Colin Wilson and John G. Sutton
Colin Wilson was born in the year 1931 in the city of Leicester. He was educated at the Gateway School which he left aged 16years to take up work in a series of labouring jobs. In 1956 his first book ‘The Outsider’ was published and since that time he has been a professional writer. His titles include: ‘The Occult’ ‘Strange Powers’ ‘The Supernatural’ ‘Poetry and Mysticism’ ‘The Strength to Dream’ and many more. Colin Wilson is, in my opinion, one of the most erudite and eminent writers on the subject of the occult in the world. If you are interested in the phenomena of the paranormal then he is an essential author and no serious student of the occult should overlook this writer’s work. Here is why I believe that Mr Wilson succeeds so well in his craft as an author:
Books on the subject of supernatural phenomena can sometimes be difficult to comprehend. This is never the case with Colin Wilson, he has a very easy to read style that informs and entertains at the same time. Here is an example from his book ‘The Supernatural’ : Chapter 3. ‘Visions of The Past’ :
‘In the winter of 1921, a number of people had come together in a room of the Metaphysic Institute-the French version of the Society for Psychical Research- in Paris, to test a clairvoyant, Madame De B. Dr Gustav Geley, a leading French investigator and director of the Institute, asked someone to pass a letter to her. A painter and novelist called Pascal Forthuny grabbed it. ‘It can’t be difficult to invent something that applies to anybody!’ He began to improvise jokingly. ‘Ah yes, I see a crime……a murder……’ When he had finished, Dr Geley said ‘That letter was from Henri Landru.’ Landru was at the time on trial for the murder of eleven women, crimes for which he was guillotined in the following year.
No one was very impressed by Forthuny’s performance; after all, Landru’s trial was the chief news-event of the day, so murder was an obvious topic to come to Forthuny’s mind. Geley’s wife picked up a fan from the table. ‘Let’s see if that was just luck. Try this’
Still light hearted, Forthuny ran his fingers over the fan in a professional manner and looked solemnly into space. ‘I have the impression of being suffocated and I hear a name being called: Elisa’. Madame Geley looked at him in stupefaction. The fan had belonged to an old lady who had died seven years earlier from congestion of the lungs; the companion of her last days had been called Elisa……… This curious faculty-which so amazed Forthuny-had been discovered more than sixty years earlier by Joseph Rodes Buchanan. He had labelled it ‘Psychometery’.
In that brief but explicit extract Colin Wilson introduces the reader to the subject matter of visions from the past. He uses an example that encapsulates the concept whilst at the same time is both interesting and entertaining. It is this ability to create informative properly researched text that captures the imagination that makes Colin Wilson so readable and so worthwhile.
Wilson’s abilities as a critic and philosopher are also immense. In his book ‘The Strength to Dream’ he examines, in considerable depth, the question ‘What is Imagination?’ Anyone interested in the idea that original thinking, works of art, and literature are potentially inspired from an external source must read this book. In this title Colin Wilson considers the works of many literary giants and poses the question ‘What Inspired Them?’ Here is an example from ‘The Strength to Dream: Chapter 5: The Power of Darkness’:
Ghosts And The Supernatural:
Today, the devotee of science is seldom the believer in the supernatural. In the Middle-Ages, they were almost the same thing. The twelfth-century chemist Theophilus the Monk could describe how to make gold from the ashes of basilisks, red copper, powdered human blood (from a redheaded man) and vinegar; yet the same treatise contains sober accounts of how to make glass and how to separate silver from gold with the use of sulpher. The pseudo Democritus describes how to make crystal with white lead and glass, and then to this add the urine of an ass, and after forty days you will find emeralds’. It is hard for us to grasp the state of mind in which these supernatural marvels were taken completely for granted, as if they were as well established as the theory of gravity or the composition of water.’
In the above extract we see that Colin Wilson is once again introducing his subject using an interesting historically verifiable series of facts that both entertain and explain. The idea Wilson is conveying in this text is that the supernatural of yesterday was not conceived of as being paranormal, it was a part of and not distinct from science. Whereas today scientists denounce the idea of discarnate spirits, in the past their counterparts believed not only in ghosts and the like but also in an imagined ability to turn base metals into gold and, as seen above, create emeralds from the urine of an ass. By using such historical references Wilson asks the reader to consider the influences surrounding imaginative writers on the subject of supernatural events, such as Edgar Alan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James and Sheridan Le Fanu etc.
Within the works of Colin Wilson the reader will find comprehensive and compellingly readable accounts of all manner of subjects associated with the occult and supernatural. From poltergeists to vampires, time-slips to werewolves, ghosts and goblins Colin Wilson’s works cover the full spectrum of the supernatural. He is always entertaining, informative, intelligible and I highly recommend that anyone interested in the occult should refer to his books. If you ask at your local library you will find a list of all available titles by Colin Wilson, the writer that dared to dream.
To read the poem 'Tetherdown: The home Of Colin Wilson' Click Here.
TO READ MORE ABOUT COLIN WILSON'S WORK CLICK THE LINK BELOW
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/cwintro.html