An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural Read online

  Loch Ness Monster

  See Nessie.

  Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph

  (1851-1940) Sir Oliver was a scientist who did pioneer work in early radio and research on lightning. Among other inventions, he perfected a model of coherer, a device used in early radio before the invention of the vacuum tube.

  Lodge's son Raymond was killed in battle in 1915 in France. In 1916, Lodge published a book, Raymond, or Life and Death in which he said that the spirit of his son had communicated with him through various spirit mediums. Raymond, he said, described clothes worn in heaven, as well as all other material things there, as being made of the “smell” of the same decayed matter in the earthly world. Such claims, and his fervent support of the spiritualist movement, eventually made Lodge the laughingstock of his peers and the public, though he was, and still is, a sainted figure to the spiritualists.

  Loudun, Devils of

  The 1634 case in which Urbain Grandier, a priest at a small town of Loudun, France, was accused of bewitching a local nun, and then a whole group of them, with whom it was reported he became involved in a manner that was anything but religious. Charged with sorcery, Grandier was convicted, horribly tortured, and burned alive. The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris has a document which is said to be the written pact Grandier made with the Devil.

  This case was echoed later by the 1692 Salem witch trials in the American colonies.

  Loup-garou

  See werewolf

  Lourdes

  It is the town of Lourdes, France, that has attained the strongest international reputation for miracles of healing. This acclaim is the result of a very successful commercial venture that began with a story about Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879), an ignorant peasant girl who said she had a visitation there from “a lady” in 1858.

  A shrine was established in 1876 to which some five million visitors a year now flock, occupying four hundred hotels built for them. The public relations people who sell Lourdes as a business claim that there are about thirty thousand healings a year, but church authorities deny that figure, cautioning that less than a hundred claims have been properly documented since the founding of the shrine, and the church has as of this date accepted only sixty-four as miracles, from the millions of cures claimed over the years.

  Whether these sixty-four were simply remissions of various kinds or perhaps recoveries brought about by orthodox medical attention, one cannot know, since the records are so sketchy. In several cases, we have no evidence that even the ailments were real. In the absence of proof that the attendance of the afflicted at the shrine was the one element responsible for the termination of the ailment, common sense, as well as the simple principle of parsimony, would require one to strongly doubt the miraculous nature of these events.

  Bathing in the mineral springs of Lourdes and drinking of the spring water have been confused with the healing stories. The church has never made any claim that the spring water from the Lourdes grotto is curative in any way, yet every year the souvenir shops sell thousands of gallons to the faithful in tiny vials, as amulets. Those who attend Lourdes in person have consumed millions of gallons more. It is amazing that more worshipers have not contracted diseases from that practice. Europeans are prone to accept the medicinal value of almost any natural spring water — especially if it smells bad. They cannot resist drinking from and washing in the Lourdes spring.

  See also Bernadette Soubirous.

  Lucifer

  The name of Satan before he fell from heaven. Or another designation for the planet Venus. Or the sun god. Take your choice.

  Lycanthropy

  See werewolf.

  M

  Mackay, Dr. Charles

  (1814-1889) Author of the remarkable book Extraordinary Popular Delusions (1841) and its successor, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1843), Mackay was alarmed at the widespread belief in the wild speculations, the lack of common sense and the acceptance of supernatural subjects that he found in his society, and expressed his concern very well. He was an astute observer of conditions that he might well be dismayed — but not surprised — to discover are still very much with us today.

  His book, reprinted by Crown Publishers, is highly recommended.

  Macumba

  See Umbanda.

  Magic

  An attempt to supplant natural processes and events by means of incantations, spells and/or offerings. Approximated by conjuring and often attempted by prayer. Magic and science are exact opposites in every way.

  Magic can be divided into three very general categories: divinatory (determining hidden information), sympathetic (affecting some aspect of nature by performing upon a similar object/person/symbol), and ritual (reciting a prayer, incantation, charm, or carrying out an accepted formality).

  See also sympathetic magic.

  Magic Ashes

  According to the Bible (Numbers 19:1), the ashes of a red, unblemished, sacrificed heifer are to be used for magical purification purposes. Not widely used nowadays.

  Magic Circle

  The inscribed circle within which the magus stands while invoking demons. He is protected while within that circle. The figure must be set up according to carefully formulated rules.

  The circle is drawn on the ground with the point of a new sword, proper symbols are inscribed along the circumference, and appropriate words are whispered.

  In ancient Assyria, a sick person was protected from the effects of demons by having a circle of flour drawn about his bed. In India, it is a circle of black pebbles.

  Magician, Mage, Magi

  See magus.

  Magic Square

  See charms.

  Magic Wand

  Usually, by tradition, a baton made of hazel or ash wood. The magic wand is the equivalent of a specialized talisman used to facilitate the invocation of the magician's spell. Conjurors today have largely abandoned the affectation of carrying and wielding such a prop, though it was almost universal and expected throughout the nineteenth century. To the conjuror, it has served as a mode of misdirection.

  Magnetic Hills

  A sensory illusion in which a road or path appears to have a slight upgrade but is actually minimally downhill.

  This can be brought about by false optical indicators. One such occurs when nearby trees, road signs, or fence posts in the area are inclined somewhat away from the vertical, a condition which may have come about from a long-forgotten geological shift. The tendency for the senses is to automatically assume that trees and other such objects are positioned at right angles to the horizontal, and with some persons the sense of sight overcomes that of the balance organ (located in the ear) which normally gives us our conception of the position of the horizontal.

  Stories abound of cars that run uphill at these locations with the ignition turned off, when actually they are coasting downhill. If it is possible to stand far enough back from the site so that the greater surroundings are also seen, it will be noticed that the illusion then fails.

  A strong example of this deceptive effect is found at the “Oregon Vortex,” a site on Interstate I-5 near Gold Hill, Oregon, near the California-Oregon border. The thousands of visitors who visit the area annually go away convinced that they have witnessed a genuine unexplainable miracle.

  Magus

  (plural, magi) Originally, a Zoroastrian priest, but now used to denote a magician, a person who seeks to control nature by means of spells and incantations. Or, loosely used, it designates a conjuror, which see.

  Maharaj Ji

  (1957?- ) Leader of the Divine Light Mission, a cult that was brought with great success in 1971 to the United States. At one point, the mission boasted forty-five ashrams in the United States alone, peopled with disciples who worked long hours and unquestioningly gave all their earnings to the Maharaj Ji.

  The overweight teenage guru, addressed as “Lord of the Universe” by his devotees, was driven about in a Rolls-Royce whenever he was no
t roaring down the street on one of his collection of high-powered motorcycles. He promised followers that they would “receive the knowledge” after a period of study and work, during which they donated all their income to him.

  The mission had as its membership mostly middle-class young people, who were taught that rational thought is the supreme enemy and were urged to immediately commence meditation whenever the thinking process threatened to return.

  The Maharaj Ji announced that the “most significant event in the history of humanity” would take place, “Millennium '73,” at the Houston Astrodome. The arena was rented at a frightening price and admission was free, but only twenty thousand of the expected sixty thousand persons showed up. It was a bust, especially financially.

  The Mission published a slick color magazine titled And It is Divine, and one issue featured psychic Uri Geller on the cover, during a time when the two superstars, it was rumored, were planning to join forces. It never happened.

  Plans for a Divine City peopled only by mission members came and went. “Receiving the knowledge” turned out to be a process of seeing “heavenly lights” when pressing on the eyeballs, hearing “blissful music” when the ears were stopped up, tasting “divine nectar” when the head was thrown back with the tongue turned inward, and receiving a mantra nonsense word. The sensory illusions were quite natural and easily understood physiological phenomena, the “nectar” being simply nasal secretions dripping into the throat. Only the very naive were convinced that they had been let in on some sort of celestial secret. The big promise fizzled.

  In 1974 Maharaj Ji married his secretary Marolyn Lois Johnson, who he had discovered was the reincarnation of the ten-armed, tiger riding goddess Durga. His mother revolted against this alliance and tried to regain her former position as female leader of the sect by announcing that her other son, Bal Bhagwan Ji, was thenceforth the divine head of the cult. Disillusionment set in, and in 1975 Maharaj Ji's mother and brother sued him for their share of the wealth that had been accumulated. Then everyone sued everyone else, and the Divine vanished when the Light went out.

  In 1981, Maharaj Ji showed up uninvited at a rock concert at Glastonbury, England, driven in a white Rolls-Royce. He preached a few moments for an uninterested audience, and motored away when someone switched off the microphone. The god business is often not as enthusiastically supported as a god might wish.

  Maharaj Ji has been variously reported as now living in Denver, Colorado, and in Australia. There has not been a concerted effort to locate him.

  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

  See Transcendental Meditation.

  Malicious Animal Magnetism

  Also known to followers of Christian Science as “M.A.M.,” this was first postulated by Mary Baker Eddy in her system for divine healing. It was an idea borrowed from Mesmer, who at first thought that he had discovered a form of biological magnetism, but it turned out to be a form of suggestion that affected susceptible persons.

  At the age of fifty-six (she gave her age as forty), the founder of Christian Science married Gilbert Asa Eddy, a sewing machine salesman. It was her third marriage. In a stirring court trial, Mrs. Eddy accused her husband of trying to send arsenic, via M.A.M., into her body. The charges, including witchcraft, were dismissed as groundless.

  No evidence for any such sort of force has ever been produced, but it remains an article of faith with Christian Science.

  See also Mary Baker Eddy.

  Malleus Maleficarum

  (“Hammer of Witches”) Two Dominican monks, Heinrich Kramer (1430-1505) and Jacob Sprenger (1436-1495), earned their unenviable place in history by writing this book. It was published, in Latin, in 1486, and became the virtual handbook for witch-hunters. It contains a complex, convoluted discussion of the world of demons and how these infernal beings related to and interacted with humans. The book appeared in three dozen editions and in English, French, German, and Italian.

  The Malleus also gave explicit instructions on how suspected witches were to be discovered, tortured, forced into confession, tried, and executed. It directed, by the procedures outlined, that the accused would eventually be found guilty, regardless of the evidence.

  The book served as a guide to the Holy Inquisition for more than a century.

  M.A.M.

  See malicious animal magnetism.

  Mandala

  From the Sanskrit word for “circle.” A symbol of the cosmos, usually circular, with a god-symbol or name at the center, inscribed on charms or used in rituals. The four cardinal points are also often represented. Large versions are often sold as decorative wall-pieces to tourists who are unaware of its true function.

  Mandrake

  (also, mandragore or mandragora) A plant, Mandragora officinarum, related to the potato. The root is a tuber, and it often grows in the shape of a human body. The more it resembles a body, the more valuable the root is believed to be for magical purposes. Mandrake is sold whole in oriental pharmacies and in powdered form and pills as well. The German mystics keep foot-high figures of old sorceresses, richly dressed and comfortably housed, some of which are mandrake roots in drag. In Norway the figures are consulted for advice. Really.

  A certain problem exists with harvesting the root. When the plant is drawn from the ground, it is supposed to emit a horrendous humanlike shriek that will drive a human insane. A solution is arrived at by tying the plant to a dog's tail and encouraging the dog to pull it up. By that means the prize is obtained, since dogs are luckily immune to the dreadful sound.

  It is mentioned in the Bible, Genesis 30:14, as a substance that assured fecundity. This account involves trading some mandrake roots for a night with another's wife, or some such deal. In any case, the assignation reportedly produced a male child, even though the mandrake roots were not consumed. Truly magical.

  Manning, Matthew

  (1955- ) A U.K. imitator of Uri Geller. He also performs spoon-bending and other claimed paranormal effects. In recent years, Manning has taken on the role of healer, lecturing on the subject internationally.

  See also faith healing.

  Mantra

  (from the Sanskrit; also, mantram) A secret talisman word assigned to devotees of various mystical movements. It is determined not by divine inspiration, as often claimed, but from information such as birth date and the date on which the student first began affiliation with the movement. In some usages, the mantra is supposed to be used by the owner to attain spiritual contact by repeating it endlessly, or to summon up a source of spiritual power.

  The best-known mantra is “Om mani padme hum,” used by Tibetan Buddhists. The simplest is just the word “Om,” attributed to the guru Trimurti. It is recognized in psychology that the constant repetition of a word or phrase (known as echolalia when performed by autistic persons) can be comforting and soothing to the disturbed mind.

  Map Dowsing

  This is a peculiar skill claimed by a few dowsers. It consists of swinging a pendulum (or just the hand or any other preferred device) over any piece of paper that represents a map of an area of land, and thereby finding anything from lost children to buried treasure. The map, most practitioners claim, can even have all coordinates removed, can be of any unspecified scale, in color or not, or be of an unknown part of the globe. A review of a book on the subject in Nature magazine in 1940 said:

  The fact that such a thing [dowsing over maps with a pendulum] is seriously mentioned [in the book] is calculated to undermine the reader's faith in the author's critical faculty.

  In England, Dr. Julian Huxley, F.R.S., said in 1942 that he had been present at a test of this claim at Oxford and that the diviner failed both with water and with minerals. He added that, in his opinion, the alleged finding of water by means of dowsing over a map was a belief that “belongs in the Middle Ages” and was “certainly not worthy of credence.”

  Marduk

  An obviously powerful god in Assyrian mythology, who split Tiamat, mother of the gods, into two part
s, thus creating heaven and Earth. Not presently a generally popular belief.

  Margery

  See Crandon, Margery.