Widening our horizons

Alan Murdie examines a very welcome collection which opens up how researchers can explore links between the paranormal and the natural world

Greening the Paranormal

Exploring the Ecology of Extraordinary Experience

ed. Jack Hunter

August Night Press/White Crow Publishing 2019

Pb, 312pp, £12.99 ISBN 9781786771094

Arthur C Clarke once described science fiction as the only consciousnessexpanding form of literature. Greening the Paranormal is a timely book seeking to achieve exactly such an expansion in thinking for those interested in paranormal research. Edited by anthropologist Jack Hunter, it features contributions from a variety of writers who believe there is a close connection between psychic experience and the natural world.

Hunter argues for anomaly and paranormal researchers to embrace an ecological dimension in their work. Identifying the paranormal as the “intersect between an object other and participatory subjectivity”, he maintains that accepting the paranormal in all its “weirdness and complexity” is a necessity for both future research and our wider relations with the natural world.

Appealing particularly to psi researchers, he calls for a widening of horizons and the need to venture beyond their current confining methodologies. Researchers should engage in more openminded field studies, not imposing arbitrary limits upon what may be investigated, and ruling no alleged phenomena out of bounds. This means taking the intellectual step of actively acknowledging the possibility of interaction with nonhuman intelligences coexistent upon Earth with us. Such a recognition paves the way for potential contact with not only recognised lifeforms but also extraterrestrials and spiritual entities, “gods, goddesses, angels, poltergeists, faeries, ufonauts, spirits of the dead”.

By admitting an objective element to such experiences, Hunter believes we may be taking a vital step in breaking down ossified structures of materialist thinking which have caused so much of the ecological damage afflicting our planet and which are now being recognised as threatening our longterm survival prospects.

Hunter’s arguments supply a loose framework for the following chapters which variously reflect objective and subjective approaches to anomalous phenomena occurring in the wider environment. No mere echo chamber of contemporary environmental and metaphysical concerns, this collection is permeated with highly intriguing speculations from contributors including spiritual practitioners, artists and environmental activists. All identify paranormal and transcendent aspects in human relations with the natural world. Mixed in are more methodological chapters from social scientists, anthropologists and psychologists seeking to extend the boundaries of their disciplines outside their current ideological enclosures, resulting in a very fortean book indeed.

Charles Fort himself is praised at the outset for his iconoclastic thinking in a meditative polemic by Cody Meycock on science and its detrimental social and environmental impacts.

Pursuing traditional cosmologies, Amba J Sepie writes on the indigenous wisdom of the Kogi people in Colombia. Influenced by indigenous First Nation beliefs from North America, Nancy Wisser examines mystical experiences in childhood and Lance Foster considers guardian spirits and how he no longer recognises a distinction between normal and paranormal experiences. Trickster theory is proposed by Jacob Glazier as an approach for making sense of the elusive and contradictory nature of phenomena, an aspect which other theoreticians have so far failed to explain. Christine SimmondsMoore probes liminal experiences and the enchanted boundaries between self and places where uncanny encounters cluster, while Mark A Schroll looks at the ecological aspects of sacred sites. Unsurprisingly, both find natural environments conducive to paranormal and mystical experiences.

The possibility that other species – plant, animal, alien – may actually be communicating with us is raised by several contributors. Viktoria Duda shares her sensations of a connection with nature achieved by immersion in mountain landscapes in northern Hungary, and Maya Ward writes of the importance of listening to nature, inspired partly by weeks spent following traditional pathways across Australia.

David Luke explores the idea that one can extract veridical information direct from plants by ingesting hallucinogens. Examples of meaningful messages delivered by birds such as kingfishers are discussed by Brian Taylor.

Silvia Mutterle considers the symbiotic and healing relationship with certain animal species encountered in shamanistic societies. From the realm of cryptozoology Susan Marsh wonders if urbanisation flushes cryptids into greater visibility today, as harbingers of the damage being wrought upon the planet.

Regarding apparent extraterrestrial contact, Simon Wilson speculates on the meaning of UFO encounters and ideas which treat earthlights as angels that convey messages from the Earth itself. Timothy GrieveCarlson analyses the esoteric and ecological dimensions in Whitley Strieber’s Communion writings.

The final chapter, “Psychic Naturalism”, is by Elorah Fangrad, Rick Fehr and Christopher Laursen, who are pursuing an ongoing and multidiscipline academic research project at a haunted lodge situated deep in the Ontario forests.

While welcoming this volume, and personally sympathetic to many of the ideas expressed, I consider we will still require much help from materialistic science to reverse decades of environmental damage. This will need to be combined with much hardnosed political engagement.

In addition to advocating that psi researchers adopt ecological perspectives, Greening the Paranormal may also serve to reinvigorate the fortean field of “earth mysteries” by encouraging new directions of study and research. For those who are flexible in their thinking, able to tolerate ambiguities and enjoy engaging with bold challenges to their own beliefsystems, this proves a very thoughtprovoking and intellectually stimulating book.

Alan Murdie

★★★★★

“We may be taking a vital step in breaking down ossified structures of thinking”