A Realpolitik Self-Help Guide cum Spiritual Memoir

Beginning in her early childhood, the world-famous trance medium and grande dame of parapsychology Eileen J. Garrett had numerous encounters with an entity she called the “Noble Stranger.” When she asked his identity one day, this mysterious figure responded, “You may call me Lucifer.”

Call me Lucifer: Dialogues with a Noble Stranger, features Garrett’s writings about her encounters with this Noble Stranger, and reflections on her intellectual “duels with her Devil.”  The book includes extensive verbatim transcripts of Lucifer’s communications with Garrett, together with Lucifer’s Compendium of Guidance.

Though prepared with great care over the course of her life, the book has lain dormant in Garrett’s family archives for decades.  Her granddaughter, Lisette Coly, current President of the Parapsychology Foundation, has now decided that it should be shared with the public as an aid to our spiritual evolution.

The book can be enjoyed on at least three levels: an unflinching psychological self-portrait of a highly cultured, intelligent woman of the last century interrogating her own extraordinary experiences; a long-lost chapter in the history of parapsychology and another piece in the puzzle of Garrett’s mediumship; and perhaps most importantly, a source of thought-provoking wisdom and startling ideas. Whether they originated with Lucifer himself or from somewhere deep in the medium’s subconscious, readers will appreciate these texts for their insight into life’s most pressing spiritual and existential questions.

Praise for Call me Lucifer.

“Call Me Lucifer is a fascinating account by Irish medium and parapsychologist Eileen J. Garrett of her life-long relationship with a personality that identified itself as Lucifer. Through her conversations with Lucifer – interpreted variably as a separate entity or an aspect of her subconscious – Garrett explored key issues of modernity, such as the Self, the subconscious, sexuality, and spirituality. As such, Garrett’s dealings with Lucifer in many ways parallel those of other mediums and occultists, for example, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and his experiences with the ‘discarnate entity’ Aiwass, identified by Crowley as Satan or Lucifer. Call Me Lucifer will be of interest not only to readers with an interest in channeling and parapsychology, but also to students of esotericism and twentieth-century spirituality.”

~ Professor Henrik Bogdan, author of Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation and co-editor of Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism.

“Call me Lucifer: Dialogues with a Noble Stranger is part of a new wave of publishing on the lives and work of leading women in the twentieth century esoteric world whose stories and roles deserve to be recognised. Irish medium Eileen J. Garrett is one such woman and her book is a fascinating account of her experiences with her most important guide and the insights for spiritual development that emerged.”

~ Vivianne Crowley, PhD, Wiccan High Priestess and author of Wild Once: Awaken the Magic Within, and Wicca: A Comprehensive Guide to the Old Religion in the Modern World.

“Call Me Lucifer is of special interest to me, having known not only Eileen Garrett but her daughter and granddaughter as well. This remarkable book resonates with the Eileen who I knew, a woman who was inquisitive, skeptical, reflective, frank, funny, and lusty.  And it demonstrates how many dimensions of the human psyche are still inadequately explored, begging for answers.”
~ Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Co-author, Personal Mythology.

“This is a fast-paced book with surprises throughout. It should, however, be pondered as many of the book’s ideas need careful contemplation. Parts of the book show theosophical influences, elsewhere hints of Gnosticism and Middle Platonism. … Garrett is clearly a free thinker. She talks openly about her experiences of nameless sex, LSD, and distressing visions of deformed hobgoblins. Throughout all this, her charming Devil – the Noble Stranger – Lucifer. Most of the book happens in ‘inner time’ reminiscent of Jung’s Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Overall, this is an interesting exploration of one woman’s personal mediumship.”

~ Susan Leybourne, medium, spiritual teacher and author of The Chaldean Oracles: Origins, Developments and Theurgy in Late Antiquity.

“Psychic phenomena are matter of fact. They occur spontaneously, but perhaps only occasionally, to a large proportion of the general public. For some, psychic experiences occur so frequently that they form an essential thread of the warp and weft of lived experience. But that deep acquaintance does not necessarily lead to deep understanding of the phenomena. Eileen Garrett illustrates this perfectly. Despite a lifetime of rich spiritual experiences and an unprecedented willingness to subject herself to scientific study (a great deal of which she financed herself), she remained perplexed by their ultimate cause and wrestled with different understandings of them. Her description of interactions with ‘Lucifer’ – recounted here – is typically candid, as she oscillates between belief in her contact as an independent intelligent agent and belief that he has emerged from the deepest wells of her own unconscious, perhaps with a dash of extrasensory perception to account for accuracies in the information she received that couldn’t be known by normal means. Communications from the Noble Stranger can be cryptic, perhaps intentionally inscrutable in the manner of a koan that is intended to be ruminated upon rather than resolved, and could reward careful study. Whatever we make of the personality that appears in these pages as ‘Lucifer’, and whatever we each take from his teachings, the publication of this ‘lost’ manuscript provides a valuable insight into the complexities of the psyche of a gifted medium.”

~ Professor Chris A. Roe, Director, Centre for Psychology & Social Sciences, University of Northampton.

Eileen J. Garrett (1893-1970) was an Irish medium and one of the most important figures in parapsychology. Despite her apparent psychic abilities, which were subjected to numerous tests by the most prominent researchers of the era.

Garrett maintained a lifelong healthy skepticism, always questioning the nature and meaning of her own extraordinary experiences. Her dedication to the objective, scientific study of psychical phenomena resulted in her establishing the Parapsychology Foundation, which published many books on the subject as well as the International Journal of Parapsychology, and the popular Tomorrow magazine.

Garrett was also something of a bon vivant, rubbing shoulders with everyone from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Cecil B. DeMille, Aldous Huxley, Salvador Dalí, Robert Graves, Anaïs Nin, and Carl Jung to name but a few. Garrett herself was a prolific author, writing a number of novels as well as books on psychical research and three autobiographies – including My Life as a Search for the Meaning of Mediumship, forthcoming in a new edition from Afterworlds Press.