This piece is a follow-on to a short story posted a few days ago here, and it will make less sense if you have not read the other. It described some inner experiences upon ingesting mescalin half a century ago. That piece was a work of fiction, although obviously possessing a strong autobiographical content. Here, however, I am trying to reason some specific points. What is imagined and what is not, and how do we know?

In the tale of the mescalin trip, shortly after Icker’s obvious flight into fantasy imagination with the ‘walking on the water’ episode, a more haunting and evocative incident took place. An encounter arose with two, almost twin-like, half-sized figures who bore a distinctly otherworldly feel about them. The manner in which they appeared differed from all other sensory manifestations during the mescalin trip. Up to this point every visualization had been an amplification or intensification of something otherwise real in the physical environment nearby. Further, these two entities demonstrated the capacity to introduce concepts in an almost conversational manner into Icker’s mind. In terms of spiritual ability they actually seemed superior to Icker. He had the feeling they were assessing his worthiness vis-a-vis their manifestation to him. Then, judging in the negative for the time being, their presence dissolved but not before leaving him with a sort of cautionary thought, telepathically, as it were. The character of this singular event lived within Icker for decades after most everything else about his hallucinogenic exploration was all but forgotten.

For about fifty years Icker, myself, held this riddle warm and cold, trying out ideas but never coming to a satisfying explanatory narrative. Yet the event had a compeling enough character that I was never remotely willing to discard it as spaced out arbitrary whimsy. Then, less than two years ago, I came across some distinct research which made me begin to look at things from a totally different perspective. I now consider that the most viable ‘explanation’ or description of what took place in that long ago spring forest was that I had a meeting with two spiritual, what are usually referred to as elemental, beings. And in fact, from the point of view of Celtic esotericism and myth, these beings were none other than Leprechauns.

Before the Wee Folk Became Kitsch

As you’re rushing to click elsewhere in rational disgust, let me shout a few things to your turned back before the door slams shut. First, I want to stress that when I say spiritual entity, I mean a being who is non-physical, as in having no material molecules. This implies that no human can actually behold them by making use of their physical sensory organs in the usual way. They have to do it in another way. Since elementals inhabit a realm directly adjacent to our physical one, but which is not itself physical in nature, we need non-physical sense organs to become aware of them. The authors whom I most respect who have claimed these capabilities stress that such instances of becoming aware of spiritual beings are best thought of as consisting of acts of grace. The beings decide. You do not so much earn the ability, although numerous preparatory exercises are known, but rather make yourself ready and ‘visible’ to spiritual beings who might then reveal something to you. In the story, Icker unwittingly violates this moral arrangement via artificial means, the hallucinogen. Mescalin, I believe, loosens to a certain degree the connection in the head region between our physical (purely material) body and the life process. (The life process is etheric at its core nature, not material… it simply enlivens the material structures.) This partial seperation results in an undisciplined sort of haphazard faux clairvoyance which cannot be ‘owned’ or controlled by the individual. This amounts to a kind of rude insult to the elemental realm. It is like splotches of chaotic crude earth consciousness invading the etheric consciousness domain. It is experienced as very polluting by nature. Elemental beings actually want modern humans to cross the barrier to have concourse with them. This is a desired thing in world evolution at this point, but the humans in question must arrive having achieved certain inward moral thresholds to be of value and not instead be detrimental.

This brings me to my second point. There is an ample and confusing lore of elemental beings, and leprechauns in particular, which can be researched, explored, and evaluated employing one’s natural powers of discernment. I say confusing because there exist all levels of information available from internet fodder and syrupy drivel to serious scholarly (but unfortunately too materialistic) efforts to penetrate the sources of legend to actual gold. Meaning truthful serious accounts given by non-spectacular people, whose only agenda is to inform, with a gift of clairvoyance. That means they can speak out of their own experiences! No sketchy speculating. And if they be not too hysterical a sort, they can then cross reference these experiences with study of legends and rare medieval accounts to triangulate a fuller comprehension. Which if given in a coherently written way allows non-clairvoyant people, like you and I, to intuit the truthiness of their offerings.

The term “leprechaun” is specific to Celtic and especially Irish legend and lore. A wise person, say a medicine man from a native American culture of a thousand years ago, might have a very different name and descriptive lore about a spiritual entity with a very similar function. When digesting lore and myth one has to be aware of the general inexorable trend that with the passage of centuries, the original ‘purer’ esoteric realizations become very diluted and mundanized because less and less people comprehend the initial meanings anymore. Because they cannot. Revelation decays to sacred desriptions, which decay to respected but more sketchy legends, which decay to folk understandings and orthodoxy superstitions. This happens with religions too. Very much so! The reason is because people change. Their cognitive capacities evolve along new lines. A greater proportion of the people could receive clairvoyant perceptions in ancient cultures than can nowadays. Legends which have substance and quality, no matter in which geographical region on earth, always originated in the past due to direct spiritual perceptions by some seer.

If you wish to research leprechauns then, from an esoteric instead of a diluted folkloric point of view, you have to be able to ignore or at least think allegorically about populist claims like three wishes granted, kidnappings of children, and pots of gold as rewards. The Irish poet Yeats, whom I basically adore, attempted to consolidate bundles of unruly Irish myth in his spare time. He stated that leprechauns originally always wore red and were attuned to crafting shoes. I do not know how deep the justification goes for Yeats’ claims, or his true motives. But the essential question would be: could he actually spiritually perceive them? Or was he merely mining the older literature and tales? My own thoughts about this species of elemental spirit run as follows. I associate them with earth elementals. (Many elementals are categorized as either spirits concerned with Earth, Water, Air, or Fire, the classical ‘elements’ within Greek thought). They like woodlands and quiet places where they accomplish Earth-related spiritual tasks, undisturbed. I think of the frequent rainbows associated with images of them as indicating the ephemeral and fleeting and privileged nature of their presence as well as the ephemeral nature of spiritual revelation in general. Rainbows are perceived infrequently, and when they are seen they do not last long. One has to notice, pause, and take them in. Are they not like a call asking for a response? Rainbows have a less than physical quality, a phenomena of light. The leprechaun’s rainbow is often depicted as leading to a bucket of gold, or a cauldron of treasure. But to arrive at the treasure is fraught with difficulty. (In myths, like the 12 Labors of Hercules, for example, such difficulties are portrayed as very physical and strenuous real world tasks. But this is allegory and the true labors involve the preparation and purification of one’s spirit.) Have you ever seen a particularly vivid and close rainbow while driving? Once this happened to me in a quite rural locale. The lighting was magical! Dark and light together. I drove to keep near to it, half wishing to attain the elusive end. I could see the rainbow terminating seemingly 50 meters away from me in a grassy field near a swamp. But I knew if I got out to run there the rainbow would adjust for the sake of my perceiving. The elusivity of the rainbow models the dogged, humble persistence and non-clutching sort of attitude necessary to obtain spiritual gold: transformation. In earlier Irish legend there existed an object or symbol known as the Cauldron of Rebirth It looks exactly like the leprechaun’s pot. A cooking pot, where intangible things were conjured, remindful of the alchemist concoctions of the Middle Ages. In the cauldron treasure was brewed. It symbolized the transformative processes the soul underwent in order to evolve a new earthlife from the vaporized ingredients of a past life.

One can gather from a rough exercise such as this the image nature of old legends. Revelations were clothed in allegorical images with specific meanings for non-clairvoyants to contemplate and visualize, helping them form concepts about spiritual truths. Writing did not yet exist often. But the cultural lore was a secret and sacred map of the less and less seen greater spiritual reality.

You Have to be Picky With Spiritual Authors

I want to end this essay with an accounting of some of the stuff I came across leading me to think that the most likely possibility is that Icker actually met leprechauns. But first I need to shine light on some realities about the vast sea of sometimes garbled writings and testimony out there from people who claim various degrees of clairvoyance. I want to say something about how I have come to evaluate the quality, respectability, and sometimes authority of such people, especially considering I myself am not clairvoyant. At present. 🙂

The first quality I look for is coherent thought. Just because a speaker is relating essentially information about perceptions in the spiritual world does not grant him or her license to do so shabbily, without any care for logical sequencing of things. The evident carefulness of a speaker shows that he could also apply the same sober rigor when perceiving and evaluating spiritual perceptions in the first place. How are the thoughts and images organized? Do they jump about haphazardly or show some empathy for the position his listeners are in to absorb this stuff he relays? Related to this closely is the emotional style and state of the spiritual translator. Excess excitation, enthusiasm, too much deviation from objective reporting in favor of emphasizing or exaggerating aspects he most sympathizes with are signs of the feelings not being under sufficient control — which would also be true during the actual perceiving. Level, simple, detailed accounts given with as much of an absence of ego as possible. Also, you should not be able to detect any wish or tendency to make you the listener, a convert or follower. You almost have to be able to sense a more robust than usual (as in ordinary discourse) commitment to honesty and very deliberate word selection. All these things are qualities which can be judged and assessed with quite normal human cognitive faculties. It should require no clairvoyance on the listener’s part to form a solid opinion about the character of what is being delivered. You should be able to get the sensation: hmm, it is possible there is truth here!

One can also compare ideas from one spiritual researcher with those of others and look for harmonies. This of course comes more into play whenever a person is trying to go a little bit deeper. It takes some time and desire and will to gain an overview or survey about what people have had to say about some topic or other, elementals, karma, the nature of childhood, premature death, the Christ mystery, and so on. A clairvoyant author I have been studying for the past three years or so is a Norwegian veterinarian named Are Simeon Thoresen. In my view he ticks all the items in the checklist above. I have worked through seven or eight of his recent books, watched numerous online videos of talks, interviews, and lectures he has given, and also had a chance to meet him in person last October when he came to Montreal to give a workshop and talks. Thoresen and I were born in the same year and believes he first experienced clairvoyance in early childhood, although he did not realize this was an unusual condition until many years later. He has since had some important breakthroughs and refined his capabilities. I do not want to go further than this in terms of describing him to you as the main reason I am discussing him here at all is because of some things he has said concerning elementals and leprechauns which have opened a doorway for me to peer more deeply into Icker’s adventure. I will just say this much: an excellent way to get a feeling and evaluate his character is to watch one of his videoed talks, an interview like this one, or perhaps this one, more of a formal lecture setting.

What Did Icker See?

If you do watch any of the above videos, you come away with a particular impression, namely how matter-of-fact Thoresen’s delivery is. This person has zero concern or interest about people taking him to be crazy. He is entirely, and I would even say humbly, driven by a desire to reach people who are ready to hear what he has to say in a spirit of objective openness. In one place, Thoresen notes that he has very often encountered spiritual beings in pairs. Especially the ‘gnomes’ of Ireland, the one land mass still left over above waters from the times of the ancient continent of Atlantis, had this feature in his experience: namely elementals commonly manifesting in pairs, complimentary pairs, and in Ireland they were called leprechauns.

He described (in a 2020 book titled “Transforming Demons – the true story of how a seeker resolves his karma”) how when driving back from Galway in the west towards Dublin in the east, in the region of Ballinasloe, he became curiously compelled to pause at a remote area of marsh land and flat peat in order to consider which route to take back. It seemed a fateful decision to be made, though he knew not why. Getting out of the vehicle he scanned the horizons when he noticed something odd in his peripheral vision to the left. Gradually it developed that the peripheral disturbance was revealed as two approaching human figures in the distance. Except he knew they were not actually human at all. They bore a roughly human shape, but their appearance and manner of arriving were amazing to him. Suddenly they were directly in front of him. He then recognized them as leprechauns, somewhat related to the gnomen and nisser elementals well known in the folklore of his native Norway. They wore clothing seemingly common and respectable for several centuries ago. Solid boots, green trousers, jackets with upturned sleeves and feathered hats. Looking directly at him the pair simultaneously raised their right arms and pointed, not without some measure of solemnity and vigor, to the southwest. This was the opposite, exactly, to the direction the seeker had been considering, the northeast. But having experience in such communications, he immediately knew that what was actually intended was the northeast, and most vociferously. For with spiritual entitites all things are reversed, as if seen in a mirror. And then noticing that the seeker had understood, just like that, the two leprechauns vanished. He stood alone a moment, sure now that it was important somehow that he proceed in a northerly route back to Dublin. He recalled lines of a poem he had written long ago in youth.

A faint breathing in marshes and bogs,
the sun has well set.
They are approaching, their silver-grey luster,
my world is at peace.
I feel the older parts of my soul
changing and bending in my mind,
but this must be my path
if eternity would be mine.

The seeker had noticed something in recent years. The more urgent some information was, which needed to be passed to him from spiritual sources, the more human-like and physical the manifestations appeared. And these two seemed very real. He returned at once to driving, selecting the road north towards Longford, knowing it was vital but not knowing why. For ninety minutes he drove through typical Irish countryside. Grazing cows, and sheep, blue sky, old stone structures, abandoned farms, tiny villages. Till he saw a field on fire about 200 meters up ahead. He pulled off the side of the road and got out to study things. Suddenly a great arm of flames shot upwards out of the blazing field and swooped down to his vehicle swirling all about it in a spiraling maelstrom. He was not consumed but rather transported to an entirely different reality where his powers of thought and feeling and will seemed increased to infinity. He could grasp everything, and understood much which had long puzzled him about his personal history and circumstances. Much was communicated to him in vast visions which he later had no good way to recall. Then he was deposited back at the roadside and all was quiet and there was no sign of either fire or burning. The seeker recognized the magnitude of his experience and yet felt a depression of sorts because he could not make concrete any memories of what he had just learned and become privy to. But he knew that clarifications would be forthcoming, without knowing how.

Back in Norway a few weeks later, he received through a friend an invitation to a gathering of some mediums who claimed to be in contact with Atlantean human souls either unwilling or unable to incarnate. The seeker did not attach much credence to this group, and was not particularly unskeptical about mediumship. But he decided to attend for his friend’s sake. While there, a ‘listener’ singled him out and advised that she had been authorized to forward him a message. From the disembodied Atlantean souls. He had been together with them ten thousand years before, as part of an Oracle grouping, a kind of ancient Atlantean form of a temple. This Oracle was located in what was now Ireland and then the most northeasterly portion of Atlantis. Together with this group, the seeker had abused spiritual powers and become involved in forms of black magic. Because they were so afraid of the karma incurred and the terrible nature of the lives before them were they to reincarnate, this group of his ex-associates remained in fear and procrastination in the spiritual realms. Only the seeker had chosen to brave the harshness of destiny and incarnate again, and over the course of many lifetimes he gradually made good the bad karma of his past. The seeker served as a shining hope for the self-exiled Atlanteans, and as part of their lot they were now empowered to give him assistance from across the spiritual barrier to his questing efforts on Earth. For true seers are rare and the spiritual world is in great need of more of them developing during earthly lives so as to be worthy of receiving relevant transmissions of assistance and comprehension and truth. If an insufficient number of humans can develop spiritual vision while on Earth in the near future, then mankind will have to wait a long time, many thousands of years before another opportunity can present itself. And in this case, the sorts of evil, chaos and disharmony which plague the world at present will increase dramatically and unceasingly.

The situation reminds me very much of a scene in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, when Frodo is in conference with the elven queen Galadriel and they are discussing what must be done, and Frodo admits his fear, lack of confidence, and loneliness concerning the task ahead. Galadriel then tells him “To be a ring bearer is to be alone. This task falls now to you. And if you do not accomplish it, no one will.”

Yes, my interpid, enduring, and patient reader whom I’ve tortured now quite enough. Yes. After long considerations in quiet moments during my more mature years, I have arrived at a solid conclusion, with no small degree of surprise. It was two genuine leprechauns who Icker encountered, that day so long ago in the forest, when he was on the very verge of departing his teenaged epoch, and about to learn how to be a man.

_______RS

Note : Goethe, about whom it is little known that he performed extensive scientific researches, had interesting things to say about rainbows, and color phenomena in general. He noted that when rainbows manifest, the red side of the arc is always touching a darker region of the rainy sky than the violet side which borders on a lighter region. Red – dark; Violet – light. Isaac Newton studied light and claimed there are six bands of color in rainbows. I always seem to count at least seven. Violet, two very different forms of blue (Russian has different basic words for these two which all 5-year old speakers know.), then green and yellow. Maybe two kinds of orange? And red. Sometimes I think there are an infinite amount. Check the foto; what do you see?

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