Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Bad Wizard

Stupid criminals and the paranormal only occasionally overlap, but when they do the result is often especially hilarious. An Iranian man wanted to rob a bank, so he paid a wizard for spells to make him invisible. Arriving at said bank, he quickly discovered that the spells did not work as advertised.

The man explained to the court that he had paid five million rials (just under £290) to a wizard imposter, who in return gave him a set of spells to tie to his arm. The fake sorcerer explained to him that the spells would make him invisible, and that he could then rob banks all he wanted.

The man’s ill-fated attempt to rob the bank started to go wrong after he entered the bank and started randomly snatching money from the hands of customers, before they decided to act quickly and overpower the ill-fated thief.

Now anybody who knows anything about magick will tell you that this is not going to work. The "invisibility spells" that you can find in the old grimoires and so forth don't actually make you transparent, but rather shift the attention of people around you so that you can go about your business unnoticed. They won't fool a security camera and they certainly won't allow you to grab cash out of somebody's hand with impunity.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of a story that Donald Michael Kraig reports in one of his articles. The story goes:

"There is a story of a young man, sitting in a café (I’ve heard of different locations where this story occurred), when all of a sudden, a strange man, dressed in yellow, comes darting through the café, babbling in a strange, foreign language. To his surprise, nobody was paying any attention to this obviously crazy man. The shocked café-goer asks the head waiter if something should be done. The head waiter replies, “Oh no, sir. That’s just Mr. Crowley being invisible again.”

Hahahaha. :)

- See more at: http://www.llewellyn.com/blog/2012/05/crowley-amorc-o-t-o-g-d-real-power-little-children/#sthash.dNmjTVtp.dpuf

Adesh!
-Aghor Pir

Scott Stenwick said...

Yup, I've heard that joke as well. It's a riff on this quote from Confessions:

"I worked also at acquiring the power of invisibility. (See The Equinox, vol. I, no. III, p. 272 for the ritual.) I reached a point when my physical reflection in a mirror became faint and flickering. It gave very much the effect of the interrupted images of the cinematograph in its early days. But the real secret of invisibility is not concerned with the laws of optics at all; the trick is to prevent people noticing you when they would normally do so. In this I was quite successful. For example, I was able to take a walk in the street in a golden crown and a scarlet robe without attracting attention."

While it's funny to imagine everyone politely ignoring Crowley in his silly outfit, I've also seen the joke used as an "argument" to support the contention that these spells can't work. In fact, with some practice, they work quite well - especially if you don't wear goofy attire.

Hypnovatos said...

A number of years ago, i had a ring, which, amongst a number of various magical symbols, had a Quranic verse which discussed being "unseen". I wore the ring a few times while driving and found that to be a bad idea as i always appeared to "materialize out of nowhere" to other drivers as they would nearly run into me.
Then, one night, i had to use the ring in ernest to learn a truth about someone. It worked beyond my wildest fantasies, and I had nearly forgotten i was wearing it once i discovered horrible news as a result of my "spying". I walked to within 2 feet of the person I was spying on... face to face, and was about to confront them in absolute anger when i realized they were still staring right past me. I turned around and decided to confront them when i was of cooler mind, and when i did, they were shocked to hear that i was there and knew what i did.
Coincidentally... or not, the ring "vanished" at some point O.o

Scott Stenwick said...

Yeah, invisibility spells can be a problem while doing all sorts of day-to-day activities. If you've developed the technique to where it really works well, you need to be careful how you apply it.