Customer Reviews

Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld

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Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide To The Otherworld by Patrick Harpur offers a uniquely holistic and metaphysical perspective concerning otherworldly events such as UFOs, fairies, phantom animals, visions of the Virgin Mary, alien abductions, and more. Presenting the theory of Daimonic Reality, which perceives certain creatures and things to be not literally real (incapable of being unequivocally proven to exist) but rather Daemonically real (always being expressed in one form or another no matter how heavily skeptical opinions proclaim otherwise), Daimonic Reality is a thoughtful and fascinatingly unique look at the realm of the bizarre. Daimonic Reality is a "must read" title for dedicated students of religion, mythology, metaphysics, and paranormal studies.

Harpur gives us a taxonomy of spirits - some will be recognizable to those familiar with this strange field, others might be new. For example, Harpur describes a series of strange,, phantom social workers who visited homes a few years ago in England. One thing about these social workers, and the men-in-black described by John Keel in The Mothman Prophecies, is how they seem to dress and act in ways that are exaggerated stereotypes. The female social workers with their hair in tight little buns, and the MIB's in their improbably starched white shirts. It is as if these characters were dressing for a part, and overdid it just a bit. The serious ghost hunters reference Harpur's book for its thoughtfulness, and often put it up there will Charles Fort and Jacques Valle in its impact. Recommended.......but destined to sit aside lesser works under the New Age banner at your local bookstore. That has always been the problem with this frustrating field - preaching to the chior.

This is a book of the Anima Mundi, the living soul of the world. It is this soul (like Jung's collective unconscious) that serves as a great reservoir of primordial images. Prior to the age of rigid religious dogma, and equally rigid scientific materialism, human beings naturally seemed to tap into this living soul that permeates and unites all. Indeed, people actively sought to tap into this "otherworld" to gain guidance and gifts for themselves and the community.

Now, even though modern man no longer believes in such things, this "otherworld" is as potent as it ever was. Perhaps it is more so, for if people ignore and repress this alternate reality, it seems to "break out" into the "real" world with even more insistence. Harpur speculates that such unexplained phenomena as fairies, UFO's, angels, Yetis, crop circles, lake monsters, etc., all represent such breakthroughs by the otherworld.

This is indeed an important and ground breaking book, not because it contains anything truly new, but because it reemphasises something quite old- perhaps older than the species itself, perhaps the fount from which we came....

Above all, just because modern men are through with the otherworld does not mean that It is through with us. Not at all.

This is a book that urgently needed to be written, an intelligent and genuinely thoughtful examination of anomalous phenomena like "UFO" and "fairy" sightings. I've spent time in rural India where these types of experiences are still amazingly common. In India the World Soul or anima mundi is called the mahat ("great mind") and is understood as the source of many extra-ordinary phenomena. On the one hand they are recognized as hallucinations (maya); on the other, they reflect the incursion of the tanmatras (subtle matter) into our physical experience, and in that sense are completely real.
I'm grateful to Harpur for reintroducing the World Soul to jaded Western readers who may have lost sight of the mysterious "Other World" which co-exists with our modern rational universe in such an uneasy manner. He's onto something important here. This book is a classic; I'm certain people will still be reading it a century from now.

One of the best books on anomalous events I have ever read. To often in reporting things such as bigfoot, UFOs, or the like, the event is merely ridiculed as a hoax or delusion or fit into an acceptable point of view, whether that viewpoint is scientific, theological or some form of common sense. Investigators of bigfoot usually try to explain it as some form of giant primate. In the Himalayas or the remote forests of the northwest that might be believable. But in Oklahoma? Ufologists usually try to stress how consistent the reports from around the world are, claiming that this shows that a single reality, a "real" reality, is behind them. They are anything but consistent. UFO encounters are weird. They don't fit a pattern, at least not that UFOs are extraterrestrial craft. Patrick Harpur does not "explain" these events, but he does shed a great deal of light on them. I highly recommend his book if you are lucky enough to get a hold of a copy.

This is truly one of the best books ever written on what might actually be going on with UFOs, fairies, and anomolous events of all kinds. Patrick Harpur has written a profound study of a reality most of us have never imagined, and perhaps would prefer to ignore. With vast erudition, cutting intelligence, and great good humor, he explores all the possibilities--scientific, psychological, philosophical--of what that world of Daimonic Reality might be, and how it interrupts our narrow, earthbound sensibilities. And then, in a burst of glory, he frees the reader from the very need to find "rational explanations" for daimonic events. I reread this book regularly and often, and I urge anyone open-minded enough to wonder about the nature of our world to pick it up immediately.

Someone sent me this book as a gift. I couldn't put it down. The thinking is original, deep and wise. This is not another "New Age" book; it is a landmark work that ties together various realms of inquiry and arrives at conclusions that are sensible and in my view, intuitively correct.

This is a serious, yet vastly enjoyable read. It helps to have a broad range of knowledge as the author obviously does, but don't let that stop you. This book opens doors that none have even approached before.

Patrick Harpur poetically captures the splendors and horrors of the paranormal spectrum in this fantastic book. With humor and wit, he continues the exploration into the underlying mechanism of these seemingly unrelated yet disturbingly similar events. As creepy and insightful as Ted Holiday, as world view shifting as Charles Fort, but uniquely beautiful and celebratory, Daimonic Reality is definitely a required field guide for the researcher of Fortean events who wishes to be enlightened and mystified.

DAIMONIC REALITY A Field Guide to the Other World by Patrick Harpur is a well-documented, scholarly work on one level, and an extremely entertaining collection of folklore, ghost stories, monsters, myths, visions, Blessed Virgins, stigmata, sacred places and UFO encounters on an equally engrossing other level. Sci-Fi and horror buffs will not be disappointed.

The author suggests an alternative explanation for "paranormal" phenomena, that is, an alternative to the rigid scientific method--an explanation that likewise does not accept such phenomena as literal occurence. Instead he suggests that they spring from the "daimonic" inner space of consciousness. They do exist, but they cannot be measured, weighed, etc. At the same time, they are not the literal or concrete realities of true believers. They exist on their own terms, not so much to please us, as to tease us.

ANYBODY interested in psychic & other strange phenomena will LOVE this book!

The Origins of Psychic Phenomena: Poltergeists, Incubi, Succubi, and the Unconscious Mind

This book has been a longtime favourite of mine- it was originally published in 1994 and has achieved something close to classic status now for many students of the paranormal. The book is not just a catalogue of strange stories, but rather a detailed and beautiful philosophy on the nature of reality and paranormal phenomena. There are many elements to Harpurs' brilliant and erudite thinking, including Jung, Plato and the Romantic Poets. He essentially argues here that 'reality' is not the set in stone, literal, objective world that modern science would have us believe in, but rather an expression of Imagination, the Soul of the World, the Collective Unconscious. The plethora of daimons/strange beings that have invaded our culture in recent years may in fact be a reaction to modern mans' over reliance on rationality and literalism. And if all this makes you snort "Yuck! Mysticism!", you are exactly the sort of person who could benefit from reading this book with an open mind. There is much profound food for thought here; anyone who questions the nature of reality and the mind would do well to mull over this thoughtful mans' ideas at least once. Recommended.