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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 4, 1979)
THE BATTALION Page 3B nSupernatural alive, well in B-CS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1979 m m r than lk up for even Most 100 mark tit best record 5,000 in Ik 00,0004 eat retainiii aid. “Man) 1 a time bast lar game llii lying as 1( ut by the By CLAY B. COCKRILL Special to The Battalion Belief in the supernatural is alive over the world, including Bryan id College Station. Clairvoyants, trologists, folk doctors and water 55 appea v j ne rs can all be found locally, ick one ros The following narrative captures closely as possible the dialogue tween a man and a clairvoyant at transpired in Bryan. Sources main unidentified for reason of ivacy. The young man climbed the rch of the large, old house and ocked a few times at the door. A mrt, dark-complected woman of out 50 years appeared. “I, uh, guess I came to seek your rvices,” he said. The woman unlatched the door id let him in. He found himself anding in a high foyer with two lairs against the back wall and to be|' „ it goes 011 3 eople drf teU !/ ou y° ur P ast ’ present ice they: jM future by looking into your tn’t beattkit/es, your face, and your body. beatable’ a player’s | will answer three questions, onsultation is $40.” — A ryan woman who says she is a ges himmli a i rC0 y an t And 1 rs. ster they ’s fascinate e detail mi - beeps aii uicken » ■rs approad] o a night ask whelk™ , , , he man spoke ace Invade! ,. v „ >. ■ McDilU YeS ’ $4 °- Don 1 aor leading into a living area. In- Ide, the house seemed stately. The oman turned to him and spoke :ry routinely: I tell you your past, present and ture by looking into your eyes, ur face, and your body. I will an- er three questions. Consultation I $40.” I There was a long pause and then ix months. i inflation Dr the last in lawyer gotten tei you have a •'nrfteaper rate, maybe, like for less P ent at le fJions?” The woman smiled warmly. “You em to be a little short today. I tell rou what, I let you have the three lestions for $25, how’s that?” /ITIC There was another long pause. much do you have,” the i woman asked. Ct/i I "Well I wasn’t thinking of spend- |jng more than $10.” “Okay. What do you want to lOW?” “Well I, uh, have this problem [ith women. None of the relation- ips ever seem to last. I’d like to know if one ever will.” I “Your problem is you are too percentnk emo tj ona l. That has been the prob- s. Therein j n a jj y 0ur p as j relationships: last year L ur enl otions and your temper got ' rate j’“ r .put of hand. You have to learn to plus the k Ijufj-o] y 0ur emotions. You are not road decidt j v j n g j n (} ie cav eman days; you can’t r of reti j u ]] y 0ur wa y through everything to pacd 115a Lj, gel whal you -waul. You have to learn to control your hat mafesi | em p er .” 0 the Unil t was awe( j Never before h taxation anyone spoken so truthfully to and jitteiifljiu) anc ] w ith such knowledge and lunity, uliji a IFrankliii»W^ e man was awe< ^- ^ ever be- ador. fore had anyone spoken so ris builtti truthfully to him and with such 1, a school 1 knowledge and authority. He civic orgaii teas confused. How could she an Amp k mw these things about him? Anonym® fj e b een skeptical of fortune ' e °’ tellers before, but now he was " S i / beginning to wonder. porate 01* 0 0 ____ pend ski ufftority. He was confused. How gh to surai s 4 know these things about shim? He had been skeptical of for tune tellers before, but now he was ginning to wonder. The woman sensed his awe. “I ow you are confused. It is a gift 1 me by God. Everyone has a You have yours.” “How long have you had it?” “I have known about it since I was about 15 years old. What else do you want to know?” “I will soon graduate from col lege. My father runs a business and he wants me to come work with him.” “No, it will never work. Your father is too much like you are. You don’t like to be told what to do. You both would rather give orders than to receive them.” “But what if he retires?” “Oh, well that would be all right. As long as you are your own boss.” Still the man was awed. The words she used seemed to charac terize him perfectly. How could she do it? How could she know? “There is a woman I met who lives in another state. When I graduate, she wants me to come see her. Should I?” “Go. Give it a chance. Give some one a chance to be close to you. And don’t wait too long. You are young, but you will get older, and you could live a short, unhappy life if you aren’t careful. Speed, alcohol and drugs will not make you happy. Why do you need these things? And remember that sex is not all there is to a relationship. If sex is all you want, go out on the street and get it, and that way you won’t hurt any one.” “Can you predict the future?” The woman spoke impatiently now: “You are going to be all right but you must do these things I’ve told you.” “But if you can see the future, the future is the future; what difference does it make?” “You are going to be all right, if you do these things.” Creative portrait package Multiple exposures, indoor/outdoor photography, unlimited imagination. Packages as low as University If ili! 1 Studio Northgate 846-8019 3109 Texas Avenue Bryan, Texas 77801 Dr. Tom Green, a folklorist at Texas A<LrM, called what people want clairvoyants to do “taking the randomness out of a situa tion. ” The woman had never seen the man before that day, and yet in that brief period she had painted a de scriptive image of him that seemed to be correct. She was apparently able to do this through her powers of extrasensory perception (ESP), an ability to perceive and understand things that cannot be perceived by the normal senses. The man left the house with a greater sense of direc tion in his life and a less skeptical attitude toward the supernatural. In helping people work out their problems, psychologists and minis ters take a much less direct ap proach to giving advice, said Dr. Jef frey Kern, a psychologist at Texas A&M University. They don’t depend on any kind of special, extra sense through which they can define people and give them advice, and they avoid de scriptive images. In fact most of them, said Kern, avoid giving ad vice altogether. Instead, they try to help people understand themselves so that they can answer their own questions. Kern is skeptical of clairvoyants. “I don’t think that anyone can make those kinds of statements about another person with such cer tainty as she did,” he said. Kern said clairvoyants try to al leviate peoples’ problems by making something predictable that wasn’t before. Dr. Tom Green, a folklorist at Texas A&M, called this “taking the randomness out of a situation. ” A person confronted with a prob lem is confused by the multitude of possible outcomes to an impending situation. Green said. What the clairvoyant does is try to remove the confusion by telling the person what the outcome will be, he said. The Eskimo equivalent of the In dian medicine man is called a sha man. Before a hunt, Eskimo hunters are often uncertain about where to find game. Instead of engaging in an undirected search, they ask the shaman, and he tells them where to look. “If the hunters should find deer, then the powers of the shaman are confirmed. If they don’t find deer, then it is accepted that it was be cause they didn’t believe strongly enough in the shaman or they didn’t strictly observe tribal rites,” Green said. “For the Eskimo, any direction is better than no direction at all,” he said. And so it often is for people in modern society. Confused by the multitude of decisions to be made, thay turn to clairvoyants and supers tition for guidance. It is not neces sarily the logical approach to solving a problem, but as Brewton Barry writes in “You and Your Supersti tion,” man is only semi-logical any way. “He is dominated more by habit, custom, public opinion, and vanity than he is by reason. Far more,” says Berry. That may explain how a clair voyant is able to make people feel better and why they seek their ad vice, but does it mean that all clair voyants are quacks? And what about the young man who confessed that the things the woman said about him seemed to be true? How is it that the image she painted seemed to be the right image? Kern admits that he once went to a gathering of psychics in Florida who knew, without him telling them, what his mother’s name was and that she was deceased. “I can’t explain that,” he said. “I’m not dogmatically against it (be lief in psychic abilities), but I’m still skeptical.” Kern said part of a psychic’s abil ity to make judgments about a per son that that person can identify with, is due to their use of general statements that would seem correct to anyone. “Suppose that the woman had told the man instead that his prob lem with women was that he was sometimes shy and wouldn’t come out of his shell. He would have probably identified with that just as easily,” said Kern. Green said he agreed that this is often true but said nonetheless, that for many groups of people clair- t^<TI ills?:: voyant predictions are valid alterna tives for dealing with problems. He also said that most clair voyants in the United States are quite sincere in their own belief in their abilities. They are often very sensitive to body mannerisms and physical changes in their clients, such as eye dilations. It could be that they sub consciously extrapolate their predic tions from that, he said. j RESTAURANT presents Happy Hour 4-6 (7 days a week) 2 for 1 per person 10% discount for all A&M students with current I.D. Mon.-Thurs. only. Hamburgers 1800 S. Texas Ave. College Station 693-9515 The Cow Hop The Biggest Burger Bargains in B-CS! GIANT 1/3 LB. HOMEMADE BURGER ++ of* served with a pile of real French Fries or salad. Dress it yourself N* T ^ at our salad bar. 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