It depends on whether you talk about Sorcery as the literal definition of "exercising supernatural powers with help from evil spirits" or if you are discussing more specifically what we consider to be acts of Sorcery today (such as hexes/juju etc.). From my Western background, what i understand Sorcery to be is the type of magic that 'magicians' (the type found in fantasy novels/movies) perform which includes things such as summoning fire/lightning from nothing, levitation of items, shape shifting etc. 

it is not the same, to proof the sorcery exists you just need to demonstrate a single act that can be duplicated, to proof it does not exists you will have to prove everywhere in the world, every single claim of sorcery is false.

it is like in court case where presumption of innocence mean the prosecution can not make argument like "You can’t prove that the defendant didn’t commit the crime" as the basis for his case. he need to present evidence that show the defendant have indeed commit the crime.

Ghosts and corpses

2010/03/20

U-EN NG
uen-nst@gmail.com

Believe it or not, resident spirits do roam our theatre venues. U-EN NG talks about his ghostly encounters

MOST theatres have a ghost, and some have more than one. It is difficult to say precisely why this is so — dissatisfied customers, possibly, or maybe the veil separating this world from the other is thinner in places where illusions are frequently made.


Over the centuries theatre managers have seen fit to set “ghost lights” in the middle of the stage during dark nights (such as when the theatre is closed) to let resident spirits put on their own shows or to chase away malevolent remnants of past performances, and in the age before electricity the use of bare candles for this purpose was one of the main reasons why so many theatres burnt down.


The more prosaic dismiss this as mere superstition: ghost lights prevent technicians walking into sets or falling off the stage into the orchestra pit, thereby resulting in personal injury and the sudden manifestation of other frightening entities, to wit, lawyers — but sometimes reason can be a poor mirror to an uncanny reality.


At one of the major Kuala Lumpur venues some years ago, the ensemble of a large musical (sadly, mine) were subject to an inexplicable attack of nosebleeds that stopped after the stage manager discovered an unsettling “young woman” sitting on the electrical console during the show.


On another occasion, while escaping hostile critics displeased with another of my shows, I sneaked into the stairwell by The Actors Studio in Bangsar, only to be lectured to by disembodied whispering. I could not make out what the voice was saying, but gathered that it had to do with my reliance on violence to drive the plot — in any case this was what the critics had a problem with.


On still another occasion, a stage manager watching the monitor during a mixed media production (equal parts film and live theatre) saw me drag across the stage a “corpse” wrapped in a sheet (that is, another actor pretending to be a corpse in a sheet) — when in fact this happened five minutes previously.


Other people have other stories, most of them involving locked dressing-room doors becoming unlocked, or vice-versa; lights going on or off for no apparent reason; sound equipment acting up despite not being plugged in to begin with; and at least one instance of costumes crawling on the ceiling.


There is another kind of corpse, however, that appears very frequently on stage: the term “corpsing” applies to the action of an actor at the moment of distraction: a line is forgotten or one is assailed by crazy-laughter — whatever the cause, the character disappears and the illusion of the stage is broken.


Corpsing really happens only when it is bad enough that the audience notices, as, for example, if Sir Ian McKellen playing Titus Andronicus is unaccountably amused by someone’s phone going off and thereby ceases to be Titus and starts being Ian McKellen, or Gandalf, or Magneto.


However terrifying it might be for the corpse, it is generally very amusing for everyone else: an actor needs to think very quickly to get him or herself out of the problem in a timely and acceptable fashion, with the illusion intact, and this requires a great exercise of wit under pressure.


Sometimes people invent lines on the spot, which is not difficult to do if the play is a modern one. Harold Pinter, for example, was famous for inserting long “pregnant” pauses in his lines that one may exploit with ease; and Samuel Beckett’s lines were so notoriously dense that you can get away with making it up if you know his vocabulary well enough.


It all becomes funnier, however, when one has to do it with Shakespeare or some other ancient dramatist — Sir Peter Ustinov, for example, once famously extemporised Sheridan at length to help a fellow actor who had gone off the rails — but mostly we get away with short-term mumbling, a melodramatic hand to the forehead, or a convincing fumble.
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U-En Ng is a former parliamentary correspondent and leader-writer. He has dallied with theatre for some time in an effort to prove that you can make a fool of yourself in more ways than one.

it depends on which part of the world you are in. Under British law a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty but under French law a person is guilty until proven innocent.

it depends on which part of the world you are in. Under British law a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty but under French law a person is guilty until proven innocent.

that is the definition of sorcery that we meant. The former that you mentioned I think are witchcraft.

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Added on September 17, 2010, 11:51 pmback to topic, I would highlight the scientific evidence. I think we are yet to develop enough base understanding regarding the paranormal world aka ghost/witch/other being realms. We do not have concrete fundamental understanding in order to start evaluating and argument on its properties

Ah, thanks for clearing that up for me, in which case then i probably do believe it to be possible (or at least really like the idea), and that we simply haven't discovered a power source capable of allowing an individual to perform acts of 'sorcery'.

I was slightly confused as a lot of what was being discussed sounded like practices such as Voodoo and Witchdoctoring in which case i don't believe it to be 'magic' or even consorting with evil spirits. Although i do think they can have some powerful effects on people who believe them to be true.

i dont know where you get this, in any modern country innocent until provent guilty is a fundamental right, it is in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen since the french revolution. it is also in the European Convention on Human Rights

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_o..._of_the_Citizen

let us not dwell far to the realm of Merlin casting fire out of his staff or Gandalf whom shine as bright as the sun with his cloak. Let us talk about psychokinetic. The ability to move objects with mind, or levitation? perhaps. (which the Yoga master or Hindu yogi claim possible)

it is even recorded that that this meditation grandmasters has gain control over their subcontious mind even muscle reflects (that they can stop their heart beat)
Sorcery is the field wherby people with abiblity that is capable of manipualting their surroundings whereby witchcraft is the manupulation/exploitation of other beings other than human for evil conduct.

what about malaysia? 

what about malaysia? 

I believe in magic only.. coz magic is simply a trick.. it just deceives your eyes.

malay word nailed it...

"SILAP mata"

Hi. I posted a topic some time ago about ghosts and whether there is any scientific evidence of their existence. I was surprised when I saw that the majority of voters said that yes they believed in ghosts, but the majority of those who commented ridiculed the whole idea. See the thread here.

In this topic, I'm curious to find out whether sorcery/voodoo/witchcraft/magic is supported by any scientific evidence.

Why does this idea seem VERY popular????? 

The reason for this is ad populum.

Haunted computers

100 apes says this story is true but hopefully that 1 ape will not be back to tell these 100 apes otherwise.

Do you mind referencing? Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence.

I tried searching online, but couldn't find the case to verify.

A search on the author, turned up with a concept he came up with such as:
Hundredth monkey effect


You are always questioned and shunned for thinking differently from others.

All these cases were mentioned in the book 'The Nature of Things' by the author, Lyall Watson who was acclaimed for his book 'Supernature'.

He was born in Johannesburg as Malcolm Lyall-Watson. He had an early fascination for nature in the surrounding bush, learning from Zulu and !Kung bushmen. Watson attended boarding school at Rondebosch Boys' High School in Cape Town, completing his studies in 1955. He enrolled at Witwatersrand University in 1956, where he earned degrees in botany and zoology, before securing an apprenticeship in palaentology under Raymond Dart, leading on to anthropological studies in Germany and the Netherlands. Later he earned degrees in geology, chemistry, marine biology, ecology and anthropology. He completed a doctorate of ethology at the University of London, under Desmond Morris. He also worked at the BBC writing and producing nature documentaries.