{"id":521,"date":"2007-11-01T07:38:38","date_gmt":"2007-11-01T11:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=521"},"modified":"2007-10-31T13:42:06","modified_gmt":"2007-10-31T17:42:06","slug":"yeah-people-really-will-believe-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=521","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, People Really Will Believe Anything"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent poll<\/A>* found that as many as a third of “people” (I would assume this means Westerners) believe in ghosts and other spooky stuff, and nearly one-quarter have seen or otherwise “experienced” a ghost. I would have thought these percentages were a little high, except I slammed face-first into this mindset last Saturday.<\/p>\n

A lady I used to work with invited Shadowboy to her Halloween party. Since all the parents were also invited, I offered to bring along my tarot cards and help with entertainment. She has one of those “treat the New-Agey stuff like an a la carte menu” things going on, so I knew she’d love the idea.** I did 15 or 20 readings, and I think that for ethical reasons I’m not going to do tarot readings any more. Because I knew<\/EM> I was making crap up, and I had people hanging on my every syllable. Three different people told me earnestly that I had given them incredibly accurate readings and that I had a real gift. (The gift of B.S.<\/EM>, people.) And I don’t even give a very convincing performance; trying to act mystical just makes me giggle, and the deck I was using didn’t have the standard suits so I kept having to pause and remember whether bats were supposed to be swords or pentacles.<\/p>\n

Now, let me pause to say that I’m not casting aspersions on anybody who uses tarot as part of their belief system.*** I wasn’t using them the “real” way, I was making stuff up as I went along. A while back I put together a “bluff your way through the tarot” guide<\/A>, and that’s how I do readings. I took educated guesses, I made generalizations, and the only thing my Inner Eye was open to was a vague sense of alarm that I was being taken seriously.[4] <\/p>\n

Anyway, I’m uncomfortable that I inadvertently affected peoples’ lives with a total pack of lies, but I’m a whole lot more uncomfortable that I was able<\/EM> to affect peoples’ lives with a total pack of lies.<\/p>\n

I now see how professional psychics make money. Yeesh.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*This article links to another article entitled, What to do if your house has ghosts<\/A>, which includes the sentence, “You can either learn to live with the novelty of a ghost in your house, or get in touch with a legitimate ghost researcher to help you understand what’s going on.” It’s the “legitimate” that gets me. Remember when CNN covered actual news?<\/p>\n

**Back when I worked with her she told me with some pride that she was a “Reiki Master.” I looked up Reiki online, and the heading of one entry in the FAQ told me all that I needed to know about Reiki: “Origin of the $10,000 Fee” (Their reason: Since Reiki Mastership is so easily learned, the Japanese developer of the technique felt that Westerners might not value it. So charging a huge sum of money to “teach” it confers the respect it deserves. I just want to shake the hand of whomever came up with that particular angle.) I don’t think she paid that much for her “mastership,” but I expect she was soaked for a large sum. (Which maybe means she’s got substandard Reiki skills. Who knows?)<\/p>\n

***Because one of them is my sister, and she could totally<\/EM> kick my ass.<\/p>\n

[4] Incidentally, no matter what cards showed up, I predicted positive results all ’round. I’m not going to be the bearer of fake bad news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent poll* found that as many as a third of “people” (I would assume this means Westerners) believe in ghosts and other spooky stuff, and nearly one-quarter have seen or otherwise “experienced” a ghost. I would have thought these percentages were a little high, except I slammed face-first into this mindset last Saturday. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}