In my early years, I became enamored by magic. So I went to study at a place where many mentalists hung out. There were stage entertainers who used "psychic" abilities to entertain. Of course, they were all tricks. I learned how to use tarot cards and even balloon animals to tell someone about their past, present and future. This style is known as "cold reading".
Before he would take me on as a student, a particular teacher of mine required that I read a classic fictional work "Nightmare Alley", about a circus performer who does cold reading and starts to believe his own press, gaining power and money, and eventually falling. Mentalism is for entertainment, and so long as you don't believe that it is anything else, then you will succeed. I never really had a good patter for it. And while my showmanship skills are a bit lacking, but I still was able to do it pretty well. I still have some of my old reference works - classics. But I never got as good as some of the people that I encountered who gained groupies, wanting private readings, which most of them declined.
While living in Chicago, I attended more than one tent revival meeting. These are people who are doing some good work; some of the money goes to charity. They speak of God and of our mission on this earth. They do a "miracle" or two, a cold reading, a supposed healing, a choir singing a song (one had an "Authentic American Indian performing a ritual healing dance"). It's pure entertainment, and as long as you go with that mindset, that's fine. It is when good people who want to do good get caught up in their own press, that things go sour.
Nir ben Artzi claims that he surrounded himself with unscrupulous men who kidnapped him for more than three years. When confronted with the question as to how can one, who claims that he can see a movie about anyone's past or present, could have missed this, people cry out "Everyone knows that a psychic cannot use powers to help himself!" Really? And where do we know that from? From those who need to provide an excuse. He cannot seem to predict who will be the big donors, so he needs to find them. He could not tell that his wife would try a failed suicide attempt by drinking ant poison (Really? There as so many better ways to accomplish this!). The thing about Mentalists, is that believers remember their "successes" and conveniently forget about their failures.
By the way, there is a documentary showing only his side of the story can be seen here on YouTube. Be prepared for a lot of weirdness coming from his mouth.
So I am going to end by paraphrasing and expanding up the words of the early Sages:
"No one is satisfied with a little bit of money, power, honor, fame, and other things that inflate one. And like a balloon, too much inflation results in what anyone can predict." - Eliyahu (not the Navi!)
