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Methinks Rowland has also steered away from the full facts of cold reading.......................

Boom boom!

comedy gold.

i am in agreement with madrake on this one. yes, it was a bold thing to do to name your book to be a complete treatise on a subject, certainly such an expansive one. we should consider it to be a reference book like any other.

back to rowland himself. it is clear there is some real venom in some of the members here towards him (for reasons, if i had my way, that you would choose not to disclose) so getting an accurate picture of his credentials is becoming difficult.

so has he done readings for money or not? does the wikipedia entry about him need editing? are the statements on his website about his skills untrue?


cheers,

stack

I have just been to Wikipedia. It doesn't say one word about him doing readings for money. Perhaps it was edited out to keep the entry accurate and truthful. The only time he seems to have done any readings is for demonstration purposes and those "readings" are bloody awful. Even the sample reading in his book that he comes across as so proud of is below par.

As for "venom" he encourages it by being so bloody miserable. I met him in Toronto recently and Paul Pacific who was there at the time got great amusement out of him saying to me "you are not someone that I have much respect for". His attitude should be contrasted with Simon Lovell that I was incredibly rude to on the Internet yet when I also met him in Toronto we got on like a house on fire within a minute or two.

I am beginning to get a psychic vibe that Stackman is Rowland himself but since the vision is a little cloudy at the moment I will not state it as an absolute fact.

As for the point about real psychics not being upset by the aggressive and deceptive techniques used by Rowland, Stackman plainly does not understand the psychic process which makes me think even more that he could be Rowland himself.

A real psychic will sense the challenge inherent in the techniques and will immediately react negatively to the challenge. We are all human and psychics are no exception. If we sense that someone is trying to challenge and play with us for their own amusement rather than having a reading because they have a problem we can help them gain insight to, we shut down very quickly.

Having a reading is a two way process. The psychic has to gain rapport with the sitter in order to achieve positive results. If that rapport is destroyed by some twit who has been daft enough to read the Rowland book and take it seriously then it is their own fault that the reading will be below par.

Not that it would bother me of course. NONE of the psychic baiting tricks that Rowland advocates would work with me. NOT ONE. And I would take the baiter's money without a qualm and deliberately give him some kind of substandard reading that he would not be able to argue with and get rid of him as soon as possible. I wouldn't let him speak either once I got a vibe of negativity. In actual fact with my style of reading my clients don't generally say much anyway. I feel that I am there to give them information rather than the other way round.

mark lewis wrote:
I am beginning to get a psychic vibe that Stackman is Rowland himself but since the vision is a little cloudy at the moment I will not state it as an absolute fact.

i cannot work out if that was a classic lewis gag or not! if not my apologies and could you go into more detail dear sir?

Only a faint vibe old chap. We psychics don't see everything you know. It is a bit like looking through frosted glass. We get glimpses but we don't see everything.

well mr lewis, i can tell you that i am certainly not mr rowland. any check of my posting history you will see that it is exclusively concerned with memorisation and stacked arrangements of playing cards; both here and across the 1000+ posts at the bunny. (in fact i was wondering if i could have an inclusion in the comedic dictionary you have here mr Mandrake? 'To be Stackman'd' - where you ask a question and immediately get the response 'it could be achieved most easily with a stacked deck'....)

well the venom mentioned earlier is not helping myself get a clear picture of mr rowland or the book. in particular it seems that some seem to think that mr rowland is being totally dismissive of psychic ability, whereas rather he is being dismissive of fraudsters using techniques to mimic the said ability.

mr lewis, as a genuine psychic i thought that this book would have your full support?

The book does not have my full support because Rowland is trying to debunk genuine psychics while pretending that he isn't. At least with Randi
he is blunt and honest about his opinion. He says openly that he doesn't believe in ANY psychics and that is fair enough. Rowland is trying to get his cake and eat it. He says one thing and means another.

But at least if you are trying to debunk psychics then in the name of God don't give false methods. No psychic, fake or otherwise uses a single one of the Rowland techniques. No. Not one of them.

I know some fake psychics but they aren't using any of the Rowland techniques at all. Not one of them. So Rowland is giving false information. Perhaps he needed to do some better research. Instead of chattering to various eggheads and academics about how they THINK what goes on he should have spoken to various people on the fringes of wickedness who KNOW what goes on.

Granted a few fake mediums use some of the Rowland techniques but very few psychics do mediumship work. And for some reason all the fake mediums seem to be on television. Many of the mediums I have met who do private readings are sincere believers. I personally have my doubts that they are actually contacting any spirits but I think that they think they do and that is not fraud. And in any event they are not using any of the Ian Rowland nonsense.

mark lewis wrote: And for some reason all the fake mediums seem to be on television.

well the fake mediums, the ones that are viewable to all on the TV, do seem to use the techniques in the book. i think it would be fun to post a couple of links and see if we can see any of the book's content is being used.

The opening chapter of Richard Wiseman's Paranormality is a very insightful exploration of readings. It is sceptical without being dismissive (as Ian Rowland's work often was). Anyone else read it yet?

I don't know this title but will look it up, thanks!

As to the suggestion that "some who spit bile at the book suddenly claiming long term support" (insinuating me, I'd guess) I will point out that I've always said that it is a great second step but NOT... ABSOLUTELY NOT something for the novice. I've likewise pointed out that the original intended market, at least according to the original cover story, was for the book to cater to the general public in much the same way the Max Maven "How to Read Anything" book attempted to do -- a "Coffee Table" book. This is one reason why Rowland has a nasty reputation for Exposing secrets and has been essentially boycotted here in the U.S. (though I don't personally think that was justified; the man does have a thing or two to teach folks, I can say the same for 99% of the people I disagree with in that I can give credit where it is due).

As Mark pointed out Rowland has NEVER worked full time as a Reader, relying on that skill set as a key income source, I know of very few in this industry that do now days though you will find it amongst the old timers that operate outside the Dunninger mold & ideology of things (a.k.a. Robert Nelson fans).

As to the books popularity, it has nothing to do with Derren Brown's endorsement but rather the entire skeptic's community burping up the title every single time a novice asks about learning Cold Reading. The thing I've always found sickly humorous about such encouragement is that this, TRADECRAFT and the Dewey books all deal with one-on-one Reading work and NOT working from the stage -- all of these "experts" are sending students to resources that encourage Reading work vs. a focus on performance-based responses to questions. You'd think they would point the neophyte in directions far away from the very thing they loathe.

Then again, we work in an field that claims to be "actors playing the part of ___" and yet, members of the fellowship rarely know the first thing about acting let alone what the differences are when it comes to up-stage vs. down-stage and actual showmanship vs. showing off (and all too frequently, doing a poor job of it). In other words, this seems a craft filled with contradictions when you step back and take a long look at it.

I thought the book had some pretty good infomation in it. It comes highly recommended, and although it can ba a little bit of a drag to read at parts, it's readable. I do think he has a slightly annoying style of writing at times though.

As for the section about seeking out "psychics", I do think he's kind of getting at how you can look out for the fakes, although I personally think that it's all fake. Although if you were to think of it as going out to just bully, I don't agree with that. I would take the same stance on that as I would with religion. I don't believe in that either, but people I'm close to do, so I don't go out of my way to rock the boat.

About the whole thing of you only see the fakes and they might be using the dogus skills, well that can't be true, there are so many vidoes of that stuff going on, and it can be explained by verious methods, and to say ok, well that's because they're fake and the real ones don't get shown is basicly saying that, you're real until you get caught. Another way to put it is that if there was some form of real paranormal out there, surly it would have attempted the James Randi challenge. I sure as hell would, and no one in there right mind would say that they couldn't use the money, unless only the multi-millionairs are the real deal.

So, back to the book. I think that it is a good sorce of infomation, and quite informative, but it does seem like he's leaked a bit of opinion into it along with the facts.

No dout this post won't go un-noticed, but it's ok, I know that there are plenty out there that will agree. Atleast a million us dollars worth.

themagicwand wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5NTtqT3yec

How have I never seen this guy before? Some of it is hilarious...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR531qWb ... re=related

This book is now available on Amazon UK (though currently out of stock).

Barry

I found it and a handful of other popular titles on a couple of file share sites this week as well, wonder if I should to list the links

Nonetheless. . . for the novice I will give you two links to FREE downloads, the first dealing with the issue of Cold Reading and the other, a fairly rounded introduction to Mentalism that will most certainly allow you to see it from a wider sense of perspective than writers of the past dozen or so years seem capable (or willing) to share with you.

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/learning-to-cold-read/14358013

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/mentalism-introduction-resource-list/15574606


Oh! Contrary to the ruder comments some will undoubtedly express on this forum, both books have seen high acclaim on multiple other forums including the Cafe (which hates me terribly) and NO, my publishing these (and those to follow) has nothing to do with promoting my Lulu site. Truth is the majority of my publications are at Lybrary.com or mevproshop.com