class by about a year. The curse of the Pharaoh is a beneficial curse, it would appear.
See Appendix II for more information.
Twenty-year curse
See Presidential Curse.
U
UFO
Acronym for Unidentified Flying Object, also known as a “flying saucer” due to the media misinterpretation of pilot Kenneth Arnold's (which see) 1947 sighting.
Since that time, endless reports of UFOs have come in, most of them actually of weather balloons, science projects, meteors, regular airline flights, and other relatively mundane events. In mos
t cases, sizes and distances have been given, though such figures simply cannot be determined without the use of proper instrumentation, a comparison object, or another properly recorded, independent report. It is an illusion most people have that they can tell the size and/or the distance of an object without these advantages, and it is just not true.
The viewing of an unknown object or image in the sky has almost automatically brought in suggestions of extraterrestrial origins. While there can hardly be any doubt that because of the vastness involved, other forms of life must exist in the universe besides those of which we are already aware, that fact does not imply that a viewed UFO is a manifestation of such life. It is simply what its name implies: an object or other phenomenon seen in the sky, apparently flying, and of unknown origin and nature, at that time and place, to that observer.
The currently favorite UFO claim is that of “abduction,” in which “abductees” report to the media — in considerable detail — how they were whisked away by alien craft as biological specimens. Almost invariably we hear that the UFO occupants carefully examined the genitals of the victims, who delight to dwell on that factor. The Journal of Irreproducible Results in the United States awarded their 1993 “Ig Nobel Prize” in psychology to scientists John Mack of Harvard Medical School and David Jacobs of Temple University in Philadelphia for their joint conclusion that people who believe they were kidnapped by aliens from outer space probably were, and that the purpose of the abduction is the production of children. The opinion of Mack and Jacobs on the Tooth Fairy was not revealed.
Umbanda
A Brazilian combination of the ideas of Allan Kardec and the teachings of Candomblé, which is a religion of African origin presided over by women. Created about 1920, Umbanda is often incorrectly referred to as Macumba. It is popular and highly respected in Brazil.
Unicorn
A mythical animal resembling a small horse with a beardlike appendage and a long, spiral, tapering horn (known as an alicorn) projecting from the forehead. The only person who can tame a unicorn, it is said, is a virgin. A virgin is recommended as necessary for capturing the beast. None of the beasts has been captured.
The Chinese have long recognized this beast in their mythology. They refer to it as ch'i-lin, which translates as “male-female.” The earliest Greek reference to a unicorn (by Ctesias) is in 400 B.C. and may have actually referred to the Indian rhinoceros. It is described there as having the legs of a buck deer, the head and body of a horse, and the tail of a lion. The horn is said to be white at the base, black in the middle, and red at the tip. Its body is white, the head red, and the eyes blue. This description was largely ignored and an all-white beast became accepted as typical.
In early Greek writings on animal husbandry there is a description of the process whereby horn buds of a goat kid are extracted and one of them is implanted at the center of the forehead. This produces in the mature goat the appearance of a small unicorn. The simple operation has also been done, first in 1933, with an Ayrshire calf. Since then, angora goats thus modified have been offered for sale as novelties.
Powdered unicorn horn was said to neutralize poisons and cure dropsy, epilepsy, gout and many other ailments, and it was sold for those purposes by early apothecaries. The substance thus offered was probably narwhal horn, actually a form of specialized tooth growing from the mouth of the male narwhal, a small whale that is found in Arctic waters. (Incredibly, a powdered horn substance is still available in oriental pharmacies in the form of rhinoceros horn, which is extolled as an aphrodisiac. This is yet another fallacy that shows clearly the manner in which ignorance and greed by humans are destroying the assets of our planet, in this case leading inexorably to the extinction of the white rhinoceros.)
The demon Amduscias, Grand Duke of Hades, is said to have the form of a unicorn.
Universal Alkahest
See philosopher's stone.
V
Vampire
Known in Poland as an upir and in Greece as a brucolaca. In Slavic countries, it has been believed that a child born with a tooth already developed will become a vampire.
Traditionally, the vampire is an “undead” person, often a suicide, who survives ordinary death by feeding on human blood, that of beautiful young maidens being much preferred. The blood is ingested through a bite wound on the victim's neck. It is said that some new vampires are the result of infection brought about from such a bite.
The person thus affected must sleep by day in a coffin in contact with earth from his or her mother country in order to sustain the pseudo-life state. Sunlight is invariably fatal to vampires. Only that, a stake through the heart, a silver bullet in the heart, or the destruction or sealing up of the resting place can finally kill a vampire. They do not cast shadows, nor do they have reflections in a mirror.
In 1730, there was a widespread panic in Hungary, where the legend was very strong. Adolescent girls reported nightly visitations from these creatures, much to the concern of the church.
Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897) benefited from the fact that the vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) had been discovered and studied in South America and seemed to provide an animal counterpart to the legend. In fact, the bat took its name from the mythical monster.
Vibration
An object or substance which oscillates from a neutral position (node) to positions (crests) on either side of the node is said to vibrate. An example would be the movement of the tines of a tuning fork, of a violin string, or of a pendulum (all “transverse” vibrations), or the compression effect on air or another medium when it vibrates with sound waves, an example of a longitudinal wave. The general condition of such oscillation, or a single cycle, is known as a vibration.
Occultists have used the word vibration freely but without much notion of its meaning or respect for its true nature. It is a highly popular catchall description for imaginary forces, powers, or influences.
Von Däniken, Erich
(1935- ) Former Swiss bank employee and author of Chariots of the Gods?, Gold of the Gods, and others, books in which he attempted to establish that UFOs were spacecraft described in ancient writings and mythology. Over thirty-six million copies of his books have been sold, and they are still on bookstands.
Erich Von Däniken, who invents material via what he termed
Von Däniken's work does not survive even cursory examination. His calculations are wrong, his facts are misquoted or invented, and he has admitted, during a 1978 PBS Nova television program, that some of his claims, conversations, and research did not take place at all; he simply invented material via what he termed “writer's license.” Nonetheless, his books continue to sell by the millions all over the world, in several different languages.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of Von Däniken's arguments is that though he cites the varied marvelous accomplishments of brown-, yellow-, or black-skinned races, he expresses his doubt that they could have constructed these wonders (the Egyptian pyramids, Easter Island statues, Nazca [Peru] lines, for example) without extraterrestrial help. He never mentions Stonehenge, Chartres Cathedral, the Parthenon, or any other wonders created by white-skinned races.
Voodoo
A religion of the West Indies, and specifically Haiti, originating with the slaves imported from Africa, who combined their gods with the Christian religious figures and through Macumba, Obeah (Jamaica), and other variations of this process created a great number of specific religions now popular in the Caribbean.
Voodoo itself is most well-known for its use of the wax doll to effect changes on a subject. A doll, preferably made using the hair, nail parings, and/or clothing of the intended subject, and baptized in that name, is subjected to various procedures such as pin-pricking, melting, or being submerged in water. The subject is said to undergo the actual experiences to which the doll has been exposed.
Though there is no evidence that such a system works, it has been postulated by modern authorities that perhaps a process of suggestion is
involved, if the subject is informed of what has been intended and believes that it can work.
See also sympathetic magic.
Voodoo doll
See voodoo and sympathetic magic.
Vril
An imaginary “occult essence,” the invention of mystic/novelist Bulwer-Lytton (1831-1891), who headed up a magic center in London and was a colleague of Éliphas Lévi.
