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Out Of Fortean Fashion

JamesWhitehead

Piffle Prospector
Joined
Aug 2, 2001
Messages
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I thought that we had a thread already on the way Fortean topics come into vogue for a while and then sink.

I can't find one.

It is not always easy to identify a lack of something. Google does not help - its new format seems to avoid any statistics on the results page.

The topic I had in mind was Rennes-le-Château. We are so long past the Dan Brown peak that all I could find of recent origin were offers of accommodation in the town - at very modest rates.

No new discoveries, no excavations, no ongoing "research." Have they stopped drawing geometric figures on old paintings and claiming they are maps to buried treasures? Have publishers withdrawn from an overcrowded and disreputable market? Or has the show just moved on?

Perhaps it is due an unholy revival. Meanwhile, can we spot other topics that seem to be slumbering with no recent activity reported.

Odds seem to be against ectoplasm erupting again . . . :atom:
 
We have 3 threads addressing the ebbs and flows of Fortean topics, reports, and / or forum postings ...

Do Older Fortean Phenomena & Themes Make A Comeback?

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...rtean-phenomena-themes-make-a-comeback.12312/


Changing Times Changing Forteana

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/changing-times-changing-forteana.60167/


Where Has All The Forteana Gone?

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/where-has-all-the-forteana-gone.24523/

(This one is as much about the website traffic and FT as about Forteana in general.)
 
I thought that we had a thread already on the way Fortean topics come into vogue for a while and then sink.

I can't find one.

It is not always easy to identify a lack of something. Google does not help - its new format seems to avoid any statistics on the results page.

The topic I had in mind was Rennes-le-Château. We are so long past the Dan Brown peak that all I could find of recent origin were offers of accommodation in the town - at very modest rates.

No new discoveries, no excavations, no ongoing "research." Have they stopped drawing geometric figures on old paintings and claiming they are maps to buried treasures? Have publishers withdrawn from an overcrowded and disreputable market? Or has the show just moved on?

Perhaps it is due an unholy revival. Meanwhile, can we spot other topics that seem to be slumbering with no recent activity reported.

Odds seem to be against ectoplasm erupting again . . . :atom:

As mentioned in https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/these-things-dont-happen-much-anymore.65825/ I found the reports of toads in [limestone] holes pleasing and would like to see them make a comeback. They were a major Victorian-era Fortean subject. https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/11/toads-in-rocks-and-other-bizarre-entombed-animals/

SORRAT's minilab experiments, although very highly suspect, were interesting (not a lot online about them)

The true origin of the Cerne Abbas chalk figure seemingly hasn't been delved into or researched so much recently (my own pet theory is that he's a ribald riposte against Puritanism and a welcome-home joke to King Charles II as he seems to date from around 1640-70)
 
Ley Lines. ...
Is that out-of-fashion or due-for-revival, Frides? ...

IMHO there's a bigger or perhaps 'meta' issue relating to ley lines.

Thirty / forty years ago I was really into ley lines as well as similar topics relating to (how to phrase it? ... ) how humans relate (and have related themselves) to the terrestrial environment. Much of my enthusiasm was tied to John Michell's work. I don't want to give the impression that I think Michell drove ley lines (and allied earth mystery / magic topics) into the ditch. By the same token, I have to admit I found my enthusiasm mutating into ennui and eye-rolling-at-excessive-woo-factor around the time Michell seemed to be dead-set on welding together an integrated worldview out of ley lines, feng shui / dragon roads, and sacred geometry.

I still find each of these topics - separately / individually - fascinating, but somehow I lost interest in their grab-bagged combination around the time Michell's particular attempt to blend them once and for all became popular. I do believe there's a general or global subject in there somewhere, but somehow I sensed his attempted synthesis was somewhat premature and based too heavily on a small set of relevant exemplars.

Ley lines were a specific localized UK / northern European approach to earth-relationship, and I found myself suspecting they didn't generalize worldwide to the degree Michell seemed to believe. I'm not even sure they were as generally significant as Watkins believed them to be. I could say the same about the Chinese earth-relative topics Michell attempted to bring into the mix.

More importantly, I became increasingly impatient with the lack of attempts to identify and analyze what - and how many - other earth-related systems or orientations ancients had devised. The bigger / 'meta' issue to which I alluded is the need for a broader outlook, perhaps derived from compiling survey / inventory data on relevant orientations and innovations worldwide and stepping back to re-evaluate how the specific tidbits emphasized decades ago fit with whatever else there may be.

In summary ... I think a revival of the earth-related subjects is overdue, but it will devolve into an even more transient fad (than it was before) until and unless these topics are more broadly contextualized.
 
the way Fortean topics come into vogue for a while and then sink.
Perhaps the point is kind of moot in this era of whimsical attention. Here today, gone tomorrow is the way most onliners have come to function as far as I can see.
... will devolve into an even more transient fad (than it was before) until and unless these topics are more broadly contextualized.
That's the point, isn't it. How many people spend time contextualising anything these days? Our members are old school for the most part, a (hesitate to say) remnant of another way of life now pretty much silted over by the daily waves of transient pap reportage. It won't come back the same.
 
`Pyramid power`.

So back in the seventies there was this notion floating around in early New Agey circles that the pyramid stucture - with the right proportions mind - provided all manner of special healing and energising forces to anything or anybody placed within the pyramid.

Thus people would meditate within small mocked up pyramids (I never did - perhaps my life would,ve been less crap if I had've). Some people even placed their razor blades inside small pyramids in the belief that the blade would be sharpened in doing so.

Fun fact: James Galway, the Northern Irish popular flautist, was a fim believer in pyramid power.

`Orgone`.

This one derives from one Willheim Reich. It is the idea that an ectoplasmic type energy form exists which is associated with the orgasm. Riech called it orgone. People believed that this orgone could be contained and stored within certain devices, rather like static electricity. As late as the early Eighties, I met a chap who had created an `orgone cushion`. As for what he used it for - it boggles the mind!

Fun fact: Ladbroke Grove based space rockers Hawkwind wrote a song called `Orgone Accumulator`.

I suppose if you could make a pyramid that accumulated orgone too you'd be quids in!

But if you talk about pyramid power and orgone to the kids of today - they look at you like you're a nutter. Don't know they're born!
 
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`Pyramid power`.

So back in the seventies there was this notion floating around in early New Agey circles that the pyramid stucture - with the right proportions mind - provided all manner of special healing and energising forces to anything or anybody placed within the pyramid.

Thus people would meditate within small mocked up pyramids (I never did - perhaps my life would,ve been less crap if I had've). Some people even placed their razor blades inside small pyramids in the belief that the blade would be sharpened in doing so.

Fun fact: James Galway, the Northern Irish popular flautist, was a fim believer in pyramid power.

`Orgone`.

This one derives from one Willheim Reich. It is the idea that an ectoplasmic type energy form exists which is associated with the orgasm. Riech called it orgone. People believed that this orgone could be contained and stored within certain devices, rather like static electricity. As late as the early Eighties, I met a chap who had created an `orgone cushion`. As for what he used it for - it boggles the mind!

Fun fact: Ladbroke Grove based space rockers Hawkwind wrote a song called `Orgone Accumulator`.

I suppose if you could make a pyramid that accumulated orgone too you'd be quids in!

But if you talk about pyramid power and orgone to the kids of today - they look at you like you're a nutter. Don't know they're born!
Following on from that, you never hear anything about the Aetherius Society these days.
 
Following on from that, you never hear anything about the Aetherius Society these days.

I suspect the 1997 Heaven's Gate incident negatively affected popular interest in any religious (or quasi- / pseudo-religious) organizations espousing beliefs relating to extraterrestrial beings, forces, visits, or factors.
 
`Pyramid power`.

So back in the seventies there was this notion floating around in early New Agey circles that the pyramid stucture - with the right proportions mind - provided all manner of special healing and energising forces to anything or anybody placed within the pyramid.

Thus people would meditate within small mocked up pyramids (I never did - perhaps my life would,ve been less crap if I had've). Some people even placed their razor blades inside small pyramids in the belief that the blade would be sharpened in doing so.

Fun fact: James Galway, the Northern Irish popular flautist, was a fim believer in pyramid power.

`Orgone`.

This one derives from one Willheim Reich. It is the idea that an ectoplasmic type energy form exists which is associated with the orgasm. Riech called it orgone. People believed that this orgone could be contained and stored within certain devices, rather like static electricity. As late as the early Eighties, I met a chap who had created an `orgone cushion`. As for what he used it for - it boggles the mind!

Fun fact: Ladbroke Grove based space rockers Hawkwind wrote a song called `Orgone Accumulator`.

I suppose if you could make a pyramid that accumulated orgone too you'd be quids in!

But if you talk about pyramid power and orgone to the kids of today - they look at you like you're a nutter. Don't know they're born!
I wrote about orgone energy in FT as recently as issue 378.
 
Horoscopes .. and astrology in general. Almost everyone, Fortean or not knew what star sign they were 'back then' but don't bother even trying to ask anyone 20 years old or younger these days ..
 
Ghost encounters, of course, remain a popular subject. However, attempting deliberate or formal contact with the departed (seances; spiritualism) seems to have faded as both a subject and an activity.

This is not to say alleged or perceived communication from the other side has disappeared. It just seems that nowadays such things are framed as incidental experiences occurring to a given individual rather than phenomena that one can invoke or explore with the right help or procedure.

I suppose the many reported cases of fraudulent, manipulative, or even thieving mediums / psychics have dampened popular interest, but I'm not sure that's all there is to the decline.

It may also be related to the way in which New Age and similar popular activities have shifted popular notions of "spirit" to something one has and can develop here and now (during one's life) rather than a thing one might leave behind after death.
 
Ghost encounters, of course, remain a popular subject. However, attempting deliberate or formal contact with the departed (seances; spiritualism) seems to have faded as both a subject and an activity.

This is not to say alleged or perceived communication from the other side has disappeared. It just seems that nowadays such things are framed as incidental experiences occurring to a given individual rather than phenomena that one can invoke or explore with the right help or procedure.

I suppose the many reported cases of fraudulent, manipulative, or even thieving mediums / psychics have dampened popular interest, but I'm not sure that's all there is to the decline.

It may also be related to the way in which New Age and similar popular activities have shifted popular notions of "spirit" to something one has and can develop here and now (during one's life) rather than a thing one might leave behind after death.
Not the case in Edinburgh, there are several very active spiritualist churches who do frequent demonstrations of survival. We also have an active branch of the Theosophical Society and I think the only active group promoting the return of Maitreya outside of London?
 
don't bother even trying to ask anyone 20 years old or younger these days

I used, sometimes, to use horoscopes to explore the idea of character-types with youngsters.

Some had never heard of horoscopes. A few - mainly girls - were familiar with comparing notes on daily predictions, increasingly not on print-media.

The subject may well be haram, now, in many places. I would tend to avoid it. :dunno:
 
Horoscopes .. and astrology in general. Almost everyone, Fortean or not knew what star sign they were 'back then' but don't bother even trying to ask anyone 20 years old or younger these days ..

It's probably on its way back with the upswing in youthful interest in witchcraft.
 
I suppose the many reported cases of fraudulent, manipulative, or even thieving mediums / psychics have dampened popular interest, but I'm not sure that's all there is to the decline.

Indeed. Some years ago TV 'medium' shows were all over TV. Most of their shows have been cancelled but many are still around on the internet. You can catch 'The Psychic John Edward' on Facebook Watch.

As you mention, 'mediums' have been repeatedly shown up as frauds; not least the famous ones. Our own late Colin Fry was relentlessly taunted with his previous exposure as a trumpet-wielding trickster.
 
As a juvenile Fortean, before getting all the proper feathers, there was a big thing about the Warminster UFO flap. There was also the massive summer reportings of crop circles. Other things that seem to have faded from view are Lyall Watson’s Supernature musings and the photographs of plant auras that showed the shape they would ultimately would grow into.
Perhaps marketing has got in the way now but there were also experiments of labelling water to promote health and wellness simply by the process of naming.
The Royal ‘Bat-like’ creature is something you don’t hear of nowadays either.
 
The Royal ‘Bat-like’ creature is something you don’t hear of nowadays either.
I haven't even heard of that one. Please explain further? Do you mean the 'Herne the Hunter' entity seen by guardsmen at Windsor Castle?
 
`Orgone`.

This one derives from one Willheim Reich. It is the idea that an ectoplasmic type energy form exists which is associated with the orgasm. Riech called it orgone. People believed that this orgone could be contained and stored within certain devices, rather like static electricity. As late as the early Eighties, I met a chap who had created an `orgone cushion`. As for what he used it for - it boggles the mind!

But if you talk about pyramid power and orgone to the kids of today - they look at you like you're a nutter. Don't know they're born!

Thought orgone power was associated with organisms rather than orgasms but what the heck. I found blueprints for an orgone accumulator in an obscure Psychology textbook in the College library in the mid 80's, always meant to give it a whirl. Was also going to mention Kate Bush's video for Cloudbusting (another Wilheim Reich project) as evidence that kids of today had heard about Orgonomy - except I realise that was almost 35 years ago, so no they haven't.
 
The topic I had in mind was Rennes-le-Château. We are so long past the Dan Brown peak that all I could find of recent origin were offers of accommodation in the town - at very modest rates.
No new discoveries, no excavations, no ongoing "research." Have they stopped drawing geometric figures on old paintings and claiming they are maps to buried treasures? Have publishers withdrawn from an overcrowded and disreputable market? Or has the show just moved on?
Perhaps it is due an unholy revival.
Henry Lincoln is getting on a bit. Someone I know has been in regular contact with him, but the old Doctor Who veteran is somewhat less sprightly than he was, so we won't be getting many more missives from the man who started the ball rolling in modern times.
 
Most of the books in my budding Fortean library as a juve were on Astral Projection. This was renamed 'Out of Body Experiences' as if that was an explanation.
 
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