Saturday, March 10, 2012

KNOCK, KNOCK: What's NOT There???


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.....

7 comments:

  1. Hello Prof, I hope you are feeling well.

    For one reason or another, your original post on the Knock apparition has repeatedly crossed my thoughts. Time and again, I've tried to cosh it into submission with any number of exotic ideas and abortive speculations.

    Nano-particle technology was probably the most 'Out Proctor' notion!

    For fear of getting too esoteric, if these incidents were genuine, we can't know if the witnesses were the target audience for potential messages. For example, the Knock apparition has come to represent a great many things to diverse people ever since. In that light, could it be a possibility that *messages* are actually being transmitted to an altogether different time, audience and place?

    In that scenario, the apparition at Knock could be like a message in a bottle being cast to the tides until an intended recipient can recognise what the content is. This doesn't carry any of us into an epiphany and yet at least it offers the inkling of some purpose to the anomalous.

    All the best :)

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  2. Well, my friend, I'm up for practically anything on this one. I tend, rightly or wrongly, to underrate [or DO I? maybe I'm realistic for a change...] the possibilities that the "agencies" behind those anomalistic phenomena [which might be consciously directed] are really so awesomely capable of accurately manipulating our mental responses [either individually or as cultures].

    The "fishing expeditions" that some of these experience-purveyors seem to be on seem pretty weak at controlled/ predictable "results" whether in gross behavior or "beliefs" on our parts. The relevance if any to Knock is that it's tough for me to see the efficacy of putting out some "delayed" message intended for some LATER religious response, in this unpredictable situation --- unless some random fishing around to see some socio-cultural result is all this is --- sort of a cold psychology lab experiment.

    Rather than that, my current, almost worthless, speculation sees this thing as a truly random event [i.e. NOT planned/orchestrated by any intelligent agency]. Lord Save Me!! Did I just use Occam's Razor???

    But what the heck do I know?? One thing is certain: there is a little bungalow with your name on it sitting far Out Proctor Hollow.... That is something that I know you acknowledge proudly --- in the right company, of course.

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  3. Prof did you spot the metaphysical in-joke?

    'Holy' beings can walk on water - water CAN'T walk on 'holy' beings.

    I suspect Bartholomew Cavanaugh did and couldn't make up his mind if it meant the 'other side' was taking the unholy p.

    That or he was an earlier form of a growing band of 'rational' religious types who find find 'supernaturality' intellectually repugnant.

    Your switcheroo idea resulting in Knock's rain going elsewhere works for me because it seems cosmic multitasking's how a lot of this sort of stuff's done - as I commented on Nick Redfern's Darkness in the Desert blog even if there were no 'aliens' so long as SOMETHING continues sprinkling moonbeams and pixie dust on the Roswell 'space' ship it'll continue to shapeshift and induce the same sort of intellectual restlessness the ARK and the ARGo once did.

    It's the endless momentary pauses interruptions breaks interventions divergences stops bardo points in our various continuities (including waking/sleeping birth/death giving/taking life/death) where all the action happens.

    Which brings me to your 'knock' (another summons to pause interrupt break intervene diverge stop bardo moment our continuity).

    The Ancient Romans believed those abrupt noises houses sometimes make were a sign from the household or family deity.

    Shamans paid great attention when their sacred drums banged of their own accord.

    The word bolt in the term fairy- or elfbolt connotes the same idea of knocking or striking.

    When Far Shooter Apollo (just the sort of chap to teleport rain elsewhere and do two completely different types of jobs) loosed one of his arrows it was understood he was either about to make opportunity knock for the recipient or knock them sideways.

    Mind expansion can only occur if you ask questions (such as whom does the Grail serve?) and you ask good questions.

    ...so no permanently retiring to Out Proctor Hollow until you're at least two hundred!

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  4. Sounds more like 'pataphysics than metaphysics to me.....

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  5. Mightn't this be a "sinple" time-slip - the parishioners perceiving the statues years before they were actually sculpted?

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  6. Two things: 1). they've never received such statues. So, even if some other parish somewhere received such objects, you have a space slip not a time slip, and have not solved anything. Occam's Razor would drop the time idea as unnecessary unless it could be shown that at least somewhere in the world such statuary was produced [and without any knowledge of what the Knock structures looked like] sometime after the apparition.

    2). I strongly resist any such concept as time slips when it involves the future. A time slip peek into the past might be possible within the universe if there remains coherence of what the physicists call the "worldlines" of particles, and thereby the arrangement of complex things would stay the same [museum-wise] for some conscious paranormal interface to occur. But the future does not exist to be "slipped into". If it did that would seriously damage the concept of free will which for me is a foundational absolute. It is one of the very few restrictions that I place on my range of possibilities.

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  7. I'd like to inform all the serious readers that I had to delete a wise-ass post from an "anonymous" [naturally]. As you all know who've been reading the blog for a while, although we are very welcome of imaginative concepts to be applied to these interesting mysteries, we don't want our time wasted by jerk-like behavior. I always feel bad about deletions, but this one was mocking spirituality and heart-felt theological concepts to say nothing of the mystery itself.

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