Stargates among us, conspiracy and afterthought

I came across the site of Chad Stuemke, and quickly dismissed it as another fantasy-ridden moneymaker. Then I took a closer look and actually read the text..
Wait a minute.. This guy is not trying to sell the idea that our Cities are riddled with Portals to everywhere, and all you need to open them is to buy his book or DVD. Instead, he makes it perfectly clear that he is investigating Symbolism appearing in cities, and argues that it seems too complicated to be coincidence.

Now, that struck a chord and brought back memories, of a time when a certain person claimed that our city, Athens, Greece,  was full of Mystery Places, Portals, Loci as was the term (plural to Locus). There was evidence of that (if evidence can be had on a purely subjective basis), and some of that evidence was witnessed by me. A marking here, an unusual lighting there, a building that looked, well, weird. You get the picture. It is all very subtle, and, admittedly, not conclusive, but it added a certain degree of magic to an otherwise drab city, not to mention my way of thinking.

Two schools of thought can account for all that.
The first is that cities naturally grow around and encompass Places of Power, changing their appearance but not their essence. Not cities themselves, but the people building them. An architect who added a little detail to a certain corner of a building, not sure why but he liked the way it looked. A homeowner who arranges his garden around a block of stone that’s been there for who knows how long. A public works planner who likes the way a certain street lamp looks on a certain road, and deviates from the standard, as if marking the place for those who know what to see..

The second and slightly more disturbing is that THERE IS ACTUAL THOUGHT behind every norm-altering detail. That the Sacred Geometry of our cities is dictated by Those Who Rule The World In Secret, slowly nudging it towards the (right?) direction.
The Illuminati? The Sufis? The Masters of Shamballa?
I don’t know but it generates a warm feeling (dread?) to think that there is someone wise enough out there to plan all our fates, without us ever noticing. And if they left clues, can we see them?
Walter Rathenau comes to mind:

Walter Rathenau, writing in the Wiener Press (24 December, 1921) said, “Only 300 men, each of whom knows all others govern the fate of Europe. They select their successors from their own entourage. These men have the means in their hands of putting an end to the form of State which they find unreasonable.” Exactly six months after publication, Rathenau was assassinated.

I had read that Rathenau, at the day he was assassinated, claimed that those who rule the world are 72. Then I saw this image of the mural on Freedom’s Gate in the U.S. Capitol.

George Washington, the first President of the US surrounded by 72 stars… And then I am reminded of his uncanny resemblance to Adam Weisshaupt, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati..

The bottom line of this article is: Watch your surroundings and don’t let your brain file everything away as normal. It could lead to eventual madness, I admit, but to some interesting discoveries as well. You could start noticing things very few people notice.

Have you ever been on a street at night, where the light looked like it had a bluish purple tint, although it came from totally ordinary street lamps?
And did you walk to the end of the road?

Geoff Ryman's AIR and our Parallel Universe Within

"In the future, everyone will be able to talk with their dead."  AIR

I just finished reading Geoff Ryman's Air, and I could not resist this post, not so much as a review, but as some afterthought on ideas expressed that, well.. are great. Thought- provoking, gentle, clever, different. This book is great.
It takes place in a remote village in China (?), in a not so remote future, exploring the complex rural dynamics after the coming of Air. So what is Air?
In that future, scientists have discovered that the extra dimensions co-existing with our own 3, can be accessed by the human brain after some minor over-the-air modification. That in turn creates the Ultimate Internet, a technological gestalt of sorts, where people use their minds to navigate through the accumulated knowledge of humanity (albeit not always free), communicate instantly and leap through in evolution.
Don't get the wrong idea here: this is not hardcore sci-fi stuff. We learn all that by following the simple life of a peasant trying to make something of herself. We see the change through her eyes and experience her loss and heartbreak when all goes wrong, her joy when good things happen. If anything, this novel is human above all, showing us that what makes us human can only become more prominent with technology. Sounds like a contradiction, but you have to read it to see for yourselves.
Air is like the Dreaming of the Aborigines mentioned before, like the place in our heads where childhood memories and dreams reside. Air is the Past, the Present and the Future all rolled into one.
Geoff Ryman reminded me that what can be dreamt, can never be forgotten. That forgetting is dying. That all that is good in us is not lost but coexists with everything else, even the bad.
That we learn through all eternity in our dreams. 
Thank you Mr Ryman for reminding us. We need that from time to time.

Reaching Level 1 – Game Over … Oops

In a surprisingly clear-headed lecture on Ted, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp takes on aliens, space travel and the advancement of humanity. He dissolves almost all science fiction principles and ideas into clear, concise thought and razor-sharp conclusions. Scientific propositions guide us to levels of civilization, energy, space, the Singularity and beyond, and then, BITCH-SLAP IN THE FACE!
This is so cool. I am jealous in more ways than one.

Dreaming of Things Lost

The Aboriginals of Australia have an oral history of a timeless time, called the Dreaming. In it and through it, they describe the times when gods walked, lived, bred and interacted with the Earth, a time of creation and wonder. Shape-shifting, timeless gods, not dead now but forever present, sleeping as forces in the lands they once inhabited.
Translated from a term that cannot be translated, the Dreaming just got a weird new twist. Following a Dreaming story, Duane Hamacher, a PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Sydney, discovered that the ancient tale regarding a cosmic impact is indeed true, as he searched Google Earth and found evidence of a crater. The expedition that followed verified that it indeed was a crater.

And it was not the only one. The team found many more, as they began examining the Dreaming tales related to cosmic events and objects falling to Earth.
All nice and good for science, but for a little glitch: Most of the craters where millions of years old, when no man was present to witness. What’s more, the craters are not easily discernible by eye, and it took satellite photos and mineral analysis to prove that they are indeed meteor impacts. 
We could start proposing theories and ideas on how these people came to know about things that far in the past.
But then, how do you describe a dream? How do you describe a parallel reality, occupied by gods, who co-exist in our own in select spots, but everywhere as well?
Like I said, how do you describe a Dream?
Most of it is weird, indescribable, alien. Only through feelings, as primitive as ritual dance, painting, songs, barbaric words and incantations. Only through dreaming terms can you approach it, but then again, most of it is lost.
An Aboriginal man told anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner  “White man got no Dreaming”, and, although it seems true in most cases, I reserve the right to differ. I think the Dreaming is in all of us, saturating the Earth. Few can feel it, and even fewer can handle it.
Like a force, a feeling,  a memory lost which you never had anyway, lingering in the edge of consciousness.
You may not remember, but you will never, ever forget.

Source
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