
Read all abaht it!
"A look at the amazing life of 19 year old Gary Mannion - the UKs newest Psychic Surgeon"
By Julia
The Indigo Kid has contributed an article to Highspirit magazine, which according to its website www.highspiritmagazine.co.uk is dedicated to:
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Offering readers both inspiration and motivation to help achieve a healthy life balance.
Every now and then we can feel slightly of [sic] course and seek a sense of direction. Highspirit offers ideas and expert advice to help get back on track, boost confidence, make good choices and feel revitalised both physically and emotionally.
Covering natural health and nutrition, fitness, diet and detox, beauty and complimentary [sic] therapies, relationships, fashion. Travel: holistic holidays, spiritual reatreats [sic], spas.
Also giving an insight to astrology, psychic readings, spiritual awareness and personal development and featuring real life positive success stories to give inspiration for a happy and healthy life.
Other articles in the same issue include:
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Energy vampires
It might come as a surprise to learn that it's not just your late night addiction to Desperate Housewives that's sapping your get-up-and-go.
You don't have to be particularly cynical to suspect that with a title like that the article itself
has be a disappointment.
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Complementary therapies A-Z
Don't know your Buteyko from your Zero Balancing?
Read our A-Z of complementary therapies by Cora Lydon
Think of all the times you've been publicly humiliated by not knowing your Buteyko from your Zero Balancing!
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Street Psychic
UK leading Psychic Tony Stockwell answers our questions.
Yes,
that Tony Stockwell, clueless Psychic Sleuth Extraordinaire:
http://badpsychics.com/thefraudfiles/modules/news/article.php?storyid=66Quote:
Reiki is Only Love
Reiki is all about healing and positive energy - but above all, Reiki is about Love says International Reiki Master Teacher Gaetano Vivo
So Reiki is only love, eh? I was under the impression it was a method that enabled Westerners to make a good living by manipulating an imaginary Chinese/Japanese "life force energy".
Highspirit also has a "psychic agony aunt" - Netty, who is described in glowing terms by the
Faces Agency
www.facesagency.co.uk (my bolding):
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NETTY
One of Europes top clairvoyants, mediums, and lifecoaches.
Netty is a clairvoyant, medium and author. She started channelling [sic] spirit at the age of three and has many celebrity clients for both psychic guidance and lifecoaching.
Her work takes her all over Europe and she has many television credits to her name for the BBC and Sky channel 886. She is also the resident psychic agony aunt for Highspirit magazine and Vision magazine.
Netty can give readings from any household objects ranging from a tomato sauce bottle to a blank piece of paper! She also produces angel pictures and channells [sic] messages using a hot iron and wax all with her eyes shut! Netty is also the author of the Angels for Life book which is seeing fantastic sales on both sides of the atlantic. Her work as a metaphysical tutor allows her to get you involved by showing you tools so that you too can have a go at recieving [sic] psychic messages in a full interactive and fun way.
Blimey. Just...blimey. Even by New Age standards the combination of tomato sauce bottles, angels, a hot iron, wax and tools boggles the mind. And just think what Netty might be capable of doing with her eyes
open! But I shouldn't mock. I'm sure Netty is a deeply spiritual woman who just happens to have the same agent as the Grumbleweeds, several magicians and Richard Felix of
Most Haunted fame.
The
Highspirit website also features a "Consultant Directory", which lists the websites of everyone featured in the current issue of the magazine. Right at the bottom is an interesting little disclaimer:
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High Spirit makes no representations regarding the accuracy of any information relating to any of the sites listed. Any questions, complaints or claims regarding these sites must be directed to the appropriate webmaster.
In other words: never mind if the information is accurate or not,
Highspirit is only interested in raking in the dough from credulous readers. Or perhaps most of the money comes from the individuals and companies featured in the articles, which sound suspiciously like infomercials. In either case you'd think
Highspirits would be able to afford the services of a proofreader, although you may have noticed that the
Faces Agency doesn't employ one either.
The good news is that you don't have to buy
Highspirits to read Gary's article, which is reproduced on
www.garymannion.com. According to Gary the magazine can be found "in most shops such as WHSmiths as of April 2008", which is rather odd as some of the articles are Christmas-related. There's even something rather Christmassy about the cover girl, a graduate of the Tammy Faye Bakker School of Cosmetology who would look perfectly at home on top of a Christmas tree. But I digress - back to Gary's article.
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I grew up in London and even from a young age and was seeing and conversing with entities that were not physically there. These entities being Spirit.
Most young children see and converse with invisible entities, otherwise known as imaginary friends. But of course they're not
Indigo children.
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However I don't remember anything before the age of 13 and so therefore have had to go by stories I have heard from my parents...
It must be almost unheard of not to remember anything from the first thirteen years of your life. In fact I'm willing to bet it's the only genuinely unusual thing about Gary.
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Also from a young age I was classed with A.D.H.D. (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder), put on Ritalin and regularly sent to see a childhood [sic] psychologist. However, as I grew older my parents saw a programme on the side effects of this drug and took me off it straight away.This is what has given me all my first hand experience on working with fellow Indigo Children.
That's interesting. I wonder if Gary's parents came across the concept of "Indigo Children" at about the same time as they saw that programme about Ritalin?
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As I was developing my psychic abilities I was also practically running 2 well known home improvement companies, teaching drama to kids and adults and working one on one with kids in schools that were being classed with all the current child behavioural problems.
All this before his eighteenth birthday! I wonder
which well-known home improvement companies Gary is referring to? And
which schools allowed a teenager to work "one on one" with their problem pupils?
Gary's introduction to bloodless, offal-free "psychic surgery" took place two years ago in Manchester, when:
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I was asked to try out a form of spiritual healing that they practiced. Up to the point I had done some healing at my local church and therefore saw no reason why I shouldn't give it a go and placed my hands on this woman's stomach. As soon as I made contact I felt this strong presence behind me and I saw these hands reach into this lady's skin and start pulling mould out. When this had finished I explained what I had seen and was told that she did in fact have a stomach condition. Food did not always digest in her stomach and every now and again she would have to go to the hospital to get it removed when it went all mouldy. As shocked as I was, I was willing to accept that something amazing had happened...
Many readers of this astonishing tale, which Gary repeated at the "demonstration of psychic surgery" held at St James' Church in February 2008, will also be "shocked" - by his effrontery at coming out with such a load of rubbish. When I asked members of the Bad Science Forum (
http://badscience.net/forum/) for their comments on this curious stomach complaint I received a memorable reply from "neil desperandum":
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Complete pants.
For one thing food isn't digested in the stomach, apart from some initial protein digestion. The acid denatures almost all enzymes, which is how it kills microbes, which is what the acid is for. So little digestion and no mold.
The hospital trips were presumably to a psychiatric unit.
I couldn't have put it better myself...
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Two weeks after this experience started I was back in Manchester running a development circle. We had a new lady attend and I was told that she had a bad knee. I asked her to hop on the couch and allow me to do some spiritual healing on her leg...As soon as I placed my hands on her knee I felt this presence behind me however this time the presence spoke and told me they would be performing an operation on the leg. I instantly protested stating things like "if anything goes wrong she will kill me. It's alright for you your [sic] already dead.It's going to hurt me a lot more than it's going to hurt you." After much reassurance from this spirit and then receiving the lady's approval I gave in. The spirit hands entered the body and this time instead of just seeing everything I could feel everything as well. Since that incident the woman has not had a problem with her leg.
Gentle reader, put yourself in the position of a woo-inclined lady with a knee problem bad enough to be painful but not bad enough to stop her hopping on a couch. No sooner had she put herself in Gary's hands than he began to argue with the invisible spirit who wanted to perform an "operation" on her knee. This inter-dimensional squabble must have been vastly entertaining, but peace was soon restored and the operation - which in Gary's version of psychic surgery is no more than massage/manipulation - took place in front of an audience conditioned to accept the miraculous. Can you imagine the patient having the rank
ingratitude to say "Erm..It doesn't really feel much different?" And what precisely was wrong with this woman? "A bad knee" could be the result of an accident, arthritis, rheumatism, a cartilage problem...we'll probably never know.
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My approach to all spiritual matters is very down to earth and I like to see the evidence.
As we've seen elsewhere, Gary's definition of "evidence" isn't one you'll find in the dictionary. When you've read the complete article on
www.garymannion.com have a look at the little comment that appeared on the home page after Gary's lies were exposed on BadPsychics and UK-Skeptics:
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For those who believe and know the work of spirit is true no explanation is needed. For those who do not believe no satisfactory explanation can be given to satisfy your dis-beliefs. For ignorance is Bliss!
"No explanation is needed"? Well, that neatly does away with the need for evidence...
Finally:
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I have also now started doing physical mediumship, in which spirit have [sic] lifted tables off the floor, answered questions through a series of knocks and even tapped out well known theme songs.
Any further comment on that last statement would surely be superfluous, so I'll merely wonder - not for the first time - why so many New Agers have absolutely no sense of the ridiculous.
Some useful links:"Why Bogus Therapies Often Seem to Work"
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/altbelief.htmlIndigo Children:
http://www.skepdic.com/indigo.htmlhttp://www.randi.org/jr/2006-07/072806academic.html#i14ADHD and medication:
http://www.addcentre.co.uk/ADHDMedicateorNot.htmlRitalin controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_about_ADHDReiki:
http://www.skepdic.com/reiki.html"The Woo-Woo Credo":
http://www.watchingyou.com/woowoo.html