MYSTICS, MAGICIANS, AND MEDICINE PEOPLE: Tales of a Wanderer

Remember the last minutes of Psycho, with its laborious, tacked-on psychological afterward? Boyd stumbles into the same error here, delivering eight exciting firsthand encounters with the paranormal and then almost spoiling each with a leaden, preachy commentary. A characteristic tale tells of an old Korean patriarch whom Boyd met during his Asian travels, a man who lives in two worlds at once--the ordinary world of our senses and a mystical sphere of ""deep understanding."" Boyd neatly captures the Korean's charisma and irascibility--he seems like an Oriental version of Castaneda's Don Juan--and adds a spooky tale of how a photo of the man's face gradually faded away, until ""it was as though I had captured a headless man in a horsehair hat."" Tingling stuff: it's too bad that Boyd fancies himself a New Age teacher--his first two hooks (Rolling Thunder, Swami) deal with spiritual masters--and proceeds to gloss his text with such banal insights as ""there is a great deal in this world that cannot be understood through analysis"" or, a blt later on, ""the Golden Rule is often set aside when it is needed most."" Other episodes recount adventures with a Korean shaman; a Japanese martial artist who lives in Times Square; a yogini who spends ""long hours in levitation""; an itinerant Japanese monk with clairvoyant powers; and a Shoshone Indian who channels a spirit entity named ""Joseph"" In each case, Boyd's interpretive remarks smother tire tale like so much lumpy gravy on tenderloin. With a few more stories and a lot less explication, this might rank with John Keel's Jadoo and other classic firsthand accounts of the supernatural, Instead, it's more like The Twilight Zone hosted by J.Z. Knight.