Theos-Talk Archives (June 2004 Message tt00148)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> Probably Blavatsky with help; most probably one of
> the servants; Khitmutgar comes to mind immediately.

She claimed she had a "brother" helping with the phenomenon and that 
the demo occurresd in the vicinity of a Tibetan temple. So there 
seems to be a clear implication that someone at the temple was 
involved. Other than that I would guess Babula, who turned against 
Blavatsky later after years of abuse.

> When Uri Geller first came to the forefront, all sorts of
> scientists were describing experiments that "proved" that he
> was psychic; at least until James Randi asked pointed
> questions, and found that there were details they had
> previously ignored which explained how they could have
> been done. 

As for Uri Geller and his mangled spoons, I found this on the 
Internet:

"Jack Houck is a man with a mission, but not a glory?seeker: he seems 
to have been happy just to help the cause of parapsychology with his 
PK parties. Five years ago, he taught spoon?bending at a convention 
of the American Board of Hypnotherapy. Among the participants was a 
therapist called Gary Sinclair who was in his forties and originally 
from Maine. ..."

"He has a waiting list of clients happy to pay $1,500 for an 
intensive 'life clean?out'. To his vast repertoire of therapies, Gary 
Sinclair has recently, thanks to PK parties, added spoon bending. ... 
And he promises, you don't have to go to all the trouble of a party 
to learn to bend a spoon. He can teach on a one?to?one basis ? and 
tutored me to the first, most basic level of manually assisted spoon?
bending in less then half an hour. After getting me to mangle a 
series of progressively bigger spoons as if they were made of 
Plasticine, he had me coil up the handle of a huge, heavy?gauge 
cooking spoon into a tight corkscrew that looked as if it had taken 
an hour on an engineers's bench to create. People back in England 
still gasp at the thing, try to unbend it ? which they can't ? and 
ask me how I did it. All I can answer is that I don't know, but it 
seemed effortless at the time, as if the spoon were made of rubber."

The instructions are supposedly in a book called URI GELLAR by 
Jonathan Margolis, I have not read the book, nor have I destroyed 
any spoons so cannot comment on this from personal experience. But 
it would appear the matter deserves more study than merely taking 
Randi's word if anyone could care less whether spoons can be bent or 
not. It does not interest me enough that I have felt motivated to 
investigate it. I do not agree with Daniel's assertion that we must 
automatically be credulous about every claim without investigation.

> A detail whose sole purpose appears to be to make the
> phenomenon more impressive is usually the major clue
> as to how it was faked.

Very interesting. The fact that the teacup could not seemingly have 
been planted seemed to be to me a clue that it was NOT faked. 
Interesting that someone else would draw the exact opposite 
conclusion.

> Some people have nothing to do with their day but sit
> down writing articles for the Internet.

Yes, that's true. It's a bummer, isn't it?

> If I thought that an article on a magician's analysis of
> Blavatsky's phenomena had a decent chance of being sold,
> I might consider putting in the hours and days of research
> it would take.

Don't quit your day job. You could sell it, but your hourly rate for 
your time would not quite come up to Donald Trump's standard.

> There's a technique where one can take a small metal box, wrap
> it up with rubber bands, wrap THAT up with yarn, and put the
> whole thing in a seal plastic bag, and STILL manage to get a
> marked bill into it without apparent disturbance.

Child's play. You forgot to explain how she got the mahatma letter 
into the cushion. Whether it was phenomenal or not, she apparently 
learned it in Egypt, since Lane describes the very same effect in his 
book MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE MODERN EGYPTIANS, published long 
before the TS was founded. So it was well known in Egypt when she 
studied there. If it is non phenomenal (i.e., if it had been a 
trick) I could do it myself, and unlike Randi, I do not consider 
myself "amazing."

One thing I am still noy clear on is how the teacup could have been 
placed in the ground a day or two earlier by someone from the temple 
without the ground being disturbed when the cup was dug out and with 
roots growing densely all around the cup and saucer. If a "brother" 
from the Tibetan temple was responsible, and not Blavstsky, as the 
story seems to suggest, then it makes sense that Blavatsky would have 
had to lead everyone to a spot at which it would have been convenient 
for him to deposit the thing.