Quiddity
UndertheInfluenceofGiants
[size=+3]You Can Trust Me, I'm a Psychic[/size]
[size=+2] By Mark P. Shea[/size]
You can't turn on the TV these days without being acosted by an infomercial for the latest scam: psychic hotlines. New ones spring up practically every day, and this fast growing fad is grabbing a lot more than foolish people's cash - souls are at stake. Have you ever wondered why these 900# scams are so effective in duping so many? Here's a look at the silliness and, how Catholics can respond to those who swear by their psychics.
You see this stuff everywhere. During the commercials on the science programs that assure us we've progressed past medieval superstition. On the back pages of magazines that assure us we're integrated adults with healthy sex lives and high-paying jobs. In the newspapers that remind us how American secular culture is free of the ignorant mysticism of the Dark Ages. In the pages of a zillion "women's mags," sandwiched between excerpts from "Andre Talks Hair!" and "How to Have Abs of Steel."
Horoscopes. Astrologers. Dionne Warwick hawking her Psychic Pals. Billy Dee Williams coaxing you into dialing that 900 number that will change your life and your phone bill forever. Crystal gazing, tarot reading, clairvoyance and all the rest of it. What is a Catholic to make of it all? And what is a Catholic who wishes to share his Faith to say to his neighbor who faithfully reads his horoscope every morning in the Times?
Some laugh at the very idea of saying anything. The whole enterprise is shot through with such quackery and hokum that many people can't believe anyone takes it seriously. For example, when Envoy did a search to find a few astrology Web sites, we found (among the thousands of hits) three separate sites advertising the uncanny powers of Mystic Meg, Sylvia Browne and Jeanne Dixon. What struck us as most uncanny of all was that their advertising blurbs were, to a large extent, exact, word-for-word duplicates of one another, right down to the displays of grammatical ineptitude ("Yes, I have one of the greatest psychic pools filled with my hand picked psychics and they all experience the same capabilities as mine.")
Brrr! Scary! What besides psychic synchronicity could possibly explain this strange coincidence? Could it have to do with their remarkably similar phone numbers? You be the judge!
Still other ads wavered between spookiness and a kind of unconscious compulsion to confess their quackery, as, for example, tarot readings offered by the appropriately-named "House of Cards." Others simply brass it out with wondrously meaningless claims, as, for instance, an astrologer down the street from me who advertises herself as "Seattle's Best Astrologer." In lucid moments, one wonders just how to measure this claim versus, say, Seattle's Second Best Astrologer. But, as should be obvious, most of these people are not really counting on a clientele with a robust sense of skepticism.
Nonetheless, millions of people do not harbor such skepticism. Which is why the tube, the newspapers and the magazines do not promote this stuff for their health. They promote it because it is big, booming, lucrative business that rakes in big, booming, lucrative bucks. Here, for instance, is the July 1997 issue of New Woman, an ultra-typical checkstand mag featuring an ultra-typical "Horoscope Special" section sponsored by the Coty perfume company. The first page has a big splashy ad for "Ghost Myst" ("You can't see it, but you know it's there"), along with the slogan, "Always believe in spirits -- especially yours." Then, leaf after leaf of fabulously expensive color glossy pages telling several hundred thousand credulous readers how to organize their finances based on the stars and planets ("We all have issues when it comes to money -- and the cosmos have more to do with it than you might think." "Your Sun sign influences the way you feel about money.")
Here is a spectacularly crass alloy of Corporate Big Money, American self-worship and materialism, and superstitious truckling to the powers that would have made Simon the Magician proud (Acts 8:9-10). And it is sponsored not by some two-bit juke joint crystal gazer, but by a major American corporation in a major American magazine utterly indistinguishable from a hundred others. That means, among other things, that this stuff, far from being far out, is mainstream, normal and regarded as harmless. But is it harmless?
[size=+2] By Mark P. Shea[/size]
You see this stuff everywhere. During the commercials on the science programs that assure us we've progressed past medieval superstition. On the back pages of magazines that assure us we're integrated adults with healthy sex lives and high-paying jobs. In the newspapers that remind us how American secular culture is free of the ignorant mysticism of the Dark Ages. In the pages of a zillion "women's mags," sandwiched between excerpts from "Andre Talks Hair!" and "How to Have Abs of Steel."
Horoscopes. Astrologers. Dionne Warwick hawking her Psychic Pals. Billy Dee Williams coaxing you into dialing that 900 number that will change your life and your phone bill forever. Crystal gazing, tarot reading, clairvoyance and all the rest of it. What is a Catholic to make of it all? And what is a Catholic who wishes to share his Faith to say to his neighbor who faithfully reads his horoscope every morning in the Times?
Some laugh at the very idea of saying anything. The whole enterprise is shot through with such quackery and hokum that many people can't believe anyone takes it seriously. For example, when Envoy did a search to find a few astrology Web sites, we found (among the thousands of hits) three separate sites advertising the uncanny powers of Mystic Meg, Sylvia Browne and Jeanne Dixon. What struck us as most uncanny of all was that their advertising blurbs were, to a large extent, exact, word-for-word duplicates of one another, right down to the displays of grammatical ineptitude ("Yes, I have one of the greatest psychic pools filled with my hand picked psychics and they all experience the same capabilities as mine.")
Brrr! Scary! What besides psychic synchronicity could possibly explain this strange coincidence? Could it have to do with their remarkably similar phone numbers? You be the judge!
Still other ads wavered between spookiness and a kind of unconscious compulsion to confess their quackery, as, for example, tarot readings offered by the appropriately-named "House of Cards." Others simply brass it out with wondrously meaningless claims, as, for instance, an astrologer down the street from me who advertises herself as "Seattle's Best Astrologer." In lucid moments, one wonders just how to measure this claim versus, say, Seattle's Second Best Astrologer. But, as should be obvious, most of these people are not really counting on a clientele with a robust sense of skepticism.
Nonetheless, millions of people do not harbor such skepticism. Which is why the tube, the newspapers and the magazines do not promote this stuff for their health. They promote it because it is big, booming, lucrative business that rakes in big, booming, lucrative bucks. Here, for instance, is the July 1997 issue of New Woman, an ultra-typical checkstand mag featuring an ultra-typical "Horoscope Special" section sponsored by the Coty perfume company. The first page has a big splashy ad for "Ghost Myst" ("You can't see it, but you know it's there"), along with the slogan, "Always believe in spirits -- especially yours." Then, leaf after leaf of fabulously expensive color glossy pages telling several hundred thousand credulous readers how to organize their finances based on the stars and planets ("We all have issues when it comes to money -- and the cosmos have more to do with it than you might think." "Your Sun sign influences the way you feel about money.")
Here is a spectacularly crass alloy of Corporate Big Money, American self-worship and materialism, and superstitious truckling to the powers that would have made Simon the Magician proud (Acts 8:9-10). And it is sponsored not by some two-bit juke joint crystal gazer, but by a major American corporation in a major American magazine utterly indistinguishable from a hundred others. That means, among other things, that this stuff, far from being far out, is mainstream, normal and regarded as harmless. But is it harmless?