William Blake: Preface to Milton

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

French Encounters of the Close Kind

1954: Quarouble Nord-Pas-de-Calais. During the intense UFO wave of 1954, Marius Dewilde had a bizarre experience on the night of 10 September. He had gone to calm his barking dog. Mr. Dewilde was shocked when his flashlight illuminated two short creatures with large heads, dressed in what appeared to be 'diving suits.' He lunged at them, but was blinded by a brilliant beam of light, and saw a strange object rising into the air. The image above is a newspaper with an aritists rendering of the encounter and an actual photo of Marius Dewilde. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marius_Dewilde

1965: Valensole, Alpes-de-Haute Provence. Farmer Maurice Masse heard a hissing sound and saw a spherical shaped object, as big as a small car land in his lavender field on the morning of 1 July. Two small humanoids with large heads seemed to be inspecting his plants. As he got closer, one of the beings saw him and pointed a strange object at him. He found himself paralyzed and feeling somewhat tranquilized. After the UFO left marks were found in the field and days later the lavender began to die within 5 to 6 meters from where the UFO landed. The local gendarmerie believed his story and effects from the incident were still felt eight years after wards. http://ufoevidence.org/cases/case140.htm The image below is of Maurice Masse standing where the object landed.

1981: Trans-en-Provence, Var. The truth of this case largely stands on the testimony of one witness. On 8 January, Renato Nicolai claimed he saw a metallic, disk shaped object touch down on land below his farm house at dusk. The object quickly left took off and disappeared, leaving behind circular traces on the ground. Plant and soil samples were subjected to a detailed scientific investigation by scientists from GEPAN (Study Group into Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena). GEPAN concluded that a heavy, metal object had impacted on the ground, which had been subjected to intense heat. This has become one of the best 'physical trace' cases in the UFO literature. http://www.ufocasebook.com/transenprovince.html The image below is an artists rendering of what Renato Nicolai claimed to have observed.

1994: Air France Flight 3532, in flight from Nice to London. On 28 January, shortly after noon, the flight crew of an Air France Airbus saw an reddish-brown object of "immense size" and "constantly changing shape"-to the flight captain it looked "like an enormous lens" and changed shape several times before it disappeared. Ground radar confirmed an unidentified trace crossing Flight 3532's trajectory at the time of the sighting. The GEPAN study concludes: "The case has never been explained to this day and leaves the door open to all possible hypotheses." http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case1062.htm The image below is an artists rendering of the Air France encounter. As often happens with artists who are unfamiliar with aircraft-the plane is wrong-looks to me like he drew a 727 and it should have been a twin-engined Airbus A319. Of course it is the image of the unidentified object that is most important so I went ahead and posted it.

I hope there are no spacing problems when I post this as there usually are when I try to do multiple images-if so I will try to work them out. I was going to put a 1968 French case in with these, but thought it deserved its own post. I would also like to do a single post about a 1978 case in Australia and a 1980 case in Texas, USA. However, the next series I would like to do is just a short bit of Fortean history that I think will be interesting and different from the things I have done before here, I hope to have it here fairly soon. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by and thanks so very much for your intelligent and thougtful comments!

For Friends In Faraway Places

I wanted to thank everyone who stops by and comments here-I can't tell you how much I appreciate this! I am sorry for the lack of new topics here-the subjects I am working on for a future series is taking a lot of time. I have also been struggling with illness and exhaustion, between Friday evening and Saturday evening I figure I was in bed for 20 hours-possibly more-except to get up and use the facilities and even though I have only been up for about nine or ten hours I am feeling sleepy again. So I am very much hoping that this will not continue. I have recently received 2 letters and a package of books and other things from friends who I have never met face to face-I would so like to be able to do this someday! I just wanted to do a short post for these friends and also the people who continue to stop by my little place on the web and post your wonderful and thoughtful comments. Soon I hope to come up with a new short series in between the major work I am trying to do that is taking so much time-a lot of it will depend on if this crazy exhaustion and feeling sick continues. Here are some things I hope these people and all of you can enjoy. To the friends on the other side of the world-you will never know what your friendship does for me and the positive changes it has made in my thinking!

Lao Tzu: Existence is beyond the power of words to define. Terms may be used but none of them are absolute. In the beginning of Heaven and Earth there were no words. Words came out of the womb of matter. And whether a man dispassionately sees to the core of Life or passionately sees the surface, the core and the surface are the same, words making them seem different only to express appearance. If a name be needed, let the name be wonder, and then from wonder to wonder, existence opens.

Confucius on people and words: You lose people if you do not talk to those worth talking to; you lose words if you talk to those not worth talking to. The intelligent do not lose people and do not lose words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Brahma

If the red slayer thinks he slays,

Or if the slain think he is slain,

They know not well the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and turn again

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;

The vanished gods to me appear,

And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;

I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Bhrahmin sings

The strong gods pine for my abode,

And pine in vain the sacred Seven;

But thou, meek lover of the good!

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

PS-The US postal stamp series issued in 1974-"Letters Mingle Souls" didn't come out as good an image as I was hoping it would. It was really quite a beautiful series when it came out and it just didn't translate to the blog as well as I had hoped.

Rene Guenon & Reincarnation Part Two

Rene Guenon talked about reincarnation in many of his books always from a negative standpoint. In these books he seemed to assume that the reader was familiar with his reason for rejecting it. The problem with this was that he explained his ideas about his rejection of reincarnation in an early book of his that was not translated into English, L Erreur Spirite (The Spititualist Error", 1921). In this book, Guenon stated the 'metaphysical' argument against reincarnation to which he would always refer.

The debate Guenon brings out boils down to this: People who believe in reincarnation believe that the same being can be born more than once in a human body. Guenon says that this belief is wrong because people misunsderstand what a being is. When Guenon thinks of the word 'being', he is thinking of it in very wide terms. Many times he is thinking of Universal Being as a polar opposite of Non-Being. At other times he is thinking of it in the sense that a being is one of the multitude of entities that Universal Being appears to divide itself, in compliance with the principle that every possibility of manifestation must be manifested or brought into existence. This is in obedience to the same principle of Universal Possibility, each of these beings manisfests in all the possible states of formal existence.

Each of these states of being has its unique set of qualities and characteristics, such as corporeality (this word can be thought of as the extent of the 'denseness' or how much the being 'lives' in the physical plane in Guenon's way of thinking-for example human beings have a greater 'corporeality' than angels or the hidden people -talked about in an earlier set of posts), intelligence, temporality (the amount of time a being is 'alive' on its plane of extence) etcetera. The human state is just one of these states of being-nothing special about it at all. Other states would be-the 'states' of plant life, animals, the beings of higher planes of existence-maybe the sylphs, hidden people and even devas or angels would be in this category. From the point of view of Universal Being, which is beyond time, space and causality-all of its 'states' exist simultaneously. But from the states that are subjected to existence in space and time no matter how refined they seem--they are subjected to a sequential existence with a past, present and future.

Guenon states, "In universal existence, the return to the same state is an impossibilty; in total Possibility, those particular possibilities that are the states conditioned existence are necessarily indefinite (when Guenon says indefinite he means infinite) in number; to deny this is to try to limit possibility. One must admit it, on pain of contradiction, and that is enough to prevent any being from passing twice through the same state. Guenon's objection to reincarnation stands or falls on whether one agrees with this hypothesis or postulate-that there are an infinite number of states of being in the universe/multiverse and the human realm is nothing so special at all that a 'soul' would need to go through the human state of existence twice.

I think Guenon's 'proof' that reincarnation as we think of it is a 'logical impossibility' is anything but simple and maybe quite presumptious. However, I find many parts of his metaphysical ponderings very beautiful. To give another way of looking at why he believes a being can ever only 'incarnate' in one state it is very useful to think of numbers. In an infinite series, like that of the real numbers, or integers each number appears only once. Likewise in the infinite totality and variety of the Universe and Universal Mind, experienced in its totality by every being , no single state of being need be or can be repeated. The being contains, or to use the sequential metaphor, passes through them all, without singling any particular state of being for repetition or attention. This is where I think Guenon's dry logic and wordiness get in the way of the beauty of his vision. Human life, he seems to be saying, is nothing so special that souls need to experience it over and over. Beings including you, me and all of humanity are wonderful and noble creatures. In Guenon's view there are an infinitely vast and incredibly other modes of being that we can't even conceive of, but will eventually experience.

I am pretty sure this is the end of the series on Guenon's views about reincarnation, unless anyone that reads this blog is still confused about what he meant -which would be perfectly understandable-then maybe I will do a post to clarify questions if anyone has any. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!

Rene Guenon & Reincarnation

For a few posts I would like to talk about the French philosopher and metaphysician, Rene Guenon (1886-1951), and his views on both metaphysics and reincarnation. I do not know how many posts this will be and I might even interrupt them with other things. I also am not making any promises about how fast they will get here. I think a quote from one of Guenon's books about the nature of the human spirit would be valuable to put here-even though it is a bit wordy: The "gross state" in fact is nothing else than the corporeal existence itself, to which[...] human individuality belong by one of its modalities only, and not its integral development. As the "subtle state," it includes in the first place, the extra-corporeal modalities of the human being, or of every other being situated in the same state of existence, and also, in the second place all other individual states[...]. It may be said, therefore, that the human being, considered in its integrality, comprise a certain sum of possibilities, which constitute its corporeal or gross modality, and in addition, a multitude of possibilities, which, extending in different directions beyond the corporeal modality, constitute its subtle modalities; but all these possibilities together represent, nonetheless, one and the same degree of universal Existence.

It follows from this that human individuality is at once much more and much less than Westerners generally suppose it to be: much more, because they recognize in it scarcely anything except the corporeal modality, which, includes, but the smallest fraction of its possibilities; much less, however, because this individuality, far from really constituting the whole being, is but one state of that being among an indefinite multitude of other states. Moreover the sum of all these states is still nothing at all in relation to the personality; which alone is the true being, because it alone represents its permanent and unconditioned state, and because there is nothing else which can be considered as absolutely real.

When I come back with the next post I hope to have some thoughts on his thinking about this subject. His vision of reality is really very grand-what he is basically saying in these two paragraphs is that the human spirit on the physical level of reality is only taking in a very tiny fraction of reality itself; and that the physical part is a very small part of universal existence that is mostly made up of non-physical planes of reality. As I go along I would definitely enjoy any comments from anyone who agrees or disagrees with Guenon-or anything else. I will give part of the series away right now -Guenon thought the idea of a human soul coming back to the physical or earth plane time and time again was absurd, so he didn't believe in the 'reincarnation' that people usually think of. I will get into some of the whys in the next post. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Gu%C3%A9non

Teresita Basa: The Dead Do Talk-Conclusion

When Allan Showery was faced with this evidence he broke down and confessed. Earlier I had mentioned the two trials. At the first trial in January 1979 when the defense had asked that the case be dismissed because the evidence had apparently been provided by a ghost, Judge Frank W. Barbero overruled the objection. The jury however, had its doubts and said they were hopelessly deadlocked. During the second trial a month later, Allan Showery changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. To me -this is one of the reasons I hate plea bargaining-fourteen years for taking the life of someone out of pure greed seems far too little a time for me!

We are left to wonder about some questions in this fascinating case. With most of the parties concerned in the case working at the same hospital, maybe Remy Chua already suspected Allan Showery and used this highly original way ot pointing out her suspicions. Maybe Remy Chua had extrasensory perception and was able to 'pick' Allan Showery's mind in a way that led to her knowledge of his guilt. However, even if this is what happened and Remy Chua gleaned all her information about the jewellery, the television 'repair' motive and the girlfriend from Showery's mind, how could she have possibly obtained the telephone number of the cousins who identified the jewellery from his mind? Even though Remy and Teresita often spoke with each other when their shifts coincided they were not close friends, and she had no reason to know the telephone number, only Teresita could have provided it.

A case in England in 1922 had some curious parallels with the Teresita Basa case. A man named Eric Tombe was shot in the back of the head by his business partner, Ernest Dyer, at the racing stable they ran together at Kenley, Surrey. Dyer had hidden the body in a cesspit and promptly moved to another part of England. Shortly after the murder, Tombe's mother, the wife of the Reverend Gordon Tombe, began having dreams he was dead, and that his body was in a well with a stone slab placed over its opening. Tombe's mother had never been to the stable and did not even know it existed. It was her husband who had finally found it while trying to locate his son. Eric's mother continued to have dreams about her son's corpse and the police apparently decided to search the stud farm, as the case was going nowhere. The police didn't find any wells, but they found four cesspits, each one covered with a heavy stone slab. Eric Tombe's body was found in one of these, hidden in a recess. Ernest Dyer, the murderer, of whose existence the Tombe's had been completely unaware of, had moved to Scarborough, where he continued his unlawful ways by passing bad checks. In an ironic twist to the case, when the police came around to question Dyer about one of the bad checks, he killed himself with a revolver, in all probablility believing they had come to question him about the homicide.

Eric Tombe had been killed from behind, with the back of his head blown off with a shotgun, so there is no possible way he could have provided knowledge of his murder by telepathy. His death was instantaneous and there is a great possibility he didn't even know Dyer had killed him. It is hard to get around the facts of this case taken at face value, that Eric Tombe 'survived' his death and was able somehow to send messages to his mother in dreams of where he was buried. In a very real sense both the Teresita Basa case and that of Eric Tombe are cases of mediumship. Remy Chua first became aware of Teresita Basa when she was napping and felt that Teresita was trying to communicate with her in dreams or trance states that she herself was unware of. She had already given her 'OK' for Teresita to come to her in a dream. Teresita did indeed start coming to Remy Chua not only in dreams, but appeared to take over her person in a trancelike state. Eric Tombe's mother also learned of her son's murder while dreaming. In this twilight state of consciousness both of these women appeared to become mediums. Another thing I think is very interesting, comparing the two cases, is that although we can be sure Remy Chua didn't want to see harm come to Teresita, there was nowhere near the mother-child connection that there was in the case of Eric Tombe. Yet perhaps both of these women had mediumistic abilities-OR-the 'souls' of the two murder victims were strong enough to get their message to the world of the living---maybe because of outrage at the manner of their deaths?

Maybe these cases can best be explained by a connection between the abilites of both the 'alive' and 'dead' parties in combination? I would be interested to know what anyone reading these posts thinks. Thanks again everyone for all of the fantastic comments! The idea for this set of posts came from Colin Wilson's 1988 book, Beyond the Occult-although I had first learned ot the Teresita Basa case in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries long ago-the cases are discussed on pages 261-263 of the book. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!

Teresita Basa: The Dead Do Talk

A trial in January 1979 sent a ripple of paranormal headlines through the newspapers and media of the time. The defense in this court case wanted it dismissed on the grounds that almost all of the evidence had been provided by a--ghost. The defense in the case also implied that ghosts were untrustworthy! The jury in this particular trial admitted it was hopelessly deadlocked. The outcome of a retrial of this case a month later was much different and this part I will talk about later. The two trials involved the murder of a Filipino nurse, Teresita Basa, at the age of forty-eight on 21 February 1977. Teresita was stabbed to death in her Evanston, Illinois apartment. Forensic evidence indicated that she had let a man into her apartment, and that at first he had choked her to the point of unconsciousness and then stripped her and stabbed her between the ribs. The force of the stab wound was so strong that it went completely through her. To confuse anyone who might investigate the man had left Teresita in a position that would suggest a rape had occurred. The man then set a mattress with Teresita's corpse on it afire in hopes of burning up all of the evidence. However, thankfully (although it did nothing for the poor victim)-the fire did not take hold and comparitively little damage was done to the crime scene.

Two weeks after her death, at the Edgewater Hospital where Teresita Basa had worked, one of her co-workers said to another, "Teresita must be turning in her grave. Too bad she can't tell the police who did it." The other former co-worker of Teresita's , a respiratory therapist named Remy Chua, also a Filipino, said in reply, "She can come to me in a dream. I'm not afraid." However, later in the day, as Remy Chua was taking a nap, after a long shift in the locker room she awoke to see Teresita Basa standing in front of her. She ran from the locker room in panic. After this incident, Remy Chua began to have dreams about Teresita's murder. In these dreams she also recognized the man who had committed the crime. One day after this series of dreams, as she lay on her bed, a voice spoke through her mouth in the language of her native land, Tagalog. The voice said, "I am Teresita Basa. I want you to call the police." Remy Chua's husband heard the words, although Remy herself remembered nothing about it after she came out of her trance-like state. The couple decided to do nothing about it.

Once again, two weeks later, 'Teresita' came back and spoke through Remy Chua. This time she named her killer-'Allan'. This was very interesting because 'Allan' was also the man Remy had recognized when she first started dreaming about Teresita's murder. Allan Showery worked as an orderly at the same hospital Remy and Teresita had worked at. A few days later 'Teresita' spoke through Remy again and gave the full name of the murderer as Allan Showery, and said he had stolen some jewellery and given it to his girlfriend. While in the trance state, 'Teresita' through Remy Chua gave the telephone number of someone who could identify the jewellery. She claimed that 'Al' had come to fix her television and killed her. Finally, the Chuas called the police. The police were anything but convinced and it was several days before they questioned Showery. Showery admitted promising to repair Teresita's television, but claimed he had forgotten to do it. However, when the police questioned Showery's girlfriend, Yanka and asked her if he had given her jewellery, she showed them an antique ring that he had given her as 'a belated Christmas present.' After this the police called the number that Remy Chua had spoken in her trance. This number belonged to one of Teresita's cousins and two of her cousins came to the police station and identified the ring as Teresita's. In addition they identified other pieces of jewellery that had belonged to Teresita.

I think this is a very interesting paranormal case and hope to have the conclusion here Thursday evening-along with questions for anyone who reads the posts and would like to comment. This case in particular caused me to wonder about quite a few things about the postmortem state. Thanks again so very much for everyone's thoughtful, thought provoking and intelligent comments!

Lord Byron: Sonnet on Chillon & Two Quotes

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart-
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned-
To fetters, and the damp vaults dayless gloom,
Their country conquer with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar-for 'twas trod
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gordon_Byron,_6th_Baron_Byron


Only a few prefer liberty-the majority seeks nothing more than fair masters. Sallust, Histories

Human nature is universally imbued with a desire for liberty, and a hatred for servitude. Caesar, Gallic Wars

UFO Mysteries: Passport To Magonia Part Two

Again from Jacques Vallee's, Passport To Magonia: "Paracelsus was probably born in 1491, and in the very same year Facius Cardan recorded his observations of seven strange visitors directly related to the creatures of the elements who were so puzzling to the great philosophers. The incident is preserved in the writings of his son, Jerome Cardan (1501-1576), who is well known to us today as a mathematician. Jerome Cardan lived in Milan and was not only a mathematician but also an occulist and a physician. In his book De Subtilitate, Cardan explains that he had often heard his father tell the particular story and finally searched for his record of the event, which reads as follows: August 13, 1491. When I had completed the customary rites, at about the twentieth hour of the day, seven men duly appeared to me clothed in silken garments, resembling Greek togas, and wearing, as it were, shining shoes. The undergarments beneath their glistening and ruddy breastplates seemed to be wrought of crimson and were of extraordinary beauty.

Nevertheless, all were not dressed in this fashion, but only two who seemed to be of nobler rank than the others. The taller of them who was of ruddy complexion was attended by two companions, and the second who was fairer and of shorter stature, by three. Thus in all there were seven. He left no record as to whether their heads were covered. They were about forty years of age, but they did not appear to be above thirty. When asked who they were, they said that they were men composed, as it were, of air, and subject to birth and death. It was true that their lives were much longer than hours, and might even reach three hundred years duration. Questioned on the immortality of our soul, they affirmed that nothing survives which is peculiar to the individual...When my father asked them why they did not reveal treasures to men if they knew where they were, they answered that it was forbidden by a peculiar law under the heaviest penalties for anyone to communicate this knowledge to men. They remained with my father for over three hours. But when he questioned them as to the cause of the universe they were not agreed. The tallest of them denied that God had made the world from eternity. On the contrary, the other added that God created it from moment to moment, so that should he desist for an instant the world would perish...Be this fact or fable, so it stands.

At the end of Passport to Magonia, before the huge appendix section of that book begins, Jacques Vallee has some great thoughts about the UFO phenomenon that I think are very much remarking on here: "To conclude, let us remark that the density (timewise) of UFO manifestations is not decreasing. Let us also note that knowledge of the structure of time would imply superior knowledge of destiny (I am using the word "destiny" to designate not the fate of individuals but the mechanism through which physical events unfold and the canvas upon which they are implemented). Perhaps I should remind the reader of two points we have touched on earlier: (1) the relativity of time in Magonia, a theory passed on to us in numerous tales we have reviewed; and (2) that astonishing little remark made by a sylph to Facius Cardan, which antedates quantum theory by four centuries: "He added that God created [the universe] from moment to moment, so that should he desist for an instant the world would perish."

As Jerome Cardan says, "Be this fact or fable, so it stands." I cannot offer the key to this mystery. I can only repeat: the search may be futile; the solution may lie forever beyond our grasp; the apparent logic of out most elementary deductions may evaporate. Perhaps what we search for is no more than a dream that, becoming part of our lives, never existed in reality. We cannot be sure that we study something real, because we do not know what reality is; we can only be sure that our study will help us understand more, far more, about ourselves. This is not a worthless task, and this idea gives me comfort, as I leave you with the lines of Milton:
I took it for a faery vision
Of some gay creatures of the element
That in the colours of the rainbow live
And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awestruck
And as I passed, I worshipped; if those you seek
It were a journey like the path to heaven
To help you find them.

I hope anyone reading these posts has enjoyed them. The major reason I wanted to put them here is to give a kind of boost to the series I want to start on Thursday or Friday. I don't know about anyone else, but this information from Passport To Magonia really got my imagination going; as to the question of whether beings from other realms, planes, dimensions or even frequencies of existence could be real and what form they might take. Thanks again for all of your kind, thoughtful and intelligent comments. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!

UFO Mysteries: Passport To Magonia

Before starting the series I want to begin on Thursday or Friday, I have found some information in Jacques Vallee's book, Passport To Magonia, that I think will help with understanding the next series, although it is not about UFOs. The information I would like to post is from pages 11 to 14 in the book and I will try to get it here as fast as possible. I do not think it will be that much. I think Passport as with his other books will help us understand this bizarre yet beautifully mysterious phenomenon better. Starting with page 11 Vallee states, " Plutarch even had a complete theory on the nature of these beings: He thinks it would be absurd that there should be no mean between the two extremes of an immortal and a mortal being; that there cannot be in nature so vast a flaw, without some intermedial kind of life, partaking of them both. As, therefore, we find the intercourse between the soul and the body to be made by animal spirits, so between divinity and humanity there is a species of daemons." This part from Vallee's wonderful book is from A.H. Clough's, Introduction to Plutarch's "Lives." Continuing on: " It is not surprising, then, to find that the "Philosophers" disagreed with Agobard on the nature of the three men and the woman who were captured by the mob in Lyons: In vain does a Philosopher bring to light the falsity of the chimeras people have fabricated, and present manifest proofs to the contrary. No matter what his experience, nor how sound his argument and reasoning, let but a man with a doctor's hood come along and write them down as false-experience and demonstration count for naught and it is henceforward beyond the power of Truth to reestablish her empire. People would rather believe in a doctor's hood than in their own eyes. There has been in your native France a memorable proof of this popular mania.

The famous Cabalist Zedechias, in the reign of your Pepin, took it into his head to convince the world that the Elements are inhabited by these peoples whose nature I have just described to you. The expedient of which he bethought himself was to advise the Sylphs to show themselves in the Air to everybody: They did so sumptuously. These beings were seen in the Air in human form, sometimes in battle array marching in good order, halting under arms, or encamped beneath magnificent tents. Sometimes on wonderfully constructed aerial ships, whose flying squadrons roved at the will of the Zephyrs.

What happened? Do you suppose that ignorant age would so much as reason as to the nature of these marvellous spectacles? The people straightaway believed that sorcerers had taken possession of the Air for the purpose of raising tempests and bringing hail upon their crops. The learned theologians and jurists were soon of the same opinion as the masses. The Emperor believed it as well; and the ridiculous chimera went so far that the wise Charlegmagne, and after him Louis the Debonair, imposed grievous penalties upon all these supposed Tyrants of the Air. You may see an account of this in the first chapter of the Capitularies of these two Emperors.

The Sylphs seeing the populace, the pedants and even the crowned heads thus alarmed against them, determined to dissipate the bad opinion people had of their innocent fleet by carrying off men from every locality and showing them their beautiful women, their Republic and their manner of government, and then setting them down again in divers parts of the world. They carried out their plan. The people who saw these men descending came running from every direction, convinced beforehand that they were sorcerers who had separated from their companions in order to come and scatter poisons on the fruit and in the springs. Carried away by the frenzy with which such fancies inspired them, they hurried those innocents off to the torture. The great number of them who were put to death by fire and water throughout the kingdom is incredible.

One day, among other instances, it chanced at Lyons that three men and a woman were seen descending from these aerial ships. The entire city gathered about them, crying out that they were magicians and were sent by Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, Charlegmagne's enemy, to destroy the French harvests." The rest of this quote from A.H. Clough's work from Jacques Vallee's book is in the fifth paragraph of my 18 January Airship Mysteries Part Five post. Vallee goes on to say, "Such stories were so well established during the Middle Ages that the problem of communicating with the Elementals became a major preoccupation of the hermentics and an important part of their philosophy. Paracelsus wrote an entire book on the nature of these beings, but he took great pains to warn the reader of the dangers of an association with them: I do not want to say here, because of the ills which might befall those who would try it, through which compact one associates with these beings, thanks to which compact they appear to us and speak to us. And in a treatise entitled "Why These Beings Appear to Us", he presented the following ingenious theory: Everything God creates manifests itself to Man sooner or later. Sometimes God confronts him with the devil and the spirits in order to convince him of their existence. From the top of Heaven, he also sends the angels, his servants. Thus these beings appear to us, not in order to stay among us or become allied to us, but in order for us to become able to understand them. These apparitions are scarce, to tell the truth. But why should it be otherwise? Is it not enough for one of us to see an Angel, in order for all of us to believe in the other Angels? I hope to have the next part of this here very soon, especially as I think this information from Vallee's work is a great primer for the next series, so hopefully it will be posted sometime tomorrow before my 'offline' time starts between late Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!

Terry Robinson: Was It An Angel?

We went to live in Malahide
In a chalet by the sea
The roof had many a hole in it
But we had many a pot, you see
The summer was at its pleasant best
The sand was soft and gold
Oh how I loved that untamed beach
Where the birds sang joyous songs
Each morning to the beach I'd run
When all my tasks were done
With a hop and a skip and a jump
The water and I were one
As I stood looking out to sea
A voice quite startled me
From nowhere it seemed to come
Yet it changed my destiny
A voice so soft and tender
Spoke these few words to me
'Young man would you like to float?'
was the challenge he flung at me
I shyly replied with a nod of my head
And a quivering 'Thank you Sir, I would'
He guided me gently to float with ease
Then like a gust of wind was gone
But he left behind a happy boy
Who shall never ever forget
Not only twice did he save my life
But saved another as well