Your guide book to the spirit worlds?
Graham Hancock's latest book, SUPERNATURAL, requires a very open mind - open like a barn door - to entertain the central premise: That plant derived psychedelic drugs might have provided the vehicle for ancient shamans - and modern joes - to travel to other planes of existence and have encounters with cosmic personalities.
Furthermore, he explores a thread common to stories of UFO abductions, encounters with fairies and other small folk, and shamans of ancient cultures who could travel to the spirit world in search of medical knowledge.
Remember Washington Irving's story of Rip Van Winkle? The lazy man who went hiking in the Catskills and encountered the little people? He drank with them and ended up sleeping for twenty years. When he finally awoke and returned home, his wife was dead and his children grown.
If Hancock is to be believed, Irving's story is similar to a phenomenon which has been plaguing humanity for more than 40,000 years and which may be responsible for the origins of modern religions and for other bizarre or mystical happenings.
However, you can enjoy Hancock's work without necessarily buying into his findings. He is a former reporter for The Economist and brings to his work all of the healthy habits of traditional journalism: curiosity, careful reporting and some measure of healthy skepticism.
It just so happens that he chooses really weird subjects to write about. He has written a number of controversial titles including THE SIGN AND THE SEAL, a search for the Ark of the Covenant - which by the way, he did not find; and FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS, which explores the mysteries of the ancient pyramids.
I like Hancock's books. They remind us that there ARE indeed mysteries left in the world. Furthermore, they provide a counterpoint to the equally fantastic, orthodox fairy tales too often spoon-fed us. It may well be that we don't want to believe Hancock only because his fairy tales are different from the ones we've heard before.
