Away with the faeries

I began reading Graham Hancock’s book ‘Supernatural’ again a couple of days ago – all 800 pages of it. Bought it last year, but couldn’t seem to get into it properly at the time, so much stuff to take in. The suspension of disbelief needed in the second half of the book is somewhat incredible, but when you just say ‘okay’, what if? A lot of his ideas kinda make sense in a Huxley meets Walt Disney way.

He proposes, like a lot of other people, that the revolution in symbolic consciousness that occurred some 50,000 years ago as manifested in the cave painting’s of Altamira, Lascaux and so on was because of the systematic use of psychoactive drugs, specifically mushrooms containing the psychoactive chemical Psilocybin. (I know, we’ve been here before!)

He claims that the images depicted on those cave walls, abstract signs, ‘therianthropes’ (animal-human hybrids), symbolic woundings, initiation narratives etc, have powerful similarities with the tropes of fairy lore from around the world and modern UFO abduction phenomena.

Hancock cites the DMT studies done by the psychiatrist Rick Strassman as a support for his theories. DMT is a naturally occurring substance with psychoactive properties found in most organic things including humans.
Strassman and Hancock propose that around 2 percent of the population have particular levels of the molecule that enable them too ‘spontaneously trance’. These people are in effect ‘born Shamans’ who under certain conditions are able to access other ‘free standing’ realities outside of normal human awareness.

Hancock sites ufologist Jaques Vallee’s work on this back in the 60’s, but his most interesting sources are Kirk’s ‘Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies’ (1691), and W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s ‘The fairy faith in Celtic countries’ (1910).

Both these books are full of first hand accounts of being abducted by fairies, gnomes, elves etc, the ‘Changeling’ phenomena whereby human babies are substituted for fairy babies, wet nursing of fairy children by human’s in the supernatural realm, inter-fairy/human hybrids, fairy ships and sky carriages and so on interminably.

If you suspend belief a little more and compare this phenomena with DMT trips and UFO abdication cases: being experimented on by small beings, conceiving and wet-nursing alien children, finding oneself in crystalline rooms in space ships, or alien landscapes, alien/human hybrids, a feeling of great wisdom being conveyed without language – there does seem to be some kind of correlation.

Swap the fairies and elves for little green or grey men, or cave therianthropes, the ‘sky ships’ for ufo’s etc – taking into account time and culture - and what have you got? A big pile of interesting analogies.
Note that both Hancock and Strassman believe that the experiences people have while ‘trancing’ on DMT and Psilocybin (and Ayahuasca), are very real free standing realities not just hallucinations.

Hancock does posit the idea that the fairy dance and the subsequent fairy ring phenomena may be evidence of quantum wormhole manifestations! Wicked.
I haven’t the time to write about the DNA Shamanic coding stuff later in the book. I’ll leave that for part 2 eh?
The book is one long cosmic head fuck! It does sound like the biggest load of bollocks imaginable on one level, but is vastly entertaining, even if just for the stuff on Palaeolithic cave art and Celtic folklore.