Fireflies and Shooting Stars: Visual Narratives of Daimonic Intelligence

(in Voss, A. & W. Rowlandson, eds (2013) Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 244-265)

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore the phenomena of visual apparitions of daimons and spirits, and how in the neoplatonic traditions they have always been seen as lights. I discuss the power of the imagination to discern spiritual intelligence, and how we have lost the ability to ‘see’ with the eye of the soul, reducing all extraordinary visions to hallucination or technical manipulations. I conclude that scientific and imaginal interpretations do not contradict each other, but reveal different modalities of vision, and that only a radical shift in the cognitive register of the researcher will open the field of  paranormal research to create new paradigms for this controversial field.

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