Book: "Supernatural" by Graham Hancock
1 rating since posting on Sunday, November 12, 2006
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I've followed Graham Hancock's work through the years with great interest and appreciation, even when he has been on a few side trails. History is less easily tested than the "hard" sciences, but Hancock has made a career of gathering together many small bits and pieces of things to reveal the underlying patterns that were not as noticeable before, but now appear strongly and certainly to be true. Always in pursuit of the presumed lost civilization that gave birth to our own, Hancock has been all over the world and even under the seas in his recent book, Underworld, searching for empirical evidence in ruins of human structures dateable to a time before the commonly accepted genesis dates of civilization. It was quite a twist for me, then, when I learned that he was writing a new book on a totally different angle. In Supernatural, Hancock takes us on an epic journey from the famous pre-historic cave art of Europe and rock art from Africa with its strange menageries of part human-part animal beings, through modern expressions of shamanistic beliefs and techniques, and the use of and research into psychoactive substances that seem to open a doorway into another reality. These things, he maintains, are all connected and should be given the consideration of representing something real rather than being casually dismissed as primitive superstition or "brain fiction" caused by chemical reactions in the molecules of the brain. This is a philosophy I've been personally exploring for some time, and it is quite a treat to have a researcher with the time, resources, and courage of Hancock, to forge so strongly ahead in a direction I was going. He has locked on to the same literary resources that propelled my own interest - Narby's "Cosmic Serpent", Shanon's epic "Antipodes of the Mind", Strassman's "DMT The Spirit Molecule", etc. Plus, he has now personally experienced the effects of those natural psychoactive plants that have opened a portal for humans for millenia, from magic mushrooms to iboga to ayahuasca. Far from being "pleasure trips", most of these substances are difficult and extremely unpleasant to use. The ritual and sacremental use of them is endured in order to experience the non- ordinary realities that they can reveal. Realities that seem to include non-human entities. Hancock takes us through the centuries with stories of angels, demons, fairies, goblins, and all the "other beings" called by various names through the centuries. Not the least of these are the modern concepts of extra-terrestrial aliens. He shows how these are all expressions of the same phenomenon, from the part-human/animal cave art depictions to the grey aliens of UFO's, and how their interactions with humans over time has seemingly evolved towards some purpose. The first part of the book dealing with the cave art gets somewhat long and repetitive, but I realize that Hancock is being rather more careful these days to back up what he is saying with the most thorough research job he can achieve in order to deflect as much of the certain academic backlash as possible. Supernatural is a very important book for those seeking a quantum jump forward into unknown but extremely compelling territory. Its subject matter will certainly cause it to be profoundly ignored or at most crassly denigrated by the orthodox scientific/academic community, but that is the nature of human nature. It takes someone with courage who has no turf to protect to simply go in pursuit of these things with the golden purpose of finding out what is real. That is certainly my goal, having recently returned from a similar journey to Peru to work directly with Ayahuasca. It is a valued resource, as well as a pleasure and a comfort, to have Graham Hancock on that road with me. - Pluma del Tigre , posted 11/12/06 |
