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January 15, 2008

UFOs over Texas?


Dozens in Texas town report seeing UFO

STEPHENVILLE, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.

Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.

"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."

While federal officials insist there's a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.

Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.

"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."

Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.


A lot of people ask "why don't people see UFO's anymore? Why aren't there the level of sightings that we saw in the 50's and 60's?".

Well - apart from any social and cultural analysis of UFO's that you might have - the media doesn't bother reporting sightings anymore.

But if you scratch the surface - and bring up the subject of UFOs among a group of people - you soon realise that people see just as many UFOs as they always did - but they don't report them for fear of all the "UFO and X-Files Nuts" that wouldn't give them a moments peace ..

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May 6, 2007

Inner Space Wormhole

Or maybe not ...as Mathematicians Design Invisible Tunnel

New calculations show how to make an electromagnetic "wormhole"—a tube that is invisible from the sides but allows light to shine down the center.

The concept is a twist on a spherical cloak of invisibility proposed last year. Such a device would be made of metamaterial, a thicket of metal rings or other shapes that bends light in funny ways. A hollow shell of metamaterial could in principle channel light around its inner space without slowing the light down, rendering that hidey-hole invisible to the outside world.


I love this daft science stuff ... because one day - it might be the future ...

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April 29, 2007

The New "Noah's Ark"

Almost like a theme park for Noah's Ark Enthusiasts - the Dutch Version has finally opened to the public

The ark, in the town of Schagen, is 150 cubits long - half the length of Noah's - and three storeys high. A cubit was about 45cm (18in) long.

The ark opened its doors on Saturday, after almost two years' construction, most of it by Mr Huiber himself.

"The design is by my wife, Bianca," Mr Huibers said. "She didn't really want me to do this at all, but she said if you're going to anyway, it should look like this."

Life-size models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras and bison are included in the ark's interior.

The Bible's Book of Genesis says Noah kept seven pairs of most tamed animals and one breeding pair of all other creatures in the boat, which survived a catastrophic flood sent down by God to punish man.

Mr Huibers spent nearly two years building the ark

Mr Huibers, a contractor, built the ark out of cedar and pine - because Biblical scholars are still not sure as to which type of wood was used in the ark's construction.

He began building in May 2005, after he dreamed of the Netherlands being flooded.



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April 20, 2007

The End for "FridgeHenge"?

Remember that version of Stonehenge made of old fridges - well it doesn't seem it will last as long ..

Stonefridge, also known as Fridgehenge, is an 18-foot-tall, 100-foot-diameter replica of the rock-ringed relics at Stonehenge. Instead of hulking, oblong sandstone blocks, the monument in Santa Fe was constructed of more than 100 discarded refrigerators of varied age, color and size.

And while its British counterpart is aligned with the sunrise that marks the summer solstice, Stonefridge is aligned with Los Alamos National Laboratory, birthplace of the atomic bomb. Horowitz said that's a nod to some of the most deadly technology man has dreamed up.

No one intended for Stonefridge to become a cultish phenomenon. Neither the artist nor the Santa Fe city officials who reluctantly permitted its construction thought it would stand for nearly 10 years. They didn't expect it to become a hot tourism destination or appear on television and in print across the globe.

But it did, and it has.

So when strong winds knocked down much of the structure last week, artist Adam Horowitz was devastated. Now Horowitz is bracing against a brewing political storm that could permanently remove the trash that he transformed into what he calls "a megalithic, post-apocalyptic monument to consumerism and waste."


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21st Century "Marie Celeste"

The Marie Celeste lives - as a new 'Ghost yacht' found floating off Great Barrier Reef

Rescuers in Australia are trying to solve the mystery of a yacht found drifting in calm waters off the Great Barrier Reef with food on the table, computers and engine running, but no sign of the three-man crew.

The 12-metre catamaran Kaz II was first spotted drifting off north Queensland on Wednesday by an aircraft on coastguard duty. A rescue helicopter was sent to the scene and circled overhead several times, with the pilot radioing back that there was no one aboard.

"It looked like the boat had been recently abandoned. The engine was still running in neutral [but] one of the sails had been damaged," he said.

"There was a laptop computer on board and running with power, the computers on board were running, all of their clothing was still there.

"The table was actually set for a meal with food and cutlery in place. The radio was working, the GPS was working and things below deck were normal except for the absence of crew."


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April 15, 2007

Forteana and Critical Thinking

Having a day of posting Fortean material has just reminded me of a piece I read recently about Critical Thinking

My evening with Joe was very illuminative. After the moon hoax came the following, depending on your point of view:

Alien blobs surrounding the Space Shuttle OR a negative image videotape of a blurry object at the bottom of an aquarium.

UFO squadrons flying in close formation OR distant geese at the limit of a digital zoom slowed to 5 frames per second.

A giant, manned American space station in orbit around Mars OR a still frame from NASA’s 1976 Viking animation.

Otherworldly “rods” darting invisibly through the skies of our planet OR individual frames of a large insect leaving a blurry video trail as it whizzes past the lens.

Every time I would identify one of these great mysteries, Joe had the same response: okay, but what about this! No fight, no defense – nothing. And then we’d be on to some new blur or smudge that proved, incontrovertibly, that this “reality” we live in is a giant lie, and that we are all victims of Dark Forces moving beyond our control or even our awareness… and that while the sleepwalking sheeple go on with their corporate-controlled lives, the mysterious wheels of the Shadow Government turn inexorably onward, crushing those brave few individuals who are on to the whole horrid plot like so many ants.

There is a word for this diseased mental state. It begins with a “P” and if you blurted out “progressive” then shame on you, you horrible bigot. That may be a correlation without causality.

As I was leaving Joe’s, he said something I’m sure he thought was very funny. He said, “Man, I’ll bet a guy like you thinks Lee Harvey Oswald really shot JFK.”

Read it all - a very funny debunking of some of the current myths that are flying around in the 21st Century.

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Malaysia terminates 'un-Islamic' vampire exhibition

A good day for Forteana really - as Malaysia terminates 'un-Islamic' vampire exhibition - apparently they couldn't even agree if some of the items were "fake" or not.

What - not even the vampire carcass and the phoenix? Faked - surely not!?

A Malaysian state has closed down an exhibition on ghosts, ghouls and supernatural beings after Islamic clerics declared it detrimental to Muslims' faith.

The exhibition at the state museum capitalises on widespread fascination in Malaysia with other-worldly creatures from local mythology. Artefacts on display reportedly included alleged carcasses of vampires and a phoenix.

Abdul Shukor Husin, chairman of the fatwa council which advises the government on Islamic regulations, was quoted as saying: "We don't want to promote a belief in tahyul [supernatural] and khurafat [superstition] which we do not know about. We do not need to focus on such things or play them up by having such exhibitions." Some 60 per cent of the 26 million population are Muslims.

Last year, a three-month exhibition on "Mysteries, Genies, Ghosts and Coffins" drew tens of thousands of visitors to view, among other objects, a preserved mermaid, the shrivelled skeletal remains of a half-woman, half-snake, and a goblin in a bottle. Critics were divided between those who accused it of being un-Islamic and others who suggested the items could be fakes.



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Cheeta the "Tarzan" Chimp Outlives Co-Stars

This chimp is older than me - Happy Birthday Cheeta


Cheeta the chimpanzee, the animal star of 12 Tarzan films in the Thirties and Forties, celebrated his 75th birthday yesterday.

He has outlived both his human Tarzan costars. Johnny Weissmuller, who played the lead, died in 1984 aged 79, and Maureen O'Sullivan, who was Jane, died in 1998 at 87.


When asked about his lifestyle Cheeta commented that a diet of bananas, early nights and hanging upside down from trees had kept him young and that he was looking forward to making his comeback for his 80th birthday - as a NuLabour politician ..

He denied all rumours about his relationship with Maureen O'Sullivan but referred to that fact that "Johnny Weissmuller was always jealous of me" commenting that "It wasn't just that i was hairier than him, nor that I had better muscles - it was the fact that I could act him off the set any day of the week".


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Wife Is Stranger Than Fiction

Properly Fortean tale - i.e. You Couldn't Make it Up - as the BBC reports about a Sudanese man has been forced to marry a goat.

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, of Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up."

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife," Mr Alifi told the newspaper.


It just goes to prove that "wife is stranger than fiction" ...

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March 22, 2007

Husband rips wife's eyes out

You couldn't make it up - but it happened Husband rips wife's eyes out after she refuses sex


A MAN who ripped out his wife's eyes in a fit of rage was sentenced by a French court to 30 years behind bars today.

Mohamed Hadfi, 31, tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari's eyes following a heated argument in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 after she refused to have sex with him.

Ms Bari, who had demanded a divorce before the attack, was permanently blinded.

Hadfi, a Moroccan, initially fled to Germany. He was finally arrested and sent back to France, where he was indicted for "acts of torture and barbarity leading to a permanent disability".

Prosecutor Dominique Tourette demanded that Hadfi be sentenced to 30 years in prison, two thirds of which must be served in full, calling the defendant a "diabolic torturer".

Once his sentence is served, Hadfi will be deported and barred from ever returning to France.

His lawyer Jean-Pierre Cabanes meanwhile insisted there were extenuating circumstances.

"This is the result of a marriage that was arranged, not chosen," he said, pointing to the gulf separating his client, who came from southern Morocco, and his young wife, who had grown up in France.

Mr Cabanes begged the jury for leniency, claiming his client's action "appeared to stem from a mental illness."


I don't suppose anyone can spot the "elephant in the room" with this article and suggest what the "mental illness" might be ...

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March 14, 2007

The Zodiac Killings

Interesting slideshow here about the Zodiac Killings

With a new movie out on the mysterious "Zodiac' murders of the 1960s and 70s, we re-examine the murders with a series of photographs from the most notorious murder spree in Bay Area.
Interestingly - one of the images is this - an "undecoded message" from Zodiac ...


zodiac_crypto.jpg


Zodiac included several cryptograms in his letters to various Bay Area newspapers. In the accompanying letters, the killer claimed that if authorities could crack the code it would reveal his identity. However, authorities were never able to decode the messages. Photo: San Francisco Police Department

I wondered - is this true now? Is there nobody who can decrypt the "Zodiac Message" in the 21st Century??

Unless the "Zodiac Killer" was using a "private language" - and as Wittgenstein said "there is no such thing as a private language" ...


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February 27, 2007

Dissect them Alive!!

The Times has a story that is almost too Fortean to believe - Dissect them alive: order not to be disobeyed - about a Japaneses medical auxiliary who carried out live disections ...


For 62 years, Akira Makino spoke not a word of what he’d done, but to those who knew him well it must have been obvious that he was a man with a tortured conscience.

Only in the twilight of his life, has Mr Makino begun to talk about the secret which he had carried.

In 1944, as a medical auxiliary in the Japanese Imperial Navy, he was stationed in the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. There he was party to one of the most notorious and poorly chronicled cruelties of the Japanese war effort - the medical dissection and murder of living prisoners of war.

Over the course of four months before the defeat of the Japanese forces in March 1945, Mr Makino cut open the bodies of ten Filipino prisoners, including two teenage girls. He amputated their limbs, and cut up and removed their healthy livers, kidneys, wombs and still beating hearts for no better reason than to improve his knowledge of anatomy.

“It was educational,” he said. “Even today when I go to see doctors, they are impressed by my knowledge of the human body. But if I’m really honest, the reason we did it was to take revenge on these people who were spying for the Americans.


Not quite "just obeying orders then" .. no wonder that he felt guilty a bit later and spent his time trying to atone ..

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November 20, 2006

Global Orgasm for Peace

It's a bit like World Jump Day - but the timing might be a little more tricky ... from WCBSTV via TailRank.

The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, whose immodest goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm Dec. 22 while focusing on world peace.

"The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said Sunday. "Your mind is like a blank. It's like a meditative state. And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."

The couple have studied evolutionary psychology and believe that war is mainly an outgrowth of men trying to impress potential mates, a case of "my missile is bigger than your missile," as Reffell put it.

By promoting what they hope to be a synchronized global orgasm, they hope to get people to channel their sexual energy into something more positive.

The blurb from the website is fascinating ....

The mission of the Global Orgasm is to effect change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy. Now that there are two more US fleets heading for the Persian Gulf with anti- submarine equipment that can only be for use against Iran, the time to change Earth’s energy is NOW! Read more about the fleet buildup here.

The intent is that the participants concentrate any thoughts during and after orgasm on peace. The combination of high- energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers.

The goal is to add so much concentrated and high-energy positive input into the energy field of the Earth that it will reduce the current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world.

Global Orgasm is an experiment open to everyone in the world.

The results will be measured on the worldwide monitor system of the Global Consciousness Project.

This will be interesing to watch - will the massed orgasms of Peace centered individuals actually make a difference to the Global Consciousness project?

And how long before some chancer starts www.orgasmforwar.org?


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October 15, 2006

Diver Death Suggests Hidden Passage

This is a spooky tale with Fortean overtones - from Daily Lobo


About 120 miles east of Albuquerque, on the eastern edge of the town of Santa Rosa, N.M., lies a tiny oval of blue water - a spring-fed sinkhole about 80 feet wide and 81 feet deep - known as the Blue Hole.

Sometime ago a group of scuba divers dove into the Blue Hole, eager to explore every nook and fissure of the smooth-walled sinkhole. After climbing out, they realized one of their divers had
disappeared.

Six months later, the body of that diver finally surfaced, but not in Santa Rosa. It was discovered, the story claims, in Lake Michigan - more than a thousand miles away - naked, waterlogged and with much of its skin scuffed off, as if it had been pushed and scraped through miles of rocky tunnels.

If the story is true, one of the longest underground waterways in the world could lie directly beneath us. Perhaps the direct water route across the continent searched for by the explorers Lewis and Clark actually exists - underground. Andrea Sachs, in a Dec. 19, 2004, Washington Post article, wrote that there is a protective metal grate covering a spring that produces about 3,000 gallons of fresh water per minute on the Blue Hole's limestone floor. And, she wrote, that grate also seals off an elaborate network of caves that twists southward 200 miles, down to Texas.



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September 18, 2006

Da Vinci Code: The Reference

I talked about the "Da Vinci" code case before and opined that a Copyright on Conspiracy was unlikely because there idea that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene had been extant in the occult and conspiracy literature for many years.

I managed to produce a quote that was almost the the smoking gun - but the evidence was inconclusive.

This is from "The Secret of the 59th Chapter" by Adel Abbas & Anne Fretwell (Toth Publications, 2000), page 483.
However we came to know from several ancient documents that Mary Magdalene, according to the Cathars, was married to Jesus (Dondane 1959).
Strangely enough - in all this footnoted and heavily referenced book - there is no bibliographic reference for Dondane 1959 - no title nor publisher nor any other information except for the quote above.

I tracked down one of the authors and emailed them - they were kind enough to produce a reference for me.

Dondaine, A. 'Durand de Huesca et la polemique anti-cathar' (Archiveum Fratum, Praedicatorum, Rome, 1959, 29,228-276).

Make of it what you will - if anyone has a copy I'd like to hear about it - but any fellow fortean enthusiasts now have as much information on this as I do and can follow the leads wherever they go.


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June 26, 2006

600 Million People

World Jump Day is coming to a place near you "Real Soon Now" (tm)

No seriously, the folks at World Jump Day have calculated that if 600 million people all jump at the same time - we can slightly shift the planetary orbit of Earth.

Scientists from the ISA/Munchen (Germany) have produced a report ... which confirms that planet Earth could be driven out of its current orbital rotation by the combined force of human beings.

Prof. Hans Niesward and his colleagues at the Department of Graviationphysik estimated that it would take a minimum of 600 Miliion people on the western hemisphere to jump at the same moment.

Why bother? Well according to these guys a succesful "jump" could save the planet by reducing global warming to a minimum.

It sounds like a bunch of scientists warming up their theories in public - without concern for the consequences.

It also reminds me of those old Cold War "science paranoia" movies - like The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) - where scientists explode atomic bombs and tilt the Earth into a new orbit that causes - you guessed it - global warming on a massive scale.

Or maybe Crack In the Earth (1965) - where a scientist attempts to develop eco-friendly geothermal energy - by dropping an atomic bomb deep into the Earth's crust.

I think you get the point - strange science like this might well make the problem worse - rather than better.

I console myself that if we get it wrong we can always try and correct it by having another "World Jump Day".

But it could be another hundred years before the Earth is in the correct position for a "succesful" jump attempt again - so if the scientists have their figures,or their theories, totally wrong - it will be getting hotter for a long time yet.


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May 27, 2006

Two Headed Sheep

Talking about psychic powers and thinking of a Fortean nature reminded me I've had this scan of a two headed sheep on my desktop for ages and been meaning to post it.

These scans are from an article in Diario de Cadiz.


2headed-sheep01.jpg


2headed-sheep02.jpg

Not quite "two-headed", but certainly odd enough to file under "Forteana".

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Psychic Powers


BBC NEWS | UK | Britons report 'psychic powers'

Of 1,006 adults polled for Readers Digest Magazine, 43% reported reading others' thoughts or having theirs read.

More than half had had a dream or premonition of an event before it happened and 26% said they had sensed when a loved-one was ill or in trouble.

A fifth said they had seen a ghost and 29% believed near-death experiences were evidence there was an afterlife.

Of those questioned, 43% claimed to have tapped into other people's thoughts or to have had their own minds read by someone else.

Nice idea - but even SONY have found that it is not reliable enough to bring to market yet - I guess employing people to write malware is easier.

If all this stuff really worked then someone, somewhere would be making a "psychic ipod" which knew which tune you wanted to hear before you even heard it, the "psychic tipster" would have put bookies and lotteries out of business by now, and everyone would be a millionaire becuase they invested in the stocks and shares recommended by their "psychic financial advisor".

It all reminds me of the sign on the door of the local psychics and medium society - "Closed due to Unforseeen Circumstances" - and no - I am not going to mention the "Prophet" Mohammed's lack of foresight when he failed to mention neckties in the Koran ....


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May 6, 2006

Playground pentagram to go

This is a crazy story - apparently a five-pointed star was made by mistake in a new playground project - and now they are going to spend money to change it because it is a "satanic symbol".

Springfield resident Leland Rhodes said he found the design "distressing."

"There is a certain breed of individual out there who reveres such symbols, and in that context, it becomes a religious icon. In this day and age of general concern for children's welfare, especially in regard to predators, my main concern was for the crowd that it might draw," Rhodes said.

But - five pointed stars are everywhere - all over the place - are they all going to attract "certain breeds of individuals" because "it is a religious icon"?

Will Mr. Rhodes require other changes to, for example, the flag of the USA, because of the 50 five pointed stars on "Old Glory". Surely it is 50 times as likely to attact "certain breeds of individuals" and might even "draw a crowd" of "predators".

This is plain daft. Why can't a five-pointed star just be a five pointed star? - and if some new-age hippies want to burn candles - so what? it is a public park after all.

I personally find moonlit or candlelit picnics romantic and fun - I don't need a five pointed star to do it - and to spend money changing up a harmless design is just stupid - religious correctness gone mad.


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April 8, 2006

Da Vinci Code: Author Cleared

As I predicted, Dan Brown - the author of the best selling "Da Vinci Code" - has been cleared of copyright violation.

In issuing his judgment, Justice Peter Smith said that Mr. Brown did indeed rely on the earlier work, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" in writing a section of "The Da Vinci Code." But he said that two of "Holy Blood's" authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, had failed to define the central theme of their book and thus failed to prove their accusation that Mr. Brown had lifted it from them.

I said here, here and here that the ideas contained in both Baigent & Leigh's and Dan Brown's book had precursors in the occult, fortean and conspiracy fields that precluded any claim on copyright.

This is a victory for common sense - for once. it looks like authors and writers can now use historical and pseudo-historical sources to construct new works of fiction - within the bounds of common sense and fair use.

It looks like the judgment means that works can be copyrighted but ideas cannot - so there is no "Copyright on Conspiracy" - this time.

One question: Is the judge - Justice Peter Smith - a Freemason?

If he was - then he could have been a representative of one of the oldest conspiracies on planet Earth -
The Knights Templar - or then again - maybe not.

Either way I get to mention the Templars - and as any good fortean occult conspiracy buff knows - the Templars are involved in everything, everywhere and at all times and have spread their evil tentacles all over the world.

I have to go now - I think I am being watched .... @*$/)@?"/$)&*@(# ++++ NO CARRIER ++++


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March 24, 2006

Da Vinci Trial - the "smoking gun" - almost

I've spoken before about the "Da Vinci Trial" and commented then that the ideas were not original - and that for Baigent & to Leigh to claim them was laughable.

This is from "The Secret of the 59th Chapter" by Adel Abbas & Anne Fretwell (Toth Publications, 2000), page 483.

However we came to know from several ancient documents that Mary Magdalene, according to the Cathars, was married to Jesus (Dondane 1959).

Strangely enough - in all this footnoted and heavily referenced book - there is no bibliographic reference for Dondane 1959 - no title nor publisher nor any other information except for the quote above.

So even though there is a clear reference to a work that preceded Baigent & Leigh - it is impossible to track it down - because there aren't enough details.

If anyone knows of a book about the Cathars, Mary Magdalene and Jesus published by Dondane in 1959 - then I'd like to know more about it.

I've emailed the publisher - maybe the authors can clear this one up - but until they reply I'm convinced its all a conspiracy and that the Templars must be involved somewhere ...

Have I mentioned the Templars yet?


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March 16, 2006

The "Da Vinci" Trial

Perhaps the funniest thing in this report today from The Herald Tribune is the following.

Baigent and Leigh are suing "Da Vinci Code" publisher Random House for copyright infringement, claiming Brown "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."

Excuse me - "non-fiction" - yeah right.

Actually it should have been filed under "Fortean" and "Forget" because it was only interesting for its 15 minutes of fame back in 1982.

If it hadn't been for the "Da Vinci Code" everyone would have forgotten the Baigent and Leigh book by now.

Except the Christians - they are a little fed up with the suggestion that Jesus married, had a child and lived happily ever after.

It seems to annoy them for some reason - something to do with the resurrection and 2,000 years of faith I guess.

But as they don't seem to be taking to the streets and demonstrating against it no-one seems to care about their feelings.

It's all about copyright - not about faith - so the "Auto da Fe" with Baigent, Leigh and Brown will have to wait for another year.

If I wasn't so new-age and fluffy I'd cynically suggest that certain authors are suffering from sour grapes and want a slice of the very large pie that Dan Brown has baked out of left over ingredients.

I suppose I should mention the Templars round about now ...


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February 28, 2006

Copyright on Conspiracy?

I find the news that Baigent and Leigh - the authors of the "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" in 1982 - are suing Dan Brown for stealing ideas from their book to write the far more sucessful "Da Vinci Code" risible in the extreme.

I remember the Baigent and Leigh book when it first came out - it successfully synthesised a whole bunch of legends and theories about Jesus and his marriage to Mary Magdalene, odd chunks of history, the Knights Templars ("the templars, the templars - always the templars") and the Rennes la Chateau "mystery" into an amusing potboiler that sold moderately well to an audience that had no idea about anything the book was talking about.

Then Dan Brown came along and successfully synthesised a whole bunch of legends, theories about Jesus and Magdalene yada yada yada ... you guessed it - the templars turn up, and the freemasons, opus dei and uncle Tom Cobley and all .. into an amusing potboiler that sold very well to an audience that had no idea of anything that the book was talking about.

But all the legends, myths, secret societies and cod-theology - all the guff about the Templars and the Holy Grail - it's all been done to death again and again and again in the Fortean and Occult literature for the last 20-50 years.

Every overpriced new-age part-work on the hidden mysteries of time, the universe and god have covered this story to death for years .... and years ... and years.

I'd be very surprised if Baigent and Leigh win - there are too many mimeographed pamplets and 18th centruy Victorian tracts speculating everything - and more - in the same field that Baigent, Leigh and Brown have written about.

They all synthesised the same bunch of silly old ideas and made books about those silly ideas - then they all sold books to people all over the world who like reading about silly ideas.

Good business in my mind.

Anyway - if Baigent and Leigh win - what's to stop the Priory of Sion suing them for stealing their ideas, and then the Illuminati suing the Priory of Sion, and then the Templars suing the Illuminati who are in turn sued by the remnants of Hassan-I-Sabbah's "Hashishin" - who are then sued in turn by the descendants of Jesus because he really was a magic mushroom just as Wassoon theorised ...

I'm just waiting for the second coming of the Templars

Have I mentioned the Templars yet ??

Let me tell you all about my latest conspiracy theory ... no I can't .. if I told you about it I'd have to kill you .. and it's copyright anyway ..

Anyway it has to be true because I read it in a book while I was in a secret Tibetan monastery and it was dictated by the Secret Masters - it was all about the reincarnation of Adam Weishaupt and the 3rd coming of the 4th Reich because they have these secret bases in Antarctica where the grey aliens experiment on people from all over time who are snatched using the secret time tunnel located at Montauk which uses the energy generated by the HAARP system ...

File this under Fortean methinks - but not until I've mentioned the Templars - they have linked up with Google adwords and every time you read the word "Templars" I get 50cents.

It's all a conspiracy you know.



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