Porterboy
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2006
- Messages
- 446
I’ve just finished “The Psychic Mafia” by M Lamar Keene. This might surprise you, seeing as I’m a believer spirit contact, but I actually liked it. Yes, the author is a brave and dutiful person and he has my respect. In the end he paid for it with his life. If such fraud is still going on, which may well be the case, then the author has forewarned and forearmed people who are at risk of falling victim to it; and I’m obviously in a high-risk category myself because of my own interests and beliefs.
My first impression of the book was that it read like a kind of Betty Shine meets “Trance-Formation of America”. The revelations within seemed almost too fantastic to be true; and I’m not a newcomer to skeptic literature. I don’t doubt that these kinds of things go on. I know that fake mediums DO operate and I’m glad this book has revealed their secret methods. There’s only one problem: the activities and ceremonies described by Keene have absolutely nothing in common, in any way, with anything resembling the Spiritualism I’m involved in. This Hogarth collection of low-lifes, black matriarchs, psychotics, occultists and emotional vampires are as alien to me as they probably are to you.
My Spiritualist “church” bears no resemblance to any location described in the book. It is not a religious place of worship at all in reality. I think people call it a “church” because in earlier days something had to have that word in its name to avoid being closed down as a “den of heresy”, especially during less tolerant ages (Spiritualism did NOT begin with the Fox sisters; theirs is merely a tacky modern reproduction of an ancient and ubiquitous phenomenon that has always been a part of human existence). There are no formal ceremonies in our Spiritualist “services”, short of singing a few hymns. There’s usually a reading, not from some dogmatic religious scripture, but from anything with a spiritual theme. Sometimes it’s a Hindu proverb, a Gnostic poem, a meaningful joke even! Anything from Giordano Bruno to Bill Hicks! Then the medium will begin channeling. The word “medium” is rarely used in my church; usually it is substituted by the word “speaker”, and that’s a good word because all he or she does is speak. There are no trumpets, no chiffon, no silk tableaus, no message cards, no manifestations, no sealed envelopes, no ectoplasm. I have never seen psychics at my church use any kind of prop whatsoever!... And yes, the church is always well-lit during the service. As for the idea of mediums having sex with sitters: it is absolutely unthinkable! Any medium who tried it would be blacklisted!
Afterwards we sing another hymn and there’s a whip-round with the collection bag. NB: The amount of money collected usually only just covers the mediums petrol tank or train ticket. Mediums do charge forty to fifty pounds for a private sitting, but at churches, where they do most of their work, they earn next to nothing. In fact one of the world’s most famous mediums today, Gordon Smith, refuses to take any money at all and, until recently, has lived entirely off his day-job: running a barbers shop in Glasgow! Most Spiritualists are working-class and their average age is in the later fifties. Many will be on pensions or benefits; they are not the kind of people who can write thousand dollar cheques, however vehemently some discarnate relative demands it. The church is run by a committee of volunteers, a handful of local elderly couples. The building is actually is a converted Scout hut, about 20 feet square, (there’s another group in my hometown that cannot afford any premises of its own and has to hire a function room at a community centre) and I doubt there would be room for any hidden trapdoors or secret storage vaults with a database on everyone who goes in there, even if the same people attended every week. The services at my church end with a blessing and then we gather round with a cup of tea and have a discussion on any and all things spiritual, my favorite port of the evening. This is also a time when the medium will do hands-on healing, NB: always without charging. The churches in “The Psychic Mafia” are far bigger and grander than anything I’m used to. There is no hierarchy in my church, or any other church I’ve heard of; nobody is a “queen” or “prince”, there are no suited ushers, no grand design features.
I have never been to “Camp Chesterfield” or any other institution like it. As far as I know such places don’t exist today. I’ve never seen anything like them advertised. I’ve been to a seance once only and it was a very sordid and uninspiring affair, carried out by a self-professed “medium” who never does the church circuit. Most Spiritualists attend seances at some point, usually when they’re new to Spiritualism and curious to experiment and learn, but few that I know of do such things regularly. And seances NEVER take place at my church; the one I went to was at someone’s house.
One of the biggest differences between Lamar Keene’s and my own experience of Spiritualism is the sitters themselves. The people I know at church are some of the most active-minded, intelligent individuals you could ask to meet; they are nothing like the vulnerable, grief-stricken, neurotic dupes who Keene used to exploit and plunder. Most church members are well-read and have a sound general knowledge base. They would easily carry their weight at the Oxford Union and could give any philosophy graduate an evenly-matched wrangle. Many, along with me, attend separate discussion meetings on the paranormal. We’ve occasionally had skeptics join us and they’ve been made very welcome, not kicked out like Keene’s challengers were. They’ve often asked very searching questions to the medium and started a very spirited talk. People who attend Spiritualist churches are not brainless saps, they are as capable as anyone else.
I wonder if the skeptic movement has perhaps made an unfair generalization here. What do skeptics mean by “Spiritualism”? What range of beliefs and philosophies does the term cover? If you mean it to refer only to Keene’s brand of showmanship, then I’m certainly not a believer in that! But this kind of thing is not Spiritualism as I define it, and I don’t think it’s fair to tar it with the same brush. In the last few pages of the book I got the impression that M Lamar Keene was aware of this too. He discourages people from getting involved in any kind of Spiritualism because of his own experiences, but if he’d ever visited a church like mine… pity he didn’t.
All in all, I’m glad I read this book. I recommend it to anyone and I’ll pass it on to other church members now that I’ve finished with it. If any fraudulent mediums make the mistake of trying to mess with anyone at our church then we’ll have to knowledge to see through their stunts and expose them. However the situations in the book bear no resemblance to my experience of Spiritualism and give me no reason to suspect that such Spiritualism is a sham.
My first impression of the book was that it read like a kind of Betty Shine meets “Trance-Formation of America”. The revelations within seemed almost too fantastic to be true; and I’m not a newcomer to skeptic literature. I don’t doubt that these kinds of things go on. I know that fake mediums DO operate and I’m glad this book has revealed their secret methods. There’s only one problem: the activities and ceremonies described by Keene have absolutely nothing in common, in any way, with anything resembling the Spiritualism I’m involved in. This Hogarth collection of low-lifes, black matriarchs, psychotics, occultists and emotional vampires are as alien to me as they probably are to you.
My Spiritualist “church” bears no resemblance to any location described in the book. It is not a religious place of worship at all in reality. I think people call it a “church” because in earlier days something had to have that word in its name to avoid being closed down as a “den of heresy”, especially during less tolerant ages (Spiritualism did NOT begin with the Fox sisters; theirs is merely a tacky modern reproduction of an ancient and ubiquitous phenomenon that has always been a part of human existence). There are no formal ceremonies in our Spiritualist “services”, short of singing a few hymns. There’s usually a reading, not from some dogmatic religious scripture, but from anything with a spiritual theme. Sometimes it’s a Hindu proverb, a Gnostic poem, a meaningful joke even! Anything from Giordano Bruno to Bill Hicks! Then the medium will begin channeling. The word “medium” is rarely used in my church; usually it is substituted by the word “speaker”, and that’s a good word because all he or she does is speak. There are no trumpets, no chiffon, no silk tableaus, no message cards, no manifestations, no sealed envelopes, no ectoplasm. I have never seen psychics at my church use any kind of prop whatsoever!... And yes, the church is always well-lit during the service. As for the idea of mediums having sex with sitters: it is absolutely unthinkable! Any medium who tried it would be blacklisted!
Afterwards we sing another hymn and there’s a whip-round with the collection bag. NB: The amount of money collected usually only just covers the mediums petrol tank or train ticket. Mediums do charge forty to fifty pounds for a private sitting, but at churches, where they do most of their work, they earn next to nothing. In fact one of the world’s most famous mediums today, Gordon Smith, refuses to take any money at all and, until recently, has lived entirely off his day-job: running a barbers shop in Glasgow! Most Spiritualists are working-class and their average age is in the later fifties. Many will be on pensions or benefits; they are not the kind of people who can write thousand dollar cheques, however vehemently some discarnate relative demands it. The church is run by a committee of volunteers, a handful of local elderly couples. The building is actually is a converted Scout hut, about 20 feet square, (there’s another group in my hometown that cannot afford any premises of its own and has to hire a function room at a community centre) and I doubt there would be room for any hidden trapdoors or secret storage vaults with a database on everyone who goes in there, even if the same people attended every week. The services at my church end with a blessing and then we gather round with a cup of tea and have a discussion on any and all things spiritual, my favorite port of the evening. This is also a time when the medium will do hands-on healing, NB: always without charging. The churches in “The Psychic Mafia” are far bigger and grander than anything I’m used to. There is no hierarchy in my church, or any other church I’ve heard of; nobody is a “queen” or “prince”, there are no suited ushers, no grand design features.
I have never been to “Camp Chesterfield” or any other institution like it. As far as I know such places don’t exist today. I’ve never seen anything like them advertised. I’ve been to a seance once only and it was a very sordid and uninspiring affair, carried out by a self-professed “medium” who never does the church circuit. Most Spiritualists attend seances at some point, usually when they’re new to Spiritualism and curious to experiment and learn, but few that I know of do such things regularly. And seances NEVER take place at my church; the one I went to was at someone’s house.
One of the biggest differences between Lamar Keene’s and my own experience of Spiritualism is the sitters themselves. The people I know at church are some of the most active-minded, intelligent individuals you could ask to meet; they are nothing like the vulnerable, grief-stricken, neurotic dupes who Keene used to exploit and plunder. Most church members are well-read and have a sound general knowledge base. They would easily carry their weight at the Oxford Union and could give any philosophy graduate an evenly-matched wrangle. Many, along with me, attend separate discussion meetings on the paranormal. We’ve occasionally had skeptics join us and they’ve been made very welcome, not kicked out like Keene’s challengers were. They’ve often asked very searching questions to the medium and started a very spirited talk. People who attend Spiritualist churches are not brainless saps, they are as capable as anyone else.
I wonder if the skeptic movement has perhaps made an unfair generalization here. What do skeptics mean by “Spiritualism”? What range of beliefs and philosophies does the term cover? If you mean it to refer only to Keene’s brand of showmanship, then I’m certainly not a believer in that! But this kind of thing is not Spiritualism as I define it, and I don’t think it’s fair to tar it with the same brush. In the last few pages of the book I got the impression that M Lamar Keene was aware of this too. He discourages people from getting involved in any kind of Spiritualism because of his own experiences, but if he’d ever visited a church like mine… pity he didn’t.
All in all, I’m glad I read this book. I recommend it to anyone and I’ll pass it on to other church members now that I’ve finished with it. If any fraudulent mediums make the mistake of trying to mess with anyone at our church then we’ll have to knowledge to see through their stunts and expose them. However the situations in the book bear no resemblance to my experience of Spiritualism and give me no reason to suspect that such Spiritualism is a sham.
