[escepticos] RV: Russians and Paranormal

[planetario@...>]

-----Original Message-----
De: JamesOberg en aol.com <JamesOberg en aol.com>
Para: ybarbero en yvesbarbero.com <ybarbero en yvesbarbero.com>;
sheaffer en netcom.com <sheaffer en netcom.com>; WIZARDS-STAR-LIST en ssr.com
<WIZARDS-STAR-LIST en ssr.com>
Fecha: viernes 12 de febrero de 1999 23:54
Asunto: Russians and Paranormal


>Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999
>
>   GIVING REALITY THE SLIP: CRISIS-HIT RUSSIANS LOOK TO THE STARS
>   By Irina Glushchenko
>   MOSCOW - Suddenly, the Russian capital has been overrun by rabbits.
>You can find them in the markets, on the news-stands, and in the
>toyshops. The reason, as readers may have guessed, is that in Chinese
>astrology 1999 is the year of the rabbit.
>   Twenty years ago in Russia, such information was almost a secret.
>When I was at school, someone once gave me a few type-written sheets
>with the signs of the zodiac and the characteristics of the people
>born under them. I was staggered - everything was so unfamiliar, so
>unlike anything I had ever read! With its typos and spelling errors,
>the fuzzy letters showing that it was a third carbon copy, the text
>was like samizdat....
>   Those times are long past. The signs of the zodiac gradually crept
>into Soviet newspapers. I even managed to buy a set of postcards with
>drawings of the star-signs, and the corresponding dates. This was a
>real find. From then on, my friends and I would know which sign we
>had been born under. Then I started meeting people who asked
>insistently, ``What are you? A Libra?'', and who, once in command of
>this information, proceeded to map out my character in close detail.
>   Things were harder with the eastern calendar. There was no
>systematic information. Usually in late December, the popular
>television program International Panorama reported briefly: ``The
>Chinese consider the coming year to be the year of (the monkey)''...
>and added a few words about how one was supposed to mark such a year.
>Rumours grew. ``Have you heard? This is the year of the monkey!''
>Later, we also discovered that the monkeys and other animals were of
>various colours - blue, green, red and so on. That meant they had to
>be greeted in red (blue, green). We also learned what you had to do
>when celebrating the New Year. Sometimes you were required to crawl
>under the table. Or to moo, or to crow, depending on the animal whose
>year you were seeing in. Perfectly educated people carried out all
>these demands conscientiously.
>   Meanwhile, the veil of secrecy was lifting. Slender booklets were
>appearing, containing horoscopes, the signs of the zodiac, and the
>Chinese calendar. Now anyone could find out which year followed
>which, and what this meant. Toys and figurines symbolising the year
>went on sale as well. If the coming year was the year of the pig,
>souvenir pigs appeared everywhere. To buy such a pig became a matter
>of honour.
>   With the dawn of liberal reform, astrology went onto a mass-
>production basis. From being amusing pseudo-information, the occult
>sciences joined the category of serious, indispensable knowledge.
>Television appearances by astrologists took up even more time than
>the speechifying of politicians. We were regaled with such
>information as: ``In the late twenty-first century social cataclysms
>will occur in Britain, and as a result the British Isles themselves
>may sink.'' Television news programs ended with an astrological
>forecast for the following day or week. Every self-respecting
>newspaper acquired a staff astrologer, the thrust of whose
>predictions depended on the newspaper's profile. Business astrology,
>political astrology, erotic astrology and so forth all made their
>appearance. State figures consulted with specialists in the fields
>that particularly concerned them.
>   Where, in the former USSR, did all these experts on heavenly
>influences suddenly spring from? The astrologers, like the other
>sorcerers on our television screens, maintained that their knowledge
>or gift had been inherited from the past. Decades of repression by
>the Soviet authorities, they declared, had not managed to destroy it.
>   Meanwhile, learned academies were being established in which one
>could attend lectures on magic, love-potions, flying saucers, and so
>forth. Publications went on sale describing ``barabashka'', a
>mysterious being said to have invaded a women's hostel, and to
>manifest its presence through strange nocturnal knockings. The
>fascination with the occult gripped people of the most diverse views.
>For example, I came across a book on the prophesies of Nostradamus by
>an author who did not hide his communist convictions....
>   All this was understandable in a society that had abruptly lost its
>confidence in the future. People who had earlier believed
>explanations presented to them as ``the only true science'' found
>themselves handed over to the whims of fate. In the space of a few
>months, all their conceptual landmarks were obliterated. Soviet
>Marxism had taught them that science was good, and superstition bad.
>Then the propaganda began arguing that Marxism was absolutely
>incorrect, and that everything it taught was a lie. It was easy
>enough to conclude that superstition was better than science.
>   The ideological vacuum that followed the downfall of ``Soviet
>communism'' was not filled by convincing new ideas. The obvious
>degradation of rational knowledge, the decay of education and the
>general confusion encouraged people to turn to the wisdom of the
>middle ages.
>   The people who were now believing absurdities also had the excuse
>that in terms of their earlier experience, the events occurring
>around them were no less improbable than the sorcerers' fairy-tales.
>Matthias Rust's plane, landing on Red Square in broad daylight, was
>just as fantastic as a witch flying in on a broomstick. If we were
>supposed to believe that the recipes of the International Monetary
>Fund would save us by transforming the economy from the ``very bad''
>planned model to the ``very good'' market one, why not believe in
>wizards and witches too?
>   The most widespread development in the field of the supernatural was
>the mass appearance of ``extrasenses''. We were told that our society
>contained people gifted with the power to heal sickness without
>medicines or surgery. These people saw a person's ``aura'', and
>through some mysterious intuition, also recognised internal
>illnesses. The healing occurred when the extrasense, who was charged
>with the necessary energy, made a series of complicated hand
>movements above the patient. The extrasense flushed out kidneys,
>cleaned blood vessels, and sucked out tumours.
>   I once encountered an extrasense myself. He was a handsome engineer
>with kindly eyes, who lived in a little two-roomed flat that was
>always full of people. I went there with a woman friend who suffered
>from back pain. The extrasense spent a long time passing his hands
>over her, to no obvious effect. Then he took off his jacket and began
>massaging her back, just as an ordinary masseur would. The pain
>became less. I think we were lucky - he was not a greedy man, and
>believed sincerely in his powers.
>   The Russian police as well have begun resorting to the help of
>extrasenses, who have been asked to assist in the search for
>criminals and for people and objects that have vanished without
>trace. Rumours circulate of a top-secret security force unit staffed
>entirely with psychics and practitioners of black magic.
>   Meanwhile, there is no need for your firm to go bankrupt because it
>has been hexed by a competitor; an advertisement offers to ``protect
>your business from the evil eye''. Various other magical services,
>from the healing of impotence to the ``correction of karma'', enjoy
>great popularity. Attempts are also made to cure alcoholics through
>exorcism. The success rate here, though, is said to be unimpressive.
>   At a certain point, Russia witnessed a rash of mass cures. Some of
>the best-known extrasenses filled halls with people, worked them up
>to near-hysteria, and finally had them fall into a trance. Next to
>appear was television hypnosis. Perfectly well-educated people came
>to believe that if they put water in a glass in front of their
>television sets, an extrasense could ``charge'' it for them via the
>screen. If this water were then sprinkled on flowers, the story went,
>the flowers would grow better.
>   Here in Russia, we have grown used to being surrounded by witch-
>doctors, soothsayers, and astrological symbols. To a disturbing
>degree, we have become a society trying to give reality the slip. The
>charts on the economic pages point to destitution and national break-
>up; give us a star-chart instead.
>   So far, the most effective antidote has been cynicism. The more
>clear-headed Russians can no longer be convinced that anything very
>good is going to happen to them. As a result, they joke about
>astrology just as they joke about ideologies, the economy, and the
>country's leaders. In the year of the bull, cartoons appeared
>depicting the bull in the guise of a ``new Russian'' playing the
>stock market. When the year of the pig was followed by the year of
>the rat, throughout Moscow you could buy wall calendars depicting a
>fat rat in a dressing-gown, smashing open a piggy-bank beneath a New
>Year's fir-tree.
>   Meanwhile, as I have been writing this article, I have just learned
>that the coming year is not the year of the rabbit at all, but the
>year of the cat, and that it is yellow. However, I have been told, in
>Chinese astrology the rabbit and the cat are one and the same....
>