There is hardly a word that evokes more fear and curiosity than the word “occult”, yet it has been a much maligned word as well, for it simply means “hidden”. I will admit that some morally evil things are “hidden” if you will admit that maybe some things of value are hidden as well. So being hidden, in itself, doesn’t necessarily make something bad or evil. Hiding something is a tool, many tools are demonized by society due to lack of understanding. The thing we must remember is that each and every tool has dangers associated with it. First of all, there are many different types of information which has been termed “occult”, anything “hidden”, including but not limited to: witchcraft, Wicca, magick, magic, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Paganism, Sufism, mysticism, Kabbala, Rosicrucianism, astrology, palm reading, tarot cards, the Ouija board and the worship of the devil himself. My warnings on occult teachings are the same as they are for religion, it is a play ground for our rational thoughts to become corrupted with superstitions and magical thinking. A group think mentality can fester, infecting the followers when they are expected to believe in such a way that fits the model. Anytime you place your faith in something, there is a chance that some one will unscrupulously take advantage of you, exploiting your trust. Again this is not to say that religion or the occult are bad, I believe that the study of both subjects can be helpful in understanding where we came from and why we think like we do. Trying to understand the belief systems of our ancestors, can teach us about our own superstitions and assumptions.
Clearly I see magic and conjuring, and even juggling, and ventriloquism as deriving from these occult or hidden arts. Entertaining magic shows and ventriloquists are the modern evolution of earlier enchanters with an objective not only to fool the senses, but to truly deceive as well. These enchanters still exist and still practice the same methods as a stage magician or mentalist, only with the intent to deceive and defraud an unsuspecting public. Just like their predecessors these deceivers learn to infiltrate religion and spiritual belief systems, which make the deception stronger, and the consensus of like beliefs seem like fact.
Religion, the occult, politics, and businesses are saturated with unscrupulous deceptive individuals. If the leaders of an organization or business are corrupt and encourage deceptive practices the entire organization becomes corrupt as well. “Cooking the books” in business is common place, we hear of big companies defrauding there shareholders, some are caught and reported on, some are never caught.
Main stream religion has seen Christian faith healer Peter Popoff exposed before the nation by James Randi in the 1980's to the point that according to Randi, Popoff declared bankruptcy in 1987. Randi used a radio scanner to bust Popoff for using a tiny listing device, to listen to his wife back stage and receive information on the various followers and their ailments. He would spout forth this information as if it was divinely inspired. Randi also nails him on other acts of mental misdirection. We are told to forgive and forget, and we do, and Peter Popoff is back on television. Luring the unsuspecting with powerful words and demonstration, occurs in the world of the occult. The methods available to a person who truly wants to manipulate and deceive are immense, and it has been shown that even after a charlatan has been exposed to his followers as a fraud the faithful return to the comfort of the leader. I refuse to clog these pages with references but I will mention the book Psychic Mafia by M. Lamar Keene and Allen Spragget, because it illustrates this point that to the faithful, a fake guru is better than no guru at all.
 

My experience in magic is a classic fools journey, at about age nine I was taught two card tricks by my father, after I begged for a months to learn them. When I was sixteen, I was a professional clown, at seventeen my girlfriend started booking my clown act. By the time I was nineteen I was determined to create an act and transform from a clown to a magician. I created an act with my girlfriend, and at twenty years old became the youngest performer to win “Best Stage Magic” at the Texas Association Of Magicians. Three weeks before I turned twenty-four, my magical partner/ high school sweetheart Angela and I got married. The rest as they say is history, magic has taken us to exotic and interesting places such as Japan and the Netherlands, and introduced us to diverse variety of terrific people. At this time, Angela and I have been married for nineteen years and have a beautiful nine year old daughter.
One of the first gigs we got after I took off the make-up, was at a college renaissance fair, “Angelica the Queen of Mystery” and I performed a two person telepathy act, along with several psychic stunts. Following one of the shows, Angie was accosted by two girls from the colleges bible study group. The girls were carrying bibles and insisted that Angie should drop to her knees and ask the Lord for forgiveness, because divination and mind reading is the power of demons and an abomination of God. Angie replies by telling the girls that she is simply an actress portraying the part of a mind reader, a mentalist. The girls responded to this, as if the serpent himself had said it. They began praying and preaching, telling her she is possessed by demons. Finally a teacher from the college stepped in and told the girls to leave Angela alone, that she was hired to perform. Another time we got a call, from a big company that was throwing party with a circus sideshow theme. They were looking for strolling close-up magicians, as Angela was finalizing the deal for myself and a fellow magician, the client mentioned he was looking for a fortune teller as well, if she could recommend one. Angie’s motto, “If you are going to make your living from hand to mouth you better be ambidextrous”. She tells the client how she is not, exactly a fortune teller but a mentalist, and being an actress as well, she figures she could do the gig, so he hired her. The night of the party they had a nice black tent set up for her, which she set up an electric plasma ball wrapped with an old silk scarf. Her only preparation for the gig was to tease and style her hair, apply as much eye make-up as she possibly could, and the palmistry book she had been reading the week before. She had very few props including an, Amazing Kresken pendulum and a deck of Rhine esp cards. She had intended to play the part totally, tongue-in-cheek. Her first guy comes in for a reading and she asks for his hand, after looking for at it, she quips,”no the clean one”, not a smile. The guy just held up his other hand and waited to hear about his future. So she realized right away that these people were not here to be entertained but to be advised. So she began to talk to the people heart to heart and using some cold reading, but mainly just using intuition to get to the heart of the issues in that persons life. She would meet with each person one on one, talk to some people for five minutes some for twenty minutes, as one would leave the next would come in, not realizing she had a line of sixty or more. As one person would leave the tent, invariably people would ask, “is it worth the wait”,or “Is she really psychic”, they would answer, “unbelievable”or “oh my god, yes...”, so her legend quickly grew. The party was huge, it was supposed to run four hours from seven o’clock until eleven, at eleven she had over sixty people in line. I had finished, so I went and told her what time it was, how big the line was, and to speed it up. While sitting on a bench waiting I struck up a conversation with a woman who had just come out of the little black tent, when she found out I was married to the “Queen of Mystery”she asked me, “what’s it like being with someone who knows?”. The powers at be cut the line down to about ten or twelve people at eleven-thirty, the next few people in line offered the security money to let them stay in line, and many people got upset. Her little tent was the hottest attraction at the event. On the way home she told us about one man who broke down in tears, after she commented, “your not very flexible”, he then confided that his wife had left him and he felt it was because he was to stubborn. I could hardly believe how with no more credentials than a brightly colored sign reading “fortune teller”, total strangers would open up and totally ignore rational thought. My wife felt somewhat guilty after that, not because of anything she did or said but because she realized the people that she did readings for put instant faith in her, and they believed she was psychic. She has not performed as a fortune teller since.
The reason I bring these stories up is to illustrate that, many people do believe, in palm reading, psychics, mind reading and demon possession. At least some,(like the people in the above examples),believe in fraudulent fortune tellers, and they spread the myth with eye witness accounts.