Reviews of Mysteries & Secrets Revealed: From Oracles at Delphi to Spiritualism in America by Loren Pankratz and The Conjurer’s Conundrum: My Life in Magic & Skepticism by Jamy Ian Swiss

BY MICHELLE AINSWORTH

“[Seventeenth century botanical taxonomist Frederico] Cesi learned from Galileo that he must draw nature as it was, not as it was presumed to be.” (p. 103)

—Loren Pankratz, PhD

“[Skeptic Paul Kurtz’s] ability to … heed the expertise of magicians was ultimately outweighed by his …false confidence.” (p. 94)

—Jamy Ian Swiss

Why did some leading scientists endorse 19thcentury communication with ghosts? Were people more credulous in earlier centuries? Have the techniques of stage magic played a role in these and later phenomena?

Two new books profitably discuss such questions from a skeptical perspective. Mysteries and Secrets Revealed: From Oracles at Delphi to Spiritualism in America by Loren Pankratz, PhD (Lanham, MD, Prometheus Books, 2021) is a historical magnum opus by a psychologist, while The Conjurer’s Conundrum: My Life in Magic and Skepticism by Jamy Ian Swiss (Np, Vanishing Inc. Magic, 2020) is a passionate book-length essay by a performance magician with decades of experience as an outspoken skeptical activist. Both men have contributed to leading skeptical magazines and, in different ways, each man has a remarkable depth of knowledge about deception. Together the books give a vivid sense of how essential that lens is.

I am personally acquainted with both men and am acknowledged for “insightful comments to early drafts” in the Pankratz book. I received a free review copy of Mysteries and Secrets Revealed. I purchased Conjurer’s Conundrum at full price.

Mysteries and Secrets Revealed: From Oracles at Delphi to Spiritualism in America is a history of how false beliefs were overcome by people with the courage to accept new evidence. The book opens and closes with justly preeminent examples of apparently supernatural phenomena created in part by cheating. In between, pivotal cases in the development of the scientific method are discussed, with the paradigm of theory based solely on authority declining over time in favor of belief justified by experimental evidence.

The subtitle to Dr. Pankratz’s book, “From Oracles at Dephi to Spiritualism in America” is an apt description of the book’s scope. Dr. Pankratz discusses these and many other topics in loose chronological order, including the Christian church’s condemnation of curiosity, the discovery that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, and speculation that the Moon was inhabited. His theme is the sometimes-conflicted development of the scientific method in the Italian Renaissance and European Enlightenment. He then provides primary source-anchored analysis on the history of mesmerism as a pivot to his extended and mostly original analysis of 19^th century psychics and seances. I often struggle to follow an author’s reasoning in books even half as long and twice as contiguous as this one, but Mysteries and Secrets Revealed is remarkably easy to read. Pankratz ably transitions between decades (while linking seemingly disparate topics) with clarity and cohesion.