User talk:Trajectory
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Hello Trajectory, If you do a search on MAGICIANS WHO ENDORSED PSYCHIC PHENOMENA, an article by conjuror George Hansen, you will see how George likes to lump all conjurors together, especially when it comes to a first impression. What they may say later he omits. After talking to George, I don't think he does this purposely. He only tends to look so far to satisfy a preconceived conviction. (He refuses to revise, even if he knows better) I find these boundaries of inquiry fascinating. We all tend to do it. It is human nature and very difficult to avoid.
Robert T. Carroll has told me he refuses to add folie a deux to his Skeptic's Dictionary because he cannot accept two people can share the same visual hallucination. Randi won't even talk about it.(Randi is a strange bird, even though I have great respect him). I can't figure him out, and he can't figure me out. Marcello Truzzi said it was impossible for a participate to critically examine their own hallucination in folie a deux. So much for curiosity. Whatever.
The historical Daniel Home is of course lost. The contadictory statements and blanks of his time will always keep us IN THE DARK. I love it! What a sharpie! How good was he, really? Levitate six inches for ten seconds! That's impressive enough to record? User:Kazuba 12 Jan 2006
An interesting tag to this story is that Houdini's will would have given his great conjuring library to the ASPR if his nemesis J. Malcolm Bird were to resign.(I believe Bird fired its secretary, the wise, Walter Franklin Prince after the Mina Crandon fiasco. Conjuring historians claim Bird was having an affair with her). Instead, Houdini's vast collection went to the library of congress. Where it is to this day. (As they say in the Bible.)
Even back then there were ancients who knew well that necromancy and believing in strange magic could get you in trouble. Each new generation has to rediscover the occult for themselves. Maybe Wikipedia will help. User:Kazuba 12 Jan 2006
Hello Trajectory. I'd like to point out stage magicians are not necessarily versed in the tricks used by fraudulent mediums and other charlatans. For some strange reason those who favor psychic phenomena seem to think all conjurors have the same skills. Which is entirely untrue. Some of the past specialists in the 19th century were David P. Abbott, S.J. Davey, and J.W. Truesdell. S. J. Davey suspected Home used a thread to move the balance scale. You removed Home's ten second, six inch, levitation recorded by Crookes and the brief history of Home's mooching and receiving of rich gifts. May I ask why you find these things irrelevant to Home's biography? Does not every piece of a puzzle matter?
- Hello Kazuba. Thanks for your comment. I don't "favor psychic phenomena" - I am in fact quite sure that Home somehow faked all of his "feats", but it's difficult to speculate on such things so long after the fact. I wonder if it isn't best to leave it up to the intelligent reader to work out ways (e.g. threads, etc) that Home could have produced the effects he did? Stage magicians may not have all the same skills, but I would presume they are familiar with techniques such as misdirection, and sleight of hand. Certainly, if Houdini claimed he could duplicate many of Home's claimed manifestations, or levitations, it indicates that he for one had some idea of how the tricks were performed.
- The levitation: there are countless descriptions of Home levitating himself in one way or another. I chose the more famous levitation as observed by Lord Adare, but maybe there could be a short paragraph describing some of the other claimed levitations. As for the rich gifts, it is mentioned in a few places that he "managed to live very well on gifts, generous donations and lodging from his many wealthy admirers", "always as a guest of wealthy patrons", etc. Trajectory 23:51, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
