The supernatural evokes unease, even within religion.  There is an ambivalent and confused attitude toward miracles and supernatural phenomena.  Elite liberal Protestant clergy and seminary professors look upon them as embarrassing superstitions from a distant, primitive past.  Secularization and demythologizing typify mainline Protestant Christianity today.

    Conservatives accept the reality of miracles and God’s intervention in the world.  Evangelical, Pentecostal, and fundamentalist churches are growing; the liberal denominations are in decline.  Why?

    Catholic and Orthodox Christianity retain monastic orders and have a more mystical orientation than Protestants.  But even there, saints are to be venerated but not imitated.  There is ambivalence toward paranormal phenomena, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) prohibits the practice of clairvoyance.

    The word supernatural is synonymous with paranormal.  Dictionaries make this completely clear.  But religious scholars and parapsychologists are not comfortable associating with each other. Parapsychologists avoid the word supernatural by the (legitimate) fear that an association with religion would taint them.  Religious scholars do not wish to intrude upon science’s territory.

    Saints and mystics have produced the most extraordinary paranormal phenomena ever reported.  Yet both mainline religions and establishment science now largely ignore mysticism and the reality of miracles.  This neglect is an important clue to the nature of the phenomena.

    The “irrational” is key.  Rudolf Otto addressed it in The Idea of the Holy (1917), which was subtitled An Inquiry Into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational.  He explained the concept of the numinous, which is in the realm of the non-rational.  He specifically stated that the numinous is the source of miracles.  It is no accident that the most aggressive antagonists of the paranormal today are affiliated with anti-religious causes, particularly with extreme rationalism.

    Otto understood this very well and wrote: “In truth the enemy has often a keener vision in this matter than either the champion of religion or the neutral and professedly impartial theorist.  For the adversaries on their side know very well that the entire ‘pother about mysticism’ has nothing to do with ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’” (p. 4).

    The trickster, an irrational being, was important in many early religions.  Earlier societies made accommodation for the irrational, and for the trickster.  Today, both are forced to the margins.  A similar situation is seen in religion generally.  All religions have accounts of miracles, but as they become more established and respectable, miracles decline and fade from sight.

    There are important exceptions.  Spiritualism and neo-paganism overtly engage supernatural entities.  But those religions have trickster characteristics.  Their organizational structures are dramatically different from traditional churches.  They remain marginal, with little stability or respectability.

    The Trickster and the Paranormal integrates findings from a variety of fields and illuminates the relationship of religion and the supernatural, with particular attention to mysticism and the irrational.