The Psychology of Magic, Mediums, Politics, and Advertising
An interesting post about the above title with more than one reference to some magician bloke called Derren Brown. Personally I’ve never heard of the bloke myself.
One from the archives.
This is old news and very silly. But funny as hell.
Darren Brittain
BadPsychics TV have recently released two short films exposing the “Psychics” we all love to hate.
This one deals with a recent Channel 4 show, “Tony Robinson and the Blitz Witch”.
BadPsychics TV says : “The documentary was mainly about fraudulent physical medium Helen Duncan, however during the show a medium by the name of Darren Brittain was featured. And that is who we are conentrating on today.
The reason why we decided to produce this short analysis on him is due to a single sentence claim on his website.
“His reputation for delivering names, dates, street names, and personal information to identify loved ones has earned him a reputation as a medium of high quality.”
After viewing him give readings in a spiritualist church and also to Tony Robinson, something didn’t sit right.
Is Darren Brittain the real deal? Or is he a calculating conman?
I will let you make up your own mind regarding that conclusion.”
FERRYING ACROSS THE MERSEY
As you do. First day of filming, and I shall be meeting our Liverpool medium a little later. We’ll be spending the week together and I’ll be looking at to what extent his quite serious claims really stand up. He’s made a small name for himself, and is typical of many mediums working in the UK. I, as ever, would love it to be true and am hoping he’ll show me things I can’t explain. But his involving himself in murder cases makes me uneasy. I imagine there’ll be some sequences with bereaved parents that I’ll find excruciating. Yet clearly they take much comfort from him. Much to learn, observe and discuss.
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Don’t forget!
Tonight, Channel 4, 10pm.
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Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe
During the Middle Ages, the Western world translated the incredible Arabic scientific corpus and imported it into Western culture: Arabic philosophy, optics, and physics, as well as alchemy, astrology, and talismanic magic. The line between the scientific and the magical was blurred. According to popular lore, magicians of the Middle Ages were trained in the art of magic in “magician schools” located in various metropolitan areas, such as Naples, Athens, and Toledo.
It was common knowledge that magic was learned and that cities had schools designed to teach the dark arts. The Spanish city of Toledo, for example, was so renowned for its magic training schools that “the art of Toledo” was synonymous with “the art of magic.” Until Benedek Lang’s work onUnlocked Books, little had been known about the place of magic outside these major cities.
Lang explores textual evidence from the sixteenth century suggesting that Krakow, Poland, was also a key city for instruction in magic. For instance, Lang directs our attention to a marginal comment on the bookLocorum communium collectanea, by Johannes Manlius, which identifies the “first authentic notice of the Magician Dr Faustus” as having studied at Krakow. A principal aim of Unlocked Books is to situate the role of central Europe in general, and Krakow in particular, as a center for the study of magic.
Available from Fields Books in the US and Amazon in the UK.
Photo-realism illusion
This little prank took a lot of work but seemed worth it in the end.
Barrack Obama uses NLP and evil mind techniques to brainwash you
OK this article is hog-wash but it is a clever use of how people think NLP and suggestive speech can mass manipulate people in to group behaviour.
Similar claims that Derren has forced millions of listeners – via his radio interviews – to set up weekly direct debits in to his personal bank account is simply not true. (It was only about 90,000 at best and it was a 1 off payment).
Caption Competition Results
Firstly can I take this opportunity to apologise for how long its taken to get round to announcing this, what with celebrating the baby Jesus’ birthday and a whole new year (2009) to get to grips with it sort of got left behind.
Also I should apologise to our American cousins out there, it was silly of me to presume you guys would know who Ken Livingstone was (ex-London mayor).
Anyway the next competition will be much better I can assure you of that.
So the winner is………(drum-roll please Phillis!)………
Eric. S
His caption was, “When I count to four, you will not see me place this pubic hair on your danish pastry…”
I’ll fire you an email now Eric and get hold of your address.
Better luck next time everyone else.
Coops
ITUNES
Off this morning (on my way to Liverpool) to record extracts of ‘Tricks of the Mind’ (i.e. the book) for iTunes. You heard it here first. It’s 6 hours of recording, but no idea how long that will translate to in terms of play.
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