Zetetic Scholar

Addresses new and interesting links to other sites (not listed on the Genii website) that merit attention.
Bill Mullins
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Zetetic Scholar

Postby Bill Mullins » August 26th, 2015, 12:05 am

The Zetetic Scholar was a skeptic-oriented magazine put out by Marcello Truzzi. 13 issues are online here. It contains contributions by Martin Gardner, James Randi, Milbourne Christopher, Persi Diaconis, and Truzzi.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Joe Pecore » August 26th, 2015, 3:25 am

Where is "here"?
Share your knowledge on the MagicPedia wiki.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 26th, 2015, 6:04 am

I bet it had a MASSIVE circulation!

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Jon Elion » August 26th, 2015, 6:35 am

Here is here.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Bill Mullins » August 26th, 2015, 8:20 am

I meant to include a link. . .

Thanks, Jon.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby P.T.Widdle » August 26th, 2015, 9:31 am

performer wrote:I bet it had a MASSIVE circulation!


Perfect example of the troll-like behavior from you that upset people. Get off this thread unless you have something to offer other than snarky sarcasm intended to provoke.


Bill, Jon, thanks for the link.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Joe Pecore » August 26th, 2015, 9:35 am

P.T.Widdle wrote:
performer wrote:I bet it had a MASSIVE circulation!


Perfect example of the troll-like behavior from you that upset people. Get off this thread unless you have something to offer other than snarky sarcasm intended to provoke.


Bill, Jon, thanks for the link.



Please don't feed the trolls. ;)
Share your knowledge on the MagicPedia wiki.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 26th, 2015, 9:45 am

P.T.Widdle wrote:
performer wrote:I bet it had a MASSIVE circulation!


Perfect example of the troll-like behavior from you that upset people. Get off this thread unless you have something to offer other than snarky sarcasm intended to provoke.


Bill, Jon, thanks for the link.


I am sorry, Widdle old chap. I have had so much unwarranted harassment from demented skeptics that I really think I should be allowed a little mild amusement in return.

There is also a more serious point I am making. The waffle from skeptics with their little magazines no matter how worthy are of such little consequence and a tiny pinprick that nobody reads except a few hundred people in a dusty university are trifling fare compared to the thousands of best selling books on all sorts of subjects that they debunk.

I personally regard the Bible as a load of old nonsense but that doesn't stop it being the best selling book of all time.

Still, far be it from me to interfere with minority interests. Carry on, carry on.....................

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Brad Henderson » August 26th, 2015, 10:43 am

P.T.Widdle wrote:
performer wrote:I bet it had a MASSIVE circulation!


Perfect example of the troll-like behavior from you that upset people. Get off this thread unless you have something to offer other than snarky sarcasm intended to provoke.
.





wait - is tnere a new rule against snarky comments on genii posts?

That's gonna cut down a lot of traffic here don't you think?

Oh, or is this just your way, Widdle, of attempting to silence those with whom you disagree, people who have real esperience with the subject matter?

That's exactly the skeptic like behavior we've come to know and expect

Keep of the open minded work tnere!

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby P.T.Widdle » August 26th, 2015, 11:16 am

Brad Henderson wrote:people who have real esperience with the subject matter


If he has real experience then he should offer something constructive, something specific to the thread's topic.
He's lowering the bar for discourse, and you're encouraging it.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Jonathan Townsend » August 26th, 2015, 11:23 am

Brad Henderson wrote:...

Keep of the open minded work tnere!


Take the work as presented, considered and optimized for its audience. What does it presume of the reader?


http://www.iep.utm.edu/skepanci/
v. The Skeptical Life

So, skepticism is an ability to discover opposed arguments of equal persuasive force, the practice of which leads first to suspension of judgment and afterwards, fortuitously, to tranquility.


I heard a rumor that there are people who go around telling stories about strange things happening. Maybe there are such people. Do you know any? Have there been any local sightings?

Seems a simpler explanation than fretting over imagined yet unmeasured / unreliably reproduced phenomena.
Last edited by Jonathan Townsend on August 26th, 2015, 11:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mundus vult decipi -per Caleb Carr's story Killing Time

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Daniel Z » August 26th, 2015, 11:46 am

Thanks Bill. That's great. I have a couple of issues somewhere and always thought it would be great to check out the series.

Mark: Leaving aside the question of the scope of the impact of this magazine or the doings of self-proclaimed sceptics (and their critics), I was surprised by your initial snark. It struck me as odd that your (perhaps understandable) feelings of ill will regarding “sceptics” would lead to this response to Bill’s posting about Zetetic Scholar.

Elsewhere you recently acknowledged Marcello’s reputation as a “…a very reasonable and open minded man”. From personal conversations with many of the key players in this drama I garnered the impression that in fact, he was marginalized by other, better known skeptics who felt (rightly or wrongly) that he was 5th column, a closet believer, a fellow traveler of psychics, etc. His friendship with Geller, though it came later, seemed to reinforce this notion.

Moreover, I understood that this schism in the skeptical ranks occurred because Marcello felt that many of these people were, under the banner of reason, behaved like pseudo-skeptics much of the time. He felt that they were, what the early Greek skeptics might have called, academic or dogmatic-skeptics rather than true skeptics who, according to Marcello and these ancient), should be trying to suspend their beliefs in any particular position.

One of the founders of The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), they absorbed a journal he edited and made it their official journal. Later they changed the name to the The Zetetic (still later to The Skeptical Inquirer). About a year later they effectively forced him out (i.e. they held a vote of non-confidence in his work. My impression was that Marcello had started Zetetic Scholar as a response to CSICOP's actions which he saw as increasingly unscientific and closed-minded.

For those of you who had the misfortune of not getting to know him, Marcello was a remarkable man with a remarkable biography (e.g. he was the child of a well known circus family and raised in Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus). A sociologist of science, he had a long association with the worlds of comedy, music, juggling, and magic, especially mentalism. He was a scholar of these matters, a confidant of some of the most renown performers and at times a professional performer himself.

While his original and playful (I think he’d be OK if I added “eccentric”) mind certainly rubbed some people the wrong way, he was an honest zetetic and a good friend. Sadly, he died of cancer in 2003 at the age of 68. Those interested can can learn more about him on-line. A good place to start is the same site that Bill refers to in his original post. It has more about him and his academic work http://www.tricksterbook.com/truzzi/
Magicpedia has a short entry under his name and mentions an obituary in Magicol No. 148 (August 2003).

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Leo Garet » August 26th, 2015, 11:50 am

Jonathan Townsend wrote:Take the work as presented, considered and optimized for its audience. What does it presume of the reader?

Agreed.

As an aside, if “Massive Circulations” are the criteria for publication, there’s not going to be too much left.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Brad Henderson » August 26th, 2015, 12:01 pm

P.T.Widdle wrote:
Brad Henderson wrote:people who have real esperience with the subject matter


If he has real experience then he should offer something constructive, something specific to the thread's topic.
He's lowering the bar for discourse, and you're encouraging it.


so YOU get to determine what others post and deign what is relevant?

You open minded skeptics sure are a special lot.

One need not be constructive in order to make a point. My entire life has been focused on being negative - and by embracing negativity we can learn an awful lot. The holes sometimes reveal more about the structure than the foundation!

Daniel Z, did you give the talk at G4G on Truzzi/Gardner and their disagreement over the tact to take when dealing with psychics/believers?

Someone gave a talk based on exchanged letters. Truzzi advocated a kind, gentle approach. gardner advocated derision. Derision won. And because of that, I feel, the skeptic movement has failed. making fun of people is no way to get them to change their minds (unless perhaps you are of that breed who thinks it will). But most people when accused of being scammed or stupid tend to dig in their heels. No one wants to be thought or as a mark. (Note the lower case m, Mr Lewis ;). )

They made the wrong choice, obviously. And as long as that attitude prevail they will continue preaching only to their arrogant, self righteous choir

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Bill Mullins » August 26th, 2015, 12:31 pm

Daniel Z wrote: Those interested can can learn more about him on-line. A good place to start is the same site that Bill refers to in his original post. It has more about him and his academic work http://www.tricksterbook.com/truzzi/
Magicpedia has a short entry under his name and mentions an obituary in Magicol No. 148 (August 2003).


The obituary from Magicol, and another detailed one from the Linking Ring, are on the page Daniel linked to.

As he said, Truzzi didn't have the best relationship with the mainstream skeptic movement. Martin Gardner resigned as a consulting editor from ZS, apparently because Truzzi didn't disbelieve Immanuel Zelikovsky strongly enough (see ZS #2 p. 64).

Brad Henderson wrote: Daniel Z, did you give the talk at G4G on Truzzi/Gardner and their disagreement over the tact to take when dealing with psychics/believers?

Someone gave a talk based on exchanged letters. Truzzi advocated a kind, gentle approach. gardner advocated derision. Derision won. And because of that, I feel, the skeptic movement has failed.


Brad -- I'm pretty sure the talk you are referring to was by Dana Richards, who has compiled a massive bibliography of Gardner, helped organize his papers, contributed heavily to Martin Gardner Presents, and is slowly heading towards a biography, I think.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 26th, 2015, 2:23 pm

Oddly enough I first met Daniel Z at a psychic fair!

Yes. I quite liked Marcello Truzzi from the little I heard of him. However the combination of the words "skeptic" and "Widdle" have a strange metaphysical impact on me and alas it tends to trigger off mischief. Besides I saw the name of some of the contributors and it set off bad vibes to my equilibrium.

But yes. I did admire Marcello Truzzi for standing up to all the demented and over zealous sceptics. If scepticism had followed his lead I dare say it wouldn't have had such a tiny impact with fake million dollar challenges and suchlike.

I find sceptics very odd I must say. I saw a panel discussion at one of their conventions and was amused to see one chap on the panel who had written a book on fortune telling for the public. I looked through this book at the time and found no indication that he did not believe in this stuff. After all many magicians DO believe in metaphysical matters although I would certainly accept that rather a lot of silly ones don't. And that entire panel seemed to consist entirely of magicians. The silly ones that is.

Anyway I simply assumed that he was simply a believer and thought nothing more of it. Then one day I was walking through a shopping mall where someone by the name of Ben David (or something like that anyway)was walking past. I remembered him as an ex-employee and he informed me that people on the Genii Forum had no sense of humour and under no circumstances should I seek amusement of any kind on here as any risibility would be highly frowned upon.

I then enquired about the author of said book and opined that he must believe in spiritual matters. I was then informed by the most worthy gentleman that this was not true and in fact the said author did not believe a single word of what he had written and had just done it for the money.

And then I recently found him on that very panel of skeptics I mentioned. Tut. Tut. Dearie Me! Surely this is a scandal of monumental proportions in the tiny world of skeptics! An author pretending to believe in psychic powers in order to make money from the public! Sceptics have drummed magicians out of magic clubs for wickedness such as this. Ask Richard Webster.

And yet this chap who had written a book for the public on fortune telling thus propagating a continued belief it in was sitting on a panel of sceptics!

Quite disgraceful! I wonder how Widdle is going to Widdle out of that!

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 27th, 2015, 6:11 am

Oh. I see that Widdle hasn't widdled! I rest my case.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Daniel Z » August 28th, 2015, 10:09 pm

Hi Brad.
It wasn't me. I don't think I was at that one. If memory serves --a dubious proposition in my case -- I was at a couple of the earlier ones and a couple of later ones.

Mark. I don't think that was the first time we met! But (speaking of memory) you know how these memories from previous incarnations can confuse things...

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 28th, 2015, 10:44 pm

If you are the Daniel Z I am thinking of then I certainly did meet you at a psychic fair. You were filming there and afterwards you came to my booth to see me doing the svengali deck. NOW do you remember?

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Daniel Z » August 29th, 2015, 4:26 am

Hello Brad and Performer.

Brad: Sorry about the confusion in my answer. I guess some lingering element of my childhood dyslexia had me reading G4G as G4G Four. Oh well. Anyway, it wasn't me.

Mark: Of course I remember the psychic fair. We there filming Tarot readers for a project on the history of the Tarot. I only meant, that I don't think that was the first time we met.

Daniel Zuckerbrot
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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 29th, 2015, 6:17 am

And what were your conclusions when you finished the project? Did you think the psychics were a bunch of fakes or did you think they believed in their disciplines? I merely want to educate poor old Widdle a trifle.

Did you interview any that were not magicians? After all magicians are the least qualified to comment on psychic matters. Except me of course. I am after all a superb magician and a superb psychic. A most worthy combination. I am in constant admiration of my own genius on a daily basis.

Alas others do not quite come up to my own exalted standards.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Daniel Z » August 29th, 2015, 11:12 pm

Hi Mark.
The film got made. It was part of the Enigma series that we did a range of stuff from, magicians like Jeff McBride and Max Maven to various objects like the Tarot to characters like Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons. Murphy's used to distribute some of those DVDs. Those films are currently available distributed through Gaiam TV where I believe you can watch them online (for a price).

They describe ti this way: "Some say that a great and ancient wisdom is hidden in the mysterious images of the Tarot deck. That it is the sole surviving remnant from the great libraries of ancient Egypt. This may just be a romantic delusion as others say it originated in northern Italy during the early 15th century for a card game called triumphs. However, recent research shows that Tarot cards may indeed have a mysterious origin and may well have been intended as more than a simple game. There may indeed be ancient wisdom hidden in the mysterious images of the Tarot deck. - See more at: http://www.gaiamtv.com/video/tarot#sthash.SMvsSkmo.dpuf"

But the short version is that we didn't talk about whether psychic's are real (or in what sense they are real). That wasn't our interest at all. Our film on Tarot was about the history of these cards and what various people believe about them.

The reality of psychic phenomena could certainly be a film though. I did do a film years ago about dowsers (water diviners) with Ray Hyman (skeptic and magician), and Marcello Truzzi and we did look at how people claimed it worked or didn't work. Even in this though our focus was really on questions about how science works, what counts as evidence, and why, etc.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 30th, 2015, 5:14 am

Then you must have found out the answer to a simple question. I used to know the answer but alas I completely forgot. I think it is something I should know. I do know that playing cards and tarot are connected. One is derived from the other. However, I have forgotten which one came first. Was it the Tarot or the regular cards that came first?

Incidentally, I believe 100 percent in the power of the Tarot. I believe that it is the most powerful method of divination known to man. When I learned the Tarot my business skyrocketed. I was once informed by a psychic fair promoter that the strongest combination in a reading is palmistry and tarot. I have found this to be true.

The first thing I would advise anybody that wants to learn tarot cards is to throw the little book that comes with the cards away. There is a fallacy that you will hear magicians who do this kind of stuff say that you should stick to the standard meanings of the cards as they claim that many of your clients will know the standard meanings and if you don't use them the reading will not ring true.

This is utter tosh and is not the correct way to go about things. I often give readings to people who do the Tarot and they accept whatever method I use. The key is to use your OWN intuiton! You should study each card beforehand in private, meditate over each one and decide what the card means to YOU! Tarot is a personal thing. Once you have your own meanings then you can go with the flow better and your own meanings will be far better for your intuitive process.

Psychic readings are nothing more that HEIGHTENED INTUITION and this process has nothing to do with the supernatural. It also has nothing to do with so-called "cold reading" that nobody actually uses anyway except a percentage of fraudulent psychic mediums of the kind you see on television.

The process is what is likened to a "psychic mirror". In other words the subconcious mind of the querent is reflected back to your own conccious AND subconscious mind and given out verbally. And the cards are the mirror. A cloudy mirror but a mirror nevertheless. A psychic reading is like looking through frosted glass. You can see a fair bit but you can't see everything.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Daniel Z » August 30th, 2015, 8:03 am

It looks like that beginning in the late 18th century the European occult tradition held that Tarot came first and was a book of wisdom. Most historians hold that the evidence supports the opposite idea: that playing cards came first and the occult meanings were superimposed first as fortune telling and later spun off into its own deck and more occult meanings (relation to the Kabbalah, etc) were added. As far as that goes it's probably true but we show in the film the question is really more subtle and far from settled.

Since this is the Genii Forum let me add that this film has Jeff McBride presenting a trick with Tarot cards to illustrate the popular occultist version of the origins of the Tarot.

Also David Ben presents a very interesting and original trick to illustrate the idea that the British novelist Charles Williams had about the original Tarot. Williams was a buddy of Tolkien and CS Lewis (one of the Inklings). Along with Yeats a member of the Golden Dawn and other occult orgs. Since I was a teen ager I did a little effect that I based on his story and I had played for many years with the idea of turning it into a larger piece. David Ben did that for me but (un)fortunately I don't have the chops to do it the way he did.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Bob Coyne » August 30th, 2015, 9:54 am

performer wrote:
Incidentally, I believe 100 percent in the power of the Tarot. [...]

Psychic readings are nothing more that HEIGHTENED INTUITION and this process has nothing to do with the supernatural. It also has nothing to do with so-called "cold reading" that nobody actually uses anyway except a percentage of fraudulent psychic mediums of the kind you see on television.

The process is what is likened to a "psychic mirror". In other words the subconcious mind of the querent is reflected back to your own conccious AND subconscious mind and given out verbally. And the cards are the mirror. A cloudy mirror but a mirror nevertheless. A psychic reading is like looking through frosted glass. You can see a fair bit but you can't see everything.


Performer, some questions on this: Is there something significant about the particular pictures and stories used in Tarot cards, or would many other things achieve the same heightened intuition (eg a set of evocative artwork)? Also, heightened intuition, as you describe it, implies that the readings would be limited to what either the subject or reader knows or feels at some level. But how do you filter out intuitions that neither party could really know? i.e. intuitions might sometimes be picking up on something in the subject's subconscious but sometimes will just be noise and random hunches on the part of the reader. Similar to having a hunch or lucky number at roulette or the lottery. It seems to me that for intuitions to flow you have to have a certain suspension of disbelief. But that would have to be reconciled with the need to separate the wheat from the chaff among the intuitions.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 30th, 2015, 9:59 am

I thank Daniel for his answer about which comes first. It seems it could go either way. I shall have to consult a psychic to decide the matter. As for doing tricks with a Tarot deck the very idea fills me with horror. It somehow seems sacrilegious.

I shall answer Bob later. Alas I have to leave and spread enlightenment to my congregation in my capacity as a psychic reverend.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby MagicbyAlfred » August 30th, 2015, 12:22 pm

Before today, I had never heard of Marcello Truzzi, or the term, "Zetetic," despite having picked up a degree in Philosophy prior to devoting my life to the performance of close up magic. I was fascinated to learn, among other things, that:

"Truzzi [a college professor in Sociology, whose father performed with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus] founded the skeptical journal Explorations and was a founding member of the skeptic organization CSICOP...Truzzi's journal became the official journal of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and was renamed The Zetetic ('zetetic' is another name for 'skeptic' and is not to be confused with zetetics, the study of the relationship of art and science). The journal remained under his editorship. He left CSICOP about a year after its founding, after receiving a vote of no confidence from the group's Executive Council. Truzzi wanted to include pro-paranormal people in the organization and pro-paranormal research in the journal, but CSICOP felt that there were already enough organizations and journals dedicated to the paranormal..Truzzi was skeptical of investigators and debunkers who determined the validity of a claim prior to investigation. He accused CSICOP of increasingly unscientific behavior, for which he coined the term pseudoskepticism. Truzzi stated:

'They tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion. Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them. [...] When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts. Then, if the experiment is reputable, they say it's a mere anomaly.' "

Article on Marcello Truzzi, Wikipedia. (*I realize Wikipedia is a secondary source, but I have found it to be a generally reliable one)
Last edited by MagicbyAlfred on August 30th, 2015, 4:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 30th, 2015, 1:09 pm

Alfred
The reason you like this place is because I have arrived. It is exceedingly boring without me I can assure you.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 30th, 2015, 1:31 pm

Incidentally Truzzo had the correct approach. If the skeptics had followed his lead they would have made a hell of a lot more progress. Flies_ honey and vinegar you know.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 31st, 2015, 4:40 am

Bob Coyne wrote:
performer wrote:
Incidentally, I believe 100 percent in the power of the Tarot. [...]

Psychic readings are nothing more that HEIGHTENED INTUITION and this process has nothing to do with the supernatural. It also has nothing to do with so-called "cold reading" that nobody actually uses anyway except a percentage of fraudulent psychic mediums of the kind you see on television.

The process is what is likened to a "psychic mirror". In other words the subconcious mind of the querent is reflected back to your own conccious AND subconscious mind and given out verbally. And the cards are the mirror. A cloudy mirror but a mirror nevertheless. A psychic reading is like looking through frosted glass. You can see a fair bit but you can't see everything.


Performer, some questions on this: Is there something significant about the particular pictures and stories used in Tarot cards, or would many other things achieve the same heightened intuition (eg a set of evocative artwork)? Also, heightened intuition, as you describe it, implies that the readings would be limited to what either the subject or reader knows or feels at some level. But how do you filter out intuitions that neither party could really know? i.e. intuitions might sometimes be picking up on something in the subject's subconscious but sometimes will just be noise and random hunches on the part of the reader. Similar to having a hunch or lucky number at roulette or the lottery. It seems to me that for intuitions to flow you have to have a certain suspension of disbelief. But that would have to be reconciled with the need to separate the wheat from the chaff among the intuitions.



You know, I completely forgot about Bob's questions and I apologise to him for this late response. They are intelligent questions so I will try to answer them.

As to the first part of his question. Yes. I do indeed think that many other images would do very well indeed and you could use almost anything. However, Tarot cards have been specially made for this purpose and have been around for hundreds of years and create an atmosphere of credibility because of their reputation. Therefore you may as well use those.

I don't want to go off at a tangent too much but the cards I first purchased when I started off did not have too much in the way of images so I had to use a combination of numerology and the meaning of the suits for the minor arcana which is a little more difficult. I would recommend a beginner use the Rider Waite pack as there are far more images to draw upon.

The second part of his question is a bit more complicated but I will try and respond. An old psychic lady once told me that if I feel something I should say it even if it doesn't make sense to me. I sometimes do this and it inevitably works. However, this only happens when the "vibe" is a very strong one and I am pretty certain I am correct. In many cases, as Bob says I have to sort the wheat from the chaff. This is how I do it. When I first get the "vibe" (for want of a better word) I don't blurt it out straight away if I am not too sure. Instead I proceed with the reading and see if there are any confirmatory indications in the cards that my original hunch was correct. A bit like magicians using "time misdirection" as I think Harry Lorayne once termed it.

This is why I like to read the palm first before the Tarot. Even though palmistry requires no psychic ability as all you have to do is read the meaning of the lines as per traditional palmistry lore I do get very strong vibes about the person as I am doing it. I store those vibes in my memory and see if they are confirmed when I do the tarot reading. If the vibes are confirmed I proceed as already indicated.

Depending on the strength of these indications I may or may not come out with the information in all it's glory. However, if I am still not sure I put out little feelers so see if my hunch is on the right track. If I see that I am way off base I simply do not put forth the information. However, my hunches are right more often than not.

Where the more remarkable of these hunches come from I am not quite sure. But then I don't understand electricity either but that doesn't stop me using it.

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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Daniel Z » August 31st, 2015, 5:13 am

Hello.
I am convinced (from my own research) that Mark is 100% right when he says most psychic readers are true believers and do not use cold reading or think in those terms. As for how "psychic" readings work, to what degree are they "real", etc. I for one have not the slightest idea. Nor do I have a horse in that race. Certainly, it strikes me that like most of life's interesting phenomena, it is mysterious, most peoples ideas about it are delusional, or total [censored] etc. But that doesn't tell us much that's new.

Here's two thoughts that may seem to point in different directions but I think Mark might find them both of interest... Based on my memory (hmmm) Marcello told me not long before his demise that he was working on a research paper showing how the idea of cold reading was a 20th century literary invention (Lindsay Gresham?) developed by magician's trying to explain the doings of alleged psychics. Not that Marcello thought that the alternative to cold reading was "real" psychic phenomena -- he was not in fact a believer. However, he recognized other (perhaps simpler) alternatives. It was something he had been toying with for a while and I don't know if he finished this work or published anything about it.

Perhaps light (or further confusion) is thrown on this question when one recalls a story told by Ray Hyman. Ray is a noted psychologist, a skeptic, one of the founders of CSICOP, expert in statistical analysis especially of "paranormal" research. He was also a friend and colleague of the late Martin Gardner. Ray is also a magician (he had at least one Linking Ring Parade), but he started off performing as a palm reader an art which he studied earnestly and believed in completely. I think he was in fact putting himself through university doing palm readings. Then one day something challenged his beliefs about it and being of a scientific turn of mind he decided to put it to the test. The next series of readings he did he interpreted the hands of his clients exactly the opposite of what their hands told him, eg. if their palms indicated an introverted type he told them they were extroverted (or something like that, i don't know more details). While he expected the clients to object to what he was saying but the results were (according to his telling of the story) that they were just as satisfied and that he gave up palmistry. Questionable science of course but I find it an interesting story nonetheless.

To mix things up even more let me add that Ray did one of the first and most extensive studies of dowsers (water diviners) which he published in the classic "Water Witching USA" (with E.Z. Vogt, U of Chicago 1959). While he did not in anyway believe in the power of water witches Ray did say (on camera) that if he needed to drill a well and there was a dowser from the area (i.e. who knew it well, had gone to well drillings around there likely since childhood etc) he would hire the dowser before he'd hire a hydrogeologist. While he didn't believe there was anything psychic or supernatural going on he did thing that 'real dowsers" were unconsciously processing huge amounts of knowledge and observations that led to their sense of where the well should be drilled.

performer
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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 31st, 2015, 5:32 am

I see that Daniel also doesn't sleep properly and is up at unnatural early hours of the morning too. I am tempted to type something rude about somebody or other while Richard is too fast asleep to delete it but I will resist the temptation.

Actually the "unconsciously processing huge amounts of knowledge and observations that led to their sense of where the well should be drilled" IS psychic ability and that is what I have been saying all along. That is exactly how it all works.

But note the word "unconsciously". That is the key to the whole thing. Nothing fraudulent about it at all. And the observation about William Lindsey Gresham is quite interesting. It may well have been that he or somebody else invented the term to explain what is going on. As I keep saying it doesn't exist and not a single psychic of my acquaintance either honest or crooked uses it. I certainly don't. Sceptics are imagining things and the Ian Rowland book is a load of claptrap. I told Ian this in person in my usual tactful manner. The only exceptions seem to be the television mediums as far as I can see. The other psychics aren't clever enough to do things like that. It wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing was invented by some literary person.

I have always been a trifle suspicious that Arthur Conan Doyle invented it and he was wasn't as naive and innocent as he pretended. It has not gone unnoticed by me that Sherlock Holmes used it all the time.

Daniel Z
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Joined: June 17th, 2008, 8:32 pm

Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Daniel Z » August 31st, 2015, 5:56 am

Sleep? I'll look it up and get back to you about that.

I was going to add that, as you pointed out, this unconscious processing of information might be the same as what Mark refers to as intuition.

Re: literary origins of cold reading. Marcello may well have been thinking about Conan Doyle. As a sociologist who loved the weird and wonderful Truzzi was, not surprisingly, connected to many "eccentric" scenes other than magic. These included the Baker Street Irregulars (the literary society dedicated to all things Sherlockian). I mentioned Gresham since I recalled his name came up in one of our conversations about this theme -- I have no idea if it was as the originator.

Personally, I don't think cold reading is bull [censored]. But I am one of those who you describe as not clever enough to do it. I've studied a lot of the literature but find it way to cumbersome. At least in how it's generally explained. As you know there are a couple of people who have found their own way of proceeding that are simple and effective yet still related to the "classical" conception of cold-reading.

performer
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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 31st, 2015, 9:42 am

Daniel. There are various mentalists that do it as part of their tricks. However, I am talking about a psychic reading context. It just isn't used by any psychic I know. Oh, and it isn't used by people who write books about it either, at least not in a paid reading situation. They might earn a bit of money doing demonstrations CLAIMING that this is what psychics do it but that is a different thing entirely.

A lot of this "cold reading" tripe is based on asking questions, studying body language and using language in a manipulative fashion. Yes. I have seen psychic mediums do it on television and mentalists doing it as part of tricks or giving ineffective demonstrations of what they think happens in a reading.

There may possibly be a few magicians who try their hand at psychic readings and do this cold reading nonsense but they soon find out how ineffective and impractical it is.

That horrible old monster Ford Kross once sent me an audio tape of a reading that was full of around a million questions or so that he was asking his clients. Bad idea. A client will soon say "aren't you supposed to be telling me?" And of course the other problem is that if you are asking questions of the client you will never get rid of them as the session will never finish. You certainly can't do that at psychic fairs where other people are waiting for their reading.

As for studying body language I have no idea how to do that and if you ever see me working at a fair I hardly even look at the client. As I have stated on other threads I am not a fan of eye contact.

As for using language in a manipulative fashion I am far too busy and far too tired to mess about with that nonsense and it shuts down the intuitive process because you are using the logical mind too much.

And why do it anyway when it is just as easy to use palmistry lore that has been around for thousands of years (palmistry is even mentioned in the Bible) or Tarot techniques that have been around for hundreds of years? Nobody who ever wrote a book on palmistry or tarot that you purchase in bookshops ever mentions "cold reading" and most psychics have never even heard of it.

Anyway, this might interest you. I started my career with International Magic over 50 years ago and have known them for decades. Ron MacMillan started me on the svengali deck and in fact I have always said that if it weren't for the svengali deck there would be no International Magic.

They brought me over to the UK in 2010 to lecture on these subjects and produced two DVDS on the matter. They overworked me a trifle and when I demanded more money they fobbed me off in true International fashion with a ton of these DVDS which I will probably have to sell posthumously from the spirit world.

If anybody wants to purchase these DVDs they can contact me directly. International have enough money as it is.

Anyway here is a little videoclip they made promoting my work. Incidentally the girl in the clip is my niece and an accomplished entertainer in her own right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnsjG6SRXRY

Bob Coyne
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Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby Bob Coyne » August 31st, 2015, 10:29 am

Thanks ML/Performer for the answers to my questions...very informative! It sounds like a very enjoyable process to follow/hone your intuitions that way and see how they reinforce each other or not.

performer
Posts: 3508
Joined: August 7th, 2015, 10:35 pm

Re: Zetetic Scholar

Postby performer » August 31st, 2015, 1:26 pm

I am not sure enjoyable is the right word....................


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