Author Archives: Hey!

Vibe me and help me get James Randi’s loot

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Hey!

Like the great prophet David Icke says, we all emit vibrations and, similarly, we can tune into the vibrations of everything else – be it the Universe, another person, or that sandwich.

When I told my skepto mate Esther that I reckoned I could identify someone’s mood just by their vibes, she leapt onto it like a bloody terrier on a stick – and now she won’t let go.

“Oh really?” she uttered, in her broad Northern accent, already designed to sound 80 per cent more scathing than the Southern accent. “So you think you could tell someone’s emotion without looking at them? Just by the vibrations in the room?”

“Of course,” I said. “You can feel the energy worrying the air.”

“No, you can’t.”

We had a bit of a starey stand-off.

“But surely you tell if someone fancies you by the tension without anything being said?” I persisted, bringing it back to layman’s territory.

“Yes, but that’s my hormones, my blood pressure rising,” she said. “You, on the other hand, think you can identify a complete stranger as being sad, happy or angry without any visual cues.”

“Yes.”

“So if I were to present three people with different moods to you, in a small enclosed room with a couple of cameras, while you were blindfolded, you would be able to correctly read their vibes?”

“They’d have to be fixed cameras. If you have camera operators in there you’ll throw me off the scent.”

“All right, then.”

And thus, what began as a minor knocking of horns over breakfast has turned into a bit of a worry, as Esther plots to utilise the resources of her TV production company to prove my theory to be ailing. She’s even recruiting a skeptics society to set up the ideal scientific scenario.

Anyway, I’ve decided this is doable, but I need to practise. You can’t tell me that, say, dogs can’t pick up on a mood. Look at Lassie. And just as dogs go spastic when a storm’s approaching, so do I. It’s all about electrical frequencies, says Sir Icke.

So next time you’re feeling something real bad, come and find me and focus that feeling at me. If I manage to identify it, I’ll split the James Randi loot with you – he’s the psychic investigator who’s offering a million bucks to anyone who can demonstrate psychic powers under controlled circumstances. Strictly speaking I’m merely tuning into molecular vibrations, but we can probably get away with calling it psychic. Plenty of others do.

Tune in soon for the experiment proper.

2 Comments

Posted in David Icke. Bookmark the permalink.

Bob Proctor: sensible uncle vs. sensationalist salesman

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Hey!

The snake oil skeptometer goes through the roof at the merest mention of The Secret and the ‘law of attraction’ – see previous post – however, this here article by celeb psychic Greg Riley in the free paper An Alternative Voice, repeats some pretty sound advice from one of The Secret’s ‘Master Teachers’.

Bob Proctor (I’m guessing ‘Bob Proctor’ isn’t his real name – it sound suspiciously safe and dependable, unless you’ve got colon cancer) is a wealth mentor and personal development guru. Given that Greg Riley is a graduate of Bob Proctor’s Life Success Program, I feel like this shouldn’t be sound advice, but I’m prepared to roll over meekly and concede when something I investigate seems genuinely helpful. I’ve edited the points down to a line each.

Law of Attraction in everyday life

  1. What other people think of us is none of our business.
  2. Every day, visualise the same stretch objective [personal development speak for ‘ambition’] coming true.
  3. Life is a balance of mind, body and spirit. Establish what is important to you in each category.
  4. Set goals every six months.
  5. Create a gratitude card and look at it five times a day.
  6. Create a vision board of what you would like your life to be and look at it each day. Meditate each night on your dream and imagine you are already in that situation.
  7. Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb and make life changes.
  8. Take action.

I like these pointers because they’re basically about taking the time to assess and focus, instead of turning up the white noise in your brain by way of mindless telly, internet, consumerism and chemicals, and then realising you’re all out of time.
Number 1’s something your mother ought to tell you, instead of “they’re just jealous”. Numbers 2 and 6 – visualising – works a bit: sometimes I like to walk down the street as though I’ve just had great sex, and pretty much everyone smiles at me. Number 3, about mind, body and spirit, is even worth plotting out on paper, writing down your values in each area. If you haven’t already tried it, do list your values – it’s astounding the first time you discover you have some, particularly when you find you’re unfathomably moral about one issue and then completely amoral about the very next. Number 5 might just stop your next whinge in your throat. Number 7, going out on a limb, should be a no-brainer. I relish curve balls and rolling with the punches: okay, you’ve cut me off at that pass; now I’m going to take another road, quite possibly the low one. Number 8 – take action – ought to silence any of life’s armchair critics and complainers.

As well as The Secret, Bob hawks ‘The 11 Forgotten Laws’ – of which the law of attraction is just one. The others are the laws of: thinking, supply, receiving, increase, compensation, non-resistance, forgiveness, sacrifice, obedience and success. Just as Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret, attests vaguely that ‘the law of attraction’ has been known by and kept schtum by philosophers, artists and the wealthy throughout history, so also were the forgotten laws – but now they can be yours.
Put ‘Bob Proctor’ into Google and ‘bob proctor fraud’ and ‘bob proctor scam’ will be suggested. In a completely wily move, one pro-Bob website has the url of www.bobproctorscam.org. You may enter it a skeptic and come out completely converted – suck it and see.

Leave a comment

Posted in Law of attraction. Bookmark the permalink.

The Secret: unfairly excludes infidels and the faithless

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Hey!

Get them while they're young.

“Everything happens for a reason.” OOF.

“It is what it is.” OOH-YAY.

I’m as vague as the next old dear, but even I need a bit more direction than “throw it out to the universe” as a roadmap to run my life.

Still, according to the Oprah-endorsed The Secret by Australian Rhonda Byrne, everyone from Plato to Shakespeare to Beethoven to your next-door celebrity Scientologist is in on a magical formula to get everything you want, so I’d better jump onboard quick-smart.

The Secret is essentially the law of attraction: visualise brilliant things happening to you and those brilliant things will be helpless to resist speeding towards you, like “iron filings to a magnet”.

A quick email around the office instantly conjures up three copies of The Secret, although everyone groaningly insists their copy was pressed upon them by some chump. Sure. I take one down to the beach for a peruse – not for an extra spiritual experience, but so nobody catches me reading it.

Opening the book at random, P59 explains how to visualise yourself thin. Even though you may have stuffed yourself cross-eyed and giggling, “food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless you THINK it can.”

You can also think yourself well and think yourself a million bucks. Don’t be anti-something, be pro- its positive opposite. And don’t resist! I’m confused, though… how does ‘visualising’ what you want differ from ‘fantasising’, which I’m already doing every waking minute? All that’s brought me is a tendency to not hear a word you’re saying.

Look, maybe there’s something in this. A ‘positivity can’t hurt, and people around you seem to prefer it’ sort of something. When I was a child, home life was a cacophony of tuts: Dad’d get started with one of his epic to-be-followed-by-rumbling-storm-clouds-of-oaths tuts that would make your heart skip a beat with dread, then Mum would fall in with the empathetic, oh-dear-that’s-torn-it tuts, and eventually we were all at it. On trips away, tension would do a Mexican wave around the car at the bloody unfairness of it all, whatever that was. Heeding someone else’s sensitivity to tuts and forecastings of doom by being outwardly chipper was not considered.

So anyway, let’s see what we have here.

Funny – I’ve always been told I’m NOT the centre of the universe, yet here on p46, within a jolly metaphor about Aladdin’s lamp, it clearly says: “You are the Master of the Universe, and the Genie (that’s the law of attraction, or the Universe) is there to serve you.” I’m advised to “place an order” to the Universe by writing it out on a piece of paper in the present tense. (Fried chicken wings?)

Step two is to believe that it’s already mine. I guess I already do this when I go shopping. I look at a dress and imagine myself parading down the street wearing it, looking fine, with my hair bouncing around.

Of course, The Secret does have itself a get-out clause. You’re to believe with “complete and utter faith”. So I guess if you don’t get the dress you wanted, your faith was lacking. And if you live in a third-world country and are STILL starving to death, well, I guess you should have put it out to the Universe harder.

I come from here, Rhonda. Do you think the Universe can be arsed?

2 Comments

Posted in Law of attraction, Still extremely dubious. Bookmark the permalink.

I like David Icke

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Hey!

“I can tell you how the World Trade Centre came down. I served in the Special Armed Forces, the Secret Service, I know all the world bankers. I know the cure to breast cancer. I could become a very wealthy man.”

The rant’s coming thick and fast, low and sexual, delivered with a prowling gait. It’s surprisingly succinct and coherent, with a bitter little twist.

No, it’s not David Icke, it’s a bloke on the 86 tram. Pacing up and down with straggly hair falling around his face like Jesus. Or Frank from Shameless. Once he’s jumped off, everybody breathes a sigh of relief – so presumably they’re not en route to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre like me.

Today Icke’s talking for nine hours on his The Lion Sleeps No More tour, brought out by a company called Positive Path. You know David Icke – the Pommy goalkeeper-turned-Green-Party-pollie-turned-New-Age-conspiracy-theorist. The one with the lizards. The giant, blood-sucking lizards that are running our governments, our media and our minds. Their number include George Bush, the Queen and Willie Nelson. Yes? Now?

I was expecting something slick and unnerving. like Tom Cruise in Magnolia. Instead I’ve got a pot-bellied, slightly peeved, nutty professor – albeit one with crazy eyes. Icke’s self-deprecating humour (in the sense that he’s decided to laugh at himself before you get a chance to) covers all his humiliations: his cruel dressing down on British talk show Wogan (YouTube it), his “turquoise period” (during which he moved his clairvoyant mistress into the family home, called himself the “son of the godhead” and would only wear turquoise in an effort to attract Universal positivity), his dabblings with psychoactive plants (could he be seeing the same giant lizards Hunter S Thompson saw?), and Richard Dawkins’ persistent poking fun at him. In fact, his motto is “Still crazy after all these years”. You can even get the T-shirt.

Icke in his turquoise phase on Wogan.

As the story goes, Icke lost his mind back in 1990, when a psychic told him he’d say things that would change the world as we knew it. He found himself called to Peru, where he had an awakening atop a mountain, so powerful that he found himself drilled into the ground in a Christ-like pose, with the elements rushing in to baptise him. Ever since, he’s been refining and refining his theory: that the human race is neck-deep in a triple conspiracy to keep us dumb, while giant reptilians from the star system Alpha Draconis manipulate our reality.

As allegories for modern society, some scholars point out, Icke’s theories are brilliant. But, the same scholars concede, he’s probably not talking allegories.

Or is he?

Or is he?

The first third of today’s proceedings, anyway, fucks us gently.

In a seamless flow of rhetoric, Icke pulls apart religion, the monarchy, the CIA, mindless television, the Lord Mayor’s reaction to Occupy in Melbourne and blind adhesion to a rat race existence, overseen by sinister, shadowy overlords. Icke has logical explanations for UFOs, astrology, palmistry, crystal therapy, chakras, numerology and all the New Agery I’m highly dubious about, but explains so fast I have no time to keep filtering back through his claims and cross-referencing. Still, learning physics at school also required a massive suspension of disbelief that I don’t even remember having to hoist. The ‘big bang theory’. Really? Icke laughs in the face of it.

Pre-head explosion.

Moving on, Icke paces the stage restlessly and talks of us using our senses to decode vibrations and electromagnetic energy, one minute painting us as computers living in a virtual reality not of our own making (cue plentiful references to The Matrix and examples of how 3D holographic images are increasingly used in the media – implying we can’t be sure of what’s real), the next as slaves to the left side of our brains (New Agers employ the right). “Don’t trust your thoughts; you are not your thoughts,” he’s saying; shouting, actually. But whereas that’s a mantra of modern-day psychologists and mindfulness practitioners, Icke means our thoughts are literally being inserted into our heads – by THEM.

As a slow drip feed of information, it all seems perfectly reasonable, whereas if he’d leapt from “while you’re watching Deal Or No Deal things are happening without your consent” to “we are all holograms projected from the edge of space” in one fell swoop, well, I’d have laughed.

So this is how mind control – the very type he warns us of – works: careful attrition of what you think you’re sure of. No wonder some extra-conspiratorial conspiracy theorists reckon Icke’s a double agent, a right-wing rube – he’s got the tactics down pat.

Three hours in, we broke for lunch and I kept on walking. I felt like I was betraying Icke – and I’ll never know for sure who THEY were – but sitting still for longer than this for any reason makes my head explode, Scanners-style.

And while he may approve of that actuality, I don’t think he’d want me for one of his lions.

4 Comments

Posted in David Icke, New Age conspiracy. Bookmark the permalink.

Joining a women’s healing group

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Hey!

Wasn't like this.

“If we have to look at our vaginas in a mirror,” said Esther, “I’m leaving.”

I’ve tried all sorts of New Agery with Esther in a past blog (and possibly a past life), like Healing My Embittered Soul With Song and Tapping Myself to Emotional Freedom below. Neither of us are fans of angels, spirit guides and unicorns, and Esther has issues with tolerance, so hopefully healing doesn’t involve any of the above, and/or touching our Sacred Feminine.

This must be a sign, though: waiting at Parliament Station, ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams starts warbling out of the tannoy. Why? That’s the anthem for the very slightly spiritual, isn’t it? The ones with the Only God Can Judge Me tattoos. Why? This has to be one of those coincidences I’ve started to look out for.

Once at the building, we’re asked to take off our shoes (Esther is wearing two stripy socks, I’m wearing one. Coincidence?) and we bunker down in a room with cushions laid out in a circle. There are eight women and one facilitator, who’s a new age counsellor. It soon emerges this is group therapy, in the form of shares and visualisation, with much of it anticipated to be “of a highly adult nature”.

As this is the first meet-up, there’s much discussion of the fairest way of doing things, which reminds me why I don’t like to travel with women – way too much conferring. Whoever speaks, it’s eventually determined, should be handed a talking stick to symbolise that they should not be interrupted. The facilitator hunts around the room for something.

“I hope this rather phallic candle isn’t upsetting anyone,” she murmurs as an afterthought, as it journeys obscenely around the room.

Now that's a talking stick.

Once we finally get started, I like this environment. I’m with eight very nurturing women, most here to find their “authentic self”. We’re using voices so unusually hushed and gentle that I’m lulled into a trance and become preoccupied for much of the session with trying to imagine what each lady would sound like down the pub after a few squawky chardonnays.

At first I’m a bit wistful. If this were a men’s group we’d be in the woods staring into a bollocking great bonfire and thrashing drums, Robert Bly-style. Even in this room there’s a rogue element of Lord of the Flies though. Everyone stiffens at the thought of outsiders joining next month, yet we’ve only known each other half an hour.

I’m a latecomer to sisterhood. I grew up with a fierce determination not to be anything like a woman, nor suffer the guilt by association, having observed close-up that men had all the luck, all the fun and the last word. Mum’d pipe up with the odd feminist comment at the dinner table, for my benefit, but I’d join in any derision. Naively, I thought I’d picked a side, the winning side. The battle lines were clearly drawn, and needs must.

Now I’m completely comfortable in this room, talking honestly – which is a relief, as a grown woman who believes she’s “one of the boys” tends to be a lost lamb indeed. I can feel the empathy emanating around us, and when one girl cries in exhaustion I just want to go over and stroke her hair. Instead we are instructed to picture a big sphere hovering in front of us all and imagine exhaling our bad thoughts into it. “You can make a noise if you like,” the facilitator urges, then gaily boots the thing out of the room.

I’m going to go back again, you know… and I won’t be writing about it.

Leave a comment

Posted in Conversations, Healing. Bookmark the permalink.

Healing my embittered soul with song

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Hey!

Over the years I’ve learned not to trust people who say “close your eyes and open your mouth”, but today at the joyful voice workshop I’m assured I’m in a safe environment.

This one-day course aims to help you heal yourself (your soul, rather than your gout) by the power of your own voice. Sometimes I’ll dream I’m singing, and it’s the most beautiful sound I ever heard. Something pure and unspoilt from years ago… You know… before the music DIED.

Anyway, in waking hours I’m in possession of a plaintive squawk with a blatant disregard for consonants, and my friend Esther is terrified of singing in public despite ordinarily being a gobshite, but with some gentle coaching (“gentle” is the operative word today), healer Chris gets all 15 of us here sounding like human panpipes.

After about an hour of cooing “ooooooooooooh” my head’s vibrating like I’m on a cheap pill, and this pulsing sensation starts travelling down my spine until all my cells expand and I feel like I’m going to fall over.

As soon as we’re all duly hypnotised, Chris whips out a synth and starts playing songs about angels and butterflies in minor keys. Eventually I feel a tear plop out down my cheek. This is supposed to happen.

“Was that just you feeling sorry for yourself, though?” Esther asks during snack break. I knew I shouldn’t have filled her in on the previous few days’ unbloggables. I persist that there’s something undeniably restorative about singing, especially when you’ve a tendency to hammer yourself into the ground. I mean, maybe some regular joyful song about angels’ wings could be the long sought-after antidote to drugs and booze.

“You might want to take up cutting,” Esther says. “Or bulimia.”

After the break we’re told to pair up with a complete stranger, take both their hands, stand about 2mm apart, and drone at each other until we’re both resonating like a bell and pulling off harmonics. This should be hideously excruciating, eyeball to eyeball as we are, but it’s just one of those rare situations where there’s no room for self-consciousness. And hey – everyone’s had the curry dip and poppadoms.

Next step is to become a human theremin, with one person leading – dipping and warbling over octaves and making bizarro shapes with their mouths. The other person, intuitively, is just a split second behind them. Third step, we mirror each other’s freaky arm waves while doing all the above. Fourth step, hugs.

After lunch and a giant coffee, I find my patience is tested. “I bet Chris comments on the coffee,” Esther says as we tromp back in with our haul – and certainly he does. He attests that the power of gentle breathin’ and lovin’ allows people to quit all sorts of substances cold turkey though, so we may as well have this last hurrah.

With another two hours of ultra-vague discussion about good vibes and negative energy, and lots of head-buzzy sing-songs around the synth, I find I’m fighting waves of violence, while Esther later admits she was muttering the serenity prayer to make it through.

“Why is it that people think spirituality always has to involve angels and butterflies?” she tuts as we sprint off to the car afterwards. “What’s wrong with being a human being?”

Keeper? Adapting to such in-your-face intimacy was quite an eye-opener, and I did like the singing as a way of, um – ugh – getting in touch with yourself. I was banned from singing sweet hymns in the car as a child (ask me for my rendition of Give Me Oil In My Lamp), but no one can stop me now.

1 Comment

Posted in Air punch!, Angels, Howling. Bookmark the permalink.

Tapping myself to emotional freedom

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Hey!

The fact that I’ve come to investigate Emotional Freedom Techniques in this windswept Box Hill motel with Esther of all people, should suggest that I’ve come bearing a bucketload of pig’s blood to tip all over it.

Both of us pop a capillary at any pseudoscientific talk of angels, the law of attraction and whatnot, as evidenced by our recent experiment with healing our souls with song… So why do we keep coming back for more?

Maybe because we’re two reformed grog-botherers who’ve lost our religion. We once had blind faith, just like the good people we’re scathing of – faith that this time when we poured a rather large vodka, we wouldn’t end up making pricks of ourselves with our stockings at half mast. (I could metaphor on for a bit about worshipping at the altar of the bottle shop, but I won’t.) Maybe we do crave something new to believe in. Maybe, Esther worries, we have the God Gene.

The first hint that EFT might be the real deal is that this three-hour session with a husband and wife couple is free. Sure, you can buy the book, but it turns out there’s no hard sell.

I won’t use the couple’s real names, because I don’t tell them I’ll be writing about them. David and Anne used to practise Neuro-Linguistic Programming, till they “suspended their disbelief” and switched to Emotional Freedom Techniques – developed by a US realtor and NLP practitioner with no medical or psychological background – which promises to cure emotional and physical pain. The US military, for instance, has been using it on personnel with post-traumatic stress disorder.

During the opening spiel, about men and women across the States who have leapt out of wheelchairs and had pernicious diseases cured by EFT, I hear the word “tapping” and shrivel up inside. Doesn’t this involve touching people? I really should have looked into this before coming along.

Happily, tonight we’ll only be touching ourselves. We use our fingers to tap ourselves on meridian points on the hands, face and body while repeating a mantra. David gives us all a chocolate as an experiment. Most of us, upon holding it, start getting strong urges to eat it. First we do three rounds of tapping, the basic mantra of which is: “Even though I want to eat this chocolate, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

We’re told to take a bite of the chocolate. My brain usually lights up like a Christmas tree at this point, but I find the thing tastes flat and dull. Everyone else reports something similar; one bloke complains his tastes of cow. By golly, if we’ve been brainwashed, I hope we’ve done it ourselves.

Now we’re going to move to an emotional problem. We’re asked to think back to something that traumatised us, at least three years ago, and isolate what emotion it made us feel. We rate how bad it’s making us feel right now with a mark out of 10. Then we drop the name of that emotion into the mantra: “Even though I feel xxx…” and tap through it while replaying the scene in our minds. This time, though, we imagine we’re tapping our younger selves. Afterwards we see if the mark out of 10 has gone down. And repeat.

David invites two people to the front to reveal what their trauma was and then be tapped through it. The first guy recounts a childhood humiliation, and reports his anxiety levels go down as he repeats the process. The girl refuses to talk about what happened to her and is close to tears.

David asks if he can perform the tapping on her himself, an uncomfortable moment, especially given her body language. He goes through three or four rounds, dropping in phrases like “I don’t feel I can trust people” and “I know I am safe here”, which seems manipulative. Meanwhile, we’re all slapping away at ourselves in front of her. It sounds like a porn film in here.

A few times, David loses my willingness. He insists that every experience we’ve had is imprinted inside us and could potentially be replayed like a movie. He talks of the time he worked at Amway. He references The Secret. Rationalising things like EFT, he chuckles, involves “rational lies”. And then there’s his account of being regressed to the womb. Lastly, I’m always suspicious of people who smile “Isn’t that interesting” when “um” would do just as well.

Keeper? I’m not sure yet if I feel beatific because I’ve spent gentle, quality time with myself (that doesn’t involve a cigarette or rolling around in bed), or because there’s something in this tapping lark. Hey – that chocolate thing was weird though.

POSTSCRIPT: Seven days later, I’ve had no desire to smoke. Isn’t that interesting?

2 Comments

Posted in Energy, Hypnotism. Bookmark the permalink.

Psychics Vs Mentalists: the rematch

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Hey!

Derren: mentalist.

Here is an excellent post from Michael Witheford on uber-mentalist Derren Brown, versus world famous psychic John Edwards – a man South Park’s South Park’s Trey Parker said, “We literally did decide this guy was the worst. He was the worst guy in the world. There’s nothing you can do right now that’s worse than this.”

That’s a bit rich coming from Trey though, eh?

Witheford, by contrast, says of self-confessed confidence trickster Brown: “At some point I intend taking Derren hostage and, while waving a hot poker in his face, enquiring about how his dazzling set pieces are achieved. In a microsecond, of course, he’d have the poker in his own hands, and I’d be tied to a chair in a busy street with no trousers on.”

Here’s The Guardian on Derren Brown taking on faith healers in a new series.

John: psychic.


Leave a comment

Posted in Fortune telling, Mentalist. Bookmark the permalink.

Psychics Vs. Mentalists

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Hey!

I’m on a quest to crack open my monkey brain and slip in the spoon of spirituality (a hypnotherapist told me the unconscious mind responds well to metaphors… how’s yours doing?), but one area guaranteed to get me wriggling like a fish on a hook is clairvoyancy.

Here’s why.

“Many of the chronic health conditions and diseases that we experience in adulthood are rooted in childhood or the womb. I use many different techniques to remove these traumas and problems quickly and easily.”

“A Soul Inspired reading is an opportunity to connect with your Soul/Higher self, to gain, feel and see your life from a higher perspective through the energy of love and without the distractions of your personality.”

“Anything from minor complaints to life-threatening injuries can be treated or even cured through the use of psychic powers. Whether these powers come from God, the healer, or the Universe as a whole is a matter of debate, but that they work is certain to those who believe in them.”

“Psychic healing can help you obtain relief from physical or mental pain. The gifted psychic can see your aura and determine the source of pain. They use subtle energy to remove your pain.”

“Transcendence Healing is an individual process assessing powerful Universal energies in order to facilitate your healing at a soul level.”

Deep down I would rather believe than not believe, though. How awesome to think that someone could completely understand and anticipate you without all that awkward business of getting to know you. So I’m fully prepared to alter my perception at the slightest shred of evidence and raising of hairs. I’ve already been proved wrong with energy healing, as I’m convinced the chap in Byron Bay on Day One quelled my vagus nerve by the time I’d wobbled out his door. So maybe, as with teachers, hairdressers and cats, you’ve just got to meet the right psychic.

The problem is, I’ve failed to be rendered wide-eyed by the triumvirate of revelations psychics always wheel out to women in their thirties:

1)    You’re having doubts about a man

2)    You’re thinking about buying a house

3)    You’re unhappy in your job and thinking about going for another

You may also be worrying about a friend, be musing on vague plans to travel or move to the sea, and be thinking about starting a family… although no one’s leveled that last one at me.

That’s because of cold reading; the art (they’d call it science) of making high probability guesses about someone’s life by their appearance and reactions.

Psychics beadily eye my slovenly dress code and inky arms and deduce I’m a raging pisshead. “You need to start taking it easy on your body,” they’ll say with concern, shuffling cards and prescribing early nights. One of the perks of being a toothsome teetotaller is smugness, so imagine how sensational I feel when a psychic wheels out that old chestnut. For this reason I reckon I’m a fantastic litmus test for psychics – you should take me along before you agree to hand over your money.

Here’s an interview I did with a mentalist – a man who happily admits to leading a person’s train of thought with imperceptible cues (and a good grasp of neuro-linguistic programming), reading the nuances of their face and body in turn, to see if he’s on the right track. The accomplished accompanying patter allows him to slither and weasel his way out of any wrong turn, barely detected.

No such luck today here in Glebe. I can’t believe this $30-for-20-mins psychic is talking solely about me, yet I’m still bored.

We get onto the subject of some japester persistently vandalising my property, and she proposes I call on “his royal hotness” the Archangel Michael. I’m to visualise a deep blue cloak draped around my possessions, which will render them invisible. Sorted.

The Archangel Michael.

“Take a big lump of rose quartz,” she says, doing the very same. “And hold it in your right hand.”

Awesome. Are we going to make a fist around it and learn how to throw a loaded right hook?

“See all the lines in it? They directly link up to your brain stems.” She gauges my reaction for a beat. “You can tell this crystal your intention and it will project it out to the universe.”

I feel like I’m on the phone to a telecaller, or a boring band I’m interviewing. “Okay, thanks then. Okay thanks. Thanks. Yep, yep, no, that’s all,” I say, lowering the metaphysical telephone receiver. Keep talking and I’m going to have to blow a whistle down it in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Nonintuitively, she bids me ask another question.

Leave a comment

Posted in Fortune telling, Mentalist, Still extremely dubious. Bookmark the permalink.

Psychic ‘n’ Parma Night in the outer suburbs

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Hey!

Pinched from my last venture, the new-adventure-every-day-for-a-year account, Hey Man, Now You’re Really Living

“So how long have you known you’re a white witch?” the psychic asks me over her shoulder as we hurry through the pub for my 10-minute sesh in a back room. As opening lines go I reckon it’s up there with “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” So good, she uses it on my mate later.

One archangel, two spirit guides and a medieval past-life later, I’m moving on to the tarot reader – it’s $30 for a counter meal and two readings at this pub out in the ‘burbs. This reader bears an unnerving resemblance to Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom as she pins me with a stare and says: “You think you’ve reached rock bottom already, but you haven’t.”

Predicting a spell in rehab and a short-lived career selling drugs for bikers, she doesn’t pull her punches. What’s more, she seems to be almost imperceptibly vibrating her head as she cranes closer, giving off a weird strobe effect.

“You’ve had two abortions … no … miscarriages … no … you can’t have children because of all the drugs …  no … you don’t WANT children!” she finishes triumphantly.

“You think men are only good for one thing; you tend to flip either way [for the record, I’m quite particular about only flipping one way] and you’re fed up of being told to just get over it.” She fixes me an extra beady one. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Jeez, someone’s been watching too much Underbelly, I’d wager. Jacki did nail my upbringing with further detail, but then, I can immediately sniff out someone with a back-story like mine, too – you don’t have to be a psychic, or a grifter.

1 Comment

Posted in Fortune telling, Past lives, Spirit guides, Still extremely dubious. Bookmark the permalink.
← Older Posts
Newer Posts →