We are at a critical moment in the history of humankind’s relationship with the Earth, and all the species that co-inhabit with us. This is a time of climate change, species loss and ecological collapse on a scale that has never been seen before. New ways of thinking will be required if we hope to overcome these global problems and develop a more harmonious relationship between the human and non-human worlds. In the spirit of creative exploration this book suggests that approaches emerging from the study of (and engagement with) the super-natural may ultimately help us to re-connect with the natural, and in so doing develop innovative approaches to confronting the eco-crisis.

Greening the Paranormal explores parallels between anomalistics (the study of the paranormal in all its guises, incorporating parapsychology, paranthropology, cryptozoology, religious studies, and so on), and ecology (the study of living systems), not just for the sake of exploring interesting intersections (of which there are many), but for the essential task of contributing towards a much broader – necessary – change of perspective concerning our relationship to the living planet. The chapters collected in this book demonstrate that we have much to learn from exploring the ecology of extraordinary experience.

Contents

Foreword: Paul Devereux

Chapter 1: Greening the Paranormal: Re-Wilding and Re-Enchantment – Jack Hunter

Chapter 2: The Anarchist and the Unicorn: On Science, Spirit, and Civilization – Cody Meyocks

Chapter 3: Listening to the Elders: Earth Consciousness and Ecology – Amba J. Sepie

Chapter 4: This Moment Returns to Me: Childhood Reverie and a Lenape Idea of Recruitment by the Earth – Nancy Wissers

Chapter 5: The Invisible Ecosystem: A Native American Perspective – Lance M. Foster

Chapter 6: Piercing the Veil with the Trickster – Jacob W. Glazier

Chapter 7: Liminal Spaces and Liminal Minds: Boundary Thinness and Participatory Eco-Consciousness – Christine Simmonds-Moore

Chapter 8: Re-Awakening the Transpersonal Ecosophical Significance of Sacred Places – Mark A. Schroll

Chapter 9: Ancient Webs, Modern Webs, World Wide Webs – Viktória Duda

Chapter 10: Embodiment, Reconciliation, Belonging: Writing to Re-member the ‘Paranormal’ – Maya Ward

Chapter 11: Earth Light, Earth Angel – Simon Wilson

Chapter 12: Eco-Consciousness, Species Connectedness and the Psychedelic Experience – David Luke

Chapter 13: Taking Soul Birds Seriously: A Post-secular Animist Perspective on Extra-ordinary Communications – Brian Taylor

Chapter 14: Animal Allies Transformed into Animal Essences: Healing and Transformation with the Wild Earth Animal Essences – Silvia Mutterle

Chapter 15: Cryptozoology in a Changing World – Susan Marsh

Chapter 16: A Hidden Predator: Ecology and Esotericism in the Work of Whitley Strieber – Timothy Grieve-Carlson

Chapter 17: Psychic Naturalism - Elorah Fangrad, Rick Fehr, and Christopher Laursen

Biographies

References

Index

Praise for Greening the Paranormal

This book does everything one can hope for. It begins with a shocking shared road encounter with what looks like, well, the Green Man of European folklore. It then travels through any number of well worn paranormal paths, each time, like the initial astonished encounter, spotting new (and yet very old) things and struggling mightily with the empirical highly strange aspects of the phenomena. The essayists do not flinch. They do not look away. They walk ahead, right into the dark green forest of religion, mythology, and folklore. What they bring back could signal major shifts in our intellectual, social, political, and moral landscapes with respect to a natural world that is really a super natural world, that is really us.

–Jeffrey J. Kripal, PhD., author of Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions

Having joined the Green movement in 1973 after reading Limits to Growth, which warned of potentially devastating climate change, I have supported Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc., since then. Recently I have become a Green Town Councillor to further help in changing the way in which we live our lives. However, my work has always been in Parapsychology, both as a teacher and a researcher. I have always seen Parapsychology as the spiritual aspect of the Green movement, and have given talks and written articles to that end. So I am absolutely delighted that Jack has brought out this compilation of the Green aspects of the Paranormal, written from a very diverse array of perspectives. I hope that it makes a great impact on our society which is in desperate need of changing its predominant world view.

–Serena Roney-Dougal, PhD., author of Where Science and Magic Meet

Dr. Jack Hunter is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of ecology, religion and the paranormal. He lives in the hills of Mid-Wales with his family. He is an Honorary Research Fellow with the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David and a Research Fellow with the Parapsychology Foundation, New York.  He is the founder and editor of Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal, the author of Spirits, Gods and Magic: An Introduction to the Anthropology of the Supernatural (2019) and Engaging the Anomalous (2018). He is the editor of Strange Dimensions: A Paranthropology Anthology (2015), Damned Facts: Fortean Essays on Religion, Folklore and the Paranormal (2016), and is co-editor with Dr. David Luke of Talking With the Spirits: Ethnographies from Between the Worlds (2014).
To find out more about his work visit www.jack-hunter.webstarts.com