This South African Body & Mind website has me reaching for the animated bashing-your-head-against-a-brick-wall emoticon which doesn’t seem to be available here – perhaps bluegray V can add this very useful little item. The per-page amount of whack at this site is simple stunning, especially in the “Articles” section where one will find a glut of descriptions of many “alternative therapies.” Claims by the authors of being “holistic therapists” abound, as do averments of their having “done extensive research.” The obvious question, of course, is which particular peer-reviewed medical journal/s has/ve published the findings of all this uniquely fruitful research.
The article then proceeds to discuss how the “auric bands” relate to a person’s various bodies. Thereafter, the meaning of different colours in the “aura” are described.
Ignoring for now all this grandiose talk of “bands” and “bodies” belonging to an individual, I must admit to some considerable bafflement at what obscure quirk of optical physics allows these purported colours to arise in the first place if “we cannot see” them because “they vibrate at a very fast rate making them invisible to the human eye.”
Actually, it would be cool if our “auras” were emitting in the near-infrared as CMOS’s and CCD’s commonly found in digital cameras react to it (try it next time with your TV remote). Infrared light is at a frequency lower than our visual system can perceive i.e. vibrates slower. But anyway, allow me to introduce you to more irritating woo.
Wynter Worsthorne is an animal communicator now living in Cape Town. She charges a minimum of R 350.00 per consultation to tell you what your dog, cat or any other pet is thinking. Well, how difficult can it be to read your dog ? Really, you only have the following options:
I want to hump your leg
I want to eat your lunch
I want to play NOW !
Okay ! Okay ! Throw the stick ! Throw the stick ! Throw the stick !
I like licking my balls - because I can
I have friends who have fallen for this phoney (alliteration ! :D). Of course, like any decent psychic she also does pro-bono work for nature reserves, animal shelters and any other organisation/cause that can bring her publicity.
Because I once fell for woo (during a difficult and painful period) I am going to be gentle with my friends and educate them slowly. What irritates me though is that they are yuppies who have had it pretty easy in life and yet they fall for this nonsense. I am not sure how gentle I am going to be.
Greetings, and welcome here to the forum, MrCurious.
Elsewhere in these pages, I suggested that Cape Town seems to have extraordinarily many of these woo-woo nuts, and you’ve lent some support to my suspicion. Maybe it’s that mountain…
And they, in turn, no doubt swear by her abilities.
So have I for similar reasons, and I’m sure so have some of the other people on this forum. The important thing is that you recognised it and changed accordingly.
The best way, I think, to get them to think about these things is to point out the ridiculousness of some of the more obvious absurdities. For example, this “animal communicator” cites the “work” of Masaru Emoto (she misspells his name) at the beginning of one of her articles:
Not only can no-one in the scientific community replicate Emoto’s results, the whole premiss is fundamentally flawed: it requires an ongoing input of energy to keep a water molecule deformed, otherwise it will just spit out a few photons and snap back into its usual relaxed shape. But never mind that. If Emoto’s thesis was tenable, you’d be able to make a glass of water objectively taste of something else (a yummy Merlot, say), if not look any different, simply by thinking appropriate thoughts at it long and hard enough because flavour is a function of molecular shapes, as is smell.
The above has yet to be achieved outside the realm of the conjurer.