Psychic surgery - now for a word about fraud

 Now for a word about fraud, which applies to many phenomena described elsewhere in this book. The first thing that must be understood is that psychic gifts have been observed to come and go in cycles. Dr J. B. Rhine has shown that there is a curve of decline and emergence in telepathy, and this also applies to psychic surgery and Spiritist mediumship in general. In Zener card guessing, the telepathy involved may come and go at short intervals, whereas with physical-effects mediumship there may be a long period of supremacy followed by an equally long decline. Let us examine some of the factors that affect this curve of ups and downs, and see where the question of fraud comes in.

Whatever the source of the extraordinary power that some psychic surgeons have been observed to possess may turn out to be, it seems clear that the moral character of the medium concerned has a great deal to do with its continuing supply. A basic tenet of Brazilian Spiritism is that once you make use of your paranormal powers for your own benefit, you lose them. Its believers insist that one should freely give what one has freely received, and that under no circumstances at all should mediums charge money for their services.

It is difficult to stop people giving presents to mediums, however, and only a man with the moral qualities of a Chico Xavier (who once gave away an expensive imported piano an admirer had sent him, although he loved music) can resist this form of temptation to acquire material riches. Mediums are only human, and the better they are at their job the more people will want to give them presents; the more lavish these are the greater their corrupting influence will be. A fondness for material wealth, even unasked, can have an effect on the curve of a medium’s abilities. It is a tough vocation, making often unbearable  demands on its practitioners, and once a medium’s powers have declined they tend to stay that way, possibly with occasional reminders of the old power.

Perhaps the most important factor bearing on the curve of mediumistic ability is that of environment. Very few mediums, and no psychic surgeons that I know of in Brazil, work entirely on their own. They tend to be surrounded by a group of helpers, on whom the mediums depend to a great extent to tell them what they do while they are in trance. If they are genuine, or if at least if they were to start with, trance mediums’ only sources of reliable information about their own work are those present during the trance state. To be able to assemble such a group in the first place, it seems probable that a medium must at some time have shown genuine gifts, for it cannot be easy to begin as a deliberate fraud from scratch.

Thus mediums will gradually come to know what is expected of them, and feel obliged, even if subconsciously, to provide the phenomena their customers or patients have come to see. Then comes the day when they find they have not got the necessary power. Now if this happened to a concert pianist, for instance, there would be nothing for it but to cancel the concert. You cannot very well pretend to play a piano concerto if you have forgotten it.

Yet the medium can pretend to be a medium, knowing that there is a good chance nobody will notice the difference, since so much of a medium’s work deals with the invisible. When they have one of their bad days, they can either cheat on purpose or unconsciously; or if they are honest they can call off the session altogether. If there are two or three hundred people waiting to see them, perhaps people who have made a contribution to the centre where they work, they may feel obliged to perform just to satisfy their audience, even if they know they cannot produce the genuine effects they have come to see.

You too can be a psychic surgeon, if not for long. Here is how.

There are many ways in which psychic surgeons can, and do, cheat. The most common, which has been observed in the Philippines but not as yet in Brazil, is to tape two small cellophane bags in the palms of your hands, one containing chicken blood and the other pure ether. You slap the hand with the blood in it on the patient’s stomach, having punctured it with a tiny pin attached to your thumbnail, making a terrible mess. Then you start prodding away with your fingers, perhaps even making a ‘cut’ beforehand with a blunt knife so as to leave a  nice red line on the skin. Then, when you have finished ‘operating’, you burst the ether bag in your other hand and mop up the blood, most of which will appear to evaporate, helped perhaps by your assistant’s casual dabs with damp cotton wool.

A far easier way of cheating for beginners is to claim that you are only going to operate on the perispirit body, or in the astral plane. Here, all you have to do is wave your hands in the air above the body, manipulate invisible scissors, knives and other implements, muttering instructions to your unseen helpers. These, of course, will not reply, but everybody present will understand that they are on the astral plane and only you can hear them.

As for diagnosis, you use the time-honoured methods of muscle reading and fishing. Chances are your patients have something wrong in the stomach area, so you simply prod around here and write out a prescription for anything you like, preferably something totally harmless. Assure your patients that your spirit guides will slip something into the medicine to make it work better, slap them on the back and order God to be with them. You may find that some will actually get better. If you come up against a really tough case, you always have karma to fall back on. Supposing an attractive young lady comes up and says: ‘Oh, Dr Wu’ (that’s your spirit guide), I’m desperate. I’ve got cancer of the uterus, colon, stomach, lungs, neck, nose and big toe. I’ve been given three weeks to live. Help!’ In cases like this you prod her around a little, look at the ceiling, cock your ear to the voice of your invisible mentor and reply:

‘Yes, my dear sister. Your problem is one of karma. In your past incarnation you were a prison guard in Siberia, and before that you were one of the assistants who threw Christians to the lions in Rome. Before that you were a mass murderer in Atlantis, and in the Mesolithic Age you were a child rapist. In this lifetime, you have been given a great chance to pay off all your past debts at once. God is good. Next patient, please!’

This will never fail. Karma is karma, and with luck your patient will obediently go away and die, convinced she is doing herself a favour. Your spiritual wisdom and understanding will be widely praised, especially if you murmur a prayer for the girl’s soul and wish it better luck next time round.

In general, would-be psychic surgeons must remember the cardinal rules of conjuring: don’t tell your audience what you are going to do, and never try the same trick twice on the same evening. But there is   something else amateur surgeons must do: namely, bring off some genuine cures now and then, otherwise they will be out of business, for the only way they can advertise is by word of mouth. They are also warned that sooner or later somebody will try to film them at work, or bring along a real doctor to watch. When that happens, they had better say their guides are taking the evening off, and do likewise themselves.

A very serious warning must be given here to would-be patients. Although Brazil welcomes tourists, there are two very good reasons why foreigners suffering from serious diseases should not go there in search of help. One is that Brazil, like many countries, has strict immigration laws, and will not issue a visa to anybody who is dangerously ill. The other is that alternative healing is widely practised in many other countries, especially Britain and the US, so readers from those areas are advised to seek out their own local healers instead of adding themselves to the long waiting lists of Brazil’s already overburdened psychics. There is no indication whatever that Brazilian healers can do anything that reputable healers in other countries cannot also do; they just use different methods.

Another point to consider is that since the persecution and imprisonment of Arigó there has been a tendency for psychic surgeons to try to remain anonymous, avoid publicity and work in near secrecy. They have in fact mostly gone underground, and it might take a newcomer months even to find one.

THE FLYING COW

EXPLORING THE PSYCHIC WORLD OF BRAZIL

GUY LYON PLAYFAIR