Psychic Blues Confessions Of A Conflicted Medium

"Mark Edward is an equivocator, fibber, and mountebank. Which begs the question: if a liar admits to lying, can he be telling the truth? He is a literate, informative, intellectual, a student of the psychology of humans, a foe of those who would defraud the public for personal gain, and as an author and practicing psychic, he is first and foremost an entertainer."—Joel Moskowitz, International Brotherhood of Magicians Mark Edward admits that for years he exploited believers who wished to connect with supernatural ideas and sad family members who missed dead loved ones. Now Edward is a magician who works the Haunted Castle in Hollywood and is also on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine, where he reveals the means of psychic scamsters. This entertaining book is at once a confessional and instructional regarding human belief and those who exploit it. Though Edward believes that most practitioners of the psychic business are out-and-out scam artists, he also counters the skeptic belief that the supernatural is a lie. Both skeptic and skeptical of skepticism, Mark Edward has worked as a 900-number psychic, ghost hunter, and Hollywood Magic Castle medium. He has also worked vigorously to debunk psychic frauds and currently works on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine.

"Mark Edward is an equivocator, fibber, and mountebank. Which begs the question: if a liar admits to lying, can he be telling the truth' He is a literate, informative, intellectual, a student of the psychology of humans, a foe of those who would defraud the public for personal gain, and as an author and practicing psychic, he is first and foremost an entertainer."-Joel Moskowitz, International Brotherhood of Magicians Mark Edward admits that for years he exploited believers who wished to connect with supernatural ideas and sad family members who missed dead loved ones. Now Edward is a magician who works the Haunted Castle in Hollywood and is also on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine, where he reveals the means of psychic scamsters. This entertaining book is at once a confessional and instructional regarding human belief and those who exploit it. Though Edward believes that most practitioners of the psychic business are out-and-out scam artists, he also counters the skeptic belief that the supernatural is a lie. Both skeptic and skeptical of skepticism, Mark Edward has worked as a 900-number psychic, ghost hunter, and Hollywood Magic Castle medium. He has also worked vigorously to debunk psychic frauds and currently works on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine.

This one-volume encyclopedia examines jobs and occupations from around the world that are unique and out of the ordinary, from bike fishermen in the Netherlands and professional wedding guests in South Korea to elephant dressers in India. It's not surprising that the first question we are asked by strangers often has to do with what we do for a living. It's another way of asking, "Who are you, and what are you about?" But what happens when the answer to that question is "I am a gondolier" or "I am an Instagram influencer?" This book tries to answer that question, focusing on approximately 100 unusual occupations around the world. Arranged alphabetically, entries define the jobs and detail their historical, social, and cultural significance. Entries also examine where the job is located, how it came to be, how people get into the position, and what the economic and future outlook is for that job. While the entries focus on contemporary jobs, the encyclopedia also includes sidebars that highlight unique jobs from history to give the reader a sense of how unusual (and often terrible!) some jobs once were. Students will find this book useful in looking at cultures around the world.

Lucy Acosta's mother died when she was three. Growing up in a Victorian mansion in the middle of the woods with her cold, distant father, she explored the dark hallways of the estate with her cousin, Margaret. They're inseparable—a family. When her aunt Penelope, the only mother she's ever known, tragically disappears while walking in the woods surrounding their estate, Lucy finds herself devastated and alone. Margaret has been spending a lot of time in the attic. She claims she can hear her dead mother's voice whispering from the walls. Emotionally shut out by her father, Lucy watches helplessly as her cousin's sanity slowly unravels. But when she begins hearing voices herself, Lucy finds herself confronting an ancient and deadly legacy that has marked the women in her family for generations.

As a young psychic, Regina Milbourne became the unlikely and reluctant confidante to the denizens of Miami's seedy underworld. Murderers, thieves, crooked cops, pedophiles, cheating spouses, and Russian drug dealers all came to Regina, who charged (and ultimately paid) a premium to shield them from dangerous evil forces. Even when confronted with death, corruption, and life-threatening encounters, Regina stood by her promise to help anyone who sought her guidance. But when her and her family's lives were threatened, she decided to turn her back on the gift she's had since almost drowning at the age of twelve. In Miami Psychic, she comes clean, divulging—without revealing the identity of any of her clients—the unimaginable horrors and shocking confessions that she witnessed throughout her career. Part gypsy priestess and part psychologist, Regina has experienced it all—from a narcotics officer smuggling drugs to an identity thief plagued by a deceased brother and a Miami heiress cursed by black magic. This harrowing memoir reveals her story in a voice as raw and haunting as the world she came to know and ultimately left behind.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

How does Tarot work? Why is it so popular today? Is it just for fortune tellers? Tarot has seen a recent uptick in interest that warrants explanation. This book, however, is not another take on the cards' meanings and how to read them. Instead, independent researcher Simon Kenny presents Tarot to the incredulous and curious and those who wish to know the basis for its continued cultural relevance. A Critical Introduction to Tarot explains the practice in its historical and metaphysical contexts, and investigates its supporting belief structures, from witchcraft and magical practices to popular psychology. Throughout these pages, connections to politics, philosophy, psychology, numerology, astrology, Freemasonry, statistics, interpretative symbolism, self-help, social media -- even the nature of truth itself -- are explored. An accessible read aimed at demystifying Tarot for those unfamiliar with its magical, occult roots and growing use as a personal development tool.

Hasn't he lived long enough? Why not? I could take him like a thief in the night. This is how the Thief thinks. He serves death, the vacuum, the unknown. He's always waiting. Always there. Seventeen-year-old Nina Barrows knows all about the Thief. She's intimately familiar with his hunting methods: how he stalks and kills at random, how he disposes of his victims' bodies in an abandoned mine in the deepest, most desolate part of a desert. Now, for the first time, Nina has the chance to do something about the serial killer that no one else knows exists. With the help of her former best friend, Warren, she tracks the Thief two thousand miles, to his home turf-the deserts of New Mexico. But the man she meets there seems nothing like the brutal sociopath with whom she's had a disturbing connection her whole life. To anyone else, Dylan Shadwell is exactly what he appears to be: a young veteran committed to his girlfriend and her young daughter. As Nina spends more time with him, she begins to doubt the truth she once held as certain: Dylan Shadwell is the Thief. She even starts to wonder . . . what if there is no Thief? From debut author Margot Harrison comes a brilliantly twisted psychological thriller that asks which is more terrifying: the possibility that your nightmares are real . . . or the possibility that they begin and end with you?