New blog: Ecto-Ville

Didn't want to do it, didn't mean to do it, but I did... new blog: Ecto-ville.

A Bit of Rethinking: Aliester Crowley and LAM

I've been re-thinking my opinions on "the grays," alien abductions and hypnosis and the larger question of ET and UFOs. I still think some UFOs and aliens are literal beings from other planets. It's straightforward: they have technology, they live on the Moon, or Mars, or whatever. They manipulate us and have been doing so for eons. Yep, I'm all about Ancient Astronauts. However, much is going on that suggests other, and more... not just the much flung about phrase "inter-dimensional" but entities encountered on the astral level, the line blurring between religious doctrine and beliefs and non-human entities, myths, mysticism and our own participation that remain mostly secretive even to ourselves.

In part, reading Nick Redfern's exciting and ---  as usual with Redfern, controversial and daring perspectives on subjects -- book Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife has caused me to take another look at Aliester Crowley's  "LAM."  In this 1996  article by  Ian Blake for Excluded Middle, (Aliester Crowley and LAM) Blake writes, about hypnosis and memory in the context of abduction/alien events:

Before we allow ourselves to be convinced however, it is worth taking into account John Rimmer's observation that the witness in this case, "one of a number investigated by Budd Hopkins, had no conscious memory of an abduction before the investigation." The phrase I have underlined is important, not least because the Lam procedure also involves a form of hypnosis, albeit self-administered and -regulated. Rimmer adds that "the UFO abduction as a distinct phenomenon exists as a result of the process of hypnotic regression." And again: "...to a very great extent the evidence for alien abductions stands or falls on the reliability of memories recalled through regression, and the techniques of hypnosis themselves."

Very interesting. (Of course, Rimmer, et al are skeptics in the end.)

Of our participation, even while we often forget or are unaware of that participation in these events, Blake writes:

In real terms most accounts gained under hypnosis are so vague and imprecise as to be virtually worthless. The sensible reaction to them must inevitably be that they contain a certain amount of "confabulated" material, expressing the repressed desires of the unconscious mind. Hilary Evans seems to be referring to something of this sort in Visions * Apparitions * Alien Visitors when he asks, "Are we to suppose that, subconsciously, all the witnesses...were unconsciously seeking their encounter? And in that case do we have to suppose that every UFO percipient is also responding to some subconscious motivation?" I suspect so -- at least as a broad percept. I suspect furthermore, just as the vampires of eighteenth century Hungary were unable to cross a threshold uninvited, so the UFO entities of contemporary folklore are bound by a similar constraint. Having given the matter careful consideration, I am forced reluctantly to conclude that they too are unable to cross the threshold of human experience without first being "invited" in some way.

That last sentence: "Having given the matter careful consideration, I am forced reluctantly to conclude that they too are unable to cross the threshold of human experience without first being "invited" in some way" is very intriguing.

Interesting points about the use of hypnosis to retrieve memories of alien encounters. Revisiting the issue of hypnosis in UFO research is a positive that's come from Emma Woods story of her sessions with David Jacobs and Carol Rainey's experiences with Budd Hopkins.

 Richelle Hawks discusses LAM and the image of the gray in her excellent  UFO Digest article Yabba Dabble Doo; How Aleister Crowley Introduced the Iconic Gray Alien.
Hawks notes that Whitley Strieber, who is often credited with bringing this now popular culture alien iconic image to our awareness, doesn't think the grays are literal space-men:

Many might be surprised to learn that Strieber himself doesn't (or didn't) necessarily adhere to the nuts and bolts theory, or even that the entities are necessarily aliens. In a Barnes and Noble Author's chat transcript, dated April 12, 1997, he makes these following curious statements: "Is there such a thing as 'grays?' I don't know." " I don't know what the 'visitors' are." And, "I assume aliens are the answer when we don't know what's going on."

Ideas about how UFOs/aliens intersect with esoteric systems and religious presentations of "demons" aren't specific to Crowley or new to UFO research.  Remaining open to this arena and how it might apply to UFOs/aliens; revisiting these concepts often reveals a new path or two for us to follow in our journey.

Related posts: 
Regan Lee for Speculative Realms: Female Abductee Madonna Complex: A Gender-Identified Blame Game

"Dream Academy" Synchronicity and the subconscious

Readers of The Orange Orb know that I post many of my UFO related dreams here. To my surprise, those posts receive a lot of comments and emails. I acknowledge I post those dreams here as a way of trying to discover . . . something . . . about my experiences. My own, free, little therapy blog. But others find something in these posts, as I do in the posts of others who write about their dreams, and other  vague, surreal moments. Mike Clelland's blog, hidden experience, Anya is a Channel, The Secret Sun, among others, discuss dreams, symbols, images as a language connected with the esoteric.  As individual and often just weird these dreams, experiences, or interpretations of seemingly mundane events are, these shared personal landscapes resonate, and often we find bits of synchronicity as well.

This morning, checking one of my favorite Fortean news sites, The Daily Grail, I find the following link: Dream Academy: Secrets of the subconscious unlocked. The article is a bit of a fluff piece and feels the need to add in the skeptic's  admonishments:

Louise Chunn, the editor of Psychologies magazine, said she could imagine dream groups taking off, in much the same way that "today's narcissistic society" is addicted to talking about itself on Twitter. "I can imagine talking about your dreams becoming a trend in the way that people photograph their food. Is this just another way to validate ourselves?" She warned that the upshot could be to leave those with less exciting dreams feeling inadequate.

Some psychologists and psychiatrists worry that dream groups might cause harm if the distressing emotions turned up by the subconscious mind are mistreated. Patrick McNamara, associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Boston University and author of Nightmares: The Science and Solution of Those Frightening Visions During Sleep, believes that dreams shouldn't be shared with anyone who lacks due regard for their complexity.

But the point of the article is that in the UK, dream groups are popular, and individuals are finding that discussing their dreams in groups is very helpful for them. In some cultures, discussing your dreams is not considered woo or "narcissistic" it just is, an important part of the daily routine.

Not all my dreams are UFO related. I have all kinds of dreams: dreams about obvious anxieties or issues about work, daily life, stress related dreams, weird dreams because I ate too much or not feeling well, fun dreams, silly dreams. When it comes to the UFO dreams, there is the question of intepretation, meaning. Are the dreams somewhat literal, something UFO related trying to get through, or are the symbols and scenarios stand-ins for something else? 

An example: I have a recurring dream that I find myself driving, usually alone, on a narrow, one lane bridge across the ocean. I just find myself in the middle of nowhere, all I can see is water on either side of me, in front of and behind me. The water comes up to the sides of the bridge, very scary. The bridge only has a small and frail rail on either side. It doesn't seem to have any purpose. It wouldn't stop a car from going off the bridge. I'm scared out of my mind because one slip and I'm in this water.  It's all so weird and scary: just one long narrow road on top of the water with no end in sight, no turn around, no signs, nothing.

I've had this dream for years, and still have it. Had one the other night in fact. What completely unglued me a few years ago was, I found myself on this very road! I was completely lost in Portalnd, no idea at all where I was, or going . . . I have no idea how I ended up on this road but there I was, on a narrow road with water all around, no signs, no turn around, no idea where I was going. None of that had to do with UFOs. Just a weird bit of synchronicity. 

Memory is a strange thing. Why do we remember vivid small scenes from childhood, the rest fallen away? What was it about that moment, that's stayed with us for decades, while others seem to leave? And what of the rare "scenes" where you remember, but not sure if it happened? 

image: Henry Fuseli: Nightmare (The Incubus)

Shermer's Gorilla Suit Man

Michael Shermer, uber-skeptoid and professional debunker, did an experiment at the recent 2009 Science, Technology and Research Symposium in Charleston to show that Mothman (which he admits to knowing nothing about), Bigfoot (to which he says he does) and other paranormal/Fortean/esoteric/anomalous phenomena are figments of over-active imaginations, but more than that,illustrations of why we lie:

We already know that people lie; that happens all the time. ... The more interesting question is why do people fall for it," he said.

In other words, people who speak of witnessing UFOs or other strange events, are lying.

Sure, people lie about their experiences. They elaborate, embroider, exaggerate and outright lie. They hoax and they pull pranks. They're delusional and mentally ill, they're alcoholics and drug abusers. Some people. And for some people in that category, they present to the world tales of UFOs, strange creatures, aliens and visits to Venus.

Those aside, thousands upon thousands more people without that baggage -- and even with some of that baggage, does not automatically exclude the experience of such phenomena or cause it -- have encounters with the weird that cannot be explained by tired exercises into so-called rationality. Such as Shermer's. (Warning: ad hom ahead. "Smirking Shermer" as I like to call him. Come on, the man smirks for crying out loud. He's so taken with himself.)

Shermer instructs an audience to watch a video of basket ball players, watching for:

the number of times six young people passing basketballs, three of them in white shirts and three in black shirts. He asked the crowd to count how many times the three in white shirts passed the basketball to each other.

Afterward, Shermer had the crowd call out answers. Then he played the video again, telling everyone just to relax and not worry about counting passes this time. And to the amazement of many, about halfway through a person in a monkey suit walked from out-of-frame into the middle of the scene, paused, gave a friendly wave and then promptly walked off screen.

This proves, says Shermer, that people see what they want to see. Er, that means we don't want to see a man in a gorilla suit at the Lakers game?

What it says to me is this: when something weird and unexpected happens, especially in the midst of a mundane event, like a basketball game, we don't notice it. Which then means , that the weird, the unexpected, like say, a Mothman or a Bigfoot, even a UFO, goes right by us. It literally can be in front of our noses and we won't deal with the strangeness. In fact, when something highly unusual is going on, and the one or two people who do happen to be aware of it point it out to others, most people refuse to even look to see for themselves.

Shermer had his own out of body experience. Under laboratory conditions, don't you know. Which proves that no such thing as astral projection and OOBEs occur, since it can be recreated in the laboratory:

Shermer said he once had an out-of-body experience successfully recreated under laboratory conditions. It had nothing to do with his consciousness actually leaving his body.

This is another standard, and very tired meme of the uber-skeptic: that because something paranormal/anomalous can be recreated in the lab, it doesn't exist. Rather, it doesn't exist paranormally; of course it exists, they just recreated it! (The same is said of hoaxes, as the recent hoaxed UFO lights showed: to the skeptoid, UFO hoaxes "proves" that UFOs don't exist.)

Why do we insist upon "believing weird things" as Shermer so often phrases this conundrum of human existence? It has to do with evolution:

As for the reason people believe strange things, Shermer said it is rooted in humanity's evolutionary history and its psychological drive to connect invisible causes to the events around them. That movement in the grass may be the wind or it could be a predator.

Or fairies! It's fairies!

If we think of the movement in the grass as a predator, we're good ... Shermer concludes that if we think the worst: "better safe than sorry" then we believe that forces control the things we can't explain. Like a lion in the grass? Huh?

Shermer's presentation didn't prove a thing, but of course, the choir he preaches to think otherwise.

Soure: Science vs. ESP: Skeptic Ponders UFOs, Mothman

Eerie Racoon Moments

Along with owls, deer, ravens and other animals, raccoons have their place in esoteric phenomena. Signaling the possible arrival of the weird,these creatures, including raccoons, stand between us and "it," whatever that it may be. A UFO encounter, with journeys on ships, contact with entities, maybe, or some sort of liminal experience. Take the experience of Dr. Kary Mullis, who had a very strange encounter with a glowing raccoon in the summer of 1985.

Consciously pulling up memories of these kinds of experiences is difficult; they usually erupt randomly. For myself, unexpected snippets -- jarring in their visceral appearances -- come to me through meditation, dreams and while viewing images.

The other night, while watching the television program Eleventh Hour, I had one of those startling moments that really jolted me. On screen, the character, driving his car on the road in the daytime, swerves to avoid hitting a raccoon who was standing in the middle of the road. (A few moments later, the character realizes the raccoon shouldn't have been there, which was a clue that something was very wrong in the area.) For some reason, that image of a raccoon standing in the road, during the day, reminded me of something. I turned to my husband and said "Didn't we see two or three raccoon's in the daytime when we lived on Friendly Street?" He remembered. I hadn't thought of that in years, but something about that image on the television recalled that memory.

We had a large sliding glass door that led out to the backyard. We lived at the top of a hill; town was right down the street, but right above us, it was rural, and the further you drove on the highway above our house, the more rural you got. One day we were surprised to see raccoons just standing there at the glass, looking in at us. It was weird. I remember how very weird we both thought it was at the time; in fact, I remember kind of screaming -- not screaming, but shouting out when I saw them. For some reason, I found their presence irritating; unusual for me since I'm an animal lover, and normally would have thought it pretty neat. Friendly Street was where we were living when we saw the "orange orb" and had the missing time, and all kinds of UFO related events happened.

I've seen raccoons in the daytime before; but rarely. Several months ago I saw a raccoon in the daytime where I'm living now; it was sickly looking and it's obvious something was wrong. It's not common to see raccoons in the daytime, but not impossible.

But something about that memory of seeing those raccoons, just standing there, watching us through the glass, was eerie.

New blog: Saucer Sightings

The only reason I started this new blog, Saucer Sightings, was to keep all of my UFO sightings in one place. I got tired of rewriting any particular sighting I've had. This way, they're archived in one place. I can use it as a referral: "see my blog entry on my triangle sighting here" kind of thing. There isn't much there yet, and it really won't be much other than a chronology of specific sightings and encounters. It will also include specific paranormal encouners, like ghost sightings, etc. Which, this blog was kind of, sort of, intended to be when I started it a few years ago. But as you can see, it's become much more than that!

The Puppet Wolves

My latest article for Trickster's Realm on BoA is up now: The Synchronicity of Puppet Wolves.

Green Electric

Green Electric
I feel strange writing about this. Yes, me, who urges others to share their stories of the anomalous with others, and not be afraid of what others may think. I hesitate because it sounds off the wall. (I know, it’s ironic, isn’t it? I can hear some people now; “as if missing time, etc. isn’t off the wall?”)

Last night, I had two very strong “episodes.” I was in bed, but awake. (I had just turned off the radio in fact.) I began hearing inside me, inside my head strong clickings and what I can best describe as electrical buzzings, whirrings, and beeps. It was very loud, and very weird. I’ve had this before to some degree, but never this strong. It was, to put it succinctly, freaking me out. At the same time, I was “seeing” this hint of green light -- like green lines, or machines, or green glowing beings -- I “knew” they were there. I “saw” them in my mind’s eye, but of course, when I opened my eyes, they weren’t there. This strong electrical, shocking feeling, was still there. I was afraid to move. It felt a bit like the feeling you get when the chiropractor or acupuncturist puts those electrical things on you, only much much stronger.

As if that wasn’t enough, then I started to leave my body. I was very aware of having, or about to have, an OBE (out of body experience.) I became very frightened at this point and managed to get up, “shake it off,” and then try to go back to sleep.

Then it just happened all over again! “They” or “it” wasn’t going to give up. I couldn’t dispel the unpleasant feeling of some very unpleasant entities around. I couldn’t see them (though I never got the sense of any “grays”) but I felt them. They were responsible for the electric feeling throughout my entire body. It was as if someone had just plugged my entire body into an outlet.

I once again managed to pull myself out of this, and after awhile, go back to sleep. I was a little afraid of going to sleep, but it was about two in the morning and I had to get up at six for work.
I’ve had these weird type of electric, buzzing sensations before; not only in connection with some UFOs, but in some cases of hauntings and precognitive experiences. Obviously there’s a connection there. Or possibly they’re different things but it triggers the same “thing,” the same mechanism.

The Green Glowy Screen Thing
I wrote about a similar episode some time back here on The Orb some where a green “matrix” like computer screen image was scrolling inside my head. (Jesus, that sounds kooky, doesn’t it?) It was one of those “mind postcards,” as I call them. It was from somewhere “out there” and had no business being in my mind’s eye, but there it was. There was the definite knowledge it was intentionally inserted there.

What It Means
I have no idea. I think it’s part of a connection to not only other, “higher selves” but things that are both outside of me (possibly entities, etc.) as well as within. We’re electric beings, and we’re all connected in some way. For all I know, it could be blocked chakras; I’m not being facetious. It’s possible some part of me is trying to connect with something out there, and wake me up to it. Or, the other way around.

It could also be something less “spiritual” and more sinister: government spooks engaged in MILAB mind control stuff. That’s pretty bleak though.

Whatever it is, it’s been something occurring throughout my life.

Memory Games

image: still from Hitchcock film Spellbound, 1945


A lot’s been written on the nature of memory and UFO/paranormal experiences. All sides of the anomalous realm have tackled the hows and whys of our memories; skeptics of all stripes, UFO researchers, psychologists, debunkers, etc.

Theories as to our memories abound; explanations for missing time, screen memories, events that are as real as me sitting here in my armchair with my laptop but shouldn't ‘t be for their fantastic elements; all are either “explained” or debunked. And then there are the UFO researchers who take a nuts and bolts view: they happened exactly as described, for the aliens really did land, or communicate, or abduct, and that’s the end of that.

We’re fantasy prone. Or we remember what we want to remember. Or we think we remember but we really don't remember. We fill in the lbanks with things that aren’t there. We see patterns where there aren’t any. We want to see things so we do. We’re awake when we’re asleep, we’re asleep when we’re awake. Or we think we are. We suffer from sleep paralysis. We expect to see or experience something strange, so we do. We’ve seen too many movies about flying saucers. Some of us are mentally ill. Or some of us are just outright liars.

All the above combine in various ways to screw up our memory banks, and make us think we’ve seen things that we shouldn’t have, couldn’t have seen because they don’t exist. These are excuses to explain away all the weird things that happen in UFO events: missing time, screen memories, interactions with entities on some mid-plane (neither here in “reality” nor unreal.)

I’ve spoken with many individuals who’ve experienced the above, from a UFO sighting to alien abductions. I’ve personally experienced the following: UFO sightings, missing time, regression/hypnosis, interaction with entities, awareness of invisible entities. (Or what we interpreted as “entities” for all I know, they could have been microwaved beamed at us from a shadow government agency.) And in all of those experiences; my personal ones, and those of others, not once has the idea of these experiences being murky, iffy occurrences been expressed. There was never any doubt they really happened.

I don’t think I’ve seen UFOs, I have. I don’t kind of, sort of, in that vague dream like way, think I could have experienced missing time, I did experience missing time. The invisible entities: that was confirmed on different occasions by others who experienced the same thing. There is no question of false memory or sleep paralysis or other trendy chronic skeptic explanation.

I do have two memories I’m not sure about, and they have nothing to do with UFOs, the paranormal, or anything at all esoteric or occult. The question of course is why? How can it be I have two images/memories that won’t go away, yet I don’t know if they really happened? Were they dreams, or real? And why do I remember them at all?

In one, I am about five years old. I’m with my grandmother. We’re in a large place; the floor is black and white checkered linoleum. There are large pebbled glass windows set high in the walls, which are white ceramic tiles. The sun is streaming through these windows; the place is full of light. There are lots of clocks everywhere. I have no idea if this is a dream, or a memory of something real. It’s a persistent image however.

The other one concerns a concert. I have a memory of seeing Donovan at the Hollywood Bowl. But I’m not sure. I’ve been to a lot of performances there; and never doubted one of them. I’m positive about all of them. Except this one. You’d think I’d be “sure” if I saw Donovan or not. Why wouldn’t I be? Why am I not sure? I have a persistent image of him on the stage, sitting on a carpet, with flowers around his neck. I’m in the audience watching him. I think. I’m not sure. I don’t remember who I was with, how I got there, or what happened next.


Are these memories real? Is the first one a memory of somewhere I really did go with my grandmother? the Donovan memory: is it just one of those quirky aberrations, or some type of UFO or paranormal event after all?

While interesting, they have to stay where they are. In the meantime, the other experiences, as strange as they are, leave behind them plenty of questions as to what, who and why.

But not to their reality.