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IAmZamzam
12-01-2010, 06:09 AM
The subject of professional psychics came up recently. It made me think of an idea I’d already had for a thread. You see, in all of fiction there is no scene I know of that demonstrates all the common tactics of these phonies more succinctly and understandably (even to the children of the story’s primary demographic) than the sequence with Professor Marvel in The Wizard of Oz. Therefore I have decided to go through the scene with you, bit by bit, and elaborate on all the elements of psychic trickery used. Think of it as a textbook example and elaboration.

In transcribing the scene I have had to use a Youtube video of the stage play as reference, due to a combination of an equipment problem that makes it hard for me to do it from my own DVD copy of the film and the moderators’ habit of getting me into trouble every time I make the least bit of reference to a movie. I have also, for the sake of relevancy and conciseness, removed an irrelevant moment or two with Toto from my transcription, as it has nothing to do with anything and can easily be taken out without harming the flow of the narrative.

Before we begin, let me give you the low down: whether psychic abilities actually exist or not, anyone who claims to use them as part of their job is almost certainly a liar (or much more rarely, delusional; these few folks are referred to by the frauds as “shut eyes”). If there are genuine psychics among the professionals, they must be in such low numbers as to make the extremely likely risk of giving any of the others even the very time of day, let alone one's trust and money, completely not worth it. God has given us our own mundane mental faculties and they (especially our reason) should suffice. When they don’t suffice, we should rely on those of others or, at worst, simply accept that the issue is in God’s hands and wash our own of it. Nobody needs psychic abilities: we can do just fine without them. We’re made to. And how often do these so-called psychics tell you anything about yourself you don’t already know anyway?

Now, in this play (and in the movie; apparently not in the book, though I haven’t read it myself) the protagonist, a young farmgirl named Dorothy Gale, visits a medium on her way as she runs away from home. This man calls himself Professor Marvel; probably he’s gone by a lot of names in his day. The meeting goes as follows piecemeal:

Professor Marvel: Welllll, houseguest, huh? And who might you be?

Dorothy: Well, I—

Professor Marvel: Wait, don’t tell me, don’t tell me! You are…uh…you’re, uh…traveling in disguise!

Professor Marvel sees from the look on her face that he’s wrong.

Professor Marvel: No, no, that’s not right. You’re, uh, you’re, uh…going on a visit!

Again he can see that he’s wrong.

Professor Marvel: No, I’m wrong, you’re uh, you’re, uh—running away!

Dorothy: How did you guess?!

Professor Marvel: Ha ha ha ha! Professor Marvel never guesses! He knows!
This is a fine demonstration of the first and probably most common of the tactics of these liars who call themselves mediums. It is called cold reading. It is, to put it simply, a guessing game elevated to the status of a parlor trick. The medium tosses out guesses, making sure to word them so as not to sound too much like guesses, and carefully gauging your reaction gradually hones in on the truth. You’ll notice that the “professor” makes more wrong assertions than right ones and yet Dorothy notices or focuses on only the final, correct guess. Bear this in mind: it is one of the central principles of cold reading.

Anybody could pull a similar trick off to some degree or other and people who have made a living out of something usually have had a lot of practice at it. Most of them are a lot more subtle than Professor Marvel. John Edward, for example, can somehow make total rambling and raving like “I’m getting something with an M here something with an M or N someone associated with the month of February maybe someone who is above you” actually sound like a clear, decisive proclamation of known fact. Mentalists pull exactly the same stunt, the key difference being that they are honest about their cold readings, labeling them only as magic tricks and performing them only for entertainment value. And yet when mediums do exactly the same things they claim to be doing it for real. Weird, huh?

Professor Marvel: But why are you running away?

Dorothy: Well—

Professor Marvel: Don’t tell me, don’t tell me! Uh, they don’t understand you at home. They don’t appreciate you. You want to get out and see other cities, big mountains, big oceans.

Dorothy: It’s like you could read what was inside of me!
This is the second of the common tactics of the medium. Similar to cold reading, it is known as warm reading. There seems to be some confusion over what some people mean by “warm reading” as compared to others, but basically a warm reading is using known elements of psychology, or other such inductive reasoning, to provide the appearance of knowing something beforehand that you couldn’t have known. Whereas cold reading is making it seem like the person being read is receiving the key information when instead they are really providing it, warm reading is coming up with the information yourself using your own head and making it look like you couldn’t have. Professor Marvel is as well aware as anyone what the most common cause of children running away is, but the children themselves like Dorothy may not know how common their own reasons are. Therefore, he can impress her by guessing them. Again, mentalists do exactly the same thing without pretending to be psychic—as do detectives, as one of the main parts of their job.

Professor Marvel: It’s my trade, my calling! It’s what it says on the side of my conveyance!

Dorothy reads on the side of the wagon a claim about Professor Marvel being recommended by the “crown heads of Europe”.

Dorothy: Oh, please, Professor! Why can’t we go with you to see “the crowned heads of Europe”?

Professor Marvel: Do you know of any?? Oh, the thing! Yes, well, uh, I don’t do anything without consulting my crystal first! Why don’t you come over here and have a seat here. Make yourself comfortable there.
Now we come to another hallmark of these phonies: backing up their reputation or establishing a false accuracy rate with unsubstantiated claims about amazing past exploits, often involving famous people. Sylvia Browne does this all the time. She said, for instance, in Prophecy: What the Future Holds for You that she has “been tested a bazillion times by a whole list of psychologists, scientists, paranormal researchers, psychiatrists, hypnotherapists and MD's” (pages 96-97, first edition paperback). She has spoken of any number of famous cases where she helped police find missing people. So far, not a single such claim has ever been proven, although she has gotten some famous cases famously wrong, the most notorious of these being Shawn Hornbeck’s.

As he speaks the following line, while Dorothy isn’t looking Professor Marvel grabs his crystal ball from a hidden place and with a sloppy yet effective bit of sleight of hand makes it seem like he got it from nowhere. He places it on the table.

Professor Marvel: Have a seat, my friend, and I will magically pull out of thin air this authentic crystal, used by Isis and Osiris in the days of the pharaohs in Egypt. When Cleopatra first saw the approach of Julius Caesar and, uh, Mark Antony, and uh, so on and so on. Here, why don’t you hold out your hands and, uh, help me look into the future.
Here we get two more chestnuts. The first is the use of senseless, seemingly random blathering about historical or scientific justification for the medium’s practice, always in a way that doesn’t make any sense at all. Osiris was a god of ancient Egypt and Julius Caesar wasn’t even around in Cleopatra’s lifetime. Watch for these inconsistencies, or check them later if you don’t know enough to watch for them at the time. Two words that you should watch for in particular are “energy” and “vibration”. They’ll never give these words a very coherent meaning, you’ll notice. I don’t know if those words were necessarily in vogue amongst the tricksters in Professor Marvel’s time. (Actually, as the movie came out in 1939 and the original book in 1900, and the play started sometime between, it is hard to get a certain timeframe out of when the story is supposed to take place at all.)

The second of these two chestnuts is mere sleight-of-hand. Crystal balls that light up mysteriously, two pounds for yes coming on the wall in a séance because the plant outside is listening in and waiting for his cue to pound, a candle’s fire turning bright green…All these and more are just more sleight-of-hand, and just as mentalists can tell you all about the “psychic” reading-based tricks I describe so could illusionists probably explain to you how all the paranormal phenomena spiritualists seem to bring is just more illusions. You could read that book I recommended and linked to in the “palmist” thead, The Psychic Mafia. It describes how many such tricks are done. And there are plenty of other written resources on the matter as well.

Professor Marvel: Now, close your eyes, my child, so we—so we can get better in tune with the infinite!

As Dorothy’s eyes are closed Professor Marvel, while saying the next line, goes through her basket and finds a picture of her with Auntie Em in front of their house, containing all the details the “professor” will soon be claiming to “see”. He then puts the basket and picture back as they were.

Professor Marvel: You can’t do these things without reaching out into the infinite. So just keep them closed and, uh, together we will look into the infinite, just like Cleopatra and Osiris and…Isis and all those other fine, nice people, and we’ll get it over. Okay, now you can open them!

Dorothy opens her eyes and, for some reason, gasps. Maybe she’s getting ecstatically caught up in this whole “infinite” thing or maybe the crystal ball now has some special effects going on in it or something, I couldn’t tell from the Youtube recording.

Professor Marvel: And together we will look into your future. Ooh, yes, I see a house with a picket fence!

Dorothy: Oh, that’s our farm!

Professor Marvel: Yes, and there’s a…there’s a woman! She’s wearing a, a polka dot dress but her face is careworn.

Dorothy: Oh, that’s Aunt Em!

Professor Marvel: Her name is Emily!
First off, did you notice how he said her name was Emily only after Dorothy had already more or less told him? The confirmation by the medium of what the one being read has told him, and only after he's told it, is another essential element of this stuff.

And now, also, we have come to the third and last of the three basic types of fraudulent techniques that mediums use: the hot reading. Now the hot reading is when the medium doesn’t need either your leads or his own reasoned out guesses to know about you and seem psychic by it…because he already does know about you! He’s done his research, or in some way has prior knowledge of you. A hot reader can probably make the most impressive show, as Professor Marvel here does as he now shocks Dorothy with his “abilities” more than ever before. Why, he even knows the design on Em’s dress! Because he’s seen a photo that tells him all he needs.

Hot reading can be done a number of ways, including but not limited to: by having hidden recording devices around the people who are about to get a reading while they sit and wait, by gaining information about them via a plant who gave them a ticket to the show, or simply by looking the person up in the databases that The Psychic Mafia revealed are kept between psychical frauds, containing already acquired information on people who have had readings before, and people whom they know who have had readings. And The Psychic Mafia was written before the internet made things even easier: now the psychic databases, I’m sure, are much more efficient and there are lots of means of finding out things about a person online. Enough, at least, so that I’m sure an experienced hot reader would know what to do with the info.

Dorothy: That’s right! What’s she doing now?

Professor Marvel: Ooh, what’s this? She’s crying!

Dorothy: Oh!

Professor Marvel: Someone has hurt her! Someone has just about broken her heart.

Dorothy is sheepish.
Another example of warm reading.

Dorothy: Why would anybody do that?

Professor Marvel: I don’t know, but it’s someone she loves very much. Someone she’s been very kind to. Someone she’s taken care of in sickness.

Dorothy: …I had the measles once…and she stayed right by my side. Every minute.

Professor Marvel: Uh, huh.
Notice how Dorothy willingly contributes the information about the measles even though it’s so random and unlikely to be the big deal that the Professor is making out what he's “seeing” to be. In order to believe in the reader, the one being read has to make themselves believe, to make themselves make sense of it all. John Edward could rave, “Something in January February someone close to you in February with a problem in the heart chest area” and the person he’s reading might respond, “Yeah, I had a problem in my chest last February,” causing Edward to reply, “Yeah, it’s still there still in the heart…” Thus Edward confirms what the other guy said, not him, after the other guy had to make a stretch to make it mean anything and told him what it meant, prompting Edward then and only then to act like he already knew.

Dorothy: But that was when I was young. And she doesn’t care about me anymore. And…and so I don’t care about her!

Professor Marvel: I don’t see any of that in the crystal.

Dorothy: Well, they were going to kill Toto, and she did nothing to stop them!

Professor Marvel: That’s not what the crystal says. All I see is a woman who does the best she can and misses you something terrible.

Dorothy: Oh, well…what’s she doing now?

Professor Marvel: Well, there’s a roof…Oh, oh, what’s this?! She’s…holding her hand on her heart! She…she’s dropping down on the bed!

Dorothy: No! What’s wrong with her?!

Professor Marvel: I…I can’t see. The crystal has gone dark.

Dorothy: You don’t suppose she could be sick, do you?

Professor Marvel shrugs.

Dorothy: Well, I’d better get to her, right away!

Professor Marvel: What’s this? I thought you were coming along with me?

Dorothy: Oh no, I’ve got to get to my Auntie Em! C’mon, Toto! Goodbye, Professor Marvel, and thank you!
This last part of the scene leaves me with two final notes. First, most real mediums are not as transparent with their techniques as Professor Marvel, who had to be transparent in order for the story to teach the children watching these vital, oft overlooked lessons on the subject of psychic trickery. Some can be subtle, even if you're looking for it. Second, most frauds aren’t as quasi-good-natured as he is too. He just wanted to shoo Dorothy back home where she belonged. Most mediums, I suspect, would still think of a way somehow to charge her more, if only by asking her to come back some other time.

Does anyone have any problem understanding now?
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Muhaba
12-01-2010, 11:20 AM
who wanted to know and why?
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titus
12-01-2010, 03:30 PM
James Randi has had an offer on the table for years offering $1,000,000US to anyone that can prove they are a psychic. The most famous psychics around have been asked to take the challenge. They have all either not accepted the challenge, or accepted the challenge then refused to take part.

Psychics are frauds. That is all there is to it.
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IAmZamzam
12-01-2010, 05:15 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by muhaba
who wanted to know and why?
I don't remember who started the "palmistry" thread but the whole thing got me thinking that it was about time to write this article now. Like I said, I'd already been planning it. What I'm teaching is something most everyone should know.
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M.I.A.
12-01-2010, 08:01 PM
psychics make me think we might be part of the borg collective..but thats just the trekky talking.

worse still we might be part of a george romero movie... the collective unconciousnessness.
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IAmZamzam
12-01-2010, 08:17 PM
What's a borg collective?
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M.I.A.
12-01-2010, 08:23 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Yahya Sulaiman
What's a borg collective?
they are sort of semi human and eat worlds for laughs.. kinda similar to the darleks in dr who.

id say similar to the gog and magog but that would be going to far.
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IAmZamzam
12-01-2010, 08:40 PM
I'm afraid I still don't understand. Is the borg collective a hive? Is it something like In the Hills, the Cities by Clive Barker?
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M.I.A.
12-01-2010, 08:54 PM
im sure there are many comparisons and repeated ideas in the movies. with so many ideas and directors its not entirely improbable.
psychics, what are ya gonna do with em. ;D
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IAmZamzam
12-01-2010, 08:59 PM
...Is that a "yes, it is like the Clive Barker story and I have it right"? I'm not sure.
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M.I.A.
12-01-2010, 09:06 PM
im sorry, i have not read it.
i might read it and get back to you on it.
could wiki it for a synopsis but it would not really be doing the author any justice.
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Trumble
12-03-2010, 12:36 AM
Not really. The Borg are cyborgs who increase their numbers by 'assimilating' humans and other Trek races, i.e they are essentially brainwashed and fitted with cybernetic implants. They have a telepathic hive-mind, but remain distinct physical individuals.
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IAmZamzam
12-03-2010, 12:59 AM
Like if Agent Smith ran a cult?
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Muhaba
12-03-2010, 07:43 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by titus
James Randi has had an offer on the table for years offering $1,000,000US to anyone that can prove they are a psychic. The most famous psychics around have been asked to take the challenge. They have all either not accepted the challenge, or accepted the challenge then refused to take part.

Psychics are frauds. That is all there is to it.

that would be an interesting challenge. why did ppl refuse to take part? i guess it shows they aren't psychic.
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IAmZamzam
12-03-2010, 04:17 PM
Most people in the world don't even know about it. But all of the famous ones like John Edward and James van Praagh have been invited to take it and refused--Sylvia Browne for constantly changing contradictory reasons.
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