I had an interesting discussion with my boi last night, provoked by an episode of "Crossing Over", which has just started on free-to-air TV over here. Ghost had been watching it back in the US and was curious to see my reaction. He knows I'm a little witchy and thought I'd be all over it like white on rice.
He was somewhat disappointed with my reaction.
(I think he was also convinced that I was playing the sceptic for the benefit of the houseguest we had staying with us.)
But I wasn't. I was genuinely sceptical. Ghost just didn't understand why. He thought it would be right up my alley.
For a start, I'm not nearly as mystical as he thinks. Yes, I have a lot of spell ingredients and spell books at home. I read tarot cards. Hell, I've even got a proper besom. But this doesn't mean I'm suddenly in touch with the ‘other side'.
For me, spells are simply ways of focusing my mind and my attitude to achieve a particular goal. It's no different to the positive envisioning that an Olympic athlete does, I just use pretty smelling oils and candles. Anyone who wants to achieve a goal knows that positive thinking and having the right attitude is half the battle. A spell is just a ritual to achieve that.
I do not believe that spells will change the world around me. They change me.
Here's an example. The company I was working for was going through a rough financial period a couple of years ago. I gathered the ingredients for a ‘bring in more money' spell and a group of us cast it. The very next day, a large cheque we had been waiting on for a couple of weeks arrived (it had been misdirected in the mail to Manilla in the Philippines for some reason.) Coincidence? Absolutely. But that's not what was important here.
What was important was that everyone believed that my spell had ‘worked'. And they stopped worrying about how we were going to get in more money and began to focus on their work again. Which is what really brings in the money. So, in effect, my spell ‘worked'. People stopped focusing on the wrong thing because they felt the spell would do the job for them. And we started making money again.
I did nothing to change the problem. I changed attitudes to the problem.
I also read tarot cards. Correction, I read people while I read tarot cards. This was something that resonated with me on "Crossing Over". I could see what he was doing because I do the exact same thing. You look at a person, before you even begin reading and try to understand something about them. What are they wearing? What is their posture telling you? Their expression?
Then, when you begin laying out the cards, what are they asking you? What comments of mine are they responding to? What gets a reaction? I do this all in my reading and so does John Edwards.
[On a side note, a friend was learning to read tarot cards and she asked if she could practice on me. I deliberately withheld any information. I did not tell her what I wanted to know and I consciously did not react to anything she said. Afterwards, despite her knowing me quite well, she said it was the hardest reading she'd ever done.]
So why am I so sceptical of John Edwards? Don't get me wrong, he said some stuff that made me say, "What the fuck?" But there's more. Firstly, his audience is open to him. They may say they are sceptics, but they are there because they want to be convinced. They want to believe. Or they do believe.
He seems to be a great reader of character and enormously charming. People open up to him. They respond to his patter and no matter how vague the question, they can apply it to something in their lives. It's the same thing I do with tarot cards and it's the same thing that daily sun-sign horoscope writers do. Make it sufficiently vague and someone will respond to something.
John Edwards is a performer, like a magician, and what he does is supposed to be about mystery. It just makes me want to see what the man behind the curtain is doing.
Tarot cards do not predict the future. Spells do not change the world around you. Does John Edwards commune with the dead? I don't know, but based on my own experience, I suspect the answer is a lot more prosaic.
Well written. I haven't seen the show but I've seen him on other talk shows, and can see how easy it would be to get sucked in...especially when you WANT to believe. As long as people aren't being taken for their life savings, and they leave feeling somehow comforted, I don't see the harm in it.
We laugh about this guy back in the states. =) The only dead people that John Edwards talks to are in his audience. I say that with sincere pity for all those people who think he is providing them with some form of valuable emotional information when the bottom line is that he is just another snake oil salesman who is exploiting people's grief and making a buck off of it.
Why would anyone who was dead want to talk to that guy? Look at how cheesy he acts! If he could do it don't you think he would wake up in the morning to a line of dead people streaming out of his bedroom and home pleading with him day and night to contact there kids, friends, relatives to pass on mundane information like where they hid the children's aspirin right before the car hit them, or more important things like Swiss bank account numbers? Wouldn't they have locked him away years ago for talking to himself and labeled him Shizo and maybe given him a different mail box for each of the different personalities he claimed to channel? Sheez.
If John Edwards could really talk to the dead he'd be like a call center that serviced the planet with only one customer service rep. His head would explode from all the voices and requests. Think about how many irrate callers he'd get. Why doesn't he ever channel anyone who gets pissed at the quality of his service? Do they not use fowl language in the afterlife? What about overseas callers, or people who were born in other countries who don't speak English or for whom English is a second language- again; this guys head should be exploding from all the superflous information! =p Does he only channel the recently dead? What about the Native Americans who lived here before the Europeans arrived? Wouldn't some of them still have a bone to pick or two over diseased blankets, mass slaughters, broken treaties and the like?
Fun stuff to ponder when watching shows like this. Thank you Tree for a great little blog that made me smile! =)
Hmmmm. I feel the way you do. The audience has a lot to do with the performance.
I am also a person who is in touch with the more mystic and spiritual side of life. But some things just send out red flags. I believe it is healthy to doubt some things.
I agree with you. I can't stand to watch "Crossing Over" and see those people being duped. :P
To his credit, I read somewhere that a group of scientists had Edwards "communicate" with a dead relative of a person he'd not yet met or knew was nearby. The things he said were told to the person in question by the scientists not by Edwards. And it was still true.
Who knows? The energy of every living thing still exists but whether they've retained individual personalities or memories is debatable.
From a scientific standpoint, since time is a human invention, it only stands to reason that the past can overlap with the present...i.e. ghosts and channeling.
Like Arthur C. Clarke said, magic is just a technology we've yet to understand. (paraphrased)
In my opinion, "supernatural" is a myth because if a thing exists, it is a part of nature.
Never head of the guy or the show, but doubt I'd like it. I do think there's more to tarot than peoplereading - pulling things out at random, I like to think it gets some sort of communication through, whether from the subconscious or whatever. Am of the opinion that it brings into focus things you already know - er I only read for myself.
Always think of Hitchikers, where Arthur pulls out the scrabble letters and produces the Ultimate Question.
Who knows for sure, except for Mr. Edwards of course. I do not know that there are ways to communicate with those who have passed on and I don't know that it is impossible. I just know that I've never consciously done it.
I believe in reincarnation, so really would not bother trying to contact someone who has passed out of my life for the simple reason that I am hoping that they are back somewhere enjoying new challenges. What I need to know and reassure myself about them is within me and for me to work through anyhow and someone as annoying as Mr. Edwards could never have the power to make me feel better about it.
I use rune stones, much the same way you do tarot cards. To get myself in focus and laying the stones gives me varied perspectives to consider.
hey..i've been hiding lately, wanted to drop in and say hi though..so HI! :D
A friend of mine who has a habit of knowing these things said he's a fraud, but an excellent cold reader. I don't know what that means exactly, and didn't care enough to ask, but I suspect it means exactly what you've described here. But who knows?
Hope everything is working out as it should with you. Love to you and Ghost.
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I suspect you are right... My wife watches his show occasionally, but it does absolutely nothing for me.