Sweet Ceiling Cat in a chicken basket! As Greg and I have written several times, the New York Times has in the last couple of years become very soft on spirituality, woo, and the occult, especially on astrology. Well, it’s gone extra far this time by publishing a very long profile in its “Style” section of Carissa Schumacher, a medium/spiritualist/channeler from Los Angeles. That’s big publicity!
Schumacher is a full-blown loon, and yet she’s accumulated a stable of wealthy and famous Hollywood-ites who pay her big bucks for “sessions.” Besides channeling Jesus (she’s got a contract to publish three books containing the words of the Son of God), she’ll channel anybody’s relatives—for a fee, of course.
The thing is, the whole article is basically a worshipful piece on Schumacher and her vocal emissions, and the only pushback consists of two quotes from the admirable Susan Gerbic, a columnist for Skeptical Inquirer, experienced debunker, and head of Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia.
Since there are a gazillion mediums in the world, all of them bogus, I fail to see why the paper is highlighting this one, and, in fact, their publicity will surely bring Schumacher a lot more business.
Click to read and weep.
The piece begins with a gathering at Schumacher’s estate, where a lot of big names show up to hear the medium channel Jesus (she says “Yeshua” because she think it sounds weird to say “I’m channeling Jesus!”). It’s surprising who’s been duped by this woman, but, as we know, the public has an endless appetite for confirmation that there’s life after death. The dead speaking through Schumacher gives them comfort and reassurance. From the paper:
Last Saturday night, a group gathered at the Flamingo Estate in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles to meet the spiritual adviser Carissa Schumacher.
At the front of an open-air room, a seat awaited Ms. Schumacher under a large floral arch. After guests, including the actresses Jennifer Aniston and Uma Thurman, filled the rows of chairs, others moved to the floor. Andie MacDowell reclined on a rug among a heap of pillows. Ms. Schumacher was supposed to appear at 8:30 p.m. A gospel choir sang while everyone sat around and glanced at Ms. Schumacher’s empty chair and at each other.
Since 2010, Ms. Schumacher has worked as a medium, meaning someone who receives messages from people who have died. She doesn’t have a website and is often booked months in advance. Her prices are another obstacle, with sessions priced at $1,111 per hour. (She likes the synchronicity of the number.)
In late 2019, just as the world was on the precipice of a plague of biblical proportions, Ms. Schumacher said she began channeling Yeshua, a.k.a. Jesus Christ. Transcribed recordings of some of those sessions appear in a new book, “The Freedom Transmissions,” out Nov. 30.
. . . The party was for the book, but it was also a chance for her clients, many of whom hadn’t experienced the Yeshua channeling, to see what it was all about. Maybe she would channel him at the party. No one was quite sure.
Well, nobody’s claimed that stars like McDowell, Thurman, and Aniston were the sharpest knives in the drawer, but there are others who pay the “synchronicity fee” as well, including Brad Pitt and Rooney Mara. After a long wait, Clarissa shows up:
Ms. Schumacher finally appeared a little after 9:30 p.m. A petite woman of 39, she walked tentatively toward the front of the room, removed her metallic gold heels, and sat cross-legged beneath the giant floral wreath, which now looked like a halo. The wall behind her was covered in photos of rainbows.
“We love you so much!” someone screamed. She put her hands together in prayer and nodded to a few fans around the room. “For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Carissa,” she said. “I knew my whole life that I would be a channel for Yeshua.”
A photo of the session (sadly, the Son of Man refused to be channeled that night). Schumacher, with her white robe, reminds me of another religious huckster in L.A.: Aimee Semple McPherson:
McPherson:
Now how did Sister Carissa come to be the megaphone for Jesus? The NYT explains:
Her naturopathic doctor suggested she meet Danielle Gibbons, who lives in southern Oregon and says she has been channeling the Virgin Mary since 1994. (She has a YouTube channel.) In 2011, Ms. Schumacher attended Ms. Gibbons’s workshop in Los Angeles, and subsequently booked private sessions with her roughly once a year. Ms. Gibbons told me that she didn’t know Ms. Schumacher was a Yeshua channel until much later, in 2019.
Ms. Schumacher said that she spent the next decade preparing her channel for Yeshua. She meditated daily, cut out sugar and caffeine, and limited her diet to five foods: broccoli, cauliflower, turkey, chicken and watermelon. “If someone’s channel is diluted,” she said, “there’s a kind of film or gunk that the energy gets stuck in and can’t push through.”
That’s actually pretty funny, but the NYT presents it without any sarcasm. Perhaps that was their aim, for somehow I don’t think the purpose of this big article was to show that mediums are frauds. It might well be to highlight her bogus book.
What does Jesus say? It turns out that he produces only bromides (surprise!) and doesn’t give specific details about his life. He also has an accent (my emphasis):
Ms. Aniston left that journey early, and the next day Ms. Schumacher said that Yeshua spoke through her for the first time. Those who’ve witnessed it since then say that Ms. Schumacher’s voice and body change. Yeshua’s voice is deeper, more measured, and has a slight British accent.
LOL! I can hear it now: “My dear chaps, you can arrive at God only through me.” And if she’s really channeling Jesus, why isn’t she speaking Hebrew?
There’s more and it’s pretty funny as well, with a toilet metaphor:
When I asked what it’s like to channel Yeshua, Ms. Schumacher said, “It feels like I’m being flushed down a toilet. I go whoosh! And he comes up. I breathe a lot. My body shakes.” On journeys, someone is tasked with holding down her ankles. Coming back into her body is hard, she said. “It’s a little bit like … womp, womp.”
. . . In the fall of 2020, Ms. Schumacher emailed recordings of Yeshua transmissions to her clients. Among them was Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, who was referred to Ms. Schumacher after leaving her longtime job running the literary department at WME. She thought Yeshua’s teachings could be a book and connected Ms. Schumacher with the publisher of Harper One, which will release “The Freedom Transmissions.”
Though there’s some Christian iconography in it — references to the crucifixion, for instance — the rest is a more neutral smorgasbord of divine power surrender, Buddhism, repairing the fragmented self after trauma, and accessing “the God self,” a reference to Carl Jung.
Ms. Rudolph Walsh said that Yeshua’s teachings changed her entire nervous system. “I don’t react to the weather,” she said. “I don’t report the weather. I am the weather. And the weather is always peace.”
I asked Ms. Rudolph Walsh if she believed that Yeshua was truly speaking through Ms. Schumacher. “To me, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “It matters what is being said. But do I personally believe she’s channeling Yeshua? Yes, I do.”
Now perhaps Schumacher really believes that she’s channeling Jesus and the other dead people she speaks for. Perhaps she’s in a self-induced hallucinatory state, but you’d have to be pretty credulous to think that Jesus (if he really existed, and I’m not convinced) would use you as a mouthpiece.
The only two bits of doubt cast on Schumacher, as I said, came from Susan Gerbic:
Susan Gerbic, the founder of Guerrilla Skeptics, a group that conducts sting operations of people she calls “grief vampires,” told me that the invocation of religion was consistent with a psychic’s desire to feel special. “If you are in conversation with dead biblical figures, then that is really special and holds a lot of power,” she said, adding that it also served as a shield against skeptics. “Who’s going to attack someone who’s playing the religion card?”
And this is a gem, especially the part I’ve put in bold:
. . . Later I asked Ms. Gerbic, the psychic skeptic, if she believed there were any legitimate mediums in the world. “I could give you the long answer about how we don’t know all things yet and science does not know everything, but I think you know my answer: It’s all BS,” she wrote in an email. “And the way I know this isn’t because I’ve been doing this for so long, and know many people who have been doing this for so long. But because it is NOT possible to communicate with dead people. They are dead.”
Indeed. They are dead. If you want to test Schumacher as a medium, get someone like the late James Randi to do it. But of course I doubt she’d be tested.
Anyway, Jesus Christ didn’t make a vocal appearance that evening, so Schumacher channeled another person who sings in the Choir Invisible:
Ms. Schumacher decided ultimately that the vibe at the Flamingo Estate wasn’t conducive to channeling Yeshua. (“I am not a go-go-gadget channel,” she told me.) Instead she channeled Kenneth, a guest’s dead father who she said liked fishing and fixing cars. Kenneth’s son, John, wiped his eyes, as did many others in the room. “I’m sorry,” Ms. Schumacher said.
“Don’t be,” John said. “I loved it.”
And if you want to read what Jesus supposedly said, well, Harper Collins, through its imprint Harper One, is releasing the book below: notice that Jesus is listed as the main author! (Does he get most of the royalties?) I have little doubt it’ll sell like hotcakes. Everybody wants to know what Jesus has to say! And two sequels are in the offing.
But I remain curious: why did the New York Times profile this woman? It’s like profiling any kind of hokum: reiki therapy, coffee enemas, reading auras, dowsing, and so on. I can’t help but think that the NYT really thinks there may be something to this, and wanted to get in on the story on the ground floor. Or do the Woke have some kind of penchant for woo? Not that I’ve noticed, but they do practice a kind of religion.
If you have the dosh, you can contact Carissa here.
It seems that Carissa Schumacher makes money from telling people what they want to hear. Much like the New York Times, really.
P. T. Barnum would be proud!
“And if she’s really channeling Jesus, why isn’t she speaking Hebrew?”
Or Aramaic, or ancient Greek.
Thou (thee?) hast beat me to it. But verily, at least to Americans, he (and others) sound much more godly and/or authoritative in King James English, esp. with the proper accent. Reminds me of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrFmuiF2ENY
“Thou” is correct. “Thou” is the subject [Thou has said it], “thee” is the object [I say to thee].
Jesus speaks English because God is an Englishman.
Jesus should tell Ms. Schumacher that under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act she could get in big trouble for waving that feather around.
Speaking of feathers, why did the chicken attend the seance? It wanted to get to the other side.
Has God responded yet about this on his Twitter feed? I’ll bet he (I mean, He) would have some choice words for her.
“Her prices are another obstacle, with sessions priced at $1,111 per hour. (She likes the synchronicity of the number.)” – I bet she does! The only surprise is that she doesn’t find $9,999 even more synchronous. The NYT should be ashamed of itself.
One wonders in what way a price number can have “synchronicity”, also. That was a term Jung* invented meaning: the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. You might as well say she likes the aroma of the number.
*No stranger to a bit of woo himself.
Did she charge for being an hour late?
Probably charged them at Yeshua’s enormously higher rate, since he was even later.
If I want someone to channel JC, I’ll take GC (George Carlin). This is from a tv pilot and the Jesus interview begins ~ 16:10.
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGCQGolGReE
I would assume that the Woke do, in fact, have a penchant for woo. It fits with their very simplistic world view. If this woman is bilking celebrities, though, it sounds like a victimless crime.
Or maybe their penchant for it depends on the race and gender of the woomeister. Western colonial mediums? Frauds taking the resources from indigenous peoples. Indigenous mediums? Totally legit.
“I would assume that the Woke do, in fact, have a penchant for woo.” – Well, it’s a fair assumption given their disconnect from reality…
I just read that article (which was, incredibly, featured in the NYT “The Great Read” email), and immediately searched for a skeptics take on this ridiculous BS. Sad to say, not much out there. This woman is either wackadoodle or a dedicated con artist, but either way she’s definitely figured out how to monetize her “talents.” The studied avoidance of designer clothing and standard internet channels (because who needs internet channels when you channel Yeshua?) is smart — it gives her an aura of equal parts simplicity, mystery and exclusivity, which her wealthy clients take as authenticity. The decision to arrive one hour late at an event with all these “stars” also was smart: make them feel she’s not courting them, that she’s “above” that, and her mystical nature dictates her arrival. It makes the clients respect her more, since they are not accustomed to being kept waiting and are used to being fawned over. And NOT channeling Yeshua was smart, too: keep the audience coming back, not knowing when “the Big Guy” will put in an appearance. Supply and demand, baby — the more Yeshua appears to your clients, the less impressive it becomes. You gotta leave ‘em wanting more! (As a side note: I’m a native San Diegan, and I’m grossed out that she lives here. I used to live in Escondido and know the Elfin Forest well, bike through it all the time. I don’t want to associate it with this fraud/crackpot.)
Perhaps there was no parking place at the event, so she had to leave her car in the stable?
If she were really smart, she would charge a nominal fee. Then after the performance, she would pass around the tip jar, and collect cash gratuities. Then only report the official fees to the IRS
Only if she was channelling “What would Donald do?”
“Medium rare is the only legitimate medium.”
“Oh yes. Me. Give your money to me.”
“If there were, you wouldn’t need to ask the question. Does anyone go around asking if cats are real?”
If the Queen’s English is good enough for Texas school kids, it damn well oughta be good enough for Jesus, as Ma Ferguson sorta maybe said.
I’ll be sorely disappointed if all proper 1st century CE Galileans don’t speak with Received Pronunciation.
Sure would be nice if one of these mediums could channel an ancient Cretan, and tell us how to translate Linear A.
My dear fellow, we British citizens don’t speak with any kind of accent. We speak…English. It’s you chaps across the pond who speak with an accent. 😉
As a USian I am really having fun watching the Masterpiece Theater show Endeavour currently available on Amazon Prime. It’s a detective show set in Oxford in the mid and late 1960s. The accents on top of the idioms / common metaphors / ‘sayings’ is one of the things that makes it so interesting to watch. It takes a bit of effort at times, including rewinding once or twice, but for the most part we can figure out what they mean be context. And when that’s failed we’ve used Google.
I remember my first time listening to a TV interview with Sir Alex Ferguson (former Scottish Manager of Manchester United). I found his accent difficult to understand at times. I am much better now, but I wonder about the plight of some foreign players who had to learn English as well understand Sir Alex. No wonder MU did so well then. If you keep winning you don’t have to worry about not understanding your boss.
A US professor of mine had problems understanding the English of a Prime Suspect episode. I think that particular episode was set in Manchester — not sure though.
It’s entirely possible to be a native British English speaker and yet to fail to understand regional dialects as spoken by, say, grannies at bus stops in Northumberland (to pick an example from my own experience).
I was under the impression that the J-man spoke (ancient) Aramaic.
Well, you’re right–if there WERE a Jesus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DtEjzwc3Vw
Or like the cake that the Little Rascals baked
I must admit, I’d have a hard time with my conscience if I could make $1000 an hour selling woo. Could I do it part time under a pseudonym and wearing a disguise?
Sure hope she asked him on behalf of Dan Rather what the frequency is.
I was charmed by Ms.Schumacher’s five magic foods: broccoli, cauliflower, turkey, chicken, and watermelon. Surprising, though, that the diet for channeling omitted quinoa, whatever that is. And I personally would have added an occasional portion of squid, channeled these days as calamari.
No question that the woke have an affinity for woo, inasmuch as the latter is an “other way of knowing”. We can next look forward to the NYT reporting a few words from Yeshua about the holy trinity of D, E, and I—only omitted from the New Testament, presumably, in the rush to meet a publication deadline.
I think the Thuggees must’ve eaten fried squid a lot, because in the Indiana Jones movie they keep chanting about it.
That’s easy — because more people in the audience understand English. If Jesus is who the Christians say he is, he is omniscient. Therefore, even though he may have spoken Aramaic and Hebrew when he walked the earth, he would be fluent in English. Of course, God Man would speak English in an accent of his choice. Is that even a question worth asking?
If the the g-man takes questions, we could ask him how he was born and how he died, just to verify the inerrancy of the H. Bible. Maybe we could ask him to sing a song in Aramaic.
This is funny:
I have heard an apologist deal with the question how daddy could have know what g-man could not have known while on earth. A head full of high-grade wool helped him out with Mark 13:32:
Channeling Yeshua has a long and “impressive” heritage, going all the back at least to Saul of Tarsus, who founded a religion on “channeling” the person whose followers he had previously persecuted, after having his Road to Damascus episode. Admittedly, he didn’t pretend to speak literally in Jesus’s voice, but certainly passed on “his” edicts and thoughts.
BTW, did Bob Hope and Bing Crosby ever do a “Road to Damascus” movie? If they didn’t, they missed a beat.
I think Dorothy Lamour took a pass on that one. After the first half-dozen, the roads had to run downhill.
It’s notable that this article appeared in the Style section of the NYT, alongside articles about fashion designers and architecture and home decor. I think the article is not really about Carissa, it’s more about the people who buy Carissa’s services. For these rich empty people, Carissa herself is not so much a spiritual advisor, she’s a fashion accessory, like one of those teacup dogs you can buy and put in your purse.
I was thinking something similar. It’s a fad or sign of wealth. The newly discovered thing for wealthy socialites who are a generation too old to post tik tok dances or make up stupid challenges.
Why to they always channel a few figures of historical significance, when its statistically far more likely they’d find a mystical portal to someone like the guy who clean out the open sewers?
Probably not really true. If you walk into a medium’s shop and tell them you’re trying to contact Herb the deceased garbageman, I’m sure they’ll channel Herb. For a price. And you may have to come back several times before they get it right.
Lol! Nice scam. Well if people with money to burn get a dopamine release in the brain from this, why not?
Of course there is a woke version: “selling indulgences” to teach you how racist you are.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/04/white-women-paying-2-5k-for-a-dinner-to-learn-how-theyre-racist/
Nothing surprises me here in Fantasyland. I wonder if she sells anything on Goop.
So she eats broccoli every day?
I guess she won’t be channeling George HW Bush anytime soon
LOL! He really regretted saying that after the broccoli growers of America sent in their produce in attempts to convince him of the error of his ways. Naturally, there’s a Wikipedia article about the incident… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush_broccoli_comments
Would that she had listed a Herbert Walker favorite, pork rinds.
I wonder what the mentioned choir gets paid for each gig. And why wasn’t their repertoire/concert program listed?
Surely, Brad Pitt was only there to see Jennifer.