So I’m doing my standard web surfing for the day, checking out all the quackery and woo that stuffs the interwebs and spills out into our daily lives like the yolk of an egg that’s been boiled too long.
and this is how homeopathy gets into the world
So I come across the Rods of Ra.
These guys are selling magic wands. Magic wands! Like Harry Potter has, or like a level 4 elf wizard who really needs to cast a fireball but hasn’t rested for the day.
Here’s the awesome claim: Research indicates that copper and zinc Rods filled with charcoal, magnetite, quartz crystals or other special materials seem to have certain energetic qualities that provided the ancient Egyptian ruling class a means of connecting directly with the energy systems of the human body and the universal energy of deliberate creation. This allowed a powerful point of focus for the work of balance and self-perfection.
You’ll notice, if you dick around on the site, that there’s no research indicated. Instead, you get energy healing.
For those of you who’ve never wandered into the world of woo, energy healing is exactly what it sounds like – curing people of illness and injury the same way that you do in World of Warcraft.
They claim that the pharaohs used them (maybe just the inbred ones?) for “bringing their human energy systems back into balance and restoring normal form and function to their bodies.”
By holding metal tubes.
And as any woo-website is bound to be, this one is internally inconsistent: one minute you get this:
It is interesting to note that conventional Egyptologists and archeologists have never asked the question, what are they holding in their hands?
Then:
The “conventional” theory is that the statues are holding “scrolls” in their hands.
Crafty Egyptologists, answering questions they have never asked!
Could it maybe be scrolls? Well, even on the Rods of Ra website, there’s one really convincing picture. Looks like a scroll to me.
But these guys are part of a larger webring of stupid that boggles the mind and, I hope, is horribly unprofitable.
More on that later…
4 responses so far ↓
Brad H. // May 11, 2009 at 23:38 |
$499?! I think we should set ourselves up as competitors. Maybe we can drop the price down to $199 and make a killing.
jacksonskepticalsociety // May 12, 2009 at 03:05 |
Hell, I think we could try 29.99 and cross-market them as sex toys.
jacksonskepticalsociety // May 12, 2009 at 03:05 |
“Yeah, baby, I know what’ll work – the Rod of Ra. That’s what you need.”
Fire Biophotons! « Living Better Skeptically // May 14, 2009 at 04:18 |
[...] this for ages, and the most hilarious one I’ve seen yet is Quantum Balancing. This beats the “Rods of Ra” (and is, in fact, where I found the Rods of Ra) by a few giant statue [...]