Toward Ecosophy

In the nine previous posts in this series, we've talked about a disparate assortment of technologies, all of which seem to relate in various ways to the realm of being that traditional occultists call the etheric plane: the plane of the life force. Mesmer's "animal magnetism," Reichenbach's "od," Eeman's "X force," Kilner's "human atmosphere," Reich's "orgone," and the strange resonances and reactions explored by Abrams, Drown, the de la Warrs, Tansley, and others all seemed to be aspects of the same polymorphous life force.  As usually happens in the early phases of any scientific investigation, however, most of these researchers pursued their work in relative isolation from one another.  The rise of radionics technology was the one chief exception to that rule -- Ruth Drown picked up where Albert Abrams left off, and Drown's work inspired the later radionicists -- but even so, not until David Tansley's time did that current of exploration start to draw significantly on the broader body of etheric research. 

Some years before Tansley started work, however, the first movements toward a synthesis began. The most important figure in that process was Meade Layne, the stern-looking gentleman on the left.  Layne was born in 1882 and became a professor of English literature, working at several different institutions, including Illinois Wesleyan and Florida Southern College. (Despite misinformation repeated in Wikipedia and elsewhere, he didn't have or claim a Ph.D -- in his day you could teach at colleges, though not universities, with a M.A., and "Meade Layne, M.A." was how he signed his name.)

He combined his academic work with a lively interest in occultism, and studied with Crowley's errant disciple Charles Stansfeld Jones as well as with Israel Regardie and William Wallace Webb; his 1945 booklet The Art of Geomancy shows an extensive knowledge of Golden Dawn occultism. (Golden Dawnies will also want to take a close look at the version of the caduceus on the image to the right.) He was also an active contributor of papers to the American Society for Psychical Research and the Fortean Society.

After his retirement, he and his wife Gladys moved to San Diego, California, and like many retirees, he took up a hobby to fill his spare time. In Layne's case, that amounted to a newsletter, the Round Robin, on Fortean and occult subjects, which began publication in 1945. The response was lively enough that the next year he founded the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation (BSRF), which rapidly became a network of researchers dissatisfied with the dogmatic materialism of the day. A great deal of BSRF's early work focused on the UFO phenomenon, which seized public attention the year after the Foundation began work; Layne was among the first UFO researchers to notice that many UFOs did not behave like physical objects, and proposed that the phenomenon had an etheric basis instead. 

In terms of the story we're following, however, the most important aspects of BSRF's work had nothing to do with flying saucers. Among the core interests of the Foundation's members was anything relating to the etheric plane and the life force that pervades it. Articles on Albert Abrams' and Ruth Drown's research into radionics thus found their way into the Round Robin and its successor the Journal of Borderland Sciences; so did articles on Leon Eeman's screens; so did many other related subjects, including new investigations such as Project VITIC, which explored the effects of magnets and carbon rods on the human energy field and demonstrated that these effects could be measured using magnetometers. 

Layne stepped down as director of BSRF due to failing health in 1959, and died in 1961. His longtime friend and successor Riley Crabb became the next director and kept the Foundation going along similar lines, publishing many books of his own on UFOs, occult philosophy, and related subjects.  As a result the BSRF remained one of the leading lights of the small but active community of American etheric researchers all through the second half of the twentieth century. It still exists, though it's much less active than it once was; interested readers can consult its website here, and browse many of the articles from the Round Robin and the Journal of Borderland Sciences here.