All paranormal phenomena are essentially of a Trickster variety.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Trickster-Paranormal-George-Hansen/dp/1401000827

My opinion/belief is that paranormal events are "real", but they are consciousness-level events. This belief requires another, that the physical world is nested within some kind of metaphysical consciousness.

u/at-night_mostly · 8 points r/occult

Chaos magick is the bare bones, a system distilled by stripping away all cultural content and context. It works, like all magick, on the premise that a change within produces change in the external world; as above, so below.

Why are serious practitioners of the occult not uniquely successful and wealthy?
Because the practice of magick transforms our idea of what constitutes wealth and success. Personally, I feel both wealthy and successful, but I have no money and few possessions because these things have ceased to hold meaning or provide satisfaction for me. Whose definition of these terms should we be applying?

How have these traditions never been quantifiably studied?
No scientist wants to risk their career and reputation by taking seriously something the scientific establishment has dismissed as nonsense. There's already strong evidence from reputable scientists demonstrating the effects of human consciousness on matter at a distance, in both time and space, but since there is currently no theory that accounts for the results it rarely progresses beyond the dry statistics in research papers. (See, for instance: The Trickster and the Paranormal)

Magick works, so those who are doing it see no need for proof or evidence. There's no conspiracy, no-one is 'kept' in the dark, the only thing stopping you from using magick is you. The proof is always in the doing, in the process that reveals the true nature of our relationship with the world. It's always personal and particular; each of us must prove it for ourselves.

u/[deleted] · 4 points r/emeraldcouncil

I read that interview with Regardie, and I think he was right. I think it's entirely possible that their may be "secret chiefs" running around the planet. Plenty of traditions have similar ideas... the angels of Malkuth are the Isshim, who are apparently human in origin. I've always supposed that they were like Bodhisattvas, or that Boddhisattvas are Isshim, or that the two are subtribes of a larger group of "ascended" humans.

That said, I really don't think we should worry about them, for this reason-- There's a big problem of elitism in magical groups. It's not just a problem because people who think that they're better or more enlightened than others, or who think that their magical or spiritual achievements give them the right to dominate others are assholes. They are assholes. But they're also very ineffective-- to steal a line from John Michael Greer, being a powerful magician doesn't necessarily make you a good leader of a magical group, just like being a great plummer doesn't necessarily make you the best candidate for president of the plummer's union.

So elitism is destructive, and the idea of the Secret Chiefs tends to encourage that elitism. People claim contact with the Secret Chiefs, and that shows you why their group is better than yours, or why they personally have the right to control all magical groups around.

And this all relates to a larger issue: I think that the second you touch the paranormal in any way, you enter the realm of the trickster. George Hanson goes into detail on this in The Trickster and the Paranormal, which is one of the most wonderful things I've read. Hermes, who is our patron, is an aspect of the trickster. Two common characteristics are deceit and just those delusions of grandeur which often affects magicians and holy men and women. So we have to be very careful! Spirits lie. They lie all the time! Spirits told the Xhosa people of Africa that if they slaughtered their cattle and burnt their crops then the white people would be driven from their land. They lied! Spirits told the people of Papua New Guinea that if they built model aircraft and landing strips, then the US military and all its cargo would come back. They lied!

Some of this is, I think, malicious. The Church, for centuries, condemned all contact with spirits, and insisted that all such entities were demons. This is wrong. Unfortunately, people who struggle against bad ideas have a way of turning to the explicit opposite-- in this case, the idea that all spirits are good. But the opposite of a bad idea is usually not a good idea, but another bad idea. Some spirits are indeed malevolent. Others may do harm without meaning to-- I think that non-corporeal beings simply don't relate to truth in the same way we do, and in fact, I think a lot of them can't. We know that our own experiences of the Astral Plane, for instance, are subjective; how would a being who exists only on that plane relate to truth? Surely not the same way we do. A close friend of mine is studying under a Dakota Medicine Man. She tells me that many spirits are clowns-- They speak backwards, and you have to work at it to figure out what they're saying.

So someone could have contact with beings who claim to be the Secret Chiefs, and any number of things could be going on. The beings could be evil spirits, who want to actively do harm, or they could be tricksters, like Loki or Puck, who simply enjoy causing trouble. They could be clowns. They could be actual Secret Chiefs, or Isshim or Boddhisattvas or ascended heroes of ancient times. If so, their words could be straightforwardly true-- or, all that time spent in the Far Realms could have completely altered their relationship to what we call "fact" and "truth," so that you have to interpret everything they say by reading it upsidedown in a mirror while hanging from the ceiling!

So, back to the original point-- I think Regardie is right, and the Secret Chiefs are best left alone. Or if you find yourself in contact with beings who claim to be them, then you should be very careful about interpreting their message! If they seem to be saying that you are the chosen one, or that your order is the only right order, or that if you burn all your crops and slaughter all your cattle then all your enemies will be destroyed... Take a lesson from history, and don't just follow along.

u/obscure_robot · 3 points r/occult

I believe you are looking for this book. There is a chapter that discusses fraud, names names, and discusses the role of fraud in paranormal / occult subcultures.

u/IntheDepthofMyEgo · 3 points r/DebateAnarchism

I think the Occult can be explained scientifically, eventually, just the same as somebody will eventually figure out where we fucked up in physics. The Higgs has proven either everything we know is wrong or as some scientists whisper the universe is designed for life i.e. non-natural.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/complications-in-physics-lend-support-to-multiverse-hypothesis-20130524

Now you can dress that up in a multi-verse theory if you like, a religious concept based on no evidence other than some loose math and a few acid trips, or (Occam's razor here) the universe is primed and built to produce existence.

How? I don't know, but I do know the military has accepted the idea of a sixth sense and is training troops for it: http://time.com/4721715/phenomena-annie-jacobsen/

From the article:

"In 2014, the Office of Naval Research embarked on a four-year, $3.85 million research program to explore the phenomena it calls premonition and intuition, or “Spidey sense,” for sailors and Marines.

“We have to understand what gives rise to this so-called ‘sixth sense,’ says Peter Squire, a program officer in ONR’s Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism department. Today’s Navy scientists place less emphasis on trying to understand the phenomena theoretically and more on using technology to examine the mysterious process, which Navy scientists assure the public is not based on superstition. “If the researchers understand the process, there may be ways to accelerate it — and possibly spread the powers of intuition throughout military units,” says Dr. Squire...

Active-duty Marines are being taught to hone precognitive skills in order to “preempt snipers, IED emplacers and other irregular assaults [using] advanced perceptual competences that have not been well studied.” Because of the stigma of ESP and PK, the nomenclature has changed, allowing the Defense Department to distance itself from its remote-viewing past. Under the Perceptual Training Systems and Tools banner, extrasensory perception has a new name in the modern era: “sensemaking.”"

Don't forget the actual data of successful Remote Viewing experiments:
http://www.remoteviewed.com/remote_viewing_history_military_b.htm

I get into this argument alot with people in the scientific community, and what they don't realize is the layer of "truth" in the lab(coughminus the whole replication crisescough) is not the same bar everywhere.

For the military it's about something working, less about how or why; in the law it's pushing something past a reasonable doubt.

I see a universe with parts we don't understand, I see military outfits training people to pick things up from sense they aren't aware of, and at the same time I'm getting results when I burn certain candles on a money jar?

Good enough for me.

If you want a truly, TRULY scientific run at this go get this book: https://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

"Which is very interesting, and very true, but how is your specific outlook different than say Marx's dialectical materialism or that of psychology?"

None in the sense that the Black Peace Stones in South Central LA seizing more territory from the local Latin Kings outfit is I suppose.

Marx's dialectic can just as easily be called Will to Power. As for psychology it absolutely could be called that I guess.

Jungian psychology that is.

u/BeyondTheOptionsMenu · 3 points r/Nootropics

The foundation is also fraudulent and refuses to actually conduct research on the supernatural because it is afraid of what it will find. I suggest you quit embarrassing yourself now and actually study this subject properly http://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

>the guy is on his deathbed

How unfortunate he will have gone through his whole life being so ignorant and willingly fooled. We will have one less cretin in the world though.

u/KindaGamey · 2 points r/Synchronicities

The researcher who really brought it to light is George Hansen. He wrote a book called The Trickster and the Paranormal. I can't vouch for any of these links because I haven't reviewed them, but maybe this will help:

Where did the road go? Interview -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM38ilurOqk

The outer edge interview -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk_3qlEryrE

His book for money: https://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

His book for free: https://www.scribd.com/doc/138075574/The-Trickster-and-the-Paranormal-Hansen-George

A liminal dialog with George Hansen - that's another word that comes up a lot. Marginalized people. Paranormal events happening during moments of great upheaval and anti-structure. Liminal. http://auticulture.com/liminalist-2-bollixed-liminal-dialogue-george-p-hansen/

Discussion on paracast: http://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/george-hansen-the-trickster-and-the-paranormal-questions-space-fans.15677/

A write-up review: http://www.intuitive-connections.net/issue3/book-trickster.htm

http://disinfo.com/2013/07/two-talks-on-parapsychology-from-george-hansen-author-of-the-trickster-and-the-paranormal/

u/Uhgley · 2 points r/DebateReligion

u/NotHyplon · 2 points r/Nootropics

> The foundation is also fraudulent and refuses to actually conduct research on the supernatural because it is afraid of what it will find.

The onus is on the person claiming not on them. Odd how everyone so far has failed miserably. Like the Dowsers that couldn't find buried pipes, Uri Geller etc.

> I suggest you quit embarrassing yourself now and actually study this subject properly http://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

Yeah or i could by a book about how fairies are real and at the end of my garden

> How unfortunate he will have gone through his whole life being so ignorant and willingly fooled.

Fooled by disproving shysters? Hopefully you will need surgery sometime soon, get that lump sorted with psychic surgery, it's painless! Also want to buy some copper bracelets to smooth out the ion flows in your blood? Or some magnets for your fuel line that gives you better MPG?

EDIT: Also your source is self published? Neat i can write /u/BeyondTheOptionsMenu is gullible and still can't back up his claims for 500 pages and have it be just as valid.

u/Blood4TheBloodGod · 1 point r/Thetruthishere

The Trickster and The Paranormal by George Hanson

u/tricksters_ghost · 1 point r/Psychonaut

Books are my first, and favourite, way to expand consciousness - for one thing, you can do them anywhere.

Currently reading More Than Allegory by Bernardo Kastrup.

A scientist arguing against the reductionist materialism that dominates not just science, but the whole of modern culture, that ignores consciousness because it cannot quantify it, and for a rehabilitation of the understanding of traditional mythologies that allow us to find meaning in the material world, in everyday life.

Not finished yet, might report back when I'm done.

Also Mutants and mystics: science fiction, superhero comics, and the paranormal - Jeffrey J. Kripal and Trickster and the Paranormal - George P Hansen.

Perhaps not true psychonaut literature, but stuff about how consciousness and culture interact, and how mind can affect the world at large.

u/Nefandi · 1 point r/Oneirosophy

Also you should add The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P Hansen. All Georges must stick together.

u/noddwyd · 1 point r/Paranormal

A good start would be this book, although it's not the real reason why I think this way. In fact, I think there are quite a few holes in the theory.

The truth is most likely that we, as human beings, have a set worldview that filters everything. That makes everything make sense. For normal people (people that don't have a lifelong history of so called 'paranormal' events) this worldview or OS shell can be perturbed from time to time enough for something like this to happen.

This 'shell' is cultural baggage, personal memory and cognitive typing, but mainly it's all those things that we learn to be true. "This is how the world works." type of stuff.

That's really all one can say about an event with this line of thinking though. We don't have a clue outside intuition and speculation what any of these types of events really mean, although personal meaning is often readily attached to them.

A handful of my own childhood experiences only happened when I was away from home with relatives, which was out of the ordinary, spur of the moment type things. I believe it's part of cognitive development to experience waking up and not immediately recognizing where you are, or how you got there, and your mind has to scramble to come up with the details. To make the world make sense again, right? That's a small example of perturbation. There are much bigger ones.

This doesn't offer any explanation as to why notable paranormal events are not entirely subjective, or in other words, why they are experienced by multiple people, and therefore not just something one could dismiss, or chalk up to 'I'm going crazy' or 'I must not be getting enough sleep' or some other thing. Those things do happen, and who knows what a fly on the wall would witness, but like I said, they usually get dismissed or at least never talked about.

u/Spiritwalke · 0 points r/DebateReligion

I didn't experience anything that Mystics and shamans haven't been experiencing for tens of thousands of years. I'll only get specific about my experiences with fellow Mystics, shamans. But I might consider getting specific with a skeptic who has read all the following books.

https://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Religious-Experience-Study-Nature/dp/1439297274

https://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Anomalous-Experience-Examining-Scientific/dp/1557986258

https://www.amazon.com/Mysticism-Evelyn-Underhill/dp/1463612354

https://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

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