The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination

This book raises the idea that for the last 300 years, westerners have been cut off from the daimons, archetypes and myths, that everyone else in the history of the human race, from tribal shamans to Greek philosophers and Rennaissance mages, has tapped into. We are trapped in a two-dimensional

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world by the belief that the only reality is 'literal reality'.

Patrick Harpur has packed a lot into this book, but it is split into short sections and it is easy to follow his arguments. I was fascinated by the idea that however much we try to suppress them, daimons will always break through, via the Romantic poets, Victorian spiritualism, and Jungian psychology, via UFO abductions and quantum physics.

One of the most telling images in the book is the description of Charles Darwin, so overcome with terror by his encounter with the burgeoning power of Mother Nature in the South American rainforests that he shuts himself away in his study and "begins to armour himself against her with labelling and facts", while in later life the sight of a peacock feather in all its complexity and beauty makes him nauseous.

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