Jock Brocas is a spiritual author and teacher with books published internationally. Jock is also the president of the charity organization assmpi and works tirelessly to he others develop spiritually and live a more rewarding life. Join Jock Brocas on a spiritual journey.
http://jockbrocas.us
You are invited to our small mini-conference. This is a fundraising event that will take place online and will cover 3 main topics by three passionate speakers and advocates for Psi, Parapsychology, and Spiritual Science.
This conference is to help educate and sow seeds of inquiry into the minds of those interested in a professional approach to the subject. The speakers have been chosen for their knowledge, experience, and passion to educate and support a misunderstood subject. Each speaker brings a unique skill set and their topic is chosen to give our attendees a unique perspective that they can discuss with other attendees.
We can’t wait to see you there. The cost is $20 USD and a portion goes to psi research.
We’ve made some innovations to help you enjoy the experience without feeling information overload and give you some time to either chat up other people in the audience, grab something to eat, or get a couple of chores done around the house to clear your head before the next speech.
We do this by having a ten-minute Q&A after each speech and then a 20-minute break. Whatever time zone you’re in, you won’t be rushed.
We’re using a sophisticated networking software program that puts you at tables, so that it’s not a free for all, and you can leave a table if you’re not grooving with the conversation there.
Typical table arrangement
This is what your screen looks like. If you join one of those tables, it looks a lot like a Zoom conversation. It’s a great way to find people to talk to or locate a friend who is also attending. Take the time to put in a profile and people will be able to see who you are at a glance. You can message anyone or join group messaging at a particular table to share info with each other.
For some people, this is the best part of conferences.
We have a great lineup of speakers:
Our featured speaker Loyd Auerbach:
M.S. (Parapsychology), Director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations and President of the Forever Family Foundation, has been in the field for over 40 years focusing on education and field investigation. He is the author or co-author of 10 nonfiction books and one novel and teaches online Parapsychology courses through the Rhine Education Center.
He is on the Board of the Rhine Research Center and the advisory boards of the Windbridge Research Center and the Forever Family Foundation. His media appearances on TV, radio, and in print number in the thousands, including The UnXplained, ESPN’s SportsCenter, ABC’s The View, Oprah, and Larry King Live. He works as a parapsychologist, professional mentalist/psychic entertainer (Professor Paranormal), public speaking & media skills coach, and as a professional chocolatier.
Loyd will be talking about:
Do Ghosts Have ESP? Parapsychology can answer, but Reality TV Cannot
Description:
The field of Parapsychology/Psychical Research, with its over 140-year history, provides much from both field investigations and laboratory findings that are generally ignored by the paranormal reality TV shows, and therefore unknown to or ignored by most who follow the often TV-producer-influenced methods. Parapsychologists, as scientists, have to assess their cases carefully, always looking for alternative "normal" explanations for every reported event, not just the overall case (this is not "debunking," by the way, but rather the process of applying science).
Also speaking: Jock Brocas
Photographer: W. V. Pattison |
Jock Brocas is the founder of PDN, an evidential Spiritual Medium, and spiritual author of several books. Jock’s latest book “Deadly Departed” challenges the widely accepted paradigm of the afterlife. Jock writes with passion and in-depth knowledge. The books are written with one common goal, which is to enlighten and teach spiritual lessons of love, compassion, and forgiveness. Jock has appeared in national media and has written for global media on the paranormal, spirituality, and the afterlife. He has dedicated his later years to his own spiritual development and the professional development of his Mediumship and understanding of Parapsychology. Jock takes a more scientific view of the paranormal and the afterlife.
As a proponent of many disciplines, these skills have culminated in developing unique perspectives on spirituality and spiritual life. Jock teaches regularly and works tirelessly to help those developing on a spiritual path.
Jock’s Speech:
Dangers of Paranormal Belief for Mediums and Investigators
Description:
Are we wired for belief in the paranormal, and does a common bias cause more problems when it comes to the investigation of potential anomalous phenomena? Mediums, Uninformed Investigators, Religious perceptions, and the uneducated public could cause more suffering for a family, individual, or community under spiritual crisis. Jock will cite examples of mediumistic bias and the dangers associated with paranormal belief.
Also speaking: Craig Weiler
Craig Weiler is the science editor for Paranormal Daily News, a parapsychology journalist, author, and blogger. Craig covers controversies in parapsychology (and occasionally other topics) as well as interesting studies, various researchers and projects, and the occasional topical subject related to parapsychology. In particular, Craig covered the TED controversy of 2013 extensively as well as a Wikipedia controversy later in the year and was the first to report on Russell Gruber's Mirror Worlds Research.
Craig’s nuts and bolts approach takes you on a practical and easily understandable discussion of the ongoing debate between people who believe in a totally physical world and those who believe that consciousness is fundamental. He then shows how you can use this information to practical effect in your life.
Miss Something? The Conference is Being Recorded
The conference will be recorded and each paid attendee will be able to watch the conference recording within our new private community at any time. Buying a ticket to the event ensures access to the new para community app.
This article is a rebuttal to the article; “Souls: It’s Time We Give Up the Ghost” recently published in Psychology Today by Bill Sullivan Ph.D. While I am not an academic, I am an author and paranormal researcher who can certainly spot a bad argument when I see one.
The article suggests that we should give up the idea of a soul. It suggests we find the hidden power in refuting the idea of a soul. It is rather like saying one should deny the existence of our thoughts. These thoughts certainly exist but have no material form. The author suggests that all emotion is controlled by the brain. Therefore, that would suggest that no matter what emotion we experience, it would be a purely physical process. But emotions are also thoughts, and the physical experience of emotion comes from those non-material thoughts.
The arguments put forth regarding emotion and healing or experiences of a visual nature and degeneration or disease, suggest that split-brain means that consciousness is the brain when in fact, this could not be further from the truth. Conclusive research, as noted in Science Daily and Brain, indicates that split-brain does not mean split consciousness (Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness)
The Argument Against The Soul Is Weak
Sullivan begins his argument with an example of how split-brain patients experience two different realities at the same time. He then argues that this would not happen with a unified soul. This argument is one of the better ones that are made in defense of materialism, but it relies on materialist assumptions.
Once you examine those assumptions, the argument is less clear-cut. Consider this, if a radio is broken or cannot receive transmissions in the field - perhaps in a military environment. The soldier or operator would not blame the signal. It is not the signal that is broken. In fact, the signal is still operating perfectly. The radio signal does not require a receiver for its existence. Therefore, the signal exists whether the receiver is there or not. The reality is the radio receiver is broken. Therefore, the only issue is the receiver. Should the soldier Sullivan is therefore blaming the radio signal, which is nonsensical and the argument is rather futile.
In my opinion, it seems to me that Sullivan is labeling the soul as a being or separate entity. Suggesting the doppelgänger if you will, existing as an entity on its own with form and function parallel to the material form. The article actually shows that he has very specific perceptions of the reality of the soul. He thinks he understands what the soul actually is, and what part it plays in human function. His belief is based upon the assumption the brain is acting as the soul, or that because the brain acts within its varying pathways based on stimulus and emotion, the soul cannot exist.
A Potential Understanding Of The Soul
Defending The Soul’s Existence
If one is forced to believe a soul is a separate form, that it has its own identity and personality, then of course Sullivan’s assumptions may have some merit. But this assumption is at best, based on a reductionist, materialistic view of science and does not look toward the plethora of survival evidence that suggests the contrary. Consequently, in the article, the author tries to forcibly play his hand by claiming the newest research in this field supports his assumptions. Furthermore, it is noted the article does not cite any real case studies that have valid efficacy and are replicable, as continually pointed out - a requirement of real scientific inquiry. The scientific evidence for Psi is overwhelming and serves to refute materialist claims and assumptions. Not including this research as part of the discussion in Bill's article, means the conclusions are cherry-picked to suit.
The soul, like any word in our language, has an etymological history. We find it easier to attach labels to concepts in order to satisfy our need for understanding. If we look at the origin of the word, we can deduce where this concept or construct has come from.
The modern English word soul derives from the Old English sáwol, sáwel, which itself comes from the Old High German sêula, sêla. The Germanic word is a translation of the Greek psychē (ψυχή- "life, spirit, consciousness") by missionaries such as Ulfila, apostle to the Goths (fourth century C.E.).
This has become increasingly misunderstood, as in modern times, many people tend to label the soul and give it form with the assumption of it being a separate form from consciousness. The reality, of course, is the soul is not formed and is not biological or physiological in function.
Theories In Biocentrism
Again, this is my own opinion with regard to the soul and whether it exists as a separate being or energy. In my mind, the soul is an aspect of the animating force that gives life, that allows the functioning of the being in human form within the constructs of material existence. This is also an opinion shared by others and noted in Robert Lanza M.D's article: “Does the soul exist, the evidence says yes!”. Robert cites many new hypotheses from modern research on the subject titled Biocentrism. This theory challenges the model widely accepted in the science community, which is based in materialism and draws many conclusions based on false assumptions.
Soul, therefore, is spirit and spirit is the aspect of the animating force that is creation itself. It is not a separate being that is outside the human form and in the same way that the brain is needed to function in the rest of the material or corporeal form, so too, the spirit is needed for the human brain to function. Without this animating force, the brain is lifeless and is connected to nothing.
Where are the replicable studies?
Sullivan further states in his article,
"Science has definitively shown that all of the things that define us, including our thoughts, emotions, and memories, are generated by the brain."
Where are these studies cited and are they replicable? Scientists are forever hammering us about the need for studies to be validated through replication. Yet nowhere in this article does the author try to prove his assumptions. He only gleans over information that is gathered from hypotheses and perceptions. His argument also falls flat with other studies that have further evidence of a vastly different hypothesis that can be replicated.
Intelligent discourse and reasoning
We know from afterlife research and evidential communications from discarnate beings, that reasoning and intelligent discarnate communications exist. Yet, if we were relying on the assumptions of the author, this would be impossible. Why? Because there is no human brain, which means that these beings who communicate from the other side of life would not be able to communicate intelligently or reason with information being gleaned.
Near-Death Experiences
If indeed the brain is the only form of consciousness and all emotion is contained within those neural pathways, then how can near-death experiences give empirical evidence of events and intelligent information with the capacity to reason, when the brain is in fact - dead - for lack of a better term.
Empirical Mediumship Evidence
Afterlife Research
One particular medium stands out in the annals of parapsychological history. Leonora Piper was one of the most remarkable mediums in the world and one of the most researched mediums. Piper produced remarkable empirical evidence over many years and was subjected to rigorous scientific research by notable pioneers in parapsychology. Professor William James of Harvard sat with Piper and was so convinced of the evidence that he continued to arrange sittings for research purposes. James arranged for a colleague from the Society of Psychical Research (SPR) to carry on the sittings. Richard Hodgson, an Australian who had been teaching law and philosophy in England, began to work full time on the sittings which were conducted three times per week.
Several reports were presented on the sittings with Piper and research continued. Noted researcher Sir Oliver Lodge remarked:
The trance is, to the best of my belief, a genuine one. In it Mrs. Piper is (sometimes, at least) insensible to pain, as tested by suddenly pushing a needle into her hand, which causes not the slightest flinching; and her pulse is affected beyond what I can imagine to be the control of volition.8Remarkable Evidence Verified.
Frederick Myers Founding Member Of The Society Of Psychical Research
Frederick Meyers, who also researched Piper noted her integrity and honesty. In a statement made as to the nature of the intelligent discourse, he confirmed the following:
that many of the facts given could not have been learnt even by a skilled detective; (2) that to learn others of them, although possible, would have needed an expenditure of money as well as of time which it seems impossible to suppose that Mrs. Piper could have met; and (3) that her conduct has never given any ground whatever for supposing her capable of fraud or trickery. Few persons have been so long and so carefully observed; and she has left on all observers the impression of thorough uprightness, candour, and honesty.
Cross Correspondences
If we are refuting the idea that the brain controls all intelligence and consciousness, it is important to also consider examples of cross correspondences. This was a research modality that was prevalent in the early 20th century as scientific research into the phenomenon of automatic writing. Piper was also involved in these formal studies and research. This form of communication, performed under scientific conditions, is perhaps one of the best forms of evidential communication that refutes the necessity of the existence of the brain for the existence of consciousness. In fact, by 1936, there were over 3000 transcripts recorded and analyzed by notable SPR researchers. The evidence contained within those transcripts was considered to be the best proof of survival of bodily death.
Cross correspondences demonstrate that information coming from a discarnate being through automatic writing under trance conditions can not only be validated but the information gained could not be attained through other means. Again, this would be impossible if the brain was indeed in control. Even though cross correspondences are still controversial, the given examples of intelligence still refute the necessity of the brain for consciousness to exist.
Further Empirical Validation
Another example of this type of empirical evidence was demonstrated in another séance by a medium known as Estelle Roberts and her guide Red Cloud, who was known to get it wrong on occasion. Nevertheless, during one particular sitting, Bessie Manning came through the medium and asked Barbanell to pass a message to her mother. Barbannel sent her mother 2 telegrams in order to relay the message and the evidence given by the discarnate spirit was properly validated.
This should be impossible under Sullivan’s materialist assumptions, but it did indeed happen and here we are.
Past Lives
Research into past lives suggests the existence of more than one personality experience in other lives prior to the one in the present moment. Dr. Ian Stevenson (Now Deceased) was perhaps the most notable researcher in the field of past life research. His work is now continued by Dr. Jim Tucker of the Division Of Perceptual Studies At Virginia University. Stevenson’s work spanned many years and culminated in thousands of cases of children whose evidence of past lives was incredibly accurate.
If memory was stored in the brain only and the soul contained only in the brain, how can the evidence of a past life surface when the brain of the subject would be different from the brain in the past life's existence? This suggests that consciousness or the existence of the soul is not a prerequisite of brain function.
In Memory Of You
In another remarkable statement, the author suggests that memory is indeed a function of the brain and that losing memory in a case such as Alzheimer's would mean the soul does not exist. The following statement is a weak point of his argument for the non-existence of the brain.
If our soul contains our memories and experiences, then the amyloid plaques that form in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients should not rob us of them. If our soul was separate from our brain, lobotomies should not work. Anesthesia should not work. Novocain should not work.
Our memories here are not as full and real as the memories in the spirit; what escapes us here, cannot escape the memory in the spirit. The reality is that we are all a sum total of all memories. There have been examples of discarnate beings who in this life suffered from memory loss or from the effects of psychological disturbance, yet the evidence relayed brings forth the memories they once forgot that had to be third person validated. Once more, this refutes the idea that the brain is the constant in all forms of conscious experiences.
Jungian Psychology
“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud." —address to the Society for Psychical Research in England” ― C.G. Jung
In this article, Sullivan tried to argue that the soul did not exist. However, the basis of the argument is in material assumptions and beliefs. He fails to consider other evidence that weighs heavily in favor of the soul, and he further rejects other parapsychological evidence that supports the survival of consciousness. To a materialist, he is convincing, but his argument fails when you provide research that adequately refutes his argument.
Split Brain Theory: Sperry, R.W. (1968) Hemisphere deconnection and unity in consciousness. American Psychologist, 23, 723-33
Brain: Yair Pinto, David A. Neville, Marte Otten, Paul M. Corballis, Victor A.F. Lamme, Edward H.F. de Haan, Nicoletta Foschi, Mara Fabri. Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness. Brain, January 2017 DOI: 10.1093/brain/aww358
Myers, Frederic et al. (1890). ‘A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 6, pp. 436-660.
In sum, just as the magical traditions have maintained, belief modulates psi performance. In other words, if you don’t believe in magic, then no magic for you.
Real Magic, by Dean Radin
For the first time in the 14 years I’ve been writing about parapsychology, I’m writing about a group of experiments directly from the original studies and only from the original studies with help from the researcher. Why? Because I’m one of the first people outside of the research team and faculty committee members that’s read them. These experiments focus on psi missing (missing targets in excess of chance rates) which has some pretty interesting ramifications.
What usually happens is that by the time I see a particular area of research, it’s already been picked over like a Christmas turkey at a homeless camp. There are typically lengthy technical summaries, news articles, blog posts, skeptical commentary and other explanations that paint a picture of the research through various eyes.
It is quite strange to have no skepticism to wade through, no other articles examining the research and no one else to talk to about it aside from the original researcher. Outside of the original papers, which have been online, hidden in plain sight for a few years, this research is being shared with the world for the very first time in this article.
Most people have very little contact with scientific research into psychic ability outside of the occasional item they might see in a magazine or newspaper about a new study. Very few people, scientists included, know that credible research even exists.
Psi Wars: TED, Wikipedia and the Battle for the Internet, by Craig Weiler
The Professor
Meet Russell Gruber, PhD, who ran a parapsychology lab at Eastern Illinois University (EIU) for 18 years.
Russell Gruber image credit: Russell Gruber
He grew up in White Plains, a suburb north of New York City, with a social worker mom, a father who built animatronic puppets, an older sister and a younger brother. He remembers being an introspective child, and recalls, from a young age, being fascinated by the ability to vividly imagine things in daydreams and the more vivid realities created in dreams at night. These early interests eventually led him to a career in psychology with a focus on the study of consciousness.
Recently retired, Gruber summarizes his professorship at Eastern Illinois University:
After earning a BA from Stony Brook and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Cincinnati in 1988, I joined the psychology department at Eastern in 1991. My early research focused on lucid dreaming, nightmares and uncovering styles and functions of dreaming but I shifted in mid-career to the study of parapsychology.
During my 28 years at Eastern I taught primarily as a member of the Clinical Psychology master’s program, including courses on psychotherapy, cognitive assessment, and internship seminars. I also really enjoyed the chance to teach at the undergraduate level. My favorite course, each spring semester, was a capstone seminar titled the psychology of mind that allowed me to integrate my interests in consciousness, dreaming, mind-body health, and parapsychology.
In addition to teaching and conducting my own research, I chaired over 30 Masters theses, supervised over 100 interns and many undergraduate researchers.
Gruber also won 5 awards for teaching excellence from EIU along the way. Like many parapsychologists, his personal psychic experiences initially drew his interest towards psi research, but because controversy follows parapsychology everywhere, he wisely followed the well worn path of waiting until he had tenure to open a parapsychology lab. As he says: “I feel like what I’ve been doing for my job is more entertaining than what a lot of other people do for fun. Once I started finding psychic stuff in the lab, I was hooked.”
Truly Independent
Gruber’s research was done completely independently of the parapsychology community for many years while using his own novel methods, and in the process he replicated many important findings in this field of research. This is huge for parapsychology because it means that these findings confirm that previous research results didn’t occur because of peculiarities or flaws in the original studies.
Innovations in Psi Research
Gruber and his team of undergraduates and graduate students did not set out to prove the existence of psi. Given the many successful experiments dating back to the 1950’s, that would not have contributed much to the field. After examining the literature, they concentrated on finding out more about what it takes to successfully test for psychic ability.
Gruber, along with many other parapsychologists operate from a field theory perspective, which assumes an underlying, unseen interconnectedness between people. He began by placing people in social groups (this creates a social field) to test the theory. The experiments were essentially replications of phenomena that had already been observed in other studies. Gruber and his team, with this one simple methodology, explored multiple phenomena including the effect of belief, psi missing, differentiation and field effects.
The Answer is a Battleship
The team began with an experiment where the group attempted to psychically help the receiver find a target in a series of Where’s Waldo pictures. It didn’t work. The pictures they used had so much information in them that may have overloaded any telepathy that might have occurred. Gruber describes this as “way too much noise.”
Next, the team tried an experiment with unscrambling anagrams, but again, it just wasn’t a good task for psi research.
Then, one evening, during a research meeting, one of the assistants, Mike Steinhour, suggested using the board game Battleship, and it worked.
Pencil and paper version of the game “Battleship.” Image: Actam, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Using the battleship game as a model, the team ran a pilot study using a nine grid square to see how the test subjects would do. They were allowed to keep trying until they got a hit. The results were promising right away and then here’s what happened on the 12th run:
Image: Russell Gruber
This research assistant got six direct hits out of twelve possible. The odds of this happening by chance are less than one in a thousand. Gruber and his team felt pretty sure that they were on to something.
Gruber explained:
We tried a grid of nine targets (allowing repeat calls) and very quickly got strong evidence of psi – but the task was tedious and frustrating. We then tried a rectangle with four targets – one in each corner and this became the forced choice, spatial location task that we used for the majority of experiments. I consider these to be mental telepathy experiments, (as opposed to clairvoyance or precognition) as senders were an integral part of the method.
Nine Theses Tell the Tale
This kicked off 18 years of process oriented research. Many of the findings from the experiments were written up in the form of 9 master theses by his students over the course of several years. An advantage of master theses over published experiments is that they go into far more depth both in the literature review and the explanation of the experiments themselves. The students spent a lot of time and effort on these theses, making them clear and thorough. As a result, they are easier to follow than most experiment write ups.
Gruber ran the studies with a team of research assistants while graduate students performed the task of literature review and write up. (There are actually ten parapsychology theses, but one of them is a telephone telepathy replication.) There are a number of studies that didn’t make it into theses, some successful, some not. While many directions were explored over the years, the nine theses represent the core of the work.
When the masters theses are read in chronological order, they lay out the evolution of an increasingly sophisticated, yet relatively simple experiment that lends very convincing support to many previous researcher’s findings. In addition, the research shows glimpses into how we are all shaping our own realities. More on that later.
Running in Silent Mode
Gruber made the decision early on to run his parapsychology lab with a low profile, which is why the research hasn’t gone the route of formal publishing, which in turn is why it’s only now being widely shared. There were several very good reasons for this.
First, he would have had to spend time publishing instead of doing experiments, so he and his team would have accomplished far less. Once the research got out into the world, he would have to fend off skeptics and defend the experiments rather than improve them.
Second, this is process oriented research, not proof oriented, so the emphasis was on learning from previous experiments as a guide to designing the next, not proving a specific hypothesis. Dealing with criticism while you’re still working things out isn’t helpful. Third, the low profile meant that the lab wasn’t drawing unwanted outside attention, so Gruber and his team were left alone.
Hits and Psi Missing
A key component of this research centers around a well known phenomena in parapsychology known as “psi missing.” In testing, you typically measure for psychic ability by comparing it to purely chance results. Success is typically called a “hit” and a failure is called a “miss.” Since the objective is to produce results that are not the result of pure chance, you can do this either by succeeding in excess of chance rates ormissing in excess of chance rates. The latter is what’s called “psi missing.”
Gruber’s research leaned into examining the psi missing effect and found that it was often easier to trigger than psi hitting in a lab setting.
The experiment evolved over the years, centering around the relatively simple concept of choosing between four locations with one space randomly designated as a hit and one randomly designated as a miss. If you got a hit or a miss, you stopped there, but any other result allowed you to keep trying.
This eventually evolved into a challenge for money. For example, in some studies test subjects got paid for hits, while in others, they competed with each other in teams. This was primarily intended to keep them actively engaged and focused. Even with a monetary incentive for correct answers, psi missing was often the expected outcome.
Speaking of money, the research was self funded by Gruber. On the days he ran experiments he withdrew $100 of his own money in $1 bills occasionally clarified to the tellers that this was for scientific experiments, not a strip club. Parapsychology research is rarely properly funded and he spent thousands of dollars of his own money to support the research.
This is a foam board from one of the earlier studies, before the studies were automated as a computer program. Image: Russell Gruber
Heather Warner-Angel explained the methodology in her thesis:
An example of a typical methodology is as follows: A receiver, picked at random from a group of senders, sits in an isolated room in front of a foam board marked with four target circles (one in each corner). Three red discs with strips of Velcro adhered to the backs are used as target markers.
The receiver is viewed via closed video feed by a group of senders who are facing an identical foam board in a separate room with only two red discs, one marked (+$) and the other marked (-$). Target locations for the (+$) and (-$) discs are selected in the sender room by using random numbers. The receiver is signaled by a bell tone that the target locations have been chosen. The senders try to transmit the (+$) target location to the receiver telepathically and the receiver attempts to locate it marking it on the foam board with one of the discs.
The receiver continues to place discs on the board until either the (+$) or (-$) target is found. If the (+$) is selected by the third attempt, a bell is sounded to indicate that the receiver has scored a "hit." If the (-$) target is chosen, a buzzer is sounded to indicate that the receiver has scored a "miss." Several trials (usually 16) are run. The receiver is returned to the sender room and another receiver is randomly selected from the group. A single response is referred to as a trial, a set of trials constitutes a run, a series of runs constitutes a session, and several sessions comprise an experiment. (Warner-Angel, 2017)
Gruber explained that this methodology uses a number of innovations. He pointed out that a problem with forced choice psi tasks is the strong tendency of participants to avoid repeating previous answers. He explained that by allowing more than one try to locate a target, and using location instead of a picture or a symbol, and adding a “miss” target, this tendency may be significantly diminished.
Another advantage of adding the miss target is that it makes hits and misses equally likely to occur by chance, which in turn may allow better measurements of “psi defensiveness” – the unconscious creation of a defensive state of mind- leading to the rejection of useful psychic information.
Social Groups
In an early study, the experimenters created an artificial social situation by separating people into two groups to test the field theory hypothesis. In-groups (people who were members of a large group of senders) did much better than Out-groups (people who were excluded from the group).
Image: “The Effects of Social Fields on the Telepathic Reception of Information” Yarnell (2003)
The graph shows the In-group beating the Out-group 12 nights in a row. (12 hits on the graph is a chance result.) While In-group participants scored significantly higher than chance, the far stronger effect was the psi-missing of the Out-group members.
Psi Missing or Psi Defensive
The problem is that if all you were to do was simply combine everyone’s results in a psi experiment, the combined results would mostly cancel each other out and the experiment would appear to get chance results.
The concept of psi missing is not new in parapsychology literature and this study replicates previous findings, but it does so in very clever ways.
Certain people have a tendency to score in opposite directions because of personal characteristics or experimental conditions. Gruber’s team manipulated and measured this, whether it was belief, friendliness, group membership or other criteria, and the results were striking.
Image: “Psi Performance, Belief in Psi, and Competition in a Game-Show Format” Warner-Angel (2017)
The high belief group and the low belief group mirror each other. For each belief group, the number of people who scored below chance are blue and the number of people who scored above chance are orange. For high believers 21 scored above chance, while 7 scored below chance. While for low believers, 8 scored above chance, while 15 scored below chance.
Image: “Social Fields, Belief In Psi, And Their Effects On Mental Telepathy” Brandy McWhorter 2005
You can see in the second chart from a different study that this effect was not a one-off. The odds that this kind of lineup would happen by chance is thousands to one.
The phenomena of missing in excess of chance tells us something important here. You can’t consistently miss in excess of chance unless you’re psychic on some level. It means that the low believers must subconsciously know the correct answer and are going out of their way to avoid it (aka psi-defensiveness). At a subconscious level, these test subjects seem to be attempting to confirm their belief that psi doesn’t exist, but paradoxically, the effort requires psychic ability.
There were more tests to do in order to confirm this observation. Gruber and his team did experiments where they asked low and high believers to hit the targets. As expected, the high believers scored above chance and the low believers scored below chance.
Great, Now Please Miss the Target
In two experiments they asked the test subjects to intentionally miss the target. In the first experiment, (Parker, 2006) the participants missed the targets, exceeding expectations. In the second experiment however, high believers performed the task asked of them, but amazingly, the low believers actually started getting hits in excess of chance. It appears that the psychic ability is functioning, but that the low believers are using it to act against the requested intent of the experiment.
High believers and low believers operate with the same information but process it differently, solely due to what they believe is possible. I have suggested that this be called “The Mirror World Effect” and Gruber agrees.
Like the Mirror Universe in Star Trek, where people from the mirror universe have a darker frame of mind, which has led them into a darker, more hostile society, low believers have the same access to their useful psychic abilities, but subconsciously reject the correct information because they don’t believe in it. It isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that this kind of rejection is probably carrying over into other areas of their lives.
Even in their unconscious rejection of their own psychic ability, low believers seem to use it anyway, although at cross purposes with their own intentions.
The Mirror Worlds Effect
Image: Canva
While differences in the belief in psychic ability were the strongest indicator of this mirroring effect, it occurred in other areas as well. In-group vs. out-group, enthusiastic vs. bored, men vs. women, previous experience vs. novice, known vs. unknown senders and friendly vs. unfriendly interactions. What makes the mirror effect stand out is that you have both significantly above and significantly below chance results from the same procedure within the same experiment when you divide the data according to these dichotomies.
This effect is not entirely unknown in parapsychology. Ramakrishna Rao referred to this as the differential effect in his book “The Elements of Parapsychology” (McFarland & Company, Inc. 2017). By assigning equal probabilities to hits and misses, Gruber’s methodology is particularly sensitive to this differential/Mirror Worlds effect.
The experimenters made no attempt to select participants based on any psi ability they had. They did make sure to ask questions in order to distinguish, in various experiments, between high and low believers; they rated friendliness vs. non friendliness and noted enthusiasm vs. boredom. Or they created competing teams or divided participants into in-groups and out-groups using an experiment that measured hits and misses the same way. That’s because they weren’t looking specifically for psi hits or psi misses, but rather the mirror worlds effect, which is the opposing tendencies between the results of these groups.
Gruber and his team did the seemingly impossible: regularly getting significant results from an unselected population. This is rarely accomplished in psi research.
The results of these experiments strongly support “First Sight” theory, which holds that psychic ability is “on” all the time. The theory states:
• Psi is not unusual or non-normal; it is a characteristic of all living organisms. • Psi is not rare; it is continuously ongoing for each organism. • Psi is not an ability; it is a perpetually active aspect of our engagement with reality.
This research also sheds some light on why psychic ability can be so hard to measure. If it’s functioning all the time, then the noise of randomness that is measured in experiments is as much a part of psychic functioning as any of the more obvious displays of it, but we only notice it when it rises above the noise of randomness. “Water? asked the fish, what water?”
Out of curiosity, I asked Gruber how the low believers approached the psychic task. Did they instinctively clear their minds and focus on the task? This led to a broader discussion. Gruber explained:
It’s hard to say for sure how any one participant felt ….in the first place you have to understand that these experiments were taking place at six in the evening in the science building on a college campus for people to receive course credit.
Depending on the time of semester and other characteristics of the individual groups, it was a challenge to get people to participate enthusiastically . . . We had groups of researchers and an interesting study, a chance to win money . . . But, now imagine that you’re a little bit annoyed about having to be here . . . and somebody asks you “on a seven point scale do you believe in mental telepathy“ and you say “one“ very unlikely to exist . . . . My sense is that most people who answered low on the belief scale didn’t really try (consciously) at all and thought that it was silly.
[A] lot of these things are related to why it is easier to get people to miss targets then to hit them in a lab. Sometimes people with high belief scores, possibly because they are psychically sensitive, score well below chance. [There is] a psychic sensitivity that allows them to know where the targets are and the same sensitivity [also] causes them to reject the targets as intrusive information.
. . . The problem was getting students in the sender room to focus – a lot of times they were distracted and we considered this a problem… But again not so much for psi missing.
I think the people with high belief scores took the task much more seriously and tried hard to find the targets. Unfortunately, for low believers, the data appears to show that they actually are missing without thinking… Maybe to maintain [their] belief system… Maybe to be stubborn.
One thing that has become clear to me in my years of running a parapsychology lab focusing on social situations on a college campus, is that creating an atmosphere that is perceived by most participants as psi conducive (warm, friendly, spontaneous, and open) is not easy. Doing this under strictly controlled laboratory conditions with an unselected population (subject pool), is harder. And doing this in a consistent, replicable way, with multiple groups, over multiple evenings, over the course of a semester, is almost impossible.
Another thing that has become clear to me is that significant psi missing is much easier to elicit in a lab than psi hitting. It seems to me that psi defensiveness is omnipresent, unconscious, and is, for many people, a natural reaction to day-to-day life – particularly in the individualistic, competitive society we live in. I have found that this is easily exaggerated in an unselected population by the laboratory conditions in psi experiments.
What these experiments show us, by focusing on psi missing, is that our subconscious appears to be presenting us with the reality that we believe in. This includes active subconscious avoidance of things that we don’t think are true, causing us to reject useful information. We are left to wonder how this might be affecting us in our daily lives.
Practically from the moment that scientists began to look into psychic ability, the main questions were “What is the mechanism? How are they doing it?” Is it radio waves? What about Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) waves?
Does Psychic Ability Use Radio Waves?
Quite expectedly, people assumed that radio waves were responsible for psychic ability. They were first discovered in 1865 by German physicist Heinrich Hertz and Guglielmo Marconi sent the first wireless message in 1895. Radio waves were something relatively new, and it was easy for most people to imagine that they were responsible. Writer Upton Sinclair even coined the term “Mental Radio.”
The body does emit electrical signals and has a rhythm of electrical discharges, making electromagnetic (EM) waves a natural focal point for telepathy research.
The problem, though, was that radio waves and psychic ability didn’t seem to follow the same rules. Radio waves lose strength over distance and don’t pass through everything with ease. In addition, they can be blocked entirely with a Faraday cage. Psychic ability seemed to get around this, but experiments were needed to confirm this.
Parapsychology Behind the Iron Curtain
The first person to tackle this question thoroughly was a Russian scientist named Leonid Vasiliev (1891-1966). Vasiliev was Russia’s best parapsychologist at the time and considered a peer of JB Rhine. Unfortunately, his career was at its peak during the Iron Curtain phase of Russian history, keeping his achievements from being known in the West until his two books Experiments in Mental Suggestion and Mysterious Phenomena of the Human Psychewere translated to English and published in 1963.
Using caves and metal cabinets as Faraday cages, Vasiliev applied remote viewing techniques established by French parapsychologist and Nobel Laureate, Charles Richet. Vasiliev was able to establish that telepathy and remote viewing did not experience a weaker signal or any loss of data even when the place they were in was completely shielded either by putting participants in a cave or in Faraday cages. This methodology ruled out almost every type of EM wave. It left only one type to explore. The ELF wave. These Extremely Low Frequency waves are very big electromagnetic waves and will go through almost anything.
The Problem with ELF Waves
It is very difficult to eliminate ELF waves as a possibility because of this. They can move through seawater to a certain extent and through earth and rock. The waves can follow the curve of the earth and even diffract around mountains. They can travel the earth several times before decaying to the point of being unusable.
They come with a caveat however: sheer size. ELF wavelengths are 6,000 km long at 50 Hz and 5,000 km long at 60 Hz. An ELF antenna needs to be somewhere between 23 and 45 kilometers long. The astute reader will notice that humans do not have antennas. And more to the point, we do not have antennas that stretch across many kilometers. These radio waves also need a lot of power, which is an argument against their use for human telepathy.
Because they are absolutely huge, the information that they can carry is quite limited. Using ELF waves for ordinary communication is quite slow. It can take 15 minutes just to send three letters. For that reason, scientists were pretty sure that they were not responsible for ESP. However, it has been shown that people can be affected by these long EM waves and there is always the possibility that humans are constructing images from limited data; something the human mind is known to do, so they were worth investigating.
There is really only one way to rule out these extremely long radio waves: you need to do your psychic experiment with a submarine. The astute reader will recognize that submarines are not commonly available, and in fact, even simply riding in one is a rare event. It was an experiment that needed to be done, but no one had the resources to do it. Vasiliev had attempted to enlist the help of the Russian Navy, but without success.
A Submarine Is The Only Way
The experiment finally went forward in 1977 using a Taurus research submarine thanks to the efforts of American parapsychologist Stephan Schwartz.
Image attribution: International Hydrodynamics Company Ltd. (HYCO).
To absolutely, definitely rule out ELF waves, the sub would have to be able to dive to about 6,000 feet (1.8 kilometers), something the Taurus could not do. It was good down to a depth of about 1,200 feet (.37 kilometers). However, the remote viewers would be about 500 miles away, meaning that the signal would have to travel a long distance underwater, making it sufficiently weak to rule out ELF waves as a practical matter. Also, the submersible itself is a kind of super Faraday cage.
Sometimes science is like that. Real world considerations prevent ideal conditions and you just have to make do with what’s possible.
The Experiments
The plan was for two experiments to take place in California off the coast of Catalina using known remote viewing protocols and two elite level remote viewers. Ingo Swann and Hella Hammid.
The remote viewers would be at the SRI Institute in Menlo Park, California, which is on the peninsula south of San Francisco.
Image: Canva
In the first experiment, remote viewers on the submersible looked for targets in the San Francisco Bay Area, correctly locating a double blinded target (an oak tree) in Portola Valley (a town located in the foothills above Menlo Park to the West.) An important consideration here is that the information was located quickly and with a wealth of detail, making ELF waves an improbable source.
Finding a Shipwreck
And here is where we merge a scientific mystery with a really cool story. I will quote from an article I wrote on this several years ago.
The remote viewers were given the task of finding a previously unknown shipwreck and the whole thing took place over three days in June of 1977, with the entire process captured on film. The viewers gave a location off of Santa Catalina island and said that it was the site of a ship that had sunk about 90 years ago, and had an early high pressure steam winch that had caught fire and sunk the ship. The viewers said that they would find the winch and the aft helm of the ship. They said that a granite block approx. 6’x4’x4′ would also be found. This information was turned over to an independent observer and notarized. This occurred of course, before the search for the ship’s location took place.
At first they had trouble finding the site, so the ship dropped a buoy to ping the exact location the psychics had specified, and a psychic on board the ship (Ingo Swann) gave them minor course corrections once they got there to find the wreck.
I can’t emphasize enough just how extremely hard it is to find something specific on the ocean floor if you don’t know exactly where it is and what you’re looking for. And this is even harder if the object has been on the ocean floor for a few decades.
It Was All Filmed
It might not be believable except for the fact that the entire process was caught on film, which was quite rare in 1977. The event was filmed by the TV show “In Search Of” narrated by Leonard Nimoy and the episode (S3, E17) aired January 25th, 1979.
“In Search Of” (S3, E17)
The first thing they found was the winch. (11:25 in the video), then they found the aft helm of the ship. Then they found the granite block. (12:40)
A few questions remained. Could the psychics have read about this shipwreck? Schwartz went to the Federal Bureau of Land Management, which tracks all known shipwrecks to find out. (14:18) They had no record of shipwreck in that spot nor of any wreck of that particular type of ship, which means that no one else would have either. There were over 53 shipwrecks in the Catalina area, so this wasn’t anything unusual.
The thickness of the marine growth matched the age of the sinking as predicted by the psychics, and they found charred pieces of wood which confirmed the fire. Nautical experts identified the winch as a type that had been discontinued because they had a habit of blowing up and sinking ships. It was a type of coaster ship that was bringing blocks of granite to San Francisco that were meant to be front door steps for row houses.
If you ever wanted The One Thing that provided proof of psychic ability, this experiment was as close to ideal as you could possibly find. There is very little to no ambiguity and there is almost nothing for skeptics to contest.
There’s a remote and sleepy hollow cloaked in a dark past; a force drawing you back in time with an invitation to explore its eerie existence. The historic Boyd House once filled its walls with the sounds of children’s laughter is now filled with secrets. Imagine being transported back in time to a simpler era. A time without cell phones. A time when you knew your neighbours. A time when children played face to face. A time when family secrets were kept secret.
If you drive about two and a half hours west of Minneapolis, Minnesota, you’ll experience an endless road lined with farmers' fields on both sides. Then suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, the fields unzip to reveal a small piece of civilization: the tiny city of Boyd, Minnesota. It’s a welcome visual break from the symmetrical monotony of flanking cornrows. Boyd sits upon land originally inhabited by the indigenous tribes of the Dakota and the Anishinaabe. Descendants still live there today.
Bygone Days of Boyd House
On the edge of town, on the North-East corner of Scandia Avenue and 2nd Street, you’ll find 217 Scandia Avenue, a majestic, whitewashed home with four floors and a welcoming front porch facing the Boyd water tower. On one side stands the old lumberyard. There are railway tracks behind the house which served as a community lifeline over a hundred years ago. The new owner, paranormal investigator Jill Shelley, has affectionately named it The Boyd House.
Built in 1901, the house deed goes back to 1884 when the land was owned by the Hastings and Dakota Railway Company and officially entrusted to a man named Charles F. Hatch. It is said that he committed suicide in 1889 by shooting himself. The replacement trustee appointed by the now called Wisconsin Minnesota and Pacific Railway Company, was R. C. Mitchell who soon conveyed the land to Maddie E. Hatch in 1889, as the executrix of Hatch’s will.
The land known as Lot SW ¼ Section 15, Township 116, Range 42, changed hands numerous times until it was purchased by Peter Blacksmith and Ida Krogstad, who were married when Ida was only ten years old. Ole Iverson also owned part of the land. In 1901, H. J. Haakenson and his wife Pauline bought the house.
Did Previous Boyd House Owners Leave A Spiritual Signature?
Fred Eckhardt, Jr. was born in Ontario, New York, and married to Minnie Fenske, a German Immigrant. They moved to Boyd in 1906 with their four children, Selma, Alfred, Oscar and Elsa and purchased the Boyd House in 1912. Fred opened a general merchandise store with his brother-in-law and soon became a well-respected contributor to the community. According to a book about Boyd that Jill received from town volunteers, Fred cultivated a solid rapport with his customers. He even minted his own coins for his customers’ convenient use. It has also been said that Fred was an avid gardener with some people claiming that they’ve seen his ghost tending to the garden.
Fred was also the local Justice of the Peace, a member of the school board, city council and even the fire department. He and his father built the Lutheran Church, which still stands today and can be seen from the front porch of the house on the opposite corner of the street.
The Boyd House and the Eckhardt General Merchandise store survived the Great Depression, a flood, and numerous robberies. The availability of its products was made possible by the proximity of the railroad nearby.
Boyd House during the floods. Image Jill Shelley
Is it possible that Fred and Minnie’s resilience and strong ties to the community have left a spiritual signature on the house, long after their deaths?
Jill Shelley’s Dream Come True
As a young girl, Jill Shelley had a keen interest in the spirit world. She nurtured her curiosity and brought it with her into adulthood. In 2010, she formed a team of paranormal investigators called St. Croix Paranormal. Over ten years, the team has visited numerous haunted locations all over the United States. Jill has worked as a surgical technician for the last 19 years and before that, as a veterinary technician for 18 years.
Somewhere along her journey, Jill conceived a dream. She wanted to buy her own haunted house and offer it to the public and other paranormal researchers. Determined to bring her dream into reality, Jill engaged a real estate agent and began her property search. As soon as she came across the photographs of 217 Scandia Avenue, she knew it was the one. Naturally, listings rarely include details of any reported paranormal events, so Jill relied on her intuition.
During her first visit to the haunted home, she said she felt as if she was being watched. Jill calls herself “old school” and loves the traditional investigator equipment, such as Radiating Electromagnetic (REM) pods, K2 meters, and spirit boxes. She placed REM pods in various rooms around the house and told us that the one in the purple room lit up within eight minutes of being set up. A picture of Fred and Minnie Eckhardt now hangs on the exterior wall of that room.
Fred and Minnie Eckhardt; Image Jill Shelley
Book Of Boyd Evokes Nostalgic Spirits
Jill was given a book about Boyd’s history called “Memories 1884-1984 Boyd” which was put together by Boyd town volunteers. It’s full of details and photographs, including those of the Eckhardt family and their general store. During our interview, Jill reported that upon opening the book inside the house and asking the spirits about it, activity immediately increased. It is possible that spirits became emotional with nostalgia and were motivated to declare their presence when reunited with their past through those photographs.
Resident Spirits Feel At Home Again
Photos in the Boyd book indicate that the exterior has remained unchanged for over 100 years. With four bedrooms and two bathrooms, the house is a spacious 2120 square feet, and brimming with natural woodwork. Jill and her husband Justin have redecorated the house to recreate what they think it might have looked like. They added ornate Victorian-style wallpaper and antique-looking furniture and even brought in objects that are said to have spiritual attachments. Possibly, all of this might help any resident spirits feel welcome and at home again.
Jill named some of the rooms, such as the Purple Room and the Gold Room. In the kitchen, there is a sunny yellow dinner table with a grooved aluminium edge and matching vinyl and chrome chairs. The beautiful solid wood bannister and handrail of the staircase cordially invite visitors to climb the stairs with treads fitted with a dark floral carpet runner. The top floor of the house reveals a spacious walk-up attic with large windows allowing in enough light to banish only some of the shadows.
Potato Advertisement. Image Jill Shelley
Diving Into The Deeper Layers of History
Thrilled with her new house, Jill set out to learn as much as she could about its history. She visited the local historical society and even met with the great-grandson of Fred Eckhardt, also named Fred Eckhardt. He gifted her a handful of coins from his great grandfather Fred Eckhardt’s general store. He also gave her photographs and the potato advertisement shown above. Jill’s research continues today. She has been able to dig up countless details about the haunted home, the surrounding area, and the people who lived there. Some of it, however, remains shrouded in mystery, with any secrets buried with their keepers.
Uncovering A Tragic Past
Fred and Minnie’s family grew steadily to a total of eleven children. Sadly, David and Violet and two of their other children died in infancy, with two of them reported by Jill as passing away in the Boyd House. Fred and Minnie would spend the rest of their lives in their beautiful home, both of them passing away in the house, three years apart. Minnie died of a stroke in 1955 and according to a copy of her Funeral program, is buried close by at the Zion Lutheran Cemetery. Fred died in 1958 at the age of 76. The house was later owned by Anna Maria Reichherzer and according to the deed, she was born May 24, 1887, and died October 16, 1977. Her daughter, Erica Just assumed sole ownership. Jill notes that Ms Reichherzer also passed away in the Boyd House.
None of this information appears in the real estate listing.
Are Spirits Trying to Reveal Sinister Secrets?
Many paranormal investigators have spent time examining the four floors of this haunted home, trying to capture electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and video footage of paranormal activity. None have reported experiencing any harmful or sinister events. In fact, some investigators report a calmness in the house and despite the numerous activity they claim to have experienced, none of it was threatening. However, one of the video recordings Jill Shelley has, is a voice saying “He stabbed her.” Who was stabbed? Was Minnie stabbed?
On another occasion, Jill was in the library room and asked, “Did you die here?” She describes a recording of a voice responding, “Search for the body.” Jill also mentioned that once when she checked the storage area at the end of the hallway on the first floor, she heard a distinct “Don’t hurt me” plea when she checked the recording. Jill describes feeling extremely uneasy at the threshold of the master bedroom closet. Did horrible and unspeakable events happen in this house? If so, did they happen while the Eckhardt Family lived there? Perhaps it is the children’s spirits simply playing pranks on anyone who visits.
Boyd House Brims With Ghostly Tales
I’ve heard of playful spirits before. Not all ghosts are evil. There are probably some who are mischievous and who enjoy playing tricks on visitors. You can imagine what the house sounded like with so many Eckhardt children running around. They didn’t have television or video games. They probably explored every corner of the house, played hide and seek in the closets, and stayed up late in the dark, giggling together in their shared bedrooms.
Jill Shelley told me that the spirits in the house love to play cards, especially the game 21 while she uses a K2 meter. She even has a video of a card being pushed off the edge of a table after she asked them to do so. If you have ever had a cat, you know what that move looks like. Anything remotely close to the edge of a table or counter is fair game to the intentional flick of a cat’s paw. Although no cat could be seen in the video footage, one psychic told Jill that the spirit of Samson the cat resides in the house.
Of the many paranormal investigator teams that have stayed in the house, one of them, the Northern Outer Realm Paranormal Society, gave Jill a video capturing what appears to be two shadow figures, one substantially shorter than the other, running through the kitchen. Others have reported hearing children’s laughter or being touched. One of the researchers in a documentary about the Boyd House, says he felt a finger touch the back of his head. Jill herself said she’s been touched in the house. Maybe the spirits want to play a game of tag. Maybe it’s the ghost of Samson the cat, wanting his head scratched.
Why Is The Population Declining?
Isn’t it strange that the population of Boyd shrunk to only 141 people (Decennial Census) by the year 2020? That is a significant decline. In 1920, it was a booming town of 549 people complete with a town hotel, a dentist, a veterinarian, a piano teacher and hunting season lodging. Mr Pratt, who owned the hotel at one point, was killed by a train. Does the reduction in population have anything to do with the deaths associated with The Boyd House or the paranormal events that have been reported in the house? Of course, there can be many explanations. We may never know the real answers.
Boyd House Image Jill Shelley
Boyd House Is Open for Visitors
Jill and Justin Shelley have opened the house to visitors. Groups of up to eight people can stay overnight in the house from 3:00 p.m. to noon the next day. Recently, they added a coffee station on the first floor. For more information on booking your stay, visit the website.
“Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes, in the middle nowhere you find yourself." ~Unknown”
After talking with Jill Shelley, seeing the old photographs she sent, and the video footage of evidence from her and other investigators in her documentary film, all I could think of was picturing myself in the house. I would be relaxing in the wingback chair beside the piano and hoping to hear a few of the piano keys being played. I would have my computer resting on my lap while I conjured up words to fill the page with my next article.
While Jill and Justin continue to research the history of the house, many questions will remain unanswered. We may never know what secrets are buried with the Eckhardt family or the other owners of the house. One thing is certain, this grand structure holds an inexplicable charm that appeals to my love for old things and the stories they hold. Perhaps the peaceful city of Boyd will help people find themselves. Perhaps this house in the middle of nowhere will someday double as a writer’s retreat with spirits as muses who have someone to write their stories.
I decided to buy a book about Freemasonry after conflicting cyberspace claims caused me to ponder if they were good guys, bad guys or a strange brew of both. I settled for The Key to Solomon’s Key: Is This The Lost Symbol of Masonry? Second Edition, written by Lon Milo DuQuette; author, magician, master freemason, singer-songwriter, recording artist and humorist. He believes that every one of us is our own self-contained King Solomon:
“We are suns not planets, atoms not molecules, kings and queens, not subjects. The fundamental unit of society is not the family, not the community, not the nation, not the church, but you and I. Until we come to the full realisation of this fundamental truth, we remain like unenlightened Crusaders, fighting and dying for someone else’s absurd fantasy cause, slaves to arbitrary and impersonal outside entities, unable to recognize (let alone fulfil) our human potential.”
Book Cover Image: Linda Summer
The Key To Solomon’s Key
In my experience, nothing beats a spiritually nourishing, well written book, especially by lively, old school authors who enjoy a smattering of controversy. The publication of The Key To Solomon’s Key allegedly rattled the cage of Freemasonry’s exclusive inner core, which probably did them the world of good. Thankfully, DuQuette didn’t suffer the same fate as Freemason William Morgan who, in 1826 or thereabouts, allegedly broke his vow of secrecy by working on a book revealing the organization's secrets. Morgan mysteriously disappeared and lodges consequently saw a big dip in membership.
Welcome to Chapel Perilous
The Key To Solomon’s Key is well-paced, honest, illuminating and refreshingly entertaining. Part One, Solomon’s Secrets, hits the ground running with confessions and secrets aplenty about this mysterious age-old order. (Freemasonry’s documented history dates back to around 1717, the height of the Enlightenment era.) Part Two, The Magic of Solomon, provides comprehensive, step by step magic lessons and even lists the names and biographies of 72 famous spirits of ‘Mighty Kings and Princes’ that allegedly escaped from King Solomon’s Vessel of Brass. Heavenly and hellish stuff all rolled into one. (But where were the Mighty Princesses, I mused.)
“DuQuette’s book carries a ticking religious timebomb of historic proportions just waiting to explode. The implications for our time are provocative.” Arthur Rosengarten, PhD.
The opening lines of the Introduction penned by James Wasserman, who describes DuQuette’s work as a ‘manual of Gnosis’, are well worth repeating:
Brother Lon Milo DuQuette is about to take us on a guided tour of Chapel Perilous. He has asked me to make the following announcement: Will all readers please fasten their seatbelts.
Many of the concepts and questions to which you’ll soon be exposed may be altogether new. Some may threaten your most closely held beliefs and childhood conditioning. We ask only that you approach with an open mind and a willingness to continue your own research when you emerge from these pages…We will be encouraged to become “a principal player in the great plan of creation.”
Why Masonic Lodges Are Closing
If, like me, you have had zero interest in Freemasonry for most of your life and considered it to be nothing more than a charitable old boys networking club, here is an official definition from theFellow Craft Degree Free & Accepted Masons, California Cipher, Grand Lodge of California. F. & A.M.:
“Masonry is a progressive moral science, divided into different degrees; and, as its principles and mystic ceremonies are regularly developed and illustrated, it is intended and hoped that they will make a deep and lasting impression upon your mind.”
Sadly, Duquette reveals that this definition does not reflect what all Masons think the Craft should be. Many now feel that the esoteric roots of this ancient institution are “an embarrassment – queer and unwholesome links to paganism, the occult and even Satanism.” Oh dear. Worse still, there is a concerted effort taking place within Masonry to “once and for all divorce the Craft from its esoteric heritage, and make it an organization open only to men professing certain specific religious convictions.”
The author suggests that this is why Masonic lodges are closing and fewer men are attracted to the fraternity. Traditionally, candidates need only profess a belief in a Supreme Being and a form of the afterlife. But today, there are jurisdictions and lodges around that world that won’t even consider an application if the candidate’s religion is not mainstream enough, or his interest esoteric nature of the craft is suspiciously intense.
Are Our Younger Aspiring Masons The Answer To Spiritual Bankruptcy?
On the brighter note, DuQuette confirms that a significant number of younger Masons are joining the order because they are passionately interested in the esoteric and mystical aspects of the craft:
They come on a personal spiritual quest rather than to exploit opportunities for business or political networking; or the quaint traditions and ceremonies. Some, including the author, view their involvement in the Craft as a magical initiation – a new beginning, or awakening – a conscious decision to become more than they are.
Perhaps a breakaway Freemason fraternity is on the cards.
Freemason Symbology Image: Canva
Oh Solomon, Where Art Thou?
If I had to choose one favourite aspect of The Key to Solomon’s Key, it would be DuQuette’s dogged dig for tangible evidence that King David, King Solomon or Israel’s golden kingdoms actually existed.I must confess that I found this dilemma to be rather amusinggiven that King Solomon is the central figure of both the secret rituals of Freemasonry and forbidden rites of sorcery.
I realise that for some readers this may sound uncomfortably like heresy. Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe it is certainly possible that evidence may someday be found that supports these particular biblical accounts.
DuQuette also confirms that 12th century Jerusalem’s first Knights Templar who had the exclusive opportunity to excavate the alleged site of King Solomon’s temple, also discovered no tangible evidence to suggest that King David or King Solomon ever existed.
Can we rely on biblical accounts alone?
Arguments To Support The Author’s Controversial Claim
1. No mention of the name of David or Solomon has ever been found in the mountains of surviving records kept by the Egyptians or the Assyrians or those of any other neighbouring nations who were allegedly defeated in battle and for years paid massive tribute to Solomon.
2. No archaeologist has uncovered their tombs, a tablet or inscription bearing either of their names or the names of any of their kin or colleagues as outlined so explicitly in the Bible.
3. Most conspicuously absent are any records whatsoever of seven years of taxes and labour levies for what the Bible suggests should exist for 183,000 workmen conscripted locally and from foreign countries, documents which most certainly should be found in abundance among existing contemporary records.
4. Considering the fact that the Holy Land is an area of the world where digging has taken place for centuries… it is almost inconceivable that such celebrated kingdoms and powerful world rulers such as David and Solomon could remain so completely invisible to the archaeological record.
If you happen to come across any hard evidence to suggest otherwise, I’m sure that Lon Milo DuQuette would love to hear from you.
Transcending the Confines of the Bible Narrative
Image: Canva
Religion exalts mystery as an unknowable secret that must be fearfully worshipped from afar, while initiation requires direct participation and demands each of us to evolve our abilities and worthiness to receive the spiritual treasures.
The intrepid author swears that he is breaking no vows of secrecy by sharing that the ceremony of the third degree revolves around the story of King Solomon and the building of his temple. Some of it is taken directly from the Bible but most of it concerns a patently non-biblical story - a dramatic myth unique to Masonry.
He reveals that this ceremony gives the new Mason permission to meditate on sacred mythological truths existing outside the strict confines of the biblical narrative; that perhaps something was buried beneath the Holy of Holies of the Temple - not the fictional Temple of Solomon but the very real ruins of the 1st century BCE temple of Herod the Great.
Almost as if to say “You know - those Bible stories of David and Solomon and King Solomon’s Temple? There’s something underneath those stories. You might want to dig into it.” Masonry urges all her members to use the Volume of the Sacred Law as the Great Light in their profession.
Modern Templar treasure hunters suggest that the Masonic myth points to something buried beneath Scotland’s Rosalyn Chapel whose foundational footprint is said to be scaled to that of Herod’s Temple.
Who Wrote the Books of the Bible?
I have been asking the exact same question as DuQuette for over 30 years. He is of the opinion that we don’t know who wrote the books of the bible. However, it is clear that from approximately the 6th century BCE, multiple scribes and authors were involved including Prophet Jeremiah and Ezra the Scribe. But what we do know for certain is that for the greater part of the last two millennia, western civilization has relied upon the Bible as its primary source of historical information. It was the first book printed in the 1450s and for the next few centuries, it was more than a book. Says DuQuette: “It was the book. The unerring Word of God. Conversely, anything not found in the Bible was considered equally untrue.”
The author is of the view that the historical and archaeological fingerprint of the Hebrew people united by a single religion and occupying a nation with its headquarters in Jerusalem, is non-existent. And according to Professor Norman F Cantor, author of The Sacred Chain, the first Millennium of Jewish history as presented in the Bible has no empirical foundation whatsoever.
Revelations That Would Have Vaporized The Authority Of The Church
Furthermore, the author points out that the narratives of both the Old and New Testament are linked and supported by the story of David and Solomon. If this capstone is removed, not only does the historic integrity of much of the Old Testament collapse but a major facet of the credentials of New Testament Jesus is also radically altered. After all, the gospels go to great lengths to demonstrate that Jesus was a direct descendant of David and Solomon.
Removing this capstone would also be unsettling for pious Muslims, despite their differences…and what would happen to Islamic traditions that also presumed to reach that far back into biblical history? In the 12th century, such faith-crushing revelations would have threatened to vaporise the authority of the church and reduced to ashes concept of the divine right of kings that had been the foundation of the social order in Europe and the west for 1000 years. It would have turned the world upside down. It would have been the most dangerous secret in the world.
Predicament of the Early Templars
DuQuette also recognizes that while it appeared obvious the church was intimidated by whatever the Templars had, it would have been futile to confront this omnipotent establishment directly. Not only would this have put the early Templars in a position of perpetual danger, the secret would have isolated them from a world represented by the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam religions that revered certain books of the Bible; religions that owed their very existence to the adherents’ belief that they were descendants of certain biblical characters, and that the Bible narratives were historically true.
The most dangerous secret in the world was also the world's most blasphemous heresy. The Templars would become the most Easternized Westerners in the world - men who saw the bigger picture of life and culture - men who dreamed greater dreams than those of their fellow Europeans - men who tasted the forbidden fruit of knowledge - their eyes were opened and they became as gods.
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Important Tips for Budding Magicians
Last but not least, here is a sneak peek into Part 2 The Magic of Solomon, Elements of Spirit Evocation. Without giving away too many secrets, I considered this particular question to be a fitting choice to include in this review.
Under what circumstances is it appropriate to evoke the spirit?
1. First you must have a problem – a real problem. Before enlisting the aid of spirit to resolve the problem, you must have done everything in your power to take care of the matter by regular means on the physical plane. That’s magic too.
2. The problem you wish to be resolved must be a personal matter. You can’t do magic for someone else. When you formally evoke a spirit, you evoke an adventure. Adventures are not always pleasant and can be dangerous, even deadly. If you survive, you’ll emerge from the experience a better, wiser, braver person.
3. You must feel totally justified in doing what you are about to do and have a deep emotional involvement in the matter you wish resolved. Once you have evoked the spirit, you must be able to consider the spirit as the personification of your problem (for in essence, that is what it is.) The spirit has to listen to you, so you better know what you want to tell it. It’s either going to shape up and do what you command or you are going to annihilate it.
4. Don’t make deals with the spirit. In a very real way, you’ve been unconsciously making deals with the spirit your whole life. That’s why you have your problem. The whole ceremony is your formal way of branding your subconscious mind with the idea that you are through making deals with this tangled piece of ignorance, flawed perception, fear, vice or addiction (take your pick, they’re all demons.)
Freemasonry Liberated Millions In Its Heyday
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In its heyday, Freemasonry helped liberate millions and led to the founding of governments built on the principle of the consent of the governed. Perhaps the suggestion to expand that doctrine to read ‘informed consent’ can be reviewed by the inner core that currently stands accused of some startling allegations by a reputable UK intelligence and law agency.
What To Do About Corruption At The Highest Levels
My research into Freemasonry has also revealed that the original principles and ethics of Freemasonry have been corrupted at the highest levels and need to be urgently addressed. Some learned circles have suggested that Freemasonry is rotten to the core but arguably about 90% are decent people trapped in a bad system, and most are unaware of the hidden practices of the inner core. This seems to be a common theme across many occult societies and power mongering organisations that do not have humankind’s best interests at heart.
To conclude this review, I have chosen the following passage of liberating wisdom that can be applied to everyday life by us all:
To achieve progressively higher levels of consciousness, you must become a new kind of person and we have to start that process the same way the legendary Knights Templar did - by first liberating ourselves from the great delusion that keeps most of us in a state of spiritual bondage - the delusion that we do not create our own reality, the delusion that we are helpless victims of someone or something else’s reality. This seems like such a little step, but it is in reality a quantum leap of consciousness, a fundamental shift of self-identity.
The Key to Solomon’s Key unlocks a treasure trove of mystical historic tales, and a wealth of wisdom, wonder and controversy. DuQuette’s book is certainly worth making space for in your personal library, or requesting your local public library to order it in for you. The perfect companion to Dean Radin’s equally enlightening book, Real Magic. I wish the younger esoterically inclined Masons well on their unfolding journeys.
