The Charlatan (TC): How long have you been working as a hypnotist and as a psychic?
Blair Robertson (BR): I have been a hypnotist for 30 years, but I have been a psychic all my life. I am also a medium. The difference between a psychic and a medium is this: all mediums are psychics, but not all psychics are mediums. Some have the ability to communicate with the other side and some don’t.
TC: How did you get into this business?
BR: Almost 100 years ago, we used to have vaudeville houses and they used to have a psychic show. [Barrymore’s Music Hall on Bank Street] used to be called the Imperial Theatre and it used to be a vaudeville house. They used to have shows all day long.
Eddie Diijon, a magician, encouraged me to revive that. I started to do psychic stuff in high school on stage, and then he taught me some hypnosis. I gave up doing almost all of the [magic tricks] and ended up being a stage hypnotist. A number of years ago, I ended up doing more psychic readings and predictions. A lot of the stuff that I predict comes true. Now, more than half of my business is psychic work, and 33 per cent of my business is doing shows like Carleton frosh week and high school shows.
TC: Is there a standard of training for hypnotists or is the field mostly self-regulated?
BR: Unfortunately, in the hypnotism field there is no regulation. There are organizations, but there’s no accreditation for it. Anybody can call themselves a certified hypnotherapist. There really is no benchmark. There’s no school you can go to become a psychic . . . it’s more your reputation.
TC: Is there a link between your work as a psychic and as a hypnotist?
BR: There is none. It’s totally separate. I do the hypnosis shows for entertainment. You guys had the biggest turnout this year. Carleton is one of my two favourite universities to perform for because of the amazing amount of energy that you guys have.
TC: How long have you been doing shows at Carleton?
BR: Twenty-one or 22 years. Queen’s and Carleton both picked me up at the same time and have been running me for the same amount of years.
TC: You're known as "Canada's funniest hypnotic entertainer." How did you get this reputation?
BR: I am old-fashioned. The magician who taught me stage hypnosis — he was the one that said to me, it’s easy to do dirty work, it’s easy to get a laugh by dropping an f-bomb or getting somebody to screw a chair. But when you really think of it, you’re not really laughing because it’s funny, you’re laughing because of your own personal discomfort. It’s not because the actual act is funny.
I don’t do any dirty material in my show whatsoever. I keep my show 100 per cent squeaky clean. I’m famous for having a super clean show and I really believe people will remember my show long after the dirty hypnotist. I bring out the latent talents in people.
TC: There are a lot of people who claim to be psychics out there, and there are also a lot of hypnotists. How competitive are these fields?
BR: The Science of Getting Rich is the best book I have ever read on how to be successful in life. It’s literally about not competing, it’s about creating. I don’t have competition at all. I am not trying to be better than anyone else, I am not trying to be the best in the field, I am just trying to be the best that I can be.
I don’t compete, I create. When you compete, you wear yourself down. This goes right through to my core. If I was competing, I would be stressed out because there are a gazillion people who claim to be psychics and hundreds of people who claim to be hypnotists. When I go to [Carleton], I do the very best show I possibly can and then word spreads around. I’ve been nicknamed a motivational psychic.
TC: What is your favourite thing about doing psychic work?
BR: The best part about doing psychic work is I get to help people and when you help people, it’s a real thrill. Helping people, giving them guidance and in some cases even healing them, helping them change from despair to hope, is an incredible thing. The medium part is even better because it allows people to connect to the other side.
As an entertainer, it’s great for the ego to stand up and have 3,000 students give you a standing ovation, but when you’re doing connections with small groups of people, you’re helping people out. People feel they’re in the dark and you turn on the light for them. It’s a tremendous thing.
TC: How do you prepare for a psychic reading?
BR: For me, the most beautiful thing is I don’t have to prepare for anything. I just start receiving stuff almost instantly.
TC: Walk me through what happens when you’re working as a medium at a psychic house party.
BR: It’s extremely draining and extremely rewarding. It’s like a good workout. You’re physically exhausted, but then an hour later you’re like, “wow I feel fantastic.”
For me, it’s like a window. I am the window. I open up the window and there are the others on the other side who are free then to come through that window to the people who are still here. So I am literally like a translator. They bring stuff through in imagery, in words, in sound. I just pass the information along. The coolest part of what I do is I will leave an event not really knowing what I have told people.
TC: So if I wanted to speak to my great-great-grandfather, could you make that happen?
BR: I’m not like a telephone operator. Whoever wants to come through, will come through. You might really want to speak to your great-great-grandfather, but it may not happen. It might be somebody else related to you or connected to you. It doesn’t have to be a relative — it could be a friend, your next-door neighbour’s dad . . . it could be anybody.
TC: Can you see into the future?
BR: Yes, I can. But I have to quantify that. It’s a technique I call time-projected empathy. I’m going to write a book about this. It has become a ritual for me. On a Sunday night, I clear my head right out and I imagine that I’m in the future. I throw myself into the future. I’m tactile so I like to imagine that I’m reading a newspaper, and I literally just see headlines and I feel the reactions of what people will feel in the future. Some of them come through really clearly and I just record them.
A lot of psychics will say things like, “in 2012, there will be a massive earthquake,” and then when the first earthquake comes they say they predicted it. With my predictions, my signature is: it has to be as specific as I possibly can be and it has to have a timeline.
That’s why I’m famous for predicting the Japanese earthquake that happened and the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake. I’m not afraid to be wrong and I’m not 100 per cent accurate. The stuff that I see is never wrong, but how I interpret it could be totally off.
TC: How far into the future can you see?
BR: The bottom line is the future is never set in stone. I don’t know of any limitations, but I generally don’t predict more than one or two years out.
TC: What is the greatest misconception about hypnosis?
BR: Hypnosis is the power of suggestion. Most people think that it’s an evil satanic power.
The misconception about psychics is that it’s evil and satanic too.
TC: What do you say to people who doubt your abilities?
BR: In both cases for hypnosis and the psychic stuff, my answer is a simple one. There are a lot of skeptics and cynics. When I was in high school, I would get really upset when people would doubt it, but the reality is I couldn’t care less anymore. It doesn’t trouble me. I get paid regardless what you believe. For those who believe, no explanation is necessary . . . for those who don’t believe, no explanation is possible.
