JAMIE SUE AUSTIN

Our Human Heritage

Having been raised in a household dominated by folk lore and superstition I find it very interesting to observe others in their foray into the supernatural or occult.  Concepts so inherent in my upbringing are considered “out of the box” for many others and it is fascinating to watch people slowly come to terms with their “human heritage.”  I say “human heritage” because until recently in human evolution our co-existence with the supernatural was non-debatable.

  Perhaps our newfound reliance on the scientific in opposition to the metaphysical was best described by Edgar Allan Poe in his poem Sonnet to Science:

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

I feel that we are coming full circle.  Growing numbers of individuals are finding that science, the drab colored bird that it is, does not explain all… nor do they want it to. Ask any adult what they miss most about their childhood and their answers will most often correlate to the sense of wonder and amazement that they once felt in response to ordinary events.  

Even in my own mind I can remember the disappointment I felt when I realized that the plastic birds that so gracefully skid across the mirrored surface of my mother’s music box did not fly by some magical means, but were operated by ordinary and uninteresting magnets.  Such is the rest of our lives…ordinary and uninteresting… fully explained by the “great minds” of others, leaving us no freedom to interpret our own experiences and create our own explanations.  In the metaphysical we find freedom to explore.  We find the joy of discovery.  We find the unique human experience of creating the myth instead of debunking it.