-:- little vision tricksters -:-
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Every human culture in the world has its own unique set of ‘fairy folk’ beliefs, from leprechaun to menehune, that have persisted over millennia in the imaginations and experiences of many generations of people. Where did these animistic beliefs originate and how have the managed to survive for so many years of more organised monotheistic religion?
There’s been a lot of talk in the last few decades about aliens. These extra-terrestrials are alleged to be regularly visiting Earth, travelling across vast distances of space in craft of unknown providence and of mysterious propulsion, to indulge in explorations, abductions and communications with various inhabitants of this planet.
Around one in twenty Americans now claim to have had some form of ‘contact’ with these space beings, whether it be a sighting of an unidentified craft or a full-blown abduction experience, and some 30% of the same nation state that they believe that these aliens are in regular contact with Earth. Belief is less widespread across Europe , but the rise in crop circle incidents and the connection of these events with aliens in the minds of many people has helped to drum up significant interest.
Programmes such as ‘X-Files’ regularly dominated the TV networks across the world throughout the 1990s, and films such as ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and ‘Independence Day’ were box office smashes. The ubiquitous ‘alien-face’ symbol, originally a relatively ‘fringe’ symbol in our culture, can now be found on everything from best-selling books to food brands.
There are some who say this mixture of aliens, TV and marketing is a uniquely American invention, although its long history in alleged ‘alien hot spots’ such as Wiltshire, England, northwest France and parts of western Japan does suggest a more universal appeal and origin.
What can be happening here? Are aliens really visiting our planet on a regular basis? Or are vast numbers of humans merely getting caught up in some kind of hysteria? These are the questions a vast number of popular documentaries, books and films have sought to answer, but explanations of evidence has tended to be somewhat subjective – in many cases the ‘aliens’ explanation is only one of many equally valid explanations of a given event.
Short of an alien craft making a very public landing outside an international monument such as the White House (a la ‘Mars Attacks’), the question is not likely to be answered definitely in the affirmative or negative in the near future. At present, it is a question of belief.
But if we are to take the position that alien visitations and the elaborate mythology that surrounds them are not literally ‘true’, can we find an alternative model that may help to explain why so many people are believers and why a more select few of those believers claim to have actually been abducted?
It is therefore the purpose of this essay to explore a suggested non-literal model for these experiences which was suggested in part by the author’s realisation that a large number of alien abduction experiences seemed to bear a close resemblance to other human visionary experiences – including those of the religious and psychedelic kinds. Many of these visionary experiences recorded in literature both anthropological and sacred take the form of the appearance of what might be termed ‘spooks’ that indulge in some form of mischief or communicate a message and then make their exit, leaving the viewer with very little doubt that the experience occurred ‘out there’ and that they ‘existed’.
I use the word ‘spook’ as a technical term, meaning a generic type of visionary character who is usually in part mischievous and part wise, and who can be instantly recognised by his or her small stature, wide child-like eyes and facial features and general shyness or reluctance to come into what might be called ‘common society’ (or, indeed, ‘consensus reality’). Most importantly, it does not generally form any major or central theme of the dominant (or ‘high-status’) religious or sacred culture of a society, but exists in the folk mind
Thus a spook can often be found beyond the edge of humanity, in deep forests. Leprechauns are often held to inhabit secluded valleys or streams in Ireland, elves in dark woods and silent forests of Scandinavia , Taotao Mona in the southern mountains of Guam.
They are often understood to be guarding something, which may be literal riches such as gold, or more ethereal ones such as the gate to another world, or more simply, wisdom.
There does not seem to be a single human culture in the anthropological or historical literature that lacks a spook belief system of one form or another, and when belief in one set of spooks dies, it is quickly replaced by another, more up-to-date (or more glamorous) system. And as we shall see, they seem to have been with us since the moment we looked out with conscious, intelligent eyes and became fully human.
(c) Bruce Rimell, June 2005
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