talkmagic.co.uk

mark lewis wrote:gut feelings and intuition. Or psychic ability if you call it that

That just about sums it all up very nicely indeed.

mark lewis wrote:I understand that Lady of Mystery believes she was hypnotised. She wasn't. She only thinks she was.

I actually found that comment quite offensive, Mark. Whatever that guy did, he certainly flicked some switch inside my mind. I know what I experienced, it was kind of dream like state.

If you can show me some sort of evidence that I was delusional or making it up then I might believe you but for now, I know what I experienced.

Now, I am no hypnotist, and all I know about it is what I have read, what I have seen, and what I have been told by hypnotists.

What I think Mark is actually saying to you (And please correct me if I am wrong) is that while there is no such thing as hypnotism if someone believes that there is (or may) be something to it they will quite happily "play along". I'm sure you have experienced this in other places in life? You have heard of the placebo effect? Well it's kind of similar to that.

If you actually believe that you have to do and see whatever this bloke on the stage tells you to do, then it's not much of a leap of faith to see it working.

Have you ever read anything on cold reading? A big part to it seems to be that people only remember the hits and tend to forget the many misses that it took to get there, that's because that is what they want to believe. It's kinda the same thing.

I have often heard it said that you can't hypnotise someone who does not believe in hypnotism, did you ever wonder why this is?

I was told a story once by a magician who told me that a hypnotist friend of his once mentioned to him after a gig that one of his 'inductees' had whispered to him "Get me to pretend I'm Micheal Jackson".

if that's true oeb, can you explain how Dave was able to hold a bucket of water, at arms length for over 15 minutes as cool as a cucumber. He's tried it over and over since and can't even manage 5 minutes with out turning into a red faced, sweaty heap.

I just think that alot of people seem to be very keen to say 'oh what a load of rubbish' without any first hand experience to back it up.

I can't, but as I say I am no hypnotist. Maybe you should read the book Mark mentioned. I'm sure if that can properly explain why someone who is hypnotised can experience a 'painless' surgery, then it would also also cover avoiding muscle fatigue.

Also, there is no reason why something like that could not be accomplished by 'magical' methods. I am pretty sure that it would be easy to create a prop that looked like a full bucket of water while in fact it was really almost empty. (Think of the trick using the milkshake in Art of Astonishment)

Mandrake wrote:

mark lewis wrote:gut feelings and intuition. Or psychic ability if you call it that

That just about sums it all up very nicely indeed.

You took the thoughts out of my head

I see Lady of Mystery is getting excited. That kind of proves my point. Excitable people are the ones who con themselves that they have been hypnotised. No doubt if she heard a mouse in the middle of the night she would assume it was a burglar.

I did not say she was making it up and neither did I say she was delusional so she need not be offended. I merely said she thought that she was "hypnotised" but she wasn't. She was in a state of something but that state wasn't hypnosis which doesn't exist in the first place.

Now you may wish to suggest that this state of something was hypnosis. I say that it wasn't. It was just an excitement of the imagination. How do I know? Benjamin Franklin told me.

Yes he did. He and a committee of fellow worthies were appointed to investigate hypnosis in Paris in the eighteenth century after a chap called Mesmer caused rather a fuss with it. The committee consisted of the greatest minds of the time and they came up with the best definition of hypnosis that I have ever come across. They said in essence that it was a load of baloney and "an excitement of the imagination"

In other words Lady of Mystery has had her imagination excited. I do hope she found it enjoyable.

Since then there have been lots of daft people who have said that it is something more than that and everyone has forgotten the original conclusions of Benjamin Franklin (who was a genius not unlike myself) and his fellow committee members.

With regard to the question of "Dave" and his arm this would be covered in "They Call it Hypnosis" by Robert Baker and published by Prometheus books.

As for the young lady's contention about experience I must inform her that I have "hypnotised" thousands of people and excited their imaginations.

Let us assume there are 10 people on stage. Only a tiny percentage will be as suggestible as Lady of Mystery and of course hypnotists love people like this and will make the most of them. However probably only two or if the hypnotist is lucky three of the ten will be that good.

However another three or so will be what we call "contract players" They will try their best to be "hypnotised" but they can't manage it so they will play along to help the hypnotist and not be party poopers.

The remainder will be either bad actors or people who have no animation whatsoever. They have to be dismissed from the stage. So the hypnotist will end up with 6 or 7 out of 10.

Stooges are rarely used in hypnosis shows although it is not unknown.

If hypnotism doesn't exist and those who think they've been hypnotised simply BELIEVED they have been, then isn't this belief a hypnotic state? Ergo, hypnotism exists. It may only exist in the head of the person believing it, but it still exists.

Im so glad I got my original question answerd lol

Lady of Mystery wrote:if that's true oeb, can you explain how Dave was able to hold a bucket of water, at arms length for over 15 minutes as cool as a cucumber. He's tried it over and over since and can't even manage 5 minutes with out turning into a red faced, sweaty heap.

I hope you're not offended by what I'm about to suggest. I might be agreeing with our Mr Lewis here, but I'm not quite as rude as him (at least not to you, Lommy )

Couldn't that just be a trick, though? Getting someone to hold a bucket of water at arms length is surely an acheivable feat for a magician/illusionist/hypnotist.

- A false bottom in the bucket to make it hold less water?
- A liquid that's much lighter than water (I'm not a scientist, dunno if there is such a thing)?
- Maybe a magnet on the stage floor to make the bucket initially seem heavier?
- Maybe a detatchable block of lead on the base of the bucket for someone to try and hold it at arms length before they're hypnotised as a convincer?

I just came up with all that off the top of my head - I'm sure someone posing with the ability to give you super-strength will have much slicker techniques than anything I came up with above, but you seem to believe it's a genuine act of hypnotism simply because it seems to you that there is no other explanation.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course - that's what all magic is. The only instances I disagree with that sort of deception is, as I said before, when people abuse it rather than just use it.

Maybe that person was truly hypnotised into a mind-over-matter trance, or maybe they were not. I'd be willing to bet it's an effect easily faked.

EDIT: I just noticed oeb has made the same suggestion before me. Sorry, I missed that first time round.

With regard to those with an "excitable mind", as people who dabble in magic we should be very aware of their existence. As well as being the ones who make wonderful hypnosis subjects, they are also the ones who faint when I hold a seance and they are the ones who scream "No way!" and run away when you show them a card trick.

There seems to be more of them in the USA, but we do have them here in Blighty and thank goodness for them. They make my shows far more enjoyable for all.

Let's take this a stage further and mention something which may be more appreciated by the older members. How many of us have suddenly realised we did something daft without remembering or realising it at the time but are surprised when we find out what we did? Something along the lines of when you arrive home you always put your keys on the same shelf but one day you look for those keys and they're not there. Later on you find them in the kitchen or somewhere like that, you have no recollection of putting them there and there's nobody else in in the house so it seems very strange, possibly worrying. All that's happened is that you put the keys down whilst doing something else and your concentration was fully focussed on doing whatever it was so you genuinely don't remember leaving the keys there. The older you get the more likely this is to happen as the braincells tend to forget stuff more easily than in previous years! A skilled 'hypnotist' is probably able to bring about this off target focussing so you do and say things which you'd normally never do but only realise you've done so when you're 'woken up' and everything is pointed out to you.

On the other hand I could be completely wrong.....

My dear Mr Lewis, firstly I'm not going to be pulled into your silly, childish games. Secondly I find it very sad that you've decided to target me when I've never sad a bad word against you, I've even stuck up for you from time to time.

In a debate we always have two sides, it's such a shame that you can't listen to that other side. Instead of saying 'oh what a silly excitable girl' you could have said, 'that's a nice point there lommy but I believe this that and the other'.

Whatever happened whan I was hypnotised, the things that were suggested to me became very real. Surely that is what hypnosis is, regrdless of whether it was my excitable little mind or not, those sugestions were what made me believe what I was believing.

Queenie, you're right, the bucket of water could have been a trick. But just try, when you get a chance holding an empty bucket at arms length, after 15 minutes even an empty bucket is going to get very heavy.