On the End of the World

Only a few days from the end of the world, and we all sit in anticipation.

It is easy to think the end is near; humanity has hit its climax with kindergartener shootings, mall shootings, and other senseless violence that makes no sense.  I agree that it all is senseless; but I don't agree that the "demons are set loose on the world".  Yes, dark days are here, but it is too simplistic to to feel that all of this will lead up to the end of it all.

I live about 30 miles north  from the infamous 19th century Battle of Bad Axe. The "battle", in all sense of the world, was nothing more than a massacre.  The Native American Chief Black Hawk and his people (his people being women and children) were gunned down by the US military while fleeing across the Mississippi River in desperation to live life.  And the term "gunned down" would be too simplisitic of a theme; essentially government paid men shot in cold blood down and ran through women and children while aboard a river boat on the grand old missipp'.  Savages were murdered at the behest of progress.  Innocent children were murdered at the behest of a nation wanting blood.

I would argue that humanity has always "sucked"; today's headlines do make one wonder about the future of our kind, but to think that inhumane violence is at an apex is absurd.  I would vote that all of us will see Dec 22 2012; if there would be more books and media attention to the idea that humanity would change for the better upon the "day the world ends", there might be some hope for change; however, we all know that meme will not sell.  What will continue to sell is doubt and hopelessness about humanity's future; I would argue that mindset is what continues to keep us chained to a fear mongering profit.  And ultimately, that is all that matters.

In the Den of Shadow People

I took this photo late last night at my place of work; it features a hallway leading to an area of the corporate center of the company I work with.  With a bit of editing, it is turned to an angle.  And in the area that is lit, there have been two encounters with shadow people by my fellow employees.

As I've mentioned before, I don't believe I have the ability to see the random energy that is about us; I don't believe that I have a "needle" to play out the energy around me to the extent to witness paranormal events.  Yet I have no doubt others do have the ability see play the "record" of energy about us.

Two incidents have happened in the area featured above that I am aware of; one incident involved a network/IT specialist who would have been seated directly to the left of the area above.  One afternoon, while working on a network issue after normal work hours, he witnessed two shadow people walking  from the foreground to the background on the lit hallway featured above.  Being on the left hand side of the hallway, the shadow people moved left to right from his perspective.  He immediately went to the area to find the people but had no such luck.

The second incident involved a customer service representative who worked one Saturday afternoon, again, after normal work hours.  She would have been seated at the very end of the hallway, directly to the right of the back wall.  She claimed to have heard children running around her that afternoon; footsteps of children running along the hallway to the back and to the near ground of the photo.  The following Monday, she had our IT group look at a video tape recording of the office (a security camera does record the entire area featured above); again no evidence was found of children in the office.  The video tape did show her "reacting to something"; the video tape did show her stand up from her desk, peer around the corner, and move around the office.  It was clear that she was looking for something.  Of course, nothing was found in person or in film.

I have heard several theories of the cause of shadow people; multidimensional beings, djinn, ghosts, alien entities, and mental projections.  Many more theories likely exist.  Yet I question again these premises; why does the experience need to have an intelligent or sentient root cause?  Why can't the incident simply be energy that manifests specifically to the observer and to the observer's sociological/psychological perspective?  Why does there need to be a romantic notion of other intelligences or previous life as being the cause for the phenomenon?  More specifically, why can't the energy being witnessed be random; better yet, why can't the universe be random?

On Things Jim Moseley

The world of fortean wonder lost a true maverick of UFOology this past weekend.  James Moseley died on November 16th of this year from a long, drawn out fight from cancer.

I didn't really know much about the man until the past year; I purchased a couple of his Saucer Smear publications on line when I became aware of him from his friend Gene Steinberg's the Paracast.  From what I could tell from his various interviews on the Paracast and Radio Misteriso programs, Mr Moseley had a sense of perspective on UFOs that was both candid and intellectual.  Hearing his stories from years past and his criticisms of other UFO researchers from the 50's through the 21st century always caught my attention.  If Jim Moseley were to be interviewed on a podcast, I always made it a priority to listen his stories.

I've had his book in my Amazon queue for sometime now; I will likely finally purchase it  (and sadly after he has left this plane of existence).  His idealist criticisms on the infamous space brothers of the 50's, his skeptical viewpoint on the authenticity of the Roswell incident, and his lack of confidence regarding the high and mighty "experts" of this oddball field were always appreciated by me during his interviews.

Of course, as many have pointed out, he might always have been known as a hoaxer and practical jokester; John Keel went so far as to call him a "a boil on the ass of ufology".   Yet after hearing his devotion to the David Huggins case, his intent on believing that UFOs were not caused by interplanetary visitors, and his honest and unbiased opinions of the folklore of UFOology and those who create it, one can not be amazed.  Here was a man that was there at the beginning of this modern phenomenon; and here was a man who was intellectual, humorous and critical of the world around him.  I recall hearing him in the early sixties on various radio shows broadast on various internet programs and thinking "this guy is a very formidable and well spoken adversary to both the utopians and the critics - how bizarre is that?."  For every Keel or Vallee of any field of study, there needs to be a Jim Moseley.  And though I wish I had had the opportunity to converse or even meet with him, I felt that I knew him very well.  Godspeed Jim; your insight on the bizarre things around us all will never be forgotten by those in the know.

The Paradigm of Etheria

As noted on previous entries of this blog, I do have an incredible interest in the field of UFOlogy.  And why shouldn't I?  The idea of observed objects in the sky that appear, disappear, change colors, and change shapes over the course of human history should appeal to all of us.  Gods, angels, demons, airships and spacecraft have been with humanity since the beginning of written history; UFOs, I can only surmise, have been with us since the beginning of time.

Having read the many theories about the origin of UFOs, whether it be time travelers, elementals, cryptoterrestrials, evolved dinosaurs, and of course, extraterrestrial aliens (ancient and/or otherwise), I recently came across a "new idea" of Ether ships in John Keel's Operation Trojan Horse.  I immediately became hooked; the idea of an invisible world and invisible creatures around us that Meade Layne first theorized about prior to the famous Kenneth Arnold "Flying Saucers" event in 1947 carried an immediate and intuitive impression to me.  Today, I finally received a first edition of Layne's Ether Ship Mystery pamphlet (courtesy of an Ebay auction) and decided to become a well read couch theorist of the Ether Ship paradigm.

Above is a picture of an alleged Ether Ship photographed near an infamous Reich Orgone Cloud Buster by the daughter of Etherian theorist Trevor Constable.  Do I plan on becoming an orgone collector in the coming weeks?  Probably not; I also do not plan on receiving any job promotions or community accolades for the coming research.  Yet I do feel, for whatever reason, Layne's work, as well as the work of other contributors to the idea "Etheria", provides a cornerstone to one of the greatest mysteries of the human age; our true reality.  Stay tuned for more.

On Space

The majority of space that surrounds my life is fitted to form.  Unless I find myself in the wilderness, the city of spaces that I live in are engineered for utilization.  Streets, sidewalks, parks, homes, my office, etc... each physical space has been turned into something that benefits a human need.  Most space is a bent product of human demand.

I work in an older building in the city I live in and often find myself exploring different parts of the campus occasionally.  I am definitely not paid to be an urban explorer, but at times, needing a break from starting at my PC screen, I find myself drawn to wandering aimlessly through lesser traversed spots in the building.   On one such daily adventure, I discovered a space that exists in the "nether"; a space that provides no form or function to the company I work for.

My only estimate of the particular space's origin is that it resulted from the building's expansion at some point of the business's history.  Rather than tear down the original building's metal wall, the engineering firm built an entirely new complex and connected the two buildings with a couple of hall ways and metal roofing.  Cheap and efficient, no doubt the engineering rage of late 70's Midwest architecture.  Today, it sits as a fluorescent lit hallway that leads absolutely nowhere.  No form or function required; just metal, concrete, pipes and lighting.

To think about what has been on this exact spot over the course of time is quite overwhelming.  Initially a spot of earth and rock, later perhaps a prehistoric culture's site, perhaps even later in time the site of a home or a farm, today the space exists electric, cold and, idle.  It no longer needs rain, sunlight, or human attention; without my discovery, it likely would continue to be ignored.  I will not be able to revert this particular space to its original physical appearance, but I will not forget or be ignorant of this particular space for the rest of my life.

The Legacy of Frankenstein

The image of Frankenstein's monster; what it is that I find so fascinating about the creature that Boris Karloff became some 80 years ago?

I maybe read the Shelley classic while in grade school; I at least knew the storyline to some extent as far back as I can remember.  I recall going to the local used bookstore on Saturdays, searching out another Shelley book with a different cover on it, and buying it with the little, precious cash I had.  I never read the books I purchased, I only bought the book for the cover art.  As time went on, the collection grew so large that my mother made me sell the majority of the books at a rummage sale.  Of course I kept my favorite few.

I think I first saw the 1931 film while I was in middle school.  If I remember correctly, the original film ran on AMC late at night.  I remember scouring the weekly family tv guide for the film and when seeing the date of broadcast, breaking out a VHS to tape the show, setting up the high tech VHS timed recorder, and crossing my fingers that the tape would not run out prior to the end of the film.  Having watched it recently on DVD, the film still has some classic moments; a bit silly at times, but at the heart of the matter, the film always has Karloff looming on screen, always appearing as something ethereal and disturbing; appearing as something that quite didn't fit the screen...something that didn't quite belong to that specific time.

Perhaps that is the attraction to me.  The Karloff monster was a creature born out of time and and out of place; a creature not meant to exist and to only be dragged into reality at the hands of an egotistical maker.  Shunned and persecuted throughout the original book and countless films, the creature has and continues to bear the burden of an unwanted and unwelcome existence.  When Whalen and company designed the famous image years ago, I can't help but think that perhaps they too had tapped into something that all of us feel at some level.  I've begun to read the works of Carl Jung of late.  I don't doubt to think that the imagery of the monster will show up at some point during the reading of his works.

Today, years after my elementary school days, the Karloff incarnation of the monster continues to fascinate me.  I still keep an eye on old film posters for sale on Ebay and on the Web and watch the films when on tv.  I purchased a bust of the Karloff creature after college; today, the lifelike busts sits in my office at my workplace.  As if on queue, the bust both repulses and attracts all who see it on my desk for the first time.  The image, if somehow possible, relates to each and everyone of us at some type of archetypal level; the archetype is either appreciated or despised.  Rarely does a middle, gray type reaction exist to it.  Easily one of the greatest artistic creations of the 20th century, the Frankenstein image of Karloff will be with all of us for the rest of our time.  And I, for one, will forever be a fan. 

The Randomness of the Black Lodge

Any one who has seen the television show Twin Peaks likely remembers the show very well; my brother and I became fanatics of the show and the focused, odd vision of David Lynch constrained by the parameters of a network television show.  There were of course the owls, the log lady, Special Agent Dale Cooper, and the never resolved cliff hanger highlighting an entrance to hell; the Black Lodge.

I didn't put much thought into the idea of the Black Lodge until recently. After all, as far as I could tell, the Black Lodge was just another fantastic Lynch idea put to film.  A surrealist acid vision where my favorite television hero of all time would forever be trapped.  A brilliant, but fictitious construct that likely continues to inspire countless future filmakers and writers.  How could it be anything more than that?

Yesterday I read about the The Black Lodge in a book by Allen Greenfield.  The Black Lodge apparently is not the result of an artist's imagination, but rather an object in the history of the occult. The Black Lodge, Greenfield surmises, is a "source" of an intelligent energy that exists to inhibit and hold human evolution down against a back drop of stagnant personal growth and destructive materialism.  Likewise, in direct contrast to these dark energies, a white energy type group exists to promote and energize humanity to different epochs of human development.  As Greenfield points out, should anyone come near to or in contact with the ubermensch or oneness of the universe through actualization and transcendence, The Black Lodge descends upon that person, manifesting as a man in black, the Men In Black, black magic practitioners, and temptation.  The Black Lodge attempts to confuse and distract those with insight into the "true reality of things" by intervening in that observer's life.  Opposite energies present themselves in order to distract one away from other positive, divergent energies;  that, at least, is my take on this particular chapter of Greenfield's book "The Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts".

I recently commented on how I feel that there are multiple worlds around us all at all times of lives.  I do believe that there exists objects that manifest from an energy source outside of our field of vision.  Is this energy intelligent or random?  I have no idea, but I do tend to think that the energy invades our life on a random basis and from a random origin.  Different energies probably do collide around us frequently. Whether this collision were to create a demonic, a fairy, or an alien abduction is dependent solely upon the observer and the observer's sociological/psychological perspective.  I find it too simplistic to argue that energies permeate from a "Black Lodge" and a "White Lodge.

The idea of two eternal, warring metaphysical factions warring over the human soul through the likes of Aleister Crowley, Edward Dee, Albert K Bender and others is a very romantic notion, no doubt.  Yet I would argue that randomness holds supreme reign over the universe, our perceptions of reality, and ultimately, the thing that has become you and I. 

Undefined UFOlogy

Over the past three years, I have to admit, I have become addicted to the field of UFOlogy.  I have never witnessed a "strange light" in the sky or experienced a chance alien encounter, but the subject, I find, is most interesting.

I recall years ago in elementary school checking out books at the school library regarding Yeti, Atlantis, ghosts, and of course, UFOs.  I seem to recall quite a few Brad Steiger books that I always seemed to have around my parent's house.  Slowly the interest blended into the X-Files, then a bit into school with parapsychology, and then it was lost while in my later college years and during the first few years of my professional career.  More or less, I thought, "I've grown up".  How wrong I was.

I remember not putting much stock into the "weird events" when I was young; aliens were ET and that was that.  A few years ago I randomly chanced upon a few podcasts and was introduced to things like the Skinwalker Ranch, the Mothman of West Virginia, and my local favorite, the Beast of Bray Road.  The witness accounts were so much more vibrant and profound than the books I had read on Roswell, UFO crashes, and government coverups.  Suddenly, books like Keel's Operation Trojan House, Vallee's Magonia, even Redfern's Final Events made much more sense.  In the grand scheme of things, who doesn't like the idea of an eccentric NASA rocket scientist opening a portal to another land filled with occult energized UFOs?  The ideas presented by these authors resonated to me; why do UFOs have to be extraterrestrial in nature?  Why can't UFOS be be terrestrial in nature?  Why do I even care?

My interest has only grown over the past few years.  As far as I can tell, the enigma is no further resolved than it was in the middle ages with fairies, with the airships of the 1890's, or even with current technological sightings continuously reported around the world.  Personally, I believe the answer lies somewhere in the works of Vallee and Keel; I plan to purchase books in the near future by other "ultraterrestrial" theorists such as Constable and Layne.   Unlike so many others, I don't foresee my ability to witness these events in the   coming future.  As Dr. Barry Taff once theorized in his book, paranormal events like these are often played out to the observer much like a record needle creates sounds from a record grove.  I don't quite know what that means, but on an intuitive level, that statement makes quite a bit sense. I don't believe I have that needle; yet in the end, needle or not, the phenomenon most certainly and without a doubt, exits.

Ernst, Max

Four, five years ago I became an obsessive compulsive in collecting art; I scoured sites like Art.com and ebay for commercial prints of the favorite standbys.  Prints by Goya, Van Gogh, Duchamp, even Monet became mainstays in my apartment.  I had always felt I could be an artist at a very minimal level (but didn't think to pursue it in school or in my personal time), and to see the masters and feel their works on a daily basis made my efficiency feel cultured, at the very least.

Then came along Max Ernst.  I don't recall exactly how I found this surrealist/dada artist, but once I found a print of his work, it became an another obsession.  The more I researched his works, the more I realized I could actually purchase his art through auction houses and get limited prints with his personal, pencil engrained signature.  No longer were commercially replicated works limited to me and my living space; I now could hang living, breathing documents that recorded an artist's moment in time.  I became fascinated, and in typical due course, proceeded to watch dvds, purchase limited prints, and read books regarding Loplop and his life.

Above was the second Max Ernst print I ever purchased; I've always felt it to be a mixture between a Lovecraftian world of Cthulhu and a sort of disc shaped, unnameable object in the sky.  Again, I felt that the print demonstrated something that is both buzzing around us all and at the same time not quite accurate or material enough to pinpoint.

A fantastic blog regarding Loplop and his imagery can be found here : http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2012/02/of-this-men-shall-know-nothing.html.  In retrospect, the author's findings make a lot of sense and tie into the sense I've felt about Ernst since I first began purchasing his works.  In retrospect, I wish I had been attuned to the situation to have made a similar argument in this blog.

Reviewing Ernst's work over the years, I had never paid much attention to the imagery of his works, outside of the fact I enjoyed it all.  Ernst died in 1976, and alas, I was born in 1976.  In the grand scheme of things, I would like to think there was some sort of connection between these two facts.  I sincerely doubt that is the case.  But to this day, Max Ernst and his works, to me, feel like a connection to this world and others.  A connection to something that exists and feels natural to us at all times, yet simultaneously repulses us and begs us to look away.  I refuse to look away, and hope that you too will likewise. 

An initial post

An idea finally hit me last night; why not start a blog?  The experience felt like the beginning to a new creative life; a new place to record daily images and to permit the attempt to make sense of the images through the ideas I've been exposed to over my 36 years of life.  How much more exciting can it get than that?

Today's inaugural post includes an image that was on my wall this morning.  The image was stark; light passing through blinds and seeping onto the bedroom wall.  A wave length of light that was filtered into an image that seemed ordinary at first, but on second glance, appeared completely out of place.

John Keel, a famous ufologist from the early days of the UFO waves, wrote that energies exist outside of our visible wavelength and pass in and out of our field of visions at various points of time.  The idea spoke to an occult vision of UFOs and to other things paranormal that appear to be temporarily out of place to us, yet at the same, are familiar to us all at a very basic human conceptual level.

Do I think the image on the wall was paranormal?  Of course not. However, the otherworldly image did suggest that something so out of place was caused by something very much in place.  Why shouldn't the opposite exist?