Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Raudive tapes
Communications of the spirits of deceased people with the living via electronic tape recordings. Although he was not the first to discover these phenomena, also known as electronic voice phenomena (EVP), Latvian psychologist Konstantin Raudive popularized and devoted many years of research to them in the 1960s and 1970s. A professor at the University of…
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James Randi (1928- )
Known as James “The Amazing” Randi, a professional magician and escapologist. Born and educated in Toronto, Canada, Randi moved to the United States and was naturalized a citizen in 1987. Subsequently, he became an amateur archaeologist and astronomer, author, lecturer, and founding member of the committee for the scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal…
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Tuesday Lobsang Rampa (c. 1911-1981)
Supposedly a Tibetan lama (priest), Rampa claimed to have been born in 1911 in Lhasa and to have spent many years, from the age of seven, in esoteric training for the priesthood, specializing in Buddhist medicine, and then to have written an autobiography, The Third Eye, which was first published in 1956. The book covers…
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Rainmaking
One of the earliest efforts at weather modification by means of sympathetic magic. Early farmers, in an effort to encourage rain for their crops, used a variety of means to encourage rainfall, ranging from sex magic in Babylonian times to human sacrifice among the ancient Maya Indians of Central America. Magical means to induce rain…
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Radiesthesia
A phenomenon similar to water divining and dowsing in which a small pendulum is used instead of a forked twig. The pendulum is made by suspending a weight of any material, for example a finger ring, on a chain or thread. Without any conscious effort on the part of the operator, the weight when suspended…
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Racial theories
To classify people on the basis of their skin, their intelligence, or some other quality that is perceived as inborn. This urge is quite ancient. According to Greek philosopher Plato, his teacher Socrates proposed that, in the ideal state, people would be raised from birth to believe that their social system reflected an inborn biological…
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Rabbits
Any of several soft-furred, large-eared, rodent like burrowing mammals of the family Leporidae. The ancient Britons may have made use of rabbits for purposes of Divination; it was unlawful to eat them at the time of the Gallic Wars (c. 50 B.C.E.), and in all the British Isles it was a common complaint that witches…
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Pyramidology
The reading of messages that are implicit in the structure of the great pyramids of Egypt and, latterly, attributing magical influences to pyramid shaped objects. The idea that the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed according to a very precise quantitative plan and that its measurements encode messages about future events for posterity has been…
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Pyramid inch
Supposed standard unit of measurement used in the construction of the Great Pyramid. In 1864 Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland and a professor at the University of Edinburgh, published a book entitled Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid. In it Smyth proved to his own satisfaction that the Great Pyramid of Egypt was…
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Andrija Henry Puharich (1918-1995)
A qualified medical doctor who began to explore parapsychology in the early 1950s, investigating a range of phenomena and publishing Beyond Telepathy (1962) and The Sacred Mushroom (n.d.). In 1971 Puharich met Uri Geller, an Israeli stage magician, and was convinced of his extrasensory powers. In 1974 Puharich published Uri: A Journal of the Mystery…
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