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mysteries |
Psychic Attack |
Other Information |
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| Are the psychic attacks carried out by
mystics and black magicians mere mind manipulation, or are there darker
forces at work?
A full moon shone down on the banks of Loch Ness silhouetting the contours of Boleskin House against the night sky. The air was still and quiet, disturbed only by the occasional bark or whimper from the bloodhounds, secured in their kennel in the grounds of the house. Then something strange happened. For no apparent reason, the noise from the dogs completely stopped. The following morning, the dogs' owner - famed magician and self-styled 'wickedest man alive', Aleister Crowley - found his pack of bloodhounds dead, killed in the night by a mysterious affliction which left no physical trace. The cause of the dogs' death was never established, and there are those that claim that the animals died as a result of a visitation from some dark force. Others argue that this story is simply an elaborate hoax, conjured up by the ultimate fraudster. What is sure, however, is that the killing of the dogs marked the beginning of what would become an infamous 'psychic duel' between Crowley and his magical rival, MacGregor Mathers. Bitter Dispute. Once something of a disciple to Mathers, Crowley had recently fallen out with is former mentor. According to the story, Crowley blamed Mathers for the death of his dogs and swore revenge. But before he could summon his powers, Mathers launched another round of his relentless psychic attack. This time, Crowley was visited by a demon in the form of a beautiful female vampire. But Crowley, it seems, was no pushover. It is said that he used his powerful sexual magic to transform the young woman into a decrepit old hag who could only hobble away wearily before dematerializing. Mathers changed tack, now concentrating his psychic influence on the Boleskin House lodgekeeper, who suddenly attacked Crowley's wife, Rose. She survived unharmed, but it appears Crowley had had enough. he summoned the demon Beelzebub, along with 49 lesser demons, and physically dispatched them to Mathers' Paris flat. Mathers survived to intense attack, but, according to the tale, it brought the psychic duel between himself and Crowley to an end, with Crowley emerging the victor. In the light of Aleister Crowley's famed reputation as an artful trickster and expert self-publicist, it is easy to dismiss this story as mere myth-making. However, there are many other reported incidents of psychic attack which are far less easy to discount. One such incident concerns the writer J. B. Priestley. Attending a Poetry Society dinner in New York, Priestley became bored, Picking out a prudish-looking female at the front of the audience. he turned to his neighbour and advised that he was going to will an unsuspecting woman to wink at him. After concentrating for a minute or two, Priestley suddenly cried 'she did it.' The neighbour missed the wink and was not convinced, but, at the end of the evening, the woman stopped Priestley to apologize. 'I can't imagine what made me do it,' she said. 'Just a sudden silly impulse.' Though mild compared to the alleged psychic duel between Crowley and Mathers, this episode demonstrates the basic premise of psychic attack - the belief that a person can exert a psychic influence on another person, usually for malign purposes, causing them to experience phenomena or commit acts that will ultimately embarrass or harm them. Occult literature is full of such incidents, many of them originating in Brazil where spiritism is deeply entrenched and poltergeists are relatively common. In 1973, psychical researcher Guy Lyon Playfair learned of a family living in Sao Paolo, Brazil, who had been plagued by poltergeist for six years. In their efforts to escape its influence, the family had moved house three times, but to no avail. Playfair visited the family, spending several days in their home. During that time, he claims, he witnessed a stool bounce down the stairs of its own accord, a drawer full of clothes hurl itself out of a window, and a wardrobe spontaneously burst into flames. Elaborate Rites. Eventually, the family called in a 'candomble', or witch doctor. he decided that psychic attack through black magic was involved and carried out a number of elaborate rites to break the malign influence. After this, according to Playfair, the attacks ceased. From this account, it would be easy to conclude that psychic attack is the manifestation of some mysterious dark force, summoned at will to punish our enemies. There is, however, a less fantastic explanation for these seemingly supernatural events. Psychologists have long been aware of the power of suggestion - the idea that, if you convince someone something is going to happen to them, then you increase the chance of the event actually occurring in reality. Often known as autosuggestion, the device has, some claim, contributed to the success of many of the world's religions. And if this is true of orthodox religious practice, it must also be true of occult or black rites. A story to illustrate this point came to light through research carried out by American journalist William Seabrook in the 1930's and 40's. It concerns the French pianist Jean Dupuis. Psychic Revenge. According to Seabrook, Dupuis joined a dubious magic circle but soon fell out with them. Aggrieved, the circle members decided to take revenge through psychic attack. Baptizing a doll with Dupuis' name, they placed its hands in a vice and tightened the grip a little each day. While this ritual was going on, Dupuis received repeated hints that magic was being used against him. As a result, he became anxious and nervy. Then, just prior to a major concert, he found a note detailing the doll and vice. He went on stage to play, but found his musical talents had deserted him. As a result, he was forced to cancel the performance - a huge embarrassment. It has been argued that the 'magic' involved in this case was merely powerful psychological manipulation. The ritual was incidental to the fact that Dupuis' belief that it would work meant a successful outcome was almost inevitable. In other words, the so-called psychic attack was, in fact, produced by Dupuis' own unconscious mind and irrational beliefs. many researchers believe that all such attacks can be explained in this way. They claim that psychic attack can only work if the victim believes it can. Mysterious Force? Yet, however plausible this may seem, it fails to explain the incident concerning J. B. Priestley. If the story is to be believed, Priestley had no previous contact with the woman involved, so could his success be seen as evidence for the existence of a more mysterious force? Parapsychology does, in fact, offer a mechanism through which a real psychic attack might occur. In the 18th century, the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer claimed that, through 'mesmerism', he could manipulate a person's unconscious mind, forcing them to repeat suggested words out loud, even when he was not present. This form of 'hypnosis at a distance' was later developed by Russian researchers into a practice now known as 'tele-hypnosis'. In 1845, Russian hypnotist Andrey Ivanovitch Pashkov claimed that he had carried out successful experiments with a woman living some 500km away. Through intense concentration, Pashkov claimed to make the woman fall asleep and wake up at his command. Similarly, in 1924, Soviet researcher L. L. Vasiliev claimed to have successfully controlled the mind of a woman living over 1,700km away. There are records of similar experiments in tele-hypnosis carried out in France in the 1880's by the psychologists Pierre Janet and M. Gilbert, and, as recently as 1978, the practice came close to causing an international incident. At the World Chess Championship, one of the competitors claimed he was being hypnotised at a distance. Russian exile Victor Korchnoi accused a Dr Zhoukhar, sitting in the audience, of attempting psychically to influence the outcome of Korchnoi's match against the Soviet player Anatoly Karpov. The claims were never taken seriously and, in the event, Karpov won the match, if only by the narrowest of margins. |
Source: The X Factor By: Anthony North |