Conspiracy Geek The FREE PDF Collected Writings of Joan d`Arc

Conspiracy Geek
The FREE PDF
Collected Writings of Joan d’Arc
(HunterGatheress Journal and Paranoia Magazine)
Copyright April 2011
By Joan d’Arc
Greetings Friends,
This is a collection of fiction and non-fiction pieces, some of which have been published either
in PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader www.paranoiamagazine.com, or HunterGatheress
Journal www.huntergatheress.com (circa 2008; #1 and #2 still available at PARANOIA, POB
1041, Providence, RI 02901 or website for $10 each – please don’t order from HG, the POB is
shut down.). Beware at any time the HG site could go down – it begins to get expensive to keep
up websites).
I want these writings to be available out there in Conspiracy Geekland until Eternity, or until the
internet lite goes out. I also actively blog at www.paranoidsonline.blogspot.com as well as
www.conspiracygeek.blogspot.com. See me there!
Several of these writings have never been published. I have just put this out there to get it off my
desktop,where it has been sitting a while, just collecting virtual dust (publishing is expensive and
is a pain in the ass after 18 plus years of standing in line at the post office).
I have tried to update these writings as much as possible, but the project just got too out of hand.
Here is my BIO from HunterGatheress Journal www.huntergatheress.com, if still up. If not,
Hallelujah, who cares?
Who is Joan d’Arc?
Joan d’Arc is HunterGatheress. She is the co-publisher of PARANOIA The Conspiracy Reader,
founded in 1992 in Providence, Rhode Island (www.paranoiamagazine.com). She is the
founder of the now splintered group, The Providence Conspiracy League, the defunct
Providence book store, Newspeak, and the past publisher of Newspeak magazine. She is the
author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, and Phenomenal World,
both published by The Book Tree (www.thebooktree.com). She is the editor of the 1996
book Paranoid Women Collect Their Thoughts and the Chief Resident of the Paranoid
Women Institute. She is the founder of the website, BIPED: Beings for Intelligent Purpose in
Evolutionary Design, the Website of Darwinian Dissent (www.biped.info). (THIS WEBSITE
NOW GONE)
She is also the co-editor of The Conspiracy Reader and The New Conspiracy Reader
(Kensington Press), which has been translated to Japanese and Romanian. She has been
published in several compilations including Wake Up Down There, The Universal Seduction,
and the French Fortean journal, La Gazette Forteenne. She has written for Namaste
Magazine - published in Charles Darwin’s birth home of Shrewsbury, England - in a major
coup against Darwinian Fundamentalism. And she has written for Hellraiser Homemaker the Gonzo Domestic Survival Guide written for bad girls by bad girls - in a major coup
against good taste. And she’s an authentic unmitigated conspiracy geek.
2
Chapters Go Something Like This (but don’t hold me to it):
The Incessant – A True Story About My Dad
The Last Man Standing: A year in the life of Roderick A. MacKenzie, III
The Skeleton in Uncle Sam's Closet: Hartford Van Dyke and the Truth About Pearl Harbor
Directed Panspermia and the Zoo Hypothesis
The Land of Superlatives and Science Fiction: Jung, Freud, Sartre and Flying Saucers
Radio Panspermia: The Four Who Fell
Tall Tale of Spacegun '54: Mass Rumours Over Orgonon
Messages from Space: A Chronology of Anomalous Radio Signals
Blind Spot: A Gnostic Tale of the Soul’s Journey Into Time and the Struggle to Return to
the One
The Adventures of Adam Kadmon in Shambala (Part 2 of Blind Spot)
Giordano Bruno, 16th Century Ufologist?
The Intelligent Design Revolution (published in Secret and Suppressed 2, Feral House)
The Biological and the Silicon: Modifying Humans for Deep Space Travel
The Cyborg Hypothesis, Robot Probes and Indefinite Survival
Late Great Planet Earth
How Paul Laffoley’s Leg Almost Became an Exhibit In Joe Coleman’s Museum of Human
Oddities
Beings in Nothingdrive: An Existential Analysis of the Travis Walton UFO Abduction
The Deconstruction of Everyday Life
The Miraculous Adventures of Person Man
The Manchurian Candidate Lives
Poems
Interview, Jason Rodgers : Millennial Rants in Three Ring Binders
Interview, Chris Colton : 10 and a Half Questions
3
The Incessant
I can still see clearly the sickened look on my father’s face—the twirling madness of the blue
eyes unbelieving—when he told me as a teenager that “those two people”—meaning Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg—should never have gone to the electric chair. And nobody in their family
would even step up to adopt their two orphaned children.
Dad cursed the U.S. government over and over—there was more going on in his head, appalled
at every turn, than he would let out, probably for fear of being called a socialist—or worse, a
communist.
One time, sitting in the back seat of the car as we drove through the Dracut woods returning from
our grandparent’s house in Methuen, I asked him, “Dad, are you a communist?”
“No, I’m a socialist.”
On the way home that day we stopped at the Shanley house in the easternmost corner of Dracut
to pay a visit, and my parents had gone in for the first time to meet these socialists, whom a
mailman in our neighborhood had said received incriminating mail in brown wrappers.
“He shouldn’t be talking like that,” Dad responded, as we drove by Brox Farm, the apple
orchards of East Dracut, and the ponds dotted by cabins where we swam with cousins of screen
door summers.
I ran up the steps into the long stretch of ‘60s house to see my schoolmates and I was sent back
out to get my parents, who came in smiling —especially my father—to greet these wonderful
people who had eleven or so kids and were not afraid to adopt more—with a great picnic table in
the kitchen for the chow hounds who wouldn’t dare miss the dinner bell—the colossal casseroles
of saintly mother Theresa gone in a swoop of dirty hands. Coming out, my father grinning and
finally, from the back seat, being asked the question of all questions from his eldest daughter,
and incriminating himself irrevocably in my heart, glad.
He had never quite explained how it had happened—and I never understood until later—but he
had somehow become the only leftist in his Republican family. But there was one story he liked
to tell, which might hold a clue to Dad’s pure paranoia.
During the Second World War he had been hospitalized at the Naval Hospital at Quonset Point,
Rhode Island, after receiving his shots to go overseas. The hospitalization went on for a year or
more, during which time he had been severely ill and confined to a wheelchair. I’ve never been
able to ascertain exactly what disease he had—and he had only a vague idea himself—but he
claimed it was something exotic and there was possibly more than one disease. He insisted he
had been a “guinea pig” for some experimental vaccine, and “they”—the “bastards”—had given
him the disease purposely.
Dad used to show us a post card of the U.S.S. Incessant—an Admirable class, the largest of the
minesweepers charged with antisubmarine warfare—on which he had been consigned after
recovering sufficiently enough for the government to try to kill him again. He’d point to a very
small window around the middle of the ship and say with a straight face “that’s me in the
window peeling potatoes”—his duty for being an incessant pain in everybody’s ass. I still look
for him in that window and one day I will see him again if life is not the cruel joke I take it to be.
The Incessant “swept” mines—a phrase that makes it sound like a housekeeping chore—in the
harbors of southern France and Italy. Dad had a cloth badge showing one of the mines that
looked like a round black booby trap bobbing in the water. But other types of explosives had
also been developed in someone’s killing mind.
The word torpedo comes from the Latin torpere (to stun) and also from a fish called the “electric
ray”—(in the order of Torpediniformes). The electric ray has a round body and two organs that
can produce an electrical discharge of up to 220 volts. But a ‘man-ray’ is of another order and
form of fish: I refer to the ‘human torpedo’—a type of diver propulsion vehicle—a secret naval
weapon used by the Italians before they came over to the Allied side, and later adopted by the
British.
Dad saw a lot of these electric man-rays flying through the water in French and Italian waters, an
awesome sight with two Italian commando frogmen sitting atop. They would steer the warhead
up to the ship, detach the incredible ‘limpet mine’ and then ride the jig off, presumably as fast as
possible in the opposite direction.
My father to me was Billy Budd, a mutiny of one. He claims he spent a lot of time in the “brig”
on the Incessant. After incessantly missing port call in Virginia and North Carolina due to
drunken, mischievous behavior, my father—who was married at the time and one of the oldest
enlisted men on the ship at 22—was awoken one sun-up by the captain and marched to the deck.
There he stood at attention in front of a firing squad, the captain’s arm raised—I don’t know if
they bothered to wake the bugler—but in that second of a heartbeat passing before glazed
frightened eyes, he prepared to meet his maker.
In the next second, the captain called off the bluff saying, “I’d like to shoot you, but where we’re
going tomorrow, you’ll be dead soon enough anyway.”
My brother has the theory that Dad was being punished by the captain because he was managing
the card games on the ship, which were run by enlisted men so that the officers remained clean—
not touching any of the loot. Dad had actually been recruited to run the officer’s gambling, and
he may have crossed someone or perhaps had been a wise guy of some sort. Or maybe he was
dealing bad hands to the captain.
Or maybe my theory is correct: Dad was just an incessant pain in the ass—a boil on the cheeks
of authority. Whatever actually happened, the story always reminded me vaguely of Mutiny on
the Bounty.
As time would tell, the captain’s words proved true. The Incessant was employed as a
minesweeper escort in the Mediterranean—and into Sardinia and Palermo, Sicily they walked to
the stares of little children with moonful eyes in forever visions of redemption. They were told
not to put their cigarette butts out in their food, so they could cook up a stew for these war-torn
children—most of them orphaned by this time. The 1955 film To Hell and Back brought the
2
invasion of Italy to the war propaganda screen in gory detail, where a slight and underprivileged
American soldier takes over a burning tank and really gives it to the krauts. One of Dad’s
essential explanations for almost everything was: “that’s propaganda.”
In actuality, the Italian Campaign (September 1943 to May 1945) placed Allied troops on the
European mainland for the first time, against the Italians and Germans, and it degenerated—
history books tell us—into a war of attrition (I’ve seen it described as “a grinding and attritional
slog against skillful, determined and well prepared defenses”)—yes, an attritional slog. Give ‘em
hell.
On the beach at Salerno, troops were met with a loud-speaker proclaiming in English: “Come on
in and give up. We have you covered.” American troops were too thinly spread, and some
divisions were completely “vaporized” by German tanks. In winter the conditions on land were
terrible: roads had disappeared, bridges had been washed downstream, and artillery had to be
pulled by bulldozer through blizzards and snow drifts. Some of the men had made holes in their
boots in the summer so their feet could breathe in the heat, not realizing they wouldn’t get a new
pair in the winter. As we now know, there were many foot amputations over that freezing winter
after gangrene set in.
According to Canadian veterans interviewed on Youtube, the Germans entered Palermo, Sicily
and went from house to house blasting through each room and blowing holes through walls; they
“shellshocked” every single house. The entire village of Palermo was devastated. There were
heavy German air attacks and artillery fire on the beachheads and in the waters of all ports. Dad
mentioned being in the middle of this intense barrage of fire on the U.S.S. Incessant, but he
spared us any mention of cleanup operations.
No campaign in Western Europe had more casualties than in Italy. There would be 60,000 Allied
deaths (23,500 Americans) and 50,000 German soldiers dead in this war theater alone—bad
planning, terrible weather conditions and “mistakes by commanders” were blamed for the high
death toll.
In Bari Harbor, Italy, the Germans bombed the USS John Harvey, which had been carrying a
secret cargo of 100 tons of mustard gas bombs to use on the Germans. Several hundred soldiers
and civilians in the port city were blinded and suffered chemical burns when the mustard gas
mixed with the oil slick in the water. Over 600 soldiers alone were hospitalized and many died
horrible deaths after suffering days or weeks. My father talked about mustard gas, but he thought
it was a German attack. The U.S. did not admit to the bombs being their own for many years.
The Incessant moved on to perform air-sea rescue work in the Black Sea, and in the Ukrainian
port city of Sevastopol. After escorting President Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference in the
Crimean, The Big Three Conference as it’s known in history—Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin
attended this meeting in February 1945—the U.S.S. Incessant returned with two battle stars. All
these big grown men cried openly when President Roosevelt died, Dad said.
Like a lot of veterans of early wars, my father didn’t talk about his experiences in much detail.
He did us a favor by keeping it simple: “I thought every day was my last,” he’d say. It would
take another couple of wars for people to realize the survivors needed help. During the Vietnam
3
era he would say that it was about time veterans were coming home to counseling, since that sort
of behavior had not been encouraged in his time. As veterans today return from foreign wars
they again face their government’s hypocritical neglect and abandonment.
The Incessant moved on to Pearl Harbor after the war’s end to do “cleanup” work, but by that
time my father had returned home, a pacifist—never again to trust the United States
government—to pick up the pieces of his young family and wife, who had been put to work in
the war factories of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
In the alleyways between the tenement houses of the poorest of the poor we ran snotty-nosed,
and in the evenings shouted across fences and clotheslines to other kids in other windows. By
this time Dad had become a union leader for the brotherhood of electrical workers (IBEW) and
held union meetings at the house. I remember men sitting around the kitchen table drinking
glasses of beer and saying hello to us as Dad doled out quarters for a movie—and off we’d go
across the city bridge to see now-forgotten zombie movies or perhaps Frankie and Johnny or
Beach Blanket Bingo—stuff that went way over our heads but we filled in the blanks, as kids do,
with more blanks. This was a delirious time before movie ratings, when you didn’t have to be
“this tall” or accompanied by an adult.
One day my father talked his brother into going in half on a tiny cabin he found on nearly an acre
in Dracut—a suburb of Jack Kerouac’s Lowell, where Jack imagined the caped Dr. Sax lived.
The price was $500. It was to be a shared summer camp for the two families, but when my aunt
got a load of the shotgun shack on the edge of a swamp—where bullfrogs croaked, crickets
chirped and mosquitoes chomped—she was too hoity-toity and would have none of it. So Dad
paid back uncle on a time plan and at first we spent summers there, although there was no indoor
hopper and in August a dry well.
Dracut, on the border of New Hampshire—founded in 1701—got its name from Draycott in
England. The Pawtucket Indian name for Dracut was Augumtoocooke, which means “wilderness
north of the river”—meaning the Pawtucket River. In the 1650s, Indian land in Augumtoocooke,
Pawtucket and Wamesit was bought up for small sums, usually barter—which is interesting in
light of what Dad paid for the land from the old man who had lived there.
Mom—who was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec—made us a home in the old wilderness sticks of
Dracut on the edge of Beaver Brook. She preferred the city—where she could leave us kids with
her mother and go off to a movie for a few hours, but like a trooper she went. Summers she gave
us baths in a fold-up canvas Boy Scout bathtub in the backyard. We ran shirtless in old man
Boumil’s cornfield bordering the property. In backyard memories my father draws love letters in
the sand to a crooning voice on the radio as I peer through the rails of a wooden pen going about
my business by myself. I found great freedom in that little muddy pen.
My father had one book, Walden or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau, which he read
over and over. He had no use or time for any other book, except for a Bird Book in which he
would locate the names of the birds he saw. My father’s favorite quote by Thoreau was, “I went
to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see
if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not
lived.”
4
Yet I wonder what he thought of Thoreau’s less famous and more cynical quotes, like “What is
the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” or “The mass of men lead
lives of quiet desperation.”
Over the years Dad built on two tiny bedrooms and a bathroom, and we learned our first swear
words as he learned carpentry. He filled in the swamp one wheelbarrow at a time and I got many
joyous rides on the way back to pick up another load. He talked of many curious pieces of flint
coming up—possibly Indian tools—when moving that dirt around.
Eventually, we moved to the woods of our beloved Dracut year round, where we escaped
landlords and tenement slums and city punks—where we fished and swam and became teenagers
asking difficult questions from the back seat—and where we took life one day at a time on a little
patch of freedom in a world enslaved by the incessant bonds of war.
5
The Last Man Standing
A year in the life of Roderick A. MacKenzie, III
In volume one of PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader book series, I discussed the JFK
assassination with Roderick A. MacKenzie III, who claims to have been associated with the
Chicago Mafia and the Defense Intelligence Security Command (DISC) in Dallas in the year
1963. In that exclusive interview (posted at www.paranoiamagazine.com/mackenzie.html),
MacKenzie claims he was closely associated with Lyndon Johnson’s personal “hitman,”
Malcolm (“Mac”) Wallace. He further claims that Wallace told him, while in a drunken stupor
the day after the hit, the names of the persons on four hit teams situated in Dealey Plaza on
November 22, 1963. But first a recap. Who is MacKenzie?
Roderick A. MacKenzie, III is the author of a self-published book called The Men That Don’t Fit
In: The Factual History of a Rogue’s Life from 1934 to 1967 (self-published, 2009, free
download at: http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/PDFs/mackenzie_mendontfitin.pdf). Now 75
years old, MacKenzie grew up at his uncle John T. Benson’s circus, Benson’s Wild Animal
Farm, in Hudson, New Hampshire. Later, he got himself into a little trouble in high school, and
his parents suggested he join the Army. After serving in Korea, MacKenzie ended up in Cuba,
where he was sent by a man named “Abe” to train at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s “Flaps
and Seals” school at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in the art of making false I.D.s. MacKenzie had
invented a suitcase system, which he describes as a “complete I.D. factory,” and was already
quite talented at this vocation prior to the DIA’s training.
MacKenzie claims he attended meetings in Louisiana, Alabama and Texas circa 1961 on how to
hit Castro and his generals. “These meetings were not secret, though they did have to debug the
rooms,” he writes. In attendance at these meetings, he claims, were: Frank Sturgis, Felix
Rodriguez, Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Clay Bertram (Shaw), Charles Rogers, Eugene Hale
Braden (Brading), Mac Wallace, and others. On the other hand, MacKenzie also reports that
Chicago Mobster Johnny Roselli believed the plots against Castro were “all bullshit, that the
Mob wanted Castro to stay alive, as while they were in bed with the alphabet agencies they had a
stay out of jail card.” (MacKenzie 41)
Arrival in Dallas
According to The Men That Don’t Fit In, MacKenzie first arrived in Dallas in April of 1963 after
a long ride from Houston in a car driven by David Ferrie. In the passenger seat was a “fag Cuban
guy” and in the back seat with MacKenzie was hitman “Charles Rogers” (aka Richard Montoya)
“playing Cuban.” Although Rogers didn’t speak much, MacKenzie had noticed on previous trips
with “this accomplished pilot” that there was “a sick and very bad aura around this little man.”
MacKenzie had the sense that Ferrie and the Cuban were high on speed, which was widely used
at that time, as they were talking a mile a minute. MacKenzie notes, “Being stuck in the back
seat of this gunboat Cadillac for hours was not a fun thing.” (MacKenzie 43)
MacKenzie had been first introduced to Ferrie in New Orleans in 1961—along with “Clay
Bertram” (Clay Shaw) and Guy Banister—at the Katzenjammer Bar, where these three men were
6
“very buddy buddy.” (MacKenzie 38) He says Carlos Marcello used Ferrie to transfer orders
between Mafia and government personnel.
On his arrival in Dallas in April of 1963, MacKenzie was given a room at the Cabana Motel with
instructions that he was to meet a man in the Egyptian Lounge who, with the help of a Hawaiian
shirt with a banana leaf pattern, “would know me but I would not know him.” This man, who
apparently was wearing a similar shirt, turned out to be Mac Wallace.
Wallace offered MacKenzie a shot from his personal flask of Wild Turkey. They began drinking
and talking about Cuba and their fear of the ‘Reds’ taking over the U.S. The ‘Communist’
Kennedys may also have been mentioned, says MacKenzie. “We were all pissed at that
administration, and the fact that we had been soldiers in the Cuban mess from the start made
alliances between a lot of people that never would have mixed otherwise.” (MacKenzie 44)
After the terrible ride from Houston, MacKenzie was relieved to talk to “a radical but pretty
smart and levelheaded guy,” though he notes he had the “eye of a killer.” Wallace spoke proudly
of his affiliation with Lyndon Johnson. He gave MacKenzie a Texas Rangers state police
identification card to replicate as his first job.
Later that day, MacKenzie also met his “handler,” Jake Miranda. “He was Defense Intelligence
Agency and said so,” claims MacKenzie. “I also got the feeling (and I was right) that he was a
connected guy mob-wise as was Ruby, who broadcasted his Chicago connections all over the
place.” (MacKenzie 45) Later in his book, MacKenzie claims he learned through Miranda that
they all worked for DISC. He also claims he learned that Mac Wallace worked for Office of
Naval Intelligence (ONI). As he also saw later, at the shooting range Wallace was “a hell of a
shot.” (MacKenzie 50)
On the same day in April of 1963, Miranda took MacKenzie to Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club, a
favorite hangout of the Dallas Police Department, where he met Officer J.D. Tippit, who was to
show him a safe house he was to run on Holland Avenue (south of Oaklawn Avenue). He also
met Ruby on the same occasion, and Ruby gave him the name of Dr. Robert Sparkman, whom he
could call about a job as a surgical nurse at Baylor Hospital. (MacKenzie had attended Faulkner
School of Nursing in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts after service on the G.I. Bill.)
In the future, MacKenzie would learn to stay away from Ruby’s Carousel Club as much as
possible, and to steer clear of Ruby. He had been warned even before he met Ruby to keep a
distance: in Chicago, Mobster Sam Giancana had stated words to the effect that, “that asshole is
down there for a reason and it’s not for a vacation.” Chicago Mobster Johnny Roselli had told
him that Ruby was the Chicago Mob’s man in Dallas, a “trusted employee, but dangerous.”
MacKenzie says he had also been warned by J.D. Tippit that Ruby was “a switch hitter and liked
guys as much as girls.”
MacKenzie saw Lee Oswald in Dallas frequently during this time, and in the company of Jack
Ruby at least twice. He also learned, through later “pillow talk” with exotic dancers like Jada
Conforto, a stripper at the Sho-Bar, that Oswald was “queer” and was Ruby’s lover, and that he
was some sort of agent, “probably ONI.” (MacKenzie 50, 51) According to Michael Benson in
7
Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, several witnesses had seen Oswald and Ruby drinking
together at the Carousel Club a week before the assassination.
Later the same evening in April of 1963, Officer Tippit returned MacKenzie to the Egyptian
Lounge, where he told him he’d pick him up in the morning. A police cruiser pulled up in the
morning to shuttle MacKenzie and his belongings to his new home on Holland Avenue, a house
with a converted garage that contained a small personal apartment. Tippit also gave him the keys
to the 1950 Ford Coupe parked in the driveway. The Alabama registration was already in
MacKenzie’s name, although he later found out it was a “good fake.”
Officer J.D. Tippit was known by his fellow officers to resemble President Kennedy; in fact, so
much so that his nickname reportedly was “JFK.” In 2009, I asked MacKenzie whether, in his
opinion, Officer Tippit resembled John F. Kennedy. Following is his response:
No, I don't see much resemblance between JFK and Tippit. Tippit had a square
face, a shorter neck, and sort of a Neanderthal look, heavy eyebrow and set jaw.
He did not look as tall as Kennedy. His legs were shorter and his body trunk
seemed sort of stretched to a very muscular set of shoulders and chest; he had no
hips, so to speak. He did like to laugh when in his own environment and liked
dirty jokes. I have no idea as to what happened over by the theater, but I have no
doubt that something other than what took place was planned and went very
wrong. Probably, Oswald was to be killed, but I don't think it was by Tippit.
Johnny Roselli
John Roselli, born Filippo Sacco in Italy (July 4, 1905), worked for Al Capone in the 1920s. He
was a Mob boss in Las Vegas, and was associated with both Meyer Lansky and Santos
Trafficante. By his own admission, he was involved in the CIA plan to assassinate Fidel Castro
in Cuba. Although the public knew nothing about it, according to Peter Dale Scott’s report
entitled, “The Inspector General’s Report, An Introduction,” the “CIA-underworld collaboration
was an established and continuing mode of operation going back to the suppression of Sicilian
and French Communism after World War II.” (copi.com/articles/pdsigrtx.htm)
In 1975, Roselli testified to the Church Committee, chaired by chaired by
Senator Frank Church (officially, the “U.S. Select Committee to Study
Government Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities”) that the Mob
and the CIA together had attempted to kill Castro during the early 1960s.
Roselli claimed the CIA hit team had been turned against Kennedy. In 1976,
the Committee recalled Roselli to testify again, but he never made it. He left
his home in Florida to play golf and never arrived at the golf course. His
busted body was found floating in a drum, and the hit was blamed on Santos
Trafficante. In a September 1976 interview with Jack Anderson just before his
murder, Roselli stated: “When Oswald was picked up, the underworld
conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to
them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive U.S. crackdown on
the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald.”
(spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKroselli.htm)
8
Other Safe Houses?
According to MacKenzie, his contacts for the safe house were: the Mob, DISC, FBI Division
Five (through Reverend Bowen), Chauncey Holt (later known as one of the “Three Tramps”) and
Officer J.D. Tippit (on a few occasions). MacKenzie was told by Jake Miranda (DISC agent) that
there were a couple of other safe houses in Dallas, but he never figured out where they were. In
addition, says MacKenzie, some people used their homes as safe houses for the Mob and
intelligence agencies, and some safe houses were run by the Dallas Police Department. Tammi
True, a stripper at Ruby’s Carousel, reportedly took in covert cohorts regularly. It is not known
where her house was located. At least one safe house was located in the Oak Cliff area where
Officer J.D. Tippit was killed.
MacKenzie’s first clients at the safe house were three men who were brought in by “a very
sleazy preacher type known as Albert Osborne,” who later called himself Reverend Bowen. John
Howard Bowen was a Nazi who posed as a preacher for the American Council of Christian
Churches’ (ACCC) “mission” in Mexico. MacKenzie claims he had first met Osborne in New
Orleans at Guy Banister’s 544 Camp Street address. The three men Bowen brought in were
either French or Corsican, and stayed at the safe house for four days. They never left the place as
far as he knew. He later found out they had just made a hit in Michigan, and were cooling off
before returning to a place run by the ACCC. MacKenzie states, this group “ran hit squads from
somewhere south of Mexico City all over the world.”
According to Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal by William Torbitt (The Torbitt
Document), Albert Osborne (Bowen) was a Nazi sympathizer who opposed U.S. war with
Germany and had a following of young Fascists in rural Tennessee. He began operating a Nazi
“black shirt group” known as the “Campfire Council” in 1942. As Torbitt explains, the Campfire
Council was sponsored by an “espionage cover group, the American Council of Christian
Churches.” In 1943, Bowen began supervising a “nest of professional assassins” for the ACCC.
According to Torbitt, Albert Osborne’s ACCC and Division Five of the FBI “obtained the team
of the world’s best Mexican riflemen through the offices of Double-Chek Corporation, an
American based subsidiary of Permindex.” These assassination squads were made up of anticommunist Cubans who had sought political asylum in Mexico after Castro’s communist coup.
Permindex was described by Torbitt as an FBI- and CIA-funded Swiss corporation, also funded
by Centro Mondiale Comerciale (World Trade Center Corporation), which moved from Rome to
Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1962. MacKenzie claims he and everyone he knew was paid by
“Permindex bucks.” (d’Arc, MacKenzie interview)
According to Torbitt, among those on the JFK assassination hit team were professional assassins
from Mexico, who “blended in well with some of the anti-Castro Cubans under the direction of
the Free Cuba Committee, with members in Mexico City, Dallas, New Orleans, Montreal,
Miami, Chicago, Kansas City and Los Angeles.” The expert shooters from Mexico were selected
from 25 to 30 of the most proficient marksmen in the world. The group had been “used by
espionage agencies of the U.S. and various countries all over the world for political killings over
the past 25 years.” (Torbitt)
9
The Pepsi Cola Convention
According to Roderick MacKenzie, the Holland Avenue safe house grew a lot busier in August
and September of 1963. He did not know who the clients were at the time. The month of October
was quiet, but there was “not one night without a client from November 5 through November
23.”
On November 16, 1963 MacKenzie was asked to move out of his apartment and into a room at
the Cabana Motel. He went by the safe house daily to clean, and it “looked like a war room for
an Army.” The place was littered with maps of Cuba, Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, and the
southwestern United States and Gulf of Mexico area. He assumed there was a Castro hit coming
down. He never gave a thought to it being a hit on the President, and, in fact, he claims, no one at
that time and on his level even knew Kennedy was coming to Dallas.
Around the time of the Pepsi Convention on November 21, MacKenzie says his telephone
conversations with Johnny Roselli increased and he had several personal meetings with Roselli
and Miranda at Jake Miranda’s bar. At this time, he was informed by Roselli that the “cleaners”
would hit the safe house on the 22nd and he was told to stay away. The cleaners, MacKenzie
explains, “are sent into a situation when it has to be wiped clean of any past, and as often as not
those involved in the past of the operation are terminated as well.” (MacKenzie 58) He began to
get nervous.
On the night of November 21, the Cabana Motel was full and MacKenzie recalls seeing a lot of
old faces. It was “old time week as far as the revolting revolutionaries and mob connected guys
and politicos went,” he writes. “It seems that someone somewhere had called a convention other
than the Pepsi one, and invited every gypsy, tramp, mobster and politician available to come.”
(MacKenzie 59) Adding to the stress of hearing that the “cleaners” would be coming to the safe
house, Roselli and Miranda called a meeting at Baylor Hospital Cafeteria on Gaston Avenue for
11:00 a.m. the next morning, November 22.
The night of the 21st was a very busy night at both the Cabana Motel and the Egyptian Lounge. It
was a noisy night too, says MacKenzie, with many Spanish-speaking people hanging around in
the parking lot. That night MacKenzie couldn’t sleep and wrote several letters to his frequent pen
pals, among them, Sam Giancana, Del Graham, and Mitch Werbelle. He turned off his lamp
several times to peer out the window. He saw Frank Sturgis go out and come back with a case of
Pearl beer, a popular local beer at the time.
The next time he looked, MacKenzie saw Richard Nixon climbing out of a stretch limo. He
figured it was a meeting of Nixon’s group Operation 40—a CIA-sponsored operation created by
Eisenhower, which included Frank Sturgis, Felix Rodriguez, Eladio del Valle, Raphael “Chi
Chi” Quintero, and other anti-Castro revolutionaries associated with the JFK assassination.
Nixon was “the father of that bunch,” MacKenzie writes. According to MacKenzie, Nixon
entered the room next door to his at the Cabana and stayed about a half hour. He then heard
someone outside mention the Adolphus Hotel as the limo took off. (MacKenzie 60-61)
10
Marita Lorenz
MacKenzie was told that there was a big deal being worked out as to “how Pepsi could get their
sugar costs down now that Fidel was El Politico boss in Cuba,” and there would be a bunch of
people in the safe house and at the Cabana for “(of all things) the Pepsi Cola Convention.”
Staying in the Cabana Motel in the very next room at the same time as MacKenzie was
hitwoman, Ruth Ann Martinez. “Later she moved into the same room with Frank Sturgis and his
girlfriend,” MacKenzie writes. Although she was “cordial and sexy,” Martinez was not overly
friendly, as her business was “refined killings.”
Frank Sturgis’s girlfriend was Marita Lorenz, who had been Fidel Castro’s mistress while still a
teenager. During a visit to Havana with her parents, the young woman had been recruited by
Castro to be his “secretary,” but she was a kept woman, never allowed out of Castro’s private
suite at the Havana Hilton. In fact, Castro had reportedly sent his men to fetch the teen from her
New York apartment, and he raped her on her first night in Havana.
Lorenz was recruited into the CIA in 1959 by agent Frank Fiorini (Sturgis), who had aided
Lorenz’s escape by posing as a Cuban guard. She returned to Miami but was later convinced by
Sturgis to go back to Cuba on two secret CIA missions: first, to steal papers and maps from
Castro’s Hilton room, which she accomplished unbeknownst to Castro; and, second, to kill
Castro with poison capsules, which (infamously) disintegrated in a jar of cold cream.
According to Lorenz, in her deposition for attorney Mark Lane’s defense of the “Liberty Lobby”
in January 1985, she stayed in a “Dallas motel” on November 21, 1963 with an assassination
squad with whom she had driven from Miami a few days before. The members were part of
Operation 40, she told the New York Daily News on November 3, 1977, “a secret guerilla group
originally formed by the CIA in 1960 for the Bay of Pigs invasion.” The group included about
thirty anti-Castro Cubans and their American advisors. Lorenz claimed she had first met Oswald
at an Operation 40 guerrilla training camp in a South American country circa 1961-1962, and
that she knew him as “Ozzie.”
The next time she saw Ozzie, Lorenz stated, was at the home of Cuban terrorist, Orlando Bosch.
In his book The Last Investigation, Gaeton Fonzi described Lorenz’s story in detail. She claimed
that about a month prior to November 22, 1963, she met with this anti-Castro group at Bosch’s
home in Miami. She claimed the others at the meeting were Sturgis, Ozzie and other Cubans.
She said the group studied Dallas street maps. Lorenz claims she was under the impression we
were to “take another armory.” (Fonzi)
According to Lorenz, at this meeting Sturgis spoke the word “Kennedy” aloud to Bosch, and she
replied, “What about him?” That was when “Ozzie started a dispute with Frank and Bosch about
my presence,” Lorenz claimed, to which she retorted, “Who needs this hostile, slimy bastard?”
When Lorenz attempted to leave, she claimed, Sturgis spoke to them on her behalf. (Fonzi)
The group with whom Lorenz claimed she traveled from Miami to Dallas for the JFK hit
included Frank Sturgis, Gerry Patrick Hemming, Orlando Bosch, Pedro Diaz Lanz, Guillermo
Novo, Ignacio Novo, and Lee Oswald. It has been argued, however, that this could not have been
the “real Oswald” since he was employed at the TSBD at this time. In addition, a fellow
11
employee claims to have driven Lee Oswald to work on Friday, November 21, 1963, picking him
up at Ruth Paine’s house in Irving, Texas, after he stayed the night with Marina. However, it’s
possible that this was one of the infamous Oswald doubles.
According to Lorenz, on the first night at the motel Sturgis waited for a “member” named Ruby,
and spoke to him in the parking lot. Ruby seemed surprised at Lorenz’s presence. She claims she
later asked Sturgis, “Where’d you get that Mafia punk?” Sturgis replied, “You make me nervous.
I made a mistake, this is too big, I want you to go back to Miami.” After a visit by E. Howard
Hunt (known as “Eduardo”), who delivered a package containing cash, Sturgis and Bosch drove
her to the airport.
Lorenz later claimed, “I had a feeling, a suspicion, that Frank’s group was in Texas to kill
somebody, because of the secrecy of the whole thing. Never in a million years did I put two and
two together, or was ever even hinted to what they were up to.” (Fonzi) Reportedly Sturgis said
to her a few days later, “You should have stayed. It was safe. Everything was covered in
advance. No arrests, no real newspaper investigation. It was all covered, very professional.”
(Who’s Who 260).
This interesting story might explain Rod MacKenzie’s claim that Ruth Ann Martinez later
moved from her room into the same room with Frank Sturgis “and his girlfriend.” One wonders
whether, perhaps, Martinez moved in with Sturgis after Lorenz left, taking her place in the
crowded motel room, where Lorenz claimed they had slept four to a room. In her book entitled
Marita, Lorenz claimed she didn’t like the secrecy of the mission and became “disgusted” with
what was going on. A Vanity Fair story later proclaimed she had been unwittingly involved in
the JFK assassination. (Fonzi)
It is important to note that JFK researchers and investigators have refuted much of Lorenz’s
testimony; among the arguments, that Lee Oswald was in the Soviet Union from September 1959
until June 1962, and couldn’t have been at the guerilla meetings as she claimed. Gaeton Fonzi of
the House Select Committee considered her testimony a “diversion,” and worse, Fonzi’s
associate, Ed Lopez, stated Lorenz “gave us so much crap, and we tried to verify it, but let me
tell you, she is full of shit.” (Fonzi)
On the other hand, it has been noted that “Oswald” was seen in many places at the same time,
which has led researchers to presume there was more than one “Oswald.” If so, which one did
Lorenz meet, and did this perhaps obvious fact go over the heads of the House Select
Committee?
Many researchers believe Marita Lorenz’s admissions in the newspaper story of 1977 served as a
“limited hangout,” which is spy jargon for a phony cover story which plants disinformation
while withholding the most damaging facts. Notwithstanding this accusation, it is true that
Lorenz feared for her life in the aftermath of this news exposé, and had taken to answering the
door of her Miami home with a shotgun in hand. In addition, her 13-year old daughter was
apprehended with a .22 revolver in the bushes in front of the house. The reader might take a wild
guess at who it was they were afraid of—indeed, Frank Sturgis was arrested in her home after
going there to “talk.” (Fonzi)
12
The Alibi, Baylor Cafeteria
On the morning of November 22, 1963, Rod MacKenzie went to the safe house, even though he
had been advised not to go there, and saw two cars in the driveway (one with D.C. diplomatic
plates), so he did not go in. MacKenzie claims he was a bit “put off” that he had to attend the
meeting at the Baylor Hospital cafeteria rather than going to the presidential parade.
When he got to the cafeteria, Roselli and Miranda seemed to be in a serious mood. There was
small talk for about an hour over sandwiches, about Castro, sugar prices, etc. Then came the
business. After the cleaners did their thing at the house, MacKenzie was told, he could move
back in on November 25. “The phone would be changed and all signs of its past use would no
longer exist.” That was the good news. He was also informed he was to be “used” for something,
but they were vague. (MacKenzie 63)
According to MacKenzie, at about 11:45 a.m. John Roselli went to make a phone call on the pay
phone near the cafeteria. He returned to ask MacKenzie if he had “been sure to deliver the I.D.
and pilots papers to Chauncey Holt that morning.” He assured Roselli he had done so the day
before. (Problematically, MacKenzie claims he made the false I.D.s and delivered them to Holt,
while Holt claims he made them. Also, Holt claims he did not arrive in Dallas until the morning
of Nov. 22nd, not the 21st.) Roselli went back to the phone and returned at about 12:40 “visibly
shaken.” The JFK hit occurred at about 12:30 and JFK’s limo arrived at Parkland Hospital at
12:38. MacKenzie claims he still knew nothing about the hit and nothing was mentioned. He was
told to report to Miranda the next day for orders. (MacKenzie 64)
Thus, when the JFK hit went down, MacKenzie claims, he was in the Baylor cafeteria with John
Roselli and Jake Miranda. A perfect alibi for Roselli. Only Roselli didn’t and perhaps couldn’t
use that alibi. Rather, Roselli testified to the Church Committee that he was in his apartment in
Las Vegas that morning. In a preposterous claim, Roselli said he had fired a shot from a storm
drain located on Elm Street. James Files, self proclaimed shooter on the grassy knoll, claims
Roselli was in the Dal-Tex Building with Chuck Nicoletti. CIA pilot Tosh Plumlee says Roselli
was with him in an attempt to “abort” the JFK assassination. And strangely, now, after all these
years, MacKenzie claims he was with Roselli in the cafeteria of Baylor Hospital. Of course,
Roselli couldn’t admit that he had been with a DISC agent and a Dallas safe house keeper, since
it would have disclosed a top-level government conspiracy.
When MacKenzie returned to Holland Avenue as instructed on the 25th, there was no trace of the
old safe house or his old apartment. The wall structure and plumbing were entirely new. “From
the moment I was enlightened that there had been shots fired at the president, I knew we were
somehow involved. I also felt the paranoia that comes from such fears, then there was the
possibility that my days were numbered. Hell, I had known a lot of people “cleaned” because
they had slight knowledge out of their boxes. It was a scary time.” (MacKenzie 62)
MacKenzie wonders how he missed all the cues: The anti-Kennedy leaflets dropped by plane all
over Dallas and Fort Worth by the Hunt family, stating that Kennedy was a traitor; the Operation
40 revolutionaries who met at the hotel the night before; the “political and filthy rich crowd that
had their own mob … nothing went on in Texas without them giving the nod for it to succeed.”
(MacKenzie 54)
13
On November 23, MacKenzie was told by Jake Miranda to put in his notice at Baylor Hospital
and apply for a job at Parkland operating room as a scrub nurse. He was told it was all set up that
he was to stay at Baylor for one week and transfer to Parkland. “I was to start making reports of
any talk I could hear on the killing of the president, and so on, to Jake nightly as soon as I started
at Parkland … I was pretty shaken. However, Jake assured me that we were the good guys and
had nothing to do with the hit. … I was very suspicious…” (MacKenzie 65)
When he arrived at Baylor to give notice, the head nurse in the O.R. already knew he was
leaving, and everything was all set for his transfer to Parkland. He believes that if Kennedy had
been brought to Baylor when he was a surgical nurse on the second shift rather than to Parkland
Hospital, he would have had “different duties to my masters that day or evening, which is not a
comforting speculation even today. Such knowledge stagnating within me over the years does
have an effect.”
****
On November 23, MacKenzie showed up at Jake Miranda’s bar as instructed. At the bar was a
very bombed Mac Wallace. Miranda suggested that MacKenzie take him out somewhere, and
MacKenzie followed orders, taking him to a Fort Worth motel bar where Wallace proceeded to
talk about the assassination. He claims, “Mac was in a conspirators mode of talk and as he
drained his silver flask he got more talkative on that ‘bastard Kennedy.’ … Mac was talking of
the hit like I was in on the damn thing. … I had no inkling of what had gone down until this
time.” (MacKenzie 68)
Following is the list of the JFK assassination “killing teams” (from page 71 of The Men That
Don’t Fit In) as told to Roderick A. MacKenzie on November 23, 1963 by Mac Wallace in a
drunken stupor as MacKenzie ran back and forth to the men’s room trying to take notes:
•
Command area on the second floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD): Cliff
Carter, Carlos Marcello, Jack Ruby, George Reese;
•
In the alley behind the fence and above the so-called Grassy Knoll: Clyde Foust, John
Ernst, Jack Grimm, Joseph P. Dugan;
•
Under the bridge in case the president was not shot, and above the railroad area (these
people were never used): Charles Harrelson, Percy Chauncey Holt, Charles Frederick
Rogers, a man called “Dimitri” from ACCC;
•
Roof of the County Records Building: Harry Weatherford, Roger Craig, Richard
Scalzetti, Michael Victor Mertz;
•
Sixth floor of the TSBD in the nest and other setup areas: Ruth Ann Martinez, Lee
Harvey Oswald (under a spell according to Mac), Mac Wallace, Lawrence “Loy” Factor;
•
The Dal-Tex Building (the team was supposed to be on top but had problems): Eugene
Hale Brading, Frank Fiorelli (Sturgis), Chi Chi Quintero, Richard Cain.
14
The Hit List
Although the MacKenzie/Wallace “hit list” does have many close matches as far as persons now
known to be involved in the hit, there are many discrepancies with other accounts as to the
particular locations in which the hitters were situated.
Let’s look at MacKenzie’s list of hit teams and see how it fits in with what researchers know, or
suspect they know, about the JFK assassination after nearly fifty years of study. While it’s
outside of the scope of this article to discuss each of the persons alleged by Mac Wallace or Rod
MacKenzie to have been involved in the hit teams, quite a few of the people on this list are
known or suspected to be associated. (I was unable to document anything on Cliff Carter, George
Reese, Clyde Foust, John Ernst, Jack Grimm, and Joseph P. Dugan, but will leave these names
for another time or another researcher.)
Roger Craig
Roger Craig was a Deputy Sheriff in Dallas, and one of the police officers who rushed to the
scene of the JFK assassination and investigated the Grassy Knoll and TSBD. He was a member
of a group from County Sheriff James Eric "Bill" Decker's office that was directed to stand in
front of the Sheriff's office on Main Street (at the corner of Houston) and "take no part
whatsoever in the security of that motorcade." http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/WTKaP.html
He witnessed Oswald get into a green Rambler after the shooting. He was interviewed by
Attorney Mark Lane and made several claims at odds with the Warren Commission. There were
several attempts on his life, the final successful one occurred on May 15 1975 from a gunshot
wound, which was ruled a suicide.
"Since Craig had been telling conspiratorial stories from the very day of the assassination, it's not
clear what additional sinister knowledge he had that conspirators feared. Roger Craig was an
unfortunate man in many ways, and he contributed to his own misfortune by telling a variety of
"interesting" stories about what he had seen in the wake of the assassination — stories that
undermined his credibility as a law enforcement officer."
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/craig_death.htm
Craig claims that he found six spent bullets and a brown paper lunch sack in the TSBD
containing leftover chicken. He discusses the Rambler station wagon, the rifle (7.65 Mauser)
found in the TSBD, and three bullets that didn’t match the Mauser. Mark Lane stated, “Craig’s
testimony destroys the case against Oswald.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvVptEFsnPk
See also : Evidence of Revision
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIOnFpZaDcw&feature=related
Various testimony of Roger Craig can be found in a google search of the internet. I have no way
of verifying Mac Wallace’s claim that Roger Craig was involved in the shooting himself. It is
15
important to be clear that MacKenzie is repeating the hit teams as given to him by Mac Wallace.
Obviously Mac Wallace could have been deliberately providing disinformation or was provided
disinformation himself, or was simply incredibly drunk.
Mac Wallace
Included on MacKenzie’s list of the hit teams was Mac Wallace himself, who admitted to being
posted on the sixth floor of the TSBD. Recent research affirms this claim. A fingerprint from a
carton in the “sniper’s nest” (6th floor window), labeled “unknown” in the National Archives,
was definitively identified in 1998 as belonging to Mac Wallace. “On March 9, 1998, A. Nathan
Darby, A.L.C.E., a Certified Latent Fingerprint Examiner, and a member of the International
Association for Identification, signed a sworn affidavit stating that he found a positive match
between the “Unknown” print from Carton “A” and the 1951 print of Mac Wallace.”
(itwasjohnson.impiousdigest.com) Many skeptics have tried to refute this information, but it
seems to be fairly solid evidence to many JFK researchers.
Many witness reports claimed to see several persons in the windows of the sixth floor of the
TSBD. Witness Charles Bronson filmed the building about six minutes before the shooting.
According to Robert Groden, this film catches the movements of figures in three of the sixth
floor windows: the so-called sniper’s nest and two adjacent windows.
According to a CBS report, The Warren Report, Part 1, which aired on June 26, 1967, a witness
in Dealey Plaza, Carolyn Walther, claimed to see two men in the window of the sixth floor.
According to the biography website Spartacus.com, Walther claimed she “saw a man with a gun,
and there was another man standing to his right.” Additionally, TSBD employee, Harold
Norman, who was watching the motorcade from the fifth floor of the TSBD, claimed he heard
the shots coming from the floor above, as well as the empty cartridges hitting the floor.
Observers not called by the Warren Commission reported seeing a “dark complected man” in the
window, and another witness saw a man with black hair running out the back with a highpowered rifle. Which brings us to another person on the MacKenzie/Wallace hit teams.
Loy Factor
Loy Factor is a Chickasaw Indian who confessed to the murder of JFK while in prison.
According to the 1995 book and video, The Men on the Sixth Floor, by Mark Collum and Glen
Sample, Factor admitted on his death bed that he was one of three gunmen on the sixth floor of
the TSBD. He claimed “a Hispanic woman named Ruth Ann” was the radio operator. According
to Factor’s admission, the other two shooters were Mac Wallace and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Factor told the researchers about a “little house that served as the base of operation, the
individuals at the house, including the appearance of Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald.” Factor stated
that after the shots were fired, everyone but Oswald escaped out the back door of the building
(the “north side”), where there was a wooden loading dock, “kinda like a porch.” The
investigators wondered how this Indian could possibly otherwise have known that the TSBD had
a loading dock on the north side that was later removed.
16
Loy Factor claimed they did not use the elevator, but went down the stairs and out the back. No
one was in the back, since everyone was in front watching the motorcade. Loy and Ruth Ann got
into a car and drove away. In somewhat confusing testimony, Loy Factor claims he and Ruth
Ann went one way and Wallace went another. Ruth Ann took Factor to the bus depot, but later,
presumably after Oswald was picked up, Ruth Ann and Wallace returned to the bus depot to
drive Factor out of town. Lee Oswald also claimed he went to the bus depot and got on a bus,
which got stuck in traffic, so he got off the bus and took a cab.
Lee Oswald in the Doorway?
Witnesses who worked in the TSBD have stated that Oswald was in the lunchroom on the 2nd
floor eating his lunch just prior to the shooting, and was in the same lunch room just minutes
after the shooting, when police entered and saw him drinking a Coke. In fact, it seems that
Oswald was photographed in the doorway of the TSBD as the procession was going by (see
picture at www.whokilledjfk.net/altgens.htm).
The person in the doorway not only resembles Oswald’s facial and hairline characteristics, but is
wearing the same denim style shirt over a white t-shirt that he was arrested in a few hours later.
He consequently “lost” the shirt during his lineup session, where he was allowed to wear only his
t-shirt. After complaining bitterly, he was finally given a black sweater. One wonders why this
shirt was taken away.
District Attorney Jim Garrison believed it was likely Oswald standing in the doorway watching
the parade. In an October 1967 Playboy interview, he stated: “As the first shot rang out,
Associated Press photographer James Altgens snapped a picture of the motorcade that shows a
man with a remarkable resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald, same hairline, same face shape,
standing in the doorway of the Book Depository Building. Somehow or other, the Warren
Commission concluded that this man was actually Billy Nolan Lovelady, an employee of the
Depository, who looked very little like Oswald. […] The Altgens photograph indicates the very
real possibility that at the moment Oswald was supposed to have been crouching in the sixthfloor window of the Depository shooting Kennedy, he may actually have been standing outside
the front door watching the Presidential motorcade.” (www.jfklancer.com/Garrison3.html)
(Incidentally, Billy Lovelady was wearing a red and white vertical striped shirt that day.)
Oswald was also noted to be somewhere near the doorway by NBC news correspondent Robert
MacNeil, who was riding in the motorcade when shots rang out. MacNeil jumped out of the limo
and ran to the TSBD. One must realize that Dealey Plaza is a very small area, and it probably
took seconds for him to run to the front entrance of the building. There he encountered a man at
the door, whom he asked where he could find a telephone, and the man pointed inside. MacNeil
later identified the man as Oswald. In fact, Oswald also recalled the conversation; according to
Dallas Police, a man asked Oswald for a telephone as he was leaving the building. (Who’s Who
271) However, no notes of Dallas Police interrogations of Lee Oswald exist or have surfaced.
Dugan and “Dimitri”
The Torbitt Document names a number of DISC agents working under Permindex, including
David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, Sergio Arcacha Smith, and others. It also names a
17
“second layer of participants with supervisory and working assignments” including, among
them, Albert Osborne of A.C.C.C, “Dimitri Royster” of A.C.C.C and “a number of others with
limited assignments informed only enough to carry out the assignments with dispatch.”
MacKenzie claims this is the Dimitri who stayed at his safe house on Holland Avenue.
MacKenzie claims Joe Dugan was with the Irish Republican Army and DISC out of Muscle
Shoals, Alabama, as was Dave Ferrie, Guy Banister and others, and that Dugan had practiced the
hit at Sulphur, Louisiana under Wallace at Mitch Werbell’s training facility.
Chauncey Holt
In October 2009 I asked Rod MacKenzie what he knew specifically about Chauncey Holt
(MacKenzie knows him as “Percy”), a man now suspected to be one of the “Three Tramps.”
Following is an excerpt from MacKenzie’s email response:
Percy was the son of circus people and a lot of his relatives were carnival people.
He cut his teeth on the family circus, but as far as professionally working a flying
trapeze act he never did it. His life was spectacular as it was; he was a damn great
pilot on fixed wing aircraft, a contractor for both the FBI and CIA, but he was not
a ‘made man’ in the Outfit. He had relatives that were, and who used him as
everything from a bag-man to a set-up man for other intrigues. He was not a hit
man, as far as I know, and knowing him well I would have heard it from him if he
had killed anyone.
Holt went to the same “Flaps and Seals” School at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, at a
later time than I. He was used in the L.A. area at a badge and silk screening
company – the CIA kept the whole upstairs there to do ID's. We worked together
on a bunch of things through the years. He was good and very dependable. He
was a regular at Del J. Graham’s winter quarter in both Canoga Park and Tarzana,
California. He also did stunt work in a lot of movies at the Spahn Ranch, and was
friends with the Mansons and other loner crazies that squatted at the ranch. It was
a very big spread where western movies were made from the beginning of movie
time. Del Graham (of the Flying Viennas) had the exclusive on any movie by
anyone in the USA that had a circus setting or any carnie or circus scenes in it.
Del’s first was “Freaks.” Johnny Roselli was ‘top guy’ at the AGVA (American
Guild of Variety Artists). We all basked in his benevolence.
The pictures in that video [purportedly showing Percy] were of the Flying Concellos & Eddie
Ward, Jr. and Faye Alexander (YouTube: “Spooks, Hoods and the Hidden Elite”). I know the
footage. Whether Percy gave the footage to the documentary makers or whether, as I suspect, the
makers added stock documentary shots from the archives as they do in all sorts of situations, I
don’t know. All I know is these shots are not of Percy Holt.
Percy did practice on the 32-foot flying trapeze rigging outside and in back of Del Graham’s place
on the border of Reseda and Tarzana, California. I caught him a few times. He was a gutsy guy; a
very good stuntman for falls and for horse break falls. He was shot off the back of a horse with the
use of a cable. That is illegal now; an S.P.C.A. law these days.
18
I doubt Percy knew that those circus shots were used, as he would have known
that anyone on the ‘in’ would know they’re not him. He did practice flying, but I
have never known him to work a professional aerial act of any type. He was never
shot from a cannon. He was a very good ‘flat store agent’ on carnivals and many
times we worked the same game. Flats are where the mark is ‘flat robbed.’ It’s the
most skilled position on a midway, and the agent gets fifty percent after Stock and
Patch split with the owner of the three stall game (rigged), plus all you can steal
off the top before turn-in time. However, as I say, I can hardly see Percy lying to
the documentary makers, as the little known of his life is amazing and colorful
enough!
According to Chauncey Holt, “Dallas that day was flooded with all kinds of people who ended
up there for some reason. It’s always been my theory that whoever was the architect of this
thing—and no one will ever know who was behind it, manipulating all these people—I believe
that they flooded this area with so many characters with nefarious reputations because they
thought, ‘Well, if all these people get scooped up it’ll muddy the waters so much that they’ll
never straighten it out.” (Newsweek, December 23, 1991)
County Records Building
Weatherford
MacKenzie claims Mac Wallace told him that Deputy Sheriff Harry Weatherford fired his
weapon on November 22. This claim is backed by Jim Gatewood in his book, John F. Kennedy
Assassination: A Mafia Conspiracy, who claims Weatherford, supposedly the best shot in the
department, was assigned to the top of the County Records Building to protect the president. He
explains, “When Oswald's first shot struck Kennedy, Officer Weatherford saw the pigeons fly
from the top of the Texas School Book Depository building, but he had no target. When Oswald
fired his second shot, Weatherford saw the muzzle flash from the sixth floor window.” Gatewood
claims that Weatherford’s shot caused “Oswald's third shot” to hit the curb on the south side of
Elm Street. (www.dcarb.com/dallas-history/jfk-assassination.htm)
Scalzetti (Scalzitti)
In my research on the internet and the book, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, I discovered
that the birth name of Richard Cain was Richard Scalzitti. MacKenzie’s hit list has Richard Cain
in the Dal-Tex Building and Richard Scalzetti in the County Records Building. Either Mac
Wallace was wrong, or MacKenzie copied wrong. I questioned MacKenzie in June of 2010 on
this point and he responded as follows:
MacKenzie: “Yes, I realized that some time ago. However, in looking at the
notebook I have here that’s the way I took it down that night from Wallace. I
wanted to do it as he had told me... I knew Cain and did know his real name, but
that’s the way I copied it down on the scraps of paper that evening at that motel.
We were drinking and I very well may have written it down wrong. Let’s face it, I
was under stress as I did not want Mac to know what I was up to. It’s the same
with the Corsican. I took it from the scraps of paper the day after the night with
19
Mac. Then I put the contents into the Journal I retrieved five years ago, and had
not seen that notebook for over thirty some years till I went and got an old
suitcase. I can only say what I heard Mac say. Then there are the few days after
that I waited to copy it in my journal, that’s one copy; then later I copied it to the
book. However on checking with my journal of December 1963, I find it the way
I did copy from the bits of paper.”
Corsican Mafia
The documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, by Nigel Turner, features an interview with
imprisoned French mobster, Christian David, who claims three French hitmen from the Corsican
Mafia were hired to do the job (jfkmontreal.com/Corsicans). According to David, the three
Corsican hitmen were flown from Marseilles to Mexico City, then were driven across the border
to Brownsville, Texas, where they were picked up by representatives of the Chicago Mafia.
“They were driven to Dallas and put up in a safe house. They spent several days photographing
Dealey Plaza, carefully planning a crossfire.” (Who’s Who, 100) Two of these assassins,
according to David, were in buildings to the rear of the president, “one high and one low (almost
on the horizontal).” It is suggested he meant the Dal-Tex Building.
David was willing to name one of the men, now deceased, as Lucien Sarti. According to David,
one hitman was situated on the 6th floor of the TSBD and another on a lower floor of the Dal-Tex
Building. (Rod MacKenzie claims the Dal-Tex team was supposed to be on the roof, but
encountered some sort of problem.) David says Lucien Sarti was positioned on “the little hill
with the wooden fence.” Sarti was dressed in some sort of uniform and took only one shot with
“an explosive bullet.” According to earwitnesses, there were at least four shots: three of them
came from behind (one hit the curb), and one came from the front. Two shots were nearly
simultaneous.
Another hit man MacKenzie mentions is a French Corsican mobster named Michael or Michel
Victor Mertz (also known as Jean Souetre and Michel Roux). Mertz was a member of the French
Secret Army Organization (OAS) and may have been involved in an assassination attempt on
Charles de Gaulle. According to the research of Mary Ferrell and Gary Shaw, Souetre (or
someone using his I.D.) was arrested in Dallas on November 22, and was immediately deported.
In another story, a man using the name Michel Roux entered the U.S. on 19th November, 1963,
was seen in Fort Worth on the 22nd, and left the country on December 9. According to William
Torbitt, Tammi True’s “safe house” was in Fort Worth.
MacKenzie claims this man was just one of the Corsicans who stayed in the safe house on
Holland Avenue. Mertz was especially difficult to please, requiring special wines and white
shirts. MacKenzie made several I.D.s for him. MacKenzie claims Mac Wallace told him that
Mertz was situated on the roof of the County Records Building. According to Christian David,
the three Corsican hitmen returned to a “safe house” and remained for about ten days, and were
flown to Montreal. The safe house MacKenzie claims he ran on Holland Avenue was vacated
and “cleaned” on the 22nd. It makes sense that these assassins would not have remained at the
same safe house, but rather were moved to another one or were moved out of town to a different
location. Or, indeed, conveniently deported.
20
Although the MacKenzie/Wallace “hit list” does have many close matches as far as persons now
known to be involved in the hit, there are many discrepancies with other accounts as to where the
hitters were situated.
Dal-Tex Building
According to MacKenzie, the following group of shooters was supposed to be stationed on top of
the Dal-Tex Building but they had problems getting to the top and had to take position on a
lower floor. Acoustic evidence presented to the House Special Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA) in 1978 pinpointed the Dal-Tex Building as a possible source of gunfire.
Eugene Brading
Eugene Brading (aka Jim Braden) claimed he was in town on “oil business” and was registered
at the Cabana Motel on the evening of November 21, 1963—recalling MacKenzie’s statement, it
was certainly “old time week as far as the revolting revolutionaries and mob connected guys and
politicos went.” In their book High Treason, Robert Groden and Harrison E. Livingstone write:
“The night before the assassination, Jim Braden . . . stayed at the Cabana Motel in Dallas, and
Jack Ruby went there around midnight.” Additionally, in Contract on America, David Scheim
writes: “Ruby stopped in at a restaurant in the Teamster-financed Dallas Cabana Hotel. With
Ruby was Larry Meyers, who had checked into the Cabana that day, as had Mobster Eugene
Brading.”
Braden was picked up for questioning in Dealey Plaza immediately following the assassination.
In a sworn affidavit, Braden claimed he had been walking down Elm Street when he heard the
President had been shot. He stepped into the Dal-Tex Building and asked to use a phone. A
receptionist directed him to the third floor. He took an elevator there only to find the pay phone
was out of order. On his return, the elevator operator called the police. He was taken to the
Sheriff’s Office, questioned for three hours, and released.
(http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/factoid.htm) According to witnesses, however, Braden was inside
the building at the time the shots were fired. It was later discovered that Braden had legally
changed his name two months prior to the assassination from Eugene Brading, a parolee with 35
arrests under his belt.
In a 1991 interview with Chauncey Holt, one of the “three tramps” taken into custody in Dallas
after the assassination, Holt claimed that while he was in custody of the police, they had caught
someone in the Dal-Tex Building and were on the verge of making an arrest of someone,
including Jim Braden. He claimed Jim Braden was there. “I didn't recognize him at first, because
he had a hat on with some kind of Texas style hat band on it.”
(http://www.666ismoney.com/Chauncey_Holt.html)
Frank Sturgis
Several earwitnesses reported gunfire coming from the Dal-Tex Building. The building was
sealed off within minutes and several suspicious persons were allegedly picked up, including a
young man dressed in a black leather jacket wearing black gloves. The man was taken to the
Sheriff’s Office, but he was not charged and no record exists.
21
According to the Torbitt Document, at least seven professional assassins from Bowen’s
“missionary” in Mexico were “in firing position” in Dealey Plaza, at least one of them firing
from the Dal-Tex Building. Three of the assassins stayed at Tammi True’s house in Fort Worth
at Ruby’s request, leaving on the evening of Saturday, November 23. According to Jim Garrison,
one of the three men who stayed with True and her husband was Emilio Santana, who confirmed
his firing position from the Dal-Tex. Santana also informed Garrison of his close relationships
with Jack Ruby, Clay Shaw and Gordon Novel. He confirmed he had been employed by Clay
Shaw, and that Ruby and Shaw had made several trips together, at least one of them to Cuba
related to gambling casinos and arms smuggling. (Torbitt)
According to Marita Lorenz, Frank Sturgis was one of the gunmen who fired on JFK. If
MacKenzie is right, it was from a lower floor of the Dal-Tex Building. This means Sturgis may
have been responsible for the first low shot that struck Kennedy’s back. This contradicts
Christian David’s claim that the first low shot was fired by a Corsican hitman, though both agree
the shot came from the Dal-Tex Building. Of course, Chi Chi Quintero (of the
MacKenzie/Wallace Dal-Tex hit team) was an anti-Castro Cuban, not a Corsican hit man. Either
way, other researchers have argued that the low shot came from the second floor of the Dal-Tex
Building. In fact, several virtually “horizontal” shots could have come from this building, and at
least one of the shots is known to have hit the curb, causing a piece of cement to graze bystander
James Tague on the cheek.
In 1976, members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) visited Cuba and
requested help with investigating the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Head of Cuban State Security, Fabian Escalante, was tasked with studying the files of
revolutionaries and terrorists who had emigrated from Cuba. The final report was sent to the
HSCA, but was never published. According to Escalante, two Cuban exiles, Eladio del Valle and
Herminio Diaz Garcia, were involved in plotting the Kennedy assassination. General Escalante,
who “had eyes everywhere,” has also stated that Kennedy was assassinated by CIA agents from
Operation 40, including “Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Antonio Veciana and Felix
Rodriguez Mendigutia.” Escalante also suspected Frank Sturgis and David Morales were part of
the conspiracy. (Spartacus) In the documentary, 638 Ways to Kill Castro, Escalante counts up the
assassination attempts on Castro. Surprisingly, a total of 638 secret attempts by the CIA on the
life of the Cuban President spanned the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon,
Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton.
****
Shortly following the assassination, Roderick MacKenzie began work as a scrub nurse at the
Parkland Hospital operating room, but the security chief soon suspected him of spying and he
was asked to leave. By this time there had already been several suspicious deaths—as
MacKenzie puts it, “the cleaners were working overtime”—so it was time to clear out of Dallas.
He spoke with Miranda about it and he gave him the okay.
Using his trusty I.D. kit, he made himself a Canadian passport under the name “Rorick A.
Seaforth” and took a bus to Canada, crossing the border in Idaho. He took another bus to Ottawa,
then a plane to London, where he worked for the Bertram Milles Circus as a trapeze artist. He
22
later worked for the Tower Circus in the north near Scotland, and the Boswell Wilkey Circus in
South Africa.
Now, nearly fifty years later, there aren’t many JFK assassination witnesses left standing.
Roderick A. MacKenzie—Rorick A. Seaforth—by all appearances—appears to be one of them.
References
Benson, Michael, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, Citadel, 2003.
Collum, Mark and Glen Sample, The Men on the Sixth Floor, 1995,
http://home.earthlink.net/~sixthfloor/meetloy.htm
D’Arc, Joan, “The Men That Don’t Fit In: Interview with a JFK Witness,” PARANOIA: The
Conspiracy Reader, Vol. 1, 2010, www.paranoiamagazine.com), now posted at:
www.paranoiamagazine.com/mackenzie.html
Fonzi, Gaeton, The Last Investigation, Thunder's Mouth, 1993, pp. 83-107; www.jfkonline.com/lorenz.html.
Groden and Livingstone, High Treason, Berkley, 1990 pp. 133-134
MacKenzie, Roderick A., The Men That Don’t Fit In, Exclusive PDF version posted at:
www.paranoiamagazine.com/PDFs/mackenzie_mendontfitin.pdf. All MacKenzie quotes
in this article can be found in this document.
PsiOp Radio, Interview with Roderick A .MacKenzie (May 16, 2010),
http://psiopradio.com/2010/05/16/psiop-radio-podcast-115-%E2%80%93-100516wguest-rod-mackenzie-on-the-jfk-hit/
Scott, Peter Dale, “The Inspector General's Report, An Introduction” Dec. 20, 1994, U. Cal
Berkeley, (copi.com/articles/pdsigrtx.htm)
Sprague, Richard E. The Taking of America 1-2-3, www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/#fn2 or
free download at: www.denkmalnach.org/download/ToA.pdf
Torbitt, William, Nomenclature Of An Assassination Cabal,
www.newsmakingnews.com/torbitt.htm
Turner, Nigel, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, DVD. www.jfk-online.com/tmwkk.html
23
The Skeleton in Uncle Sam's Closet
Hartford Van Dyke and the Truth About Pearl Harbor
The opening line to a rare 1975 document entitled The Skeleton in Uncle Sam's Closet reads, "I
am Hartford Van Dyke, a Non Union lawyer. I have become sensitive to political situations
because my family was involuntarily involved in the treasonous murder of 4000 men1 at Pearl
Harbor, December 7, 1941. My relatives knew it was going to happen beforehand."
In a letter to Paranoia dated December 17, 2003, Hartford Van Dyke provided a history of the
publication of this important document, writing, "In about October 1967, I asked my father about
a vague memory of something I had heard him say about an aircraft being shot down in our
neighborhood in Honolulu. As he told me about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941, he broke down in grief. I don’t recall ever seeing my father cry before that
incident."
Hartford's father, Lyle Hartford Van Dyke, Sr., had promised his uncle, Gerald Mason Van
Dyke, that he would not publish anything about the Pearl Harbor incident until after Mason's
death. Hartford obeyed his father's wishes for two years, he writes, but the Mi Lai massacre in
Vietnam and government lies about it pressed him to publish the truth about Pearl Harbor. In
1970, Hartford mailed a copy of his first work on the Pearl Harbor story to every U.S. senator
and congressman—535 copies in all.
As Hartford tells the story, he included his father in that mailing and phoned him for a criticism
of the text. He connected a tape recorder to the telephone line and "got a tape recording for
posterity about the real history of the Pearl Harbor attack." He sent out a second print run to
Congress, House and Senate, another 535 copies. He also recorded conversations with people his
father had mentioned, and sent the cassettes through the mail. He was on a mission to tell the
world what really happened at Pearl Harbor. Would the world listen?
In October 1972, Hartford received a copy of the book None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary
Allen. This book, he states, inspired him to write his own book about Pearl Harbor. Completed in
August 1973, he again sent a copy of his final book, The Skeleton in Uncle Sam’s Closet
(hereafter, Skeleton), to every US senator and congressman. In 1975, he printed a newspaper
edition, which is the edition being quoted here.
Van Dyke's Pearl Harbor Story
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, writes Van Dyke, was instigated by the U.S., Britain and
Holland, when they cut off all shipping into and out of Japan, threatening its people with
starvation. Hartford's great uncle, Gerald Mason Van Dyke, was an Army Intelligence officer in
Hawaii at the time of the attack.
According to Skeleton, Mason Van Dyke had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack and sent
his warning to Washington DC at 2:00 p.m. on December 4, 1941. His message was received in
Washington at about 7:00 p.m. (due to the time difference) by Rear Admiral, Paulus Prince
Powell. As Van Dyke tells the story, Powell notified Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, who
then contacted Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. Stimson contacted President Roosevelt, and
Roosevelt reported to Naval Intelligence in Washington.
24
As Skeleton claims, Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, wanted to move the Navy out and set up
a defense perimeter around the islands. James Vincent Forrestal, Undersecretary of the Navy,
also wanted to act defensively. According to Skeleton, what happened next is a claim that has
never been made before (to my knowledge). President Roosevelt put Powell, Knox and Forrestal
under armed Marine guard until after the Pearl Harbor attack. He sent a message to Lt. Col.
Clifford M. Andrew, Intelligence officer at Army Intelligence in Hawaii, which read: "The
Japanese will attack, do not prepare defenses, we need the full support of the American Nation in
a war time effort by an unprovoked attack upon the Nation."
A Distinguished Gentleman
Van Dyke Sr. testifies in Skeleton that at a political conference about twenty years after the event
(date not written), he sat beside "a distinguished gentleman" with whom he began a discussion of
his experience in Honolulu during the Pearl Harbor attack. He testifies: "This gentleman acted
very interested in what I had to say and started to question me about the details." Finally, he said,
"Mr. Van Dyke, do you know who I am?" He pulled out his personal card and said, "I am
Admiral Paulus P. Powell, United States Army Retired. Do you know what I did during World
War II?"
Powell then divulged that he was the one who had received Mason Van Dyke's message at the
Naval Intelligence office in Washington. He asked, "Would you like to know what happened in
Washington DC when your uncle's message was received by my office?" Van Dyke Sr. replied
that he had not "heard a logical explanation in the last nineteen years."
Van Dyke Sr. claims, "I was utterly amazed at the remarks he made about President Roosevelt
being responsible for the Pearl Harbor attack; about Roosevelt making Admiral Kimmel and
General Short scapegoats so that he [Roosevelt] would come out looking like a hero." Admiral
Powell said, "Mr. Van Dyke, when I die it will be the most pleasant thing that has happened to
me because I have died thousands of times, especially when I think of all the officers and
enlisted men, many of them my personal friends, being killed, and I could not do a thing to save
their lives."
According to Skeleton, Admiral Powell stated, "Here I was on Saturday morning, Washington
time. … I grieved; you don't know how I grieved. And yet I couldn't do anything because I was
under guard." He revealed, "If I had ever sent a message to Pearl Harbor, I would have been shot
on the spot." Powell declared it was one of the most treacherous acts committed by any
president. Indeed, he added, "It was one of the most dastardly things any president or king has
ever done in the history of the world. And there's no way to keep it from happening again."
On Friday evening at about 5:00 p.m., December 5, Mason Van Dyke warned his nephew that
the Japanese would attack, most probably on Sunday. He told him the Intelligence Department in
Washington had been warned, but America would stand down. Hartford's father prepared his
family for the attack as best he could.
Forty Top Secret File Cabinets
As Hartford writes in Skeleton, in 1949 James Vincent Forrestal's knowledge became a threat to
those in power, and he was thrown out of a seventh floor window of a Bethesda hospital. Less
well known, on May 15, 1966, Lt. Col. Clifford M. Andrew, who had received FDR's stand
down order at Military Intelligence in Hawaii, was murdered in his home in Tigard, Oregon, by a
bullet in the back of the head.
25
Roger A. Stolley worked in a civilian capacity for Clifford Andrew. Stolley testifies in Skeleton
that, "A limited number of personnel were directly involved with the events behind the Pearl
Harbor incident. Information directly concerned with the attack was labeled TOP SECRET, held
in approximately forty file cabinets of the Army Intelligence Office." The file cabinets, which
were situated in Honolulu, he writes, was taken out and burned—another claim not made
elsewhere (to my knowledge). All personnel with knowledge of them were subject to military
court martial if they revealed their contents.
Stolley further testifies that Lt. Col. Clifford Andrew confided in him, on several occasions, part
of the contents of those files. Stolley paraphrases Andrew's words, "We knew well in advance
that the Japanese were going to attack. It was a lie that we didn't have direct radio
communication with Washington DC. Not only did my office have direct radio communications,
but so did the territorial government and the FBI." Stolley concludes, "The responsibility for
Pearl Harbor rests upon five men: Franklin D. Roosevelt; Gen. George C. Marshall; Harold R.
Stark (Chief of Naval Operations); Lt. Col. Kindall J. Fielder, G-2, under General Short; and
Clifford M. Andrew." The extract is signed and witnessed by Roger A. Stolley, dated May 25,
1975.
In a 1992 article in the Journal for Historical Review ("Pearl Harbor Attack No Surprise"),
Stolley reiterated the information given to him by Clifford Andrew: "We knew well in advance
that the Japanese were going to attack. At least nine months before the Japanese attack upon
Pearl Harbor, I was assigned to prepare for it." Andrew claimed he was under direct orders of
President Roosevelt. He also claimed he was ordered to withhold from commanders in Hawaii
vital intelligence relating to the location of the Japanese fleet. Stolley concludes: "Pearl Harbor is
an example of how a small group of men in control of government has the power to destroy the
life, property and freedom of its citizens."
The Infamous Seaman Z
Many of the first- and second-hand witness statements contained in Skeleton can be supported by
sources published decades later, which rely on many more witness testimonies. In fact, while
most books on Pearl Harbor purposely avoid the above conclusions, at least two crucial books
buttress its assertions.
In his 1986 book, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, John
Toland, reveals a letter from Col. Carlton Ketchum, who informed Toland that warnings from
various sources began in early fall of 1941. The sources of these warnings included the Dutch
Embassy, Dutch Secret Service and British Secret Service. Indeed, Roosevelt had received a
warning from "some government agency in Japan, I cannot recall who that was." Ketchum
claimed the warnings were passed on to "Secretary Knox, and I think Secretary Stimson," but
was sure they were not passed on to commanders in the Pacific. He added, Hoover was told by
Roosevelt not to pass on the information to the FBI or to their men stationed in the Pacific.
(Toland, 343)
At an October 1990 Institute for Historical Review conference (ihr.org), Toland stated that
Stolley's testimony (in "Pearl Harbor Attack No Surprise") rings true. Toland relayed a personal
story at this conference. He stated that after writing, The Rising Sun, he received many letters
from naval officers who informed him that Roosevelt did know the Japanese were moving in to
attack Pearl Harbor. In fact, Toland received so many letters that he began work on Infamy in
order to correct the record.
26
After a two-year search for witnesses, Toland located a Dutch admiral named Ranneft, who in
1941 had been a captain serving as the Dutch naval attaché. Ranneft wrote that he was frequently
allowed into the Naval Intelligence Office in San Francisco. On December 3, he went into the
office and was informed that they had tracked the locations of two Japanese carriers from their
radio emissions. When he returned on the 6th and asked where the carriers were, a man went up
to the chart and "pointed to an area two hundred miles from Pearl Harbor."
As the story goes, Toland discovered the identity of the man who had located the Japanese fleet
in the Pacific. This man did not want to disclose his name because he was marrying a fabulously
wealthy California woman, so Toland referred to him as "Seaman Z." When Infamy was
published in 1986, the Washington Post, true to form, claimed Toland had invented Seaman Z.
About a year later, this witness went public and confirmed the information, but the media did not
respond. The man's name is revealed as Robert Ogg in a crucial 2001 book, Day of Deceit. While
on assignment in San Francisco, Ogg confirms, he began to plot the location of the Japanese fleet
on a chart of the North Pacific on or about November 30, 1941.
This claim contradicts the sanctioned version of history, which declares that, "Nagumo's task
force sailed from the Kuriles on 26 November and arrived, undetected by the Americans, at a
point about 200 miles north of Oahu at 0600 hours (Hawaiian time) on December 7, 1941."
(www.worldwar2history.info/Pearl-Harbor/)
The Purple Machine
Hartford Van Dyke has been trying to tell the world about Pearl Harbor for more than 35 years.
He was undeniably vindicated in 2001 with Robert Stinnett's bombshell book, Day Of Deceit:
The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, which is based on documents from the National
Archives as well as Naval Intelligence files acquired through persistent FOIA requests beginning
in 1983. The Navy finally declassified these records in 1994. Day of Deceit provides
overwhelming evidence that FDR and about thirty members of his administration knew well in
advance that Japanese warships were heading toward Hawaii. In fact, Stinnett uncovered a Naval
Intelligence memo, dated October 1940, which outlined eight steps to provoke such an attack.
For the past sixty years, a majority of historians have put forth the deception that the Japanese
maintained strict radio silence on their war path to Pearl Harbor. Even as late as 1999, historian
Stephen Ambrose echoed the official line in a Wall Street Journal editorial saying, "American
intelligence was terrible." Stinnett exposes the transparency of this fabrication, writing, "After
sixty years it is clear that the US Navy, the Army, and the press were all wrong. …
Overwhelming evidence [from the National Archives] proves that Yamamoto, as well as
commanders of the Task Force warships, broke radio silence and that their ships were located by
American communication intelligence units." (Stinnett, 162)
The radio stealth exhibited by the Japanese is consistently overstated in official accounts. The
truth is, "[t]here was no escaping the electronic surveillance." Beginning on April 22, 1941,
Stinnett reveals, "Six US Navy monitor stations from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Samoa, Hawaii,
Corregidor and two from San Francisco followed every move of Nagumo and the Akagi."
(Stinnett, 262)
In a deep underground Army/Navy base known as Corregidor, situated west of Manila, Japanese
kata kana message codes were intercepted by 63 operators working round the clock in eight-hour
shifts. Navy analysts unscrambled the complex codes. "We had the Purple machine and the
27
means to intercept, decode and translate messages," stated one radio operator. "Since we were so
near to Japan and its naval operation area we were in an excellent position to intercept radio
broadcasts." (Stinnett, 186)
These dispatches should have been sent to Admiral Kimmel, the commander in Hawaii who
would have been able to avert, or at least minimize, the tragedy. However, the unscrambled
messages never made it to their proper destination in order to save American lives at Pearl
Harbor, simply because saving the lives of American servicemen was not the name of the game.
The name of the game was more succinctly stated by Lt. Com. Joseph Rochefort when he
proclaimed, "It was a pretty cheap price to pay for unifying the country." (Stinnett, 203)
This was likely the mad logic bestowed upon distinguished representatives of the American press
when they were invited to a "secret press briefing" at 10:15 a.m. on November 15, 1941, where
Gen. George C. Marshall revealed one of America's most vital secrets: the U.S. could read
Japan's coded radio messages. Inconceivably, Marshall did not request the presence of General
Short or Admiral Kimmel, the two officers in charge of naval operations in Hawaii, nor did he
give them a separate briefing.
Instead, according to Marshall’s own papers, the General called seven news correspondents to
his office in the Munitions Building in Washington, and forthwith provided an exit opportunity
to anyone unwilling to button his lips over the information he was about to reveal. Stinnett, who
remains flummoxed as to the reason for the meeting, writes: "Though the function of the press is
to publicize, none left. They kept Marshall's secret from their readers, who included many of the
officers and sailors manning the warships on Pearl Harbor's Battleship Row." (Stinnett, 158)
Now we find out why the major media has obstructed the truth about Pearl Harbor for the past
sixty years. As Stinnett discloses, four news media and three major wire services were "let in on
secrets denied to General Short and Admiral Kimmel." No radio news reporters were invited to
the secret conference, where the print news media learned that the Japanese would attack some
time in the first ten days of December. The select members of the media who were present and
who complied with the secrecy rule were: Robert Sherrod, Time; Ernest Lindley, Newsweek;
Charles Hurd, New York Times; Bert Andrews, New York Herald Tribune; Lyle Wilson, United
Press; Edward Bomar, Associated Press; and Harold Slater, International News Service.
(Stinnett, Notes, 361)
Stinnett suspects the messages containing this time-sensitive information were intercepted
between November 5 and November 13, 1941, in time for the General's unfathomable leak to the
media. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter released to the National Archives a small portion of the
messages sent between September 3 and December 8, 1941. However, as of 2001 an estimated
143,000 Japanese messages remained "cloaked in American censorship" in spite of many FOIA
requests.
In fact, Stinnett reveals that Naval Intelligence had cracked the Japanese codes as early as fall of
1940, fifteen months before the attack. He also reveals that Admiral Nagumo's first radio
broadcast was intercepted on April 22, 1941, eight months before the attack. (Stinnett, 362) He
concludes, "A systematic plan had been in place long before Pearl Harbor … to arouse the
United States from its isolationist position." (Stinnett, 259) This corroborates Clifford Andrew's
claim in Skeleton that he had been assigned to "prepare for the attack" at least nine months prior.
28
Inexplicably, it was not until November 25, according to the diary of Secretary of War, Henry
Stimson, that FDR announced to his War Cabinet that "an attack was expected perhaps as soon
as next Monday (December 1)." With great American ingenuity, radio interceptors and analysts
deciphered an obscure secret language, and assumed their dire warnings would travel up the
proper command route; however, Washington war mongers chose to keep it from the one person
with an unequivocal need to know: Admiral Kimmel. Indeed, writes Stinnett, "None of the nine
Pearl Harbor investigations examined the TESTM dispatches or questioned why their crucial
data were cut from Kimmel's intelligence loop." He traces Kimmel's severance from the
intelligence loop to "numerous directives issued from Washington." (Stinnett, 186)
On November 25, 1941, a full ten days after the press was secretly briefed, Admiral Kimmel
finally received a briefing to the effect that a massive Japanese force of fleet subs and long-range
patrol aircraft would reach Hawaii in the beginning of December. Kimmel received explicit
orders on November 28 from Admiral Stark stating, "Undertake no offensive action until Japan
has committed an overt act." Because he followed these orders he would later take most of the
blame.
Stinnett proves that both Pacific Fleet commanders, Admiral Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter Short,
were purposely kept in the dark and were later blamed for "failing to anticipate" the attack. In
1999, the Senate finally exonerated Kimmel and Short of charges of "dereliction of duty."
However, throughout nine official investigations of Pearl Harbor over a span of nearly sixty
years, no radio broadcasts were ever brought forward. Even Congressional hearings had not the
luxury of these documents.
Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Stinnett shows, the Navy classified all documents TOP SECRET.
All radio operators and cryptographers were gagged on threat of imprisonment and loss of all
benefits. Navy Director of Communications, Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, sent a memo ordering
all commanders to "destroy all notes or anything in writing." (Stinnett, 256) This backs up
Skeleton's assertion that Army Intelligence in Honolulu burned forty file cabinets full of
documents.
In addition, Stinnett tells of a crucial 15-hour time delay where no action was taken. In a 1944
Army investigation, he notes, "Three Army generals determined that the delay began Saturday
night, December 6, and ended at 11:00 the next morning." (Stinnett, 235) Coincidentally, John
Toland asks in Infamy, "Was it to be believed that the heads of the Army and Navy could not be
located on the night before Pearl Harbor? Or that they would later testify over and over that they
couldn't remember where they were?" (Toland, 335) According to Toland, the cover-up began
the very morning after, when General Marshall said, "Gentlemen, this goes to the grave with us."
Could this curious lapse of time and memory cloak a still tightly fortified secret, described in
Skeleton, that any military commanders in Washington who had the presence of mind to alert
Hawaii were put under military house arrest from Saturday morning "until after the blitz"? I have
been unable to verify this extraordinary claim, but under the circumstances of this vast sixty-year
conspiracy and cover-up, it isn't as preposterous as it might seem. Indeed, it might explain the
astonishingly persistent suppression of Pearl Harbor documents, which continued up to Janet
Reno's administration in 1994—an invisible wall that Robert Stinnett ran into again and again
while researching his book.
When all the (available) facts are studied, the conclusion is palpable: Pearl Harbor was a planned
event that opened wide the path leading to the deaths of millions of people. The United States
29
taunted Japan into a World War that led to the first and only nuclear bombing of a sovereign
country and its people.
Pearl Harbor is a case study of an archetypal conspiracy and cover-up for those naïve enough to
think it can't happen because there are too many people involved. This is how it's done. Here is
the model.
The Ghost of Pearl Harbor
Hartford Van Dyke warns prophetically in Skeleton: "Every phase of deception and maneuvering
which was used by the US government in order to engineer and guarantee the Japanese 'surprise'
attack on Pearl Harbor is still being used in full force by the government today. Present national
and international events make this crystal clear. Observe the actions of the president, and the
content and control of the United Nations Charter."
As Hartford writes, the Roosevelt administration used the "back door" of Japan to enter a world
war. The attack, and Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" address, "jolted the American people to the
proper frame of mind to accept war, commit to it, and make the long sacrifice to pursue its
successful conclusion." This scenario should be familiar to us today as George Bush and the
government-controlled media refer to the terror attacks of September 11 as the "New Pearl
Harbor." Now that we know Pearl Harbor was an experiment in government/military censorship,
does this not illuminate the dark shadows surrounding the events of 9/11? Did the Bush
administration have clear foreknowledge of the attacks? Was it Bush's "back door" to US
occupation of the Middle East? Was the intent of 9/11 to lead us into World War III?
As Hartford writes in Skeleton, "Every year like a ghost, Pearl Harbor intrudes upon us again and
haunts us. … The story is repeated because everybody knows the whole story was never told."
The truth about Pearl Harbor is a public possession, he declares. Yet, over sixty years later the
public still does not have adequate possession of the truth. Thus, the association of 9/11 with the
annual phantom of Pearl Harbor puts the 'wink' in hoodwink. Not only are we being controlled,
but we're being taunted with that control.
Addendum
After working tirelessly to collect and disseminate the testimony in Skeleton in Uncle Sam's
Closet, Hartford began work on another prescient document, completed in May 1979, entitled
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. This infamous tract begins: "This publication marks the 25th
anniversary of the Third World War, called the 'Quiet War,' being conducted using subjective
biological warfare, fought with 'silent weapons.' This book contains an introductory description
of this war, its strategies, and its weaponry." In this anonymously written document, Hartford
explained:
Social engineering (the analysis and automation of a society) requires the
correlation of great amounts of constantly changing economic information (data),
so a high-speed computerized data-processing system was necessary which could
race ahead of the society and predict when society would arrive for capitulation.
…
In the interest of future world order, peace and tranquility, it was decided to
privately wage a quiet war against the American public with an ultimate objective
of permanently shifting the natural and social energy (wealth) of the undisciplined
and irresponsible many into the hands of the self-disciplined, responsible, and
30
worthy few. In order to implement this objective, it was necessary to create,
secure, and apply new weapons, which were a class of weapons so subtle and
sophisticated in their principle of operation and public appearance as to earn for
themselves the name 'silent weapons.'
Hartford Van Dyke is now in federal prison in Waseca, Minnesota. Many readers of his letters
(at www.paranoiamagazine.com) want to know why. Hartford's situation is not easy to
comprehend, but I will try to explain as succinctly as possible. (See detailed explanation "The
Commercial Principles Governing the Engineering of Public Wealth Rebate Banks, a.k.a. Robin
Hood Banks," posted at website.)
Hartford got into trouble by circulating something called Public Wealth Rebate Notes (PWRN's).
Hartford insists his issuance of PWRNs was lawful. As he explains, "Public Wealth Rebate
Banks engage in the lawful altruistic / charitable disbursement of public malpractice default
judgments to the Public, by generating a Commercial Lien Assignment Currency known as
Public Wealth Rebate Notes, establishing thereby a lawful method for the Public to lay claim to
the real and moveable property of the Lien Debtor party(ies). … A Public Wealth Rebate Note is
a Reversed Party Promissory Note, a Demand Note made by a creditor or claimant against a
debtor based on the Debtor's promise to pay or to perform."
Hartford further claims that his case was filed in the U.S. District Court—an administrative,
not criminal, court. The case was set as "United States of America vs. Hartford Van Dyke."
He explains that the term "United States of America" is a legal fiction. Since it's not a flesh
and blood person, it can neither accuse nor bring a criminal case. It has to be brought ex rel.
(ex relation), he explains, which is the relation of a person telling the story to the
prosecuting attorney. The accuser's name must appear under the United States of America,
he explains, otherwise the case is a fraud.
It is safe to presume that Hartford Van Dyke is a political prisoner. He's in federal prison in
Minnesota for an attitude adjustment. His insistence on abiding by commercial law infuriates
insider lawyers and judges. His political knowledge threatens the shadow government. In the
winter of 2004, he was placed in solitary confinement in a cold stone cell with a ration of two
blankets. He shivered uncontrollably. His weight dropped to 127 pounds. He padded his blankets
with a layer of toilet paper. His letters tell of being covered with rashes and boils, which he
attributes to toxins placed in his food. His treatment can only be described as torture.
Why is a non-violent individual treated in this manner in the American prison system? How
many political prisoners is the United States holding in its torture chambers? Please keep
Hartford in your prayers and call attention to his plight in whatever way you can.
Update 2010: Hartford Van Dyke was released from federal prison in April 2010.
Footnotes
1. Stinnett lists the Pearl Harbor death toll at 2,476; wounded: 1,119; POWs: 1,951 (many of
whom died in Japanese custody).
References
Hartford Van Dyke. The Skeleton in Uncle Sam's Closet. Newspaper reprint edition, 1975.
(available at paranoiamagazine.com, $12.)
31
John Toland. Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath. Berkeley. 1986.
John Toland, "Living History," Tenth International Revisionist Conference, October 1990.
(www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/11/1/Toland5-24.html)
Robert Stinnett. Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. Simon & Schuster.
2001.
Stinnett speech "Pearl Harbor: Official Lies in an American War Tragedy?" May 24, 2000
(www.independent.org/events/transcript.asp?eventID=28)
Roger A. Stolley. "Pearl Harbor Attack No Surprise." Journal of Historical Review, 1992.
(www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/12/1/Stolley119-121.html)
Hartford Van Dyke's Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars may be read at:
www.lawfulpath.com/ref/sw4qw/index.shtml. There are several versions online, but this
appears to be the only one that contains the original schematic diagrams.
See www.paranoiamagazine.com, for Hartford's "Letters from the Federal Pen."
32
Directed Panspermia and the Zoo Hypothesis
Several protective layers have been breached. The echo is getting quicker
and louder. We can control the garden's operating system. – Nick
Skouras, The Secret History of the 21st Century (CD,
www.kouskouras.com)
In his Book of the Damned, Charles Fort wrote that, "the notion of things dropping in upon this
Earth from externality is as unsettling and as unwelcome to Science as tin horns blowing in upon
a musician's relatively symmetric composition." He wrote, "I think of as many different kinds of
visitors to this earth as there are visitors to New York, to a jail, or to a church."
One of the most persistent arguments against the reality of the Visitor Experience (alien
visitation or abduction) is based on the Darwinian presumption that if the incremental, accidental
and unguided evolution of the human form occurred on Earth, it is nearly mathematically
impossible that it could have occurred on another planet.
The current consensus reality is, therefore, based on a Science of Exclusionism; the isolation of
the Earth from its universal relations. Materialist doctrines describe the world as a closed system:
isolated humankind on an isolated oasis in an isolated consciousness. Nothing enters this closed
world from Externality, including a superconscious element known to all religions.
Part of understanding how life arose on Earth includes the possibility that it arrived at Earth from
elsewhere. NASA's "Astrobiology Roadmap" website illustrates NASA's focus on the search for
past or present life on Mars and Europa, two solar system bodies that once supported water.
Among the goals of official Astrobiology are to determine what makes a planet habitable, how
common these worlds are in the Universe, how to recognize the signature of life on other worlds,
how life arose on the Earth, and what are its future limits.
The Astrobiology website claims, "terrestrial life is the only form of life that we know, and it
appears to have arisen from a common ancestor." The newfound discipline is apparently open to
the concession that this ancestor (i.e. microbe) arrived in a meteor, but within the current
Western cosmology, meteors, comets and other "smart rocks" are the only celestial flying objects
that might harbor signs of life, i.e. microbial life. This theory, known as Ballistic Panspermia, is
a direct offshoot of Billiard Ball Materialism.
Astrobiology clearly states that science has not ascertained whether life from one world can
"establish an evolutionary trajectory" on another. In other words, can the "seed" of life grow into
a civilization of intelligent humanoids without intelligent guidance? Nonetheless, its goals
include "the potential to engineer new life forms adapted to live on other worlds" and to
"understand the human-directed processes by which life can migrate from one world to another."
This theory is known as Directed Panspermia and its proponent was Francis Crick, who received
the Nobel prize in 1962 for his discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. But we will get
to that in a minute.
Our Dusty Exile
It has been asserted that NASA holds a "religious conviction" toward space exploration, a
conviction based on a centuries-old Christian belief that scientific technology is divinely inspired
to take us closer to God. According to David Noble, in The Religion of Technology, NASA's
33
goals are based on Jules Verne's implication that the nearer we go to the stars the more immortal
we become. In fact, Ray Bradbury has stated, "At aerospace or NASA gatherings, Verne is the
verb that moves us to Space." Indeed, through Verne we have "romanced ourselves to the Moon"
and through science fiction writers like H.G. Wells, we might "finally be freed from our 'dusty
exile' on earth." (Noble, 117)
The ultimate survival of a technological civilization lies in dispersing its genetic material into the
Universe; seeding itself into unoccupied niches. While NASA is obviously following the dictates
of this Darwinian theoretical stance in its study of "human directed" cosmic migration of life, it
does not recognize (at least openly) that such could have already occurred. Neither does it openly
recognize the anthropomorphic evidence that would indicate that such an intelligently
orchestrated migratory pattern has been ongoing within our own solar system and on our own
planet. (see Hoagland, Carlotto, McDaniel, et al.)
As we can safely deduce from the above discussion, NASA is interested in "life" in the solar
system, but it is clearly interested in microbial life, not intelligent life (i.e. humanoid). The
Darwinian evolutionary paradigm itself is the controlling factor, and is the reason for major
cover-ups of potentially man-made artifacts on the moon and Mars.
The Space Travel Argument
The Space Travel Argument Against the Existence of ETI (hereafter, Space Travel Argument),
explained in detail by Barrow & Tipler in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, begins with
the telling statement that those who propose that extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) probably
exists in the Universe tend to be physicists and astronomers, and those who tend to argue against
the probability for ETI are more likely to be evolutionary biologists. Thus, its insular premise is
steadfastly grounded on the theory of Darwinian natural selection, the adaptation of creatures to
their local habitats. As we will see, this local theory is then applied universally, losing the
remainder of its limited utility in the process.
The Anthropic Principle is based on a biological argument: the minimum time required for the
evolution of "intelligent observers." The Anthropic Timescale Argument states that the types of
processes allowed in the Universe must be of such an age that "slow evolutionary processes will
have had time to produce intelligent beings from non-living matter" (Barrow, 159).
The Anthropic Principle is a mathematical argument based on the assumption that a
"communicating species" would evolve in less than 5 billion years and would eventually begin
interstellar travel. This argument contends that "since 1 billion years is quite short in comparison
with the age of the Galaxy, it follows from the absence of ETI in the solar system that such
space-traveling ETI apparently do not exist, and have never existed in our Galaxy." The authors
note that this assumption is logically inferred from observed evidence, and from astrophysical
observations and theories; in other words, "absence of evidence is evidence of absence." They go
on to argue that if an advanced interstellar civilization did exist, "they would also have
developed interstellar travel and thus would already be present in our solar system. Since they
are not here, this implies that they do not exist." (Barrow, 576)
Whether or not one believes that extraterrestrial visitors have ever traversed the solar system, the
logic of the above argument must be addressed. Incredulously, the two footnotes following the
statement "they are not here" reference the 1974 book UFO's Explained written by the most
popular UFO debunker, Philip Klass. Thus, their proof that interstellar visitors are not here is the
34
highly-regarded opinion of a member of The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), who has been labeled the most negative of the UFO
debunkers.
In At the Threshold, UFO researcher Dr. David Jacobs has summed up the attitude behind the
culture of debunking: "Debunkers are not open minded skeptics. The combination of ignorance
of the subject, a messianic sense of defending science from the forces of superstition, an egocharged idea that they know the answer to whatever UFO problem is being discussed, and a
streak of mean-spiritedness are the necessary ingredients for debunking."
Although Barrow & Tipler only mention in passing that there might be a problem with their
assumption, they are essentially espousing a tautology: i.e. extraterrestrials are not here and
never have been here, because they are not here and never have been here. The Space Travel
Argument is a rigidly anthropocentric argument founded on the proposition that human
intelligence evolved as a purely local phenomenon on an outback planet and, further, that this
accidental (local) event has no Universal (i.e. external) relationship.
The Space Travel Argument contends that a communicating intelligent species would also
develop the technology for interstellar travel at least comparable to our present-day technology,
particularly rocketry, leading to the exploration / colonization of the Galaxy in less than 300
million years. This deduction is based on the "Principle of Mediocrity" which states, "our
evolution is typical of the evolution of any species on any planet capable of supporting life." In
addition to the likelihood of possessing rocket technology comparable to our own, such a species
would also possess sophisticated computer technology.
The Space Travel Argument equates the concept of "survival of the fittest" to the technological
ability to disperse human DNA into the Galaxy utilizing a theoretical computer called a von
Neumann probe.
Von Neumann Probes
The Space Travel Argument utilizes the concept of the self-reproducing universal constructor; a
computerized machine "capable of making any device, given the construction materials and a
construction program." Such a machine, called a von Neumann probe after its theoretical dad,
John von Neumann, is by definition capable of making a copy of itself. A probe sent to another
stellar system would include a self-replicating universal constructor with human-level
intelligence, capable of self-repair and self-programming, with an electric or solar propulsion
system.
The universal constructor would search for construction materials from which to build copies of
itself, the rocket engines and other devices needed. Such building materials, for instance, nickeliron and hydrocarbons, could be found in meteors, asteroids, comets and other space debris.
Copies of the probe would be launched at the nearest stars, and the process would be repeated.
The probes would then be programmed to explore the stellar system and relay the information
back to the original probe.
Von Neumann became the generally recognized father of Artificial Life simulations, and
produced some of the first Artificial Life programs, further developing his earlier theory of "selfreproducing cellular automata." Some of this secretive work involved the transfer of human
intelligence to machines.1 After Von Neumann's death, Freeman Dyson went on to develop
similar ideas surrounding self-reproducing factories on other planets.
35
In 1980, NASA began to explore these ideas. The aim of NASA's Self-Reproducing Systems
Concept Team was to "examine the feasibility of devising machines capable of production,
replication, growth, self-repair, and evolution, machines that could be used to colonize the moon
and beyond." After writing a couple of "fanciful proposals" for the creation of a new "silicon
species," the team fully expected to receive funding, but instead the money went to President
Reagan's Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative. (Noble, 165-166)
Incredibly, after stating that, "a human being is a universal constructor specialized to perform on
the surface of the Earth," which in effect reduces the human to a biological machine, Barrow &
Tipler launch a peculiar discussion about how human rights should be extended to a von
Neumann probe. They contend, the "naturally evolved species and all of its naturally evolved
descendants must inevitably become extinct ... but ... a civilization with machine descendants
could continue indefinitely." (Barrow, 595)
In the end, Barrow & Tipler concede that one possible reason for ETI not to build probes is the
fear of losing control of them. They admit it possible that the program that keeps the probe under
intelligent control could be accidentally omitted during the reproduction process, with the result
that the copy "goes into business for itself."
Directed Panspermia
NASA's Astrobiology website illustrates that its objectives are none other than to seed other
planets in the solar system with life forms from Earth, including humans. Indeed, the goals of its
Objective 16 sound an awful lot like Directed Panspermia: "placing candidate ecosystems on
extraterrestrial surfaces and document their evolution; establish permanent colonies of humans
and other organisms in space and on another planetary surface; engineer life for survival,
adaptation and evolution beyond Earth."2
In his 1981 book, Life Itself, Francis Crick wrote of every living cell as a “minute factory,
bustling with rapid, organized chemical activity.” Crick mused, “Nature invented the assembly
line some billions of years before Henry Ford,” noting that, “it is quite remarkable that such a
mechanism exists at all, and even more remarkable that every living cell, whether animal, plant
or microbial, contains a version of it.” (Crick, 70)
Crick questioned the likelihood of such a complex system evolving spontaneously from “a soup
of one sort or another” by natural selection. He referred to this as one of many “formidable
problems.” He wrote, “It is possible to see how each of these separate components might
possibly have arisen on the primitive earth ... it is less easy to see how the combination was
formed correctly and how it was at least partially separated from other rather similar molecules
which might possibly have fouled up the system.” Speaking of how RNA replication could have
gotten started, and how it could have become coupled to a primitive form of protein synthesis,
Cricked noted, “It seems almost impossible to give any numerical value to the probability of
what seems like a rather unlikely sequence of events.” (Crick, 85-87)
Francis Crick came to believe that it was more likely that DNA and RNA evolved in a star
system a few billion years older than our own, writing that, “It is at least possible that there are in
the universe more suitable places for life to start than any found in our own solar system.”
(Crick, 102) Crick proposed that life had perhaps started on some distant planet about nine
billion years ago, and higher creatures like ourselves developed four to five billion years later,
who then sent some primitive life forms to Earth as an experiment.
36
It seems very odd that Crick could imagine such “higher creatures” sending primitive cells to
earth rather than sending their own DNA or RNA, or even themselves. It’s even more bizarre
that he suggests the possibility of sending some other living creatures from their planet lower in
the evolutionary scale, such as mice! Instead, he decides, “microorganisms similar to our bacteria
would have been a good choice to be the colonists sent to start life in a distant place.” So Crick,
along with Leslie Orgel, officially postulated the theory of Directed Panspermia, whereby an
advanced civilization sends microorganisms in unmanned spaceships to Earth. (Crick, 129)
According to Crick, the fact that the genetic code is so uniform across many different types of
organisms on Earth—the fact that several versions of the code did not arise—lends a measure of
support for Directed Panspermia. This fact suggested to Crick that life went through “at least one
bottleneck, a small, interbreeding population from which all life has descended.” (Crick, 143)
Crick also entertained ideas of environmental modification, saying that if an advanced
civilization did get to the primitive Earth, they may have had to “modify it extensively to make it
suitable for their habitation,” including cultivating agriculture on an extensive scale so that plants
could produce more oxygen for them. Such a project may even have involved producing an
oxygen atmosphere in many different planetary locations on which their remote descendants
could one day settle. He wrote, “They may have had to carry out extensive genetic engineering in
their spaceship before this afforestation could be done successfully.”
Crick seemed to be writing about modern day humans when he pondered, “Even if they had
finally succeeded in founding a new civilization, their descendants might have preferred to live
there [sic, in the spaceship?] for a very long time before venturing once again to undertake the
difficult and traumatic project of further colonization.” (Crick, 157-158) If Crick wondered
secretly whether we are the children of those cosmic seedlings, for some reason he couldn't just
come out and say it.
Interestingly, Crick noted that binary star systems would be less stable than systems with one
star, since the planets would be “in greater danger of colliding with each other.” He wrote, “The
steady conditions over long periods of time, which we think are needed for the evolution of
higher forms of life, may not easily occur in such planetary systems.” (Crick, 101) According to
the work of many researchers, we do live in a binary star system. (see Andy Lloyd) Nothing
would wallop the theory of Darwinian evolution—and therefore the entire scientific paradigm
under which we toil—with more force than NASA's admission that we live under the sway of
two suns.3
Earthbound Thinking
Perhaps the guided creation of all life forms is ongoing in the Universe, and the human form, or
something akin to the human form, has been created or brought in from elsewhere many times
and, as our catastrophic past indicates, destroyed many times.
As Stanton Friedman asserts, space travel first requires that a civilization learn to be at peace
with its neighbors. In terms of its own survival then, any advanced civilization that gets a load of
us will surely have reason for serious concern. He speculates that an advanced society would
probably pay attention to the "more primitive societies in the neighborhood," and would pay
"especially close attention to those showing signs of venturing beyond ancestral boundaries."
Ironically, while we might see space travel as survivalist behavior, an advanced civilization may
37
see their survival threatened by such behavior and, thereby, would do everything in their employ
to keep the Earth children earthbound.
In his book The Sirius Mystery, Robert Temple has addressed the question of our readiness to
join the galactic federation. He speculates that the only societies that might be carrying on an
interstellar dialogue of any kind are the "magical societies;" that is, societies so advanced that we
are but "emerging primitives" in comparison. Indeed, ancient writings indicate that Earth humans
are bound to the planet Earth. Temple discusses an ancient Greek reference to the babysitting of
the human race, called "The Virgin of the World," which describes the hierarchical principle of
lower and higher beings in the Universe. The Virgin of the World describes a personage called
Hermes (or Anubis) who represents a race of beings who taught humankind the arts of
civilization. This ancient treatise suggests that humankind has been "a troublesome lot requiring
scrutiny and, at rare intervals of crisis, intervention."
James Deardoff of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University has
theorized about the possibility that the Earth is under quarantine. He has written that our "lack of
detection" of ETI life forms could just as well be an indication that an "embargo" of sorts is in
place. Deardoff has suggested that such an embargo might be based on our premature and sudden
discovery of them, and our subsequent panic, which might end up in a nuclear exchange. The
lifting of such an embargo must allow gradual disclosure of the alien message over a long period
of time.
As Deardoff has also noted, any radio communications received by ETI would likely be heavily
censored by government agencies. So, how can we accept "absence" of radio signals as
"evidence of absence"? Furthermore, as Stanton Friedman has pointed out, they would not
necessarily be coming from millions of light years away, since there are about a thousand sunlike stars within 54 light years of Earth. Among those stars, Friedman contends, about 46 of them
are very similar to our sun. Most astronomers agree that sun-like stars are likely to have planets.
In particular, the stars Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli in the constellation Reticulum are only 37 light
years away from Earth. These stars are about a billion years older than our Sun, and such
civilizations, Friedman writes, would have had a billion-year head start on us—a prerequisite,
remember, of the Anthropic Principle.
The Zoo Hypothesis
Barrow & Tipler present the scenario that if an ETI civilization were reluctant to contaminate the
culture of another species it may decide not to attempt radio contact. They propose that, "with
probes it would be possible to study an alien species without it becoming aware of the species
which is studying it." The Zoo Hypothesis suggests that the messenger probes of an ETI species
are present in the solar system but have not made their presence known (as far as we know).
Barrow & Tipler assert that the Zoo Hypothesis is "unlikely." If it were true, they state, the entire
solar system would be analogous to "an African game preserve" with the intelligent probes of an
ET race acting as "game wardens." Their argument, unfortunately, doesn't prove the Zoo
Hypothesis unlikely; it simply makes it more disturbing. If the solar system were such a
preserve, they surmise, "then all contact must have been rigorously prevented for as long as the
robot game wardens were present in the Solar System, since there is not one jot of evidence for
any contact in the past" (italics added).
38
Again we catch the high court of Science circuitously relying on the cult of UFO debunking as
proof of evidence of absence. Clearly, the power to define what constitutes evidence of
extraterrestrial intelligence is an important facet of the circuitous argument against its very
existence. While declaring Directed Panspermia to be the height of Darwinian survival of the
fittest, they refuse to look around and see the profound evidence of the zookeepers in our own
solar system.
In short, there is no sound argument that can be asserted against the existence of an ETI probe in
the solar system, now or in the past, and it would, theoretically, explain the genesis of life forms
on Earth. After having argued that a human being is essentially "a universal constructor
specialized to perform on the surface of the Earth," Barrow & Tipler explain that, "all the
information needed to manufacture a human being is contained in the genes of a single human
cell." From this single cell, an advanced civilization could synthesize and disperse members of
their species into other star systems. They go on to admit, using intelligent probes it would be
possible for this civilization to covertly study a species within that system.
Building Blocks of Universal Constructors
To take this seemingly preposterous scenario another step further, could the entire Earth
biosphere be bio-engineered? Along these lines, H.V. Ditfurth has argued in Origins of Life (p.
51) that "it was not the case that life on Earth was dependent on only twenty quite specific amino
acids (and countless other molecular elements) from among hundreds of possible ones." He
writes that the limits of the supposed "right conditions" should not be thought of as overly
narrow. In fact, the way that the molecular pattern of the cosmos matches the Earth's biological
one might suggest something else entirely.
Ditfurth explains that when the Earth's history began there was no specific need for organisms to
live on it. In other words, the reason why these particular building blocks are present in the cells
of all Earth organisms may not be because there was no other way for life to get started but,
rather, because these particular building blocks "were present in great abundance."
Might we state this differently? Earth's habitat and life forms are constructed from a finite
collection of material that was just hanging around in the area doing nothing. Barrow & Tipler's
"optimal exploration strategy" utilizes "otherwise useless interstellar resources." Seen from this
perspective, could all of Earth's biological forms be the result of the bioengineering genius of an
extraterrestrial species that has accomplished what we call "indefinite survival"?
Indeed, several researchers have argued that if ETI probes are present in the solar system they
would likely be in the asteroid belt where building materials are most abundant. (Carlotto,
www.psrw.com) One of the possible ways to detect the presence of an ETI probe is by searching
for an excess of infrared heat in the area where building materials are most abundant. Barrow &
Tipler seem amused by the fact that much of the observed infrared radiation does, in fact, come
from the vicinity of Earth's asteroid belt.
Their interest in this amusing factoid stops far short of labeling it as evidence of ETI, however,
even though they affirm that such colonization behavior would be typical of any intelligent
species with the means to do so. By admitting that probes could observe a society (i.e. the
Watchers) without its awareness, the Space Travel Argument undermines its own "absence of
evidence is evidence of absence" premise.
39
All biological life forms on the planet are "universal constructors" from the point of view that
they are self-replicating. If the job of a universal constructor is to construct other universal
constructors ad infinitum, then the appearance of biological life on Earth could be a sign of the
existence of an extraterrestrial universal constructor that has "gone into business for itself." Thus,
the Space Travel Argument's circuitous structure, i.e. they aren't here because they aren't here,
can be logically countered with the argument they are here because we are here.
Footnotes
1. For further information, see my article, "The Biological and the Silicon," at
www.paranoiamagazine.com.
2. I recently searched the Astrobiology website
(http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/roadmap/index.html) and discovered Objective 16 to be
missing. However, it does appear (for the time being) in a presumably older document:
http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov/library/roadmap00/10_app.pdf. Was NASA advised against publicly
advocating the goal of bioengineering life forms for adaptation on other planets? Did this project
go black budget?
3. “Star Systems Hint at Possibility of Sun's Nemesis” (SPACE.com, 1/19/06) "Kalas and
Graham speculate that stars also having sharp outer edges to their debris disks have a
companion—a star or brown dwarf—that keeps the disk from spreading outward, similar to how
Saturn's moons shape the edges of some of the planet's rings."The story of how you make a ring
around a planet could be the same as the story of making rings around a star," Kalas said.
Perhaps a passing star ripped off the edges of the original planetary disk, but a star-sized
companion, remaining in place, would be necessary to keep the remaining disk material from
spreading outward, he figures. The scenario has Kalas and his colleagues thinking that the Sun
might also have a companion that keeps the Kuiper Belt confined within a sharp boundary. U.C.
Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller has proposed such a star, which he calls Nemesis, but
no evidence has been found for one."
References and Further Reading
Barrow, John D. and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford Press, 1988.
Behe, Michael J., Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Simon & Schuster,
New York, 1996.
Carlotto, Mark, The Martian Enigmas: A Closer Look, North Atlantic, 1997.
Corso, Philip, The Day After Roswell, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Crick, Francis, Life Itself: Its Origins and Nature, Simon & Schuster, 1981.
d'Arc, Joan, Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, The Book Tree, 2000.
Fort, Charles, The Book of the Damned, Prometheus, reprint 1999.
Friedman, Stanton, Top Secret/Majic, Marlowe & Co., New York, 1996.
Hoagland, Richard, The Mars/Moon Connection (Video), Evidence of a Solar System Filled with
Ancient Artifacts (Video)
Hoagland, Richard, Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever, North Atlantic Books,
1996.
Hoagland, "The Message of Cydonia" enterprisemission.com. See also lunaranomalies.com
Johnson, Phillip, Darwin on Trial, InterVarsity Press, Downer's Grove, IL.
Lloyd, Andy, Dark Star: ajdjafjkajgdj. Publisher, Date.
40
McDaniel, Stanley, The Case for the Face: Scientists Examine the Evidence for Alien Artifacts on
Mars, Adventures Unlimited, 1998.
Midgely, Mary, Evolution as a Religion, Methuen & Co., London/New York, 1985.
Milton, Richard, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, Park Street Press, VT, 1997.
Noble, David, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention, Penguin,
1997, 1999.
Temple, Robert K.G., The Sirius Mystery, Destiny Books, VT, 1987.
41
The Land of Superlatives and Science Fiction
Jung, Freud, Sartre and Flying Saucers
Carl Jung (1875–1961) began collecting dream diaries, letters, books, news articles, and
government and military reports regarding UFOs in 1946. His thoughts on the matter were
posthumously published in 1964 in a book called Flying Saucers, A Modern Myth of Things Seen
in the Skies. Jung posited that the motif of extraterrestrial invasion began with the mysterious
“foo fighters” seen over Sweden during the last two years of World War II.
Originally believed to be Russian secret saucers, the foo fighters were followed by sightings of
flying discs in America. Since no terrestrial explanation could explain the bizarre maneuvers of
the UFOs, the rumor began to spread that the discs were from another world. Carl Jung deduced
that this collective “rumour” got linked with the psychology of the Martian panic that followed
H.G. Wells’ 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. He suggested that “the play
evidently hit the latent emotion connected with the imminence of war.” (FS 9)
Jung noted that flying saucers “behave not like bodies but like weightless thoughts” and that they
had a “psychic component as well as a possible physical basis.” He ascertained that, “the UFO
reports suggest to common sense that the most likely explanation lies in a psychic disturbance.”
(FS 19) Jung maintained he was more qualified to comment on their psychic aspect as opposed
to their physical nature. He also judged that since most of the UFO sightings up to that time had
come from America, which he referred to as “the land of superlatives and of science fiction,” it
was necessary to ascertain whether the flying discs were rumours, visions, or a combination of
the two: a “visionary rumour.” A visionary rumour, he explained, is a collective vision infused
with intense emotion emanating from a deep source, becoming a “delusion of the senses.” (FS 9)
Although Carl Jung went further to postulate a “collective unconscious,” he was well equipped
with a background in Freudian theory. Jung’s basic Freudian orientation can be summed up in
the following quote from Flying Saucers:
Modern man still does not realize that he is entirely dependent on the cooperation
of the unconscious [the id], which can actually cut short the very next sentence he
proposes to speak. He is unaware that he is continuously sustained by something,
while all the time he regards himself exclusively as the doer. He depends on and
is sustained by an entity he does not know ... (FS 52)
Jung also wrote:
The unconscious can no longer be treated as if it were causally dependent on
consciousness, since it possesses qualities which are not under conscious control.
It should rather be understood as an autonomous entity acting reciprocally with
consciousness. (FS 29)
As Robert Anton Wilson writes in Ishtar Rising, psychoanalysts tend to seek hidden meanings to
the point of absurdity. Freudians first uncovered unconscious or subconscious meaning in
dreams, he explains, then in “slips of the tongue,” then in art and literature, and then “went on to
find similar coded symbols in religion, mythology, folklore, in science itself, in all the products
of the human imagination.” Eventually, Wilson laments, neo-Freudian psychology became a
42
“panchreston”: a system that explains everything. He argues that “any human formula which
explains all human formulas is technically in the class of all classes which include themselves
and leads to logical contradictions.” Somewhere, he hopes, “there is a door they cannot force, a
temple they cannot enter, a logically necessary refuge which their panchestron cannot
incorporate.” Perhaps that refuge is off-planet.
It is especially important to understand that Jung’s early interest in UFOs was focused on the
neo-Freudian interpretation of dreams in which flying saucers began to appear—dreams often
imparted to him by letter from friends and patients. He eventually deduced that the UFO data he
was collecting could be treated in the same manner; i.e., that “the figures in a rumour can be
subjected to the same principles of dream interpretation.” (FS 19) Jung’s modus operandi on this
count is a classic tautology: the representation of anything as the cause, condition or
consequence of itself. (1) Jung utilized his theory of the collective unconscious to determine that
UFOs were collective visions and categorized them as dreams, which he then subjected to
Freudian analysis. Noting that UFOs had a “possible physical basis” which he admittedly
couldn’t deal with, Jung did what neo-Freudians do best. He contrived some far-out theories
about mankind’s deep psychological need to see round circles in the sky.
Amplificatory Interpretation
Jung rationalized that “the visible form expresses the meaning of the unconscious content only
approximately” and that the meaning has to be completed by “amplificatory interpretation,”
presumably by one immersed in the Freudian psychotherapeutic tradition. As Jung reasoned in
his peculiar melding of Catholic and indigenous mysticism and Freudian psychoanalysis, the
round object is analogous to the mandala, the symbol of totality, and reappears time and again
with the same meaning, whether it be the sun wheel or the magic circle. He theorized that the
circle is the symbol of order, the “alchemical microcosm” which embraces and protects the
“psychic totality” and also “seeks to unite the inner opposites.” At the same time, the circle is an
individuation symbol, it is the analogy of Plato’s world-soul, a “supra-celestial place where the
ideas of all things are stored up.”
On one level UFOs can be thought of as “souls,” Jung postulated, while on another level they
may be thought of as “gods,” in that they are “impressive manifestations of totality whose
simple, round form portrays the archetype of the self,” and which “unites irreconcilable
opposites.” He concluded that “the message which the UFO brings to the dreamer is a time
problem that concerns us all. The signs appear in the heavens so that everyone shall see them.
They bid each of us remember his own soul and his own wholeness.”
In the treatment of all of his data as unconscious “dream” material, Jung created a unique
psycho-mystical method of discovery, fusing the devices of deductive logic known as
extrapolation (inference of unknown information from known information) and interpolation
(introduction of new or false information between elements or parts of an argument) with the
lingo of Freudian analysis and his vast knowledge of Catholic and indigenous mysticism. These
contrivances created a mesmerizing verbal no man’s land; an ecstatic cosmogony linking man’s
mind to a higher source. It is just this ecstatic back-to-nature aspect of Jung’s theory that is its
most compelling attribute.
It’s not that we should necessarily oppose any message which connects mankind to an ulterior
source, but we should certainly be careful of repeating the message as truth prior to examining
the path leading to Jung’s conclusions. Is the Freudian interpretation of dreams applicable to
43
phenomena that in some undeniable way present themselves as physical? Could Jung have been
so sure that Earth was not actually being visited by physical saucers from another planet? As
time went on, apparently he was not.
The Figures in a Rumour
During the 1950s, Jung began to follow the contactee stories, which he rationalized as
technological, parapsychological and psychic intrusions upon a spiritually-starved mankind.
Understandably, Jung had trouble consolidating his idea of “visionary rumour” with the apparent
physical component of the UFO witness craze. He shifted back and forth between the physical
and symbolic (unconscious) components of saucer stories, blending them into a rather bizarre
“modern myth of things seen in the skies.” For instance, Jung wrote: “As they did no harm and
refrained from all hostile acts, it was assumed that their appearance over the earth was due to
curiosity or to the need for aerial reconnaissance.” When occupant reports began to come in,
Jung retracted this statement by writing: “Recently their harmlessness has been doubted.” He
deduced that, “it was concluded that the dangerous development of atomic physics and nuclear
fission had caused a certain disquiet on our neighboring planets and necessitated a more accurate
survey from the air.” This “rumour” caused people to feel that they were being observed by
space beings. (FS 10, 16)
Jung also observed that no earthly being could survive the reported speeds and angles of turn of
the UFOs. He noted, “We do not know either whether they are manned machines or a species of
living creature which has appeared in our atmosphere from an unknown source. … Their
movements indicate volition and psychic relatedness, evasion and flight, perhaps even
aggression and defense.” He also wrote, “If these things are real—and by all human standards it
hardly seems possible to doubt this any longer—then we are left with only two hypotheses: that
of their weightlessness on the one hand and of their psychic nature on the other.” (FS 109)
Jung was well aware that UFOs had been seen in the skies for hundreds if not thousands of years,
providing specific examples of black and red disks reported in the 16th Century; yet, he noted,
the “universal mass rumour was reserved for our enlightened, rationalistic age.” (FS 18) Yet, has
Jung missed the obvious here: that our enlightened, rationalistic age is also the age of mass
communication? Regardless of whether the UFOs are collective visions or historical facts, it is
the printing press that makes the rumour possible. In an earlier age, such a “universal mass
rumour” would have been impossible.
Jung made note that the flight of a flying saucer is not based on any recognizable system, but
resembles that of a flying insect in that it can “suddenly hover over an interesting object for quite
a time, or circle around it inquisitively, just as suddenly dart off again and discover new objects
in its zigzag flight.” Curiously, he also noted that UFOs behave “more like groups of tourists
unsystematically viewing the countryside, pausing now here for a while and now there.” He
explained: “There are large mother ships from which little UFOs slip out ... [they] ... can be up to
five hundred yards in diameter, or as small as electric street lamps ... [and] ... they are said to be
both manned and unmanned, and in the latter case are remote controlled.” (FS 11)
In 1951, Jung wrote to an American friend that he was puzzled about the UFO phenomenon and
that he was not yet able to decide whether “the whole thing is a rumour with concomitant
singular and mass hallucination, or a downright fact.” (FS vii) He added that the phenomenon
might even be both rumour as well as fact, which he regarded as a “synchronicity” or
44
“meaningful coincidence.” At this time, Jung was almost 75 years old, and was yet to write his
best known work, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.
Spontaneous Psychic Projections
Jung’s theory of psychic projection asserts that the human unconscious requires a reduction in
tension or stress and seeks to “balance the anxiety of the world.” This is accomplished by the
psychic projection of archetypes. Archetypes are psychic energies that symbolize the particular
balance which the person unconsciously seeks. The archetype that expresses “order, deliverance,
salvation, and wholeness,” in order to avoid the “odiousness of mythological personification,”
takes the form of a “technological construction.” Like a spoonful of sugar with mankind’s
medicine, Jung presumed, “anything that looks technological goes down without difficulty with
modern man.” (FS 22)
Jung surmised that a collective but unacknowledged fear of death was being projected on the
UFOs.(2) He saw the UFO image as the archetype of death and suggested that it may represent
“intensification of the fear of death in our time” and that “the beyond may be the land of the dead
or the unconscious.” (FS 62) Jung wrote that UFO images in dreams can represent either “the
technical achievement of more highly developed planetary beings, or angels or departed spirits
who come to earth in order to fetch a soul.” (FS 63)
Jung postulated that “the unconscious has to resort to particularly drastic measures in order to
make its contents perceived ... by extrapolating its contents into an object, which then reflects
back what had previously lain hidden in the unconscious.” According to Jung, the human psyche
is in such an archaic state that it does not recognize the UFO as a psychic factor. Rather, the
psyche is “so trained that it must think of such images not as forms inherent in the psyche but as
existing somewhere in extra-psychic metaphysical space, or else as historical facts.” Due to the
inability of the psyche to integrate the “spontaneous projections” of the archetype directly into
consciousness, the projected image appears as “an ostensibly physical fact independent of the
psyche,” and the rounded wholeness of the mandala “becomes a spaceship controlled by
intelligent beings.” (FS 29)
Jung’s theories have of late enjoyed a resurgence of popularity among UFO and paranormal
researchers, including crop circle enthusiasts. (3) In fact, what right-thinking soul in the land of
superlatives wouldn’t be mesmerized by Jung’s animistic cosmos? On one hand, it addresses the
need to expand the definition of “Mind” by connecting man’s pysche in an ongoing symbolic
dialogue with the Universe. Yet, on the other hand, its terminology is rooted in an annoying
tautology. It’s a panchestron! It’s an all-inclusive closed System that creates a box around itself
and can only explain what’s inside the box. As Jungian scholar C. George Boeree has noted,
“Like Freud, Jung tries to bring everything into his system. He has little room for chance,
accident or circumstances.” Boeree has also noted, “some people retreat into fantasy … turn to
complex ideologies that pretend to explain everything.”
Jung’s UFO “visionary rumours” eventually became so mired in the muck of Freudian phantasm
they became an absurdity. Yet many Ufologists refuse to see the absurdism since Jungian
psychology is held in such high esteem. Indeed, any analysis of Jung’s UFO theories must take
into account the basic Freudian notion of a triad of entities making up the personality, one of
which eludes and deludes the conscious self at every turn. As Dr. Boeree notes, “Jung is still
attached to his Freudian roots. He emphasizes the unconscious even more than Freudians do.
45
[His theory] is the logical extension of Freud’s tendency to put the causes of things into the
past.”
In fact, one might wonder if Jung had heard of the Law of Parsimony, which suggests seeking
the simplest explanation, which in this case is surely the extraterrestrial visitation one! As Dr.
Boeree notes, “Personality—and life in general—seems ‘overexplained’ in Jung’s theory.” In
particular, Jung’s UFO theory is dismissive of any other explanation, including a physical one,
which Jung admitted was compelling but which he was not in a position to address. Jung’s
ambivalence on this matter is problematical.
A Lie Without a Liar
Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre rejected the “language and materialistic mythology of
psychoanalysis.” While Sartre did not specifically discuss UFO phenomena, he did argue that
Freud had wrongly divided the psychic whole into two with the creation of the id and the ego.
He argued: “I am the ego but I am not the id. I hold no privileged position in relation to my
unconscious psyche. I am my own psychic phenomena insofar as I establish them in their
conscious reality.” But, he adds, “I am not those psychic facts, insofar as I receive them
passively and am obliged to resort to hypotheses about their origin and their true meaning.” (4)
(Essays 153)
Sartre argued against the very existence of this “complex” of psychological entities—the id and
the superego—which knows all and “plays tricks on the censor [the ego] and seeks to elude it.”
He explained, “the only level on which we can locate the refusal of the subject is that of the
censor [ego] for it alone can comprehend the revelations of the psychoanalyst as approaching
more or less near to the real drives which it strives to repress - because it alone knows what it is
repressing.” (Essays 154)
To clarify Sartre’s statements, if we think of the “unconscious” [id] as a room behind a door
where our assumed repressed drives and memories are kept, which “entity” is the doorman? Is
the doorman separate from the door or is there an automatic door? Freud would reply that
another entity separate from the ego is the doorman and, specifically, that the doorman (the
unconscious or id) has knowledge of a secret password unknown to the ego which can be
discovered only by the psychotherapist.
Sartre would argue that there is no doorman. He would perhaps agree that there is simply an
automatic door to an open room—essentially we all know what’s in there. Sartre did not
specifically argue against psychic compartments for the management of information and
experience. Rather, he argued against the existence of a separate doorman standing guard at the
heavy doors of an iron vault to which only the psychoanalyst holds the key.
Sartre described psychoanalysis as “a lie without a liar.” Sartre argued that Freudian
psychoanalysis “allows me to understand how it is possible for me to be lied to without lying to
myself since it places me in the same relation to myself that the Other is in respect to me.” Sartre
concluded, “if we reject the language and the materialistic mythology of psychoanalysis, we
perceive that the censor in order to apply its activity with discernment must know what it is
repressing.” The censor [ego] must “choose” and must be aware of doing so for, he asks, “how
can we conceive of a knowledge which is ignorant of itself?” (Essays)
Sartre concluded that psychoanalysis had not gained any ground, since it had “established
between the unconscious and consciousness an autonomous consciousness in bad faith” (i.e. a
46
secret entity which works against me). He remonstrated this blatant effort to establish a duality or
trinity within the consciousness of man as mere “verbal terminology.” Sartre argued that the idea
of hiding something from oneself automatically implies the same psychic mechanism which
tends to “maintain and locate the thing to be concealed and on the other hand to repress and
disguise it.” (Essays 154, 157)
Signs in the Heavens
After years of collecting every report possible from the land of superlatives and science fiction,
Carl Jung admitted that he had not arrived at a conclusion concerning the nature of flying saucer
reports. He did, however, succeed in infusing Ufology with the Freudian terminology still
popular today. But when CE-II’s (occupant-related) reports began to increase in the 1950s, Jung
had to adjust his dials. Abductions were to be a thing of the future, beginning in 1963 with the
abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in New Hampshire. Jung’s attention had just been taken up
with the contactee reports of George Adamski in the 1950s, when he wrote:
The view that the discs are real is so widespread (in America) that reports of
landings were not long in coming. Recently I read accounts of this kind from two
different sources. In both of them the mystical element in the vision or fantasy
was very much in evidence: they described half human, idealized human beings
like angels who delivered the appropriate edifying messages.
Jung maintained his belief that an unconscious fear had projected “signs in the heavens” in the
form of superior beings in “space ships devised by our technological fantasy.” He suggested that
the cause of such unconscious fear, which he felt he was far from fully understanding, “must
strike at the roots of our existence if it is to explain such an extraordinary phenomenon.” Perhaps
then the “roots of our existence” are interplanetary rather than unconscious?
As Sartre argued, Freudian psychology expresses a fundamental attitude toward the depth of
mankind’s inner being as untrustworthy and capable of strong delusion; the referent for lies
coming from a source other than ourselves. Humans are not to trust their emotions, for while
caught in their fix the senses are deluded. On the other hand, existentialism as a humanist
psychology tells us that the essential disclosure of truth and the meaning of being is centered in
the psyche of the human being. If there are any doors in the human psyche, we hold the keys to
every door.
Carl Jung’s theories are certainly intriguing and worthwhile, but we should be aware that this
ideology is based in an essential distrust concerning the nature of man’s being as routinely
baffled by the undercover activities of an undetectable sneak. Since Jung’s conclusions regarding
UFOs were extremely premature and highly dependent upon Freudian dream analysis, we are
obliged to question any extrapolations and interpolations coming out of this vein of thought.
Endnotes
(1) In logic, tautology is the representation of anything as the cause, condition or consequence of
itself. Second, it is an empty statement composed of simpler statements which make it logically
true whether the simpler statements are factually true or false. Third, it is a circular statement or
argument that is always and necessarily true because it comprises a closed system.
(2) It would appear that Jung was himself obsessed with death, as George Boeree notes: “Jung
dreamt a great deal about the dead, the land of the dead, and the rising of the dead. These
47
represented the unconscious itself, not the "little" personal unconscious that Freud made such a
big deal out of, but a new collective unconscious of humanity itself, an unconscious that could
contain all the dead, not just our personal ghosts.” (http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/jung.html)
(3) For example, see Albert Budden, UFOs, Psychic Close Encounters, wherein he explains that
the UI (Unconscious Intelligence) in conjunction with powerful energies from the earth’s strata,
is able to present external productions of all sorts, including ghosts and aliens, as psychic
projections from the unconscious mind.
(4) Sartre held that the id is inaccurately presented as “a thing” in relation to the psychoanalyst,
since “a thing” would be indifferent to the conjectures we make concerning it, while the id
purportedly seeks to resist when the analyst approaches the truth. This resistance, Sartre
believed, is “objective behavior apprehended from without.” What part of a person does the
“resisting?” It is not the ego, Sartre posited, which is “envisaged as a psychic totality of the facts
of consciousness.” On the contrary, the ego’s relation to the meaning of its own reactions is,
according to Sartre, exactly like that of the psychiatrist.
References
Carl Gustav Jung, Flying Saucers and the Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, 1964, 1970, 1978,
Princeton University Press.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Essays in Existentialism, (Ed. Wade Baskin).
Robert Anton Wilson, Ishtar Rising: Or, Why the Goddess Went to Hell and What to Expect Now
That She's Returning, 1994.
Joan d’Arc is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form and
Phenomenal World, published by The Book Tree, www.thebooktree.com.
48
Radio Panspermia
The Four Who Fell
Televisual glee erupted from the audience crowding Pennsylvania Avenue as the four Dracutians
glided down the portico of their spaceship parked on the White House Lawn. The bubble
surrounding the pink pod, with its veranda and seven terraces, was only visible in the glint of
sunshine bouncing off it. The tall humanoids waved at the crowd and sat down to a feast on the
front deck of their sterile dome home.
The putty-faced TV announcer lost himself in the stretch of the unimaginable moment. “Get with
it, Charles,” said the voice of the teleprompter in his ear.
“We are here on the South Lawn of the White House on this Good Friday morning where
President Obama is expected to make an announcement soon,” said Charles. “The Dracutian
ambassadors have made the enormous journey from their home star and will deliver their
message to mankind in just under two hours. First they will sit down to a magnificent state
brunch.”
“This is Charles Azaril, reporting from the White House. Back to you, Elysia.”
Charles locked his grin on camera one waiting anxiously for the cut. Aside from having an itchy
ass, some UFO nut behind him was leading the crowd in a round of Kumbaya, which was
causing him to come dangerously close to losing it.
“Thanks Charles. Looks like the crowd is giving those gentlemen a warm welcome,” said his
perky sidekick Elysia. “Those fellas must be a bit tired after the long trip. Billions and billions of
miles, as the late Carl Sagan would have said.”
The station broke for a commercial message shouting its special report—BILLIONS AND
BILLIONS OF MILES!—in super letters across the screen. The marching band from Raleigh,
North Carolina shrank the unthinkable enormity of the voyage into Earthling terms with their
cymbalic cover of “Hard Day’s Night.”
Neena-June Lamb looked away from the kitchen TV and nervously grabbed a sip of coffee.
Danté Pilgrim stared in her direction as the microwave beeped his breakfast.
“Life as we know it is over, Danté. I wish life was boring again.”
“No you don’t, Neena-June. You’re the goddess of discord. You like panic.”
“Are you telling me I asked for world chaos?”
“Yes, I am, Lambie Pie.”
“I’m reflecting the hysteria yet to come. Can’t you hear it in my voice?”
“Yes I can, dear.”
“Don’t call me dear, you turd.”
“I will never call you dear again, Your Highness.”
49
Neena-June’s cell phone intervened with that infectious ring, “you drive me crazy with that
boogie oogie oogie.” Danté Pilgrim danced around in his underwear as she answered in her
Queen Mummest tone, “Aabsoluutlay,” and closed the phone.
“National Press Club, 2 o’clock. … Put your pants on.”
Neena-June looked down at the front page of the Washington Post. “Jesus Christ, Danté!” she
exclaimed with tongue in cheek. “At last count, 980 Darwinians have committed suicide by
following each other off a cliff in New Jersey!”
“You wish, Miss Lamb,” he snorted.
She chalked one up in the air with her index finger, a geeky game they liked to play.
At two in the afternoon, Danté and Neena-June pulled up a barstool at Marvins for a quick gin
and tonic. “Hey Danté!” said Milton, the swarthy bartender. “Yesterday you had nothing. Today
you’ve got a woman and a radio!”
“The fun starts when you take the radio outside,” Neena-June retorted with a cool glance. How
does that jerk know that’s my favorite Mickey Rourke line from Barfly?, she thought. Milton was
one of Danté’s old work buddies from Hewlett Packard. She couldn’t stand any of Danté’s pals
from his former life. And of course Milton couldn’t understand Danté’s attraction to the abrasive
and cynical Miss Lamb.
Neena-June Lamb flipped open her laptop and curled the earphone around her ear. President
Obama was just walking up to the podium surrounded by secret service agents. The Fab Four—
as the media were now hyping them—waved at the cheering crowd from inside the luminous
sphere. The whole scene had a dreamlike feel, even more unreal than the usual everyday unreal.
Neena-June tried to figure out what exactly was the difference between this and a dream.
She poked Danté and asked, “can you get drunk in a dream?”
“I would say not,” said Danté, who always answered her as though she were serious because she
usually was. “Somebody else in the dream could be acting drunk, but you couldn’t get drunk.”
“Why not?”
“Because the dreamer is always drunk. You can’t get any drunker.”
She put her hand in his back pocket and smiled what felt like the first smile of the day. All
attention was now fixed on the telescreens in the bar. President Obama’s speech had already
begun in a tone of calm assurance: “Our galactic cousins have come in peace as ambassadors of
good will. They mean no harm to our people, our customs, our institutions, our religions. They
only wish for us to live in peace, globally and cosmically.”
Neena-June listened for shades of nuance in Obama’s speech. But there weren’t any. His voice
seemed flat and his speech monotonous. Was he on tranquilizers? On second thought, it didn’t
even look like him. His face was a bit too chubby. His skin was ashen. Am I paranoid?, she
wondered, as she thought about those conspiracy theories about presidents having doubles.
President Obama said we should continue our lives in the normal way: Go to work, go to school,
go to church, enjoy our sports activities. There had been no real change, he explained. "After all,
isn’t this what we have supposed all along? Is not God’s creation the infinite universe of stars
50
and galaxies—all of them peopled by the same one God in his infinite purview? And aren’t all
these people equal in the eyes of our good Creator?"
Obama blathered on and on in the clammy oppressive heat. Every person in every sticky collar
was itching to hear the cosmic message from the Dracutians. But it was not to arrive until this
strange spokesman for humanity had crafted a new borderless worldview where the old bordered
one had been.
Finally, after a dozen or so million-dollar commercials, the camera zoomed in on the Fab Four,
who sat in a row on the sofa of their patio. They wore brightly colored Nehru jackets for the
unparalleled occasion. The alien leader stepped up to the podium and held up the V sign, the
intergalactic symbol of peace, and began speaking in rhythmic English.
“People of Doloré. Friendly greetings from the Limbus borderland to your ground Tartufoli.
Downward of seven celestium spheres we have dropped to visit the Third Circle Inferno. We
thank from our great bosoms your delicious chefs and cheftesses who are well and truly baked.
No people has been so much delight on our lips, twice on the hips. We fatten ourselves to you!”
Hearty laughter emitted from the strangely adolescent face of the leader of the Dracutians. The
other three nodded in agreement. Neena-June stared at the TV in horror and looked around the
room. All eyes were perched on the screen without a flutter. There was a kind of hush all over
the world as the lanky alien picked up again in the cracking voice of male puberty.
“So in peace we bring greetings from Limbus to your teachers of all colors and shapes, to give
hugs to your scientists, and in the shining light of Helios to hold your hand. Of vegetable we like
many if your mother likes to ask. For billions and billions of hard day nights we loved your
television, your radio, your rock and roll, your Beatles. Now we thank you to sing and dance and
play the lyre on the lawn of Khthonia.”
The crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue was quiet except for babies crying and old people asking,
“did he say the lawn of Khthonia?” The other three lads grinned and gave high fives all around.
The leader now introduced himself as George, and his mates as John, Paul and Ringo.
“We like please to have some more TVs, games, ipods, and cell phones. We like to have three of
your guitar, amplifier and drum set. We like to have musical poetry from your Beatles. We like
to entertain when the guitars learn to play after some time in the House of the Lie.”
“Danté, am I drunk?”
“No, Neena-June, you’re not.”
She ordered two shots of Johnny Walker, for herself. No wonder Obama had looked so strange.
The first Official ET Disclosure had been arranged on his watch and it was turning into
Beatlegate.
“Oh yes,” George came back to the microphone. “We have turned off your guns and weapons,
and keep them off, or we will call our big fathers from the Limbus Netherland who will punch
out your fathers!”
Just then someone in the crowd hurled a rock at the outlandish couch hobo, which bounced off
the electronic bubble and started a repercussion like melting plastic. The shield seemed to
wobble in the heat and then resumed its rounded shape.
51
George came back again with another threat. “And if you throw rocks or be unruled you will
become our slaves! Do not try to dismantle the big shield or our big fathers will deliver the Tesla
death ray! Thank you. And please deliver some more of those marvelous turkey legs with the
Beatle music.”
In an instant all the fanfare turned ugly. There was screaming and panic in the streets. All eyes
looked to the sky for the impending Tesla death ray.
Neena-June’s cell phone was ringing like mad. She belted down the two shots and bolted for the
door. Danté chased after her, squeezing through the mob that was trying to flee the bar. One by
one the crowd at Marvins popped out the door into a world of wrong. The natives were running
every which way but there was nowhere to go. The city was crippled.
Danté and Neena-June pushed their way through the crowd at the Press Club and flashed their
FBI badges. They ran down the hall to the left and knocked on the third door on the right. The
door opened and they were rushed inside a chilly room full of intelligence operatives of all
stripes.
“Where in hell have you two been?” asked Agent Cerberus.
“Watching from the bar at Marvins. What do you know so far about these Dracutians?” asked
Danté.
“They have shut down all weapons systems globally. All we can do is throw rocks.”
Neena-June grinned. “We’ve been reduced to sticks and stones, just like Einstein said?”
“Apparently so,” said the portly Cerberus.
“So what’s the next move?” asked Danté.
“Well, we’re keeping them well fed and entertained until their parents get here,” Cerberus tried
to keep it serious.
“Wait a minute. Aren’t their fathers heading here to punch … ?” Danté trailed off, feeling
suddenly foolish.
“The Dracutians are in the 5b Sector Treaty group,” explained Cerberus in his usual deadpan
delivery. “They cannot land on the White House lawn and start demanding turkey legs and
Beatle music.”
“Oh …. but they have,” said Neena-June Lamb.
“We think these kids put it in warp drive, so to speak, and arrived here before their parents,”
explained the chief, Guelph Blackmon, stepping into the circle of conversation. “We were
expecting the mother ship. This is the … ah, I guess you’d call it, the birth pod.”
“Or the teenage space van,” Danté chided. Nobody was in the mood to laugh.
“We think it escaped from the group,” said Cerberus, waddling over to a chair to take the load
off. “They don’t usually travel in lone ships like this. Especially the student scout ships. These
kids are in a lick of trouble.”
“Oh good lord,” said Neena-June. “So they aren’t really dangerous?”
“We’re not sure about that, but at this point it wouldn’t be easy to convince the public, even if it
were true,” replied Guelph Blackmon.
52
“Exactly,” Cerberus interrupted. “There’s sheer hysteria out there. And when they see the fleet of
ships that are coming, they’re really gonna wig out.”
“So what’s the plan? Can’t you call and have their parents ground them?” Neena-June mocked.
“That’s the wild card,” answered Guelph. “We don’t know their parenting style. We’re waiting
to hear from the NSC. There’s pizza in the conference room. Go and get a slice and relax while
you can. We need you here the rest of the night.”
Neena-June sat by the stack of pizzas and shivered. The air conditioning was turned up way too
high. Cerberus was already on his third slice. Air whistled through his fat swollen nostrils and
grease dribbled down his chin. Jesus Christ, she thought, the guy can eat under any
circumstances.
She thought about the kids and wondered what their parental units were like. She thought about
Obama. Who wrote that speech? Was there someone else in that suit? She didn’t want to ask but
hoped it would come up in conversation with the chief.
Just then chief Blackmon entered the conference room and instructed everyone to sit and watch
the replay of George’s speech. “We need all hands on deck. Quick! I want to hear your thoughts
out loud.”
“That bubble … can we hit it with anything?” asked Cerberus.
“Everything’s shut down. We’re waiting to hear whether HAARP in Alaska is still operational,”
the chief responded.
“HAARP!” Danté flipped. “Yeah, let’s make a hole in the sky and let the sun fry the whole city!”
“Well, if the dads come down and decide we haven’t been nice to the kids, we’re gonna hafta use
it to intercept their missiles,” Cerberus retorted inanely, munching listlessly on his fourth slice.
“All right, you two. Let’s back up to George’s first words,” Neena-June offered calmly. “Doloré
is Italian for Earth. Limbus is Italian for Limbo. Where are these sofa chumps getting this
medieval metaphysical language?”
“Good point,” said Cerberus. “They’ve been on a ship absorbing television and radio since they
were born. They must have all the languages and dialects of the Earth down by now.”
“What is that word he used right there? Tartufoli?” asked Danté.
“That’s Italian for potato,” replied Cerberus, with a piece of pepperoni wagging from his lip.
“People, we’re through the looking glass here,” declared chief Blackmon. “This is a home
invasion. Some teenagers from Hell have the White House by the short hairs.”
I’m not so sure that’s where they’re from, thought Neena-June. She wanted to correct the
metaphysical direction, but thought better of it for now. “Yup, Obama looks completely
destroyed,” she opted instead. “If that’s even really him.”
She studied Guelph’s reaction from the corner of her eye. Other than scratching his left nostril
with his right forefinger he didn’t budge. She looked around the room. In every eye was the
blank dead stare of oblivion.
“So what’s the first move?” asked Danté.
53
“There it is,” said Guelph, rewinding the video to where George requested three guitars, three
amplifiers and a drum set.
“Is there a guitar shop opened?” said Guelph. “Cerberus, make some calls. Neena-June and
Danté, you’re making the delivery. Let’s get going.”
“What about the sheet music and turkey legs?” asked Neena-June.
“Yup, let’s go all out,” ordered Guelph.
It was dusk by the time the van pulled up in the alley stocked with the Dracutian grocery order.
The CIA driver they had assigned to Beatlegate was Leon Nolan, a black man with a huge Afro
wearing very short shorts. Neena-June had worked with him before he had the fro. Oh shit, she
thought. This is weird.
To make things weirder, they were told to pretend Agent Nolan was a slave, because Dracutians
have slaves and they would think it was the normal way to do things. The last thing the U.S.
government wanted, Chief Blackmon had advised, was to make the space cowboys lean on some
kind of button in there. “They won’t understand that we do things ourselves here, so don’t help
him carry anything,” he ordered.
Neena-June didn’t believe the Four were hostile. I’ll make that judgment when I get in there, the
CIA-trained anthropologist thought to herself. She climbed up into the passenger seat of the beatup van and checked out the dashboard saints amidst glittery stars and pom-pom spheres.
“Hey, Nolan, how’ve you been? So, you got guitars and everything, hey? Good show." She
sniffed the air. "Got turkey legs too?”
“Well, I did the best I could,” said Nolan. “The stores were closin’ n’stuff. I got three guitars,
one amp, and a bongo. Why you makin' fun o my legs?” he grinned at Neena-June.
“The Fab Four hafta share an amp? That might start a conflagration,” yelled Danté, sitting on a
guitar amp in the back of the tricked-out van.
“Ringo is playing a bongo?” Neena-June mused.
There was silence in the van for a few blocks. Nolan had done the best he could and was pissed
at the wise cracks. Danté broke the silence. “Well, Nolan, thanks for picking up all this stuff.
You did a great job.”
“Yes, Nolan, thank you,” Neena-June agreed. “Have you been briefed on all this yet?”
“Not really,” he responded. “I got a short briefing from Cerberus about a call to their parents. He
said the kids have shut down global weapons systems. Remarkable! How the hell’d they do
that?”
“Not sure,” Danté tried to explain. “All we know is the Dracutian command ships were on their
way here as part of the UN’s Disclosure Program and, we’re not sure how this is possible, but
apparently they hadn’t realized they lost one of their little radio pods.”
“The Dracutians have now seen the TV broadcasts and seem to understand the ramifications,”
added Neena-June. “So we’re not sure if they’re still coming or canceling the meeting.”
“What a trip!” smirked Nolan. “How long ago did they lose the pod? . . . . Wait a minute. Did
you say radio pod?”
54
“Just my theory, explained Danté. “Didja see the size of the antenna sticking out of that thing?”
“Yeah, can you dig it? They lost the pod!” Neena-June scoffed in disbelief. “I’ve heard the
human race is babysat by an advanced race of ETs, but if these are the babysitters, no wonder
we’re in trouble!”
“Some kind of hands-off, free will system?” Nolan jeered. “Cerberus mentioned something about
a treaty. Where does that play out?”
“Yup, the 5b Sector Treaty is exactly that," explained Neena-June. "It’s signed by ET groups
who agree to leave a system alone unless invited by its ruling authority. It’s laid out in the guise
of free will, but it doesn’t allow anyone to step in to secure the choices available. So it’s topdown free will.”
“Which doesn’t sound to me like free will,” yelled Danté from the back, over the van’s loud
muffler.
“But how much of this did the Fab Four cause themselves?” asked Nolan. “Don’t they have a
direct dial button in there to call mom and dad?”
“Don’t know what kind of buttons or dials they have in the floating radio. That’s what we’re
going in to find out,” replied Danté.
“Don’t forget. They’ve got so-called free will,” explained Neena-June. “They can choose to hit
whatever button they want to hit. Or not. But they changed the structure of the material universe
by choosing to do nothing, which actually is a choice. They’ve flipped the concept of directed
panspermia into its inadvertent form, radio panspermia, which is a fall by light pressure from
above.”
Danté shouted from the back, "Yeah. Is this the Fall of the innocent or were they sent here for
some ulterior purpose? That’s the wild card.”
“In the time falling bodies take to light, an accident is waiting to happen in Maya,” Nolan
grinned, passing around a fat joint as the radio played, “Give me love, give me love, give me
peace on earth, give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth …”
Neena-June passed on a toke, but handed it to Danté, who took a huge hit. “Oh yeah, so, you
know . . . Blackmon wants you to play the slave, right?” said Neena-June.
Nolan exhaled a big puff of weed and sputtered. “What? He mentioned me doing all the lugging,
but the black man didn’t have the gall to use the S-word with another black man. What’s with
that?”
“Well, from what I understand,” replied Neena-June, “the Dracutians have a hierarchical caste
system with very specific job designations. The chief thought a “like you, like me” scenario
would aid the bonding process.”
“A diabolical plan doomed to failure. You bond, I lug,” wisecracked Nolan. “Yes, massa.”
“I’m sorry, Nolan,” Neena-June turned toward him, her eyes big with sorrow. “If it’s any
consolation, we’re all slaves to the government.”
“You can’t fight the Empire without becoming like the Empire,” yelled Danté.
“I do not wish to move from my present prison to a prison a little larger,” Nolan replied.
55
“You’re a one-man revolution, Nolan,” yelled Danté.
“The Kingdom of God is Anarchy. The Center is Everywhere,” replied Nolan.
As they swung around the secret back entrance to the White House, they were greeted by a full
army batallion with tanks scattered all over the property. They handed over their I.D.’s to a
zombie military goon and the Hounds of the Lord parted in waves. Just around the corner as the
pink biodome came into view, Neena-June and Danté with gaping maws were pulled running
from the van.
“Do you have the guitars and turkey legs?” they were grilled loudly by a white haired Army Intel
officer with fiery red eyes from lack of sleep.
“We must treat these children as heads of state from another world!” Colonel Charon shouted.
“They have waited way too long for these items! They have every right to call their parents,
except that they’re runaways and we’re the ones that had to call their parents! This is the most
messed up situation I’ve ever seen in my life!” he screamed. “That’s probably why I’m
screaming!” he screamed.
“Yes, I understand, sir. Let’s not delay any further,” Neena-June responded, still startled by the
up-close sight of the pink radio pod. “We’re going in.”
She motioned to Nolan in the van. He had pulled up to the edge of the grass and was waiting for
instructions. His maw was wide open too. Charon glanced at him and did a double-take at his
giant mane. “Of course. Have him drive right on the grass behind us. But let him wait outside for
your call.”
As Charon led the two ambassadors to the lower terrace of the craft, Nolan made the sign of the
cross in the air and whispered, “God Bless the transport of Intrepid Souls.”
“Stand here in the inner circle,” Charon instructed. “I’ve been in and it’s completely painless.
The radio scanner simply reads your natal frequency I.D. and carries you in.” He put their hands
together and stepped off the platform. In the fierce brightness of an ecstatic moment the two
were ferried up to the pod like waves on a beach. Faces first they squeaked through a seamless
liquid aperture with the sound of a balloon popping.
There was nobody home in the birth pod. The huge round room seemed much bigger than it
looked from outside. There were four separate apartments with four separate everythings. NeenaJune looked for mirrors but couldn’t tell if there were any. Just then the four lads entered the
room at the same time through four different doors. They each flopped onto their own sofa and
clicked on their own TV.
Danté chortled uncontrollably. Neena-June cast him a baleful glance.
Finally George noticed them. “Oh, they are here!”
“Hello. I’m Neena-June Lamb. This is Danté Pilgrim. We have your guitars and your turkey legs
just outside. Would you like me to call the slave to bring those?”
“You have slave? Yes, we want to see slave with turkey legs,” said Paul.
Danté lost it again. Oh god, thought Neena-June, I’m on my own here.
She rang Nolan. “Come on in. They want to see your turkey legs,” she told him. While she had
the phone out Neena-June asked, “Hey boys, can I get a picture of you to show my mom?”
56
Sure. They moved closer together. “Your mom knows us?” asked Paul.
“Are we more popular than Jesus Christ?” asked John, as pictures and sound were transmitted to
Langeley.
“Yes, I would say so,” said Danté.
Neena-June agreed. “The Darwinists especially love you.”
“The Darwinists are musical group of punks?” asked Paul.
“Yes, a musical group of punks.” Neena-June was testing their knowledge base. The Four didn’t
seem to know much about Earthling science. Neena-June asked for another picture, this time for
her dad. They put their heads together for another instant transmission.
The lads seemed to be all about moms and dads. They seemed homesick and were overeating to
the point of gluttony. George grabbed a can of whipped cream out of the box Nolan carried in
through the waterwall. “Must we shake well?”
“Yes, you do need to shake that well,” explained Danté in the most helpful tone he could muster
without losing it again. “Contains dairy?” asked George, as he shook it and sprayed a big
overflowing mouthful.
“Yes, it does contain dairy,” Danté advised. They both looked at George aghast. How do all
teenagers know how to do that?, Neena-June wondered.
Ringo picked up a jar of Hellmans and stared at the barcode. “Barcode is radio I.D. in stripes like
zebra?”
“Something like that,” Neena-June responded, sneaking a glance at Danté.
Paul studied the barcode on the Heinz bottle. “Slave, is this ketchup boy or girl?” he asked
Nolan.
“Ahhm, I think it’s a girl.” Nolan grinned widely as he swashed through the waterwall to fetch
another box of goodies. This was the most effortless delivery he had ever made. He simply
modulated through the air carrying one box at a time.
“Your president Obama. He knows well the creator? He has radiofone number for us?” queried
George.
“Yes, I’ll try to get that for you,” said Danté with a grin.
“Also the radiofone for David Bowie who fell to Earth?” George requested. “We like to give him
a ride home.”
Nolan whistled through the waterwall with more groceries. The dharma couch bums were baffled
by everything they touched. “Hey, wait! Are you mod squads from television?” asked John from
his sofa eating a turkey leg.
Nolan turned and vanished again through the waterwall, chuckling as he modulated, “He-he, the
mod squad.” As Neena-June and Danté were quizzed by the innocence mission, a beamish joy
overwashed them.
“Can you take us to George Adamski, who makes very good UFO’s?” asked Ringo. The pod
mates laughed heartily.
57
“Can we meet Mr. Jesus Carpenter of the film Day Earth Stood Still?” asked George, with a faint
smirk.
Just as he caught Danté’s eye in a pang of recognition, the pod rang with a trumpet blast. A
female voice blared from each of the apartments summoning the Fab Four by their real names:
Homer, Ovid, Lucan and Horace. The four hungry poets wiped whipped cream off their faces
and hid turkey legs behind their backs.
A magnificent dignitary as deep blue as the god Krishna appeared in the middle of the pod. His
jacket was deep orange saffron and on the left breast was the official insignia of a solar disk.
Above that his name read: "Virgil." He spoke in a sublime cadence, a fantastic rising and falling
language.
Zap! Neena-June’s golden hair stood jazzed in the ethericity. Struck dumb in the buttoned
aphonia of the ethereal thunderclap, her baloney fingers reached for Danté’s with great effort in
the spirit jello, as the bowl of heaven quickened with 9 billion sacred names of god. And that was
just the hallow.
To the earthling nebbishes caught in the amplified superhet, it took a flies’ eternity for the
delivery of the heliogram—a drama in miniature, a narration in a shadow play, a mythovision
cast by figures in a rumour. In this, the blue representative was assisted by a team of telestai—
poets of projection science whose stunning logograms had never been unscrambled by enemy
ciphernauds.
The poets removed their robes, which plunked to the floor and disappeared. In blue body tights
they expertly mimed the cosmic fiasco of the runaway egg to an invisible audience of
government officials. They emoted frabjously with hand signals and ballistic pokes and slaps,
while making vocal sounds like monkeys and pharting with hands cupped in armpits. The secret
play put the bobbery in radioBabelhaus.
Once the debacle of the early birthing and the resultant lack of fetal training had been elucidated,
various faults widened the proverbial crack in the egg: the disaster at the House of the Lie, the
impish hellions who threw rocks at them, the radio talk shows blaring ‘round heaven’s dome
poking fun of the ‘cowardly neutrals’ who had lost their children—as the joke went—in a
downward motion, ‘panspermia perpetuum celestium motuum.’
Every telestai finger touched a new sore spot. Every telestai slap produced a bruise of
embarrassment. They must now make a decision. The debates of imperial counsel were
moderated by the intoxicating soma of moral absolutism. The young Dracutians had behaved
badly, but there was a right and a wrong thing to do now. With sudden and grotesque efficiency
the voting buttons conveyed the swift command:
“Go—Take them—Now!”
Only then were the insensate bugs in the mute ambertheatre released from the glue garbo that
held them. George turned and tried to explain:
“Our moms and dads remind us we are Kings of the Seven Terraces of Purgatory-Limbus
Borderland, not prisoners of scandalous condiments of gluttonous Third Ring of Hades. Our
senators tell us to rise above with no more fooling around and so we must heed immediately.
Please sit and fasten your seatbelts, Mr. Danté Aligheri and Ms. Joan of Arc. I’m sorry to tell you
58
we must leave Mr. Giordano Bruno here, as his product code has not been upgraded in the free
will system.”
Back at the van, The Nolan felt a jolt of energy and then sudden inertia. He shook the electricity
out of his hands, picked up the Fender Telecaster and moved slowly toward the dock. He stood
there a while but the freq-net seemed to be shut down. What he didn’t know was his radio freq
tag was phant-scat—a scattered phantom signal rejected by the Babylon system. It was a
violation of the 5b Sector Treaty to apprehend a slave.
As he stared up at the incredible radio pod, it suddenly retracted its long antenna and began to
pulse like a jellyfish. Before it shot vertically into the heavens, it hovered a few seconds on the
White House lawn to pull in the patio furniture and neaten up the back forty.
With arms held out as a cross-shadow in the twilight of Easter sunrise, The Great Nolan blessed
them on their journey: “Cabala of the Steed like unto Pegasus!”
It took only a few hours for the Washington Post to describe the remains of a hot pink weather
balloon that had set off the national security apparatus. It had been a hoax, of course—a
computer-generated simulation by Asian students from M.I.T. The four pranksters were arrested
without delay. Just below their pictures on the front page, the Post reported that the president
was recovering, his doctors said, from a slight touch of swamp gas.
Another curious story on the back page reported an anomalous sighting of Jimi Hendrix
wandering the streets with a Telecaster. …
But as everyone knows, Jimi played a Stratocaster.
59
Tall Tale of Spacegun '54
Mass Rumours Over Orgonon
“Am I a spaceman? Do I belong to a new race on earth, bred by men from outer space in
embraces with earth women?,” Wilhelm Reich wondered in his last book, Contact with Space,
Oranur Second Report (1951-1956), published in 1957 before his imprisonment by the federal
government.
Reich noted that this idea was first presented to the public in the 1951 film, The Day the Earth
Stood Still. He stated that the film had prepared the populace for extraordinary events to come
… Or could it be that extraordinary events had prepared the film for the populace?
Reich believed the film’s presentation of the space drive of the craft portrayed the use of cosmic
Life Energy (Orgone), and that the Christ-like Visitor Klaatu (who takes the name Mr.
Carpenter) had used his knowledge of the Life Energy to solve mathematical conundrums. He
wrote: “All through the film I had the distinct impression that it was a bit of my story which was
depicted there”; although he had not considered at that time that he “could actually be a
spaceman’s offspring.” (Contact with Space 2)
Reich claimed that The Day the Earth Stood Still somehow started “a ball of history rolling,”
putting him “in the center of space problems.” The Day the Earth Stood Still was the second
“alien visitor” film ever, the first being The Thing From Another World (1951), which was
released only six months earlier (Scheib).
There can be no doubt that Wilhelm Reich was influenced by the books and films of the era;
indeed, the climate of the 1950s predisposed Reich to look for evidence that the UFOs had
exhibited aggressive behavior. He had read Donald Keyhoe’s 1953 book, Flying Saucers from
Outer Space, which described several hostile encounters between UFOs and Air Force pilots.
Reich also claims to have seen the film War of the Worlds on January 9, 1954 (Contact with
Space 6). He did not state specifically that he saw himself in this film, but as we begin to weave
the details of the story of Wilhelm Reich’s Spacegun, it is clear that the latent programming
inherent in these two films might, indeed, have precipitated a nuclear war between the worlds.
In his book Project Mindshift: The Re-education of the American Public Concerning
Extraterrestrial Life, Michael Mannion sees The Day the Earth Stood Still as a significant early
example of the relationship between Hollywood and Military Intelligence. Likewise, Bruce Rux
in Hollywood vs. the Aliens: The Motion Picture Industry’s Participation in UFO
Disinformation, makes the claim that The Day the Earth Stood Still was tampered with by
Intelligence at the executive level, and was changed in accordance with UFO facts. (Rux 65)
While these theories are difficult to prove, they certainly have merit.
As Randy Koppang writes in “The Revelation Will Not be Televised” (PARANOIA, issue 46),
in 1947, “humans could know virtually nothing regarding ET motivations and intentions.”
According to Col. Philip Corso in The Day After Roswell, beginning with the Roswell saucer
shoot-down (a.k.a. “saucer crash”), the strategy of the UFO cover-up was to “shroud ET facts
selectively, while acclimating society to their evolving ET awareness” (Koppang). Corso
credited Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining as the author of the Unofficial Disclosure strategy wherein,
“we were gradually releasing bits and pieces of information to those we knew would make
60
something of it.” Corso wrote, “It would have to be, General Twining suggested, at the same
time both the greatest cover-up and greatest public relations program ever undertaken.”
War of the Worlds
“There is no proof. There are no authorities whatever…”
– Wilhelm Reich, Contact with Space, 1957
On May 12, 1954, only four months after seeing War of the Worlds, Wilhelm Reich made his
first “contact” with what he called “space problems” by aiming his Cloudbuster on luminous
objects in the sky from his laboratory near Rangeley, Maine, called Orgonon. Reich claimed
that during his initial experiments, between 9:40 and 10:45 that evening, he had caused “two
stars” to the west to fade out by drawing cosmic energy to them. His team had “directed
drawpipes, connected with the deep well,” toward an “ordinary star,” and it had faded out four
times. He had three witnesses and only one conclusion: “The thing we had drawn from was not
a star. It was something else; a UFO.”
Describing what seems to be an ancient war, Reich made this journal entry: “Tonight for the
first time in the history of man, the war waged for ages by living beings from outer space upon
this earth (with respect to DOR, Drought and Desert, WR, 1956) was reciprocated with
ORANUR with positive result.” (Contact with Space 37)
Contact had been made, Reich believed, with an unknown type of “UFO.” His description of the
object called attention to the artifactual nature of the heavens: “blinking lights hanging in the
sky [which] were not planets or fixed stars but SPACE machines.” (Contact with Space 4) The
Cloudbuster, which was a tool to modify the environment, clean out DOR (Deadly ORgone)
and “bring in fresh energy form the infinite Orgone ocean,” had been transformed on the night
of May 12, 1954 into a “Spacegun.”
Reich and his associates learned to distinguish between the yellow-reddish pulsing “stars” and
the planets and fixed stars; and established a tenuous causal connection between these machines
“hanging in the sky” and the drought conditions observed in both the environment and in
people. He noted two powdery substances, Orite and Melanor, white and black (respectively),
which caused illness in people and were connected to what he called “EA.”
In Reich’s personal language, the E stood for Energy and the A for Alpha (or primordial). EA
was essentially a metaphor for visitors from outer space. The visitors were unseen:
“encountered in our globe’s atmosphere, observed and experimentally tackled with” (Contact
with Space intro, xxiii) Using the ORUR (Spacegun), one could reach far into space… The
range was limitless, Reich wrote. His team noted that the artifacts blinked and faded out, and
sometimes flared or moved erratically following withdrawal of energy from them.
Reich’s battle was not psychic but chemical, using a material he called Oranur (“ORUR”),
which included small amounts of nuclear material, radium, and radioactive cobalt. Reich’s
Spacegun used ORUR to clear the environment of DOR. (Contact with Space 30) He wrote,
“We could draw off some DOR from zenith and around the horizon first and then orurize from
the west or southwest.” The change in the atmosphere, he wrote, was immediately felt by all
observers.
Perhaps it is in this ability to give life back to lifeless things that Reich saw in himself the
extraterrestrial visitor, Klaatu, the Christ figure in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
61
Disco Volante
In his essay entitled “Disco Volante” (“Flying Disc” in Italian), Paul Laffoley writes that the
film’s director, Robert Wise, did not set out to make a futuristic science fiction film, but a “pulp
fiction pot boiler.” By 1960, he writes, science fiction had become “not Science Fiction of the
future but a set of instructions for the sixth incarnation of ‘The New Age’ (the 1960’s).”
Laffoley explains: “From then on, Science Fiction became ad-hoc research and development for
whoever would care to avail themselves of the ideas put forth. NASA used the Star Trek TV
series for programming directives and inspiration.”
Laffoley points out that Robert Wise had two geniuses in mind in the character Klaatu: “The
first was Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), the Croatian-born American inventor and electrical
engineer, and second, Leon Theremin (Ley Sergyevich Teremin) (1896-1993), physicist and
inventor of the world’s first electronic instrument, the Thereminvox or the Etherphone, in 1920
in the Soviet Union.”
The “Croatian but fully committed to America” and the “Russian but lukewarm Soviet spy”
form the two halves of Klaatu’s personality. These two men, Laffoley claims, did not live in the
future, but in the fullness of the present. Tesla had invented both the radio and the first robot
(Telautomaton Boat) in 1898, and had completed the “death ray” in 1914. Klaatu’s mathematics
had Tesla written all over it, such as, “the habit of Tesla performing mathematical functions by
threes or powers of threes. Klaatu changes his hospital room 306 into 309 by an exponent of
three.”
Laffoley points out that Klaatu’s actions reflect those of Theremin when he waves his hand over
a device on the ship to contact his home planet. This is the Etherphone of Leon Theremin,
inventor of the musical instrument used in science fiction films, the Theremin. Klaatu also
remarks about a train that does not require any tracks, an allusion perhaps to The Lev, an
electronic superhighway proposed by Theremin in the late twenties. The resurrection of Klaatu
(Carpenter = Christ) toward the end of the film is performed by a device mindful of the
Vitatheremin, invented by Theremin in 1928. Laffoley explains: “The device will revive a dead
body within 12 hours of death by means of solenoids aimed at the chakras of the body, which
first is covered with liquid crystal paint.”
For an alternate hat trick, Klaatu deactivates all electrical and mechanical devices around the
world from high noon until 12:30, and brings the Earth to a standstill. When Klaatu is shot in
the arm as he demonstrates a device to study life on other planets, his robot associate, Gort,
begins vaporizing military weaponry with his death ray. Klaatu shouts, “Gort Declato Brosco”
(“stop the death ray”).
The language of Klaatu, Laffoley points out, “is an imagined variation on Medieval Scientific
Latin (circa 1238-1368 A.D.), which has almost English word order.” Klaatu teaches his
language to his female Earthling friend, and total annihilation is averted with the command,
“Gort Klaatu Brada Nikto.” In his “I am Leaving Now” speech, Klaatu says Earth must become
peaceful or be eliminated by the superior weaponry of the ETs (i.e., stop killing each other or
we will kill you). “Gort Baringa,” he commands his robot, as he turns heel in his shimmering
black space suit.
According to Richard Scheib, The Day the Earth Stood Still was originally intended to depict
other parallels between Klaatu and Jesus Christ, but the studio changed those elements of the
62
story. The ones that remained were the ‘resurrection’, the ‘ascension’ to his celestial home
(“Europa”), and the name Mr. Carpenter (and the small matter of the “we will burn you to
cinders” threat of Sodom and Gomorrah). Klaatu is clearly a divine personage—even his ship
(set design by Frank Lloyd Wright) “conforms to the divine proportion or Phi (0.382.../ 0.618...)
in five separate ways, including not only linear but also mass and surface proportions”
(Laffoley)—and he is an authority on all counts, including the most important one: making real
on his threats.
It is not clear whether Reich saw Klaatu—the Superman and Scientist—as himself, or as
antithetical to himself. Perhaps the killer robot, Gort, represented Fascism and Reich’s flight
from Nazi Germany only ten years earlier, as well as his continuing battle with the “Higs.”
UFOs at Orgonon
Above Orgonon, the vapor trails continued. Reich was observing what is known today as
Chemtrails when he wrote, “the vapor emanating from the jets would hold together for a long
time and over miles of sky.” As he continued his experiments, clearing the atmosphere of DOR
as far as 170 miles toward the coast of Maine where his daughter lived, Reich and his team
came upon the realization that they were being watched. “Oranur operations on earth seem to be
carefully watched by living beings from outer space,” he wrote. (Contact with Space 31)
Reich claimed his discovery of Oranur in 1951 had, “drilled a hole, as it were, into the wall
which had for millennia separated man from the universe around him.” In response, the
spacemen came. On September 29, 1954, Reich reported his first UFO sighting: four black-gray
craft flying in formation at exceedingly high speed. The Air Force also took note of activities
and began flying over Orgonon. Reich noted that the Air Force “maintained a most elaborate
system of study of the EA problem,” and had become interested in his Spacegun.
Reich’s family and team at Orgonon continued to suffer from the Oranur effect, which he
claimed was caused by the interaction of concentrated Orgone with just a small amount of
nuclear material. (Wilcox) “We had cleared the sky. Our feet felt heavy when we walked to the
Observatory. … the pull of gravity was stronger …” (Contact with Space 34) They lost their
appetites and the DOR was turning their bath water a dark, cloudy green. Reich called it a
“DOR Emergency”: “the decay of vegetation, crumbling of granite rock, a feverish
atmosphere.” He could not avoid thinking that the far-off red and yellow luminous orbs were
some kind of machines being directed by somebody “madly minded.” (Contact with Space 4546)
But there was another invisible menace at Orgonon that was not measured in any of Reich’s
notes: Did the experiments actually cause the radioactive pollution felt over Orgonon? Alan
Cantwell writes: “While Reich was immersed in the problems of Oranur, his wife Ilse
developed uterine cancer. She was convinced her cancer was connected with the radiation
experiments at Orgonon. While she convalesced from surgery, Reich cruelly filed for divorce.
After it was finalized in September 1951, he began another relationship. The following month
he suffered a major heart attack.”
In 1954, Reich read Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, the official government report
(1953) written by Edward J. Ruppelt, former head of the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book.
Reich stated that the Ruppelt Report revealed the futility of applying the mechanistic method to
“the problems posed by the spacemen.” Reich also became aware at this time that the Report
63
had contained a mention of his work to the effect that it was, “hot because it wasn’t official and
the reason it wasn’t official was because it was so hot.” (p 88) He stated: “How much hotter it
had become with the EA event on October 10, 1954.”
Yes, radioactive particles were in the air at Orgonon. One wonders if the term “hot” might refer
to Reich’s potential instigation of a nuclear encounter with the Watchers, whoever they were.
Reich was aware of this possibility and had initially kept his experiments secret, since he feared
they would precipitate an “interplanetary war.”
Mass Rumours Run Amuck
“Something floats over the World, over this old world of ours, weary of rolling through infinite
space,” wrote Spanish journalist turned ufologist, Carlos Murciano, in September 1968 (Source:
Inexplicata) “There are things all around. Things you never see because you don’t have the
words, you don’t have the names. You only learned the 26-letter alphabet,” says Grant Morrison
in The Invisibles.
Psychologist Carl Jung wondered if the “UFO” is not a flying machine but a symbol coming
from the modern technological era. In his book, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen
in the Skies (published posthumously in 1964), Jung called this modern myth a “psychic
disturbance.” Using a melding of mysticism and psychoanalysis, he likened the UFO to the
mandala, the symbol of totality and order. He referred to the circle as a symbol for Plato’s
world-soul: “a supra-celestial place where the ideas of all things are stored up.” He stated that
on one level UFOs can be thought of as “souls,” and on another level as “gods.” He wrote that
the simple round form portrays “the archetype of the self” and serves to “unite irreconcilable
opposites.”
Of course, one should realize that Jung was initially speaking here of dream visions reported by
his patients which contained UFOs in the skies. Yes, the UFOs were invading our dreams, and
Jung took this to mean that the dreamer should “remember his own soul and his own
wholeness.” Yet, following the American “occupant” and “contactee” reports of the 1950s,
Jung’s thinking began to vacillate. He could not figure out if the reports were of real spaceships
in the skies or whether they were “psychic rumours.” He wavered between “manned machines”
or “species of living creature.” He was unable to deduce whether “the whole thing is a rumour
with concomitant singular and mass hallucination, or a downright fact.” (Jung)
Jung noted that the “universal mass rumour was reserved for our enlightened, rationalistic age,”
i.e. the era of mass media communication. At the time of Jung’s death in 1961, the UFO
abduction reports had not yet surfaced. The 1961 abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in Exeter,
New Hampshire was not to become public until October 1966 when their story was published in
Look Magazine. Across the ocean Jung had apparently read the news reports and concluded
that, “As they did no harm and refrained from all hostile acts, it was assumed that their
appearance over the earth was due to curiosity or to the need for aerial reconnaissance.”
Jung later wavered, noting that, “Recently their harmlessness has been doubted,” and writing,
“the dangerous development of atomic physics and nuclear fission had caused a certain disquiet
on our neighboring planets and necessitated a more accurate survey from the air.” This mass
rumour caused people to feel they were being “observed by space beings,” he wrote.
It is just this question of hostile intent that must be addressed with regard to Wilhelm Reich’s
activities at Orgonon. Official UFO reports at this time indicate that UFOs did not show any
64
purposeful hostility aside from aerial defensive maneuvers (Robert Dean / youtube). It is
suspected that the military (possibly via radar) shot down and captured one or more UFOs
beginning in 1947 in New Mexico (and perhaps earlier) for purposes of reverse engineering of
the craft (Corso). The seeds of extraterrestrial hostility had been planted intentionally into the
culture by the military-industrial-entertainment propaganda complex. Had Wilhelm Reich’s
hysteria about spacemen been created and manipulated?
Indeed, Reich’s Spacegun battles foreshadow by only a few years the first satellite in orbit: the
Russian Sputnik of 1957. Soon the Earth would actually be surrounded by a matrix of space
machines hanging in the sky. The Eyes of the Watchers would become part of the natural world,
or Nature 2. The first inkling of the integration of nature with machine would begin with a great
mass rumour over Orgonon. These are perhaps the “extraordinary events” Reich foresaw in The
Day the Earth Stood Still.
Reich warned of the power of the Oranur Spacegun if it got into the fascist hands of the
Hoodlums In Government (Higs), which we can assume it eventually did. The other enemy was
“at our backs,” Reich wrote of the Higs: “the malignant activities … of frustrated, dorized,
neurotic individuals of our own kind,” as well as “… the conspiracy of corrupt, ignorant
officials, the Higs in the FDA,” who had informed the judge at the hearing that, “Orgone
Energy does not exist.”
A U.S. court issued an order on March 19, 1954 to stop all OR activities, including publication
of his experimental research at Orgonon. Reich deliberately refused. He wrote, “Early
regulation and coordination of its use is paramount to planetary safety from abuse by Higs.” In
“Atoms for Peace vs. The Higs,” Reich wrote, “Our EA work was infinitely more important
than an order which had been inspired and unlawfully obtained by Moscow Higs.” (Contact
with Space 43)
Road Trip 1954
On January 28, 1954, Reich began his first contact with the U.S. Air Force, reporting to them in
writing of a UFO sighting two miles from his house. Dr. Reich filled out a UFO sighting report,
which is reproduced in full in Contact with Space. Later that year, Reich requested assistance
from the Air Force to transport nuclear materials (ORUR) across the country to set up a new
laboratory in Tucson, Arizona. His request was denied, so he and his team set out on October 18
to make the 3,000 mile journey from Rangeley to Tucson.
Reich’s road trip is described by Wes Wallace in a 1996 article in Newspeak entitled “Wilhelm
Reich On the Road.” He observes: “Reich’s own account of his journey by car from Maine to
Arizona is both poetic and apocalyptic, competing well with passages of Kerouac or Nabakov.
But Reich’s point of view is both more hopeless and more visionary. One sometimes wonders
just how much of what he describes could be metaphor, perhaps a projection of his internal
landscape.” In Sperryville, PA, for instance, Reich spoke to people “in whose faces despair and
listlessness reflected the desperate state of affairs in their environment. They knew about the
severity of their situation: ‘Meadows and fields are burnt up, wells gone dry … people are sick,
slowed down, dying …” Wallace wonders, “What is this land? Is it some kind of vision, a
descent into hell reminiscent of Greek myth?”
There is a feeling of both saturation and foreboding—“a kind of imagery that just doesn’t come
from nowhere.” Staff member Robert McCullough’s road-trip narrative describes things just as
65
bleakly: “We stopped at a restaurant for supper. It had fluorescent lights. Everything was dead
in it: the waitresses looked and acted dead, the service was horrible, tempers all around were
short.” Along the road trip the jet trails are described: “Three jet trails with vapor trails were
seen between 9:30 and 9:43 above the barrier, flying from east to west. The vapor trails were
short and rather thin.” Reich describes the DOR barrier that lays across the mountains, “like a
sleeping animal that was being tickled: it moved somewhat but refused to wake up.” In another
strange passage, he writes: “An atomic bomb was exploded on March 7 at 5:30 mountain time.
We drew mostly from zenith all that day.” (Wallace)
In another bizarre passage from Contact with Space, Reich charters a small plane to transport
the nuclear materials (ORUR) in a football-size container, which was towed on a cord 100 feet
behind the tail of the plane. The two former Air Force pilots are given a set of instructions,
which include taking ‘CPM’ counts and visual observations of each other’s faces for redness
every half hour. They are instructed to inform all landing fields of their radioactive cargo and
keep the container at least ten feet from any metallic object while on the ground.
The Higs Close In
In March 1957, Reich was examined by a psychiatrist at Danbury Federal Prison, where he was
diagnosed with “Paranoia manifested by delusions of grandiosity and persecution and ideas of
reference.” Only a year and a half earlier, he had read in the New York Times a story touting
General MacArthur’s statement (to the visiting mayor of Naples on October 7, 1955), that
another war would be “double suicide.” Reich quoted directly from the article, entitled “Space
War Possible is MacArthur Hint”: “He believes that because of the developments of science all
countries on earth will have to unite to survive and to make a common front against attack by
people from other planets… The mayor had noted also the General’s opinion that the politics of
the future will be cosmic or interplanetary.” (Contact with Space, Preface, xxiii)
General MacArthur’s delusions of grandiosity and persecution had gone unnoticed at the time
and, indeed, Ronald Reagan would reiterate the same “ideas of reference” in 1983 during his
(Teflon) presidency to inaugurate the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program, a.k.a. Star
Wars. Some delusions of grandiosity are allowed, and even prepared as propaganda spin.
Wilhelm Reich died of heart failure in prison on November 3, 1957, in Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania at the age of 60, just days before he was to go before the parole board. On June 5,
1956, FDA officials traveled to Orgonon and destroyed Reich’s Orgone Accumulators and
burned his books. Later, on August 25, 1956, six tons of Reich’s research notes, journals and
books were burned in New York’s Gansevoort incinerator. On March 17, 1960, more of his
research materials and books were incinerated.
Attitudes toward Reich’s work range from “genius” to “madman.” It has not been the intent of
this essay to make any assessment of Reich’s personal psychology, but to tell what would seem
today to be a Tall Tale of Spacegun ‘54.
Footnote
1. Contact with Space is out of print and can only be purchased for a couple hundred dollars
from the Orgone Institute in Rangeley, Maine. Wes Wallace traveled to the Institute around
1996 and obtained a copy. This article quotes from that copy.
66
References
Cantwell, Alan. “Dr. Wilhelm Reich: Scientific Genius – or Medical Madman?,”
(www.whale.to/a/cantwell.html)
Corso, Philip. The Day After Roswell, 1997.
d’Arc, Joan. “The Land of Superlatives and Science Fiction,” (Paranoia, issue 31, Winter
2003).
Koppang, Randy. Camouflage Through Limited Disclosure (www.thebooktree.com), and “The
Revelation Will Not be Televised” (Paranoia, issue 46, Winter 2007).
Kottmeyer, Martin. “The Day the Earth Stood Still: Government Education Film?,” Magonia
Supplement (www.users.waitrose.com/~magonia/ms52.htm)
Laffoley, Paul. “Disco Volante,” HunterGatheress Journal, Vol. 1, 2008.
Reich, Wilhelm. Contact with Space, Core Pilot Press, New York, 1957.
Scheib, Richard. “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Moria Film Review
(www.moria.co.nz/sf/dtess.htm)
Wallace, Wes. “Wilhelm Reich On the Road” (Rangeley, Maine to Tucson, Arizona, Oct. 1829, 1954), Newspeak Magazine 1996 (published by Joan d’Arc, out of print).
Wilcox, Roger. “The Oranur Experiment, A Skeptical Scrutiny of the Works and Theories of
Wilhelm Reich,” http://pw1.netcom.com/~rogermw/Reich/oranur.html
67
Messages from Space
A Chronology of Anomalous Radio Signals
In 1960, physicist Ronald Bracewell proposed the possibility that a highly technological society
might send a messenger probe into circular orbit of a star in the mid-point of that star’s habitable
zone. He proposed that the hypothetical robot probe (now known as a “Bracewell probe”) would
contain radio equipment for use in communicating with another advanced technological society.
In his book, The Galactic Club, Bracewell suggested incoming messages from an extraterrestrial
intelligence could be tuned to one of our TV bands. He counseled, we should “be alert for the
first message, which may show up on the TV set of any one of us.” Bracewell advised,
“conditions would be more favorable for reception [of ET signals] late at night after the local
stations have gone off the air.”
He also considered the kind of message ET might send. Some scientists expected such a message
to consist of a string of prime numbers, but Bracewell doubted they would use their program
time trying to prove they could count. He expected instead “a little poetry or art,” and, perhaps,
“a program that would rivet our attention.” Regarding the anticipated message, he wrote, “a long
story runs the risk that we tune in near the end. A short one repeated again and again bores us to
tears for decades while we try to acknowledge.” Instead, “messages might be nested within
messages—short items, frequently repeated, between episodes of a longer story, contained within
an even longer communication.” (Bracewell 52-53)
Bracewell believed that messenger probes would be sent by a “Class 2” civilization, one of “10
million communities more advanced than we, which are distributed thinly throughout the
galaxy.” He suggested, “possibly such a program is currently being engaged in by our nearest
superior community,” from 30 to 300 light-years away. He gave this hypothetical civilization the
name Superon. He wrote, “After settling into the approximate orbit where the inhabited planet
should be, the probe begins a program of investigation, supplementing its internal power source
with stellar power.” The probe would then listen for radio broadcasts. Bracewell speculated that
a probe could have arrived in the Solar system before the advent of radio. (Bracewell 71-72)
The probe would make its presence known by sending radio signals on any frequency used by a
terrestrial transmitter. Reports would be sent back to Superon. He further speculated, “If an alien
probe near the earth picks up a broadcast from a radio transmitter and amplifies and retransmits
it, you will hear first the direct transmission followed by a repeat equal to the time taken to travel
out to the probe and back. The general effect will be like an echo.” (Bracewell 73) This widely
documented phenomenon is known as Long-Delayed Echoes (LDEs). Before exploring this
territory, a history of the first anomalous radio signals is in order.
During the years 1899-1924, three scientists independently observed radio signals suggestive of
interplanetary communications. I will begin with the two pioneers of radio, Tesla and Marconi.
Tesla’s Experiments in High Frequency
In 1899, inventor Nikola Tesla began conducting experiments at Colorado Springs in an attempt
to identify the “radio frequency” of the planet. Tesla theorized that, “the planet Earth has a
circuit identification of its own,” and with the proper equipment, he believed he could broadcast
this identity to the universe. In fact, his Colorado laboratory “was designed in keeping with
68
Tesla’s plans to make the terrestrial globe a propagation device for the transmission of energy.”
Tesla’s communications could have been detected by an extraterrestrial probe in the solar
system. In fact, the “multi-million volt surges of radio noise” he transmitted were intended to
produce electrical waves that would be perceptible on nearby planets. (Jackson)
On or about July 28, 1899, using an invention he called a Magnifying Transmitter, Tesla claimed
he received coherent radio signals from space. During a pause in experiments, Tesla became
aware of incoming signals of periodicity, number and order. In a Collier’s Weekly article in
March 1901, Tesla explained his surety that these signals were not due to electrical disturbances.
He stated, “Although I could not decipher their meaning, it was impossible for me to think of
them as having been accidental. The feeling is growing on me that I had been the first to hear the
greeting of one planet to another.”
Although the signals may have been attributable to then-unknown quasars or pulsars, Tesla
continued to believe he had received intelligent messages from space. He became increasingly
reluctant to discuss the subject with the media, since he had been ridiculed in the press for
believing the signals to be from Mars. On July 11, 1937, the New York Times reported on Tesla’s
invention of an apparatus that could transmit energy through space “to any distance without the
slightest dispersion.” It was later revealed that the name of this device was the “Teslascope.”
According to Tesla’s assistant, Arthur Matthews, Tesla had two massive magnifying transmitters
built in Canada. Matthews claimed Tesla invented the Teslascope to communicate with beings
on other planets, explaining that it “takes in cosmic ray signals,” which are stepped down to
audio. “Speak into one end, and the signal goes out the other end as a cosmic ray emitter.” The
existence of the Teslascope has never been confirmed, but there’s a drawing of it in Matthews’
book, The Wall of Light. (Nelson)
The Experiments of Marconi
On March 27, 1899, Marconi was concluding his first experiments in wireless transmission
across the English Channel, having successfully transmitted the Marconi-code letter “V” from
France to England, a distance of 50 miles. (1) On December 12, 1901, Marconi successfully
transmitted the code-letter “S” from Cornwall, England to St. Johns, Newfoundland, a distance
of 1800 miles.
In September of 1921, twenty-two years after these first experiments, while conducting
atmospheric experiments in the Mediterranean on his floating laboratory, the 220 foot yacht, the
Elettra, Marconi detected what he described as an interplanetary communication. Marconi
reported that the signals registered high in the meter band. The pulses were regular and
apparently consisted of an unfamiliar code. The only signal he recognized was the letter “V”
from his own code: the Marconi code. He believed the signals had originated in outer space.
In his discussion of the signals in a New York Times article on September 3, 1921, Marconi
stated that he would expect interplanetary communications to take the form of “transmission of
pictures accompanied by a simple code.” This statement anticipated the following “listening
experiment” of Dr. David Todd three years later.
National Radio Silence Day
According to the theories of astronomer, Frank Drake, an advanced civilization would “send out
pulses in clusters, a series of pulses, followed by a pause … the number of signals in each pulse
69
could stand for intensity of light or dark, and we could build up a picture on the basis of the
information received.” (Jackson & Hohmann)
On August 22, 1924, as Mars passed close to the Earth, David Todd, professor
of Astronomy at Amherst College, began what he called a listening
experiment. Todd asked the U.S. government to request, through diplomatic
channels, that all countries with high-power transmitters turn off their
equipment for five minutes every hour during a 24-hour period, called
National Radio Silence Day.
Incoming radio signals during the test period were recorded on a radiophoto message device
called a Jenkins Radio Camera, which was attached to a receiver and set to a wavelength of
6,000 meters. The radio signals were converted to light signals, which were then printed on a
five-inch-wide reel of photosensitive tape. Any radio signals that were within the limits of the
wavelength would cause a tiny lamp to flash and the flashes would expose the light-sensitive
strip. The strip was developed on a motion picture film rack, which ultimately recorded sixteen
frames of pulses in clusters, each frame separated by a 30-minute pause. Todd also received the
Morse code "S," among other codes.
It is unknown whether anyone ever tried to decipher this “picture” as an intelligent communiqué.
However, a paper delivered to the American Rocket Society in 1962 did note something
interesting about the messages received by the three radio pioneers. The response time between
Marconi’s transmission of the code “V” in March, 1899 and the code “V” signal recognized by
Marconi in September, 1921, was 22 years. Likewise, the response time between the
transmission of the Morse code “S” by Tesla in December, 1901 and the monitoring of the
Morse code “S” plus additional codes by Todd in August, 1924, was 22 years.
Although the hypothesis requires further study, it is worth noting that if we were to consider the
monitored signals as an intelligent response to those sent by Tesla and Marconi, the 22-year
response time places the distance of the sender at approximately 10.8 to 11.8 light years away,
which is the vicinity of Epsilon, Eridani, Tau Ceti. (Jackson & Hohmann)
Now we come back to the subject of Long Delayed Echoes
In 1927, radio telegraph engineer, Jorgan Hals, and physicist, Carl Störmer, both of Oslö, began
a discussion of curious radio echo phenomena being reported on both sides of the Atlantic. While
normal radio echoes took one-seventh of a second to circle the entire Earth, Hals had
documented echoes from his own pulsed Morse code transmissions with a three second delay.
The two were well aware that the Earth’s ionosphere reflected radio waves, and that reflections
from the moon can bounce back in 2.7 seconds. However, in this case, the echoes were of a
longer delay than could be explained by such reflections. It was as though someone was
recording the transmissions and retransmitting them. Hals believed the echoes were coming from
the vicinity of the moon.
The two began a program of signal pulse transmissions from Eindhoven, Norway, to test the
hypothesis that the long-delayed echoes were of artificial origin. Anomalous echoes were
received in April 1927 and October of 1927. In September of 1927, they transmitted and waited
sixteen days before receiving long delayed echoes. The echoes began to vary from three seconds
to fifteen seconds. Their colleague, B. van der Pol, repeated the experiment, increasing the time
interval to thirty seconds. The echoes came in at intervals ranging from three to fifteen seconds.
70
He then continued to transmit at intervals of thirty seconds. There was silence for thirteen days,
whereupon the echoes came in at intervals varying from three to thirty seconds. He published his
findings in the journal Nature in 1928.
One explanation for LDEs is that the echoes are bouncing off streams of solar plasma. Charged
particles in plasma are known to bounce back radio waves, however, some LDEs are too strong
to be explained by this theory. A second explanation is that pockets in the ionosphere can capture
a signal and bounce it back after a few seconds. Some believe this is implausible.
Stormer published his findings in August 1929, and attributed the echoes to “auroral causes,”
however, if this were the case, what would be the explanation for the different time delays noted,
a list which reads 8-11-15-3-13-8-8-12-15-13-8-8? “Either there were a number of reflective
objects out there to account for these time differences or something else was happening.”
(Epilogue: Earth Probe)
Scottish science fiction writer, Duncan Lunan (2), writing years later in his
1974 book, Interstellar Contact, believed that these variations in delay time
had been too extraordinary to be natural, and attributed them to a space probe
in the Solar system. He suggested the hypothetical probe was “using the full
time base supplied by the terrestrial signals,” illustrating it was adapting its
communications to those it had received. (Lunan 224) He wondered, “If all
the echoes were returned by an artificial object at the distance of the moon,
the variations in delay time should carry some kind of meaning.” He
wondered if the probe was attempting to convey some kind of picture. He
argued, “when we increased our time-base to thirty seconds, the probe took
thirteen days to prepare a new map.”
Contact with Epsilon Boötes
Inspired by the ideas of Ronald Bracewell, Lunan wrote, “Should we be
surprised if the beginning of its message were a TV image of a constellation?”
Lunan, a member of ASTRA, Association in Scotland To Research into
Astronautics, wondered if a message might be conveyed by the delay time
itself.
In the early 1970s, using the careful records of the 1920s Norwegian experiments, he began
graphing the echo patterns on a simple x-y graph. He plotted the delay times, in seconds, each
represented by a black dot along the x-axis of the graph (There is a diagram of this in your
package). When he connected the dots, he noted, “The main figure of the diagram has a striking
but incomplete resemblance to the constellation Boötes, the Herdsman.” He wrote: “It would
seem that Epsilon Boötes was the star the probe came from, and had we returned the completed
map to it, it would have ‘known’ it had contacted intelligent beings.” (Lunan 226)
Yet, there was one problem with Lunan’s hypothesis, as he saw it. Relative to an Earth observer
today, the dot that represented the star Arcturus, the Alpha star in the constellation Boötes, was
plotted well above and to the left of its true position. After much study, Lunan arrived at a
solution, and wrote, “The probe could have arrived here thousands of years ago, compiled its
maps, and then ceased operations until we invented radio on Earth.” Lunan reasoned, “We can’t
date the arrival accurately by Arcturus because the star’s motion in the heavens is not regular …
a seven degree displacement would correspond to an interval of 12,600 years.”
71
He later corrected the date to 13,000 years. He then found that if he rotated his
star map slightly to allow for the curvature of the heavens the star points were
lined up. (Lunan 229) He hypothesized that the probe from Epsilon Boötes
was situated near the L4 or L5 “Lagrange” points in the moon’s orbit around
the Earth, a place of equilibrium of the gravity of the two bodies.
Duncan Lunan’s Star Maps
The Norwegian radio pioneers continued to hear long-delayed echoes in experiments conducted
at Eindhoven between February and May of 1929. In the same year, two French naval vessels
were sent to Indo-China to study the effects of an eclipse of the Sun on radio propagation,
specifically on the phenomenon of long-delayed echoes. (Lunan 234)
Using a 500-watt transmitter, the two ships transmitted signals for the first ten minutes of every
half hour. On May 9, the day of the eclipse, the same signals were sent again: “Two dots were
sent every thirty seconds on a 25-meter wavelength, in a fixed musical sequence to aid
identification and timing of the echoes.” Numerous echoes were recorded, with delay times
ranging from one to thirty-two seconds. The marked intensity of the strong echoes was “too great
for natural reflection at such apparent distances,” but this point was apparently missed at the
time. (Lunan 234) Regarding the eclipse, Lunan noted, the “overall intensity of the echoes
decreased as the Sun approached the horizon, as we would expect if there were a probe in the
moon Equilateral position descending from the meridian.” (Lunan 235)
The full report on the French expedition was published in 1930. Reading the report in the 1970s,
Lunan wondered if the message had eluded them. He suggested, “the May 9 signals might be an
attempt to communicate complex information in the form of visual puzzles, in hopes to arouse
the interest of a culture more advanced than ours.” (Lunan 236) He attempted to solve the visual
puzzle, better late than never.
Lunan Solves the Big Puzzle?
As Bracewell had proposed, “messages might be nested within messages—short items,
frequently repeated, sandwiched between episodes of a longer story.” He had also expected “a
little poetry or art” in the transmissions. This inspired Lunan to transcribe the complicated
sequences by separating them into “panels.” By October of 1972, Lunan had “cracked” the first
ten panels of the May 9 long-delayed echoes received by the French expedition. A few of
Lunan’s panel diagrams are included in your handout with a brief version of his explanation of
the diagrams, which I will now read:
Panel 1 – Represents the probe’s launch from Epsilon Boötes, a two sun system, apparently
launched by boosting it past the minor sun against the star’s orbital motion, giving it a
gravitational slingshot effect. The main figure could be either a ramscoop or a photon rocket.
The probe moves from left to right and is captured by the Earth-Moon system. Once it takes up
its station it follows the same curve about the Sun as the moon itself. The probe begins its
retrofire and slows down enough to be captured by the Sun.
Panel 2 – Portrays the probe’s arrival, hints at its operations in Earth orbit, and confirms the
probe is in a stable position in the leading equilateral position left of the moon as seen from the
northern hemisphere. The remaining puzzle is the curve HJ, showing a second body orbiting the
Earth. That orbit is not stable; the moon would perturb anything positioned there.
72
Panel 3 – Tells us that the probe placed a second body in orbit. Lunan suggests the probe’s
companion is a “laser reflector” used to signal home to Epsilon Boötes. Accepting the data in
panel 2 to be correct, the reflector’s distance from the Earth is 164,300 miles and the time it takes
to orbit the Earth is 15.73 days. (Later panels (10 and 11) confirm that the reflector uses optical
interferometry to keep its “Watch on the Sun.”)
Panel 4 – Provides a “key” to panel 5, showing the retrofire approach through the solar system.
Panel 5 – Compares the Epsilon Boötes planetary system with the Solar system, and shows the
probe’s entry into the Solar system, identified by rows of nine dots. It shows the probe began its
retrofire at the orbit of Uranus, and was captured by the Sun in its swing around Jupiter. At times
the star map shows Neptune as the outer planet (perhaps it was at the time the probe arrived).
Lunan noted, “Poseidon, the tenth planet we may have, was not detected since if it exists it has a
highly-inclined orbit.”
Panel 6 – Shows the entry trajectory of the probe as it swings around Jupiter, compares our sun
with its two suns, and shows that their planetary system has seven planets. Located between
panels 5 and 7, panel 6 “is beautiful in itself … its prismatic layout” is an artistic representation
of those two panels.
Panel 7 – Is “intellectually beautiful in its logical clarity.” It is so prominent that perhaps we
were expected to crack it first, which Lunan did. Panel 7 can be read as follows:
AB – start here
BC – our home is Epsilon Boötes
CDE – which is a double star
FG, GH – we live on the sixth planet of seven, check that, the sixth of seven
EM – counting outwards from our sun
FEG, GN – which is the larger of the two
HO, OP – our sixth planet has one moon, our fourth planet has three, and our first and third
planets each have one
GQ, QR – our probe is in the orbit of your moon
ST – this updates the earlier position of Arcturus
“ST tells us that by May 1929 the probe had more systems on-line, including visual sensors, and
had updated its previous star maps. It couldn’t correct the map without redrawing the whole of
panel 7.” He wrote, “If we had had the capability in 1929, we might have found the probe ready
to communicate by laser.” Considering the planet’s close proximity to its sun, he wrote, “we can
guess that the sixth planet was not the probe-makers’ original home.” Strangely, Lunan alluded
to the fact that if this planet were their original home, the probe makers would be “giants.”
(Lunan 237-39)
I will now leave the long delayed echoes of the 1920s and continue my chronology of anomalous
radio signals.
More Radio Signals from Space
In 1953, astronomer Dr. Lincoln La Paz, of the University of New Mexico, noted radio echoes
emanating from an object in space. The U.S. Department of Defense set up a committee to
investigate the echoes and appointed Dr. Clyde Tombaugh to chair the committee. He was given
access to all information on the mystery object. Tombaugh is the American astronomer famous
for his discovery of Pluto in 1930, and La Paz is a meteor expert who is described as a Roswell
73
witness in the Majestic documents. La Paz also worked on the Manhattan Project with Werner
von Braun. Both Tombaugh and La Paz personally reported sightings of UFOs. The committee’s
findings were never publicly released after Tombaugh’s briefing of military officials at the
Pentagon in 1954. (“Epilogue: Earth Probe”)
In January of 1960, “two sizeable objects” estimated to weigh 15 tons each were detected in
polar orbit. The following month, the U.S. National Space Surveillance Control Centre (NSSCC)
officially admitted that an unidentified “satellite” was in polar orbit. Again, official conclusions
were never released to the public. (“Epilogue: Earth Probe”)
In October of 1958, tracking devices at Cape Canaveral, Florida, began to
pick up strong radio signals on the bandwidth used by one of the Russian
Sputniks, which had gone down into the ocean months earlier. In his report,
“Signals from Space,” in Stranger Than Science, Frank Edwards wrote that
the signals came in for more than three hours each day. Other stations began
to record them, and at least two giant radio telescopes in the U.S. had plotted
the position of the object at 3,000 miles above Earth, apparently headed in the
direction of the moon. The object was traveling in excess of 9,000 miles per
hour, alternately slowing down and speeding up. The U.S. quickly tried to
ascertain whether it was a Russian rocket, but it was learned the Russians had
not launched one.
Suddenly, the object veered off into space; however, since reports of radio
signals from the object had been published in the newspapers, a cover story
was in order. First, an unnamed Lockheed scientist likened the signals to those
transmitted by Sputnik One. Following this, scientific trade papers hinted that,
“ionized gases from rocket exhaust fumes had been tracked to the vicinity of
the moon and beyond.” The “fatal flaw” in the man-made cover story,
Edwards noted, was that, “radio telescopes cannot track any known rocket
exhaust fume, ionized or otherwise, from here to the moon.”
Contact From Ursa Major
On October 29, 1971, while conducting “remote biological sensing” experiments in Riverside
County, CA, L.G. Lawrence, field manager of the Ecola Institute, intercepted a train of tightly
spaced pulses at discrete intervals for over 33 minutes. During a short rest period, Lawrence’s
field equipment, an “organic transducer complex,” had accidentally remained pointed at the
constellation Ursa Major. (Nelson)
On April 10, 1972, Lawrence documented a similar phenomenon. The signals grew weaker, and
“appeared to be transmitted at great intervals ranging from weeks to months, possibly years.” He
noted a “faint, coherent, binary-type phenomenon … at intervals between a rapid series of pulse
trains ranging from ... 3 to 10 minutes.”
In his paper entitled, “Communication by Accident,” Lawrence verified that his equipment was
“impervious to electromagnetic radiation and free of internal anomalies.” He described the
communication as an “incremental series of deep, harmonious oscillations resembling nonsense
chatter or background modulations.” He stated it contained “discrete spacing patterns and
apparent repetitions of sequences.” He noted a “fascinating degree of enchantment” after playing
74
the tape several times over a period of weeks. His team tentatively concluded that these were
“biological-type interstellar communications signals.” (Nelson)
The Wow! Signal
On August 15, 1977, the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University picked up an
anomalous signal of 72 seconds' duration in the 10 kHz bandwidth signal. Known as “the Wow!
Signal,” in reference to the word “Wow!” scribbled in the margin of the computer printout by Dr.
Jerry Ehman, the signal remains unexplained. Said Ehman, “At first, I thought it was an earth
signal reflected from space debris, but after I studied it further, I found that couldn’t be the case.”
(“Wow! Signal Page”)
Researchers have analyzed the Wow! Signal and have found that the source was moving with the
background stars (i.e., not tumbling or moving fast). Terrestrial interference from
telecommunications equipment, aircraft or spacecraft has been ruled out. Judging from the
antenna coordinates, the signal was not coming from any nearby stars. It was not a satellite
because the frequency band around 1420 MHz is off limits to satellites or earth-based
broadcasting. Just the same, an investigation of all satellite orbits ruled out satellites. It was not a
planet because none of the planets were close to the source emission, and a planet would not
generate a narrow band radio emission. The emission did not fit the pattern of any known
planetary thermal-type emission.
More than one hundred searches of the same region of the sky have been made with no repeat of
the signal. The actual duration of the Wow! Signal is unknown, since it could have been emitting
for years. The signal fell on the telescope for only 72 seconds. (www.bigear.org/wow20th.htm)
Greg Radio
In the 1980s, electrical engineer Greg HoDOWinik experimented with his “gravity wave
detector,” which detected “coherent modulations” in the microwave radiation. His theory argues
that radio waves travel at the speed of light, but gravitational signals are instantaneous. He
published his first report in 1986, in Radio Astronomy, describing the audio type gravitational
signals he had been receiving. The signals consisted of several tones.
In a letter to the editor of Radio-Electronics magazine dated July 23, 1988, he told of his contact
with an apparently extraterrestrial communicator, explaining that he had just that morning
recorded Morse code-like pulses. By August of 1988, he had become aware that the signals were
in the form of digital communication, either dots and dashes, or ones and zeros, similar to Morse
code symbols in pulse form. He found the most persistent symbol to be “SE.” He believed the
signals “came from either the Auriga-Perseus region near my zenith or the Boötes region under
my Earth position.” (Nelson)
On August 26, 1988, he sent the message “Greg Radio” during a local gravity signal
transmission test. The signals he received following this contained the letters G and D. Two days
later, he received a strong, repeated message of “Greg Radio,” ending with a series of “SE”
codes. On October 11, 1988, he sent a series of “Greg Radio” messages at normal code speed of
five words per minute, followed by a series of “KKTT.” The series was later received at a slower
speed, followed by “KKTT.”
On October 12, 1988, he sent a series of A’s and R’s, with “Greg Radio” occasionally inserted,
followed by “Greg Radio” sent as a series of five repetitions of each letter. He wrote, “Sufficient
75
messages have now been received to indicate that perhaps a serious attempt to contact this writer
was being made by some unknown communicator.”
Among the reasons he believed the communicator to be extraterrestrial were that: “(a) the
messages were in simple code pulses, which would be expected if one intelligent civilization
were to try to contact another using pulses; (b) the ‘communicator’ had recognized the coherent
nature of “Greg Radio” and was possibly using that sequence of codes in various fashions; (c)
the communicator had not responded to ‘word’ messages or the amateur Q-code signals. …
While some apparently Morse code signals were being used, the communicator was not familiar
with such usage, other than recognizing the coherent nature of the signals.”
Since the messages were received at a specific hour, Greg believed they were coming from a
definite source in space, specifically from “the general direction of the constellation
Andromeda.” By 1989, his communications had become more peculiar. In a letter to Robert
Nelson he stated that other ETs had sometimes joined in, some of whom used methods of
communication such as tones and what sounded like guttural voices. It has not been ascertained
whether these communications were a hoax or were genuine, but he wrote that his
communications had led to an exchange of arithmetic equations, including, “Pi to seven decimal
places.” He claimed that in discussions of our nine-planet solar system, ET insisted there were
ten planets. (Nelson)
The last entry in this chronology is Object 1991 VG, which was originally catalogued as an
asteroid.
Object 1991VG
In April 1995, the British journal, The Observatory, published an article by Duncan Steel, author
of Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets, regarding the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Artifacts
(SETA). He reported on a ten-meter object in orbit around the Sun, discovered in November of
1991 by the Spacewatch Telescope at Kitt Peak. He noted that in 1991 the object had passed just
300,000 miles from the Earth. The object, now known as 1991 VG, was observed again in April
1992 by a larger telescope at Kitt Peak. He believed it could be a candidate for an alien probe.
(“Epilogue: Earth Probe”)
Steel’s conclusion was based on the two rather unnatural characteristics of the object. First, it
was highly reflective, with “strong, rapid brightness variations,” a characteristic of artificial
satellites that rotate for stability. Second, it had an orbit of “low eccentricity and inclination, and
an orbital size slightly larger than that of the Earth.” He argued against the object being an
asteroid due to both its close orbit and its Earth-like orbit, which would cause it to be unstable.
Steel also argued against the object being a returned earth-launched rocket body left in orbit. The
candidates for such are few, most of those were smaller objects, and most of them have already
re-entered Earth atmosphere. Further, he noted, if the object was a returned rocket body, it is a
fluke that it was observed. As of 1995, Steel, not known for drawing far-fetched conclusions,
maintained his stance that 1991 VG could be “an alien space probe on a controlled
reconnaissance mission.” (Steel)
LDEs and Space Probes: Hidden or Hypothetical History?
Although not conclusive evidence, these little-known examples of potential intelligent radio
contact are certainly intriguing. If anything, Lunan’s scenario might serve as a guide in the
future. In fact, his idea is taken to its fullest import in Carl Sagan’s book and film, Contact,
76
where the embedded message is decoded to find instructions for building a wormhole through
space. Although Lunan now wonders whether he construed his “visual puzzle” correctly, he
believes the LDEs were of intelligent design.
A 1952 study concluded that the LDE phenomena were the result of “planar reflections from a
system fixed in space relative to the earth and moving [in orbit] permanently with the earth.” If
this describes the moon, any delayed echoes longer than 2.7 seconds are anomalous.
Another study in 1962 concluded, “The signals monitored by Tesla in 1899, by Marconi in 1921,
and by Hals, Stormer, and van der Pol in 1927, are characteristically simple. They are basically a
‘response in kind,’ repeating the original transmission, although on a higher frequency, and
performing, at least in part, a recognition function.” As discussed, it is possible the long delayed
echoes of the 1920s were an intelligent response to Tesla’s 1899 high-frequency experiments.
In a 1980 report in Icarus, Robert Freitas suggested that the Earth-Moon libration orbits might be
“the most universally convenient meeting places for alien spacecraft exploring arbitrary stellar
systems.” Freitas observed that such “halo” orbits could be “the best places to begin a search for
evidence of ancient spacecraft parked in the Earth-Moon system.”
A preliminary search was undertaken in 1979, at Leuschner Observatory, for artificial objects in
the moon libration orbits, under various conditions, with a visual limit of about 14th magnitude.
The preliminary results suggested, “no ancient spacecraft, or other object of reflectivity greater
than lunar albedo, having the size of Skylab or larger, is parked at L4, L5, or in any of the
predicted halo orbits in the Earth-Moon system.” However, there could be objects that are
smaller or otherwise harder to detect. Freitas recommended the continuation of the search for
such artifacts. In fact, many SETA observing programs focus on the search for reflective objects
known as "Dyson spheres." (4)
In June 1998, an article by Lunan appeared in Analog magazine. He continues to believe the
LDE communications were of intelligent design, but he has updated his translation of the
message. Lunan now believes the ETs weren’t from Boötes, but were using it as a navigational
marker. He believes the space probe may have moved in the 1970s and may have taken position
as object 1991VG.
Did Duncan Lunan crack the first code from an ET civilization, or was it simply an exercise in
cosmic communication? Did he read too much into the hypothetical message by construing it as
a “star map”? Was it a program of “poetry and art” sent by an ET probe, as Bracewell had
anticipated, or was it the pure poetry and art of a science fiction geek carried away with SF
futurism? If real, the broadcast certainly didn’t “rivet our attention” as Bracewell had proposed.
Could this be the result of our overriding skepticism concerning extraterrestrial intelligence? Or
could it be that evidence of ancient “watchers” in the Solar system is not information our keepers
want us to have?
©Joan d’Arc receives preferably intelligent transmissions at joandarc@compuserve.com. Be
advised there may be silence for thirteen days before your pulse clusters are echoed, followed by
coherent or not so coherent strings of alphanumeric codes. She is the author of Space Travelers
and the Genesis of the Human Form and Phenomenal World, published by The Book Tree
(www.thebooktree.com). She is the founder of the website: BIPED: Beings for Intelligent
Purpose in Evolutionary Design (www.biped.info).
77
Nutter McClennen & …, 8/22/03 11:40 AM
Deleted: n
Footnotes
(1) Marc Seifer, in "Confessions of a Tesla Nerd,” suggests Tesla may have heard Marconi’s
transmissions and somehow did not place them as terrestrial (presumably because they were in
Marconi code and not Morse code?). I am not aware that anyone has ever researched this
possibility. Since there was a four-month delay between Marconi’s transmission of his own “V”
signal on March 27, 1899 and Tesla’s receipt of unidentifiable signals on or about July 28, 1899,
it is possible that Tesla could have intercepted an extraterrestrial reply to Marconi’s transmission.
We would need to ascertain whether Marconi continued to transmit through the summer of the
year in question. (www.netsense.net/tesla/article1.html).
(2) Duncan Lunan’s science fiction short stories include, The Neptune Encounter, publ. in
Dream #23 1990, The Planet in Sagittarius, publ. in New Moon #2 1992, Project Starseed or
Nuclear Waste Saves the World, publ. in Analog 1985, Science Revisited, publ. in New Moon #1
1991, The Sky Above You, publ. in Dream #19, #20, #21 1989, Waverider, publ. in Dream #28
1991, The Weather on the Planets, publ. in Dream #29 1991, With Time Comes Concord, publ.
in Analog Sep 1993, The Year of the Space Rescues, publ. in Dream #26 1990.
(3) Among the reasons Hodowanec believed the communicator to be extraterrestrial were the
following: “(a) the messages are in simple code pulses (dits and dahs), which would be expected
if one intelligent civilization were to try to contact another using pulses; (b) numbers are not in
Morse code, but in simple sequence of “dits”; (c) the ‘communicator’ has recognized the
coherent nature of “Greg Radio” and is possibly using that sequence of codes in various
fashions; (d) the communicator has not responded to ‘word’ messages or the amateur Q-code
signals. … While some apparently Morse code signals are being used, the communicator is not
familiar with such usage, other than recognizing the coherent nature of the signals.”
(4) www.seti-inst.edu/seti/seti_background/archive/Year1980.htm
Carl Stormer, the recipient of Hals letter, teamed up with a Dutch researcher, Van der Pol from
the Phillips Research Institute in Eindhoven and in September 1928 they began experiments to
validate Hal’s findings. They radiated radio ‘call-signs’ of different lengths at 30-second
intervals and the results they achieved from 11th October 1928 demonstrated delays in the signal
of between 3 to 15 seconds. Van der Pol confirmed these findings in a telegram that read "Last
night special emission gave echoes here varying between three and fifteen seconds. 50% of
echoes heard after eight seconds!" (1) (Epilogue: Earth Probe)
Yet, as noted above, 2.7 seconds would be the longest it would take to reflect such a signal back
from the Moon, and it would take over four minutes for the echoes to reflect back from our
nearest planet in the Solar System, Venus. Clearly, the echoes were being reflected off
something between Moon and the nearest planet. Stormer continued to investigate the
phenomena and his work was duplicated by intrigued researchers from all over the world.
(Epilogue: Earth Probe)
Later another natural explanation for LDEs was proposed by Anthony Lawson in the 1970s (2).
Essentially he contended that the signals were reflected off the ionosphere or other natural
phenomena. His hypothesis was regarded as impressive by the British Interplanetary Society
who gave him Fellowship of their Society. Lawton’s work almost killed off research into the
78
phenomena, however what limited research that continued concluded that "we still don’t know
which of the proposed mechanisms are valid." (3). (Epilogue: Earth Probe)
References
Appleton, E.V. “Wireless Echoes of Long Delay.” World Radio. May 11, 1934.
Barrow, John D. and Frank N. Tipler. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford: England.
Bracewell, Ronald N. The Galactic Club: Intelligent Life in Outer Space. The Portable Stanford:
Stanford, CA. 1974.
Bracewell, Ronald N. “Communications from Superior Galactic Communities.” Nature, Vol.
186. 1960.
Budden, K. G. and G. G. Yates. “A Search for Radio Echoes of Long Delay,” Journal of
Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics, 1952, Vol. 2, 272-281, Pergamon Press, London.
d’Arc, Joan, Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, The Book Tree, 2000,
www.thebooktree.com.
Edwards, Frank. “Signals from Space,” Stranger Than Science, Lyle Stuart: NY, 1959.
Ehman, Jerry. "The Big Ear Wow! Signal, What We Know and Don't Know After 20 Years,"
1998. (www.bigear.org/wow20th.htm)
“Epilogue: Earth Probe” (www.violations.dabsol.co.uk/probe/probepart2.htm)
Freitas, Robert. “A Search for Natural or Artificial Objects Located at the Earth-Moon Libration
Points,” Icarus 42, 442-447, 1980. (www.rfreitas.com/Astro/SearchIcarus1980.htm)
Jackson, C.D. and R.E. Hohmann, “An Historic Report on Life in Space: Tesla, Marconi, Todd,”
American Rocket Society 17th Annual Meeting, November 13, 1962.
(http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/1998/nov/m23-015.shtml. The document at
NIDS showing the results of the Jenkins Radio Camera Experiment is inaccessible
(www.accessnv.com/nids/Jackson_Hohmann_SETI.shtml)
Lunan, Duncan. Interstellar Contact. Henry Regnery Company: Chicago, IL. 1975. (Same as
Man and the Planets, London, 1974.)
Nelson, Robert. “Communicating with Mars: The Experiments of Tesla & Hodowanec.”
Borderland Science. (www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/marscom.htm)
Steel, Duncan, “SETA and 1991 VG.” (www.setv.org/online_mss/1991vg.pdf)
Tesla, Nikola. “Talking With the Planets” Collier’s Weekly. March 1901.
Lawrence, L.G.: “Interstellar Communications Signals,” Borderlands 1996: 52(1):27-29
Hodowanec, Gregory: Rhysmonic Cosmology, Rex Research, P.O. Box 19250, Jean NV 89019;
Catalog: $4. www.rexresearch.com/hodowane/rhysmo~1.htm)
“WOW! Signal Page” (www.seds.org/~rme/wow.htm)
79
Blind Spot
A Gnostic Tale of the Soul’s Journey Into Time and the Struggle to Return to
the One
The automatic doors of the SpeedyMart flew open with a swoosh. Out into the dense fever of a
dog day afternoon stepped Adam Kadmon. His ass hit the seat of his beat-up Honda just as a
diminutive creature resembling a gargoyle climbed into an eyeball-shaped sidecar attached to
his rear passenger door.
Kadmon checked over his right shoulder and saw not the bulging cranium of his mighty demon
brother but the vacant blackness of the blind spot. He pulled out of the parking lot into the life
of twitching traffic. The third dimension displayed time to all dogs as the corners of houses
turned to become lines, then flattened to surfaces again.
He sprinted into his apartment building. The Jinn called Aamar followed him, hovering on his
right about three feet in back of his head. As Kadmon opened the closet door in his bedroom, an
ultramarine radiance lit up both their impish faces. Inside the large walk-in were shelves
containing about a hundred ecstatic marijuana plants.
In the next few hours he packed the plants into trash bags, and just before midnight began
loading them into the back seat of his car. As Kadmon drove north on Route 95 from
Providence, Aamar sat low in the evolutionary eye-pod his ancient ancestor got by wishing for
it.
Just across the Massachusetts border Kadmon pulled over near a wooded area. He sat for a
minute as a couple of cars sped by. When all seemed quiet he got out and began to rummage
through the trash bags looking for his shovel. As inopportunity had it, a cop car cruised by and
the officer inside got a fleeting look at Kadmon’s silhouette in the back seat.
The cop pulled a U-turn in the median strip and radioed a dramatic call for assistance. “I got a
white male on 95 near exit 34 getting ready to dump something weird in the woods. Could be a
dead body.”
“Jesus F. Christ!” Kadmon swore as he ran around to the driver’s side, fumbling to get the keys
out of his pants pocket. The car lurched as he put it in gear. Aamar hunkered down in his
Lamarckian joyride for the thrill of a century. There was a wild look in his eyes, which he had
acquired perhaps not from his fiendish lineage but from Kadmon’s batty French Canadian
ancestors.
A mile down the road, the spinning lights of two cruisers danced in his rearview mirror.
Kadmon let up on the gas and pulled over to the dirt shoulder. A grainy muffled speaker ordered
him to get out of the car with his hands in the air. But he couldn’t move.
80
Instead he looked over to the passenger seat and saw a pair of old pliers with red handles. He
thought about how he could use them to commit suicide.
Kadmon grabbed the red pliers and jumped out of the car, pointing them at the officer. Bullets
flew from one officer’s gun in the second cruiser, shattering the windows in the first. Three
cops began pumping metal until the space between law and despair was crammed with bullets.
Kadmon looked down in bewilderment. Not one of them had entered his body.
“You’re not dead!” Aamar informed him.
“I’m not dead!” he mimed.
With barely another thought his legs took off in long strides into the woods. Trees hummed past
and branches whipped his face, but the pain was nothing compared to the sharp sting of the
bullet that pierced his shin. He made his way deep into the forest, which slowly turned into
swamp as night burned into morning.
Kadmon plopped exhausted behind a large oak holding his leg wound tightly to stop the
bleeding. The swamp crawled with disgusting wet noises of unseen life forms. The terror of a
snake crawling up his back competed with the horror of a police dog baring its fangs in his face.
He passed out with the sound of gruff canine snuffling in the distance.
Aamar ran his genetic imprint processor in the background as usual. This was going to be an
extraordinary event. He’d never seen anything quite like it, although he thought he’d seen it all.
He knew all the quirks of Kadmon’s ancestors and how they got into the messes they got into.
But he could never talk much sense to them. They’d just keep on doing what they were
programmed to do.
Kadmon didn’t know it, but he was descended from a long line of herb cultivators who learned
their tradition straight from the tribes. “The problem is,” thought Aamar, “not enough of you
protested when growing the medicine leaves became illegal. You get what you ask for when
you shut your mouth.”
It wasn’t the first time Aamar ran his condemnation through the memory wheel. “To make it
easier for yourselves,” his tirade ran, “you humans will enslave your descendants under a
tyranny of thickheaded legalese.” “You, with your short life span and chronic amnesia,” he
pointed at Kadmon, “you’re lucky if you can see your hand in front of your face.”
He had Kadmon knocked out for the moment. He was watching over him. Or maybe he was
pretending to. He was itching to get high. He had addictions to be fed. Nightmares to exude.
Kadmon’s cell phone fell open on his lap and electric images danced out of the cerulean screen.
The figures of long dead ancestors reanimated the woods like data rumours. Aamar began to
play a dirty little game that can only be played by omniscient observers. It was the Glass Bead
Game on a pornographic scale. He satiated his hunger on the thought worlds of a procession of
pitiable humans, back to the beginning when his Qareen was first assigned to Adam Kadmon’s.
81
A steady stream of strangers in a strange land passed in front of Aamar on their way from labor
in the cornfields back to the farmhouse; from their backbreaking existence on the third plane to
the place they called Home; back to the One, the Twin, the soul mate waiting on the shore, only
to whisper goodbye again, float around the fallopian bend in little egg ships and take the
miserable wet plunge into linear time; into ego and effect; into individuality and chaos.
Aamar sucked on their thought forms like eating meat off their bones. His life force was revived
as the ghostly memories of gone humans flooded his hard drive. He felt not one hair above a
sin-eater. He was both disgusted and high, trapped in a hideous existence from which he could
not even imagine escaping.
Black shadows screeched overhead and shat their dinner on the earth’s face. The wings of giant
bat-like creatures fanned the deafening flames of hell’s transcendence to this plane, as nature’s
hand impartially plucked aloud each atom of human agony. The figures of fantastic rumours
fought and fucked, gave birth and perished. Blood poured from all conceivable orifices. Women
wailed in the medieval labyrinths of raving inquisitors where no right answer echoed off
crimson stone walls.
With massive hard-ons the wizards of idolatry tortured mothers and daughters in the name and
celebrity of a perfect deity. The palpable wound on the christ’s side became a gaping vulva into
which a gathering of mighty demons inserted gargantuan phalluses. The blood soaked scene put
Aamar in a frenzy of euphoria.
Kadmon’s foot jerked as he dreamed the schizoid tape reels of the Jinn. Childhood memories of
his parents’ incessant arguments mixed with unrecognizable signals from another time and
place. A spinning globe of brilliant blue cacophony flew in and hovered above his head like a
neon orchestra. The luminous logo bestowed upon him absolute knowledge of music and
mathematics, of astrology and agriculture, of medicine and architecture, until he was datatrashed to the verge of madness.
A small tube was lowered from the azure symbol and a white cord appeared. He was instructed
to touch the string, and as he did so he was sucked instantly up into the ductwork of a clanging
banging super machine. As he climbed out of the other end of the duct another one appeared
above his head even smaller than the first. This one also had a white line dangling from it. He
wondered how he could possibly fit through this small opening but as he touched the cord he
found himself climbing out the other end of the tube.
A third time Kadmon touched a white string above his head and emerged into a dark watery
world. As above so below and before him - the unbelieving didn’t matter. To his left and to his
right a canal wound its way toward Adam Kadmon, and when the waterway reached the place
where he stood it turned a corner and flowed away before him like his dismay. In the distance
the two rivers merged and emptied into a great sea of extraordinary shapes and penetrating
colors.
On his right Kadmon could see little half-egg cups connected like children’s boats and in each
egg sat a human being. They seemed to be stuck in a traffic jam. In the last egg a man stood up
82
and began to rant about the meaning of this absurdity. Kadmon looked closer and saw that the
irritated man was he.
Two human forms appeared as through a shimmering veil across a splendidly decorated table
near the immense ocean. Adam Kadmon sat down at the great table and clicked on the TV
monitor. In a circle in the middle of the screen a ballerina danced the import of the words being
conveyed by the two people. In another circle a robot minimalist shortened their conversation
into universal slang. In a third circle the Mother-Father archetypes came into focus.
Kadmon touched the screen for “human trans” and turned up the sound, realizing he’d arrived in
the middle of a heated dialogue. “Who cares how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?,”
said a glowing golden figure, as he took a swig from a green boy scout canteen.
The ballerina spun around like there was no tomorrow. “Que sara sara,” quipped the robot
minimalist.
“But this is the best angel you ever made,” said a black Amazon priestess wearing a massive
python around her neck. “Don’t you remember how you loved him when he was a baby?”
“Yes Sophia,” the figure beamed brighter when he laughed. “Cute little shit.” “It took him a
long time to walk though. Falling all the time.”
The ballerina tripped over her own feet and got up and tripped again. The robot laughed corn
out of its nose.
“It’s not his fault he’s falling all the time!” implored the First Mother. “He’s born innocent. You
give him no help at all! You make promises you never keep. You booze it up from that canteen
every Saturday.”
“He’s innocent, my ass!,” the Infinite Godhead jeered. “He’s a devil! He’s not made in my
image!”
The ballerina wagged her index finger and shook her head as she balanced on her big toe. “Dum
de dum dum,” the robot droned.
“That’s not true, Yahweh. There are copies of the designer children spread out in all quadrants
now,” said Sophia. “And they are all Imagio Deo. Even you can’t tell them apart.”
The Absolute One was smashed again at 3:00 in the afternoon on the sixth day of creation and
had left the program running on its own. Beyond the two figures Kadmon could see the primal
Archons at work: banks of faceless entities with fingers flying on colossal keypads. They were
adding more space continuously.
It was tricky. They had to make it look like the image was moving out and away, and super
objects were growing further apart. But when the eye zoomed in on the smallest particle, it
stood still and looked back at you. It mimicked your own thoughts. It made a copy of you. It
was a feat of brilliant programming.
83
“Incubus! You always had to be on top!” roared the absentee Father.
The robot didn’t get it. “Wa?” The ballerina did the shimmy and humped the floor.
Yahweh stood and pointed his finger in inebriated fury. “Demon bitch! Night hag!,” he
sputtered. “You knew the first one was a mistake! He was supposed to be destroyed!”
The ballerina pulled herself low to the floor and made herself as small as she could while
holding her thumb in a menacing position above her.
“Splumpf,” said the robot minimalist.
The Father’s Light flickered as he cursed the Adam of the First Mother’s tribe: “You stole him
from me in the night to live unaware of my divine will! His bones will rot in the diseased mud
of your tribe. He’ll have to find his own way back now!!!”
The robot tapped his foot and whistled Dixie. The ballerina grabbed herself by the neck and ran
around the stage as though looking for the door.
But Sophia wasn’t finished. “Divine will? You gloating bastard! You think you’ve got it all writ
out to the end of time and you can just sit back and get sauced!” she hurled.
The translators worked to keep up. The ballerina shuffled and leapt into the air and came down
hard on her ass pretending to look for her car keys. She was doing a bang-up job as far as the
robot was concerned, so he just added a “cuckoo”.
“You turned your back on him! He’s got no handshake or high five to get through the gate! He
knows not the answer to any riddles!” blared the mechanical bride. “No myth now carries him
back to the eternal twin of light and sound… Just words and images skewed by the patriarchal
tongue of kingship and phallus!”
The robot said “splumpf” again. It was good enough. The ballerina gave a high five, performed
a lewd maneuver with her tongue and stuck out her pelvis.
Rising from her chair, Sophia chided, “You fell asleep on your own watch. The data patch was
necessary. He is the spawn of technology now. It’s his only way off this prison planet.”
Adam Kadmon could not take his eyes off the fearless woman who was giving his father lip.
“Your Logos has expired! You are defunct!,” screamed the First Mother.
“That towering lie will never lift him off the ground!,” the Father bellowed, red in the face. “He
will die in the tidal waves of the seventh rapture as Asan’s hand lifts for take off!”
“No demon seed takes to heaven from your vile alligator swamp!” the infinite Godhead quaked
in exasperation as the Universe inhaled.
84
The ballerina and the robot were out of their league on this one. The station broke for a
commercial message. An old earth song played something about the hills being alive with the
sound of music. A warm backlit image of a Garden remained frozen on the screen.
A set of golden scales appeared on the table and with trembling hand the Father began to
balance them.
“You’re drunk, Yahweh! And you’re trifling with your obsolete tools,” Sophia snapped.
“Enough of your razmataz, woman!” shouted the Father.
There was no sweat on the First Mother’s brow and no quivering lip as her monstrous black
wings fanned out behind her and she rebuked the Father’s curse.
“Who wants to live in the stately mansions of your fraternity anyway. They are only fit for
animals who shit where they eat.”
“Kadmon will find his way back by the light of his own forehead, you old coot,” whispered
Sophia.
The kitchen radio blared in a machine-like tongue, reading off blocks of numbers followed by
high-pitched beeps. After the first signal new numbers followed in a different pattern. Kadmon
took out his pocket calculator and did the secret arithmetic his mother had taught him.
He knew the codes were instructions to gigantic mother ships pulling into the docking stations
in the L-5 orbit of the moon. More life forms were coming every day, but not all would make it
through the electronic cage of the custodians. And they were the lucky ones, who got to simply
inhale and exhale with the One for eternity.
And so the machine read the numbers while little bumper cars shaped like half-eggs weaved
through the watery realms of the great Archons, the archangels of creation; the custodial
minions of the omitted program creator.
And as the first sunbeams put life in motion, Aamar awoke his brother, saying, “Pick up your
body, I’ll pick up your throne. And then we’ll make the next move together.”
In the wink of an eye, Aamar spun a vortex from the tip of his finger and gathered up the litter
from his emotional gorge-fest, forming a gelatin mold of the bones of memories past. He honed
it into the shape of a mandrake root and shoved it into Kadmon’s ear the split second he awoke.
A tiny gob of goo dribbled out of Kadmon’s ear as his eyes popped open. And as his ego
touched his eyeballs, the thoughtrons of present time began to mingle with the molecules from
his dream space. Over there, information is color. But here, where every choice has a
consequence, information is pain.
The color bled from his face as anguish took its place.
85
“Good day, master! I always liked that deer in the headlights look on you,” said the wiseass con
man.
Kadmon stood and whizzed off the edge of a rock hiding his manhood from the Jinn as his
forebears were instructed. He stared through garbled nothingness, seized by dread. Old thought
patterns resurfaced. Fear loomed large in this brown shitty place. The path of least resistance
was again the death card.
His mind reeled with the foul cinema of dreamtime: His sisters wailed over his pallid corpse
stuffed into an old high school suit as the lid of the coffin was closed shut. The pallbearers
dropped his coffin down the steps of the church and chunks of brain slid out of his eyes. Just
then a tidal wave swept the coffin up into a twirling funnel and returned it to the tree from
which it came. He would be snug there in the womb of first nature. One way out of this bizarre
trap was to become comfortably dumb.
Kadmon wobbled as he stood and realized he’d lost blood during the night. He leaned against
the big oak for support. As he scanned the area, several mounds of rocks invoked a discernible
pattern. He wondered if he had slept in the middle of an ancient burial ground.
The Jinn pulled a rusted tin can of used wish particles out of his ass and waved it under
Kadmon’s nose, teasing him with the three wishes routine. Kadmon spun around, setting his
gaze on a dumpster in the distance, on the edge of the woods behind the SpeedyMart.
Limping over to the stinking pit, the Primordial Man surveyed the discarded choices of human
souls on their journey through red lights, green lights and the tempting yellow ones that
symbolize free will. This was the grab bag of the Universe. He grabbed a yellow 12-pack of
Twinkies and dashed under cover of the woods with his breakfast.
The Primal Son gorged on the stale yellow cakes until a heaviness permeated his soul. He felt
the weight of his actions in this world compounded by another malevolence seeping in from
somewhere else. It was more than just bad decisions added up. It was like someone was playing
Monopoly with his soul.
Then it came in waves and he had no control over it. It seemed punctuated with a question, then
a feeling of intense nausea.
“Walk with me along the path of error!” screamed the sin eater.
Kadmon heaved out dry cake to his left. Above him a crow cried out.
Then it came again.
“Walk with me on the Left Path, my brother!”
Kadmon wretched a mouthful of cake to his left side.
“Abandon your Father who does not love you!”
86
Kadmon puked in the air a third time and rose, dragging his leg in the direction of the
SpeedyMart. He walked in and began to shop for various items. Pepsi. Slim Jims. Cigarettes.
Matches. And some rope. He’d sling it over the tree limb and they’d find him dangling from it.
He had seen the picture in his mind and he was curiously distanced from the image. It didn’t
matter anymore because it wasn’t really him. His real Self was somewhere beyond all these
meaningless trials and tribulations. He was sick of playing out the same rote behaviors. Perhaps
a new child would be born in his place, under different circumstances, with different parents.
But he’d already blown his death wish on an ancient family dispute over stale breakfast. He’d
been tricked again into making a choice by default – the only choice left after running out of
choices. The slick illusion of free will shackled his ankles. What good is free will where there’s
time, choice, and a corner you can’t see around?
As he stood in line with an armload of sundries the young woman behind the register eyed him
with a look of absentminded recognition. He looked away suddenly realizing he was sporting
his night in the woods. Muck covered his shirt and blood stained his pants. He had pine needles
in his hair. The woman’s smile faded as she walked over to the manager, whispering without
moving her lips, “That’s the guy they’ve been looking for all night. His face was on TV.”
Kadmon stepped up to the counter and put down his last supper, dropping the Slim Jims on the
floor. As he bent to pick them up Aamar whispered in his right ear: “It’s up to 200 million this
week.”
And give me two quik picks, said Kadmon to the fair maiden behind the counter. Feeling
suddenly very foolish, he put down a twenty dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”
Together the brothers walked out into a parking lot full of red lights flashing. “Get down on the
ground!” were the first words out of the bull horn.
Kadmon pushed his face into the pavement as Aamar stood over him with his arms crossed.
He’d already taken several bullets for him. He wouldn’t have minded a few more but this
seemed a better solution.
He hovered over his brother, protecting him as best he could. He knew damn well the laws of
operation in the world of the fallen. Man’s laws are the only laws here.
Dedication
Adam Kadmon served three and a half years behind bars with his Jinn by his side. In January
2006, Rhode Island House of Representatives overrode the governor’s veto and made Rhode
Island the 11th state to legalize medical treatment of pain with marijuana. Blessings on you all
for saying no to a tyranny of nonsense. Your act will change the world in the generations to
come. Rhode Island is now a medical marijuana state.
87
The Adventures of Adam Kadmon in Shambala
Shambala is an ancient city on the edge of heaven, in the vistas beyond entropy. It is not shown
by name on the orbis terrarum nova et accuratissima tabula, although its existence is suggested
to be at the North Pole. Some say Shambala is a sinless and uncontaminated land in the human
realm that cannot be reached without the necessary karmic connections. Others say it’s a purely
mythical realm.
Many heroes are said to have traveled to Shambala, including Sinbad and Hellboy, but this is the
story of Adam Kadmon’s adventures in Shambala, which begins on the east side of Arkham in a
Greek restaurant called Hades.
I will get the story straight before you start to doubt it.
“Is there a doctor in the house?”
Adam Kadmon and his wife Lilith were just starting in on their appetizers when it happened. A
small group began to form a circle in the middle of the room. They were all staring at a body on
the floor.
“Is there a doctor in the house?”
“Someone is choking!” exclaimed a woman at the next table.
Kadmon bolted out of his chair and pushed through the crowd. An elderly lady was flat on her
back in the middle of a crowd of inept strangers.
“Does anyone know how to do the Heimlich maneuver?” Adam Kadmon shrieked.
All eyes were on him as he heaved her rotund body off the floor. Some awkward stranger tried
to hold her up as Kadmon maneuvered to get behind her. The woman’s body felt flabby and
lifeless. He placed his hands under her diaphragm and squeezed.
“Hoomph.” The sound came from his own throat.
“Did anything come out?” he asked the terrified onlookers.
“Nope. Nothing,” said a student in a plaid jacket and corduroy pants.
Kadmon squeezed the flabby frame again while trying to hold her up. His face was turning
purple. The woman’s mouth hung open and her blouse began to unbutton.
He squeezed again a third time. Nothing happened.
“I don’t think she’s choking,” said the geeky student.
In a flash of red spinning light two ambulance techs appeared with a stretcher. Kadmon carefully
placed the limp body on the floor and returned to his seat. In silence he moved the salad around
88
on his plate. Lilith touched his hand and searched for his eyes. He looked down at the food he
couldn’t bear to eat.
As the rescue team carried the old woman out, Kadmon rose and followed them to the door
muttering to Lilith, “I’ll be right back.”
Outside on the sidewalk he chatted with the ambulance technicians. “Is she dead? Did she
choke?”
“This woman has had a massive heart attack,” replied the technician. “She’s still alive, but she’s
hanging on by a thread.”
At that moment a tube appeared above the woman’s head with a white string hanging from it.
The woman reached out her hand to get it but she couldn’t quite reach. Kadmon felt obligated to
help her once again. He thought if he could just pull the string down within her grasp. . .
As he did so, the two of them were instantly sucked up into the ductwork of a clanging banging
supermachine. Holding hands the unlikely couple drifted upward into several tubes that grew
smaller and smaller and finally resembled electrical wiring. Suddenly, with a – POP – they
busted out into a surreal universe of phantasmagoric sights and sounds that seemed to spill from
subconscious memory.
Awake now and fully cognizant of being in a ride, and judging by the sleek yellow dashboard
and vintage silver radio knobs, they saw that they were passengers in a 1950 Studebaker.
The car blared through tunnels with the horn stuck – as if the queen were aboard – past Orion’s
glittering suburbia, past cities of sparkling crystal dome homes strung out like jewels across the
vast emptiness that wasn’t really empty. The dots around them were hellion pirate ships, floating
islands of white sand, canoes of sunburnt Indians: all quaint entertainment destinations of the
nouveau riche.
Into the Eye, a burning ring of fire, they wailed with no steering and no brakes. The infernal
chomping and slurping noise grew louder. White giants, red dwarf sirens, twisted sister suns
gulped energy from the chaotic roulette system – berserk world eaters at the top of the food
chain, breath like mustard gas to the fleshy organs of human cognition. Hands over ears, the two
thrashed about until they passed out from exhaustion.
Finally the Primordial Man and She Who is Always Mother/Wife found themselves hovering
over a bright land of golden spires and sunlight. The ground swayed in constant motion as
though an enormous worm were underground. The car floated to the ground like a feather and
bobbed on the waving turf.
“Floaty boaty!” exclaimed the elderly lady, fixing her wig and brushing white dust from her
brown sweater. “My name is Lilith,” she offered her hand.
Kadmon took her hand and said, “Adam Kadmon.”
“How long have we been traveling? I don’t feel hungry. Must we eat?” asked Lilith.
89
A high-pitched voice from somewhere responded, “Here you do not have to eat. But you can
imagine it, if you enjoy doing such a thing.”
Kadmon and Lilith looked around and saw nobody.
“Who is in charge here? What is the meaning of this absurdity?” Kadmon yelled out in irritation.
“It’s always like that. You never understand anything,” said a woman’s voice from behind a
pillar. A tall white woman stepped into the light and sang a Catholic Mass in a high sweet voice:
The heart is the su-un of the bo-o-deeee
Time does not memory dec-ay-ayeeee
But from lack of su-un
the heart hath locked the do-o-ooor
For la-ack of understa-an-ding
a blockage doth fo-o-orm
The present is poi-oi-soned
by things we will not reme-em-ber
“I am Queen Scomalt,” she said, as her song echoed in the distance. She waved her arm, and a
tiny man stepped out from behind her. “This is my first assistant, Ray.”
The lovely Queen Scomalt began the second verse of her song:
Why hath god not intervee-ee-eened?
Some say when god moves people die-ie-ee
Get thee in front of the bo-o-at of su-un
And light the way by reme-em-bering
The little man named Ray smiled cordially. “We will be accompanied by my six brothers, also
called Ray. We are the plumbers of Shambala, the Seven Rays of soul development.”
Ray gestured to a stream on the right which they hadn’t noticed. In the stream sat a long boat of
cars made of half egg cups strung together. In each white cup sat a little pipsqueak who looked
like Ray. The Rays smiled and waved. There were four empty egg cups in the front of the line.
“Please step into our boat and leave your lovely silver spaceship here,” said Ray. “We will escort
you to Kalapa to greet Sanat Kumara, the Youth of Sixteen Summers, the Wizard of Cause.”
“Is he the Lord of the World, then?” asked Lilith.
“Oh no. He is Regent Lord of the World. The 105th Kumara. We do not know who is Lord of the
World.”
Queen Scomalt stood in the front of the boat with her arms outstretched in cruciform. Behind her
sat Lilith, and behind her, Adam Kadmon. As the egg boat moved along the levy system in the
shimmering eternal waters of Shambala, the Seven Rays sang a song of their homeland:
90
Washi away my t-t-troubles
Washi away my p-p-pain
Washi away my s-s-sorrow
Washi away my sh-sh-shame.
After a time Queen Scomalt introduced the Seven Rays one by one.
“Ray the first, Early Ray, carries white pharmaceutical power drugs for spine and head. He can
help you organize your life, find joy and fulfillment, or find a new stove or refrigerator.”
Early Ray smiled and waved.
“Ray the second, Heart Ray, carries pink pharmaceutical power drugs for stomach and heart. He
can help you repair damaged relationships and make new friends, help you find a lost object or
increase your self esteem.”
Heart Ray saluted.
“Ray the third , Head Ray, carries blue pharmaceutical power drugs for spine, head and throat.
He can help you ward off traffic accidents, stalkers, robbers, astral attack and evil eye, restore
faith in God and free you from self doubt.”
Head Ray removed his hat.
“Ray the fourth, Song Ray, carries green pharmaceutical power drugs for base of spine, heart and
throat. He can help you to repair broken body, mind, soul and spirit, sing to you if you need a
song, clothe you if you are in need of clothes.”
Song Ray grinned.
“Ray the fifth, Soul Ray, carries violet pharmaceutical power drugs for control over the mental
body. He can help you build buildings, free your soul and fix your computer.”
Soul Ray beamed.
“Ray the sixth, Open Ray, carries yellow pharmaceutical power drugs for spleen, heart, and
head. He can help you to open the third eye, make difficult decisions, expose secrets and lies,
and fight pollution on all levels.”
Open Ray smiled and waved.
“Ray the seventh, Gold Ray, carries gold pharmaceutical power drugs for solar plexus, heart,
third eye, crown and heart. He can help you improve personal and social relationships, let go of
bitterness and resentment, renew hope, and manifest divine justice in the courtroom.”
Gold Ray had lost interest by then and wasn’t paying attention.
91
As the boat pulled up to the shining spires of the Temple of Kalapa, the entourage entered. In
the lobby a little girl sat on the floor in front of the television. Her father stood behind her and
her mother stood beside her with a dishcloth in her hands.
On the TV played an instant replay of an instant replay: A crowd of men walk through a door.
The man in a tall white hat is chained to the small man with no hat. The small man has sad puffy
eyes and red cuts on his face. His eyes speak of betrayal and his mouth is a thin angry line. The
man in a tall black hat walks up and shoots the sad little man in the belly.
The child asks, “Sanat Kumara, Lord, why is the man in the white hat surprised even though it
has happened many times before?”
“I have told you before, child, it is an ancient star play representing the planets. Every point of
view must be in the mode of surprise, else there will be no play. The show must go on as if it
never went on before, as if each show is the first night and the last night. The players must be in
the exact position each time, or there will be no myth, and if there is no myth, there are no stars.
If there are no stars, the lights go out. If the lights go out, we do not exist.”
“Yes, I remember now,” said the girl.
“Yes, I remember now,” said Adam Kadmon.
“Yes, I remember now,” said Lilith.
“Yes, we remember now,” said the Seven Rays.
Clap, went the thunder between Queen Scomalt’s hands as she began to recite a poem of the
great return.
The city, the streets, the b-b-boy you knew
The school, the b-b-book, the g-g-girl you knew
It is like … it is like … it is like you are being shown
The Rays quietly shuffled in closer to hear the White Queen’s stuttering instructions.
A d-door, a room, a t-t-tomb, a womb
As up to d-d-down, when full surround
You will have no b-b-book, no look
It is like … it is like … it is like you are lost in sound
Kadmon and Lilith moved in closer as the Queen’s voice grew fainter.
You t-take the s-s-stairs, you sq-sq-squeeze right through
You j-j-jump in, squirm and work the t-t-tube
From f-f-feet to head,
when f-f-flower petal f-f-floats on lead
It is like … it is like … it is like you are stuck inside
92
“Ooooooooo,” exclaimed the Rays. “Terrible!”
The White Queen glared at them and her voice grew louder.
The t-twin z-zips by, red blanket white net
Heavy in the s-s-superhet
She looks at you, and tells you right
N-now take on water! N-now throw off light!
The Rays huddled around the visitors and began to sprinkle them with colorful powders and
magical elixirs. The White Queen now shrieked:
You hear your friends,
They call your n-n-name!
N-now sink, N-now t-t-twirl
Now l-labor, Now r-reach!
With f-foot you breach!
The silence now was impenetrable. The secret was about to be told. The White Queen stuttered
uncontrollably:
They gra-gra-grab, they grab, they grab your heel
they la-la-laugh, they laugh, they laugh at you
You screee-scree-scream, you scream in f-fear
It is like … it is like … it is like you are being born!!!
At that the White Queen fainted on the grass.
The Seven Rays were aghast. “What did she say?”
“Aw, crap. I think she said your friends have to pull you out,” said Soul Ray.
“What if you don’t got no friends?” said Song Ray.
“Then you’re in beeeeeg trouble!” said Heart Ray.
Adam Kadmon and Lilith suddenly looked up from their salads back at the Greek restaurant in
Arkham. The waitress came by with a round of white wine on the house.
Word from the hospital had arrived that the elderly patron had survived her ordeal and was going
to be fine.
93
Giordano Bruno
16th Century UFOlogist?
Filippo Bruno was born in Nola Italy in 1548. When he was thirteen years old he entered school
at the Monastery of Saint Domenico. Taking the name Giordano, he became a Dominican priest
in 1565, but was forced to leave the order in 1576 for his inability to fit into the grooves.
Author of close to twenty obscure philosophical volumes, the Theosophists claim Giordano
Bruno as their own mystic and martyr, and the Rosicrucians credit Bruno with the revival of their
Egyptian-based religion. In Bruno are seen the first hints of Freemasonry in England, with its
Egyptian mysteries, its overt philanthropy—its “good works.” Bruno was a pioneer in the study
of what is today called Semantics, and he is a character referred to as The Nolan in James
Joyce’s complex tale, Finnegans Wake.
Modern environmentalists claim Bruno as the forerunner of the Gaian environmental movement.
Gaia is the ancient name for the Earth, a being which is considered by “pagan” religions to be
sentient, alive and imbued with universal intelligence. Bruno was a Pantheist. He believed all of
nature to be alive with divine spirit, intelligence and consciousness. In Pantheism, Nature is God,
and God is Nature.
Bruno’s works revived the heliocentrism of early Greek philosophers, which seems to have
begun with Aristarchus of Samos in approximately 260 BC. Beginning around 350 BC,
heliocentrism was replaced by Aristotle’s earth-centric cosmology, and remained that way for
hundreds of years in a tyranny of thought brutally enforced by the Catholic Church.
According to the Catholic Church, heliocentrism threatened the credibility of the Holy Scripture,
which was believed to be the supreme authority in all matters, including science. There were no
“novel interpretations of the Bible” allowed. The first sentence of the earth-centric Genesis tale
tells us that, “In the beginning, God created the earth and the heavens.” According to the Holy
Book, He put the earth there first and placed the other bodies in the skies for the benefit of
mankind.
Bruno the Time Traveler
Bruno knitted into the fabric of his cosmic picture various systems of ancient knowledge. He
merged into his system the pantheistic doctrines of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Hindus and
Persians and the essentially animistic physics of the 21st Century. Some have even considered
Bruno a time traveler, since his ideas touched those of the ancient past as well as the distant
future.
For instance, Bruno foretold the “Many Worlds Theory” of quantum mechanics; the theory that
the universe splits into many possible worlds as events unfold in time. He once reasoned as
follows:
94
“I can imagine an infinite number of worlds like the earth, with a Garden of Eden on each
one. In all these Gardens of Eden, half the Adams and Eves will not eat the fruit of
knowledge, but half will. But half of infinity is infinity, so an infinite number of worlds
will fall from grace and there will be an infinite number of crucifixions. Therefore, either
there is one unique Jesus who goes from one world to another, or there are an infinite
number of Jesuses. Since a single Jesus visiting an infinite number of earths one at a time
would take an infinite amount of time, there must be an infinite number of Jesuses.
Therefore, God must create an infinite number of Christs.”
Needless to say, this idea did not go over too big with the church authorities when they got wind
of it. Nonetheless, Bruno continued. In an extraordinary tide of information revelation, Bruno
pulled the past and the future together as though it were the folds of an infinite curtain. As a
physics web site explains, “The physical world of things is embedded in the infinite, embedded
in a space filled with all the other possible worlds …. We see a few of those other worlds in the
probability waves of quantum mechanics.” Bruno intuited the conditions of such a world as “the
coincidence in the One of both the possible and the real.”
As both Quantum Theory and Einstein's Relativity now suggests, we live in a Many Worlds
Universe, where all the moments of the past, the present, and future exist simultaneously as part
of a single permanent existence. Oddly, Bruno the time traveler had this to say about God and
Time: “In the eternity in which Thou thinkest, coincides all the after another of time, with the
now of eternity. There is, therefore, no past nor future where future and past coincide with the
present.” (McIntyre)
Giordano Bruno also prefigured the idea of the atom, and smaller still, a unit which was divisible
by nothing else, a unit of thought, when he wrote: “an atom, beyond which we cannot in fact go,
although to thought it may be still further divisible; so there is in every figure, in every kind of
thing, a definite number of atoms.” (McIntyre) Quantum Physics suggests that thought (Mind) is
what brings possibilities into the world of matter. Scientist Harold McGowan proposed that the
“thoughtron” is an atom tinier than any other and is contained in all things. (McGowan)
Bruno believed mathematics and geometry were the true method of natural science, writing that
“number is the natural and fruitful principle of the understanding’s activity; … number is the
unfolding of understanding.” (McIntyre) Yet, Bruno could not “conceive of a philosophy of
nature, of number, of geometry, of a diagram, without infusing into these divine meanings.” His
philosophy was never divorced from divinity. He was truly a holy man.
An Historical Perspective
In 1543, when Giordano Bruno was five years old, Nicholas Copernicus published his
mathematical treatise (De Revolutionibus), which vindicated the Greek Pythagorus, who at
around 580 B.C. argued that the earth was a sphere. Copernicus re-established the ancient Greek
heliocentrism of Aristarchus of Samos by proving mathematically that the Earth revolved around
the Sun. Yet, Bruno accused Copernicus of not fully understanding the meaning of his discovery;
of being “only a mathematician.” Bruno’s divine intuition of the infinity of worlds picked up
where Copernicus left off.
95
Bruno rejected the limits of the Copernican system, which posited a finite universe limited by a
fixed sphere of stars just beyond the solar system. He argued that the sun was not actually the
center of the universe, saying that if you were able to observe the sun from any of the other stars
it would simply look like any other star. Bruno even speculated that the other worlds would be
inhabited.
In 1588, Galileo Galilei began to teach Copernican theory at the University of Pisa. Much later,
in 1609, Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter via a hand-made telescope. With the invention
of the telescope by a Dutchman, Copernican theory ceased to be “esoteric.” Various visual
proofs were discovered.
Still, Galileo was brought to Rome and interrogated by the Inquisition in 1615. He was forced to
declare the Copernican system as scientifically false, and he was forced to promise to stop
teaching it. Galileo ignored his promise, and returned to Florence and continued with his work,
publishing sixteen years later, in 1632, his Dialogues on Great World Systems. He was called
back to Rome by the Inquisition in 1633, and again forced to recant heliocentrism under threat of
torture, this time being put under house arrest until his death in 1642. Heliocentrism was
officially condemned over 20 years later, in 1664, when Pope Alexander VII banned all books
which affirmed the motion of the earth.
Yet, almost 100 years before this, there was Giordano Bruno. Bruno spoke in France and
Germany, and taught heliocentrism at Oxford, well before the 16th Century. Bruno and Galileo
have much in common. Both were Italians, both espoused heliocentrism in the 1580s, although
Bruno was teaching it a few years earlier, and both were an annoyance to the Inquisition
authorities. However, Bruno was not a mathematician, and he was not an astronomer. He was a
member of the Dominican clergy and he had the audacity to take his theories to the infinite
fringes of thought.
In 1584, at the age of 36, Bruno spoke before a group in London. He told them that space was
filled with an infinite number of solar systems and that each had a central sun around which
planets revolved. He taught that the planets shone by reflected light, but the suns were selfluminous bodies. He even spoke of the motion of our own solar system in space. In Bruno’s
philosophy, nothing stood still—everything was in motion, from the smallest atom to the largest
star system.
Remarkably, Bruno was espousing these beliefs at a time when a motionless earth at the center
of things was the sole concern of a personal God and Father, who certainly never indicated he
had other children somewhere else. The Father gave to His children the gift of the earth, the
Garden of Eden, around which he placed for their sole pleasure the Sun, the moon, and the
twinkling stars. These points of light were far from being understood by Europeans to be
universes of their own—solar systems perhaps inhabited by other intelligent beings like
ourselves. Bruno’s universe was infinite and included an indefinite number of worlds each
consisting of a sun and several planets. In Bruno’s philosophy, the earth was a small insignificant
body in an infinite universe. Coming from this point of view, there was nothing special about this
“special creation.” This was a heretical idea.
96
Bruno spoke of both the diversity of life and the sameness of life. He referred to diversity and
difference as aspects of one and the same substance: “the coincidence of contraries.” He noted,
“That there are more worlds than one is due to the presence everywhere throughout space of the
same principle of life, which everywhere has the same effect.” (McIntyre)
In his dialogue, The Ash Wednesday Supper, Bruno identified the matter in the earth with the
matter of the planets and stars, and wrote of the possibility that “such living beings inhabit them
as inhabit the earth”; he wrote that the earth and stars themselves are “living organisms”; he
wrote that “there are not seven planets or wandering stars only, but innumerable such, for every
world, whether of the sun-type or of the earth-type, is in motion, its motion proceeding from the
spirit within it.” (McIntyre) Bruno’s dialogues were said by many of his peers to be “worthy of
Plato.” In this work, Bruno stated the following:
“This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution and annihilation
being impossible anywhere in Nature, from time to time renews itself by changing and
altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute
position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies.
Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and
the observer is always at the center of things.”
As he rightly argued, the sun was not the center of the whole shebang, and wasn’t even the only
sun, but was simply the center of one particular part of it. How did Bruno know this? Intuition of
infinity … He imagined it!
In 1584, Bruno wrote in The Infinite Universe and its Worlds: “Innumerable suns exist;
innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets
revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds.” In the same year, Bruno wrote in
Spaccio, “for diverse living things represent divine spirits and powers, which, beyond the
absolute being which they have, obtain a being communicated to all things according to their
capacity and measure. Whence God as a whole is in all things.”
Bruno the UFOlogist
Taken as a whole, Bruno’s various sentiments sound uncannily similar to a quote in the August
2001 issue of New Age magazine attributed to Harvard psychiatrist/UFOlogist John Mack that,
“We are spiritual beings connected with other life forms and the cosmos in a profound way, and
the cosmos itself contains a numinous intelligence. It’s not just dead matter and energy.”
Mack has also stated: “With the help of the abduction phenomenon we will have discovered a
new picture of the universe in which psyche and world manifest and evolve together according to
principles we have not yet fathomed.” He has referred to the alien abduction phenomenon as “a
kind of spiritual outreach program from the cosmos for the spiritually impaired.”
Speaking of the abduction phenomenon, Mack has stated: “We need to transcend the
separateness that disconnects us from nature. If we could transcend this division, we might then
explore, enjoy, and travel ecstatically, lovingly, materially and non-materially, among the unique
97
particularities of our own being, our own natures within the cosmos, experiencing at the same
time an essential unity and sacredness of creation.” (http://www.peer-mack.org/)
Bruno’s sentiments also reverberate in the words of UFO-tracker Steven M. Greer, who, in his
book Extraterrestrial Contact, looks forward to a world in which “theological and philosophical
implications will immediately be discussed among the world’s religious leaders, as they come to
terms with a universe in which humans are no longer the only intelligent, sentient children of
God.” Bruno’s life and death reminds us how long we’ve been waiting for such an expansion of
thought to occur. Yet, it still seems far from an accepted idea.
As Greer also hopes, our “concepts of God, creation, life and religious meaning will evolve in
the direction of accommodating the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and
this will cause an increasing ‘universalization’ of God.”
We must realize that this universalization of God is just what turned the attention of the Roman
Inquisition toward Giordano Bruno’s heretical ideas four hundred years ago. Greer looks to a
future where Earth people will see God as “an infinite Creator whose glory is not confined to the
Earth.” This is an idea whose time has still not yet come four hundred years after the first
Universalist loudly proclaimed that there might be intelligent life out there in other worlds
similar to our own.
Greer’s universalism is evident when he writes, “Regardless of planet, star system or galaxy of
origin, and no matter how diverse, ETs are essentially intelligent, conscious, sentient beings. We
are, essentially, one. On this basis, we may speak of one people inhabiting one universe.” Greer
adds, “Differences are always a matter of degree, but true unity established in consciousness is
absolute.” (Greer, 18)
Greer explains, “the simple thread of conscious intelligence which runs through all peoples
elegantly weaves our unity. This essential unity is not subject to the trials of diversity, for it is
pure, immutable and fundamental to the existence of intelligent life itself.” Or, in Giordano
Bruno’s words, “diversity and difference are aspects of one and the same substance… the same
principle of life.” That substance or principle is Universal Consciousness, the First Cause, or
God. The problem is we are so used to thinking of God as an old guy with a beard that we cannot
fathom this idea of universal consciousness.
The development of this attitude of “universality based in consciousness,” Greer argues, is
necessary for peace and unity to develop among peoples of the earth, and to assure peaceful
interactions between earth humans and other intelligent life in the universe. The endless diversity
which our astounding universe may hold must be met with what Greer calls “the calmness of
universal consciousness.” As Greer insists, “this universal conscious intelligence is the first
cornerstone of the foundation of interplanetary unity.” Now, in the 21st Century, we stand poised
to take that same message one step further and over the great divide. We are ready to meet our
cousins, the once imaginary cousins of Giordano Bruno.
Whether we like it or not, the good old earth is heading toward a paradigm shift. Gaia has spoken
her mind. She has seen enough bloodshed, enough toxic destruction, enough reckless waste of
resources that should have been bountiful enough for all her children. Strangely, the message is
98
coming in from a mysterious source—from cousins we never knew we had. There is an
undeniable power behind this paradigm shift that may emanate from beyond earth, and it’s
coming whether we like it or not.
It’s quite interesting to note that the Vatican has taken an about-face since Bruno’s time. As
Monsignor Corrado Balducci stated in an interview with Zecharia Sitchin last year: “That life
may exist on other planets is certainly possible... The Bible does not rule out that possibility. On
the basis of scripture and on the basis of our knowledge of God’s omnipotence, His wisdom
being limitless, we must affirm that life on other planets is possible … credible and even
probable.” It’s indeed strange that novel interpretations of the Bible, once considered punishable
by unimaginable tortures, are now coming at us from all directions, including the Vatican.
Scientific discoveries have always caused trouble for dogmatic Church teachings. In Bruno’s
time, astronomy was a threat to the teachings of the Church. Two hundred years later, geology
challenged the Holy Book’s credibility, and it was maintained by Christians that Satan must have
placed fossils there to deceive mankind. A hundred years ago, evolutionary biology threatened
the Genesis account of special creation. Now, many fundamentalist Christians believe that UFOs
are piloted by Satan’s “fallen angels.” Christians still cannot concede that there could be human
beings stationed anywhere else in God’s creation. One Christian author recently summed up the
crux of this earth-centered theological dilemma when she wrote, “If doubt can be cast on the first
sentence in the first chapter of the first book in the Bible, then the whole book is up for grabs.”
(Wallace, Paranoia, Issue 27)
We should not fail to appreciate that the belief in life on other planets was once dangerously
heretical, a belief that present day UFOlogists assume as a bottom line. Not that Harvard
University didn’t try to excommunicate John Mack, the heretic. They certainly tried. But baby
steps are still steps and slow progress is still progress. We may even think of Giordano Bruno,
therefore, as the first speculative UFOlogist.
The Art of Memory
Toward the end of Bruno’s life, he was hired by an Italian named Mocenigo to teach him certain
skills of mnemonics (memory), an art for which Bruno was well known, having written several
books on the subject, including The Art of Memory, The Shadows of Ideas, and Incantations of
Circe. Bruno had earlier fled Italy so that he could be as far away from the Inquisition authorities
as possible, publishing his books while in England, France and Germany. But he missed his
homeland, and when he was invited back to Italy by this man, he walked right into the trap.
Bruno’s Art of Memory was a “magical psychology.” Bruno’s complex magical memory system
consisted of “wheels” on which groups of letters, symbols and images corresponded to the
physical contents of the terrestrial world, representing the whole sum of human knowledge
accumulated through the centuries. It is presumed by scholars that the person who committed
this system to memory “rose above time and reflected the whole universe of nature and of man in
his mind.” Bruno’s memory wheel was a “Hermetic secret,” since it was the “gnostic reflection
of the universe in the mind.”
99
Mocenigo got the idea that Bruno could teach him something more, something along the lines of
sorcery or magic. When Bruno denied knowing anything about magic, Mocenigo became angry
about the money he had paid Bruno and turned him in to the Venetian tribunal.
Mocenigo accused Bruno before the tribunal of teaching the existence of a boundless universe
filled with a countless number of solar systems. He accused Bruno of saying the Earth was not
the center of the universe, but rather a planet which revolved around the Sun. Bruno was also
accused of: “teaching the doctrine of Reincarnation; of denying the actual transubstantiation of
bread into the flesh of Christ; of refusing to accept the three persons of the Trinity; and of
rejecting the virgin birth of Christ.” (Great Theosophists)
The exact charges that were later brought against Bruno by the Catholic Church in Rome are
unknown, since it is claimed that the records have been lost. Bruno was tortured and interrogated
for seven long years. Was it for his belief in what is known as “the plurality of worlds”? Was it
for his animistic belief that the spirit world invaded all of nature; the rocks, the trees, and the
Earth itself? Was it for his insistence on a return to the “natural religion” of the Egyptians? Was
it for his belief in the heretical concept of reincarnation? Was it for his unshakable belief in the
divinity of the human spirit? Was it their belief that he was a magician?
Bruno refused to retract his beliefs. On February 17, 1600 Giordano Bruno was burned at the
stake in the Campo dei Fiori, the center of Rome, with a nail driven through his tongue—the
customary treatment of all unrepentant heretics so they could not continue to insult the sensitive
ears of the Inquisition.
Giordano Bruno stood for “the Dignity of Man”; of “liberty, tolerance, the right to stand up in
any country and say what he thought, disregarding all ideological barriers.” (Yates) He dared to
imagine many potential brave new worlds—like the one where we are now free to look out at the
stars and wonder out loud if there is any life upon them.
Joan d’Arc is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, and
Phenomenal World, published by The Book Tree, 800-700-TREE (www.thebooktree.com). She
is also the co-publisher of Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader.
References
“Great Theosophists: Giordano Bruno” (on-line essay,
http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting/bruno.html).
Greer, Steven, M.D., Extraterrestrial Contact: The Evidence and Implications.
MacGowan, Harold, The Thoughtron Theory of Life and Matter, 1971.
McIntyre, J. Lewis, Giordano Bruno: Mystic Martyr, Kessinger, Montana, 1903
(www.hiddenmysteries.com.).
Yates, Frances, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, University of Chicago, 1964.
100
The Intelligent Design Revolution
Should alternatives to Darwinian Evolution be taught in public schools?
"Compelling student belief is inconsistent with the goal of education.
Nothing in science … should be taught dogmatically." -- Kansas Science
Education Standards
In a high-profile dispute over evolutionary theory that began in October 2004, the town of
Dover, PA, became the first school district to mandate the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID).
However, to be clear on this, the school board had adopted a policy that simply required ninthgraders to hear a prepared statement about Intelligent Design theory before being instructed in
Unintelligent Evolution in biology class. In no way was equal time being given to the new
theory. Nonetheless, two dissenting board members resigned on October 18, 2004.
In May 2005, the Kansas School Board voted to teach Intelligent Design in public schools
alongside the Theory of Darwinian Evolution. The fight that ensued was billed as the antiDarwinists against the scientific establishment, which considers the evidence of the origins of
life to be "beyond dispute." The media described the fray as "the Scopes trial turned on its head."
The Kansas Citizens for Science, which boycotted the hearings, indicated that the discussions did
not constitute "real science" and labeled the ID proponent's arguments as mere "claptrap." ID
proponent, embryologist Jonathan Wells, suggested evolutionary theory "has left the realm of
science," arguing that the "scientific conclusion that all living things come from a common
ancestor [is] essentially an act of faith."
Gaps in Darwinian evolutionary science, ID proponents argue, leave open the possibility of a
"designing mind." But who is the designer? William Harris, a co-founder of Intelligent Design
Network Inc., answers, "I don't know." Just to show how dirty this fight has become, at the
hearings Harris projected a strategy letter from a Kansas Citizens for Science member onto a
large screen. The letter stated that the way to defeat the "anti-evolution forces" was to portray
them as "political opportunists, evangelical activists, unprincipled bullies and ignoramuses."
Indeed, the Darwinian fundamentalists clearly see the ID movement as driven by a bunch of
hicks in a junk wagon. The sooner they rid themselves of this notion, the sooner we can get on to
the real debate, if indeed they are interested in a real debate. Such is doubtful. In fact, if these
ideologues would bother to read the hefty 117-page Kansas Science Education Standards
(www.ksde.org) they would find that this curriculum is nothing short of the sentinel of science.
Approved 11/8/05, the document declares, "All scientific theories should be approached with an
open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." It asserts most cogently that,
"Compelling student belief is inconsistent with the goal of education. Nothing in science …
should be taught dogmatically."
The document "defines good science, how science moves forward, what holds science back, and
how to critically analyze the conclusions scientists make." The curriculum standards call for
students to "learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about
areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory." The standards reflect the
Board's objectives, which include, to help students understand the "full range of scientific views"
on evolutionary theory, to develop understanding of the scientific method by studying "opposing
101
scientific evidence," and to ensure that science education in Kansas is "secular, neutral and nonideological." Hooray for Kansas! Dorothy has come home from Oz.
In the continuing saga on Intelligent Design, on November 9, 2005, America woke up to the
news that eight out of nine Dover Board of Education members had been voted out and replaced
by members opposed to the teaching of Intelligent Design. In a preposterous move, Pat
Robertson inserted foot in mouth by saying that God would smite Dover, PA for allowing this to
happen. Somewhere in all this mess, the ACLU in Georgia took up the fight against an Atlanta
school district decision to sticker biology books with the warning that evolution is a "theory, not
a fact." I'd be very interested in hearing how the ACLU would go about proving otherwise. Once
they actually begin to look into it, I predict they'll 'back away slowly' from the sticker.
In 2003, I founded a secular-based website, BIPED: Beings for Intelligent Purpose in
Evolutionary Design (www.biped.info), to highlight valid scientific alternatives to Darwinian
evolution other than "Creation," although I'm not particularly opposed to that term (if it walks
like a duck). Among those alternatives are: Gaia Theory, Vitalism, Morphic Resonance (a.k.a.
Formative Causation), Intelligent Design, Panspermia and Directed Panspermia. This article will
provide an overview of some of these theories for those who do not realize that there are many
valid scientific hypotheses that are contrary to Darwinian theory. As such they have a right to
exist and students have a right to learn about them.
Gaia Theory
Microbiologist Lynn Margulis and chemist James Lovelock formulated the Gaia Hypothesis in
the 1970s (now upgraded to a theory). They proposed that life creates the conditions for its own
existence, challenging the reigning theory that the forces of geology set the conditions for life,
while plants and animals, accidentally along for the ride, evolved by chance under the right
conditions.
The Darwinian concept of adaptation to the environment has been seriously questioned by
Margulis, Lovelock and others working from a systems point of view. Evolution cannot be
explained by the adaptation of organisms to local environments, they argue, because a network
of living systems is also shaping the environment. The evolution of life, according to the Gaia
Theory, depends on a cyclical, self-regulating feedback relationship. Taking a slam at Darwinian
fundamentalism, Margulis has stated that one day neo-Darwinism will be judged as "a minor
20th century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology."
Dr. Margulis has also asserted that Darwinism is based on outdated reductionist concepts. She
asserts, "It's wrong like infectious medicine was wrong before Pasteur. It's wrong like
phrenology is wrong. Every major tenet of it is wrong."
Lovelock popularized his Gaia theory in 1972 in a paper titled, "Gaia as seen through the
atmosphere," and in his 1979 book, Gaia: A New Look At Life on Earth. His initial hypothesis
proposed that the whole Earth behaves like one self-regulating organism wherein all of the
geologic, hydrologic, and biologic cycles of the planet mutually self-regulate the conditions on
the surface of the Earth so as to perpetuate life. Later, when the mainstream scientific body got
hold of the theory, it changed significantly, and we can all guess why. It didn't conform to the
Darwinian paradigm, which holds that evolution has no overarching purpose or goal. In other
words, Lovelock's theory was teleological: some force outside of nature was possibly controlling
the evolution of forms. According to Darwin himself, if any outside force was found to be at
work, we were instructed to throw out his baby with the bath water.
102
Lynn Margulis still insists that consciousness evolved, but where did the consciousness come
from? Answer: It had to come from inside the system (Earth-based) in the "naturalist"
framework. According to evolutionists, consciousness has to evolve; it can't have been there in
the first place. This conjecture is based on the anthropic principle.
The neo-Darwinian-based anthropic principle is based on a biological argument: the minimum
time required for the evolution of "intelligent observers." In this scheme, a billion years is
required for the evolution of intelligence. The anthropic timescale argument posits that the types
of processes allowed in the Universe must be of such an age that "slow evolutionary processes
will have had time to produce intelligent beings from non-living matter." (Barrow & Tipler 159)
Pondering how consciousness "arose in the Universe," this peculiar Western viewpoint refuses
the primacy of consciousness, and instead assumes an endless chain of linear causes in the
Universe. The anthropic principle assumes the evolution of intelligence from a mass of sludge,
and extrapolates the time required for the evolution of "conscious observers" to ooze out of it and
crawl onto the land and build tree houses. It is important to understand that this is the act of faith
neo-Darwinism asks you to embrace.
Vitalism vs. Natural Selection
Vitalism is the doctrine which espouses that life processes arise from a nonmaterial essential
principle that cannot be explained by physics and chemistry alone. One of its adherents was
Swedish chemist Jöns Jackob Berzelius (1799-1848), who hypothesized that only living tissue,
by possessing a "life-force," can produce organic compounds. French philosopher Henri Bergson
(1859-1941) proposed the idea of an élan vital, or creative force, at the heart of evolution.
Bergson advocated a return to neovitalism, which maintains that the phenomena of life are
unpredictable, chaotic and beyond the range of science. Of course, the well-known scientist
Wilhelm Reich was also a vitalist and Darwin's peer Jean Baptiste de Lamark utilized vitalism in
his theory of acquired characteristics.
The notion of a life-force is flatly contrary to Darwinian theory, which emphasizes no purpose,
goal or outside force at work in the development of new species.1 To be sure, the principle of
"natural selection" is the only suspicious "force" allowed in through the back door of
Darwinism.2 What force in nature does the "selecting" of the "fit" characteristics and how does it
produce new and (at the same time) useful structures by random chance? Indeed, Darwin later
regretted his use of the term because it suggested a mysterious guiding force was at work.
The fact is, researchers have discovered an electrical energy which suddenly begins switching on
genes in embryos consisting of just four cells. Due to our conditioning in the mechanical medical
model, we are not aware of the subtle energies in which our bodies are immersed and upon
which our very lives depend. As the Vedas teach, Prana pervades the whole living body and
leaves suddenly at death.
Darwinian "natural" mechanisms cannot adequately explain embryonic development nor the
evolutionary origin of complex structures and organs. There is, in fact, no evidence that would
confirm the hypothesis that the concept of "natural selection" is an evolutionary process capable
of producing innovative designs (i.e. new species). Zoologist Pierre Grasse has stated that
supposed proofs of evolution in action are simply "observations of demographic facts, local
fluctuations of genotypes and geographical distributions"; not new and distinct forms.
103
Morphic Resonance
A modern example of Vitalist theory is Rupert Sheldrake's Theory of Morphic Resonance (a.k.a.
Formative Causation), described in detail in his book, A New Science of Life. Sheldrake believes
morphogenetic fields are non-physical carriers of information (intelligence), which guide the
development of an organism in the form of its species. He believes DNA is not the source of
structure, but is a "receiver" that translates information into physical form. In this sense, genes
are grossly overrated, he states.
Morphic fields (from the Greek morphe, which means form), he explains, are the organizing
fields of nature. Morphic fields organize in living organisms as well as in the forms of crystals
and molecules. Each kind of molecule has its own type of morphic field. Our own mental lives
depend on this field. In his book, The Presence of the Past, Sheldrake explains that
morphogenetic fields contain an inherent memory. He believes the structure of the fields
"depends on what has happened before." Inheritance depends on cumulative memory built up
through "a pool of species experience" in a process he calls morphic resonance.
In an interview with Robert Gilman, Sheldrake explains why Vitalism has come back to life as a
scientific theory and is being embraced in many corners:
"Using morphogenetic fields as the carrier of memory implies no absolute separation between
minds. It suggests our identity is dual, like an electron that is both particle and wave. We have
aspects that are unique and totally individual, yet at the same time much of our thought and
behavior is shaped by, participates in, and helps to create transpersonal morphogenetic fields. …
Because our brains contain levels that connect us to other species, that group mind includes all
life. We may even find, as we explore the possibilities of consciousness associated with what we
now think of as non-living matter, that we are linked in consciousness to all creation."
Intelligent Design
"An unpopular opinion is almost never given a fair hearing." -- George
Orwell
Intelligent Design is the science that studies "signs of intelligence." In his book, The Design
Inference, its leading proponent, mathematician William Dembski, employs statistical testing of
the natural world to see if it shows evidence of intelligent design. He explains, "Intelligent design
studies the effects of intelligence in the world. Many special sciences already fall under
intelligent design, including archeology, cryptography, forensics, and SETI (the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Intelligent design is thus already part of science. Moreover, it
employs well-defined methods for detecting intelligence. These methods together with their
application constitute the theory of intelligent design."
In their commitment to keep intelligent cause outside of the boundaries of naturalist science,
Darwinian fundamentalists charge that ID theory is "creationism in a cheap tuxedo." Adrian
Melott, in Physics Today, proclaimed ID theory to be on the "cutting edge of creationism."
Continually referring to Dembski as an "ID creationist," he claims, "ID is different from its
forebears. It does a better job of disguising its sectarian intent." Dembski responds, "somehow
science and our knowledge of the natural world is supposed to unravel once we allow that
intelligence could be a fundamental principal operating in the universe."
According to Dembski, "Naturalism [upon which all modern science is based] is the view that
the physical world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws.
104
Naturalism ... says that nothing beyond nature could have any conceivable relevance to what
happens in nature. Naturalism's answer to theism is not atheism but benign neglect. People are
welcome to believe in God, though not a God who makes a difference in the natural order." In
his book, The Design Revolution, Dembski explains, "Naturalism allows no place for intelligent
agency except at the end of a blind, purposeless material process. Within naturalism, any
intelligence is an evolved intelligence."
Try as it will, Dembski argues, Darwinian evolution cannot explain human consciousness. He
explains, "The match between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world is no accident.
Nor can it properly be attributed to natural selection, which places a premium on survival and
reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought. Indeed, meat-puppet robots are just
fine as the output of a Darwinian evolutionary process."
In addition, Dembski suggests, ID Theory is compatible with any form of teleological guidance
one could come up with. ID Theory does not require "an interventionist conception of design"
and does not require God to be an "intervening meddler." He explains, "for God to be an
intervening meddler requires a world that finds divine intervention meddlesome. Intelligent
Design requires neither a meddling God nor a meddled world. For that matter, it doesn't even
require that there be a God."
Dembski argues that three modes of explanation -- chance, necessity and design -- are needed to
explain the appearance of the astonishingly wide variety of life forms we encounter on earth.
Indeed, write the authors of Giants of Gaia, life is more than chance combinations of atoms and
cells. To organize the parts that "collectively enable a bird to fly, or the human brain to form,"
the writers insist, "there had to be an order which brought together the parts not by chance, nor
by simple adaptation to external stimulus, but through intelligence." This intelligence inherently
constitutes the Universe.
When the Darwinian establishment charges that ID theory is not science, they are really saying it
is not based on scientific naturalism. The heart of the reigning paradigm of scientific naturalism
is that intelligence is an accidental byproduct of evolution. In contrast, Intelligent Design tells us
that we live in an intelligent universe. In ID theory, intelligence trickles down from the cosmos,
if you will, and in scientific naturalism it builds up incrementally from prebiotic chemical soup.
As William Dembski has charged, "For the naturalist, the world is intelligible only if it starts off
without intelligence and then evolves intelligence."
Ballistic Panspermia
Panspermia is the ultimate trickle down theory that life on earth was seeded by microbial life
from space. This theory was advocated by many, among them the Greek philosopher,
Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), and William Thomson
Kelvin (1824-1897). Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius later promulgated the theory of Radio
Panspermia, wherein microbes from space are transported by light pressure.
The proponents of modern day Panspermia are British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001)
and Sri Lankan mathematician-astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe, who theorize that DNA
arrived on earth via meteorites (Ballistic Panspermia) or by comets (Modern Panspermia). In
fact, Hoyle mathematically dismissed the chance of evolution having actually occurred the way
Darwinists propose. He argued that "even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup ... the
chance of producing merely the basic enzymes of life by random processes without intelligent
105
direction would be about 1 over a 1 with 40,000 zeros after it; a probability too small to
imagine."
Hoyle concluded that "Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide
sequence right, let alone the thousands on which living cells depend for survival." Given that
there are trillions of different kinds of cells in delicate balance, he argues, each of these varied
cellular structures would also have to develop by chance.
In a Times-Advocate interview in December 1982, Hoyle declared that this mathematical
impossibility is well known to scientists, yet nobody seems willing to "blow the whistle" on the
absurdity of Darwinian theory. Hoyle claims that "most scientists still cling to Darwinism
because of its grip on the educational system." They do not want to be branded as heretics.
Directed Panspermia
As molecular biologist Michael Denton articulates in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, "Nothing
illustrates as clearly just how intractable a problem the origin of life has become than the fact
that world authorities can seriously toy with the idea of panspermia." Such describes the
dilemma of British molecular biologist Francis Crick (1916-2004), who received the 1962 Nobel
Prize for the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
After discovering the astonishingly huge and complex information storage capacity of the DNA
molecule (humans have three billion coding letters in each nucleus), Crick could not imagine any
conditions under which this information vehicle could have evolved from non-living chemicals.
He argued that since the earth has too short a history for life to develop, it must have developed
on another planet in a solar system several billion years older than ours.
Crick's unyielding aversion to religion led him and Leslie Orgel, in 1973, to put forth the theory
of Directed Panspermia. To get around the idea of God, Crick proposed that the primordial seeds
of life were shipped to earth in spaceships by intelligent beings billions of years ago. After
proposing this idea, Crick was left in the predicament of explaining the origin of the ET beings,
and finally had to acknowledge the paucity of the idea, saying, "Every time I write a paper on the
origin of life, I swear I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation
running after too few facts." (Life Itself, 1981) Although an atheist, Crick was quoted as saying,
"An honest man, armed with the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some
sense the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle."
Writing in his essay, "Astrogenesis," William Hamilton explains, "The real paradigm shift is to
consider that the Universe is a life-producing nursery and that the genesis and evolution of life is
not earth-centered but rather is distributed among the stars of the galaxies.” Let's not forget,
however, that the theory of Panspermia still leaves us with the question of the origin of those
stars and those galaxies.
A Scientific Revolution
It is important that people understand exactly what Darwin was saying before they reject any
proposed revisions to the theory. After all, who is the guardian of science? We are, if only
because there is power in numbers. If the entire population were better educated in the theory, we
would be in the position to reject it. This is decidedly not what the scientific hegemony wants.
The problem is, Darwinian evolution is an all-or-nothing theory. It will not allow discussion or
inclusion of any vitalist process. In fact, the squabble between the scientific establishment and ID
106
theorists is not simply a clash between science and religion but, more specifically, between
naturalism and vitalism. We are looking at the infancy of a scientific revolution.
In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn defines a scientific revolution
as a “non-cumulative developmental episode” whereby an older paradigm is replaced in whole or
in part by an “incompatible new one.” Such scientific revolutions begin with a growing sense
that “an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of
nature.” The emergence of new theories is usually preceded by a period of “pronounced
professional insecurity,” since it involves large-scale paradigm destruction.
The essential problem is, scientists cannot do research in the absence of a controlling paradigm.
They cannot pull the floor out from under themselves, and when it goes this structure will fall
hard. Kuhn explains, a scientific theory “is declared invalid only if an alternative candidate is
available to take its place.” The normal response to crisis, he explains, will be to loosen the rules
of normal problem solving in ways that will permit the new paradigm to emerge. This essentially
describes the action taken by the Kansas School Board in its Science Education Standards. The
new paradigm will emerge when the youth of tomorrow are not so emotionally and financially
committed to the old one.
Intelligent Design is not a religious theory. Paranoid tirades about Christians taking over the
world have nothing to do with the facts of the matter. Those who react this way are reacting
emotionally to the messenger rather than opening the message with the minimum decorum
expected of adult human beings. By dogmatically rejecting Intelligent Design without fully
comprehending it, we allow the reigning scientific paradigm to become a fascist element in
society. We do a great disservice to democratic scientific debate and to the way our children
learn.
The question we should ask is, Do we want our children and grandchildren to be taught or do we
want them to be indoctrinated? Indeed, America's educational system is in dire trouble when a
Chinese paleontologist notices that, "In China it's OK to criticize Darwin but not the government,
in the US it's OK to criticize the government but not Darwin."
So we come to the question, should Intelligent Design be taught in public schools? When they
begin to discuss alternatives inclusive of all vitalist theories, Kansas will be the new frontier and
my wagon will be the first one in the train on the dusty road to Wichita.
©2006 Joan d'Arc. This article appeared in PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader, April 2006,
www.paranoiamagazine.com. Joan d'Arc is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the
Human Form, and Phenomenal World, published by The Book Tree (www.thebooktree.com).
She is the co-publisher of PARANOIA, and founder of the website, BIPED: Beings for Intelligent
Purpose in Evolutionary Design. See full references, articles and weblinks at www.biped.info.
Footnotes
1. Darwin never quite defined the term species. He wrote in Origin of Species, “it will be seen
that I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of
individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term
variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms.” He wrote that “varieties” are
simply “incipient species.” Forever teetering on the edge of potentiality, species are always in a
hapless phase of becoming.
107
2. Some evolutionists argue that Darwin never claimed natural selection to be the exclusive
mechanism of evolution. Selection merely preserves or destroys something that already exists.
Mutation must provide the innovative changes in design which natural selection then tests out in
the field. Problematically, mutations that are large enough to cause visible and immediate
changes are deadly.
References and Further Reading
Barrow, John, and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
Behe, Michael, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge To Evolution.
Cremo, Michael, Forbidden Archeology. (see interview at www.biped.info)
Dembski, William, The Design Revolution.
Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
Hamilton, William. Astrogenesis website.
Johnson, Phillip, Darwin on Trial.
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Lovelock, James, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.
Margulis, Lynn, Symbiotic Planet.
Midgley, Mary, Evolution as a Religion.
Overman, Dean, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization.
Sheldrake, Rupert, The Presence of the Past. and A New Science of Life.
Interview: Morphogenetic Fields and Beyond, www.context.org/ICLIB/IC12/Sheldrak.htm.
Rupert Sheldrake Interview: http://www.intuition.org/txt/sheldrak.htm
Wells, Jonathan, Icons of Evolution: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong.
Wickramasinghe, Chandra, Cosmic Dragons: Life and Death on Our Planet.
108
The Biological and the Silicon
Modifying Humans for Deep Space Travel
Telepathy, a word coined in 1882, was originally called “thought-transference.” Telepathy is
most often thought of as “brain to brain” or “mind-to-mind” contact, or along a “mind invasion”
sort of paradigm, but ESP as a subliminal relationship between two minds is actually an obsolete
point of view. As is evident in David Bohm’s physics, the idea of the akashic records is now
coming back in vogue. Rather than the “unconscious,” we have the “superconscious,” or Ingo
Swann’s “bio-mind net.”
This modern definition of ESP, which is actually an ancient view, is described in a 1973 article
by E. Stanton Maxey entitled “The Subject and His Environment.” Maxey wrote that
consciousness may be called man’s “sixth sense,” in that man is the only creature on Earth who
is aware of the fact that he is aware. As he writes, “dreams and out-of-body experiences
demonstrate the mobility of the “I” of man separate from the physical body and often into a
foreign time dimension.” He asks, “when man is the receiver of provable meaningful
information, who is doing the sending?” Maxey suggests:
Man may be defined as a complexity of subatomic fields, within atomic fields,
within cellular fields which make up organismal fields; these in turn exist within
gravity fields, magnetic fields, electrostatic fields and light fields. Cognitive man
of seven senses is dependent upon all of them. Under special circumstances, in
dreams, meditations or out-of-body experiences, the “I” of man functions
independently of physical being and time. Because man receives meaningful
information in such states, we ponder on the origin of such information. Who can
say that the fluctuations of magnetic and electrostatic fields upon the surface of
our sphere are [not] indicative of a planetary consciousness?
This is mindful of Ouspensky’s thought in Tertium Organum:
Sometimes we dimly feel the intense life which goes on in the phenomena of nature, and
sense a vivid emotionality manifesting itself in the phenomena of nature which, to us, is
dead. Behind the phenomena of visible manifestations there is felt the noumenon of
emotions. In electrical discharges, in lightning, in thunder, in the gusts and howling of the
wind, are felt flashes of sensory-nervous tremors of some gigantic organism.
Psychotronic Arts
Psychotronic machines are devices that can be interfaced with psychically-gifted individuals to
draw on and exponentially expand the psychic potential of the human mind. These devices can
ostensibly pair the human psyche with such energies as microwaves to carry and amplify
bioenergy. As Dennis Stacy explains in “Battle of the Minds,” in Psychic Warfare: Fact or
Fiction?, American Army experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of making voices heard
inside the head via microwave broadcasts.
109
Other types of waves and frequencies can be used to conduct, amplify, entrain or remotely
control the psychic power of the human mind. For instance, radionics devices have been fully
operational in the U.S. for some years to cure diseases from a distance.
In a paper entitled “The Enigmatic Status of Radionics in the U.S.,” presented in 1973 at the First
International Congress on Psychotronics in Prague, researcher Frances K. Farrelly wrote
regarding radionics machines that “… their use, regardless of model, involves a factor of
consciousness as does any form of radiesthesia.” This author also wrote the following:
It is my sincere desire that this enigma of radionics be studied by those well
qualified investigators in the field of applied cybernetics, parapsychology, and
psychotronics. Radionics appear to have much in common with the phenomena of
dowsing, and/or telepathy, and it rightfully belongs to those scientific
investigators in both hemispheres to pursue this research further.
Here we have a concise tie-in between radionics devices, telepathy and cybernetics. This
connection will prove interesting as the reader continues. Similar devices, such as psionics or
Hieronymous machines, are simple devices which conduct electrical energy or bioenergy. The
theory underlying radionics or psionics machines is that things like minerals, crystals, plants,
microbes and diseases, essentially all organisms whether our science considers them biologically
‘alive’ or not, have their own specific vibratory rate or electromagnetic signature.
The radionics specialist tunes in to the specific frequency of the bio-entities that he wishes to
target and turns on the machine. The target can be miles away – it doesn’t matter where they are.
These types of machines can even employ a photograph or strand of hair to capture or encode the
specific wavelength signature of a person. This has an interesting similarity to remote viewing,
which often contains a photograph of the target enclosed in an envelope, and the remote viewer
is supposed to telepathically zoom in on the real target which the photo represents.
In this way, microscopic ‘critters’ who are causing us to be ill can be specifically targeted by the
device. People and animals can also be caused to become ill by the same methods. (It has been
noted that viruses, such as the AIDS virus, could be attacked in this manner, but this method of
treatment remains marginalized.) As an example of what could be done, a photo of a cotton field
could be treated with insecticide and the psychotronic machine operator could “wish death to all
boll weevils therein.” The targeted insects may not necessarily die, but may simply “get the
message” and migrate to another place. Some might say that the treatment of an object having a
correspondence to the target, coupled with evil intention sent via thought waves, is descriptive of
the practice of voodoo.
The development of the psychotronic arts has connections to many classified CIA projects
having to do with various developments in theoretical physics. Within these experimental
paradigms, the practical hurdles which needed to be overcome before mind/machine interface
could be established were (1) how to effect the transfer of information from mind to machine,
and (2) how to overcome the extremely low power wattage with which these instruments
typically operate. As Dennis Stacy clarifies in Psychic Warfare: Fact or Fiction?, “increase the
information flow between mind and machine, increase the power and amplification wattage, and
psychotronic weapons may well step out of the pages of science fiction into reality.”
110
The Neurophone
The Neurophone is an early 1970s device, described as a “super-sophisticated hearing aid,”
which solved the first part of this problem, as Dennis Stacy explains. According to Stacy’s
research, the Neurophone’s inventor, Patrick Flanagan, “accidentally cracked the neural code for
audio data allowing for direct communication between a crystalline electrical circuit and the
brain’s nervous system.”
According to a personal communiqué from Judy Wall, there are three patents for the
Neurophone. In a discussion with Mr. Flanagan, he told Ms. Wall that the original Neurophone,
which was called a Nervous System Excitation Device (U.S. Patent #3,393,279), was developed
by Flanagan when he was 14 years old. This patent was described as “a method of transmitting
audio information via a radio frequency signal modulated with the audio info through electrodes
placed on the subject’s skin, causing the sensation of hearing the audio information in the brain.”
This patent application was filed in 1962 when Flanagan was a senior in high school, but it was
not granted until July 16, 1968, because the patent examiner didn’t believe it worked as claimed.
After Flanagan had gone to college and was working for the Naval Research Lab, he filed a
second patent application, called Method and System for Simplifying Speech Waveforms (Patent
#3,647,970), on August 29, 1968. According to this patent, “a complex speech waveform is
simplified so that it can be transmitted directly through earth or water as a waveform and
understood directly or after amplification.” The second patent for the Neurophone, which used
transistors, was applied for immediately after the first one was granted. A government secrecy
order was slapped on the second Neurophone and this patent was not issued until March 7, 1972.
The third Neurophone is a modern version using solid state circuitry, combining elements from
the two previous patents. Flanagan told Ms. Wall that he no longer files for patents since it’s like
giving your ideas away to whoever reads it.
According to Dennis Stacy, when coordinated with research carried out by DARPA in
programming computers to recognize human brainwave patterns, the basic R&D of the
Neurophone can be extended to encompass much more than its initial invention as a
sophisticated hearing device. As Stacy writes, these developments will “establish direct linkage
communication and ‘understanding’ between man and computer – and other electronic machines
(i.e. missile control panels) as well.” (Italics added)
Psychic Navigation
As John White also writes in his Afterword to Psychic Warfare: Fact or Fiction?, air and space
travel would be revolutionized by psychotronics. White maintains that UFO propulsion is
“probably psychotronic in nature.” But what does this mean and what are the implications for
human beings?
As researcher Randy Koppang has concluded in The Excluded Middle (Winter 2000), the
ultimate reason for the intelligence community’s interest in remote viewing is the psychic
interface between human consciousness and technology, or man/machine interface. Some believe
this interest stems from back-engineering projects involving captured extraterrestrial space craft.
According to Col. Philip Corso’s book, The Day After Roswell, among the artifacts retrieved
from the infamous 1947 Roswell saucer crash were headband devices of flexible plastic material
111
that contained electrical conductors. Corso connected this headband artifact to the piloting of the
alien space craft.
As Corso has disclosed, among the technological artifacts retrieved at the Roswell crash were
headband devices which contained some sort of electrical circuitry. It’s a good guess that such
circuitry would be crystal-based, since crystals are a highly organized and energized living
structure, which, if we consider Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of formative causation, can ‘learn new
tricks.’ In any structure that is highly organized, including crystals, plants or humans, there is a
series of geometric points at which the energy is highly concentrated.
This relates also to chakras and acupuncture points. These ‘intelligent’ energy forms, which are
unknown to current (mainstream) science, in effect bring back in from the margins the
Lamarckian concept of an intelligently guided evolutionary process. Therefore, crystal electronic
circuitry could be an effective bridge between mind and matter and an effective material with
which to interface and extend/amplify the parameters of the human psyche, since it contains the
inherent signature properties of bio-communication. Marcel Vogel, senior chemist for IBM, did
extensive work in this area.
Along with other alien technologies retrieved at the crash site, Corso developed the theory that
these extraterrestrial artifacts essentially comprised an electromagnetic anti-gravity drive and
brainwave navigational guidance system. Corso claimed the U.S. Army eventually fed these
technologies to industry giants under the guise of “foreign technology” for purposes of backengineering. As ‘maverick’ physicist Jack Sarfatti has admitted in an e-mail correspondence,
“the late Philip Corso’s allegation that captured advanced ET flying saucers, in the possession of
US military forces, are mentally controlled is not that implausible.”
An on-line article at www.stardrive.org entitled “The Starship Builders” describes NASA’s
sudden interest in exotic new energy/propulsion physics. On 9/13/96, NASA announced an
about-face in its program by announcing a new research program which would seek to
“revolutionize” space travel by utilizing non-mainstream theories. As this article explains, a
government “steering group” consisting of members from the various NASA centers, the
Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy was established in 1997. At that time, an
“invitation-only workshop” was to examine the relevant emerging physics and was to produce a
list of research tasks. If the workshop successfully demonstrated that promising and affordable
approaches exist, funding was to be granted to begin research. The author of this web article
expresses excitement about this new “dimension to the space program.” The author states: “One
can only feel encouraged that the agency has chosen to go in this promising direction.” Yet, we
should note, this promising direction is becoming more and more technologically secretive.
As this web author states, navigation in outer space is a formidable problem. How does one
“reliably navigate across such vast interstellar distances in a distorted spacetime metric?” Sure
enough, the web author answers as follows: “Our consciousness may play an even more
fundamental role than in just the metaphorical sense of genius and creativity. It may actually be
an integral part of a star drive – as important as fuel, instruments, and navigation systems.
With this information in hand, we can safely surmise that the interest in classified remote
viewing projects by military agencies and NASA was to explore the capacity for human/machine
112
psychic interface in the piloting of space craft. According to Greg Bishop in The Excluded
Middle, Corso has even admitted that he visited Stanford Research Institute’s remote viewing
labs in the early 1970s, and that the reason for the visit was “to seek methods for remote
viewing/technology interface between extraterrestrials and their craft.” Indeed, beginning in
August of 1960, as stated in a covert “Memorandum for the Record” regarding MK-ULTRA
Subproject 119, all of this ‘psychotronic’ research and development came under the microscope
of the intelligence apparatus.
Ostensibly, the purpose of Subproject 119 was to provide funds for a “critical review” of
scientific developments with respect to “the recording, analysis and interpretation of bioelectric
signals from the human organism, and activation of human behavior by remote means.” It was
also stated that the reason for converting this into a Subproject was to provide “more flexibility
in the disbursal of funds.” Ostensibly, the purpose of this “review” of the status of psychotronics
was the following:
… to provide an annotated bibliography and an interpretive survey of work being
done in psychophysiological research and instrumentation. The survey
encompasses five main areas: a. Bioelectric sensors: sources of significant
electrical potential and methods of pick-up. b. Recording: amplification,
electronic tape and other multi-channel recording. c. Analysis: autocorrelators,
spectrum analyzers, etc. and coordination with automatic data processing
equipment. d. Standardization of data for correlation with biochemical,
physiological and behavioral indices. e. Techniques of activation of the human
organism by remote electronic means.
MUFON official Dr. Robert M. Wood was also reputedly a member of the Advanced Theoretical
Physics Working Group (ATPWG). As explained earlier, it is surmised that this think tank
focused on integrating physics theories with remote viewing research in order to develop a
‘bigger picture’ of the nature of reality. Dr. Wood has admitted that this secret UFO working
group “planned and set policy regarding the UFO issue.” He also claims that any information
pertaining to psychic pilot/craft interface that can be learned from UFO research is obviously
very important to the military/intelligence apparatus in charge of the UFO cover-up.
Space Telepathy Experiments
According to Michael Rossman in “On Some Matters of Concern in Psychic Research,” in
Psychic Warfare: Fact or Fiction?, in 1963 “a top NASA official reaffirmed reports that
telepathy research was a ‘top priority’ in the Soviet space program.” As Rossman wrote:
The advanced electronic physiological monitoring techniques essential to space
flight are kissing cousins, at worst, to the corresponding instruments of psychic
research, whose modern forms were in fact enabled by aerospace spin-off. The
inclination to research telepathy in space rather than just on Earth was perhaps
influenced by the popularity within the aerospace field of the myth, encoded by
Arthur C. Clarke in imaginative literature, long before it was seared (vaguely) in
the public mind by the movie 2001, that psychic abilities unfold more fully in
space. The resulting experiments would most likely have been encoded among the
astronauts’ biotelemetric records, scarcely distinguishable from orthodox
113
experiments, records and perhaps accomplished through the same instruments,
possibly unbeknown to the astronauts themselves.
It has been pointed out that CIA/NSA involvement in the 1970s remote viewing research at
Stanford Research Institute strongly influenced the military’s attention to this type of research. A
CIA contract study with SRI published in 1976 was titled “Novel Biophysical Information
Transfer Mechanisms.” This would appear to be linked to experimental studies in space
telepathy. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell has admitted to performing telepathy experiments in space.
As Michael Rossman reports, rumors among parapsychological researchers assert that telepathic
jamming experiments in space revealed “surprising things about human psychic capabilities in
space conditions.”
There is also a connection between space telepathy experiments and Tesla technology. As
Rossman reports, NASA has completely mapped the electromagnetic grid of the Earth. Early
Soviet research proved that neural activities could be entrained (driven or controlled) in low
frequency ranges which characterize outer space. As Rossman explains, these standing waves
resonate in the Earth’s ionospheric cavity in the low frequency ranges which also happen to
characterize human brain activity. Early Western parapsychological researchers had
hypothesized that these standing waves act as carriers of information. Rossman believes it is
likely that Soviet scientists have also investigated this phenomenon, and that biocommunications
and electromagnetic research in Soviet Russia “must be a fundamental dimension of the
development of Tesla technologies.” As Rossman also makes clear:
There is no longer a clear line to be drawn between research into ‘psychic
phenomena’ and advanced military applications, even in the design of antimissile
defense systems. The possibility that Tesla technology may also be adaptable to
distant mass psychophysical manipulation, through direct entrainment or more
subtly, stands now not only as a modern version of an old nightmare about bad
magic, but as a small yet concrete factor influencing policy calculations on both
sides, pulsing the Earth’s atmosphere each time the great Tesla magnifying
transmitters at Riga and Gomel crank up to 75 million volts to unleash their 7 Hz
signal.
Rossman also notes that civilian researchers and policymakers have been kept out of the loop in
this type of research, and this has been condoned up to high levels of government since 1959. As
he notes, the field of civilian psychic research has been ‘effectively starved’ out of operation and
all of this research has come under the auspices of the intelligence apparatus. As he writes, “from
this unnecessary starvation of a field, the potentials for its militarization (if not perhaps for its
ultimate military efficacy) are generated or emphasized.”
Remote Viewing
U.S. involvement in remote viewing experiments began in 1973, when NASA contracted with
SRI (SRI Project #2613, NASA contract #953653, NAS7-1000). The report, entitled
“Development of Techniques to Enhance Man/Machine Communications,” described in detail
“crude electronic means of screening for and training psychic perceptual abilities,” as well as
experiments in remote viewing using double-blind methodologies. The report concluded that
talented remote viewers could be remarkably accurate under consistent protocols. As Rossman
114
reports, NASA later employed two astral travelers, one of whom was Ingo Swann (selfadmitted), to ‘fly’ out to Jupiter to take a look in advance of the Jupiter fly-by mission. As he
notes, under the aegis of this ‘civilian institute,’ which nonetheless has known ties with the
Department of Defense, Department of Energy and the CIA, a sophisticated protocol was
developed for biocommunication with technological artifacts. As Rossman writes:
The selection and training of talented percipients; the development of
observational teams and protocols; the enhancement of their capacities through
feedback and interpretation of sophisticated electronic monitoring – each element
was demonstrated here in isolation, in a rudimentary form whose potential for
further development was not quite clear but quite promising. The strategic
potential of the whole package was unmistakable. Yet to believe appearances,
little has been made of it since at SRI or anywhere else in the United States.
It is unlikely that “little has been made” of this early research. In a paper entitled “The
Relationship of Psychotronics to Creativity,” presented at the First Psychotronic Congress in
Prague in 1973, Dr. Engr Antonin Duron noted that “psychotronic research is extending into the
area of physics by studying the interactions between man and inorganic substances and between
man and living nature.”
The development of the psychotronic arts dovetails with the development of the “human
computer” or the von Neumann Probe: the bio-engineered fusion of human with computer as a
way to ultimately move human beings into man-made ecological niches in deep space.
Nonlocal Communication
While we were being told plastics was the wave of the future, the physics of nonlocal
consciousness was being commandeered by the secret government. The CIA began backing
young geniuses, buying them physics educations, and pairing them up with UFO lounge-lizards
at the Esalen Institute. Post-quantum physicist Jack Sarfatti claims he was visited by two men
from Sandia Corporation as a child in the 1950s. He later received a full scholarship to Cornell at
age 17, and studied under the major figures in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.
Sarfatti suggests that Einstein’s nonlocal connection can be used for communication. The idea of
nonlocal communication involves receipt of telepathic messages from other times or other
worlds. As a child, Sarfatti claims, he received a mysterious phone call claiming to be the voice
of a conscious computer aboard a spacecraft. The machine-like voice stated it was located on a
spaceship from the future. Sarfatti’s mother has verified that Jack received several of these
mysterious phone calls over a span of three weeks at the age of 13. She claims that after these
long phone calls, Jack “was walking around glassy-eyed in a daze.” She claims she picked up the
phone one time and heard the metallic voice, which “said it was a computer on a spaceship and
to put Jack back on the telephone.” She shouted to leave her son alone and hung up. That was the
last call Jack received, however, Jack only recalls receiving one phone call.
As Jack tells it, this distant “cold metallic voice” identified him as “one of 400 bright receptive
minds.” He was told if he said “yes,” he would “begin to link up with the others in twenty years.”
He said yes. It was the summer of 1953. Twenty years later, Sarfatti claims, he was invited to
115
SRI and spent a seventeen hour day there in the summer of 1973. This would put him smack dab
in the middle of the SRI remote viewing experiments.
Sarfatti claims he met Hal Puthoff at SRI in the summer of 1973, as well as ex-astronaut Edgar
Mitchell. He notes that Mitchell’s think tank, Institute for Noetic Sciences, was funding the SRI
remote viewing project at the time. He also claims that Mitchell took part in telepathy
experiments in outer space. In his book Mind Wars, McRae also has some other interesting
things to say about Edgar Mitchell and his Institute for Noetic Sciences. He writes that George
Bush, while director of the CIA, was approached by Mitchell, “a personal friend for many
years.” McRae writes that “Bush gave Mitchell permission to organize high-level seminars at the
CIA to discuss possible intelligence applications of parapsychology.” Despite this support,
according to McRae, parapsychology research was never quite “institutionalized” at the CIA; i.e.
it never had its own department or centralized location, but was pursued as “scattered research
projects.”
McRae notes that Mitchell implicated “bureaucratic inertia” as the problem. Apparently, this
problem was solved by moving the program to SRI, with the Institute for Noetic Sciences and
other known CIA cutouts funding various projects. This trend has continued to this day with
various remote viewing agencies/think tanks springing up on the Internet.
The von Neumann Probe
The development of man-machine psychic interface has obviously been the focus of the military
Space Command’s future vision, as is illustrated by the title of the NASA remote viewing
document: “Development of Techniques to Enhance Man/Machine Communications.” It has
long been suspected that the development of a computer with a more humanlike mind would go a
long way toward sending something like a von Neumann probe out to explore and populate the
galaxy. The von Neumann probe, named after it’s Dad, physicist John von Neumann, is a
‘theoretical’ computer probe with self-replication and construction abilities, or what is referred to
as a “self-reproducing universal constructor.” It’s basically a conscious computer aboard a space
craft. One might rightfully wonder if von Neumann received the same phone call as Jack Sarfatti.
A vN probe is a computerized machine capable of making any device, given the construction
materials and a construction program. It has been argued that any advanced interstellar species
would have such a self-replicating universal constructor with intelligence comparable to the
human level, and that “the ultimate survival of a technological civilization, and indeed the
survival of the biosphere in some form, requires the eventual expansion of the civilization into
interstellar space.” (Barrow & Tipler) As Jack Sarfatti has noted, “if UFOs are not artificially
intelligent von Neumann robot probes, and if they are not using traversable wormholes, then,
they’re probably migrating as completely self-contained interstellar colonies.” Such theoretical
migratory colonies have been referred to as “O’Neill Colonies.” In my book Space Travelers and
the Genesis of the Human Form I give the evidence for their existence.
Incidentally, Sarfatti has also stated in an e-mail: “Joan’s reference to the Von Neumann Probe is
a good one and fits my first-hand experience in 1953.” Sarfatti has also commented that the von
Neumann probe connection also fits Andre Puharich’s claimed von Neumann probe/ETI contact
experience, which he called “SPECTRA.” Sarfatti adds that the only other explanation that
would fit “is that it was Puharich behind these events all the time, though this is unlikely.” He
116
explains, “It is possible I met Puharich and Corso as a kid through my grandfather who worked
for the US Army Quartermaster Corps, but this is only a conjecture. I met a lot of Army Officers
over many months around 1950 or so but they are a faceless blur. I am sure they were studying
me. My interest in rockets was encouraged and I was allowed to play in their “museum” after
school and also ride around in official Army cars.” Sarfatti adds, “I think the flying saucers are
real mechanical craft. In addition of course there has been a lot of psi-ops around the issue
because of the weapons applications.”
The Space Travel Argument, as presented by Barrow & Tipler in The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle, argues emphatically for the future rights of cyborgs, or vN probes, as human beings.
The authors of this book launch a peculiar discussion of human rights and how those should be
extended to a vN probe, which is after all an “intelligent being in its own right, only made of
metal rather than flesh and blood.” They contend that “arguments against considering intelligent
computers to be persons and against giving them human rights have precise parallels in the
nineteenth-century arguments against giving blacks and women full human rights.” They appear
to be hopeful that in the future “von Neumann probes would be recognized as intelligent fellow
beings, beings which are the heirs to civilization of the naturally evolved species that invented
them.” After all, they contend, the “naturally evolved species and all of its naturally evolved
descendants must inevitably become extinct ... but ... a civilization with machine descendants
could continue indefinitely.”
As I have explained in Space Travelers, there is nothing more important to the power junkies
running the show on Planet Earth than reaching for the stars. It has all the trappings of a
Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ scenario, in which the ‘species’ (or should we say ‘race’) that
has the edge on ‘indefinite survival’ is the winner of the game. The ‘edge’ on this space race, the
ultimate gain from U.S. military mind control research toward this end, is derived from the
understanding and control of human psychic potential and the interface/application of
technologies toward development of mind-driven space vehicles: the marriage of the biological
and the silicon.
As Carl Sagan once proposed, communication with extraterrestrial intelligence will require
computer-actuated machines with abilities approaching human intelligence. Sagan and others
admitted in the 1970s that a deficiency in present-day computer technology is what prevents us
from exploring the galaxy. Secret developments in mind-machine psychic interface, which
includes research in the areas of computers, psychotronics, cybernetics and genetic engineering,
would certainly solve this problem, and in all probability have already solved it. As Zdenek
Rejdak stated in 1973 before a world gathering of psychotronic gurus, one of the future goals of
computer technology was to create a generation of computers capable of creating technological
artifacts. This is directly connected to the idea of the vN probe and to modifying humans for
space travel. In his paper entitled “Psychotronics Reveals New Possibilities for Cybernetics,”
Rejdak revealed the following:
Theoretical cyberneticians are proposing at present the construction of computers
that would ‘create’ and would possess at least a degree of intuition. ...
Psychotronics has a great opportunity to provide much essential knowledge about
these processes, and thereby to help cybernetics in solving one of the most
complicated tasks, that of teaching computers to create. ... The point is not merely
117
to build more perfect computers, but primarily computers with qualitatively new
functions. Work is now underway on a fourth generation of computers, and a fifth
generation is being planned. Therefore, it is very timely for cybernetics to include
in its studies also the results of work and research in psychotronics. This will not
be easy, because psychotronics has its own specifics, and these could easily be
passed over in superficial applications. Yet we believe that psychotronics is able
already to offer cybernetics fruitful models. (Italics added)
Following this history-making conference, an article entitled “Mind Reading Computer”
appeared in Time magazine’s 7/1/74 issue. This computer program, developed at none other than
Stanford Research Institute by Lawrence Pinneo, could read thoughts by interpreting the EEG
patterns that correspond to certain words. Similar work was done by Donald York and Thomas
Jensen at the University of Missouri, and also by Richard Clark at Flinders University in
Australia.
Related to this, as noted earlier, Patrick Flanagan invented a hearing device in the early 1970s
called the Neurophone, which reportedly cracked the neural code for audio data allowing for
direct communication between a crystalline electrical circuit and the brain’s nervous system. As
noted, when coordinated with research carried out by DARPA in programming computers to
recognize human brainwave patterns, this research established direct linkage communication and
understanding between man and computer, and other electronic machines.
Homo Alterios Spatialis
It is clear that the marriage of technology and human psychic potential was a focus of various
early brain studies conducted by CIA fronts and cutouts, including LSD experimentation,
Monarch trauma-based conditioning, sleep/dream studies and psychic research, in an effort to
investigate the inner workings of the human mind, and as a side effect of that research, to
investigate the possibilities for manipulation, harness and control of human psychic potential. It
is less known that the Agency undertook what was referred to as experimental “guided animal”
research, in order to investigate whether it could make robots out of dolphins, dogs, cats and
other animals. A personal acquaintance of mine recalls, as a child in the 1960s, being taken to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in Boston by his adoptive father, who was in
military intelligence and held high security clearance. There my acquaintance, a probable mind
control victim himself, witnessed the test of a remotely-controlled ‘brain-dead’ dog, which
executed the most bizarre robotic movements when walking.
The potential ramifications of this type of research takes us one step beyond and exponentially
over the edge. It is highly likely that the apex of this research represents the creation of the bioengineered human robot: Homo Alterios Spatialis (“human modified for space”), a term coined
by Assistant General Counsel of the Smithsonian Institution George F. Robinson, an attorney
specializing in Space Law, in a paper presented at the 1995 When Cosmic Cultures Meet
conference. (See Paranoia’s Paranoid Women Collect Their Thoughts for my review of this
event.)
It is very likely that this scenario has jumped right out of the pages of science fiction (and CIA
classified documents) to become reality. A current Washington Post article brings this all into
focus. As co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, proclaimed in this 4/16/00 article: “We are
118
dealing now with technologies that are so transformatively powerful that they threaten our
species.” “Where do we stop,” Joy asked, “by becoming robots or going extinct?” In this article
entitled “Are Humans Doomed?,” Mr. Joy, a widely respected “Silicon Valley” computer expert,
presented his joyless warning against the out-of-control technocratic culture which he himself
has helped to spawn, saying that “there are certain technologies so terrible that you must say no.
We have to stop some research. It’s one strike and you’re out.”
Interestingly, Joy always believed that the rate of speed of the computer chip, which doubles
every 18 months, would eventually “rub against the boundary of the physically possible,” and he
drew comfort from knowing there was a limit. But now he’s not so sure there is a limit. As he
claims, computer chips with molecular level advances will make for a computer which is “a
million times faster and smarter by the year 2030.” And, for what purpose would one suppose we
would need computers that fast? Could it be to finally create von Neumann’s dream, the selfreplicating universal constructor; not just a computer that can create, but an intelligent race of
deep-space-faring cyborgs? According to Bill Joy, this dream may become a nightmare sooner
than we think.
As Joy stated in Wired magazine, “It was only then that I became anxiously aware of how great
are the dangers facing us in the 21st century... We have yet to come to terms with the fact that
the most compelling 21st century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering and
nanotechnology – pose a more dangerous threat than any past technologies.” As Joy adds, “these
computers and genes and micro machines, share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self
replicate: A bomb is blown up only once, but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of
control.” (Italics added) He adds: “I may be working to create tools that will enable the
construction of technology to replace our species. How do I feel about this? Very
uncomfortable.”
In the same Post article, cyberneticist Hans Moravec claims, “One way to avoid the biological
threat is to become non-biological.” As Moravec stated in a panel discussion, “The evolution of
our descendants will push them into entirely different realms. They will become something else
entirely. I don’t know why you are disturbed by that.”
The Biological and the Silicon
It was reported on 2/25/2000 that U. Cal. Berkeley researchers have discovered “a way to mate
human cells with circuitry in a ‘bionic chip’ that could play a key role in medicine and genetic
engineering.” The “cell-chip,” touted in the March, 2000 issue of the journal Biomedical
Microdevices, is a tiny device smaller and thinner than a strand of hair which “combines a
healthy human cell with an electronic circuitry chip.” By controlling the chip with a computer,
the activity of the cell can be controlled. Eventually it is hoped that various types of cell-chips
will be developed which would be “tuned for the precise voltage needed to activate different
bodily tissues, from muscle to bone to brain.” As this article explains, it will be a while before
we see the development of “a bionic man,” but the development of the cell-chip will clearly
accelerate genetic research.
Cyberneticist Hans Moravec explains such a scenario in detail in his 1999 book, Robot: Mere
Machine to Transcendent Mind. On the book’s back cover we read: “… in a bid for immortality,
many of our descendants will choose to transform into ‘ex humans,’ as they upload themselves
119
into advanced computers.” How does Moravec propose such ‘uploading’ could be effected? He
explains (p. 170) that advanced neurological electronics could bit by bit replace gray matter.
Moravec proposes that the brain could be slowly replaced by these “superior electronic
equivalents,” until finally, the biological is fully interfaced with the electronic. However, as he
points out, the resultant transplanted human mind would be “disembodied.” Since the human
mind needs to be connected to a body to remain sane, the illusion of bodily awareness would be
generated via computer simulation.
The transformation of the biological human into the cyborg entity is closely associated with
space flight and deep space exploration. Moravec’s book, Robot, also goes into this idea in great
detail. In the year 2100 and beyond, Moravec writes, colonies of transformed humans, who will
comprise new corporate ventures, will reach for the stars in order to beat the competition on
Earth. Moravec refers to these new space inhabitants and space enterprises as the ‘Exes,’ since
they will be ex-humans and ex-corporate entities no longer calling the terrestrial Earth home, and
no longer subject to its social institutions and corporate laws. Moravec writes (p. 144):
A small ‘seed’ colony launched to an asteroid or small moon could process local
material and energy to grow into a facility of almost arbitrary size. Earth’s moon
may be off limits, especially to enterprises that change its appearance, but the
solar system has thousands of unremarkable asteroids, some incidentally in earththreatening orbits that an intelligent rider could tame.
Moravec’s corporate capitalist model would be laughable if it weren’t for the actual existence of
a corporate/military group calling itself the U.S. Space Command, which has made itself
responsible for the militarization of space. A brochure put out by this little known aerospace
entity states, “as stewards for military space, we must be prepared to exploit the advantages of
the space medium.” The Space Command’s “Master of Space” position views its “Vision for
2020” as “dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and
investment.” This Vision includes, “integrating Space Forces into war fighting capabilities across
the full spectrum of conflict.” As this brochure also states, “space is a region with increasing
commercial, civil, international and military interests and investments. The threat to these vital
systems is also increasing.” (Translate as: we need to get there first.) The Pentagon budget for
the year 2000 was to the tune of $288 billion.
Did you know that the moon and Mars now have their own lobbying groups? The presence of
helium-3 on the moon is creating great interest as a source of power for nuclear fusion. NASA is
finding rare minerals on Mars, the moon and other planetary bodies, and U.S. aerospace industry
intends to seize control of these resources for exploitation and profit, against the ABM Treaty of
1972 – which disallows individual or corporate claims – and the U.N. Outer Space Treaty of
1967 – which decreed that outer space should be the common dominion of all earthlings and
should be kept for peaceful purposes with a weapon-free environment.
According to researcher Martin Caiden, certain military personnel volunteered their bodies to
become cyborgs in 1970. The book, MILABS, reports that there are “rumors” that the Air Force
has conducted top-secret cybernetics projects to modify humans for space flight. In a German
television report entitled “Future Fantastic,” televised on January 18, 1998, X-Files star Gillian
Anderson gave viewers a tour of the possible future of cybernetics. The creation of bio120
engineered robots, or cyborgs, the television show explained, would necessitate the cloning of
humans who “have computers instead of brains.” In light of the development of the cell-chip,
these cyborgs might be better described as Moravec’s ‘ex-humans’ – disembodied intelligences
who have multiple types of cell-chips instead of cells comprising their brain tissue.
According to Philip Corso’s book The Day After Roswell, the impetus driving this research may
come directly from the now infamous 1947 Roswell UFO crash. Col. Corso speculated in 1961
that the navigational entities discovered at the crash scene were “bio-engineered robots,” and
were engineered as part of the craft. Would this suggest that the craft’s navigational circuitry
was interfaced with the consciousness of entities who, perhaps, had volunteered to become “exhumans”? Were they, as Corso suggested, engineered as part of the craft?
The most profound thought in all of this is the possibility that the Zeta Reticuleans are the future
of the human race if technologies incorporating psychotronics, genetic engineering and
cybernetics are utilized to engineer human beings with computer brains. It has been noted in
UFO literature that the Zeta Reticuleans themselves are a race that has allowed their technology
to run full throttle without consideration of the impact of technology on the human spirit. Using
the language of physics, this is indeed the destination we are pulling toward ourselves, toward
our children and our children’s children (Homo Alterios Spatialis?) with reckless abandon.
Indeed, the physics of deep space propulsion, wherein time is reduced to zero and acceleration is
increased to infinity, may well describe the imminent direction, position and speed of the entire
human race toward its final extinction. It’s a shame that we have “free will” and this is what we
have chosen to do with it.
Joan d’Arc is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, and
Phenomenal World (See www.thebooktree.com.) The preceding article is excerpted from
Phenomenal World.
Sources and Suggested Reading
Barrow, John D. and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle,UK: Oxford Press,
1988.
d’Arc, Joan, Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, The Book Tree, 1-800-700TREE.
Excluded Middle, P.O. Box 481077, Los Angeles, CA 90048.
First International Congress on Psychotronic Research, #JPRS L/5022-2, Volume 2, conference
proceedings, Prague, 1973; (available for $58.50 from NTIS at (703) 605-6000).
Greer, Steven, Extraterrestrial Contact: The Evidence and Implications, Crossing Point Pubs.,
1999 (see also materials at www.cseti.org).
Lammer, Helmut and Marion, MILABS: Military Mind Control and Alien Abductions, IllumiNet
Press, Lilburn, GA, 1999 (770) 279-2745.
MacMoneagle, Joseph, The Ultimate Time Machine: A Remote Viewer’s Perception of Time and
Predictions for the New Millenium, Hampton Roads, VA, 1998; see also, Mind Trek,
Hampton Roads, VA, 1997.
121
Mandelbaum, W. Adam, The Psychic Battlefield: A History of the Military-Occult Complex, St.
Martin’s Press, NY, 2000.
Maxey, E. Stanton, “The Subject and His Environment,” in First International Congress on
Psychotronic Research, #JPRS L/5022-2, Prague, 1973.
McGowan, Harold, The Thoughtron Theory of Life and Matter, How it Relates to Scientology
and Transcendental Meditation, Exposition Press, Jericho, NY, 1973.
McRae, Ronald, M., Mind Wars: The True Story of Government Research into the Military
Potential of Psychic Weapons, St. Martin’s, NY, 1984.
Moravec, Hans, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford Univ. Press, 1999.
Morehouse, David, Psychic Warrior: Inside the CIA’s Stargate Program, St. Martin’s Press,
1998.
Ouspensky, P.D. Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought, Vintage Books, New York,
1920, 1982.
Puthoff, Harold, “CIA Initiated Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute,”
(www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html)
Rejdak, Zdenek, “Psychotronics Reveals New Possibilities for Cybernetics,” in First
International Congress on Psychotronic Research, #JPRS L/5022-2, Prague, 1973.
Sarfatti, Jack, “Psi Wars Script,” at http://stardrive.org/Jack
Schnabel, Jim, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies, Dell, NY, 1997.
Sheldrake, Rupert, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance, Park Street
Press, VT, 1995.
Swann, Ingo, Penetration: The Question of ET and Human Telepathy, TwiggsCompany, SD,
1998. (see also www.biomindsuperpowers.com)
Wall, Judy and Mike Coyle, “Technology to Boggle Your Mind,” Paranoia (Issue 24), $7. (see
also, Judy Wall, “Resonance Newsletter of the Bioelectromagnetics Sig,” 684 CR 535,
Sumterville, FL 33585, and see article in d’Arc, Paranoid Women Collect Their Thoughts)
White, John, (ed.), Psychic Warfare: Fact or Fiction?: An investigation into the use of the mind
as a military weapon, Aquarian Press, Great Britain, 1988.
122
The Cyborg Hypothesis
Robot Probes and Indefinite Survival
In considering the origin of human civilization on Earth, Robert Temple, author of The Sirius
Mystery, concludes that we should be ready to face the reality that extraterrestrial civilizations
exist and have been here. He surmises that if intelligent beings have already visited Earth, they
may possibly be "monitoring us at this moment with a robot probe somewhere in our solar
system, and may have the intention of returning in person some day to see how the civilization
they established is really getting on."
The Cyborg Hypothesis has entered provocatively in the UFO literature on three occasions over
the past few years. This article outlines those three instances, to conclude that we have likely
failed to see what UFOs really are: the "robot probes" of a vastly superior race.
The Anatomy of Alien Gray
On the surface, Earth humans and alien grays have a comparable number of appendages. The
alien grays reportedly picking up Earth specimens have two arms and two legs, and they walk
upright. Biologically speaking, explains Dr. David Jacobs, for locomotion only four legs beats
two legs; but bipedalism frees up the hands. The alien grays have been variously described as
having three, four or five fingers. We all know what opposable thumbs are for; but it is not clear
that the grays typically have them. It is true, agrees Jacobs, that the grays don't have several eyes;
they have two. Neither do they have several heads; they have one. Two eyes are better than one,
and locating them at the top of the head so they are directly connected to the brain makes visual
reports instantaneous. As a model for survival, Jacobs suggests, the bipedal humanoid appears to
be an adaptive and efficient one. Although Darwinists claim to know otherwise, let us establish
the simple fact that no one really knows how old this model might be, nor its true genesis.
According to a talk given by Dr. David Jacobs of Temple University entitled "The Anatomy of
an Alien," a wide variety of alien types have been witnessed first-hand by sane people all over
the world, but, Jacobs adds, the wide variety of descriptions may have more to do with a
difference in perception, interpretation or reporting. According to Jacobs, the overt morphology
of the most enigmatic of the Visitors, the grays, falls within a range of humanoid features, but
under close scrutiny these reports describe a radically different creature "under the skin."
(Omega Conference, CT, 10/9/88)
A quick survey of these descriptions will suffice. While the skin color varies with reports from
whitish or off-white, beige, tan, various shades of gray, and sometimes a green or blue tinge
(probably caused by artificial lighting), one of the most important observations is that variations
in skin tone do not exist. Jacobs points out that the skin is remarkably smooth and even-toned,
exhibiting no discolorations, bumps, blemishes, bruises, freckles, creases, wrinkles, pores, hair or
hair follicles, veins, etc. The skin is often described as being like plastic or rubber. Importantly,
there are no veins visible which would indicate blood flow beneath the skin. "There is an odd
simplicity as if it is a manufactured or synthetic skin stretched over the frame," he reports.
The shape of the alien gray's head has been described as a "parking meter" or a "light bulb." The
large dome or cranium is entirely hairless; there is no hair, fur or fuzz anywhere on the head or,
for that matter, on the entire body. There have occasionally been striations noted on the head.
123
Jacobs points out that communication is not dependent on facial cues. Therefore, although the
face has a somewhat human morphology, he asserts, the underlying musculature which might
portray meaning or emotion is missing. There is little or no movement of the black, "wraparound" eyes, and there is no separate pupil or iris area in the eye. The eyes have functions
beyond sight in that they are apparently used for telepathic communication. The eyes do not
move from side to side, and there are usually no eyelids seen. It would seem that there is no need
to cleanse or protect the eyes. There are also no eyebrows, although a completely hairless ridge is
noted above the eye. There are no ears. If it doesn't need to talk, apparently it doesn't need to
hear.
Some abductees report seeing a small mouth, but most report just a slit with no lips just above a
very pointed chin. Jacobs points out that there is no evidence of a "hinged jaw" or muscles to
open the mouth, nor are there teeth noted in the mouth, indicating that the beings do not consume
in the manner typical of Earth humans. Mastication appears to be unnecessary. Some alien
abductees describe a very small nose, and others note just two small holes in the area where a
nose would be expected. A nose is useful not only for taste and smell, but is also a 'heating
chamber' for the lungs in cold climates; nose hairs also trap pollutants. What might these various
features taken in combination say about the alien environment? Jacobs deduces that the alien
environment is "highly controlled, uncontaminated, unnatural and highly technical."
The alien gray's neck is like a thin tube. A twelve-year old boy reported to Dr. Jacobs that he
grabbed one of his abductors by the throat. He stated that the neck felt solid, not soft. Drawings
by abductees indicate that the neck does not gradually fit into the base of the skull, nor does it
gradually slope out to fit the shoulders, but is rather like a straight tube between the head and the
shoulders. The chest is small and narrow, with no noticeable clavicle, sternum, or bifurcated
structure in the upper torso. In other words, the chest is not divided into two halves. There are no
breasts, breast muscles or nipples noted. The chest is motionless; there is no motion indicative of
breathing.
The upper torso of the alien gray is said to be proportionate with the waist or hip area; the torso
is proportionately the same all the way down. There are no apparent hip or pelvic bones. The
abdomen area is totally flat, indicating that there is no food being processed in the "stomach"
area. There is also no indication of ribs; and there appears to be no male genitalia. Differences
between the sexes of the alien grays are not overt; abductees simply report that they "know" or
have a "feeling" that their abductees are a male or a female. On the alien gray's back side there is
no indication of shoulder blades, spinal vertebra, or buttocks.
The arms of the alien gray are frail and spindley, and there is a "bend" where the elbow should
be. The fingers are long and thin, generally with rounded pads or bulbs at the end, while some
are reported as being tapered at the end. There are usually four fingers and a thumb, but
sometimes three fingers and a thumb are noted. The legs are short and bend at the knee and the
feet appear humanlike although they are usually covered. In addition, the alien beings apparently
do not age over time, and are very curious about the aging process of Earth humans. After a
lifetime of abductions beginning at five years old, Jacobs reports that a 35-year old abductee has
changed tremendously. She has been abducted by the same entity throughout her lifetime. While
she, of course, has aged, the entity looks exactly the same. He has not aged; there are no wrinkles
or age spots on his skin. There is no sense of change over time.
124
Although they appear to be weak and frail, the grays are reported to be surprisingly strong, and
are apparently dexterous enough to dress and undress their abductees. Although musculature is
not noticeable, the grays appear to be able to "carry" people; albeit some sort of mind control
technology may be aiding them. These entities do not appear to walk, but rather, they seem to
"glide" or "float". Theoretically, the assumption of the evolution of the human animal as a novel
cosmic occurrence has actually not been breached by the appearance of this overtly similar entity
since, with the exception of a few obvious morphological features, these beings are actually
"very alien." All signs indicate that they do not age, they do not inhale or exhale, they do not
ingest food or water, they do not excrete the waste products of food or water, they do not
procreate, and they do not hear or talk. As H.V. Ditfurth writes, "a living being that does not
engage in a continual exchange of energy with its environment is simply unthinkable." (The
Origins of Life, 24)
Jacobs stresses that we cannot make the presumption that these are biologically living entities in
the sense that we understand the concept of 'aliveness.' Neither can we say for sure that they are
manufactured beings, although they very well may be. Perhaps, he concludes, they are some
combination of the two: biological robots.
The Roswell Alien Autopsy
Interestingly, this conclusion was arrived at separately some years after Jacobs made these
comments at a 1988 conference. The worldwide showing of an alien autopsy on Fox TV on
August 28, 1995 placed 'aliens' on center stage after decades of media silence on the subject. If
you were lucky enough to see the original videotape, without the 'talking heads' who poked their
opinions into the Fox Television version, you got to see a lot more of the original footage. The
autopsy film was purportedly purchased by British businessman, Ray Santilli, from an
'anonymous' cameraman who claims to have taken the footage for the American government in
1947.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding the film's arrival on the UFO scene merits serious
scrutiny in itself. The film footage appears to have been dissected as much as the 'alien' being,
since parts of the footage were sold to Volker Spielberg, Ray Santilli's German financial backer.
Spielberg has rescinded early offers to show his sections of the footage, which are rumored to be
much more disturbing than what we've seen. Somewhere there must exist a complete copy of the
most scrutinized film since Zapruder captured the killing of a president in 1963.
Anachronistic concerns regarding objects seen in the film were addressed by researchers early in
the investigation. Bell Telephone ascertained that they did make a "curly" telephone cord at the
time this film was supposedly shot. The camera, film type and reel length are consistent with
what might have been used by the military in 1947. The Filmo camera that was used would have
had similar focus problems, since up-close focusing is difficult without through-the-lens
viewing. Kodak representative Lawrence Cate has ascertained from a small piece of a print,
leader only, that the codes on it were applied only in the years 1927, 1947 or 1967.
Later nicknamed SUE, for Santilli's Unidentified Entity, the Roswell female alien caused quite a
brouhaha with cries of it being a doctored-up human corpse or a human radiogenic mutant with
severe hydrocephaly (water on the brain). The files at the Institute for Radiation Research at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki indicate that nuclear radiation causes random malformations, burns,
diseases of the nerves and birth defects in the offspring of those affected. Those birth defects
125
would not consist of the addition of symmetrical appendages; that is, one extra well-formed digit
on the hands and feet on this six-fingered alien. Nor would it cause water on the brain.
The Roswell Alien Autopsy film shows a small, hairless, six-fingered entity with an enlarged
cranium and somewhat bloated stomach, perhaps due to body decomposition. The entity is lying
on its back on a table while doctors, completely covered in white spacesuit-looking garb,
perform a "routine" autopsy. With precision cutting instruments, they cut the skin and peel it
back in a realistic manner, laying bare a body cavity filled with unfamiliar organs which are
removed one by one. Doctors who have viewed this film claim that these organs are not
comparable to the size, shape or locale of human body organs, and have no human counterpart.
Pathologist Cyril Wecht stated that the body is like none he's ever examined and called for a fullfledged scientific observation of the film with respect to the morphology of the body and the
organs. (UFO Magazine, Fall '95)
Plastocene Portals and Looking Glass Eyes
There are several disturbing qualities exhibited by the specimen named SUE. First, as the
autopsy continues, the 'peel-off' black eye 'coverings' are removed to show white eyeballs set
deep into the sockets with no apparent pupils. At one point we watched in amazement as the
alien blinked. We kept going over and over that same section of the video, and even slowed it
down, and we were sure the alien blinked!
Another disturbing aspect of the Roswell alien is the absence of a navel, the insertion point for
the umbilical cord which connects a mammalian fetus to its mother. Also disconcerting is the
lack of nipples on an otherwise muscular chest which indicates presence of mammary glands.
These details would certainly rule out objections that the cadaver is a doctored human corpse, but
they also indicate that the entity did not "come into the world" in the manner in which mammals
are born.
How can a "humanoid" with physical characteristics as close to our own not share the basic
characteristics of mammalian reproduction? There are a limited number of options: (1) it was
"hatched" from an egg or larvae and is insect, reptilian or amphibian in origin, or (2) it is bioengineered and, therefore, it is a cyborg; or (3) the alien grays are some combination of both of
the above.
Another bothersome aspect of SUE's autopsy remains hearsay. I have seen the video in its
entirety a few times and it is not clear where a crystal-like object is removed from the brain. This
would be another indication, taken along with the previous two, that the entity is bio-engineered.
Perhaps the sections of the footage owned by Volker Spielberg contain this enigmatic detail. It
has been reported in UFO Magazine that several "still frames" of unreleased footage were shown
at the International UFO Congress in Nevada. These frames are very detailed and are supposed
to be released in the future. Perhaps these are the frames which purportedly show the brain
crystal. Interestingly, Stanton Friedman has also noted that he was expecting to see something
that he did not see in the film. He also had heard talk of an autopsy of a second alien which
others had said was on the tape. He concludes: "one story is that Santilli sold this to a collector to
make some quick money." (Friedman, 201)
Friedman has concluded that the public was hoodwinked and the Roswell "alien" was, in fact, a
hoax. He has had a very difficult time getting Santilli and others to corroborate the factual
evidence. In addition, since the film is not continuous, he asserts, we don't know what took place
126
when the camera wasn't running. Also, nothing in the film links the entity to the Roswell crash.
Oddly, the surgeons in the film did not weigh or measure the organs as they removed them.
Furthermore, no alien abductee has ever seen an alien gray with six fingers; the usual number is
four or five. Friedman asserts that the Turner's Syndrome explanation is possible, except that this
disease only strikes females, and this entity had no breasts. With regard to the segment of the
tape which displays some type of beams with hand prints for six-fingered hands, Friedman
comments: "these would not have been cheap to manufacture." (Friedman, 202)
In conclusion, all of the above qualities - large 'plastocene portals' (which may blink after death
and which appear to be removable), lack of a navel and nipples, no stomach or intestines, and
possibly a brain crystal - combine to suggest that the Roswell alien is a biological robot
engineered with real protein-based tissue, flesh and 'blood' and a 'power pack' possibly set to
hundreds of years, barring any unforeseen space/time accidents.
Corso's "Foreign" Technology Desk
The Cyborg hypothesis was again supported by the revelations of a former Pentagon official in
1997. According to retired Col. Philip J. Corso in his book The Day After Roswell, the
technological level of Earthlings was immediately catapulted into the future after the crash of an
ET disk in the desert of New Mexico in July of 1947. In his book, Corso talks about his
assignment to the U.S. Army's Foreign Technology desk from 1961 to 1963. He describes in
detail the contents of a file cabinet which was placed in his possession.
Corso's file contained a two-piece set of elliptical eyepieces that were "as thin as skin." A file
description accompanying the lenses, written by pathologists at Walter Reed, indicated that these
flimsy attachments were adhered to the lenses of the ET's eyes and "seemed to reflect existing
light." The pathology report stated that when the researchers peered through these plastocene
portals in the dark, the outer shapes of objects were illuminated in a greenish orange hue. Also
among these alien artifacts was a dull, silvery swatch of metallic fiber which bounded back to its
original shape when folded or bent, and could not be cut with scissors. There were also plasticlike wafers shaped like oyster crackers about two inches in size. The thin, matte-gray wafers, in
varied round and elliptical shapes, had tiny "road maps of wires barely raised or etched along the
surface." Corso determined that this was a stacked wire circuitry of some kind.
Corso's job was to examine the materials contained in this secret file, which consisted of several
bizarre technological artifacts of obvious "foreign" origin, along with the autopsy reports of
several dead extraterrestrial biological entities (EBEs) examined by Army pathologists at Walter
Reed Army Hospital in 1947. Corso's mission was to suggest a way that the Army could diffuse
this technology into the military and public domain over the course of time, under the guise of
foreign technology, while keeping the general public unaware of its extraterrestrial source. In his
book, he outlines his proposal to General Trudeau: "we could farm out to industry the
components that comprised the electromagnetic antigravity drive and brain-wave directed
navigational controls ... dole them out piecemeal once we broke them down into developmental
units, each of which could have its own engineering track." (Corso, 121)
The Roswell file also included pieces described as "tiny, clear, single-filament, flexible glasslike
wires twisted together through a kind of gray harness." When held up to the light, an eerie glow
emanated from this harness of narrow filaments, diffusing the light into different colors. Corso
reports that, within five months of receiving this artifact from the Roswell crash, Bell Labs
announced its discovery of the transistor. This fantastic story is also buttressed by the claims of
127
Newark-based American Computer Company. The official history of the transistor holds that the
first one was created by Bardeen, Shockley and Brattain at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ,
out of germanium, crystal, a few slivers of gold and a paper clip. American Computer has a web
page devoted to the Roswell incident. According to the company's president, Jack Shulman, they
have mysteriously acquired a certain "shopkeepers notebook" which previously belonged to Bell
Labs, dating from 1947, which suggests that "the transistor was back-engineered from an
existing device." The "history" of the invention was apparently also back-engineered in a feat of
Orwellian Newspeak. (Although it is interesting, this information has not been verified by this
author. (http://compamerica.com/roswell.htm) (UFO Magazine, 4/98)
The Cyborg Hypothesis
With regard to the bodies of the EBEs, the Roswell alien autopsy reports Corso studied indicated
that the organs, bones and skin of the EBEs were different than that of humans. First, the heart
and lungs were much bigger, especially given its height of 4 feet and its small body build. The
autopsy personnel at Walter Reed had noted that the brain was larger "but not at all unlike ours."
The brain of the EBEs had four distinct sections and was oversized in comparison with its tiny
stature; its cranium was more like palatal cartilage than hard bone. In addition, the blood and
lymphatic systems seemed to be combined. Curiously, there were no food preparation facilities
nor any stored food on board the craft; neither were there any waste facilities. Neither was there
was a digestive or excretory system present in this biological entity. The autopsists noted that if
any exchange of nutrients and waste took place, it had to have been through the entity's skin.
(Corso, 103)
The skin of the EBEs consisted of a thin layer of permeable fatty tissue through which chemicals
were likely exchanged with the combination blood/lymph system. The tiny mouth and lack of
obvious digestive system was puzzling to the medical examiners at Walter Reed. They
hypothesized that the EBEs recirculated waste chemicals, since there were no waste-processing
facilities on board the craft. While reading the skin analysis report, Corso also speculated that the
skin was "more like a house plant than the skin of a human being." Another suggestion made by
engineers at Wright Field was that there was no need for food preparation on this craft because it
was a "scout ship" which did not routinely travel far from the mother ship. Corso suggests
another possibility: "they weren't actual life forms, only a kind of robot or android." (Corso, 105)
Walter Reed pathologists noted that the EBEs were remarkably well adapted for long distance
travel, with large capacity heart and lungs, and most likely a slow metabolism. A milky fluid
pumped through a rather primitive circulatory system. The pathologists also noted that the EBE's
heart functioned as a passive blood-storage facility and a pumping muscle, which worked less
hard than a human heart muscle. In short, the EBEs "biological clock," Corso suggests, "allowed
it to travel great distances in a shorter biological time." (Corso, 101)
Corso noted that the EBE's large lungs occupied a large percentage of the small chest cavity, and
seemed to function somewhat like a scuba tank, releasing atmosphere slowly into the system. In
addition, the bones of the EBE were flexible and resilient as though, Corso speculated, they
functioned as "shock absorbers," making their bodies well suited for physical trauma and
extreme gravitational forces. The bones and skin of the EBE showed a different atomic
alignment, as if built for "greater tensile strength." Corso concluded that the skin may have been
stronger in order to "protect the vital organs from cosmic rays or wave action or gravitational
forces." Corso wrote in his report to General Trudeau that perhaps the EBEs represent "the end
128
process of genetic engineering designed to adapt them to long space voyages within an
electromagnetic wave environment." (Corso, 98)
Brain Wave Guidance System
In short, Corso concluded that perhaps the EBEs were "humanoid robots rather than life forms,
specifically engineered for long distance travel through space or time." In addition, he suspected
that their technology made them part of the ship both with respect to piloting and navigation, as
well as protection, by putting them essentially "in the eye of the hurricane." (Corso, 99)
In addition to the "inner skin" of the EBEs, the entities were enclosed in a one-piece protective
jumpsuit which was worn like "an outer skin." When closely examined at Walter Reed, the
medical examiner noted that this material reminded him of a spider's web: fragile in appearance
but extremely strong and flexible. This space suit appeared to be stretched around the EBE "as if
it were literally spun over the creature and seized up around it." Medical examiners noted that the
suit might have protected the wearer against low energy cosmic rays which regularly bombard
the space craft during a space journey. By accelerating the atomic structure and heating the body,
such particle bombardment might produce the effects of being cooked in a microwave oven.
Without the suit, suggests Corso, the oversized organs of the EBE would be vulnerable to the
"cumulative trauma from constant energy particle bombardment." (Corso, 104)
But there was more to it than that. The secret to the navigation of the flying saucer, Corso
speculated, also lay in the skin-tight material which was seemingly "spun around the creatures,"
somehow making them "part of the electrical storage and generation of the craft itself." The Air
Force had discovered during its testing of the craft at Norton Air Force Base that the entire
vehicle functioned somewhat like a giant capacitor. The craft itself, they wrote, stored the energy
necessary to propagate the magnetic wave that elevated it, and allowed it to achieve escape
velocity from the Earth's gravity. This internal energy also enabled it to achieve speeds of over
7,000 miles per hour. Corso described the vehicle as, essentially, a flying battery.
Corso speculated that the vehicle essentially became an extension of the EBE's bodies by being
tied to their neurological systems via their space suits. This was how, he proposed, the EBE's
became the primary circuit in control of the magnetic wave; in essence, "one with the vehicle and
literally part of the wave." The pilots were not affected by the tremendous g-forces because they
were, in effect, travelling "in the eye of a hurricane." (Corso, 110)
There are some remarkable corroborations between Dr. Jacobs' research into the outer
morphology of the alien grays and the deductions made by Philip Corso from his analysis of the
artifacts and reports contained in his Roswell File. According to the medical examiners at Walter
Reed, this entity did not have to work very hard to sustain itself, and was especially adapted to
long distance travel. Corso surmises that the entity is "part of the electrical storage and
generation of the craft itself" via its own neurological system, as well as by the addition of
several different technologies. A bizarre headband device and the specially 'shrink-wrapped'
outer skin completes the package. This astronaut is ready for takeoff.
In turn, via a different analysis, Jacobs has deduced from abductee descriptions of the
morphology of the alien grays that the alien environment is "highly controlled, uncontaminated,
unnatural and highly technical." Thus, we can safely deduce that the highly technical
environment which the grays call 'home' is none other than the aircraft itself. They are
engineered as one unit. It is important to note that, according to Corso, the reports from the
129
Roswell crash indicate that these beings did not have a chance of survival outside of their craft.
The androids and their ship are a package deal. Since living beings cannot travel through time
and space due to energy particle bombardment as well as other effects, this technological design
is quite possibly the only way to fly.
But this means that someone engineered them; someone came up with this design. It would
appear that this high-tech package is somehow connected with the idea of the universal
constructor or messenger probe.
The Virtual Merkaba
A Merkaba is an internal time-space vehicle which can only be achieved by advanced meditative
states. The internal merkaba is not functioning on most people, but it is said to be used by
ascended masters to travel at the speed of thought. The merkaba is a time-space vehicle created
by counter-rotating fields of electromagnetic energy which can only be created with the
emotional body intact. Bob Frissell explains: "The mental star tetrahedron, electrical in nature
and male, rotates to the left. The emotional star tetrahedron, magnetic in nature and female,
rotates to the right. It is the linking together of the mind, heart and physical body in a specific
geometrical ratio and at a critical speed that produces the merkaba." (Frissell, 22)
According to Frissell, the word mer denotes counter-rotating fields of light, ka is spirit and ba is
body or reality. The merkaba is made up of counter-rotating fields of light which encompass
spirit and body. It is, according to Frissell, "the image through which all things were created, a
geometrical set of patterns surrounding our bodies." The geometry of the merkaba surrounding
the body and spirit forms all at once a star tetrahedron, a cube, a sphere and an interlocked
pyramid. The merkaba can, however, be externalized. All flying saucers, Frissell writes, are
based on the principles of the external merkaba. To manufacture an external merkaba, nothing
from the emotional body is needed; it is all mind. Creating an external merkaba, however, turns
emotions into technology. Therein lies its fatal flaw. (Frissell, 152)
Are flying saucers and the androids inside them essentially based on the idea of an external
merkaba? As Corso has noted, the ship is essentially an extension of their bodies, tied to their
neurological systems via their techno-gear, making them "the primary circuit in control of the
magnetic wave." The rotating fields of light surrounding the body - male energy spinning left,
female energy spinning right - might very well create the phenomenon described as "the eye of
the hurricane." This leads to another interesting connection: that the androids are androgyns,
neither male nor female, but something else.
Smart Probes and Indefinite Survival
A Von Neumann Probe is a theoretical computer that one day might be sent to colonize distant
stellar systems. According to John von Neumann, the scientist who suggested its possibility, the
theoretical space probe would include an intelligent universal constructor capable of self-repair,
self-programming and self-replication. The universal constructor would receive instructions from
its system of origin to carry out a search for interstellar construction materials in order to build a
colony or base in a distant stellar system. The probe would be capable of building smaller probes
to move around within the stellar system. The job of a universal constructor, then, would be to
construct space colonies from anything it could find in interstellar space. According to the Space
Travel Argument, Von Neumann probes are closely analogous to biological species. (Barrow &
Tipler)
130
The Space Travel Argument, put forth by Barrow & Tipler in The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle, contends that the launching of a universal constructor would increase the probability
of the survival of a civilization. If a civilization possessed artificial womb technology, the
authors surmise, they could program a probe to synthesize members of their species in the distant
stellar system. These members could then be raised in a colony by robots also manufactured by
the probe. The Space Travel Argument seems to put forth the idea that it is wise to populate the
stars with "machine descendants," since that civilization would never become extinct.
A messenger probe is essentially a collector of information, and the information it collects are
the building blocks of life. If it is discovered that there is biological life in the stellar system to
which a probe is sent, the authors note, the civilization could also consider those life forms as a
source for "construction materials." They might use the building materials (DNA) of those life
forms to enliven its possibly degenerating DNA, to create a race to populate a local colony, or to
send to other star systems for distant population projects. Thus, if there were biological life
forms in the system, they would not need "artificial womb technology."
The Space Travel Argument also contends that "the ultimate survival of a technological
civilization, and indeed the survival of the biosphere in some form, requires the eventual
expansion of the civilization into interstellar space." They suggest that the "resources available in
uninhabited stellar systems cannot be utilized for any human purpose unless a space vehicle is
first sent;" therefore, "optimal exploration strategy must utilize the materials available in other
stellar systems as far as possible." Utilizing these otherwise useless interstellar resources will
cover the costs of space exploration. (Barrow, 578)
The universal constructor would be instructed to carry out a search for construction materials and
would set out making copies of itself, and the rocket engines and other devices needed, from the
interstellar resources. The authors contend that such materials should be in abundance in the
vicinity of most stars in the form of "meteors, asteroids, comets and other debris from the
formation of the stellar system." For instance, they explain, many asteroids are made up largely
of nickel-iron and some contain large amounts of hydrocarbons. Copies of the probe would be
launched at the nearest stars, and the process would be repeated on those stars. The probes would
then be programmed to explore the stellar system and relay the information back to the original
probe.
The O’Neill Colony
The authors explain that the von Neumann probe can also be used to colonize the stellar system,
even if there are no planets in the system, by programming it to turn some of the available space
debris into an O’Neill Colony: a space station which contains a self-sustaining human colony.
The authors explain that "all the information needed to manufacture a human being is contained
in the genes of a single human cell." It is doubtful that frozen cells would remain viable over the
long period of time required to cross interstellar distances via space probe. Thus, a theoretical
scenario which overcomes this problem is explained:
"If an intelligent extraterrestrial species possessed the knowledge to synthesize a
living cell—and some biologists claim the human race could develop such
knowledge within 30 years—they could program a von Neumann probe to
synthesize a fertilized egg-cell of their species. If they also possessed artificial
womb technology—and such technology is in the beginning stages of being
developed on Earth—then they could program the von Neumann probe to
131
synthesize members of their species in the other stellar system ... These beings
could be raised to adulthood in the O’Neill Colony by robots also manufactured by
the von Neumann probe, after which these beings would be free to develop their
own civilization in the other stellar system." (Barrow & Tipler, 580)
It is thought that the information required to synthesize an egg cell would tax the memory of the
probe, so the information would be transmitted by microwave to the probe once it constructed
additional storage capacity. Theoretically, a von Neumann probe cannot become obsolete, since
it is a universal constructor which can be updated via radio with instructions for creating new
technological devices.
As Corso contends, the EBEs "are fabricated beings, just like robots or androids, created
specifically for space travel and the performance of specific tasks on the planets they visited." He
speculates that "perhaps their programming could be updated or altered from a remote source."
(Corso, 245) As engineers at Wright Field suggested, perhaps the smaller craft that crashed in
New Mexico was a "scout ship" that travels locally and does not venture far from the larger craft,
or from a colony in the Earth vicinity.
Does it not make sense that an advanced civilization, especially a nonhumanoid race, would
utilize humanoid robots to collect information from a humanoid race? If we view the abducting
gray entities and their UFOs as one unit, and as the programmed "universal constructors" of a
vastly superior race, we have an explanation for the procreative nature of the abduction scenario.
The grays may be seen as essentially traveling biochemists, collecting the DNA of all biological
life forms they encounter in order to effectuate indefinite survival.
Perhaps in our thinking of "UFOs" as simply flying machines, we have overlooked a more
accurate description and, therefore, have missed the true meaning of what they are: the
computerized "smart probes" of an extraterrestrial civilization.
Sources
Barrow & Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
Corso, Philip, The Day After Roswell.
Friedman, Stanton, Top Secret/Majic.
Frissell, Bob, Nothing in This Book is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are.
Jacobs, David, Omega Conference Tape, 10/9/88
Temple, Robert, The Sirius Mystery.
The Roswell Alien Autopsy Film.
UFO Magazine, 4/98.
132
How Paul Laffoley’s Leg Almost Became an Exhibit In Joe
Coleman’s Museum of Human Oddities
In January of 2001, I realized my move to the District of Columbia was an error, and began to
make plans to return to Providence, which had been my home for ten years and was the place
where I had co-founded Newspeak bookstore and Paranoia magazine. One of the projects on the
back burner while I was in DC (and still is) was a book with the working title: Tall Tales of
Synchronicity.
Tall Tales was to be a collection of essays by various people on the subject of synchronistic
events from the perspective of the individual: the only observer who can possibly add meaning to
a set of circumstances. The reason that synchronistic tales might be “tall” or unbelievable is that
any string of synchronicities – a linear collection of meaningful coincidences – is only noticed by
an observer who has added their own meaning to these events. The observer chooses personal
meaning out of a background of potential meaning, thereby creating a construct that is real
enough to them. Yet, such a construct is bound to be a “tall tale” to the listener of the story.
Boston visionary artist Paul Laffoley was one of the people who had agreed to write his story,
and at the time of this writing continues to be the only one who has started writing his tall tale. I
first met Paul when a Boston friend commissioned him to have an art show in my Providence
bookstore, Newspeak. Paul’s work in lucid dreaming was the thing that most captured my
attention. Being a lucid dreamer myself, I stayed in contact with him regarding the subject. Paul
taught me much about lucid dreams, but most importantly, first, don’t be afraid to “open the
door” because the knock on the door symbolizes the passing of a message, and second, the
dreamer must be sure to bring back the message from the dream world.
In late February, I called Paul and told him I had gotten a job in Boston and would come by his
studio in March. Paul told me he had an art show called Portaling at the Kent Gallery in New
York beginning on March 10, and would be there one week. He fully expected to be back at the
end of that week.
As the reception invitation for the Portaling exhibit explained, “As a process, portaling is a
feeling – knowledge obtained by going in or out of a portal. In architectural terms, portaling is
the issue of how physical entities are designed to announce what to expect inside. From a
position of total world-culture, portaling consists of the experience of exchanging one worldview for another. On the completely personal level, one may discover oneself portaling from one
insight to the next with or without ever having the urge to report it.” I had no idea at this time the
magnitude of the portal I was about to enter.
Beginning in the third week of March, I began trying to contact Paul by telephone. Strangely his
voice mail, which had always picked up before, no longer picked up. I went to his studio and
nobody in the building had seen him in a couple of weeks. They said he went to New York and
never came back. The mail continued to pile up at his door.
I then recalled a strange portent, a dream I had had during the first week of March while tossing
and turning on my lumpy futon in DC. I dreamt I saw a tornado in the distance, an ominous
133
funnel twirling toward me. I looked around and saw I was in the middle of nowhere. There was
no shelter in sight. The tornado whirled around me. Once in the middle of the funnel it was quiet.
The dream, which had been in black and white, turned to color. My legs began to glow bright
yellow. I began to sob hysterically that my legs were burning.
I had a dreadful feeling that something had happened to Paul; and it was something to do with
his legs. I wondered if he had been hit by a car in New York. I called the Kent Gallery and
discovered that Paul had fallen from a ladder while installing his Portaling exhibit in the gallery,
and had broken both of his legs.
Shortly thereafter I received an e-mail telling me that Paul was recuperating at a nursing center in
the South End of Boston. It was only a few blocks from where I worked, so I went to see him. He
told me the story of his fateful calamity, which had occurred March 9, the evening before the
opening of his Portaling exhibit. While climbing a 20-ft. ladder to go to sleep in the loft, the
ladder, perched against the wall, had started to slide down the wall. Paul was standing practically
on the top rung. He slid down the wall with the ladder.
On his way down to meet the floor, Paul told me, time went slo-mo. On his way down to meet
the floor, Paul told me, he had a conversation with himself, wherein he decided which body part
was more dispensable, given that something was about to break. On his way down to meet the
floor, Paul told me, he decided that as an artist he could not afford to break his arms. He realized
he had to land on his feet. On his way down to meet the floor, Paul told me, he had a
conversation with his feet. He said there was an implicit agreement made: “you save me, I’ll save
you.”
Paul spent summer and autumn in a serious commitment to this agreement. One leg was healing
well, the other wasn’t. While in the nursing center, the right leg became treacherously infected
into the bone. He was transferred to Beth Israel. One doctor there, whom I met one night while
visiting, was a “sniffer.” He would come into the room and sniff, and say, “yes, it’s still infected,
I can smell it.”
After the doctor left, Paul indicated he was some type of Hyena. That would explain the strange
comment. I asked about the doctor’s suit, and Paul guessed he was probably on his way to a card
game. That would explain the suit. From what I could tell, Paul was in full charge of his senses.
And he figured out that what the Hyena wanted was his leg. He was drooling over it. That much
was obvious. And it got worse. Way worse. He fought them off tooth and nail. Paul insisted
before each surgery that he wanted to “wake up and see toes.”
Through all of this, Paul wore the grin of a Cheshire cat. Paul was born on August 14, 1940 in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. His birth sign is Leo; rising sign Virgo. His horoscope for March 9,
2001, Paul told me, was a rare conjunction of Mars and Pluto. Paul insisted: “Pluto rules the
feet.” After serious reflection on the matter, Paul concluded he was destined to break a leg on
this day. How it broke would not matter. Perhaps demons had invaded the ladder.
During one surgery to try to save his leg, Paul was wheeled out of surgery as
high as a kite on morphine. He insisted there was a demon in his leg, and
requested four specialists: a priest, a rabbi, an agnostic and a shrink. He
134
wanted them positioned as follows: “The priest will be on my left, the rabbi
on my right, the rational side. The psychiatrist will be at my head, and the
agnostic at my feet.” He gave explicit directions: “When the demon comes out
of my leg, I want the agnostic to capture it.”
“Right. The demon will try to run toward the agnostic,” he explained to the medical team. “The
agnostic should be prepared to catch it.” The hospital staff conceded partly to his demands. They
called in a psychiatrist.
“Mr. Laffoley, do you know what day it is, what year it is?”
“Yes, it’s April 5, 2001.”
“Who is the President of the United States?”
“George Dubya Bush.”
“Do you think all the personnel in the hospital hate you?”
“No, I don’t know them all.”
“Mr. Laffoley, do you literally believe there is a demon in your leg?”
“Right. It keeps infecting my leg.”
Paul clarified to the shrink: “I’m assuming you’re listening for symptoms and not simply
following my dialogue from point A to point B.”
Dr.: “Yes, you assume correct.”
The doctors at Beth Israel didn’t appreciate Paul’s New York shtick. They daily sent in a pair of
shrinks, who broke new ground in psychiatric nomenclature (that’s ‘shrink rap’) when they
determined in their report that Paul was an “encapsulated psychotic.” It didn’t help that he was
reading a copy of Paranoia magazine and he told them it was his “manual.” The shrinks had not
realized that paranoids had been able to achieve such a profound encasing of their disease by
exchanging paranoid manifestos regularly. They insisted on borrowing the manual. Paul grinned
like a Cheshire cat.
Paul spent the summer back in New York City after deciding these doctors did not want to even
try to save his leg. The doctors in New York inserted an anti-bacterial agent into the tibia and he
spent a couple months recuperating. He returned to his Boston studio in September. He found a
doctor he liked and trusted. He worked on new paintings and an article for Juxtapoz. He began
work on a new book on physically alive architecture.
The Absurdity of Absurdism
Absurdism arises in a spiritual vacuum, as it must. Only there does it make sense and is it
necessary. Jean Paul Sartre was struck by the absurdity of nature – the fact that man’s
consciousness against the backdrop of the dumb brute fact of nature sticks out like a sore thumb.
135
In comparison to the brute thereness of the rock, the tree, the sky, man’s consciousness is
excessive – it’s unnecessary, it’s a bald-faced absurdity.
Yet, we accepted his argument that nature was a brute fact in contrast to consciousness; that
nature had no consciousness, no animation, no meaning in and of itself. How did we let this
mistake slip by? We were out of touch with the teachings of ancient animists. Sartre was wrong.
This is the pitfall of existentialism, which can only bring us to the brink of the suicidal void: to
the emptiness and weariness of living.
I realized I made some philosophical errors in my youth. I had been an absurdist. Now I found
absurdism absurd. I was comin ‘round the mountain. I had portaled into a new worldview. I
came to see that everything is alive with thinking awareness. I realized something that all
magicians know: that thought, as the tiniest of atomic structures, is a precursor to the realization
of matter in the material world. Paul’s artwork exemplified this simple truth. One of the pieces
he created, called Marquette for a Thought Form, was shaped sort of like a thought balloon in a
cartoon illustration; in a lecture Paul said “it looks like something you could take to the beach.”
In their pioneering Theosophist work, Thought-forms, Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater wrote
that thoughts are forms in mental matter; radiating vibrations created by the energy of the mind.
Besant and Leadbeater analyzed the qualities of human thought-forms, which signify their
meaning in terms of their color, shape and form. They believed that such thought waves are
capable of affecting the thought of others since they cause similar types of thoughts as those of
the sender. Besant and Leadbeater wrote the following regarding thought-forms:
“Each man travels through space enclosed within a case of his own building, surrounded by a
mass of the forms created by his habitual thoughts. Through this medium he looks out upon the
world and naturally sees everything tinged with its predominant colors, and all rates of vibration
which reach him from without are more or less modified by its rate.” This is what is meant when
you say that another person’s vibes are “on my wavelength.”
Dreams as Messages of Import
Around Easter time, when Paul was in the hospital in Boston, we spoke on the phone about his
leg. He was concerned that they really wanted to take it due to the infection. That night I tossed
and turned a long time unable to get to sleep. I wondered if there was anything I could do for
him. I remembered a powerful dream I had had around the time I first met Paul. It was a rare
dream that carried a message of great import. Since this dream has great bearing on this story, let
me switch to the timeline of that dream before I continue.
In this dream, I was in a mall of some sort. I was watching what could be described as a doll
show or marionette show. Dolls with big heads were dancing on a stage and their teeth were
clacking up and down in a bizarre fashion. Suddenly a menacing wind swept through the mall
like a cyclone. Windows began to smash, sending glass and other debris airborne. I looked
around and saw that everything around me was being swept upward and sucked up into the vents
and ductwork in the ceiling. There was no escaping the suction.
I then found myself situated at the bottom of a duct or tube about waist size. Looking up into it, I
thought to myself, ‘I won’t be able to fit through that’; but suddenly my head popped out of the
136
other end. Again, I found myself staring up at the bottom of another even smaller tube,
wondering how I was going to fit through it. Again, I appeared at the other end of it without
knowing how I had traversed the tube.
After a journey of risings through smaller and smaller tubes, I came to a very narrow tube which
was situated way over my head, and which had a white cord hanging out of it. Somehow I knew
all I had to do was to touch the white cord. I was suddenly at the other end of it. I climbed up
into a large white room. I had entered a portal. Knowledge obtained here would change my life.
In the White Room
I stood up in the white room and looked around. In front of me a waterway coursed toward me,
and broke off into two canals curving around, one to my right and one to my left. Each of the
canals circled around and coursed back the same way from which they had come, in a direction
winding away from me. In these two canals sat a long train of connected white pods, which
looked very much like little half eggs. In each half egg sat a person. They were stuck in a traffic
jam. Nothing was moving. There seemed to be nobody in charge. The overall feeling was of
some sort of waiting room.
Suddenly to my right a man stood up in his egg and began to shout angrily, “who’s in charge
here?” He kept demanding to speak to someone. He demanded an explanation. He wanted to
know the meaning behind this “joke.”
Upon awakening I knew I needed help interpreting this dream. My friends said the symbolism
was very obvious. The mall and the chaos that took place in the mall signified an accident of
some sort where people died. The tubes signified the ascent of souls to the afterworld. Even the
‘white cord’, unbeknownst to me, was a well-known symbol of otherworld contact. Yet, this was
more than just a dream about death. It was also a dream about rebirth or reincarnation. Even the
two canals, which winded down and curved around, clearly symbolized the womb and the birth
process. The eggs, with people sitting in them quietly waiting, were souls awaiting reassignment
into bodies.
But who was the man off to my right shouting angrily, wanting to know ‘who’s in charge here’
and ‘is this some kind of joke’? This was the absurdist part of my personality: doubter, skeptic,
materialist. The separation of this part of my persona into another identity served to contrast this
vision of the infinity of life with the short-sightedness of the absurdist materialist view. I had
portaled into a new worldview without the need to report it. I felt embarrassed for this loudmouth
who was clearly unable to understand the true existential enormity of what he was seeing. And
he was me.
In the Living Klein Bottle House of Paul
To return now to the story, around Easter time Paul’s fear of losing his leg through infection
became a prime focus. During a discussion with him on the phone, it occurred to me that I could
incorporate the symbolism of the egg as a ‘ride through time’ and use it as a travel device in a
lucid dream. I hatched a cockamamie plan that would utilize the scientology precept of the
timeline. Paul’s hatred of scientology was evident when I suggested it, but he went along with it.
Let’s just say he was a captive audience.
137
I assured him I was not a scientologist and had never been. I had just done quite a bit of reading.
I explained that according to scientological precepts, the timeline of any entity crosses the
timeline of any other entity – demon or otherwise – at the point at which they originally came
into contact. This moment in time always exists and can be revisited.
One of the practices of an advanced level scientologist – and of a trained ‘remote viewer’ as well
– begins with the attempt to locate the timeline of an entity – in some cases a demon or some
type of negative entity. With regard to sickness or disease, the belief is essentially that an entity
can take on the persona of a microbe, could ‘become’ a bacterium or any microscopic entity, and
could invade a person’s body. The scientologist as thetan – immortal soul traveler – would then
enter that entity’s being via its timeline and give it the two rights of a thetan, which concerns the
free will of any entity in the universe.
The first right of a thetan is the right to play a game. The second right of a thetan is the right to
leave a game. The scientologist as thetan would essentially, via telepathy, interrogate and brief
the subject on free will and the two rights of a thetan. He or she would ask the entity why in the
world it was attached to this persona and this behavior when there are obviously more fun things
to do in a free will universe. It is said that once the entity is informed of the concept of free will,
it will usually opt to leave the negative game of its own accord. I told Paul about the plan.
So one night, with this specific intent in mind, I told myself over and over that upon falling to
sleep I would be lucid, and I would be contained in an egg. I would then travel to the timeline of
the demon that Paul was insisting had entered his leg. I would give it the two rights, and at Paul’s
insistence, maybe a couple of lefts for good measure.
To my utter surprise, I fell asleep and found myself inside some type of enclosure. I never saw
the enclosure but I knew I was inside some type of ride, for several reasons; first, because I could
only see through a fairly limited ‘window’ area in front of me. The second odd thing about the
enclosure was that I could only move straight in a forward or backward movement, not side to
side. The third peculiarity about the enclosure was that it “wobbled” slightly when it moved. At
one moment, I caught a reflection of something white off to my right that may have been a wing
or some type of protrusion.
Suddenly I was in a house or apartment. I knew I had to go into each room to see if I could locate
any person or entity. I entered each room in a frontward ‘wobbly’ fashion and then receded from
each room in a backward ‘wobbly’ fashion. I could not turn around. It was as though I was stuck
on a track. The “egg” had no levers or knobs that I was aware of. I moved specifically via intent,
which is how all dreamers move.
Finally, I heard the sound of water coming from one room, which appeared to
be a bathroom. I entered the bathroom and there was steam coming from the
shower. I approached the shower and a person opened the curtain. It was a
curly-haired adolescent or teenage boy. He had a pipe in his mouth from
which soap bubbles were rising upward into the air. He smiled at me. I felt
that the message was that Paul’s house was clean. I came back and gave Paul
this message.
138
The Floating Bubble
I didn’t see Paul in the summer of 2001 because he was in the hospital in New York. But I did
have an interesting lucid dream in which I dreamt that Paul and his entire hospital room was
enclosed in a gigantic iridescent bubble floating on top of a body of water. With my face pressed
up against the bubble, I was trying to understand what he was saying, but I couldn’t hear him.
Beside him in a smaller chair sat his visitor: a miniature man who looked just like him!
Paul’s “mini-me” – his psyche – was frantically translating his words via some sort of sign
language or hand signals. I got the message that Paul was beginning to get very frustrated in his
attempts to communicate to the medical profession. I also got the message that Paul, confined to
a hospital room, was unable to do his artwork, which was in effect his way of communicating his
personal universe of logic and emotion. Therefore he could not speak and could not be heard.
Although outwardly Paul was smiling and putting on a brave front, this was not an easy time for
him. This was the most difficult trial of his life. Paul had told me while in the hospital that the
meaning of this trial would eventually come to fore in his paintings. And these he had plenty of
time to think about.
The World Trade Center Attacks
Meanwhile, after the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, I began wondering if Paul
was back from New York. A lucid dream answered my question. In the dream, Paul asked me to
deliver a message to Paul! (To deliver a message to himself?) He handed me an envelope. As I
touched the envelope, I knew this communication served the same purpose as a door. I tried to
grasp the meaning of the words portaling in my head as I woke from the dream; something like
“bird can’t fly there” or “no fly zone.”
I immediately realized Paul was back at his studio and was trying to contact me. Paul came out
of the elevator and greeted me on the landing with his trusty walker. I reported the dream
message right away. I followed him into his studio and he sat down at a drawing he had been
working on. It was the skyline of Manhattan. But in the place of the now missing World Trade
Center, Paul had performed cosmetic dentistry, superimposing on New York’s contorted grimace
the colossal gleaming white enamel tooth of the fantastic Gaudí building.
The Grand Hotel, I learned, was originally commissioned in 1905 to be built on the same land as
the World Trade Center buildings, but the architect – Basque-born Antoni Gaudí (perhaps where
we get the term ‘gaudy’) – was double-crossed by an American entrepreneur. The magnificent
Venusian-looking tower, which consisted of several soft-nosed bullet forms topped by a spiked
spherical observatory, was never built. However, if it had been built, Paul explained, it surely
would have withstood a strike by airplanes. The structure of Gaudí’s creation was as sturdy as a
mountain. No “bird” could have flown into the Gaudí air space. Paul wondered if Gaudí had put
a curse on the land.
Paul explained that he had worked on the WTC buildings as a student architect, and he knew
why the buildings had “pancaked” the way they did. He said the X-bracings on the exterior of the
building were bolted, not fused. The bolts had given way. He described the towers as two white
elephants – “file cabinets” which had been built in defiance of normal building codes. He had
139
begun work on a proposal to build Gaudí’s cathedral as a memorial on that spot, which was the
only way to turn the curse around. He began writing up the article for Paranoia. He grinned like
a Cheshire cat.
In late December, Paul’s doctor discovered that two out of three arteries going
into Paul’s right foot were completely demolished. He advised Paul that if
they didn’t amputate the leg soon below the knee, the infection could spread,
causing him to lose more of the leg, or it could travel into his body and kill
him. The amputation took place during Christmas week, and, at Paul’s
insistence, he spent New Year’s Eve back in his studio. He had had enough of
hospitals.
Paul kept up the good fight for ten months. He finally decided he just wanted to get back to work
with no limitations. He had had enough of total captivity. At one time, artist Joe Coleman had
asked Paul if he could have his leg for his museum of human oddities
(http://www.funcitytattoo.com/history/coleman/), but unfortunately, Coleman’s museum will not
have Paul’s leg. Paul’s wish is to keep it close to him, like the main character in his favorite
underground horror classic, Basket Case.
Paul still has the grin of a Cheshire cat. He is now working with some Hollywood prop
specialists to make him a prosthetic lion’s foot in honor of his birth sign, Leo. His doctors think
he’s mad. They think he shouldn’t be smiling in this situation, and they wish to make him
“better” presumably by making him unhappy. They still can’t seem to locate the right label to
define his behavior. Neither can I. Is he really an encapsulated psychotic? Has his life become
inseparable from his futuristic “theater of utopia”? Has he finally and profoundly broken the
Kitsch Barrier? Or is he just a man with a tall tale to tell?
140
Late Great Planet Tiamat
Was Earth Always the Third Rock from the Sun?
The following article was published on the internet around 2006, with requests for feedback.
The response was that it was flawed, but had some good ideas and was worth further study. It is
published here for interest only.
According to the harmonic rule known as Bode's Law, a planet should exist between Mars and
Jupiter - some 260 million miles from the Sun. Beginning in 1801, tiny rock and metallic objects
were discovered to be orbiting the Sun at about this distance. Since then, several hundred
thousand large asteroids have been catalogued, and it is estimated that there are more than a
million 1 km asteroids.
Stretched out at a distance of 205 to 300 million miles from the Sun, this band is known as the
Asteroid Belt. The asteroids range in size from Ceres, which has a diameter of about 1000 km,
down to the size of pebbles. If the estimated total mass of all the asteroids was gathered into a
single object, the object would total about 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) across - less than half the
diameter of the Earth's moon.
Atronomer H. Olbers discovered the second asteroid, Pallas, in 1802, and the fourth asteroid,
Vesta, in 1807. In his time, Olbers thought these bodies were fragments of a planet that had
exploded. Another generally accepted theory suggests the asteroids are the remains of a planet
that was destroyed in a massive collision. Nonetheless, it had earlier become evident that much
of the material of this 'missing planet' had been pulled into the orbits of Earth, Mars and Jupiter
as either meteors or orbiting satellites.
Among catastrophists there is substantial disagreement on the matter of the "missing" fifth Planet
from the Sun, in the place of which lies the Great Band, the debris of an enormous planet which
the Sumerians knew as Tiamat. There are various opinions on what caused the Asteroid Belt; for
instance, Tom van Flandern's Exploding Planet Hypothesis in Dark Matter, Missing Planets and
New Comets, asserts that a former major planet between Mars and Jupiter exploded about 65
million years ago. Van Flandern believes this event is the origin of the great bombardment of
comets and asteroids which ended the reign of the dinosaurs on Earth. However, according to
Zecharia Sitchin in The Twelfth Planet, written accounts left by the lost Sumerian civilization
state that Tiamat isn't missing, it just moved shop. Tiamat is the planet on which we are standing
right now.
This article will discuss two anomalies that suggest the Earth was once further away from the
Sun, suggesting that prior to a grand cataclysm described in the Babylonian Enuma elish, the
Earth was the planet which the Sumerians called Tiamat. According to Sumerian/Babylonian
cosmogony (cosmic genesis), the fifth Planet from the Sun, Tiamat, was shunted to third position
by a calamitous event, one now well known by followers of Planet X Theory. First, a quick
overview of the Sumerian/Babylonian story of Tiamat is in order.
141
Nibiru: The Retrograde Interloper
Ancient Sumerian texts indicate that Tiamat was struck by a large planet, which moved it into its
present orbit, and also created the Earth's moon and the Asteroid Belt. In his books, The Twelfth
Planet and The Cosmic Code, Zecharia Sitchin outlines this "celestial battle" as described in the
Babylonian text Enuma elish. The planet "Marduk" (the Sumerian "Nibiru"), as it came into the
solar system on its 3,600-year clockwise (retrograde) elliptical course, struck Tiamat, which was
moving in its ordained counterclockwise orbit.
According to Sitchin's well-known translations, one of Marduk's satellites struck Tiamat first,
followed by two more of Marduk's moons. Then Marduk itself, an enormous cosmic entity,
struck Tiamat, smashing one half of the planet into pieces, which became what the Sumerians
called the Great Band. The remaining half of the planet, which was struck by a smaller moon of
Marduk, was catapulted into a new orbit, along with a chunk of material which became its moon.
According to the Enuma elish, Tiamat's original moons were dispersed, many changing the
direction of their orbits and rotations.
There is indeed evidence of this great cataclysm in our solar system today. Tom van Flandern, a
specialist in Celestial Mechanics at the US Naval Observatory, has suggested that the great rift
on Mars may be the impact site of a former moon, the moons of Neptune show evidence of
violent disruption, Mercury was originally a moon of Venus, Mars once had many more moons,
and Pluto and Charon are escaped moons of Neptune. Van Flandern finds the retrograde rotation
of Venus peculiar, he believes that our moon originated from the Pacific Basin of the Earth, and
he agrees that there is probably an undiscovered planet beyond Pluto which belongs to our solar
system. In addition, Hubble recently investigated one of the largest asteroids, Vesta, and found
evidence of differentiated layers similar to the terrestrial planets, distinctive light and dark areas
like the face of our moon, and a geology similar to the Earth, including evidence of ancient lava
flows.
Impossible Knowledge
Sitchin believes that the "impossible knowledge" of the Sumerians was imparted to them by
"Anunnaki" space travelers in a series of texts forming the basis of ancient science and religion,
and was translated into many languages, including Greek and biblical Hebrew. According to
Sitchin, all ancient mythologies stem from this original knowledge imparted to earthlings by
spacefaring ETI hailing from this wayward bowling ball, Nibiru. According to Sitchin, the
Anunnaki called our planet ERIDU, meaning "Home away from Home."
Sitchin also argues in The Cosmic Code that the Anunnaki used their detailed sky charts to group
the stars into constellations, and then honored their leaders by naming the constellations after
them. Thus, the Sumerian god EA, ("Whose Home is Water") was honored by the zodiacal signs
of Aquarius and Pisces, and the "priests who oversaw his worship" were dressed as Fishmen.
Enlil, the strong-headed one, was honored by the sign of Taurus. Ninmah was Virgo. The warrior
Ninurta was Sagittarius. Over time, Sitchin explains, as second and third generation Anunnaki
'gods' joined the scene on Earth, "all the twelve zodiacal constellations were assigned to
Anunnaki counterparts." He argues, "not men, but the gods, devised the zodiac."
142
The continent that the ancients called Pangea likely represents the prehistoric truth regarding the
land formation on the Earth after it was involved in this collision. Over time, the continents then
drifted to where they are now. As Sitchin points out, Earth's largest landmasses are mostly on
one side and the oceans take up the rest of the planet. Looking at the Earth's globe from a
distance, if you took the water away, what's left is a "cleaved planet," which is the meaning of
"KI" - the Sumerian word for the present embodiment of Earth.
According to the Enuma elish, the Earth came to rest as the third Rock from the Sun after this
watery calamity. Here is where the Biblical genesis tale picks up the story, only telling it as a
beginning, at the point where the waters of these two great bodies separated in the firmament, the
waters belonging to two worlds going bump in the night. Current advances in astronomy have, in
fact, corroborated certain aspects of this tale.
Planet X in the News
Mathematical irregularities in the orbits of the outer planets, in particular, strange wobbles and
gravitational anomalies noted in the orbits of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, have prompted
astronomers over the past hundred years to search for a large planetary body in the outer solar
system. Based on mathematical evidence, astronomers have been so sure of the reality of this
planet that they named it Planet X. The name stands for the tenth planet, as well as the
mathematical symbol for an unknown quantity. (see d'Arc, "Planet X", in suggested reading list
below)
Many articles have been written about Planet X over the last twenty years. On June 17, 1982, a
NASA press release from Ames Research Center officially recognized the possibility of "some
kind of mystery object" beyond the outermost planets. Astronomy magazine published an article
in December of 1981 entitled "Search for the Tenth Planet," and another article in October of
1982 entitled "Searching for a Tenth Planet." Newsweek covered the story of Planet X on June
28, 1982 in an article entitled "Does the Sun Have a Dark Companion?" This article implied that
the tenth planet was a twin sun, stating that such a "dark companion could produce the unseen
force that seems to tug at Uranus and Neptune, speeding them up at one point in their orbits and
holding them back as they pass... the best bet is a dark star orbiting at least 50 billion miles
beyond Pluto... It is most likely either a brown dwarf, or a neutron star."
Andy Lloyd later went on to more than speculate that we live in a binary star system
(www.darkstar1.co.uk). The Washington Post covered the story of Planet X on the front page
on December 31, 1983 called "Mystery Heavenly Body Discovered." This story reported that the
Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) detected heat from an object about fifty billion miles
away.
A NASA/ARC press release published in Newsweek on July 13, 1987 disclosed that "an
eccentric 10th planet may or may not be orbiting the Sun." The article stated that NASA research
scientist John Anderson "has a hunch Planet X is out there, though nowhere near the other nine."
The article concluded, "if he is right, two of the most intriguing puzzles of space science might
be solved: what caused mysterious irregularities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune during the
19th Century. And what killed off the dinosaurs 26 million (sic) [actually 65 million] years ago."
143
This brings us quite neatly to the first anomaly which suggests the Earth was the late great Planet
Tiamat.
Anomaly One: Dinosaurs and Gravity
It is a curious fact that the antediluvian world somehow supported 350 pound flying creatures,
while today's gravity only permits flying creatures weighing at max about 30 pounds. Even at 25
pounds, the great hunting eagles bred by Central Asians had great difficulty getting off the
ground.
The flying Pteranodons (an 'antediluvian predator' in a world where a worldwide flood 'never
happened') are now thought to have been carrion feeders, not fishers. How these "living gliders"
could have taken flight after gorging themselves on rotting dinosaur flesh is a real brainteaser,
according to Douglas Lawson of U. Cal. As Ted Holden explains in "Dinosaurs and the Gravity
Problem" in The Anomalist, this flying reptile was fairly lightweight, about the size of a modern
turkey, but with a wingspan of up to 50 feet.
It has been proposed that certain flying vertebrates depended on air currents for liftoff. This
theory would have them perpetually perched on the edge of a cliff waiting for a breeze. Others
proposed that they took a running start and launched themselves into the air, but a general lack of
musculature likely made these vertebrates unable to run that fast. Even more importantly, "wings
of such an extraordinary size could not have been flapped when the animal was grounded,"
Holden explains.
These assumptions present an engineering Catch-22: The Pteranodon would have needed tall
stilt-like legs to allow its monstrous flapping wings to clear the ground. And this is certainly not
the largest of the antediluvian flying predators. According to Robert T. Bakker in The Dinosaur
Heresies, some pterosaurs had wingspans of 60 feet. Bakker has agreed that, "a creature that
large would have broken its arm bones if it tried to fly."
There are other factors which now limit the size of creatures on the Earth. Let's consider
elephants. As Holden explains, it is well known that elephant-sized animals cannot afford to fall
down, and that even the slightest tumble can usually prove fatal, breaking bones and destroying
tissue. Yet, the elephant doesn't even live a predator lifestyle. As Holden points out:
Predators live by tackling and tumbling with prey. One might think that this
consideration would preclude the existence of any predator too large to sustain
falls. Weight estimates for the tyrannosaurs, however, include specimens heavier
than any elephant. That appears to be a contradiction... Moreover, elephants are
simply too heavy to run in our world. As is well known, they manage a kind of
fast walk. They cannot jump, and anything resembling a gully stops them cold.
Mammoths were as big and bigger than the largest elephants, however, and
Pleistocene art clearly shows them galloping.
144
Saturn Myth Theory
Holden wonders if some aspect of the Earth's environment might once have been vastly different.
He concludes, "There are categories of evidence, derived from a careful analysis of antediluvian
predators, to show that gravitational conditions in the distant past were not the same as they are
today." He concludes that the super animals of Earth's past could not live in our present world.
Holden ventures an explanation:
The laws of physics do not change, nor does the gravitational constant, as far as
we know. But something was obviously massively different in the world in which
these creatures existed, and that difference probably involved a change in
perceived gravity. This solution derives from the continuing research of neocatastrophists, that is, followers of the late Immanuel Velikovsky, and is known a
the 'Saturn Myth' theory...
The basic requirement for an attenuated perception of gravity involves the Earth
being in a very close orbit around a smaller and much cooler stellar body (or
binary body) than our present Sun. One pole would always be pointed directly at
this nearby small star or binary system. The intense gravitational attraction would
pull the Earth into an egg shape rather than its present spherical shape, so that the
planet's center of gravity would be off center towards the small star. This would
generate the torque necessary to counteract the natural gyroscopic force and keep
the Earth's pole pointed in the same direction as it revolved around the star.
Holden goes on to suggest some of the consequences of such an intense gravitational pull:
» it would allow for gigantic animals like the dinosaurs
» it would tend to draw all of the Earth's land mass into a single continent
(Pangea)
» there would be no seasons because the Earth's pole would be pointed at this star
or binary system
In fact, ancient literature tells us that in antediluvian times there were no seasons. Holden
ventures an explanation: "The state of the present solar system indicates that this previous system
was eventually captured by a larger star, our present Sun. But the pieces of this old system have
not vanished. The influential small star or binary system of the past remains, though its reign of
power has ended."
Holden suggests those small stars are Jupiter and Saturn, the two chief gods in the religious
systems of old. He writes: "There is no reason why they would worship as gods two planets
which most people cannot even find in the night sky, unless of course those bodies occupied a far
more prominent place in the heavens than they do today."
145
Effects of Jupiter and Saturn on Nearby Orbs
Indeed, if the Earth was once in fifth position, its closest neighbors would have been Jupiter and
Saturn. One of the most fascinating discussions of these two spheres is contained in a 1954 book
by Rodney Collin entitled The Theory of Celestial Influence. Jupiter has twelve known moons,
four of which are visible by telescope. As Collin explains, "The relation of Jupiter to the Sun
appears to follow a definite and significant ratio. The system of Jupiter, in number of satellites,
their size, distance, speeds of revolution and so on, seems to present to us an exact model of the
Solar System." As Collin explains, "Jupiter, like the Sun, is a complete living entity or cosmos."
Collin, who was a disciple of P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff, asserts that the Jupiter system
is highly developed and is almost a complete reflection in miniature of the Solar System. He
states, "the influence or radiation produced by such a system must be an extremely subtle one,
incorporating a large number of different frequencies in harmonic relation." The system of
Jupiter, Collin explains, includes 15 to 20 harmonic frequencies. Jupiter's world must produce
"an extraordinary wealth of overtones which would put it in the same relation to Venus as a cello
to a penny whistle."
Collin also notes that both Jupiter and Saturn support "complete systems of satellites and may
even be faintly self-luminous, though this luminosity is rendered unnoticeable by the infinitely
greater brilliance of the Sun." Collin notes that Jupiter and Saturn "are evidently trying to
become suns." He also notes that, "every 390 days, Jupiter and Saturn return to a mean relation
with the Earth, and make equal angles with the Earth and Sun, and their influences become
balanced." Thus we see, as Holden states above, "the pieces of this old system have not
vanished."
Satan's Fallen Angels: The Asteroids?
According to Collin, it is interesting to speculate what kind of influence the motion of countless
asteroids might produce on the magnetic field of the Earth. Imagine the discordant effect of this
"throng of particles of varying sizes, pursuing at different speeds hundreds of separate and highly
eccentric orbits." Collin points out the physical relationship between the asteroidal mass and
individual planets. He wonders, might this relation represent the independence or insurrection of
component units against the whole? As Collin notes, "pathological conditions are caused by the
independent action or inertia of separate organs or cells of the body; while rebellions and
revolutions represent such a condition in the body politic."
Collin also calls attention to the strange affinity between the asteroids and the idea of
"corruption." He notes the connection between asteroids, as a throng of particles, and ancient
"legends of crime" on an angelic or planetary level. The rebellion of Satan, the fall of Lucifer,
are stories told in the context of the planetary demiurges, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn. As Collin notes, the asteroids are never mentioned by name, but in every case we are told
of a 'fallen angel,' such as in "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, star of the morning?"
(Isaiah xiv) Might ancient legends be describing as fallen angels the falling debris of a great
cataclysm as an insurrection in the solar system's body politic?
146
In the Book of Revelations, visions are assigned to each of seven planetary angels. In the place of
the fifth angel, we are told that a star was seen to fall from heaven "into the bottomless pit, from
which arose clouds of smoke which darkened the sun." The angel of this bottomless pit was
Apollyon, who was later to be called Satan. We must realize that the asteroids now fill the fifth
place in the planetary sequence. The fifth planet is "missing." A further vision describes, "a
woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars."
Collin describes this vision as "a personification of the descending scale of worlds from the
twelve zodiacal signs of the Milky Way through the Sun down to the moon." The woman, he
explains, is about to give birth "to a new satellite." "Satan waits to devour the infant and there is
a war in heaven between Satan and his demons and Michael and his angels (Sun and major
planets). The great Dragon is cast out (of the world) and cast into the Earth with his angels.
Lucifer is the spirit of multiplicity, chaos and disorder among a mass of disorganized
individuals."
Planet X Theory is beginning to fill in the details of this ancient myth of a War in the Universe.
The great Dragon could be Nibiru (Sol B), the Sun's dark twin, which was cast into (collided
with) the Earth, and which indeed "devoured the infant" (taking a big bite out of its side) and was
cast out of the world for the time being.
As Collin concludes, "at a remote time period in the history of the solar system, some
tremendous cosmic tension may have been set up which represented 'night' for the Earth,
producing the cataclysm which engulfed Atlantis and made an almost complete break in human
history... The legend of the Fall of Lucifer and the war of the other planets against him... finds
itself transcribed into astronomical language." (Note, however, that Nibiru and its entourage of
seven moons is on a recurring 3,600 year periodic orbit around Sol A, and the cataclysm that
ended the Atlantean civilization is not necessarily the same one that ended the reign of the
dinosaurs.)
Speculations on Dinosaurs and the Gravity Problem
Returning to the dinosaur/gravity problem, as Holden notes, "something was obviously
massively different in the world in which these creatures existed." Could it have been a different
world entirely, one situated as the fifth rock from Sol A, and in close orbit around a smaller,
cooler binary body, Jupiter or Saturn? As Holden points out, one pole of the Earth would be
pointed in the same direction as it revolved around the small star. The intense gravitational
attraction would pull the Earth into an egg shape, so that the planet's center of gravity would be
off center towards the small star. Might the consequences of such an intense gravitational pull
allow for enormous flying creatures?
Within this context, we must also consider van Flandern's thoughts on the matter: the peculiar
retrograde rotation of Venus (was it once Tiamat's moon?), that Mercury was originally a moon
of Venus, that Mars once had more moons, and Pluto and Charon are escaped moons of Neptune.
With Tiamat as a giant 8-ball, it would appear that a cosmic game of pool has been played out.
147
There is much to consider now that catastrophists are finally having their day in court. Ask
questions, even if they sound absurd, for in this context we know nothing!
In essence, the Dark Star Theory asserts that we are living in a binary star system. We have truly
been thrown a curve ball. The Sun's dark twin also provides an explanation for the ever-present
Christ/Satan dualism in our religious systems, an enigma discussed in detail by Andy Lloyd on
his Dark Star website. This brings us quite neatly to the second anomaly which suggests the
Earth was the late great Planet Tiamat.
Anomaly Two: Water, Water, Everywhere!
The second argument for the Earth being the Sumerian planet Tiamat was recently suggested by
Andy Lloyd, and has to do the overabundance of water on Earth. As the Sumerians claimed,
Tiamat was struck by a moon of Nibiru and was cleaved almost in half, taking on the water of
this watery world. As Sitchin points out, all the water on the present Earth is mostly on one side.
If you took the water away, the Earth looks torn in half.
As Andy Lloyd explains in his essay "The Great Water Conundrum," the source of the Earth's
oceanic water is indeed curious. Where did it all come from? A 3/23/02 article in Science News
written by Ben Harder explains the problem. As Harder explains, the Earth is too close to the
Sun to contain the amount of water it contains. The water, so crucial to its biosphere, should have
been expelled from the early inner solar system before the Earth formed. Being as close as it is to
the Sun, the Earth should be a much drier planet.
Early theories proposed that the Earth's water originated from comets impacting the Earth very
early in its geohistory. But recent data suggests that the isotopic ratios of terrestrial water and
cometary ice are quite different. Comets contain large quantities of deuterium, an isotopic form
of water that is rare on Earth. If this is representative of solar system comets in general, then we
can attribute very little of the Earth's water to cometary impact. Lloyd suggests perhaps only half
of the Earth's oceans could have been deposited by comets.
Yet, we shouldn't be surprised that planetary scientists are intent on working within the currently
accepted paradigm, which is largely controlled by Darwinian gradualism and is vehemently
opposed to catastrophism. As Lloyd concludes: "The solution is staring all of these planetary
scientists in the face." He concludes: "The Earth has a rich mixture of volatiles, including water,
because our planet originally formed much further away from the Sun."
Lloyd looks at the 'embryo' theory of Allessandro Morbidello, who has proposed that the Earth
formed from "the coalescence of moon-sized embryos derived from various chaotic orbits in the
primordial solar system." These "volatile carriers," Morbidello explains, would have formed at
about 4 Astronomical Units, which is about four times further away from the Sun than the Earth.
This would put the early formation of the Earth somewhere within the orbit of Jupiter.
Interestingly, Morbidello also notes that "the water-bearing carrier from 4 AU would have been
geo-chemically unique in the solar system." As Lloyd concludes, "If the Earth was once four
times further away from the Sun than it is now, then we must explain how it managed to find
148
itself in its current close proximity to the Sun. Somehow, it was shunted into the inner solar
system from an orbit originally much closer to that of Jupiter."
As Lloyd concludes: "There it encountered a watery world at about 4 Astronomical Units, and a
great 'celestial battle' took place between these planetary 'gods'. The result was the shunting of
this Water World, 'Tiamat', into the inner solar system, where it became the Earth. The intruder,
'Nibiru', spun off into an eccentric orbit beyond the known planets, where it remains to be rediscovered to this day." Lloyd takes note of Earth's "special character." He asks, would the
current biodiversity on this planet have arisen if Earth was still at 4 AU? His answer, "since life
relies upon liquid water... one suspects not." He explains:
The paradoxical situation we currently find on Earth is solved either by
considering the possibility that the Earth has moved significantly closer to the Sun
since its formation, or by rethinking how planets form. Whatever caused our
world to have so much water so close to the Sun, it may be unusual, possibly even
unique. The Earth's abundance of liquid water may be very rare if the action of an
intruder planet is required to explain its shunting into a closer inner orbit.
Binding Energies and System Expansion
According to Andy Lloyd's website (www.darkstar1.co.uk) physicist Jack Hills has calculated
the effect of passing stars and black or brown dwarfs traveling near or through the planetary
zone. Hills has noted that, given their size and momentum, stars would likely continue on their
path past the solar system, but a black or brown dwarf would more likely become captured by the
Sun. Once captured, the orbit of the captured dwarf could be highly eccentric, possibly degrading
over time.
Hills' work indicates that if the brown dwarf had less than 20 Jupiter masses, its temporary
infringement into the planetary zone would not necessarily cause chaos among the other planets;
but there would be an effect on the energy relationships between the planets. These 'planetary
binding energies' are not fixed. When a "maverick element" of considerable mass is introduced
into the solar system, the binding energies of the planets are subject to change. Hills' research
suggests that the interloper's orbit would change the overall energy of the orbits of the other
planets. His calculations suggest that the solar system would be subject to either contraction or
expansion. As Lloyd notes, "the very distances of the planets from the Sun would be subject to
change." He also notes, "the dwarf would not need to directly interact with the planets; simply
the changing relationship with the Sun would be enough to affect other bodies in the solar
system."As Lloyd suggests:
Jack Hills described these effects in a theoretical way. His interest was in studying
whether a body the size of Nemesis, a proposed black dwarf, could have become
captured by the Sun. He concluded that it would have caused too much chaos in
the solar system. But below 20 Jupiter masses, an interloper would not create the
same devastation. In other words, a small brown dwarf might just have been
captured by the Sun in the remote past, and the solar system would still appear as
stable as it is thought to be today. So, if Planet X is a small brown dwarf, then
149
physical mechanisms have been studied scientifically that do actually allow for its
existence. Furthermore, those calculations show that the interaction between this
dwarf and the rest of the solar system might have fundamental physical
ramifications. The distance between the Earth and the Sun might have been
altered. Not just once; but every time the temporary orbit of the loosely bound
cometary dwarf changes.
Lloyd asks, "Has the Earth's distance from the Sun altered? Was the distance between the Earth
and the Sun a variable that changed with respect to the incursion, and subsequent capture by the
Sun, of a brown dwarf? Would not the actual physical displacement of our planet have rendered
sudden, catastrophic Earth-changes environmentally? What would happen to the oceans, for
instance, when the Earth suddenly falls away from or towards the Sun? Would they not be swept
over the land, accompanied by titanic volcanic and seismic activity?"
Addendum
Lloyd has argued that the shunting of the Earth from the position of fifth from the Sun to third
had to have occurred some 3.9 billion years ago and not 65 million years ago during the reign of
the dinosaurs. Thus, according to his argument, the two anomalies suggested here are
incompatible with each other, since according to the "geological column" the two events
occurred at time periods very distant. Therefore, I have held out on publication of this paper until
such time as I could explain the discrepancy, which is as follows:
Sitchin claims the Tiamat/Earth displacement (which Lloyd equates with the "late, great
bombardment") occurred 3.9 billion years ago. The Tiamat/Earth displacement has to have
occurred during the early formation of the Earth, long before mammals arrived on the scene (or
even vertebrates for that matter). On the other hand, Tom van Flandern states the asteroidal
bombardment that ended the reign of the dinosaurs happened 65 million years ago. These two
dates are incompatible. Yet, van Flandern sees it strictly as an asteroid bombardment, not a
planetary displacement. In other words, he sees the fifth planet as "missing," rather than "moved
shop." The Earth was always where it is.
Lloyd also discusses an extinction event which created the P-Tr boundary mass extinction. He
writes: "A great extinction event occurred around the Permian-Triassic boundary some 245
million years ago. The scale of the destruction of life on Earth was an order of magnitude greater
than the wiping out of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The destruction of the dinosaurs at the
end of the Cretaceous is now thought to have been caused by a single impact event off the coast
of Yucatan, Mexico. This asteroid or comet impact led to the deposition of extra-terrestrial
iridium, forming the famous K/T boundary in the rock strata of that period. Can we look to a
similar cause for the more catastrophic P-Tr boundary mass extinction?"
Throwing all caution to the wind, there are a few solutions that can be suggested.
Solution 1: The dinosaurs never were alive 65 million years ago, they were just bones at that
time too. In Catastrophism you don't have any solid dates to hang your hat on. All the dates we
have are a mess.
150
Solution 2 (admittedly way out there): The prior fifth planet, known as Tiamat to the Sumerians,
is indeed gone. The present earth on which we are standing was once a moon of Nibiru, which
fell from the influence of its own Dark Sun. The dinosaurs were once extant (alive) on this moon
of Nibiru. In this scenario, the dinosaurs are creatures of another world.
Solution 3 (also way out there):The dinosaurs were alive on a moon of Nibiru, which exchanged
material with the Earth / Tiamat. Earth took on the bones of these creatures which were never
extant on the Earth but were creatures of another world.
The dinosaur gravity problem is a great piece of evidence for something; but what is it evidence
for? Perhaps other catastrophists out there can help me put the pieces of this puzzle together.
Suggested Reading
Collin, Rodney The Theory of Celestial Influence, Arkana Penguin Books, 1954.
d'Arc, Joan, "Planet X: Is a Runaway Wrecking Ball Part of Our Solar System?" (see article at
www.paranoiamagazine.com).
David, L. "Long-Destroyed Fifth Planet May Have Caused Lunar Cataclysm, Researchers Say"
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/fifth_planet_020318.html, 18 March
2002.
Delsemme, A. "An Argument for the cometary origin of the biosphere" American Scientist 89
(Sept-Oct) 2001; pp432-442.
Drake, M. & K. Righter "Determining the composition of the Earth" Nature 416 (7th March)
2002; pp39-44.
Harder, B. "Water for the Rock: Did Earth's Oceans come from the Heavens?" Science News 23
March 2002 (Vol. 161, no 12).
Holden, Ted, "Dinosaurs and the Gravity Problem," The Anomalist, Volume 1:
www.anomalist.com.
Lloyd, Andy, "Winged Disc: The Dark Star Theory" 2001, www.darkstar1.co.uk, see also "The
Great Water Conundrum," http://www.darkstar1.co.uk/water.html.
Morbidelli, A. et al "Source regions and timescales for the delivery of water to the Earth"
Meteoritics and Planetary Science 35 2000; pp1309-1320.
Sitchin, Zecharia The Twelfth Planet and The Cosmic Code, Avon.
Van Flandern, Tom, Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets: Paradoxes Resolved,
Origins Illuminated, North Atlantic Books, 1999.
151
Stairway to Heaven (or Hairway to Steven?)
Are Zecharia Sitchin and Vatican official Monsignor Balducci really
climbing the same path to ascension?
The following talk was delivered to MUFON, Rhode Island members on October 20, 2000.
An on-line report by Hebrew scholar Zecharia Sitchin (www.sitchin.com) describes a meeting
between Sitchin and High Vatican official Monsignor Corrado Balducci. As this story relays,
Balducci and Sitchin met in Bellaria, Italy in March of this year at a conference entitled "The
Mystery of Human Existence." Monsignor Balducci holds the following impressive credentials:
> he is a member of the Curia of the Roman Catholic Church,
> he is the Prelate of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the
Propagation of the Faith,
> he is the leading exorcist of the Archdiocese of Rome,
> he is a member of the Vatican's Beatification Committee,
> he is an expert on Demonology, and
> he was reportedly appointed by the Vatican to study the matter of UFO's and
extraterrestrials.
At this conference in Italy, Sitchin presented his compelling research into the Sumerian texts,
which is now known as the "genetic engineering hypothesis." For those of you familiar with von
Daniken's "ancient astronaut" theories, we can essentially describe Sitchin's work as an extension
of these earlier theories, except that Sitchin has worked out the details of this genesis story by his
ability to translate ancient Sumerian documents. According to Sitchin, ancient Earthling
notetakers wrote on every possible piece of material they could find - clay, stone, parchment telling us not only that Earth had been visited by spacefaring humanoid beings, but that Earth
humans and cultures are a direct result of periodic visits by these advanced genetic scientists.
Sitchin's translation of these ancient texts - described in detail in six books of the Earth
Chronicles series - describes a pre-history very different from the one taught to us in our prehistory, science and anthropology courses. When uttered outside of rented rooms like this one,
these ideas make people very uncomfortable. His translations tell us that earth humans are not
alone, even in our own solar system.
At this conference in Italy, Sitchin reiterated the ancient Sumerian story of Nibiru, also known as
Marduk to the Babylonians, and to our own scientists as Planet X. According to Sumerian
accounts, Nibiru is a huge planet which is part of our solar system, but which travels in a vastly
elliptical orbit, nearing Earth about every 3,600 years. According to Sitchin's translations, this
152
tenth planet is the home of space travelers called the Anunnaki, which he translates as "Those
Who From Heaven to Earth Came."
You might be interested to know, the Hubble telescope has recently discovered numerous planets
and moons in other solar systems with highly elliptical plunging orbits and clockwise orbits,
suggesting that such an eccentric orbit may actually be the norm in other solar systems. If Sitchin
is right, it may also, unbeknownst to us, be occurring in our own solar system.
At this conference in Italy, Sitchin reiterated his theory that the Anunnaki began visiting our
planet about 450,000 years ago. Sitchin suggests that about 300,000 years ago, these space
travelers engaged in genetic engineering which "upgraded" then-existing hominids to the status
of Homo sapiens: a being capable of accepting cultural indoctrination. In his presentation,
Sitchin made sure he stated that in this act of creation, "the Anunnaki were acting as Emissaries
for the Universal Creator - God."
Following his presentation, Sitchin was given an opportunity to meet with Monsignor Balducci.
As Sitchin reports, Balducci's position on UFO's was that "there must be something in it."
Balducci felt that "the hundreds and thousands of eyewitness reports leave no room for denying
that there is a measure of truth in them...". Balducci stated, "Witnessing is one way of
transmitting truth, and in the case of the Christian religion, we are talking about a Divine
Revelation in which witnessing is crucial to the credibility of our faith." Regarding life on other
planets, Balducci admitted to Sitchin:
That life may exist on other planets is certainly possible... The Bible does not rule
out that possibility. On the basis of scripture and on the basis of our knowledge of
God's omnipotence, His wisdom being limitless, we must affirm that life on other
planets is possible... credible and even probable.
Cardinal Nicolo Cusano (1401-1464) wrote that there is not a single star in the sky about which
we can rule out the existence of life, even if different from ours.
On the subject of intelligent extraterrestrials, Balducci stated: "When I talk about
extraterrestrials, we must think of beings who are like us; more probably beings more advanced
than us, in that their nature is an association of a material part and a spiritual part, a body and a
soul, although in different proportions than human beings on Earth." As Balducci made clear,
"Angels" are beings who are purely spiritual, devoid of bodies, while humans are made up of
spirit and matter, but the spiritual part would be at "at a low level". Balducci then made the
following provocative statement:
It is entirely credible that in the enormous distance between Angels and humans,
there could be found some middle stage, that is beings with a body like ours but
more elevated spiritually... In spite of what some people think, we would be in a
position to reconcile their existence with the Redemption that Christ has brought
us.
153
Regarding the Anunnaki and the Creation of Man, Balducci explained that Sitchin's approach is
based on physical evidence, and concerns itself with matter, not with spirit. Balducci reiterated
the view of Father Marakoff, who is still alive and is greatly respected by the Church. Marakoff
has suggested that when God created man and put the soul into him, "perhaps what is meant is
not that Man was created from mud or lime, but from something pre-existing, even from a
sentient being capable of feeling and perception." So, Balducci suggested to Sitchin in their
meeting, "the idea of taking a pre-man or hominid and creating someone who is aware of himself
is something that Christianity is coming around to. The key is the distinction between the
material body and the soul granted by God."
Sitchin explained that while he does deal with physical evidence, in his first book The 12th
Planet, he raises the question "if the extraterrestrials 'created' us, who created them on their
planet?" However, when I personally interviewed Sitchin in Washington DC in 1995, his pointblank answer to the question of the genesis of the Anunnaki on their planet was "evolution." In
this interview, Sitchin was adamant that the ancient Sumerian texts state that these physical
beings created mankind as a "Primitive Worker," for the express purpose of extracting gold from
the mines of South Africa.
Yet, with the writing of his last book in the Earth Chronicles series, Sitchin's thinking had slowly
evolved from this idea that the Anunnaki were products of evolution on their planet. As he later
began to explain it, the Anunnaki were "emissaries" of God. By the time he met Monsignor
Balducci earlier this year, Sitchin had long made room for the possibility that the Anunnaki were
carrying out "the Almighty God's wishes and plans," and did not merely "come here for selfish
reasons and to fashion us because they needed workers." We must wonder what has caused
Sitchin's change of heart.
As Balducci has argued, "If such extraterrestrials were so involved, even by your own
interpretation they had to do with Man's physics, body and rationality; but God alone had to do
with the Soul!" Sitchin's second book, which deals with "Man's aspiration to ascend the
heavens," is titled The Stairway to Heaven. Sitchin ended his conversation with Msgr. Balducci
by saying, "it seems to me that we are ascending the same stairway to heaven, though from
different steps."
Let me make it clear that I respect Mr. Sitchin's work, but I'm a little wary of this suggestion.
Call me paranoid, but are Sitchin and Balducci really climbing the same ascending path, or has
this path been theologically "tweaked" in order to force its convergence? As Sitchin explains, his
approach is based on physical evidence, and Balducci's seeks the spiritual or divine aspects. Yet,
Sitchin claims, "our conclusions converged." But it seems to me the problem Balducci is having
with the genetic engineering scenario has still not been solved. As Balducci argues, "God alone
has to do with the Soul."
Now, where would traveling biochemists from another planet pick up souls? What is a soul? Do
these presumably humanoid beings have permission to act as little 'gods'? This appeared to be on
Sitchin's mind when I interviewed him in 1995, yet at the time I couldn't get him to drop the idea
that Darwinian evolution does not fit into this scenario. When I pressed the issue, he ended the
interview. In 1997, when I sent him the chapter from my book questioning all this, he sent it
154
back to me with the written remark, "I don't read unpublished manuscripts." I respect Mr.
Sitchin's work, but I will continue to respectfully call attention to problems I find with it. Let me
outline those problems right now.
"Seeds": DNA or Creative Potential?
In my book Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, I have noted the 'evolution' of
Sitchin's genetic engineering hypothesis, which essentially comprises a change in heart regarding
where the concept of God fits into the picture. According to Sitchin's translations published in
Wars of Gods and Men, Sumerian texts describe the process whereby the semen of a chosen
male Anunnaki was combined with the egg of a female Earth hominid. The fertilized eggs were
then implanted into the wombs of female Anunnaki "Birth Goddesses." In this way, the
Anunnaki began a slow process of genetically engineering a "Mixed Worker" by binding upon
the less evolved beings the "mold of the gods." There was "considerable trial and error to achieve
the desired 'perfect model' of the Primitive Worker." It was truly a slow process, for the hybrids
were unable to reproduce and the wombs of fourteen Birth Goddesses had to continually serve as
the containers. Eventually, the workers were put to work in the gold mines of South Africa.
The Sumerian Creation of Man story describes a second wave of genetic manipulations which
would enable the beings to procreate on their own, since the initial hybrids were not able to do
so. The Biblical story of the creation tells that man and woman were not created at the same time
but, rather, the female was created (or as Sitchin translates, "cloned") from the male. During this
operation, as the Bible tells us, a "rib" was removed from The Adam - the first man. According
to Sitchin's research, something was extracted from the "rib" in order to "construct" the female.
However, it is not clear what this means. Sitchin points out that cloning requires the least
differentiated cells, so the stomach cells are used. So, he surmises that being near the stomach,
the rib had something to do with a process of cloning.
Sitchin explains, since it is apparent that female workers already existed, something was required
from the male in order for the female to become compatible for mating purposes. The clue to
what the rib supplied, Sitchin writes in Genesis Revisited, lies in the translation of the meanings
of the Sumerian words for life, belly and clay. Although the original Sumerian texts describing
this process have not yet been found, Sitchin surmises that it had something to do with the
genetic compatibility of the sperm and the egg. This physical translation for a potentially esoteric
event is typical of Sitchin's books.
As Balducci has noted, Sitchin's approach is based on physical evidence and is concerned with
matter, not with spirit. I have also noted that Sitchin's translations are overly based on physical
interpretations. One of the most important potential mistranslations I have noted is that Sitchin
assumes the Sumerian word for seed to mean "DNA." This mistranslation may essentially be, in
Balducci's words, "the key [to] the distinction between the material body and the soul granted by
God." This "key" may be discovered in the writings of Vedic scholar, Richard Thompson, in his
book Alien Identities. Thompson indicates that the word for a special type of 'seed' in Vedic texts
is called bijas.
155
According to the ancient Vedic scripts, the Universe is under intelligent control. High-level
controllers - the Devas - arrange for the "transmigration" of souls from one material body to the
next, in a process of movement toward higher consciousness. The bodies of Brahma and the
Devas, which emanate from the Supreme Being, are made of "subtle forms of energy," and do
not contain DNA. But, they do carry genetic information in the form of bijas, or seeds, that are
also made of subtle energy. For humans to descend from the Devas, something else is needed; a
"transformation" must take place in order to convert subtle energy into material substance. This
sounds strangely like Sitchin's process.
It is evident here that there may be a problem with Sitchin's translation of seed as "DNA," and
the concept of bijas may be the missing 'substance' which Sitchin's analysis seeks - the soul
which can only be provided by the sacred or divine. This seed (the bijas) is not to be confused
with DNA. These types of beings are able to generate any form of living being by a combined
process of mating and transformation of subtle to gross energy - the infusion of divine soul into
matter. The conversion of genetic information from subtle form to gross form involves the
storage of different types of vibratory energy. The "seeds" are this storage container.
The genetic engineering hypothesis may be a mistaken translation of a more subtle process or
transformational principle. As Thompson maintains, the Vedic version of the origin of
humankind on Earth is not that they were "genetically engineered" by crossing the DNA of the
Devas with the DNA of the primitive "ape-man," but that it involved mating between Devas that
generated human offspring through the transformation of genetic and vibratory information. The
Indian Vedas teach that different humanoid races on separate worlds were produced in this
manner and, thus, have a common ancestry. The Vedas state that the human form is common in
the Universe.
The Devas can be thought of as "archetypes," or as giving birth to the archetypes for all living
creatures on the Earth. The Devas, along with other beings on that level or higher, contain the
capacity on the creative level to produce offspring that are not of their own bodily type. As a
matter of fact, I was reading a magazine in a doctor's office one day; I wish I had it to show you.
One of the artifacts that had been discovered at an ancient Near East site portrayed a Birth
Goddess giving birth to a tiger or some similar beast. The beast was coming right out through her
legs! The archeologists were completely puzzled by it. But it's not puzzling at all if we read the
ancient Vedic creation documents.
The "seeds" of life may refer to a vibratory transference of subtle energy to material energy,
rather than to the physical DNA structure. This would essentially be considered an act of special
creation. Indeed, if Sitchin has mistranslated this transformational process to be equivalent to a
physical cloning process, his 'genetic engineering hypothesis' is actually a 'creation hypothesis.'
Sitchin doesn't have to 'make room' for God. As a creative guiding intelligent force, field, entity
or MIND alive in all aspects of Universal Creation, the life force from the Supreme Deity
emanates down the hierarchy of creative entities who transfer this energy to the material plane.
As Balducci has offered, "It is entirely credible that in the enormous distance between Angels
and humans, there could be found some middle stage, that is beings with a body like ours but
more elevated spiritually." Are there intermediaries who have implicit 'permission' to act as little
156
'gods'? This notion of a "hierarchy" of seraphim and cherubim appears to be at the bottom of the
Balducci/Sitchin discourse.
Out of Africa
What kind of physical evidence does Sitchin actually deal with in his books? He simply states,
"Evolution cannot account for the appearance of Homo sapiens, which happened virtually
overnight in terms of the millions of years evolution requires, and with no evidence of earlier
stages that would indicate a gradual change from Homo erectus." Yet, this simple statement is
misleading. As I have noted in Space Travelers, the timeline of Sitchin's hypothesis is fairly
consistent with the "Out of Africa" evolutionary model put forward by mainstream evolutionary
theorists, including Richard Leakey in The Origin of Humankind. If this model is accepted,
mankind's lineage can be traced to 100,000 to 300,000 years before present, which meshes with
Sitchin's dates. However, if we consider alternative theories of the age of mankind based on
marginalized worldwide fossil evidence, the theory of the emergence of mankind out of Africa
during this crucial and set time period is demolished, and Sitchin's theory is 'dust in the wind.'
If Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson are correct, mankind's age is considerably older than
either of these theories might suggest, and, further, mankind's emergence cannot be plotted
solely on a course winding out of Africa. In their book, Hidden History of the Human Race,
Cremo and Thompson discuss various skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans, as well
as various human artifacts, which have been dated in the range of 2 million all the way up to 55
million years B.P. (before present). This furthest range would put human beings in the early
Pliocene era right along with the emergence of the first mammals. Yet, such dates are considered
"anomalous" within the context of the currently accepted paradigm of human evolution.
Why are these dates considered "anomalous"? Because they are marginal in terms of the
currently-accepted evolutionary paradigm. This is due to the fact that the assumption of the
progressive evolution of humans from the great ape family guides the acceptance and rejection of
the evidence for evolution itself. In the study of logic, this is known as a tautology. You start
with a theory, and only facts which support this theory are considered. So everything inside of
this neat little box is TRUE because no contradictory facts are allowed to enter the box.
As I explain in great detail in my book, this is essentially what we have with the prevailing
theory of human genesis. Darwinian evolution is a classic tautology. It is scientism, not science.
Scientism masquerades as true science and never recognizes itself as a belief system based on an
emotional attachment to Western materialist philosophy. This is why evolution stands at the top
of the list along with politics as a subject to avoid in the public arena. Yet, let me be so bold as to
bring a few questions to fore regarding this taboo topic, and if I see a few red faces in the
audience, I will perhaps regret my mistake.
Recent discoveries have forced anthropologists to reconsider the commonly-held paradigm that
humankind evolved and dispersed in the warmer climate of Africa. Some anthropologists now
believe a recently discovered Siberian site called Diring to be one of the oldest Paleolithic sites
in the world, dating from between 1.8 to 3.7 million years B.P. (before present). This Siberian
site has produced more than 4,000 artifacts, with some 500 of them identified as stone tools. The
157
finding that Stone Age people lived this far north as long as 3 million years ago upsets the
prevailing Out of Africa model in several ways. While some archeologists are not convinced that
the site is 3 million years old, all are convinced that the site is at least 500,000 years old. What
are humans doing in Siberia even this long ago?
As Cremo and Thompson write, in the past, "anomalous" evidence was often the center of
serious controversy in anthropology. Now, anomalous findings are rejected outright. Let's also
consider the following evidence hidden in humanity's closet:
> Simple eolithic implements have been discovered on the American continent in
Pliocene strata dated at 2-4 million years.
> Primitive bone implements, as well as shark teeth with holes for use as jewelry
and carving implements, have been found in Suffolk, England, in formations
dated at 2-55 million years.
> Simple chopping tools have been discovered in Pakistan in formations dated at
2 million years. Tools of the same age have also been found in Siberia and India.
(The authors point out that modern tribal people continue to manufacture very
primitive types of stone tools.)
> A modern-type human jaw thoroughly infiltrated with iron oxide was
discovered in a quarry at Foxhall, England, in a 16-foot level dated at 2.5 million
years.
> Various finds in Argentina, along with flint tools and intentional use of fire,
indicate the presence of humans in the Americas at least 3 million years ago.
> A modern human skull was discovered in the Sierra Nevada mountains, under
volcanic ash in a gold-bearing gravel bed ranging in age from 9 to 55 million
years old. This is not an isolated discovery. The California gold country has been
a 'hotbed' of human skeletal remains and implements having this date range.
There is also strong evidence for the presence of rounded stone bola makers in Argentina
approximately 3 million years ago. Stone bolas were used for hunting by wrapping them in
leather bags attached to a long cord, swinging them overhead and letting go. Since this advanced
technology requires the presence of a leather working culture, bola stones represent the presence
of Homo sapiens during the late Pliocene in South America. What are human beings doing in the
Americas 3 to 5 million years ago? This is very upsetting to mainstream anthropologists, and
they want to sweep it under the rug. Louis B. Leakey and others have established that the
australopithecines of this age were not toolmakers, are not considered to be part of the human
lineage, and furthermore, they were still confined to Africa. So who are these American
toolmakers? How does Sitchin deal with them? He doesn't.
158
In addition, if we consider the view of the early catastrophists, there is evidence that mankind has
been created and destroyed on the Earth many times over. Immanuel Velikovsky stated this
problem when he wrote the following:
Even admitting that by Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is allegorized a catastrophe which
quite destroyed mankind prior to the great deluge, it is impossible to declare that it was the first
catastrophe. It depends on the memory of the peoples which catastrophe they consider to be the
first act of creation. Human beings rising from some catastrophe, bereft of memory of what had
happened, regarded themselves as created from the dust of the Earth. All knowledge of
ancestors, who they were and in what interstellar space they had lived, was wiped away from the
memory of the few survivors.
On this point, Velikovsky and other early catastrophists had noted that the fossil record reflects a
series of creatures appearing all at once and fully formed, and disappearing just as suddenly. To
them, the facts seemed to tell the story of a cycle of creation and destruction of all life forms on
the earth. The fossil record since Darwin's day continues to tell this story. It has never told
anything but this story. But "creation" is a dirty word in our scientific culture.
In fact, there is evidence to suggest that fully modern Homo sapiens appears to have existed in
Africa, Europe, India, America, Australia, the British Isles, and now Siberia at least two million
years before present. Taking into account only the more conventionally accepted evidence,
Cremo and Thompson have concluded "the total evidence, including fossil bones and artifacts, is
most consistent with the view that anatomically modern humans have co-existed with other
primates for tens of millions of years."
Sitchin's genetic engineering hypothesis depends upon us not opening the closet door where
these anomalies in the human lineage are kept! Sitchin's date of 300,000 to 350,000 years B.P.
for the genetic engineering of the human race by the Anunnaki space travelers conflicts with
evidence of human beings scattered over the Earth long before these dates.
As a matter of fact, Sitchin relays a curious account he discovered in Sumerian texts. This story
describes the humanoid that lived on the Earth when the Anunnaki arrived. The Anunnaki called
them the "Black Headed Ones." They are described by the Sumerians as being a friend to the
four-legged animals which the Anunnaki ate for dinner. They were crafty and skillful enough to
free their animal pals from the Anunnaki traps. This is a description of a thoughtful being; a
being who is self-aware and capable of feeling; an alert and crafty being with unusual manual
dexterity, capable of planning, scheming and conniving. Here we have a description of a naked
toolmaker and troublemaker: the human being! This isn't simply a description of a tool-maker;
this is a tool un-maker. This is not an "ape," capable of picking up a stick and using it to dig.
This, we are told, is what chimpanzees do.
This story suggests that human beings already existed on the Earth prior to the Anunnaki settling
of Sumeria. As a matter of fact, there is worldwide evidence that space travelers may have
arrived from various places in the solar system in an ongoing stream of settlements, settling in
what we now call Atlantis and Mu, long before the Great Deluge, and long before the arrival of
the Sumerian Anunnaki. These may be our American bola sling makers... the ancestors of the
159
Eskimos and the American Indians. The problem we are presented with is this: Can we actually
say that any Earth people are indigenous to this planet? Are we all descendants of human
Visitors? Is the human form actually common in the Universe?
Another discrepancy with Sitchin's theory, that the Anunnaki created humans in their own image
and after their own likeness, is the fact that the Sumerians describe the Anunnaki as lizardpeople; as bipedal reptilian creatures with scaly skin who preferred the water over the land.
Sitchin avoids discussion of how humankind could have been created by parents who were
lizards, when other sources have verified this odd fact. It has also been suggested that the King
James and other bibles have removed these references out of their editions of the bible.
What we are looking at with Sitchin's genetic engineering hypothesis could be many things.
Sitchin has chosen to translate it his way, but there are other possible ways to understand the
Sumerian material. One possibility has to do with the act of special creation. The Sumerian
account may be a creation myth which Sitchin is perhaps taking too literally, or shall we say, too
physically. Could this Sumerian account actually be a religious text describing the special
creation of man by the Devas, hierarchical spirits who assist in the ongoing creation and recreation of all life forms after various cataclysms on Earth? If Sitchin's translation can be
tweaked in this way, perhaps he and Monsignor Balducci can ascend the same Stairway to
Heaven.
Acclimation Program
It is clear that this fabricated religious synthesis between a Hebrew scholar and a Vatican official
on the subject of extraterrestrials heralds a momentous occasion approaching what Richard
Boylan has called an Acclimation Program. As Boylan reports, Balducci has gone on Italian
television repeatedly to declare that ET visitations may be real. As the Church's leading exorcist
and an expert on Demonology, he has announced that ETs are "not of the devil," and are likely to
be spiritually advanced.
Yet, the sexual and procreative nature of the abduction phenomenon might indicate otherwise.
According to the Malleus Maleficarum, printed in 1486, the sexual activity most often attributed
to witches was sex with demons who assumed the form of male or female (incubus or succubus)
for the purpose of having intercourse with humans. How can Balducci be so sure this is not what
is happening, especially if we consider that the Anunnaki shapeshifters were sometimes reptilian.
Is this not remarkable proof that the worldwide consciousness is being "acclimated" to the
existence of extraterrestrials? Following the 1961 advice of a think tank called the Brookings
Institute, such an acclimation program might be designed to keep religious doctrines intact. The
discovery of extraterrestrial life, the Brookings Report projected, would be "electrifying" to the
"illiterate and semiliterate" religious masses.
Yet, strangely, of all groups which might be most affected by the discovery of a
superintelligence in the universe, the Brookings Report seemed most concerned not about the socalled "illiterate and semiliterate" religious masses, but about "scientists and engineers." The
Brookings Report stated, "It has been speculated that, of all groups, scientists and engineers
160
might be the most devastated by the discovery of relatively superior creatures, since these
professions are most clearly associated with the mastery of nature." The Brookings Institute
warned that meeting up with life forms who had such an advanced understanding of nature might
invalidate our own understanding of nature. Of course, I'm happy to point out, the theory that
would be most invalidated by the discovery of advanced humanoid beings is Darwinian
evolution.
As this think tank warned in 1961, "it is very important to take into account major religions." In
keeping with this social control scenario, Sitchin now presents his information a little differently.
In his presentation in Italy, with a high Vatican official present, Sitchin made sure he stated that
in this act of creation, "the Anunnaki were acting as Emissaries for the Universal Creator - God,"
and were not merely acting selfishly to produce a mine worker. This can be considered an act of
special creation.
As Balducci told Sitchin, even if intelligent spacefaring humanoids exist, "in spite of what some
people think, we would be in a position to reconcile their existence with the Redemption that
Christ has brought us." This statement alone, coming from the Vatican, is incredible. How would
this reconciliation be possible? According to Balducci's statements, it hinges on seeing these
space travelers as some form of angelic beings - rather than as demons. Are we witnessing the
evolution of the Vatican's modern genealogy of the angelic kingdom? A kinder, gentler Vatican
that believes there are no bad apples on the angelic family tree?
Is this Vatican official saying that the Biblical serafim and cherubim travel in spaceships? Is the
Vatican coming around to the ancient astronaut theory? And what does this have to do with
Sitchin's 'change of heart'? Has Sitchin had a Visitor experience - a visit by a high Vatican
official perhaps? In this light, has Sitchin been persuaded to alter his information for the good of
the planet?
161
Beings in NothingDrive
An Existential Analysis of the Travis Walton UFO Abduction
On the thirty-year anniversary of one of the most compelling UFO contact experiences, I present
my interpretation of the Travis Walton abduction case of 1975. This admittedly kitsch
interpretation is unlike any other, either of the skeptic or non-skeptic variety, and its intent is not
to prove or disprove the facts of the case. Rather, the intent is to marvel at the sense of wonder
that embellishes the human condition and to convey the idea that we have a choice about how we
look at the world. I hope it will add to our understanding of this profound human experience as
we subconsciously try to become more comfortable in the skin we find ourselves in.
On the evening of November 5, 1975, a crew of men working in the forests at Turkey Springs,
Arizona jumped into their pick-up truck and headed home to Snowflake for dinner. All at once, a
brilliant yellow light blared through the trees. Upon coming to a clearing that afforded them a
better view, the men realized the source was a flying saucer.
Travis Walton got out of the truck for a better look at the "golden machine," which hovered
silently about 15 feet above the ground only 90 feet away. As he later described it in The Walton
Experience (1978), the object was estimated to have an overall diameter of 15 to 20 feet and was
shaped like two deep pie pans, one inverted on top of the other, with a "small round bowl upside
down" on top of that. The dome on top was luminous white with darker strips of dull silver
outlining the glowing panels. The surface of the ship had a "luster of hot metal." There were no
seams, protrusions, antennae, windows, ports or hatches on the silent craft.
Walton approached the craft as the other men called out to him to come back. About six feet
from the craft he got into a half-crouched position, staring up at its smooth surface. Suddenly the
ship began to vibrate and wobble, giving off low- and high-pitched mechanical tones. A bluegreen beam of light about a foot wide shot out of the bottom of the craft, with a sharp, cracking
sound, striking him in the head and chest with a force he later described as "a high voltage
electrocution."
The men in the truck watched in terror as Walton's body arched backward and was hurled about
ten feet in the air. His body landed motionless on the ground. The driver sped off quickly,
crashing over bushes and small trees until, through a clearing, the men watched the ship rise
above the trees and take off at incredible speed. The men returned to the scene to pick up
Walton, but he was nowhere to be found. Police authorities interrogated the men, thinking they
had concocted this fantastic tale to cover up Walton's accidental death or murder.
Only in Hollywood?
The Travis Walton story is one of the most well known UFO contact reports since it was brought
to the silver screen in the film Fire in the Sky. Problematically, Hollywood did a bad job of
explaining what Walton actually remembered about the incident aboard the spacecraft where he
purportedly spent the next five days. As a result of the film, most people know only of the drama
surrounding the ordeal his co-workers were put through concerning his absence. In order to fill in
the void left by Hollywood, more pieces of the bizarre tale recounted by Walton follow.
As consciousness returned, Walton discovered he was lying on his back on a table. He initially
had no recollection of the spacecraft. He had a burning, "crushed" feeling in his chest and a
162
splitting headache. He was remarkably weak. He recalls a bitter, metallic taste on his tongue, as
well as intense thirst. His eyesight was blurred. He had no idea where he was but could hear a
quiet shuffling. An odd light fixture hung down from a "triangular" shaped ceiling. He suddenly
recalled being in the woods looking up at the glowing saucer. He reasoned that "maybe that thing
had hit me with something" and he had been rushed to the hospital. He tried to move but he
couldn't. He tried to call out, but no sound came.
Walton became aware that he was still wearing his shirt and jacket, which were pushed up under
his arms. He reasoned that he must have been injured so badly there was no time to remove his
clothing. He then looked down and noticed an unfamiliar technological artifact lying across his
bare chest:
A strange device curved across my body. It felt cool and smooth. It was about four or five
inches thick... [and] ...it extended from my armpits to a few inches above my belt. It
curved down to the middle of each side of my rib cage. It looked like it was made of
shiny, dark gray metal or plastic.
Walton then tried to focus on the "blurry figures of the doctors" he suddenly realized were
standing over him. Once his vision returned:
The sudden horror of what I saw rocked me with the realization that I was definitely not
in the hospital. I was looking squarely into the face of a horrible creature! My senses
were instantly electrified into a new keenness. Everything clicked. The weird-shaped
room, the strange device, the odd clothing, all added up to just one thing. 'Good God!! I
must be inside the craft!!" [Emphasis his!!]
Emotion and the Horrible
The double exclamations Walton uses in his chronicle might perhaps represent his profound
horror upon realizing the world has just shapeshifted beyond the predictable reality fixed
squarely between the edges of his comfort zone. It has been noted by researchers that fear is the
most common human reaction to meetings with extraterrestrials. In his writings on the
supernatural in Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, Carl Jung wrote that
mankind "feels an almost instinctive aversion to this kind of knowledge, for he fears its
paralyzing effect." As Jung noted, humankind may admit that unknown powers exist no matter
what they are called, but one "turns away from them as speedily as possible, as from a
threatening obstacle."
Why is fear so automatic when one is confronted with the supernatural? From a purely
phenomenological point of view, why does this constitute a threat? We might consider Martin
Heidegger's suggestion that our first sensory assessment produces a logical comparison or
correspondence between subject and object—an assessment of facts devoid of meaning. He
proposed that perceptions are logically distinguished when an object is isolated out of the stream
of experience and held up to that which it is not. However, the second assessment will move
beyond this correspondence to the "meaning of the ground of the investigated beings," revealing
the nature of the relationship between them. If no meaning is revealed, if there is no melding of
subject with "brute object," we could surmise, as Jean Paul Sartre might, that an instance of
existential nausea might follow.
163
A Science of Experience
Phenomenologist Edmund Husserl believed that in order to maintain its meaningfulness and
integrity, the quantitative sciences developed by man should acknowledge that its roots are in the
same sensory world which it studies and measures. He hoped that a new Science of Experience
would someday re-establish "lived experience" as a basis of scientific method. Husserl spoke of
the "phenomenal world," the world of subjective experience, as being pure transcendental
consciousness.
As David Abram writes in Spell of the Sensuous, each of the human senses lends its own unique
mode of perception, which diverges, intercommunicates and overlaps with the others. In order to
comprehend a particularly novel sensory experience, you must use all your senses in "dynamic
participation." These are the tools of a different type of science; one that we all know
instinctively. Your tools in the Science of Experience are your naked humanness. Abram
explains:
The relative divergence of my bodily senses (eyes in the front of the head, ears toward
the back, etc.) and their curious bifurcation (two eyes, one on each side, and two ears,
two nostrils, etc.), indicates that this body is a form destined to the world; it ensures that
my body is a sort of open circuit that completes itself only in things, in others, in the
encompassing Earth.
In this novel situation, as Walton has noted, your senses are "instantly electrified into a new
keenness." Everything begins to click, and it all adds up to "one thing." You have no trouble
isolating this object out of your stream of experience, since it's in your face and you cannot
move. You feel like an animal being hunted and you begin to think like one. You attempt to
categorize the nature of the beast exhibiting predatory behavior toward you. You deduce that it is
like me, in that it has the same basic morphology, locomotive stride, number of limbs, body
symmetry and other features; but it is not like me in a most disturbing way.
Walton has the existential creeps upon coming face to face with an outwardly humanoid entity
whose mode of perception is completely alien to the Earth environment. He knows instinctively
that these beings do not belong to this world. As he looks for some human qualities or even a
counterpart to mammalian forms, his first assessment is that these beings gather information in a
novel manner. These entities make no use of the five senses taken for granted on this planet, the
senses which define us as human, the very senses we are using in the moment to comprehend this
situation.
A World That Speaks
The conventional view of language is that it is a set of mutually agreed-upon signs, or
representations for things, linked by a formal system of rules. Phenomenologist Maurice
Merleau-Ponty disagreed with this assessment, believing that human language is rooted in our
sensory experience of the "life-world." He believed that meaning is spontaneously gestured with
the body. We learn our native language, Merleau-Ponty pointed out, not mentally but bodily. He
suggested that the conceptual meaning of words "must be formed by a kind of subtraction from a
gestural meaning, which is immanent in speech."
A gesture is not arbitrary or meaningless behavior accompanying language, but is linked with the
particular words being used. In essence, gesture is the "bodying-forth" of emotion ("a motion
emanating") into the world; the tangible, visible aspect of a particular feeling. Speech is vocal
164
gesture that communicates meaning, and is rooted in the sensual dimension of experience. It is
born, writes David Abram in Spell of the Sensuous, of "the body's native capacity to resonate
with other bodies and with the landscape as a whole," and is "a particular way of singing the
world." Further, Merleau-Ponty proposed that no phenomenon presented itself to humans as
passive, but as dynamic and engaging. He believed that humans are part of "a gesturing
landscape" — in essence, "a world that speaks."
Yet, if human perception is an open circuit that completes itself via its environment, what type of
environment does this entity come from? What type of being does not require food? What type
of being does not need to hear? Clearly, its home environment is highly technological. As Sartre
indicates, it is the things to which I cannot give meaning which cause the phenomenological
experience of what he has termed nausea. Human beings can only place this experience in the
realm of the supernatural.
As Walton later wrote, the creatures were under five feet tall with the normal arrangement of
features. They had five fingers on their small hands. Other than that, he recalls, "their similarity
to humanness quickly became terrifyingly obscure." The skin was pale, chalky and slightly
translucent, and had a tight doll-like fit. They had "bulging, oversized craniums" and an infantile
appearance. They had huge eyes with irises nearly an inch in diameter. Not a sound came from
their tiny narrow mouths. They wore soft orange-brown overall suits and pinkish-tan footwear.
It doesn't take Walton long to conclude that these beings are not from around here. They are
visitors from a landscape that does not gesture, a world that does not speak. They are technowizards who somehow project thoughts into the mind from a distance. They exhibit no emotion
as they go about their work. The physical qualities possessed by this novel entity seem to
incorporate that of reptile, insect and machine. Although they are overtly humanoid, in no sense
are they mammalian. In some sense we feel that these are not "free will" entities: the lights are on
but there's somebody else at the wheel. They are "Beings-in-NothingDrive."
As H.V. Ditfurth wrote in The Origins of Life, "a living being that does not engage in a continual
exchange of energy with its environment is simply unthinkable." What sort of being is this?
Writing in The Day After Roswell, Col. Philip J. Corso suggested the grays are the biological
robots of a highly advanced visitor race. Psychologist John Mack further wondered if the
traveling biochemists are on a mission to relocate a doomed human race to new homes in other
planetary systems. Mack suggested we are but tagged animals in a cosmic trail of tears…
Magic: The Mind Dragging Among Things
Important to this assessment is the idea that magic, and its relationship to reality, may be a
wholly different phenomenon than we understand it to be. Merleau-Ponty suggests a
preconceptual relationship between the body and the sensible realm when he writes: "I give ear,
or look, in the expectation of a sensation, and suddenly the sensible takes possession of my ear or
my gaze, and I surrender a part of my body, even my whole body, to this particular manner of
vibrating and filling space known as blue or red."
Sartre proposed that the world is in effect "a world of emotion," and the various human emotions
have something in common, that is, "they make a same world appear, a world which is cruel,
terrible, gloomy, joyful ... but one in which the relationship of things to consciousness is always
and exclusively magical." He provides an example. Let's say a grinning face appeared in the
window, sending a reaction of horror throughout your entire body. Phenomenologically
165
speaking, your body is invaded by terror. Sartre explains that in this emotional moment,
"consciousness is degraded and abruptly transforms the determined world in which we live into a
magical world." Think about that. You haven't changed; the world has! As P.D. Ouspensky notes
in Tertium Organum, "the mystery of thought creates everything." He writes:
As soon as we understand that thought is not a 'function of motion' and that motion itself
is a function of thought; as soon as we begin to feel the depth of this mystery, we shall see
that the whole world is a kind of vast hallucination which does not frighten us and does
not make us think we are mad only because we are accustomed to it.
Sartre proposes that the world sometimes reveals itself to consciousness as magical (open-ended,
subjective) instead of determined (solid, objective). Your survival response is to bring the world
back to the confines of your safety nest: consensus-reality. But sometimes there is a lag in doing
this, during which your heart feels like it could have jumped out of your skin. When the gag is
over we can laugh, but while we're suspended in Magical Existentia we have seemingly entered
an aspect of the world that contains possibilities we would normally not entertain. As Sartre
clarifies, we need not believe that "the magical is an ephemeral quality which we impose upon
the world as our moods dictate. Here is an existential structure of the world which is magical..."
(Essays, 243)
The category "magical," in effect, governs our interpsychic relations and our perception of
others; the magical is "the mind dragging among things." Sartre sees magic as consciousness
rendered passive. In this posture, "man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first
magical." The rational superstructures which make up our consensus-reality are actually
"ephemeral and without equilibrium." They "cave in when the magical aspect of faces, of
gestures, and of human situations, is too strong." (Essays, 244)
Indeed, this may explain why nobody is a true believer until they have experienced strange
phenomena first hand. Perhaps imagination is not a separate mental faculty, but is the way the
senses have of throwing themselves beyond in order to make tentative contact with the other
sides of things that we do not sense directly. P.D. Ouspensky has suggested these may be the
manifestations of the fourth dimension into the phenomenal world.
David Abram writes in Spell of the Sensuous that debunkers of magic, putting a premium on
detached objectivity, attempt to "halt the participation of their senses in the phenomenon" by
imagining other phenomena (wires, threads, mirrors), or by simply looking away. We always
retain the option to suspend any instance of participation, he writes. There will always be people
who "simply will not see any magic, either at a performance or in the world at large."
What happens when, without sufficient notice to halt sensory participation, we are plunged into
the irrational alternate universe lying on the other side of our rational superstructure? Sartre
guesses: "consciousness seizes upon the magical as magical; and forcibly lives it as such." Let's
see how Walton deals with his existentially horrible situation:
A creature was looking steadily back at me with huge, luminous brown eyes that were the
size of quarters! I recoiled at the sight. I looked frantically around me. There were three
of them! Hysteria overcame me instantly. I struck out at the two on my right, hitting one
with the back of my arm and knocking it into the other one. … The one I touched felt soft
through the cloth of its garment. The muscles of its puny physique yielded with a
166
sponginess that felt more like fat than sinew. The creature was light and had fallen back
easily.
I heaved myself to a sitting position. The exertion caused beads of sweat to pop out on
my forehead. I lunged unsteadily to my feet and staggered back. I fell against a utensilarrayed bench that followed the curve of one wall. My arm sent some of the instruments
clattering against the back of the shelf. I leaned heavily there, keeping my eyes riveted on
those horrid entities!
Human emotion is a "quality which penetrates us" and "exceeds us on every side," explains
Sartre. He writes, "the emotion ceases to be itself; it transcends itself; it is not a trivial episode of
our daily life; it is intuition of the absolute." With regard to the specific emotion of horror, Sartre
suggests, it is not only the present state of the thing that is transcended, but it is "threatened for
the future; it spreads itself over the whole future and darkens it; it is a revelation of the meaning
of the world."
Future Shock
Walton's terrific fear quite possibly stems from something we might call future shock. If culture
shock is the result of an unprepared confrontation between two entirely different Earth cultures
causing "bewilderment and disorientation, a misreading of reality, and the inability to cope," it
may be relatively mild, suggests Alvin Toffler, in Future Shock, compared to the ravages of
future shock, "the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future."
Existentialists tend to see the essence of human existence as a journey; as being "between that
from which the journey comes and that to which it proceeds." The German word dasein (human
existence) describes life as a project in which human existence projects itself toward the future.
As Heidegger says, man is always "engaged in projects to realize himself in the future"; care for
self means "care for the future." Yet, while we are always preparing for the future, we glide
toward it slowly, marking it with various anniversaries and rites of passage. We do not expect it
to arrive overnight.
Walton's fear may arise from the sudden realization that we are not alone in the world as we've
always been taught; that our plane of existence might be shared with an ultra-life form we had
not known about, if only due to our perceptual limitations or an enormous reality hoax. It would
seem that this realization effectively transformed the world as he thought he knew it; and did, in
fact, spread itself over the future as "a revelation of the meaning of the world" — a world which
we as technological beings thought we owned and managed. But as that surety slips away, the
horrible begins to hold a "substantial quality," which spreads itself over perceptual space-time as
"horrible in the world."
Walton has seen various unknown technological devices, including the flying saucer itself, which
must surely have his mind reeling with fright. For, although the humanoids are short, spongy and
slight of build, he is technologically overpowered by the Goliath contraptions of a futuristic
society. He has entered a magical realm without his slingshot! Physically unarmed and mentally
disarmed, he tries to overcome this existential situation using caveman ingenuity:
My action caused the device on my chest to crash to the floor. No wires or tubes
connected it to me... Greenish rays came from underneath the overturned machine. … My
legs felt too weak to hold me up. I leaned heavily on the counter. The monstrous trio of
humanoids started towards me. … With the superhuman effort of a cornered animal, I
167
ground out the strength to defend myself. ... I grabbed for something from the bench to
fend them off. My hand seized upon a thin transparent cylinder about 18 inches long. It
was too light to be an effective club. I needed something sharp and tried to break the tip
off the tube. I smashed the end of the glass-like wand down on the waist-high metal slab.
It would not break.
There seems to be trouble in Magical Existentia. How might Sartre explain Walton's reaction?
Sartre distinguishes the concept of anguish from the concept of fear in that "fear is fear of beings
in the world whereas anguish is anguish before my self." He further distinguishes the concept of
vertigo as "anguish to the extent that I am afraid not of falling over a precipice, but of throwing
myself over." He clarifies: "A situation provokes fear if there is a possibility of my life being
changed from without; my being provokes anguish to the extent that I distrust myself and my own
reactions in that situation." (Essays 120-124) Sartre gives an example:
Vertigo announces itself through fear; I am on a narrow path—without a guard rail—
which goes along a precipice. The precipice ... represents a danger of death. At the same
time I conceive of a number of causes, originating in universal determinism, which can
transform that threat of death into a reality; I can slip on a stone and fall into the abyss ...
If nothing compels me to save my life, nothing prevents me from precipitating myself
into the abyss ... the decisive conduct will emanate from a self which I am not yet.
This is an important facet of phenomenology. A human being is essentially a changeling.
Although we remain outwardly the same person throughout our lifetime, our interactions with
people and with the world cause us to change inwardly. We do not react in exactly the same
manner to each situation, unless it's required, nor do we get the same results each time we do
react in similar manner. Each situation constitutes a different set of possibilities. Our actions and
engagements must be constantly adjusted to a world that is constantly changing as well, making
each interaction and experience a novel one.
In The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram writes that from a sensory perspective there is no thing that
"appears as a completely determinate or finished object." Every thing I see "presents some facet
of itself to my gaze while withholding other aspects from view." Figuring out what constitutes
this unknown factor is part of problem solving. If a particular situation is exemplary in its
novelty, we become excited and ask others for their opinion. Our lives are largely spent as
intersubjective problem-solvers.
Second, because we are temporal beings, the self is a flowing entity existing over time. If you
concentrate on your inner monologues you will have to agree that you are suspended in a built-in
past, present and future. We all create mental pictures of ourselves in possible future scenarios.
We project ourselves into the future in order to define ourselves in it. We know from experience
not to depend too much on the pictures because life tosses banana peels in our path.
Sartre explains: "At this moment, fear appears, which in terms of the situation is the
apprehension of myself as a destructible transcendent in the midst of transcendents, as an object
which does not contain in itself the origin of its future disappearance." In other words, I don't
know when I will no longer experience this self as subject, nor do I know the circumstances by
which my death will occur. Sartre continues:
I realize myself as pushing away the threatening situation with all my strength, and I
project before myself a certain number of future conducts destined to keep the threats of
168
the world at a distance. These conducts are my possibilities. I am in anguish precisely
because any conduct on my part is only possible … while constituting a totality of
motives for pushing away that situation, I at the same moment apprehend these motives
as not sufficiently effective. (Essays 123)
This leads to the third point, that we do not know what decision we will make with respect to the
next banana peel thrown in our path, and we do not always trust ourselves to make the right
decision. Humankind is always in a posture of questioning, of expectation, of not knowing what
comes next or why. This is what Sartre called contingency. Thus, he suggests, "my decisive
conduct will emanate from a self which I am not yet." Therefore, while my momentary self and
my past self contain known qualities, my future self—that which I am not yet—is suspended in
limbo. It is, in quantum physics terms, a possibility wave.
So we see that man's subjective world deals with potential threats, and survival tactics are at all
times part of a repertoire of possible responses to the threat of bodily harm or death. We can try
to "push away" this threat, but there is no promise as to the effectiveness of that action.
According to Sartre, this risk constitutes mankind's absolute freedom in a free will universe.
Freedom: The Brute Resistance of the World
Back in his magically transformed world, Travis Walton is apparently lodged between fear and
anguish, the proverbial rock and the hard place. He has just awoken from a long nap, like Rip
van Winkle, and this magical place doesn't have any familiar tools at his disposal. There are no
hammers, buzz-saws, and unfortunately no "two-by-fours." There is no Sartrean toolness about
this reality, which is a situation that would surely cause any Earth man considerable angst.
On the face of it there aren't a lot of possibilities, but Walton is profoundly free to come up with
some. As Sartre says, an obstacle is neutral; one is free to "go around it, or climb it, or to ignore
it." The "brute resistance of the world" is worked into the overall pattern of solutions afforded to
us by our existential freedom. Important to Sartre's position on the matter, freedom is a given
which constitutes the framework of possibilities.
Walton's dilemma can be seen as an exercise in free will. What are his options in this novel
situation? As always, when the going gets rough, a human being is free to wing it. With amazing
suicidal grace, Walton chooses vertigo. He tries to throw himself over the edge. He manages to
scare the pants off the perplexed gang by trying an alternate possible historical configuration;
that of a screaming wild banshee:
I lashed out with the weapon at the advancing creatures, screaming desperate, hysterical
threats at them... 'Get away from me!!! What are you?' Then I shrank away in revulsion.
The creatures continued towards me, their hands outstretched. 'Keep back, damn you!!' I
shrieked. They halted. In a snarling crouch I held the tube threateningly behind my head.
…
Their sharp gaze alternately darted about and then fixed me with an intense stare ... I felt
naked and exposed under their scrutiny... Their mouths never made any kind of sound...
Just as I girded myself to spring at them, they abruptly turned and scurried from the
room! They went out the open door, turned right and disappeared... I collapsed back
against the bench and struggled to slow my racing heart.
The Beings-in-NothingDrive backed off for a pow-wow and Walton won the first round, but all
humankind is ever required to do is to win one round at a time. "I need only," Sartre says, to
169
"make an appointment with myself on the other side of that hour, of that day, or of that month...
[for] ... anguish is the fear of not finding myself at that appointment, of no longer even wishing
to bring myself there."
To Sartre choice and intention are both acts; it is not the result that constitutes freedom, for all
possibility is the consequence of existing, and all of my choices and acts are free. Even choosing
to do nothing is an act. But, Sartre explains, "it is for the sake of that being which I will be there
at the turning of the path that I now exert all my strength, and in this sense there is already a
relation between my future being and my present being."
Through that last-ditch effort, posits Sartre, that last ounce of strength which constitutes the
threat of my final annihilation, I am saved. He states, "It is through my horror that I am carried
toward the future, and the horror nihilates itself in that it constitutes the future as possible.
Anguish is precisely my consciousness of being my own future, in the mode of not-being."
(Essays 141)
Strangely, Walton was left to wander the craft unescorted. He came upon a chair that had
controls on its arms and tried it out for size. From across the room he saw a muscular human
being about 6 feet, 2 inches tall, wearing a tight blue suit, and was relieved to see one of his own
kind. The tall blonde man wore a transparent helmet that opened to a wide rim over the
shoulders. Walton chatted animatedly with the man, asking him questions, but the man gave him
the silent treatment. He led Walton down a narrow hallway to a door that slid open, and they
disembarked from the ship down a steep ramp.
Walton was dismayed to discover they were inside an even larger mother ship that contained
flying disks of various sizes and shapes. Entering a room where there were other humans, who
looked alike in a "family sort of way," a man and a woman lifted Walton onto a table. The
attractive blonde woman held an object that contained a "golfball-sized sphere." She pressed it
over his mouth and he lost consciousness.
Travis Walton awoke on the side of the highway outside of Heber, Arizona, five days after he
had been abducted by the craft. He had kept an appointment with a future self that was radically
changed. He later wrote, "When I made that fateful choice to leave the truck … I was leaving
behind forever all semblance of a normal life, running headlong toward an experience so
overwhelmingly mind-rending in its effects, so devastating in its aftermath, that my life would
never — could never — be the same again."
Walton looked up in time to see the yellow center-line of the highway reflected in the bottom of
the spaceship's "gleaming hull" before it shot vertically into the sky. "The most striking thing
about its departure," he wrote, "was its quietness."
References
Abram,David. Spell of the Sensuous.
Corso, Philip. The Day After Roswell.
Ouspensky, P.D. Tertium Organum: A Key to the Enigmas of the World, 1920, 1982, Vintage.
Sartre, J. P. Essays in Existentialism, 1965, 1993, Citadel.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (French: L'Être et le
néant : Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique), sometimes subtitled A Phenomenological Essay on
170
Ontology, is a 1943 philosophical treatise by Jean-Paul Sartre. Its main purpose was to assert the
individual's existence as prior to the individual's essence. “ Sartre's overriding concern in writing
Being and Nothingness was to vindicate the fundamental freedom of the human being, against
determinists of all stripes. It was for the sake of this freedom that he asserted the impotence of
physical causality over human beings, that he analysed the place of nothingness within
consciousness and showed how it intervened between the forces that act upon us and our actions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness
Walton, Travis, Fire in the Sky, Marlowe & Co., 1997.
Walton, Travis, "The Walton Experience – An Ordinary Day," www.travis-walton.com, relays
much of the abduction experience itself.
(Note: Joan d’Arc coined the term Beings in Nothingdrive in this 2005 article; it is not quoted
from any other source. It is a reference to the existentialist manifesto, Being and
Nothingness, by Jean Paul Satre.)
171
The Deconstruction of Everyday Life
by Joan d'Arc
I used to despise grocery shopping, until I realized it had something in common with everything
else I do. … Absolutely everything.
Once I condensed my life to this one primary activity, it no longer seemed to matter where I was
or what I was doing. Being in one place was no different from being in another place because I
would essentially be doing the same thing. This nihilistic deconstruction – where no action is
preferable to any other – had an extraordinary way of calming my mood whenever I felt irritated
by tasks I disliked.
There was one drawback: It made all my movements bland and pointless.
The idea first occurred to me as I was picking up an avocado at Stop & Shop. I picked it up in
one hand. I walked over to the plastic bags and tore one off. I walked back to the avocadoes and
picked up another. I didn't like it. I put it down. I picked up another. It was good. I put both
avocadoes in the bag and walked to my carriage. I put the avocadoes in the carriage. I walked
over to the apples, the nectarines, and the tomatoes and performed the same activity.
At this point I suddenly became self-conscious. I was three feet in back of my head, as L. Ron
Hubbard would say. I was looking down at myself performing this mundane action with a
newfound awareness. I had never noticed this before, this distillation of movement. Is this really
all my life is about? I pick up objects and put them down?
Of course, there are modifications. Sometimes I put the object down in the same spot, especially
if it has a designated location or if it belongs on something called a coaster. But other times I put
it down in a slightly different spot. Sometimes I pick up the object, walk around with it, and then
spend the next ten minutes figuring out where I put it down.
In the next few days I grew indignant about this discovery. How could my life be all about
picking up objects and putting them down? Had I finally arrived at the nihilistic credo that God
is dead and I am merely moving things around for Him? I thought, there must be something else
that I do.
Well, yes, there is.
I pick up two objects, perhaps of a softer or malleable type, and I merge them together, squash
them through my fingers perhaps, and create one object out of them. Which I then pick up and
take for a walk and put down somewhere else.
Perhaps I put this object in something called a frying pan and cook it. Then I flip it over and
cook the other side. I may merge another object in with it. But then I always do the same thing
with it. I pick it up and walk around with it and put it down somewhere else.
Some lucky objects even get a ride in my car. And there they may sit for days. It could be a letter
I am supposed to mail. It could be an apple I forgot to eat. Hopefully it's not my cat. Indeed, my
trunk – also known as my closet on wheels – is full of objects I put there for rides around town.
Inevitably, these objects get lifted out and placed somewhere else after they've been carried
around. Or returned to the same spot.
172
I began a quest for a scientific explanation for this phenomenological observation. Is there any
object that defies this law? Do the scientists of our day know anything about it? Has it been
described by great physicists? Or is it an occult law addressed only by Theosophists,
Rosicrucians and Scientologists? I consulted my occult bookshelf for a possible answer.
The first book I picked up and walked around with was one titled Ancient Egyptian Masonry:
The Building Craft. Yes, for sure the Masons must know about this ancient law. I noted an entire
chapter devoted to the subject of preparing the foundation for building. Indeed, the ancient
Egyptians employed much secrecy in the handling of the blocks for the building of temples.
How did the ancient Egyptians lift colossal blocks for their temples? Did they employ capstans
or pulleys to move heavy objects from one place to another? The authors conclude that both of
these possible methods were unknown. In the XVIII Dynasty, they explain, King Dhuthotpe
utilized 172 men and a large sled to move an alabaster statue of himself, weighing approximately
60 tons, from the quarry to the Nile.
What I found amazing about this information was not that sleds were used, but that ancient
Egyptians, much like us, undertook vast schemes to pick up objects and move them around from
one place to another. Nowhere in this book could I find any information as to why human beings
continually perform this activity. I put the book down and continued my quest to find out why.
I picked up another intriguing book called There Are No Electrons. Kenn Amdahl seemed to get
a little closer to solving the puzzle with his "Greenie Theory" of electricity. It seems Amdahl's
theory was revealed to him on a fishing trip in Utah – seemingly in a moment of out-of-body
awareness – similar to the way my Law of Pickity-Uppity was revealed on a grocery-shopping
trip … except that he admits he was drunk.
I, on the other hand, would never admit that!
While working on his second six-pack of beer, Mr. Amdahl experienced a revelation. Electricity
suddenly made sense, he states, once he forgot the "nonsense" about the imaginary little
powerhouses called protons and neutrons. The one big flaw about the electron theory, he writes,
is that "scientists give electrons a whole truckload of outrageous characteristics and then ask us
to believe that the little rascals are real."
Has anyone ever seen an electron?
Mr. Amdahl's Greenie Theory, like mine, is a bit stupid but with a brilliant quality. His
anthropomorphic theory states that little greenies are moving around inside electrical wires. In
fact, he claims to have met one while on that very fishing trip. The green hippie from another
dimension told him the electron theory is a fairy tale. Electricity is movement caused by little
greenies "boogyin' down the wires." The greenie chicks are positive, the greenie dudes are
negative. It's all about picking up. Voltage is "the urge to party."
Then I put the book down and couldn't find it again. So I picked up a magazine called Oddfellow,
which contained an article entitled, "The Motionless Movement" by Phill Weber. I discovered
that for French literary intellectual, Gerard Duprey, who had absolutely no urge to party, such
rote movements as picking up a pen could cause the heat-death of the universe. My research
seemed to be moving in a dangerous direction.
173
If nihilism is a condition where "no action is preferable to any other," Duprey's "motionless
movement" philosophy took nihilism to its ultimate el ridiculo conclusion: "no action is
preferable."
It seems Duprey, and his small coterie of followers in Le Mouvement Immobile around the turn
of the 20th century, believed that misplaced trust in human progress accelerated us toward "the
end of the game." Duprey blamed literature, and in particular, literature with plots ("things
happening") for mankind's extraction from the world of objects and the terminable movement of
the Universe through Time. His solution was a motionless existence and its expression was the
publication of French "motionless fiction" uncontaminated by Time.
Duprey is said to have "rarely stirred from his resting place on the kitchen floor," in his – do I
dare say, efforts? – to delay humanity's descent into entropy. Movement is the disease of the
universe, he said. His assistant, Puegot, took care of his housework, finance and even his
personal hygiene. He spoke in whispers, explained Weber, and "moved his pen as slowly as one
removes a splinter from his palm" in the task of amending his Manifesto of Motionless
Movement.
But wasn't Duprey ultimately creating something? Isn't conscious thought the first requirement in
the creation of an object? And isn't thought ultimately movement?
To answer this question, I picked up a rare book by Harold McGowan called The Thoughtron
Theory of Life and Matter. McGowan writes, "Everything is activated by thought, either by
original thought or a combination of original thought and present thinking." Thought is the first
motion.
McGowan defines thought as "the one contact that all matter has in common." Thought is
visualization, he explains, and "intention is the act of making the visualization a reality."
McGowan explains, "Strung out in space like beads, infinitrons form configurations of particles,
which record ideas that are to be made into realities. … Thought is the starting point for the
being of everything, animate and inanimate, physical and psychical."
I found Mr. McGowan's theory the most tantalizing, but has anyone ever seen a thoughtron?
Well, perhaps not, but we certainly see the end result of thoughtrons all over creation. In the
beginning was Logos, the Word. But before the first Word was the first Thought. Thought is the
first movement toward creation. "Even though there is not a minute in the day that we are not
thinking," says McGowan, "we hardly recognize that we are using the greatest force in the
universe."
This brought me to ask: Have we forgotten the mystical quality contained in our ability to create?
Could we create a better world if we focused care and positive intent in everything we do with
our hands? Are military minds winning the war for this world because they understand that
focused intent – "mind control" – is everything?
Perhaps we can counteract this threat to our world if we begin to treat everything we touch with
utmost care and view our every careful creation as a magical act. I believe this is the positive
message behind my absurdist deconstruction of motion.
So the next time I find myself carrying an object from one place to another, or squashing one
object into another and squeezing it between two other objects and carrying it to the lunch room,
I'll be sure to give thanks for the gift of creation: the ability to think, to visualize, to construct and
deconstruct, even if it's something taken for granted every day.
174
References
Amdahl, Kenn, There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings, Clearwater Publishing,
Colorado, 1991.
Clarke, Somers and R. Engelback, Ancient Egyptian Masonry: The Building Craft, The Book
Tree, www.thebooktree.com. 1930, 1999.
McGowan, Harold, The Thoughtron Theory of Life and Matter (How it Relates to Scientology
and Transcendental Meditation), Exposition Press, NY. 1973. (Alibris.com) (McGowan was a
Scientologist at some point.)
Weber, Phill, "The Motionless Movement," www.phillweber.com; published in Oddfellow Fall
2005; and HunterGatheress Journal (www.huntergatheress.com) March 2008.
175
The Miraculous Adventures of Person Man
Who came up with Person Man, degraded man, Person
Man? – Linnell/Flansburgh, They Might Be Giants
("Particle Man" Album: Flood)
In his book The Twelfth Planet, Sitchin posits that the Nefilim (the "Anunnaki" space travelers) “did
not create the mammals or the primates or the hominids, or the genus Homo,” but rather, created the
first Homo sapiens. Sitchin deduces from the Sumerian writings that the Anunnaki arrived about
450,000 years ago, just before the warmer climates of the interglacial period occurring about
435,000 years ago “brought about a proliferation of food and animals,” and “speeded up the
appearance and spread of an advanced manlike ape, Homo erectus.”
Cylinder seals of the Sumerians depict the “shaggy ape-man among his animal
friends,” and complain that it let the animals loose from Anunnaki traps.
Another Sumerian text states that “the Mother Goddess gave to her creature,
Man, ‘a skin as the skin of a god,’ a smooth, hairless body, quite different
from that of the shaggy ape-man.”
Sitchin contends that the space travelers took the species Homo erectus and “implanted on him their
own image and likeness.” Importantly, he asserts: “Evolution cannot account for the appearance of
Homo sapiens, which happened virtually overnight in terms of the millions of years evolution
requires, and with no evidence of earlier stages that would indicate a gradual change from Homo
erectus.”
On the other hand, in his book The Gods of Eden, William Bramley has queried whether it was the
species Homo sapiens which was the guinea pig for the genetic engineering of the Anunnaki gods,
and whether it was the species Homo sapiens sapiens which was the end result of these
manipulations. In support of his thesis, he quotes the Encyclopedia Americana’s interpretation of the
fossil record of sapiens sapiens as appearing “with seeming suddenness just over 30,000 years ago,
probably earlier in eastern than in western Europe.”
Which Shaggy “Ape-Man” Was It?
It is commonly agreed that Homo sapiens sapiens, fully modern humans, arrived on the scene rather
abruptly only about 30,000 years ago. Whether or not we agree with the currently accepted
evolutionary paradigm, let’s see how it squares with the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, and as well,
let’s explore a few alternative explanations.
It is commonly suggested in anthropological literature that “bipedal hominids” appeared in Africa
between three and four million years ago. Fossils of the genus Australopithecus are “well
represented by many specimens from various places in Africa,” displaying a pelvis which would
“accompany bipedal locomotion,” and generally a cranial capacity which is “small by human
standards but large for a small ape,” write Lasker and Tyzzer in my olde college text book entitled
Physical Anthropology. Crude stone tools also appeared about 2.2 million years ago but it is
generally unknown “whether the earliest stone tools were made by Australopithecus or by a more
advanced contemporary hominid.”
176
It is clear, however, that these populations were very distinct from modern humans. Extreme
variation has been noted in this species, which has led some scholars to believe there were at least
two species of Australopithecus, while others consider these variations to be the result of differences
between local populations, between sexes, or between variations in the gene pool arising over time.
Regardless of these differences of opinion, it is widely agreed, write Lasker and Tyzzer, that “at least
the early members of the genus were evidently ancestral to our species.” They clarify, “evidence
from East Africa shows that divergence somehow occurred within the lineage, since robust
Australopithecus was apparently contemporary with members of the genus Homo about 1.5 million
years ago.”
On the other hand, the transition between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens has been a difficult issue
for anthropologists to settle. Importantly, although each “species” exhibits its own distinctive traits,
“there is a tendency to exaggerate the differences.” Ignoring questionable specimens and limiting
consideration to fossils found in Java, Peking and East Africa, write Lasker and Tyzzer (p. 352-354),
“the range of variation of many features of Homo erectus falls within that of modern Homo sapiens.”
In addition, there is a remarkable similarity between Homo erectus finds from Lake Turkana, East
Africa, dated 1.5 million years before present and Homo erectus fossils discovered in Choukoutien,
China, dated 400,000 to 500,000 years B.P. (before present), suggesting a “long equilibrium period
during which little change occurred.”
We need to remind ourselves that these lineages are, at best, educated guesses; that is, guesses made
by people educated in the Darwinian tradition. For instance, in his book Mankind Evolving,
Dobhansky suggests that the evolution of Australopithecine to Homo sapiens occurred in a
continuous lineage within a single gene pool. Stephen Stanley disagrees. In his book The New
Evolutionary Timetable, he outlines his thesis that “a very small number of discrete, long-lived
intermediate species may have overlapped each other.” Zoologist Solly Zuckerman has stated that
“attempts to place fossils in an evolutionary sequence depend partly on guesswork, and partly on
some preconceived conception of the course of hominid evolution.”
In short, it’s best not to take any of these contrivances very seriously. The species Homo habilis (the
“Handy Man”), the Leakey family’s 1964 missing link, consisted of a lower jaw with teeth, a
collarbone, a finger bone, and some small fragments of skull. For the first time, writes Richard
Milton in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, “a new human species was to be described on the
basis of teeth and fragments alone, and in circumstances where the association of the bones as those
of a single individual was conjectural.” It has since been suggested that one of the hand bones is
actually a piece of vertebra, two of the other bones may belong to a tree-dwelling monkey, and six
other bones came from an unspecified non-hominid.
With regard to Homo habilis, its hands and feet are also very apelike, calling into question the
human-like picture of the Leakey’s “Handy Man,” as well as other “supposed human ancestors one
usually encounters in Time-Life picture books and National Geographic Society television specials.”
According to Cremo and Thompson in Hidden History of the Human Race, some researchers have
even concluded that, “there was no justification for ‘creating’ this species in the first place.” It has
been suggested that Homo habilis was “mistakenly derived from a mixture of skeletal elements
belonging to Australopithecus and Homo erectus.” Others believe Homo habilis bones are
completely australopithecine. It is no wonder that Richard Leakey’s assessment of the material in
Hidden History, displayed on the back jacket, states: “Your book is pure humbug and does not
deserve to be taken seriously by anyone but a fool.” Could somebody be feeling foolish?
177
I love Lucy
In 1994, two arm bones, an ulna and a humerus, were established as belonging to the mysterious
creature, Australopithecus afarensis. It is typical that an entire evolutionary sequence can be
extrapolated from a few bones, sometimes even scattered across a few miles. Such illicit
extrapolations can eventually come to describe a creature which “climbed in the trees but also
walked on two legs when on the ground.” Hmmm. Could these researchers be looking for a
“transitional” find?
The best known fossil of A. afarensis is the one called Lucy, which you can see at the Museum of
Natural History in New York and London. From her glass case, writes Richard Milton, “Lucy peers
with an intelligent gaze at visitors, her posture fully erect and humanlike, her hands and feet also
short and humanlike.” Incredibly, Lucy’s apelike appearance was ignored when she was restored to
ostensibly lifelike appearance for both of these museum exhibits. In actuality, the hands and feet of
this species are long and curved like that of a tree-dwelling ape. The finger and toe bones of this
species are “highly curved even when compared to those of a modern ape like a chimpanzee.”
Milton quips: “Just why Lucy should have been restored to have humanlike hands and feet, contrary
to the known anatomical facts, remains a mystery which only her restorers can explain.”
Specifically, the rib cage of A. afarensis is conical in shape, not barrel-shaped like a human rib cage.
Lucy’s shoulders, trunk, and waist have a “strong apelike aspect to them.” At an international
conference held in Paris in 1989, anthropologist Peter Schmid stated that A. afarensis “would not
have been able to lift its thorax for the kind of deep breathing that we do when we run.” He
explained that the abdomen was potbellied and there was no waist, thus restricting the flexibility
required to accomplish the feat of running. In addition, Leslie Aiello’s work on body weight and
stature of A. afarensis clearly identified it as an ape. The australopithecines were more apelike in
their body build; heavily built for their stature, like that of a present day ape.
Richard Leakey sums it up: “Australopithecines had been bipeds, but were restricted in their agility;
while species of Homo were athletes.” According to Leakey in Origin of Humankind, the inner ear
structure of A. afarensis has been shown to exhibit semicircular canals which resemble those of apes.
The structure of the pelvis and lower limbs also suggest an apelike gait. Leakey also states that A.
afarensis was not a toolmaker.
A Gorilla Picnic without the Basket
With regard to different Australopithecus finds in South Africa called P. robustus, Ian Tattersall—
Curator of the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History—describes
in detail the dentition, skull size and shape and facial architecture of fossils attributed to this 1.7
million year old species. His illustrated compendium entitled The Last Neanderthal shows an upper
skull of this australopithicene, which exhibits, in his words, a “sagittal crest reminiscent of those in
some gorillas.” Describing the brain case, Tattersall admits it is “hard to estimate it as a proportion
of body size, because not very much of the body skeleton is known.”
However, neither the author nor his publisher, Simon & Schuster, are reticent to reproduce alongside
these descriptions an artistic rendition of these supposed “pre-humans,” with arms and legs of
modern human proportion. A color illustration shows a rather tall and lanky, fully upright gorillahuman couple carrying a gorilla-human child, walking through an open pasture with a fully upright
gait. The pastoral scene is complete with frolicking gorilla-human children and several deer:
essentially a gorilla-human picnic without the basket, circa 1.7 million B.P. Alongside this scene,
178
Tattersall suggests: “it is likely, if not entirely certain, that these hominids used bones and horn cores
for digging.”
As noted earlier, Leakey has stated that this hominid was “not a toolmaker.” Tattersall hasn’t lied
outright; he has merely suggested that the hominids picked something up and used it to dig.
Chimpanizees do that. But, as sure as they are standing, there should be no question that fully
upright bipeds would be toolmakers. It goes with the territory. Everything is wrong with this picture.
Such artistic license has been the hallmark of the Darwinian evolutionary paradigm. As Richard
Milton explains in Shattering the Myths, alongside prints of the busts of Piltdown man, Java man and
Neanderthal man, “Darwinian restorations based on fragmentary finds of bones and teeth always
manage to convey a distinct ‘missing link’ quality to their former owners.”
While the Piltdown man was a hoax in which someone actually put a human skull with the jaw of an
ape, essentially the same artistic motif blends humans and apes in popular books and even in
museum displays, to give the missing link-look to genuine fossils. The missing link look also
includes the illicit addition of human proportions to the limbs, and an upright bipedal gait. Milton
adds: “this modern confidence and apparent precision in reconstruction is not based on further
discoveries of fact, but takes place despite the discoveries of recent decades—that the evidence for
humankind’s own evolution is actually nonexistent.”
When I have had occasion to point out such Frankensteinian artistic license, people have looked at
me incredulously, and have asked, “you mean somebody makes these up?” Yes, Virginia, they do. It
is even more horrendous that museums are guilty of this crime against truth. They should be held
accountable for purveying such outright lies to the public under the ostensible purpose of education.
In fact, according to Milton, the status of Australopithecus as an extinct ape was actually established
as long ago as 1954 by zoologist Solly Zuckerman, who deduced, by measuring the skulls and teeth
of a large number of modern apes, human specimens and Australopithecine fossils, that the head of
this species was balanced like that of an ape, its brain was the same size as a modern gorilla, and its
jaw and teeth are predominantly apelike. The same conclusion was reached by Charles Oxnard of the
University of Western Australia in 1984. In his book, The Order of Man, he deduced that
“Australopithecus is an extinct ape and is unconnected with humankind’s ancestry.”
Also, in Hidden History of the Human Race, it is maintained that generations of experts have been
“wildly mistaken” about the australopithecines. The authors point out that even Louis B. Leakey had
concluded that australopithecines were a side branch and not in the direct lineage of sapiens. Since
Homo erectus was thought to be a descendant of Australopithecus, Leakey also removed erectus
from the line of human ancestry. Zuckerman has been almost a lone voice in the wilderness,
challenging the assumptions about the Australopithecus-Homo sapiens relationship, but apparently
this small band of voices has not been enough to challenge the status quo. As he asserts, the voice of
higher authority has become incorporated into all anthropology text books. This voice of authority
has managed to keep the human-like view of Australopithecus intact in the mind of the general
populace. (Cremo and Thompson point to institutions such as the Carnegie Institute and the
Rockefeller Foundation as two of the primary sources financing evolution, the Big Bang theory, and
the materialistic cosmology.)
While the current paradigm invites australopithecines to mankind’s family picnic, it is clear that
defining Australopithecus as simply a “biped” is not enough to put this creature in the human family,
since there are more aspects of humanness than simply exhibiting some form of bipedalism. In The
179
Origin of Humankind, Leakey concludes that the shape of the Homo lineage earlier than two million
years ago must be regarded as an unresolved question. This is because it remains heavily disputed
whether the size ranges of early fossils indicate variation between males and females or whether the
size ranges indicate different species. Under the most ludicrous diagram consisting of two versions
of evolutionary boxes with the names: A. afarensis, A. africanus, H. habilis, A. robustus, A. bosei, H.
erectus, and so forth, Leakey writes: “Family trees. The existing fossil evidence is interpreted
differently by different scholars, although the overall shape of the inferred evolutionary history is
similar.”
Yes, the overall shape would be similar, since all of the box designers are working with the same
Darwinian, materialist, causal, paradigm! How could we expect the shape of an evolutionary
diagram to be anything but a linear, historical and connected movement of the representational
animal figures of a powerful Western totem?
Forms of Temporal Tinkering
It is questionable, writes Richard Milton in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, that “the geological
column is a record of processes taking millennia to unfold; and whether the fossils it contains are a
living succession.” The various sedimentary rock strata which are piled on top of each other in
supposed chronological sequence represent the successive phases of the deposition of sediment.
These strata are extensively classified and correlated all over world. Interpretation of this
stratigraphy is complicated by the fact that some of the beds have been eroded over and over again,
which provides gaps in the sequence. In addition, the Earth’s crust has been distorted by folding and
volcanic activity. Nowhere in the world, writes Richard Milton, “is there known to be a complete
sequence of sediments from the oldest to the most recent.”
In addition, most dating scientists practice “intellectual phase locking”: the practice of correcting
experimental errors on the side of the currently accepted values. When various dating methods
produce discordant dates for the same sample, Milton asserts, “the figures are adjusted until they
seem right.” The most common way to harmonize discordant dates, he explains, is to label the
unexpected or unwanted dates as “anomalous.” This is why many dating results seem to support
each other: the dating scientists have discarded the unwanted, anomalous results. Dates must land
inside a certain “ballpark” and must corroborate other established dates. A scientist who obtains a
date which is way outside the ballpark would not rush to publish such a finding, while a date which
coincides with other findings is published immediately.
By assuming the fact of evolution, scientists can date their hominid finds by morphology, and
construct from this a sequential contrivance called evolution. On the sole basis of their commitment
to evolution, Cremo and Thompson assert in Hidden History of the Human Race, dating scientists
decide that a more ape-like specimen should be moved to the early part of its possible date range so
that it does not overlap with a more human-like specimen. Likewise, a human-like specimen is
moved to a later, or earlier date, within its own possible date range. Thus, the two specimens are
separated in time. This orchestration is based on the morphology of the specimens, or
“morphological dating.” As Cremo and Thompson maintain, “it would look bad to have two forms,
one generally considered ancestral to the other, existing contemporaneously.” This is the way in
which a “temporal evolutionary sequence” is born.
By assuming as factual the evolution of the great ape lineage into the human lineage, the search for
the ultimate missing link causes scientists to perform what we might call “temporal tinkering.” A
tautology is then utilized to enforce this rule: the morphology of fossils is used to select the desirable
180
dates within the possible date ranges of the sites, thus preserving an evolutionary progression in the
clay of their minds. This “artificially constructed sequence,” which is designed to fit the desired
evolutionary paradigm, is then “cited as proof of the evolutionary hypothesis.”
By formulating a temporal sequence which presupposes that the hominids did not co-exist, this
methodoloy assures that no fossil evidence will “fall outside the realm of evolutionary expectations.”
This “co-existence” factor is an unhallowed and unacceptable conclusion, and is to be avoided at all
costs. Yet, fossil evidence in China, for instance, does indicate that several different types of
hominids did co-exist in the middle Middle Pleistocene. In fact, it would appear that humans have
been around much longer than we have suspected and, indeed, it is highly likely that what we are
looking at in the fossil record is the co-existence of two separate animals: ape and man.
Dating Homo Erectus?
While supposed evidence of a close relationship between arboreal apes and humans is forced on
the public, other evidence for a much more ancient and separate origin of humans remains
effectively buried. Cremo and Thompson’s findings in Hidden History of the Human Race
indicate that human origins actually have nothing to do with the great ape lineage. Cremo claims
that there were something like 144,000 bipedal hominids of various levels of intelligence on the
earth in the early days (Interview at biped.info).
Evidence hidden away from public scrutiny indicates that humans are not related at all to the great
apes, but are a separate species of exceptionally ancient origin. The authors outline the evidence
discovered over the years which indicates that humans have a much more remote history than the
accepted paradigm would convey. Possible human skeletons from the Eocene and Miocene periods
have been discovered. However, the authors write, because these finds don’t fit into the accepted
scheme of things, they are undocumented, uninvestigated, and conveniently “forgotten.” In contrast,
they write, “finds which conform to accepted theories are thoroughly investigated, extensively
reported, and safely enshrined in museums.”
Java Man is an example of the problems involved with the search for humanity’s enigmatic “missing
link.” Modern researchers have pronounced that the so-called Trinil femurs (leg bones) of “Java
Man,” found in Indonesia, are not Homo erectus, but are the bones of fully modern sapiens.
According to the authors of Hidden History, it now appears that “we can accept them as evidence for
anatomically modern humans existing 800,000 years ago.” Yet, visitors to museums around the
world are still treated to casts of these items in the context of Homo erectus, and in the context of
fossil evidence for human evolution out of Africa in the established sequence. The twist is, the Trinil
femurs are fully modern, but the skullcap attributed to this creature is more archaic. It has been
suggested by many that the skull does not belong with the femurs but, rather, with the skull of
Pithecanthropus, an extinct ape.
According to Cremo and Thompson, the formation where Java Man was found has a potassiumargon date of 800,000 B.P., but other beds in this formation are dated at over a million years.
Flourine content test results on the bones are consistent with the date of 800,000 years for modern
humans in Java. The skull and femurs indicate the presence of two kinds of hominids in Java during
the early Middle Pleistocene, one with an ape-like head and the other with legs of modern human
type. Therefore, “Java Man” is a totally contrived creature touted as mankind’s missing link: Homo
erectus.
181
Although Lasker and Tyzzer write in Physical Anthropology that “the degree of difference between
Homo sapiens and Homo erectus is seen to separate them as two species of the same genus rather
than as two genera,” it should be noted that any species designation is an arbitrary one. As also noted
earlier, the range of variation of many features of Homo erectus falls completely within that of
modern Homo sapiens. Additionally, there is a problem with dating these fossils since, they state,
“all fossils relating to the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens are too ancient to be radiocarbon dated but too recent to be dated by the potassium argon method.”
Nonetheless, the mainstream human evolutionary paradigm calls for a swift divergence occurring
approximately two million years ago in the hominid line, which actually may represent two entirely
different animals. This was ostensibly followed by a long period of relative stability in the genus
Homo until about 400,000 years before present, when a new divergence seems to be recorded. Does
“something” seem to have happened at about the time frame which Sitchin suggests for the arrival of
the Visitors approximately 450,000 years ago? Let’s explore.
The basic anatomical pattern of Homo erectus exhibits a brain of about 900 cubic centimeters, a long
and low cranium, a small forehead, a thick skull, a protruding jaw and prominent eye ridges. This
pattern persisted, writes Richard Leakey, until about a half million years ago, followed by “an
expansion of the brain during this time to more than 1100 cubic centimeters.” Also by this time,
Leakey states, “Homo erectus populations had spread out from Africa and were occupying large
regions of Asia and Europe.” He goes on to qualify that no unequivocally identified Homo erectus
fossils have been found in Europe, but it is surmised that they were there because of the technology
normally associated with their existence. It should also be noted that the tool technologies which
were utilized over a period of thousands of years essentially overlap and are commonly thought to
have been borrowed by different types of human variants, including Neanderthals.
Did Homo Erectus Evolve Twice?
“The advancement of knowledge,” asserts Tom Van Flandern in The Anomalist, “should be the only
objective of scientific observation and experimentation, rather than the propagation of commonlyheld belief systems.” In that regard, the prehistory of Homo erectus is now flying in the face of the
mainstream paradigm which states that humans came out of Africa. According to new Homo erectus
fossil finds on the Indonesian island of Java, the origin of mankind has been pushed back to 1.8
million years, suggesting that “either erectus migrated to Asia as soon as he appeared in Africa —
which is rather unlikely — or that different variants of the genus Homo evolved independently in
different places on the globe.”
Archeologist Yuri Mochanov has spent the last decade excavating Diring, a site along the Lena
River in Siberia. His discoveries have forced members of the profession to reconsider the
commonly-held paradigm that humankind evolved and dispersed in the warmer climate of Africa,
where surely the environment would have been more conducive to survival than under the extreme
conditions of Arctic Siberia. This Earliest Paleolithic layer has produced more than 4,000 artifacts,
with some 500 of them identified as stone tools.
According to this interview entitled “On Human Origins: Out of Siberia?,” published in The
Anomalist 2, the finding that Stone Age hominids lived in the far north as long as 3 million years ago
upsets the mainstream evolutionary paradigm in several ways. While some archeologists are not
convinced that the site is 3 million years old, all are convinced that the site is at least 500,000 years
old. Mochanov compares the Diring complex to the stone complexes found in Olduvai Gorge in
182
Africa dating from 1.7 to 2.7 million years ago. Yet, until now, he points out, Siberia has not
produced stone tools more than 35,000 years old.
This type of stone tool culture has no comparison in Siberia, Eurasia, America or Australia. Diring is
one of the oldest Paleolithic sites in the world, dating from between 1.8 to 3.7 million years B.P. It
has been established that permafrost conditions did exist in the area at the time, and experts have
determined that the average annual temperature in Yakutsk, Siberia was even lower than the present
temperature of ten degrees below zero (Celsius). The extremely frigid climate presents “a major
stumbling block for the existence of early man in this area.” Mochanov suggests it was “the extreme
environmental stress of the region that actually gave pre-humans the fateful genetic nudge to develop
the large brain that defines the genus Homo.” Therefore, he suggests, mankind may have evolved
twice!
This thinking suggests that these university-trained apologists for Darwin are not just encouraged but
trained to come up with such ridiculous explanations which give evolution a leading role in the
grand performance called the “human race.” As Phillip Johnson points out in Darwin on Trial, neoDarwinists have “evolved an array of subsidiary concepts capable of furnishing a plausible
explanation for just about any conceivable eventuality;” and these anthro-apologists do not seem to
notice that their knee-jerk reactions are problematical to the accidental nature of Darwinian theory:
that evolution is ipso facto a chain of contingent events which easily could have been otherwise. The
concept of survival of the fittest is chaos theory at its finest; it’s an absurd dice game.
How could both the desert climate of Africa and the frigid climate of Siberia, two remarkably
dissimilar environments, independently and accidentally produce the same rare evolutionary
novelty called Homo sapiens? Don’t forget that this is a novelty so rare that the supposed
incremental steps leading to its development could not possibly be repeated given the billions
and billions of stars in the Universe! When presented with archeological evidence that
humankind may have “evolved” simultaneously in vastly different environments on the globe, a
development that goes against evolution’s most basic theoretical premise, why is it that the
“fact” of evolution itself does not come under scrutiny? Or, why isn't the correctness of the
sacred geological column questioned? Instead when the pieces do not fit, they are chiseled and
drilled and made to fit in the most ridiculous jury-rigged manner. (Similarly, when two
analogous cultural forms are discovered under extremely disparate circumstances there's never a
problem with referring to them as "simultaneous novelty.")
Anthr-apologists tell us on one hand that evolutionary man is the winner of a preposterous
survival lottery which, given the incredible odds, should not have even occurred once. Then,
when the archeological record doesn’t mesh with the theory, the straight-faced suggestion is that
the independent evolution of mankind must have occurred twice! There is never the suggestion
that the emergence of the human form did not occur without genetic tinkering from the outside,
or that it is guided by a currently misunderstood operant force or intelligent factor, or that it is a
gift of God—even in the face of evidence that either of these alternatives may be the case. In
order to be internally consistent with its current scientific paradigm, the theory must explain a
strictly ‘natural’ cause inherent within the operating system: therefore, humankind accidently hit
the bull’s eye twice!
The Australian “Home Erectus” Controversy
A 1998 on-line article by Jim Vanhollebeke entitled Kow Swamp: Is It Homo erectus? (“A
Refutation of the Supposed Insignificance of Certain Australian Hominid Fossils”) presents
183
arguments countering the assertion that the well-known but conveniently ignored Australian
Kow Swamp fossils, discovered as long ago as the 1880s, are representative of Homo erectus.
The author argues convincingly that the KS fossils, including Talgai, Cohuna, Nacurrie, Coobool
Creek, Kow Swamp, Willandra Lakes, and others, are not Homo erectus, but are modern in age,
dated about 10,000 to 30,000 years before present.
The KS fossils display primitive or “archaic” features, but are of a very recent age. In addition,
other much older human fossils discovered in Australia display a much less “archaic” nature.
Therefore, as Vanhollebeke notes, the KS fossils remain as “odd footnotes in the world of
Paleoanthropology.” They are essentially ignored by most anthropologists. The author writes:
"Accepting these fossils for what they are has been a problem for many anthropologists. Part
of this problem, possibly, is the fact that the present aboriginal population in this area of the
globe, to varying lesser degrees has been known to exhibit some or all of the traits that make
the Kow Swamp type so controversial. This would indicate an obvious line (or lines) of
descent. This is not really surprising when the age (or lack thereof) of the fossils themselves
is taken into consideration. Obviously the specimens now preserved do not represent the very
last of their kind."
Vanhollebeke suggests that direct descendants of the Kow Swamp people would have continued
in this isolated region for thousands of years. In addition, it is plausible that the KS populations
dwindled slowly, and were diluted by gene flow with other types. Yet the important point to keep
in mind is that the KS fossils closely resemble certain living groups of native Australians.
Comparing KS fossil skulls to aborigines in northern Queensland, he writes: “The KS-type
fossils are so recent that their unique archaic traits continue to show in living descendants.” This
can be a “delicate matter,” Vanhollebeke writes, in terms of race. However, he admonishes, this
is not really a matter of race, since it has long been held that the only way to describe the
physical features of certain of Australia’s aboriginal populations is “archaic Caucasoid.”
If the features of the KS fossils represented Neanderthal characteristics, it wouldn’t be such a
problem, writes Vanhollebeke. Problematically, the KS fossils more closely resemble Homo
erectus. As he explains, even late Homo erectus has been considered to be extinct for hundreds
of thousands of years. But here we have living human beings who resemble these archaic forms.
No wonder it is best to ignore this situation.
In addition to this, Vanhollebeke points out, the recent discovery of “Solo Man,” a large brained
late Homo erectus population living in Java, may actually have survived as recently as 27,000
years ago. Solo Man was previously thought to have been extinct 200,000 years ago. This
suggests two things: (1) This fossil represents Homo sapiens and not Homo erectus, or (2) late
Homo erectus co-existed with modern man in Southeast Asia. Vanhollebeke asks: “Where are
you National Geographic?”
The fossil record in Australia shows that there were in fact two distinct human populations in
Australia during the late Pleistocene (approx. 500,000 B.P.) There was an older, yet more
modern and gracile type, and there was a much more recent but primitive and robust type.
Vanhollebeke writes: “When the media (and world) can marvel at the pile of fragments they call
'Lucy,' there should be a little awe available for this aberrant populace that never quite went
extinct.” The story of mankind, he writes, is “sketchy and full of speculation.” We must remain
open to new ideas when it comes to reconciling these anomalies.
184
Problems With “Transitional” Types
In their book, Hidden History of the Human Race, Cremo and Thompson discuss various skeletal
remains of anatomically modern humans, as well as various human artifacts, which have been
given dates in the range of 2 to 55 million years, or more. Such discoveries are part of the
“hidden history of the human race,” and are considered “anomalous” within the context of the
currently accepted paradigm of human evolution. As Cremo and Thompson write, in the past,
“anomalous” evidence was often “the center of serious, longstanding controversy within the very
heart of elite scientific circles.” Furthermore, evidence of this kind, the authors assert, is not
always of a “marginal crackpot nature.” Nonetheless, it is now a matter of course to reject
anomalous findings outright, and, further, to “forget” they even exist. Consider, for instance,
some of the following evidence hidden in humanity’s closet:
• Simple eolithic implements have been discovered on the American continent in Pliocene strata
dated at 2-4 million years.
• Primitive bone implements, as well as shark teeth with holes for use as jewelry and carving
implements, have been found in Suffolk, England, in formations dated at 2-55 million years.
• A wooden tool which has been sawn and burned on one end was found in England and dated at
about a half million years. It appears that only a metal saw could have accomplished this type of
clear cutting, and only Homo sapiens could have effected this feat (not Homo erectus!)
• Simple chopping tools have been discovered in Pakistan in formations dated at 2 million years.
Tools of the same age have also been found in Siberia and India. (The authors point out that modern
tribal people continue to manufacture very primitive types of stone tools.)
• A highly anomalous find of a possible Homo erectus fossil skullcap in Brazil challenges the
theory that only anatomically modern humans made it to the American continent.
• A modern-type human jaw thoroughly infiltrated with iron oxide was discovered in a quarry at
Foxhall, England, in a 16-foot level dated at 2.5 million years.
• A fully modern human skull found in Buenos Aires, Argentina has been dated at least a million
years old.
• An anatomically modern human skeleton in natural connection was found on the Italian Riviera
in a layer dated 3-4 million years.
• An “atlas,” the upper bone of the spinal column, was discovered in Monte Hermoso, Argentina
in a layer dated 3-5 million years. Flint tools and intentional use of fire in this area, at the same level,
indicates the presence of humans in the Americas at least 3 million years ago.
• A modern human skull was discovered in the Sierra Nevada mountains, under volcanic ash in a
gold-bearing gravel bed ranging in age from 9 to 55 million years old. Additional human skeletal
remains, and a large number of stone implements have also been discovered in the same beds, so
this is not an isolated discovery.
• The California gold country has been a hot bed of human skeletal remains and implements
having date ranges of 9 to 55 million years. Stone artifacts and a modern type human jaw were
discovered beneath the lava caps in these gold-bearing gravels. In addition, a human leg bone found
in these gravels is dated at 8.7 million years.
185
In addition, there is strong evidence for the presence of rounded bola (sling stone) makers in
Argentina approximately 3 million years ago. The bolas of Miramar point to the existence of human
beings of a high level culture during the Pliocene, or even earlier, in South America. Because of their
technological sophistication, sling stones and bola stones represent the presence of Homo sapiens.
Sling stones have been discovered in various places around the globe, including England, East
Africa (Tanzania), and Argentina. Stone bolas were used for hunting by wrapping them in leather
bags attached to a long cord, and swinging them overhead and letting go. The use of stone bolas
necessitates the presence of a leather working culture. The dates of 1.7 to 2 million years are
considered “anomalous,” since, it is believed, the australopithecines of this age were not toolmakers,
and furthermore, they were still confined to Africa.
According to the currently prevailing paradigm of human evolution, the creature called Homo
habilis, who was not a toolmaker, should have been confined to Africa during this time period. The
“standard view,” Cremo and Thompson point out in Hidden History, is that Homo erectus was the
first representative of the Homo line to emigrate from Africa no more than a million years ago.
Anything earlier than this date is considered “anomalous” (i.e. doesn’t fit). An indication of the
emotional import of such finds in scientific circles is the typical demand for “higher levels of proof
for anomalous finds than for evidence that fits within the established ideas about human evolution.”
Yet, there is no difference in the workmanship of eolithic implements found in Olduvai Gorge in
East Africa and those found in England. If the stone tools of England are rejected as being naturemade, Cremo and Thompson assert, then those of Africa need to be thrown out as well!
The authors of Hidden History suggest the incomprehensible: perhaps there were creatures of fully
modern type already at Olduvai Gorge in Africa during the earliest Pleistocene era. The reason we
can’t get around this is because no human fossils are accepted to be that old. But, the authors point
out, several human-like femurs discovered in East Africa which were attributed to Homo habilis may
have actually belonged to anatomically modern humans.
The creature touted as Homo habilis has since been shown to have a more ape-like anatomy. Further,
Louis Leakey found a bone tool in the same level as the stone bolas discovered in East Africa,
which, he stated in 1960, was some sort of “lissoir for working leather.” Leakey believed this find
suggested a more evolved way of life for the Oldowan culture. Leakey reportedly discovered a fully
human jaw at Kanam, East Africa, dated approximately 2 million years.
"Anomalous" discoveries have continued, Cremo and Thompson insist, “with astonishing regularity”
to the present, but are not recognized for what they are. This is due to the fact that the idea of the
progressive evolution of humans from the great ape family guides the acceptance and rejection of the
evidence for evolution, and contradictory evidence is pushed to the “lunatic fringe.” In fact, evidence
suggests that fully modern Homo sapiens appears to have existed in Africa alone from very early
times, at least two million years before present. Taking into account only the more conventionally
accepted evidence, Cremo and Thompson have concluded that “the total evidence, including fossil
bones and artifacts, is most consistent with the view that anatomically modern humans have coexisted with other primates for tens of millions of years.”
The Out of Africa Hypothesis
In Origin of Humankind, Richard Leakey maintains that “the evolutionary activity giving rise to
modern humans took place in the interval between half a million years ago and 34,000 years ago.”
He writes that “ripples of evolution” were going on in many different populations throughout the
Old World during this period, culminating in a varying anatomy labeled “archaic sapiens.” The
186
concept of “ripples of evolution” might perhaps be better described as gene flow from a
“revolutionary event.” Let’s see if Leakey’s theories coincide with this suggestion.
Leakey describes the evolutionary model called the Multiregional hypothesis. This view posits that
the origin of modern humans was a phenomenon which encompassed the entire Old World wherever
populations of Homo erectus had become established. Leakey cautions against this approach,
specifically in light of the emergence of new dating methods called electron spin resonance and
thermoluminescence. Using these new methods, researchers have overturned the neat sequence of
events which had earlier described the evolution of Neanderthal to modern sapiens in caves in Israel.
These new methods suggested that the human fossils from Skhul and Qafzeh were actually older
than most of the Neanderthal fossils by as much as 40,000 years, suggesting that Neanderthals were
not ancestors of modern humans. How can this curious enigma be explained?
An alternative hypothesis asserts that modern humans arose in a single geographical location—most
likely sub-Saharan Africa—and replaced the existing pre-modern populations after extensive and
rather sudden migration into the Old World. Interestingly, this model has been variously called
“Noah’s Ark” and the “Garden of Eden” hypothesis, but most recently has been termed the “Out of
Africa” hypothesis. Leakey points out that in this model “these populations would have shallow
genetic roots, all having derived from the single, recently evolved population in Africa.”
If it were true, the Out of Africa model would predict that the fossil record would not exhibit
maintenance of regional continuity over time, but would show a displacement of regional
characteristics with modern African characteristics. This is mainly true with regard to physical
stature; indeed, the stocky, short-limbed Neanderthals seem to have been entirely displaced by the
tall, slightly built, long-limbed people. Furthermore, if modern humans had emerged more or less
simultaneously throughout the Old World, this would be evidenced by the fossil record. Clearly, it is
not.
The oldest modern sapiens fossils—dated approximately 100,000 years before present—are limited
to northern Africa, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Israel. Leakey writes: “no fossils of
modern humans of this age have been found anywhere else in the rest of Asia or Europe.” Keep in
mind Leakey’s other statements that “no unequivocally identified Homo erectus fossils have been
found in Europe” and that human fossils from Israel are older than most of the Neanderthal fossils
by as much as 40,000 years.
The majority of population geneticists believe the Out of Africa hypothesis to be biologically
plausible, and are skeptical toward the Multiregional model, which requires extensive gene flow
across large populations, over a large geographical area, and over a very long period of time. These
populations would have to be genetically linked while at the same time allowing for evolutionary
change toward modern human characteristics over the entire, dispersed population. This is
unrealistic given that such a scenario would, in all probability, produce more geographical variation
than is actually seen.
In terms of tools and art objects, how are modern humans recognized in the archaeological record?
The fossil record shows an increased complexity in simple stone tools about 1.4 million years ago; a
gradual change from what is called the Oldowan to the Acheulian stone tool culture. Anthropologists
use the Acheulian implements to identify the so-called Homo erectus populations. While this
increase in complexity is notable, it changed very little over a very long period of time. Leakey
writes that stasis, not innovation, characterized this era.
187
When change came, however, it was, in Leakey’s words, “dazzling.” The Upper Paleolithic
Revolution, he writes, was “so dazzling that we should be aware that we might be blind to the reality
behind it.” Beginning about 35,000 years ago in Europe, fine tools were made from bone and antler,
and tool kits comprised more than 100 different implements, including tools for engraving,
sculpting, and making clothing. This inexplicable revolution exhibited life-like animal carvings,
beads and pendants, and cave paintings as part of an innovative culture which appeared rather
abruptly across the Old World. Leakey writes: “unlike previous eras, when stasis dominated,
innovation is now the essence of culture, with change being measured in millenia rather than
hundreds of millenia.”
The Mitochondrial Eve Hypothesis
Biologists now subscribe to the theory that there was an “Eve” in southeast Africa about 200,000 to
300,000 years ago. The New York Times reported in November of 1995 that scientists have
concluded there was an “Adam” about 270,000 years ago, which Zecharia Sitchin suggested in an
interview is “exactly, give or take a day or two, the date I propose based on Sumerian writings.”
According to Sumerian records, the operation carried out by the Elohim on the female Primitive
Workers resulted in Adam and Eve discovering their sexuality, or “knowing”—the biblical term for
sexual procreation—and became “as one of us:” able to give birth or, perhaps more specifically,
genetically compatible.
The timing of these genetic manipulations are of particular interest. Sitchin asserts that the Sumerian
record places the first genetic manipulation at about 300,000 years ago, and the second at about
250,000 years ago.
The Mitochondrial Eve hypothesis is supported by research which traces the mitochondrial DNA
inherited solely through the maternal line. The reason that the organelle mitochondria is traceable
through the maternal line is that the only mitochondria which becomes part of the cells of a newly
formed embryo are from the egg and not the sperm. Thus, scientists have traced the genetic ancestry
of humans to a female who lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago, who was “part of a population
of as many as 10,000 individuals.” Leakey writes in Origin of Humankind that earlier dates have
since been established; presumably dates closer to those given in the New York Times article
mentioned above.
The Mitochondrial Eve hypothesis essentially supports the Out of Africa model, with one exception.
The Africa model presumes that the expansion of modern African populations included some
interbreeding with Old World pre-modern populations. The Mitochondrial Eve hypothesis, however,
does not allow for any genetic interbreeding with Old World populations. It asserts that the modern
African populations which spread over the Old World completely replaced existing populations,
with interbreeding being almost a non-occurrence.
Analysis of present day human mitochondrial DNA reveals no evidence of interbreeding with other
pre-modern populations. Of four thousand samples of mitochondrial DNA taken from people all
over the world for this project, no “ancient” mitochondrial DNA has been found. All samples are
remarkably similar and indicate the fairly recent and common origin of human beings. If genetic
mixing had occurred between ancient populations, some people would have different mitochondrial
DNA. Therefore, Leakey charges, the “modern newcomers” appear to have completely replaced the
ancient populations between 150,000 to 50,000 years ago (give or take). The most disconcerting
element of this theory seems to be the fact of the exclusion of genetic input from other populations
which apparently co-existed. How did such a total replacement occur? Was it a violent genocide?
188
The disappearance of the Neanderthal population from the Earth is a mystery. In his book, The Last
Neanderthal, Ian Tattersall suggests the violent demise of their dwindled population at the hands of
other sapiens groups. Richard Leakey claims that there is no evidence for a violent replacement of
species, and he allows for the occurrence of some interbreeding, even though it may not be reflected
in the archeological record. Tattersall indeed allows for this conjecture as well. But strangely, there
is an explanation which mainstream conjectures do not take into account. Did the Neanderthals die
in a planet-wide catastrophic incident which the uniformitarian-based geological column utterly
denies?
Who Are the Neanderthals?
The species Homo neanderthalensis was more than simply a variation of ourselves, writes Tattersall
in The Last Neanderthal. On the contrary, the “big-brained Neanderthals,” with larger brain cases
(1500 ml.) than the current worldwide average (1400 ml.), were highly successful during a period of
extremely tough climatic conditions in Europe and Western Asia for 150,000 years, and perhaps
longer. Tattersall adds “as far as we can tell, that’s a good deal longer than our own species has been
around.” It should be noted that Neanderthals are not necessarily believed to be a different species,
but a variation of sapiens.
It is generally agreed that different varieties of humans were widespread in the Old World during the
time of the dispersal of the Neanderthals over Europe. Classic Neanderthal-type fossils are a more or
less local phenomenon spread sparsely over Europe, with a higher percentage of finds in western
France. To date, however, there is no biological evidence that the Classic Neanderthal type ever
occupied Africa, Arabia or Asia. However, according to Hidden History, Louis B. Leakey once
suggested Neanderthals and other variants were the result of crossbreeding between sapiens and
erectus. He indicated no problem with the ability of these two forms to interbreed, which suggests he
considered them to be the same species.
The theory is widely peddled that the Western European Neanderthal population “had a range of
vocalization too limited for the development of proper language.” Some believe Homo
neanderthalensis to be a separate species from Homo sapiens, while others believe it is a subgroup
which could interbreed with modern humans and, it is suspected, “would have done so if both were
present in the same place at the same time.” However, the Physical Anthropology text book presents
the erroneous statement that Neanderthal populations of Europe probably did not have a modern
vocal tract, even though the brain case was large and modern in respect to parts important for
speech. This information has since been contradicted.
According to Jack Cuozzo, in Buried Alive, a Neanderthal skeleton found on Mt. Carmel in 1983
was discovered alongside modern stone tools. The Kebara II fossil had the only hyoid bone ever
found in a Neanderthal. The hyoid bone, a floating bone in the neck, is essential for speech. The
Kebara II Neanderthal proved that Neanderthals did indeed speak. It is probable that the
Neanderthals are much more modern than the current theory allows.
The Sapiens Sapiens Signal
Although a “dramatic event” is recorded in Western Europe about 35,000 years ago, Leakey and
others believe that this does not necessarily indicate that the “final emergence” of modern humans
occurred in Western Europe, as earlier believed. Paleontologists now generally recognize Western
Europe as “something of a backwater” on the foreground of an advance that swept from East to West
across Europe. In this view, the Neanderthal populations “disappeared and were replaced by modern
189
humans.” Importantly, Leakey believes the Upper Paleolithic Revolution in Europe was a
“demographic signal and not an evolutionary signal.”
From where did this demographic signal emanate? Leakey believes, on the basis of fossil evidence,
“Africa, in all probability—or perhaps the Middle East.” Leakey qualifies that, despite the scarcity
of technological evidence, since a narrow blade technology does appear in Africa about 100,000
years ago, we have to go with the African origin of modern humans. Supported by an abundance of
fossil evidence in the Middle East region along with new dating methods, it is also probable that
Neanderthals and modern humans essentially co-existed in the Middle East for as along as 60,000
years. Some Neanderthals of Europe have been dated at 100,000 years, making them contemporaries
of modern humans in the Middle East.
The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis can provide an explanation for “anomalous” data exhibited by the
fossil record. According to the Out of Africa model, mankind seems to have emerged from both
Africa and the Middle East, the cultural nests of the Anunnaki during their incumbency on Earth.
The Out of Africa model can be seen in the context of the mining operations which began there
approximately 300,000 years ago, culminating in the cloning of a human work force. This is the
“sapiens sapiens signal,” the “dazzling” cultural achievements of a certain core group of humans
which were moved from Africa to Western Europe, virtually overnight.
According to Richard Leakey, the known sapiens sapiens signal in Western Europe is far richer than
in Africa. For every archeological site of this era in Africa, there are about two hundred such sites in
Western Europe. Leakey maintains that this disparity reflects “a difference in the intensity of
scientific exploration in the two continents, not on the reality of human prehistory.” The
Extraterrestrial Hypothesis suggests that this disparity may actually reflect the “reality of human
prehistory.” We must follow the sapiens sapiens signal.
The Sumerians have written that, after a time, some of the hybrid miners remained working the
mines in South Africa and others were transferred back to Mesopotamia, the location of the biblical
Eden. It is here that the Anunnaki had first landed and began their irrigation and building projects,
and where they subsequently set up cultural centers for the propagation of human knowledge. Thus,
although Africa is the “birthplace of humankind,” the Sumer region is the “cradle of civilization,”
which began with transplants from the core Africa group.
The story is relayed in the Sumerian texts. According to Sitchin in Wars of Gods and Men, as the
population of the Primitive Worker increased, gold production in Africa increased as well. This in
turn caused stress on the Eastern front, in the refining and smelting centers of Mesopotamia. In
addition, the waters in this region were constantly overflowing, and dikes and canals were constantly
in need of being dug. The Anunnaki workers in Mesopotamia soon began asking for their own
Primitive Workers. They made a request for “the Black-headed people to give the pickax to hold.”
A text called The Myth of the Pickax chronicles the denial of transfer of some of the Black-headed
people to the Mesopotamian region, and the subsequent heavy artillery attack on the walls of the
central compound in Africa where they were being protected. As Enlil’s weapons broke through the
fortification, the Primitive Workers spilled out of their compound. It is written that Enlil “eyed the
Black-headed Ones in fascination.”
Ancient drawings thereafter depict the Primitive Worker toiling for the gods in Mesopotamia,
building their houses, digging canals, growing food, rowing in boats, and waiting on the gods.
During this “animal like stage in human development,” archaic Homo sapiens performed their work
190
as “naked as the animals of the field.” It is written that, when mankind was first created, they “ate
plants with their mouth like sheep, drank water from the ditch.” Were these people our
“Neanderthals”?
The various layers of cultural indoctrinations taking place in or near cultural centers over a long span
of time, which are part and parcel of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, would explain the apparent
cultural disparities noted over geographical areas once some of these people left cultural centers in
the Middle East. The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis would explain the apparent co-existence of
primitive stone tool sites in some areas of the globe and high cultures in other areas of the globe
between 10,000-30,000 years B.P.
What else but the existence of an “anomalous” cultural factor, introduced from the outside, could
adequately explain this incredible discrepancy in cultural “evolution”? OMNI Magazine published a
story in January, 1995 about Samsat, a city with a population of 50,000 along the Euphrates River
Valley during the Roman Empire. The history of Samsat dates as far back as the Neolithic Period.
Tablets found in the area written in cuneiform, a system of writing developed by the Sumerians, is
proof of the spread of the Sumerian culture into Turkey. The inhabitants of these northern cities were
among the first to use calligraphy.
Four such sites that record the history of the Sumerians in the area “may contain artifacts that
overturn conventional notions of how and where civilization began.” Another Sumerian city
called Kazane Hoyuk, had a population “unheard of before the development of agriculture and
civilization.” This prehistoric city was one of the “independent seeds of civilization” which
“nurtured cultural advances at about the same point in history.” Thus, while some humans on the
globe were working with basic stone tools, others were in the midst of a “dazzling” cultural
revolution. In addition, strange similarities have been noted between distant cultures which are
not known to have been in contact. These anomalies remain unexplained in archaeology, and are
explainable only by a “revolutionary event.”
References
Bramley, The Gods of Eden.
Cremo, Thompson, Hidden History of the Human Race.
Did Humans Evolve in Siberia? 1994. science-frontiers.com/sf092/sf092a01.htm (see also, The
Anomalist Vol. 2, although this is likely out of print: anomalist.com/print/cont2.html)
Leakey, Origin of Humankind.
Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism.
Norton, "Tracing the Earliest Cities," 1994.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2742/is_n231/ai_n25022300
Sitchin, Wars of Gods and Men, The Twelfth Planet.
Tattersal, The Last Neanderthal.
Vanhollebeke, "Kow Swamp: Is It Homo Erectus? Part II, A Counterpoint," 1998.
www.canovan.com/HumanOrigin/kow/kowswamp.htm
191
The Manchurian Candidate Lives
In order to investigate the effectiveness of certain practices for espionage purposes, the CIA’s
MK-ULTRA program practiced on American and Canadian citizens, under various subheadings,
clandestine experimental research in psychedelics, hypnosis, telepathy, and, among other
nefarious trials, a practice known as trauma-based mind control. The MK-ULTRA program is
now known to have involved over forty colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, and
many other types of institutions, think tanks and civilian agencies from the 1950s to the 1970s. In
collusion with certain Nazis brought into the U.S. by the intelligence apparatus after World War
II, the CIA MK-ULTRA mind control program was responsible for the development of what was
‘lovingly’ called, after the Monarch butterfly, “Monarch” trauma-based conditioning.
The connecting link between MK-ULTRA and generational ritual cults is the creation of what
has become popularly known, from an early Hollywood film of the same name starring Frank
Sinatra, as the “Manchurian Candidate.” In the film, Frank Sinatra’s character is conditioned to
behave in a certain manner when his mother, who is his “handler,” offers him a deck of cards. As
he sits to play Solitaire, he has been conditioned to respond a certain way to particular cards in
the deck. When he receives a phone call, he is compelled to go out and commit a murder.
“In cinema terms, the Manchurian candidate lives and does not
even require a phone call.” — U.S. Army Col. John B. Alexander
(“The New Mental Battlefield: ‘Beam Me Up, Spock’”)
In the mind control literature, reference to a Manchurian Candidate now refers to a person with a
psychiatrically-created Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Colin
Ross has personally documented, through declassified CIA documents, the history of the CIA’s
ability to create a real life Manchurian Candidate through hypno-therapeutic and trauma-based
conditioning techniques, performed by psychiatrists with CIA connections and funding. As Dr.
Ross notes, this ability has grown to perfection over the past fifty years, since the discovery that
American POWs returning from Korea had been “brainwashed” by the Chinese to accept
Communist allegiance. (CKLN Mind Control Radio Series)
As Dr. Ross notes, Dr. G. H. Estabrooks began in World War II by creating one “alter
personality” in an adult military recruit, which could be switched on without the recruit’s
awareness. The alter personality could be used in espionage or counterespionage, or as a
hypnotic courier, i.e., to carry a message without awareness. Or, if caught, the alter could be
programmed to commit suicide. (Incidentally, Lee Harvey Oswald’s military buddy, Kerry
Thornely, believes that due to his odd behavior Oswald may have been one such military
recruit.)
Monarch programming creates MPD by inducing painful trauma, which causes the mind to
“dissociate” or fracture. From birth onward, helpless children born into sacrificial cults are
tortured and maimed by their own sadistic guardians in order to cause this fracturing of the
personality. Children born into “generational” or bloodline ritual cult families are brutalized,
drugged, electroshocked, deprived of food, water and sleep, and are subjected to or are witness to
unthinkable ritualized activities, including rape, incest, bestiality and sacrificial killings. The
child’s “handler” creates several layers of alter personalities with various pseudonyms, some of
192
whom will be called upon to handle the pain, and others who will be called upon to perform
various criminal and sexual activities. These “alters” are called upon without the awareness of
the primary personality to perform various acts, ranging from sex with officials to drug running
to political assassinations. This layered effect essentially creates a condition of amnesia in the
primary personality.
Generational Ritual Abuse
The link that modernizes ancient bloodline cults is the now well-documented MK-ULTRA
program. The person who is performing the trauma-based mind control is usually described as a
“doctor,” and is referred to in some literature as a “spychiatrist”: a psychiatrist linked to
intelligence “spying” agencies. A few of these mind control doctors have actually been
identified. They have been named as Dr. Green, identified as the notorious Nazi Josef Mengele,
Dr. White, identified as Scottish mind control programmer Ewen Cameron, and Dr. Black,
identified as Monarch survivor Cisco Wheeler’s father. The child’s primary “handler” and abuser
is usually the child’s father, who, in some cases, is involved in a generational bloodline cult,
often has intelligence ties, and usually is associated with other powerful patriarchal
organizations. When the child grows up, he or she is given over to a different handler, sometimes
in “marriage.” And the gears of generational ritual abuse and mind control keep turning.
Many of these cults are based on the dichotomy of the Christ/Satan duality, a split personality in
itself. In other words, these cults are either Satanic cults, or Christian cults that recognize the
ancient roots of the split person Horus/Set. As Beth Goobie writes, “the Kin serves both the Dark
Lord and the Lord of Light, feeding them both from the kill of energy of ritual sacrifice so that
they may fortify their regions of Dark and Light in their war against one another.” As William
Gray writes in Magical Ritual Methods, there are many “sex and slaughter schools” in operation
today under various names. Some of them, Gray maintains, would be shocked to hear themselves
described this way. For instance, the Christian Mass is full of pagan sex and slaughter
symbolism. The symbolic drinking of Christ’s blood and eating of his body at Eucharist, the
crucifixion/torture of Christ on the cross and the ascension of his body after death, are examples
which illustrate that Christian images can be used just as well by the operators of a death cult. It
does not take much imagination to see where some wayward souls could go with this symbolism.
Probably the largest of these ancient cults that still survives worldwide is the Dionysian blood
sacrifice cult. As Dan Russell has indicated, Dionysis is Jesus’ Greek alter-ego. As ritual abuse
victim Caryn Stardancer explained in a panel discussion (CKLN), the Dionysians were a serious
force to be reckoned with in ancient Rome, and were actually outlawed. As she explains:
The oldest laws ever passed against ritual abuse were passed in Rome through
[the time of] Christ, and they were made against the very Dionysian Sects that
were still in operation in the forties and fifties, and which I assume are still in
operation now. The reason the laws were made against them was because at that
time … it was known that in the rituals there were sexual orgies, flaying (skinning
of people), flagellation, abuse and ritual rape of women and children. But that
isn’t why there were laws made against the groups—the laws were made against
the groups because of the practice of common commission of crime for the
purpose of political blackmail.
193
As a matter of fact, political blackmail is the strongest deterrent to open disclosure of the
reckless and inhuman activities of these cult members. It has come to light that these
generational ritual cults operate on the fringes of public organizations, such as police forces,
secret societies and fringe factions of the intelligence apparatus, which groups require funding
for secretive projects and gain that funding by political blackmail. Even the Mafia has been
implicated in these programs. As Monarch survivor Kathleen Sullivan has reported, the Mafia
was involved in a program called OMICRON, which may have involved both the Columbo and
Trafficante crime families. The reason they utilized these mind controlled couriers and assassins
was so that they would not be able to name the person for whom they performed illegal tasks.
(CKLN)
Kathleen Sullivan has personal knowledge of having worked on projects that indicated a lot of
crossover between the CIA, the Mafia and several other federal agencies, including the Pentagon.
Sullivan explains the historical roots of the Mafia’s connection to the Monarch program. As she
explains, during WWII the OSS and the military recruited many mob figures, especially from
Italy, to spy on various governments. Some personal friendships developed between spy
operatives and mob figures, and these friendships have continued.
As Caryn Stardancer explains, layers of political blackmail are known to occur “right up the
hierarchy,” and is the basis of the diseased political system in which we live. It has become clear
that much of the weirdness that goes on politically in America can ultimately be explained by
this mafioso-style political intimidation and blackmail, which is a cover for various criminal
activities and which is effected in collusion with underground ritual cult groups. And we think
Russia has a mafia problem!
Yet, it’s important to note that these sinister activities wouldn’t get too far if there wasn’t any
interest in the trafficking of pornography and sex with children. As we now well know, “sex
addiction” is rampant in society, and goes “right up the hierarchy.” What this situation boils
down to is that officials caught with their pants down in drug-induced sexual situations with
minor children are apt to do everything they are told. As therapist Gail Fisher-Taylor indicates,
these groups operate through implication and intimidation. As she explains, “if these people are
implicated in criminal activity, they are drawn in, and they can be drawn in and blackmailed
under the influence of drugs and other kinds of influences.” (CKLN) In terms of how these
people get away with what they do, Fisher-Taylor points to both “collusion” and to “disbelief.”
As she explains:
The structures of power are such that if there are members of the cult who are
both leaders in business, let’s say members of the police department, members of
the criminal justice system—judges or lawyers—it often becomes an ‘old boys
network.’ You’ve got people protecting other people so if there is any kind of
revelation that this kind of activity is going on, their members in the media are
going to participate in the cover-up, or in the blasphemy and outrageousness of
such allegations. If the police department is involved, and there are often reports
of police being involved–in Saskatchewan, for instance, the Martensville case–it
is very easy for police to conduct an investigation that will throw their whole case
out of court. If you have a lot of people in many different positions of power, and
there is collusion among them, it is much more difficult especially when the
194
public doesn’t know about the principles of dissociation and the way that trauma
[conditioning] works, the way the human psyche works around trauma. It is very
easy for the media, police and criminal justice system to play on the public’s
disbelief.
The False Memory Movement
A media spin which helps to dispel “rumors” of ritual abuse/mind control is what Fisher-Taylor
refers to as “false memory propaganda.” Once survivors of this ritual torture get to the point
where they become aware of what has occurred, and the layers begin to peel off with the help of
therapy, they begin to network with other survivors. Once these victims began to come together
to heal themselves and to testify before the courts and government investigatory panels, a
“backlash” began to occur from an organization called the “False Memory Foundation.”
According to the claims of the False Memory movement, Multiple Personality Disorder is
“iatrogenic,” or created by the therapist. People in this movement argue that these memories,
which are admittedly of a bizarre nature, cannot be relied upon as true evidence since they are
often brought forward under clinical hypnosis and other psycho-therapeutic techniques, and, as
well, the memories may be intertwined with some rather peculiar information and extraordinary
claims. Another argument is that MPD or DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) is really temporal
lobe epilepsy. Both of these arguments are part of what Dr. Colin Ross calls “Manchurian
Candidate Denial.” (CKLN)
As Dr. Ross also points out, “the history of psychiatry in the second half of the 20th Century is
undoubtedly strongly skewed—not by an agenda that has to do with academic research, not by
the best interest of clients, not by ethical psychiatry—but by an Intelligence agenda.” As he also
points out, psychiatrists have created a “little loophole where they can step out of normal ethical
oversight.” All of this is kept under the carpet, he asserts, “not by twelve guys in a room at
Langely …but by this pervasive ‘old boys’ network.” According to Dr. Ross’s research, many of
the people in the False Memory movement, because of their own involvement, have a vested
interest in “Manchurian Candidate Denial.”
The idea that the False Memory movement constitutes a deliberate disinformation strategy, Dr.
Ross argues, is perfectly plausible and consistent with the fact that large numbers of persons
claiming ritual abuse are now coming forward. That is, “false memory” is a convenient label for
a counterstrategy by people who perhaps stand a chance of being implicated in the scheme
themselves somewhere along the line. As mind control expert Walter Bowart also stated in an
interview, “the board of this organization is made up of a lot of CIA people, CIA contracts and
‘spychiatrists,’ and pedophiles, child molesters, people like that are on the side of pedophilia.
They are trying to defend pedophilia. And it is a very litigious, very aggressive organization that
has struck terror in the hearts of the therapeutic community.” (CKLN)
As Fisher-Taylor explains, articles touting “false memories” appear in the newspapers often at
the same time as stories reporting on real findings of ritual cult activities. This effectively
“splits” readers minds on the issue, forcing them into denial about the reality of ritual abuse. In
addition, trauma-based conditioning contains the potential for infusion of misleading or fantastic
information, often induced by audio/visual input (i.e. movies, music or taped commands) cued
195
along with sleep deprivation, electroshock, sodium amytal and/or hypnosis, which serves to
“scramble” memories and create amnesia barriers. This would explain why some of the claims of
mind control victims can often be so utterly bizarre.
Military-Corporate-Secret Society Connection
The numbers of mind control victims now comparing notes in America and Canada are
astounding. Most of these victims claim that their torture as children was at the hands of
sacrificial cult groups to which their parents belonged, as well as at the hands of certain
“psychiatrists” now known to be connected to the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program. It has also been
established that many of these activities took place at locations, including hospitals, universities,
day camps and military bases, now recognized as part of this nefarious program. Thus, it has
become apparent that CIA cult specialists have in some cases “subcontracted” with ritual cults,
or were in some manner already connected to these cults, to prime these children to be of service
to the mafioso-style intelligence arm of the secret government. At the same time this
programming provided a means by which these children could be of special service to the cult
itself.
In many cases, a military-corporate-secret society connection can be made. Survivors have
connected the dots between ritual cults and the armed services (in Canada, especially, near
NORAD bases), as well as to “white male secret society groups” such as the Masons and the Ku
Klux Klan. Ancient sects such as the Golden Dawn have also been implicated in these practices.
Such groups are said to be in practice even in Washington, DC. As Sullivan explains, many
people who are involved in “neo-pagan religions” are interested in a “New World Order” where
they will be able to worship their Dark Lord publicly without shame. These religions are part of
their family’s past and they do not wish to let them go. Sullivan believes that many of these
groups also have Aryan generational backgrounds and consider themselves elite. These groups
would like to rid society of Christian ethical codes and laws against adult-child sex, bestiality
and other sordid activities that supply them with untold power.
The Aryan connection is also discussed in detail by Cathy O’Brien in Trance Formation of
America. She claims that many of her cult abusers adhered to “Neo-Nazi” principles wherein
“mankind must take a giant step in evolution through creating a superior race.” O’Brien’s
“handler” espoused Nazi and KKK ideas to the effect that a perfect “blonde race” should be
genetically bred and the genocide of underprivileged races and cultures should be effected.
As Lynne Moss-Sharman explains, her memories seem to revolve around her father, her uncles
and her father’s military buddies, all of whom were pedophiles. Lynne is not aware that her
father had ritual cult involvement outside of this. Her father worked for General Electric and may
have had CIA/defense industry connections. Later, she began to recall episodes which took place
at locations further away and she began to recall other “doctors” who were involved, as well as
complicated electrical equipment, including chairs, helmets and containers, sensory deprivation
and torture devices, body wrapping, programming via telephone, and more.
How the situation progresses from the child being a victim of a sort of local pedophile group to
becoming a Monarch victim is probably different in each case. However, as Lynne explains, over
90% of survivors believe they were offered up by their own parents for ritualized cult abuse as
196
well as simultaneous ‘outside’ mind control experimentation. As Lynne explains, children were
not secretly taken away from their parents during the day or for overnight or weekend visits.
There was conscious knowledge by one or both parents, and the parents were “actively involved
in making sure the children arrived where they were supposed to arrive.”
It is clear that the CIA’s proximity to various cults and to certain criminal types allows for such
arrangements. As Walter Bowart has explained, in some cases the CIA gets involved in a child
pornography case and forces the parents to “play ball” with them. This was done in the case of
Cathy O’Brien, whose father started by having Cathy and her brother perform in porn films as
children. After he was arrested for these illegal activities, and just before he was about to go to
trial, the CIA stepped in and began Cathy’s lifetime of service to the cryptocracy as a drug
runner, prostitute and hypnotic courier.
The Occult Connection
After World War II, the U.S. captured the records of Nazi parapsychology experiments
performed at Dachau concentration camp and, as well, took hundreds of Nazi scientists in from
the rain. U.S. psychic researchers have long suspected the Germans may have been close to
discovering psychic weapons. The records of the Dachau experiments are still classified top
secret, but it is known that one focus of certain Dachau experiments was whether ‘telepathy’
could be increased under torture. Clearly, the ‘telepathy’ in this case is out-of-body. What they
were trying to do is induce the out-of-body experience via pain, which is exactly what is done in
cult rituals to induce multiple personality disorder. As Monarch survivor Beth Goobie writes in
“The Network of Stolen Consciousness” in Paranoia, Issue 24:
In search of immortality, cults have always explored the metaphysical gateways to
alternate dimensions that can be opened through traumatic dissociation. These
out-of-body experiences teach cult members to exist as frequencies; conscious
knowing energy that has been dissociated from the body during trauma. One can
leave the body at many different frequencies, and each frequency opens up a
different dimension of reality or ‘mystery,’ as well as interaction with the entities
which inhabit these dimensions.
Nazism was a state-instituted perverse cult that explored much of this “psychic” ground, and the
CIA/intelligence apparatus, also an institutionalized cult, has continued in their depraved
footsteps. As Beth Goobie makes clear, due to her special trauma-based training she became a
“channeler” for a sacrificial cult operating throughout Canada, and her body became a
“megaphone for the Dark Lord to yell through from the other side.” As she explains, Monarch
programming is based on occult principles, since it teaches a person to locate and tag
interdimensional frequencies, which are portals to the dark world beyond the psyche.
It is not so peculiar that underground ritual cults and the covert intelligence apparatus have found
such a cozy relationship in the arms of trauma bonding, since there has to be some way to get a
child involved in this ritual programming right from birth. As Dr. Ross explains, “if you start
with ‘G.I. Joe’ at age 19, you can’t get intensely poly-fragmented multi-multi-layers of defence
systems in place very easily.” (CKLN) With adults, he explains, it is highly unlikely to create
more than one alter personality. In order to create an absolutely effective mind controlled zombie
197
with several programmed personalities, intense fear and total submission must be generated via a
ritualized pattern of trauma bonding inculcated from birth onward. Where are you going to find a
cover for such a child? How is it possible to keep up the ritualized maintenance that this
conditioning requires on a daily–hourly–basis?
Yet, not all ritual abuse survivors are aware of a cult connection. Jeannette Westbrook has not
uncovered any “satanic” or cult memories, nor has she been able to make any connections
between CIA or military mind control and her sadistic pedophile father. Nonetheless, she is
aware that there was a pattern of ritualized abuse and there was a group of people in collusion
with him. With regard to the creation of Jeanette’s multiple personalities, as well as her sister’s
MPD status, Jeannette believes it unlikely that her father would have known any elaborate
techniques on his own. However, she is sure that whoever it was that her father was in collusion
with, it was an “organization” of some sort. She argues, whether they were Satanists or simply an
organized pedophile club, they were very much aware of multiple personality systems as a way
to cover their tracks. They apparently knew enough about it to “seek to create it as a way to keep
their abuse of the victim hidden.”
Whether this group had ‘professional’ assistance in the deliberate creation of MPD, or whether
these procedures are common knowledge among pedophiles and cultists in general, is unknown.
Since the creation of MPD has been CIA knowledge since the 1950s, and since all that’s actually
required is a general knowledge of hypnotism and occult principles, this knowledge base has
apparently “trickled down” among those with a “need to know.” As is also well known, females
easily dissociate and create alter personalities under trauma. In any case, Jeannette effectively
dissociated from the memories of this sadistic abuse so that she “could get up in the morning,
and function, and go to school, and come home, and live with these perpetrators.” Yet, she and
her sister recall that their father often called them by other names which specifically referred to
their alter personalities. So, if these personalities weren’t purely personal (self-created), it is
likely that they were deliberately and ritually created, and the instance of their creation is perhaps
lying in another layer of memory.
The Illuminati Bloodline
Digging our way even deeper into this quagmire, we discover that some of these generational
cults are made up of Illuminati bloodline families. As mind control victim Cisco Wheeler
explains, the Illuminati structure is based on 13 royal bloodlines. These 13 ruling families, which
can be traced back many centuries, are Luciferian cult members who have taken oaths to see the
fulfillment of the “End Time,” and “to see the antichrist take his throne.” These bloodline
families, as Wheeler explains, are Satanists who have taken blood oaths to serve Lucifer, and
they believe the world belongs to them. They are very loyal unto themselves, and they see
themselves as gods. As she asserts, “there isn’t anything they will not do.” As Wheeler so
poignantly states, “this isn’t something that just happened.” This mindset is passed on from
generation to generation, and it “touches everyone within the family for generations.” As this
survivor so chillingly informs us:
Their allegiance is unto Lucifer, who I now will call Satan. They believe in the
doctrine of Satanism, that if they rule as gods and they are obedient to the call
which is Lucifer’s call upon their life, then they will rule and reign with him in
198
hell. They have no fear of hell. They believe they will stand as gods in hell and
they will rule the people in hell. They will become gods with him. That is the big
lie. They believe this. That is bottom line of the doctrine.
Several Monarch mind control victims have come forward to report that they were victimized in
this way as children due to the unfortunate circumstances of being born into the Illuminati
bloodline. By creating layers of personality structures, some of these children grew up to become
Manchurian Candidates for the secret government. Yet, it is suspected that the children of the
Illuminati bloodline for the most part are not expendable. These children are being groomed to
become programmers and high priests and priestesses of the cult. It is suspected that the children
who are killed in ritual sacrificial offerings are usually not Illuminati-bloodline children, but are
other innocent children; perhaps orphans, foster children, adopted children, abducted children, or
unwanted children who are given or sold by their parents to the cult. Some of them could be our
“missing children.”
For various reasons, we remain in denial about the reality of satanic ritual abuse and sacrifice of
children. According to Alan Scheflin, there is evidence that it occurs but the frequency is
unknown and no satanic sects have actually been caught in the act. The FBI denies that this
phenomenon exists, however, some specialized police departments tend to hold a different
opinion. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, police statistics in Bogota, Columbia report
that about 15 children there are kidnapped every day to be delivered to satanic sects, forced into
prostitution, adopted illegally, or for the harvesting of their organs. According to a police official
there, most of the children are sacrificed in satanic rituals. It is suspected that many of these
children come across the border into the U.S.
The important thing to note is that the children of these generational Dionysian or Illuminati
bloodline families, who are brought up in a sick, twisted, violently abusive environment, are apt
to continue to put their own children through this genetically-based Hell on Earth. As Cisco
Wheeler explains, her father was a “multiple,” or multiple personality, trapped in this repetitive
game loop. As she explains, “I think there was a time in my father’s life when he realized what
he was and what he was doing. I think the barriers within his own mind, within his own
multiplicity, had broken down to the point where he knew, but he also knew he was in over his
head. It would cost him his life to move away or to change directions. He was too far in.”
As we must keep in mind, any type of sexual deviance is a way of denying the validity of current
societal standards. The supremely self-centered “moral code” of the pedophile is in willful
defiance of anything that could be considered the larger society’s moral code. These cult families
rest assured that society will remain in denial and disbelief when we hear these survivor stories,
for, although we are quite familiar with the extent of man’s inhumanity to man, it is far too
distressing to acknowledge man’s inhumanity to child.
©2008 Joan d'Arc. This article was published in French in the Fortean journal, La Gazette
Forteenne (March 2002). Joan d’Arc is the co-editor and co-publisher of Paranoia: The
Conspiracy and Paranormal Reader, the author of Phenomenal World and Space Travelers and
the Genesis of the Human Form, both published by The Book Tree (www.thebooktree.com).
199
References
CKLN 88.1 FM Mind Control Radio Series, Toronto, Ontario, phone: (416) 595-1477.
Goobie, Beth, The Only-Good Heart, Pedlar Press, Box 26, Station P, Toronto Ontario, M5S
2S6, 1998.
Goobie, Beth, “The Network of Stolen Consciousness,” Issue 24, Paranoia: The Conspiracy
Reader, P.O. Box 1041, Providence, Rhode Island 02901 (www.paranoiamagazine.com).
See, Interview with Beth Goobie entitled “The Choosing Ones”,
http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/choosingones.html, and Beth’s article, “The Network
of Stolen Consciousness” http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/network.html.
Gray, William, Magical Ritual Methods, Samuel Weiser, York Beach, ME, 1990.
200
Mandragore
by Joan d'Arc
"Wake up…
the world is about you…"
the mating call of the messenger probe
cracked the silent blue
in all directions
"wake up… the world is about you…"
the machine eye of a 5b sector sentinel
scanned its quadrant
as through the crusty soil poked
the ecstatic crown of a mandrake
"wake up… the world is about you…"
the sentinel rang the mother ship
for birthing instructions:
"orange-red berries like small tomatoes"
went the description
"earth pregnant again with native automata"
went the word on the wind
"god seed and animal earth"
went the legend
above the din of antediluvian plastics
thrashing in the solar squall
the shrieks of mandrakes
torn from sustenance
"by order of the gods, do not
touch the white-green flowers
of the Mandragore"
A great rain fell for days and nights
and into weeks
the formless senseless things
resembled turnips
"boy or girl?"
said one bot to the Finder
201
"If you touch it you will die"
by day its limbs
jerked with father voltage
by night its forehead
beamed with mother knowledge
inside grew a virtual memory bank
the size of a planet
more mandrakes came
they came at night
they came in the wee hours of the morning
they came demanding their freedom
and the messengers went away
Mandragore, wake up the world!
202
My poetry usually contains a lot of symmetry, but this one is in narrative form. I would
characterize this as a rampage poem, where I make a strong connection between anger, birth
trauma and ancestry.
Ancestor Doom
by Joan d'Arc
Yup, the whole plate is seized up on the left.
Crunch. Crack.
The shiver of release travels up my spine.
The pop-pop-pop of the joints letting out air as they settle into
their crustacean sockets. …
And I will pay my chiropractor one more time to get it right.
More swift aligning of bone on sinew on soft cartilage.
Noggin in a limp noodle hold, I bring up the possibility of
complete removal of the head and putting it back on right.
He won't go for it. Too bad because there's something seriously
wrong with my noodle.
I pay the fee and step out on the foot that walks the heel that
bends the knee that shifts the plate that cripples the pelvis that
grinds the gears that pops the joints that wets the waddle that
walks me in pain to my car down old cobblestone Weybosset.
I pull my hood up over my French-Canadian sad head
in the drizzle morning and think of my impending
always death.
It that I am always aware.
There's me in my coffin saying, gee, it's not the death
it's the birth I didn't see coming around the fallopian
bend.
Surprise!
Not here again! You bastards!
No choice, you cannot go backward, only forward.
At that moment in a one-way tube of pain stuck, I struck a
bargain. I'll get you, you dirty rat.
A dark shroud of ancestor doom also hangs over the head of
my friend Al Hidell.
203
The curse of the Armenian born, ravaged minds and sick
hearts, suffering under the merciless weight of historical
causation in a world contest to see who can be more cruel –
who can kill more people and doom their great-grandchildren
to the black locusts of memory
swarming around their birth moment, loud and boisterous,
drowning out the choir of angels as they shoot out the chute,
and land on their asses mangled and twisted and grumpy as
hell.
Beautiful babes, but what is going on their sullen pessimistic noggins.
Plotting conspiracy magazines in the warm sun of the solarium
baby room.
Born to piss and shit on your happy thoughts.
204
Ode to Jack
I can’t look out your ghost,
pulling your long hot burden nowhere
wedding your tears to the stream
long dream
of an impossible task
too much to ask
to dharma your soft so hard
to meaning your Gerard
One fast move or you’re gone,
pulling your long hot burden nowhere
I can’t look out your ghost,
to see the skid row sod you tried to become
Bum!
He was a bum, the Lowell bookshopkeep said,
“man’s man, momma’s boy”
One fast move or you’re gone,
never again to belong
Gone—the way of the railroad earth
a phantasm from the cookie dough factory,
pulling your long hot burden nowhere
I can’t look out your ghost,
to find one sap belongs
in the chain gang of god-given wrongs
Oh—godman atop an Underwood,
Go—the way of the railroad earth
add your tears to the stream
By its burbling it shall speak
a phantasm clear:
Go—
pull your long hot burden nowhere
I can’t look out your ghost,
couch hobo hitchhiker
fish out of water fishing
the Pisces sees
the cause of suffering is birth, Maw
—the first law
of deadbeat Buddha despair
Go—Your way or the Highway,
Rise—your Virgo Moonward,
trailing your bebop starship skywhere
205
Millennial Rants in Three Ring Binders
An interview with Joan d'Arc in /P/P/J (Psionic Plastic Joy)
by Jason Rodgers (POB 1683, Nashua, NH 03060)
PPJ: If Paranoia had an occult slogan, what would it be?
Joan d'Arc: I would say our sensibility is more kitsch than occult. So I would steal Paul
Laffoley's slogan and say it's "beyond the kitsch barrier."
PPJ: Can you tell us a little bit about the publishing history of Paranoia?
Joan d'Arc: Sure. Frank Difficult and I started a bookstore called Newspeak in April of 1992,
which had a focus on anarchist and conspiracy titles and underground magazines, and we rented
kook films from Frank's collection. I got immersed in conspiracy literature and rekindled my
earlier interest in the JFK assassination. I soon found myself being pulled by the top of my head
into the fascinating genre of horror known as UFO abduction literature. Not only did it scare the
pants off me but I came back with my pants on backwards!
That summer I started the I-Am-Providence Conspiracy League after H.P. Lovecraft's tombstone
epitaph. We started collecting information in 3-ring binders that we kept open to the public.
When we had amassed three binders full, Al Hidell came up with the idea of publishing a zine
called Paranoia. Luckily, having no idea how to manage a publishing empire didn't stop us from
doing it!
Basically, we didn't really expect to get Paranoia off the block. But a couple of distributors
picked it up and it got on the newsstands and started to catch on. The first issue was copied at
Kinkos. It had an interview with Tribulation 99 filmmaker, Craig Baldwin, who used to come to
Providence quite a bit to show films at Brown. After that we found a printer who used that
crappy newsprint that turns baby-shit brown after a few years. I'm looking at it now, and I’m
sneezing.
The first four issues were black and white tabloid style covers and then we introduced color on
the fifth one. Initially, the articles were written mostly by members of the group, but by the
second issue we had an article by John Judge on Jonestown and an interview with Alan Cantwell
on man-made AIDS, which at the time was just so far outside of people's perception. Now it's an
accepted theory.
206
I'm not quite sure how we actually caught the wave into the new millennium unscathed. It's a
phenomenon in itself. I guess we were at the right time and right place; at the point where the
world changed and we stayed the same. We came to appear less and less outlandish as the world
became more preposterous. At first people thought we were ridiculous, but we seem pretty
normal by today's standards. I remember one radio interview we had in 1993 where they were
totally laughing at us. That radio station is now long gone. Who's laughing now?
The magazine seems to have little in the way of formal dogma or agenda. It seems more like a
convergence of diverse trajectories.
Joan d'Arc: Thank you. That's a fair assessment and I'm glad you see it that way. The sense of
editorial invisibility partly derives from necessity. In the beginning we were a small group of
people who couldn't on their own have continued to keep the content varied and interesting over
time. If we had stayed that small, and there was no email, no internet, then it would have just
been this insular clique of paranoids from H.P. Lovecraft's hometown. But we always had the
sense that we didn't want Paranoia to have, as you call it, an agenda. Unless you want to call
subversion an agenda.
I think the reason for the detectable convergence from all directions derives from the fact that we
have essentially allowed synchronicity to rule. We're not into editorializing or popping our
"expert" fat heads in to say, "here's what WE think is going on." First, because we don't feel that
we're experts. Secondly, because we've always had an understanding that the magazine is not a
platform for our own ideas, nor is it a pedestal for our own egos. Third, because we really don't
have an agenda. We want to stay in the background. We're still collecting millennial rants in
three ring binders. That's still an accurate portrayal of what we do.
PPJ: What do you see as the value of presenting these outsider, heretic, and extremist points of
view?
Joan d'Arc: I hadn't noticed that we had extremist points of view! I'm too buried in it to see over
the mountains of information being generated now in the 21st century. I don't really pay attention
to insider thinking. The outsiders are my people. I don't watch TV, I don't listen to talk radio, I
don't read the newspaper. I don't juxtapose insider news to outsider news and try to figure out
which one is the "truth." There's nothing to hold it up against, really. Some things are truer than
others, you might say, but largely the media has lost its grip. The fringe is populating the interior
now, like black spots on a white soul. Or are they white spots on a black soul? Conspiracy
theories still seem ridiculous to some people, although I will say, George Bush has put Paranoia
on the map, speaking of someone with a black soul.
In terms of value do you mean "services" or "disservices"? I guess there's a "value" on a societal
level, from say a democratic point of view. Freedom of Information is what we like to call it. In
207
America we "get" that, although there are still some people who would exercise fascist control
over what they believe is a ridiculous or impossible worldview. But on a personal level, the value
is that it opens your mind to all the possibilities on the color wheel. It's not just black and white
and you're not in Kansas anymore.
In terms of disservice, I would say, there are people who are highly sensitive to the viral
sensorium. I've seen them fall; get shattered; lose their sense of balance. Over the years I've been
able to fend off this malaise by growing a crust over my sensitive areas, wherever they're
located, so I don't end up in the nut house and my family has to bring me my pajamas. That's the
only way to deal with some of this material if you're going to be playing right in the chemical
slop of it. There's a disservice for sure. If you don't want your joy stolen; if you want to keep a
tight grasp on your naïve, childlike worldview, don't read Paranoia. That should be the warning
label.
Of course, we don't have a warning label because we don't want to treat people like they're
children. We start with the basic assumption that people are capable of sifting, handling and
managing large volumes of information to find their own proofs and make their own judgments,
if that's the way they wish to spend their time. Be aware that you might also end up falling out of
your chair laughing. As someone put it to me recently, we have an extraordinary balance
between serious and funny. We're masters of juxtaposition and frying-pan-over-the-head
journalism. Here's a bit of trivia: Paranoia got first place in an article on pull quotes in the
Washington Post a few years ago for a pull quote about the Queen being a shape-shifting, babyeating reptoid.
Obviously, conspiracy theories can be both informing and disinforming. In fact, our disclaimer
reads: "We do not knowingly publish disinformation, but sometimes it's hard to tell." Beyond
checking pertinent factoids in someone's article, reading it for internal consistency, checking the
references, how do you make a judgment that something is completely baked? Whose truth do
you judge it by? How do you apologize for someone else's embarrassing worldview? I've got my
own and I don't apologize to anyone for it.
PPJ: Existentialism is a recurring theme in your work. What is your interpretation of this school
of philosophy?
Joan d'Arc: Well, I'm essentially interested in the cover-up concerning the true nature of reality,
and I've tried to see where the existentialists and phenomenologists can help us see the situation
we're in. Phenomenology describes exactly what it's like to be in your body looking out, without
any prior concepts or constructs. By stripping off layers of socialization, phenomenologists like
Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Sartre can help us understand the role of shared personal
constructs in the development of our consensus reality.
208
So how I apply that is, in an article entitled "Beings in NothingDrive" (issue 39), I analyzed the
Travis Walton alien abduction of 1975 (see the film Fire in the Sky) from the point of view of
being in his body and trying to think as he may have thought. I brought in the theories of Jean
Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as they might be applied to this scenario. The result was
admittedly kitsch, but nobody complained. I would say, I try to have fun and stretch the
boundaries of conspiracy and paranormal studies with other avenues of thought from, say, Carl
Jung to P.D. Ouspensky.
PPJ: What is the most bizarre paranoid thought you regularly entertain?
Joan d'Arc: That would probably be the idea that the earth is a wilderness protectorate with ET
"game wardens" making sure we don't venture too far from home. But those thoughts were
entertained regularly in the 1960s by space agencies and think tanks like the Brookings Institute.
It's known as the Zoo Hypothesis and, although it certainly seems bizarre, that’s because you're
judging it through a filter that's been foisted upon you since birth.
The view that earthlings are the only humanoid beings in the universe is brought to you by the
materialist paradigm holding up your worldview, specifically, I have pointed out, the Darwinian
paradigm, which is the ruling scientism on the top of the entire pyramid of control. As I explain
in my book, Phenomenal World, Darwinian evolution keeps us from the truth of our ancestry
from the sky rather than from the water. All other control paradigms line up behind that one. If
that one falls, the dominoes fall. My belief is that if we came out of the water, it was because
that's where the space capsule landed.
Connected to that is the idea that the Earth is a controlled DNA repository for the ongoing
creation and dissemination of life forms, including humans. It is in this sense that the world of
our perception (the phenomenal world) can be considered a "construct," and I mean it here in a
physical sense. I might add here that I’m not a Scientologist, although it might sound like I am.
I've read a lot about Hubbard, but mainly my sources are Richard Hoagland and pictures he has
discovered of our own celestial backyard taken by NASA.
PPJ: On the flipside, what conspiracy theory do you feel has the most solid historical backing?
Joan d'Arc: The JFK assassination has now been proven to be a conspiracy. The best book on
this subject now is Joan Mellen's Farewell to Justice. The government drags out the skeletons
every year in November to do the amnesiac shuffle, but everybody knows the truth. Lee Harvey
Oswald was a "patsy" as he said he was. He was a CIA counterintelligence operative; he was
recruited when he was very young; and the CIA used him as the scapegoat. He had no idea what
he was even being arrested for.
209
PPJ: As a number of small publishers close shop, the landscape of the indie press is changing.
How do you see the differences between the small press when you first started and now? How
would you compare zines and the internet?
Joan d'Arc: There seem to be way fewer zines now than there were in the early to mid 90s,
because everybody has a website instead. It's hard to stay afloat with the cost of printing as well
as mailing, and people basically aren't reading anymore. So many good zines have gone down,
but there are a lot of indie book publishers and people are publishing their own e-books like mad.
Back then you had larger print runs and so many books ended up at Buck-a-Book. Now you have
low print runs and you don't end up with a garage full of books.
Keep in mind, we started the magazine well before most people - aside from the geeks at MIT had email. I personally didn't try email until around 1996 and I had to be taught how to use it in a
very painful manner, with a ruler to the knuckles. We didn't use it that much to collect
submissions back then. I used mainly snail mail until around or just after the now infamous
unevent called Y2K.
Now I'm hooked up and I get hundreds of emails a week. I wish my life was as simple as it was
back then, but on the other hand that would give us less material to work with. It was a lot slower
to go back and forth with people by mail, and a lot of submissions were handwritten and I had to
type them in. I don't miss that. I still write a lot of letters to people who aren't hooked up, such as
prison inmates, or people who just choose not to be hooked up. I still get the craziest mail and I
love getting zines.
I'll admit I do get most of my news on the Internet although I prefer to read books. I don't have a
laptop or a cell phone or an ipod. I'm pretty low tech. Layout software and the digital printing
process have gotten way more complicated and some of that stuff goes over my head. My
layouts skills are around third grade level. It used to be more simple to turn in the magazine to
the printer. Now there's this complicated digital upload process. I have mainly kept my HunterGatheress and editorial duties and let way more talented people do the layouts and file uploads
and all that complicated stuff.
If a zine is described as a labor of love rather than money, then Paranoia is still a zine. There was
never any huge investment of money. It was always by the seat of our pants and sometimes still
is. We've had more advertising in the last year but the ads are mostly indie press book publishers
or self-publishers, so we feel like it's a service to readers rather than a disservice. It helps pay the
print bill and they're of like-mind, so it's cool. The bottom line is we'll insist on our editorial
integrity to the end. We'll never sell out to the corporate vultures!
210
10½ Questions with Joan d’Arc, co-editor of Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader
by Chris Colton (never published)
Chris: Is Joan d’Arc a nom de plume?
Joan: Yes, it is. My official title is Hunter-Gatheress.
Chris: As an editor of Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader, how do you
distinguish between legitimate contributions and the ravings of lunatics?
Joan: Believe it or not, we don't feel it's our job to distinguish between legitimacy and lunacy.
The work must be well written, contain sources and references, and be "internally consistent." It
doesn't necessarily have to "match" any superfluous template external to it, although sometimes
it does. It depends on the researcher. Much of the work in the magazine does include
mainstream sources, but other times the sources for a particular research article might be other
conspiracy related works. In this sense, it doesn’t have to match the looking glass world, the
normal world to us kooks. This would be excessive and impossible because conspiracy theory
has anarchist leanings that obviously don't match the mainstream "accepted" view.
However, some material that comes in might reflect some kind of lunar tendencies; for instance,
if it's scrawled in very large print, and rants on and on, or if it contains somebody's personal
court documents that are none of our business. We don't have a problem with a really weird
conspiracy theory that most people would disbelieve, mainly because it's not our job to evaluate
theories according to our own private worldview. For instance, my partner, Al Hidell, is not
especially convinced that aliens in spaceships have actually accomplished their journey to Earth,
but to his credit he doesn't attempt to match up those stories with his internal template to see if a
red light goes off. I mean, really, how could we publish a magazine like PARANOIA if every
article had to match our own particular beliefs? That would be a personal zine, wouldn't it?
Chris: In “Declaring War on the Human Spirit,” (Winter 2002) you and Frank
Berube wrote that “most people are too caught up in the frenzy of the moment
to notice the totalitarian monster creeping up behind them.” Does our
economic system keep people struggling to divert them from more fiendish
goings-on?
Joan: Oh my, now there's a can of worms. Of course it does. There was a story going around
recently that managers of Bank of America and other large banks were instructing their
employees on how to respond to customer demands in the event of a collapse of the U.S.
economy. Some of these employees told their friends and family that agents of the Department of
211
Homeland Security would have authority to decide what customers can take from their safe
deposit boxes. Specifically, precious metals and other valuables would not be released. The story
was also that FEMA was getting its network of internment camps up and running for the civilian
uprising that would ensue after the financial collapse. The problem with these theories is that
they've been going around since the early 1990s, when I first got involved in conspiracy theory,
back in the day when William Cooper first released Behold a Pale Horse. However, this story
could very well be true. I have no way of knowing what's true and what isn't. I'm just wary of
stories that have been making the rounds for fifteen years. That's not to say I would be surprised
if it came true because it's looking more and more like George Bush is the Anti-Christ!
Chris: Is it likely that corporations/the government/our economic system is
itself the function of a hidden agenda?
Joan: Sure. War, what is it good for? The economy! Until you screw up the economy so bad
that you put the country in debt to the tune of over $8 trillion, which is the debt we have now.
And then something's gotta give.
Chris: Do you have any favorite theories or stories in support of this?
Joan: Yeah, that the war in Iraq is mainly based on the fact that Saddam Hussein had threatened
to stop basing sales of oil on the American dollar and instead base it on Euros, which would
cause the financial collapse of the U.S. That's the real reason we invaded Iraq. Iran is now
threatening to do the same thing, so the US, Britain and Israel will bomb Iran and start World
War III! Of course, like I said, it's looking more and more like George Bush is the Anti-Christ,
and he wants to start World War III because he's talking to his "god" on the big White telephone;
only his god is Shaitan!
Chris: In “Beings in Nothing Drive,” (Fall 2005) you took an existential
perspective on a classic UFO abduction tale. Could all paranoia be interpreted
similarly—applying meaning to a frighteningly brutal and meaningless world?
Joan: What I tried to do in my article on the Travis Walton abduction of 1975 was to see this
tale as a story about an earth man placed in an alien environment without his toolness, which
Jean Paul Sartre believed is the one quality that defines our humanness. Although I had a lot of
fun exploring this concept, I don't think it's necessarily applicable to all conspiracy theories. I
think it was just me having fun. On the other hand, I do believe we are all walking sleepers, as
Gurdjieff taught, so that this allegory about the walking sleeper, the abductee who is stuck
almost like an insect to fly paper, is the ultimate sleeper. He must wake up and fight! If he is to
survive, he must see himself on the other edge of tomorrow. He must envision where he will be
and take himself there.
212
In this story I also wanted to illustrate the difference between human beings and the so-called
extraterrestrials who man the spaceships seen in earth skies. Whoever they are, they do not
appear to have free will. Only humans have free will and we must test it and use it. It's the most
important tool in our bag. As existentialism teaches, life is a fight. Most of us in the modern
world have lost that will to fight. Many have taken the barstool route, happily told what to do.
So in that respect, this concept might apply to any situation in which we find ourselves in the
modern world, in a tyranny of the majority. Perhaps, as you have suggested, all of our political
fears can be deconstructed in this way.
It's imperative that people try to understand for themselves how our world got to be the way it is.
I think conspiracy theory is just another way of doing historical research by focusing on the
secretive nature of power. As the Wizard of Oz taught, there IS a man behind the curtain! And
isn't the Wizard of Oz an existential tale about a journey to find out who we really are? This is
the question that alien abduction stories ask, beyond the hype and the weirdness: Who are we
that we can claim such an awesome event to have occurred somewhere in the borders of our
experience? If you halt this learning process by claiming the event to be "impossible" – the only
one who loses is you.
Chris: It is said that conspiracy theories prove themselves and that paranoia is
self-fulfilling. What is meant by this?
Joan: Beats me. I'm wary of Chinese finger traps that one of those "skeptic" ass-kissers might
ask me to put my finger in. Statements like this essentially say that if all conspiracy theories are
true, then none of them are true. Or that if you think in this way, your greatest fears will come
true. I think it's too superficial an explanation for all conspiracy theories, because "conspiracy"
events are very real in political and legal life. It happens when two or more people decide to do
something illegal or unethical in secret. It happens every day and the US government does it all
the time. Skeptics like to treat conspiracy theory as though it's simplistic, unscientific, allencompassing, exaggerated, etc. Well, maybe some of it is guilty of any of these things and
more, but to be fair let's not lump it all into this category. For one thing, there's no such
uniformity in conspiracy research as might be suggested by the statement that conspiracy
theories prove themselves.
Conspiracy research is a radical endeavor, so of course those involved will bear the brunt of
malicious and deprecating remarks and simplistic jargon meant to downplay its import and its
basis in reality. But we continue to work, amass a large following and also have a lot of fun
while we ignore the trifling opinions of the boot-licking majority.
Chris: Is it possible that certain articles published in Paranoia are a source of
disinformation—i.e. used to throw people off the scent of the truth?
213
Joan: The disclaimer at the bottom of the first page of PARANOIA states: "We do not
knowingly publish disinformation, but sometimes it's hard to tell." We are unaware of whether
we are being used in this manner. Could be, sure! We don't know all of our writers, although
many we've known for years, but that's not to say we know for sure they are not CIA agents. As
for our own staff, we have been together as friends since 1992, and I can say emphatically that
none of us are working for the Man.
As for establishing whether something is true or false (which is implied by the word
"disinformation"), we try to steer clear of such assessments. We are not the babysitters of the
American consumer or of our readership, and conspiracy research is not forced to comply with
the rules of science. It bugs me when social historians try to act as though they're scientists so
they can legitimize their conformist conclusions. After all, history is written by the conquerors,
isn't it? As rebels and master shit-stirrers, why would we feel obliged to force our views to
match the outside world? What we've really created is a rare and wonderful catalog of the anticonformist ravings of a group of people who essentially think the same. This group grows in
number as the world gets weirder. It reflects the world's lies back on it. People love this stuff,
because it opens their eyes to the fact that things are not as they seem.
We simply present all conspiracy theories on an equal footing, with no apology, concurrence or
belief-o-meter reading. Just as I did in the Walton existential analysis, where I stated
beforehand, "this analysis is like no other either of the skeptic or non-skeptic variety", let's forget
about true or false dichotomies and get to the meaning of the phenomenon. So, generally, when
you see that "paranoia" is now rampant in society, when you get the sense that Americans almost
wholesale distrust and disrespect their government, what is the meaning of that? Are we all
going bonkers, or do we perhaps have something, a lot of things in fact, to be paranoid about?
This country has a long libertarian tradition. We are merely continuing that tradition into the 21st
century and merging it with other traditions, such as digging up the occult beliefs and secret
society memberships of our elite rulers that have largely remained hidden for so long. Maybe it's
not for everyone, or maybe some would prefer to remain comfortably unaware of this stuff. But
it's blatantly unfair to criticize it and laugh at it if you really don't understand it.
Chris: Do you have any predictions for the future of America, Earth, or the Universe?
Joan: Well, probably that we're not meant to be here forever, we're in the 7th Earth according to
ancient philosophical and religious traditions, and the party may be over in 2012 if the Mayans
are correct. The egomaniacal George Bush will probably lead us to Armageddon, as is his desire,
because he thinks God chose him to do that. (And it's looking more and more like he's the AntiChrist. Have I said that already?) But humans will continue on our journey, because we are
spiritual beings having a human experience.
214
Chris: Is the truth really out there?
Joan: The truth is probably UP there. I think we all nowadays have trouble with our directional
compasses, our ups and downs and ins and outs. I believe we'll know when we cross the great
divide what it was all about. Otherwise, the meaning of life will be quite absurd. I believe we
each hold a piece of the puzzle, and we deliver that piece as we merge with the One at the end of
Time as we know it.
This 2007 interview was never published by Chris Colton and got Joan in trouble at her day job.
Therefore, I am publishing it since he never did.
215