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577 Pages·2006·3 MB·English
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MYSTERIES AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE OCCULT, THE PARANORMAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL COLIN WILSON FOR EDDIE CAMPBELL WITH AFFECTION Colin Wilson is one of the most prolific, versatile and popular writers at work today. He was born in Leicester in 1931, and left school at sixteen. After he had spent years working in a wool warehouse, a laboratory, a plastics factory and a coffee bar, his first book The Outsider was published in 1956. It received outstanding critical acclaim and was an immediate bestseller. Since then he has written many books on philosophy, the occult, crime and sexual deviance, plus a host of successful novels which have won him an international reputation. His work has been translated into Spanish, French, Swedish, Dutch, Japanese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Hebrew. By the same author NON-FICTION The Outsider cycle: The Outsider Religion and the Rebel The Age of Defeat The Strength to Dream Origins of the Sexual Impulse Beyond the Outsider Introduction to the New Existentialism Books on the occult and paranormal The Occult Poltergeist Psychic Detectives Strange Powers The Geller Phenomenon A Dictionary of Possibilities (with John Grant) Other Non-Fiction: An Encyclopedia of Murder (with Pat Pitman) An Encyclopedia of Modern Murder (with Donald Seaman) A Casebook of Murder Order of Assassins Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs Bernard Shaw—A Reassessment New Pathways in Psychology The Quest for Wilhelm Reich The War Against Sleep—The Philosophy of Gurdjieff The Lord of the underworld—A Study of Jung The Craft of the Novel The Strange Genius of David Lindsay Frankenstein’s Castle Access to Inner Worlds Eagle and Earwig (Essays on books and writers) Poetry and Mysticism A Book of Booze Starseekers The Brandy of the Damned (Essays on Music) Anti-Sartre The Misfits AUTOBIOGRAPHY Voyage to a Beginning FICTION The ‘Sorme Trilogy’: Ritual in the Dark The Man without a Shadow (re-titled The Sex Diary of Gerard Sorme) The God of the Labyrinth Other Fiction: Adrift in Soho The World of Violence Necessary Doubt The Glass Cage The Mind Parasites The Killer The Philosopher’s Stone The Black Room The Space Vampires The Schoolgirl Murder Case Rasputin: A Novel Spider World: The Tower Spider World: The Delta Contents Analytical Table of Contents Introduction to the New Edition Introduction: The Ladder of Selves PART ONE 1 Ghosts, Ghouls and Pendulums 2 Giants and Witches 3 The Path of the Dragon 4 The Timeless Zone PART TWO 1 The Curious History of Human Stupidity 2 How Many Me’s Are There? 3 In Search of Faculty X 4 The Rediscovery of Magic 5 Descent into the Unconscious 6 Revelations 7 Worlds Beyond 8 Ancient Mysteries 9 The Great Secret 10 Powers of Evil? PART THREE 1 Evolution 2 Messages from Space and Time 3 The Mechanisms of Enlightenment 4 Other Dimensions Appendix: Electromagnetic Induction of Psi States Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments It would have been impossible to write this book without the help of many friends who have kept me supplied with material, or drawn my attention to cases that I might otherwise not have seen. Chief among these has been Ira Einhorn, who is virtually a one-man liaison service for parapsychologists and scientists interested in various aspects of the paranormal. My old friend June O’Shea has also provided me with invaluable material, including Walter Prince’s original articles on the Doris case. Lawrence Leshan spoke to me of the Philip case, and put me in touch with Dr George Owen, who not only sent me his wife’s book on the subject, but provided equally fascinating material on Matthew Manning, Uri Geller and on poltergeist phenomena. I am also indebted for material to C. L. Tilburn, Hugh Corbett, Walter Williams, Robert Turner, Joyce Carol Oates, Doris Cerea, Kathie Schlichting, Angelica de St. Prix, Jerry Neff, John Comley, Sir Robin Mackworth-Young, Jacquetta Hawkes, Arthur Young, Martin Gardner, Nigel Morland, Jesse Lasky jnr, Carol Davies, Anita Gregory, Wilson Knight, Theo Brown, Andrew Green, Idries Shah, Linda Woolery, Arthur Guirdham, Geoffrey Ashe, Björn Sjöval, Sheila Clarkson, Stephen Skinner and Robert Temple. The National Enquirer was kind enough to send me photostats of various items that I had otherwise been unable to trace. The Society for Psychical Research, represented by its Librarian Miss Eleanor O’Keefe, has been equally generous in lending me otherwise unobtainable books, as has the Harry Price Library of London University. The staff of the London Library has shown incredible patience and ingenuity in tracing dozens of obscure books and references that would otherwise have been unavailable to me. (Their particular triumph was the details of the career of Benoit de Maillet.) Finally, I wish to offer my warmest thanks to my English and American editors, Rivers Scott and Anne Freedgood, for their truly enormous labours in getting this book into its final shape. Colin Wilson Analytical Table of Contents Introduction: The Ladder of Selves My experience of ‘panic attacks’. The ‘schoolmistress effect’. My realisation that we contain a ‘hierarchy of selves’. J. G. Bennett’s description of his experience of ‘higher consciousness’ at Fontainebleau. ‘Faculty X.’ Gurdjieff s power to ‘transfer energy’. Fritz Peters’ story. Rasputin revives Anna Vyrubova. Story of the two monks. Suffocating effects of ‘the robot’. Nietzsche’s vision on Leutsch. Ramakrishna’s suicide attempt. ‘Men are far stronger than they suspect.’ What lies at the top of the ladder of selves? My aim in writing this book. The mechanics of contacting our higher selves. Can paranormal phenomena be explained in terms of the ‘ladder-of-selves’ theory? Dowsing, divination, multiple personality. Ian Stevenson’s case of Jasbir Lal Jat. Poltergeist activity. Anne Owen’s glimpse of the future. Alan Vaughan’s experience of ‘possession’ and higher consciousness. Proust, William James, Toynbee: ‘All is well’ feeling. Basic importance of security. The ultimate questions about the universe: do they have ‘answers’? Sartre’s nausea: Camus’s absurdity. Lack of inner pressure. The failure of psychical research to provide conclusive answers. Attempt at a comprehensive theory of ‘the occult’. T. C. Lethbridge and the pragmatic approach. PART ONE 1 Ghosts, Ghouls and Pendulums Tom Lethbridge moves into Hole House. Lethbridge and dowsing. The ‘witch’ who lived next door. Her astral projections. She teaches Tom how to throw pentagrams. How to use the pendulum. Locating buried silver. Lethbridge studies ‘rates’ of length. Searching for truffles. The problem of ghosts. The invisible porter of Trinity. The ghoul on the stairs. The apparition of Hole Mill. Was she a tape recording? The suicide in the wood. The ‘blanket of depression’ on Ladram beach. Mina is urged to jump over the cliff. The common denominator: water. Lethbridge’s ‘field’ theory of ghosts and ghouls. Bill Lewis and Leonard Locker. Are ghosts intelligent? Beverley Nichols’ story of the haunted house of Torquay. Arthur Guirdham’s theory of houses that induce illness. Lethbridge’s poltergeist on Skellig Michael. A ghost steals the sandwiches. Vanishings and apports. Sir Oliver Lodge’s ‘tape recording’ theory. Andrew Green and the house in Ealing. The haunting of the Ma Barker house in Florida. Unusual powers of animals: the cat’s ‘second sight’. Are cats’ whiskers divining rods? The behaviour of the hawk moth. Is dowsing ‘electrical’? Sexual electricity. Freida Weisl, whose orgasms made ornaments jump off the mantelpiece. Electrical theory of the paranormal. Lethbridge and ‘other dimensions’. Can the pendulum reveal what is beyond death? ‘The second whorl of the spiral.’ The timeless zone. Robert Leftwich and the ‘superconscious’ theory of dowsing. Jung’s ‘other selves’. The concept of ‘promotion’. Our inborn passivity. Lethbridge’s last days. Lethbridge’s four areas of study. 2 Giants and Witches. The owner of Skellig Michael suggests a theory. Lethbridge disagrees. The white dog of Hole. The tile with the white hare. The search for the giant of Wandlebury Camp. The legend of the ghostly knight. The mystery of the giant hill figures. The Cerne Abbas giant. The Long Man of Wilmington. The white horses of England. Dragons? Lethbridge locates the Wandlebury giant and discovers three figures. The Celts and their gods. Lethbridge’s theories cause controversy. He leaves Cambridge. Frazer and The Golden Bough. Andrew Lang’s criticisms. Margaret Murray and the god of the witches. Leland’s Aradia. ‘The old religion.’ Lethbridge’s theories of the Great Mother. The sun god Lugh becomes St Michael. Gerald Gardner and the witchcraft revival. Norman Cohn’s criticisms of Margaret Murray. Michael Harrison’s Roots of Witchcraft: the phalluses hidden in the altar. The Bishop of Exeter catches the monks worshipping ‘the pagan Diana’. Sheila-na-gigs. Michael Dames’s theory of the purpose of Silbury Hill: a giant fertility figure? My own investigations into the ‘Old Religion’ in Cornwall. The Helston furry dance; the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss. The Hungerford tuttimen. The horned dancers. Lethbridge on magic. Are the stone megaliths storage batteries? Levi and Crowley on magic: the ‘Astral Light’. Robert Graves and the moon cult. 3 The Path of the Dragon The modern ‘occult revival’. Gerald Gardner, The Morning of the Magicians. The Piri Reis maps. Kenneth Arnold sights the first flying saucers. George Hunt Williamson and the Great Pyramid. Kubrick’s 2001. Lethbridge reads von Däniken. Von Däniken’s inaccuracies. His literary offences. Lethbridge’s theory of ‘space men’. Who were the ‘giants in the earth’? The ‘war in heaven’. Lethbridge on Stonehenge. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account. Where did the stones come from? Lethbridge’s investigations. Were the stones intended to guide space craft? Robert Temple’s Sirius Mystery. How did the Dogon know Sirius was a double star? Lethbridge at the Merry Maidens. My own experience of dowsing. Alfred Watkins discovers ley lines. Are leys ancient trade routes? Guy Underwood and his theory of aquastats. The ‘earth force’. White horses and dragons. John Michell’s theory of leys. The feng-shui lines. The currents of the earth force. Does this explain the ‘Old religion’? Man and the earth. Leys and acupuncture. The coiled serpent. Hermes as god of the leys. The earth as a living being. Its forces can interact with the human mind. Poltergeists and ley lines. Black dogs. Animal ghosts. Colin Godman’s story of the white dog of Blaize House. Ancient man as a nomad. The theories of Alexander Thom and Gerald Hawkins: the megaliths as astronomical observatories. The new Carbon 14 dating of Stonehenge. Euan MacKie’s theory of a ‘theocratic élite caste’ in the late Neolithic. Evidence that the Great Pyramid was an observatory. Why was ancient man so fascinated by the skies? James Bailey’s theories of ‘ancient sea kings’ long before 2000 BC. Evidence in South America. The ‘White Gods’ of the South American Indians: were they Europeans? Pierre Honoré’s theory that they were Cretans. Lethbridge and Prince Madoc.

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