Sorcery

A sorcerer mumbles a spell over a photograph of a seriously ill girl, and she is cured. Another sorcerer sticks pins in a wax doll, and his distant victim screams. Preposterous? Certainly that’s what we were taught, but a mass of evidence has accumu-lated suggesting that we were wrong, that these things may occur, and occur in accordance with rationally determined principles. In this persuasively argued book, J. Finley Hurley gives serious consideration to the possibility that old-fashioned strike-dead-and-blind sorcery is a reality.The power to influence the thoughts, dreams and actions of other at great distance is one of the oldest ‘facts of nature’ known to man, and this book gives a clear exposition of why we should regard sorcery as a very real phenomenon. It shows that old-fashioned sorcery, the casting of spells that heal or kill, can be a rational ad effective procedure in harmony with the modern, scientific world-view. A few scientists have recognized this, but their evidence has never been treated in detail—until this book.It draws from scientific studies in many areas —perception, creativity, biofeedback, dreams, telepathy, psychosomatic reactions—to marshal the fascinating case histories and experiments that put sorcery in a surprisingly modern perspective. Without abandoning rationality, the reader can understand how a spell is cast and why it the impli-cations are absorbing and perhaps frightening.Comments by researchers and authors in the field of the paranormal Eisenbud, late professor of psychiatry at the university of Colorado, was cited by Steven Braude as parapsychology's premier theoretician. Eisenbud was the author of many books on the paranormal, including Psi and Psychoanalysis, Paranormal Foreknowledge, Psychology and the Unconscious, The World of Ted Serios. He wrote that Sorcery is a "marvelous book." "It is far and away the best thing that has been written on the extensive powers of the mind for producing evil at a distance, and I trust it will put the futile exercises of the laboratory in their place once and for all."Colin Wilson, prolific author of books on the paranormal, a few of which are The Occult, The Outsider, The Psychic Detectives, Mysteries of the Mind, The Unexplained, Poltergeist! wrote "I think [Sorcery] a really excellent piece of work—very exciting."Guy Lyon Playfair, author of many books on the paranormal, among them The Flying Cow, Cycles of Heaven, The Indefinite Boundary, The Unknown Power, Twin Telepathy, Medicine, Mind & Magic, applauded Sorcery as "a splendid book. It is a book I certainly intend to read again."