Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld

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Summary: For dedicated students of religion, mythology, & metaphysics
Review: 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.

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Summary: Encyclopedic, learned treatment of a strange subject
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Encyclopedic, learned treatment of a strange subject
Review: 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.

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Summary: Get it back in print!
Review: 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.

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Summary: Fortean Delight
Review: 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.

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Summary: do not read this book if you are a coward!
Review: Reading this book will have the profound affect of changing your consciousness,unless of course you are a closed minded cabbage.I found myself rembering earlier daimonic events and confirming others.This book is also extremely helpful in destroying secular belief.This book and thee occult books of Peter J Carroll are thee best deconditioning tools I have ever come across.

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Summary: A book of the Anima Mundi
Review: This is a book of the Anima Mundi, the living soul of the world. It is this soul (like Jung's collective unconscience) 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.

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Summary: A landmark in understanding the supernatural.
Review: 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.