An entity is something that has separate existence, but not necessarily in a material sense. As such, it can be a concept. But in regard to the paranormal, the term is traditionally used to identify a ghost, demon, etc.
Entities, of various forms, have appeared throughout human history. I’m not interested, here, in how they appear, but why? Do they have a specific purpose, or are they simply silly distractions of the fantasy-prone?
Entities are not cast in stone.
Rather, they change over time. Indeed, I’ve used the term ‘psychic waves’ to explain this mode of change over the centuries. And several theorists are fundamental to putting together the pieces of a possible reason why.
Take mythologist Joseph Campbell. He identified universal similarities in myths. I’ve used the term ‘universal psychology’ to identify this form of identical thinking that lies behind the phenomenon. Carl Jung also offered the collective unconscious, where ‘archetypes’ appear in myth and dream, also suggesting universality.
This suggests a standard pattern in our mind-set.
So could this suggest a standard pattern to entities, which are seen through the mind, are they not? Other researchers, such as Jacques Vallee, offer a possible reason for all this.
They speak of a ‘psychic menagerie’ lying below our conscious thought, acting as if a ‘control mechanism’ upon our culture, aspirations, etc. So is it possible that such a mechanism exists? And if so, why? Maybe a short natural history of the entity would be useful.
The first possibly known entities were animal spirits.
Fundamental to the first nature religions, the shaman would communicate with them in order to form a contract between man and nature.
This was important because nature was the central arena of man’s endeavour. As man began to move out of nature, he expressed ‘ego’, and entities changed into the ‘chimera’ – half animal, half man. The agricultural revolution then led to the city, and our new entities were the gods and superheroes of Classical myth.
Monotheism brought a change in entities.
Banishing the previous paganism, entities expressed ‘evil’, and were thus seem as demons, or more subtle fairies. Man was pure, so when he did evil himself, it couldn’t be him. Hence, much evil action came to be seen in terms of the werewolf.
As the Medieval world began to collapse and man gained predominance, entities became man-based, in the vampire. As we moved away from a spiritual world due to the Enlightenment, entities began to remind us of the spiritual in the ghost and, as the Englightenment crashed into 19th and 20th century conflicts, the spirit guide and communication with the dead.
Next, we began to look at the possibility of space travel, and the entity became the UFO and alien. And today, as spirituality becomes personal in the New Age, the entity has become the guardian angel.
Of course, various entities have always been seen, but there is a distinct pattern to predominant entities throughout history. And in every case they come in line with specific changes in man’s attitudes. It is as if they are born from our changing mind-set and the cultural expressions that arise – a kind of psychic media-form.
Of course, we must then face the possibility that, as with main media, an idea arises and is then symbolically represented in media, thus defining it and changing society in kind. And if we place this function upon entities, then the paranormal becomes the actual engine of historical change. In effect, it expresses a concept – which is, of course, the intellectual meaning of the word, entity.
© Anthony North, July 2008
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