Author Archive | David Metcalfe

Educating the Potential Human – Skepticism, Psychical Research and a New Age of Reason

By David Metcalfe on September 13, 2013 in News 3

Seeking Harmony After a recent investigation into the public presentation of anomalistic science, it’s fairly clear to me (as if it wasn’t already) that much of the information being fed into the popular consciousness is nothing more than hyped up fantasy fixed and formatted for mass mediated consumption. With Dean Radin’s new book, Supernormal, reaching the top if it’s sales categories on Amazon, and ranking high in the Nielsen ratings, there is an obvious desire for more detailed investigations of these areas that go beyond the paranormalist freak show and the skeptical sub-culture’s deflated debunking.

The binary argument of real vs. fake, of truth vs. fraud, or any such division, is merely a set up to market to one side or the other, and both proponents and defamers alike rely on each other to stoke the fires of contention so that an audience lulled by the rhythms of the work place will feel called to seek some solace in the untenable possibilities of the unknown, or the thin empowerment of a pseudo-scientific righteousness found in the knowledge that all their dreams and fears from childhood have been firmly put to bed by the cold light of rational, technological progress.… Read the rest

Two Talks on Parapsychology from George Hansen, Author of The Trickster and the Paranormal

By David Metcalfe on July 22, 2013 in News 2

Photographer Shannon Taggart and Liminal Analytics: Applied Research Collaborative recently hosted George Hansen, author of the seminal Trickster and the Paranormal, for a series of talks at the Observatory in Brooklyn, NY. For those who were unable to attend in person, the talks are now available on Youtube!

Hansen offers a succinct appraisal of the history of psychical inquiry, as well as an analysis of the decline of professional parapsychology over the past few decades. His insights into the social factors that attend anomalous phenomena provide an interesting avenue for understanding this area of experience that goes beyond black and white questions of proof, and into a more complex and inclusive vision of what happens when things drift into the unstable realms of weirdness.

A History of Parapsychology and Psychical Research

Entering the Theatre of Manifestation – The Art of Possession

By David Metcalfe on June 17, 2013 in News 1

@ Foolish People @ (For the first installment in this series covering the FoolishPeople’s ritual performance craft see - Entering the Theatre of Manifestation – Unveiling the FoolishPeople )

“There was a time when I found the concept of possession alien, exotic and dangerous. We Westerners have come to see possession a something akin to what we find in movies like The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Serpent and the Rainbow and many other movies that feed the fear of the unknown taking possession of us. But these movies speak solely about the possession and obsession that might happen by the intrusion of hostile spirits upon ones being.”

- from The Mystery of Possession, Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold

Possession is an odd phenomena. Portrayed in the media as rare and uncertain, observed more carefully the basic elements of possession can be used to understand the underlying nature of our conscious experience. We are possessed by our self identity, a phantom, so easily unmoored, an accretion of habitual responses and memory that we cling to with such intensity we often miss the benefits of taking on another type of personal agency.… Read the rest

The Trickster Comes to NYC – George Hansen at the Observatory

By David Metcalfe on June 14, 2013 in News 4

George Hansen - Trickster and the Paranormal My friend George Hansen has a pretty succinct biography:

George P. Hansen was professionally employed in parapsychology laboratories for eight years—three at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina, and five at Psychophysical Research Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. His experiments included remote viewing, card guessing, ganzfeld, electronic random number generators, séance phenomena, and ghosts. He has been active in a number of psychic, UFO, and New Age organizations, and he helped found a skeptics group.

His papers in scientific journals cover mathematical statistics, fraud and deception, the skeptics movement, conjurors in parapsychology, and exposés of hoaxes. He is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

Reading all that you’re given no clues to the fact that his book The Trickster and the Paranormal offers one of the most detailed examinations of the psycho-social factors of anomalous experiences written in the 20th century. That little bit about “his experiments included…” actually means he has spent the last few decades doing ethnographic immersion in the entire field of psychical and anomalous research.… Read the rest

Reality Sandwich is Expanding!

By David Metcalfe on May 25, 2013 in News 6

Reality Sandwich is running a Kickstarter campaign to revamp the website into a real time digital think tank. When they mentioned this thing was starting it hit a brain overflowing with Santa Muerte research, and, as you might imagine, La Nina Blanca is an odd prelude to considerations of the digital economy and interactive web platforms.

The concepts met in an strange and awkward dance until reading sociologist Bernardo Barranco I was reminded that She is the patron saint of the marginal economy and black market. This struck a chord with me when ruminating on digital culture turned to an abstract personal reverie. Back in the 90′s interacting with websites like Disinfo.com, GreyLodge.org, and other forerunners to Reality Sandwich, felt like accessing digital gates to the black market of ideas. William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Robert Anton Wilson, and a whole host of others were just a contact away if you were chatting on the message boards.… Read the rest

It Was the Devil Who Sent Me: Leonarda Ferreira Paixão and the Skulls of Sao Paulo

By David Metcalfe on May 17, 2013 in News 11

Devil Sent Me “Foi o diabo quem mandou”, roughly translated this means something to the effect of “It was the devil who sent me.” It’s one of the only reported statements from Leonarda Ferreira Paixão, a 42 year old woman arrested on May 10th in relation to a puzzling series of crudely wrapped skulls found placed in various locations throughout Sao Paulo, Brazil since February.

Paixao was caught on camera pulling a skull out of a bag, and placing it near the Consulate of South Africa earlier in the week. Friday night she was caught by guards at the Cemitério da Vila Formosa, Zona Leste, attempting to take two more skulls from the premises. Law enforcement had some idea that the skulls were being taken from cemeteries even before catching her since advanced signs of decomposition made it clear these were not fresh specimens.

From limited reports in the Brazilian press it seems she’s claimed that during some sort of ritual work she was commanded to eat the offerings made during the working, then to proceed to a cemetery, dig up certain graves, and distribute skulls to specific locations throughout Sao Paulo.… Read the rest

Catholic Church Officially Declares Devotion to Santa Muerte Blasphemous

By David Metcalfe on May 10, 2013 in News 11

(This summary originally appeared in an alternate form on SkeletonSaint.com )

The battle between the Catholic orthodoxy and devotees of Santa Muerte has hit a high water mark with a visit to Mexico from the Vatican’s Cultural Minister, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. Sarah C. Nelson, writing for Huffington Post UK, reports on the news that Ravasi has given a charge of blasphemy to Santa Muerte in a series of talks he presented where he compared the devotional tradition to those held by Cosa Nostra organized crime families in Italy:

“A Vatican spokesman has declared Mexico’s folk Death Saint (Santa Meurte) is “blasphemous” and should not be part of any religion.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi said worship of the skeletal figure of a cloaked woman carrying a scythe was a degeneration of religion, the Associated Press reported.”

This is Ravasi’s third condemnation of the tradition in four days. Up to this point the Catholic Church’s standard response has, at times, favored the devotional fervor, and intent of Santa Muerte’s followers, while expressing concern over doctrinal issues. Quotes from a Spanish language AP report show that that the Cardinal has gone well past any tense acquiescence, and it seems likely that the Vatican is planning to highlight Santa Muerte as a negative foil during the development of upcoming cultural education initiatives:

“The mafia, drug trafficking, organized crime are not religious forms.

… Read the rest

Exploring the Implications of Sacred Geometry – A Meeting of Minds

By David Metcalfe on April 19, 2013 in News 2

Mind and Cosmos What do you do with a technologically aided telepathic connection to a rat’s tail?

Odd questions like this become more relevant as developments in cybernetics and communication technology allow for strange interactions with the world around us. Without the aid of creative imagination you get a bizarre bit of cultural kitsch, delving deeper you can encounter profound questions that crack into the mystery of mind and body, and the synaptic symetry defining so much of our self perception. If you tread carefully you enter the realm of Sacred Geometry, encountering applications of mathematics and ratio that bridge the gap between material science and the more aetheral realms of human existence.

It may seem counter-intuitive to connect Sacred Geometry to cybernetics, but in this kind of wider application is exactly the domains where theories of integral mathematics can be most fruitfully applied. The neuro-chemical maps that connect our nervous system to our body and allow us to move are predicated on mathematical relationships that can be found throughout manifested reality.… Read the rest

Embalming Time – The Photography of Invisible Things

By David Metcalfe on April 1, 2013 in News 4

It is an egregious, unavoidable fact that much of the material evidence for unexplained experience is the result of easily explained technical glitches, intentionally or unintentionally invoked. Apparitional double exposures, pollen produced orbs, apophenial faces, and other replicable effects mar the minds of seekers and skeptics confronted with photographs, and other forms of ostensibly objective proof, said to contain traces of some transcendent order of nature.

The latest episode of The Midnight Archive, an award winning documentary series from film maker Ronni Thomas, features an interview with photographer Shannon Taggart who takes this fact as given, and, moving beyond questions of real or unreal, uses it to capture a more narrative experience of the event. In the interview she discusses her art, and the broader history of Spiritualist spirit photography, in the process providing an alternative approach to understanding these areas of experience that steps past questions of proof:

As an artist and photojournalist Taggart is able to eschew issues of authenticity, in order to embrace the psychological and storytelling aspects of the event.… Read the rest

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