It's in The Stars

The other day  I  received a pitch from a PR person for my column. She worked with an association of California psychics.  Now beyond being inappropriate for a column about gay fatherhood, I'm also not what one would call a big believer in psychics and mediums.  Sure, maybe there are a few people that truly have some sort of gift but they're few and far between.  For the most part, I personally think they provide great generalities and tell people what they want to hear.

 

When it comes to psychics, I always think about when I did accounts receivable at a manufacturing company back in the 1990s. One day in my deposits, I found a check for $50 from our receptionist, Ruthie. Turns out I'd get 3-4 more of those over the next few weeks. Ruthie had been calling the Psychic Friends Hotline to discuss her love life. When a call came through the switchboard, she'd simply put her all knowing friend on hold, handle the business call, and then get back on to hear about the future. Apparently, Miss Cleo wasn't skilled enough to tell Ruthie that while reviewing the monthly phone bill, the comptroller would notice a charge of several hundred dollars to a psychic line. Nor was her gift great enough to warn Ruthie that the company was also able to determine from which phone line the calls had been made.

Spiritualism, mediums and psychics have been around forever. But the practice became mainstream - especially among the upper classes - following World War I when the sons of the Britain's top families ended up falling in the fields of Belgium.   One of the best known among society people was Louisa Doyle, wife of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Mrs. Doyle's "gift" consisted of her going into a trance and allowing the spirit of the departed to enter her body and to use her pen to write messages for the living. As a courtesy, Mrs. Doyle offered to contact the recently departed mother of the great Harry Houdini, a close friend of the Doyles.  Amazingly, she was able to reach Mrs. Weisz! More amazingly to Houdini, through Mrs. Doyle's hand, his Jewish mother wrote the sign of the cross on the top of the sheet of paper, failed to mention the night of the reading was her birthday, and for a woman, who hadn't spoken a word of English, suddenly had a fluent command of the language.

Houdini called bullshit. The friendship between these two great luminaries of their time was over.

Television has spurred a whole new generation of mediums. 

 

Simple editing makes it seem to viewers at home that these gifted seers are hitting the mark time after time. But a member of a skeptic organization managed to get into the audiences of both James Van Praagh and John Edward (above men).

Television and studio audiences were amazed as a woman raised her hand after Van Praagh pointed to a section of chairs and innocently asked, "Who here is from a different country?" What people not near the table where Van Praagh had been signing books prior to the show weren't privy to was that the hand-raising woman had volunteered that she was from Italy as she had a book signed.  Unlike the skeptic, people at home also hadn't seen Edward fire off no fewer than 40 guesses before finally landing on something solid with an audience member.

Being a skeptic doesn't mean I simply discount that the Long Island Medium and Psychic Tia  (above and bottom) aren't offering up advice based on insights offered by spirits of the dead. I'm just saying that I need more solid evidence.

So, per the PR person's request, I offered to write my January column about a psychic reading on what 2014 holds in store for me. However, I had a caveat: I wanted 5 specific predictions. Not anything that was open to interpretation like "you're going on a trip" - driving out to see my niece Ashley's family in Saratoga Springs could be classified as a trip - but also not something that I could manipulate; so no "Nope, didn't paint my office blue, painted it yellow."

If all 5 predictions proved correct I would write my January 2015 column about what an amazing experience it had been and how readers could get in contact with these truly gifted people. However, if even one of the predictions was wrong, they'd have to put a press release out and take an ad out announcing they were frauds.

She never got back with me.

Personally, if I were her, I'd have taken the offer. Even if they got 2 or 3 predictions right, they could have spun a release saying they got 50-75% of their predictions right.

Oh, and if my dear friend and colleague Bob Henline, and my much adored nephew-in-law Jerid Foster are reading this, yes, I am very much aware of the duplicity I show between my demand for evidence from psychics and my faith that Jesus of Nazareth was not only the Son of God, who resurrected after His crucifixion, but He is God and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

But here's the demarcation line for me: Jesus never made money performing miracles. Yeah, it's true: there are plenty of crazy Christians wondering around there making a quick buck in the name of God.

But, I have a healthy skepticism about religion too. An image of the Virgin Mary appearing in a tree trunk? On par with that cloud looking like a dragon. An icon of some saint crying? Or is it really just condensation?

The fact of the matter is that everyone needs to determine his or her own reality and faith. Someone's dead grandmother whispering generalities into a person's ear in exchange for cold hard cash just doesn't work for me. But a guy that can turn water into wine? That I can get behind!