Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Alan Moore on Magic: Crappy Science

One of Eddington's photographs of the total so...

Image via Wikipedia

 

I came across this great article by Alan Moore, modern-day philosopher and thinker, and I just had to share.
Written for a magazine that died, in it Moore tackles the treacherous topic of magic, in a way that most have not. I will come back to that topic, since I happen to think that magic is just another facet of the Mystery of Life. The connections are there. They just have to be seen and declared out loud.

The article is long and dense, and comes in two parts. Here is some good stuff:

“…This would seem to be the crux: magic, if it is a science, clearly isn’t a particularly well-developed one. Where, for example, are the magical equivalents of Einstein’s General or even Special theories of Relativity, let alone that of Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation? Come to that, where are our analogues for laws of gravity, thermodynamics and the rest? Eratosthenes once measured the circumference of the Earth using geometry and shadows. When did we last manage anything as useful or as neat as that? Has there been anything even resembling a general theory since the Emerald Tablet? Once again, perhaps magic’s preoccupation with cause and effect has played a part in this. Our axioms seem mostly on the level of “if we do A then B will happen”. If we say these words or call these names then certain visions will appear to us. As to how they do so, well, who cares? As long as we get a result, the thinking seems to run, why does it matter how this outcome was obtained? If we bang these two flints together for a while they’ll make a spark and set all that dry grass on fire. And have you ever noticed how if you make sure to sacrifice a pig during eclipses, then the sun always returns? Magic is, at best, Paleolithic science. It really had best put aside that Nobel Prize acceptance speech until it’s shaved its forehead.

…Science cannot even properly discuss the personal, so the transpersonal has no chance. These are matters of the inner world, and science cannot go there. This is why it wisely leaves the exploration of mankind’s interior to a sophisticated tool that is specifically developed for that usage, namely art.
If magic were regarded as an art it would have culturally valid access to the infrascape, the endless immaterial territories that are ignored by and invisible to Science, that are to scientific reason inaccessible, and thus comprise magic’s most natural terrain. Turning its efforts to creative exploration of humanity’s interior space might also be of massive human use, might possibly restore to magic all the relevance and purpose, the demonstrable utility that it has lacked so woefully, and for so long. Seen as an art, the field could still produce the reams of speculative theory that it is so fond of (after all, philosophy and rhetoric may be as easily considered arts as sciences), just so long as it were written beautifully or interestingly. While, for example, The Book of the Law may be debatable in value when considered purely as prophetic text describing actual occurrences or states of mind to come, it cannot be denied that it’s a shit-hot piece of writing, which deserves to be revered as such. “

Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, October 21, 2010

John Keel tribute blog

image

 

I came across this great blog dedicated to John Keel, maintained by his longtime friend Doug Skinner.

A wealth of material on and by Keel, not necessarily connected to UFOs, but including, lectures, poems and drawings!

I especially l like the header text: NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING..
I wish more where as humble..

 

Sunday, October 17, 2010

The One True Alien Crash Site

ufocrashed

I may seem to be obsessed with Roswell these days, but that is not the case. It’s just that suddenly the Roswell Saga has received a new breath of life from.. somewhere. New evidence, eye witness accounts, artifact photography and more are coming out of the Net’s woodwork.. Now that is a good subject for some research.. Where is all this coming from? Is it a fluke or.. something else entirely?
Never mind. These days it seems I am content to ask questions more than to answer them.
This piece is written by Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press and is an interesting account of a field trip he took to the Roswell Crash Site, as described to an unknown “Ed” by the cameraman of the infamous 1995 Ray Santilli Alien Autopsy Film.. (oh come on, everyone has seen it!)
The last paragraph caught my eye, and so here it is:
“…Ed has taken only one or two UFO researchers to this site, as he rarely gets time these days to make the visit to New Mexico. That's quite a shame, really, considering that in the half-perceived, half-created world of UFOlogy, this canyon definitely falls into the half that actually can be perceived, and perhaps researched into some surprising realms of parapolitical history.”
Half perceived-half created… This is not existential babble, but isn’t that a rather accurate description of Life?
I will come back to that soon. I will I tell you..

Original Story Here

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Roswell snippets: Posthumous Revelations

image

 

Anthony Bragalia shares third-party, hearsay knowledge about the Roswell Crash, allegedly reported by Navy Commander George W. Hoover, one of Werner Von Braun’s friends and coworkers.
Although the Officer failed to reveal any useful information to his son, he allegedly made several revelations to researcher William J. Birnes PhD.
He also “left his testament for history with an associate of the History Channel” , whatever that means..

His conversations with Birnes boil down to the following:

 

· UFOs are not the "biggest secret" - it is the entities behind them that was of most concern
· Roswell was in fact a crash event of "visitors from somewhere else"
· The entities were "not so much interplanetary as much as they were literally also time travelers." They are extra-temporal.
· The visitors are clearly "from the future." There is reason to believe that they may even be "us" from a future Earth.· These "future humans" have the ability to "manipulate reality around us."
· The government feared the intentions and abilities of the "visitors"
· These visitors are able to use the power of consciousness in extraordinary ways to morph reality
· We human beings are far more powerful in potential than we ever dreamed that we are. We don't yet comprehend our extraordinary future capabilities.
· The visitors remain at essence though "corporeal" and "physical" - and secret attempts at reverse-engineering the visitor's crash material were made
· Incredibly, Hoover admitted that he himself was engaged in such technology transfer as a Naval Intelligence Officer with Top Secret clearances

Now, this stuff is great. It features some of my personal ideas and conclusions, and it is exactly what I wanted to hear…
Now that didn’t sound too good. Nor should it.

If we take into account that the careful leaks from the Intelligence Community (?) have adapted over the years from flying saucers and little green men to “extra-temporal” beings, I get the distinct sense that we are being manipulated once again.
Maybe “prepared” for something? The Disclosure is coming?

I really wish it is coming, because I am getting tired of all the revelations out there, coming in bite-sized snippets.

I am now ready for One Big Truth. (whatever that may be)

Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, October 8, 2010

Orbs and the invisible Thread

Closeup of image below - altered

My previous post on Orbs generated a lot of response from readers, although it was inconclusive and rather a “what if” piece.
Clearly there is a lot of interest in this subject even though proof or conclusions are not anywhere to be seen.

What prompted me to do a follow-up was the experiences of one of the readers who commented on the original piece.
The first thing that intrigued me was that she claimed she could see Orbs with the naked eye:

“I see orbs all the time , I didn't realize it was so rare to see them…. A particular night a couple of weeks ago it was one of those very still eerie nights and I kept catching them in the sky as I stood in my garden. So I got my camera and started snapping and sure enough the photo's confirmed what I saw.”

In the correspondence that ensued she sent me lots of photos and experiences, which made me rethink the whole matter.

On the first photo is a close-up, level-enhanced orb. It displays the typical characteristics of an optical orb: Purple Fringing and the Cat’s Eye Effect. The logical explanation is the obvious one: Dust particles caught in the flash of the camera, close to the lens. The original photo below displays more Orbs, all consistent with the explanation…

image And a couple more:

imageimage imageNotice the Jellyfish on the last photo to the right. Is that great or what? Any way..

What got me thinking was another thing she said:

“The ones you see in the night sky with no people , well that was the night I said I could feel the air was full of something , and although I didn't see all the ones the camera revealed I saw a fair few of them. Which is why I ran back in to get my camera.
I have always seen them , I never really thought anything of it . I also have the electric thing going on (you might have to Google street light going out or something) lights go out when I pass then come back on ..its mad ha ha and that has been going on all my life as well. I am not good around certain electric appliances and cannot press the buttons on a lift/elevator.”

Now this could be a coincidence, but I know the feeling. Yep, street lights go off (or on) regularly when I pass them, elevators activate before I touch the button and sometimes I recall seeing flicks of light (orbs?) and I have been studying the Paranormal nearly all my life and, for the life of me, I never gave any of it a second thought.
Strange? Not so much. As a “serious” student of the Unknown, you somehow condition yourself to take into account only the Hard Evidence that comes your way, however scarce, and dismiss everything else with the hardest Skeptic way possible.  Would this tiny thing hold in a publication or would it seem ridiculous? Well, maybe it is time to rethink that strategy..

The Paranormal is not a Science. We should start from there. It has it’s own set of rules, ones you discover along the way and which may not work for another person, and that is the main difference from science: The same experiment cannot be replicated with the same variables applying. But, there is one problem : WE DON’T HAVE ALL THE VARIABLES! As simple as that.

I am talking about the Invisible Thread connecting the Viewer with the Phenomenon, and Schrödinger's famous theory . It may be a part of Quantum Physics, but it is hardly taken into account by other disciplines of science, and quantum physicists are after all just a bunch of drunks, right?
We feel something is in the air, something electrifying, and then something occurs, an orb, a UFO, a creature that should not exist. Maybe we snap a picture or two. What happens next is typical and lead nowhere: The investigator dissects the phenomenon into it’s components. The feeling, the photo, the viewer’s experience is all examined separately, and examined for their validity as entities.
I think this is getting us nowhere.
I have come to see that the phenomenon should be examined as an experience, as a whole, not leaving the slightest detail out, no matter how subjective. If the hidden variables start with the Invisible Thread, the Viewer himself, then we may really have a chance of setting a unique set of rules for the Unknown and, ultimately, acquiring an understanding.

It would be a shame if a tiny thing like an orb was meant to convey a message, or mean something, or mark a spot, and we dismiss it simply because it is small and insubstantial, and we are on the lookout for huge flying craft and burn marks on the ground.

In the midst of science and rationality, I must constantly remind myself: Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence..

Thanks fudgy for the photos and experiences shared!

Enhanced by Zemanta