Dear Friends,
Stay Tuned… There will be another entry today of some note…
We lost everything on site yesterday, and had to have a restore done from the previous morning, losing an entry, which I partially recovered by memory. Sorry about the links, gone, gone, gone… I have to institute another back-up for the web-log, which might happen this week. I found out there are some 500 plus entries, of considerable size, lots of writing that hasn’t been archived.
The technology is fragile when you look at it.
Today we revisit Robert Anton Wilson again (I miss him!) and we take our hat of to some of the Indian Pantheon as well. We visit again wiht Seamus Heaney… and move along down the road.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
_________
On The Menu:
The Links
Morgans’ Take on the Cock-Up on Earthrites Yesterday…
God behind the Gods
Bugs Bunny And Other UFO Victims -Reality isn’t always consensual
Poems for Mid February: Seamus Heaney
Art: Indian Portrayals of Brahman
_____________
The Links
Pagans push peace, not politics
The danger of a ‘chosen’ nation
Burial mound plans sounds alarm
Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
___________
Morgans’ take on yesterday on Earthrites…. 8o)
___________
God behind the Gods
The gods and the demons had been having a war. Somehow the gods won, at least for the time being. But they did not realize that the power of Brahman, the Supreme Being, had made their victory possible. The gods took the credit themselves. When Brahman saw them congratulating each other, he decided to act, and to teach them a good lesson.
So he appeared before them in a form something like a ghost. The gods said to each other in great wonder, “What is this awesome spirit?”
Then they asked Agni, the god of fire, if he would try to find out who it was, and he agreed. He ran toward the spirit and that spirit said, “Stop! Who are you?”
“I am Agni, the god of fire,” he proudly replied.
“I see. And what power do you have?” asked Brahman.
“Why, I can burn anything on the earth,” said Agni.
So Brahman, in that spirit form, put a straw on the ground in front of him, saying, “is that so? Burn this, then!” Agni went toward it, his fiery breath crackling and arms ablaze, but in no way could he burn that straw, for some strange reason, no matter how hard he tried. Going back to the other gods, he told them shamefully that he had not been able to find out who that being was. Now they had to ask someone else to try.
This time they chose Vayu, the god of the wind. “You please try to find out who this spirit is,” they said. Vayu agreed and ran boldly toward the spirit, who told him, “Stop! Tell me who you are.”
“I am Vayu, god of air and wind,” he answered.
“Oh! What power do you have?” asked Brahman.
“Why, I make hurricanes and cyclones. I can lift up anything on this earth,” said Vayu.
“Is that so?” said the spirit, placing a straw in front of him. “Then lift up this!” Vayu rushed at it with a terrific noise but no matter how he huffed and puffed, the straw remained on the ground. He too returned to the gods, ashamed, and let them know that the spirit baffled him.
Finally the gods chose Indra, their highest and best, and asked him to do the job. Indra agreed to it. But when he approached that spirit, it suddenly disappeared! In its place was seen the shining form of the goddess Uma, a lovely woman adorned with gems, who is called the revealer of Truth. “Who is that spirit,” Indra asked her, “whom we have been seeing here?”
“That is Brahman, the Supreme Spirit,” she answered. “It is all due to the power of Brahman that you have had victory over the demons, and have become great. Don’t you know that?”
Then Indra understood.
This story explains why Agni, Vayu and Indra rank higher than the other gods. They came “nearest” to Brahman. And, of these, Indra deserves first place, for it was to him that the Truth was first revealed. That Truth is Brahman, the desire of every heart. Meditate on him, the sages say, for those who know him are rare and very precious to the world.
Kenopanishad
________
Bugs Bunny And Other UFO Victims -Reality isn’t always consensual
by Robert Anton Wilson
Although few people remember this, Bugs Bunny was the first UFO “abductee” in a 1952 cartoon called “Hasty Hare.”
The next case did not occur until nine years later, in 1961, when Betty and Barney Hill famously encountered the “greys” from Zeta Reticuli, who molested them sexually and otherwise, and were also wearing Nazi uniforms. At least, Barney Hill remembered the malign midgets as garbed in Nazi regalia; Betty, for some reason, never did recall that poignantly puzzling detail
Now, many millions have allegedly suffered the same sort of “extraterrestrial” sexual abuse, according to Abductees Anonymous, a support group for survivors. Budd Hopkins has become rock star famous for helping people “remember” such experiences. And this is not just another New Age fad. Dr. John Mack, a distinguished scientist on the staff of the psychiatry department at Harvard University, has written two books on the subject. And Harvard, which once gave Dr. Timothy Leary the bum’s rush for having weird ideas, allows Dr. Mack to remain on their staff, with all the prestige that bestows upon this eldritch and Lovecraftian topic.
I’ve met Dr. Mack, and he seems like a sane and sensible man. He frankly admits that he’s not quite sure what kind of “reality” these experiences occur in, except that it sure ain’t consensus reality. It’s something more like the non-ordinary reality of Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan books, or of the mystics of all traditions — or of Leary and his merry band of acid astronauts.
Peculiarly, both law enforcement and mainstream science seem to have no interest in this matter at all.
I find that startling. Imagine what would happen if “many millions” of U.S. citizens said they had been sexually assaulted by aliens from Mexico or Iraq, instead of aliens from Outer Space. Obviously, there would be no scientific taboo against investigating such cases, and Congress might even have declared war on the invaders by now. If the subjects claimed, as most of Dr. Mack’s subjects do, that they now love their kidnappers and have received important ecological warnings from them, as well as learning from their extraterrestrial sermons about how wicked and wretched our society is, this would be considered evidence that they had been “brainwashed” as well as raped (think Stockholm Syndrome). The differences in scientific and political reactions to atrocities by human aliens and nonhuman aliens seem even more confusing than the rest of this mystery.
Bill Cooper, who claims to be a former Naval Intelligence officer, alleges that he saw papers revealing a treaty between our government and the “greys,” who are providing our military with advanced technology. The little bastards have broken the treaty, Cooper says, not only by meddling sexually and/or genetically with our citizens, but also by mutilating a lot of cattle. But our government can’t stop them because of their superior weapons. The Outer Space monsters were also behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he says.
Dr. Mack, on the other hand, isn’t sure about the literalness of alien abductions. In his second book, Passport to the Cosmos (Crown) he no longer calls his subjects “abductees,” but “experiencers,” although he remains convinced that they experienced something and that the experience is real in some sense.
Consider, in this context, the investigations of Dr. Corey Hammond of the University of Utah, former president of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. Dr. Hammond has had a lot of clients who, under hypnosis, remember hideous incidents of Satanic rituals, infant sacrifice, sadomasochism, coprophilia and assorted horrors. Dr. Hammond believes that these cases, and the data he has unearthed on Satanic cults in general, prove that three distinct groups are working together — Nazis, the CIA, and NASA — who have been secretly and brutally programming American children for over 50 years to make them part of “a Satanic order that will rule the world.”
Can we believe both Dr. Mack and Dr. Hammond at the same time, and accept that while extraterrestrials or even weirder nonhumans have been raping people and teaching ecology, another conspiracy is simultaneously torturing and reeducating children to make them Slaves of Satan? Or might we more economically assume that a lot of people have had a lot of non-ordinary experiences — psychedelic trips without drugs — and we all tend to interpret these according to our own hopes and fears?
Consider the model offered by Dr. Jacques Vallee, who has been investigating UFOs for more than 30 years. Dr. Vallee has suggested as one possible explanation a vast experiment in mind control and behavior modification by some Intelligence Agency (he doesn’t try to guess which one). Could both Dr. Mack’s cases and Dr. Hammond’s cases represent persons who fell victim to this and retain only shattered and distorted memories of their ordeal? Considering what has already leaked about the CIA’s MK-ULTRA research, this hypothesis does not seem altogether extravagant.
Bill Cooper, the guy who says the greys were behind the JFK hit, has also considered a variation on Vallee’s theory. He himself, Cooper says, may have been deceived by his superiors in Naval Intelligence. But in that case, he points out, the government (I no longer feel safe in calling it “our government”) must be using the “grey mythology” as a cover-up to hide something else — something even worse than selling us out to rapists from Reticuli.
Frankly, I cannot accept either the blind faith of the True Believers or the dogmatic denials of the Establishment. Like Dr. Mack, I think the whole topic needs less sensationalism and more open-minded research.
After all, the next person engulfed by this non-ordinary reality might be you or me.
Robert Anton Wilson is the author of 32 books, including Everything Is Under Control, an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, and maintains the Web’s strangest site @ www.rawilson.com. He also serves as CEO of CSICON (the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal).
______________
__________
Poems for Mid February: Seamus Heaney
Sweeney’s Last Poem
There was a time when I preferred
the turtle-dove’s soft jublilation
as it flitted round a pool
to the murmur of conversation.
There was a time when I preferred
the blackbird singing on a hill
and the stag loud against the storm
to the clinking tongue of this bell.
There was a time when I preferred
the mountain grouse crying at dawn
to the voice and closeness
of a beautiful woman.
There was a time when I preferred
wolf-packs yelping and howling
to the sheepish voice of a cleric
bleating out plainsong.
You are welcome to pledge healths
and carouse in your drinking dens;
I will dip and steal water
from a well with my open palm.
You are welcome to that cloistered hush
of your students’ conversation;
I will study the pure chant
of hounds baying in Glen Bolcain.
You are welcome to your salt meat
and fresh meat in feasting-houses;
I will live content elsewhere
on tufts of green watercress.
The herd’s sharp spear wounded me
and passed clean through my body.
Ah Christ, who disposed all things, why
was I not killed at Moira?
Of all the innocent lairs I made
the length and breadth of Ireland
I remember an open bed
above the lough in Mourne.
Of all the innocent lairs I made
the length and breadth of Ireland
I remember bedding down
above the wood in Glen Bolcain.
To you, Christ, I give thanks
for your Body in communion
Whatever evil I have done
in this world, I repent.
Then Sweeney’s death-swoon came over him and Moling,
attended by his clerics, rose up and each of them placed a
stone on Sweeney’s grave.
—
Brigids Girdle
Last time I wrote I wrote from a rustic table
Under magnolias in South Carolina
As blossoms fell on me, and a white gable
As clean-lined as the prow of a white liner
Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard.
I was glad of the early heat and the first quiet
Id had for weeks. I heard the mocking bird
And a delicious, articulate
Flight of small feminine plinkings from a dulcimer
Like feminine rhymes migrating to the north
Where you faced the music and the ache of summer
And earths foreknowledge gathered in the earth.
Now its Saint Brigids Day and the first snowdrop
In County Wicklow, and this a Brigids Girdle
Im plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop
(Like one of those old crinolines theyd trindle),
Twisted straw thats lifted in a circle
To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring
As strange and lightsome and traditional
As the motions you go through going through the thing.
—
Remembering Malibu
(for Brian Moore)
The Pacific at your door was wider and colder
than my notion of the Pacific
and that was perfect, for I would have rotted
beside the luke-warm ocean I imagined.
Yet no way was its cold ascetic
as our monk-fished, snowed-into Atlantic;
no beehived hut for you
on the abstract sands of Malibu –
it was early Mondrian and his dunes
misting toward the ideal forms
though the wind and sea neighed loud
as wind and sea noise amplified.
I was there in the flesh
where I’d imagined I might be
and underwent the bluster of the day:
but why would it not come home to me?
Atlantic storms have flensed the cells
on the the Great Skellig, the steps cut in the rock
I never climbed
between the graveyard and the boatslip
are welted solid to my instep.
But to rear and kick and cast that shoe –
beside that other western sea
far from the Skelligs, and far, far
from the suck of puddled, wintry ground,
our footsteps filled with blowing sand.
_______
