On The Box

One place where psychics have proved ever popular is on television. (It almost gives new meaning to Alvin Toffler's adage "the medium is the message".) Many programmes, both fictional and documentary, have been made on the subject and, while travelling with psychic fairs, I've done my share of interviews.

The only time I refused to be interviewed was the making of an "infomercial". One of the dial-up Tarot businesses wanted to make a promo featuring television presenter Michael Caton and I was asked to be the Tarot reader. Because telephone Tarot readers are instructed to keep their callers on line as long as possible at about $5 a minute I wanted no part of it. I don't know if the infomercial was ever made; I heard nothing more about it and don't watch the kind of show that features them.

On the other hand I was happy to participate in a documentary made by a company called Froxoff Films who have been nominated for awards at the Cannes Film Festival.

The director had watched me working at a Mind-Body-Spirit Festival in Sydney and asked if I would participate. She and her camera man (camera person, I suppose—it was a woman) visited me at home and we talked for a long time about things psychic and the rationale and philosophy of New Age mysticism.

I did a Tarot reading for Ms Camera so they could see close-up how I operated. There was a little humour when I turned over the card representing her current boy friend and it proved to be the Devil. I was about to interpret it when she said, "That's spot on—he's a Satanist."

The show—Romancing the Chakra—was completed in due course and a public preview was shown at a Sydney cinema. It started with New Age guru, Deepak Chopra, stating that "Humankind is governed by the four F's—Fright, Flight, Fight and Procreation." A clever opening but it went downhill from there.

Although the intention had been to make a serious documentary the finished product was a spoof—and who could blame the producers? The change was probably caused by the attitudes of the people who participated. I had no cause for complaint with the producer's summation: "It is the end of the Millennium and the New Age is booming. Across the economic spectrum, millions of Australians are rejecting conventional Religions to pay for the packaged happiness that is on sale in the supermarket of the soul."

The setting was the Mind-Body-Spirit Festival and the format was to film two innocents as they made their way through a mish-mash of practitioners espousing a mish-mash of beliefs that must have left the producers (not to mention the innocents) totally bemused. The change of plan was probably caused by the conflicting opinions of the practitioners, who took themselves too seriously. They couldn't believe that their thinking may have been flawed.

It was screened on the ABC's Channel 2 a few months later but I didn't have to endure it again since I heard only afterwards that it had been shown.

Did I get my five minutes of fame? Hardly! It was more like five minutes of notoriety. But it was an interesting experience and one I enjoyed.