Methods of Elemental Research: Ethical Integrations of Parapsychology

*Disclaimer: At the end of the day, parapsychology is a cluster of pseudosciences, and needs to be treated as such. Parapsychology is never supposed to replace the role of a licensed psychologist, therapist, or (credentialed) mental health counselor. We can explore the realms of parapsychology with integrity and curiosity, while also being aware that their implications and outcomes have not been submitted to the degree of academic rigor or peer review that should be present to give something our full trust. These things have been explored in academic settings, but a community consensus on the validity of all the data has not been reached yet. It does not mean that these experiences- or the data compilations- are not real, but simply that we need more information and better tools for analysis before we give parapsychological research a “for sure” stamp of approval. I also want to be transparent about the data I amass in that, it is not collected in a clinical setting or corroborated by professional peer review. We can utilize extrasensory tools while understanding they may not be safe for everyone (many of them have the potential to send people into psychosis) and without projecting them onto others as a hierarchal grail of “spiritual wisdom.” This remains to be properly demonstrated. It is okay to be a little eccentric in terms of how we explore our inner mythos or spiritual landscape, but it is our responsibility to be ethical eccentrics. *

The Roots of Mermaid Research

If you haven’t picked up on it yet, one of the most fulfilling things I do in human terms is to “research” elementals, their realms, their incarnations in sundry forms, and to translate those for the collective. I love to transcend the vibrational language barriers and find concrete ways of communicating them! All earthly successes aside, this is what I consider to be some of my most meaningful life’s work because it bridges dimensional rifts and merges entire civilizations in these little meeting points (books, podcasts, meditation spaces etc.). Altogether, whether you accept the stories and “research” as real experiences or pure myth, there is potent medicine and great potential for us to integrate what these beings have to offer us in our personal lives and in our communities. In previous blog posts, I have spent a lot of time outlining some magical training systems and methodologies that can help practitioners contact elementals who never incarnate on earth (astral entities), so this blog is about recognizing and researching elementals who do incarnate on earth.

When I was first awakening to the significance of my watery energy, I contacted William Mistele who shared his wealth of knowledge with me. In return, I shared my experiences and state of being with him. During the experience I was thinking, “How the world would be different if work like ours could reach even more people.” William has called himself a “mermaid greeter” on planet Earth, and I think that is so healing and wholesome, because it is exactly what a being who has not spent a lot of time physically incarnating needs when they come here. After a couple years of marinating in the comfort of being “greeted” and seen on earth, I knew that I wanted to join in and help, and since I already have an energy field with a natural element in it, incarnating spirits will see me as one of their own. It is like being in a crowd in a foreign country where you do not know anyone or speak the language, and then suddenly, almost as if it were a miracle, you recognize a family member or close friend you did not expect to see who happened to be traveling at the same time as you! It is immeasurably healing to have that experience.

Research in the metaphysical and spiritual fields is not like conducting research in a lab. Over time, we may develop some procedures, but it is more of an art form than a science. There aren’t usually right or wrong answers, and there is no curriculum telling you what to explore next, save for your own intuition and synchronicity. It can be a little nebulous at first and lacking in direction. Ultimately, I decided to open myself up, continue practicing my contact with elemental realms, and see what came to me. William ended up sending me a few people he thought would find similarities in my experiences, and over time, the questions from others began flooding into my inbox. I ran a popular Tumblr blog for a few years that became quite overwhelming with its immensity and heavy traffic flow... It wasn’t something that was meant to last forever but was a catalyst that was useful while it lasted. Since then, I have built this website and am currently working on publishing a series of books about the elementals, hoping to expand the library of information about them on Earth. Finding methods for researching incarnated beings was honestly the trickier of the two tasks I had in front of me, because at least with astral spirits, we have a lot of spiritual books guiding us and telling us how we can fine-tune our senses to experience them. With incarnated people, there is a less psychic form of dialogue for the most part and we must take into account the human social nuances and many cultural differences among us. Even so, it is a rewarding enterprise. What greater trust does a person give than placing their heart and life’s story in your hands? It is a high honor.

Methods for Researching Incarnated Elementals

 One of the first touchstones for recognizing an elemental is the way that they talk… it is easy to recognize right off the bat. Does the incarnated being express how nature feels like an inseparable part of their soul? Does nature respond when they are present? What experiences did they have in childhood that stand out from the rest in terms of who their closest friends were and how they discovered they had some psychic gift of sorts? To be fair, humans with no elements in their auras can also exhibit psychic gifts and have all sorts of spiritual experiences when they are young, but the origin point is a little different. With humans, the origin is more related to a social aspect… Needing to relate or acting as a waystation for different spiritual contacts to benefit humanity. With elementals, their presence benefits the people around them for the most part, but there is no social influence or deep connection to the human collective energy field. This does not mean that the elemental does not care about social issues or politics- If anything, elementals seem to care far more about those things when they incarnate. It just means that nature is the driving force behind their experiences, and it extends well beyond a passion for the natural world, which many of us already possess. It is that “something different” that really makes an elemental stand out from a human with psychic gifts… They have an extra vitality to their energy field that comes from keeping the same astral body from life to life without it decaying away. It is not a superior experience by any means… if anything, humans are the “braver” and more entrepreneurial than an elemental will ever be because they have chosen the harder evolutionary experience. But the frequency is distinguishable, even if it is not elevated on a hierarchy, and it is easy to be able to recognize it with a little practice. (Note: Anyone who incarnates on Earth is a human. I use the terms “elemental” and “human” to distinguish between spirits who incarnate here once or twice to get a feel for the physical version of their element(s), and people who incarnate on Earth and other planets many times as they follow the trajectory of their soul-theme. Neither experience is superior or inferior to the other.)

The second, and most important part in my opinion, is being able to read the elemental’s aura. With watery people, I don’t even need to focus on it. When someone has water in their aura, it automatically connects to other people who have the same thing. So, if I were sitting in a circle with a mix of humans and mermaids, the water running through my energy field would be flowing seamlessly into the merperson sitting next to me, and theirs would run to the next person, completing a circuit. If two watery people had a human with no water sitting between them, the link would just “skip” around the human and go to the next person. It is something that can be felt, and it can be seen by the spiritual intuitive or psychic adept. William was one of the first people to recognize this phenomenon, and it makes greeting watery people really easy for me!

If, however, someone is an elemental, but not a water spirit, or if I want to get to know the signature core vibration of a water spirit better, I have to explore the outer and inner auras. In future chapters on elementals themselves, I will sometimes reference an outer and inner aura.

The Outer Aura

The outer aura represents the most immediate interaction you have with someone’s energy field. It typically contains some permanent things, but also some impermanent things (like personality). It could have slight synodic (astrological) connotations if a particular being aligns with their natal chart more deeply than others, but you can still get a sense of the person’s passions and overall “feeling” from the outer shell. The outer aura is usually less dense and more nebulous than the inner aura, so even though it gives you immediate information about how the person feels in general, it can be hard to grasp what their mission or driving force is without going deeper.

The Inner Aura

 The inner aura is a little bit harder to sense at first for most people, because you have to go into it intentionally. This can take practice, but once you get into the inner energy field, you can discern much more permanent things about a person’s constitution. For example, past lives are easier to see, the person’s mission, life theme, or commission is more discernible, and you can feel whether astral immortality is present there or not. You can occasionally feel that in the outer aura as well, but the sensation gets stronger the further in you go. Inner auras can be more intense than the outer valences of a person’s constitution, so please go slowly if you are engaging in this level of study and perception.

Reading Energy Fields

 Reading auras is something you can look to many other resources to refine and develop. There are entire guidebooks that will help you develop your intuition or “third eye” in some traditions. Some quick tips I have are to not just limit yourself to your eyes… and do not limit yourself to the social personality that a person projects when reading the layers of someone’s aura. Sometimes, outward personality is distinct from the inner self in meaningful ways. This is because people tend to present the most socially acceptable forms of themselves to others and many of us “mask” and code switch to some extent as we move from interaction to interaction. This is normal and is not a sign of being mercurial or dishonest in and of itself, but it is something to remember when you get into energy readings.

Secondly, in the same vein of not limiting yourself to your physical eyes, find new ways of discerning information and develop your psychic empathy. Empathy in simple terms just means, “I feel what you feel.” It is not necessarily coupled with compassion by default, which is how we get interesting people like “dark empaths” and sociopaths. They are very good at reading people, but don’t hold much natural kindness in their fields. Coming from a loving space is good, but you can simply start with allowing yourself to clear your mind and emotional space (This can take a lot of practice… Some people like to do a ritual to help them clear before a reading.) so you can reflect what you find. Instead of just thinking, “What does their energy look like?”, pay attention to how you feel when you read the person’s aura. How does your personality or mood change to reflect the merge? What does it feel like to be inside of the energy? Do you have flashbacks of the person’s memories? Does it take you to a new place? What does the rhythm feel like if you can discern one? Is there a pulse, current, or circuit of some sort?

These are just some simple ideas to get your reading juices flowing. Honestly, if you put me on the spot and give me 5 seconds to read someone’s aura, I’m going to rely on my physical and psychic eyes first. If, however, you give me a minute or two, I much prefer to merge empathetically and feel what the aura does to me instead. I tend to glean much more information that way! Being a clear channel for energies to move through you without being contaminated by your own thoughts or beliefs takes intention and skill, so I would encourage you to seek out resources that help you clear and clarify. It is almost impossible to completely rid ourselves of bias, but we can clean off our perceptual lenses, in a manner of speaking, so that messages come through as clearly as possible.

Lucid Dreaming and Meeting in Psychic Spaces

 Next, a method I like to employ is to ask a person to lucid dream with me. Many of us live far apart in the world. For some reason, elementals rarely incarnate close together in geographical terms. I suspect that it is because we are like little lighthouses of information, and since there aren’t that many of us compared to the general population, we have to be spread out to share our gifts with the communities, storytellers, folklorists, poets, and spiritual researchers who can then beam the information out to other people. Because we are not closely knit together in the physical, we have to find ways to transcend geography and physical space to be able to have experiences together. Lucid dreaming is the perfect platform for setting up a meeting and getting to see how a person interacts with a reality that is much more malleable than our third density construct.

Locations for psychic meet ups never have to be physical, and this method requires the researcher to become an artist and a scientist… an architect of a world that two different beings can feel at home in and really get to know each other well. Sometimes you can have the person you are “meeting up” with send you a picture online or you can loosely meditate on their outer aura to get an idea of which environment might appeal to them the most. You will both be co-creators, so it is wise to set up a rough time when you will both be sleeping or astral travelling and to come up with what I call a dream token. This will be an image or icon that will alert you both to the idea that you have reached your meetup point. (As an example, one elemental I met up with who was deeply connected to ley lines and earth frequencies wanted to use a lamppost like the one Lucy finds in the book The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. The idea was to meet there and then continue in the dreamspace together. It was so much fun!)

Call in the Otherworlds

Sometimes it helps to have a second opinion. If you’re fortunate, you can have another practitioner with you to add some dimension to the reading. Most of the time this will not be the case, but you can always ask the realm the person is most attuned to to be available and add their “two cents” to the conversation. How do the sylphs feel about an incarnated air spirit? What do they remember from the “time” they spent (and spend) in the sylph realm together? What do they discern about the person’s talents or state of being? They are always incredibly helpful in adding the final touches to an energy reading because there will be an automatic connection between them and the “family” member who has a similar energetic makeup.

Research Validity and Neuropsychological Humility

See my full blog post on this topic here.

 I have taught a few other people what I know about researching incarnated elementals or incarnated beings from other places, and sometimes the question of how we can be sure of what we interpret is correct comes up. This is where we lay all our information side by side and create a map of sorts. Do all the dots connect? Do the inner and outer aura readings coincide with the person’s abilities and what we experienced in the dream or astral travel? I am probably making it sound more complicated than it is. Usually, you will get everything you need by getting a reading of the inner and outer aura.

Many Indigenous cultures have pointed out that we need to decolonize our thinking when it comes to how we approach research, especially in spiritual terms. Our western world values concrete evidence, policies and procedures, academic gatekeeping, and restricted access to certain precincts of information or research tools. The fact is that spiritual information doesn’t always travel along those pathways… Often they are more revelatory, even if our methods to information retrieval have some degree of intention or practice involved. When life experience, astral journeys, aura readings, and the person’s effect on the world around them all line up, it is usually a very good indication that you are on the right track.

At the same time, I am not dismissing the path of skepticism. In fact, I think many skeptics (which can coexist with any religion or spiritual belief system) have thought through “why” they believe what they believe or why they do what they do better than most other people. Having neuropsychological humility means recognizing that we are in human bodies regardless of the realms we most resonate with otherwise, and that we can and do get things wrong… or just not completely accurate sometimes. It can be challenging to see a comprehensive picture when we’re looking through a small, human lens. That is okay. We can give ourselves permission to be human. Even scientific studies can be less than accurate in terms of properly reflecting the experiences or data of the collective it is exploring. This is why we test and retest and retest and retest our findings until we can be fairly certain that when the same is repeated, it will yield similar results to other near-identical studies. You can use the same concept in your practice. If you aren’t sure about something, let someone else read it. Sometimes, by no fault of our own, we may just not be compatible with someone else’s energy and another researcher or practitioner may be better suited to getting in touch with them. Have the humility to stay in touch with your humanity and do your best to find the best contact point for the people who reach out to you.

Elementals Can Be Elusive. Act with Integrity.

 Lastly, something else to consider is that there are many elementals who are very hesitant to make contact with a “greeter” or practitioner of magic. This stems from an understanding that many humans want power, control, or fame, and may exploit the elemental’s (or client’s) personal information for their own gain. This has happened in the past. Often, elementals will hang out in the background and take quite a bit of time to decide whether they want someone to read their auras or not. Unlike humans who love learning about themselves and taking online quizzes to find out what kind of bread we are, elementals already know who they are. There is still value for them in having their auras read because the skilled practitioner might be able to pick up on little things that may have been filtered out of the consciousness when incarnating, but they aren’t looking for many clues to their identity most of the time. It is very rare that an elemental has a more “human” experience where they completely forget who they are.

We (researchers in human bodies) are the ones who stand to gain the most from these interactions, so we need to act with integrity and create safe spaces for the people whose auras we are reading. This can go for any psychic practice, of course! Reading energy is very personal for most people, elemental, human, or otherwise, and it isn’t something we should be sharing without permission. Move gently, communicate clearly, create safe spaces, and work with your interviewees and clients to make sure that the interaction is what holds the highest good for everyone.

Takeaways

         Elemental research is as much of an art as it is a science. With practice, anyone can sharpen their abilities and find answers for themselves while exploring, myths, stories, anecdotes, and otherworlds. There are many methods you can use to read someone’s energy, and you can cross reference them with each other to maintain consistency and grasp the big picture. Keeping a good system of organization and summarizing our findings regularly will be a gift to us in the long-run. Being privy to someone’s personal history, human or spiritual, is a great honor, so it is imperative that we care for that information ethically.

*Note: Just to reiterate, there is no such thing as better than or less than in terms of how people incarnate or whether they have elemental auras or not. A lot of racism and eugenics-sourced lingo have found footholds in starseed communities. I do not want to entrench those in my research, value system(s), or writings. Please know that being human is something to be incredibly proud of. There are things we can teach elementals to understand such as social discernment, courage, inner fortitude, and resilience, etc. Their worlds do not contain all of the threats, instabilities, and big payoffs that ours does. I spend my time researching elementals as part of my “Ovate” shamanistic commitment as a practicing Druid. I bring back information that is helpful to humans as we excavate our innermost selves and become the best beings that we can be. It does not mean that we cannot also offer insights and wisdom to other beings in the Universe. And if you are taking all of this in as myths and fairytales, it does not mean humans are inferior to the beings in our books and blog posts. Regardless of your approach, the point is to realize the worthiness of every being and to mobilize our stories/myths/legends/fictions/research to become the best versions of ourselves, personally and as a collective.*