Obviously a Chaosphere

Does anybody else think this infrared image of an unidentified flying object is obviously a chaosphere? I sure do. If so, there's nothing all that mysterious about it. It's just magick. Chaospheres don't necessarily wander through the atmosphere like this one is apparently doing, but it could produce a heat variation with its eight-pointed shape acting as an attractor. That might show up on an infrared camera if it was sensitive enough.

Mysterious footage released in the Pentagon’s UFO files on Friday appeared to capture a bizarre “eight-pointed star” streaking across the sky several years back.

The infrared clip, submitted by US Central Command personnel, showed the strange-shaped object appearing to float around in 2013, according to the newly released files.

The footage, which lasts nearly two minutes, was apparently shot from “infrared sensor aboard a US military platform.”

“This video depicts an area of contrast resembling an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length,” a description on the UFO files website reads.

A note on the site later warns that the video description is for informational purposes and that “readers should not interpret any part of this description as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination.”

I criticized J. D Vance back on April Fools' Day for asserting that UFOs are demons, but my criticism has nothing to do with the possibility of some UFOs being spiritual or magical phenomena. The issue is with the reductive Christian framing that everything spiritual is a "demon." The spirit world is way more complex than that. It's not just "good angels" and "evil demons." There's a lot else out there.

Because if this is a chaosphere, it's not a demon. It's a spell, most likely cast by a human magician. I have no idea what it might have been charged to do because that's impossible to tell from the shape. As a central technique in chaos magick, chaospheres can be used for almost anything. The Chaosphere was invented by the late Peter J. Carroll, and the most recent expanded edition of his book Liber Kaos includes a new version of the ritual.

So maybe that means more of these will be flying around out there in the near future. I wonder how many UFO sightings they might cause.

Taylor Swift Summoning Demons?

I have criticized various exorcists over the years here on Augoeides for their weird ideas about magick and especially demons. I do understand that if you have gone through years of training to expel possessing spirits, that's going to be your hammer and everything is going to look like a nail. But still, people sometimes get the idea that exorcists work with spirits so they must know what they're talking about, when that's not true at all. Exorcists are trained in one specific magical ritual that has a single specific function, and that knowledge is not very applicable to regular life - or even magick in general.

Spirit possession is weird and rare, with a sample size so small that it's hard to see why it happens when it does. But exorcists think they know - it's celebrating Halloween, or dressing in black, or doing yoga stretches or just generally not being a devout traditional Christian. Or in this particular case, it's popular music. According to exorcist Father Dan Reehil, Taylor Swift concerts should be avoided because the pop star is summoning demons on her latest tour.

Reehil says those who practice witchcraft "harness energy or they try to harness energy, and they look at the Earth with the elements of water, fire, Earth, and sky. They believe that they can harness this energy in some ways to do good and in some ways to do evil."

So far so good. Magick does use the powers of the elements, also planets and signs, as a technology to influence the world, and it can be used to help or to harm depending on the intent of the practitioner

"The problem with the concert is that whether Taylor knew she was trying to imitate witches or in fact was doing some kind of a cult ceremony during the show is sort of irrelevant to the demons," Father Reehil continues.

"She is an incredibly talented and influential artist. And so the demons will take deep note of what she's doing and how she's doing it and who she's influencing. So when they imitate these rituals with these orbs and these black capes, that looks like something you'd find in the woods.

"Even if her intent was not to practice any witchcraft or do any of the incantations, she is probably attracting a lot of demons to her concerts.

But then all this is completely nuts. Conjuring demons involves specific procedures and specific implements, and those implements usually need to be consecrated for that purpose. It also involves the intent of the magician. While it is true that some practitioners go overboard with this and insist intent is all that matters, it is nonetheless the case that a magical operation won't work without it. You can't just mechnically imitate a few pieces of a magical ritual and expect anything to happen.

"Q-Shaman" is a Thing?

They say that you eventually become what you hate. So I suppose it was inevitable that followers of the QAnon conspiracy, who hate occultists, would eventually develop their own school of magick. Or not so much a school, really, as an incoherent collection of paranormal beliefs drawn from various fringe figures from popular culture. The dude behind it is apparently Jake Angeli, who was seen storming the Capitol on Wednesday in a ridiculous getup.

One of the most visually striking of the angry thugs was the shirtless “Viking” dressed in war paint with a Viking-style horned headdress and tattoos associated with neo-paganism and white nationalism. The so-called “Q-Shaman” has been a regular fixture at pro-Trump rallies across the country, a longtime “Q-influencer,” and yesterday the man news organizations identified as Jake Angeli, 32, seized the dais in the Senate chamber in the name of Donald Trump. He is also a believer in wild conspiracies that are ripped straight out of Ancient Aliens and other similar cable TV programs.

I want to point out here that my Scandinavian ancestors would have had nothing to do with this douchenozzle. He's certainly no Viking. I doubt anybody from Finland is happy with him appropriating "Shaman" either.

Angeli appears to be the same man who operates a YouTube channel (which I will not link to here) that has posted a series of conspiratorial videos since the November election. The man in the videos has the same look and build and the same set of distinctive tattoos. He also identifies himself by the same name. In the videos, Angeli presents the standard QAnon belief system, including pedophile rings, a “cabal” of evil liberals and globalists, and a quasi-religious infatuation with Donald Trump—many of which were ideas that emerged from the 1980s satanic panic and were packaged as a right-wing mystery religion by Ancient Aliens star David Wilcock and other conspiracy mongers in the months before QAnon adopted them wholesale.

Assessing James Randi

James Randi, founder of the capital-S Skeptic movement, passed away this last week at the age of 92. Over the years I have posted various articles about the Skeptics, and while I consider they methods useful for debunking fraudulent "celebrity psychics," I also think that the movement - and especially Randi himself - took an unnecessarily adversarial position with respect to actual scientific research of the paranormal.

I have been asked on a couple of occasions about this, and why I had a problem with his attitude. I do try to test my magical techniques in as scientific a manner as I can and don't have a problem with the findings of mainstream science. But skepticism - real skepticism, not the movement variety - should be based on an honest consideration of the evidence. Randi's approach never seemed honest to me, especially his constant accusation of fraud when presented with evidence he found hard to dismiss out of hand.

On the occasion of Randi's death, I considered writing up a piece expressing my assessment of the man, his legacy, and my issues with his approach to the paranormal. But before I could do that, I came across this article from Boing Boing which expresses my thoughts at least as well as I would have. It even includes some material of which I was previously unaware.

Born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge in Toronto in 1928, Randi became a celebrated stage magician and escape artist who appeared in prestigious venues and on television shows, including Happy Days. His stage aesthetics and devices were often brilliant and original. Randi toured with rock icon Alice Cooper in 1973, designing a mock beheading-by-guillotine for the proto-metal star. When claiming the garland of skepticism in the early 1970s, the MacArthur-winning Randi announced his intention of exposing phony faith healers and grifter psychics.

Today, many people know Randi from the award-winning 2014 documentary An Honest Liar. But the laudatory and engaging profile tells its story in a fashion that skeptics traditionally decry: including only the magician's successful exposes (some of which were more questionable than the film allows) and obfuscating his darker and more lasting impact: making it more difficult for serious university-based and academically trained researchers to study ESP and mental anomalies, and to receive a fair hearing in the news media. Indeed, Randi ultimately cheapened an important debate over how or whether extra-physical mentality can be studied under scientifically rigorous conditions and evaluated by serious people.

In a typical example, The New York Times ran a 2015 piece about a wave of fraudulent and flawed psychology studies; its lead paragraph cited a precognition study by Cornell University psychologist Daryl J. Bem — without justifying why it was grouped with polluted research or even further referencing Bem's study in the article. (I wrote to the Times to object. The paper has used several of my letters and op-eds, often on controversial subjects — this time, crickets.)

The Bem study is interesting for two reasons. First, while critics have argued that Bem's "presentiment" findings must be the result of experimental error, they can never pinpoint what the problem with the methodology might be. To be fair, that doesn't mean there's couldn't be a problem with the methodology, only that it hasn't been identified. The second reason it's interesting is that a very similar methodology was used in studies constantly pointed to by researchers opposed to the idea of "free will."

Revisiting Magical Metaphysics

I'm finally starting in on the process of reworking my Operant Magick manuscript for publication. Back in 2006 around the time I started this blog I put the finishing touches on the original version and started sending it out. The occult publishers I sent it to jerked me around for years and never actually published it because it was "too advanced" for beginning readers. At the time I thought that was terrible - there was already plenty of beginner material and I was of the opinion that the market could use at least a few intermediate and advanced works.

When I finally got my Enochian books published and saw real sales numbers I started to understand the reality of the situation better. Magick is pretty much the definition of a niche interest. The reason that occult publishers favor beginner material over everything else is that there's barely enough of an audience to support that, let alone the subset of that audience who reads those books and then goes on to become more "advanced" practitioners. This of course creates something of a vicious circle - no advanced material means that there's likely to be less of an advanced market, and so forth.

But I will say that to some degree I'm glad the original version didn't make it out there. A lot of the ideas in that manuscript were good, and I've tried to elucidate those here on Augoeides. At the same time, the book suffered from working with brain science that is now twenty or more years old. Brain science moves fast - between 2000 and 2010 there are a lot of significant breakthroughs that Operant Magick version one would have entirely missed. Also, many of the ideas, while good, were not developed how I now feel they should be at this point in my magical development.

This post is one example. In the original Operant Magick I proposed a slightly modified version of Kant's metaphysics that I dubbed "Hermetic Metaphysics" as the metaphysical basis for magick. I wrote up a post about my "Hermetic Metaphysics" that you can find here. In revisiting the material, though, I found that in fact Kant doesn't need any changes at all to account for paranormal phenomena. I also am glad I didn't throw something out there called "Hermetic" that is about as "Hermetic" as The Kybalion, but that's a whole other conversation.

New Mothman Documentary

The Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia is one of the most famous cryptids in the United States. The creature was originally sighted around the time of the Silver Bridge collapse in 1967. The whole area around western West Virginia and eastern Kentucky has a whole lot of weird activity to this day, as touched on in the Hellier documentary series that I reviewed last month and many other places in the paranormal literature. A new documentary called The Mothman Legacy promises to recount more sightings and shed some light on the events surrounding the mysterious creature.

Per press release, "The final chapter in [Seth] Breedlove's Mothman trilogy, The Mothman Legacy will tell the story of dozens of sightings of a folk legend of dubious origin, who allegedly continues to be seen throughout the area today. With a dozen eyewitness interviews, the film promises to offer some of the most intense and terrifying encounters ever recorded.

"Many believe the Mothman to be a 1960's phenomenon, an omen only appearing before tragedy, and disappearing after a flap of sightings and the subsequent Silver Bridge collapse in 1967. But what if there's more? What if the origins of this omen trace back much further and go much deeper than anyone realized? And what if...the sightings never ended?

"The Mothman Legacy is directed by Seth Breedlove and produced by Adrienne Breedlove. Lyle Blackburn returns to narrate with cinematography by Zac Palmisano and an original score by Brandon Dalo. The Mothman Legacy is being funded through a crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter which launches Thursday, February 6th. Rewards include copies of the film on DVD and Blu-Ray, posters, t-shirts, and more."

This sounds fascinating, and I probably should watch the other two documentaries in the series to get up to speed before I check this one out. They are Eyes of the Mothman from 2011 and The Mothman of Point Pleasant from 2017. There have been a few non-paranormal explanations floated for the Mothman, such as sightings of large owls. But while those may explain some of the eyewitness reports, it doesn't really address all the other strangeness that surrounds the Mothman legend. Maybe this documentary will.

Haunted Elsa Doll

This story is more silly than spooky or even obviously paranormal, but what the heck. The British tabloid Mirror has an article up about an alleged haunted Elsa doll from the Disney film Frozen. Basically, the story goes that the family tried to throw it away multiple times, but it CAME BACK! That's some scary stuff, kids!

A mum from Houston has taken to social media to reveal why she believes her daughter, Aurelia, has a "haunted" Elsa doll. In a viral post on Facebook , that has now been deleted, Emily Madonia explained that Aurelia's toy had first started to freak them out when it began singing and talking in Spanish, while switched off.

Right, the electronics developed a glitch. And? This happens fairly often with cheap electronics.

She and her husband Mat decided to throw the doll out (with their daughter's blessing) but since then it has found it's way back into their home, not once but twice. Emily wrote: "Mat threw it away weeks ago and then we found it inside on a wooden bench.

"Okay…so we were weirded out and tightly wrapped it in its own garbage bag and put that garbage bag INSIDE another garbage bag filled with other garbage and put it in the bottom of our garbage can underneath a bunch of other bags of garbage and wheeled it to the curb and it was collected on garbage day."

The family then went on holiday, thinking the whole thing was behind them, but when they returned home, the doll was back. "We were out of town, forgot about it. Today Aurelia says, 'Mom I saw the Elsa doll again in the backyard'," she continued.

The simplest explanation - the kid likes the doll but doesn't want to stand up to the parents. So instead of arguing, she makes a show of going along with throwing the doll away and then brings it back inside. I have kids. I know how this kind of thing goes. It's even possible that the Facebook post about this was removed because she finally fessed up.

But we'll never know, right? Maybe the ghost haunting the doll logged onto Facebook and took the post down. Sure, that's possible - you know, if this happened to be a ghost with some computer skills...

Hellier - A Review

It always has seemed logical to me that there should be a lot more overlap between magicians and people investigating psychic abilities and other paranormal phenomena. In my magical models series I discussed aspects of the "psychic model" versus the "spirit model" of magick, and concluded that both play a role in successful magical operations. I suspect that the same is true of other paranormal phenomena ranging from cryotids to UFOs to premonitions and synchronicities. Synchronicities, in particular, seem to strongly correlate with both magical practice and the "strangeness" or "weirdness" that paranormal researchers associate with areas where a lot of paranormal activity seems to be happening.

The television series Hellier, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is a good exemplar of this idea. The story begins with a group of paranormal investigators who receive a series of emails describing a series of events in the little town of Hellier, Kentucky that sounds similar to the famous Hopkinsville Goblins case. In the emails, the sender describes goblin-like creatures emerging from a local cave and harassing him and his family. He sends photos of the creatures' footprints and some blurry pictures that are supposed to be of the creatures themselves. But soon after that, the emails just stop.

Season One of the series covers the investigation in Hellier. The investigators travel to the town, ask around, and have some trouble running down leads. The locals seem unwilling to talk, and the few people who sound promising at first turn out to not have much to contribute. The series does a nice job of showcasing various tools used by modern paranormal investigators, especially the use of the SB7 spirit box. The team also tracks what they consider to be highly significant synchronicities and general weirdness as they explore the area.

As a practicing magician, I had a lot of moments of "Use some freaking magick!" while watching Season One. I also was somewhat skeptical about some of the synchronicities that the team considered significant, and how impressed they seemed to be by them. Practicing magicians encounter synchronicities at the level seen on the show literally all the time, and the challenge is less recognizing them and more discounting their importance. The reason is that synchonicities are a side effect of both magical practice and paranormal phenomena, and they don't necessarily have any deeper meaning.

Haunted Grey Cloud Island

Like most places, Minnesota has its share of allegedly haunted locations. One of the most infamous of these is Grey Cloud Island, a three-square-mile island in the Mississippi River about twelve miles south of the state capital, Saint Paul. I've heard a lot of wild stories about the place over the years, and in my novel Arcana I wrote a scene there specifically because of the island's alleged spiritual energy.

City Pages has an article up today about a ghost hunting trip to the island. It's a good article, and the sort of thing it's nice to see make it into the media. Personally I have been to the island a few times, and while I have sensed some energies there that are kind of funky, I never have seen anything like an apparition or encountered anything that I found particularly scary. So even though the place does have an unusual spiritual presence, I think that a lot of the stories are probably exaggerated.

The St. Paul Park Police Department is aware of the area’s reputation. In a Facebook post from June, they attempt to address the “attention in the media lately about Grey Cloud Island being haunted,” reassuring everyone that “they have never encountered these ghosts, poltergeists, spirits, or weird happenings.” They go on to warn visitors that “unless you want to explain to a Washington County Judge... why you were running around a cemetery in the dark looking for ghosts at you’re [sic] hearing1 [sic] please stay home.”

Despite these warnings, I’m intrigued. This was two years ago, around Halloween of 2017. I email a local historian, asking if it would be possible to photograph Grey Cloud Cemetery and chat about its history and hauntings. “I would be glad to show you around!” he responds jovially later that day, sending along a map with the precise geolocation of the cemetery. The following day, I ask when he’ll be free to show me around. No response. The day after, I follow up. Nothing.

Several days later, I receive a clipped response. “They do not allow investigations of their cemetery,” he writes. “There are insubstantial rumors about the cemetery. [The Grey Cloud Township Officer] is fearful of what might happen later.” I assure him that the piece I was considering writing would be purely informational, not exploitative in any way. “I only wish I could do this,” he responds in his final communication to me, “but my Grey Cloud friends would never forgive me.”

Aleister Crowley's Wardrobe

Years ago a document billing itself as "The Thelemite Test" was being circulated online. One of the questions, for which you presumably got a point towards your "real Thelemite" status, was "Would you purchase a collection of Aleister Crowley's laundry lists?" The idea being, of course, that you gained points as a Thelemite for being willing to purchase anything, no matter how trivial, connected with The Great Beast himself.

According to this article, Crowley's laundry lists may remain lost but what he actually put his laundry into might not be. The article recounts the tale of a "spooky haunted wardrobe" that might have once belonged to Crowley. Unsurprisingly, the wardrobe allegedly has had something to do with various paranormal phenomena over the years.

The ornately carved cupboard has a large satanic head carving on the front in the style of furniture carved by Crowley, who called himself 'The Great Beast 666', lived in Torbay at two periods of his life and made heavily carved furniture. It was bought by a Winner Street shop in a house clearance but within weeks the shop owner was so spooked by spooky goings on that they put out a desperate appeal in the media for somebody to take it away.

The shop was trashed in the night and owner Linda Bell gradually became convinced the wardrobe was causing poltergeist activity, there were spinning chandeliers and the wardrobe doors would either refuse to be forced shut or would open by themselves when locked shut. It was so bad that Linda couldn't wait to find a buyer and shifted the ornate old cupboard from her shop, the curiously-named 'Olden Ewe' (near the Oldenburg pub).

This all happened shortly before Halloween in 2015. Eventually Linda managed to sell it at cost with no profit. Step forward new owners, Zena Corden and her daughter Tabitha Wright, who bought the piece and shipped it home to Derby where it went on display in their museum of the weird, Curiouser and Curiouser, in a listed building dating back hundreds of years.

Football Magick

European football - that is, soccer in the states - has a long history of magick and spells used by players and teams to increase their odds. American football, on the other hand, does not. That might explain the continued success of the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady, who finally admitted in a recent interview that his wife, model Gisele Bundchen, has been casting spells on his behalf.

New England Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady is now a six-time Super Bowl champion and, despite being 41 years old, he doesn’t appear to be slowing down at all. So, whatever he’s doing – both on and off the field – is clearly working. Brady revealed earlier this week something his wife, Gisele, has taught him that’s kept him going late in his career.

“So she put together a little altar for me that I could bring with pictures of my kids,” he explained this week, “and I have these little special stones and healing stones and protection stones and she has me wear a necklace and take these drops she makes. I say all these mantras.”

I don't have any problem with players using magick to win games, but I will say that at this point I'm pretty sick of the Patriots winning Super Bowls. It's no surprise that if one team is using magick and the others aren't, that team is going to win consistently. Clearly, other teams need to get in on the action and hire their own spellcasters. They could work to level the playing field by making sure every team has paranormal forces at their disposal.

And for those who are skeptical, keep in mind that it often comes out that top players or top teams are the ones using spells. For example, back when Tiger Woods was so dominant in golf he had an online "church" of fans praying (that is, casting spells) for him. After he was caught having affairs and the "church" disbanded, he kept playing and was still good - but not nearly as outstanding as he had been with paranormal assistance.

That's because spells work, full stop. In professional sports the differences between individual players is tiny. There's no such thing as a bad professional athlete, contrary to what angry fans might tell you after key losses. It comes down to each individual play, on which everybody involved is a great player but somebody has to wind up being the greatest player. The player on the field with probability weighted in his or her favor by spells will always be more likely to come out ahead.

So let's get with it, National Football League! Let's see some sorcerers on the sidelines. They could cast their spells right there, and make every game extra-interesting.

Engaged to a Ghost

Just in time for Halloween, ghost sex enthusiast Amethyst Realm (yes, that's really her name) is now engaged to a ghost. Remember Amethyst Realm? She's the British woman who either has a real talent for connecting with spirits or a really weird case of sleep paralysis. She met her spectral fiancée on a recent trip to Australia and plan to be married in a handfasting ceremony in which their hands are tied together. How that's supposed to work with a ghost is anyone's guess. Not only that, once they are married she wants to start a family of "ghost babies" with him. How this is supposed to work is really anyone's guess. The biology of half-human, half-ghost children is poorly understood to say the least.

Amethyst Realm, 30, of Bristol, says she has had sex with at least 20 ghosts since she was a teenager but wasn’t looking for a new relationship when she went to Australia on a business trip. However, she says that changed on a nature hike when she came into contact with an apparition and felt sparks like none she’s ever known.

Realm didn’t think it could amount to anything serious because she says spirits tend to stay in one place, but something amazing happened on her flight home: She felt the presence of her lover on the plane, and apparently not stowed in cargo. “I couldn’t believe it. I was happy and excited — so excited that we had to do something about it. So we headed to the plane loo,” she told the Sun. “And, well, I am now a member of the Mile High Club.”

That was nine months ago and things have progressed to the point where Realm discussed her desire to marry and have her ghost’s baby on the British show “ITV This Morning” in August. The paranormal proposal reportedly occurred last week when the couple took a road trip to England’s Wookey Hole caves, according to the New York Post.

“There was no going down on one knee — he doesn’t have knees. But for the first time, I heard him speak,” she said, according to the paper. “I could actually hear his voice, and it was beautiful. Deep, sexy and real.” The couple are now choosing a ring but have not decided what kind it will be. Realm, supernaturally, is hoping her ring will have an amethyst in it, but she’s leaving it to her spirit lover to decide.

The couple plans to do a Pagan “handfasting” ceremony, in which their hands are tied together, symbolizing their connection, she said. “It’ll be somewhere in the English countryside. We haven’t discussed the details yet, but I think it will be quite a big do.”

If the ghosts (or at least this one) really can follow her around, I will say that doesn't sound like this can be fully explained by sleep paralysis. Also, as a magician I believe that spirits are real entities and in theory a person could have sex with or marry one, the main issue being their limited presence in the physical realm. There are many stories about this in the Western tradition, with the spirit in question usually referred to as a fairy or something similar. In more modern times, Aleister Crowley described the "mystic marriage" of the magician and the Holy Guardian Angel, and while this is probably not that it at least sounds related.

So let's say we believe her just for today. It is Halloween, after all! I hope that Realm and her spirit lover are happy together and have many ghostly babies - at least in part because I'm really curious about how a "ghost baby" will turn out.

A "Conjuring Arts" Chair

A university in Canada is looking to fill a new "conjuring arts" chair. I was excited for two reasons when I came across the story. First, for just a minute, I thought that the article was talking about Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. I attended Saint Olaf College just across town from Carleton, and I have to say, it really is about time that Carleton College assembled an Aleister Crowley collection even half as good as Saint Olaf's - which, unlike Carleton, is ironically a Christian (ELCA Lutheran) college. Second, before I read it I thought that the university might be trying to a curriculum in Western Esotericism, like only a handful of schools around the world have done. But I was disappointed on both counts. Carleton University is in Canada, and it sounds like "conjuring arts" in this context has nothing to do with, well, actual conjuring.

So what approach will the new chair take? “The conjuring arts” is not a term used by experts in the field, and the job’s terms of reference are somewhat vague. The president of Carleton, Alastair Summerlee, who has a great wizard name and actually looks extremely wizard-like, told CTV News that the scope of the job is “incredibly broad.” He says that the university is open to candidates from a variety of backgrounds, and would, in addition, like to find someone who will “use magic as entrée into the world of perception and deception.” This would include studying the techniques of persuasion used in politics and the media. So you might finally be able to get credit for your essay comparing every Trump administration official to a Harry Potter villain. But also, as Professor Magliocco points out, it could help us understand “how large groups of people come to believe things that are impossible and even dangerous.” She says this is of real value in an era when fake news is rampant and when thoughts and prayers are offered as the solution to school shootings.

The chair is named after Allan Slaight, one of Canada’s richest people, whose family foundation put up $2 million for it. (Carleton matched that sum from its own budget.) Before he sold out over a decade ago, Slaight was the owner of a broadcasting empire that included dozens of radio stations, a couple of television stations, and, at one point, the Toronto Raptors. Slaight spent several years when he was young touring the prairies as a performing magician, and he has remained obsessed with stage magic. He has edited and published two massive books on legendary Canadian magician Stewart James, which one reviewer has described as “the biggest books in the history of magic literature.” If academic opinion is divided over the new chair, the practicing magicians VICE spoke to were, perhaps not surprisingly, all enthusiastic — although one of them admitted he initially thought the Slaight family had donated an actual magic chair, which would have, let’s face it, been even cooler.

Not "Mass Hysteria"

Well, that was quick. Just as I predicted, researchers examining the Cuban "sonic weapon" brain injuries have concluded that what is going on is absolutely not a case of mass psychogenic illness, or if you will, "mass hysteria." To be clear, there's no evidence that any sonic weapon was employed to cause these injuries, but it is also clear that they have some sort of physical cause. That should have been obvious from the start, but skeptics just love to muddy the waters by insisting that anything they don't understand is "psychological."

While the exact cause of these concussion-like symptoms remains unknown, these individuals appeared to have sustained injury to "widespread brain networks without an associated history of blunt head trauma," report clinicians from the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Brain Injury and Repair in Philadelphia, which was selected to coordinate evaluation, treatment, and rehabilitation of affected patients.

Importantly, note Randel L. Swanson II, DO, PhD, and colleagues, there is no evidence that the symptoms reported by US embassy personnel in Cuba can be attributed to mass psychogenic illness, as some skeptics have suggested. Mass psychogenic illness typically involves uniform symptoms that are of short duration and are often benign in nature, with no consistent physical exam findings. This is completely opposite of what is seen in the Cuba cohort, they note. Although not systematically excluded, viruses or chemical exposures are unlikely, they say.

"While there are many open questions that remain, we are collectively convinced that these individuals, as a group, sustained a neurological injury. So, the constellation of signs and symptoms and their response to rehabilitation mirrors what we see in patients with mild traumatic brain injury, both in the civilian population and in our military population," Swanson said in a JAMA podcast.

As a point, there are equally misguided folks in the magical community who do the same thing. There's no clear consensus on the nature of spirits, for example, so some practitioners dismiss them as "psychological projections." But my point is that what's going on with both spirits and the Cuba case is that we just don't know for sure. If you automatically dismiss everything you don't understand as "psychological," you are going to make a lot of mistakes evaluating any paranormal phenomenon - or even unusual ones.

Calm Before the Stupid

Donald Trump may be a bad president for many people, but the one group that he has consistently delivered for is conspiracy theorists. I don't mean the garden-variety "big business is colluding with the government to make money" kind of conspiracy theorists (those sorts of conspiracies happen all the time), but rather the complete and utterly batshit insane variety. More and more implausible allegations come to light every day. Is it fake news, or is it just flat-out stupidity? I expect that you already know my answer to that question. I recently came across an article about a conspiracy theory floated last year called "The Storm." It was a sort of meta-conspiracy that set the bar quite high for future efforts.

Part “Pizzagate,” part New World Order, and part hyper-partisan wishful thinking by defenders of Donald Trump, “the Storm” is a sprawling meta-conspiracy, with actors ranging from Hillary Clinton to model Chrissy Teigen, in which everything you know about the current investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential collusion with the Trump campaign is upside down.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, in this alternative universe, is in fact preparing to indict hundreds of Democrats (including Clinton, Barack Obama, and financier George Soros) and Hollywood celebrities for their roles in a massive worldwide pedophilia ring, operated by “globalists” who are conspiring to destroy Trump — and that the president himself is himself masterminding this “countercoup.”

“What we have come up with is a possible coup,” explained conspiracy theorist David Zublick in a late-November video, “not against Donald Trump, but by Donald Trump, working with Robert Mueller to bring down the Clintons, the Democrat Party, and the entire U.S. government involved in pedophilia and child sex trafficking.”

In just a few short weeks, the theory has grown from a handful of posts on fringe Internet chat forums to become the overwhelming obsession of nearly every conspiracy theorist in the business, notably Alex Jones and his Infowars operation, as well as social-media figures such as Liz Crokin. In addition to being a constant focus of discussion on Infowars, dozens of YouTube videos and thousands of Twitter posts exploring various facets of the conspiracy, and presenting the usual dubious “evidence” to “prove” it, have shown up on the Internet.

The origins of “The Storm” lie in Trump’s cryptic remarks on October 6, saying that a gathering of military leaders represented “the calm before the storm.” When asked what he meant, Trump responded: “You’ll see.”

That's Really Too Bad

It sounds like the African nation of Zambia won't be conducting cutting-edge paranormal research any time soon. In response to rumors that the government was considering investigating witchcraft - that is, magick - as a science, its chief spokesperson issued a strong denial on the grounds that Zambia is officially defined as a "Christian nation" in its 1996 constitution. As I see it, this is one more case where having a state religion is just a terrible idea. Western academic institutions are highly biased against paranormal research on entirely different grounds, so little of it goes on here. But in Africa, it could be a more plausible area for study if not for all the religious prejudice.

The Zambian government on Tuesday denied media reports that it intends to consider research on witchcraft as a science. Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups. Witchcraft often occupies a religious divinatory or medicinal role, and is often present within societies and groups whose cultural framework includes a magical world view.

Chief Government Spokesperson, Kampamba Mulenga, said such reports were blatant falsehoods. Mulenga said: "We are aware that there is a group of people that is spreading malicious statements through various media platforms, bent on destroying government’s image." According to her, the government could not start advocating for witchcraft practices as the country was a declared Christian nation. She added: "Christianity and witchcraft are poles apart and cannot co-exist."

In other words, as long as Zambia is a "Christian Nation," no paranormal research will ever be conducted. That's too bad, because paranormal research touches on all sorts of areas that I remain convinced will become important areas for study in the future. At the very least, consciousness studies has taken off as a discipline over the last decade or so, and one wonders if that would fall under "witchcraft" as well according to the Zambian government. After all, consciousness is the key to working with every magical system I've ever come across, and I highly doubt that the African form of witchcraft is any different.

It should also be pointed out that this is exactly the kind of nation that the Poor Oppressed Christians are fighting for here in the United States. As they are "oppressed" by the mere existence of people who don't share their beliefs, any paranormal research in a "Christian America" would be right out. I might not even be allowed to discuss it publicly in a forum like this blog. And as I see it, that simply is unacceptable.

Mass Hysteria is Paranormal

"Mass hysteria" is the skeptic's go-to explanation for anything they don't understand. According to its proponents, mass hysteria arises unexpectedly, is poorly understood, and is a relatively rare phenomenon. It is supposedly "mental" or "psychological," and yet it can apparently produce significant physical changes within the human body. In short, it is pretty much the same thing as "mind over matter" or "faith healing" in reverse - as generally speaking, it tends to cause illness rather than cure it.

The cause of mass hysteria is said to be "the mind," but to be clear, the same exact thing can be said about psychic phenomena. So I contend that mass hysteria is essentially a paranormal explanation. It's just a paranormal explanation that skeptics happen to like. Slate has an article up today arguing that the alleged "sonic attacks" that affected U.S. embassy workers in Cuba back in 2016 were the result of this phenomena. But I think the author of it has failed to consider all of the ramifications of his conclusion.

A few weeks after the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, several people working for the U.S. Embassy in Cuba fell mysteriously ill. Some lost their hearing. Some had headaches and a pain in one ear. Others reported feeling dizzy or nauseous, having trouble focusing, or feeling fatigued. Later, some would have a hard time concentrating, remembering things, sleeping, and even walking. These symptoms were “medically confirmed,” as the State Department’s medical director Charles Rosenfarb put it, and brain scans were said to show abnormalities in the victims’ white matter, which transfers information between brain regions. The illnesses were believed by the government to be “health attacks,” carried out by a foreign power, though as Todd Brown, assistant director at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “investigative attempts and expert analysis failed to identify the cause or perpetrator.”

Nonetheless, investigators concluded the illnesses, which ultimately affected 24 people, were likely the result of a “sonic device.” This conclusion seems to be primarily due to the fact that some diplomats reported hearing a high-pitched noise in their homes and hotel rooms. Despite a lack evidence for such a weapon, or any known way it could affect white matter, the sonic weapon theory proved irresistible for both media outlets and for Cuba hawks like Sens. Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, both of whom immediately transformed the sonic weapon into a handy political weapon. In the months following the “attacks,” new diplomats arriving in the country were warned of this sonic danger. Embassy employees were played a recording of what was thought to be the sound so they knew what to listen for. Soon, people at the Canadian Embassy in Cuba began reporting symptoms similar to what the Americans had experienced, as did a few tourists there. A husband and wife at the U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan became ill as well. Whatever it was, it seemed to be spreading.

Paranormal Investigators Hate Witches

Or at least, this one does. I'm talking, of course, about Zak Bagans, host of the paranormal train wreck that is Ghost Adventures. Bagans is not like the paranormal investigators on shows like Ghost Hunters, who always start by looking for normal explanations and often find them. Bagans runs into ghosts and spirits all the time, mostly because he appears to lack critical thinking skills of any kind. Bagans is the only paranormal investigator about whom I have ever agreed with James Randi - and let me tell you, I can't stand Randi's smug dismissal of everything from ghosts to psychic abilities to meditation (!).

To recap that story, back in 2014 I posted about an allegedly haunted house in Indiana. Bagans hyped the case a whole bunch, purchased the house, and was planning on making a documentary about it. Meanwhile, the Randi Foundation and many other commenters on the Internet noted that the only photos of the alleged ghost had been faked with a popular iPhone spirit photography app. It's possible Bagans is not so stupid that he fell hook, line, and sinker for a hoax that could have been unraveled with a simple Google image search, but then again, his opinions about Wiccans and Pagans also demonstrate a complete lack of comprehension.

After experiencing an encounter at night in the abandoned Golden church, the archbishop and Bagans discuss “what might be feeding the malevolence that permeates the entire area.” Bagans asks Cloud, “Have you ever heard about this sanctuary out here in the woods somewhere that is very close to this? They do these rituals; I know it’s Witchcraft. It said Pagan rituals. Have you heard about this group?”

Cloud answers he has and that the Witches are all over, and that the ritual practices are “steeped in Witchcraft,” and that he is sure that “they are conjuring demons.” Another interviewee later confirms that by saying that she “knows” it is caused by the local Witches. During the discussion between Cloud and Bagans, there are flashes of various images of people at night in the woods obscured by branches and trees. The entire sequence, which includes hanging stick figures and dramatic sound, is reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project (1999).

“Could the unusual number of violent acts in this area be caused by the dark entities conjured by this group of Witches?” asks the narrator. Interestingly enough, there actually is a Witch camp not far from Golden. Bagans is right; the area does have modern Witches performing modern Pagan rituals. It is Free Cascadia Witchcamp, one of Reclaiming’s annual retreats. Last year, the week-long event happened in late June, quite possibly at the same time the show was being filmed. However, that has not yet been confirmed.

Apophenia, Pareidolia, and Paranormal Beliefs

I talk about apophenia and pareidolia a lot here on Augoeides when evaluating claims of the paranormal. The two concepts are important because while legitimately paranormal events do happen, mistaking normal events for paranormal ones is far more common. You know, because if paranormal events were commonplace, they wouldn't be "paranormal" at all in any meaningful sense. Pareidolia refers to the natural human tendency to perceive random or semi-random stimuli as clear images, like when people see the face of Jesus on a piece of toast. Aphophenia describes the process by which our minds create and assign meaning to random or semi-random events. These two phenomena are responsible for most of the cases out there where normal events are mistaken for paranormal ones. In fact, a new study conducted by Tapani Riekki at the University of Helsinki in Finland has found that people who believe in the paranormal tend to have a higher capacity for both of these phenomena.

Riekki recently asked sceptics and believers to view simple animations of moving shapes, while lying in a brain scanner. He found paranormal believers were more likely to see some kind of intention behind the movements – as if the shapes were playing a game of “tag”, say – and this was reflected in greater brain activity in the regions normally associated with “theory of mind” and understanding others’ motives. Riekki has also found that people who believe in the supernatural are more likely to see hidden faces in everyday photos – a finding confirmed by another team at the University of Amsterdam, who showed that paranormal believers are more likely to imagine that they had seen a walking figure in random light displays.

Added to this, Riekki has found that believers may have weaker cognitive “inhibition”, compared to sceptics. That’s the skill that allows you to quash unwanted thoughts, so perhaps we are all spooked by strange coincidences and patterns from time to time, but sceptics are better at pushing them aside. Riekki gives the example of someone who is thinking about their mother, only for her to call two minutes later. “Is it just that sceptics can laugh and say it is just coincidence, and then think of something else?” he wonders. Significantly, another paper reported that paranormal believers also tend to have greater confidence in their decisions, even when they are based on ambiguous information. So once they have latched onto the belief, you might be less likely to let it go.

Even so, most researchers agree that sceptics shouldn’t be too critical of people who harbour these beliefs. After all, one study has found that various superstitions can boost your performance in a range of skills. In one trial, bringing their favourite lucky charm into a memory test significantly improved subjects’ recall, since it seemed to increase their confidence in their own abilities. Another experiment tested the subjects’ golf putting ability. Telling them that they were using a “lucky” ball meant they were more likely to score than those simply using any old ball. Even something as simple as saying “break a leg” or “I’ll keep my fingers for you” improved the participants’ motor dexterity and their ability to solve anagrams.

The fundamental problem that I have with the linked article is that to my way of thinking, it asks the wrong questions. It really should not be difficult at all to see that paranormal believers are believer because of their own direct experiences with what they consider paranormal events. Riekki's research entirely supports this notion - a person who mistakenly identifies more normal events as paranormal is pretty much by definition going to experience more "paranormal" events. From my perspective as a magician, the real question should be how we can train our minds to discern genuine paranormal events from misidentified ones. The article doesn't even touch on that, because it assumes at the outset that all paranormal experiences are the result of misinterpretation - since OBVIOUSLY nothing paranormal really exists. Of course, we practicing magicians beg to differ.

Trump Judicial Nominee Hunts Ghosts

Last week Trump judicial nominee Brett Talley withdrew his nomination after questions arose regarding his qualifications and a possible undisclosed conflict of interest. Here at Augoeides, though, what's most notable about Talley is that he's a paranormal investigator. Talley was involved with the Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group from 2009-2010. It's possible that he may be the first judicial nominee ever to be a ghost hunter, or at least the first to acknowledge being one publicly.

The appointment of Brett Talley, 36, for a lifetime post as an Alabama federal judge is raising eyebrows because he has never tried a case, BBC reported on Wednesday. It also emerged he failed to disclose on a conflict-of-interest questionnaire that his wife is a White House lawyer. But he did divulge his Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group membership.

Talley was approved last week by the Senate committee on a party-line vote, and he is likely to be confirmed by the full chamber soon. His nomination is part of President Trump's efforts to expand the presence of conservative jurists in American courtrooms, say analysts.

Note that this quoted article was written before Talley withdrew his nomination. He will not become a federal judge.

The Harvard-educated lawyer was unanimously deemed "not qualified" by the American Bar Association to serve an appointment on the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. Talley, who has practised law for three years, has written right-wing blog posts critical of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, whom he labelled "Rotten", according to US media. He also maintains a horror blog online, when not searching for ghosts.

In a questionnaire form submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Talley revealed his 2009-10 affiliation with the phantom chasers. The Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group searches for the truth "of the paranormal existence" in addition to helping "those who may be living with paranormal activity that can be disruptive and/or traumatic", according to their website.

While Talley strikes me as an under-qualified right-wing ideologue who I would never want on the bench, it's interesting that ghost hunting is now mainstream enough that it is not considered immediately disqualifying for a federal appointment. This probably has to do with the success of television programs like Ghost Hunters, and the Tuscaloosa group appears to follow a similar approach to that seen on the show. They try to debunk everything they can with normal explanations before concluding that activity they observe is paranormal, employ similar equipment like EMF meters, and so forth.

I can see some advantages of having a good ghost hunter serving as a judge. Someone experienced at working out normal explanations for apparently paranormal phenomena might have better insight into complex cases that involve unusual situations, and consider possibilities others might immediately dismiss. I have no idea whether Talley would have brought such a perspective to his work, but it looks like we won't be finding out now.