Customer Reviews

The Secret Art: A Brief History of Radionic Technology for the Creative Individual

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The Secret Art makes no health claims and does not recommend any form of treatment. It is a well-researched history of technology, beautifully filled with precise illustrations of rarely seen inventions.

Now largely forgotten, radionics pioneered mind-body connections with electrical equipment to purportedly detect and treat illness. It continues to attract adherents and spinoffs despite aggressive legal prosecution of its practitioners.

If you are interested in subtle energies, metaphysics or scientific controversies, this book is for you.

If you dismiss radionics as pseudoscientific quackery -- its dubious artifacts best locked safely away in private collections -- then this book is still for you. With healthy objectivity, The Secret Art traces the path of radionics from its peculiar medical origins to intriguing possibilities in agriculture, parapsychology and artistic expression.

The Secret Art belongs in art, engineering and medical libraries.

A "radionic apparatus" is a system, mechanical or otherwise, developed for the purpose of receiving and transmitting subtle forms of energy through an earnest practitioner into a subject. Since the early 1900's, some developers of such technologies have been using the word radionic to describe devices used mainly for purposes of healing.

Mr. Laurie's book provides a through and fascinating account of the history of this little known and much-maligned field. He suggests that outside of the medical and scientific communities, not only are radionic phenomena heartily accepted, they have been functioning effectively for thousands of years at the hands of shamans, artists, and musicians.

Mr. Laurie's thesis is that radionics, while by no means a lost art, may be a slightly-misplaced one - the ideas behind it have been discounted by those unable to appreciate the power of forces that cannot be quantified. When presented as science or medicine, radionics is easily challenged. Introduce it as a powerful creative tool, however, and radionics becomes "The Secret Art".

We take for granted that all human beings are inherently capable of experiencing intangible, unquantifiable sensations such as intention, intuition, inspiration, and other emotional states. Technologies for accessing and working with these invisible forces have been cultivated by shamans, artists, and holy people since the dawn of time. That a work of art or a piece of music can be found "moving" or "transformative" comes as no surprise. Why, then, is it such shock (to the western mind, at least) when a force we find "mysterious" serves as the catalyst for physical transformation? Because our in our culture we have come to look to the scientific method as an all-purpose evaluation tool - if something doesn't measure up scientifically, we tend to discount it as useless or non-existent.

But as we hurl ever forward into an age of new quantum-techno-science, old paradigms begin to break down. We encounter tangible evidence of the power of the invisible every day as information that arrives via internet and wireless technology routinely shapes our lives. Research into quantum physics alludes to the existence of strange micro-realms that work behind and within the scenes to compose our macro reality.

Ironically, discovery of the structure of DNA, holographic imaging, and other modern scientific breakthroughs are only serving to help lend insight into why many established "intuitive" technologies, such as prayer, shamanic and Tibetan Buddhist ritual, and radionics, actually work.

"The Secret Art" is an invitation to consider that the power of intangible forces and our relationships with them may hold keys to the ways we shape ourselves and our world. Mr. Laurie suggests that it could be artists, unfettered by limiting beliefs and already consciously attuned to subtle energy, who may be best equipped to combine traditional systems with contemporary research to generate powerful new technologies. The book is a radionic device in itself, a call-to-action for those willing to work with phenomena that we are aware of through our senses, but that are yet to be classified by science.

Over the years I have listened to multiple conversations about Radionics without really understanding the subject. In contrast, The Secret Art has given me an excellent historical overview of the subject; which in turn has resulted in an understanding-however simplistic-of the limitless power of the human mind.

Speaking of simplistic examples, I have learned to control my emotional state by what I think about if I concentrate on doing it. If I am upset about a perceived slight or wrong, I can remind myself that I should be grateful to be alive and I almost immediately become much calmer.

To quote Mr. Laurie book on page 2: "There are far too many unknowns when it comes to the power and potential of consciousness and directed intent in Nature to discard potential opportunities just because they are not understood or condoned by science."

Do buy and read this book!

There is no "secret" in The Secret Art by Duncan Laurie but I did find the history of radionics informative and well-researched. The author's proposition is that radionics and related occult healing remedies with their fascinating artifacts, rituals and machines can be aesthetic approaches to human awareness that can stimulate a kind of inexplicable psychic healing. Faith healing or the placebo effect by any name has a long and winding history in human affairs with widespread acceptance to this day. Scientific testing, however, as Laurie points out, has dismissed nearly all occult healing or shamanic technique as unreliable and lacking in hard evidence for support if not outright hoaxes. With the information in this book I was able to not only better understand the topic but also was able to determine, based on the extensive evidence provided, whether I agreed with the author or not. I did not agree with the author's proposition. That to me is a sign of a good book. I enjoyed reading it.

If this worked, we would have heard of someone claiming the $1,000,000+ prize from the James Randi Education Foundation.