My husband painted this last year. He's titled it "Orange Orb." After all these decades, orange sphere in the sky still scuds along in our subconscious.
'Orange Orb,' acrylic on canvas, 24" by 30", James Rich 2022.
I've been making spell jars and very much enjoying them. I have them up on Etsy and eBay.
Mother Mary talisman/spell jar.
Ocean Goddess spell jar.
Sweet Dreams witch ball
Yule Prosperity Protection witch ball
An Orange Orb dream the other night:
I'm on a Zoom like call; a UFO presentation. Sort of like a podcast, UFO conference and radio show all together. Some one recognizes my blog The Orange Orb and so I once again tell the tale. Of seeing the very large and up close orange orb, its following us, the feeling it knew what I was thinking and was responding, the missing time . . .
And then I say that each time I tell the story, the orange orb becomes more real, (not that it ever was not real) more concrete. Like a UFO Tulpa. It's still true, and "mine," meaning, my experience but it also is its own self. Aware. Solid. Separate from me. Its own thing. This is so damn hard to articulate! So hard. But a very important aspect of the whole encounter.
As I'm relating this, the night sky becomes a swirling geometric mass and several insectoids show up. Praying Mantis types, locust types. They are anywhere from six feet to ten feet tall. They're watching, listening. Aware. No threat -- yet.
I tell everyone that they're here and very, very real. "Yes," I say, as bizarre and really, ridiculous, as it seems, these alien-insectoid beings are real. And here. And have been.
I figure it will take me a good month if not more before I am finished with my purging project, and getting that room -- now full of books and files and mysterious boxes -- ready for human habitation.
I found this today: Tim Beckley's UFO Review, no. 27 from 1988. Priced at $1.50! Beckley was the publisher and editor of this mag. I loved getting these publications in the mail from Beckley. He also put out Conspiracy Journal and all kinds of old school U.F.O. stuff. (some of my work appeared in a few of his publications.)
I miss Tim. He was always very nice to me and helpful and appreciative of my input. The UFO world lost a real treasure when he passed away in May of 2021.
I've been bingeing on X-Files lately. A feast! I've also been going through many of my art books, seeking inspiration. And found, to my surprise, The Art of the X-Files. Great find but have no memory of how I came to own this book. I don't remember, nor does my husband. Nothing mysterious here; no doubt, during my days as a folklore UFO nerd at the U of O, I purchased the book. Maybe it was a gift. Either way, nice discovery!
I occasionally post my artwork with UFO and related themes here on the Orb. I've started a blog that shows all kinds of art work, not just UFO themed. Take a look, and comments are welcome. Thanks!
Two strange dreams last night. Oddly enough, I had not taken any melatonin, which can certainly cause some deeply surreal dreams. Nor did I listen to any paranormal podcast or Coast to Coast, which I often do when in bed. The subconscious works in its own language for sure.
At night, a couple dozen people. Some kind of party -- more like a celebration, or an observance of something. A rite, an homage, a recognition. We either eat or drink something psychedelic. Not exactly that; more like this substance enhances in a way what’s already within. There is a beach ball sized globe, or orb, solid, physical but also made of light. Hard to explain. It’s a light blue color. We pass it around, balance it, play with it. Dance with it.
Someone has the orb now. There is a deep and intense connection here between me/this someone and the orb. Everyone else stands back. They know the orb has chosen its person.
The person is in rapture. Holds onto the orb, talks in tongues, falls down onto the ground. On his back, this person is holding up the orb, signing, talking in a strange language. Purple lights appear and swirl around him. Then he turns into a violet reptilian type being, with huge black eyes. I lean into this being and stare into those eyes. Nothing on this earth has ever been as black as the black of its eyes. Huge deep glossy black eyes.
There is nothing malevolent about this but it is terribly profound. True awe. I cannot believe this blackness, this never ending sea of dark. I am sort of screaming out about this -- wanting others to look, to pay attention to this. These eyes, this black it’s so damn important!
In the dream, I tell myself I have to remember this and write it down right away. The urgency is vibrating, I must get this down! I’m writing this dream down and Jim comes in to talk to me about something. I tell him to go away, I have to get this dream down immediately! Later, I tell him about the dream. And then it starts over again: the violet, the purple, the huge black eyes, the reptilian, the blue orb, the chanting and dancing . . .
Same night, different dream:
I’m in an empty room on the tenth floor of a building -- office building? -- built in the 1950s, maybe 1940s. dingy, frayed carpets, not many people about. I don’t know why I’m here. I look down into the street. Thousands of people, literally nose to nose. No room to move. Yet move they do. Crawling, scrambling, shoving, climbing on each others. Violence. People fighting. Something bout gas. Some force is stealing gas. I stay up here because I sure as hell don’t want any of that! A few people come into the building but they stay on the first few floors. Once they realize it’s an empty building (except for me or a few others in the upper floors) they leave.
After a few hours of this madness, two gigantic mothership UFOs appear overhead. They lift up two huge silver domes. Domes that have been covering the city. The aliens or beings or whoever, whatever, they are, put the domes in place to disguise their presence while they sucked up all the gasoline in the city. Once they filled their own tanks, they lifted the domes and left. Once they left, everyone was back to normal. No memory of what just happened.
This second dream doesn't make much sense to me, since, on the west coast, a lack of gasoline has not been an issue.
'Dark Aliens,' pencil on paper, Regan Lee 2021
Playing around with monochromatic looks, and a sort of Shadow Person/Alien being. I think this will become a painting.
'Insectoid Visitor,' oil pastel on black paper, Regan Lee 2021
Experimenting with drawing on black paper, and the giant insect alien imagery.
Of deserts, MIB, and MIR (Men in Red.) Don't know where that last one came from. Anyway, two little sketches that just came to me. Why the MIR? I have no idea. I used ink, water-soluble NeoColor on paper.
Content Description:Using Thomas Bullard's structure of UFO abduction narratives as an object of analysis, this paper looks closely at UFO lore and makes comparisons with Greek mythology.
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| James Rich, "Popcorn Machine Alien/UFO" watercolor |
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| Salvidor Dali, Persistence of Memory |
When he was ten years old, he said he had what he calls the “pop corn machine dream.” He was living in Hawthorne, California, at the time. Back then the area was almost out in the sticks, no sidewalks, brush, tumbleweeds. He woke up -- or, as he put it, he dreamt he woke up -- to see a craft outside his window. He went on board, where he saw a machine that “smelled like popcorn, and it reminded me of one of those popcorn machines.”
“I knew they were aliens, and they weren’t good. Over my life, of all the dreams I’ve had about aliens, they’ve never been good in any of them. They’ve been all about bad, or Trickster at best.” (To this day he talks about how he hated living out there, moving from the Hollywood area to live in the middle of nowhere.
This could probably be chalked up to being a kid, and suddenly uprooted from friends and school. But I wonder if some of this intense dislike has something to do with his “alien” experiences.)
I told him I rarely see aliens in my dreams. (But then I immediately remembered my “Geisha Woman” dream of the tall female gray being; where I found myself on board, sitting across a tall “gray” female with black hair.) He said “I have. They’re usually human looking, but alien nonetheless. I just know they’re aliens. I don't’ think I’ve ever had gray aliens, specifically, but I have had insectoid aliens, giant preying mantis kind of things.” (When he said that, I almost fell out of the chair!)
He continued: “You never see them completely, but more like parts of them, and they appear in parts, revealing themselves slowly. I never see the whole thing.”
“Do you still have alien dreams?” I asked him.
“Yeah, occasionally.”
“I don’t have bad dreams or scary dreams that often, but when I do, they’re about aliens. Whatever it is I’ve been seeing all my life, it hasn’t been good,” he said again. (Regan Lee, July 2007, Trickster's Realm at Binnall of America.)
Prof. Jeffrey Kripal of Rice University discussed comparative religions and various aspects of the paranormal. In a sense, the study of religion is more difficult than the sciences because religious experience is difficult to quantify, and challenges people's deepest values and world views, he noted. When people compare religions in a rigorous manner, they recognize that their own world view is filled with certain gaps, he revealed. The ancient Greeks used to send out scouts to foreign cities or countries to study religious spectacles, and they were often changed by what they'd seen. (Coast to Coast)
