YouTuber Ceylan published a new video on July 24 targeting Taiwanese influencer Jolie and her "life aura portrait photography," arguing that the so-called aura camera does not reveal anything mystical. In the account summarized by BlockTempo, the device takes a standard portrait in darkness first, then uses built-in colored LED strips for a second exposure. The two images are combined to produce the visible halo.
Ceylan said the hand sensor attached to the setup is not detecting spiritual energy. He said it is reading skin current — put more bluntly, hand sweat.
Ceylan says the business rests on a "hand-sweat machine"
The article describes the sales experience in simple terms: stand quietly in a room for 15 minutes, wait for an instant photo to come out, then hear that the purple or gold glow over your head reflects the current color of your soul. The price, according to the report, is NT$1,500.
In his video, Ceylan called the device a "hand-sweat machine." He also said he purchased Jolie’s manifestation course priced at NT$11,111. After reviewing the accompanying book, he said its use of quantum physics to explain manifestation principles was deeply wrong. His conservative estimate was that the courses alone brought in more than NT$40 million for Jolie. He described that revenue stream as an "IQ tax."
The report also notes that Jolie later responded to the criticism in the media. At the same time, the article says it is not attempting to decide the dispute for either side, leaving legal questions and personal judgment separate.
A 30-year-old Taiwan case reappears in the comparison
BlockTempo then moves back three decades and links the current controversy to the 1996 Song Qi-Li case in Taiwan. Song claimed he could manifest duplicate bodies and emit light. Followers were shown photographs of him suspended in midair or glowing at the forehead, and some even bowed before those images while holding infants, according to the article.
Those so-called miracle photos were sold for NT$70,000 each, while signed versions were priced at NT$140,000. Taipei City councilor Chiu Mei-Feng later exposed the case, and photographer Lo Cheng-Hung admitted the images were created through multiple exposure techniques in a darkroom.
The report says Song used that narrative of supernatural duplication to amass an estimated NT$2 billion to NT$3 billion. It draws a direct line between Song’s darkroom multiple exposures and Jolie’s LED-based double exposure, arguing that the mechanism is essentially the same even if the props changed over 30 years.
On the legal side, the article says Song received a seven-year sentence in the first trial, but the case was reversed on appeal after years of litigation and ended with a final acquittal. The reasoning cited was religious freedom and insufficient grounds to establish fraud. The court, however, did not say the photos were real.
Scientology’s E-meter and the claim of detecting the soul
The article then shifts to the United States and Scientology, often referred to in Chinese as the Church of Scientology. It says one of the group’s core rituals is auditing, where a participant holds two metal cylinders connected to a device called the E-meter. The church says needle movements on the instrument reflect a person’s mental state, reveal traumatic "engrams" from past lives, and can even detect the immortal soul, or "thetan," said to inhabit the body.
Outside Scientology, the same device is described in the piece as a galvanometer. It measures skin resistance and works on the same basic principle as a polygraph. The report says there is no scientifically reviewed research showing that it can detect a thetan or engrams.
It also cites a 1971 U.S. federal court ruling that said medical use of the E-meter had to stop. Religious use could continue only with a disclaimer stating in plain language that the device had no proven medical or scientific ability to improve anyone’s health or bodily functions. The article adds that the Church of Scientology still rejects the label of pseudoscience.
Low hardware cost, hard-to-falsify claims, and buyers who arrive ready to believe
BlockTempo groups the aura camera, Song’s darkroom images, and the E-meter into one pattern: each takes a bodily signal or image effect that can be explained by basic science, attaches a spiritual label to it, and sells it at a premium.
The article says this type of business keeps working because it satisfies three conditions at once:
- Costs are close to zero. A set of LED strips, a galvanometer, or a darkroom is cheap compared with the story being sold.
- The product is difficult to falsify. A customer cannot easily prove they do not have an aura, just as they cannot prove they do not have a thetan.
- Customers bring their own beliefs. Buyers arrive looking for meaning, uplift, or healing, and the seller only needs to tell them their spirituality can be improved.
The piece extends the logic to crypto as well
The article says it is not mocking faith itself. It draws a line between genuine belief and a model built on paid courses, leader profit, pseudoscientific backing, and intolerance of criticism. In the wording used by the piece, that is where faith slips into something else — described directly as cult behavior or fraud.
It then applies the same framing to blockchain markets, saying there are many similar "hand-sweat machines" on-chain: projects that promise to change the world, and NFTs packaged as manifestations of energy. In the article’s view, they are also selling stories that investors cannot easily falsify. It adds that the phrase Ceylan used — "harvesting retail investors" — originally came from the financial world.
The piece ends with a self-aware line from the writer, who says that as of yesterday, he had bought a bit more token spot exposure himself.
Two key points repeated in the FAQ section
The article closes by restating two points in its FAQ. First, the aura camera is described as a system that takes a portrait in darkness and then adds a second exposure with colored LED lighting; the hand sensor reads skin current, or hand sweat, rather than any soul-based energy. Second, Song Qi-Li was not ultimately convicted. He was sentenced to seven years in the first trial, but the case was overturned on appeal and ended in a final acquittal, even though the court still treated the "duplicate body" and glowing images as darkroom composites.