Being Druid: not an analysis, just a ramble.

I'm giving in to an "urge" today. I don't believe that I'll ever know what "druidism" really was, and suspect that no one will, but the study of what little we have about them gives rise to some thoughts which I find difficult to dismiss. As the title says, this is an unsupportable ramble and thereby not much like most of the posts that manifest here.

As you will understand as you read the ramble, it accidently and awkwardly occurs just after Memorial Day. This requires me, in all honesty, to type a few words about people who go to war. I have nothing against the average GI Joe who serves his/our country as a soldier. One of my commonest charities is the Paralyzed Veterans of America. I do honor their personal commitment to what they have been told is the right thing to do, and admire their courage and sacrifice, even though I wish that none of it were so. I do NOT honor the administrators who make the decisions to kill people. And that group is legion, both "friend" and "enemy". They represent often the worst people in the world. Terrorist leaders are in that number, but we have had our own share of violent almost cavalier politicians.

So, God Bless the courageous little guy, forced by "culture" and programming and sense of duty to give up everything truly important, and The Devil take the others.

As I say, reading the following will make clearer why I felt it necessary to say these things.

So, why Druids?

That's why.

When you read a lot about ancient times, it's possible that you begin to think thoughts like: "what would MY life have been like back then?" When I meditate upon things like the paintings above, I say: horrific. Glad I was born in 20th century America. If body type would have been the same, there is no way I could have escaped the military and the violent attempt to kill lots of people.

Or, WAS there? And with this question I believe that I know why there were druids.

Intelligent people must have existed in every age and most of them had no desire to have various parts of their anatomies sawed off while otherwise wasting everything else in life. {I don't know how women coped in all this, and I apologize to the ladies for composing this essay around what I believe some men did}.

If I had been an intelligent, albeit ignorant, young man in those days, not looking for violence, killing and "brutal theft and glory", but rather fascinated with the creation around me [in fact being who I am today], what could I do?

I could walk away. I could remove myself from the dominions of the Insane Men, and try to live somehow out of their influence. Insane Men. I'm serious about the label. These were the power men, ubiquitous everywhere in these societies; making up excuses for killing their territorial "neighbors" rather than counseling with them, and not thinking at all about cooperating when troubles in one or the other microsociety arose. Problems? Kill your neighbors and take what you want. Even the Old Testament is rife with these non-spiritual atrocities.

But going it alone is very hard --- doubtless much harder then than now, other than it might have been easier to get distance from the Insane Men in a less populated world. A "shaman" or a "healer" might go off to the nearby woods and regularly re-emerge or be visited by members of the Insane Men's society and "make a living" doing so, but the shaman must have something to offer, and that something somehow making him a bit of an untouchable. i.e. too valuable as he is to force him into the military or even wallow at court.

It would be an awfully talented loner to pull that off.

So you go in search of others like yourself. If you're lucky, you hear the rumors of some "odd people" who live apart and are said to have powers the rest of us do not have. They do not fight, and do not covet land, but they "know things". And you find and join that band. {doubtless with a thorough probationary period where you demonstrate what your personality/ heart actually is like}.

If you are in an ancient urbanized area, you might find these individuals in an allied but not state-controlled "temple" or monastery. You might become a Magi, a Yogi, a Lama. The Insane Men who rule your geography tolerate your independence [and refusal to join the military or the servant class] because you have something that you seem to offer them which makes it worth it. That then is the trick: what uniquely do you possess that can't be forcefully stolen?

If you are in the ancient British Isles, or some similar "small villages and baronies-type locale", you might retreat to the forests and "away". Still, the "practical issue" is the same: what do you have to offer the Insane Men?

Finally, here is where the circumstances meld harmoniously to allow a solution to the dilemma of the non-insane man. What he, and the band of brothers that constitute his society have always wanted to do is: 1). Live in Peace; 2). Enjoy Life and the Creation; 3). Explore the World; 4). Learn it's wonders; 5). Strive for answers to the Big Questions.

And that's what they do. --- ALL of them. Yogis, Magi, Lamas, Monks, Druids. They learn. They develop "techniques" and applications. They dream dreams, some of them appealing in strange ways to even the Insane Men.

When I began my studies of the druids with Henry Rowlands' Mona Antiqua Restaurata,  an Archaeological Discourse on the Antiquities of the Isle of Anglesey, the Ancient Seat of the Druids {1723}, Rowlands told me something which has rung solidly true through all my subsequent readings, whether of druidism or other "cults" of peace-loving questing men: that was that the druids deliberately isolated themselves from the Insane Men, pursued Peace, intensely studied Nature, set themselves up in three "layers" of activities ["colleges"], and then created a brilliant "service" to lessen the violence of the Insane Men.

What was the service? The druids had plenty to offer once their colleges came somewhat to maturity {calendar-fixing, dreams of a tolerable afterlife [the picture above is a chambered burial site on Angelsey oriented to the Sun], healings, plant knowledge, some materials-working knowledge, and who knows what else, possibly including some psi talents a la the Buddhists}. But that wasn't the brilliant ploy. They offered the Insane Men the members of the third {lowest} college: the "Beirdd" [the other colleges had the names "Offwyr" and "Drudau" --- these are spelled many ways].

These "Bards" were the "historian-singers", the rememberers of "political history". The colleges allowed each Insane Man the services of one Bard/Beirrd. And what was the result? That Beirrd could occasionally stop a war. He did this by "remembering" what had transpire between the two Insane Men  or their insane fathers in the past. He sung the Sagas, and included in them were the "understandings" between the families of the two combatants. Doubtless the other militaristic clown's Beirrd was doing the same AND AGREEING. [do we really think that the two "King's Druids" never collaborated to mold a peace?] And many times these recitations did end a dispute, doubtless after some face-saving compromise. The brilliance of the Beirrd concept was the foundation of Diplomacy vs mindless War.

And, a primary rule of all this: the King's Druid was off-limits as to violence by the opposite side.

Don't involve us in your insanity in any way other than trying to stop it.

This strategy kept a region of insulation between the druidical colleges and the realms of violent power. The intelligence non-violent men had succeeded in finding a way to live peaceful explorative lives in a community of like-minded people. As they watched the distressing waste going on "outside", they at least did what they could to mitigate some of it, while preserving their own lives. Buddhists, Lamas, Monks, probably even Pythagoreans, Eleusians, Delphosians et al were doing the same.

It is ironic that what the history books talk about is entirely the actions of the Insane Men. As off-target as that is, I believe that it was a necessary consequence of what people like the druids had to do. To remain uniquely valuable, groups like the druids had to keep their special knowledge from the Insane Men. That meant secrecy. That meant only VERY gradual being let in on the knowledge. And, with groups that did not have their own material fortress, that probably meant no permanently written down [i.e. steal-able] information. The druids solved this by Beirrds and others dedicated to song and recitations.

But without the writings, there is no history to write about later. So, we future persons get the impression that what was really important in the past were the killings of large numbers of people by insane men. How many "inventions" leaked ultimately into greater society from the magi, monks, and druids? What REALLY made the world progress? War or Study?

There is the old legend of the Language of the Birds. The legend says that he who can understand the Language of the Birds receives all Knowledge and Wisdom. In a way, for those times, I believe that this is precisely true. I think that it is true because the Language of the Birds is a metaphor. It is a metaphor for the close attentive study of Nature. Understanding the Language of the Birds, understanding Nature, is the Path taken by the Druids. Here lies Knowledge. Here lies Wisdom. Here lies the understanding of the Cycles of Life and their Harmonies.

Here lies, ultimately, Peace.

I have no doubt that even druids occasionally screwed this up. Surely some lost their way, sold out to power, strove for "position", got too big to maintain perspective nor community. Stonehenge and Avebury, rather than being the pinnacles of Druidism [or whatever pre-druidic "colleges" built them], may well have been symbols that noble ideas had lost their way. Grossness and the too-intimate interface with the world of the insane manifesting in an "arm's race" to see who could build the biggest temple? Give me the forested grove instead.

The prime deity in the druidical pantheon seems to have been Lugh.

LIGHT. That seems exactly the correct choice.

Till the next time, my friends:  LIGHT and Peace.

SHAKE,RATTLE, & ROLL: Can UFOs Project Force, part two?

Let's give this a second look.

My first glance at this particular pile of cases [always remembering that they're only cases that I happen to have folders for in my own files and that more cases exist elsewhere] in the previous blog encouraged me to state that it looks as if we have good evidence that UFOs can project attractive and repulsive forces. I.E, "pulls" AND "pushes". Today I'm going to stand by half of that assertion.

Reasoning process, such as it is: I did a "Hynek" style Strangeness/ Credibility graph for these 49 incidents, and It leads me to a slightly different viewpoint.

To begin with, though, I think that I should remind everyone that there is nothing "scientific" about such a graph. We almost never can be overly confident in the Credibility rating of a case [because the information has passed through witnesses' brains, witnesses' language, writer's brains, and writer's language before it gets to our own brain and our own formulations.] I personally try to rough these things out by going more strongly for those cases with investigations by people who I know something about. Some persons try to make a robotic thing about single witness vs high credentialed single witness vs multiple witness vs independent multiple witness, and though those delineations have SOME statistical relationship to good reports, slavishly following that mantra is foolish. Each case is its own "beast".

Also, my take on "Strangeness" is different from my colleagues. Most of them seem to want to escalate strangeness in a more or less Hynekian way, according to the categories of Close Encounters et al. While I understand the lure of this, it is also pretty foolish when you actually give it some thought. ANY high credibility case which contains elements in it which are beyond the technological capabilities of 21st century engineering/science IS AS HIGH A STRANGENESS AS YOU GET. When one is at the point of complete impossibility for current human capability, what's the use for UFOlogy's sake, of claiming that one completely impossible thing is stranger than another? When you actually search your soul on this, you come to the conclusion that you are separating infinities on nothing but emotional "WOW!" grounds.

Well, not me, I hope. But my own graphing still has plenty of "just-my-intuitions" in it, and I can see where others would put their case ratings elsewhere. But... the above is my array.

What I was looking for was a way to {maybe} better sift the 49 case pile. Although this graphing exercise doesn't give one scientific data, as said, it DOES force you to discipline yourself a little more while trying to evaluate things. Tremendous cases like #31 "The Coyne Helicopter Lift" {above} are still going to end up in the top righthand corner of the Hynek graph in the realm of "golden" foundational incidents. Coyne is joined there by #19 [Plattville's carlift], #8 [Herman's trucklift], and 5 others. These eight incidents form the groundwork for whatever "conclusions" I might feel defensible.

There are seven other cases which I then judge to be close in quality to these cornerstones. These are the cases similar in credibility but perhaps slightly less clear in strangeness. Still, these 15 cases constitute a formidable base.

The above case is Plattville, one of the Anchor cases.

Along with the 15 anchors, there were, I guessed, eight more pretty strong cases in the highly strange areas which had good provenance. And I added in four more "on-the-reasonable-margin" incidents to constitute 12 further incidents to support the 15 anchors. 27 cases to seriously look at, and leaving 22 of the original 49 behind as "maybe but who knows?"

The above case is Herman, MN, one of the anchors.

So what does one see when one looks at the sifted pile? Of the 14 power cases, there are six carlifts and three trucklifts. These are mostly lifts which are completely off the ground, and with no direct contact by an offending UFO. The other five incidents are the Helicopter lift, a car shaking, a pulling of a car and motorbike at the same time, a pulling on a man, and a holding back of a boat.

The supplementary cases have three carlifts, a car pivot [which almost had to have a lift therein], three car shakes, three human lifts, one horse lift, and a man knocked down.

Above is case #29, a carlift which I upgraded just since yesterday when I found a bit more investigative information by APRO.

When I wrap my head around these cases, what I see are almost entirely attraction forces. These things emphasize "pulling up" and "grabbing tight". There is only one case in this lot which is a projection of a repulsive force [the knockdown case], and interestingly it is the only case wherein the investigators had some stated reservations about the witness.

So.... my statement from the previous blogpost is now this: Using cases of this sort of physical interference on material things' motions, we have strong evidence that UFOs can project ATTRACTIVE forces capable of lifting mass and holding objects [while other influences like shaking could be impressed upon them]. There is little or no evidence in this particular type of UFO case for the use of repulsive or delivered punch/blow type of force.

Time for absurd speculations: these cases make me wonder about a lot of UFOlogical things. They make me wonder about "electromagnetic vehicle stops" and UFO-related EM effects in general. We could speculate upon anti-gravity fields of course, but one wonders if ET could have mastered magnetic lasers --- or whatever the analogy of that concept would be. But autos don't show evidence of being swathed in high density magnetic fields. But what if those fields could be collimated so narrowly to act as a surgical instrument? And ... what if, just like their sawed off lightbeam technology, they can operate a collimated magnetic projection the same way? A "tractor beam" without antigravity? And no "stray force" to damage incidental humans in the cars?

Maybe. But the lifts of humans and our French horse give us some further problems. Do we have to go antigravity for those? Can diamagnetic forces in non-metallic substances do? Could they be strong enough to lift, but not to physiologically hurt? If our friends upstairs have found such controllable force projections, EITHER magnetic or antigravitational, would the same "trick" to hold a boat or a car work just fine to hold a human. Is the so-called "paralysis beam" just a variety of the car-hold-and-shake?

All this is musings, a little more than purely idle I hope, since we at least looked at the cases. The data-driven bottomline can get us this far, though: UFOs, regardless of their external appearances, and with no visible beams whatever, can hold and lift material things by some sort of force "at-a-distance".

That's plenty strange enough for me.

Till the next time the drawers open, have days full of wonder, friends.

SHAKE, RATTLE, and ROLL: Is There Evidence That UFOs Project Attractive or Repulsive Force?

Trying to squeeze something in during busy times.... I went to the files over the last seven to ten days to log some cases. I was interested in the category that I call CE2EE {I actually use and infinity sign rather than an "EE", but this keyboard doesn't have one and "Everything Else" will do fine}.

The focus became "carlifts", then expanded to Lifts and Shakes and Pushes and Pulls. When I got it rounded up to that, I found almost fifty cases in the file drawer with which to do a small study. "This ain't brilliant, folks", but maybe it will at least be somewhat entertaining.

For a stretch here I'm going to show you my case logs for these sorts of incidents, and just say a few words to each sheet. The Case #1-7 sheet contains three incidents for which I have some confidence [Outlined in blue] but no really outstanding ones. The BLUEs are all different. One is a horselifting; one is a carlifting; and one is a car shaking. As usual, my evaluations are my own. I try to caution myself with "credibility guidelines", but each case is unique in this field and credibility is often pretty intuitive.

Case #8-14 sheet contains two more BLUES but also two YELLOW/ GOLDS. These latter represent cases that I accept as outstanding. The Herman, MN trucklift incident is starred as I consider it extremely sound and therefore foundational. In that case we have a single witness but the unusual circumstance of a multiply witnessed "impossible" non-track in the snow at the site. That is, the truck "landed" well off the road without any intermediate sign of having touched ground. Case #11 is also extremely solid due to its scientist witness giving very good detail to investigators including Jim McDonald.

So in this group we have a trucklift, a car semi-lift, another carlift, and the lifting of a small girl. I am severely tempted to upgrade the girl-lifting case to high level, but I really need to see something closer than what I have to a primary investigative document.

Case #15-21 sheet is loaded with quality. Jonestown, Westhope, Plattville, and Quincy are high quality. Parshall and Hillsboro are OK, but Parshall might not really have force projection in it, and Hillsboro lacks a good report. Of the high quality reports, we have a carpull stop, a person pulled at, a car semi-lift and shake, and another carlift. The Plattville semi-lift/shake is outstanding. In it a wife is driving her husband home, when a weird cone-shaped UFO confronts her, raises the front end of the car up towards it, awakens a soon-to-panic husband, and slams the car back down. Secondary nearby witnesses see the light phenomenon, and there are EM effects in the neighborhood. This is one of my personal favorite cases in the files.

Case #22-28 sheet is much more modest in quality. Here the Gleichen incident appears to be excellent, and the Helleland Norway incident good. Gleichen is a carlift, while Helleland is an odd instance of a person being pushed or knocked down by some invisible force, coincidentally with his car's window smashing. Witness claimed that this was not anything like "wind". I have an intuition that Ojebyn could be a good case too, but I have no access to a report. AND on this sheet are three of the teasing South American type cases with no good provenance whatever. You cannot in honesty give them more than your interest.

Case #29-35 sheet has "the honor of hosting" the second greatest case in all ufological history: The Coyne Helicopter "tractorbeam lift", over Mansfield OH. What a case!!! Muliple credible primary witnesses; multiple completely independent secondary witnesses; very high strangeness {Close Encounter with discoid object which pulled military reserve helicopter several hundred feet up in sky}. Case is foundational; for practically any basic claim you'd like to make about UFOs.

This case sheet also has the Ely, NV trucklift case studied by Hynek et al, and two other incidents of subtance: a carpull, and a carlift. Two marginal cases { a person-pulled, and a person levitated} could maybe be OK.

Case #36-42 sheet is also loaded with quality. Two extra-solid cases { the holding of a boat by invisible force, and a carlift}; two strong cases { a carshake, and a motorbike and car-pull}; and one good case { a car-rock, maybe lifting}. All these "yellow-gold" cases have the common quality of good investigations usually from people that I know their work quality. That is to say: the GOLD vs BLUE vs Nothing is not based on "Strangeness" { all these claims are plenty strange}, but on "Credibility".

Case #43-49 sheet is my last. It contains the Bellwood car-tipper, and three "OK" cases { a personlift, a carshake, and a trucklift}. Once again, a thing like Bellwood gets gold by having a very detailed investigation by known caseworkers, plus a competent witness. Allen Hynek wouldn't let himself include single-witness cases in his confident-case lists, but I do. If the investigators are good, they will vet the case well, and objectively evaluate the witness and her narrative. I believe that Keith Basterfield and friends have done exactly this with the very famous Mundrabilla alleged carlift. VERY thorough looking at everything including quality of witnesses. The analyses left me completely at sea as to whether to believe any of it, and if so, what exactly?

I am going to stop this post here and come back to this subject in a day or two or so. Maybe I'll have something interesting to say, maybe not --- both you and I will wait and see. For the moment, although I wasn't sure what I'd find, I believe that we have enough evidence in our little pile to say that UFOs do indeed project force of both a push and pull variety.

What say you, Ed? You buying it?

No chance, eh?

Everyday Spirituality

LIFE .....................................  again.

POT-POURRI: Pyramids, Monks, and Reality Chunks.

Aimlessly wandering through the forest today. I have just about dissipated the 80 boxes of "stuff" which came up from Wheeling finally, and the house and SITU garage and basement research areas are almost presentable to somebody "normal". Of course I know that I wouldn't have to spruce it up for any of YOU folks. You obviously like a "little" abnormality or you wouldn't be here.

With the better part of the "work" done, there came a brief releasing of breath, and a chance to think about posting something. This post is a mixture of things, which, though I guess we're supposed to think that "everything's connected", I'll leave the synthesis, if any, to you. I'm going to blunder about these:

a]. Shensi Pyramids;
b]. A claim of spectacular Buddhist monk psi;
and c]. everyone's favorite new word, "jottles".

The pictures above are the reason for topic "a". I was putting away a near-final SITU Chaos Box when a decaying plastic package containing these photos emerged. Thankfully, for a change, they were labeled on the back. But not when they were taken. They were defaced, and I've tried to clean them up so you can enjoy looking at them more.

Here are the words which went with each photo:
1). "Tsin Che Huang-ti pyramid. Length: 350m; height: 48m; volume: 1,900,000 cubic meters. Chensi Province."
2). "Han Yuan-ti pyramid. Valley of the River Wei"
3). "The Nan-Ling. Pyramid of Emperor Wu.
     "The Ngan-Ling. Pyramid of Emperor Hu-wei.
       150-200m in length; 20m high."
4). "The Marshal's pyramid."
5). "Han Tchao-ti pyramid. 73 BC" [backside actually had a different way of denoting the "before Christ era".]
6). "The Marshal's pyramid".

Well, that's what there was. SITU never used any of these pictures, but did address the mysterious Chinese pyramids very early [1973] in its publication of PURSUIT. The photograph that they DID use they claimed a member got from a book published in 1902, entitled Through Hidden Shensi by Francis H. Nichols. This reference seems almost unknown to people who are commenting upon the Shensi pyramids on the internet, which is a curiosity in itself. Wikipedia, for instance, knows nothing about this and references something about ten years later for earliest "western" knowledge of these structures. And I looked at a half dozen special interest sites, and none of them reference it either. A bit odd....

The PURSUIT article went on to talk of the "famous" US military pilot overflight in 1947, the report of which brought the subject of these pyramids "out of the closet" finally. The pilot, Colonel Maurice Sheahan, photographed a pyramid from the air and this was published.

Apparently this is that photo. This 1947 pyramid is manicured on the sides with a noticeably flat top. None of the mysterious photos from the Chaos Box look quite that way. The answer?: MANY pyramids scattered all about Shensi. Somehow, the photo above and the story by the American pilot got molded into a belief that the pyramid shown was a structure so great that it dwarfed the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The statement widely circulated that the Shensi pyramid was 1000 feet high, whereas the Great Pyramid only 470. However big the photo'd Shensi pyramid really was/is, none of the pictures that I just uncovered claim to show pyramids greater than about 150 feet. Arguments began about the size of this thing resulting in dataless baloney and name-calling.

Regardless of the debate about size [another utterly pointless human brouhaha], it's at least certain that the pre-Christian era Chinese emperors piled up great pyramidal mounds of earth for some reason, did this lots of times, and oriented all of them very close to true North-South-East-West lines. The Egyptians did this, too, and in their case we know that they were pointing their "exit shafts" towards the Polar stars, so that Pharaoh's soul could launch upwards into the realm of the "Undying Heavens" {The Star region which never set}, and there remain in Paradise Immortal. Did the Chinese Emperors share the thought?

Well, modern folks at least are trying to turn the "mystery" of the giant "White Pyramid" [there has gotten to be an added claim that the really big one has a glorious shining white top section], into a great variety of what seem largely to be their own reveries untrammeled by facts. One of these ideas is that the Great White Pyramid contains a veritable treasurehouse of ancient Chinese wealth. Another is that it is a great depository of secrets, and there seems to even be a newly minted "brotherhood of the White Pyramid" set up to keep the rest of us out. [wherever the thing is].

Now for a little added disclosure: when I first came across the SITU pyramid pictures, my first thought wasn't particularly about any mysteries associated with them, but instead of being reminded of reading "somewhere" of a guy who slogged across central China during one of their interminable wars, and "discovered" the location of the pyramids by accident. He then went on to a much more fascinating experience, which I will tell of in a moment. But I couldn't remember where I'd read this, and all my files were empty. Then it dawned on me that I "knew" one person who would have been panting with excitement about such things. Can you guess?

Wait for it..........

george hunt williamson.

Yep, good old Georgie. The article that I sought was right in his files. Like I just said, I'll get to the details of what really interested me in a moment, but GHW was on the hunt of big things himself. The map above [somehow GHW got hold of an old military operations map; the guy was amazing] shows George's plot of his interpretation of the trip that the writer, Fred Meyer Schroder, took in 1912. The markings are Williamson's. George deduced that Schroder came down the road [dark dashed line] entering the map top-middle and continued south and west with a line of pyramids on his left. GHW might actually be correct about this. Here GHW felt that Schroder "discovered" a whole array of pyramids seemingly kept secret even from most of the authorities.

Why was Williamson interested? He felt that these pyramids were "linked" somehow with the pyramids in Egypt, and that they somehow pointed the way to powers. He corresponded enthusiastically about this with New Zealand UFOlogist and generally far-out thinker, Bruce Cathie. Both of them believed that the Earth was dotted with some sort of regular grids, which ancient magicians or sensitives could detect and utilize somehow by building structures at key points. Cathie "calculated" that the prime pyramid of Shensi [the one marked "1" on the map] was precisely paralleled in one one his grids with the Great Pyramid of Egypt. Georgie was enamored of the whole lay-out, as he saw the pyramids in the form of the constellation Draco the Dragon, symbolizing the Earth's Dragonline power {the Chinese have their dragonline, feng-shui, concept rather than our ley line concept}. Both GHW and Cathie were now assured that they were on the path to greatness and proceeded to locate the site where Adamski met the Spaceman in the desert on one of Cathie's grid points. [NOT kidding].

Well, how much better can it get? Ivan Sanderson may have paid some attention to this, as he was migrating to a concept of a "dodecadated globe" to "explain" places like The Bermuda Triangle and the rest of his "Vile Vortices".

I hate to be a stick in the mud, but I believe that none of that grid-drawing makes any sense whatever. What I DO think makes at least partial sense is the adventure of Fred Meyer Schroder, who trekked past those pyramids in 1912.

Schroder was an original character who reveled in living a full throttle life. In 1912 he and a partner were making a good living operating caravans mainly between the Mongolian capital of Urga [Ulan Bator] and the Great Wall trading terminuses. They went into the Chinese interior carrying cigarettes and other items of vice, and bringing illegal guns back to Urga for the Mongolian rebels. At this moment, the revolution was particularly hot, and Schroder and his buddy were in danger from the Chinese military. Their Mongol friends brought them a surprising message that they were being sent for by the local high holy man. This lama told them that the Chinese military would crush them all, unless one thing happened. That one thing was that "the red god" would send a direct message to the monks around the Urga region to rise up as one force and fight. This was the name of the Tashi Lama of Kumbum Monastery, the second most revered holyman after only the Dalai Lama. Schroder and his friend were to journey to the monastery of the Red God and inform him of this need.

This was asking a journey of over 2000 miles, but in a way there was little choice. Schroder's partner stayed behind to help with the fighting, and Schroder went more or less south to pick up an influential lama to accompany him the bulk of the trip. It was during the mainly westerly part of the journey that Schroder saw the Shensi pyramids. All that element of the adventure seemed to make good reading sense to me. The travelers made greater than fifty miles per day mounted and enjoying no military interruptions, and with the lama along, good welcomings. Plus, the pyramids seem accurately placed and described. So far so good.

They get to Kumbum monastery and the Red God asked to see Schroder immediately. Schroder explained the reason for his journey. The Red God listened in friendly fashion, but did not then agree to do what was asked. There were regular meetings for two weeks more. During this time it was as if the high lama was getting to know Schroder at a depth he wanted to. It was then that the thing happened, or was alleged to have happened, that interested me. The Red God decided to show Schroder how the monastery got its information about how things were going in Mongolia.

Schroder says that he was taken by the Tashi Lama to a very quiet room, which seemed to be an environment for maintaining an altered state of consciousness via meditation. Young monks [over twenty in number] sat on prayer rugs in a semi-circle and had the appearance of dozing off. Other monks sat or stood by quietly watching the "dozers". When one of the monks would rouse, a watcher would hurry over to him with a cup of tea. The roused monk would drink avidly, then tell the onlookers "where he'd been" and what was the news he brought from there.

This room was, therefore, what we might today call a location for maintaining a dream-like altered state of consciousness for "remote viewing", or at least that's what I believe my friend Hal Puthoff would call it. The difference between what Hal tried to accomplish with remote viewers like Pat Price, Hella Hammid, and Ingo Swann was that the Tashi Lama [unlike the CIA] considered this "actionable intelligence". And the high lama DID act, agreeing that the information received by this method from the Urga area indicated that his support for the revolution there could produce success.

So ....... did this happen? We westerners have only Schroder's word for it. But the rest of his narrative also had "unbelievable {for the time}" wonders in it [the pyramids], and that part proved true. And we have had for many years the knowledge that Buddhist meditators claim at the highest levels to be able to achieve the "siddhis", or a set of paranormal abilities which include "distant knowing". And we have Hal's work, which says that even we undisciplined westerners can do it some of the time. Buddhist meditation seems to be a sort of "mental technology" for achieving {at great patient commitment} some of these potentials. Maybe Schroder was privileged to witness a "psychic information center" inside the Kumbum Monastery.

Now.... how to put all this remote viewing and pyramid mysteries together in true George Hunt Williamson style?

Whoops!! No way. You're not going to sucker me in on THAT one!!

Thankfully, George passed before the Martian pyramids stuff arose. Would he ever have gone bonkers on that!

========================================================================

========================================================================

And now for something completely different.... yeh, I know, GHW would have found a connection with this too......

My [and our] good friend, Jerry Clark, sent me a piece of a contribution to a monograph by a parapsychologist named Mary Rose Barrington on her concept of "jottles". She says JOTTs or "Just One of Those Things". The idea is actually a bit useful, as it does not really embed within the word a model of the envisioned theoretical reason for JOTTs. It has gotten several persons talking about it, including a whole panel at the British Society for Psychical Research. Barrington is trying to describe in general terms the far-more-common-than-realized-or-admitted phenomenon of puzzling disappearances and re-appearances of everyday objects. When such happens, it's "just one of those things".

The table above lists Barrington's types of JOTTs or as they are coming to be called "jottles".

I had, and described here on the blog, a mind-boggler jottle [for me, anyway], when my watch went missing, and several days later AFTER I HAD PURCHASED A NEW ONE, it "reappeared" exactly in the wide-open corner of the kitchen cabinet-top where it was supposed to be all along. I have a VERY organized sister to whom these things happen disturbingly regularly. These are classic "comebacks" in the types listed above. My UFO buddy, Robert Powell, did us all one better with a "trade-in" wherein a pair of scissors was replaced by a non-identical pair, and later the original scissors "returned" alongside the new interloper!.

{ I probably shouldn't have included this along with the other material above, but I thought if I don't slot this in now, I'll likely forget, so here it is. I wanted to share the concept and the following two stories}.

I believe that Robert's jottle is better that Manfred's, but Grosse's tale is genuinely Out Proctor.

Barrington seems to lean towards an idea that quantum fluctuations in an unruly Universe must have something to do with this, and who knows? But I still prefer, as the Old Religion did, the concept of the paranormal entity who has been messing around with us from Time Immemorial. Heck, he/she/it can use quantum fluctuations like a Maxwellian Daemon.

Peace and joy, folks.... and may all your jottles be amusing ones.