The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure: Thoughts on Transparency

I recently had the opportunity to listen to the Mysterious Universe episode on the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure.  I am not as interested in UFO’s as perhaps I ought to be, given the subject of this blog, but I try to keep my finger on the pulse of what is going on in UFOlogical circles and the hearings were certainly the big news in that realm at the time.

Those who have been reading this blog for a while know that I am not a proponent of the little green men from outer space hypothesis regarding the UFO phenomenon. I do not think that we need to look into the vastness of interstellar space to find a solution for a phenomenon that has plagued humankind for centuries. In my view, UFOlogical phenomenon fall into two broad categories: what I call the Intruders, in one of their many guises, or top secret governmental experiments with aircraft and, perhaps, mind control.

One of the themes that is recurrent, in listening to this podcast and throughout the UFO community is that the government (usually referring to the US government but also taking in other world governments or even so called shadow governments) is hiding evidence of aliens and alien incursion into our societies. The UFO investigators, and there are many good solid people in the field along with some very questionable characters, maintain that humankind (the ubiquitous we) should be made aware of what the government(s) know and then go on to postulate reasons why this information is not publicly available. One of the primary reasons put forward by many researchers for this lack of forthrightness on the part of governments is the idea that humans could not cope with the truth.

This reasoning, of course, meets with scorn from the UFO community – a group of people who actively seek out these phenomenon and who have interviewed countless witnesses who seem to be quite alright despite their experience. I would argue, though, that the governments of the world may not be so far off base. A single human can cope with the seemingly insurmountable and find the wherewithal to truly overcome and achieve the impossible. Even a small group of people, when given sufficient motivation and cohesiveness, can work together and deal with situations that would boggle most people’s minds. Humanity as a whole or a large group though?

Stop for a moment and consider those around you. In the microcosm of your workplace or your neighborhood, of your town, village or even city, most people are living lives set along very rigid lines. They rise at a specific time, they do their morning routine, they go to their jobs, they come home, they spend some time watching TV or use other media and retire, only to begin the cycle again the next day. Change is something that occurs when they have a flat tire on the way to work or trip over a curb and break an ankle. It is an unwelcome intruder into their lives and they work hard to restore “normalcy” as soon as possible. Even weekends are patterned and scheduled to produce feelings of normalcy and comfort. I know that, even though I can hardly qualify as “normal” in any sense of the word, I have my schedule and like to keep to it when the spirits will allow it.

Imagine please what would happen in this world of enforced normalcy if the US government one day stepped to the podium and announced, unequivocally, that our world is being visited by beings from another dimension, that we have no effective counter for these incursions, that these beings may or may not have our best interests in mind (likely not) and that these “aliens” seem quite capable of plucking us from our homes and roadways, in some manner, to “experiment” on us. I predict that the fallout from such an announcement would fall into one of two broad categories in the greater population (i.e. not the UFO community).

The first group and likely the largest would be the “malaise” group. While being, perhaps, mildly interested in the phenomenon when it is first made evident to them, these folks would look at what was presented, determine that it had nothing to do with them, since they had not seen a UFO or been abducted, and file the phenomenon away as another potential danger that one faces in life along with mugging, internet scams and child abductions. In other words, the UFO phenomenon would fall into their category of “dangerous things to keep an eye out for but not to worry about too much”. The malaise group would fall back into their normal patterns quickly although they might be even less likely to go into remote or isolated areas (remember, these people have been trained to view nature as inherently dangerous by the media). The malaise group would, of course, sit idly by and watch as the second group stepped to the fore.

I call this group the witch hunters. Some of the UFOlogical community would join this group immediately since they have been convinced for some time that the damned government was hiding something and now, finally, their suspicions have been confirmed and the situation is as bad as they thought. The witch hunters would demand immediate action against the “aliens” and would form the sort of squeaky wheel minority that could move a government to attempt a response. I suspect that once the word was definitively out, these people would end up turning on fellow humans since the phenomenon itself is so unpredictable and ephemeral. The logical choice of target? The government that kept this secret for all these years. Given some good marketing and organized political lobbying, these people could easily develop a following of politicians who were willing to toady for them. It is not hard for me to imagine “witch hunts” in the McCarthy style as a result and a lot of politicians stepping to the microphone to announce their support for an increase in the military research budget to fight this new threat.

Of course, there would be voices for a more moderate and studied response but, in this age of polarization, it seems unlikely that the mass panic feared by some would ensue – although I am certain that there would be some astonishingly kooky apocalyptic cults derived from the announcement – but rather that a certain vocal sect of people would turn on the government and make life hell for them, at least for a time. I suspect the government lack of transparency in the UFO situation is the result, as mentioned in the above referenced program, of deeply engrained Cold War mentality but also of a sort of enlightened self interest on the part of governments involved.

Actually Finding Sasquatch

I have made no secret, in these pages, of the idea that I do not think that the Sasquatch is a creature of this world. While I realize that this will instantly make me unpopular with the folks who are tramping around in the forest looking for a relic hominid or new species of giant bipedal ape, my examination of the stories surrounding this creature has led me inexorably to the conclusion that Sasquatch is a visitor to our realm and not a permanent resident. My purpose in writing this little article though is not to debate the physical existence of this creature vs. the thought that it physically manifests from the Otherworld. My purpose is, instead, to propose some ideas toward having an experience of this creature for readers who are so inclined.

Now, please be aware that I have not done extensive field testing of these ideas but, given some of the . . . interesting methods I have seen on television shows and in documentaries, my method ought to work at least as well as spraying gorilla pheromones and leaving Reeses’s Peanut Butter Cups on a stump.

First note: leave the “team” and most of the equipment at home!! If you really want to have an experience of a being that has proven itself to be elusive in the extreme, the last thing that you need is to have a bunch of people tramping around in the brush looking for the creature. Remember, even if I am wrong and this is an actual physical animal, one is not going to get a look at it by going into the woods and moving around, talking , leaving human spoor all over the place and generally announcing one’s presence to the entire forest population. Keep the numbers down but do take at least one partner for safety’s sake.

The first tool in the Sasquatch hunter’s arsenal should be stealth. Before even attempting to look for this being, I would strongly recommend some time learning stalking, tracking and camouflage from someone with experience. And no, I am not talking about the guy down the road who goes into the woods every season looking for deer and manages to bag one because he is carrying a high powered rifle with a scope. I am talking about the individual who can sneak up on a deer and get close enough to touch it. Find someone like that and they will be able to show the Sasquatch hunter how to move in the woods with minimal noise, thus increasing the chances of encountering all sorts of wildlife, including the elusive bipedal Tall Man.

In addition to teaching stalking and stealth, such a person should also be able to give the would-be Sasquatch hunter lessons in primitive living skills, also known as wilderness survival. My theory is that, if one can walk into the forest with nothing but a knife and live there comfortably for a few months, one literally becomes a part of the forest and thus much more difficult to detect. Now, I realize that this is beyond the ability of most people but the idea here is to take a minimalist approach and to try to stay in place for a while. A weekend camping trip out of the back of a pick up truck with roaring fires and consumption of alcoholic beverages when one is not out “hunting” is not going to yield a large percentage of wildlife sightings of any kind unless the local wildlife is habituated to human presence. While there do seem to be some instances where Sasquatch have appeared around such camp sites, I have the suspicion that they are bringing their offspring to look at the humans and teach them how not to behave.

Once the basic skills of stealth, stalking and survival have been met, we come to the more controversial part of my little Sasquatch hunting program: magic. If one is practicing one’s wilderness skills in areas where Sasquatch sightings are common, then there is a chance that an encounter may occur simply because one has the skill to move well in the woods and stumbles across a Sasquatch. So, where does the magic come in?

If, as many Native Americans believe, the Sasquatch is a spirit being then one increases one’s chances of an encounter by the use of magical evocation. If you are not an experienced magician, then become one . . .

Just kidding, it is actually quite simple to develop a small ceremony of evocation that one can use prior to going into the woods on a Sasquatch quest. Check out Jason Miller’s excellent book The Sorcerer’s Secrets: Strategies in Practical Magick for a fairly accessible introduction to the practice of results oriented magic. The book rests on Miller’s notion that successful magic relies on a base of meditation, offering and invocation – in other words, practice, just as one would if one were trying to learn a martial art or master a golf swing.

Once those fairly simple basics have become habit, one could use some of the techniques learned in the book for creating one’s own Sasquatch evocation. Hint: look at the section on The Rending of Space in the Gestures section at the beginning of the book and then consider what one would like to bring through that “hole” in the Veil. Remember, please, to close that hole once the hunt is complete to avoid any untoward “critters” coming through at a later date.

As with all things mentioned here, this evocation will take some practice and tweaking before it bears much fruit but, if one is looking for an encounter with Sasquatch, I would think that one has developed some patience or one would have given up the search long ago. If the idea of doing a little evocation prior to going into the woods seems ridiculous, consider that the ritual itself, once practiced will take about five minutes. Even if Sasquatch is a physical being, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that animals are sensitive to psychic and magical currents. If Sasquatch is a physical being, it may still be attracted by the energy of the evocation. If Sasquatch is a creature of the Otherside, it will be attracted by the rite itself. This is a curious beast so one really has nothing to lose in trying to lure it out with magic.

Loup Garou . . . in America

Those who have been reading these pages for some time will have guessed by now that I am fond of folklore, seeing the old stories as being more true than many in the modern materialist culture give credit for. Folklore often gives the reader insight into that culture’s view of the Otherworld. In addition, as you can see from the previous post, I am a shameless aficionado of shapeshifter and particularly werewolf lore so the following appealed to me on both levels.

When one hears the words, loup garou, I would bet that my erudite readers begin thinking of the Old World and France in particular, of course. Most folks with even a modicum of werewolf knowledge know that this phrase is a French word that refers to the werewolf. Or does it? I was browsing the web some time back (ah, the wonders of keeping notes in Evernote) and came across this very interesting website. The site contains a set of stories, not from France, but from right here in America, Indiana, in fact. I was surprised to see that, though the term loup garou certainly applied to a human who became a wolf, it also applied to a number of other shape shifters, including a rather comical tale of a man who became a cow.

The other item that sets these stories apart is the idea that the loup garou, in whatever form it takes, is placed under a shape shifting spell for a limited period of time (more on that in a moment) and that the only way a person could be delivered from the curse was for someone to recognize them as a loup garou and somehow draw blood from the bespelled individual. Once blood had been drawn, the loup garou returned to human form but neither that person nor the person who freed him or her could speak of it for a period of time or the curse would return, and for a longer period.

There is something very otherworldly about these stories. The period of time that the loup garou is cursed (and we never really learn where the curse comes from) is always a period of time, usually a hundred days, plus one. We see this time + 1 motif in many stories of magic and of the faery where the extra day seems to be outside time and not owned by the day to day world; it is magical in its own right and serves as a doorstep into the Otherworld.

While the time + 1 day motif is certainly magical in and of itself, one must also note that the loup garou can only be freed from the affliction by the shedding of blood. Most folklorists would shrug their shoulders at this and then go on to list similar stories and motifs as a sort of “explanation” of this odd detail but I find it magically interesting. By releasing the blood, what many cultures consider to be the essence of life, the loup garou is made whole. In a manner of speaking, the individual literally has to turn themselves right side out, releasing the human part of themselves to the surface in order to regain full humanity.

Finally, the idea of silence weighs heavily throughout these tales. Magical thinkers believe that to know the True Name of something can actually call it to the practitioner. In this case, the victim of the loup garou curse, who has been morose and solemn and sickly in the day, likely exhausted from the night’s wandering, and his or her rescuer must keep silence for a very clear reason: to speak of the curse will call it back.

There is a power in silence that few people explore in our constantly yattering world. Whether we are talking about the monk sitting zazen in his or her zendo, the Native person on vision quest or the ceremonial magician working the magic of Abramelin, great power can be found in periods of silence – the power to contact one’s own inner guidance and learn to hear and listen to that guidance. Perhaps, this is the sub rosa lesson to be learned in these stories of the loup garou. Cursed with a shape that he or she does not desire, the loup garou, when finally released from that spell must keep their peace about the incident, looking within for the strength and inner guidance to prevent such a catastrophe from befalling them again.

The Morbach Werewolf

I follow a number of different blogs on the paranormal side and happened across this wonderful post a few days back. I have seen bits and bites of this story (probably also on Phantoms and Monsters) but this is the most complete version of the narrative I have seen.

Now, I love a good werewolf story. My work with a certain god form in my magical travels has led me to some interesting shape shifting experiences. While I have not wakened, of a cool, misty morning, naked and alone in the forest with blood on my face and hands, I have felt changes, presumably in my etheric body, which would correspond nicely to the effects described by John Michael Greer in Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings. Not an experience for the faint of heart or the control freak **smile**

But, I digress. As I was saying, I love a good werewolf tale and this story has it all. The witness, though not named, is allegedly a retired Air Force Staff Sergeant. There is a back story . . . the incident occurs near the town where the last werewolf was supposedly killed in Germany. A shrine at the site is supposed to have a candle lit at all times, otherwise the werewolf will return. The security personnel in question laugh off the fact that the candle is out when they pass the shrine but are later confronted by mysterious howls and growls at their supposedly secure site followed by sightings of a “huge dark mass” clearing the nine foot perimeter fence. To add a further air of the eerie to the sighting, the witness reports seeing the creature, standing on its hind legs and breathing heavily, through his night vision equipment before the unidentified (and un-described) animal faded into the woods.

The story is written in the style of a soldier making a report. The sergeant tells the reader about how he moved his people and in what direction as they attempted to corner the mysterious visitor. He gives us an in depth look into why the report did not become more widely disseminated (the Flight Chief becomes the prime actor in this little drama). The end of the story bears quoting:

Some of us choose not to talk about it, but obviously some did. It really happened. It wasn’t some story to scare the jeeps. Jeeps are FNG’s, rookies, etc. Was it a Werewolf? Was it an endangered European Wolf? Was it a coincidence that the candle was out that night of a full moon? You decide. As for me…I’ll say this. The above statement is true to the best of my knowledge.

Those who read these pages know that I am far more likely to give credence to a monster sighting than the so-called skeptics out there but this story gives me pause. Lon Strickler, the author of the Phantoms and Monsters blog, indicates that he checked out the story to the best of his ability. I have no reason to doubt that but I still feel that this narrative sounds a little too much like a fictional horror short story written in the first person narrative style with plenty of military details thrown in to give a sense of authenticity.

My biggest problem with the story is that, though the witness says that he saw the creature standing upright in the forest, he does not tell us exactly what he saw. The narrator states that he had night vision googles on and that the range was 200 meters. He could see that the beast was breathing heavily but gives us no other details. I have never worn night vision gear but, if the witness could spot the creature’s breathing pattern and upright stance, then he should have been able to give some description of what he was looking at.

Even if we give this story the benefit of the doubt, what we have is a series of events that may or may not be related. One of the pitfalls that magical types have to look out for is seeing relationships between things that are not necessarily related. A happens and then B happens and one jumps to the conclusion that A caused B. We see this here with the candle incident – the candle was out and the legend says the werewolf will appear – and the subsequent appearance of an unknown animal on the base these men were guarding. Perhaps the two are related but it is far more likely that the wind blew the candle out and that the base had a visit from a wild animal than that a werewolf chose that particular night to come for a visit to those specific people. Personally, if I were a bipedal canid with human intelligence, I think I might avoid anyplace where people carried loaded M-16′s and night vision gear.

If we take the story at face value, what did those men see that night? Given what is included in this article, there is no way to know. It is always possible that an Intruder decided to have some fun with the security forces that night and took the form of a werewolf since that is what these troops expected to see, at least subconsciously. It is possible that these fellows had a real live werewolf on their hands (a person encased in an etheric shell made to resemble a wolf). It is even possible that the base had a visit from a time traveling dire wolf or other monstrous canid species (all those reports of mammoths in the far north give one pause). I think it is most likely, however, that the staff sergeant and his troops, if they indeed exist, had given more credence to the local legend than they realized and created a werewolf out of local animal. Perhaps they were, indeed, fortunate enough to encounter one of the rare European wolves.

Skinwalkers

In my perusal of all the things that go bump in the night, I ran across this Phantoms and Monsters blog the other day. Lon Strickler, the proprietor of the blog, does a great job of keeping people up to date on the latest events in the paranormal and I am always finding items of interest there. One of the advantages to reading P&M is that Mr. Strickler has been in business for some time and people seem to be constantly sending him stories of varying sorts. This post is a collection of terrifying narrations from people who have encountered something that they believed was a skinwalker.

I do not like the term “black” or “dark” magician since this has racist overtones and because moral choices are seldom as clear cut as black and white. Some cultures refer to these practitioners as sorcerers or witches but those terms have variant meanings and do not always refer to the magic user who does not have the evolution of the human race as a goal. I’ve already named magic users with a more positive slant as mages so I will call those who are of a less positive bent conjurors.

Conjurors appear in the folklore of every race that I have ever read about and none is more debased than the yee naaldlooshii, the Dine’ (Navajo) skinwalker. This “witch” is so feared amongst the Dine’ that those persons found to be skinwalkers are considered to have forfeited their humanity and may be killed on sight. There is a host of beliefs constellated around the skinwalker that make cultural anthropologists certain that this conjuror is simply a myth created by the Dine’ to explain some of the terrible hardships that these desert people face. The anthropologists can continue to believe this, ensconced in their ivory towers, but the average traditional Dine’ understands that the yee naaldlooshii is all too real.

In order to become a skinwalker, one must be initiated by breaking one of the Dine’ cultural taboos, most commonly the killing of a blood relative with strong hints of cannibalism. Once this initiation, accomplished with the assistance of those who are already skinwalkers, is undergone, the individual becomes capable of shifting to a variety of animal forms, of moving at terrific speed and of placing curses on those that have slighted the skinwalker in any way amongst a variety of other attributed abilities including the ability to imitate any voice or animal sound. The yee naaldlooshii is anathema in a tribal culture because he, or rarely she, looks only to themselves and has become a skinwalker for their own advantage.

If one reads the stories from the Phantoms and Monsters blog referenced above, one begins to get a strong feeling for the deep dread engendered amongst the Dine’ by these conjurors. Interestingly, although it is true that some skinwalkers were killed as a result of their depredations, one never saw full scale “witch hunts” on the reservation. Rather, the Dine’ person who believed that he or she had encountered the yee naaldlooshii would seek out the services of a healer who could prescribe the right ceremony to cleanse and counter any possible difficulty that might be derive from the encounter. In my view, this is a much more enlightened approach than that taken by the terror ridden Europeans of the Middle Ages.

From a magical perspective, I have no trouble at all believing the stories of the Dine’ about their native conjuror. One has only to look at the stories of the berserkir and ulfhednar in Norse culture to see similar themes with a European flavor. These warriors, like the skinwalker, were said to take on the traits and/or appearance of their “totem” animal (bear and wolf, respectively), to be able to move with the speed and strength of that animal and to be virtually invulnerable in battle as the result of the magical protection afforded by the animal skin that they wore. While the yee naaldlooshii is not specifically a warrior, I can draw some parallels from my research into the werewolf traditions of Europe.

Shape shifting is one of those magical traits that pops up in a huge number of cultural contexts. While the yee naaldlooshii is feared for the ability to curse, a commonality amongst practitioners of the self-centered magical arts, it is most feared because of the ability to change forms. While most mages do not take seriously the idea of a human literally changing to an animal (although I reserve the right to think it could happen given a great enough magical energy source), there are a couple of ways in which a human being might appear to take on the form of an animal and both involve etheric projection.

In the first method, the shape shifter sinks into a deep trance and actually extrudes a carefully crafted animal form. We find a classic example of this in the Norse Saga of Hrolf Krake “where Bödvar Bjarki, in the shape of a huge bear, fights desperately with the enemy, which has surrounded the hall of his king, whilst his human body lies drunkenly beside the embers within” (Sabine Baring Gould, The Book of Werewolves). Note please that the bear thus extruded did tremendous damage to the enemy forces until some idiot wakened Bjarki to come and fight. The bear promptly disappeared and the battle was subsequently lost so this was not a case of some ethereal appearance on the battle field but of a very solid and deadly manifestation wreaking havoc in the enemy lines.

The second way that a human might be considered to change shape works in a similar manner, only, rather than sinking into deep trance, the practitioner remains conscious, extrudes the animal form and actually settles it in a shell around him or her. One can easily see how some poor peasant, coming upon a person working this magic, might believe that he is seeing an actual transformation from human to animal. Interestingly, too, both of these types of shape shifting often seem to be dependent on a clear link between the human and “their” animal. Most often this link takes the form of the animal’s skin and again, with the proper skill, the form extruded as shell can be quite physically present.

Stories of shape shifters are not the sole province of the Dine’. Many indigenous people of North America have similar beliefs about their medicine people or those that oppose them. It is quite possible that the yee naaldlooshii and other shape shifting magical practitioners could be the cause of some of the “interesting” sightings that we see logged in the annals of high strangeness.

On Talking Sasquatches

I found a perfectly delightful post from Nick Redfern on the Mysterious Universe site this morning. This tale of a telepathic Sasquatch in the Ouachita National Forest is exactly the sort of sighting/experience that convinces me that Sasquatch are not any sort of relic hominid skillfully evading humankind for all these years.

The whole post is certainly worth reading (including the colorful comments), I would draw the reader’s attention to the following:

But then something truly strange occurred: in somewhat hesitant tones, Donnie said they continued to look on in both awe and fear, when suddenly their minds were filled with a soothing female voice that uttered the words: “Do not be afraid. You will not be harmed. Do not come closer.”

While Sasquatch sightings normally fall into the “I was hiking through the woods and saw this giant creature” category, there are witnesses who report telepathic or even semi-verbal communication with these entities. If one adds these witness statements in with the subset of Sasquatch sightings that happen on and around UFO’s and then factor in the witnesses who state that they saw the creature and then it simply vanished, one becomes increasingly certain that one is dealing with a phenomenon that is not normally a part of this consensual reality.

The materialist “skeptic” will shrug his or her shoulders and dismiss the whole incident as shared delusion. The cryptozoologist will likely ignore such a report since it does not fit into his or her paradigm of searching for a new ape species. Fortean researchers will look at the report with glee and file it away as yet another incident of high strangeness. The commenters on this blog post who tried to explain the sighting attributed the incident to everything from aliens to the voice of the Goddess. I found the comments almost as interesting as the blog itself.

Part of the reason that I write this blog is to keep pointing out something that other researchers seem to be determined to miss in their rush to offer a “scientific” explanation of the unexplained. Very simply, my goal is to point out that science, while an extremely useful tool and mindset, is not the only way that humans can view their world. If one sets aside the scientific worldview for a few moments and puts on the glasses of the magic user, all of this “stuff” makes perfect sense. Society encourages us to think in either/or terms – either I view the world this way OR that way – but in actuality it is quite easy to shift perspective from one mode of thought to the other. Accepting magical thought does not mean a wholesale denial of the scientific method (in fact, magic users often keep detailed records of their experiments and use them to refine hypotheses), it simply requires a shift in perspective on suitable occasions.

What would I have told this terrified couple if I had happened to encounter them as they came out of the woods? I would have told them that their reaction was perfectly natural, that they were not insane or deluded in any way and that they were another in a long line of people to have encounters with these creatures.

You see, I am quite convinced that Sasquatch is a member of the faerie tribe, an Otherworld race that is one of the types of beings that make up what I call the Intruders. One need only look at Katharine Brigg’s encyclopedic treatments of faerie folklore to realize how many types of beings fit into this group and, while I have not run across a folkloric faerie that seems an exact match for the Sasquatch, my own experiments in etheric projection have convinced me that the Big Guy is actually a card carrying member of the faerie nation.

Here are just some of the aspects of this Ouachita sighting that scream faerie! to me:

* The sudden appearance of the beast – the couple describes it as crashing through the brush but one would think that, had it been making that much noise, they would have heard it coming long before they saw it. It is almost as if the creature stepped through a portal and into the brush near the couple.
* The extreme emotional reaction of the couple – the female literally falls to her knees and the male seems to have trouble standing as well. While I am certain that I would be shaken by the sudden appearance of an eight foot Sasquatch, the shock and awe of the witness’ reaction is something often associated with the faerie.
* The telepathic contact – folklore is full of instances of the faerie communicating with humans. The stories I have read have usually simply had the faerie speak to the human but this might be a case where the physical form that the Sasquatch chooses does not lend itself to human speech. Faerie are known for their magic so telepathic communication is definitely not beyond them
* The messages – basically, the couple are told to fear not, to not come closer and are strongly discouraged from taking pictures. Faerie are known for their privacy issues. Even if they suddenly appear from nowhere in front of an unsuspecting human, if they decide that the human is intruding, he or she is in trouble. I fear to think what might have happened if the duo had either tried to get closer or attempted to take a picture. Punishment for such an “intrusion” can range from a string of bad luck to death depending on the type of faerie. This one seems to have been a more Seelie court type since it gave fair warning.
* The voice – both subjects reported hearing a female voice though the Sasquatch was “obviously male”. As some of the commenters noted, the voice did not necessarily come from the creature before them. Like humans, faerie are known to have mates and this being’s mate may have been secreted out of sight and communicating for her mate. Alternatively, some of the faerie seem to have a hierarchical social structure. This big fellow could have been a bodyguard for his queen who was doing the talking.

When viewed through the lens of folklore and magic, then, this encounter, while terrifying, makes perfect sense. The couple did exactly what they should have done – they kept their distance, obeyed the voice in the matter of the camera and departed when they were given leave to go. Given that they had no training in otherworldly communication, they responded in a respectful way that ensured that no one came to harm.

On Opening Doors and Forgetting to Close Them

In my post, The NeverNever Part 2 I theorized that some of the seemingly random high strangeness occurring in our world could be due to the following:

So, we have a perfect storm – one part freely available magical lore (some of it from quite old sources), one part people who may be emotional about a subject and willing to use magic to remedy it and one part natural talent.  Shake, stir and wave a wand and you have a circumstance that could open a portal quite easily but only for a limited period of time.

In that article, I provided a rather extensive theoretical example but something occurred in my own practice recently that has really driven this point home to me.

In one of my shamanic journeys, I was shown, very clearly, the importance of the Ancestors in my work so I have looked at a number of ways to honor the Ancestors and develop a relationship with them. I settled on the idea of developing an ancestral altar where I light candles, offer water and incense and meditate several times a week. The Ancestors have responded quite favorably to this invitation from my side and, while much of what I have learned has been deeply personal to me, I will say that They have helped me discern a path in life that I had not seen.

As part of fine tuning this work, I have sought ways to make the two way communication easier so, recently, I borrowed a technique from Jason Miller and began each Ancestor session with a version of his Rending of Space. Basically, this entails opening a door between this world and the Otherworld via a series of simple gestures.

In my view, this technique worked quite well and allowed me to commune more fully with those Ancestors who love and support me. For those who might be interested in actually trying to commune with their Ancestors, I highly recommend listening to The Online Ceremony of Ancestral Communion for an excellent pathworking that will take the listener into the presence of his or her ancestors.

So, all was well – I established contact with the Ancestors through shamanic work and meditation, I fine tuned the process and the Ancestors were responding kindly. There was only one problem. Last week, I forgot to shut the door when I concluded my ancestral communion.

It was such a beginner’s mistake that I am embarrassed to admit it but I allowed myself to be distracted as I was coming out of meditation (one of the pets required my attention) and went to attend to that distraction without closing out my little rite properly. Then, to compound my stupidity, I promptly forgot that I had not closed out properly, leaving an open ancestral altar/portal in my bedroom (I need to move that altar, too, the bedroom is not the best place for ‘feeding’ spirits). Suffice to say that I had a very interesting night, filled with wild dreams full of people running up to talk to me, some of them quite wild eyed and insistent. I puzzled over the cause of my restlessness for a few moments as I awoke but, when my eyes fell on the altar, I knew. I closed the portal as soon afterward as I could and have been very diligent about doing it since.

I paid for my inattention with a restless night full of spirits trying to get my attention in the dream world. My little portal is not meant for anything more than communing with my ancestors. Imagine, for a moment, what might happen if a group of inexperienced magic users opened one of these portals in a quest to invoke or evoke any of a range of powerful entities and then failed to properly close that portal before leaving the area. Essentially, if they have any ability at all, they will have lit a powerful beacon in the Otherworld with a sign over the top that says “Door to the Earth Plane here – free passage”.

As I have said, I think that there are many reasons for the manifestation of seemingly random occasions of high strangeness. One of the things that I would be looking for, as an investigator, would the presence of magical practitioners in the area. If a fairly experienced walker between the worlds can make a rookie mistake like the one described above, it is well within the realm of the conceivable that this type of incident has happened elsewhere and perhaps with stronger results.

Types of Spirits – A Small Primer

I mentioned, in my last post, the extraordinary diversity of the Otherworld. As with this consensual reality, the Otherworld has its own form of bio-diversity and part of the magician’s task is to acquaint him or her self with some of those Otherwordly inhabitants and to work with them. Even limited experience in the other realms causes one to quickly realize that there is no way that one will ever know about all the spiritual entities that inhabit the worlds beyond our own. In my more awe-struck moments, I am convinced that even the mages have only explored a certain portion of inner space and that there are untold numbers of beings that we have not even imagined yet.

Nevertheless, being human and having that innate desire to catalog things, magicians throughout the ages have tried to enumerate the spirit world. When one looks at the various lists of spirits, it quickly becomes apparent that those who set about this task often end up like the field biologist in a rain forest trying desperately to fit each new creature into an existing category. Sometimes those categories work and sometimes they seem more than a little contrived.

Given the above, one might think that I am opposed to the cataloging of spirits or that I think it is a useless endeavor. Quite to the contrary, I think such exercises are very useful despite the limits of human knowledge in these realms. Without these attempts, our knowledge of the spirit world would be even more limited than it already is. I think that it especially behooves the investigator of the paranormal/Fortean to have a working knowledge of spirit types so that they can begin to diagnose and deal with situations when they come up. If nothing else, the investigator should be familiar with spirit types so that they know when to head for the nearest door.

I can not possibly elucidate the world of spirits in a thousand word blog but I do want to give the investigator or would be investigator something to think about in that regard so here are my basic categories of spirits:

1) Ghosts – yes, Virginia, there are ghosts. In my definition, a ghost is a part of the human soul complex that has either chosen to remain in this world, usually as the result of unfinished business or extreme attachment to a person or place. It is the case that ghosts may be trapped in a place by magical workings (usually curses) but such cases are, thankfully, rare.

2) The in between – technically, ghosts are in between since they have not moved completely into the Otherworld, but this category refers to those beings who exist on the periphery between this world and the Otherworld. These beings are usually called vampires and are most often humans who have managed to avoid the Second Death (First Death = death of the physical body and the process of loosening the soul from that body; Second Death occurs when the pieces of the soul complex have gone to their respective places in the Otherworld) and who continue their semi-existence by feeding off the energies of the living.

3) The dead/Ancestors – once a soul has reached the Otherworld, it is still possible for that “person” to reach out to and effect this world. If one looks at the rich lore of ancestor work in the African Traditional Religions, as an example, and Hoodoo, as another example, one sees that the dead can still be with us even after they have crossed over.

4) Elementals – classical Western magic recognizes four elements – earth, air, fire and water – and each of those elements is characterized by a magical creature – gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and undines, respectively. Encounters with these beings are usually limited to psychics and magic workers who are actively seeking them out but they are often confused with . . .

5) The Faery – simply, the faery (and I include the djinn here) are the beings that inhabited this world before human beings came along. Since the advent of the human race, they are said to have been driven underground or into the vast wildernesses and deserts of the earth. A little over a century ago, knowledge of “them ones” was common and humans went out of their way to co-exist peacefully with these beings. If you want to know more about this vast swath of races in the Otherworld, look to the myths of the worlds cultures, and look at books such as W Y Evan-Wentz’s The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries. The important thing to remember about the faery is that they are not Tinker Bell. Many possess enormous power and the Scots recognized two courts of Faery – the Seelie Court that was indifferent to humans or might actively aid them and the Unseelie Court that carried active malice to humans.

6) Daemons – I could lump the daemons in with the faery but these beings have a different feel to them in my experience so I put them in a separate category. As you can see from the name, these are the beings that became the demons of Christianity, not because they are innately evil but because they were well accepted throughout the classical realm in early Christian times. Since they did not fit into the Christian pantheon as angels, they had to be working for the other side. The interesting thing about daemons is that they are said to work closely with people – either guiding them along a beneficial path or tempting them away from virtue. If I were pushed, I would give the opinion that the daemons are an intermediate class between the faery and our next class . . .

7) Angels – Please forget everything that you have ever read about angels. 99.9% of it is BS. As with all things we fear (see the faery and Tinker Bell), angels have been disempowered in our culture to the point that we have bumper stickers about not driving faster than your guardian angel. Bah. The next time you are tempted to think in a foo foo way about angels, remember that this is the being that supposedly laid waste to all the first born of Egypt and is alleged to have slain an entire army in one night in separate Old Testament texts. Angels are extremely powerful beings who serve one purpose – they are messengers of the Most High, God, the Source of All Life or whatever you want to call it. As such, they should be treated with the extreme respect and reverence that they deserve. There is nothing wrong with calling on the aid of a favorite angel; just remember who you are talking to.

8) “Demons” – Most of the so-called “demons” are actually daemons or faery/djinn of the Unseelie variety busily working out their malice toward human kind. However, if one deals with the darker aspects of the paranormal/occult, one will eventually run up against a creature which seems to be the exact opposite of an angel. Rather than being a creature of radiant light, totally aligned to the will of “God” (however you see that), these beings seem to gather darkness around them and to delight in the destruction, on all levels, of human beings. Forget the pitch forks and pointed tails (another example of how humans seek to disempower what they fear), forget the holy water and prayers from a book, the only way to intervene in a case where a demon is seeking to destroy a person is to get a qualified exorcist involved. Even then, there are no guarantees.

So there you have it, a quick overview of the Otherworld as I know it. Many of these spirits are quite capable of producing phenomenon of one sort or the other so figuring out what you are dealing with is often most of the challenge. My hope, in writing this little piece, is that it will get the investigator or would be investigator thinking and researching so that they have a deeper understanding of the spirit world.

Book Review: The Vengeful Djinn by Guiley and Imbrogno

A while back, an interesting vision prompted me to do some research on the djinn and I noted interviews and articles on The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda of Genies by Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Philip J. Imbrogno. I decided, after looking at some of the material about the book that I wanted to read it, since it appeared that the authors were attempting a sort of unified field theory of the supernatural i.e. putting forward the thought that most, if not all, paranormal events could be explained by the presence of the djinn. I found such an idea to be erroneous but I wanted to read the book before drawing any conclusions.

The Vengeful Djinn is exactly what I feared it would be: a book that takes one particular sort of spirit and tries to push, pull and stretch that spirit type to fit all the known categories of the paranormal from UFO sightings and abductions to werewolves to hostile hauntings. The djinn can, according to these authors, even explain Bigfoot sightings and, of course, the djinn were responsible for the wave of craziness that enveloped Point Pleasant, West Virginia, surrounding the sightings of Mothman.

The authors have taken a single type of spirit, the beings of smokeless fire found in the Q’uran and other Islamic sources, and turned them into the be all and end all of the paranormal. I was particularly incensed by the authors’ presumption in assuming that the djinn were actually the spirits evoked in the Goetia. I think, before one makes that sort of assumption, as a non-practitioner of the Arts Magical, one might want to consult with someone who has actually worked the Goetia and ask them what sort of spirit they are working with. Hint: the answer is not djinn.

Do I believe that djinn exist? Most certainly. I suggest a reading of Legends of the Fire Spirits by Robert Lebling for more detailed information on these spirits. They are a recorded part of Middle Eastern folklore that goes back to the time before Mohammed. Do I think that the djinn are powerful? Absolutely, again, the folklore and the witness of magicians in the Middle East attests to the fact that these spirits pack a punch and that they can be mischievous or outright dangerous. Do I feel that the djinn are responsible for a great deal of paranormal activity in the Middle East and other areas of the world? While I am certain that these spirits do still “act out” in various ways, I am not convinced that they are as widespread as the authors would have us believe. I think that the djinn, like the faery, have an attachment to the place, people and culture that recognized them.

The djinn, in Islamic thought, seem to hold the same sort of position that the demon holds in Christian thought; the djinn is the spiritual being that is responsible for all things that cannot be explained by the presence and intervention of angels and it is sometimes difficult to tell the two types of spirit apart. It seems to me that Christians and Muslims have developed their own unified field theory of the paranormal that specifically excludes the input of outside sources; if it is not specifically of their god, then it must be evil and be the work of a demon or djinn. Such a position is in no way congruent with the complex reality of the Otherworld as viewed by magicians throughout the ages.

Open any grimoire or decent book on ceremonial magic or paganism and one of the things the reader will encounter is lists of spirits. Angels, demons, spirits of the four elements, the faerie, genii loci, the ancestors and so forth. The magician truly is a walker between the worlds and, as such, has extensive contact with beings on both sides of the veil. He or she recognizes that the world of spirits is populated by various and multudinous races and that each of these beings has a different “feel” to them, a signature by which they can be recognized. Different magicians may attach different names to these signatures but all agree that each “feel” represents a different type of entity and that these entities vary wildly in their appearance to the magically inclined and in their tolerance for human beings.

I did not come to write this article by accident. While I have done work in the faery realms, I had never encountered a djinn until several months ago when I had a hypnagogic vision of a being of fire speaking to me from a cloud of smoke – a common appearance for the djinn, as I learned while researching what this being might be. Like the faery, the djinn seem to be adverse to being maligned and my research on this creature led me to the Lebling book and then on to the subject of this review. While this article will likely not reach a wide audience (unless the djinn decide to lend a magical hand), I think that these beings of smokeless fire simply want us to recognize that the paranoia evident in The Vengeful Djinn – the djinn were removed from our world and they want it back – is just that, paranoia. While there are djinn that detest human kind, there are also plenty of other spirits out there that share that sentiment. I do not see an organized plot by the djinn or any other spirit group to take our world for themselves.

I understand that writers have to make a living and that, in order to do so, they have to find items that appeal to the public. I understand, too, that research into a particular type of being can result in a sort of tunnel vision. Humans so want there to be an “easy” explanation of the paranormal, even if the explanation scares the heck out of them. I’m sorry to say though that the things that go bump in the night are always going to elude those who are not willing to take the plunge and begin walking through the worlds and really experiencing the diversity of the Otherside.

Book Review: Psychic Shield by Caitlin Matthews

In my time in the esoteric world, I have read many books by many different authors. Some of those books I immediately consigned to the rubbish heap, others had bits and pieces that were interesting to me while yet others were gold mines of information that I found useful in my search or, at the very least, quite interesting.

Caitlin Matthews and her husband, John, wrote Walkers Between the Worlds: The Western Mysteries from Shaman to Magus (re-released under that title in 2004 – had previously been a two volume set), one of the best overview books ever written on the Western Mystery traditions, so I was excited when I found a copy of Caitlin Matthews’ book Psychic Shield: The Personal Handbook of Psychic Protection in my local library. I’ve read some of Ms. Matthews’ other work and have found her to be a calm, clear voice in a field that often seems filled with the strident raspings of the poorly informed. I find Ms. Matthews’ work particularly interesting since she does approach much of what she does from a neo-shamanic point of view.

I will start this review by saying that this is not a book for those in the midst of psychic emergencies (hostile hauntings, curses, magical attack, etc). The work in this book takes time, a lot of patience and the willingness to be truthful with oneself and come to know oneself better. The basic premise of the book is that of nurturing ones souls. Ms. Matthews, like the Norse, views the “soul” as a complex of different parts with different functions and creates a very nice working model for dealing with those different soul parts, recovering their power and even, in some cases, recovering soul parts that have been lost due to trauma. As one would expect from an author with a shamanic practice, Ms. Matthews places a lot of emphasis on meeting and developing a relationship with the “advocates”, those spiritual beings that are willing to work with humans and the various areas of their soul.

As I said, such an approach takes time and patience but, if done with care and attention, will produce a more balanced person who is less likely to be knocked off balance and who has access to techniques that will assist in re-centering and calling on the protective advocates who can help with the situation. If I were running a school of psychic self defense, I might use this book as a primer for the first six months to a year and have my students work through the material methodically in order to put them in a place where they could go on to more advanced study. By the time a student works their way through this book they should be in a place where they have a better understanding of themselves psychologically, an awareness of and ability to work with the spirit world and some basic techniques to assist in times of what Ms. Matthews calls psychic disturbance. In addition, the student should have begun developing a connection to what Ms. Matthews calls the Source of Life, the ultimate protection against anything that goes bump in the night.

That said, as I noted earlier, this is not a book for someone who is in the midst of a psychic emergency. The best thing to do in the event of such an emergency is call in professionals who can assist. Given the difficulty in finding such assistance though it seems to me that one might want to practice an ounce of prevention rather than having to seek a pound of cure. There are, as I have noted throughout this blog, elements of the Otherworld that do not care for humans. Just as one hopes that one never has to use self-defense skills in a real world scenario but still studies martial arts, so one should invest some time and effort in learning how to defend oneself in the Otherworld. Ms. Matthews book is one good place to start and I hope to present reviews of other texts that will be helpful as I go along.