Broca's Brain - Carl Sagan [25]
The serpent was, in fact, of a large and conveniently docile variety, procured for this purpose earlier in Macedonia, and outfitted with a linen head of somewhat human countenance. The room was dimly lit. Because of the press of the crowd, no visitor could stay for very long or inspect the serpent very carefully. The opinion of the multitude was that the seer had indeed delivered a god.
Alexander then pronounced the god ready to answer written questions delivered in sealed envelopes. When alone, he would lift off or duplicate the seal, read the message, remake the envelope and attach a response. People flocked from all over the Empire to witness this marvel, an oracular serpent with the head of a man. In those cases where the oracle later proved not just ambiguous but grossly wrong, Alexander had a simple solution: he altered his record of the response he had given. And if the question of a rich man or woman revealed some weakness or guilty secret, Alexander did not scruple at extortion. The result of all this imposture was an income equivalent today to several hundred thousand dollars per year and fame rivaled by few men of his time.
We may smile at Alexander the Oracle-Monger. Of course we all would like to foretell the future and make contact with the gods. But we would not nowadays be taken in by such a fraud. Or would we? M. Lamar Keene spent thirteen years as a spiritualist medium. He was pastor of the New Age Assembly Church in Tampa, a trustee of the Universal Spiritualist Association, and for many years a leading figure in the mainstream of the American spiritualist movement. He is also a self-confessed fraud who believes, from first-hand knowledge, that virtually all spirit readings, séances and mediumistic messages from the dead are conscious deceptions, contrived to exploit the grief and longing we feel for deceased friends and relatives. Keene, like Alexander, would answer questions given to him in sealed envelopes—in this case not in private, but on the pulpit. He viewed the contents with a concealed bright lamp or by smearing lighter fluid, either of which can render the envelope momentarily transparent. He would find lost objects, present people with astounding revelations about their private lives which “no one could know,” commune with the spirits and materialize ectoplasm in the darkness of the séance—all based on the simplest tricks, an unswerving self-confidence, and most of all, on the monumental credulity, the utter lack of skepticism he found in his parishioners and clients. Keene believes, as did Harry Houdini, that not only is such fraud rampant among the spiritualists, but also that they are highly organized to exchange data on potential clients, in order to make the revelations of the séance more astonishing. Like the viewing of Alexander’s serpent, the séances all take place in darkened rooms—because the deception would be too easily penetrated in the light. In his peak-earning years, Keene earned about as much, in equivalent purchasing power, as Alexander of Abonutichus.
From Alexander’s time to our own—indeed, probably for as long as human beings have inhabited this planet—people have discovered they could make money by pretending to arcane or occult knowledge. A charming and enlightening account of some of these bamboozles can be found in a remarkable book published in 1852 in London, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. Bernard Baruch claimed that the book saved him millions of dollars—presumably by alerting him to which idiot schemes he should not invest his money in. Mackay’s treatment ranges from alchemy, prophecy and faith healing, to haunted houses, the Crusades, and the “influence of politics and religion on the hair and beard.” The value of the book, like the account of Alexander the Oracle-Monger, lies in the remoteness of the frauds and delusions described. Many of the impostures do not have a contemporary ring and only weakly