Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Aleister Crowley
Modern exponent of ceremonial magic. Crowley was a product of the late- 19th-century magic revival which assumed that there was an invisible power, analogous to the “magnetic” power discussed by the mesmerists, that was the agent of magical operations. He later developed his own system of magical theory and practice, which he termed thelema (from…
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Cross correspondences
A form of communication from the dead through mediums; these are believed by many psychical researchers to be among the best evidence of survival after death. The correspondences are established by bringing together the meaningless utterances of two or more mediums working independently of each other, utterances that only become meaningful when combined. Classical cross-correspondence…
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Crop circles
Strange circular depressions in fields of grain crops. In England during 1976, patterns of unknown origin were observed, impressed on fields of grain. At first the patterns were simple circles but, as years passed, the number, locations, and complexity of these circles increased. The idea that some human agency might be responsible was dismissed: There…
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Sir William Crookes
One of England’s outstanding scientists who during the early years of his career became involved in psychical research and with one of the most controversial mediums of modern spiritualism, Florence Cook. After graduating from the Royal College of Chemistry, he went to work in the Meteorological Department at Radcliffe Observatory. His first major contribution was…
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Criminal genes
The idea that there is a gene that predisposes its possessors to criminal or aberrant behavior. In the 19th century, Italian physician Cesare Lom-Broso claimed to have identified features that characterized criminals: “the enormous jaws, high cheek bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle-shaped ears,” characteristics shared…
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Creation science research center
A facility to promote the teachings of creation science. The Creation Science Research Center was founded in 1970 by Nell Seagraves, her son Kelly Seagraves, and Henry Morris as a division of Christian Heritage College, the independent fundamentalist school associated with Scott Memorial Baptist Church, San Diego, California. Shortly after the founding of the center,…
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Cranial osteopathy
A therapy promoted by Dr. William Garner Sutherland in the 1940s. The skull is formed of several plates with slight separations between them. They are displaced during birth and may not return to their proper positions subsequently, sometimes causing a misalignment of the facial bones, especially the jawbones. They also may be displaced later in…
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Covens
A gathering of witches or practitioners of the Wicca religion. Covens usually have a fairly constant membership often, according to some traditions, of 13 members. This number supposedly relates to Christ and his 12 apostles, but this idea probably arose during the Inquisition, when witches were persecuted as heretics; the idea of witches perverting Christ’s…
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Counting horses
An interesting occurrence in the field of animal cognition that received plenty of observational evidence but no scientific approval. A famous case was that of Clever Hans, a horse that demonstrated to audiences many times that he could add, subtract, and even solve complicated mathematical problems by tapping out numbers with his hoof and stopping…
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Emile coue
A French pharmacist who at his clinic at Nancy in 1920 introduced a method of psychotherapy based on autosuggestion (self-induced suggestion). His method, which ran counter to his two great contemporaries, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, was to encourage each patient to set his or her personal goal and then to repeat frequently: “Every…
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