Angels & Demons: Duality & Paranormal Phenomena

I mentioned the Neoplatonists in earlier articles. The Neoplatonists believed in the concept of a world-soul, which they also also acquired from Plato. They called this the Anima Mundi. This world-soul or Anima Mundi was the realm from which emerged the gods and daimons. The Anima Mundi is also equal to Dr. Carl Jung's collective unconscious and I also believe it is Dr. Huston Smith's Intermediate Plane or Dr. Henry Corbin's Imaginal Realm.

The Soul of the World, collective unconscious, or Imaginal Realm-whatever noun we choose to identify this magical place with-cannot be known directly. The daimons, myths, and gods that emanate from this realm are, in a sense, metaphors for one another. It is also useful, I believe, to imagine the Anima Mundi/Imaginal Realm as the beautiful, calm reflective surface of a crystal-clear mountain lake on an enchanting Autumn night. Using this imagery, picture that the images on the surface of our lake are actually empty-or not "really" on the lake-but the surface of our magical lake can reflect everything. Then I think we have a good metaphor/analogy for Jung's collective unconscious/Anima Mundi/Imaginal Realm.

In other words the gods, daimons, and myths of the Imaginal Realm are not in the Imaginal Realm etc.--they are the Imaginal Realm etc. One thing that using the placid surface of a lake for our analogy to the Imaginal Realm that may give a false impression of this place is the sense of calm and serenity it gives. In fact, it is a dynamic, tempestuous place that constantly branches into "our" world-its tendrils leaping into the physical plane, the mental plane (our thoughts/imagination) and our psycholgical complexes and dreams.

The philosophy of alchemy gives us one of the most refined embodiments of the Anima Mundi. Mercury (Mercurius) personified a dynamic, living spirit in the physical matter and also the unconscious itself. "The mythical figure of Proteus, a favorite image of the Renaissance, represented a combination of the sea image and the personification: as daimonic offspring of the sea-god Poseidon. Proteus is the shape-changer par excellence-always himself, yet always appearing as something else."

"When Jung spoke of images, he referred especially of course to those archetypal images we encounter as daimons and gods. We must not be misled by the word "images" into thinking of them as somehow unreal. We should, on the contrary, approach them as Jung approached daimons like his Philemon-"as if they were real people" to whom he "listened attentively." He did not, we notice, treat them as literally real, as we (mistakenly) treat hallucinations or (correctly) treat people in the street...He treated them as metaphorical beings, as if they were real people. And it is this metaphorical reality, as (if not more so than) literal reality-as real as Philemon-that he called psychic reality." Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur, pp. 47-48.

There are two benefits for thinking of the Anima Mundi instead of the collective unconscious as the prime metaphor for daimonic reality. The first is that the Anima Mundi evokes the notion of the soul, with all of its religious and mystical implications as opposed to psyche which has been denuded of these connections by almost everyone except Jung and a handful of other thinkers. The second benefit is that the Amima Mundi suggests a plane of being that is as much "out there" as it is "within us," as opposed to how the "unconscious" part of the collective unconscious suggests as area of being that can be reduced to psychological factors.

W.B. Yeats wrote: "If all our mental images no less than apparitions (and I see no reason to distinguish), are forms existing in the general vehicle of Anima Mundi, and mirrored in our particular vehicle, many crooked things are made straight." From the human standpoint, the soul is a microcosm which is also composed of a deep, abstruse collective level or world-soul where all of the separate, individual souls meet. From the world-soul/Anima Mundi's point of view it is a macrocosm, a complete impersonal world which has the ability to paradoxically be made known in a personal manner (duality again--microcosm/macrocos, personal/impersonal) as individual human souls. Jung realized that the deeper we dig into our souls, the unconscious unfolds-turning inside out: "At bottom the psyche is simply the world."

The word "animism" is used, by and large, in a derogatory manner by Western society towards traditional societies-all of which, even if they don't have an intellection for it, perceive Anima Mundi. This is because Western culture, long ago, denied any sense of anima in Nature thus taking soul out of it and debased Nature to dead matter reacting in accordance with sterile mechanical laws. To cultures which are animistic, Nature reveals herself in all her glory as thourougly daimon-haunted. These people recognize the sylphs of the air, the genii of forest and mountain, numina of trees and streams etc. The amazing variety of daimons associated with certain places also have their opposite numbers in places of habitation, such as ancestral spirits and the "kinder and gentler" household gods. To people in animistic cultures no part of mundane reality is without the sacralization of everyday living or without a daimon who has to be awarded its share unless one wants to invite misfortune and mishap into their lives.

Daimons also love to inhabit areas such as sacred graves, stone circles, tumuli, and holy wells. Perhaps the lights seen hovering over crop circles and tumuli (among other sacred sites), are analogous in some way to "modern" UFOs that are spotted over power generating stations, nuclear reactors, military bases and reservoirs. If this is the case we would have dualities with the ancient and modern: ghost/fairy lights (ancient) hovering over stone circles/tumuli (ancient). UFOs (modern) hovering over military bases/nuclear reactors (modern). The military bases, nuclear reactors and the like would play the part of our modern "sacred" technological sites which we worship, as animistic cultures worship at stone circles or sacred graves and the like.

Geographical locations where a high number of UFOs are seen are called "windows." Other Fortean phenomena also seem to favor certain locations or "windows" on occasion. A window is certainly a good name to describe an area where there is more permeability between daimonic and ordinary reality--the "daimonic" and "ordinary" being perhaps another duality that is essentially the flip sides of the same coin.

Daimons are famous for haunting "boundary" areas. The anthropolist Victor Turner called them liminal ("threshold") zones. These liminal zones and the daimons that haunt them occur in a wide variety of areas physical and mental-many of which can be thought of in the form of dualities: consciouness/unconsciousness, day/night, old/new (example: at the turn of the year) etc. Other liminal zones that daimons favor are crossroads, bridges, the bases of mountains, and shores. Mobile home parks and caravan sites are frequented by strange beings, UFOs and other Fortean phenomena more often than other areas where people make their homes-especially considering their usually smaller size. Could this be because they are often located in liminal (boundary/threshold) zones between city and country? Perhaps also because these areas are "home" and yet "not- home" to so many people? Could these examples also be yet more evidence of duality?--city/country, home/not- home? Whatever one thinks of the duality issue-one thing can be said for certain with regard to these quirky places: Many people know of a magical, enchanted place whether it is largely known or private where our so-called "laws" of space and time, matter and causality appear to be undermined; and for a time-usually brief we catch a glimpse of a hidden order of things.