I post a lot of links on my blog. I also save a lot of links with the intention of posting them and commenting on the stories in more depth. Sometimes I just don't get around to it though, life being what it is. So what I'm going to do is post a list of some of the links I've had stored away so that other seekers of the strange can enjoy them if they haven't seen them already.
What if E.T. thinks we're evil?
The aliens have landed: Amazing footage shows 'little green men walking about after UFO touchdown'... but why does it always happen in Siberia?
Fantastic Flying Folk!
"Creature" filmed in Brazilian rainforest
The real-life Blob: Is mysterious translucent jelly found in Cumbrian Fells from outer space?
Sally Morgan challenged to prove her psychic powers on Halloween
Hopefully you enjoy these stories I've been collecting for a few weeks. I'm really interested to see if anything comes from the Sally Morgan test. Happy Halloween!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
The Book of Aquarius
I'm going to keep it short and sweet this week. I found this book online a few weeks ago and have been going through it in some of my spare time. I'm not quite finished reading it yet but I wanted to go on and pass it along.
The Book of Aquarius is an alchemical manual claiming to reveal the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone. A lofty claim but I suspended my disbelief and prejudice long enough to start reading it. It should be enjoyable to anyone interested in alchemy. Be sure to let me know if you succeed at the process the author gives. I may end up doing a deeper breakdown of the material once I finish the whole thing.
The Book of Aquarius is an alchemical manual claiming to reveal the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone. A lofty claim but I suspended my disbelief and prejudice long enough to start reading it. It should be enjoyable to anyone interested in alchemy. Be sure to let me know if you succeed at the process the author gives. I may end up doing a deeper breakdown of the material once I finish the whole thing.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Are spirits real?
Spirits are a staple of mysticism and magic all over the world but our modern society tends to regard spirits as fantasy and delusion. This view of spirits and the spirit world tends to come down to the assumption that they just aren't "real." Of course when we say "real" here we mean it in the materialist sense of physical existence, strings and pulleys, visible causation.
What about the mind though? It should come as no surprise to any mystic or magician that the mind is the fundamental tool of the occult arts. The mind is also how we perceive and interpret our world. I think most people would agree that the mind is very real even though it's rather hard to quantify in the materialist sense. Does something happening in the mind or being perceived solely through the mind make it any less real? The mind has a level of "real" all its own.
Most spirit communication relies on an altered state of consciousness or a level of trance in order for it to take place. These very altered states that make working with spirits possible are the same things that make spirit communication seem so improbable to most people. We've been conditioned to believe that our minds are fallible, cannot be trusted, and are prone to leading us astray. All of this may be true to a point but it cannot be absolutely true as we experience everything through our minds and most of us have come to a consensus about things that are true and real despite being perceived through the mind. The fallibility of perception and the mind is an easy way to explain away things we don't want to exist or are difficult to accept while still relying on our perceptions to understand the more desirable parts of our reality or the things that just can't be ignored.
So do spirits need to have an objective material presence to be considered real? I would say not considering that the very label of "spirit" has connotations of an incorporeal existence in the first place. We've just been conditioned to accept anything not solid, material, and objectively verifiable as being false. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, this skepticism toward unverifiable claims or experiences. However, belief in objectively unverifiable phenomena or the belief that phenomena that happen solely in the mind are still real are not threats like they seem to be perceived in some arguments and debates.
In my opinion, just interacting with an entity or intelligence that could be considered a spirit, whether it exists outside of the mind or is just an expression of the mind, makes the spirit real. Charging a spirit with a task and then reaping the desired outcome makes the spirit real. Whether the outcome was coincidence makes no difference from a pragmatic perspective. This isn't going to satisfy staunch materialists but those are the types that usually aren't going to delve into this area of study in the first place.
Believing in a spirit world or in the existence of spirits does not undermine empirical evidence or scientific achievement. The very unverifiable nature of spiritual phenomenon, how illogical it seems to be, means that science and those that tout it as a superior epistemology shouldn't be all that concerned with it anyway. Whether it's "real" or not doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. People will continue to have experiences with spirits, work with spirits, and espouse the existence of a spiritual world whether the materialists like it or not. Hopefully this musing has given you something to think about.
I think it should also be noted that it's been one year to the day since I started this blog. Thank you to everyone that stops by to read my posts. It's the readers that have kept me going with this project whenever I'd thought I'd run out of things to say or when I wondered if it mattered at all. My only hope is that whatever I have to say gets others thinking about these subjects and maybe inspires them to take the information further.
What about the mind though? It should come as no surprise to any mystic or magician that the mind is the fundamental tool of the occult arts. The mind is also how we perceive and interpret our world. I think most people would agree that the mind is very real even though it's rather hard to quantify in the materialist sense. Does something happening in the mind or being perceived solely through the mind make it any less real? The mind has a level of "real" all its own.
Most spirit communication relies on an altered state of consciousness or a level of trance in order for it to take place. These very altered states that make working with spirits possible are the same things that make spirit communication seem so improbable to most people. We've been conditioned to believe that our minds are fallible, cannot be trusted, and are prone to leading us astray. All of this may be true to a point but it cannot be absolutely true as we experience everything through our minds and most of us have come to a consensus about things that are true and real despite being perceived through the mind. The fallibility of perception and the mind is an easy way to explain away things we don't want to exist or are difficult to accept while still relying on our perceptions to understand the more desirable parts of our reality or the things that just can't be ignored.
So do spirits need to have an objective material presence to be considered real? I would say not considering that the very label of "spirit" has connotations of an incorporeal existence in the first place. We've just been conditioned to accept anything not solid, material, and objectively verifiable as being false. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, this skepticism toward unverifiable claims or experiences. However, belief in objectively unverifiable phenomena or the belief that phenomena that happen solely in the mind are still real are not threats like they seem to be perceived in some arguments and debates.
In my opinion, just interacting with an entity or intelligence that could be considered a spirit, whether it exists outside of the mind or is just an expression of the mind, makes the spirit real. Charging a spirit with a task and then reaping the desired outcome makes the spirit real. Whether the outcome was coincidence makes no difference from a pragmatic perspective. This isn't going to satisfy staunch materialists but those are the types that usually aren't going to delve into this area of study in the first place.
Believing in a spirit world or in the existence of spirits does not undermine empirical evidence or scientific achievement. The very unverifiable nature of spiritual phenomenon, how illogical it seems to be, means that science and those that tout it as a superior epistemology shouldn't be all that concerned with it anyway. Whether it's "real" or not doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. People will continue to have experiences with spirits, work with spirits, and espouse the existence of a spiritual world whether the materialists like it or not. Hopefully this musing has given you something to think about.
I think it should also be noted that it's been one year to the day since I started this blog. Thank you to everyone that stops by to read my posts. It's the readers that have kept me going with this project whenever I'd thought I'd run out of things to say or when I wondered if it mattered at all. My only hope is that whatever I have to say gets others thinking about these subjects and maybe inspires them to take the information further.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
UFO Alert in Missouri
The strange, glowing object that put Missouri on "UFO alert" this week
I'm not really much of a fan of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an explanation for UFOs these days so I'm just going to get that out of the way before I continue. My impression of this is that it's some kind of secret aircraft being tested. Why populated highways would be chosen to test it I'm not really sure.
Thinking back on previous UFO tales I'm curious whether there were any radiation readings taken after these encounters. I wonder whether there were any radiation burns on the witnesses or any strange markings on the vehicles. I'm also curious if there are any military bases nearby that could support the secret test flight hypothesis. Maybe if this "UFO alert" continues we'll get some more interesting stories and pictures to scrutinize.
It may be pessimistic to say but I'm not confident that we'll ever really know what's going on with this case, much like most other UFO cases.
I'm not really much of a fan of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an explanation for UFOs these days so I'm just going to get that out of the way before I continue. My impression of this is that it's some kind of secret aircraft being tested. Why populated highways would be chosen to test it I'm not really sure.
Thinking back on previous UFO tales I'm curious whether there were any radiation readings taken after these encounters. I wonder whether there were any radiation burns on the witnesses or any strange markings on the vehicles. I'm also curious if there are any military bases nearby that could support the secret test flight hypothesis. Maybe if this "UFO alert" continues we'll get some more interesting stories and pictures to scrutinize.
It may be pessimistic to say but I'm not confident that we'll ever really know what's going on with this case, much like most other UFO cases.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Spontaneous Human Combustion in Ireland and Wi-Fi Refugees
Spontaneous human combustion is one of those things that never seems to go away no matter how many "rational" explanations you throw at it. There are a lot of different theories as to what causes the phenomenon but no one seems to be able to explain it beyond a doubt. I bring up spontaneous human combustion because the first case documented in Ireland has apparently occurred.
'First Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion
In other weird bodily phenomena we have those that claim extreme sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation. This seems quite similar to the phenomenon of electric or magnetic people to me except that instead of manipulating electrical devices or having objects stick to them these people become ill in the presence of electromagnetic radiation. Some have even gone so far as to seek refuge from EM radiation in the "Quiet Zone" that surrounds a major radio telescope.
'Wi-fi refugees' shelter in West Virginia mountains
I find both spontaneous human combustion and sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation to be interesting facets of the human condition. It suggests to me that we are more susceptible to the sea of energy around us and perhaps have something of a literal inner fire inside of us. We are biological beings but it would be ignorant to say that we are not also electromagnetic creatures. Our brains and nervous systems operate with electrical signals, we can look into our own behavior using machines that record our electromagnetic impulses, and our free will can apparently be usurped by moving a magnetic field over certain areas of our brains.
I think that there is some correlation between electromagnetism and the spiritual energy that so many mystics talk about. Perhaps they are just two different interpretations of the same thing? Maybe this plays into spontaneous human combustion somehow? There is a theory that SHC is caused by an uncontrolled awakening of the Kundalini energy within an individual. Hopefully this will give you something to chew on until my next post.
'First Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion
In other weird bodily phenomena we have those that claim extreme sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation. This seems quite similar to the phenomenon of electric or magnetic people to me except that instead of manipulating electrical devices or having objects stick to them these people become ill in the presence of electromagnetic radiation. Some have even gone so far as to seek refuge from EM radiation in the "Quiet Zone" that surrounds a major radio telescope.
'Wi-fi refugees' shelter in West Virginia mountains
I find both spontaneous human combustion and sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation to be interesting facets of the human condition. It suggests to me that we are more susceptible to the sea of energy around us and perhaps have something of a literal inner fire inside of us. We are biological beings but it would be ignorant to say that we are not also electromagnetic creatures. Our brains and nervous systems operate with electrical signals, we can look into our own behavior using machines that record our electromagnetic impulses, and our free will can apparently be usurped by moving a magnetic field over certain areas of our brains.
I think that there is some correlation between electromagnetism and the spiritual energy that so many mystics talk about. Perhaps they are just two different interpretations of the same thing? Maybe this plays into spontaneous human combustion somehow? There is a theory that SHC is caused by an uncontrolled awakening of the Kundalini energy within an individual. Hopefully this will give you something to chew on until my next post.
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