My interest in the myths, symbols, and the unusual aspects of life often leads me into some fairly strange sub-adventures that underly my day-to-day life. There are even certain points where I begin to feel that there is something of a continuum between them, and that particular themes will begin to emerge over and over again, until they finally command my attention. And interestingly, these sorts of instances often will yield the most fruit in terms of insights I am able to come away with regarding odd bits of esoterica. 

One such instance involves a rather strange series of events surrounding the historic figure known as John Dee, a scientist, advisor, and spy for Queen Elizabeth I, in addition to having undertaken a variety of magical workings in his day. Knowing my interest in (and aptitude for) matters involving symbology, a woman had contacted me a while ago to ask whether I might know the meaning behind a certain strange little symbol: it resembled a stick man, with what resembled horns protruding from the head. Indeed, I did recognize the symbol, and within a few minutes, after initially mistaking it for being associated with the magician Aleister Crowley, I managed to confirm that it was the Monas Hieroglyphica of John Dee. In doing so, I also managed to spark a strange debate about the origins of symbols and information that the human mind seems capable of accessing at times… a process which some feels has ties to the otherworldly.

Once it was revealed that I had given the correct answer (which was posted on a Facebook group where others were attempting to solve the same riddle), I was subsequently contacted by a woman who wished to know how I had deciphered the symbol. She then told me she was a psychic, specializing in remote viewing, and wondered if I too, as she had done, managed to decipher the riddle “by consulting with the Akashic Record.” For the moment, I had somehow managed to give the impression that I was in touch with some kind of extra-bodily universal intelligence… but where, in fact, did my knowledge of the Hieroglyphica come from?

I found this question rather strange, and while I had to admit that I had not knowingly been in direct contact with a nonphysical “library”, of sorts, which stored universal knowledge, I had been intrigued by symbols like Dee’s Monas (pictured right) for quite some time, and had merely stumbled across the image at some point. But the question of whether I had been able to consult with “Akashic Records” was somewhat synchronistic all the same, since I had only recently been contacted by a friend, who after reading my book The UFO Singularity, asked me whether I thought artificial intelligence in the future might be able to solve the UFO riddle by accessing the Akashic Records.

For those unfamiliar with the topic, the so-called “Akashic Records” refers to a concept found in the mythos surrounding many spiritualist and religious teachings, believed to contain “all knowledge of human experience and all experiences,” along with the complete history of the cosmos. This information is “written”, woven, or encoded into the very fabric reality, a state sometimes referred to as the ”aether.” The name itself is derived from the old Sanskrit “akasha,” a word used to express similar aether-like concepts of an all encompassing “substance” that permeates all creation.

Edgar Cayce, the great “sleeping prophet,” was actually said to have attained his knowledge of ancient lost civilizations by directly accessing the Akashic Records while in a trance state, though this was not asserted by Cayce himself, but revealed later in the first book in an odd series, called The Law of One, where it is stated that Cayce obtained the information (here again, this “answer” is channeled in similar fashion), revealing that humans occasionally access such realms of knowledge that exist beyond the mind alone. The relevant passage reads as follows:

“We have explained before that the intelligent infinity is brought into intelligent energy from eighth density or octave. The one sound vibratory complex called Edgar used this gateway to view the present, which is not the continuum you experience but the potential social memory complex of this planetary sphere. The term your peoples have used for this is the ‘Akashic Record’ or the ‘Hall of Records’.”

But the notion that humans may be capable of accessing information they would otherwise not be capable of attaining is mirrored in the study of psychology as well, particularly in the works of Carl Jung. In his essay, Confrontation with the Unconscious, he notes the appearance of an archetype he calls “Philemon,” which was an older male figure he refers to as a guide throughout his various imaginary visions. At one point, Jung begins to recognize the information imparted to him by Philemon as seeming to emanate from someplace other than his own mind:

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him. and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me.

It is a very strange notion indeed, that some aspects of human existence may be rooted within a complex collective unconsciousness, as Jung supposed; even more strange and perplexing is the idea that the human mind might even draw information from elsewhere… places or planes of thought and imagination that exist beyond the mind itself. I certainly don’t feel that I’ve done this myself, especially in my modest ability to reflect upon seeing, at one point, John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica; let alone do I acknowledge that there are components within the mind that, in scientific terms, might be capable of extending beyond the physical. But the prevalence of this concept in various cultures and traditions, along with allusions to similar processes expressed by Jung, do provide some compelling and challenging notions about the inner workings of the human mind.

The Apocalypse is nigh! Okay, so not really. We’re now well into 2013, and I’m sure that most of you have realized by now: The world did not end in 2012. And while we all celebrate our continued existence – and put the whole Mayan Calender incident behind us – what world-ending theories are left? 

The Expansion of the Sun

A giant, burning, mass of hydrogen and helium, the Sun is the source of energy (both direct and indirect) for most life on the Planet. Yet scientists have determined that our Solar center might one day expand so far as to engulf the Earth.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s theorized that – in roughly 5 billion years – our yellow sun would have finally exhausted the hydrogen fuel at its core, and that at this point, it will begin to expand. Although the sun will expand to where the Earth’s orbit will pass directly through the molten ball, the Sun’s transformation into a Red Giant (as a result of the expansion) means that it will only be about half the temperature it is today. Will our greatest source of energy spell our slow-burning doom?

Nuclear Holocaust

Click here to view the embedded video.

Although at times the idea of large scale nuclear fallout seems more like the illegitimate love-child of the Cold War and a Tom Clancy novel, and less like a prophecy for Armageddon, pushing the Big Red Button could still very well mean the end of the world as we know it. It’s a scary thought, but as political tensions continue to grow, the looming threat of the mushroom cloud persists.

Judgement Day (No, not the machines)

Okay: maybe this one has a few flaws. For generations, the ever-present “fear of God” has been felt among certain secular organisations (I’m not naming names). And although not based on ANY form of science (or even pseudo-science, for that matter), the Last Judgement theory still has its fans.

The belief that eventually the Earth will be destroyed in a blaze of hell-fire and damnation is an old one, and the desire for the pious to be ‘saved’ from the doom is equally so. However, it’s the similarities between the latter and ‘ascension’ which is truly interesting. Something to think about, New Agers.

For the seeker of the strange and unusual, a wealth of interesting topics can be found in the mystic traditions of Judaism. One of the more famous legends from this faith to become popularly associated with modern Forteana involves the “Golem,” a literal man brought to life from mud by the Maharal of Prague, Judah Loew ben Bezalel, in the 1500s. However, the creation of mud-men by magical means is hardly the only area of the esoteric that the Jewish faith encompasses.

Much like the Holy Church of Rome, which acknowledges that there are scientific, and at times even scriptural justifications for life on other planets, much can be found in the holy texts of the Torah that seem to point us toward the same line of thought. Often, it is argued that for a divine intelligence or “creator” to exist, it would seem odd for such a being to begin the great work of creating conscious life throughout our universe… but if life were to exist on other planets, how might those varieties of intelligence differ from you or I? Also, would those differences merely be physical in nature, or would the same sorts of differences we might expect of alien life carry over into the spiritual realm just as well?

An article appearing at the website Torah.org deals with a few of the issues that extraterrestrial life forms may face under a God shared by Earthlings. As the Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan expresses in his article “Extraterrestrial Life,” one view holds that while aliens certainly could exist on distant planets, they may not be gifted with such human graces as “free will”. He cites the work of the Jewish Sefer Habris (The Book of the Covenant), believed to have been authored in the twelfth century by the biblical commentator Rabbi Yosef Kimchi, which divulges the following about alien life existing elsewhere:

[W]e find the opinion of the Sefer Habris who states that extraterrestrial life does exist, but that it does not possess free will. The latter is the exclusive possession of man, for whom the universe was created. The 18,000 worlds mentioned earlier, in his opinion, are inhabited physical worlds. The proof that he brings for his thesis is most ingenious. In the song of Deborah, we find the verse, “Cursed is Meroz… cursed are its inhabitants” (Judges 5:23). In the Talmud, we find the opinion that Meroz is the name of a star. According to this opinion, the fact that Scripture states, “Cursed is Meroz… cursed are its inhabitants” is clear proof from the words of our Sages for extraterrestrial life.

Of course, even this proof is subject to refutation, for the Zohar also follows the opinion that Meroz is a star, yet states that “its inhabitants” refers to its “camp,” that is, most probably, to the planets surrounding it. Nevertheless, the simple meaning of the verse seems to support the opinion of the Sefer Habris.

The Sefer Habris also notes, according to Rabbi Kaplan, that humankind “should not expect the creatures of another world to resemble earthly life, any more than sea creatures resemble those of land.” This is much in keeping, of course, with popular conceptions about alien life from a modern scientific standpoint, of course: if life evolved on a planet vastly different from our own, why would we ever assume that these beings would resemble humans in any way?

Arguably, in general terms, when we think of non-human entities on Earth, this would entail other creatures from the animal kingdom, which, from a theological perspective, might not be viewed as thinking, reasoning beings; hence, in the sense of free-will being associated with beings who reason, it could be that the supposition that alien life would exist in a world void of free will might have stemmed (early on, at least) from the general presumptions that might have come to interpret what, precisely, “non human life” should entail.

Do the theological perspectives of Judaism really differ from that of Christianity, or perhaps other faiths such as Hindu and other traditions, when it comes to the study of alien life? Furthermore, is there any knowledge that might be gained in terms of the study of extraterrestrial intelligence by applying a largely theological interpretation, or would this merely better us in hopes of deepening our spirituality, perhaps in a cosmological sense?

Dreams have always influenced Kim Shong’s life, even before she was born. Growing up in a “semi-traditional” Asian household, Kim said her family has always been open to spirituality, which resulted in her name.

“My deceased grandfather came to my mother in her dream when she was pregnant with me, and had given me my name,” she said. “So we believe dreams and are open minded.”

Kim is sure her almost nightly lucid dreams are spiritual visits. Such as a series of dreams she had in junior high school involving a family friend.

“My mother’s closest friend stayed with us during her progressive stages in cancer and we were very close to her,” Kim said. “I dreamt of her passing through symbols in a dream and actually found out that day she had passed while I was in class.”

Traditionally, a family burns the dead’s possessions, such as clothing and pictures, to send them along to the afterlife. After her family did this, she again dreamed of her mother’s friend.

“I dreamt of a young woman who was in a yellow polka dotted dress with a white sun hat, but I couldn’t make out her face,” she said. “In the background was our apartment and full of boxes as if someone was moving.”

Deceased family members and friends have visited Kim in dreams before, and they always looked young and healthy, so she knew who the woman was. “It was my mother’s friend.”

The woman in the dream told Kim she didn’t want to leave. Kim’s dream-self simply smiled and told her she couldn’t stay there anymore. The woman said, “Okay,” and left. Kim has never seen her in her dreams again. But she still dreams, all the time.

“You might just write them off,” she said. “But I am convinced they’re more than just dreams.”

Some of these dreams are dark.

“I’ve had very strange things happened to me and for a long time,” she said. “I thought things were following me wherever we moved, like poltergeists or something, because I’ve had very bad nightmares, and strange things happening for a very long time.”

Like the shadows. Kim first experienced them one night in the apartment where she lived during her junior high school years. “I remember waking up and opening my eyes but everything was hazy and it felt like I was in maybe REM sleep, borderline conscious and unconscious,” she said. “When I first opened my eyes, I saw this very, very tall shadow.”

Through the dream haze, she could make out a thin figure, “like an elongated human,” standing in front of her bedroom door. The figure was so tall it reached the doorframe. “When I saw it, I didn’t panic or react,” she said. “I don’t remember how I felt but it wasn’t fear or shock. I think I was indifferent.”

She closed her eyes and opened them again, and the shadow had moved. It was closer. “The shadow was on the edge of my bed this time,” she said. “Then one last time I closed and opened my eyes and it was there next to me, on the side of the bed close to my face, just standing and looking down.”

She couldn’t see any detail in the entity’s face, nor its clothing. “I then just fell asleep and didn’t see it again,” she said. “It was not a threatening being and it didn’t seem malicious, it was just there.”

Although this shadow entity didn’t seem dangerous, the one from a visitation in 2011 did. “It was also in a dream-like state,” Kim said. “It was one of those paralyzing situations and yes, I’ve had my fair share of paralyzing dreams, but this was the strangest, and like nothing else I’ve had.”

Kim “woke” in her dream, seeing her surroundings exactly as they should be, although she was still asleep. “It was very lucid, so I thought I had woken up,” she said. “My room was dark as it normally would be at night, but there was like a purplish hue covering the room.”

Kim initially thought the purple glow was from the moon, but quickly dismissed it. The light didn’t come from the window, and moonlight isn’t purple. Then she noticed she wasn’t alone. “This dark, shadowed man was sitting on my bed, very close to me,” she said. “I didn’t get up, I just looked up at him.”

She lay in silence and stared at the dark, androgynous person next to her. Much like her first shadowy encounter, there were no visible features on the black figure; it was a silhouette, but she knew what it was. “I knew it was a man because of his voice,” Kim said. “He was talking to me, and I could hear him, but he didn’t have a face.”

Terror consumed her as she stared at this strange, silhouette sitting on her bed. Then it leaned close to her and spoke. “In a panicked, almost aggressive and hurried voice he says to me, ‘Don’t you know there are other dimensions?’”

Something inside told her to turn her head toward the wall her bed rested against. She didn’t expect what she saw. “There was this large round neat drawing or something on my wall with symbols inside of it,” she said. “I couldn’t make (the symbols) out though. It was large and covered the center of that wall. And as soon as he said those words, I was so scared.”

Then the shadow man leaned into the circle and disappeared. “I freaked out,” Kim said. “I tried to get up from my bed but I couldn’t move my body. I was panicking so much.”

Fear clawed at Kim. Her mother slept in the next room and she wanted nothing more at that moment than to wake her. “I tried to move my hand to hit the wall,” Kim said. “I was slamming my body and head into the wall to make as much noise as possible, and even tried screaming, but no noise came from it.”

Then she woke, really woke. “I jumped up straight from my bed and bolted to the living room screaming, promptly waking my mother up and her asking if I was okay,” Kim said. “I stood in front of her shocked but didn’t want to tell her because I didn’t want to scare her.”

Kim tried to process what she’d experienced, but couldn’t. The entity she’d seen was real to her, and so were its words. “It didn’t feel like a dream at all,” Kim said. “My heart was still beating rapidly. I think I was psychologically frightened. It’s kind of haunting.”

Don’t you know there are other dimensions? Kim still doesn’t know what that means. “It stuck in my mind ever since, ” she said. “Thinking about it is creepy. Until I started learning about shadow people (I didn’t think) it may be beings from different dimensions.”

Her lucid dreams continue every time she tries to sleep. She doesn’t like to do that anymore. “I’ve developed really bad insomnia and if I do happen to go to bed early, I always wake up at 3 a.m. like clockwork no matter how exhausted I am,” she said. “I don’t even bother sleeping at night anymore, but when I do sleep for those few hours before being jarred awake at 3 a.m., I feel my body vibrating and it gets me a bit nauseated and I get the feeling that somebody is there.”

Paranoia washes over her dream self until she actually wakes, but she knows being awake or asleep is irrelevant – her experiences are real. “I know it’s not nothing,” Kim said. “I know it’s more than just a dream.

In the Bavarian village of Konnersreuth in March of 1918, a 19-year-old peasant girl, Therese Neumann, fell from a stool while tending a fire in her uncle’s barn. Therese was left partially paralysed by the fall and over the coming months the poor, unfortunate Therese would suffer further falls. After one such fall in 1919, she was left completely blind. Now bedridden, Therese developed bed sores that so deeply ate into her flesh, at times, bone was exposed. Life was not looking good for the teenage girl who should have, at that age, been in her prime.

But on 29 April 1923, according to Therese herself, something miraculous happened to the devout Catholic peasant girl. After diligently praying for the impending beatification of Therese of Lisieux, Therese Neumann was cured of her blindness, on the very day her namesake was beatified in Rome.

Thus began an extraordinary life of miraculous cures, stigmata and religious visions spoken in ancient tongues for the poor peasant girl from Konnersreuth.

Miraculous Cures

While her blindness had apparently been miraculously cured, Therese was still left bedridden through paralysis and still suffered agonising bed sores. She would suffer these debilitating afflictions for a further two years … until the day Therese of Lisieux was canonised as a saint. On that day, 17 May 1925, Therese claimed the newly canonised saint appeared to her and this time cured her of her paralysis and bed sores.

But just months later, the long-suffering young woman would again be confined to bed, this time with appendicitis. Then, just before she was to go in for surgery, Therese begged her family to take her immediately to the church to pray. Once inside, and after saying her prayers, she suddenly announced that she had been cured of this latest affliction also.

Stigmata

If Therese now thought her medical tribulations were finally over, she was unfortunately mistaken. In March 1926, the first day of Lent, a wound suddenly appeared just above Therese’s heart. This she initially kept secret. However, further wounds soon appeared on Therese’s body and she confided in her sister that along with the stigmata she had also begun having religious visions.

“Every Friday, according to her relatives, she has wept tears of blood, while red marks, like the Stigmata of St. Francis, appear on the palms of her hands, on her left side, and on her feet. When the marks appear her home is a place of pilgrimage for thousands from all over Germany and Czecho-Slovakia and other countries,” reported The Advertiser in November 1927.

The Canberra Times also reported on the mysterious stigmata afflicting Therese Neumann.

“Eight months ago Fraulein Neumann was taken ill. Soon the stigmata or bleeding wounds on her hands, feet and at her side – Christ’s wounds – opened on her body. At times blood came from her mouth. For seven months the stigmata have bled and the girl has not taken food or water. According to the villagers she has not lost weight.”

Religious Visions in Ancient Tongues

“In July Fraulein Neumann began seeing visions and describing persons who participated in the tragedy of the Crucifixion, without knowing who they were. Her descriptions were recorded and Pontius Pilate, Caiphas, Judas and St. Peter were identified. In the last few days, moreover, the girl has been visited with the gift of tongues. When the local priest found her describing her visions in an unknown language he called in experts who recorded her words in Aramaic. Also, the different persons in her vision, it is asserted, speak with different dialects, St. Peter with the Galilean and Caiphas with a more Jewish intonation,” The Canberra Times reported.

“Therese speaks in her visions as a contemporary. She, therefore, quotes persons living in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion who had a kind word for Judas because he kissed the Saviour, and who accuse Peter for first drawing the sword against Malchus, and shedding blood, which Theresa explains caused a bad impression in Jerusalem then.”

It was stressed that Therese’s visions included details that only the most scholarly students of Biblical history would be aware. “She described Christ carrying three pieces of wood for the cross and not the cross itself, and claims that the original cross was shaped like a Y.”

For the rest of her life, Therese remained an enigma, and somewhat of an international celebrity. It has been reported that more than 100,000 pilgrims from across the globe visited the Bavarian village to pay homage to the religious wonders that apparently manifested through the ever-suffering Therese. During Hitler’s reign of terror, she was an outspoken critic, but while the Gestapo kept a close watch on her, she was never directly targeted by the Nazi regime. After hostilities had ended, it is reputed that following a question from a US soldier on whether the United States would ever face war on its soil, she replied: “No, but at the end of this century America will be destroyed economically by a series of natural disasters.”

On 18 September 1962, at the age of 64, Therese Neumann died of a heart attack. She had apparently lived on only the Eucharist for the past 40 years, and had not had any water for the past 36 years.

The “fractured” nature of supposed psychic phenomena is further complicated by the appearance of 1-800 hotlines, reality television programing, and a host of other commercial endeavors that, for good or for ill, promote the extra-sensory abilities of others for purpose of profit. While every individual should be allowed the ability to earn their living, the process of commercializing the unexplained often casts strange phenomenon like ESP in a poor light, especially amidst the scientific community.

But there are certainly those out there who seek to better understand such things as psychic phenomenon, and to do so utilizing the scientific method. In doing so, could we possibly discover that proposed “psychic abilites” may actually be the result of such things as natural selection, and even underlying biological processes occurring within the body?

I am reminded of a musician friend of mine who once told me that he, upon first meeting certain women throughout his life, had always received a particular sensation if this would eventually be someone he would later begin dating. The conversation came together as the result of a question I had asked him: do you believe in psychic phenomenon? Indeed, it was my friend’s feeling that the “sensation” he had described, rather than merely being the kinds of sparks flying between two interested individuals, had actually been something precognitive that “alerted” him as to which women he met would be an ideal partner.

If we were to suppose, for instance, that there were some underlying evolutionary reason for this kind of process to occur within the mind, we might assume that developing a precognitive ability to discern which people would become the best partners could be conducive to procreation. Again, in an evolutionary sense, this sort of “evolved” ability to precognitively pick lovers might have served our ancient ancestors in the successful furtherance of our species; it could also explain the increased incidence of psychic experiences couples seem to share, as discussed thoroughly in books like author Brad Steiger’s Otherworldly Affaires: Haunted Lovers, Phantom Spouses, and Sexual Molesters from the Shadow World. 

Similarly, while the results of the study to follow have been disputed, the research of psychologist Daryl Bem in his so-called “Feeling the Future” studies, which asserted that individuals showed an increased incident of telepathic prowess immediately prior to being shown erotic imagery. Again, we might assert that if such a trend actually exists, it could be the result of an acquired evolutionary development, designed to assist in successful procreation.

Another unique way of viewing the benefits of developing psychic abilities could have to do with the nature of thoughts and, more specifically, dreams. Often, people who claim to have experienced precognitive events did so through recollections of things experienced during the dream state. Could it be that the dreaming mind, serving as an effective “simulation” of the real world and the activities we will engage within it, might at times help us to ready ourselves for upcoming future events? Furthermore, would it be too much of a stretch to assume that the dreaming mind might occasionally do this through the use of psychic dreams?

At the blog for The Rhine Center, a very insightful post titled “Psi Events and Evolutionary Psychology” recently touched on a similar idea, while expressing the ways that biology and natural selection could be underlying the development of psychic abilities:

Your experiences are mediated by your physical parts, and those physical parts with their sensory structures got here via natural selection.  It is known that there are psychological processes that you are born with, that are built into your DNA such as the ability to use language or walking.  One such evolved trait in humans is a mental world where you create a virtual simulation of life.  This allows you to make plans, to remember events, to solve problems and practice real-world activities in a virtual setting.  The process of natural selection also takes place in this virtual world.  The mind is constantly taking in new pieces of information and testing them against problems that you can expect to encounter.  This seems to be the primary evolved function of dreaming.

Dreams are also discussed seriously within the context of psychic phenomenon and prophecy in Elliot R. Wolfson’s fantastic book A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination, in which the author shares a wealth of unique observations pertaining to prophetic nature of dreams. ”What is significant about the dream,” Wolfson writes in the book’s second chapter, “is that it is a mode of seeing in the present about the future based on the past, and similarly, prophecy is a preview of what will transpire, often envisioned in parabolic images that call for interpretation.” He goes on to express, in a Faustian comparison, the way that dreams tend to mirror something deeper than the mere existant reality:

“The dream may be likened to the mirror of Faust, a mirror that mirrors not a reality external to it, but the mirror of the mind gazing upon nothing but its own proclivity to dissemble indeterminately and deficiently. The oneriic seeing is thus a vision of nocturnality gleaming forth at the heart of nocturnaily–even when the dream occurs in daylight–and beholding a darkness too incandescent to behold.”

While wordy, I try to enjoy the colorful (beautiful, in truth) use of language that Wolfson evokes here; but despite his almost artisitc expression of the dream state, his assertions peer beyond the obvious, and instead look into the darkness of the philosophical dream-state. It becomes a place where, instead of merely thoughts rumbling around in one’s head as they sleep, the very shadows of reality play against one another, in an almost imperceptible sort of depth that challenges the mind of the individual. What exists in the dream world very well may not be merely “reality” as we tend to perceive it, but instead some complex rendering of that which exists around us non-temporally; a collection of potentials that occasionally enter our mind while dreaming, and which may at time be capable of revealing things to us that the known capacities of the mind aren’t believed to be capable of.

Food for thought, sweet dreams, and all the cliché expressions come to mind here, but perhaps they are so standard for a reason; whether or not science can explain the peculiar nature of psychic phenomenon, it appears to be something innate to humanity, though more often misunderstood than recognized, even partially, for the curious role it may play in our progression as a species.

The incidents began slowly. As Jay Carlton’s family got ready for church one Sunday in 1983, music began to pour from 18-year-old Carlton’s stereo, even though it had been off just moments before. As he stared at the device in his Independence, Missouri, home it shut off. No one was near it.

“On the day I was getting baptized as a Mormon, some weird things were going on,” Carlton said.

As the family drove to church, the car’s windshield wipers turned themselves on and off. Then something else happened, although the family didn’t realize it at the time.

“At church everyone asked us what took us so long,” Carlton said. “We were really late.”

And they were, although they didn’t know why they were late, or what had happened.

A year after his baptism, Carlton’s faith in the church faltered, and he found himself alone and upset.

“I had a disagreement with the church,” he said. “I went home at night and took down all the spiritual pictures I had.”

Finished clearing his walls of religious images, he relaxed and sat on his bed, staring out his bedroom window. He saw a light.

“I saw what I thought was the moon and it was full,” Carlton said. “I said, ‘man, the moon looks pretty tonight.’ Then it moved.”

The light grew closer to Carlton’s house; he found he wasn’t alone in the room.

“I was thrown flat on my back by some force,” Carlton said. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t open my eyes. I felt a presence at my feet.”

As he lay pinned to his bed, struggling against something – some entity he couldn’t see – his religious teachings came back to him.

“I called out to Jesus and it left,” Carlton said. He lay there, panting, now able to move and open his eyes; he wondered what had been in his room.

That wasn’t the last time.

Carlton served in the Army National Guard, worked in law enforcement, and currently works as a security guard. He’s seen a lot of strange things in his work, but nothing like what has followed him throughout his life.

Carlton, once again a Mormon and living in Salt Lake City in 2002, was driving to a church dance near when he lost hours of his life.

“I think the dance started at 7:30, 8 o’clock. I left at 6 something,” he said. “I was lost and was trying to get back to the road the dance was on. I was going toward the mountains west near Utah Lake.”

On a long stretch of road, Carlton noticed the big, full moon.

“It was beautiful,” he said. “It started to move. I thought, ‘here we go again.’”

The light began to “do maneuvers. I thought maybe it was a helicopter.”

He rolled down his window; there was no sound. It wasn’t a helicopter.

“My mindset at the time I wasn’t even going to pay attention,” he said. “I turned south and came upon Utah Lake.”

He drove by a small peninsula framed by a fence. Later, he drove by the same fenced-off peninsula a second time.

“I remember passing again and said, ‘what on earth?’” Carlton said. “I got to the dance and my friends said, ‘where have you been?’ It was 9:30. I had lost time.”

Since then Carlton has experienced more lost time than he cares to count. He moved back to the Independence, Missouri, area, and strangeness continued to stalk him. Carlton has seen metallic craft floating in the mid-day sky, large white lights pacing his car, triangular craft the size of a football field, and a 100-yard-long snake-like metallic craft undulating in the afternoon sky.

He also has experienced physical symptoms typical of alien abductions.

“I find blood drops on my bed down near my navel area,” he said. “No nosebleed, nothing. Marks on my body that would disappear the next morning.”

However, Carlton is convinced his experiences aren’t related to aliens from space.

“Less than a year ago, I saw a being at 3 or 3:30 in the morning,” Carlton said. “It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Carlton lay on the couch in the basement when a feeling dragged him from sleep. He opened his eyes and saw a red human-like creature about four feet tall with long ears, and dead black eyes.

“It had this funny stare towards me,” Carlton said. “Almost like it wanted to laugh.” But it couldn’t laugh; the entity had almost no mouth, just a small slit.

During about ten seconds of eye contact, Carlton was convinced this entity didn’t mean him harm.

“It was just checking on me,” he said. “How’s he doing today? I can’t say I wasn’t scared. I’m staring at a being I’ve never seen before. Is this an alien? Is this a demon? What the flip is this thing?”

Carlton mustered enough courage to speak and said, “Lord Jesus.” The entity simply disappeared. Carlton is convinced, after a spiritual encounter in 2002 in which he heard the voice of God, that many of what people consider UFOs and extraterrestrials are some type of angel.

“I believe that they are both fallen and good angels,” he said. “They are constantly at battle in the heavens. When they go from universe to universe they use these craft. UFO buffs say they’re beings from another planet, I’m not saying that’s not possible.”

But he knows what he’s encountered is spiritual.

“I’m being taxed for my purpose on earth,” he said. “There’s angels constantly looking over me, and there are bad angels attacking me. It’s spiritual warfare. It’s been that way for a long, long time.”

And the warfare for Carlton continues.

“A few months ago I saw a bluish light shining in my room and felt something touching my feet,” he said. Carlton now lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “I looked at my clock which read 3:33 a.m. The very next morning I noticed small long fingerprints on my desktop computer next to my bed.”

Over the years, there have certainly been a number of good conspiracies and other controversies arise pertaining to the identity of the historical Jesus. With special thanks to books like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, questions about the man, as well as the life he may have led, have been placed in an all new light, linking such things as the “secret bloodline of Jesus” to organizations and societies like the Knights Templar and the modern day Masonic orders.

The latest addition to these “Jesus Controversies” involves a document that was allegedly discovered, penned in an Egyptian Coptic script, in which Jesus makes a statement concerning his wife. The Vatican has denounced the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” as a “clumsy fake,” whereas some others have noted that the apparent document may indeed point to aspects of the Christian savior’s life that haven’t been very well publicized over the centuries.

Despite whether or not the document is real, there are far stranger notes and asides that occur in the story of Jesus, emerging in rather outlandish claims from other parts of the world, which suggest that Jesus wasn’t just a married man, but that he had been a world traveler too, among other things.

According to one rather obscure tradition in Japan, a location known as Shingō villageis actually the final resting place of Jesus.

Visitors to the town may discover a site dubbed Kirisuto no haka, which literally means “The Tomb of Jesus”near the family home of a man named Sajiro Sawaguchi. The family has long claimed that Jesus escaped death on the cross by allowing his brother Isukiri (who bore a curiously Asian-sounding name to have been the brother of an ethnic Jew from Nazareth) to take his place on the cross. Jesus then fled, traversing Siberia and eventually entering the Mutsu Province of Northern Japan. There, he settled and became a rice farmer, and much like other controversial scenes in the life of the savior proposed by various documents that have emerged over the years, he married and had a family. The Sawaguchi family legend even claims that Jesus lived to be 106 years old, and upon his death, his body lay exposed on a hilltop for four years before his remains were gathered and buried at the grave site bearing his name today.

This isn’t the only tradition that holds that Jesus escaped death on the cross, or perhaps at least made his rounds in visits to other parts of the world after the resurrection that occurs in Christian belief systems. The Mormon tradition also holds that visits from Jesus occurred in the Americas following the crucifixion, where he invited them to examine evidence of his resurrection in much the same way he had done before his apostles:

“…Feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am…the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world. … Ye are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice…” (3 Nephi 11:14, 15:21).

Mormons ad others have sought to substantiate such claims by wording found in the book of Acts that states how Jesus would carry proof of his resurrection, “unto the uttermost part of the earth,” as well as the wording from John’s gospel that Jesus would visit “other sheep.”

While these references pertain to Jesus’s visits following the crucifixion, there are other traditions maintaining that in his early life, Jesus may have also visited parts of England. Citing such works as The Traditions of Glastonbury by E. Raymond Capt, and Did Our Lord Visit Britain? by C.C. Dobson, the story emerges as follows: Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus’ great uncle, had traveled to Glastonbury, England, with the young messiah in tow. The reason for this, according to this tradition, had been because Joseph the uncle had become the legal guardian, so to speak, of Jesus following his father’s death, and as a wealthy merchant, he brought the boy with him on his various business ventures. It is thus said that at the Church of Priddy near Somerset, UK, an old saying can still be heard that notes, in rather anecdotal fashion, that one can rest assured of a given subject, “just as sure as our Lord was at Priddy.” Much the same, there is a Christmas carol stemming from the region that repeats the following line: “Joseph was a tin merchant, a tin merchant, a tin merchant,” and tells of his arrival from the sea in a boat.

Other traditions similarly tell that Jesus traveled to India, as well as South America. And while it’s unlikely that Jesus ever made it as far south as Antarctica, one might be surprised to find our just how much religious practice goes on there nonetheless. While we can’t be certain if Jesus ever had a wife or not, one thing these various other traditions might make clear, if they can be taken literally, is that the Messiah was at very least well-traveled.

In a world filled with terrorism, Middle Eastern wars and skirmishes, disturbing changes in weather patterns, apocalyptic tales of the Mayans and 2012, and Hollywood’s ongoing obsession with “end of the world”-type movies – check out Contagion; Children of Men; Knowing; Dawn of the Dead; The Happening; and 28 Days Later as just a few examples from the last 10 years – it’s hardly surprising that people might be tempted to look to the stars for salvation.

In other words, if we can’t help ourselves, maybe “the aliens” will do a better job. Of course, people have looked for advanced, outside help ever since the era of the UFO was born in the summer of 1947. The problem, however, is that our call has not been answered. At least, not yet it hasn’t. But, some say, maybe that’s about to change – but not in ways most might imagine or hope for.

Indeed, it seems that even the world of Ufology has been bitten by the Armageddon bug. An increasing number of people are coming around to the idea that, while there does appear to be a very real UFO phenomenon, it may not be what it appears to be. According to some, it may prove to be our very worst nightmare.

Put simply, there is a growing belief and acceptance that rather than having alien origins, UFOs are – quite literally – demonic. That’s right: Satan’s Saucers. And, the small, black-eyed, domed-head aliens that have become such an integral part of Ufology, on-screen science-fiction, and popular-culture, are nothing less than deceptive demons preparing the way ahead for the final battle between good and evil, the rise of the Antichrist, and the enslavement of our very souls.

Among those who believe that such a startling and grim scenario has validity is Michael Heiser, an author and UFO researcher who earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Semitic languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In an interview with me a couple of years ago, Michael said of the UFO issue:

“I look at it demonically because of the human-rights issues: people being taken against their will, nasty things done to them. Or even if things are not literally done, they’re implanted in their minds; they’re mentally tormented. This is something inherently negative and sinister. They’re essentially manipulators of human beings. That’s the game: they want to usurp the higher authority, to usurp God for their own ends.”

Then there is Joseph Jordan, who has heavily studied the data suggesting alien abductions can be stopped by calling out the name of Jesus Christ. Jordan stated to me of the alleged aliens of UFO lore and their actions:

“The purpose I see with these entities in their communication is that they’re preaching a new gospel. And, the Bible warns of angels preaching gospel. I do believe they are a part of a demonic hierarchy, and the entities involved in the abduction experience are the elite of that hierarchy; it seems like we’re dealing with fallen-angels. The abilities that the fallen-angels have are mirrored by these entities, but the message they come with is not that of the Judeo-Christian God. It’s against them.”

Moving on, we turn our attentions to Ray Boeche. An Anglican priest who served as the Rector of the Celebration Anglican Church in Lincoln, Nebraska for nearly a decade, Boeche is also a former Nebraska State Director for the Mutual UFO Network, and the recipient of a B.A. from Peru State College and a Th.M. degree from St. Mark’s School of Divinity. His opinion on the UFO controversy is clear, as he detailed to me in 2007:

“As a pastor and someone who’s trained as a theologian, I can’t come to any other conclusion than there is some sort of spiritual deception going on here. In so many of these kinds of alien contacts, the entities involved make a denial of Christianity. Anytime the spiritual issues are addressed, there is always some sort of denial of the validity of Christianity and the validity of the Bible.”

Nicole Malone, author of The Bible, Physics, and the Abilities of Fallen Angels, comes to much the same conclusion. Of alien abduction stories, she says they are “caused by fallen angels.”

Finally, my very own book, Final Events, is a full-length, controversial study of how and why even people within the U.S. Government have come to the conclusion that UFOs have occult, paranormal, and demonic origins. Their story is a disturbingly bleak one filled with accounts that tell of satanic deception, a panicked Pentagon, and a select and secret elite preparing for a war they believe has our very souls at stake.

The dark side of Ufology? Definitely. Close encounters of the demonic kind? Time may, or may not, tell…

Matthew Williams – a former special-investigator with the British Government’s Customs & Excise agency – holds the distinction of being one of the very few people in the world arrested, charged and convicted for making a Crop Circle – although the actual crime was of causing damage to the field in which the formation was made.

I will be the first to admit that Matthew is a good friend of mine, and a great deal has been written about his reasons for making crop-formations that is either misleading or downright untrue. And, more importantly, the notion that people such as Matthew can be dismissed as mere hoaxers is an utter failure to understand and appreciate the philosophy and experiences of the human circle-makers.

In an extensive interview I conducted with Matthew, he began:

“In 1992, when I got involved in Crop Circle research, there were a lot of people who believed that Crop Circles could only be made by otherworldly forces. Admittedly, I didn’t know very much about Crop Circles back then; and hearing some of the arguments of ‘bent nodes’ and ‘blown expulsion cavities’ coupled with UFO sightings, made the whole subject seem extraordinary. Without researching the subject for myself, I was inclined to believe the so-called experts and their seemingly plausible theories about aliens making Crop Circles.”

“My early research efforts involved investigating areas where Crop Circles were expected to appear. I coordinated efforts with other friends and researchers via radios, and we patrolled fields in our cars, armed with night-vision equipment. Back in those hazy days, I used to think that people who made Crop Circles were trying to confuse us and lead us away from the path of discovering deeply encoded alien messages. I was on a mission to stop man-made Crop Circles appearing.”

Matthew explained to me the motivation behind his mission: “Many researchers I knew believed that the Crop Circles were alien in origin and felt there was nothing to be gained in trying to police human Circle-makers, as, in the opinion of the researchers, there were very few Crop Circles created by people anyway; and the researchers I knew were sure that they could tell the difference between a manmade Crop Circle and an alien-made Crop Circle.

“The standard method of researching Crop Circles generally involved going into them on the same day they had formed and studying what was present. My own motivation was to get closer to whatever was creating the Crop Circles, at night and when the Circles were formed. If we had caught any human in the act of making Crop Circles, then the plan was to scare them off or perhaps even call the police. In fact, our field surveillance activities were actually welcomed by the police as a form of anti-criminal vigilance. If we could be sure we had cleared a field of any human-made Crop Circles, then logic dictated that if a Crop Circle did appear, it must be genuine.”

Matthew admitted, however, that these plans were both “rather naïve” and “fruitless” with “none of us even getting close to a Crop Circle being created under weird or 100-per-cent confirmed fields-clear-of-hoaxers.”

He elaborated: “It wasn’t until about 1994 that I decided to seek out the human Crop Circle makers. What subsequently happened could be termed the ‘other side’ of the story. By this time, I had a good idea that many Crop Circles were made by humans; but was unsure if there was a level of disinformation being spread. It was then I met [Crop Circle researcher, maker, and personality] Rob Irving and heard his immortal quote, which I still use to illustrate the simplicity of the Crop Circle argument: ‘You’ll never be sure until you actually make one.’

“What I learned next was totally unexpected, as the Crop Circle makers I spoke to did not debunk the theories that paranormal events take place in Crop Circles, even if they are man-made. Indeed, there was much talk of strange lights and events happening to the Crop Circle makers while they made Crop Circles at night.

“I was given countless tales of UFO activity and even strange synchronicities which took place in the man-made Crop Circles, and which made the Crop Circle makers wonder if they were being influenced by a higher, guiding hand – perhaps at the design stage, or out in the field.

“I befriended a number of Circles teams and watched Crop Circles being made under various conditions. Back in the early days, I thought that speaking to the human Crop Circle makers would help me to determine which Crop Circles were made by unknown persons or paranormal forces. Later on, however, I became convinced that human-made Crop Circles made up the whole sum of the complex Pictograms, leaving only very simple Crop Circles as possible unknowns.”

Matthew makes an important point that – whether you agree with him or not – takes him just about as far away from being a mere hoaxer as it is possible to get: “I believe that the human Crop Circle makers may be guided by a connection to a higher intelligence, a gestalt or group mind; and the symbols that are put down are deep-routed subconscious expressions. This would explain why some telepaths or psychics claim to have seen Crop Circle designs before they appear – because we are all dialed into the same group-mind ‘internet.’”

On this same matter, he continues:

“The synchronistic events which happen each year in the unfolding designs that the Crop Circle makers come out with are often remarked as being too much of a coincidence. Crop Circle designs have been repeated in different parts of the country by teams who didn’t share designs beforehand. There have even been teams who have gone out on the same night to the same field, made designs, not knowing the other team was present, and their designs have had similarities. The chances of this happening, without planning, are slim; so it would appear that something paranormal is working for the Crop Circle makers.”

Matthew continues: “Why do Crop Circles have power? I know that crop is a living medium. Unlike any other type of canvas that an artist may use, crop has a life-force energy which, when used on such a large scale, makes crops blend natural Earth-energy magic with human-energy magic. What Crop Circle-makers may have rediscovered is the ancient art of natural magic – working with large emblems as part of the energy system of the Earth.

“Take sacred sites such as stone-circles: these were erected as temples for people to visit, perhaps as part of a sacred quest seeking answers. Today, Crop Circles fill a similar role, attracting people who ask questions and putting visitors closer to paranormal sources.”

On this theme, Matthew adds: “Many people have expressed concern to me about humans making Crop Circles and trying to instill magical energy in them. Along with this comes a distrust of the motives of Crop Circle makers. However, if researchers are to be believed on the healing energies of many Crop Circles, then this is not a negative thing, by definition.”

As for the process of creating Crop Circles, Matthew explains:

“Over the years from 1994, I participated as Crop Circle maker, designer of Crop Circles, and as observer to other persons, creating Crop Circles. They are typically created in the dark, just after it gets too dark to be seen in the field. Typically, this was from 10.00 to 11.00 p.m. in the British summer months. Teams of between two and nine would work under the guidance of whichever team member designed or studied the design. Coordination is essential among team members.

“The actual laying down of the Crop Circle is usually done in stages. The first stage is known as foot-lining, which means the creation of the thin part of the design, without doing the shaded areas of the design, which represent flattened areas of crop. One person will hold one end of a tape measure. The distance on the tape measure is found and the other end of the tape is held. One end of the tape is held in place and the other end is walked around, creating your circles. Holding the tape tight is important, as over a distance of 100 feet you can get considerable sag in the tape which can, if not handled correctly, cause circles to have wobbly edges.

“To etch in the internal designs, two ends of the tape are held, which gives a straight line, and a third person walks along the edge of the tape. It is important to note that these etching lines, created by the width of your foot in the crop, are often visible as thin lines hinted at when aerial photos of Crop Circles are zoomed in on. Marker posts are used to guide tape-measurement points. These points are driven into the ground and are often made of bamboo posts, similar to those found in garden use.

“Once the design is fully etched with foot-lines, then the process of filling takes place. The teams have to be briefed as to which parts are to be filled or left standing. There are usually simple rules to follow to make sure you don’t flatten the wrong area. Often tramlines or tractor lines are mistaken for starting or stopping points for filling work. In the filling stage, planks of wood affixed with ropes are used to press down with large areas of crop. Approximately one meter in width, these boards will leave tell-tale signs of human construction when viewed from the ground or the air.

“The appearance of many circles will be a combed effect. Some types of crop, brittle plants or late-in-the-season plants, fall down well and do not grow back up to the light. Formations created in these fields look very impressive because the ground-lay, with its flat uniformity, shines from the air when photographed from the correct angle.”

Matthew makes a valuable observation: “Crop Circle makers tread a thin line. On the one hand, they want people to come to them and get experiences from the Crop Circles. If Crop Circles were known as a 100-per-cent, man-made hoax, then the public might turn away. So this is why authorship of most Crop Circles remains anonymous, for legal reasons and for reasons of sensitivity. However, to stem the rot of blind belief in Crop Circles and to make sure Crop Circle makers and their motives are known to those who have delved deeper, there is a dialogue between some researchers and Crop Circle makers. This is to allow the more open-minded to see the bigger picture at work.”

Again, whether people agree with Matthew and those who follow a similar path, the fact is that in the minds of the people who create them, they are most assuredly not hoaxers, merely on a path to spoil everyone’s fun and deceive them. No: if people such as Matthew are correct then (a) at least some of the human Crop Circle-makers seem to be guided by a form of higher, unidentified intelligence; (b) the work of the Crop Circle-makers appeared to be inextricably linked to the worlds of ancient magic and archaic ritual; and (c) the public image of the “Crop Circle hoaxer” – that is often offered by, and to, the collective UFO and Crop Circle research communities – is about as far away from the truth as it is possible to get.

Sometimes it takes no more than an odd word to inspire unique ways of thinking about the strange and unusual. For me, words the likes of metamorphosis, esoteric, hermeticism, or psychomanteum have proven in the past to yield favorable and interesting new lines of thought in terms of what directions my interests may begin taking at any time. I often begin to wonder whether there might actually be times when our human perceptions of reality, especially in terms of the symbolism we attribute to objects we encounter, might not be partially (if not even wholly, at times) dependent on the names we give those objects. In other words, knowing that the name something is given will influence how we tend to perceive it, we could argue that language plays a far deeper role in the study of meaning and perception.

For example, if you met a person with an absurd name the likes of “Filthy Monkey McGhee,” you may be less likely to take them seriously or desire to form a friendship than if their name were “Bianca Anderson” or “Michael O’Donahue.” Indeed, the symbols we attach to things in many ways form the attitudes we will have toward them. But by the same token, this simple illustration of the way that ideas and attitudes are rooted in symbols, as well as what are often esoteric concepts, is only the tip of the iceberg. Getting to the realm of the supernatural, what happens when people begin to take the symbols associated with aspects of human existence, and project them outward into our environment, along the lines of what are called “tulpas” and thought manifestations?

Coming back to the idea for a moment of words that inspire strange lines of thought, the concept of simulacra, a term borrowing from the Latin meaning essentially that which is like or similar, reveals this deeply rooted desire within humankind to take whatever the essence of our heart, mind, and soul is and project that outward into our environments. The real world isn’t good enough; we must take photographs of people and places that catch our eye, and often, we utilize the arts to create representations of those things. Often times, we would rather hang a painting of a beautiful landscape on our mantle, rather than to go there and experience it ourselves. With art, we are capable of taking reality, and making it better and more vibrant that what reality itself can afford.

This same human tendency to project ourselves outward in art could be applied to our tendencies toward creating other kinds of simulacra that borrow from human symbolism. One obvious example that is prevalent in literature especially is that of the artificial man; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein may be the best modern example of the ancient concept where man decides to create not merely a clone of a living body, but a superhuman that improves on it’s master’s form. The ancient Kabbalistic Jewish traditions involving creation of Golems bears obvious similarity here as well; heading further East, the Tibetans and their Tulpas are yet another representation of taking inner concepts and essences, and projecting those outward in the formation of something like us, but not quite human in the truest sense.

Whether such things are the product of some esoteric ritual or meditation, or instead something that is more nuts and bolts, seems to be of little importance. Today, we do see in the trends toward creation of artificial intelligence that same tendency for humans to take themselves and try and utilize some means of reproducing intelligence, or some aspect of it… perhaps some aspect of ourselves. And yet, while we can think of practical reasons for the creation of advanced artificial intelligence, we less often consider what the driving motivation underlying such activities may be. Why would we seek to do such things, in all honesty? What drives people to create in our image, just as our myths of creation describe God doing with Adam at the Genesis of our species? We are tacked with some innate desire to be creators ourselves, it seems… and while we can justify the practicality behind any such endeavor, it is almost as if the desire to project ourselves into simulacra in our environments is innate; it is something we do not because we can, or simply because we want to, but almost as if we were made to do it.

I can’t help but bring this around to an idea rooted in our ancient astronaut theories: that humans themselves were at some point “created” in this same manner by some intelligence that existed (or still exists) elsewhere in the cosmos. What if it is indeed the case that our innate desire to create artificial likenesses of ourselves stems from our own creation, and the circumstances underlying it? Perhaps humanity is indeed a variety of artificial intelligence itself, and we are merely carrying the torch, so to speak, of something those before us began long ago.

It has been an art employed by some of the greatest minds and practitioners of the sciences over the centuries, as well as many of the more nefarious names in history as well. From scholars like Pythagoras in Ancient Greece, to medieval wizards like John Dee and, much later on, the controversial occultist Aleister Crowley, magic has been heralded as a force by which man can connect with the parts of reality beyond which most mortal men could otherwise reach.

By the standards of most today, what we call “magic” involves archaic processes of trying to utilize spells and sorcery–in addition to belief that such things can prove effective–in an effort to change or bend the forces of nature. Due to the perception that such things are indeed remnants of what are now outmoded ways of thought and belief, the idea of using magic for practical purposes today has lost much of its appeal. And yet, there are still many that do act as proponents of the use of ritual magic for bettering their lives, and changing the world around them. Is their belief in such ancient arts completely in vein, or are there elements to the mystery of the modern magi that do make their esoteric practices worthwhile?

Webster’s Dictionary defines magic as “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.” Even while looking up this definition, I began to notice my own preconceptions and biases toward the word all unto itself; immediately, I envision either a corny series of silly images involving spellcasters and sorcerers, or conversely, I’m reminded of the darker perceptions attributed to “black magic” and the dark arts.

But in truth, there are a variety of practices maintained today which, in essence, seek to influence the course of natural events by utilizing the supernatural. In fact, given this definition, how can we really differentiate something prayer or meditation from magic? They certainly utilize supernatural forces in an attempt to influence the outcome of events to come, and yet it could be argued that perhaps a majority of Americans, for instance, either employ one or the other of these in an effort to better their lives or those of their loved ones.

In fact, to further our comparison between magic and prayer, I’ve often considered how such things might have risen from people in ancient times, and their belief in (if not outright projection toward) anthropomorphized gods that resembled the various elements of nature, which in their extremities could make life very hard on societies more primitive than those today. In all likelihood, use of ritual practices by ancient people stemmed from attempts at reconciling with these things that threatened their way of life, and thus, they were carried out in order to appease their presumed nature-gods. Taking this into consideration, it is interesting to note that in modern times, our ideas of an “angry God” have softened somewhat, and people now, thanks to the ease and simplicity of modern life (particularly here in the West) pray to a creator that is generally viewed as being more loving and gentle. And of course, our sense of there being a necessity for such things as magic rituals has lessened considerably, also.

But does this remove entirely the potential that magic may hold some relevance in our lives nonetheless? Perhaps not, since even our present studies pertaining to quantum physics show us more and more with time how perception alone is capable of influencing the outcome of events. Perhaps the use of focused rituals have a greater promise for effectiveness than most of us realize… putting it out to the Mysterious Universe readership, do you feel that magic and ritual bear any relevance in modern times, and if so, in what ways?

Tarot cards, the famous and controversial deck of playing cards used for divination by occultists and mystic practitioners since the late 1700s, have long been an item of fascination among both the psychic practitioner and fortune teller, as well as the psychologist and therapeutic practitioner. What, precisely, the nature of their effect actually is, no one can say; while the mystic will use them to predict outcomes of future events, the psychologist might prescribe them for use in helping order one’s own inner thoughts, rather than anything yet to come.

Fascinated with the different possibilities, I thought that there may be no finer way to test this for myself than to subject myself to a couple of Tarot readings myself, by different readers with different backgrounds and interpretations, and see what outcomes transpired for me personally. Indeed, the outcomes were quite fascinating…

Going into my first Tarot reading, which was performed by the astute Mr. Scotty Roberts, author of Rise and Fall of the Nephelim, I really tried not to have any serious preconceptions or expectations. If anything, I had more or less hoped to merely look at the information objectively, and see, as they say, “where the cards would fall.” During the reading, Roberts also told me that, in his own practice, he favored a more “optimistic” interpretation of the data revealed by the cards, drawing from the lighter aspects of the symbolism they represented. The resounding themes from this reading had been that I had reached great new achievements in life, or the “capture” of something I’d longed for… but that there may still be trials ahead. “The battle is won,” Roberts alluded, “but there may still be a war to be won as well, so celebrate… but celebrate from the saddle.” Also the Empress card was a key fixture of the reading, speaking of a strong feminine presence in my life. Finally, there had also been a strong trend toward physical movement in the outcome of the reading. “I don’t just mean moving change,” Scotty confided, “this could be interpreted as actually moving, or traveling.”

Reflecting on the reading, I couldn’t help but feel that the essence of the reading had been spot-on. There had been various personal developments occurring in my life, but due to the nature of the situation, as well as my own work schedule and other “grown up” aspects of life and living, things were moving slowly, but with sincere promise. While the Empress card obviously seemed to represent this, I felt that the presence of feminine energies also related to a number of other areas in my life; various female friends (particularly those many decades older than myself), and even a general level of comfort with what I perceive as being my own innate feminine or “motherly” side (this particularly manifests, for me, with regard to children, the elderly, or anyone generally in need of more care and attention than most others). And finally, there had certainly been recent discussion and contemplation regarding the prospect of relocation at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Had Scotty managed to use divination to “read” my own future? While the possibility existed, for me, I felt much more strongly that the meaning in the symbolism the cards presented was reliant on my own inner psyche, and the determinations of my own heart and mind. In other words, rather than having “predicted” things about my life, the cards Scotty had drawn utilized archetypal symbolism to help me re-order my own thoughts, and in an almost therapeutic way.

This interpretation of the Tarot is not unique, of course. While I normally would not quote Wikipedia as a source, the following excerpt from the Wiki article on Tarot discusses briefly the apparent symbolic aspects psychologist Carl Jung saw in Tarot and their use:

Carl Jung was the first psychoanalyst to attach importance to tarot symbolism. He may have regarded the tarot cards as representing archetypes: fundamental types of persons or situations embedded in the collective unconscious of all human beings. The theory of archetypes gives rise to several psychoanalytical uses. Since the cards represent these different archetypes within each individual, ideas of the subject’s self-perception can be gained by asking them to select a card that they ‘identify with’. Equally, the subject can try to clarify the situation by imagining it in terms of the archetypal ideas associated with each card. For instance, someone rushing in heedlessly like the Knight of Swords, or blindly keeping the world at bay like the Rider-Waite-Smith Two of Swords.

This rather concisely illustrates the same principles underlying my own interpretation of the Tarot reading; while there were incredible (even synchronistic) elements that emerged, I felt that the strongest determinations stemmed from within my own subconsciousness, or at times, even my overt conscious mind just as well.

My second reading took place more recently, at the suggestion of my friend Laura, who also performed the reading. In contrast with the reading performed by Scotty, Laura asked me to formulate a specific question, which would become the focus of the information in the reading. My question had been one I was contemplating on the drive over, and dealt with how to cultivate and focus more of my own inner positivity, but also ways I could express this outward in constructive ways toward those around me (a concept I refer to often as “Cosmic Love”). With Laura’s reading, the first card drawn had been the Justice card, and later on, the Empress card also appeared yet again. The final “resolution” card had been death; admittedly, it was a beautifully drawn card (Laura had been using a popular deck known as the Robin Wood Tarot deck, named after the artist, which features a variety of pagan and mythic imagery). It featured a person lying on the ground, mostly covered in a cape or robe, with blood pooling on the stone floor. A number of swords protruded from the body in the picture; but despite the dark depiction on the card itself, I made an instant association upon taking the card and holding it in my hand. The image that came to mind had been the scene at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the “starchild” is hovering near the Earth… to me, this obviously represented change, or perhaps more succinctly, rebirth. But altogether, while Laura’s reading had seemed to be more instructive (and as expected, due to the more focused nature of the question I asked beforehand), I still found that the majority of the meaning I took away from the reading had been my own projected inner senses and feelings, and the interpretation I assigned them in the order the cards helped assert.

On a personal level, the experiences with the Tarot readings became incredibly helpful in terms of clarifying the otherwise cluttered nature of everyday thought, and seemed to help bring together a number of loose ends, so to speak. While Tarot may be favored for many in terms of its use for predicting outcomes, I found it far more helpful within the context of taking the known quantities of existence, and helping bring meaning to them as if laying them out on a grid for examination in the raw. Perhaps if more tools of spiritualism could be viewed this way, rather than through the sorts of cultural taboos built around them over time, they would not only become more readily acceptable to a larger audience, but would even stand to aid a wider demographic in a variety of therapeutic ways. Even in a more logic-oriented context such as this, one could argue there is a certain “magic” they maintain nonetheless.

What is it about the artistic mind that seems to allow the more remote and esoteric aspects of existence to shimmer through the cracks in our reality? Far more often than not, it seems that individuals who are gifted in the arts claim to be more spiritual and—to put it bluntly—psychically attuned.

Countless numbers of individuals have claimed to be both progenitors of the arts, in addition to being at least mildly “in touch” with spiritual essences that are not immediately made available to the average person. But is this really a gift that many artists seem to have, or is it just the result of the creative aspects underlying the minds of such personalities taking charge, and thus creating the sometimes-convincing impression of being gifted with special abilities?

While there are indeed studies that are well known already linking musical abilities with increased success in various other cognitive activities, a different kind of study was recently brought to my attention by good friend Thomas Cameron, a martial arts instructor and colleague of mine based out of Chicago. Tom had begun a recent correspondence with me by posing similar questions, and then began to posit theories regarding level of artistic or musical ability in relation to extra-sensory gifts. Then he mentioned a study that seemed, at least peripherally, to lend some justification to why, precisely, this might be. The process of the study, according to Cameron, was as follows:

Several tracts of garbled speech were recorded one over the top of the other, with one single track of speech containing brief non sequitur phrases. The recording was then played to a wide variety of people to see if there was any one group of people that had greater acuity at discerning the non sequitur phrases from the other gibberish. The study’s results showed that those people who have had musical training or had musical skill were able to not only make out that the phrases existed, but were able to accurately discern what the phrases actually said. I can’t help but think this study may be in some way impactful with regard to those people with psychic gifts who “hear” information from unseen sources. Perhaps in the same way that those who had musical skill were able to differentiate between legitimate phrases and garbled noise, psychics are able to differentiate between coherent information and “psychic white noise”.

But in an even more literal sense than that which Cameron relates here, it seems that those who fared best in the study described above were musicians; in other words, they had apparently been best equipped physically for the task of making out the phrases amidst garbled gibberish. This reminds me a bit of some of psychic Robert Cracknell’s determinations about his own abilities, as well as those possessed by others claiming to be psychic; in essence, Cracknell has argued that much of what constitutes “psychic” ability stems from a general physical sensitivity a minority of individuals may possess naturally or have developed over time. In terms of the latter case, it seems to be a generally accepted theme among psychic studies that virtually anybody should be capable of learning to harness such talents, in the event that they choose to go about it rightly. And of course, many of the processes underlying the attainment of presumed “psychic” abilities involve the use of such things as frequent meditation and other esoteric practices. Not to generalize here, but again, we find the processes used for obtaining psychic abilities are most often spiritual in nature, and thus things that, arguably, more artists, musicians, and generally creative people will gravitate toward.

In the end, perhaps it’s really just a case of which came first: the psychic chicken, or the cosmic egg itself, which holds the answer to riddles such as psychic phenomenon in the first place. Without one, we may not be able to fully understand the other; much the same, whether people with innate psychic abilities gravitate toward the arts, or study of the arts themselves are the impetus behind such clandestine talents, we may not be capable of discerning… for now, at least.