Mumbo Jumbo

Conn Corrigan charts the rise of gobbledegook

It is easy to scoff at Americans for their willingness to believe in anything. We feel smug when we see TV programmes about UFOs and hear about the latest US fad in New Age quackery. It is indeed laughable that an estimated four million Americans believe they have been abducted by aliens and that 34% believe in the literal truth of the Bible. It is scary – and perhaps just a tad funny – to think that during the Cold War, Ronald Reagan would consult his wife’s astrologer before making decisions.

But this smugness is becoming hypocritical. We need not look so far to have a good snigger anymore. For in Ireland, the decline of the Catholic Church has been inversely proportional to a rise in bullshit beliefs and practices, and we are rapidly catching up with the US in the amount of bunkum we are prepared to believe in – and pay for.

Irish Psychics Live recorded a profit of €2.3 million in 2004. Last year, the company had 100,000 callers. Staying on the phone for an average of 18 minutes, these callers are charged €2.40 per minute, while their psychic, who has “an innate ability to sense things that most of us can’t,” counsels them. The psychics receive a commission of 38 cents per minute of each call they receive, which goes up to 44 cents per minute after a certain time threshold. To help them in their work, they use various “focusing mechanisms” such as tarot cards, tea leaves and rune stones. One of these ‘psychics’ uses coffee granules. Instant coffee granules.

Irish Psychics Live has seven competitors. Una Power, the “resident psychic” on TV3’s Ireland AM, also has a show on another great bastion of Irish tabloid media, 98FM. If one day you wish to work as a psychic, you can study for a Diploma in Psychic Development from the Academy of Personal and Psychic Development in Galway. Emma King, the “internationally renowned psychic” who set up this school, says it has been such a success that another one is planned for Dublin later this year.

“We started in 1997,” says Tom Higgins of Irish Psychics Live, “and our business keeps going or increases. A lot of people who called us in 1997 are still regular customers. If anyone is going to accuse our psychics of all being charlatans, then they most certainly have a very dim view of the intelligence of these people.” Higgins is a wealthy man (he is now planning to become the first Irishman in space). “You’d be amazed at some of the calls we get from some people,” he tells me. “We know who they are… high up in the legal profession, entertainment, politics, people from all walks of life.”

Margaret Neylon, who writes astrology columns for Social and Personal and the Sunday Tribune, says one of the reasons for the popularity of psychics is the decline of organised religion. In effect, the premium-rate psychic is replacing the parish priest. On the day I called Neylon, she had just given a reading to a nun. “When we put all our faith in something or someone outside of ourselves,” she says, “we run the risk of being abused by those we give our power to. When this happens it forces us back on our own inner knowledge, and that is why we seek out someone of similar mind to confirm what we already know inside.”

Neylon teaches workshops around the country on angel communication, dream analysis and tarot reading. “People come to me when they need confirmation of their plans,” she says. “The profile tends to be female, 25-60 years, with an emphasis on those around the 40 plus age group, which is a time of major change. They know they have more potential to fulfil but need an outsider to give them ‘permission’ to fulfil it.”

Sarah, who is 37, has been going to psychics for years. “What I like about Margaret [Neylon],” she tells me, “is that she always seems to hit the nail on the head. She doesn’t waffle. She uses numerology, where the planets are in the universe, and what phases they are moving into to explain why we behave the way we do. So it’s not all crystal ball readings with lotto numbers and promises of great fortune. It’s very scientific.”

Sarah still attends mass, out of force of habit than anything else. “These days, with all our problems in the church, we find ourselves going down different avenues to find our own healing.” Her spiritual needs are met by angel workshops. “I always knew someone was watching out for me from afar my whole life,” she says, “but it only made sense to me when I discovered angels a few years ago.”

Perhaps the most exploitative aspect of psychics is their claim to be able to communicate with the dead. As far as Tom Higgins is aware, this doesn’t happen in Irish Psychics Live. “I haven’t spoken to my psychics individually to ask them if they could,” he says. “I’m sure there’s a possibility that some of them would say that they could. But I wouldn’t allow them to do it on the phone and I’d be upset if they were doing it. Some psychic lines do offer it, but it’s not something I’d like to offer.” Higgins may wish to have a word with two of his employees, ‘’ and ‘YVonnieasmin.’ On the company website, Vonnie explains, “I have been using the Tarot Cards for over 30 years. I can pass on messages from past loved ones and analyse your dreams.” Yasmin, a “genuine” spiritualist, also advises on “how to contact people who have passed on to the next life.” The services provided by Tom Higgins and others depend on a supply of vulnerable people, but they could rarely be described as outright dangerous. This is not the case for alternative medicine, which has also become hugely popular. In a recent issue of The Dubliner, Marsha Hunt revealed that after discovering a lump in her breast in August, she waited until October until she called her homeopath. He should have been alarmed that a 57-year-old woman with a lump in her breast had waited two months and still hadn’t accessed treatment – proper treatment – and should have told her to go straight to her GP. Instead, Hunt’s homeopath “recommended a remedy to reduce the swelling.”

When I asked why conventional medicine has such a fraught relationship with her brand of medicine, a member of the Irish Society of Homeopaths (ISH) explained, “I don’t know why homeopathy would undermine people’s confidence in conventional medicine, because at the end of the day, we never ask people to choose between one form and the other.” This sounds plausible, but in cases such as Hunt’s, where it was obvious that she was in need of conventional treatment, not advising her to see a doctor was only slightly less dangerous than advising her not to see a doctor. After all, people wouldn’t go to an alternative practitioner in the first place if they didn’t think whatever remedy they were given would work. And many patients feel that because they have seen an alternative practitioner, they needn’t bother seeing a conventional doctor.

On April 5th 2003, Paul Howie (49) from Ballinrobe, County Mayo, died of a throat tumour, after his “natural health therapist,” Mineke Kamper, told him that the treatments she had prescribed wouldn’t work if he also used conventional medicine. Howie’s widow, Michelle, told the inquest into his death, “Kamper said she could cure him. Paul got weaker and she said if I took him to hospital he would die.” The inquest also heard that Howie’s tumour was localized, so if it had been removed, he would most probably still be alive today. During the inquest it emerged that Jacqueline Aldershade died of an asthma attack in 2001, on her way to visit Kamper. In Aldershade’s diary, she wrote that Kamper had told her to stop using all medication apart from her inhaler, and that she had been given drops and pills instead. Her asthma, she was told, was due to “emotional upset.”

In media reports that followed Howie’s inquest, much was made of the fact that whatever active ingredient was in the prescriptions given to him by Kamper, it was so minute as to have been undetectable. It was also reported that Kamper, although a trained nurse, had no professional qualifications as a homeopath. It could very easily be inferred from these two pieces of information that had Kamper not been negligent, Howie could have been treated with a ‘proper’ homeopathic remedy, which presumably would have meant his system would have had traces of an active agreement. But even if a fully-carded member of the ISH had treated Howie, there would most likely have been no trace of an active ingredient in his system, because most homeopathic remedies consist almost entirely of water. A process called serial dilution is used, in which a drop of the active ingredient is added to water, so that for each part of it there are 99 parts water (1C). This solution is then added to another solution that has also been diluted to one part in 100, giving a solution of 2C, or one part in 10,000. A solution that measures 12C would be the equivalent of one drop in the Atlantic Ocean. A typical homeopathic medicine is around 30C, at which point there probably wouldn’t even be one molecule left of the active ingredient.

Homeopaths say their remedies still work after being diluted because water retains a “memory” of coming into contact with the active ingredient. A disgraced scientist called Jacques Benveniste first advanced this theory. His experiments later failed in the presence of researchers for the highly respected peer-reviewed journal, Nature. In a 2003 edition of the BBC science programme, Horizon, another attempt was made to reproduce Benveniste’s experiment to demonstrate the memory of water, and once again, this failed. Sir Donald Irvine, former president of the General Medical Council, attributes the popularity of alternative medicine to the “time and empathy” lavished on patients. Indeed, as John Diamond, author of a brilliant polemic on alternative medicine, noted, alternative practitioners repeatedly stress how long their consultation periods are. According to Diamond, the average consultation period for an alternative practitioner in Britain is an hour for the first visit and a half hour for the second visit. (If it were simply a matter of time, would people be cured if they added an extra few minutes at their consultation?)

Journalists are great champions of alternative medicine. “There’s so much pseudo-science around,” says Paul O’Donoghue of the Irish Skeptics Society, “especially in alternative medicine, which gets huge media coverage.” Alternative medicine does get more publicity now than ever, although this can be construed as a good thing, in that it places the industry under scrutiny. But sometimes the Irish media is completely unquestioning in its coverage of alternative medicine. For example, on January 3rd, a lengthy article in the health section of the Irish Times explained ways in which you could ‘detox’ your body. The article slavishly quoted John Russell, a ‘holistic’ dietician, and Mary Daly, a “Maharishi Ayurveda” consultant who gives ‘How to Feel Good All Day’ seminars. There was no mention of any doubt within the scientific community about the whole ‘detox’ business.

Many medical experts believe that detox pills and supplements are worthless. Dr John Hoskins, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, put it like this: “On detox, the Romans got it right: Mundus vult decipi – the world wants to be deceived – better translated as, ‘there’s a sucker born every minute.’ The only thing that loses weight on a detox diet is your wallet.” The Irish Times failed to mention that neither John Russell nor Mary Daly is a member of the Irish Nutrition and Dietetics Institute (INDI), the professional body for clinical nutritionists and dieticians.

To join this organisation, you need to have a properly recognised degree. To work in the hospital system or as a community dietician in Ireland, you need to be either an accredited member of the INDI, or have your qualification validated by the INDI. However, there’s nothing to stop you from setting up your own private practice – if I wanted, I could quite easily put a little sign outside my house proclaiming that I’m a ‘holistic’ dietician, because in Ireland, unlike in Britain and Canada, the term ‘dietician’ is un-protected.

This will change, as the government has brought in legislation which states that only accredited dieticians can call themselves dieticians (it hasn’t yet been signed into law). In other words, pretty soon, John Russell won’t be able to call himself a dietician, holistic or otherwise, unless he spends a few years in college. The popularity of new age quackery has been good business for Joe Mullally of the Anam Holistic Centre in Manor Kilbride. Nothing if not multi-talented, divining, shamanism and healing all fall under his job description, as well as running courses on subjects such as shamanism, working with flower essences, dowsing and divining (introductory and advanced). Divining runs in his family, as do a prayer and a cure for bleeding. “If I say that prayer, the bleeding stops,” he says, adding that this could help haemophiliacs, although it’s more commonly used to help people with blood clots. Angels are his speciality, as he is a certified Angel Therapist Practitioner, trained by Doreen Virtue PhD, a big name in the angel-communication business who regularly appears on Oprah.

Mullally runs courses in angel therapy (which leads to ‘Angel Lightwalker certification’), in addition to an ‘Angel Evening in Dublin’, and ‘A Day with The Angels.’ Out of all his jobs, my personal favourite is “checking for things that are out of place and energies amiss which cause ill-health for the people who live there and bad luck on land.” Unfortunately, Mullally doesn’t yet run courses for people who wish to acquire this knowledge for themselves.

One of the distinctive features of new age quackery is the peddling of ‘Celtic mysticism,’ which is as much of a selling point for companies like Irish Psychics Live and Joe Mullally’s Anam Centre as it is for Enya. Irish Psychics Live, according to its website, is “operated by genuine Celtic psychics, the most psychic race in the world.” “Druid,” one of the readers for Irish Psychics Live, explains on his profile that he is a “descendent of Diarmuid and Fionn,” and is a “traditional Celtic spiritual psychic guide.” “Celtic tarot,” he says, “is over 2000 years old and is a tradition handed down through generations. Diarmuid was the ancient Celtic druid and Fionn acquired the ‘Salmon of Knowledge.’Between the two they have guided the Celtic people for thousands of years.” Similarly, Joe Mullally offers courses and holidays in Celtic Shamanism, and practices in ‘Healing spirit, land and place in Celtic Ireland.’ This might include, he says, “soul retrieval” which involves “connecting with the dynamic or the energy of the whole situation around and making a journey in spirit.”

Margaret Neylon, who says her life is Celtic Mysticism, is anxious to point out that we are particularly in tune with our psychic sides. “I do think that Irish people are very close to the Earth still, to the cycles of nature and know inside themselves that there is always a connection between the Earth, themselves, and Heaven (or spirit). Perhaps it was because we tend to have been an agricultural/pastoral people, who live in alignment with the solar cycles of the year and unconsciously are aware of the power of nature and magic. If we had been an industrialised nation we would have lost that ability.”

The ‘Celtic Mysticism’ marketing of psychics and angel-talkers has much in common with the marketing of alternative medicine. The Celts were ‘close to nature,’ and one of the key selling points of alternative medicine is that its remedies occur ‘naturally.’ The implication is that anything close to nature or anything that occurs ‘naturally’ must be good and pure. Anything else, such as Western medicine, is simply ‘unnatural.’ There is another similarity in the idea that because something is old, it must be good.

If, for example, the Celts used to predict each other’s future by using tarot cards, and if they treated illnesses with ‘naturally’ occurring herbs, well, being so close to nature and seeing as everyone was so full of wisdom back in those days, they must have been on to something. The Celts came to Ireland two and a half thousand years ago. Like the Vikings, they had their own bizarre rituals, which included dancing around trees in their underwear. ‘Celtic mysticism’ is just another pitch in Ireland’s New Age quack vocabulary. It all sounds lovely, might make us feel a little special, but it’s completely devoid of all intelligent meaning. And with this marketing ploy, Ireland yet again demonstrates that it’s slowly but surely losing its marbles.

One prominent homeopath I spoke to explained that writing about a homeopath and a psychic was like “lumping conventional GPs in with a group who are completely unrelated. When you put it [homeopathy] in an article with things that are a little bit wacky, there’s a risk of it being branded the same.” Yet they each expect you to believe in something that there’s absolutely no scientific proof for.

Tom Higgins, for example, said that none of his psychics would be able to prove their gifts under scientific testing because the pressure would be too much, so “you’d get zilch.” And both insist that because we don’t understand how these things work (if homeopathic remedies did work, the laws of chemistry would have to be rewritten), it doesn’t mean that they don’t work.

All of this talk of New Age religions, angels, homeopaths and psychics might make you long to return to the day when Ireland was simple and Catholic. A lot of people imagine there’s no comparison between the psychic, angel talker and homeopath on the one hand, and the good old-fashioned Catholic on the other. Indeed, the official Catholic line on fortune telling is that it’s a form of occult, and Pope Benedict XVI warned people at the World Youth Day about the “dangers” of faddish New Age religions.

Catholics are more liberal than Christians who insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible. But it’s worth remembering that the Catholic laity is asked to believe that Mary gave birth to Jesus without having sex. He was then able to walk on water, turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of God, and later succeeded in rising from the dead before flying up to heaven. One might argue that the decline in organised religion and the corresponding rise in New Age quackery is merely a matter of one set of mumbo-jumbo being replaced with another.

Francis Wheen, author of How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, thinks that it’s a little more complicated than this. He regards the rise in new superstitions as an example of how people seek comfort for anxieties in an increasingly hostile world. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,” Marx famously said, “the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” In the modern spiritless world, replace ‘religion’ with ‘talking to the angel workshops,’ homeopathy and premium-rate psychic lines, and Marx’s dictum hits the nail on the head.

Published in the April 2006 edition of The Dubliner magazine

Comments

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