Dark Lore volume 1 is the first entry in a fascinating series

I’ve always been the sort of person that sought out the books on Bigfoot, UFOs or Terrence McKenna before reading through The Kite Runner or various Grisham novels (you know… the mainstream stuff). Something about the weird and strange, no matter how implausible,  has always appealed to me. Partially this interest has developed from personal experiences with UFO sightings and other bizarre things outside normal explanations for reality. But the primary reason for my fascination is that deep inside I feel there is far more to be experienced than most people ever know. Cracks in the official explanations for reality show through on the fringes of society. We dull ourselves down through constant exposure to culture, but several hundred years ago we would have been thankful for visitations from our ancestors or discussions with plants. As the intelligence officer Major Murphy told Dr. Jacques Vallee on p.74 of Messengers of Deception regarding the failure for science to incorporate the price of information , “[In science] Suppose I gave you 95% of the data concerning a phenomenon. You’re happy because you know 95% of the data. I know that this is the cheap part of the information. I still need the other 5% but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it!”  Dark Lore is about that other 5%.

Dark Lore Volume 1 is the first of a now four volume series containing articles from the leading writers of fringe science. Edited by Greg Taylor, creator of the alternative news site The Daily Grail. In Dark Lore Volume 1, Greg has enlisted some of my favorite authors: Paul Devereux, Mitch Horowitz, John Higgs, Nick Redfern, Adam Gorightly Daniel Pinchbeck, Michael Prescott and Loren Coleman. If you follow the fields of heretical thought you’ll be familiar with these names. I would recommend this book as an antidote to someone that has been exposed to mostly bland explanations of reality.

I enjoyed all the essays in the book but I’ll provide a quick summary of the ones that really stood out, denoting my absolute favorites.

Michael Prescott analyzed how an obsession with the paranormal can drive people insane citing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the most notable examples of a man driven mad by the etheric. Greg Taylor’s essay on the common audible experiences across various border phenomena was truly fascinating. Why do people reporting alien abductions, near death experiences, psychedelic experiences, OBEs, etc… all report similar sounds triggering the altered state of consciousness? Robert M. Schoch’s description of being a rogue Egyptologist was disheartening, why do academics reject  so much quantitative and archeological evidence towards an alternative approach to Egyptian history? Daniel Pinchbeck’s piece provided a fantastic history of Terrence and Dennis McKenna’s ingestion of psychedelic mushrooms and their contribution to the Timewave Zero phenomena and the 2012 hype. Susan B. Martinez challenged typical explanations of literary inspiration by relaying paranormal experiences from authors like Wilde, Poe, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Woolf, Tennison and more. Loren Coleman provided a coherent look at how any information about Bigfoot gets blown out of proportion by the mainstream media. John Higgs provided one of my favorite essays from the book, looking at similarities between Aliester Crowley and Dr. Timothy Leary. Michael E. Tymn recounted the fascinating encounters of linguist professor Neville Whymant with a medium that channeled ancient Chinese claiming to be the spirit of Confucius. Mitch Horowitz penned an entertaining history of Ouija in America. The Emperor laid out evidence that connects many Bigfoot experiences with UFOs (much more convincing than you might think). Mike Jay discussed the ritual use of psychedelic substances in ancient Peru using archeological evidence. My favorite essay was from Michael Grosso who provided some fascinating studies and personal accounts of how the moment of death points towards an afterlife (this one is worth the price of the book alone). To close out the collection, Adam Gorightly discussed the ritual magicians of the late 1800s/early 1900s and how their experiences parallel the beings contacted in UFO experiences… did they let something in?

Overall, the entire collection was incredibly strong. If you want to be bombarded with a world you never knew existed… or if you want to expand your knowledge of the unknown I would highly recommend this collection. I’ll look forward to the time when I can pick up Dark Lore Volume 2.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: border phenomena, fringe science, mysterious

This is an interesting experiment but I’m more interested in finding evidence that links group intention to fluctuations in the random number generators. Fortunately, F. Holmes Atwater at the Monroe Institute has done just that in a recent paper,

Abstract – An experiment tested whether mental coherence entrained in groups would affect sequences of data generated by truly random number generators (RNGs) in the vicinity of those groups. Coherence was entrained by having groups listen to a prescribed series of binaural-beat rhythms during a 6-day workshop. Two RNGs based on electronic noise and one on radioactive decay latencies were located in the building where the workshops took place. Random data were continually collected from these RNGs during 14 workshops. As controls, the same RNGs generated data in the same locations and times but during 8 weeks when no workshops took place. Other RNGs in two distant locations were run as additional controls.

An exploratory hypothesis predicted that fluctuations in entrained mental coherence associated with the workshop activities would modulate the random data recorded during the workshops. This was predicted to result in positive correlations between random data streams collected from one workshop to the next. Results showed that during the workshops the overall correlation was positive, as predicted (p = .008); during control periods the same RNGs produced chance results (p = .74). Random data generated in distant locations also produced results consistent with chance.”

In summary, the group workshops which had numbers of people focusing on the same things were able to influenced the generation patters of the random number generators. For me, this is the best evidence of the validity of the GCP that has come out yet.

[via Entangled Minds]

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: consciousness, mind, science

“I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do. If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me. But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you’d probably want a lot more evidence. Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don’t have that evidence.”

So you are saying that because something doesn’t fit into the current scientific paradigm, it must be outlandish? That’s a really unfortunate viewpoint that can hinder scientific research. Scientists observe phenomena and try to explain them. There is a lot of evidence for the existence of remote viewing and other “paranormal” phenomena, unraveling the mechanisms behind these things could lead to amazing and rapid progress for society. Unfortunately, the research goes where the money goes and those in charge control the money… and the people in charge are the people like Richard Wiseman.

[via Dr. Dean Radin's Engangled Minds Blog]

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: mind, science, skeptics

Two such stories,

“The first time I had a dream about this man I was having a hard time at work. I had a dream about getting lost in a huge and deserted shopping mall. Suddenly this man appeared and I started running away from him. He chased after me for what seemed like an hour until I found myself against a wall in the kids’ area in a supermarket. At this point he smiled at me and he showed me the way out towards the cash desks and I woke up. Ever since that night this man has appeared in all of my dreams and he always gives me directions to get out of the dream and wake up.”

“I have never had homosexual relationships or even fantasies. But I dream about having sexing with this man all the time. I must admit he has a lot of imagination and he pleases me. Sometimes when I wake up I discover I have had a nocturnal emission.”

the problem is that once you see this, now you are more likely to dream this man

Update: Did some investigation into this site and discovered that it is registered to a guerilla marketing company based out of Italy. And while I’m disappointed by the fact that people aren’t dreaming about this man all over the world, I’m still awed by the brilliance of this marketing strategy.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dreams, group psychology, marketing

Morgellons (also called Morgellons disease or Morgellons syndrome), is a name given in 2002 by Mary Leitao to a proposed condition referred to by the Centers for Disease Control as Unexplained Dermopathy and characterized by a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations; finding fibers on or under the skin; and persistent skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores).

Some criticisms against Morgellons state that the whole thing could be delusional. However Morgellons sufferer, Jan Smith decided to try to get some photos of what could be behind Morgellons and the whole thing is just strange. His site has several hundred photos that are quite bizzarre. Sure, the whole thing is tinged by conspiratorial overtones. The photos could be fakes. However, the lab techniques look legitimate. If these really are the “things” behind Morgellons, it could be a very sister and bizzarre disease indeed.

is it all real? are the photos fake? if it is real, this is some confusing stuff

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: disease, weird

The creature had a human head, face, nose, shoulders and human-like skin that had very scanty furs. It had goat features from the “shoulders” to the legs. Its sagging stomach prevented curious villagers from determining whether it had human or animal sex organs as it protruded covering the front part. Villagers said the end product was so scary that even dogs were afraid to move close to the goat.

[via The Zimbabwe Guardian]

Update: Found some photos of the alleged goat-man thing. Still inconclusive in my opinion…

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cryptozoology, strange, weird

The first podcast I subscribed to when I bought my Creative Zen Vision: M in 2006 was Mysterious Universe. One of the things that got me through the work week was listening to Ben Grundy’s reports on the mysterious and the paranormal.

After his mysterious exit from the podcasting world, pledging to record a final episode and then never recording it… he’s back!  The new podcast has has retained its slick production value and Australian accent. My favorite excerpt from this episode were the accounts of grinning man sightings.

I’m happy to have this show back in my weekly playlist.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: excitement, mysterious, paranormal, Podcasts

As a student of esoteric thought and spiritual development, I’m interested in the members of our species that have achieved a particular state of enlightened knowledge, a direct contact with wisdom. Many claim to have visitations from spiritual beings or to have received revelation through direct mystical experience. Yet, a true read of their work will reveal the presence of wisdom.

While Gary Lachman’s A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult tackles many of the important writers that have made these claims, it still falls a bit short of the book I wish it was. And my disappointments aside, this is still an amazing work. Divided into two halves, the first is a series of essays on the specific eras of western esoteric development and the key players that defined it, the second half containing excerpts from important writings by the authors introduced in the first half. This volume is keenly focused on authors and writers, and Lachman admits in the beginning that an equal number of pages should be devoted to musicians and other fields.

Within A Dark Muse the esoteric enlightenment is broken into five eras: Enlightenment, Romantic, Satanic, Fin de siécle and Modernist, each highlighting Lachman’s penchant to expose under-appreciated contributors to western thought. If you want to find a reading list for the next year and a half, this is the book to pick up. I’ve discovered quite a few writings that I will explore in depth over the next few months. While the public believes that ‘the occult’ and ’satanism’ are synonymous, a simple survey of the ideas in this book will reveal quite the opposite. Occult studies are truly a deeper look at the hidden wisdom present in many of the holy books, cultures and humans on the planet. Most of the authors featured by Lachman deal with esoteric Christianity, the nature of God, metaphysics and spiritual practice (my areas of interest). The chapter on Satanic Occultism, while the most shocking, is also the shortest, simply because there aren’t many writers along those lines. This is a grab bag and a good one at that. Read and find the teasers you’ll need to dive further into many deeper ideas.

Where the book fell short is in the failure to acknowledge some major influences of the 20th century in their own right. Rudolph Steiner, G.I. Gurdjieff, Israel Regardie, Manly P. Hall, the first two being mentioned and the last two entirely left out. Other important thinkers, such as Krishnamurti, while not being explicitly occult, was still the center of Blavatsky’s Theosophical movement and would deserve more than the brief mention he receives. However, omissions make sense, jamming this much into 380 pages requires at least a few to be left aside.

The reason for the focus on occult writers becomes apparently early on in the piece on Romanticism as Lachman states,

“It’s not surprising that the mage and the poet should be linked. Both used words in order to produce a desired effect, and as magic moved more and more away from the medieval sense of controlling angels and demons, and closer to the visionary powers of William Blake, the distinction between the two became one of mere terminology.”

Learning more about Swedenborg, Cazotte, Mesmer, Saint-Martin, Eckharthausen, Blake, Goethe, Balzac, Poe, Bulwer-Lytton, Blavatsky, Blackwood, Bucke, Ouspensky, Milosz and Lowry is an eye-opening experience. To think that most of the ideas being touted as new age or evolutionary have originated in these men is refreshing. A coming rapid evolution of the human race via 2012 or other catalyst? Bulwer-Lytton has already covered it. Ascending states of cosmic consciousness? Bucke has dissected it. Spiritual science? Goethe, Steiner, Ouspensky and many others have laid the framework. The excerpts section was filled with gems.

The essay included by Ouspensky included some of the most beautiful poetry I’ve seen to describe the human condition.

Some of the most cutting edge theories of modern physicists were hinted at (with a slightly more spiritual tone) by writers like Poe in the early 1800’s:

…there are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. The atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates the atmosphere. These gradation of matter increase in rarity or fineness, until we arrive at a matter unparticled-without particles-indivisible-one; and here the all of impulsion and permeation is modified. The ultimate or imparticled matter not only permeates all things, but impels all things; and thus is all things within itself, this matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the word “thought”, is this matter in motion.

Poe was also the first to state the reason why the sky is black and not saturated with the light of stars. An insightful man. And he also stated, “Positive pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point, we must have suffered in the same.”

Saint-Martin was filled with equally brilliant insights,

There is not a man in possession of his true self for whom the temporal universe is not a great allegory or fable with must manifest the truly divine pleasures… the overwhelming misfortune of man is not that his is ignorant of the existence of truth but that he misconstrues its nature…man is the visible expression of divinity…we have not the courage to work to justify [that we are the highest in the universe]… the learned describe nature, the wise explain it…as a proof that we are regenerated we must regenerate the world.

Wow. Powerful stuff.

The down side of A Dark Muse: I now have a reading list longer than I can ever hope to tackle.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: esoteric, history, occult, philosophy, spirituality

Perhaps I was simply messed up as an early adolescent. While others around me sought speaker system upgrades for their cars or moments of numb bliss through substances, I was slowly building a small library of P.D. Ouspensky, G.I. Gurdjieff and  Jiddu Krishnamurti. The rationale escapes me for why I decided to pull the trigger on Amazon, July 15th 2005 to order Freedom from the Known by Krishnamurti. That simple act has had profound ramifications on my life and the lives of those around me. Simply put, the me you know today would not have existed without this action. Concepts such as dying psychologically every moment to remove the anxiety of the future and the weight of the past, knowing that reflections of my inner world are manifest in people around me, understanding that the world cannot change until I change and that belief is the outcome is fear are revolutionary concepts to many, especially to an eighteen year old. It has been said that recognition of truth is the intersection of external perception and internal reality and Krishnamurti’s thought rang as a refreshing breath of fresh air to the mundane world of injustice around me. These words rang as truth to me.

After years of contemplative thought on these ideas, I was caught up in learning the history of Krishnamurti and his involvement in the odd Theosophical movement around the turn of the century, which led me to Steiner. Side note: One of my favorite stories became the account of how Krishnamurti told everyone he wasn’t the new Messiah.

In the first half of the 1900’s, counter to Krishnamurti in the east, the spiritual revival in the west was catalyzed by Rudolph Steiner. I often ponder what form our modern world could have taken if the practical ideas of these deep thinkers were not interrupted by decades of war… but that discussion is for another time. When I first read Steiner’s How to Know Higher Worlds I was struck with the same power of pure original thought as with Krishnamurti. The practices for spiritual development as an aspect of my individual responsibility was an important understanding. Steiner was telling us that even if we never sought esoteric knowledge, integrating values of patience, reverence, open-mindedness, respect and tranquility would have far reaching effects in positive ways otherwise. The process for developing these principles have been crucial to my foundation towards becoming a psychologically free person. I sought to learn more about the man behind these concepts as I discovered a rich heritage of agricultural methods, curative education and alternative schooling. Gary Lachman’s biography on Steiner proved an excellent guide through the enigma of a truly spectacular man. Tracing Steiner’s development in rural Austria, to Vienna, through Germany and ultimately as Theosophical hero and finally as founder of Anthrosophy, Lachman’s approach renewed my excitement about the period of spiritual revival at the turn of the century.

Steiner designed many buildings but none as spectacular as the first Goetheanum which burned shortly after WW1

Summarizing a career as broad and spectacular as Steiner’s is no easy feat. As Lachman describes in the introduction,

Steiner’s ideas about consciousness, the nature of thought and the relationship between the mind and the external world were, quite literally, revoluationary, and they had me rethinking the history of Western philosophy. Yet I could turn to another lecture and there Steiner would tell me about reading to the dead or about the work of the Buddha on Mars…and a kind of ‘Tilt’ sign would light up in my brain

Practical revolutionary practices, followed by seemingly zany and impossible claims. Can we remove the parts we like from Steiner’s amazing body of work while dissecting the imaginative but bizarre accounts of reincarnation, death and spiritual beings? I don’t know if we can, curative education, biodynamic farming and Waldorf Schools have yielded amazing results but are ultimately based on Steiner’s perceptions of the spirit world. Quite a paradox.

What I appreciated the most about Lachman’s work were his attempts to summarize the most revolutionary concepts from Steiner’s writings and lectures which, to my knowledge, these summaries were successful and are important in their own right. The balanced approach towards Steiner’s life is equally important, I feel like I could pass this book along to a friend to introduce Steiner’s ideas without scaring them off when they would have reached Steiner’s dissertations on Atlantis, Lemuria, Ahriman Jesus and Lucifer in his original works. Steiner may be ridiculed by the more rational among us, especially the evangelists of materialism,  yet he had insights almost a hundred years ago that are only prepared to receive. He was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Yet it is a puzzle why few recognize his Philosophy of Freedom as such a seminal work.

Some of the ideas I found most important included the concept that our eyes may perceive a world that is a simple, immediate perception yet really that world is already infused with the content of our inner world. That the world is merely physical and absolute is half the equation. Descartes sitting and contemplating was failing to contemplate that his perceptions were already influenced by himself. Steiner wrote,

When one who has a rich mental life sees a thousand things which are nothing to the mentally poor, this show as clearly as sunlight that the content of reality is only the reflection of the content of our minds

Additionally he argued that our cognition and awareness is not something extra, tacked on to our biology. Our knowledge of the world is part of the world, as important as our life is to the ecosystem. This isn’t new age jargon, it is an argument against Kant’s limits to knowledge. Steiner challenged humanity in the same way as Nietzsche, that there is more to the human than we can ever imagine. Yet Steiner took it a step farther to say that there were no limits to knowledge other than those set by laziness. Through a focus on timeless ideas and growth/creation process of the world around us, we can develop the active imagining most humans fail to curate.

The thoughts I shared above are just the top layer of a deep career filled with thousands of lectures and revolutionary concepts. At the end, I had to conclude for myself that the fundamental practical solutions Steiner offered cannot be accepted if the  tremendous imagination of his mind is ignored. This account of Steiner’s life is the perfect introduction to the most important philosopher you’ve never read.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anthrosophy, esoteric science, rudolph steiner

A balanced look at the experience of an exorcist must weigh all of these barriers towards providing a fair and believable look at the truth behind these tormenting experiences. Freelance writer and journalist Matt Baglio succeeds at demonstrating why modern demon possession lore is just the tip of the iceberg through his recently released, The Rite: Making of a Modern Exorcist.

I didn’t expect an account of exorcism to be so believable, or so chilling. Partly because Baglio was just as skeptical when he started writing the book, and partly because following San Franciscan Catholic priest Father Gary through his training revealed that he started just as clueless.

When the Catholic Church wrote a letter to every US diocese in 2005, Father Gary was surprised to learn that he had been chosen for the post. Leaving for a sabbatical year, Father Gary spent twelve months at the Continuing Theological Education at the North American College in Rome where he was ordered by his bishop to take a course on how to become an exorcist. That first class was where Baglio and Gary met, Matt seeing an opportunity to follow someone through the process of what he thought might be a sensational ploy at the headlines by the Catholic Church.

Most American priests fall on one end of a large spectrum, they are either quite skeptical of exorcism or “see demons everywhere”. But in Italy, demonic possession is just a fact of life. Oddly enough, the most exorcisms occur in Italy, a country that is over 80% Catholic. Is this because demonic possession primarily affects Catholics or is it because Italians are more likely to seek out an exorcism? These are just some of the interesting mysteries raised by this book.

As Father Gary progresses through the training, he apprentices with Father Carmine, an expert in performing the exorcism ritual. Initially Father Gary only witnessed what he described as people coming in and belching very loudly. Leaving him with many more questions than answers… until he witnessed the case of Sister Janica.

Janica was a nun that suffered from a “very powerful demon.” When Father Carmine began the ritual she shook in her chair and began to beat her head against stone wall until it shook. As the prayers continued she growled and then shouted an ear piercing scream just before, “the voice” manifested. It was an otherworldly guttural rasping sound that shouted obscenities at Father Carmine. Her face contorted into rage. Her eyeballs rolled into her head and she screamed, flailing on the floor. And this had been happening regularly for nine years. Movies and lore depicts the exorcism as a one shot deal but this is rarely the case. The possessed are freed from their demons only after a long process of returning to religious ritual in their lives, for Catholics this means confessions, prayer and mass. The exorcism only makes up about 10-20% of the healing process. But in rare cases, priests have performed exorcisms on Muslims and Hindus, after which they returned to their respective rituals. This is one of the theological reasons that God allows possession, to lead people back to a life of devout faith. After witnessing something as horrible as an evil force acting through a human being, I’m sure I would strike up some sort of repeated action to avoid it.

The scientific explanation against possession lacks the ability to account for quite a few unbelievable experiences. For example, one priest went home after an exorcism and his cats began tearing each other to pieces. The next day when talking to his “patient”, the demonic voice manifested and said to the priest that it enjoyed playing with his cats. Another case involved a possessed individual taunting a priest with a demonic voice about its ability to erase all his phone’s text messages, because he did. Multiple personality disorder and depression can’t explain why the possessed have been known to vomit buckets of sperm, live scorpions and black nails. Clairvoyant abilities are provided by the demons through the possessed as they sometimes describe intimate details of priest’s lives or objects in hidden areas. In very rare cases, a demon will describe its past possessions the priest was involved in. The descriptions that Matt Baglio received of these horrible exorcisms through first hand interviews are very disturbing. As I read them, chills went down my spine because they are so vivid and honest.

Discernment, the ability to determine if someone is truly possessed, is an interesting dilemma. Many exorcists like to work with a team of psychologists, psychiatrists and other advisers. The key to determining if someone is truly possessed can be rather obscured but typically if someone’s condition does not respond to medicine, only to blessings and prayer it is an indication that demonic possession is likely present. Almost always, someone truly possessed won’t attribute their problems to a demon. They only seek out the priesthood after being forced by a family member or friend. If one comes to a priest saying that they have a demon in them, that’s a clue in the direction of a purely psychological problem.

This gripping account of an often ignored portion of the human experience, The Rite exceeded my expectations and led me to question my hodge-podge worldview. Why is it that demonic possessions occur so often in Catholics and in women? This leads me to speculate that like the campfire creating the shadows, the Catholic Church somehow creates this polar opposite manifest in the phenomena of demonic possession. There is truth in the accounts within this book, as depicted by the shock of seasoned priests to the experience of their first witnessed possession. When the exorcists themselves can’t explain what is happening I know it is a profound mystery. What it all means is beyond anyone’s understanding, especially mine. What I most definitely decided after finishing The Rite is that pure evil forces exist in some capacity. The author was raised Catholic but hadn’t been to mass in years. After witnessing an exorcism he became a practicing Catholic again, and I’ll leave it at that.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: paranormal