|
Mentalist
Mentalism is a performing art in which its practitioners, known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities. Mentalists perform a theatrical act that includes special effects that may appear to employ psychic or supernatural forces but that is actually achieved by "ordinary conjuring means", natural human abilities (i.e. reading body language, refined intuition, subliminal communication, emotional intelligence), and an in-depth understanding of key principles from human psychology or other behavioral sciences. Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precognition, psychokinesis, mediumship, mind control, memory feats, deduction, and rapid mathematics. Mentalism is commonly classified as a subcategory of magic and, when performed by a stage magician, may also be referred to as ''mental magic''. However, many professional mentalists today may generally distinguish themselves from magicians, insisti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banachek
Banachek (born Steven Shaw; 30 November 1960) is an English Mentalism, mentalist, magician (illusionist), magician, and thought reader. He first came to public attention as a teenager for his role in James Randi's Project Alpha (hoax), Project Alpha experiment, which exposed the lack of objectivity in parapsychology, parapsychology research. As director of the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge conducted by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), he has since tested the authenticity of many self-described psychics, none of whom has managed to pass scientific control, scientifically controlled tests of their claimed paranormal abilities. Banachek is currently a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a program of the Center for Inquiry, and the president of JREF. Early life Banachek was born in England and raised in South Africa and Australia. He was abandoned at the age of nine in South Africa with his two brothers, aged one and three, and raised them by him ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bizarre Magic
Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of close-up magic, parlor magic, and stage magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It is to be distinguished from paranormal magic which are effects claimed to be created through supernatural means. It is one of the oldest performing arts in the world. Modern entertainment magic, as pioneered by 19th-century magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, has become a popular theatrical art form. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and David Devant, Howard Thurston, Harry Kellar, and Harry Houdini achieved widespread commercial success during what has become known as "the Golden Age of Magic", a period in which performance magic became a staple of Broadway theatre, vaudeville, and music halls. Meanwhile, magicians such as Georges Méliès, Gaston Velle, Walter R. Booth, and Orso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magic (illusion)
Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of close-up magic, parlor magic, and stage magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It is to be distinguished from Magic (supernatural), paranormal magic which are effects claimed to be created through supernatural means. It is one of the oldest performing arts in the world. Modern entertainment magic, as pioneered by 19th-century magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, has become a popular theatrical art form. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and David Devant, Howard Thurston, Harry Kellar, and Harry Houdini achieved widespread commercial success during what has become known as "the Golden Age of Magic", a period in which performance magic became a staple of Broadway theatre, vaudeville, and music halls. Meanwhile, magicians such as Georges Méliès, Gaston Velle, Walter R. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Dunninger
Joseph Dunninger (April 28, 1892 – March 9, 1975), known as "The Amazing Dunninger", was one of the most famous and proficient Mentalism, mentalists of all time. He was one of the pioneer performers of Magic (illusion), magic on radio and television. A debunker of fraudulent Mediumship, mediums, Dunninger claimed to replicate through trickery all Spiritualism (movement), spiritualist phenomena.Nevill Drury, Drury, Nevill. (2004). ''The Dictionary of the Esoteric: Over 3000 Entries on the Mystical and Occult''. Watkins Publishing. p. 81. Biography Dunninger was born in New York City. He headlined throughout the RKO Pictures, Keith-Orpheum Circuit, and was much in demand for private entertainment. At the age of seventeen he was invited to perform at the home of Theodore Roosevelt in Oyster Bay (town), New York, Oyster Bay and at the home of the inventor Thomas Edison, both of whom were avid admirers of Dunninger. President Franklin D. Roosevelt invited Dunninger to the White Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediumship
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or ghost, spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit conduit (channeling), channelling, including table-turning, séance tables, trance, and ouija. The practice is associated with Spiritualism (movement), spiritualism and Kardecist spiritism, spiritism. A similar New Age practice is known as Channeling (New Age), channeling. Belief in psychic ability is widespread despite the absence of empirical evidence for its existence. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship for more than one hundred years and have consistently failed to confirm them. As late as 2005, an experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society reaffirmed that test subjects who self-identified as mediums demonstrated no mediumistic ability. Mediumship gained popu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bible
The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. The texts include instructions, stories, poetry, prophecies, and other genres. The collection of materials accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies. The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning 'five books') in Greek. The second-oldest part was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi'im). The third co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telepathy
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and has remained more popular than the earlier expression ''thought-transference''.Glossary of Parapsychological terms – Telepathy – Parapsychological Association. Retrieved December 19, 2006. Telepathy experiments have historically been criticized for a lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no good evidence that telepathy exists, and the topic is gene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sleight Of Hand
Sleight of hand (also known as prestidigitation or ''legerdemain'' () comprises fine motor skills used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate. It is closely associated with close-up magic, card magic, card flourishing and stealing. Because of its heavy use and practice by magicians, sleight of hand is often confused as a branch of magic; however, it is a separate genre of entertainment and many artists practice sleight of hand as an independent skill. Sleight of hand pioneers with worldwide acclaim include Dan and Dave, Ricky Jay, Derek DelGaudio, David Copperfield, Yann Frisch, Norbert Ferré, Dai Vernon, Jerry Sadowitz, Cardini, Tony Slydini, Helder Guimarães and Tom Mullica. Etymology and history The word ''sleight'', meaning "the use of dexterity or cunning, especially so as to deceive", comes from the Old Norse. The phrase ''sleight of hand'' means "quick fingers" or " trickster fingers". Common synonyms of Latin and Frenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Randi
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author, and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.#Rodrigues, Rodrigues 2010p. 271 He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87. Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi said he disliked the term's connotations and preferred to describe himself as an "investigator". He wrote about paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'', famously exposing fraudulent faith healer Peter Pop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spiritualism (movement)
Spiritualism is a social religious Social movement, movement popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, according to which an individual's Afterlife, awareness persists after death and may be Séance, contacted by the living. The afterlife, or the "Spirit world (Spiritualism), spirit world", is seen by spiritualists not as a static place, but as one in which spirits continue to interact and evolve. These two beliefs—that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans—lead spiritualists to the belief that spirits are capable of advising the living on morality, moral and ethical issues and the nature of God. Some spiritualists follow "spirit guides"—specific spirits relied upon for spiritual direction... Emanuel Swedenborg has some claim to be the father of spiritualism. The movement developed and reached its largest following from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially in English-speaking countries.. It flourished for a half centur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York Times''. Together with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann, they established the F-R Publishing Company and set up the magazine's first office in Manhattan. Ross remained the editor until his death in 1951, shaping the magazine's editorial tone and standards. ''The New Yorker''s fact-checking operation is widely recognized among journalists as one of its strengths. Although its reviews and events listings often focused on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' gained a reputation for publishing serious essays, long-form journalism, well-regarded fiction, and humor for a national and international audience, including work by writers such as Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, and Alice Munro. In the late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Testament
The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in Koine Greek. The Old Testament consists of many distinct books by various authors produced over a period of centuries. Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections: the first five books or Pentateuch (which corresponds to the Jewish Torah); the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon; the poetic and wisdom literature, which explore themes of human experience, morality, and divine justice; and the books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God. The Old Testament canon differs among Christian denominations. The Ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
