The idea of otherworldly guardians in our lives suggests that there must be some form of communication between us and the agents of the otherworld.
A lot of people claim that they receive some call from the spiritual world during their lifetime. Ghosts disturb electricity. Demon’s leave their frightening marks. Since the early beginning of mankind priests and diviners try the interpret signs of the Gods.
Is there a chance to distinct between projections and something real? Is it true that our world is full of otherworldly signs but we don’t see them because we are blind?
I’ am afraid that there is no clear answer to this if we stick to our usual patterns of rational thinking.
The signs of the otherworld often appear as a mystery, or at least we think there must be some sort of a riddle which can be solved. Thus the first question is not if there are daimonic traces in our world or not but how to interpret them.
Furthermore, is there a message or not and can we read the message? We know from many alien encounters as fairy encounters in former times that these beings obviously love to talk in riddles. The same goes for psychics and daimonic humans; “the owls are not what they seem” the Log Lady in Twin Peaks says.
When somebody is haunted by daimonic phenomena it might be something which Patrick Harpour calls a kind of initiation (which) happen the other way around: “The Otherworld enters this world” (Daimonic Reality, page 250). He calls it a quest and describes it as a goal-oriented kind of initiation where the quester, bombarded by the otherworld, is vulnerable to a mixture of delusion and revelation.
If we think of X-File’s Agent Mulder we find the perfect example of a quester on the brink of madness. Perhaps the series creators took the example of Mr. Keel, an Ufo-researcher, described by Harpour as an example.
Keel claimed that “that the phenomenon actually led him back on to the right path” which means that the confrontation with otherworldly events had an educational quality. The guardians obviously were teaching him a lesson – don’t trust the obvious.
Thus if we look out for signs of the otherworld we should look not for the obvious (proof of the ghost, alien landing, demon possession) but perhaps the truth lies in the contradictory nature of many reports.
Experiencing otherworldly events and studying the signs could be some sort of learning experience. However in the end the riddle gets not solved in an usual way but in a deeper understanding. It’s a bit like the quest for the Holy Grail where the knights gained insight during the journey. The Holy Grail is a very good example because it has many ambiguous meanings and serve as a symbol.
Otherworldly traces often are kind of symbols but it needs a lot of patience to understand the symbol.
But how could we detect “signs from the otherworld”? There is no proof to this but if we experience something strange and cannot forget it or something which pops up as a memory later again and again, it might be worth to think about the nature of the event.
Signs from the otherworld might be not necessarily something which appears as something supernatural or as a kind of wonder to us at first sight. It might be strange sets of circumstances which direct our lives in a certain direction. Perhaps we aren’t even aware about these turning points. The only chance is to keep a good memory and understand later the hidden patterns behind certain events.
Of course, paranoia isn’t far away. And it doesn’t take so much to think that a strange cloud in the sky conveys a personal message or there are mysterious signs everywhere in the street, on a train ride or in your apartment. The quester is always walking on a thin line and you need to be on alert to not lose your grip on reality.
The irony however is that the rationalist if much more in danger to lose his wits when his explanations fail rather than the open-minded. Its good to become sometimes only an observer and not necessarily an interpreter.
But here comes another interesting issue with otherworldly signs: if I start a project, for example a movie project or a book which deals with otherworldly themes, it could become a similar quest like Keel’s Ufo-research. Like Harpour says, there are moments “our everyday reality becomes heightened, full of extraordinary synchronicities and paranormal events”(Daimonic Reality). I am convinced that happened already a couple of times and perhaps I wasn’t even aware of it. And this is the moment, when the popular ” story based on true events” could work the other way around. The idea of a project and its development might provoke something. It might not something on a grand scale but subtle events shaping the course of development.
