SHORT REVIEWS: GHOSTS AND GODS

 David Brandon. Haunted Chester. The History Press, 2008. Some nice photographs, but otherwise a rather lazy and disappointing account of alleged hauntings in this historic city. There are only a couple or so of actual anomalous personal experiences which are recounted, and much of the text consists of weasel words of the "it is said that" variety, sprinkled with some touristy fakelore.

Jan W Vandersande. Life After Death: Some of the Best Evidence. Outskirts Press, 2008. Much of the 'best evidence' presented here consists of tales of physical mediumship, complete with ectoplasm and full form materialisations. As always there are assertions that the conditions preclude fakery, but the actual evidence produced, photographs are decidedly unimpressive, and those of the full form materialisations looking like nothing so much as some guy dressed in long drapery and wearing a false beard. If we could understand how this sort of 'evidence' convinces intelligent people like Vandersande (a physicist) we may well be very close to an understanding of the source of many stories of anomalous personal experiences.

Jeff Belanger, The Ghost Files: Paranormal Encounters, Discussion and Research from the Vaults of www.ghostvillage.com. New Page Books, 2007. A general popular account which, like nearly all the same sort of spiritualism-lite stuff, is more a compendium of contemporary folklore and superstition than a contribution to psychical research.

Victor J. Stenger, Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness. Prometheus Books, 2009. Having, at least to his own satisfaction, demolished the God/gods of traditional theologies, quantum physicist Victor Stenger here takes on some of the post modern, quantum cool variety, and attempts to build theologies around quantum mechanics, or at least the New-Agey, consciousness-centred interpretations of it. There are some interesting and provocative arguments in this book, but rather too much space is spent on rehearsing the history of physics and its main concepts. Stenger's own interpretations of QM and other aspects of physics are by no means easy to follow. It strikes me that these arguments about the 'correct' interpretations of QM tell us rather more about the backgrounds and beliefs of individual physicists than about nature itself.

GOOD WORK FROM GOODRICK-CLARKE

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. The Western Esoteric Traditions: a Historical Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Goodrick-Clarke, author of The Occult Roots of Nazism is Professor of Western Esotericism at Exeter University and director of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism based there. This history of the esoteric traditions from their Hellenistic roots down to the contemporary New Age is explicitly aimed at being a textbook for students on such a course. It is clearly comprehensive covering subjects such as Renaissance ritual magic, the role of Paracelsus, John Dee, Jacob Boehme and his circle, the Rosicrucians, high grade Masonry and illuminism (no, not the illuminati folks), Swedenborg, mesmerism, spiritualism, Eliphas Levi and the rebirth of magic in the 19th century, the Golden Dawn, Blavatsky and theosophy, Jung and alchemy etc

That a university course and textbook could be produced on a topic which a generation ago would have been relegated to the fringes is testimony to the historical revisionism which began with Francis Yates. Fortunately this a textbook, the main text of which can also be read with ease by the lay reader. I would however advise general readers to skip or skim the introduction, which is perhaps the main genuflection to academia

This work clearly shows that these traditions were once part of the European intellectual mainstream, only to fall by the wayside. Despite the intelligent and sympathetic treatment here, I cannot really see how, even in an age looking for alternative spiritualities, in their traditional form, these traditions can ever get back to their former glory. They are just too rooted in the anthropocentric and geocentric pre-Copernican world view. Though their have been some adaptations, with for example, the secularisation of the angels and daemons into 'superior' extraterrestrials (perhaps the only major lacunae in this book), and the adepts and hidden masters secularised into conspiracy theories, these seem very stopgap. Whether they could adapt further only time will tell, but anyone attempting this should learn from the mistakes of the past and not hitch their wagon to quantum mechanics (or particular interpretations of it) in the same way that nineteenth-century spiritualists and others hitched their wagon to the lumniferous ether. -

NEW TRICKS, OLD STEREOTYPES

I suspect that like a few other readers of this blog, I was amused by the depiction of the two ufologists on last night's (23 July) 'New Tricks' programme on BBC1.

For the benefit of overseas readers, 'New Tricks' is a drama series based on the capers of three retired cops working in a department that re-investigates unsolved murders. Was the death of a scientist in a forest, murder or suicide? (Of couse, there's a clear overtone of the David Kelly case here.) This is soon tied in with a mysterious crash in the forest near a US air-base, and our aging heroes are off to investigate a group of ufologists who seem to be involved in the mystery.

From my experience the characters of the ufologists were not too far removed from many people I have met in the field, with an attitude combining crankiness with an air of moral superiority. However, I'm sure that we'll start getting complaints about this adding to the 'ridicule barrier' that surrounds ufology. I think the only unrealistic portrayal was with the vast array of computers and technical equipment that the two ufologists seemed to have at their disposal.

If the Rendlesham case had happened after 2001, I am sure that the scenario which forms the core of the plotline would be widely accepted amongst conspiracy theorists. 

300 not out

Just noticed that there are now three hundred articles from Merseyside UFO Bulletin, MUFOB and Magonia in the archive. And there's still a lot more to come.

http://magonia.haaan.com/

THE KEEL CORRESPONDENCE

As our homage to John Keel I have posted over on the Magonia archive the texts of letters he sent to the Merseyside UFO Bulletin in the early 1970s. These are largely robust responses to reviews and criticism of his books by Alan Sharp, then MUFOB's 'Science Editor'.

They give an interesting insight into Keel's sense of humour, and the controversies of the era with regard to the 'New Ufology' and the move away from uncritical acceptance of the ETH.

One of Keel's letters was sent from "Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of the Secretary". Does anyone know what Keel was doing there?

Read the letters here: http://magonia.haaan.com/2009/keel1/

BLOOD AND MISTLETOE

Ronald Hutton. Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain. Yale University Press, 2009.

The Druids in this massive, scholarly book (or rather the vast bulk of it) are not the putative Iron Age religious specialists themselves, for as the first chapter demonstrates, of them little is known, and what sources there are tend to be highly contentious. The chief source is Julius Caesar, and relying on him for historical information may be as risky as relying on accounts by Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin for accurate historical information.

Rather this book is a detailed account of the mountains of speculation and reconstruction forged out of those scraps of information, and the image of the Druid in British culture from Tudor times onward. It goes without saying that these accounts and images will always tell us much more the times in which they were written, than in any actual prehistory. Hutton traces these changing images, both positive and negative, and their relationship to changing religious and national concerns.

Perhaps the chief theme of much of this book is the fabrication of history and the heavy use of myth, speculation, imagination and wishful thinking in the absence of real evidence, and of the many, often rather strange, characters involved in all of this. Some like the fraudster and political and religious radical Edward Williams 'Iolo Morganwg' were to have a significant impact on both Welsh and general British culture. Others such as Dr William Price had an impact on more limited aspects of life -his attempt to cremate his son led to the clarification of the law to allow for cremation in England.

These various pseudo histories led to the formation of several latter day Druid organisations, many starting as, or becoming, friendly societies. Much more on the fringes was the Universal Bond, which was founded by a man who went by the name of George Watson Reid (later MacGregor Reid), whose life, even the small portion of it which was not completely the product of his own extremely vivid imagination, reads like a novel: Scottish trade union activist, Populist candidate for the US House of Representatives, alternative medical practitioner, and founder of a group which roamed across the religious landscape with bewildering changes of direction. It was this group in its Druid incarnation, and its successor organisations which become most prominent as the Druids at Stonehenge, during which time they gradually mutated from being the radicals of the early 20th century, to the epitome of English respectability in contrast to many of the other groups who wished celebrate the solstice at Stonehenge, or at least use it as an opportunity for drunken revels.

This is a massive and comprehensive history, and barring the discovery of dramatic new source material is unlikely to be supplanted in the near future. While portions are likely to be of interest mainly to specialist historians, there is much of general interest, and the text is free of the sort of jargon that often mars academic texts. -- Peter Rogerson

BIGFOOT IN AMERICA AND CHINA: A CONVERSATION ABOUT WILDMEN

At the beginning of June Peter Rogerson wrote a review of Joshua Blu Buhs' book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Mystery (http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2009/06/joshua-blu-buhs.html).

Peter thought this was an excellent book, describing it as "likely to the be the definitive history of the Bigfoot of the imagination for some considerable time" and concluding "Buhs' study is very much in the Magonian psychosocial tradition, even to the practice of the dreaded cult of librarianship, in that his expeditions are to remote and barely accessible archives, rather than remote valleys and mountain peaks. Here however he meets Bigfoot as it once was, before the numerous revisionings."

I've just had a email from Stephanie Hlywak, of the University of Chicago Press, the book's publishers:

"Thanks for the review of Joshua Buhs ’s Bigfoot. Given your interest in the book, I thought you might be want to read a series I’m publishing this week on our blog: it’s a conversation between Buhs and Sigrid Schmalzer (author of a book called The People’s Peking Man about popular science in China) about the wildmen of their respective books and what they do and don’t have in common. The first installment is up today, and the conversation will continue tomorrow and Thursday. Please feel free to link to it and tell your readers about it. It’s a fascinating conversation!"

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2009/07/07/bigfoot_and_the_yeren_a_conver.html

It looks as though this is going to be a very interesting conversation, with bigfoot and the yeren as 'wildmen', being discussed in a psychosocial context. I will be following it with interest. Part two is now up on line:

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2009/07/08/bigfoot_and_the_yeren_part_ii.html

the third and final part is now ready:

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2009/07/09/bigfoot_and_the_yeren_part_iii.html

OUTBREAK!

Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew. Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of

Extraordinary Social Behaviour. Anomalist Books, 2009.

A truly massive encyclopedia with nearly 350 articles and 765 pages, covering a huge variety of cases of outbreaks of extraordinary behaviour ranging from demonic possession in early modern convents to fainting outbreaks in twentieth and twenty-first century schools; from rumours circulating about strange lights in the sky to phantom attackers, satanic abuse scares to Gulf War Syndrome; panics generated by broadcasts of the 'War of the Worlds' to religious revivals.

Examples at random include copycat suicides, genital shrinking scares, shouting mania, the Merphos poisoning scare, the Methodist revival, the phantom Florida gas poisoning, the South Carolina Martian panic, apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the Great Airship Wave of 1897, the Taiping rebellion, cargo cults, moving statues. Everything from the Abdera outbreak of prose and poetry to the zoot suit riots.

What unites this mass collection of disparate phenomena, is that they are situations in which groups of people start behaving in ways which are very different from the standards of behaviour of their time and culture, though the difference is often expressed in cultural terms. For example in medieval and early modern Europe and in many Third World societies today extraordinary behaviour is manifested and explained in terms of demonic or spirit possession. In the modern West it is often manifested and explained in medical or quasi-medical terms. The possessed nuns in the convent are replaced by school children and office workers suffering from imitative illnesses. In some cases not only is extraordinary behaviour manifested but extraordinary abilities also, which challenge our ideas of what human beings are capable of, such as resistance to pain, extraordinary contortions and athletic abilities and what at least look like paranormal phenomena.

While the phenomena discussed here are too heterogeneous to have a common origin or purpose, the authors suggest several sub-divisions: actions which are generated by severe social stress and protests against the same (enclosed religious orders, authoritarian educational or work place environments); experiences and behaviours based on hope and expectation; social movements generated by authority figures rather than by the community at large and so on.

Needless to say this is all good Fortean stuff, and this may well be the first time that a collection of Fortean phenomena has been assembled with the approval of academics for what is clearly an intended academic audience. Of course it is not just academics who will find this of interest, and this must be required reading for any Fortean, anomalist and psychical researchers of any kind. It will, no doubt generate controversy, for there are many advocates in a variety of these fields, ranging from Gulf War Syndrome activists to ufologists who will object to the authors' psycho-social interpretations and who will want to challenge interpretations of their particular fields. However, even for those who will not subscribe to all the authors' interpretation there are mountains of valuable information.

Even at 750+ pages, there are topics which are missed out; perhaps a second volume would cover the Great Martian Panic of 1954, the phantom helicopter scare of 1973/4, the extraordinary reaction to the death of Princesses Diana, the MMR vaccine scare and so one. My colleague John Rimmer would insist that you add much of the talk about climate change to the list!

One of the the values of a book like this is that it sparks off your own ideas. Among those which I ran through were the connections with intrusion of wilderness into the habitat, notions of disinhibition, the thought that as many of these extraordinary behaviours have a global reach, they must have a biological and presumably genetic base and pre-date the great human disapora, perhaps even pre-dating the evolution of modern humans, and which presumably at one time had survival value. Maybe in some of these experiences and behaviours we see the beginnings of all religions.

This is a huge achievement for a small publisher such as Anomalist and marks a completely new level of publishing for them. Final thought, what a great achievement for Hilary Evans at 80! Give him a birthday present and support Anomalist Books, buy this book! -- Peter Rogerson

Update: You can read an interesting interview with co-author Bartholomew here:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2009-07-11-outbreak_N.htm

JOHN KEEL, 1930 - 2009

We hear with great sadness that John Keel, probably the most important figure in the development of ufology and Forteanism in the 1970s and 1980s, died at a nursing home in New York on 3rd July.

His earliest ufological book, Operation Trojan Horse was one of the first books which freed ufology from the straightjacket of the ETH. His work has been a major influence of the development of MUFOB/Magonia's outlook on ufology, although it produced radically different views from two of the early MUFOB team, myself and Alan Sharp. By coincidence I recently put these comments into our archive:

http://magonia.haaan.com/2009/oth/

Keel was perhaps the closest heir to Charles Fort, his writings being a mix of observational notes and wild speculation, which often confused and irritated 'serious' (particularly American) ufologists. However any newspaper obits will probably concentrate on the one part of his work which made it to the big screen, The Mothman Prophecies, with Richard Gere as a Keel-like paranormal investigator. The book itself, like much of his writing, was as much about the strangeness of rural and small-town America as it was about unidentified creatures. His series of articles in Flying Saucer Review, 'From My Ohio Valley Notebook' presented views across a very strange landscape.

Back in the days of MUFOB Keel was a semi-regular correspondent and I will try to get some of his letters on-line in the near future.