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Are these people the natural enemies of the magician/mentalist?

Is it because they prey on the weak and the vulnerable for their own financial gain?

Would it be considered bad form of me to venture down this avenue purely to raise funds for my future career as a magician? Even if i were to openly explain to people that it is manipulation and lies and purely for entertainment and i do not possess psychic abilities or the power to communicate with the dead at the end of a show?

Discuss.....

Much love

Aza

Why would to want to do this to raise funds as a magician? You can earn enough from magic rather quickly. I worked for years as a magician before moving into the psychic entertainment field. If you are talking about doing seances then it is a really bad idea to stand up at the end and tell them it is all fake. I do seances but i never claim to contact relatives of friends of guests.

I foresee a BIG row...

It happened last time!

Oh dear....not what i was hoping for to be honest, i wanted a nice adult discussion and i understand that morally it is wrong to exploit people etc. but.........

And thanks for the words of advice Stephen!!

And Tomo, your mentalism powers work even over magic forums?! awesome!!

Much love

Aza

I take a reasonably sympathetic view. People live their lives through their emotions, not facts. If people lived their lives on facts alone then people wouldn't buy drugs from strangers, break speed limits or smoke etc. If you take a trip to Rome you would struggle to get the pope to change his mind on the holy trinity. In other words, if people want to believe in something, or that someone can contact their dead relative then that is a matter for them. The fact that a lot of these 'crossing over with..type shows' are so popular suggests to me that people do believe.

I once had a conversation with a friend of mine who, even after I went through the methods over and over again still thought that his 'reader' possessed psychic abilities. This belief can be best explained by a wonderful anecdote Plato told about Socrates. The great man saw that it was about to rain. He ran through the streets telling everyone to get inside. No-one listened. It started to rain quite heavily and he screamed for the people to get inside. No-one listened. He stood in his doorway and after a while he said, "well, at least I'm dry." That's how I feel about 'fake' psychics.

There seems to be an assumption here that psychic ability is not genuine. That assumption should be challenged because I maintain that nearly EVERYONE has psychic ability in the same way that nearly everyone has the ability to see or hear or smell. It is just that an intuitive psychic has developed his or her ability more through practice and constantly doing reading after reading after reading for years on end.

I have explained how it all works here:

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Aza wrote:Are these people the natural enemies of the magician/mentalist?

Is it because they prey on the weak and the vulnerable for their own financial gain?

Would it be considered bad form of me to venture down this avenue purely to raise funds for my future career as a magician? Even if i were to openly explain to people that it is manipulation and lies and purely for entertainment and i do not possess psychic abilities or the power to communicate with the dead at the end of a show?

Discuss.....

Much love

Aza

Wow. What a crazy post. If I didn't know better I'd assume it was an amateur attempt at trolling.

Basically you've said: "I think psychics are fake, evil and exploitative. Would it be bad form for me to pose as one purely to make a fast buck?"

Can you not answer that question on your own?

mark lewis wrote:There seems to be an assumption here that psychic ability is not genuine. That assumption should be challenged because I maintain that nearly EVERYONE has psychic ability in the same way that nearly everyone has the ability to see or hear or smell. It is just that an intuitive psychic has developed his or her ability more through practice and constantly doing reading after reading after reading for years on end.

I have explained how it all works here:

ftopic34011.php&highlight=" target="_blank

When the Randi foundation pays out, I will believe.

kevmundo wrote:When the Randi foundation pays out, I will believe.

And Kev I'm sure there are millions of people across the world trying desperately just to change your mind....

Randi is an old fraud and that million dollar challenge is a load of bunkum. He wouldn't pay out even if you produced a ton of ectoplasm out of his left ear. Common sense I would have thought. Do you honestly think anyone would pay out a million dollars (assuming he has it in the first place) whether you won the challenge or not? You would have to sue to get the money (if it even exists) and who the hell has time for that? The only way I would be convinced that the challenge was a genuine one is if the JREF Foundation would give a certified cheque for a million dollars made out by name to the challenger and given to a neutral judge of impeccable credentials who is not connected to JREF to hand over or not as the whim takes him or her. I have challenged them to do this in the past and they have always refused.

In any event psychic ability is not something you can test anyway. You cannot turn it on and off like a tap at will. It comes when you are not expecting it to come. It ain't gonna happen at a specific moment in time when you are supposedly "tested" by a bunch of biased individuals with an agenda to publicise themselves. Besides I knew a psychic who WON the test in a very self evident manner and they STILL refused to pay out.

I wouldn't trust that bunch with a ten foot pole. Bunch of crooks.

Heckler wrote:

kevmundo wrote:When the Randi foundation pays out, I will believe.

And Kev I'm sure there are millions of people across the world trying desperately just to change your mind....

Of that there can be no doubt.

It's not at all fair to put all psychics in the same box at all. I agree that there are far too many fakes and charlitains out there who are just taking advantage of people but there are also those who honestly believe in what they're doing and practice in a resonsible way. I've been reading the tarot for years and have dabbled in crystal healing, aromatherapy and herbalism and have seen each of them work. I've never used any fake techniques and to be honest I do believe all these things can work to a certain level.

I'd really advise avoiding this sort of area unless you're going to really learn your stuff and don't look at it as an easy way to make money. Many of the poeple who visit readers do know fair bit and you wouldn't want to get caught out. Also I wouldn't ever say that you were just using tricks, that's just telling your audience that you're a fake and for those who are believers and there will be some, you could offend and possibly get an angry reactions.

Lady of Mystery wrote:It's not at all fair to put all psychics in the same box at all. I agree that there are far too many fakes and charlitains out there who are just taking advantage of people but there are also those who honestly believe in what they're doing and practice in a resonsible way. I've been reading the tarot for years and have dabbled in crystal healing, aromatherapy and herbalism and have seen each of them work. I've never used any fake techniques and to be honest I do believe all these things can work to a certain level.

I'd really advise avoiding this sort of area unless you're going to really learn your stuff and don't look at it as an easy way to make money. Many of the poeple who visit readers do know fair bit and you wouldn't want to get caught out. Also I wouldn't ever say that you were just using tricks, that's just telling your audience that you're a fake and for those who are believers and there will be some, you could offend and possibly get an angry reactions.

Very well put. Now where's that 'Like' button?

The thing about being able to do something is being able to do it, and psychic abilities consistently fail that crucial repeatability test.

Interestingly, even if you're convinced you have no precognitive abilities whatsoever, if you make a negative prediction, you'll be right far more often than if you make a positive one. For example, make a prediction about what each card in a zener deck won't be. Mean chance expectation (what you'd expect from random guesses) tells us that guessing cards will give you an average of 20% right each time (1 in 5), but inverting that and making predictions about what the next card won't be each time boosts this to 80% (4 in 5). Try it with future events. The results are the same. Describe in detail on paper what you think somewhere you've never been will be like. You';ll be mostly wrong, so phrase it in terms of what it won't be like and presto, you're antipsychic (not anti-psychic)!