Your Friday Dose of Woo: Harry Potter called, and he's looking for the Philosopher's Stone

Sometimes my readers save my butt.

There I was earlier this week, looking through my Folder of Woo, as is my wont, and oddly enough nothing much was floating my boat. I know, I know, I've started this little weekly exercise before lamenting a lack of enthusiasm for the woo of which I am aware. Then as before then, I briefly wondered whether perhaps I had exhausted all the interesting woo. That seemed highly unlikely, given that I've only been at this about 20 months or so. After all, the woo supply is seemingly inexhaustible, and if I ever got tired of medical woo, there are so many other frontiers of woo into which I could delve. No, a lack of suitable material wasn't the problem.

That being the case, I wondered if it was me, the blogger, who was having a problem. Perhaps I was burned out on woo. Perhaps I needed to put this little weekly exercise on hiatus for a while, in order to recharge the old batteries, so to speak, the better to take on the beast yet again at some future date. But that seemed a rather drastic solution for what could well be just a bit of writer's block. Believe it or not, even Orac sometimes has trouble figuring out what to write, sometimes forging ahead anyway. (Those are usually the time that I get into trouble, usually by venturing into discussing politics or abortion or something like that).

Then I was saved by the woo, as I now like to say. Oddly enough, it came from that huge repository of all things pseudoscience and quackery, Mike Adams' NaturalNews.com. I say "oddly enough" not because it's in the least bit odd for Mike Adams to be pushing only the most extravagant quackery and big pharma paranoia. It'd be extremely odd and against type if he ever did a post that made any sense at all from a science- and evidence-based perspective. No, what was odd was that I somehow missed this gem of woo, given that I usually do peruse his site at least a couple of times a week. It's a great source of material for the blog; indeed, I have to resist the temptation to mine it more than is good for this blog, to go to the well too many times, as they say. This time, it's more than appropriate, given that Harry Potter called and he wants his Philosopher's Stone back. (In the U.K., the first Harry Potter book was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, not Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.)

Are you ready for Orme (or, as it's also called, Ormus)?

What is Ormus, you ask? Good question. Even I, connoisseur of all things woo, had--unbelievably!--never heard of Ormus or its "discoverer" David Hudson before. I know, I know, it's an embarrassing lapse in my knowledge. I can only offer the defense that--well, there is no defense, I guess. all I can do is to try to make up for it by delving into the wondrous woo that is Ormus. Fortunately, I have a guy by the name of Mike Donkers (I kid you not; that's his name) to thank for an introduction:

Ormus, also known as ORMEs, m-state elements, white powder gold, or the Philosopher's Stone, was discovered in 1975 by an Arizona farmer named David Hudson. He discovered some material in his soil that he had never seen before. He laid it out to dry in the hot Arizona sun so he could have it analyzed. What happened next was absolutely remarkable: the stuff exploded in a big flash of light and disappeared! But when he dried it without the use of sunlight it didn't disappear.

Wow! That's awesome stuff! What on earth could it be? Donkers (I just love saying that) is happy to tell us--sort of. It turns out that this amazing white gold defied the best efforts of those nasty, conventional, materialistic scientists to figure out what the heck it was:

Hudson was a very successful farmer and businessman so he could afford to have an expensive assay of the material done by a professor at New York's Cornell University. The stuff turned out to contain gold, silver, iron and aluminum, among other things. However, the gold and silver did not dissolve in fluid, as is usually the case. The iron and aluminum also did not dissolve in various acids and in their isolated form, they formed a strange black matter.

One by one the elements were isolated. Until the standard tests revealed there should be nothing left. But there was something left - a lot of it, in fact. The scientist told Hudson there was nothing, although after removal of the individual elements a staggering 98% of the material was still left! Hudson had spent a lot of money on the analyses and left the university completely disappointed in academic science.

Drat! Let down again by science! Isn't that the way it always is with woo? Those darned pointy-heads just can't appreciate when something doesn't fit into their existing paradigm, can they? Oh, sure, now you'll tell me that all those Nobel Prize winners earned a path to glory by doing just that--challenging existing paradigms--but why let a little truth interfere with a woo-meister fantasy? But, getting back to the story, surely there must be someone, some scientist who not only would believe Hudson but have the imagination to stretch beyond those dull materialistic concepts.

Fortunately for this woo, he did, or at least that's what the story claims. And the man he found was Hal Puthoff. (I kid you not; that's his name.) Apparently Hudson found Puthoff after an unnamed German "expert" subjected the powder to more tests and concluded that it contained precious elements, including platinum, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium and osmium. But it only contained them after being exposed to hot or cold temperatures for at least 70 seconds. Indeed, it was claimed that the material "expressions" of the powder changed radically depending upon the degree of warming or cooling to which it was subjected, and that one element would even "morph" into another or disappear spontaneously! This is where Hudson named the stuff:

In March of 1988 Hudson patented these elements which he called Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements, or ORMEs. This has become known as Ormus and stands for what are twelve known elements which exist both in a material and an immaterial, energetic form.

Hmmm. Let's see. E=mc². That'd be a lot of energy in that "material" energetic form there. Why is it that woomeisters never bother to go back to basic physics to test the plausibility of their claims for "pure energy"? In any case, this is where Dr. Puthoff enters the story:

Hudson found this out by getting in touch with one of the American pioneers of quantum physics, Hal Puthoff. Puthoff explained to him the strange phenomena associated with Ormus. Ormus elements are capable of losing their material form under the influence of warmth and sunlight, making them no longer subject to the laws of gravity and even capable of dissolving into sunlight. This is what Hudson had witnessed when he dried the material in the hot sun. The Ormus had literally become one with the light and transferred to another dimension in which there is no space-time. By cooling it down, he learned to bring back the stuff to the exact place where he had laid it to dry, back to the material world of space-time in which we live.

Holy dimensional woo, Batman! So that explains where all that enormous amount of energy present in the matter that is Ormus must go! It all makes such sense now, particularly given that Dr. Puthoff is a Scientologist and reached OT VII level (not to mention his mad skills at remote viewing), not to mention his apparently numerous papers in parapsychology. But what does all of this have to do with health, you may reasonably (or not so reasonably) ask? Fear not. I was wondering the same thing myself as I read this amazing article. There is indeed a health angle, as you just had to know that there would be:

Ormus is a superconductor. These elements resonate with the primal energy, the zero point from which all life originates and which is a quantum potential of possibilities. Ormus is one with this endless source of energy, which can be found in the air, the soil, plants, stones and the sea. Hudson even showed by dissecting animal brains that they too contained Ormus. According to Hudson our brains contain at least 5% Ormus. This percentage can be raised considerably if we take in food and water with a high Ormus content.

It is exactly these foods that are so sadly lacking today. Hudson refers to Ormus as 'the light of life' and 'the Spirit'. He claims it not only makes us more spiritual but that it's capable of correcting DNA too. Now think of the experiments the alchemists carried out in which they tried to change metals into gold and made a white powder out of gold. The church persecuted, tortured and killed these people. What did they know that we're not supposed to know? The ancient Egyptians also knew. Gold has always been the true money and has remained so to this day. But the true value of gold may well be medicinal and spiritual instead of material.

Beautiful! Not only is there a fatuous invocation of quantum theory, but we're now delving into "energy" medicine, or, as I like to call it, "messin' with your ghost before you're dead." Or at least the energetic essence that is your ghost if you actually had a ghost or spirit.

Unfortunately, though, this woo seems to be missing something. What could it be? What is mandatory for health-related woo. I wonder...

I have it! Where are all the toxins? They're there, of course. Indeed, evil, death-promoting forces are out there making sure you don't get your minimum daily requirement of Ormus and instead pack yourself full of toxins:

There are, unfortunately, dark and powerful forces at work which are trying to keep us from realizing our true potential, our true evolution to a higher consciousness. They are spreading death energy across the planet. They do so by controlling our food and money supply. They are the inventors of NPK agriculture, which is based on growing crops with a bare minimum of three elements: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). This technique came out of the successes they had had in World War One with nitrogen bombs. Plants grown with NPK cannot survive in nature because she sends a 'clean-up crew' of insects and fungi to dispose of these weak organisms. That's why the crops are 'treated' with pesticides, which in turn are a variation of nerve gas.

Thus an unnatural product is kept artificially alive using war chemistry. As a result, we develop a structural mineral (and therefore Ormus) deficiency and ingest dangerous toxins which mess with our hormonal and nervous system. The diseases caused by this are then 'treated' with even more war-based chemicals. Like chemo therapy, for instance, which is nothing more than a variation of mustard gas.

Now we're back to the woo I love! I'm not clear, however, how an ORMUS deficiency can lead to disease, but then, hey, I only went to medical school for four years, spent five years in a general surgery residency, over three years doing a PhD, and another three years in a surgical oncology fellowship. What do I know compared to "Dr." Donkers? Certainly not enough to be able to offer 0.5 oz of White Powder Gold for a mere $49.95.

I can't help but close with some of the more amazing things that ORMUS can do for you. For example, check this out:

The possible implications of the existence of the ORME -- adding the white powder of gold (and other precious metals) to one's "diet" -- is astounding. Based on the full range of literature, Hudson believes a human ingesting the ORME in the correct manner can fulfill all the dreams of the esoteric alchemists, i.e.:

• To have perfect telepathy,
• Be able to levitate and/or bilocate,
• Know good and evil when it's in the room with you (i.e. eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil),
• Project one's thoughts into someone else's mind,
• Heal by laying on of hands, and
• Cleanse or resurrect the dead within two or three days after they have died.

Holy crap, ORMUS is going to turn me into Jesus!

But that's not all ORMUS can do. It just occurred to me as I was writing this that the word ORMUS sounded familiar. It turns out that there's a reason. It figures that the Amazing Randi himself had already had a bit of fun discussing some of the more--shall we say?--"uplifting" claims made for ORMUS reprinting an e-mail exchange that a reader had had with a representative from the White Powder Gold site selling ORMUS. He wanted to know why the ORMUS was only sold as a suspension in water. The answer he got back will floor you:

Unfortunately we don't offer the product in powder form. In fact, due to the anti-gravital effects of the product it would be practically impossible to even measure it in powdered form - which is why we suspend it in water.

You heard right. ORMUS in its pure form levitates so that its weight can't be measured! I love it! I want some. Well, maybe not enough to pay $49.95 for a measly half ounce. But, then, what price to be turned into a god, right?