Hollywood's Most Secretive Religious Relic: E-Meter Testing

VICE editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro heads out to Union Square to give strangers E-meter readings, determining their spiritual and moral fiber. The Hubbard Electrometer, more commonly known as the E-meter, is a "religious artifact" used to measure the state of electrical characteristics in the static field surrounding the body. E-meters operate in a similar fashion to lie detectors, relying on a type of electrical circuit called a wheatstone bridge, which measures the subject's galvanic skin response. In short, the device produces a small electrical current, and measures the subject's electrical resistance to that current. Auditors use the device to measure answers to various questions that can supposedly determine whether or not a person is spiritually pure. Basically, it's what it sounds like: a bunch of bullshit. And we made this video to prove it. -- In honor of the release of Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, The Master, VICE will be cherry-picking articles from our vault of the peculiar and grotesque that have to do with strange sects and cults. Keep checking VICE.com as we roll out more religious weirdness. -- Follow Rocco on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rocco_castoro Check out the Best Of VICE playlist here: http://bit.ly/VICE-Best-Of Subscribe for videos that are actually good: http://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-VICE Check out our full video catalog: http://www.youtube.com/user/vice/videos Videos, daily editorial and more: http://vice.com Like VICE on Facebook: http://fb.com/vice Follow VICE on Twitter: http://twitter.com/vice Read our tumblr: http://vicemag.tumblr.com