A New Angle (again)…
Aleister Crowley Re-Incarnated?
So now with summer coming, the more credulous among humanity can now look forward to cooling off with the latest in psychic innovations: Karl Lang, 49, of Wales, is accused of pressuring two women to repeatedly expose themselves to him, telling them that their nudity would help them better connect with the spirit world. The women, both in their 20s, did not attend sessions together, but report similar circumstancesOne of the women scheduled her first appointment with Lang when she was 19, wishing to contact her deceased grandfather. Lang allegedly pressured her to be naked during seances because “the spirits are naked,” according to the Daily Mail. As the sessions continued, she says, Lang pressured her to do more and more “outrageous” things, including masturbating in front of him.”I had to . . . perform a bit like a porn star,” she told Wales Online. She continued weekly meetings with Lang for three years. Both women say that in addition to stripping at psychic sessions, Lang demanded that they send to him nude pictures and explicit videos.
Lang allegedly instituted a system of “levels,” in which increasingly explicit sexual exhibition was rewarded with greater spiritual powers, according to the Telegraph. One woman says she continued follow Lang’s requests because “that was the way to get up to level 30.”
Lang allegedly also told his clients he was the “reincarnation of Jesus Christ,” the Mirror reports.
When the psychic allegedly pressured one of the women to allow him to touch her, however, she began to sense that something was amiss, and contacted the police.
Though Lang is not accused of using physical force on his clients, prosecutors say what he did was “a cruel trick” and that he “totally brainwashed” the women, according to the Sun. He has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges of causing women to engage in sexual activity without consent.
I have it on good authority that Mr. Lang will not be attending TAM this year.
Move Over Crowley: The Guy Who Used to be The Wickedest Man in the World
You know, I recently did some reading about Aleister Crowley, because he’s the villain of the most recent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books under the name Oliver Hadoo, and I’m damned if I could figure out why he was “the wickedest man in the world.” He may have been sexually promiscuous, but I don’t see much evidence he was making people do things against their wills. He wrote a book of poetry called “White Stains” that was destroyed in England, but beyond the title it’s about as tame as an “erotic” book can be. (To paraphrase Bart Simpson: “That’s wasn’t sexy, even for a poem.”) I guess people just must have been much, much, much easier to shock back then, and some sort of strange memory block kept them from remembering the Marquis de Sade.
Crowley was “the wickedest man in the world” largely because he called himself “the wickedest man in the world.” And that’s Crowley in a nutshell. He was shameless self promoter, and even the more mundane details of his life are wrapped in 7 layers of exaggeration and false hood.
I must be ignorant of British law – it’s not like this charlatan pottage for brains has privacy or fiduciary responsibilities, unlike a M.D. or such. Claiming your a Greek god to get adult women in the sack, well that’s as old as the Greek gods.
Regardless, on this side of the pond I would love to see Sylvia Brown in a orange jumpsuit.
We are working on it.
This is just stunning to me. He gets someone to go all the way to masturbating in front of him, and it is only when he tries to touch them that they “sense something is amiss”? The “ulterior motive alarm” is quiet until then? I am baffled.
Crowley was the wickedest man in the world for a couple of reasons. First, because he went around calling himself that and generally camping it up in public like a cross between Anton LaVey and Madonna.
Second, because he had a tendency to join esoteric and occult organizations, then blow them up by trying to make them into Yet Another Crowley Personality Cult. The result was that most prominent Britons with an interest in the occult eventually hated his guts.
…”without consent”?…
Sounds like he talked them into it…..
Surely the prosecuter means “….with consent, which was later much regretted…”
No, I think the prosecutor means that they were young and foolish, but they thought they were complying with a means to achieve their psychic goals, not giving consent to be used as object of sexual voyeurism and gratification.
A victim of a financial scam has regrets after-the-fact, but that doesn’t make what was done to him any less criminal.
The Marquis de Sade was probably forgotten because at least when I was a boy, his books were kept in glass case only available to those with an approved course of study, and a letter from their Prof.
I must say though, that old expression about not going broke underestimating the idiocy of the average punter strikes a chord here. Credulity seems inadequate to explain it :-).
Is there something wrongly wired in the brain of those idiots?
Or is it they were early influenced by religion to completely forgo any critical thinking at all? I do not see them as victims, but brain dead morons without any sense of personal boundaries.
I just don’t get it….
Probably no more than in any of the rest of us idiots. We all have cognitive blindspots, and we are all susceptible to having our critical thinking processes go awry under the right (or wrong) circumstances. Also, the two women were trying to contact the dead. They were likely experiencing some rather powerful emotions and looking to fill some gaping emotional needs – not circumstances conducive to critical thinking (and in that sense, perhaps there was something “wrongly wired” in their brains – but that hardly makes them idiots).
Pretty much all con games seem obvious when viewed from the outside, after the fact – often even by those that fell for them in the first place. Despite (or all too often, because of) the intuition that “surely I can’t be fooled so easily,” we can all be bamboozled if we run into the right conman at the right time, offering us the right con.
You might not have been fooled by this particular con – but the two young ladies in question might well have been able to spot a different sort of con that would taken you in.
Unless they were raised as Spiritualists, their religious background probably had nothing at all to do with it. I am unaware of any evidence that religious belief has a significant correlation (negative or otherwise) with general critical thinking skills or the ability to detect a swindle. In fact, from what I understand, the more conventionally religious someone is, the less likely they are to believe in psychics, mediums, and other “New Age” tropes.
Again, they most likely are not “brain dead morons”, but individuals who had the misfortune to run into an unscrupulous man who was able to find and leverage their cognitive blindspots for his personal enjoyment. Given that they were trying to contact the dead, he was likely leveraging some rather extreme emotional needs as well, as mediums usually do.
As to their sense of personal boundaries, they may be different than yours, but maybe not. We pretty much all will allow others to infringe on our personal boundaries if we think there’s a compelling reason (a physical exam, for example). Even if their sense of personal boundaries were deficient by your personal standards, I don’t see how that excuses Karl Lang’s sexual exploitation of them.
I know it is quite en vogue and politically correct to forgo the concept of personal responsibility of ones own action, but I just don’t buy the “me victim” in a case were someone is able to talk you into actions you yourself afterwards feel are indecent and violating your boundaries – those morons had them after all apparently, otherwise why complain?
At 21 you should have an idea of how far are you willing to trust a stranger – or even a friend – when he asks you to do things you likely feel uncomfortable with.
This case however shows that without a healthy dose of skepticism you can make yourself to believe in anything.
Not being the smartest kid on the block at the time, and having had enough of school, I still was able having grown up in a catholic household to find so many inconsistencies and nonsense in the concept of god and the church that I lost my faith completely between the age of 14 – 16, to never regain it.
Engaging with anybody, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume their honesty. But upon the slightest inconsistency in behaviour, or the slightest hint that this someone might be just out to take advantage of me – that someone is dropped like a too hot potato.
Somehow it all reminds me of an old joke:
Mazy, the hooker was making a bank deposit, when the teller notices one of the bills is a counterfeit fifty. “Mazy, he says, I’m afraid you’ve been robbed.” “Robbed hell”, she exclaims, “I’ve been raped!”
It’s kind of silly to claim someone talked you into exposing yourself to him and then claiming to be a victim. I think they would be wiser to stay silent on this. But Mr Lang needs to go on Spring break where he will see more nakedness then he ever wanted to. No doubt some of those women regret it in the morning and decide they were actually “victims” as well. Go figure.
“we can all be bamboozled if we run into the right conman at the right time, offering us the right con.”
Maybe yes, but I still could not be convinced to pull my pants down and jack off in front of him – so much about personal boundaries.
I might be convinced to fuck him – but not to be fucked (I know, been there done that) And I would give it to him hard…which I did.
PS – I was 18 at the time and half drunk – but still knew my boundaries: You do not penetrate me against my will. But I was definitely willing to penetrate him, as horny as any 18 year old.
Dang it, Peter…
…talk about “too much information”….
I guess it was necessary in the context…