The Famous Stage Magician Harry Houdini

**[ WHY SHAMAN'S SOUP BBS DOESN'T RUN CHANNELED MATERIAL ]**by Michelle Klein-Hass, SysOp, Shaman's Soup BBS--Sylmar, CA Channeling has become a fad in recent years. FirstSeth, then Ramtha, then a whole deluge of entities fromalien starship captains to Egyptians to an entity claimingto be St. John the Revelator. "Channels," known to theSpiritualism faddists of the 1890s and until recently asmediums, speak in the voices of entities that may have lived,or never have had bodies and live as "beings of light." It was estimated at the height of the Seance craze that75 to 80% of all mediums (and this is a very liberal estimate,the percentage must have been higher) were fakes that knewhow to act the part of another being, and who (in those days)knew how to rattle tambourines, chains, and other things tomake it seem like the spirits of the departed were there.The famous stage magician Harry Houdini did whole shows whichdebunked the phoney mediums, much like The Amazing Randi did10 years ago during the height of Uri Geller's popularity.I'll take an educated guess and say that the figure of 75 to80 frauds out of a given 100 channelers is a good figure towork with. But what about the 20 to 25% of channels that areauthentically contacting discarnates? I believe that theseare the most dangerous ones of all. Though I do not discountthat maybe one or two of the many thousands of channelers mayactually be contacting benevolent beings (in the realm of theUnseen, anything is possible) I believe that most authenticchannels are contacting one of three things:1) Their subconscious, or their superconscious "higher self",in any event contacting a part of themselves which, by callinganother name they have disassociated themselves from;2) "Earthbound" souls of recently dead people who have losttheir way "home", or consciously do not wish to be dead. Manycrave the sensations of life in a human body, and decide toenter another person's body to recapture the incarnate life;3) Beings of negative energy which never have had bodies andsimilarly crave that level of existence. The latter two types of entities are dealt with in aseries of text files which are separate on Mysteria BBS underthe names NEGENTS.TXT, NEGENTS2.TXT, and NEGENTS3.TXT. Theyare available on Shaman's Soup as the bulletin "NegativeEntities" in the Shaman's Conference, and as a bundled.ARCfile with the file you are now reading called CHNLDNGR.ARC.This file is being distributed on other boards as well. Ifyou have received this file in the archive form, the otherfiles are right there. The former type of entity is part ofthe channel themselves, and their information is meant forthe channel only. So where does this lead us? Information from a phonychannel or a part of the channel's own mind is useless.And information from an Earthbound or a negative entityis not only untrustworthy, but can be downright dangerous.This is why I have made it the policy of my board to not runanything I know to be channeled material. I might pass upsomething that may very well come from, shall we say, a"higher" source. But then again, I will spare all of theusers of my board a source of usually fraudulent, mostlyuseless, and sometimes even dangerous information.Thank you for understanding,Michelle Klein-Hass (Chihacou White Puma)Shaman's Soup Central