BANEFUL “MAGIC.”

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1400, 6 September 1923, Page 3

BANEFUL “MAGIC.”

IMPOSTERS ATTACKED. The evil effect of superstition and trickery, even on modern people, who know too little of the extent to which clever charlatans could impose on credulity, was stressed by Mr Reg. R. Oakley in an address delivered at the Grafton Library Hall the other evening (says an Auckland exchange). The lecturer declared that the time bad arrived when educationalists should teach that neither the “marvellous” feats of magicians nor the surprising revelations of mediums should shake our faith in science or make us slaves to superstition. “There are,” he said, “a legion of charlatans who prey upon the minds of the credulous by pretending to read the future from the lay-out of a pack of cards, from the tea leaves in a cup, or the lines in one’s hand. Surely our centuries of learning should have wiped such foolish superstitions from the minds of us all. The tremendous loss of life entailed by the Great War has been turned to monetary advantage by crime-warped tricksters, who prey upon the sentimental yearnings of the bereaved relatives of men who gave their lives for the overthrow of evil, and there is a pitiful roll of suicides and mental cases as the result of the indiscriminate dabbling by weakf-mindjed people (and sometimes even strongminded ones) in matters which should be reserved for the inquiry of hardheaded investigators, specially trained for the work.’ ’ The lecturer contended that science would one day prove that the phenomena of spiritism were the result of purely physical processes. The lecture was embellished by a number of conjuring tricks illustrating the “magic” of the Indian fakirs, the card tricks of modern conjurers, and the "spiritualist phenomena” of so-called mediums in which Mr Oakley demonstrated remarkable skill.