I wanted to test a pet psychic, but there was a slight problem. I didn’t have a pet.

Fortunately, my neighbors Matt and Bekah Johnson have two cats. There is Bizzy, a painfully shy toothless tabby, and Tennessee Jed, a plump, rambunctious tomcat. Since Bizzy rarely emerges from beneath the bed, Jed seemed the preferable feline subject for the investigation.

“Can I borrow Jed so I can test a pet psychic?” I asked my neighbors. “Sure!” they obliged, as though I’d asked if I could simply borrow a hammer or for the proverbial cup of sugar. I had the pet; now I needed a pet psychic.

Call it animal communication, animal whispering, or interspecies telepathic contact; this is big business for a clientele of doting owners, nervous trainers, and exasperated farmers. These psychic Doctor Dolittles claim variously to be able to perceive and understand the “words,” thoughts, and feelings of non-human animals (including deceased pets) using clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, and channeling and often to be able to diagnose and treat their diseases. There are hundreds of pet psychics in California alone. Here are some samples of their claims.

Reverend Sylvia Shaules, pictured clutching a terrified-looking rodent, specializes in the mysterious-sounding “dreamtime messengers,” “totem animals,” and “Giving Your Animal a Voice” (yes, her voice). Animal analyst Patrice Ryan is pet psychic to the stars of Hollywood. For $400 per hour she’ll perform “energy healing” on your pet. This sounds vague, but Ryan enthuses, “It’s truly a profound and enlightening experience.” Lori Wright will practice hands-on or remote reiki on your kitty and claims to be able to contact deceased pets, but she won’t (can’t?) “consult on lost animal situations.”

Buddy Love is “California’s Finest Male Pet Psychic” for whom “no problem is to big” [sic]. Love’s client reviews accuse him of being a slow typist during chat room readings while user “mykidzrule” complained of Love’s reading, “Completely opposite of what he told me last time.” Paula Brown styles herself as an “animal feng shui expert” and prepares remedies for your pet’s health needs. Small animals have delicate constitutions, so this is a particularly dangerous practice, but since Brown’s preparations are “flower essences,” they probably only serve as pet placebos (or owner placebos).

Animal Intuitive Cindy Western claims the incredible ability to “hear the voices” of animals. She explains, “it’s like having a conversation with a person, but it’s a conversation between the minds.” Western “heals and cares” for your beloved pets with herbs, vitamins, aromatherapy, and massage (is that like patting?). Animal communicator Kazuko Tao offers pet acupuncture and chiropractic. As a registered veterinary technician, Tao should know better than to offer these integrative services.

Like Ace Ventura, Lydia Hiby fashions herself as a “pet detective.” A Dr. Kevorkian for pets, she advises clients “when it is time to put an animal to sleep.” Hiby further claims she can communicate with non-verbal people, including “comatose, stroke victims, autistic children, etc.” But she won’t read deceased pets. Instead she recommends the John Edward of pet psychics, Teresa Wagner. Wagner is a “grief counselor” and pet medium who conducts séances with animals that have “crossed over Rainbow Bridge.”

But don’t be concerned about these wild claims; the pet psychic industry is regulated by a stringent “Code of Ethics” devised by “pioneer animal communication specialist” Penelope Smith. Smith claims that telepathic communication enables “universal communication” across species. . . .

Unfortunately, these pet psychics were either too far away or unavailable. Instead, they all offered remote appointments, email or telephone readings upon supplying the name, age, sex, color, breed, and a photo of the animal. It was back to the clawing board for me. Finally, I located Reverend Ann Savino, “The Bay Area Pet Psychic.” Savino is a “professional clairvoyant and staff member of the Academy for Psychic Studies. Her advertisement beams, “Psychic readings for animals. Animal communication and healing. Pet readings lovingly done—Give to those who give so much to you.” For a fee of $80, Ann agreed to travel from Berkeley to San Rafael to read “my” cat. The following is a report of this appointment, laced with commentary and Matt’s responses to the reading. With Ann’s permission I video recorded the entire session.

On the appointed day, Bekah arrived with a very skeptical-looking Jed. He wasn’t happy about being wrenched from his turf. Released in my lounge room, Jed slunk around close to the ground and darted under a futon, where he stayed. Normally a cocky kitty, this behavior was highly uncharacteristic. At first, I indulged Jed’s shyness, hoping that he would quickly assimilate to his temporary environment. Then he fell asleep. The time drew nearer to the appointment, and I needed to extricate him from his hiding spot. It wouldn’t take a pet psychic to deduce that something was wrong.

I called his name excitedly, but he stared coolly at me. I tried to lure him out with a very fun-looking fuzzy pineapple toy and a tasty turkey snack to no avail. So I had to adopt the tough love approach. I dragged aside the futon, grabbed Jed, held him firmly on my lap, and began petting him enthusiastically. It worked! Within minutes he was purring, frolicking around, and rubbing against me.

I heard a knock at the door and did a last dash around the house, hiding copies of The Skeptic. Ann entered the room and Jed took one look at her before retiring to the corner, wrapping himself up in a ball and sleeping with one eye open, fixed on her. She seemed nervous, so I made small talk. “Have you ever read any bizarre animals, like a llama?” She seemed to relax a tad; “Mostly cats and dogs. Once I read a guinea pig.”

“I’ll need a few minutes to center myself and warm-up,” Ann explained. She sat there, eyes closed, hands outstretched as though she was warming herself over an imaginary fire. For five minutes. When she came to, like a mountaintop seer she asked sagely, “What questions do you have?”

“Can you tell me about Jed’s past?” I asked. Of course, this implied that I didn’t know Jed’s past.

“How long have you had him?” Ann asked.

“Can’t Jed answer that question for you?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m just wondering.”

“About six months,” I claimed, waiting for Jed to “speak” up.

“Is he from a shelter?” she asked.

“Can’t Jed tell you about his background?” I urged again, wanting to witness the psychic action.

“I think he’s from a shelter. I can tell you haven’t had him long,” she stated.

Matt comments: “The psychic guessed that one. We got him from a rescue society that got him from the pound. He was one of a litter of kittens someone brought in.” Cat adoption is popular here in the States. Pet stores regularly hold “rescue days” for abandoned cats and kittens that are typically tabby moggies like Jed. But can we count this as a “hit”? As rescuing is a common practice, this was a logical question, followed by “I think he’s from a shelter,” admittance of a cognition-based conclusion. Ann also assumed that I hadn’t owned Jed for a “long” period of time. Was this supposition based on my accent, that I “hadn’t been in the country very long” myself? Or because I implied that I was unaware of Jed’s past? Or was this an observation based on Jed’s size? The latter is suggested by the following exchange.

“How old is Jed?” I continued.

“He’s one year old,” Ann answered immediately, “but I can tell that by just looking at him.” Although not a psychic vision, this visual conclusion was inaccurate anyway. Matt reveals, “Jed is roughly three years old. We’ve had him since he was twelve weeks old.”

I was beginning to become frustrated with this un-psychic performance and Ann’s shameless questions. “How does Jed actually ‘talk’ to you?” I inquired.

She replied, “He sends me images. I read his aura. It’s like an energy field that contains pictures and information. I ask him specific questions and he shows me images.” So Jed “understands” Ann’s complex questions, uttered in her English-speaking “inner voice”? Then she offered a disclaimer, “This reading isn’t full of hard-wired facts. I see images, like Jed playing in the grass and rolling over.” If I had to visualize a specific cat, I’d probably “see” it playing, eating, sleeping, or enacting other such typical cat behavior too.

“Is Jed aware that you’re communicating with him?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ann replied. I looked across at Jed, who was fast asleep.

“Where was Jed born?” I asked.

Ann closed her eyes momentarily. When she opened them she announced, “He was born not far from here. It was here in Marin County. This was somewhere hilly, not downtown San Rafael. It was maybe a little north, like Petaluma. It was definitely in this area, within a 10–15 mile radius.” The truth was unpredictable. Jed wasn’t even born in California. Matt replies: “Jed was born in/around Jackson, Mississippi. This is over 2,000 miles from Marin and not so much as a large hill in sight.”

I asked next, “Does Jed feel at home here?”

“Let me tune into him,” she said as her eyes rolled back into her head. “He’s happy here. He feels secure and safe. He definitely feels at home.” She paused, “This is the most secure he’s ever felt. He knows that this is his home.” Surely, if Ann were psychic, she would “see” images of Jed’s real home and real owners? But then she really drove the nail in, “Jed’s secure, happy, and safe in this home. He knows he’s loved. He knows that you’re his mummy.”

This recalled to me the previous scene before Ann arrived. As Bekah left, she bent down towards Jed and said endearingly, “Goodbye son. I’ll be back soon.” It was very clear that she is the cat’s mother. Weeks later, I met Matt’s mother, Miss Linda, who said to me, “I hear you’re writing about our grandson.”

“I’m sorry?” I replied, confused.

“I hear you’re writing about Jed.” Either she wants grandchildren, or Jed is seriously entrenched as a member of the Johnson family.

But don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. I allowed Ann to continue her storytelling. She began weaving a tale about Jed that would have been plausible if his past wasn’t known. “For the first few months Jed didn’t think he’d stay here with you. He used to live outside on the streets as a feral cat. He had to find food on his own. It was traumatic for him; a daily struggle for survival.” In reality, Jed’s daily struggle is trying to strategize how to eat his food and Bizzy’s.

In contrast, we know that Jed was taken straight to the shelter as a kitten and he barely spent any time there before being adopted by his existing owners. Matt comments: “He was the picture of health at 12 weeks when we got him, and was already house trained. He has no survival skills whatsoever and is embarrassing to watch in his attempts to ‘hunt’ bugs around the house.” A truly “traumatic” incident that Jed experienced in 2005 was Hurricane Katrina. Ann didn’t “see” that one, but according to her, Jed wasn’t even born yet.

In Ann’s story, Jed was impounded after a life on the streets. “He didn’t get a lot of attention in the shelter. There were lots of other cats.” He then became a foster cat foisted upon different homes. “He never had a steady owner before you. Until you, no one ever made the commitment to say, ‘You’re my cat.’ Now he’s confused. All the fuss and attention you give him, it’s all new to him. He’s had other owners but he’s never been someone’s pet before you.”

“Jed had other owners before me?” I repeated in surprise.

“Yes, Jed had three previous homes. They were all temporary, and they all neglected him. They didn’t give him any affection and then abandoned him,” she claimed. Jed had led quite an adventurous life during his first six months! I asked Matt if this could be possible: “No, other than the person that brought him and the other kittens to the pound when he was quite small.”

The story continued. “Jed also had three different names.” I asked her what these names were. She paused. “He was called something beginning with “P.” Also he was called “Buttons.” The previous owner just called him “Cat.” They didn’t care about him at all.” To me, “Buttons” doesn’t sound like the name of a neglected cat, but I asked Matt if Jed had any previous names of which he was aware: “Nope, just Tennessee Jed. (That’s if you discount profanities and vulgarities directed toward him almost daily from his loving parents.)” I asked Matt to specify the PG-rated names, and he replied, “We also call him Beastly One, Kingly One, Wretch, Tiger, Foul One, and Tubbs.” Among this lengthy list there’s no name beginning with “P,” no “Buttons” or “Cat.”

Eerily, Ann’s hand would occasionally float above her lap, but she’d continue to talk as though nothing strange was happening.

“Would he benefit from having another cat around?” I asked, seeing if Jed would tell Ann about his beloved Bizzy, whom Matt calls Jed’s “Sister-Wife.” Ann said, “Jed’s not a dominant cat. Another cat would freak him out. That would be too much of an adjustment for him now.” She advised, “This isn’t a good time for another cat. He would stay away from another cat. He’s shy. He’s now used to being the only one. In the past, other cats were his family, not people. The other cats were more dominant than him.”

Matt responds with: “My butt! Jed is delusional in thinking that he is ‘Shere Kahn’ from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. And he freaks out when Bizzy is not around. He searches for her and yowls pathetically when she is at the vet or when she was missing.”

Ann continued, obviously analyzing Jed’s current introverted behavior. “He’s very sensitive. He’s not the kind of cat that just walks up to people he doesn’t know. I know other cats like this too. My sister has a cat. He knows me well. He hides as soon as he sees me.” Who said pet psychics have a sensitive connection with animals?

Matt responds: “Jed can be shy, but that quickly diminishes into a forceful attitude as I’m sure you are aware. He lived with his grandparents for the summer and took over their home in about 10 minutes, re-arranging things to his liking. Some folks he likes, some he ignores, and some he attacks (mainly small children) with swift slaps to the top of the head.” I have personally witnessed Jed terrorizing Bizzy and attacking Matt, ambush style.

Ann began to wind down the session, “I’m going to take a look at your agreements; why you two came together.” Would Jed “say,” “we came together to be neighbors?” Or, “so Karen could investigate pet psychics for The Skeptic?” Ann closed her eyes and proceeded to gesticulate exaggeratedly with sign language-like motions. “You’re a healer, a nurturer. You like to save people. Jed needed saving.” Then she went into a surreal reverie. “I see Jed finger painting now. He’s creative and expressive. Now he can blossom. He has trust. He’s never had this before. He is now loved and safe. He is a sweet, sweet boy. He’s very gentle.” This comment reminded me of the time that Jed took a casual swipe at Matt, drawing blood as he lodged a claw in Matt’s eyelid.

“I’ll do some energy clearing and healing for Jed.” Now in her role as pet medical intuitive, she began clawing and flicking away the air with her fingers as she mouthed gibberish. Then she said calmly, “I can now confirm he’s 1 year old. One to 15 months.” However, we know that Jed is three years of age, therefore Ann was incorrect both in her psychic and visual verdicts. Then Ann had a message for me. “I just saw an image of your lower body lighting up, showing an issue down there. Did you lose a baby?”

“No,” I replied honestly.

“Oh,” she tried to recover, “Jed is showing me a picture of you being sad. He doesn’t like to see you sad.”

Then she diagnosed Jed. “There aren’t any blocks in his body. But there’s been something wrong with his stomach area.”

Matt responds: “He’s rather large, but not obese. We just found out that he has herpes, which is rather amusing. But other than that (which only results in an ulcer on his lip) he has never even had a good case of fleas. He likes to drag his butt on the ground. It is quite disturbing to witness but more than one vet has assured us that it is simply something he enjoys due to his perverse nature and not a sign of illness.”

In closing the session Ann asked, “Do you have anything you want to communicate to Jed?” He was still fast asleep. “Tell him, he’s home. He’s not going anywhere,” I said in a last attempt to see if Jed would reveal the truth.

“I gave him your message,” she announced.

“And what did he say?” I asked.

“He said, ‘I know that mummy.’” On her way out the door she stooped down and tickled Jed’s tummy, “You’ve never been anybody’s cat until now, have you? Now you’re somebody’s cat! Now Karen’s your mummy!”

Overall, the reading was characterized by Ann’s questions, assumptions, and generalizations and based simplistically in folkloric knowledge of cat behavior. Ann contributes to the online American Spirit psychic newspaper, where she conducts free readings for readers. There I found simple queries and answers about characteristic cat behavior, as though Ann were a pet psychologist. My reading with Ann was a cat cold reading.

Joe Nickell (2002) cites five general cold reading techniques that he has observed in pet psychics:

1. Noting the obvious.
2. Making safe statements.
3. Asking questions.
4. Offering vague statements that most people can apply specifically to themselves.
5. Returning messages to animals. (It was the message I received in response that invalidated this ability!).

On the basis of this session, Ann didn’t provide any evidence of psychic abilities but instead appeared to employ similar techniques, either consciously or not. As confirmed by Jed’s owners, Ann was completely inaccurate in her reading of Jed’s age, place of birth, background, behavior, health, and my health. The shelter “hit” was more miss, posed as a question, and then an uncertain claim with the caveat “think.” Most damning of all, Jed is not my cat, and my home is not his!

It’s an easy gig to speak on behalf of the voiceless. Animal communication, of a paranormal nature, presupposes that the pet is telepathic, is able to understand human language and thought, and able to “respond” in kind. “Interspecies communication” appears to be a visual and subjective or imaginative interpretation of the physical and behavioral traits of non-human animals. No matter how many commands your dog responds to, no matter how many words Koko can sign, no matter how many words your parrot can mimic, language is human-species specific. We don’t and can’t “know” what animals think. Despite our own linguistic abilities, it’s difficult enough to know what people think.

This article appeared in Summer 2008’s The Skeptic and is reprinted with kind permission.

Reference

• Nickell, J. 2002. Psychic pets and pet psychics. Skeptical Inquirer. 26(6) (November/December).

The puzzlement is nothing new—after all, polished surfaces have been in use for thousands of years. The problem has left many philosophers scratching their heads. According to Plato, “all such appearances are necessary consequences of the combination of the internal and external fire, which forms a unity at the reflecting surfaces.” Lucretius believed that the image “turns inside out.” And Kant reasoned that these objects were merely “sensuous intuitions, that is, appearances whose possibility rests upon the relation of certain things unknown in themselves to something else, namely to our sensibility.” (You probably have questions about these explanations. Can I get back to you?)

In modern times, the problem has not gone away. In the opinion of Martin Gardner in The Ambidextrous Universe (1964), it is all due to a “mental rotation,” and “the mirror has not reversed left and right at all, it has reversed front and back!”

Then in June 1987, there was a renewed flurry of interest when the subject cropped up in the letters section of New Scientist. The result of all this was that I happened to become involved in a three-way correspondence on the subject with Lewis Wolpert (currently emeritus professor of biology as applied to medicine at University College, London) and Richard Gregory (currently emeritus professor of neuropsychology at Bristol University).

By now a subsidiary problem had developed: why do mirrors switch left for right but not top for bottom? Was there some way a mirror could express a preference?

Lewis Wolpert insisted that left and right hands were really inverted. “I still think the real problem with mirrors,” he told me, “is about rotations, and the key thing one needs to explain is why clockwise looks anticlockwise.” What’s more, he maintained that if you rotate a book around its horizontal axis, its mirror image will be not only upside-down but also reversed left-right. To see that this is untrue, try the experiment yourself with this page.

Richard Gregory commented, “[Wolpert] is used to observing embryological, etc., structures, and evidently images are not in his or many other people’s cognitive maps of how things should be.”

Arthur C. Clarke opined that this all had something to do with gravity. Gregory told me, “Whether Arthur Clarke put this thing forward as a joke I am not sure: it was complete nonsense.” He wrote to Clarke, enclosing a typescript of the essay on mirror reversals in his book “Odd Perceptions” but received no reply.

So when you hold a book up to a mirror, what is it that causes the left-right transposition? The answer is . . . you do. What do you do when you want to show the mirror the page? You rotate the book around a vertical axis, switching left for right. And the mirror obligingly displays the result of your rotation. The text in the image reads from right to left.

Why can’t the mirror show an upside-down image? But it can. And once again you are the cause. Beginning with the page facing you, rotate the book around a horizontal axis, switching top and bottom. Once again, the mirror faithfully shows you an upside-down image. And you will notice that the text is not additionally switched left for right. Why should it be?

In case you are confused by the fact that a book is opaque and doesn’t allow you to see the printed page and its mirror image at the same time, imagine that you have written a single lower-case letter b on a sheet of glass. While the letter is still facing you, look at its mirror image: you will see that the letter and its mirror image are exactly the same—b. The mirror has altered nothing. Rotate the sheet of glass around a vertical axis, switching left and right. The letter on the glass has reversed and now looks like a lower-case letter d. And so does its mirror image—again, the mirror has not changed it in any way.

Go back to your starting position showing b, and this time, rotate the sheet of glass around a horizontal axis, switching top and bottom. The letter on the glass now looks like a capital P—and so does its image.

There is a final possibility. Begin with your starting position showing b and rotate the glass twice—once vertically and once horizontally. The glass will now show you what looks like a backwards capital letter P—and so does the mirror, so the letter and its image are still identical. In other words, it is your physical movement of the object that causes any reversals of the image.

Doubters have one further shot in their locker. “Stand in front of a mirror,” they say, “and wave your left hand. The image will wave back with its right hand. So the mirror does cause reversals after all.”

But this is mere word play. Get rid of the words “left” and “right,” and the problem disappears. Wear a wrist watch on your left hand and call this hand the wrist-watch hand. Wave your wrist-watch hand, and the image waves back at you with its wrist-watch hand. Nothing has crossed over. Richard Gregory wrote, “It is amusing that many extremely bright people—Kant, Plato, Martin Gardner, and more immediately some of my cleverest colleagues and students—have got this wrong in various ways.” And the final sentence in his letter to me was the one word: “Amazing.”

“Quack of Quacks”

Most sources, following an untrustworthy biography, give Cagliostro’s real name as Giuseppe Balsamo, born in Palermo in 1743. He often claimed to have been a gypsy and, indeed, “he might well have been” (Randi 1995, 52). Reportedly, by the age of thirteen he was a seminarian and soon thereafter turned his talent as an artist to counterfeiting theater tickets, then advanced to forging a will so that a marquis could obtain an illicit inheritance. Soon in and out of jail for various offences, he took up magic and fortunetelling, reinventing himself as a sorcerer by adding some chemical tricks he had learned. Using a version of the gypsies’ hokkani boro, “the great trick” (Nickell 2001, 179–184), he bilked a client of a sack of gold, which resulted in his first of many journeys to avoid arrest (King n.d., 21–60).

He became acquainted with alchemists in Messina and Malta, took the name Count Alessandro Cagliostro, and subsequently became a Freemason in London. His beautiful wife, Lorenza Feliciani (according to Guiley 1991, 77),

became his partner in various occult ventures, such as crystal-gazing, healing by laying on of hands, conjuring spirits, and predicting winning lottery tickets. They also sold magic potions, the elixir of life, and the philosopher’s stone. They held séances, transmuted metals, practiced necromancy, cast out demons, and hypnotized people.

Thomas Carlyle dubbed Cagliostro the “Quack of quacks” (1833, 31).

Before Cagliostro achieved fame, he and Lorenza lived a nomadic existence. According to Grete de Francesco in his The Power of the Charlatan (1939, 211–212):

The pair acquired consummate knowledge of their metier. After they had shown a materialization of the devil in one city, they entertained the next one with an exhibition of traditional magic art, changing hemp to silk, pebbles to pearls, powder to roses. They carried with them a mandrake root, locked in a casket lined with satin, and a crystal ball in which one could stare until one saw iridescent pictures: interiors of bedchambers, exotic landscapes, shapes of the past and future.

Here and there, the fake count and countess practiced the infamous “badger game,” a swindle in which a wife entices a would-be paramour into a compromising situation, whereupon her husband bursts in (usually with a witness) and badgers the victim into paying blackmail. Lorenza reportedly went on to have two actual affairs (King n.d., 69–70, 141–144, 206–207; cf. 267).

The pair staged theatrical deceptions—not only magic shows but séances in the form of elaborate suppers capped with spirit materializations. As well, Cagliostro used sleight of hand to cause “spirit writings” to appear on slips of paper (Waldman and Layden 1997, 85; Randi 1995, 53), foreshadowing similar trickery of the later Spiritualist movement (Nickell 2007, 39–47). They promoted their elixir of youth by personal example: Cagliostro claimed that he was centuries old, having even been witness to Jesus’ crucifixion, and that his beautiful wife, who was then in her twenties, was instead in her sixties (Randi 1995, 52–53).

In addition to his elixir, Cagliostro also claimed to possess the elusive materia prima, or “philosopher’s stone,” a magical powder capable of transmuting base metals into gold. By this supposed discovery, he laid claim to being the world’s true master alchemist. Actually, he learned that “It was only necessary to pretend that you possessed this secret, and immediately your house would be besieged by credulous dupes, eager to put down their money so that they might take a humble share in your success” (King n.d., 52). During one of his pretend transmutations, Cagliostro was observed slyly dropping a concealed lump of gold into a crucible before it entered the furnace (King n.d., 147).

A cleverer method that he may have used involved a crucible with a false bottom made of an amalgam with a low melting point. Beneath this was hidden some bits of gold. The phony alchemist would place some copper, chemical compounds, and his materia prima into the “empty” crucible, whereupon some gold would be found in the residue after it was heated. A similar trick was used to seemingly convert glass into diamonds (Gibson 1967, 35–36).

Strasbourg

Cagliostro and Lorenza frequently found themselves in trouble with authorities, but credulous patrons invariably came to their defense. Such a dupe was Louis René Édouard, the Cardinal de Rohan (1734—1803), who in 1779 had become bishop of Strasbourg, France.

From 1780 to 1783, Cagliostro and Lorenza resided in Strasbourg, living in a dwelling—now known as the Cagliostro House—at 12 rue de la Râpe. It was built in 1747, and its rococo portal (see figure 1) was inspired by paneling from a nearby palace (Strolling n.d.).

Cagliostro cultivated Cardinal de Rohan, who in any case could not have failed to learn of his alleged wonder-workings since Cagliostro had been initiated into the anticlerical Order of Illuminati (founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt), whose publicist had hyped the sorcerer’s arrival in Strasbourg:

The whole town was agog with excitement, awaiting the visit of the wonderful Count Cagliostro, the famous healer who performed miraculous cures for the sick, the practised sorcerer who controlled spirits both good and bad, the learned alchemist who could transmute base metals into gold. (King n.d., 155)

Cagliostro set up his own Egyptian Masonic Order, which he used to form bonds with the aristocracy. His healing services attracted hundreds of sick persons, and he took credit for the effects of the power of suggestion, the excitement-triggered release of endorphins that reduce pain temporarily, and the body’s own natural healing mechanisms. Like many modern show-biz faith healers (Nickell 2007, 95–103), he had a collection of cast-off crutches and canes. He also gave public séances on the order of today’s phony “psychic mediums” like John Edward and Sylvia Browne (King n.d., 154–161).

Riehen

Cagliostro’s fame spread to Switzerland. A wealthy ribbon manufacturer of Basel, Jakob Sarasin, sent his ailing wife to Strasbourg to be treated by Cagliostro. She stayed there from April 1781 to September 1782, eventually recovering. Meanwhile, her husband frequently visited her in Strasbourg, and Cagliostro and Lorenza often visited Sarasin at his Basel home in return. Through Sarasin, Cagliostro met other reputable men in Basel and decided to establish a summer home there. The residence still stands in the nearby village of Riehen at 13 Basel Street (see figures 2 and 3).

Perhaps as early as 1782, this Riehen residence was “used by the false Count Alexander Cagliostro for séances of his mysterious Egyptian Lodge” (“Map” n.d.). On occasion until 1786, the rituals (which continued until 1789) were personally directed by the Grand Kofta himself. The small structure has since been renovated several times, and nothing remains as a reminder of those days but “two small pictures”—one of “the self-confident-looking adventurer,” the other of his wife, “a southern European beauty” (Iselin 1923, 185–188).

The End

In 1785, Cagliostro stormed Paris. However, he was soon involved in the scandal known as the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, primarily due to his friendship with Cardinal Rohan. The cardinal, in attempting to ingratiate himself with Marie Antoinette, was duped by the Countess of Lamotte to purchase the necklace for the queen. However, the countess’s husband apparently absconded with the booty to London, and Marie Antoinette denied either authorizing the purchase or receiving the necklace. In 1786 the countess, Cardinal de Rohan, Cagliostro, and others were brought to trial. Rohan and Cagliostro were acquitted but exiled. The countess was sentenced to be flogged, branded, and imprisoned, although she later escaped. The affair added to the unpopularity of Marie Antoinette and thus contributed to the French Revolution of 1789–1799.

Cagliostro ended up in Rome but was arrested in 1789 for heresy as a Freemason. He was sentenced to death by the Inquisition, but the Pope commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. Lorenza was imprisoned in a convent, and Cagliostro died in prison in 1795 (King n.d., 217–251; Francesco 1939, 213–221).

Called “the Last of the Sorcerers” by his perhaps most sympathetic biographer, Frank King, Cagliostro died when science was already revealing the lies of the claims of sorcerers—from alchemists to zodiac forecasters. Yet belief in sorcery is far from dead, as a visit to any bookstore will confirm. There, we can open one of the current crop of uncritical books and see Cagliostro pop out like a jack-in-the-box—wearing the persona of a “psychic” or the guise of a medical quack or other hustler. It seems to me we are inundated with Cagliostros, and I include those TV producers who make endless shows and crockumentaries on the paranormal that are an affront to science. If nothing else, the review prompted by this brief pilgrimage to two historic Cagliostro sites serves as a reminder to be ever vigilant regarding extraordinary claims.

Acknowledgments

I am supremely grateful to John and Mary Frantz, whose creation of an investigative fund makes such investigative trips possible, and Martin Mahner of CFI/Germany, who escorted me around Europe. His skills as driver, translator, investigator, and traveling companion are inestimable. I am also extremely appreciative of the gracious hospitality of the Blochs, Michael and Katalin, who hosted us in Basel. Michael drove us to the Cagliostro house in Riehen and provided published information, which he and Martin translated. And once again I am grateful for research assistance from CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga and to the entire CFI staff.

References

• Carlyle, Thomas. 1833. Count Cagliostro. Frazer’s Magazine, July/August, 23–83.
• Francesco, Grete de. 1939. The Power of the Charlatan (translated from the German). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
• Gibson, Walter. 1967. Secrets of Magic: Ancient and Modern. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.
• Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 1991. Encyclopedia of the Strange, Mystical, and Unexplained. New York: Gramercy Books.
• Iselin, D.L.E. 1923. Gesschichte des Dorfes Riehen, (History of the Village Riehen). Basel, Switzerland: Helbing and Lichtenhahn.
• King, Frank. N.d. [1929]. Cagliostro, The Last of the Sorcerers: A Portrait. London: Jarrolds.
• Map of Riehen and Bettingen. N.d. [ca. 1955]. Basel: O.P. Schwarz. Translated for me by Michael Bloch, from his copy.
• Nickell, Joe. 2001. Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky.
• —. 2007. Adventures in Paranormal Investigation. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky.
• Randi, James. 1995. The Supernatural A-Z: The Truth and the Lies. London: Brockhampton Press.
• Strolling in Strasbourg: From the Middle Ages until today, the architecture of the city in 6 itineraries. N.d. Strasbourg: Office of Tourism. 1982.
• Waldman, Carl, and Joe Layden. 1997. The Art of Magic. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group.

The universal ethical principles of respect, integrity, and responsibility constitute Camp Inquiry’s philosophical foundation and undergird daily activities and curricula. To kick off the week, campers articulated and adopted these mutually agreeable moral ideals when they collectively authored and signed their camp constitution. “We decided that we should show respect for ourselves, our fellow campers, camp counselors, the camp site, and others’ property,” they wrote after a group discussion of their values.

On the first full day of camp, kids and counselors considered the intersection of scientific inquiry, imagination, and the narratives that chronicle our perceptions of the world. After examining journal entries of preeminent thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci and Charles Darwin, campers began creating and collecting artifacts of their own, which they compiled into “inquirer’s notebooks” at the week’s end. In one such activity, campers constructed working pinhole cameras using black-painted oatmeal containers, golf tees, and photo paper onto which to capture and develop their own images of nature.

Between team sporting activities, water-balloon tosses, and shared meals in the rustic lodge, a number of special guests visited to facilitate an array of activities and interactive presentations. The week began with a focus on the elements of observation and the diversity of individual perspectives. Artist and educator Bruce Adams conducted a photographic art activity that focused kids’ imaginations on the pairing of evocative images and text, illustrating the power of our minds to make sense of the world and our place in it. Then, campers were treated to a talk by scientist Allison Hopper, who delivered a graphically-rich presentation about spirals in nature followed by a human reenactment of the big bang that, as the participant “particles” began spinning in unison, naturally resulted in the formation of a spiral of campers across the lawn. Adams and Hopper highlighted the human capacity for observation as the basis for scientific discovery, as well as an appreciation for the aesthetic splendor of the natural world.

With a focus on collaborative relationships, campers engaged with Musicians United for Superior Education in an introduction to the art of African drum and dance. Over the span of several days, campers learned and rehearsed a choreographed number that they performed for parents and guests during the closing ceremonies. In another teamwork-themed activity, campers were challenged to create an insulated “vehicle” that would protect a raw egg from cracking when dropped from a nearby bridge. Working within the constraints of a budget, kids selected from a variety of materials to create their landing modules and, as the project progressed, concluded that their best chance at success—and the candy bar prizes for intact eggs—was to collaborate, relying both on the disciplined approach of the scientific method and on the collective ingenuity of their teammates.

Campers dabbled in scientific discovery throughout the week, prompting discussions about the value of science as a method for understanding the universe and improving the human condition. A visit from the Buffalo Astronomical Association, complete with high-powered telescopes and demonstrations by astrophotographer Alan Friedman, sparked wonder and amazement, as well as contemplation of the origins of the universe and how humanists construct meaning without reliance on religious narratives.

Continuing the focus on scientific investigation, campers embarked on an outdoor hunt for the scattered bones of a small mammal, and having each found a section of its remains, teams gathered to assemble the bones and posit hypotheses about which animal they had discovered. Applying skeptical principles, participants suspended haphazard judgments about the identity of the skeleton and exercised inductivist methods for classifying the mystery species. Through careful examination of skeletal diagrams and protracted team discussions about the characteristics of various mammalian structures, campers concluded correctly: they had pieced together a rattus norvegicus. Other scientific explorations at camp included a fossil dig, a live-animal presentation by Nickel City Reptiles, and a spectacular physics show with visiting scientist David Willey.

Camp Inquiry focused youngsters’ attention on rational skepticism—the disposition of incredulity that calls for empirical evidence, rather than faith and other forms of uncritical thought, for the acceptance of a claim. And, in accordance with Carl Sagan’s seminal axiom, campers concluded that the more extraordinary the claim, the more cogent its evidentiary support must be. Venerable paranormal investigator Joe Nickell led an exploration of these principles, fascinating campers with an assortment of photos and stories of monsters, apparitions, aliens, mind-readers, and sundry pseudoscientific claims that he has examined throughout his career. Nickell narrated his investigative methodologies for each case, noting that he aims not simply to debunk; the scientific skeptic seeks verifiable and naturalistic explanations to mysterious claims rather than swift a priori dismissal based on ostensible implausibility.

Later, while the younger campers enjoyed the tales of storyteller Karima Amin, teens gathered in the pavilion for an open discussion of skepticism with D.J. Grothe, illusionist and host of Point of Inquiry. Campers examined the nature of skepticism as a kind of intellectual self-defense, as Grothe called it, against the bombardment of specious claims in our society. Campers shared the ways in which they apply critical evaluation to various facets of their lives, ranging from the assessment of teen-targeted advertising campaigns to the critique of religious precepts.

To conclude the evening, Grothe performed a magic show that left campers and counselors transfixed. Eager to learn his sleight-of-hand secrets, the audience paid close attention as Grothe revealed his method for making coins dramatically disappear and again materialize. Tricks that had initially seemed to onlookers as physical impossibilities were, by the conclusion of the demonstration, easily explainable by the basic principles of psychology and physics. Grothe and Nickell underlined the notion that a healthy dose of skepticism should be applied to epistemological and ontological claims that conflict with natural laws. However, as both speakers demonstrated, the skeptic regards factual knowledge as provisional and is open to new ideas and evidence uncovered by disciplined examination.

Camp Inquiry integrates the elements of a memorable camp experience for kids—roasted marshmallows, pillow fights, and new friendships—with the tenets of rational skepticism and secular humanism, including making ethical choices, taking naturalistic approaches to garnering knowledge, tapping into our boundless imaginations, and applying science and reason to human quests and dilemmas. It’s a place for children to think, question, and grow.