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Sure Mark, my 2 questions were part of the second post within this thread, the post immediately under your's. in any case there has been much added since then so i re couch my questions in consideration of that. and brief i will be.

(1) i accept what i think you are saying about heightened intuition. that makes sense. so in the case of your comments here:

quoting Mark Lewis: I did NOT say that the line on Eckozero's hand indicated a loved one passing away. I said that it was a protection line. It might indicate someone passed away. It might indicate a spirit guide or it might mean that God is looking after the person. I don't know what it means but it is good that the young seeker of knowledge from Cambridgeshire has it. However from experience I find that it usually means someone passed away. It is often recent but not necessarily.

does that mean to say that for people who have recently lost a loved one, there is often a "line" that develops on one's hand in a particular place? with experience you would then (i guess) see that come up regularly and associate either conciously or sub conciously both the loss of the loved one and the line on the hand, in much the same way as you would recognise a coal miner by his cough.

correct?

(2) The tarot card is somewhat more difficult to understand. the physiological change to a person as a result of something happening in their life is logical. the cards themselves of course dont undergo that same change. intially i thought you were saying the cards provided a means by which you could get reactions. for example, whatever card you turn up, the reaction would reveal most, not which card was turned.

however then it was suggested that the subject did not necessarily need to be present for the tarot to reveal information. how does that work? how could that be possible?

and finally a new question. what do you mean by "a spirit guide"?

Mark,

since posting my question above, i note you have subsequently said in Eckozero's "read my palm" thread that you dont believe in spirit guides.

quoting Mark Lewis: Some psychics say that the protection line (known as the Sister line in palmistry) represents God watching over him, other psychics would say that it is a spirit guide (I do not believe in spirit guides). As previously stated I believe it usually means someone has passed away not necessarily recently but more often than not this is the case. That person is still around him in a good way, not a bad way. Someone can be in the next room. You can't see them but you know they are there. That person would still be there and would look in on him from time to time.

therefore, can you please explain what you mean by the comments you made above, in particular:

someone has passed away not necessarily recently but more often than not this is the case. That person is still around him in a good way, not a bad way. Someone can be in the next room. You can't see them but you know they are there. That person would still be there and would look in on him from time to time

are you saying you believe the spirit or "ghost" of the deceased is there in the next room or have i taken your comments too literally. perhaps you mean their memory, the way the made you feel, the advice they gave you etc is "looking after the subject from time to time"???

can you please clarify.

I don't think your first question was your first question since the matter of the protection line came up AFTER you asked the question. I can't remember what it was but is sure as hell wasn't anything to do with the protection line.

To answer you however I am using standard palmistry lore. How the bloody line got there in the first place I have no idea since I didn't put it there. It means what it means. It may make sense or it may not. I don't know if there is any validity to it or not neither do I care. I have a living to make. If it makes sense to the person (and it usually does) that is all I care about. Some people have the line and some people don't.

However sometimes if I am in the presence of the client I can feel when someone has passed away and I can feel when they are around. I don't need the bloody palm to tell me when that happens. I have even sensed the name of the person on occasion. Reverend Browning will confirm that when you do this work day after day after day you get genuine psychic "flashes". I don't know where they come from and I don't particularly care.

I have already explained svengali's theories about the matter and I think there may be something in them. However I really don't care. Honestly. I leave that sort of thing to sceptics to wonder about. When you are in this business for a long time you take it for granted. You shrug your shoulders when it happens because it happens so often.

With regard to the Tarot I 100% believe in them not because the cards have any power to them but because the images trigger off the psychic vibes that I was talking about. The cards are just bits of cardboard that come up randomly. However it is the "psychic mirror" that makes it work.

This is too complicated to explain to someone from Australia. Suffice it to say it is the OPERATOR that makes it work rather than the cards themselves. I do not subscribe to Jung's theory of synchronicity which is often used to explain how the tarot works. I often mention it to the client because it sounds terribly learned but I don't have much faith in it.

Think of a spread of cards as a mirror. This mirror reflects the subconcious mind of the client back to the psychic.

Oh to hell with it. I am too tired to explain it. Read "Tarotmania" by Jan Woudhuysen if you are that interested.

I might be in a better mood tomorrow. Let us wait and see. If I am I will expand further on the matter.

I see that the persistent sceptic from Australia is still asking questions. It seems that he posted at the same time as I did.

He is asking about the guardian angel again. I must answer him by explaining that my definition of this entity is of no importance whatever. It is the client's definition that is the important thing. I let them figure it out. I have my own troubles.

One of them is keeping awake. Goodnight.

Mark,
in reference to what my questions originally were VS what they are now, i thought i answered that for you earlier. i re post this note below to save you looking it up:

Sure Mark, my 2 questions were part of the second post within this thread, the post immediately under your's. in any case there has been much added since then so i re couch my questions in consideration of that. and brief i will be.

Although my questions have been re couched to take into consideration the fact that some things have been covered while other new issues have been introduced, the gyst remains the same, a discussion of where your information comes from. what you instinctively glean when you meet the client, what you can tell by looking at their hands, and what you can get "elsewhere???" if infact there is an elsewhere? i cant do it so i dont know, hence the question.

furthermore, i am having trouble understanding how you feel the Tarot can reflect information to you the reader, in the absence of the subject. UNLESS what you are saying is that subcontiously you have absorbed the information in a prior meeting or conversation, and the tarot simply is a vehicle that gets you in the "right frame of mind"???

thank you for refering me to a good book on Tarot. should i ever be inclinded to practice this artform, i will surely know where to start learning. in this case, it is your opinions on the subject i am interested in.

sleep well, as they say... every day we wake up in the morning is a bonus.

Some of you may remember that a few months back I started a thread "To Be Psychic or Not To Be Psychic" where I was trying to find some common ground between the worlds of magic & magik. Coming from an "occult" background, when I first got into conjuring I was dismayed to find that all I had been doing for many years was "cold reading". This led to inner turmoil for me. Now I don't care. I combine magical trickery with occult disciplnes, and to tell you the truth the folks I entertain love it.

Laypeole find it difficult to tell the difference between magicians, psychics, mediums, and Harry Potter. How many times have you been asked "Ooh, can you tell me the lotto numbers?" after you've finished a routine? Normal folk really believe that Paul Daniels could raise the dead if he wanted to. Honestly. They do.

A week or so ago I was at a table of around 10 young women. Some were good looking. I began my table-hopping routine looking forward to some serious flirting. The women were harder to impress than most, and began to accuse me of all sorts of trickery - marked cards, peeking etc. Tough crowd I thought. Then one of them asked me if I read the tarot (See? They don't know the difference). I pulled out my faithful tarot pack, and proceeded to produce a quick reading for each lady. I got 10 hits out of 10. They were screaming in delight, and have since booked me for a series of personal readings. If I was a magician who didn't dabble in occult arts, this would never have happened. The tarot produced a magic at that table where my conjuring had failed to deliver.

There was a point to my post but I've forgotten what it was. Perhaps it was something to do with the magical community dropping this "sceptical" stand-point and seeing the magic that can be produced from ancient disciplines such as the tarot, palmistry, etc.

I blame Derren Brown. If he claimed he was psychic, every magician in the land would be claiming the same. As it is, everyone's rushing out to buy books on NLP....

Ah right ok then thanks Craig. Between yourself and magicdiscoman you have cleared up this area for me. I was looking at it from the wrong perspective. I see now because someone could tell me that I could live until I was 90 and then go out and purposefully step in front of a bus or something; but it's divination and not prophecy, not set in stone.

Thanks again, something I've always wondered about cleared up form me.

B0bbY_CaT wrote:thank you for refering me to a good book on Tarot. should i ever be inclinded to practice this artform, i will surely know where to start learning. in this case, it is your opinions on the subject i am interested in.

Firstly - I know this question wasn't for me, but I'd like to comment on it anyway.

The thing is, I don't think the questions you're asking will ever be answered satisfactorily by anyone - no matter how much of an expert they are on the subject. They are questions that only you can answer for yourself - thus the need to study up on it. It's something that needs to be discovered, rather than just understood.
It's like surfing - someone can explain what riding a wave feels like, but you'll never know until you've done it yourself - only then do you understand why one would wake up early and get into that freezing water.
Or - it's like playing jazz. I've taught many drummers how rhythm works etc. but I can't teach them how to 'get in the groove' and how to intuitively know where the music is going - that understanding only comes from actually playing.

So if you are really interested (as you say you are), rather than trying to prove a point ( that's how you often seem to come across, even if that's your intention) I would suggest that you do study up a bit on the subject, even if you don't plan on using it.

themagicwand wrote:Normal folk really believe that Paul Daniels could raise the dead if he wanted to. Honestly. They do.

Paul tells the story of the BBC producer's assistant (not sure if that comes under the heading of 'normal' or not!) who was dealing with a forthcoming Paul Daniels TV special. He told Paul he'd arranged studio time etc for October 31st, Halloween, because 'that's when your powers are at their highest' And he was deadly serious!

I have a similar story (although not related to Tarot or raising the dead ).
I was at the airport on standby and there was a long queue at the standby counter. The flight was full and it was relatively clear that noone was going home soon. At this point someone in the queue recognised me from an event I performed at and asked me if I couldn't use my 'powers' to do something. I played along and said I could - but didn't she think that that would be unfair. She said she didn't think so and if she could, she would.
What I wasn't aware of, was that someone I know had prearranged with the pilot to have seat available for me. I received a call asking where I was and at the same time the person at the standby counter called my name.
I turned to the lady and said something like "that was the pilot, thanks for the idea". The look on her face was priceless

In one of his Art of Astonishment books, Paul Harris tells the story of a time he was performing in a 'less Westernised' part of the world and was asked to do something about the dreadful lack of fish in the local river/lake. Despite his explanations that he really couldn't do anything about such things he was taken to a boat, rowed well away from the shore and had to go through the charade of doing the Witchdoctor business. The locals were satisfied so I guess that's all that matters really!

I am very glad you commented Taneous. you make a number of very interesting points. points that... "unfortunately", cause me to have a little re think. darn frustrating that, just when i think i've got it worked out...

maybe i can tell you what my motivation is. i apologise that this is maybe somewhat better suited to the intro section, however given the "interesting" way a recent thread ended up, perhaps it would in fact be helpful if you knew where i was coming from and what infact my motivation is. this could then put some comments i make into better context.

i enjoy a job that requires a large amount of creativity, allows a lot of travel and provides many new experiences. i am fortunate in that (at least compared to my peers) i dont need to "paint the whole wall" before i can tell if it will look good. i can visulise how it will look before the paint tin is open. that by the way, is a metaphor... i am not a house painter...

i am not a professional magician either, but my circumstances are such that i can revisit a few childhood whims. Magic is one of several. a very important one, so much so that i have been able to integrate magic into my "day job" in several areas, not because it's necessary, just because it's fun, and i can.

when i come across something i dont understand, i am forced to question it. much of the animosity of the last thread centred around 2 stubborn fools (i was 1 but only 1) "butting heads" both refusing to back down and consider that the other stubborn fool may in fact have something valid to say. so i look at your current post where you suggest, to truely understand something of this nature... one must get out there and experience it, learn it, live it, practice it, stuff it up a few times etc. you suggest asking question after question will not give me the answers i am looking for. well, my immediate reaction is that if people would simply provide a "straight" answer i would get the information i am looking for so... however, maybe there is no "straight answer" for this to give??? i find that very difficult to accept but...

i guess it is as much my problem as any ridiculous illogical explaination i have been given that my first reaction, because this is how i am forced to opperate in my "real world" is... "OK, tell me your story, right... this doesn't make sence, clarify that, what about this..." then armed with that information, i make a decision.

this psychic thing, it may well be too complex, too deep to provide simple yes/no type answers. i guess part of my reasoning for asking yes/no type questions, is because in business, that is the best way to determine if a person has substance. put them under a little pressure, throw them a challenge to answer and see how they perform. it definately gives you a good handle on people when interviewing job applicants, gives you a "feel" for what they can offer in a real world kind of environment.

the Tarot, and the Palm... maybe they are 2 things that simply cant be understood the way i understand everything else. perhaps i WILL start as you suggest, and as Mr Lewis often rants, by buying a book. i like to have a little inventory of books to read on planes. i am thinking i may even ask Mr Lewis to recommend something of credibility about psychic intuition in general. something not written by James Randi and DEFINATELY NOT by Uri Geller. put the book in my kit and i will get to start it over the next few months... i have a few on the go at the moment.

in the mean time, i will also keep and eye on further comments by Mr Lewis to help my "enlightening", and as always, i will not fear asking someone to clarify any comments i feel could do with a little... erm... scrutiny.

you're right, none of my questions were directed at you Taneous. but you commented anyway, and i am glad you did.

I find it funny, how someone else can tell you essentially what I'd said time and again in two other threads (about getting off one's duff and actually READING and STUDYING the subject vs. the classic 4 year old antic of asking relentlessly and rewording question after question).

Yes, I'm a stubborn Irishman with just enough Dutch blood in me to make it a thing squared. My stubborness stems from years of experience and hands on situations that go way outside the realms of Mr. Randi & Co.'s idea of what it means to investigate and "debunk" -- I go after real charlatans and predators, he merely states everything is fake... big difference!

Anwho, I'm glad the light bulb finally turned on over your head and you now have at least some reason to go pick up a few dozen books on this topic in order to actually learn something.

Taneous explained it better. also i had no issues with him talking around in circles, so i guess i gave his comments more attention... as a result they made more sense. after a week or so of asking very simple questions and getting very little by way of straight answers i made a decision, if no one can give me a straight answer, i shall get my own. i think my preceeding post does a good job of explaining why i think that way.