YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
Seeing The Unseen: A Past Life Revealed Through Hypnotic Regression – Ormond McGill
This is Ormond McGill’s second appearance on our blog, his New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnotism having previously featured. And, given his prolificacy as an author of hypnosis and related books (30+ listed on his Wikipedia page), I’m sure it won’t be his last!
McGill (1913-2005) was, and remains, primarily known as a stage hypnotist and magician. But he was also an enduringly popular teacher of hypnosis, which earned him the moniker of the ‘Dean of American Hypnotists’.
He wrote about both the ‘magic’ and the ‘magick’ of hypnosis – his body of work is a strange brew of stage hypnosis and magic performance, as well as mysticism, meditation, and cosmic consciousness.
It’s not unusual for expert purveyors of fake miracles (one of McGill’s books titled How to Produce Miracles is *spoiler alert* a book of magic tricks) to go seeking real, or ‘real’, ones. I picked up this book expecting to find either a crude cash-in on something McGill knew to be hokum, or some weird shut-eye odyssey. But I found, and still find, this work surprisingly perplexing and intriguing... Let me explain.
Seeing The Unseen: A Past Life Revealed Through Hypnotic Regression is, ostensibly, McGill’s Bridey Murphy case. Published in 1997, it details the life of ‘Katherine Bates’, a wealthy English woman born in Oxford in 1857, who gads about the world with her pals, indulging her interest in, and burgeoning talent for, Spiritualism. Having died in 1914, her account is, of course, given to McGill via a series of hypnotherapy sessions by her reincarnate self, ‘Sarah Channing’.
Now, I don’t believe we live literal, actual past lives. Easily verifiable ‘facts’ of these cases NEVER properly check out. Plus where the heck are all the toshers, tanners, and Mesopotamian shit-shovelers whilst Cleopatras and wrongly ravished Edwardian housemaids abound?!
What I do believe in, however, is the boundless possibilities of the human imagination: in unwittingly and wittingly creating ‘past lives’; either self-created; or co-created with, or furnished by, hypnotherapists or other guides; which are based on histories, happenings, and character archetypes to which those involved have some knowledge of and connection with; and which serve some metaphorical, therapeutic, fantastical, or other purpose.
McGill – presenting as a regularly practising hypnotherapist in demand for, then, “very popular” past-life regression sessions – goes with a ‘YOU DECIDE!’ magician’s stance. His preface questions whether it’s fact or fantasy, plus his topping and tailing of the book, as well as his pre- and post-session reflections, position him as a curious, agnostic witness. He peppers supernatural and supernormal teasings with psychological explanations, such as past-life regression simply being, for the client, a “a sort of mental “house cleaning” to pursue their life more clearly in the here and now”.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the book is surprisingly cunning and nuanced..?
(Well, what else would we expect of magically minded hypnotists at this stage is our Cosmic Pancakes! journey, eh?!)
But don’t get me wrong – it’s not a great book or read. The meat of it is just as I expected: a not very gripping story of a Victorian lady-woman, told in flowery, overly articulate language (apparently faithfully transcribed from tapes), in story chunks and arcs that conveniently fit the duration of a hypnotherapy session. Indeed, a dead giveaway that this is a work of McGill’s imagination is that ‘Katherine Bates’ is suspiciously savvy of Spiritualism, both ‘real’ and fake (a special interest of magicians) – with her spidey-senses for frauds and their methods rivalling those of Houdini.
But I appreciated the bones of the book: bones that might give more invested and credulous readers cause to believe – but cause me to think McGill is just revelling in the mind-fuckery.
First, there’s McGill’s client, Sarah Channing, an attractive, 30-something woman, born in 1957, and who resides in Northern California. Sarah is an avid listener to her recorded past-life revelations between sessions, and – lo! – starts researching Spiritualism. Swotting up on one’s past life whilst unfurling it is, of course, the undoing of many a ‘bone fide’ case, including Bridey Murphy. Sarah’s also, as mentioned, a skilled storyteller and suspiciously articulate. But when it’s revealed at the end that ‘Sarah’ is, in fact, a famous Hollywood actress who has insisted on anonymity, I chuckled at McGill simultaneously bolstering and undermining his ‘case study’. OF COURSE a star actress would do all the very things that cause you to question and doubt the veracity of this account! So it must be true, right..?
Secondly, there’s the mysterious Dr Martin Roberts, PhD, who provides a foreword and postscript. No biography or context is forthcoming, but Roberts creates a whiff of ‘academic’ credibility – he’s the sceptic; the unbiased “good friend” of McGill; the ‘expert’ on psychology and the methods employed; the quoter of Rossi and Erickson, etc.
In his postscript, Roberts meets with the famous ‘Sarah’, who has since finished recounting the life of ‘Katherine Bates’ to McGill. Here, in a sea-view restaurant on the California coast, further ambiguity is ladled onto the veracity, or not, of this past-life whilst Roberts, ‘Sarah’, and McGill lunch. We learn that ‘Katherine’s’ sexless life unlocked ‘Sarah’s’ remembrance of being raped by a fellow actor in her trailer after filming a steamy movie scene with him. But she’s since found peace with this and... is now developing her own psychic powers! Roberts and McGill are impressed with some of her ‘hits’, and have also corroborated many of the ‘facts’ of the life and times of ‘Katherine Bates’ to their satisfaction.
The final pages are McGill’s DIY ‘transcendental hypnotism induction’ script: this book doesn’t so much conclude as leave you with the emoji of your choice to best sum up what you make of it.
As a member of The Magic Circle, I hope it goes without saying that I don’t believe a word a magician writes! So I’m chalking the whole thing up to McGill bulking up his publishing empire with a bit of mind-fuckery in subjects that interested him. And fair play to him.
Oh, and Dr Martin Roberts, PhD? Well, turns out that he was a change-management consultant (and penner of an NLP book, ugh).
I don’t believe a word change-management consultants write either – I know because I’m one of those, too. ;-)
