This event has been subconsciously nettling me ever since I posted on it way back whenever it was. The event seems strongly veridical; that's not the problem. The witnesses are multiple, corroborating, and credible. The reports are detailed. The "case" is solid --- well, not "solid" materially-speaking, THAT in fact is about the last thing it is. The problem is that it lacks at least two things.
The apparition [to very briefly remind everyone] took place in Knock [West Central Ireland] in 1879 and was an elaborate display of three iconic Catholic figures accompanied by other religious elements, including an altar. The apparition was outside at the back of a small church, and occurred at dusk with [shortly into the experience] a light rainstorm. The scene above should therefore be painted darker and with rain. Many locals saw the thing which lasted long enough for people to go around telling others about it. In short, the event occurred.
But, as I said above: things were missing. The first thing missing that bothered me immediately was that there was no [known] communication of any religious message. Although this is one aspect of the event that actually makes it MORE credible [in that no religious motive to make stuff up can be assigned], it puts Knock into an extremely bizarre status of an apparently religious event with no religious content. The only possible reasonable counter to this would be if one imagined that some religious message was transmitted to the rector of the chapel, Bartholomew Cavanaugh [to the left], but he never said any such thing and in fact did not go out to see the apparition himself. It seems VERY unlikely that Cavanaugh would have received a revelation from the Blessed Virgin Mary and mentioned it to no one. This made another idea grow in my mind: this wasn't a religious apparition at all. But if not, what? The answer to that I cannot give, but I am going to speculate on it because there is something else missing here.The RAIN. Precisely the rain "inside" the apparition. At least two people went all the way up to the images and stuck their hands into the area. No substance to the images; just, apparently, the light. And NO RAIN FALLING THROUGH THAT SPACE. Although the rain was falling lightly all around, no rain fell through the images and the ground below did NOT get wet. What-in-the-heck can THAT be all about? That is what has been subconsciously bugging me about this real but exceptionally weird event.
I cannot explain that, but I CAN make a fool out of myself by guessing. Rain came down everywhere. It came down on the "top" of the apparitional scene. But once entering that geographical area, disappeared. It never continued to fall, and it never hit and wet the ground. Where did it go? I say that it went to wherever the source of that apparitional vision came from. Somewhere, somewhere else, got wet.
What do I guess happened? Somewhere in our old world there was a nice indoor chapel scene with statues of the Virgin Mary and the other figures and something strange twinged in the universe. Two relatively small spaces exchanged. Not wholly physically, the substance of the statuary did not manifest, but something allowed all the light from that space to be transmitted elsewhere to a field in back of a little chapel in Ireland. Observers could see it all, and even walk up and try to touch, but except for the light and the space itself, it was "out-of-touch". The observers could reach into the lighted area but not feel anything. They could remove their hands because they still had the material attachment outside that space to do so.
But what happened in the "other" place?... in the lighted chapel?? Well, I wasn't there, but how about a usually pleasant lighted altar to the Blessed Virgin suddenly vanishing to be replaced by an empty dark rainy space?? Maybe even with the odd phantasm of a bodiless hand appearing and being withdrawn?? ................................. That ought to give you some weird thoughts to chew on for awhile. Out Proctor, indeed... "The TRUTH, as we know here on this blog, IS Out Proctor".
So, why is this picture of a "Fairy Fort" mound from Ireland sitting here at the end of this blog entry?? Who cares? When you're far enough Out Proctor anything goes. But, seriously I think, one of the really old words for these Faerie mounds in the ancient celtic tongues is "knock".
Whoops.....
