Book Report: Sorcery by J. Finley Hurley (C) 1985

Imagine an experienced scientist putting aside any professional biases and exploring the idea that people can influence each other and their surroundings through thoughts (more or less) thought alone, analyzing every step of the process in a scientific method and weighing it against established researcher and observations. Well, that's the book we have here.

You'll probably have noticed a lot of books about metaphysical abilities in the book report section of my blog. What makes this one different is that the author is a clinical psychologist and this book is his analysis of "magical powers" through the lens of scientific data and empirical case studies. And he claims to have based it on his own observations and research.

Since "sorcery" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, it's worthwhile to clarify that the author's focus is primarily telepathy and it's ability to influence people with or without their knowledge, and he also touches on other cases where practitioners seemed to be able to influence people and events in seemingly magical ways. 

Happily, Hurley is a fun and engaging author, and because he also writes as a scientist, he backs up his observation and hypotheses with some kind of scientific reference (at least enough to satisfy himself). This is pretty unique for this kind of book and also very practical for anyone who wants to delve into the research instead of just taking the author's work for it.

The author hypothesizes that the other-than-rational effects of "Sorcery" cannot be justified by the conscious, rational mind and so must originate in the subconscious, which he terms "Cthonic" mind.

He begins with the well researched phenomena of The Placebo Effect, an often observed phenomena where an inert drug or treatment has a demonstrable effect on a patient simply because of the patient's belief in the outcome or had faith in the healer. He also includes the somewhat more controversial Pygmalion Effect, which suggests that the healer's belief in the placebo is as important or more important than the patient's belief. He cites situations where the placebo effect has been used to heal people, and also to curse them. In the author's view, telepathy is the vehicle whereby a sorcerer's influence is most commonly carried, and he quotes many studies that explore different forms of telepathy.  

This book falls short of offering an illustrated blueprint to practice from, but adventurers will find plenty of inspiration to work with in this tome.

 The biggest problem with this particular book is how hard it is to find. When copies do show up on the market, they usually cost several hundred dollars, and in an interview the author admits that even he doesn't own a copy. Fortunately, PDFs do float around the web, and you should be able to find one with a quick search.