Posts in: The Strange

Perspectives

Rachel and I were talking about near death experiences (NDEs) some time ago when we came to the question: should these accounts be understood as what will actually happen after death? To be clear, many of the experiencers do seem to believe everyone will experience something substantially similar to their NDE. At the time, I said to Rachel that I can believe NDEs are “real” (i.e., not hallucinations or lies or delusions) while also not believing they are photorealistic depictions of the afterlife.

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Remember the scene in Testament of Ann Lee where John Hocknell chases his own finger and it leads him to their settlement site? I am pleased to report that he was not the only one to experience that among the Shakers. A convert named Aaron Wood was known for doing the same thing. Richard Francis:

On one occasion a young boy from the area, who had been entrusted with the task of delivering corn to the local miller, failed to arrive on time. Aaron’s pointing finger led the concerned locals to the spot where the boy’s horse was waiting by the river, still loaded up with corn. The boy was nowhere to be seen, though, and Aaron and his fellow-villagers came to the conclusion that he had drowned crossing the water. Ever practical, the miller took the corn off to grind it anyway.

Turns out the boy was fine, just distracted by another errand. Aaron wondered why his arm led him to the corn but not the boy. Maybe his arm knew it was the corn, not the boy, that needed finding!

Gordon White tells a story at the end of this episode about a co-worker whose mother had died. She went back to Yorkshire to be with her sister on Christmas when, on Christmas Day, they found a butterfly flying around the kitchen. The sister said, “That’s mom!” Gordon’s co-worker said, “That’s just a butterfly.”

She went back to work and told Gordon this story, to which he replied, “No, that was your mom.”

You want a more enchanted cosmos? Do not be the voice of reason.

Excursus on Dake

Thinking about Bibles in the Holiness churches of my childhood this morning. Thompson Chain Reference was standard issue. Everyone who wanted to study the Bible had one of these. (Needless to say, Holiness churches were KJV-only.) The conceit of the Thompson–and what made it appealing to Holiness folks–was that it was not a study Bible full of “man’s opinions”; it was a study Bible that directed you back to the text itself.

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As the Spirit gave them utterance

In 1773, Ann Lee and other Shakers were arrested for causing a disturbance during a service at Christ Church in Manchester. Afterwards she was questioned by ministers. Richard Francis, Ann the Word: Once when recounting the tale of this religious interrogation, Ann said she spoke for four hours and the ministers - the ‘greatest in those parts’ (suddenly we hear the illiterate daughter of a blacksmith talking) - ‘said that I spoke in seventy two different tongues, and that I spoke them more perfect than any in their knowledge were able to do.

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Remember the reported UFO sightings at Malmstrom Air Force Base and other sites associated with nuclear missiles? One way of understanding that phenomenon is as some kind of manifestation of our collective fear. How long until we start getting UFO sightings at data centers?

You say witch and I say UFO

I see UFOs are in the news again. I haven’t been paying much attention; I’m waiting for the episodes of Why Files that explains it all. I will only note in passing that I recently heard someone (maybe Neil Degrasse Tyson?) condescendingly point out (it had to to Neil Degrasse Tyson) that UFO sightings only happen in the English-speaking world. Poppycock. They’re described in the English-speaking world as UFOs because that is our cultural language.

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Meeting the apparitions on their own ground

Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld … I will be outlining a way of perceiving the world which, while it does not explain the appearance of strange images, renders them intelligible. It is a way which requires, first of all, not that we believe, but that we suspend disbelief, as in the enjoyment of a theatrical production; a way which asks us to foster what Keats called “negative capability–that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

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The disappearance of Mr. Robert Kirk

Andrew Lang’s introduction to The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies: [The author, Robert Kirk] died (if he did die, which is disputed) in 1692, aged about fifty-one; his tomb was inscribed– ROBERTUS KIRK, A.M. Linguæ Hinberniæ Lumen. The tomb, in Scott’s time, was to be seen in the east end of the churchyard of Aberfoyle; but the ashes of Mr. Kirk are not there. His successor, the Rev.

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