Nikola Tesla 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943

Inventor, Writer, Engineer and Futurist

Starting with Some News

1st May:  Paul Harborne of Sedgeley, West midlands spent over £50, 000 restoring a car.

The result?  A fully functioning Ectomobile, complete with scrolling LED display saying ‘Ghostbusters – we’re back’.  Harborne has put a great deal of effort into every detail, hooking up an iPod in order to play the sirens and hoping to include outfits for the experience so that fans can hire the car and go out for their own busting adventures.

The 1959 Cadillac was an abandoned wreck before Harborne got hold of it, ‘It’s extremely rare and very hard to restore… It’s certainly been a challenge – 50-year-old Cadillacs are hard work!’ he said.  He’s also hopeful that there will be a third film in which case his car might get its own part, however, given Bill Murray’s rumoured disinterest in any script ideas put forward by Dan Aykroyd, it’s a question of ‘if’ rather than ‘when’ on that one.

International News

30th April:  Theerasak Saksritawee was taking a careful snapshot of a jumping spider as it lounged on a leaf at the Baan Suan Rojana resort in the eastern district of Muak Lek, when the unsuspecting spider was photobombed by a praying Mantis.

He stated that “One moment it was all clear – then this thing appears in front of me.”

5th May:  ‘Dominic Deville’ of Lucerne, Switzerland, is providing an unusual service for birthday boys and girls, for a fee, he will don his best evil clown outfit and stalk your children until their big day when he will approach them upfront and throw a pie in their faces.  The service includes text messages, phone calls and letters warning the child of their impending pie-related doom.

Sound a little much?  Dominic ensures worriers that ‘It’s all in fun, and if at any point the kids get scared or their parents are concerned, we stop right there,’ plus most of the children he has stalked ‘absolutely love being scared senseless’ by his appearance.

Deville came up with the service after his favourite horror franchises inspired him and his clown mask could certainly be likened to Stephen King’s ‘It’.

Perhaps to mark 2012’s Star Wars Day, company ‘Wicked Lasers’ have released their ‘LaserSaber’, claiming to be the most realistic Lightsabre replica ever made and which you can purchase for $400.  It features the brightest laser that it’s possible to own (Legally!) though sadly this means that it’s technically ‘not a toy’ as a laser this intense must be handled with care as it is quite dangerous.  Try telling that to a true Star Wars fan.

Watch the video of the gorgeous bit of tech in action…

8th May:  Albuquerque, New Mexico is the proposed site for a ‘scientific ghost town’.  It will act as a sort of testing ground for a wide variety of automated technology, but will house no human residents.

It will be modeled after Rock Hill in South Carolina and will go as far as having functioning plumbing and household appliances, despite the fact nobody will be there to use them.

While the project may cost up to a billion pounds, it will also create 350 permanent jobs and 3,500 indirect jobs in the process of its design, development, construction and ongoing operation.  The project will mean that researches will be able to test new technology without disturbing everyday life, while ensuring a realistic setting.

10th May:  The Mayan Calendar has been ever in the public consciousness this year as some believe it predicts the end of the world, but archaeologists in Guatemala have just reported an amazing discovery that could change that theory.

The discovery consists of a small building adorned with surprisingly well preserved paintings, one of a Mayan king and others of Mayan Calendars which extend far beyond 2012.

The calendar in question precedes the oldest Mayan Calendar so far discovered – being the one in the Dresden Codex – by several hundred years.  It consists of a table filled with huge numbers which relate to how long it takes Mars and Venus to cross the sky and return again.  This calendar spans 7,000 years.  The building itself has been known of since 1915, but it has only now been excavated professionally.

Cimolais, Italy now has a reluctant Mayor.  Fabio Borsatti stood in at the last minute because he was concerned that his good friend Gino Bertolo would not get enough votes if he stood unopposed.  His entire family voted for Bertolo and he had not imagined that he might win, but he received 58% of the vote and states that “I find myself a mayor who didn’t want to be a mayor.”  His ‘rival’ was not remotely bitter about the surprise win, saying “I wasn’t upset… Something apparently unusual happened but it is nothing to joke about.”  Borsatti has no plans to resign despite his unwanted election and plans to focus on promoting tourism to the area.

Thanks Catherine…

And from Fee we have …

A Nebraska man has changed his name to Tyrannosaurus Rex Joseph Gold. Why? Because it’s ‘cooler’ than his birth name.
Tyler Gold, 23, of York, Neb., appeared in district court. In his filing, he wrote he wanted the name change because it’s ‘cooler’ and more appealing than his birth name, the York News-Times reported.
“Also, as an entrepreneur, name recognition is important and the new name is more recognizable,” Gold told the Times. Judge Alan Gless asked Gold if he was avoiding debt collectors or law enforcement, but he told the judge no and that his request was innocent, the Christian Science Monitor reported. His request was approved, and Gold is now legally Tyrannosaurus Rex Joseph Gold

10 weird and unusual phobias

A phobia is an intense and irrational fear of a specific situation, object, person or activity. While we are generally familiar with common phobias such as acrophobia (fear of heights) and claustrophobia (fear of small spaces), some phobias are less well known. Here are 10 of the most bizarre phobias.

Optophobia: Fear of opening one’s eyes

If ever an award was given for Most Inconvenient Phobia, it would have to go to optophobia – the fear of opening one’s eyes! Although the act of opening our eyes is something that few of us ever give thought to, for optophobics this simple, daily act can be a nightmare. Luckily, if you are reading this list, you most likely aren’t suffering from this condition!

Chorophobia: Fear of dancing

If nightclubs, weddings and small children in tutus fill you with an overwhelming sense of dread, you could be suffering from chorophobia – the fear of dancing. Regardless of dance ability and whether or not you are required to hit the dancefloor, any situation or event that relates to dancing can be a source of fear for chorophobics.

Geliophobia: Fear of laughter

Many studies suggest that laughter is great for our health; helping to build social bonds, improve mental health and look after the heart. However, for those suffering from geliophobia, the act of laughing, or being around those who laugh, can actually cause overwhelming fear and anxiety. Suggested reasons for geliophobia are anxiety about laughing in inappropriate situations or of being laughed at by others.

Arachibutyrophobia: Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth

It may not be a debilitating or life-altering condition, yet no list of weird phobias would be complete without the inclusion of arachibutyrephobia – the inexplicable fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. While peanut butter is clearly not obligatory for a healthy and satisfactory life, arachibutyrophobics could miss out on the speculated health benefits of peanut butter, including its abilities to lower cholesterol and help ward off heart disease.

Heliphobia: Fear of sunlight

A rare but unfortunate condition, heliphobia refers to the fear of sunlight. Not only does going out in the sun instigate severe feelings of anxiety and panic in sufferers, but heliophobics may also experience fear of bright lights. Most often the fear or condition is associated with an anxiety about the perceived dangers of the sun; however, unless you happen to be a vampire, avoiding the sun entirely is likely to be an impossible and unnecessary task. It can also be dangerous for your wellbeing, as sunlight is good for regulating the mood and protecting bone health.

Deipnophobia: Fear of dinner conversations

While many people suffer from a general form of social anxiety, deipnophobia takes a rather more specific twist and is restricted to a fear of carrying on a conversation while eating. Although this can cause discomfort and awkwardness for dinner party guests, it seems that deipnophics could be on to something, as remaining silent while eating can actually help benefit digestion.

Neophobia: Fear of new things

While many people are wary of change, neophobia is a phobia that refers to an intense and irrational fear of all new things and experiences. Neophobia can impact on happiness and wellbeing as sufferers miss out on many life-enhancing experiences. When applied to the diet it can also mean that sufferers miss out on various healthy foods and nutrients. Research has also shown that the stress of neophobia can shorten life expectancy.

Syngenesphobia: Fear of relatives

Many of us experience embarrassment or irritation with our families at times. However, those with syngenesphobia suffer from an excessive fear of their relatives. Unless there is a specific, explicable reason for these fears, it is worth seeking help to alleviate this phobia and help you bond with relatives as research shows that forming strong family ties can help to increase life span.

Ablutophobia: Fear of washing and bathing

Although many children are resistant to being washed, this condition is much less common in adults. However, for a rare few the thought of stepping under a shower is quite literally terrifying! The good news for ablutophobics is that skipping the occasional shower can help to preserve natural oils and good bacteria that protect your skin and help to prevent disease. However, making it a regular habit is unlikely to benefit either your health or social life.

Geniophobia: Fear of chins

Geniophobia is an overwhelming fear of chins. Yes, that innocuous body part attached to the lower part of your face! Further phobias of seemingly innocent body parts include genuphobia (fear of knees), chirophobia (fear of hands) and ishicascadiggaphobia (fear of elbows). As these phobias can make normal social interaction extremely difficult, treatment through therapy is highly recommended.

The camera just can’t be trusted…

The image above is not real. It’s a computer generated digital sculpture of Korean Actress Song Hye Kyo.

The piece was created by CG artist Max Edwin Wahyudi using Pixelogic Zbrush and Autodesk 3DS Max for animation modeling.

It’s a pretty remarkable piece and extremely life like when compared with other digital photographs of live people.

A man in Hampshire has painted a picture of a Ferrari 250 GTO on the garage door of his home to fool passers-by he owns the classic car.

Chris Smart spent about two weeks transforming his garage in Bishopstoke by painting the cult, red sports car.

Mr Smart, 32, said: “We’ve had a few kids stop and stare as they walk past. Originally one of my neighbours wasn’t too keen, but now she loves it.”

A real version of the car sold for about £20m ($31m) in February.

 Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was perhaps one of the greatest inventors in history, largely overlooked and regularly stolen from, namely by Thomas Edison.

He was born on July 10th 1856 and died on January 7th 1943.

He was a genius, capable of speaking eight languages, possessing an eidetic memory and capable of picturing and designing complex devices without ever sketching a blueprint or taking a note.  He was also supposedly inspired to study electricity after he received an electric shock from his cat.

He was also notoriously eccentric and plagued by many neuroses, including an intense fear of dirt and germs, any round objects (He was specifically disgusted by pearl earrings) and he later developed an obsession with the number three.

Unfortunately, Obsessive-compulsive disorder was widely misunderstood at the time and he never received any nature of treatment.

He also often suffered from vivid hallucinations and struggled to differentiate between reality and these overwhelming ‘recurrent visual sensations, bright and geometric, which occasionally overwhelmed his sight, actually blotting out scenes in front of him.’

Additionally, towards the end of his life he grow very fond of the pigeons of Manhattan, taking care of sick and injured birds in his hotel room, including a bird he described as pure white with grey tipped wings that he claimed to ‘love as a man loves a woman, and she loved me’.

Well ahead of his time, he is directly responsible for:

• First hydroelectric plant
• The discovery of the resonant frequency of the earth.
• The remote control
• Neon Lighting
• The electric motor.
• Alternating current.
• The Tesla Coil.
• (Not the invention of, but certainly the research leading up to) X-Rays, he became aware of the damage done by them that was later identified by Rontgen.
• The first radio transmitter.
• Wardenclyffe Tower or the Tesla Tower, an early wireless telecommunications tower intended for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony, broadcasting, and the demonstration of the transmission of power without interconnecting wires.  It was apparently not financially viable however, and later in 1917 it was destroyed by the US government for fear of it being hijacked for use by the Germans.
• Wireless energy transfer and the Tesla effect.
• Radar.
• Bladeless turbines.

Amongst many other significant discoveries.  He is best known for Alternating Current, a discovery that was fraught with heated resistance from Thomas Edison who went as far as to steal pet dogs and electrocute them to death to prove AC was unsafe to power cities; despite is obvious advantages over Edison’s favoured Direct Current.  He also killed a horse using the same method.

‘Topsy’ a rebellious circus elephant was also electrocuted to death to prove AC was unsafe and filmed using Edison’s motion capture camera.

The video of the act is available to see under the name ‘Edison electrocutes elephant’.  It was deemed too cruel to hang her instead.

Subsequently, Edison is responsible for the switch from hanging to electrocution in prisons.

Edison allegedly also prevented the use of radar in the First World War after Tesla pitched the idea to the Navy and Edison said it had ‘no practical application’.  Tesla came up with the idea in 1917, long before Robert Watson-Watt.

Marconi was credited with the invention of radio, but Tesla won the legal battle and Marconi’s patents were overturned, unfortunately posthumously for Tesla.

Tesla also allegedly came up with many theoretical inventions that are still debated about to this day, including a type of particle gun that he claimed would be able to shoot planes from the sky which he called a death ray (Although it was initially called a ‘peace ray’ instead), a steam powered, conveniently portable earthquake machine, a force field, a saucer or cigar shaped craft powered run electro mechanically, and many a theory relating to ball lightning.

Tesla’s electro-mechanical oscillator or earthquake machine was invented in 1898 and it was surprisingly small, weighing a couple of pounds and only seven inches in length.

At this time, Tesla’s lab was in Houston Street, New York and the story goes that his device shook the building violently, resulting in the arrival of the police and Tesla resorting to destroying it with a hammer.

It worked by applying five pounds of air pressure against a pneumatic piston of some nature using steam.  This would result in very high temperatures and enormous generated pressure.

The reason this story is regarded as something of a myth is that attempts to replicate the ‘earthquake’ have been unsuccessful, vibrations being generated that were felt from a great distance but certainly not an earthquake.

Tesla reputedly creative ‘electric fireballs’ in a laboratory setting, writing of his findings in the 1904 journal Electrical World and Engineer as follows: “I have succeeded in determining the mode of their formation and producing them artificially…

It became apparent that the fireballs resulted from the interaction of two frequencies…. This condition acts as a trigger which may cause the total energy of the powerful longer wave to be discharged in a infinitesimally small interval of time… and is released into surrounding space with inconceivable violence. It is but a step, from the learning how a high frequency current can explosively discharge a lower frequency current, to using the principle to design a system in which these explosions can be produced by intent.”

The fireballs became more commonly known as the ball lightning phenomena, despite the differences between his described creation and the experiences of eyewitnesses to ball lightning.

Evidence of Tesla’s fireballs has never come about either, and attempts to emulate ball lightning have proved unsuccessful as well.

Most experiments succeed only in creating brief ‘fireballs’ inconsistent with the ones Tesla described.

As for ball lightning, it’s still a regularly reported though perhaps not fully understood phenomena.

Wardenclyffe Tower is sometimes quoted as being reputedly responsible for the rather odd Tunguska Event.

The Tunguska event (Or blast or explosion) was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (Now Krasnoyarsk Krai) Russia, at 7:15am on June 30th in 1908.

The blast was believed to be 1000 times more powerful than that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb and it knocked over around 80 million trees covering 2150 square km.

The shock wave from the blast is estimated to have measured at least 5.0 on the Richter scale.

However, the notion of Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower having anything to do with the Tunguska Event is widely disregarded as there is very little evidence to support any such activity, plus the Tower was either totally or partially inoperable at the time the blast was said to have taken place.

Furthermore in relation to Tesla’s Death/Peace ray, it is pointed out by Brian Dunning that has little to do with Scalar Field Theory, though it is often quoted as differently.

‘Tesla did also claim to have completed a partial unified field theory that unified gravity with electromagnetism, which is something that scalar field theory also claims. Because of these similarities, Tesla’s name is often wrongly associated with scalar weapons and scalar field theory.’

The ray was also called Teleforce, and consisted of a uniquely designed large Van de Graaff generator another unique type of open-ended vacuum tube.  It would accelerate tungsten or mercury particles to about 48 times the speed of sound from the tube by electrostatic repulsion.

Tesla used the term ‘peace ray’ instead of the media proposed ‘death ray’ as he intended it to be used for defense purposes.

The method for producing great electrical force in the range of 60,000,000 volts (To propel the particles) could have been achieved by ‘Wardenclyffe type apparatus’.

After Tesla died, alone and in poverty, his papers were seized by the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover declaring the case ‘Top Secret’ because of ‘the nature of Tesla’s inventions and patents’.

Tesla’s family and the Yugoslav embassy fought with the American authorities to regain the items seized after his death because of the potential significance of some of his research to US defense.

Sava Kosanović (Tesla’s nephew) won possession of the materials and they can now be viewed at the Nikola Tesla Museum.

The morning after Teslas’ death, Kosanovic´ states that he by the time he arrived, Tesla’s body had already been removed, and that he suspected somebody had already gone through his uncle’s possessions.

Papers were allegedly missing, including a black notebook Kosanovic was certain Tesla kept.  He says that some of the pages of this notebook had been marked ‘Government.’

Despite Kosanovic winning the materials back again, there are still missing papers.  Whether or not these have anything to do with the FBI of course remains to be seen.

The following Tesla Videos may be of interest:-

Related articles

• No Stopping on the Way to the Apocalypse (alanbjones.com)

Some News

25th April: Ant Hadleigh a kite surfer from Cape York, discovered a golden orb spider battling a brown tree snake near a friend’s home in Freshwater.

What’s more, the spider won!

While the golden orb spider is the largest known web-weaving spider in Australia, the odds would usually still be against it when pitted against a snake.  The snake involved was about a metre and a half long and Hadleigh states that every attempt it made to bite back was easily evaded by the spider.

26th April:  Many residents of San Diego were saddened to learn that a yarn bombing project whereby the stop signs were transformed into flowers may have to come to an end as there are ‘just too many restrictions to overcome’.

City official Bill Harris contacted the man behind the project, known only as Bryan, and informed him that “Even with the great community spirit this effort has generated… there is just no way to retain the works where they now are.”

Bryan currently has a week or so to remove the ‘flowers’ or they will be removed by city employees.  Bryan hopes that if he lives them up there is a chance they will be left alone after all, stating that “In January, 2011, I put up five as a test run and they are still there, so I’m hoping it was just the city doing their due diligence. But I’d like to think that if you were a busy city worker and had a whole day’s work ahead of you, removing this might be too much trouble.”

27th April:  Florida resident Blanca Riveron was very worried to hear that she may have lung cancer after an x-ray in December of last year showed a worrying dark spot on her lung.

She’d always been stricken with respiratory problems, suffering through bouts of asthma and pneumonia far more regularly than most.  However, upon coming to a halt at a set of traffic lights, she was struck with a coughing fit during which she coughed up a fruit pip she had inhaled by accident 28 years ago!

It is very likely that this was her ‘spot’ and she will be attending a checkup to make sure, but friends and family have remarked how much better she already seems to be getting.  “She’s even been able to blow up a balloon for my son. She had never been able to do that,” said her daughter, Dayana Noda.

28th April:  Since 2004, Seattle attorney Andrew Basiago has been claiming to have been part of ‘Project Pegasus’ between the age of 7 and 12.  Project Pegasus, he claims, was a US government program that worked on teleportation and time travel under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), apparently to test the effects of such travel on the bodies of children as well as adults, who also took part.

He says that children adapted better to the strains of time travel.  Most of the methods of time travel he speaks of he put down to Nikola Tesla, as papers discussing his theories on the subject were allegedly found in his New York apartment subsequent to his death in 1943.  “The machine consisted of two gray elliptical booms about eight feet tall, separated by about 10 feet, between which a shimmering curtain of what Tesla called ‘radiant energy’ was broadcast,” Basiago said. “Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space.”

He even says that he has photographic evidence of his travels, pointing out that he can be seen in a photograph of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863, “I left the area around the dais and walked about 100 paces over to where I was photographed in the Josephine Cogg image of Lincoln at Gettysburg,” he explains.  Perhaps not surprisingly, many are skeptical of his claims.

24th April:  Ginger Morneau happened to have her camera handy in order to document a rather unusual showdown while walking along the Ogden Point Breakwater in Victoria, BC.  A Glaucous gull whose eyes were probably bigger than its stomach when it spotted a potential meal, was spotted struggling with a Giant Pacific Octopus in the shallow water of the Point.

Morneau snapped several pictures of the somewhat dramatic event, describing it all as ‘primal’ and speaking of how she had rather wanted to rescue the bird, which was definitely losing the fight.  It had at first appeared to have been feeding on something just under the surface, but on closer inspection it was unable to lift its head from the water despite flapping its wings to try and free itself.

The gull was soon pulled completely under the water and the octopus slunk off to enjoy its enormous catch.  Gulls are capable of eating an octopus, but there have been odd reports throughout history of the opposite happening too as in this instance.  This is the first time anybody has ever been able to capture it though.

UFO’s

Yes the exist!

Strictly speaking ANY flying object which cannot be identified is a UFO – an Unidentified Flying Object

However when the term UFO is used many will immediately think of aliens – extraterrestrials.

Now this is a HUGE topic so we’re going to focus upon one key story and look at what ‘evidence’ there is and what we can deduce from that evidence…

The report that we are referring to in the show is can be found here and was compiled by Catherine : Rendlesham : Notes

The Drake Equation

While working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, Dr. Frank Drake conceived a means to mathematically estimate the number of worlds that might harbor beings with technology sufficient to communicate across the vast gulfs of interstellar space. The Drake Equation, as it came to be known, was formulated in 1961 and is generally accepted by the scientific community.

 N = R* f_p n_e f_l f_i f_c L

where,

• N = The number of communicative civilizations
• R* = The rate of formation of suitable stars (stars such as our Sun)
• f_p = The fraction of those stars with planets. (Current evidence indicates that planetary systems may be common for stars like the Sun.)
• n_e = The number of Earth-like worlds per planetary system
• f_l = The fraction of those Earth-like planets where life actually develops
• f_i = The fraction of life sites where intelligence develops
• f_c = The fraction of communicative planets (those on which electromagnetic communications technology develops)
• L = The “lifetime” of communicating civilizations

Frank Drake’s own current solution to the Drake Equation estimates 10,000 communicative civilizations in the Milky Way. Dr. Drake, who serves on the SETI League’s advisory board, has personally endorsed SETI’s planned all-sky survey.

Music on tonights show from Aardvark Records

Raising Days – Heart Stand Still

Raising Days – Earth

Raising Days – Craving

Related articles

• Friday Poll: Do you believe in alien UFOs?(news.cnet.com)

  ---

• Basingstoke, hotspot for UFO encounters(bsublogtask.wordpress.com)

  ---

• Man claims he tested time travel as a kid in DARPA’s Project Pegasus (realthinktank.com)

Well – as well as being Chaotic in terms of production and chat-room management, we’ll be talking about CHAOS and CHAOS Magic!

But first some news …

UK

April 21st:  A sonar picture of an object following a boat 23 metres below the surface has reignited Loch Ness Monster theories everywhere after it was taken by Loch Ness boat skipper Marcus Atkinson.

Atkinson took the picture of the sonar anomaly using his mobile phone and consequently won first place in the ‘Best Nessie Sighting of the Year’ Awards by William Hill Bookmakers.

Loch Ness Monster fans have scrutinized the sonar image and believe it is not a case of misidentified fish, seals or debris.

Atkinson explains that, “The device takes a reading of the depth and what is below the boat every quarter of a second and gradually builds up a picture, so it covered a time of about five minutes.

The object got bigger and bigger and I thought “bloody hell” and took a picture with my mobile phone. There is nothing that big in the Loch. I was in shock as it looked like a big serpent, it’s amazing. You can’t fake a sonar image. I have never seen anything returned like this on the fish finder.”

However, Dr Simon Boxall from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton points out that it may have a mundane explanation after all.  “The image shows a bloom of algae and zooplankton that would exist on what would be a thermocline.

Zooplankton live off this algae and reflect sound signals from echo sounders and fish finders very well.  They will appear as a linear “blob” on the screen, just like this.”

But while Boxall seems to have potentially solved the mystery,

Atkinson has shown the image to other experienced skippers who haven’t seen anything like it before and, of course, Nessie hunters remain hopeful that this is finally the real deal.

April 23rd:  A recent story of a monster rat found in a basement in the US has been trumped by another enormous discovery on UK shores.

Brian Watson, a grandfather from Consett, County Durham discovered the giant rat near his home after the boyfriend of his granddaughter spotted it.  Unfortunately, Watson proceeded to beat it to death with a plank of wood, which he then attempted to use to lift the body from the garden, only to result in the plank breaking under the weight of the mammoth rodent.

Watson believes the rat might’ve been about to have a litter of babies and that this may be why it was so large and slow.  Some have suggested that the animal was actually a coypu and not a rat.

Watson has also been heavily criticized for killing the creature in the manner that he did, as many feel his reaction was excessively cruel and that it could’ve been rescued or simply moved from the area.

International

April 13th:  Dawa’a, an 18-year-old-girl from Cairo, Egypt, claims to have been touched by a tribe of a thousand Jinn after she wept tears of blood.  Appearing on Al Nahar Television to tell her story, she describes how Amr Al-Laithi, a Muslim scholar, recited verses from Qur’an as she fell unconscious and how when she woke up after 20 minutes of the ritual she could not remember anything of the preceding events and had an intense headache.

Amr Al-Laithi describes the jinn as having only an external influence on Dawa’a, and that she had not been possessed.  Some have expressed concern for the girl’s health, as crying blood could also be the symptom of infection or even cancer.

April 16th:  Jose Chinchilla and his fiancée Michele Callan of Toms River, New Jersey, claim that they plan to sue the landlord $2,250 (The total of their security deposit) after paranormal activity forced them out of the newly rented property only a week after moving in.

The couple says that they ‘hear eerie noises, that lights flicker, doors slam and a spectral presence tugs on their bed sheets.’  They decided to call Shore Paranormal Research Society to investigate their strange goings on.

The Team from the Society came to the conclusion that while they believe there is something paranormal going on, they do not believe it indicated a full-blown haunting.  The landlord has reacted by filing a counter suit; of the opinion that the couple was actually unhappy with the $1,500 a month rental fee and that they invented the ghost to escape their lease.

The case will go to court by the end of this month.

Earlier in the year, we reported the announcement made by Telecommunications giant Qualcomm in reference to the ‘Tricorder X-Prize Contest’ in which the company would offer a $US10 million prize to anyone able to make a functioning medical ‘tricorder’ similar to those used in all generations of Star Trek.

Dr. Peter Jansen, a PhD graduate of the Cognitive Science Laboratory at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, says that he has been working on such a device since 2007.

Though his prototypes are designed more for scientific research than medical alone, Jansen said it can so far measure ambient temperature, pressure or humidity, take electromagnetic measurements to test magnetic fields, and it make spatial measurements of distance, location, or motion.

Jansen states that the idea of making a tricorder has been with him since he was a child and that Star Trek was what inspired him to become a scientist in the first place.  His favourite version of the fictional device appears in Voyager, though his favourite series in all is the Next Generation.  Jansen has posted schematics and designs of his first and second prototypes, (Mark 1 and Mark 2) for anyone to see and build in the hope that others will try to create something similar.

He expects to have his latest version (Mark 4) produced for about $200.  Think you’d like to try?  Visit www.tricorderproject.org for all the details.

April 17th:  UFOScandinavia have helpfully released a compilation video of all the recent youtube footage of UFO’s in St Petersburg.  Any theories?

Danu Fox – Earth-Singing

Danu was a guest on our show a couple weeks ago when she told us of the forthcoming event.

On Sat 5 May at 3pm groups of singers and dowsers are gathering all along the lines to perform and measure the effects of a short ceremony with the intention of singing thank you and giving love and appreciation for our lands.

Inspired by the Songlines tradition of Australia, Danu Fox, singer, musician and founder of Earth Singers, a pioneering programme for stewarding land, has instigated this event and it is the first time anything like this has been done on a national scale across the UK.

If you’d like to join in please go to the Earth Singers Facebook page or email Danu: info@songbearmusic.co.uk. Enjoy!

Chaos & Chaos Magic

Chaos Magic – A Primer by Catherine

Chaos magick is difficult to explain in full.  It is also a relatively recent notion, its’ birth seeming to have occurred only in 1976.

A general description of Chaos Magic outlines the contradictory nature of belief and reality and the idea of there being no real set of rules by which to achieve something.

The gnosis state is the aim for a chaos magician, whatever type of trappings you choose to employ doesn’t really matter, ‘just as long as they inspire you.’

Chaos Magick as we currently know it was first formulated in West Yorkshire in the 1970s as a consequence of a meeting between Peter Carroll and Ray Sherwin in Deptford in 1976.

In 1978 Carroll and Sherwin also founded the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) a chaos magic organisation.

The name of the organization is derived from the Greek gods of sex and death: eros and thanatos, apparently in accordance with the notion of these two methods being the positive and negative ways of achieving ‘magical consciousness’.

The group was criticized for its use of hierarchical and traditional ritual, things which should technically be rejected by most chaotes, many of whom believe the entire concept to be somewhat un-chaotic.

The group is also renowned for being, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, rather difficult to get into.

Chaos theory and magick primarily have their roots in theories outlined by Austin Osman Spare, artist and once a member of the A∴A∴, created in 1907 by Aleister Crowley and George Cecil Jones after they left the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

However, it is also important to note that they do not replicate his beliefs exactly.

While sources such as Wikipedia call him the father of chaos magick, other sources instead call him the grandfather of it, and instead believe Peter Carroll to be the ‘father’ of chaos magick.

Spare disapproved of religion and of science as well, relating religion to ‘chains’ and feeling both were restricting in their self-proclaimed ‘truths’.

One of Spare’s most significant contributions to the theories of chaos magick is probably the use of his sigils, that is, his notion of a ‘symbolic representation of the magician’s desired outcome’.

His ‘alphabet of desire’ was adapted by Carroll in his Liber Null & Psychonaut.

Spare’s use of sigils involved designing a symbol over which to obsess, something that would occupy the mind as he felt that the mind was a hindrance to magic.

Gnosis, therefore, is loosely defined as an overwhelming of the parts of the mind involved in rational function.

His other main contribution to the overall belief system of Chaos magick is the rejection of traditional magical systems and ritual in favor of achieving a Gnostic state.

Chaos magick is anarchic to some degree, hoping to negate the effects of religious structure and allow one to build a structure of their own to some degree – ie, whatever works for you.

It emphasises the importance of belief, summarising it as a form of magic in itself, though many self-proclaimed chaos magicians do not feel that belief is necessary to participate in that form of magic.

Reality is not important, then, as if a belief results in the desired outcome it is often accepted as truth or taken to heart.  Only subjective truths are available – nobody knows what is absolutely true, only beliefs are available.

Chaos magick is, at its heart, about freedom, but it is filled with opposites and paradoxes.

While the notion of belief is important and the freedom that comes with choosing any helpful belief is key to chaos theory, it is also temporary.

A chaote will believe something before changing that belief for the next one that becomes useful.

Therefore, a chaote both truly believes and does not technically ever really believe at all.  This approach was propagated by Carroll, Spare would have spoken differently.

This could also be called ‘paradigm shifting’, in that often opposing rites or rituals are used and entirely believed in their context at that time.

The saying ‘Nothing is True, and Everything is Permitted’ (A saying popularised by William Burroughs, though its’ origin was a line from a character in ‘Alamut’ by Vladimir Bartol.) plays into these principles, a self defeating statement that could be interpreted as meaning that there is no absolute objective truth to tell us what is entirely right or wrong, there are no rules.

Sigils are fundamental to chaos magic, a form by which magic can be personalised to some degree.

It begins with focusing on a wish or aim or writing a ‘statement of will’, such as ‘I will get an A on the paper I wrote’, then using the letters in the statement to form a symbol or design of some nature which must be achieved without intense focus.  It should ‘come to you’.

Carroll added to this process by suggesting removing the letters that repeat in the sentence to make it easier.

This done, gnosis must be achieved, to ensure total focus on the goal.

This can be achieved by one of several techniques which are as follows.

Inhibitory gnosis: similar to what we know as mediation, to achieve a trance-like state.  This involves self-hypnosis, regular breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation and absent thought-processes.  It could be achieved by fasting, not sleeping, sensory deprivation or even drugs.

Excitatory gnosis:  Perhaps almost the opposite of the first mentioned, involving a degree of intense arousal that could be achieved via flagellation, dance, song/ chanting, hyperventilating, sexual excitation, or, again, drugs.

Indifferent vacuity:  This third method was added later, and involves casting said spell almost as a sidenote so that there is little thought involved to suppress in the first place.

Of course, this implies that there are some rules involved in a kind of magic that prides itself on being ruleless to some degree, therefore these methods are viewed more as ways of inducing gnosis only as opposed to processes that’re valuable or significant by themselves.

Chaos itself is not a label used to specifically describe mayhem or disorder, but acts to chaotes as a description of something all-encompassing.

It is described by one researcher as “…what you love, but it’s also what you hate. Chaos is fire, and it’s water, and it’s those things whether that’s good or bad. This doesn’t just mean that it’s objective, in that it is beyond good and bad (although it is held to be) – but it also contains the subjective aspects also. It contains all opposites. As everything is of chaos, so everyone mirrors it.”

Many aspects of chaos magick have become incorporated in to the even more confusing paradigms of discordianism.

So that’s Catherine’s Introduction….

 So let’s take things a bit further…

DETERMINISM is the notion that every event or action is the inevitable result of preceding events and actions.

In many ways, the spiritual movement embrace this concept within the “Laws” of what is commonly known as “Karma”.

In science determinism suggests, at least in principle, hat every event, or action, can be predicted in advance or in retrospect. This is a view point which can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks and became part of modern science around 1500AD with the establishment of the idea that cause and effect completely govern all motion and structure on the material level.

The deterministic view of the universe suggests, therefore, that the universe unfolds in time like the workings of a machine and subject to predetermined ‘laws’.

Newtons Laws of Motion are perfect examples of deterministic thinking and it is an approach which still underpins much physical science. These ‘laws’ can be defined by measurement and expressed mathematically.

Now, one of the fundamental principles of experimental science is that no real measurement is infinitely precise but includes a degree of uncertainty in the value. The question ‘how long is a piece of string?’ is not so simple to answer – it depends upon how we measure it and what we are measuring…

In 1900 the physicist, Henri Poincare commented upon a special kind of behaviour in time found in certain physical systems. In essence he pointed out that there would be imprecision in all astronomical predictions made by Newtons equations and ‘laws’. Simply put Poincare challenged the assumptions made by his peers that such imprecision would become less significant the more accurate the   system of measurement…. in astronomical systems when the measurements became more precise the ‘shrinking of the initial conditions’ shrank from he final predictions in a corresponding way.

He summarised his arguments thusly :-

in ‘complex systems’  the only way to obtain precise predictions with any degree of accuracy would entail specifying the initial conditions with absolute infinite precision.

The extreme “sensitivity to initial  conditions” became known as ‘chaos’.

In 1963 the meteorologist wrote a basic computer program to predict weather patterns. In short he found that no matter how he altered the variables he could never quite recreate expected patterns from the initial conditions. By the late 1970′s he discovered that even the smallest discrepancy between initial conditions would always result in a huge discrepancy at earlier or later times – the hallmark of a chaotic system. The well known and oft quoted ‘Butterfly Effect’.

The discovery of chaos seems to imply that randomness lies at the core of any deterministic model of the universe. Also, although seemingly counter-intuitive, is that chaos may produce ordered systems on large scales.

It is against this scientific backdrop that Chaos Magic was born.

Simply put, if Magic (as a ritualistic act) is about ‘bringing about change in accordance with will’ the way we define that change and the actions we undertake to bring about that change will, necessarily, not have a simple cause and effect relationship.

Chaos Magicians are generally of the opinion, as far as general opinions can be stated, that belief is an active magical force. There is an emphasis on flexibility of belief an the ability to consciously choose ones beliefs – so, you do not have to have ‘belief’  in order to make magic work.

Austin Osman Spare stated that will formulates desire which promulgates belief.

In Peter Carolls works not only does he talk about magic being related to increasing the probability, not a certainty, of a specific outcome, but also the importance of the ‘gnostic state’.

This state, similar to the Buddhist notion of Samadhi, is achieved when a persons mind is focused on a single point, thought or goal.

Gnosis is said to be achievable through Inhibition or Excitation.

Inhibition would include deep meditation, trance, fasting,sensory deprivation.

Excitation would include sex, flagellation, dance, drumming, chanting, sensory overload, hyperventilation and the possible use of drugs.

Despite its ‘nod’ to Thelemic (Crowley) and Golden Dawn, OTO and A:A traditions at the core of Chaos Magic is the notion that the ‘magic is within you’ and that whatever ritual path you choose to take is more to do with choice of belief, tradition and opportunity.

I would go a step further, perhaps, in suggesting that ‘doing by not doing’ and ‘being by simply being’ is the state of gnosis ritual attempts to create. It is from this state of knowing that we can really understand what is meant by the phrase ‘to bring about change in accordance with will’.

In order to work with ‘will’ there is the need to question the nature of will – being detached from simple ‘desire’, ‘lust’ and ‘ego-need’.

There is an inbuilt responsibility to bring about ‘change’ through action and that any action, no matter how small will have some effect upon the environment in which the magician operates – mind, spirit, body, home, town, planet, solar system, cosmos. The dictum ‘as above so below’ recreated and restated within the context of Chaos Magic and non-deterministic philosophies.

You may act with belief and conviction but the true effect of that action can have consequences beyond any original intent. To attempt understand one’s own desires in the context of free-will, personal-will and cosmic-will is an interesting challenge.

To be both at once philosophical and naive is the challenge…. and now we’re back to thinking about the ‘Fool’, the ‘Cosmic Joker’ and our own, personal journey.

Alan

Music from tonights show : THE IS – available from Aardvark Records

Related articles

• Loch Ness Monster Sonar Photo Proves Existence Of Nessie, Claims Man(inquisitr.com)

  ---

• Loch Ness Monster Found(weeklyworldnews.com)

  ---

• Almost one in five Britons believe Loch Ness monster for real(blogs.vancouversun.com)

  ---

• TRTZ 54 17th April 2012 – Metaphysics : Soul, Spirit, Being(therealtwilightzone.com)

  ---

• TRTZ no 52 20th March : Chupacabra, Earth Singing(therealtwilightzone.com)

  ---

So today is the 54th TRTZ and I’m 54 today – synchronicity or what!

I know, I know – 54 – when I only look like I’m in my 40′s (yeah right!) – but as they say ‘it’s not the age, it’s the mileage’ – and no, that doesn’t make me feel any better.

Tonight we’re taking a slightly different tack and dipping our metaphorical toes into the metaphysical in an attempt to see what we all mean by the words we easily use.

Words like ‘spirit’, ‘ghost’, ‘soul’ can imply a belief system, or at least some ideas about the nature of the cosmos – but what exactly?

This is the question for tonights debate and like all TRTZ shows the notes below reflect only part of the discussion that we will be having  on air so treat them as supporting information and provocations….

BUT FIRST…

Some news…

Villagers get fed-up.

The villagers of the Australian of the town of F*****G are fed up with people stealing their road-signs that they are looking to change it to Fugging or Fuking..

The final straw has been a growing number of calls by pranksters from abroad who ring up locals and ask in English “Is That F*****G” – before bursting into laughter and hanging up.

“The phone calls are really the final straw”, said local Mayor Franz Meindl, who confirmed that the villages street signs were regularly stolen even though they had been welded on steel posts set in concrete in the ground.

Drivers heading into the village often disturbed naked couples romping in front of the signs, and local entrepreneurs made the situation worse by flogging off Fucking postcards – Fucking Christmas cards and even more recently a Fucking beer.

Residents last voted on the subject in 1996 when it decided to keep the name despite problems caused by American servicemen from across the border in Germany that drove to the region just to be photographed in front of signs. They then sent the snaps back home to their girlfriends and wives.

If the name change goes ahead, they will be following in the footsteps of stadium bosses in Switzerland who were forced to change their name from Wankdorf because red-faced stars were too embarrassed to play there.

 Retirement Plan …

It may look like a tropical paradise, but Sotobanari Island is no holiday destination: there’s no natural water, dangerous currents swirl around and it’s lashed by typhoons.

However, the Japanese island has one resident who has made it his home for the last two decades: a pensioner who walks around in the buff despite the insects that come out to bite at night.

Masafumi Nagasaki, 76, has made this 1km-wide Japanese island his retirement home, living off rice cakes, which he boils in water, four or five times a day.

He throws on clothes once a week for a trip to a settlement an hour away by boat, where he collects 10,000 yen (£78) sent to him by his family to buy food and drinking water.

Teaching a young dog an old trick…

This is quite cute ….

Play_Dead_Baillie

Having your cake and eating it….

Like something straight out of a Roald Dahl book or Heston Blumenthal TV show, a London communications firm had its office lift lined with over 1,000 Jaffa Cakes in a bid to make their workplace just a little bit nicer.

Engine, a marketing firm based in London’s Great Portland Street, had the “edible elevator artwork” installed as part of an advertising campaign for McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes.

A team of artists and food technicians took a month to come with and install the 1,325 Jaffa Cake project, which lined the walls of the lift, last week.

Spider-Mouse

A hamster who swallowed a toy magnet and became stuck to the metal bars of his cage is now recovering following the bizarre incident.

Pet hamster ‘Smurf’ had to be prised off the bars by owner Kate Meech, who came home to find the hanging helplessly off the cage.

 On a more serious note …..

An Argentinian mother has spoken of her shock after her stillborn baby was found alive in a morgue.

Analia Bouter’s fifth child was born at 26 weeks – around three months premature – in Argentina’s northern Chaco province.

Doctors told her the baby had died, but when she and her husband visited the morgue 12 hours later, they realised their daughter was breathing.

Some local stuff from my Breakfast Show this morning (see www.alanjonesradio.com)

17th April 1986 Netherlands signs Peace Treaty with The Isle of Scillies ending the 335 Year War!

The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War  was a war between the Netherlands and the  and the Isles of Scilly is said to have been extended by the lack of a peace treaty for 335 years without a single shot being fired, which would make it one of the world’s longest wars and the war with the fewest casualties.

Despite the uncertain validity of the declaration of war, peace was finally declared in 1986.

The origins of the war can be found in the Civil War , fought between the Royalists and the Parlaimentarians   from 1642 to 1652.

Oliver Cromwall had fought the Royalists to the edges of the Kingdom of England and this meant that the Dutchy of Cornwall  was the last Royalist stronghold.

In 1648, Cromwell pushed on until mainland Cornwall was in the hands of the Parliamentarians.

The Royalist Navy was forced to retreat to the Scillies which were under the ownership of Royalist John Grenville.

The Dutch Navy was suffering heavy losses from the Royalist fleet based in Scilly.

On 30 March 1651,  Admiral Maarteen Harpertszoon Tromp arrived in Scilly to demand reparation from the Royalist fleet for the Dutch ships and goods taken by them.

According to Whitelocke’s Memorials (cited in Bowley, 2001), a letter of 17 April 1651 explains: “Tromp came to Pendennis and related that he had been to Scilly to demand reparation for the Dutch ships and goods taken by them; and receiving no satisfactory answer, he had, according to his Commission, declared war on them”.

As most of England was now in Parliamentarian hands, war was declared specifically upon the Isles of Scilly.

In June 1651, soon after the declaration of war, the Parliamentarian forces under Admiral Robert Blake forced the Royalist fleet to surrender. The Netherlands fleet, no longer under threat, left without firing a shot. Due to the obscurity of one nation’s declaration of war against a small part of another, the Dutch did not officially declare peace.

In 1985, Roy Duncan, historian and Chairman of the Isles of Scilly Council, wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London to dispose of the myth that the islands were still at war. Embassy staff found the myth to be accurate and Duncan invited the Dutch ambassador Rein Huydecoper to visit the islands and sign a peace treat.

Peace was declared on 17 April 1986, 335 years after the “war” began. The Ambassador joked that it must have been harrowing to the Scillonians “to know we could have attacked at any moment.”

And finally… builders bum outlawed!

A US man has been sentenced to three days in prison after turning up to court wearing low-slung baggy jeans.

It has long been acknowledged that trousers which only reach the mid-thigh are guilty of a range of style crimes, however Alabama Judge John Bush ruled that the 20-year-old’s jeans were so low that they were actually in contempt of court.

Metaphysical Meanderings..

In his book, The Science of Mind (1926), Earnest Holmes gave  the following definitions:-

SPIRIT –That part of man which enables him to be self-conscious. That which he really is. We do not see the spirit of man any more than we see the Spirit of God. We see what man does; but we do not see the doer.

LOGOS (Christ) –The Word of God manifest in and through man. In a liberal sense the Christ means the Entire Manifestation of God and is, therefore, the Second Person of the Trinity. Christ is a Universal Idea, and each one “Puts on The Christ” to the degree that he surrenders a limited sense of Life to the Divine Realization.

SONSHIP.–We are all Sons of God and all partake of the Divine Nature.

MICROCOSM.–The individual world as distinguished from the Universal.

EMMANUEL.-GOD-WITH-US.–Means that Christ is in every one.

PERSONALITY.–The external evidence of individualized being.

INDIVIDUALITY.–Each one is a separate identity in Mind and no two are alike. Each is an Individualized Center of God-Consciousness. Our personality is the use that we make of our Divine Individuality.

CONSCIOUS-STATE.–The conscious-state is the self-knowing mind of man. It is the only thing that distinguishes him from brute creation. Without a conscious-state of mind man would not be at all; or, at least, he would not know that he is. The conscious mind should be carefully guarded, as it is the real man.

MENTAL.–Means that man is mentally conscious.

SPIRITUAL.–Means that man is a Spiritual Being.

Now I could have chosen almost any spiritual metaphysical text to start this debate, but Holmes’ thoughts provide us with adequate food for thought.

The issue, for me, with any form of philosophical argument is that whilst it may seek to explain experience it can seem detached from what we want to accept as reality.

Take any one of Xeno’s Paradoxes about movement for example. In an attempt to argue from an ‘absurd’ point of view the impossibility of movement Xeno presented a series of philosophical thoughts or propositions.

Oversimplifying some of the arguments Xeno simply claimed that since the distance between two points can be made up of an infinite number of steps it was never possible to actually arrive at a desired destination.

OK, breaking it down a bit..

If I’m travelling from A to B then the first step I take must be equal to a fraction of the distance between the two points. It is possible then to imagine that each step can be made up of two smaller fractions – ie we can travel half a step. If we can travel half a step, then we must be travelling a quarter of a step, and an eight of  a step, and then a hundredth of a step – ad infinitum.

So since there are infinite number of smaller steps that can be taken it we will never fully arrive at point B – we will only always be moving towards it.

Of course the moment someone stands up and walks between point A and point B they show the reality of the possibility of travel between the two points and make a nonsense of the argument. However BOTH realities are possible – one is the reality of the empirical, practical and observable, the other is the reality of the logical, possible and philosophical.

Such mental gymnastics are great for the oiling of the minds cogs in order to enter into meaningful debate. The fact that one reality is practical and the intellectual can, to some, produce an emotional reaction which causes the impractical to be dismissed. Such individuals hence remove themselves from the arena of debate.

During last weeks TRTZ I was noticing some interesting conversations on the two different chat rooms we were on. Some people were engaged in considering the discussion and the points being made in the show but most were not.

This is OK since in both cases the peripheral debates had  been sparked by comments made in the show.

On the one chat room we had people asking very important questions about the nature of evidence and the fact that having ‘evidence’ results in the need for interpretation and that this where things can get ‘messy’.

The other chat room was involving itself in a debate about God, Spirit and Science and the reality (or absurdity) of each.

In many ways these discussions mirror the different ways we can respond to Xeno’s paradoxes or any discussion which attempts to set practical, objective reality against subjective, personal realities.

Consider the following :-

Religions are systems of beliefs that attempt to explain the human spiritual experience.

All religions arise from the illusion of separation, because that is the nature of human experience in the physical form.

We experience ourselves as separate beings, separate from each other, separate from “God”, and from the physical Universe.

It is impossible from this viewpoint of separation to perceive the true nature of who we really are, of matter and energy, and of the life force in everything that we have labeled “God”.

So to unpick this and try to get a little deeper into what has been written let’s take a step at a time …

Religions are systems of beliefs

I think there would be little disagreement with this statement since we can readily recognise the existence of differing religions each with their own system of beliefs, canons of faith and approaches to worship.

that attempt to explain the human spiritual experience

OK, here we could have some interesting debates. It presupposes there is something called a ‘spiritual experience’ which is distinct from personal experience. Some would argue that that which we call spiritual experience is simply part and parcel of the way our brains can and do work.

I am personally in no-doubt of there being a qualitative difference between some of my personal experiences. Some have the quality of being shared by others (we could call this objective experience or rationality); some have the quality of being internal and the result of me conversing with me; some are dream like and some are, for want of a better term, transcendent – they appear to be experiences of things outside of self and outside of rationality.

We experience ourselves as separate beings, separate from each other, separate from “God”, and from the physical Universe

Whilst many would agree that there is a sense of being separate, an individual, and indeed as spectators of the physical universe, it does not mean that there has to be a “God” from which we are detached.

The concept of “God” is not easy to tie down…

From the simplistic notion of a human-like being who is all powerful, all knowing and ever present yet still acting as some kind of supernatural parent to the idea that there is an ‘intelligence’ behind the Universe we find definitions of God as being all at once personal, cultural and historical.

An awareness of  being a distinct part of the Universe of Cosmos does not need to automatically presuppose the existence of a divine being let alone a divine creator. Arguments from personal incredulity about the implausibility of natural processes ‘creating’ the universe to statements which suppose that because we can’t go beyond the scientists current idea of what happened BEFORE the moment of creation of the universe do little to prove the existence of a God.

Science has a pretty good set of ideas about what happened at the moment of creation of the Universe and, indeed, argue that the process of a universes destruction underpin the processes required to drive creation. A kind of end in the beginning and beginning in the end – which, I know, sounds very mystical.

Whilst arguments from personal incredulity are not valid philosophically, there nevertheless is the personal experience many have of the existence of personal truth of God. Should it be stated here that quite simply personal experience and personal beliefs are not necessarily universal absolutes or truths?

In my culture it was common for children to be told of a bearded, red coated fatman who delivered presents to good children every year. My experience at that time was that this was a personal truth. So entrenched was my belief in this character that I adapted my behaviour according to expectations.

When asked to prove his existence I could readily point to his effects on my word. First there were no presents under the tree, then there were.

Other people confirmed his existence and told me the same story.

At times I was sure I heard him, or his reindeer or the jingle of the sleigh-bells – my faith gave me some degree of enhanced perception.

Now I am older and I can enjoy the myth and the magic of those childhood day. In many respects seeing behind the curtain as it were gave me more questions and, indeed, a greater sense of awe…

Awe?

Yes… about how my parents were able to execute some of their well meaning deceits; about how I could be fooled; about the power of belief ..

BUT there was more…

A real fascination for how the legend that became Father Christmas has a resonance above and behind the commercialisation of the holiday period. How pagan tradition sits with Christian tradition without there being so much as a dismissive thought when Christmas and Fertility are mentioned in the same breath …. a I could go on…

So whilst there was no Father Christmas there was a set of ideas, thoughts and intentions behind the myth that were and are important.

Back to the quote in question…

 It is impossible from this viewpoint of separation to perceive the true nature of who we really are, of matter and energy, and of the life force in everything that we have labeled “God”.

So, using my Father Christmas anaology – when I was a member of the Religion of Santa Claus I may have had been told the connections to other mystical teachings (the birth of Christ) but I could not really see from the ‘inside out’ as it were and think of a world that could have ‘presents’ and no Santa.

More importantly once I had recovered from my Santa Delusion (to misappropriate a certain well know book title) I was able to see and acknowledge the interconnected nature of thoughts and ideas which had created him in the first place.

“Santa” was much more than a marketing ploy by a famous drinks company (who, despite urban myth were not the first to describe a jolly-old red-suited Father Christmas) but was a symbol of so much more that I came to value (and of some things I did not).

Having ‘been Santa’ (that is an actor playing the role of Santa professionally) I am aware of the impact the image has and the way people  of all ages react emotionally to ‘him’. For the most part the reaction is one of joy and positivity; of connecting to memories or some idealistic zietgiest …. there is nothing wrong with this as far as I am concerned. Where it would become a concern is where the esteem and regard the character is held in becomes a vehicle for manipulation and control – a kind of extension of the idea that ‘you need to be good or else no presents’.

So let’s see where we can find some ‘common ground’.

Most of us have the ability to sense ourselves as individuals – distinct and independent from each other

Most of us would accept that our awareness of the outside world changes from time to time and place to place

Further, then, I would argue that most of us would recognise that our sense of the world outside (what we see, hear, feel, taste and smell) is limited by the sensory apparatus we possess.

Most of us would be willing to accept that some of the sensory information we process is processed without conscious thought – we would be willing to conceive of a sub-conscious or unconscious set of processes.

Most of us would be willing to accept that the way we behave is the result of what we feel; what we think; what we value; what we need – on other words what motivates us to do something.

Many would further accept that there are conscious motivations and as well as unconscious ones.

Some of us would be willing to accept that our inner sense of the world is constructed from our sensory experience of the world ‘out there’ and moreover have had the experience of being fooled into seeing something that was not there (for example)

Some of us would be willing to accept that our emotions have an effect on how we make sense and react to what we perceive.

I think that apart from a pedants need to change some of the specific wording above that most people would take the above as ‘given’ and not really want to argue too much about the claims. Of course there are some with psychological or neurological conditions for which some of the above may not apply, but on the whole we have a general agreement that there are levels of experience which we can call …

• External Sensory
• Internal Sensory
• Consciousness
• Unconsciousness  or Sub-Conscious
• Behavioural

This is the MIND and BODY bit which forms part of objective reality which can be studied by scientist, philosophers and rationalists.

Ideas in this real can be tested against scientific (objective) criteria and, for the most part, we can set-up hypotheses which we can attempt to falsify (part of the scientific method).

So far so good..

Now ..

Most of us will have had experiences which we might describe as being ‘different’ and not necessarily related to external experiences – they are personal.

Emotional experiences, which can be felt as unique and personal, are of course related to aspects of brain chemistry but have an impact above and beyond the simple behavioural framework in which they occur.

These experiences can have a sense of being “beyond self” and indeed some of us will have had a sense of what could be called, mystical, spiritual or even transpersonal experiences.

Again brain chemistry is involved but what triggers the bio-chemical responses can be questioned and, in the absence of an acceptance that the mind can ‘create’ these experiences it is likely that we will call these spiritual experiences as being a connection to some universal source of essence.

So now we have the oft quoted trinity of Body, Mind and Spirit.

The issue of course is that whilst many of the body-mind experiences can be subjected to the questions of the rationalist, those we could call a spiritual experience may not be and, more importantly, get ‘caught’ by the web of an individual, group or cultural belief systems.

At this point discussion can ‘break down’ since any attempt to explore a personally powerful experience with rational techniques may seem like an attack on belief even when it is not.

Once emotions run high conversations get defensive and prone to logical fallacy after logical fallacy – and finally the ad homenim attacks which get us nowhere. The truth is, of course, that spiritual beliefs are not necessarily subject to the same rational explorations as are the components we see as being part of objective reality. The existence God, as well as well perhaps spirits or ghosts are not falsifiable in the scientific sense.

The best we can do is explore and seek to understand what individuals mean by the spiritual words and frameworks they use.

I found the chart below very interesting in that is seems to be an attempt to link the  “Great Chain of Being” is usually given as something like: matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit to the more ‘popular’ religious belief systems.

Source: Integral Life

All of the major belief systems seem to echo the following ‘truths’..

1) The individual has become disconnected from a (or the) spiritual source

2) The personality (outer representation of the individual) and the behaviours (the interaction of the individual between self, others and the outside world) of human beings need to brought in line with the destiny, desires or plan of the divine.

3) Reconnection with the spiritual source requires sacrifice, learning, and personal commitment.

4) That there is, by definition, a spiritual source to reconnect with in the first place – a matter of personal belief and/or self-referred revelation generally following some kind of personal epiphany.

 A note for the atheists who are of a scientific persuasion ….

If you, as an atheist, are willing to accept the concept of an infinite universe – in mathematical and scientific terms – then, by definition, there are an infinite number of possibilities for the mechanisms of nature (or not) which define ‘reality’.

So, therefore, there is high possibility of a universe existing in which a God exists – as well as a universe in which the laws of nature we know or think we ‘understand’ do not apply.

A note for the Christians and others who seem to engage in circular arguments…

Counter argument to the Christ myth (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here are some interesting thoughts …

Some of the best evidence for the afterlife is:

• People on their death beds see spirits who come to help them make the transition. These experiences have been confirmed in various ways and shown to be objective phenomena and not hallucinations. Sometimes other people attending the dying also see the same spirits at the same time. In one case a spirit communicating through a medium told of how she assisted a dying man. A relative of the man was sought out and the information the man related to the relative confirmed what came through the medium. (see below: Death Bed Visions)OK So how can we prove that these experiences are not hallucinations, the result of expectation, confabulation, retro-fitting reports to expectations or confirmation bias?To be presented as evidence the burden of proof lies with the claimant.
• Near the time of their death the spirits of the dead have appeared to friends or relatives at distant locations where more than one person present at the location sees the spirit. (see below: Crisis Apparitions)So how do we confirm this? These are non-falsifiable surely and, of course, such accounts as anecdotes are subject to some of the same concerns mentioned above.
• Mediums sometimes receive communications from spirits who are unrelated to and unknown by the sitters and the medium. These spirits come through to communicate for purposes important only to themselves. They give verifiable information about their identity and cause of death. (see below: Drop-in Communicators)The Medium particularly and some of those attending already have  a belief system which is based upon the reality of spirits and spirit communication. If the information is given cannot be verified at the time, i.e. no one in the session knows the person coming through, how can we rule out expectation and cherry picking when it comes to researching only information that fits that which is revealed? The specificity of the information needs to be questioned.
• Mediums can receive communications from spirits even when the person getting the reading is not present in the room with the medium. In these cases, the medium may not know who the sitter is and cannot get any type of feedback from the sitter yet the medium can bring through specialized knowledge known by the spirit. (see below: Proxy Sittings)The same questions as posed above need to be asked. In experiments I have conducted the mediums were unable to identify in  a reading someone who had ‘passed’ from six photos (hence five of whom were alive)
• When people are unconscious and near death, they sometimes experience leaving their body and when revived, bring back information that they could not have obtained with their normal senses even if they had been conscious and that information is later verified as correct. “Scientific” explanations cannot explain this and other aspects of the phenomena. (see below: Near Death Experiences)This again is subject to questions about the nature of the information – its specificity. The scientific explanation of NDE’s relies upon some well established neuro-science.
• Children have been studied who remember past lives. They can speak languages they have never heard. They remember geography, faces, and names of people in locations they have never been to. They have birthmarks on their body where they had sustained injuries in the previous life. An investigator interviews everyone involved, the children, the current families, surviving members of the families from the previous life and everything checks out. (see below: Reincarnation)This is interesting and there could be many explanations, which include cultural expectation (hence unconscious coaching) and confirmation bias. Some examples of rigorous investigation of cases has shown a bias in the nature of the questions asked by the original researchers – leading questions asked of children and relatives to get the answers required.
• Spirits have communicated parts of messages through different mediums. When combined, these partial messages produce a complete message. The messages contained very specialized knowledge known to the spirit and were communicated spontaneously, not at the request of any living person. These messages show that the spirit lives on after the death of the body, retains knowledge from its earth life, and continues to have the ability to initiate, organize, and carry out complex activities. (see below: Cross Correspondences)An interesting observation but it does not rule out mind-to-mind communication between the mediums. The specific nature of the knowledge, the information and its clearly defined ‘spontaneous’ origin beg some questions.
• Experiments attended by scientists and a stage magician have been conducted under controlled conditions where voices of spirits were heard, objects were materialized, and images imprinted on photographic film. (see below: The Scole Experiments)As noted by other commentators on the Scole Experiments were not controlled effectively..Brian Dunning notes” ….the investigators imposed little or no controls or restrictions upon the mediums, and at the same time, agreed to all of the restrictions imposed by the mediums. The mediums were in control of the seances, not the investigators. What the Scole Report authors describe as a scientific investigation of the phenomena, was in fact (by any reasonable interpretation of the scientific method) hampered by a set of rules which explicitly prevented any scientific investigation of the phenomena.”After reading about some of the controls imposed I feel that any competent magician could’ve reproduced some of  the physical phenomena.
  

  Often Quoted Individual Cases

• The spirit of a grand master chess player plays through a medium at the grand master level in a style characteristic of the time of his life on earth.
  Source: The Survival Files by Miles Edward Allen
  http://www.aeces.info/Top40/Cases_8-25/case24_soulmate.pdf
• Is the validation of a style possible since we know moves of Masters are studied in detail by students of chess?
• Could the medium play chess and was he or she any good?
• There is a magicians ‘trick’ in which a magician with no (or little knowledge) of chess can play 10 Grand Masters simultaneously and win/draw most of them
• The challenge of confirmation bias 
• A scholar of Asian languages speaks in Chinese with a spirit who successfully explains an ancient Chinese poem that modern scholars did not understand.
  Source: Psychic Adventures In New York by Neville Whymant
  http://www.freewebs.com/psilib/PsychicAdventuresWhymant.txt
• So if scholars could not interpret who was available to falsify the claim?
• Spirits of crew members of a crashed dirigible, R-101, “provided technical details about its design and construction, recollections of test flights, discussions of political pressures and unrealistic deadlines that plagued the project, and a description of the crash itself and its causes” and “the personalities of the dead airmen also came through in recognizable detail”.
  Source: “R-101″ by Michael Prescott
  † http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/R-101.htm 
• Interesting and I would like to see the details of the evidence, the availability of the technical information and how specific it was.
  Also see:
  The Survival Files by Miles Edward Allen
  http://www.aeces.info/Top40/Cases_8-25/case14_R101.pdf
• Relatives of a deceased child receive convincing evidence of identity from the spirit of the child.
  Source: “An Amazing Experiment” by Charles Drayton Thomas
• Specificity of information and the ratio of ‘hits’ to ‘misses’ would be an interesting question here.
• What were the pre-existing beliefs of the parents?
• “Police in Nelson, B.C., have found the body of a young woman who disappeared last March, and they credit a local psychic for pointing them in the right direction.”
  Source: CBC News Thursday, January 27, 2005
• What does ‘pointing in the right direction mean’?
• The use of newspaper stories does not, in my opinion, constitute reliable, unbiased evidence.
• The Sylvia Browne experience?
  http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/01/27/psychic-body050127.html#

Evidence for the Afterlife : Source

Brian Dunning : Source

Music on Tonights Show:

Courtesy of Aardvark Records

Triptych – The Truths

Sound You – The Truths

Speed of Life – The Truths

Courtesy of Al  Jones Music

NEWS

UK

4th April:  Animal rescue officer Karen Hogg arrived at the rented home of a Kingswells, (near Aberdeen) resident to deal with a report of a large snake in her home.

The frightened lady called the Scottish SPCA after spotting the 5ft long snake-like thing lurking in her loft and Hogg arrived with gloves and a pillowcase to capture the potentially dangerous critter, only to discover it wasn’t all that dangerous.

It turned out to be a draft excluder!

The excluder is snake-skin patterned and is complete with a red felt tongue so it is easy to see how it was confused with the real thing.

Hogg commented that “We’ve rescued hundreds of snakes from properties in all sorts of unusual circumstances, so we had no reason to believe this might not be the real thing.  This call-out really made us smile and given that we deal with cruelty and neglect day in day out, it was refreshing to go to a job where the ‘animal’ was completely unharmed!”  The draft excluder has been named Sid and is now residing at the Scottish SPCA’s Aberdeen Animal Rescue and Rehoming Centre.

 International

April 1st:  Mattel spokesman Alan Hilowitz today announced the production of a ‘Bald is beautiful’ Barbie doll following the success of the Facebook campaign started in January by two mothers whose daughters lost their hair due to cancer treatment.

The idea is hoped to reduce the stigma for children undergoing treatment for cancer or suffering from alopecia and trichotillomania, the doll coming with removable wigs, hats and other accessories.

Campaign co-founder Jane Bingham says that “We thought it would be popular with plenty of people, but we did not expect it to balloon the way it did across the world and throughout the media,” her partner in forming the campaign, Rebecca Sypin, added that “We are not demanding; we are not asking people to boycott, that wasn’t our goal at all.

We’re just trying to raise awareness.”  Mattel have decided that rather than sell the dolls directly into the mainstream market, they will be donated to hospitals and the US National Alopecia Areata Foundation, where they feel children will benefit most.

April 4th:  A video shot in Monument Valley, on the Utah/Arizona border is making the rounds on youtube as it features a fleeting glimpse of a potential UFO.  The individual behind the camera does not appear to be aware of the unusual object caught speeding through the shot so it may be that they didn’t see it until they reviewed the footage.

It features a cylindrical something passing swiftly across the sky in a smooth motion, and suggestions from comments on the story and on the youtube footage include a simple misidentification of a reflection to a missile of some nature.

UFO Sighting – Monument Valley, USA – 04/03/2012

Another UFO circulating youtube features a fighter jet pilot craning his neck to get a look at something zooming over his shoulder.  While many comments believe that the footage is simply another plane behind the one being filmed from, it is interesting to note the pilots’ reaction.

The object behind him is not very distinguishable and could easily be another plane but the original source of the video is unknown thusly it is difficult to determine whether what has been posted is a UFO sighting or a run-of-the-mill piece of footage of planes in operation.

Additionally, a similar piece of footage is featured in an IMAX cinema release called Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag, a film featuring pilots training before they are sent into actual combat.

April 8th : Police arrest 6ft Easter Bunny after couple mistake statue for a ‘stalker’

Police officers in Germany called to investigate an intimidating stalker standing outside a couple’s home received a pleasant surprise when the intruder turned out to be a 6ft statue of the Easter Bunny.

The worried couple in Duisburg, Germany called police on Easter Sunday after being left frightened by an intimidating prowler with a ‘striking face’.

While the egg-sharing Easter Bunny is usually welcomed all over the world on the holy feast day, clearly this couple had different feelings entirely.

The residents told officers they felt in danger after spotting the tall shadowy figure peering through their window.

A police spokesman confirmed: ‘The couple said they felt harassed by a “stalker” standing directly in front of their window.’

Attending officers even had a detailed description of the suspect as they made their way to the property.

The official call log read: ‘About 1.80 metres tall, yellow shirt, blue check trousers, green rucksack and a “striking” face.’

Officers were quick to arrest the buck-toothed bunny, with one officer adding: ‘We took him into custody but he hasn’t said much yet. It was a pretty good joke and we’re waiting for his owners to come and get him.’

Officials believe the bunny was place outside the couple’s home as a practical joke.

‘UFO’ filmed over Seoul by plane passengers

A video, apparently filmed by a passenger flying over the South Korean city on Saturday, shows a spherical object moving at a similar pace to the plane.

When the passenger zooms in to get a better look, the object appears to instantly rise in altitude, shooting out of shot.

The video has, unsurprisingly, been met with scepticism by users on YouTube, where it was uploaded.

‘When stabilised, it is easy to see what is going on with the video,’ YouTube user Pseud0Name wrote.

‘The edges of the UFO are not blurred like all of the other background objects, it seems like a separate effect from the background, and in fact you can see edge noise on the shape of the UFO indicating it’s a fake.

‘It doesn’t even look right if you start to look at it hard, especially slowed down frame by frame.’

And so to the main topic of tonight’s show Earth Energy Lines and Geomancy 

“We live on the Earth and without the activity of nature and natural processes we would not survive.”

No matter what your perspective, rationalist, mystic, scientist, pragmatist or idealist this statement is true.

The natural cycles, which include the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle, the rock cycle are key to our evolution and survival.

There was a time when we were victims of the forces of nature; in recent years we have come to accept the false security that we can somehow predict, and if not exactly control, we can ameliorate the forces of nature.

In all ways, when faced with the awesome power of nature and the cosmos, our petty efforts and attempts to control or contain it smack far less of egotism and much more of folly.

I was moved to comment once that there is an arrogance in some of the Green Movements rhetoric which calls us to ‘save the planet’ for such power is not within our grasp. True our very existence has tipped the ecological balance and we are in danger of hastening our own demise –  but frequently when we talk of ‘saving the Earth’ we are in actuality talking about preserving the planet for life as we know it. No matter what we do to the Earth, many of its processes will continue as they always have – with or without us.

The notion that we are saving the planet for human-kind could be considered a kind of self-centered and self-absorbed act.

However, that is another issue.

The simple fact is that we are dependent upon this blue-green planet and therefore it is no wonder that we have tried to understand that relationship in both rational and mystical ways.

The rationalist will tell you of the web of life; the interdependence of everything contained within the ecosystem – its fragility and its strength; its flexibility and its rigidity. As Don McLean so elegantly wrote:-

“Every thread of creation, is held in suspension, by still other strands of things living….”

The mystic has sought to be one with the ebb of flow of earth tides; the seasons – the passing of time.

It is perhaps true to say that all indigenous cultures have had, and some still maintain, a personal relationship with the land and the seasons.

It could also be argued that we, as industrialized peoples, have lost touch with what we can understand as a ‘sense of place’.

The First Nation peoples will talk of  ‘Earth Medicine’ which for the most part speaks of this relationship each person has with the land.

Several  years ago I was in the Canadian Rockies and was lucky enough to spend some time with a Shoshone ‘Medicine Man’,  and he reminded me of how important it is for us to feel ‘connected’ to each other and to the ‘land we call our home’.

The Shamanic  Medicine Bag or Bundle contains not only items of ‘personal power’ but items related to the land from which the Shaman draws his or her power.

The meaning of the term medicine to an American Indian is quite different from that which is ordinarily held by modern societies.  To most American Indians, medicine signifies an array of ideas and concepts rather than remedies and treatment alone.  There is no separation between religion and medicine in tribal culture and healing ceremonies are an integral part of the community experience.  To the American Indian, the natural or correct state of all things, including man, is harmony.  Far from being dominant over nature, man is seen as interdependent with other living beings and physical forces.  All thinking is grounded in relationships.  More emphasis is given to the connectedness of one thing to another than to the individual thing itself.  To maintain a correct or natural relationship is to be in harmony.  The universe is a complex matrix of interdependence.  There is a proper set of relationships for each being, a proper existing in harmony with the universe.

But I digress…

The link between peoples and land is something which was prized by early peoples and perhaps, misunderstood by later folks misinterpreting ‘link with territory’ as the desire to ‘own territories’. Whatever every culture has identified places in the landscape as being ‘special’ or ‘sacred’.

Before temples, churches, mosques and synagogues people found places in nature to celebrate and engage in practices we now call spiritual, mystical or religious. These places became known as places of power, and indeed in Western tradition we see such places used successive religions. In Christian tradition the sanctification of pagan sites , as well as pre-existing pagan practices, is easy to identify.

But, and here is the question, just what makes a particular ‘place’ or ‘space on the landscape’ special?

Is it simply because that portion of land has long been identified as being used for ritual or gatherings and hence there is a ‘race memory’ or ‘cultural link’ which resonates in our unconscious or is it something more?

I personally find some of the ideas about Earth Energy and the associated ideas of Earth Chakra Centres a little hard to digest – that of course is the rationalist speaking.

Scientifically the word ‘energy’ has a very specific meaning and it’s existence is something that can be ‘objectively measured’.

So what Earth Energies can we measure…

Well obviously the vast energies involved in the movement of the continental plates with the resulting earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis.  Here the energy comes from the radioactive decay of material deep within the earth, heat and convection currents and earth movements.

There’s also the Earth’s magnetic field which is important to our survival since it protects us from cosmic radiation. We know that this magnetic field can ‘flip’ from time to time and does so regularly (in geological terms).

We are being propelled through space and the earth itself is spinning. The energy which allows this to happen is related to gravitational mechanics as well as the standard rules of motion (mass, inertia and interaction) so beloved of Newtonian physicists.

 The Schumann Resonance

This global electromagnetic resonance phenomenon is named after physicist Winfried Otto Schumann who predicted it mathematically in 1952. Schumann resonances occur because the space between the surface of the Earth and the conductive ionosphere acts as a closed waveguide. The limited dimensions of the Earth cause this waveguide to act as a resonant cavity for electromagnetic waves in the ELF band.

The cavity is naturally excited by electric currents in lightning. Schumann resonances are the principal background in the electromagnetic spectrum  beginning at 3  Hz and extend to 60 Hz,and appear as distinct peaks at extremely low frequencies (ELF) around 7.83hz.

Geopathic Stress

I’m really not sure about this, in the same way I’m not overly sure about electro-sensitivity as a major physiological condition.

Again I am always willing to re-consider any opinion in the light of evidence, but at the moment I suspect that what many are claiming as being the effects of living in certain areas, are more to do with false correlation. A quick search on Pub Med reveals four articles relating to Geopathic stress all of which have been written by what appear to be complementary practitioners.

Now I am willing to accept that non-specific illnesses are very real and the people suffering from them are in pain. I also sense that when given a cause for their ills many well fell that there is at least some hope,

The simple fact is that Doctors find it difficult to identify the cause of many temporary or non-specific illnesses.

The point I guess is that some folks speak of Earth Energies, possibly being out-of-whack or influenced by the power-lines or radio masts in the area.

Perhaps, rationally speaking, the jury is still out on EMF radiation related to cell phones and phone masts, I mean the current research is suggesting that there is no effect, however on a purely subjective level I can see how a ‘belief’ in the ‘dangers posed’ by such things causes real illness. I’m careful about using the tern psychosomatic, but that’s what I am suggesting. (For the record psychosomatic illnesses are real illnesses – the term psychogenic is perhaps less loaded).

What I find interesting is that the bulk of our ‘knowledge’ of Earth Energy lines come from the subjective reports of sensitives and dowsers.

Now, before we go any further, I think and believe that as individuals we can and do have strong emotional reactions to places and to buildings. Such reactions may be because on some level we are tuning-in to subtle energy fields which are beyond sciences ability to measure or define.

They may also be because these places trigger emotions, memories and feelings at a deeply unconscious level and it is to do with what we bring to the place and what the place allows us to access. A group or tribal connection to a specific place creates emotional and psychological resonances which are real, powerful and meaningful,

As I have said before, the Rational Mystic in me is happy to acknowledge the power of the subjective without the necessary appeal to science or pseudoscience.

Ley Lines

Ley lines are alleged alignments of a number of places of geographical and historical interest, such as ancient monuments and megaliths, natural ridge-tops and water-fords. Their existence was suggested in 1921 by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins in his books Early British Trackways and The Old Straight Track.

Watkins later developed theories that these alignments were created for ease of overland trekking by line of sight navigation during Neolithic times and had persisted in the landscape over millennia.

All of this makes good sense to me.

Along these line of sight track ways stop-over points, markets, religious sites would have been developed.

The issue here, of course, is that since Watkins’ original ideas the concept of Ley Lines has developed into the notion of ‘earth energy lines’ which is an entirely different proposition.

Alfred Watkins, businessman, amateur archaeologist and antiquarian, noticed the seeming correlation between British landmarks when walking in Blackwardine, near Leominster (He allegedly called this a ‘flood of ancestral memory’)and coined the ley-lines term, going on to create a basic set of guidelines for spotting and understanding them as he saw them.

In 1922, Watkins published a book about Leys, ‘Early British Trackways’ but his best known book is ‘The Old Straight Track’, first published in 1925.

He theorized that these lines were put in place during the Neolithic period of prehistory by surveyors of a sort as a possible trade route using a line-of-sight method and that the standing stones and other such sites punctuating the lines might’ve been sighting points.

He believes that these sighting points developed a sacred significance and that later many became Christianised, hence why there are many churches in places of significance.

His ideas slowly evolved into the idea of energy lines or lines of magnetism that could be related to UFO sightings, psychic or spiritual experience and even things such as alleged Poltergeist activity, mostly in the 60s, some time after he had passed away.

In 1936, one year after Watkins died; Dion Fortune wrote a fictional novel ‘The Goat-Foot God’, wherein the notion of ley lines as paths of energy was explored.

The notion of ley lines as something transcending Watkins’ original theories is perhaps better known nowadays, theories relating to ley lines usually based in New Age ideals and often mentioning the aforementioned art of dowsing.

Though of course there are still many who are interested in ley-lines as a historical and geographical study and a look into the machinations of older minds and their interpretation of the landscape.

Where ley lines are mentioned in spiritual terms, dowsing is sure to follow.

Usually involving the use of an L-rod or a pendulum, though some say that after a lot of experience in dowsing it can be detected via the body, known as deviceless dowsing, dowsing is described as ‘searching for anything by projecting an intent of what is desired and receiving confirmation or non-confirmation feedback through the body, usually by the movements of a dowsing instrument.’

In 1969, the British author John Michell, who had previously written on the subject of UFO’s, published The View Over Atlantis, in which he revived Watkins’ ley line theories and linked them with the Chinese concept of feng shui.

The book, published by Sago Press, proved popular and was reprinted in Great Britain by Garnstone Press in 1972 and Abacus in 1973, and in the United States by Ballantine Books in 1972.

Gary Lachman states that The View Over Atlantis ”put Glastonbury on the countercultural map.” Ronald Hutton describes it as “almost the founding document of the modern earth mysteries movement.

Song Lines

Songlines, also called Dreaming tracks by Indigenous Australians within the animist indigenous belief system, are paths across the land (or, sometimes the sky⁾ which mark the route followed by localised ‘creator-beings’ during the Dreaming. The paths of the songlines are recorded in traditional songs, stories, dance, and painting.

A knowledgeable person is able to navigate across the land by repeating the words of the song, which describe the location of landmarks, waterholes, and other natural phenomena. In some cases, the paths of the creator-beings are said to be evident from their marks, or petrosomatoglyphs, on the land, such as large depressions in the land which are said to be their footprints.

By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, Indigenous people could navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia’s interior. The continent of Australia contains an extensive system of songlines, some of which are of a few kilometres, whilst others traverse hundreds of kilometres through lands of many different Indigenous peoples — peoples who may speak markedly different languages and have different cultural traditions.

Since a songline can span the lands of several different language groups, different parts of the song are said to be in those different languages. Languages are not a barrier because the melodic contour of the song describes the nature of the land over which the song passes. The rhythm is what is crucial to understanding the song. Listening to the song of the land is the same as walking on this songline and observing the land.

In some cases, a songline has a particular direction, and walking the wrong way along a songline may be a sacrilegious act (e.g. climbing up Uluru where the correct direction is down). Traditional Aboriginal people regard all land as sacred, and the songs must be continually sung to keep the land “alive”.

Geomancy – some notes from Catherine

Geomancy translates as ‘divining the earth’, and has its origins in the word ‘geomantia’, a translation of the Arabic ‘khatt al-raml’, which means ‘sand writing’ or ‘science of the sand’.

It can be likened to the slightly better known Chinese art of feng-shui (Wind and Water) which is a form of geomancy.

Geomancy is a form of divination, whereby soil or sand or another such material is thrown onto the ground and the configurations they form are read by a seer familiar in the art.

Feng Shui is perhaps broader and more suited for the everyday, focusing on how to work with your surroundings to improve your life.

Geomancy is universally believed to have spread from Arabic texts (Discovered in Spain) to Europe and while some have suggested a Persian origin, some sources point out that the original names of the figures involved in Geomancy were given in Arabic.

A similar form of divination known as Sikidy also exists in Madagascar, Africa, suggesting further influence in these areas.

Geomancy as we understand it involves the influence of certain currents running through the earth and the ability to tap into or read those currents to obtain or connect to hidden knowledge. The art is used to determine the spiritual influences and ‘health’ in an area, drawing on the fact that the earth’s energy should be ‘harnessed and also balanced when necessary.’

It also includes the art of dowsing, whereby something is located ‘using sensory means other than the five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell.’

In one form of Geomancy we discover sixteen geomantic figures which are composed of four rows of either one or two points or dots written right to left.

Each line represents one of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water.

With one dot, the element is said to be active, therefore two dots means the element is inactive, or passive.

For example the symbol for Puer consists of one dot in the first line: an active fire element, one dot in the second element: an active air element, two dots in the third line: an inactive water element and a single dot on the fourth line: an active earth element.

Each combination of dots reveals different ‘manifestations of the figure’s energy.’

Additionally, each figure has a ruling element, whereby an active element within a figure correlates most significantly to the entire figure, with the exception of Populus as all the elements in this symbol are passive.

If the figure has only one active element then that is its ruling element.

The figures in full are as follows:  Carcer, Tristitia, Acquisitio, Laetitia, Puer, Rubeus, Fortuna Major, Fortuna Minor, Puella, Amissio, Conjunctio, Albus, Via, and Populus.

The figures also have correlation to signs of the zodiac as well as being specific to a gender and they are as follows:

Puer can be translated to ‘Boy’ and has a ruling element of Fire.  Its’ zodiac sign is Aries.

Amissio translates as ‘Loss’, has a ruling element of earth and a zodiac sign of Taurus.

Albus translates as ‘White’, has a ruling element of Air and a zodiac sign of Gemini.

Populus translates as ‘(The) People’, has a ruling element of Water and a zodiac sign of Cancer.

Fortuna Major  translates as ‘Greater fortune’, has a ruling element of Fire and a zodiac sign of Leo.

Conjunctio translates as ‘Assembly/ union’, has a ruling element of Earth and a zodiac sign of Virgo.

Puella translates as ‘Girl’, has a ruling element of Air and a zodiac sign of Libra.

Rubeus translates as ‘Red’, has a ruling element of water and a zodiac sign of Scorpio.

Acquisitio translates as ‘Gain’, has a ruling element of Fire and a zodiac sign of Sagittarius.

Carcer translates as ‘Prison’, has a ruling element of Earth and a zodiac sign of Capricorn.

Tristitia translates as ‘Sadness’, has a ruling element of Air and a zodiac sign of Aquarius.

Laetitia translates as ‘Joy’, has a ruling element of Water and a zodiac sign of Pisces.

Cauda Draconis translates as ‘Tail of the Dragon’, has a ruling element of Fire and has a zodiac of Cauda Draconis.

Caput Draconis translates as ‘Head of the Dragon’, has a ruling element of Earth and a zodiac sign of Caput Draconis.

Fortuna Minor translates as ‘Lesser fortune’, has a ruling element of Fire and a zodiac sign of Leo.

Via translates as ‘Way’, has a ruling element of Water and a zodiac sign of Cancer.

Each symbol also has a reflection, forming a pair with another symbol.  For example, Puer (Boy), when inverted, becomes Puella (Girl).

This excludes the figures that are vertically symmetrical.

To ‘cast your points’, the geomancer must draw  the sixteen lines of points while focusing on the question they require an answer to and making no effort to count the points they are making.

‘The sixteen lines of points are grouped in fours and the points are counted off two by two, from the right to the left, and connected in pairs, so that each line of points ends either with a pair or with a single point. These single or odd and paired or even points will be grouped to create the first four figures of the geomantic tableau.’

Subsequently, sets of figures have additionally roles.

The first four figures are known as the matres and are drawn horizontally from left to right.

The next four are the filiae and are created by adding the points of the matres sideways from right to left.

The next four figures are the neptes, created by adding together the points in pairs of two figures above.

Additionally, if there are an even number of points, two points are put down and if there is an odd number of points, one point is put down.  For example, the first neptes is created by adding the points of the first and second matres.

The last figures are created by the same method, resulting a final three figures.  The first two are testes, and the latter is the iudex.

A sixteenth figure called the ‘super judge’ can be drawn by adding the points of the first and fifteenth figures.

The figures also reside in ‘houses’, which govern over a specific area of life which can be listed as follows:

The Houses

1: Vita – Life.

2: Lucrum – Riches.

3: Fratres – Brothers.

4: Genitor – Father.

5: Nati – Sons.

6: Valetudo – Health.

7: Uxor – Wife.

8: Mors – Death.

9: Itineris – Journeys.

10: Regnum – Kings.

11: Benefacta – Good Fortune.

12: Carcer – Prison.

You can assign a question to one of these house, for example, a question about whether or not a relation who is unwell will recover would be assigned to the 6th house.

With this tableau and the knowledge of how to interpret the symbols, considering such things as whether the a figure is in a favourable house or whether the number of points in the tableau is odd or even, certain inferences can be drawn in relation to your question.

There are variations, but this is the most widely used method.

The main concepts behind geomancy involve a great deal of influence from the magnetic fields of the earth, so to speak.

Sometimes compared to the pattern put forward by those versed in the theories behind acupuncture, the surface of the earth is described as being similarly imbued with a matrix of energy which humans have long been tapping into, building roads, buildings and monuments in keeping with the design of these apparent lines of energy.

Geomancers believe that these lines are responsible for the health of the ‘natural kingdom’.

Thusly, it is also believed that discrepancies and interruptions of these lines has a detrimental effect to the area around them.

For completeness here are the various figures of the geomantic tableaux.

Listen to the Earth

Have a listen to the strange whistle of ultra-cold liquid helium-3 as it changes volume relative to the North Pole and Earth’s rotation. These sounds were processed by NASA and would not be audible to the human ear without such processing.

The Sound of The Earth : heliumsounds

Auroral radio emissions are associated with the northern lights or aurora. Studies, primarily using auroral imagers and low-frequency radio receivers constructed at The University of Iowa, have shown the aurora is caused by energetic electrons striking the atmosphere and that these same electrons generate intense radio emissions over a frequency range about 100 to 500 kHz.

Auroral Radio Emission :  earthaAURA

Whistlers are produced by lightning and travel along Earth’s magnetic field line from one hemisphere to the other, as shown in this illustration. In the ionized gas that exists in this region of space, the high frequencies travel faster than the low frequencies, thereby dispersing the wave from the lightning stroke into a whistling tone that decreases in frequency with increasing time, hence the term “whistler.”

Earth Whistles : ewhistMP3

Source: http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/sounds/

Music On Tonight’s Show

The music on tonight’s show has be provided by the artists and their record label : Aardvark Records

Raising Days :  Earth

The Truths : Sound of You

Related articles

• TRTZ no 52 20th March : Chupacabra, Earth Singing (spirit2mind.co.uk)
• TRTZ no 47 Earth Sounds and Quantum Physics (therealtwilightzone.com)
• Just For A Laugh: Check Out The A Few Creepy Easter Bunny Images (oldschool945.com)

Just a quick update.

The Real Twilight Zone will be back tonight, 9th April 2012,  after a short break…

As usual you can find us on www.penwithradio.co.uk  : www.therealtwilightzone.com and www.inceptionradionetwork.com between 8pm and 10pm (BST – that’s 7pm – 9pm GMT).

Tonights Topic : Geomancy

The first is a tentative exploration into the world of crypto-zoology and in particular a brief look at the Chupacabra, an closer to home the Owlman and Margawr. In the process we’ll introduce one of the most colourful characters in magic and ‘the unusual’ it has ever been my pleasure to meet.

The second part of the show, and by far the more detailed, is based upon an interview with my guest Danu Fox.

The following is from Danu’s website..

Danu sang and played the piano from an early age, growing up on the coast in Portishead, UK. It was the sea and the Celtic that pulled her to study at Aberystwyth for a degree in Music and German. After qualifying as a teacher Danu travelled to Australia and then worked for Oxford University Press as Music Education editor. There Danu began to sing in earnest and secured a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London on their Postgraduate Diploma in Jazz. Professional performance work followed, with a national tour with her band Hara, launching her first album First Time Ever, and music work in many different community and educational settings. While in London another passion was discovered, in the form of Indian music, namely North Indian Raag and four years of lessons were taken with the late Pandit Chandan Misra of the Misra and Sahai families. That was a deeply influential time shaping much of what was to come.

BUT FIRST

Weird News

UK

15th March:  Herne Bay Pier near Kent has been cut off from the mainland since 1979, and has since been subject to quite a few ghost stories.  It’s unsafe to be visited by the public and has a warning light to ward off marine traffic, therefore, seeing somebody wandering about out there is very unlikely, but today a video of the pier captured a mystery individual looking out across the sea.  The figure stands quite still for the most part, but some way through the video they appear to walk to and fro, before remaining still once more.  Could it be an apparition?  There is no sign of a boat moored to the pier, though it is possible a boat is moored on the other side of the pier where it cannot be seen.  Even if a boat is moored out of sight, it still raises the question – why is somebody on a pier unsafe for the public in the first place?  Some have suggested a maintenance worker, but if so, why only the one? Additionally, the figure doesn’t appear to be doing much maintaining.

If it is some nature of hoax, it’s well executed and you can see the footage …..

19th March:  A UFO report in Pitlochry, Scotland from 1990 is reputedly one of the most convincing accounts of its kind that exists, but sometime between 1991 and 1994 all evidence of the event disappeared apart from a line-drawing of the UFO involved.  Nick Pope interviewed for the position of Chief of the MOD’s UFO office in 1991 and noted the poster of a photograph on the wall.

This was one of six photographs taken by the pair of hikers who reportedly witnessed the diamond-shaped UFO in the sky over Pitlochry in August 1990, appearing to hover by a RAF Harrier jet also in the vicinity.  It was said to have hovered for nearly ten minutes before zooming away at high speed.

Pope said that the pair with the photos contacted a newspaper and that the newspaper went on to ask the MOD for more information, resulting in the MOD’s obtaining of the original photographs and the negatives as well.

Pope describes how people from other departments would swing by to take a look at the poster and how his superior officer was convinced that the object in the UFO photo was some nature of secret, prototype aircraft from America.  But the US authorities adamantly denied that any such craft was being tested over the UK at that time.

Pope says that “I would not put myself in the [UFO] believer camp, but if I was going to end up there, this case, in terms of evidence, would give me a big push in that direction.”  The disappearance of the evidence is certainly, at the very least, intriguing!

 International

11th March:  Farmer Franz Knoglinger of Neuhofen im Innkreis in Austria was searching for his missing cat when he came across an almost perfectly spherical hole that went so deep he could not see the bottom.  Upon dropping an object into the abyss he claimed to have heard a metallic clunk when it landed.  To confirm his suspicions, he tied a magnet to a piece of rope to see if it might stick to whatever was at the bottom of the hole, and indeed it did.

25 feet of rope was needed to lower the magnet into the tunnel, and a local plumber also attempted to capture footage of the inside of it by the same means.  The film attempt was unsuccessful however, as there was ‘…disturbance on the line – maybe some sort of electrical field’.

Knoglinger pointed out that ‘It also sounds as if there is a hollow space around about whatever the metal object is – it sounds as if there is a room underneath’.

Since the story was reported on the local news he has had a steady flow of curious visitors.  The theories have put forward include (From Archaeologists) suggestions that the hole could have been left by a wooden timber from an underground burial chamber that had rotted away, remnant of a bomb, and of course some have suggested a buried spacecraft.

One individual even appeared with a sandwich board and the words ‘Beware – The Doorway to Hell’.

Geologists from the local council are to visit the site on Monday to investigate further.  One commenter amusingly asked, ‘Does no one remember Quatermass! Be very careful!! ‘ And if you’re wondering about the cat, she was found sleeping in the airing cupboard and is quite safe and healthy!

12th March:  Leo Deis’ Regina observed and photographed a broomstick stand completely unsupported in his kitchen, a phenomena that has apparently been observed rather a few times recently and many theorise that it has something to do with the recent solar flares.  While solar flares are well known for interfering with satellites and causing trouble with a few other devices that work on a similar basis, George Lolos, a physics professor at the University of Regina, outlines the possibility of it being down to static electricity.

If somebody was sweeping a carpet and then touched the broom, static electricity would circulate between the bristles and make the broom stand straight up.  For that degree of static buildup to be related to a solar flare, Lolos says that it would have fried every satellite currently in orbit!  So what could be causing such a thing?

Theories are welcome!

Chupacabra

The legend of the Chupacabra or ‘Goatsucker’ is perhaps especially interesting considering how young the myth is.

The earliest traceable story of the Chupacabra seems to come from Puerto Rican town of Canóvanas from an eyewitness called Madelyne Tolentino in only March 1995.

Her story is intricately detailed, which might at first lend credibility to it though there are many other contributing factors that go on to damage it that will be explored later on.

She describes having been helping her mother who was about to move, when she saw a car pull up outside whose occupant looked alarmed.  She revealed more specifically in a later interview that, ‘His attitude led me to believe someone was going to hit him or mug him.’

It was after she came to get a better look at him that she states she became aware of the creature, walking on two legs.

The physical description she gave painted a picture of something with large protruding, dark grey eyes, that spread to its temples, with very long arms (arms which she said were drawn back in some nature of attack position) ending in three long fingers.  She also described short, well-combed hair, long skinny legs ending in feet that resembled the webbed, three-toed splay of a goose, two small otherwise featureless holes for a nose, a slash of a mouth (She points out that she did not see teeth), and feather-like protrusions lying flat on its lower back that were joined by a reddish brown membrane, all of which amounted to this 4 feet tall (walking on its two legs) creature.

She also believes it had been burnt by something, describing round marks of pinkish-purple skin in an ‘ashen’ region.

She even describes how it stood there long enough for her to drop to the floor and see if it had genitals, which it did not, being ‘plain and sealed’.  She outlines how she found this funny, laughing and wondering with her mother how it defecated.

The movements it made were described as robotic and slow, as if somebody were operating it by remote-control, but it wasn’t until she looked into its eyes that she felt any fear.

At this point she says that she screamed, prompting her mother to go running after the creature which incited it to run off, though Tolentino wonders whether it ran off because she screamed.

Its escape was apparently made in hopping motions rather than in a run.

Further description from Tolentino was not as an eye-witness but from what she was told.

She says that ‘there’s a boy that works for my husband who’s always willing to deal with animals and keeps a pair of gloves in his car. He put them on and went into the woods to catch the creature,’ and that his attempts were met with the unfurling of the spiny appendages on its back, which, for some reason prompted him to pry open its mouth to look at its teeth, which he said were very long and pointed.

After this he says that he lost the creature, but not before a child cycled past and threw bottles at it in alarm and Tolentino saw it again, this time seemingly floating rather than hopping.

Her husband, who had been out looking for parts, returned and listened to Tolentino’s story, exclaiming that he had seen the exact same creature that morning.

Benjamin Radford, science-based paranormal investigator, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer as well as several other media based titles, investigated this case further and concluded that her account cannot be trusted for one particularly notable reason:  she had seen the film ‘Species’ prior to her experience.

While having just seen the film recently is certainly not enough to warrant accusing her of letting her imagination run away with her, further details revealed by Radford undoubtedly damage her report.

She apparently believed that the events taking place in the film were actually happening in Puerto Rica at that time, and her description of the thing she saw closely resembles the creature ‘Sil’, a character from the film.  Even she remarked that ‘It was a creature that looked like the chupacabra, with spines on its back and all… The resemblance to the chupacabra was really impressive,’ to Radford.

Radford believes that this, thusly, undermines her story, making the earliest account of the fabled chupacabra an untrustworthy source.

Tolentino describes having seen the creature again several times, new details being added to her account including a powerful odour, a detail that has been carried to other eye-witness accounts of different sightings, as well as brightly lit eyes.

She said it smelled like Malathion poison and that ‘I was trying to swallow and I couldn’t feel my throat. I was driving along with my two year old and he started gagging in the van, wouldn’t stop coughing… It’s like taking a Chloraseptic tablet.’

The name ‘goatsucker’ came from accounts of the creature in question being linked to cattle mutilations, which were initially put down to satanic cult ritual.

The mutilations Tolentino knew of usually involved removal of the genitals of an animal, and ‘surgical’ incisions in the same area or around the throat.

Tolentino described a mysterious lack of blood as well, though this was not written about in subsequent autopsies.

She also added details of slime being left behind after an attack, though there seems to be no other sources that mention this.

Subsequent reports spread to Mexico, Central America, South America, Chile, and the Southern United States.

Puerto Rican authorities put the attacks down to wild animals, noting that there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about the animals’ corpses in the cases that’ve been observed, of which there have been hundreds.

They still investigate cases when they appear.

Interestingly, reports from the US differ greatly to the reports elsewhere.

US reports describe creatures similar to dogs with little or no hair and the attacks on livestock often result in death but not necessarily consumption which added to the idea that creatures were chupacabras, as normal dogs would eat the remains.

These reports are often debunked, as more often than not they are coyotes or dogs with sarcoptic or demodactic mange, making them appear hairless.

This condition would also make them weak and desperate for food, perhaps explaining the attacks on livestock.  Plus young animals or ones weakened in this way can mean they didn’t manage to kill their prey in the first place and that they instead died later from shock or blood loss, again possibly explaining why the corpses were not consumed.

Other theories about the Chupacabra include the following:

An alien theory; being that the chupacabra is a pet or a part of an alien species that was left behind on earth.  Indeed, the description sounds quite similar to the infamous zeta reticuli sightings.

The idea that the Chupacabras are humans from the future that are travelling through time to prevent some significant event that resulted in their evolution or mutation into their chupacabra form.

A conspiracy theory involving genetic experimentation by the government.  The chupacabra is thusly believed by some to be a mutated animal created by these experiments.

Cryptids such as this have existed in our collective consciousness for decades, local myth and legend examples alone include the owlman, Morgawr, and several ABC (Alien big cat) sightings.

Morgawr in particular has been whispered about since the 1870s, disappearing into obscurity for almost half a century before a couple of sightings in 1920s and several in the 1970s.

The creature’s reputed appearance is similar to that described in Scotland’s legend of Nessie and is said to lurk in the bay around Falmouth.

The stretch of coast between Rosemullion Head and Toll Point is now known as ‘Morgawr’s mile.’

In 1875 or 6 and also in 1925 or 6 fishermen were reputed to have captured the remnants of a long-necked something in that area, their account detailing a ‘20 feet long with an eight foot tail, scaly legs and a beak-like head’.

The reported sightings from the mid seventies are perhaps the most convincing given that one included two separate sightings of the same incident, and that one of the witnesses was visiting from London and knew nothing of the local legend.

1975 also saw the publication of a picture of the beast in the Falmouth packet, whose contributor (Mary F) described as being black or brown and having a head akin to a sea-lion.

Sightings rose in ’76, ranging from descriptions of a hump-backed serpent to a worm or eel-like creature passing boats and another photograph (From Parson’s beach) surfaced in this year as well.

The sightings dwindled from here on until the early nineties, when sightings began to appear again with regularity until 2002.

Theories range from the existence of a Plesiosaur to mistaken identity.  It is possible that it’s a species not native to the UK as unlikely visitors occasionally crop up, including one instance of a barracuda in 2002.

The Owlman legend has also firmly rooted itself into Cornish lore and was first reported in 1976, in this instance and instances since in the area around Mawnan.

Two girls, June and Vicky Melling reported seeing a large, feathered “bird man” hovering over the Mawnan Church on Morgawr’s Mile, upsetting them so much that the family cut short its holiday.

However, it should be noted that this incident was recounted by Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels; Magician, surrealist, mountebank, and most importantly – hoaxer.

Researcher Jonathan Downes acknowledges that Shiels could have hoaxed the Owlman, but also claims to have interviewed a young man who says he encountered the Owlman in 1989, not in relation to Shiels.

Both he and his girlfriend described a creature ‘about five feet tall… The legs had high ankles and the feet were large and black with two huge ‘toes’ on the visible side. The creature was gray with brown and the eyes definitely glowed.’

The story from the 70s is intriguing also because it happened (If it happened) around the same time as peculiar heat waves and cold snaps in Cornwall, along with reports of packs of dogs, cats and birds terrorising people as well as a rise in UFO reports in the Mawnan area.

It’s also the same year of aforementioned Morgawr sightings.

The Owlman is often linked to the US legend of the Mothman.

One, more straight forward theory, is that it is simply an owl, a very large owl, granted, but a species such as a Eurasian Eagle owl (Bubo bubo) which are enormous and will attack if they feel threatened.

Earth Songs

The interview with Danu Fox covers a wide range of issues – it’s decidedly ‘rational mystic’ in nature.

There are so many points of clear agreement between Danu and myself – especially on the subjective, personal and spiritual aspects of our conversation.

Where we, if we really ever, part ideological company is on the ‘certainty’ of some of the ‘meta-physical’ constructs suggested. Our conversation covers Ley Lines, thoughts about ‘Earth Energies’ and the way we, as a society have become disconnected with ‘the land’ and the importance of having a ‘sense of place’.

Danu speaks passionately and clearly about ‘earth energy lines’ and uses the analogy of ‘acupuncture’ in order to explain ‘earth energies’, ‘energy lines’ and hence the ability of dowsers to define change in a clear, visual way.

Of course whilst Rational mind and desire to play devils advocate questions the objectivity and scientific measure-ability of as yet to be defined ‘energy’, my Mystical self is more than happy to acknowledge the personal (subjective), emotional, psychological and transpersonal effects our connection with each other and the land can and does have.

Hopefully you will enjoy our conversation and allow your own scepticism about the metaphysical/psuedo-scientific ideas, should you have any, to be put aside so you can engage in the meaning behind the action rather than the semantics.

For the same part I hope those of less objective/scientific persuasion will find themselves considering the questions raised from rational perspective without reacting in a ‘closed minded’ ( and potentially ignorant) way which simply declares that ‘science doesn’t know it all!’

Danu’s message here, for me, transcends the boundaries we often create between science and mysticism. It speaks directly of a practical and emotional way to each other, the land that supports us and the earth which we share.

Music from tonights show:

With thanks to Aardvark Records, Penwith Cornwall

The Truths – Everyones Crying Inside  - Aardvark Records UK

The Truths – Miracle Drug – Aardvark Records

AND from Danu Fox

Yemaya – Danu Fox – Songbear Music

And from Alan

Sea Meditation – Alan Jones

Tonight’s featured topic will be on ritual magic : the rationale, the cultural considerations and relevance in the 21st Century.

Magic has been defined as ‘the art and science of bringing about change in accordance with will’.

This apparently simple statement is a bit of a philosophical and metaphysical minefield – but more of that later.

First Some News

March 1st: A man from Brantford, Toronto, was arrested after he pilfered an 8ft tall fiberglass chicken from outside a chicken farm.  He cut off its legs in the process of stealing it, leaving behind a rather odd looking set of stumps.  Police recovered the rest of the chicken from the suspects home and removed it on a flatbed truck which must have been quite a strange sight to anybody passing by.  Charges are pending.

March 5th:  Anthony Braglia has today published a two year investigation about two child witnesses to the infamous Roswell Crash.  They were reportedly the first to discover the debris of the whatever it was that crashed at Roswell in New Mexico in 1947, and since the event Vern Brazel and ‘Dee’ never publically revealed any information about what they witnessed and both of them, according to this report, seemed to have suffered for what they knew, additionally dying at a young age.

Vern sadly committed suicide in his twenties and Dee died of a heart attack at the age of 66.  The report attempts to discern what happened to the children after their experience and involves contributions from many family members of their behavior in general and in reference to the alleged crash.  To read the full report and draw your own conclusions, you can click here.

March 6th: A man from Coralville has been accused of stealing from the First Avenue Hy-Vee whilst intoxicated, in particular a jar of cheese that he spread all over the men’s restroom.  He was caught by security cameras stealing a jar of Tostitos Salsa Con Queso Medium Cheese, chips and beer, after which he slunk off to the men’s restroom to consume them.

The complaint to the police included the somewhat ridiculous sounding accusation of his ‘committing criminal mischief with the cheese’.  Investigation by the police found the accused with some of the beer he pinched still in his pocket!

He admitted to spreading the cheese on the walls of the bathroom because ‘he thought it would be funny,’ which to him, given his level of apparent intoxication, probably was.  Police have charged him with public intoxication, third-degree theft and criminal mischief.

The Men In Black 3 trailer was also released today

March 7th:  A dead creature washed up on the shore of San Diego is being called a chupacabra.  Josh Menard, a 19-year-old snowboarder from Lake Tahoe who found and snapped photos of it described the animal as had having ‘the body shape of a pig – kind of a fat stomach, middle area. And the canines were just ridiculously large’.

Earlier in the week Mexican farmers discovered 35 of their sheep slaughtered with claw and tooth marks around their necks and also blamed the chupacabra, one witness tending to the sheep overnight in the town of Paracuaro even went as far as to say that he saw fanged, winged creatures kill the livestock.

There were also pigs and horses in the same enclosure which were unscathed.  Comments regarding the photos of the San Diego creature point out that it is most likely to be a dog, the body of which has swelled with gas from the rotting of the corpse and the teeth appearing larger than normal as the skin is drawn back.

March 8th:  A local FOX TV affiliate cut to a live traffic report web cam and unwittingly captured something of a mystery in the background of the shot.  A bright flash of light is seen in the background of the traffic footage and despite being witnessed by anybody who happened to be watching the television at the time, nobody’s sure what it was neither have Phoenix officials been able to identify it.  It appears to be an explosion of some nature, which makes the flash so baffling as nobody reported an explosion and no damage or other evidence has been found.  FOX 10 is asking for the public to suggest the possible cause of the mysterious explosion of light.

UPDATE: The flash caught on KSAZ-TV Channel 10 traffic report has been put down to a damaged Arizona Public Service Co. power line which fell and caused a short power outage in the area according to APS, who were originally perplexed by the event as they weren’t aware of any power line issues or blown transformers that might’ve caused such a bright flash.

Russian photographer Andrey Pavlov has added to his macro-photographic series ‘Ant Tales’, a series of whimsical images carefully constructed to capture ants appearing to use props designed by Pavlov.

The photographs in the series are especially impressive because they feature careful choreographing so to speak, rather than arranged dead insects.  Pavlov studied ants and became aware that they follow a specific path when they’re working; therefore, he put his props in their trail and was rewarded with some incredible shots.

A video on YouTube is claiming that a photo of what appears to be a twister or similar on the surface of Mars is actually a Martian worm.  The worm-shaped object is so enormous; it casts its own gigantic shadow as it sails the surface of the planet.  The video magnifies the NASA still photo of an unidentified area of the red planet taken as a reconnaissance satellite orbited overhead.

We’re going to start our discussions of ritual magic with the assertion that… Magic Kills

Victoria Climbe died February 25, 2000.

The picture above portrays a happy little girl 8 years old, who was sent by her parents from the Ivory Coast to live with an aunt in the UK. The parents believed that she would have a ‘better life’ here. Nothing could have been further from the truth…

The BBC reported that when Victoria died of hypothermia in February 2000 she had 128 injuries.

The Home Office pathologist who examined her body, Doctor Nathaniel Cary, says it was the worst case of abuse he has seen in his career.

“This poor little girl had scars all over her body, on the head, on the trunk, front and back, and on all four limbs.

“And many of the scars suggest they’d been due to weapon-type injuries so you can see from the nature and the extent of injuries why this would be the worst case I’ve encountered.”

Victoria – called Anna by her killers – was forced to live in a freezing bath in her own excrement. Her hands and feet were bound and she was naked except for a bin liner.

Manning has admitted hitting her over the head with a bicycle chain. She was also regularly beaten with weapons including a belt buckle, hammer and wire.

Victoria’s blood was found in the hall, bedsitting room and bathroom of the cramped flat where the three lived in Tottenham in North London.

In his diary, Manning describes Victoria as Satan and says that no matter how hard he hit her she didn’t cry or show signs that she was hurt.

The Victoria Climbie murder revealed a catalogue of disastrous decisions made by the local authorities, the social service and the police. It led to criminal charges being brought against not only her guardians but also upon members of the local authority. It sparked a major review of child welfare procedures.

At the heart of this case was a little girl who was beaten to death by guardians whose stated motivation was to drive evil out of her.

You can read the various news items about Victoria Climbie here

Ten Years On …

Kirsty Bamu died December 2010

Kristy Bamu, 15, was killed by his sister Magalie Bamu, 29, and her partner, Eric Bikubi, 28.

He died in a bath at their tower block flat in Newham, east London, on Christmas Day 2010 after days of being abused.

He had come to London from Paris with his two brothers and two sisters to spend the festive season with Magalie Bamu.

Things turned sour when the couple, who were said to be obsessed with kindoki, the word for witchcraft in their native Democratic Republic of Congo, accused him of putting spells on a younger child. At their trial at the beginning of March

Football coach Eric Bikubi and Magaile Bamu were found guilty of murder.

Bikubi was ordered to serve at least 30 years and Bamu a minimum of 25 years.

Judge David Paget told the couple the case was particularly serious and involved sadistic behaviour.

“It was prolonged torture involving mental and physical suffering being inflicted before death,” he said.

He told Bikubi that he accepted that brain damage may have made him more inclined to believe Kristy was a witch and a threat to the younger child.

But Judge Paget added: “The belief in witchcraft, however genuine, cannot excuse an assault to another person, let alone the killing of another human being.”

He told Bamu he did not accept her denial of belief in witchcraft, nor that she was forced to attack Kristy by Bikubi.

“It is only explicable if you shared Eric Bikubi’s belief. It provides some explanation for what happened, but it does not excuse it,” he told her.

More information about Kirtsy Babu can be found here

Why have I started this topic in such a negative and distressing way?

Simply because there two cases alone remind us that magical rituals are part of life in the 21st Century. These particularly distressing and extreme examples of ritual also, unfortunately, shape public perception about the ‘occult’ and ‘magic’.

It is interesting to note that both of these cases involve the murder of an individual thought to be ‘a witch’ or a ‘servant of satan’. Both cases thus could be said to involve violence being metered out by “Christian” identifying ‘believers‘

Religious extremism and bigotry exists and continually disturbs as to the violence resulting from it. Neither Muslim, Jew or Christian (whose beliefs are described as belonging to the Abrahamic Tradition) can claim that their history does not contain examples of persecution and murder of ‘non-believers’.

Neither is the New Age or Alternative movement without it’s violent or death inducing practices. The website, www.whatstheharm.net, catalogues 368,379 people deaths , 306,096 injuries  and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages which are the direct result of spiritual practices, New Age beliefs or Alternative Therapy Treatments.

In all of these cases what motivates the killer is not necessarily their belief, but in my opinion, their ignorance…

It doesn’t take too much effort to come across presentations like these on the Internet..

AND this particularly disturbing one …

What we are seeing and hearing here is exactly the opposite of ‘freedom of belief’ and the right to explore ones own spiritual path. Each of these Christian sermons are using fear, prejudice and more than a smattering of ignorance to rally believers to a particular way of thinking and being.

I guess there are numerous ‘Born Agains’ who celebrate and focus on the literal interpretation of the Bible…

Hence…

Exodus : 34:14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God

Leviticus : 21:16-23 Handicapped people cannot approach the altar of God. They would “profane” it.

To be more specific :

Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. (21:16-23)
God can’t stand the sight of handicapped people.
The blind, the lame, dwarfs, people with funny noses or blemishes, with damaged testicles, or broken hands or feet, crooked backs, or who have scurvy or scabs, or who have anything superfluous must not approach the altar of God.
What the Bible says about blind and handicapped people.
21:18 For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous,
21:19 Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded,
21:20 Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken;
21:21 No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.
21:22 He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy, and of the holy.
21:23 Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I the LORD do sanctify them.

Leviticus : 24 : 16 Anyone who blasphemes or curses shall be stoned to death by the entire community

Of course the New Testament is also of reasons to punish others, including the Jews, for either their ‘willful ways’ or ignorance of ‘the truth’ as delivered by their saviour.

Removing the emotion from the issue and looking coldly and carefully at any ‘text’ thinking folks will easily see that interpretation of what has been written is where the problems lie; especially if that interpretation is taken out of context.

Hence the verse from 2 Corinthians 10 which says:

10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Could be read as a call for Christians NOT to imagine anything outside of the ‘knowledge of God’ and total ‘obedience’ to Christ.

And then we read…

10:6 And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.

Surely a call to be ready to smite those who disobey…

But how can we interpret …

10:7 Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ’s, let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ’s, even so are we Christ’s.

Which seems to me to invoke a degree of thought and dare I say imagination.

Surely the argument that ‘the scripture’ needs to be understood and then taught by those who call themselves apostles and prophets actually calls into question the clarity of Gods word.

We could suggest that the wrongful nature of the human imagination is replaced by blind obedience to those who have had the imagination to translate ‘the word’ and indoctrinate their followers with one specific interpretation. If this were not the case how can we explain the schisms, disagreements and fragmentation of Christianity.

Now don’t get me wrong here… I’m not trying to demonise Christianity, but to call into question the behaviours of some who preach it. If I had been brought up in a predominantly Muslim or Jewish culture I may well have been raising the same questions about the Koran or the Torah.

ALSO I respect without hesitation those whose adherence to any particular text or doctrine which preaches peace and forgiveness at its core and do not fall into the fundamentalist trap of believing that they alone are the holders of ‘the truth’ (which I can accept but not agree with) and that they have the right therefore to shun, destroy or even “aggressively convert” others (something I find personally abhorrent)

As Corinthians 2 says..

13 : 11 “Live in peace.”

 Ritual Magic

Coming back to the topic at hand…

MAGIC is, as said elsewhere, the art and science of causing change in accordance with will.

In it’s broadest sense then any change that we make in our lives that we bring about by will or actions (behaviours) is a magical act. Of course this will disappoint most people who really want to hear about wand waving, sword wielding, candle burning and naked chanting… or chanting whilst naked..

Undertaking symbolic and/or practical acts to bring success to any venture has a long history. The cave paintings of our ancestors probably served symbolic and ritual purpose, and of course spells are cast by some of the Biblical ‘heroes’.

Genesis – Jacob is ‘tricked’ into bedding and conceiving children with sistes…

30:16 And Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me; for surely I have hired thee with my son’s mandrakes. And he lay with her that night.

“Surely I have hired thee with my son’s mandrakes’…

Well as any herbalist (or witch) knows mandrake has both hallucinogenic properties and is (was) used in love potions.

As Wikipedia tells us..

“Mandrake contains deliriant hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids such as atropine, scopolamine, apoatropine, hyoscyamine and the roots sometimes contain bifurcations causing them to resemble human figures, their roots have long been used in magic rituals, today also in neopaganreligions such as Wicca and Germanic revivalism religions such as Odinism.”

But more interestingly, perhaps, the two key references to mandrake in the bible use a hebraic word which translates as ‘love plant’.

So good old Leah was practicing ritual magic.

In fact the Bible is full of  references to magical practices. Some very obvious such as ‘sacrifice’ (including that of Jesus) to less obvious examples such as ‘prayer’.

A wish is a prayer which is a ‘spell’ by another name…

A verbalisation of an intent made to some deity or some source of power.

Of course when we think about Ritual Magic we are frequently drawn to the ideas and images created by the horror and sword and sorcery movies. Robed or naked figures calling out arcane verses read from a spell book or ancient grimoire.

Actually this image is easily adapted to any Church or Religious Congregation in the world.

What makes OCCULTISTS different from the everyday Church is, I would argue, is the metaphysical and mythical framework in which the ritual takes place.

Christians, Muslims and Jews (and no doubt other ‘conventional religions’) have a monotheistic basis. A single deity to which prayers are ultimately directed. Of course some ‘flavours’ of  Christianity will have a ‘host of minions’ to which specific  requests could be made. Catholicism has its Saints and Angels as well as Mother Mary, Jesus and The Trinity.

The reinvented neo-pagan tradition has a creative power behind the Universe which is knowable to us, as human beings, in the forms of a God and Goddess. (see the TRTZ episode on Wicca).

Many of these Earth Based religions, including Druidry, are concerned with the connections between people, spirit and land. Rituals tend to focus on seasonal festivities; healing; fertility and material survival.

In a non-derogatory way this can be considered as Low Magic in that it’s focus has an Earthly, practical and physical motivation. Ok there is the idea of ‘spirit’ in terms of the animistic ideals of ‘spirits of land, plants and animals’ and of ‘ancestors’.

During the Renaissance there was an explosion of interest in mystical traditions. The Natural Philosophers (who were later to become the scientists) were working to bring together spirituality with the growing knowledge that scientific discoveries were bringing. As part of their search the ‘enlightened ones’ (which may or may not have been members of the Illuninati) sought inspiration from older mystical writings. Some Jewish in origin (Qabbala), some older Sumerian and Babylonian – most reinvented and re-written specifically for the growing magical intelligencia.

The overall aim of these magicians was to gain insights into the nature of the Universe and reach some kind of understanding with God. There was, as always, a secondary goal for some of personal development (see TRTZ on Alchemy) and power.

Magical organisations like the Rosicrucians, Freemasons and later the Golden Dawn (O.T.O) and Crowley’s A:A draw heavily upon Judaeo Christian mysticism. All have a ‘hierarchy of initiation’ which may well be earned by learning or as frequently did happen through paying the right person…

In these orders the rituals were always ‘theatrical’. Have a look at this Golden Dawn ritual and see how many symbols you recognise as being part of Freemasonry and even Catholicisn.

The real issue for me is that so many magical groups and organisations become so involved with the ‘outer workings’ or the theatricality that they actually forget what the symbolism is all about. For example I was giving a talk to a ‘spiritual development group’ recently on the Qabbala and related ‘magical ideas’. At the end of the session a gentleman approached me and identified himself as a Mason (I am not a Freemason by the way). He said that he was surprised by the ‘quality’ and ‘insight’ of my talk and that he had not realised the origin of so many of the symbols that exist within his own ‘temple’.

In these organisations the ‘magical’ purpose of the initiate was generally to become closer to God or to access the God within. This may well result in ‘earthly power’, but as a by-product of what their studies and experiments rather than as an end in and of itself.

Catherine has been researching a couple of ‘magical traditions’ for your information and interest…

I asked her to look at Odinism, a modern interpretation of Norse mythology and Discordianism – which has a decidedly unusual take on all things magical… in fact one wonders if there’s more than an element of taking the p**s.

The Odinic Rite

The Odinic Rite are a Polytheistic Religious organisation founded in England in 1973.
The organisation was initially called the Committee for the Restoration of the Odinic Rite or the Odinist Committee.
In 1979 they disbanded and reformed as The Odinic Rite.
They have their roots in Germanic paganism and Norse mythology, though they apparently reject the label of ‘Viking religion’.

They describe themselves as a ‘life-affirming’ religion.

The term ‘Odinism’ comes from the name of the chief God of Norse mythology, Odin.
The Odinic Rite website describes them as being concerned with ‘…the ethics of social behavior, our relationships with one another and nature, with the whole of life,’ as well as pointing out their ideals of ‘Faith, folk and family’.

They also value the number 3 as a holy number, similar to many other sects, and use the Triskel as their symbol of choice.

They feel that the number 3 can represent a family unit (Mother, father, child) and it fits with their ‘Faith, folk and family’ motto. The triskel symbol itself is on a red background, meant to represent 3 drops of blood that tie again, into the faith, folk and family motto as they are bound by blood. The symbol as it is used now first appeared on the back page of an Odinic Rite briefing, specifically number 112, October 1991.

The Miollnir, or Thor’s hammer, is also used as a symbol of Odinism.
Their moral code is known as the Nine Noble Virtues and is as follows:

“Courage is my strength, To withstand wretched foes, To sail against the storm, And the will to insist, Honour is my will, To defend my dear folk, My moral in battle, And the drive to do Good.”

So: courage, truth, honor, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, self-reliance, industriousness and perseverance.

These virtues were “…codified from The Hávamál and The Sigrdrífomál (poems from the Elder Edda) in the early 70s.”

The mythology of Odinism is said to be held in five acts that’re often compared to the seasons and using the god Balder who is (again according to the Elder Edda) the son of Odin and Frigg, the God of summer and of all nature and one of the most famous of the mythology, doomed to an early death.

The five acts are Creation (Spring), the time preceding the death of Balder (Summer), the death of Balder (Summer’s end), the time immediately after the death of Balder (Autumn) and Ragnarok, the decline and fall followed by a renewal of the world (Winter, then spring).

Of the other gods included in the mythology Thor is also one of the more famous, though other examples include Brage, Heimdal (Watchman of the gods), Vidar (The silent god), Frigga (Queen of the cards), Vali (God of vengeance and rebirth), Frey (God of fertility), Freya (Goddess of love), Tyr (God of war), Idun (Goddess of youth) Njord (Stiller of storms) and Forsete.

Each of them represents ‘powers of nature’ and are collectively called ‘Aesir’, ruling over the world they created.

Modern day Odinists point out that they do not partake in the elaborate rituals or animal sacrifices that once were, understanding the symbolic nature of the rituals and observing their priniciples and applying them in other ways.

Discordianism is something of an enigma…

It worships the notion of chaos, personified by the Goddess Eris, or Discordia in Roman. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of the holy book Principia Discordia. It focuses on the belief that order and disorder are illusions and that neither is more accurate than the other.

There are suggestions that the whole thing was created as an antithesis to religions such as Scientology, or that it was made at the same time purely to see which could come up with the next popular new religion.
It’s many quoted mottos include ‘no two equals are the same’ and ‘There is no Erisian Movement but the Erisian Movement and it is the Erisian Movement.’
The website of the Discordian Society consists of a page with their logo and the words ‘there is no definition’.
The idea of a Discordian Society is therefore a paradox in itself. Discordian doctrine is known as Pentabarf and is as follows:
There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess. There is no Movement but The Erisian Movement and it is The Erisian Movement. And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.

A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System.
A Discordian is required to, the first Friday after his illumination, Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Roman Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns).
A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub.
A Discordian is Prohibited from Believing What he reads.
Joining apparently consists of doing what you like and telling them about it, or not, and keeping in mind that there are no rules anywhere.
The principles of Discordianism also outline the idea of everybody being a pope, and that any pope can completely rewrite the Erisian church…
According to the Principia Discordia, the birth of the Erisian Movement occurred when Omar Ravenhurst and Malaclypse the Younger received a vision of a chimpanzee while drinking coffee in an all-night bowling alley, followed by a dream of the Goddess Eris Herself a few nights later.

In relation to rituals, Discordian ceremonies tend to be difficult to unravel and non-sensical, though that appears to be the point.
Perhaps the most famous, if you can call it that, is the turkey curse, which is designed to counteract the curse of Greyface which is as follows:

In 1166bc, a malcontented hunchbrain decided that the universe was as humourless as he was and began to teach that play was sinful because it contradicted the ways of the serious order. He deluded honest men to believe that reality was a straightjacket affair and not the happy romance as men had known it. Thusly, Greyface and his followers took the game of playing at life more seriously than they took life itself and destroyed their opposers, the result of which is that mankind has been suffering from imbalance, causing frustration, causing fear, which makes for a bad trip, and that man has been on a bad trip for some time now. This is the curse of Greyface.
The Turkey curse, thusly, counters greyface and his curse of destructive order as he“…absolutely requires an aneristic setting to function and that a timely introduction of eristic vibrations will neutralize their foundation. The Turkey Curse is designed solely to counteract negative aneristic vibes and if introduced into a neutral or positive aneristic setting (like a poet working out word rhythms) it will prove harmless, or at worst, simply annoying.”

The Aneristic Principle is that of apparent order; the Eristic Principle is that of apparent disorder. Both order and disorder are ‘manmade concepts and are artificial divisions of pure chaos, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making.’

To perform it, you must “Take a foot stance as if you were John L. Sullivan preparing for fisticuffs. Face the particular greyfaced you wish to short-circuit, or towards the direction of the negative aneristic vibration that you wish to neutralize. Begin waving your arms in any elaborate manner and make motions with your hands as though you were Mandrake feeling up a sexy giantess. Chant, loudly and clearly: GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE!”

It should be noted, apparently, that this ritual can backfire. Positive motivation is essential.
This is just one example of many rituals, others of which list as The Baptismal Rite, Tarot, The Sacred Erisian High Mass of the Krispy Kreme Kabal, and the Gourdfest.

Coming back to something which may seem less ‘mocking’, Odinic ritual often involves mead, as it believed to be favoured by the gods and drank by Odin. Group rituals can include mead-drinking from a horn after a blessing and a nature of prayer, perhaps for assistance from the wisdom of Odin or in better understanding runes.

The Sumbel is an example of ritualistic drinking and toasts to one another.

The Blot is a sacrifice ritual, usually a blood sacrifice, which is not often partaken in now as it has been replaced by a more symbolic practice.

The rite of Bragi seems the most famous of the rituals, designed to honour the gods of Odinism and bring the perpetrator into a better relationship with them as Odinism teaches that its followers are friends of the gods, not inferior beings.

The ritual begins with purification, by washing the body and dressing in pure white, red or black, then waiting for night.

As night draws in, the next step involves positioning yourself before a source of light.

You must then stand with your eyes and arms raised and declare: “A man without gods has a desert in his heart.”

You must then remain motionless for a time, as during this time you are meant to be moving ‘through time without moving through space.’

Next, you must touch all the gods and goddesses of Asgard by naming them as naming is a kind of touching because the name is a part of the thing.

The final and most mystical part of the rite involves, while still standing before the light source, selecting one god or one goddess from the sacred pantheon then visualising yourself as the deity you have selected.

If the visualisation is successful and you literally see yourself as the imagined god or goddess, you will experience ‘The Glimpse of Extraordinary Beauty,’ and you will be ‘enveloped and penetrated by the thoughts of a god or a goddess.’

Ritual items are also important in these processes, from feathers, beads, bones, books, herbs, honey or beeswax, shells, turtle shells, candles and the more important of which include thor’s hammer, runes and drinking horns.

Thanks must go to Catherine for the above notes on Odinism and Discordianism who left the studio a few moments ago looking dazed and confused having invoked the spirit of Chaos in her attempts to determine meaning from the apparent non-meaning of the Principia Discordia.

The point about all magical systems is the attempt to ‘shock’ the individual awake either by  is methodological approach to what appears to be a logical metaphysical framework or by their attempt to change perception through its illogical and incongruent assertions.

I suspect that some of the more ‘out there’ approaches owe much to the Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley inspired LSD experiments which sought to open the doors of perception …. AND herein lies the key. Magic is about changing perceptions and exploring the illusions we accept as reality.

The work of Robert Anton Williams is as relevant to many magicians as the works of Crowley.

One of the more recent magical systems is that of Chaos Magic.

Liber Choas draws its inspiration from the world of probability and quantum physics …. but time doesn’t allow for more talk on this topic.

So what about the relevance of magic today…

Music

Mountain Mirrors : A Spell to Block The Sun

Buddy Guy : Are You Losing Your Mind

Tonight is Real Twilight Zone Night on Penwith Radio: after show 50 broadcast live 8pm – 10pm tonight we will be going through the night with shows voted for by listeners…

10pm –  12pm TRTZ No 1 – A chance to listen to the first official TRTZ

12pm – 2.00am  TRTZ no 31 – The Men In Black

2.00am – 4am TRTZ no 11 – Aliestair Crowley

4.00am – 6.00pm TRTZ no 14 – Edgar Cayce and Healing

So tonight we’re in a bit  of reflective mood – BUT FEAR NOT there will be some great new stuff too.

We’ll be looking at some of the questions that I’ve receive over the last few months and taking a more in depth look at the story of the Golem of Praque and of course there’ll be the news.

I’m also offering a PRIZE tonight and that will be a free copy of my book Ramblings of a Rational Mystic (autographed of course)…

Ramblings of a Rational Mystic

You’ll need to listen to the show to find out how to win a first edition of this book…

But first some news…

UK

1st March:  British researchers believe that ‘thinking caps’, could help provide ‘super-human strength, highly enhanced concentration or thought-controlled weaponry.’  A British ethics group is currently investigating the obvious ethical dilemmas presented by any nature of invention that intends to interfere with the brain.

Professor Baldwin said: “If brain-computer interfaces are used to control military aircraft or weapons from far away, who takes ultimate responsibility for the actions? Could this be blurring the line between man and machine?”

The NBC (Nuffield Council on Bioethics) has launched a consultation on the potential risks of such a thing, specifically BCIs (Brain-computer interfaces), DBS (Deep brain stimulation) or TMS (Transcranial magnetic stimulation) though similar technologies are already used in medical fields for the treatment of stroke, depression and Parkinson’s disease.

Kevin Warwick, a professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading said that “From the brain signals, a brain computer interface could translate a person’s desire to move … and then use those signals to operate a wheelchair or other piece of technology. For someone who has locked-in syndrome, for example, and cannot communicate, a BCI could be life-changing.”  The potential of this technology extends beyond medical and military applications as well as the gaming industry has expressed much interest in the idea of a thought controlled game or console.

International

28th February: A 28-year-old Winder resident called 911 during February to report a very worrying ailment indeed – he said he invisible.  Paramedics with Barrow County Emergency Services and a deputy with the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office responded to the call and when the deputy arrived he was informed that the ‘victim’ had called paramedics four or five times recently and was not in need of any actual assistance.  The deputy was also told that the caller was hoping for a ride to the hospital to get “more medications” because he had taken all the medication he already had the preceding night.  Barrow County Detention Center records outline the fact that the caller in question has been arrested previously for criminal trespass and failure to appear.  The caller was told to “dry up on the medication” and to stop calling 911 unless he actually had an emergency.  One commenter on the story amusingly noted “Failure to appear? Maybe he was there but no one could see him!”

Villagers in Namibia, Africa have been terrorized by an animal being compared to the Chupacabra (Tune in next week for an episode of TRTZ on just that) which haunts the Southwest US and Mexico.  The cryptid has been simply dubbed ‘dog-headed pig monster’ owing to its appearance which has been described as a hybrid between a dog and wild boar, with witnesses saying the animal resembles a pig from the neck down but has the muzzle and sharp fangs of a canine..  A number of attacks on goats have been blamed on the creature.

29th February:  SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) announced at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Los Angeles that they will be streaming radio frequencies picked up by the Seti Allen telescope array to their website for the public to listen to.  The project is being run by Dr Jillian Tarter, winner of the TED Prize in 2009 and director of the Seti Institute’s Center for Seti Research in the hope that some human ear might be able to pick up what the computers cannot as well help to build on the scientific community already working on the search.  Tarter stated that “There are frequencies that our automated signal detection systems now ignore, because there are too many signals there.”

To get involved, visit http://setilive.org/

A couple in Texas claim to have been ‘sunburnt’ by a UFO in a close encounter of the second kind.  According to the report they submitted to MUFON they saw a bright white light resembling a helicopter spotlight whilst driving over a bridge that divides Gladewater/Clarksville City and White Oak beside Lake Devernia.

They stopped the car and it hovered above the tree line over their vehicle at about 50-100 feet.  Subsequent to the driver sticking his head out of the window he noticed 4 additional white lights at a North/south/east/west orientation on the craft.  He went on to open the door and get out of the car, shielding his eyes with the back of his right hand to get a good look at it.  He stated that the light on his skin didn’t feel like burning at the time, merely ‘like warm sunlight’.  The driver was then overcome with apprehension and got back into the car.  Later the pair remarked that ‘We had what seemed to be minor sunburns on our face and the palms of our hands were red.

No blisters or scars/marks. Just a light red/sunburn tinge to our face, neck, palms.’  Afterwards, the driver adds that a man has contacted them twice asking to purchase his car, having seen the couple at a gas station and a shopping outlet.  While he has given them a name, he won’t give them any other information and only asks for contact information.  They are imploring anybody who knows of any strange craft in the area to help them understand what this could’ve been.

50th Episode Retrospective.

I thought it’d be interesting to list the shows and the topics we have covered over the last fifty episodes.

The first ‘official’ TRTZ was broadcast on 30th November 2010.

Of course we had two pre-TRTZ shows that went out under the Rational Mystic label. They were quite short and so I thought we’d include them here. They were not published in the order they were prepared as they first appeared on my blog.

Spooksploitation : This was a short podcast compiled in response to Derek Acorah’s Halloween themed Michael Jackson Seance.

This 8 minute podcast was intended to be the first in a series of shows which were to be placed on my Rational Mystic blog. As such it presents an opinion as well as a deliberate provocation to get listeners thinking.

2012 and All That Jazz : This was the second podcast of the series intended for my blog. It is around 15 minutes long and was compiled in response to some of the more crazy ideas about 2012 end-times. As we have survived both the 2011 Elenin Experience and are three months into 2012 I feel fairly safe in my assertion that the ‘world will not end’ this year. More to the point I see little evidence of any global raising of consciousness since we are actually witnessing more intolerance, prejudice, dogmatism and injustice. Ok, maybe this in itself is a sign of the ‘end times’ – ask me this time next year!

Before starting The Real Twilight Zone I was invited to be part of the Haunted Cornwall FM team. At the time I decided to shelve plans to continue The Rational Mystic Podcast and it was only after several months with Haunted Cornwall that there was the realisation that what I had planned for a podcast would not cross into the ‘spook spotting’ territory of the other show since the focus was not primarily ‘investigations’.

The suggestion for a Rational Mystic show actually came from listeners to Haunted Cornwall who, at the time, were happy to support two weekly shows on paranormal themes and topics but each taking a slightly different and complementary position. With the support of Tim Bowers (SJB Supernatural World) the first Real Twilight Zone was ‘aired’ at the end of November 2010.

For those who are interested here is a complete listing of the “official” TRTZ episodes.

Show 1, Nov 30th 2010:  Alternative medicine.

Show 2, Dec 2nd 2010 : Conspiracy Theories, Secret Societies and Disinformation.

Show 3, Dec 7th 2010: New research found that suggests possibility of psychic abilities.

Show 4, Dec 15th 2010:  The issue of Paranormal research, and the idea of Opinion vs Evidence and in particular the role of celebrities in making, shaping and promoting specific views of the world.

Show 5, 4th Jan 2011: How accurate psychic pundits were in 2010, discussing the state of paranormal research and investigation whilst exploring plans (And predictions) for the coming year.

Show 6, 11th Jan 2011:  Mind control, theatrically and in advertising, propaganda and MKULTRA.

Show 7, 18th Jan 2011: Cults, including Heaven’s Gate and the People’s Temple/ Jim Jones.

Show 8, 25th Jan 2011:  Psychic Fraud

Show 9, 8th Feb 2011:  Near Death Experiences and the nature of death.

Show 10, 15th Feb 2011:  Mysticism and rationality and an homage to Derren Brown.

Show 11, 22nd Feb 2011:  Aleistair Crowley.

Show 12, 1st March 2011:  9/11 Conspiracy theories.

Show 13, 8th March: Astrology, Cancer Cures, Derek Acorah, Extreme Moon, Ghosts in UK, Healing, Paranormal Groups, and Spooksploitation .

Show 14, 15th March:  Edgar Cayce, Healing.

Show 15, 22nd March: Physics and God, Ron Pearson’s Big Breed theory.

Show 16, 19th April:  Creationism.

Show 17, 26th April:  Auras and Aura photography.

Show 18, 3rd May:  Time Travel.

Show 19, 17th May:  Vampires.

Show 20, 24th May: The historical Jesus.

Show 21, 31st May: The Nature of evil.

Show 22, 7th June:  Comet Elenin.

Show 23, 14th June:  Urban Legend.

Show 24, 21st June:  The Amityville Horror, the facts, the legend and the hoax.

Show 25, 28th June:  World Governance, Chem Trails and other conspiracies.

Show 26, 5th July: The history of the Devil.

Show 27, 12th July:  Apocalypse theories and interview with Caroline Watt.

Show 28, 19th July:  Paranormal research, what have we learned? Williams Crookes and the SPR.

Show 29, 26th July:  Psychic-Intuitive Readings and the Psychological issues which surround them.

Show 30, 2nd August:  Number Stations, what’s their purpose?

Show 31, 6th September:  Men in Black.

Show 32, 13th September:  UFO Cults, including Heaven’s Gate, the Aetherius Society, The Universal People.

Show 33, 20th September:  Werewolves in fairy story, myth, psychology and history.

Show 34, 27th September:  The Bible, The Gnostic Gospels and Christian Mystical Sects.

Show 35, 11th October:  Dreams, Dreaming, Personal Experience and Mind Reading Software with guest Graeme de Lyons.

Show 36, 1st November:  Houdini, his work debunking fraudulent psychics and his annual séance.

Show 37, 8th November:  Tarot facts, myths and history.

Show 38, 22nd November:  The history and origin of Wicca and Witchcraft.

Show 39, 29th November:  The Qabbala and the path of McMysticism.

Show 40, 6th December:  The myths and mysticism surrounding the crystal skulls.

Show 41, 13th December: The Secret’s No Secret

Show 42, 20th December : Happy Holidays – The Science of Santa

Show 43,  3rd January : Alchemy, The Quest for Perfection

Show 44, 17th January : The Brain,  Mind Self

Show 45, 31st January : The Occultists John Dee and Agrippa

Show 46, 7th February : Hermeticism and Rational Mysticism

Show 47, 14th February : Earth Sounds and Quantum Physics

Show 48, 21st February : Time, Time Travel and Time Slipl

Show 49, 28th February : The Knights Templar

Show 50, 6th March : A Retrospective of the last 50 episodes : The Gollum of Praque, Listeners Questions

So there you go – quite a lot of material there. And remember, each of the recordings is supported by some quite detailed blog postings. Many contain introductory, ‘primer’, research prepared by Catherine and have a reference lists for listeners to follow-up on what we have spoken about in the show. In all cases the blog contains notes and information for what we WANTED or PLANNED to cover and the podcasts/audio programmes are about what we REALLY talked about driven by our friends on the chat rooms.

TOPICS INCLUDE : Alchemy, Illuminati, Magic Spells, Teleportation, Mediums, Paranormal Research

 So over to listeners questions….

Q: So what exactly is the TRUE STORY regarding Nicholas Flamel?  Did he really (on three separate occasions) transmute base metals into genuine gold?  He reportedly bequeathed huge amounts of money to charitable causes upon his death.  Any ideas on how he made all this happen?

An answer:

Nicholas Flamel

Harry Potter and The Philosophers stone probably has a lot to do with the revival of interest in Flamel – indeed JK Rowlings character was possibly inspired by the Nicholas Falmel the alchemical legend.

There is nothing legendary about the life of Nicolas Flamel. The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris contains works copied in his own hand and original works written by him. All the official documents relating to his life have been found: his marriage contract, his deeds of gift, his will.

In outline he was a bookseller with an interest in rare manuscripts who, if legend is to believed, was brought a rare manuscript that eventually led him to uncover the secrets of the philosophers stone and in the process become rich.

The philosophers stone, at one level, is that substance said to turn base metal into gold, On another level it is said to represent the development of a persons soul and life potential.
Of course legend suggests that he actually possessed the ability to turn lead into gold, hence his wealth, and the secret of immortality …

Some writers have claimed that Flamel used his ‘alchemical’ activities as a cover for his money-lending activities and these were the source of his great wealth. He apparently had dealings with the gentry and supported Jewish businesses based in France and Spain.
I think of the alchemical quest as being symbolic rather than actual and hence the second idea carries my vote at the moment.

Q: Hello. (Note that I wish to remain anonymous from the public). Although I don’t believe in the paranormal myself (I at most have strong doubts), I would like to ask a question about (skeptical) paranormal research on behalf of those who are in need of accurate information, regarding the existence of paranormal phenomena. Let me get to it…

There are various arguments that proponents use to (try) to argue for the existence of paranormal phenomena (they try to fight and tarnish the reputation of skeptics), and I would be interested in knowing the validity of certain arguments.

Many claim that “skeptics are deniers” and are dismissive of the existence of paranormal phenomena, and try to find “excuses” (natural explanations), and “avoid” claiming paranormal findings, even when there is paranormal activity. Is this argument valid at all, or is it rubbish?

As of right now, we say that there is no (or at least weak) evidence of the paranormal, however, how do we know that the skeptics are not “missing something”, or are investigating too thoroughly to be able to rigorously investigate “fly-by-night” phenomena? What are the faults with the respective arguments?

Others claim that, say, ghosts, are “afraid”/”shy” of skeptics and are “allergic” to lab setups or scientists, and skeptics will never find them because they “run away”. Can you explain any faults with this argument?

Finally, I must politely ask you to to explain any faults there may be with any other common arguments. Thanks very much.

My Answer:

The idea that “skeptics” are “deniers” is one which seems to permeate some of the more credulous literature “out there”. Whilst some who claim to take a sceptical approach do seem to simply dismiss claims of the paranormal, the majority seek merely to apply critical thinking to the, often poorly structured arguments of believers in paranormal phenomenon.
Certainly the skeptics I have had the pleasure of debating with and listening too take the default position that a reported experience is ‘real’ to the witness. It is in the process of interpreting that experience that critical thinking is applied and the search always moves from the “known” to the “possible” and if necessary to the “inexplicable”.

The fact of the matter is that many “believers” skip the critical thinking and questioning process and intellectually move from “strange personal experience” to “paranormal explanation” without considering, and therefore eliminating solutions which do not rely on violating known physical laws.

The notion of “investigating too thoroughly” is in itself quite an interesting notion is it not? It suggests that when things are investigated in a careful, considered and logical way paranormal evidence seems to become spurious or insignificant. Indeed this is what has been observed through many years of so called paranormal research. When a paranormal effect  is studied carefully it’s apparent uniqueness evaporates with explanations that do not need to invoke “special circumstances”.

Scientific Method, like skeptical enquiry, is a process which when applied rules out bias and evidence based on one or two isolated experiences.

Paranormal Investigation has become a cottage industry, inspired in part by the many paranormal TV shows purporting to show “real, live investigations”. Many of those in these groups lack any specific training in research or critical thinking and a goodly proportion of them seem to start with the presupposition that the “paranormal” exists.

In my blog (www.therationalmystic.co.uk) I do try to explore many of the issues related to paranormal research and you may like to look through the various posts in order to explore these ideas further.

When it comes to ghosts it strikes me that there is a real paradox when it comes many of the research techniques that enthusiastic “investigators” apply. Most would agree that they have a definition of ghosts or spirits that is based upon their “non physical” presence. So if they are not physical why are these investigators using instruments which measure physical effects? The problem is not simply in the logic behind such investigations, but is also in the fact that there is no clearly stated reason why ghosts would show up on EMF meters or IR thermometers and that the effective use of such equipment to measure conditions inn the physical world requires a real understanding of what such equipment measures and how it is used. In most cases the use of technologyvin ghost hunting is simply about creating the illusion that some form of scientific approach is being used.

The other issue about many paranotmal investigation teams is that the set out without any clear aim over and above the desire to find ‘something’ in a location that has been “reported” as being significant in some way. This approach leads to whatt can best be described as ‘anomaly hunting’ – and such an approach will always yield anomalies that can be ascribed to whatever cause the investigators choose.

The issue with believers who say that “spirits” are shy, or “my spirit guide doesn’t like to be tested”, or the “negative energies of the skeptics and non believers” stop some paranormal effect from happening is that it leads to claims that cannot be tested, cannot be verfified and depend solely upon the belief system, statements, interpretations and personal understandings of others. If I say that I can prove that aliens have landed on earth by showing you the spaceship that is in my back garden and then say that only I can see it, or that it can only be seen by others who believe, then my evidence is worthless – it cannot be falsified. If you are kind you may trust me and accept that I believe that it is true. Would you, however, accept without question my statement that because of my experience (and my interpretation) that aliens have visited us?

For be at best it would pose a question of possibility, but perhaps it would be better to rule out other possibilities first.

I hope this has in part answered your question and perhaps a visit to my blog would help you consider these points in more detail.

In essence the skeptical approach is about questioning evidence and experience; checking for logical fallacies through critical thinking; providing alternate explanations and discounting those which are not supported by any evidence.

Debunking claims of the paranormal is not the starting point of the skeptical journey, but is often the point reached when critical thinking, detailed exploration and questioning of the evidence has been undertaken.

Numerous of the more credulous literature and evangelical believers are unable or unwilling to offer evidence which stands up to scientific or skeptical exploration and make  the default claims that “scientists think they know everything” or “skeptics are closed minded” when in fact both of those assertions are a long way from what science and skepticism is about.

Scientists recognise there are gaps in what is known, are constantly asking questions
of what they think is known and what that really means.

Skeptics ask questions which broaden their experience by looking at a range of possible explanations for any particular event, piece of evidence or reported experience.

I have observed that it is often the believer who claims to know “everything” and are “closed minded” as they hang onto their interpretations of an experience and refuse to consider alternate explanations.

 Q : Hello. I was taking to a woman (will keep her identity private), who claimed that while her son was watching television, he had a necklace on. One moment, she was looking at the necklace, it was there, the next moment, she was looking at it, and it was gone. She strongly denies having forgotten anything (such as moving it and then forgetting it). She then claims that she found it three days later, by the computer, with the clasp disconnected. She claims that it is (almost) physically impossible to disconnect it (possibly supporting the hypothesis that it went “back in time”/”to a different place in time”).

Her son does not remember such an event.

While, at least my common sense is not in favor of the teleportation hypothesis, I will still be open-minded if there is reasonable evidence of such, from previous similar events. Could it have perhaps been “quantum teleportation”? (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation). Could there perhaps have been some type of interaction between the future (future events) and the past (past events), or some similar condition? I, personally doubt it, but will remain open-minded.

Otherwise, can you list the most likely explanations? Was an anomolie possible? Can you perhaps support your explanation based on evidence collected from investigation of similiar events?

My Answer: Can I refer you to a similar teleportation question and answer

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Sceptics-Skepticism-3364/2010/10/Allegations-teleport

In terms of the specific question about quantum teleportation it must be remembered that quantum effects are effects confined, as far as I am aware, to the micro world and not the macro. All quantum effects are at atomic and subatomic scales so the teleportation of a necklace by this kind of effet is not plausible,

Apports, the so called appearances of objects from spirit realms; the negation of “times arrow” in terms of anything other than quantum ‘realities’ and the reality of physical teleportation are the subject of scientific speculation and, in most cases, are firmly within the realms of science fiction in terms of what we currently know about the macro-scale universe.

There have been several cases of hoax and fraud in this regard (see any skeptical website including JREF, Skeptical Enquirer, Snopes and even the Journals of the Society for Psychical Research).

Whilst, like you, I am open to any evidence that can be provided outside of individual personal anecdote there is little or no direct evidence of these things happening in conditions that would preclude psychological and perceptual errors, false memories or deliberate attempts to defraud.

Q: What is your view regarding the illuminati and if they do control every thing, are they still in operation, are any political or strong figures in it, and do you think they can be overcome?

An Answer: Some thoughts on the Illuminati…

Well as far as a secret society goes the Illuminati haven’t done a very good job at remaining secret in recent years have they?

As far as history is concerned I think it is true to say that the Illuminati were a secret society, said to have formed in the late 18th Century in Bavaria – well if we are trying to be correct a date of 1776 has been proposed. It is difficult to piece together any meaningful history of this ‘society’ as the whole subject has become tainted with poorly referenced conspiracy paranoia, pseudo-historical analyses and the odd fraud (hoax) or two.

Starting with the choice of name – Illuminati – it seems that the society professed to be in line with some kind of information or approach that made its members ‘the enlightened’. It is likely that they had a republican political agenda which included the abolition of monarchies. It is further suggested that they tried to bring about change by means of subterfuge, secrecy, and conspiracy, including the infiltration of other organizations. They were not very successful and were destroyed, or at least outlawed, within fifteen years of their origin (Pipes 1997).

The founder is reputed to be Adam Weishaupt from the University of Ingolstadt and it appears that the society’s aims were closely linked to ideas from the Enlightenment i.e. to combat religious thinking and promote and encourage rationalism. Wieshaupt was an anti-monarchist and secularist which, obviously, informed the nature of the society he created. In 1777, Karl Theodor became ruler of Bavaria and, in 1784, his government banned all secret societies including the Illuminati and they disbanded (or perhaps were imprisoned, ‘destroyed’ or otherwise dispatched!)

There is no empirical evidence that this society survived the 18th Century.

What we hear of today is a melange of conspiracy theories from which have at their core the notion of some kind of elite, powerful and probably wealthy ‘secret society’ behind veils of other ‘secret’ or at least ‘clandestine’ groups.

Like an onion skin, although conspiracy theorists would prefer the image of a pyramid, the outer layers are the lowest levels of the New World Order movers and shakers and at the core can be found the Illuminati.

Sometimes we are told that this inner core of is run by a number of key families (13 is often quoted for effect more than genealogy) whose ‘bloodlines’ are linked and perhaps manipulated by visitors from another world.

This inner core of people is so secret that the families are actually named on several websites…

Their existence is so shadowy that they insist on leaving symbols of their very existence behind for us mere mortals to discover…

This then is the real Illuminati!

Seems like they’re not doing a very good job at keeping their manipulative presence hidden!

I mean stop for a moment to consider some simple ideas.

The bloodlines of monarchy and aristocracy are very likely to be linked in any case, what with marriage being the vehicle by which alliances were made. Such links do not require the organising agents of ‘secret’ human societies let alone the interference from some passing aliens – or am I missing the point?

Of course there are ‘symbols’ which seem to survive and be repeated from time to time and place to place. As a species we are very good at creating symbolic language and meaningful patterns (you’re reading some right now)… AND of course some ‘magical symbols’ will form part of our everyday society as they have been a part of our psyche for a very long time. Assuming these symbols need to have any other significance is a bit of a stretch. The ‘Great Seal’ on US currency is often quoted as being Masonic or Illuminati in origin having been designed by Illuminati, or at least High Degree Freemasons. If you really check this story out (see Skeptoid) there are more than enough questions raised which serve to question the key assumptions in the conspiracy theorists rhetoric.

What do Governments do?

They rule, they plan, they organise, they fight, they assert sovereignty!

There’s no need to imagine a global conspiracy to explain the actions of Governments.

Now here’s where there is, perhaps, an element of truth in all of the Conspiracy Theories you have ever heard. It seems obvious to me that Governments cannot tell us the truth all of the time, truth after all is a relative concept, and there are things that must be on a need to know basis. More importantly some major Governments have been shown to be involved with somewhat dodgy dealings and certainly individuals within Governments are not above corruption, error and simply being wrong.

The simple fact the ‘the truth outs’ from some of these accidental, and not so accidental, cover-ups seems to belie the existence of ability to ‘keep’ secrets of any real magnitude.

Perhaps there is a rule of thumb that is worth exploring – the more people who need to be involved in any form of cover-up or covert action the LESS likely it is to be possible.

Ravings of a Loon or Insightful Warnings of a Scholar?
The following is an extract of a page on the (in my opinion very dubious) website with the somewhat challenging domain name “educate-yourself.org”.

What the sire contains is, in my view, a collection of hysterical ravings, poorly-informed and misquoted ‘research’… for example…
War on Drugs

quote:….

The “War on Drugs” is a cruel joke. The US government, specifically the CIA is the biggest ‘drug lord’ on the planet. Drug money is used to pay for innumerable ‘black projects’, including the construction of huge underground cities housing both humans and aliens working with the secret US government.

The instigation of a trumped-up war as a cover for amassing fortunes can be dated back to at least the 12th Century when only a core group of nine members of an Illuminati group called the Knights Templar, the military arm of an Illuminati secret society known as the Priory of Sion, kicked off the The Crusades that lasted for over a century and a half. A rift later developed between the Templars and the Priory of Sion when Jerusalem was lost to Saracen Turks in 1187. In 1307, the king of France, Philippe the Fair (a Merovingian Illuminati), coveted the wealth and was jealous of the Templars’ power. The French king, being a puppet of the Priory of Sion, set out to arrest all the Templars in France on October 13. While many Templars were seized and tortured, including their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, many other Templars (who had been tipped off) escaped. They eventually resurfaced in Portugal, in Malta (as the Knights of Malta) and later in Scotland as The Scottish Rites of Free Masonry.
http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/index.shtml

end quote….

Unlike scholarly works which do educate there seems to be little in the way of empirical evidence to back up many of the statements made. (Where are the references?) This is the case with so many conspiracy style websites and diatribes. They connect spurious pieces of information, with unfounded suppositions and create powerful stories which would rival any Dan Brown novel!

In the above quote there are some important questions to be asked are there not?

Drug money is used to pay for innumerable ‘black projects’, including the construction of huge underground cities housing both humans and aliens working with the secret US government

Where is the evidence?

I for one would love to see a hod carrying reptilian alien?

If the ‘secret government’ is a secret how does the author know about it?

a core group of nine members of an Illuminati group called the Knights Templar, the military arm of an Illuminati secret society known as the Priory of Sion,

Top marks here for linking three of the key favourites of conspiracy theorists in half a sentence!

Again how do we know this

Were not the Priory of Sion ‘documents’ so often quoted revealed as fraud/hoax (see the various pieces produced by Brian Dunning on www.skeptoid.com ).

Surely such vague ramblings (many other Templars who had been tipped off) can hold little in the way of credibility.

However this kind of writing makes up the bulk of the information on the numerous websites devoted to Illumninati, Conspiracy Theory and other such delightful distractions. Google returns over 34,000,000 results for a search on Illuminati and a mere 1,000,000 for a search on Illuminati + Sceptic. Surely that suggests something!

One way to think about this is to turn the whole thing on it’s head.

What is the REAL MOTIVATION for the Conspiracy Theorists to constantly sew seeds of discord, disharmony and control by others?

Are they, the merchants of disinformation, really pulling the strings to perpetuate fear and uncertainty for their own ends (selling books, running workshops and seminars and seeking global unrest?)

References

Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy Free Press 1997

http://www.illuminati-news.com/moriah.htm

http://www.masonicinfo.com/illuminati.htm

http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam481/groupa/illumhist.html

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-202253133.html

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2010/01/11/the-illuminati-doesnt-exist-heres

http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/bloodlines/

Q: Hello. Apart from Affirmations, please give me a good spiriitual method I can use (which has immediate effect) to attract things into my life. Thanks

From my perspective there is no ‘magic’ to be found in the rather superficial promises of books like the Secret and Cosmic Ordering. What his there, hidden beneath layers of over generalised and sometimes vacuous New Age babble is some very sound psychology which, in effect, relates to everything I understand about the inner workings of “real magic”.

It was Goethe, the poet and playwright, who said that once the mind is set on a clear course of action the universe conspires to make it happen.

There is more than a grain of truth in this.

“Attention flows where emotion Goes” is something I say to many of my students on the Transforming Minds workshops and this is really the case.

If you have an emotional link to something, anything, that is where your attention will flow. If you direct your attention towards a specific thing then it is very likely that your unconscious mind will start to process information and ideas about it.

I am sure everyone has had the experience of buying a new (to them) car. Almost as soon as the car is purchased you start ‘noticing’ more cars of the same type and colour on the road! This is not because the universe is trying to wind-you-up, it is because your unconscious mind starts noticing things that are important to you.

The same thing happens when you ‘want’ or ‘need’ a new household appliance, suddenly you start to see ‘adverts’ and ‘notices’ for these things. It’s not that these notices and ‘ads’ have juts appeared, it is because you now notice them!

Now, back to attracting things into your life.

Thinking about what you are missing, or what you don’t want, is actually self-defeating. It remonds you of the problem, or the negative situation. In some ways you are consciously asking the unconscious mind to remind you of and find more things, that are depressing you!

Shifting your emotional focus to what you want and creatively visualising ‘how’ your life ‘will’ be different ‘when’ these changes have been made is, in essence what The Secret et al promote, but without the psuedo-spiritual baggage.

The idea of anything having an immediate effect is also a little ‘one dimensional’ in its assumption. Every moment we are alive we experience the world. How we respond to those experiences depends largely upon our internal attitudes, values, beliefs and emotional ‘states’.

Every action in the ‘now’ moves you along towards your ‘future’ – so in essence you are always making choices about tomorrow.

Since most of the day-to-day processing we undertake as people is unconscious then we rarely, if ever, take the time and the effort to make conscious choices. Our unconscious mind presents ‘options’ which we consciously weigh-up as our the only choices (or the dilemma). Our uncosncious mind uses our deep seated attitude-value-belief system to pre-process every option open to us and hence creates limited behavioural responses to our awareness.

To change your perspective you have to work on changing your mind!

So much of this is beyond the scope of the quick answer I think you wanted, so in summary, here’s a set of ideas which come from the Mind Alignment – Transformational Reading – Transforming Minds programme (Google it if you’re interested).

Have a VERY SPECIFC outcome in mind.

What do you want to attract into your life?

Visualise how your life will be differen WHEN you have attracted these things.

Create a compelling mind-movie of the future you want, with sound effects, big colourful pictures and positive, motivational dialogues.

Ask yourself if your REALLY want this future.

So many people ‘wish’ for a thing without running it through their value-attitude ‘filters’. This means that the ‘idea’ sounds good in some distant, abstract sense, but actually is not a good fit with who you really are and really want to be. Hence you start sabbotaging your own efforts to move towards the illusion you think you want.

Ask yourself to WRITE down a list of CLEAR ACTIONS you can take to move you towards your future.

Change your behaviour to match the kind if behaviours that you saw yourself engaging in in your movie. Start to walk your dream by acting ‘as if’ you had already achieved it. In essence you are ‘trying on’ the future skin you will be wearing to ensure it fits comfortably.

Keep your GOAL in mind.

This means you underplay anything which reminds you that you are a long way from what you want and celebrate eevery single thing that takes you closer.

Now if you are still reading this, I congratulate you since I have avoided giving you the specific answer you wanted.

You asked for a ‘good spiritual method’ and I have focused on some psychological aspects of making changes in your life.

I think you cannot divorce the spirtual from the practical; the rational from the mystical (hence I call myself a Rational Mystic). All magicians (and yes I do mean that in the spiritual-mystical sense) recognise the importance of ‘right thought and right action’ and creating a link between the inner-focus of ‘mind’ (the intention behind the magic) and the outer focus of ‘behaviour’ (the rituals, spell casting, visualisation techniques used).

In recent years the New Age movement has spawned some very single minded ideas about ‘magic’ and promoted the quaint and infantile notion that ‘spells can be cast’ to ‘make things happen’. Hence all personal responsibility for change is abdicated to the tides of some kind of spiritual wish-master whose sole aim is to respond to the buring of candles; the half-hearted visulisations of those seeking a quick-fix to a complex problem; the ‘orders’ of groups of people who seemed to suggest that the Cosmos bends to their whim.

The late Alex Saunders, one of the key people in the revival of the Witchcaft Tradition in the UK, said to me once…

“Casting spells and using magic is hard work, its nearly always easier to go out and do something practical to move you towards your goal.”

He said this in response to the notion that folks could ‘cast spells’ to bring ‘love’, or ‘money’ or ‘fortune’.

Of course the process of performing a magical ritual does have an effect IF that ritual is prepared correctly – that means on both a mundane and spiritual level.

To ‘cast a spell’ to bring ‘love’ and then sit at home waiting for it to work is nonesense. Of course use the ‘spell’, but use it as a motivator to change what you do, where you go, who you meet so that ‘love’ has a chance to find you.

As Alex said to me, and I am paraphrasing…

Casting a spell to bring money and fortune and then not getting off your backside to find work is a futile exercise.

Magic and Spiritual methods are part and parcel of a process which can bring ‘positive change’ – but you as a living, breathing, thinking, caring, motivated person has to actively engage in that change.

Q: Hi Alan, In a nutshell, I belive 95% that some of the best mediums like sally morgan and lisa williams are for real. I watch them and scrutinize everything they say and do and so far can’t fault them and therefore have to accept that they are telling the truth about what they do. but the other 5% of my mind hears the sceptics say that its all a trick which constantly counteracts all that they do. My question is.. IS THERE ANYONE IN THE WORLD THAT HAS EVER COME FORWARD WITH AN EXPLANATION OF HOW THEY DO THESE EXTREMELY ACCURATE READINGS? I have searched but have never heard any acceptable debunking. Ive heard all the hot and cold reading explanations but none of those come close to explaining what they can do. I have never heard of anyone ever coming forward and properly duplicating what these mediums can do. Even Derren Brown gives very poor criticisms and explanations of mediums. I tend to be a believer only in things with evidence. As far as I can tell so far, the sally morgans of the world are the only ones with any evidence that it IS all for real. Thanks.

My Answer: Many thanks for the question – it is a very interesting one.

Let me start by recognizing and honouring the fact that your are a believer, and one I am happy to note who only believes things that there is evidence for (if I understand you correctly).

I note also that you are of the opinion that Sally Morgan and Lisa Williams are able to provide evidence which convince you.

Before I answer your question directly can I ask something about the kind of evidence that you are happy to accept.

From my understanding mediums provide evidence for the survival after death – generally they talk about the survival of a soul.

Assuming there is communication from a plane or level of existence that is beyond our physical world what kind of evidence could mediums, who are ‘in touch with spirit’ actually provide?

Well I guess they could provide information about what ‘the other side” is like; they could offer information about things that are outside of what we, on the earthly plane, could know at a particular time, but would discover at some time in the future (if they are truly outside of time ten they could tell us if future things perhaps); they could give meaningful insights into the nature and quality of life as well as offering ideas about how we could improve life and solve some of the problems facing us….

In fact if the ‘other side’ can be described by spirit to mediums then the descriptions of it and what goes on there should be fairly consistent – unless of course there are a range of different afterlives.

For the most part the evidence offered by mediums is restricted to the nature of a loved ones passing; some information which is seen to be specific to the listener and a general comment as to ‘being there” or ‘being present” now.

Please bear in mind that one of the stated aims of the spiritualist movement is to offer evidence of the beyond.

So far I’ve not really answered your question and perhaps that is because I”m not sure you’ll be happy with my response.

I accept and honour your opinion, but fundamentally disagree you your assertions that ‘hot and cold’ readings do not come close to explaining what they do and that people like Derren Brown cannot duplicate what has been demonstrated.

In support of my latter statement please take a look at Derrens TV social Messiah in which he not only convinces an audience of his ability to talk to their deceased relatives but also obtains an endorsement of his ‘genuineness’ from a leading spiritualist medium . You might also take a look at Derrens interview and sessions with English medium Joe Power….

In terms of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ reading you mention that you have heard all of this kind if explanation – have therefore considered the possibility of mediums faking what they do, relying on information gained from previous meetings and sessions, employing researchers alongside relying on the basic psychology of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias?

There are some fascinating examples of these techniques being used by mediums in the past. The psychic medium Lamar Keene wrote a boom called The Psychic Mafia, which is well worth a read and you can find some really interesting insights into the world of the  fraudulent medium by looking at the website www.woogooandmuckymuck .com

Check out Peter Popov and Sylvia Brown on YouTube.

The extremely accurate readings you speak of were produced by Peter Popov (and explained/exposed); the specific demonstrations outlined above by Derren Brown in my opinion look, sound and feel the same as those offered by many mediums.

Professor Richard Wiseman has written extensively on aspects of the paranormal and explores how we tend to hear and see what we want to hear and see based on our beliefs.

I feel that you will be unmoved by my answer as you have obviously some personally valid criteria which distinguishes the ‘good’ evidence produced by Sally Morgan and friends and the ‘poor explanations’ presented by Derren Brown. Only you know what kind of evidence you are willing to accept…

Two finish a couple of personal observations…

Several years ago and early on in my exploration of these topics I was introduced to a member of the ‘advance team’ for a well known and successful touring platform medium. The role of the advance team was two fold.

Firstly to contact those people who had been to previous performances of this medium and let then have advance tickets. Nothing odd there – great marketing and use of existing mailing lists. Of course there would be some information known about each if those ‘fans’ who were coming as they were ‘regulars’

The second task was much more distasteful. Members of the team would read the obituary colums of the newspapers, visor local spiritualist churches and ‘target’ people to invite to the ‘show’ and offer them free tickets. Again providing some information that could be used by the medium.

Now I am not suggesting that Sally or Lisa or any well known mediums use these techniques, but your question was about how this kind of accurate information could be offered in a reading. In the case of the medium I am refreing to this was how they were doing it!

Secondly….

If the information offered by any medium can be honestly verified and tested why hasn’t that medium accepted one of the science based challenges out there?

Currently the JREF is offering $1 million for any evidence of paranormal claims offered under controlled conditions. Sylvia Browne and, I believe John Edwards have both said they will under take the challenge but as yet have not entered into discussions with the scientific community. In the case of Sylvia Browne she has twice on TV accepted the challenge (over five years ago) and currently says she never said she would do it.

Other mediums who could take the challenge often make  the factually incorrect claim that the money doesn’t exist, or that others have passed and not been paid …  Or that the rules of the challenge are unfair (again incorrect as the challenge is built around the claims they make and the evidence they offer to support that claim)…. Or that it’s not about the money (well that’s rich considering they earn a substantial living from what they do and if they did win the $1m they could give it to charity).

In summary I would be more than happy to look at any specific evidence that mediums can produce in a controlled situation and am currently working with two mediums whose integrity and intent are not in question and who are willing to havectheir abilities tested. My hypothesis, as I am following a scientific method have ‘blinded controls” in place is that the infirmation they provide through mediumship will be no more or less accurate than that provided via a cold reader.

I also disagree with your assertion that no one has duplicated what real mediums do and have offered some specific references for you to consider.

As a Rational Mystic there is nothing that I would like more than being able to show that several paranormal claims can be verified. I accept, however, in an area where people have so much invested in their beliefs and their opinions the serious exploration of the paranormal is far from easy.

To close the sceptic in me needs to be presented with clear, consistent and unambiguous evidence that cannot be explained by wishful thinking, belief, fraud, deliberate psychological deception or accidental psychological self-deception.

The mystic in me is willing to accept in some instances some people are supported, helped and comforted by the work of well intentioned mediums and in those cases it diesn’t matter whether there is any evidence other than that needed by the individual the medium is supporting.

I hope you have been able to read this reply and consider my points carefully. It has not been my intention to argue against your beliefs or personally held convictions but to offer some other thoughts in response to the question you asked. I would be very happy to read your thoughts on the points raised in my response and very open to the consideration of specific evidence offered by any medium.

One  of the questions I received really inspired a bit more research as I was not overly familiar with the specifc case….The Golem of Praque.

Here’s the original question:

Q: I have a question about the legend of the Golem of Prague.  You probably already know the tale of how Rabbi Loew allegedly created a golem out of clay by using the tetragrammaton to give it life.  However my research has told me that it was NOT Rabbi Loew who created the infamous golem but it was actually Rabbi Elijah of Chelm.  Either way, the story sounds too fantastic to be true. Nonetheless, it did allegedly occur in the 16th century, which is still recent enough to check for historical accuracy.  My question to you is: what incident actually did occur that gave rise to this fantastic tale?

My Original Answer :

Interesting question…

You are correct in suggesting that the earliest reports of the creation of a Golem relate to Rabbi Elijah of Chelm (1550 – 1583) and this was reported in Qabbalistic writings compiled almost a century later. The story was further elaborated on by Rabbi Emden in 1748 – again a second-hand telling of a story nearly two hundred years before.

It seems that most ‘authorities’ consider The Golem narrative to be a literary invention. Wikipedia, and I am aware of its limitations, does point to a number of sources for the story which include..

1837: Berthold Auerbach, Spinoza
1841: Gustav Philippson, Der Golam, eine Legende
1841: Franz Klutschak, Der Golam des Rabbi Löw
1842: Adam Tendlau Der Golem des Hoch-Rabbi-Löw
1847: Leopold Weisel, Der Golem

Alongside the ‘earliest’ mention which is the 1834 book Der Jüdische Gil Blas by Josef Seligman Kohn. All of this seems to imply that there has been an attempt to exaggerate the age of the story by placing in the 1600’s.

As for the reality of ‘the Golem’ …

As a creature brought forth by the use of Gods name (The Tetragrammaton) is perhaps overly imaginative and I’d favour an explanation which relies upon a metaphorical or symbolic use of the title ‘Golem’.

The Jewish tracts which are considered to form the Mishna ( the first written records of the Oral Jewish Tradition) speak of the Golem as being an uncultured, clumsy or slow person. No ‘supernatural’ origin is implied.

The Context.

Perhaps an interesting focus would be to consider the nature of Jewish persecution during the time in Prague. At the time the Jewish people who were forced to live in the ghetto there were claims of Blood Libel (actually drinking blood of Christians and Christian Children as part of the Passover rituals).

Rabbi Loew was a prolific writer who sought to inspire his people by retelling Jewish legends and folk lore and possibly therefore identified with earlier tales of the Golem.
The Legend says that Loew not only created the Golum but took responsibility for imprisoning it when it started to become out of control.

The Legend lives on because of the 1920’s silent film De Golem and Pragues’ tourist industry!
A truth goes along the lines that Folklorists writing in the 1800’s re-told the story of the Golum, which in a supernatural-mystical sense could be seen as protector, became attributed to Loew who was a recognisable name at the time. Rabbi Elijah may not have been so well known, but again could well have been tarred with same folklore/legends about a potential ‘saviour’ of the Jewish community who was created by them and for their protection.

And I also asked Catherine to see what she might come up with –  here are her findings…

Golem of Prague

The legend of the Golem of Prague has its roots in the 16th Century, during the reign of Rudolph II.

The word Golem roughly means ‘animated being created from inanimate matter’.

The story of the Golem has become somewhat well known as it has appeared in some form in books, films and plays, not to mention the fact that its apparent creator was a particularly famous Jewish scholar.

Rabbi Loeb, or Rabbi Judah Loew, or Yehudah Levi ben Betzalel, lived from 1513 till 1609 and was much respected in his lifetime, the most faithful among his followers regarding him as ‘the Exalted One’.

The story goes that in 1580, Taddeush, a priest in Prague, was scheming against the Jewish people and planned to accuse them of ‘ritual murder’, specifically that the blood of Christian children was used in Passover.

This went as far as to result in accusers planting dead children in victims houses to frame them.

Rumours of such behaviour would result in violent riots, further anti-Semitic attacks, and possibly even expulsion from their homeland.

The Rabbi needed to protect his people, and prayed for help from Heaven in the form of a dream question.

The answer he received was apparently Ata Bra Golem Devuk Hakhomer VeTigzar Zedim Chevel Torfe Yisroel, which translates as Make a Golem out of clay and you will destroy the company or thereabouts.

This message sounded simple enough, but it came with many negative connotations.

Creating life was not allowed in almost any circumstance, even by a scholar as revered as Loeb.  The only time it was considered justifiable was if it would save the lives of many, and sometime snot even then.

Additionally, the message was but a small part of the process.  He had to decipher it and use kabbalistic formulas to do so, plus he had to invoke the Shem Hameforash: the true name of God, a piece of information divulged to very few and which was rumoured to unleash power that was difficult to control.  It was a dangerous procedure.

The Kabbalistic formula he used to extract the meaning of the message was Zirufem.

The method he used to create a living golem went as follows:

He asked for help from his son-in-law, who was a Kohen: a Jew descended from ancient order of Priests and further from his student, who was a levite: a Jew descended from servants of the temple.

A day was dedicated to purification as without this the Shem Hameforash could destroy them.

He described the necessity for the inclusion of the four elements in the process.  He was to represent air, his assistants would represent fire and water, and the golem would represent earth.

Sefer Yezira or The Book of Creation was read in part, and after this they proceeded to the banks of the Vltava River or the River Moldau and procured the clay for the golem by torchlight.

The golem was sculpted from the mud, facing the sky, then the incantations received from Loeb’s dream came into play as the Kohen of the company traversed seven circuits of the body from right to left whilst reciting the Zirufem.

The levite of the company then did the same, only from left to right this time.

At this point in the process, the golem was said to have lost its terracotta colour and been imbibed with water, followed by the growth of hair and nails.

The Rabbi Loeb walked once around the body and placed a piece of parchment with the Shem Hameforash written on it into the mouth of the golem, followed by bowing to the east, west, south, then north.

Finally, the three of them recited And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul after which the golem is said to have awoke.

Some details of the golem tend to vary from story to story.  The word ‘emet’ was said to be placed on a tablet on the forehead of the golem, but other sources outline the tablet as being in his mouth.  ‘Emet’ translates as ‘truth’.

It was reputed to have been removed from the golem on the Saturday in preparation for the Sabbath day.

The golem went on to fulfill his duty and protect the Jewish people, but while some sources say he was simply no longer needed after a time, most say that he became violent and unruly.

One source (http://www.prague.net/golem) outlines how the Rabbi was attending his synagogue when, in the midst of psalm number 92, he was called away to put a stop to the golem who was uprooting trees and destroying the rabbis’ home.

The Rabbi returned to the synagogue to finish his interrupt psalm, and this is reputed to be the reason that the last verse is repeated.

To restore the golem to lifeless clay, the Rabbi was said to have done one of three things.  He may have simply removed the tablet from the mouth of the golem permanently.  He may have revoked his appeal of the Shem Hameforash along with the life principle it instilled, or, he may have scrubbed the first letter of the word ‘emet’ from the tablet, making it into the word ‘met’ which means ‘death’.

With the golem successfully de-animated, his body was said to have been hidden in the attic of Prague’s Old-New Synagogue and that the Rabbi forbade anybody to enter the attic.

The legend states that It is still there or that the shape of its body remains imprinted on the floor, though another version outlines how it was stolen and entombed in a graveyard in Prague’s Žižkov district (Where the TV tower in that area now stands).

More recently, a legend stemming from World War II has gained notoriety, telling the tale of a Nazi who attempted to break into the attic and deal with the golem, only to be killed in peculiar circumstances.  However, the origins of this story are unknown and the attic itself is not open to the public, therefore it cannot really be investigated.

Tonight we look at the Knights Templar – The History, The Myths and The Legacy…

But first some news …

The Telegraph newspaper reports that a man who was left with a large dent in his head after a fall has had his face rebuilt through pioneering surgery using his own body fat.

So from Catherine we have the following notes – Thanks Catherine

The Knights Templar or the Poor Knights of Christ appeared during the crusades, a time of unrest for Roman Catholic Europe between 1095 and 1291, the crusades being the religious wars that aimed to win back Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim occupation.

Other branches of the Templar include the Hospitallers (Knights of the Order of Saint John the Hospitaller or the Knights of Rhodes or the Knights of Malta) who came about after taking care of afflicted Pilgrims in a hospital after the First Crusade, and the Teutonic Knights of Germany.

The Templar Knights were founded by Hugue De Payens, 1118/1119, Jerusalem, in order to protect the pilgrims that travelled there through Palestine.  It also became their duty to protect the Holy City.

These knights were deeply religious and committed to their spiritual ideals– warriors for Christ.  They took many vows as displays of their dedication including vows of chastity and poverty.  Bernard of Clairvaux assisted in the formation of the rules by which the Templar Knights were bound.

The Templar exercises included “self-mortification, fasting, prayer, and a constant attendance at matins, vespers and other services of the Church.” They were also not permitted to receive letters from their parents, other family members, or friends and any gifts presented to a Templar Knight had to be donated to the order.

If modern comparisons are needed, we wonder whether or not these people provided inspiration for George Lucas when he thought up the Jedi Order!

They were recognised by Rome in 1128.

They were funded by donations from noblemen and Kings, and when an individual became a part of the brotherhood his land and money were donated to the cause.  Thusly, they became quite wealthy.

They are famed for building many enormous structures and fortifications including farms, castles, churches, cathedrals and citadels designed to withstand all and any nature of bombardment and there are suggestions that they are linked to the origin of gothic architecture.

There are suspicions that the Templar history is somehow linked to Freemasonry because of their apparent secret initiation ceremony, this also bred distrust and may have led to their downfall.

Sadly, the popularity and power of the Templar Knights grew to such an extent that they became perceived as a threat by higher powers and in particular by King Philip IV (The Fair) of France who led to their eventual demise.

At some point he requested funding from them for the ongoing wars, and they refused to give it to him, henceforth the Knights were to fall.

Philip could not get his hands on the Templar wealth unless they admitted heresy.  On Friday 13th October 1307  he captured all members of the Templar and had them brutally tortured for no less than seven years until they ‘admitted’ that they were guilty of heresy, idolatry and homosexuality amongst other things.  There came about some suggestion that they worshipped an idol known as Baphomet.

Philip put pressure upon the then Pope (Clement) to condemn the Templars, which he did in 1312, subsequently forcing their wealth to be confiscated and delivered into the Kings hands. The Templars legacy did live on but quietly and under different names.

Jaques De Molay, the last Grand Master of the Templar Knights, never disclosed the location of the funds of the Templar or betrayed his comrades even under the torture he was subjected to (Neither did Guy of Auvergne, who died with him).  On March 18th, 1314, he was taken to court over a forged confession which he disavowed, the punishment for which was death.

He and Guy were burned at the stake slowly, and his dying words were reputed to have contained something akin to, “I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret.” He also cursed both the Pope and the King, both of whom died within that very year.

Of the idolatry they were accused of, the Shroud of Turin appears.  The ‘image of a man on linen’ was reportedly in their possession, something they could’ve gotten during the sack of Constantinople during the fourth crusade in 1204.

The mystery of Rennes-le-Château ties into the Templars. 

The story goes that Berenger Sauniere, the Parish priest during the late 20th century received copious amounts of money with which he built many of the local structures including the Tower of Magdalene.  He also refurbished the church.  He died in 1917 without telling a soul about the source of his wealth, but for one Marie Dernaud, his housekeeper. She stated that she would reveal the secret, but only on her deathbed, a secret she never indulged as the nature of her death meant she was unable to speak before the end. Speculation led to suggestions of said wealth being remnants of the Templars lost treasure along with a deeper conspiracy theory that is outlined below.  In 1891, the plot thickened.

Abbe Antoine Bigou left a series of parchments containing Latin transcriptions of phrases from the Gospels, but they contained hidden messages, including,

“THIS TREASURE BELONGS TO DAGOBERT II KING AND TO SION AND HE IS THERE DEAD.”

and

“SHEPHERDESS NO TEMPTATION THAT POUSSIN TENIERS HOLD THE KEY PEACE 681 BY THE CROSS AND THIS HORSE OF GOD I COMPLETE THIS DAEMON GUARDIAN AT MIDDAY BLUE APPLES.”

The ‘Poussin’ mentioned is thought to refer to a painting by Nicolas Poussin called ‘The Arcadian Shepards’ (We assume Arcadia is by definition ‘any real or imaginary place offering peace and simplicity’) and depicts men around a tomb with the inscription ‘Et in Arcadia Ego…’ or ‘And in Arcadia I…’ as if to say that the person within had dwelt in Arcadia as well as enjoying life on earth.

There are other postulations that the tomb is meant to represent death and the inscription should be translated to mean ‘Even in Arcadia I exist’.  In addition, some theorise that the Latin sentence is incomplete and is an anagram for ‘I! Tego arcana dei’ or ‘Begone! I keep Gods secret’ or even that it is missing the word ‘sum’ and that consequently ‘et in arcadia ego sum’ is an anagram  for ‘arcam dei tango iesu’, which translates as “I touch the tomb of God — Jesus”.

“The code in the parchments is only decipherable through the use of the “knight’s tour” — a logic puzzle wherein one “jumps” a knight to every square on a chess board, once and only once. It is a puzzle which has only one solution — as does the code. The use of chessboard imagery at Rennes-le-Château is striking.”

It is thought that Berenger Sauniere was paid vast amounts of money by the Catholic Church to hide the fact he had discovered the grave in which Christ was buried, suggesting that He had not ascended into Heaven.  Furthermore, the theory went on to hypothesise that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had children who immigrated to France where they married into the Merovingian dynasty who are protected by a secret society known as the Priory of Sion that was founded in 1099.

The Knights Templar are thought to be creations of the Priory of Sion as its’ military division.  Moreover, the Church is thought to have attempted to eradicate the Templars as they were guarding this ancient bloodline that could one day usurp the Episcopal throne.  Stories go that the Holy Grail is both the womb of Saint Mary Magdalene and the sacred bloodline she gave birth to and that the Templars buried their treasure and the grail AND the Ark of the Covenant in the infamous Oak Island off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Berenger Sauniere even appears as the inspiration for a character in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.

For completeness here’s my take on the topic…

The Templars in Context

The Crusades, a series of religious expeditions and wars sanctioned by the Catholic Church and blessed by the Pope.

The main goal of these wars was to reclaim the Holy Lands and the city of Jerusalem from Muslim rule.

The main series of Crusades occurred between 1095 and 1291 – but Crusades against ‘pagans’ continued into the 16oo’s.

The word Crusade is derived from the French word which means to ‘take up the cross”. Those signing up to the Crusades were granted plenary indulgence by the Pope. In simple term this meant that engaging in the Holy War as a Solider of God, meant that all earthly sins were forgiven.

As a time line the Crusades can be seen as follows…

The First Crusade 1095 – 1099

The Byzantine Emperor Alexius 1 sent for military help from Western Europe as his empire was threatened by the expansion of the Seljuk Turks.

Pope Urban II called for all Christians to join the war against the Turks promising immediate remission of sins.

The main army, mostly of French and Norman knights were led by Godfrey of Boulion.

The captured Antioch on June 3 1098 and finally Jerusalem on July 15 1099.

In doing so they created four crusader states along the Syrian and Palestine coast.

The battles were brutal and the siege of Antioch which lasted from October 1097 to June 1098 resulted in the captured Muslims, civil and military, being massacred. Mosques were destroyed and the city ransacked.

The Crusaders were soon to find themselves besieged in Antioch by a Muslim relief army which was eventually defeated on June 28^th.

The tired and much reduced Crusader army then marched on Jerusalem and after a short siege entered the city on 15^th July 1099. Jews and Muslims fought together to defend the city and the victorious Crusaders again massacred surviving Jewish and Muslim citizens.

One historian writing about the barbarity of the Crusaders reasons that the Frank forces being so far from home resulted in a feeling of isolation which may explain the atrocities and, indeed, the recorded cannibalism during the siege of Ma’arra in 1098.

The Second Crusade 1147 – 1149

After a short period of coexistence between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, Muslims eventually captured the town of Edessa.

A new Crusade was called for and armies marshalled by King Louis VII (France) and Conrad III (Germany) marched into Jerusalem in 1147.

No major victories were recorded by armies laying siege to Damascus and other troops on the Holy Land, but a group of Northern Euorpean Crusaders stopped in Portugal and took Lisbon from the Muslims in 1147.

The Third Crusade 1187 – 1192

The Muslim peoples who had long fought against themselves were now united by the great leader Saladin so creating a single, powerful state. Following the Battle of Hattin, he Muslim forces overran the Crusader forces and by 1187 all Crusader holdings, with the exception of a few coastal cities, were captured. The Buzantines, perhaps fearful of Saladin’s power, made an alliance creating a considerable Muslim-centred ‘power-block’.

Saladins organisation of the Muslims and his military strategy sent shockwaves through Europe and so a third Crusade was called for.

Saladin’s siege of Jerusalem is said to have given Pope Urban III a heart-attack, he died on the 19^th October 1187. On the 29^th October Pope Gregory VIII officially called for a ‘new’ Crusade.

In response to the Papal Bull, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, King Phillip II Augustus of France and King Richard the Lion Heart of England raised armies against Saladin.

King Frederick died en route so few of his men actually reached the Holy Land. Political quarrels between Phillip and Richard did little to make this campaign as robust as it may have been.

Phillip returned to France and set himself to move against Richard The Lionhearts holdings in Nornandy.

Richard captured the Island of Cyprus from the Byzantines on 1191. The island was to serve as a longstanding Crusader base having significant strategic value. He went on to recapture the city of Acre, the port city of Jaffa.

Richard wass in striking distance of Jerusalem but felt that even if his forces were able to capture the city they would not be able to hold it. He decided to negotiate and truce with Saladin. The treaty allowed for trading merchants and unarmed Christian pilgrims to make Pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to the city of Jerusalem whilst it remained under Muslim control.

It may be difficult for us British folk to hear, but whilst Richard may well have had some diplomatic acumen in terms of his dealings with Saladin, many of his exploits are simply well hyped PR and later confabulation. More showman than statesman Winston Churchill noted that Richard The Lion Heart’s life was “one magnificent parade which, when ended, left only an empty plain.”

 The Fourth Crusade 1202 -1204

Pope Innocent III initiated the forth crusade in an attempt to once again free the Holy Land – ok, place it under Christian rule.

There were real issues with funds for this Crusade, war as always been a costly business, and to get things moving the Crusaders they were ‘hired’ to help restore the Christian city of Zara – that is bring its people back to God.

The problem was that these people had already been excommunicated by the Church so this act of lost most of the support other Christians had been giving to the Crusaders.

This Crusade was a messy affair and its main “success” was to turn a visit to Constantinople forced by a lack of provisions and expiring leases on vessels. The visit provoked some violent clashes and resulted in the Crusader forces in sacking the city on 1204 and establishing what came to be known as the Latin Empire.

This point in history is often quoted as being pivotal in the schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the (Western) Roman Catholic Church.

 The Fifth Crusade 1217 – 1221

Lamenting the fact that the Holy Lands were in the hands of the Muslims, the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) outlined a plan for the recapture of Muslim territories. The first step was to bring a crusading force from Austria and Hungary to join forces of the king of Jerusalem and the Prince of Antioch.

A second step in the plan involving an attack on Egypt resulted in an victory when Damietta was captured in 1219. The follow-up attack on Cairo in July 1221 was less successful and resulted in the surrender and capture of the Crusader army. The ruler of Egypt Sultan Al-Kamil agreed an eight-year peace with Europe. This was a great relief to Crusaders and Christians in general since during the hostilities he had placed a bounty of one gold piece for every Christian head brought to him.

The Sixth Crusade 1228 – 1254

Emperor Frederick II had promised much in terms of Crusades to liberate the Holy Land and after failing to deliver on promises was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX in 1228.

Perhaps in an attempt to win back the Church’s favour he set sail for the Holy Lands and landing in Egypt made a treaty with Sultan Al-Kamil which allowed Christians to rule over most of Jerusalem and a strip of land between Acre and Jerusalem.

Jerusalem itself was divided between the Muslims and the Christians with he Muslims given control of the Dome of The Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque

The peace lasted until 1244 when after another siege the Muslims regained total control of the city.

The Seventh Crusade 1248 – 1254

Papal interests, represented in the Land Holdings and Financial Systems created by The Templars brought conflict with Egypt in 1243.

Crusader armies were drawn into a battle in Gaza and were defeated with two days by tribesmen led by Baibar.

Louis IX of France organised a Crusade against Egypt between 1248 and 1254 and they were defeated en route to Cairo. King Louis was captured and the Arabs were paid a large ransom for his return.

Eight Crusade 1270

A rather disgruntled Louis IX organised a retaliatory attack against Arabs in Tunis shortly after his release, It was a badly planned, poorly executed affair which led to his armies being devastated by disease – he chosen the hottest season of the year for his campaigning armies to attack lands in North Africa. He himself was killed in an abortive attempt to take the Holy Land.

Ninth Crusade 1271 – 1272

Edward I of England led another Crusade against the tribesmen led by Baibar in 1271 -  it was a failure and ended the Crusades in the Middle East.

There were other ‘event’s not listed above, which nevertheless were part and parcel of the pattern of religious war. These include the Northern Crusades (The Teutonic Order and Swedish Crusades); The Mahdian, Blakan and  Hussite Crusades as well as those against the Tatars.

It is against the back-drop of close to three hundred years Crusading that we must consider the Knights Templar.

The Knights Templar were officially endorsed by the Catholic Church in 1129 and became a key charity throughout Europe.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon have given much to history, myth and legend and the very mention of them brings to mind images of white-tunics emblazoned with a red cross; chain mail and rugged heroism.

The initial role of the Templar Knights was that of supporting, defending and maintaining pilgrims and pilgrim routes to the Holy Land.

They had been existence prior to there church endorsement but their obvious origins stem back to around 1119 when a French Knight Hughes de Payens asked King Baldwin II of Jerusalem for permission to create a monastic order for the protection of pilgrims.  Baldwain agreed and granted space for a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. It was rumoured that this particular building was above the ruins of the Temple of Solomon – hence Knights Templar.

There were nine knights in the original order including Godfrey de Saint-Omer; Adre de Montbard and Hughes de Payens.

Initially the order was impoverished, but that was not to last for long.

The myth of their acquisition of wealth is perhaps far more exciting than the reality.

It’s clear that from the inception of the order the key members had a religious devotion matched only, perhaps, by their entrepreneurial skills.

As ‘guardians’ of pilgrims they will of course have received tolls and payments. These initial ‘gifts’ from wealthy travellers will have included livestock, land as well as cold hard cash.

The monastic life of a Templar Knight included devotion to God and training in combat skills. Hence as soldiers they became very efficient. In many ways their skill as a professional army may not have been seen since the Roman legions within Europe.

Link religious devotion,  military expertise and Church patronage to a code which honoured death in battle we create formidable professional warrior ideal for taking leading roles within the numerous Crusades.

Dukes, Earls and Barons seeking to be forgiven of their earthly sins would, of course, seek membership to such an Order as the Knights Templar and that would mean that a portion, if not all of their land would become Templar property.

With widespread support for the Crusades the Knights Templar manoeuvred themselves into a position whereby they were receiving an income from donations; from tolls and from landed patrons seeking to joining the Crusades.

Their protection of routes and pathways put them in a strategic position to not only collect tolls; but to also create stop-over points and hostelries for weary travellers. This of course would generate an income.

Of course with protected route ways and infrastructure it was only a matter of course for these trusted ‘knights of God’ to be entrusted with money and treasure to convey for the pilgrims.

So was born International Banking.

The non-combatant members of the Order developed an expertise in accounting, money lending as well as providing the safe transport of money internationally.

The cost of equipping a Knight for a Crusade was considerable, I have seen calculations which suggest that it took the produce of over 100 small holdings to fund a single Knight and his entourage on a campaign.

The Templars  were gifted estates, farm s and buildings by those supporting and joining the Order and their business acumen saw them improving productivity and income from these ventures.

Why lease a shipping fleet when you can build and own one!

The Templars owned the ships that moved merchants, money and Crusaders to the Holy Land.

With great wealth the Templars invested in building Preceptories, Churches and organising town markets.

With their endorsement by the Church in 1129 these effective business  owners were freed from the responsibility of paying tithes and taxes themselves.

There’s no need to  postulate the discovery of any form of secret wealth in the Temple on the Mount, as has been suggested by some, since it was the entrepreneurial expertise which generated the vast wealth .. wealth that was accumulated over 200 centuries of  devotion, economic engagement and charitable donations.

The Templar clerics were appointed by European Royalty to manage their accounts and fiancés; they were trusted because of the groups vow of obedience and poverty. No knight could own any property or receive payment from their activities, but of course they were clothed, equipped and fed by the organisation.

As we have seen the success of the Crusades declined in terms of bringing good news to Christendom; the defeats and losses of the Holy Land cooled the traditional support and the growing wealth of the Knights Templar became a real issue.

When France was ordered to pay ransome for Louis IX after his capture during the 7^th Crusade they forcibly took money from nearby Templar ships. This money had been entrusted to the Templars for transport to the Holy Land and so their reputation for being able to protect money-in-transit was called into question.

The Templars found themselves at odds with the other military orders (The Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights) which did not really help their cause when things really turned sour for the order.

The Templars were involved in the Battle of Hattin, which resulted in the capture of Jerusalem and then subsequent unsuccessful campaigns so it was easy for their detractors to suggest that they were no longer in ‘Gods Favour’,

In 1305 Pope Clement V attempted to merge the Templars with the Hospitallers – an idea not welcomed by either group.

Philip IV of France, possibly following the invitation of Clement V but more likely acting independently for materially motivated reasons, began an investigation of the Templars.

Philip was deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with England and turned public suspicion and rumour into a case against the ‘Godliness’ of the Order.

On Friday October 13^th 1307 Philip ordered the arrest of the Orders Grand Master (Jacques de Molay) and dozens of Templar members. The arrest order was executed with co-ordinated efficiency and all of the arrests took place at the same time..

The arrest warrant started with the phrase “God is not pleased. We have enemies of faith in the kingdom.”

The Templars were charged with numerous heresies including apostasy (moving away from the agreed doctrine), idolatry, conducting obscene rituals including homosexuality, financial corruption, fraud and secrecy.

Of course many of the accused ‘confessed’ under torture and these confessions were published much to the shock of the citizens.

On November 22 1307 Pope Clement was forced to issue a papal bull which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. The subsequent papal hearings produced more confession, obtained under torture. Of course many of the Templars recanted once released from torture.

Philip used the forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned in Paris and with his threatening military action unless the Pope complied with his wishes, the order was finally disbanded.

At the Council of Vienne in 1312 including an two orders – one to officially dissolve the order and the other to turn over any remaining assets to the Knights Hospitallers.

Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his statement. His associate Geoffroi de Charney,, Preceptor of Nomandy, followed de Molay’s example and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1314.

De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Catherdral and hold his hands together in prayer.

According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows :: “God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death”).

Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.

The Priory of Sion – The Hoax

Freemasonry and The Templars

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a link between Scottish Freemasonary and the Templars – however I’m less positive about some of the other claims.

This next video starts with the statement about the ‘vanishing’ of the Templars great wealth. As we have seen the appropriation of properties by various European Monarchs (both openly and no doubt covertly); the failure of some of these monarchs to return seized funds to the Church – Edward King of England being an example of this – and the annexing of any surviving interests by the Knights  Hospitallier would mean that treasure did ‘vanish’.

However there are some interesting issues relating to the incorporation of imagery, attitudes relating to chivalry and personal dedication…

Related articles

• Order of Knights Templar meet in Mudgee Australia (seeker401.wordpress.com)
• The Vatican and the Knights Templar (time.com)
• Temple Church (roundaboutlondon.wordpress.com)

Music on Tonights Show:

The Truths – What Fuels Your Fire – with thanks to www.aardvarkrecords.co.uk

And from Music Alley

Buddy Guy – Are you loosinng your mind

Dialis – Secretly the Abyss