Parapsychology is a new branch of either the occult or psychology, depending on whom you consult.  It is a discipline that has aimed to put many of the supernatural phenomena associated with the occult on sound scientific footing.  The attempt is to create respectability for what has been considered as foolishness.

One of the popular areas in parapsychology in recent years has been ESP (extrasensory perception).  Traditional witchcraft, which assents to the supernatural, has also given way in some groups to this new scientific or paranormal explanation of occultic activity.

 

Most newer witchcraft groups, however, avoid supernaturalism and prefer instead to speak of supernormal or paranormal events.  Magical laws are seen as effective and within the ultimate purview of scientific understanding, but their emphasis is placed upon pragmatic knowledge of such magical laws and not on their scientific validation or understanding.  In this sense, it would appear that there has been a kind of secularization of magic in adaptation to the modern scientific and naturalistic world view.  Thus, what were once described in the occult literature as supernatural psychic forces are now examples of extrasensory perception of a kind basically examinable and potentially understandable in the psychologist's laboratory (Marcello Truzzi, "Toward a Sociology of the Occult: Notes on Modern Witchcraft, " Religious Movements in Contemporary America.  Irving 1. Zaretsky and Mark P Leone, eds., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974, pp. 635, 636).

 

In Parapsychology and the Nature of Life, John L. Randall comments:

 

As the 1960s drew to a close parapsychology won a substantial victory in its ninety-year-old battle for scientific respectability.  On December 30th, 1969, Parapsychological Association was officially accepted as an affiliate member of that most distinguished body of savants, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (A.A. A.S.).... For the first time in its chequered history, parapsychology had been recognized as a legitimate scientific pursuit; and from now on parapsychologists could present their papers at the bar of scientific opinion without feeling that they would be ridiculed or dismissed out of hand merely on account of their subject matter (John L. Randall, Parapsychology and the Nature of Life, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, p. 175).

 

The demand for scientific investigation is a valid quest and should and must be made.

However, in the consideration of parapsychology as science, one must be willing embrace the most accurate explanation the data, whether it be fraud, the occult, or a valid paranormal experience.

In most cases, one fruit in the study of parapsychology is an increasing lack of motivation to study the Bible.  In fact, it often leads one in the direction of the paranormal or supernatural totally apart from a biblical base.  In an interesting preface to his book, Religion and the New Psychology, Alson J. Smith writes of the story of a young woman he talked to at length doing research in parapsychology at Duke University-

 

She was a quiet, intelligent girl from the middle South.  She had come to Duke intending to go into some kind of religious work; she had been a "local preacher" in her home-town Methodist church and had occupied the pulpit on many occasions.  At Duke, however, she had studied the various sciences and had lost most of her old, uncritical religious faith.  She gave up the idea of entering religious work and lapsed into a sort of mournful agnosticism.

In the course of her work in psychology, though, she had discovered parapsychology, the "venture beyond psychology, " with which this book is largely concerned.  It was a science in which she had learned to put her trust, and yet it spoke to her of the same spiritual world, the same spiritual forces that her old, uncritical religious faith had spoken of, in a different terminology and by a different method, it came out at the same place.  The emotional void left by the loss of her religious faith was filled; her new faith (although I do not think she would call it that) satisfied her intellectually and emotionally.  Her laboratory work in parapsydiology became for her a sort of religious vocation (Alson J. Smith, Religion and the New Psychology, Garden City, NY- Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1951, p. 5).

 

Smith interestingly enough offers this explanation for the woman's change.  He both attributes demise of her Christian faith and the rise of her "parapsychology faith" to the specific method:

 

Her story, it seems to me, is an allegory on what is happening to millions of nominal Christians in our day.  Their acceptance of the scientific method has shaken their religious faith (which, of course, has also been shaken by a great many other things), and they are not very happy about it.  But they have to accept the scientific method-its accomplishments are too many and too great to be ignored. 

T'he significance of parapsychology for these millions is that it now takes the scientific method and leads men toward the spiritual world rather than away from it.

 

Scientists usually accept that similar phenomena occur in both the occult and parapsychology.  However, many scientists disagree with the biblical explanation of such phenomena, that it is usually demonic.  Often, the new science of parapsychology will discredit any biblical interpretation of the data.

 

For example, in the book, Life, Death and Psychical Research: Studies on Behalf of the Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies, authors discredit the biblical admonition against sorcerers and mediums given in the Book of Deuteronomy.  They feel this passage does not prohibit the exercise of psyched (demonic) gifts, the prohibition of which has been the historic and traditional interpretation by the church until the modern attempt to give some type-any type-of biblical credibility to the paranormal.

Consider this:

 

The Deuteronomic "prohibition" (Deuteronomy 18:9 to 12) has long been used by the prejudiced, the ignorant and the fearful as a reason for opposing genuine Psychical research by Christian people.  In the past, innocent folk have been denounced as sorcerers and witches or of being possessed by evil spirits.  Others, who have exercised powers believed to come under the sacred ban, have been tortured to death.

Such attitudes still persist.  Those who seek to exercise Psychical gifts are often warned of the dangers of divine condemnation.  Christians who encourage paranormal investigation are reminded that they are going against the teachings of the Bible and are forbidden to "dabble" in such matters (Canon J. D. Pearce, Higgens and Rev.  Stanley Whitby, eds., Life, Death and Psychical Research: Studies of the Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies, London: Rider and Company, 1973, p. 10).

 

While its true innocent people have been denounced in the past (viz., Salem witch trials), it is a logical fallacy to assume, therefore, that historical interpretation of the Scriptures by Christians on this passage has been wrong, when in fact both history and proper biblical interpretation support their position.

 

ESP

Extrasensory perception, or ESP as it is commonly known, has become very popular today.  To know something without the help of the senses is the meaning of ESP.

 Lynn Walker states of ESP:

 

ESP, or extrasensory perception ... is the term applied to an ability to know something without the aid of the senses.  It includes precognition or what is sometimes referred to as "ESP of the future"; telepathy, which is the awareness of the thoughts of a person without the use of the senses; and clairvoyance, the awareness of objects or objective events without sensory aid (Lynn Walker, Supernatural Power and the Occult, Austin, TX: Firm Foundation Publishing House, n.d., p. 90).

 

ESP is only one major field of parapsychology.  Another area of study in parapsychology is Psychical research:

 

Systematic scientific inquiries concerning the nature, facts and causes of mediumistic phenomena (Norman Blunsdan, A Popular Dictionary of Spiritualism, NY.  The Citadel Press, 1963, s.v. "Psychical research").

 

However, what should be noted is that there is a difference between what is often called mental telepathy and ESP These two often are used interchangeably, but to a parapsychologist they are different.

Mental telepathy is a branch of ESP In fact, one of the "breakthroughs" in ESP research for parapsychologists was when they made a division between mental telepathy and clairvoyance.  In mental telepathy the person is aware of mental images, say symbols on cards, and the cards are shuffled, and he tries through ESP to reproduce the images seen.

Clairvoyance, on the other hand, tries to draw the symbols without any prior sense knowledge of what symbols were on the cards (Pratt, op. cit., pp. 45-54).  This distinction led to a new emphasis in psychic research.  The psychic researchers were able to formulate better test techniques for telepathy, and to determine precisely what was being tested, as well as what might be fraud, and from our perspective what might be strong occultic influence.