Saturday, December 31, 2011

Mushrooms & Origins of Christmas:

End the year on this unusual idea. " Author and researcher Jan Irvin discussed the earliest known forms of religion and nature worship and their connections to our modern religions and holidays; and how special plants used in shamanic rituals, including the Amanita muscaria mushroom, were ingested by those seeking higher consciousness. According to some academics & Cabalists, in the story of Adam & Eve, the Tree of Knowledge was actually the magic mushrooms, he noted, adding that in the ancient Vedic (India) tradition, "soma" is described as a plant or fruit that brings spiritual enlightenment. Scholars today suspect that soma was a mushroom or similar substance. Irvin connected the origins of Christmas and Santa Claus to the use of psychedelic mushrooms and shamanism. Santa Claus evolved from Herne, the ancient shamanic god of Europe and Siberia, to Pan the licentious Roman god who imbibed mushrooms, to Krampus, St. Nicholas's devilish helper who dealt out punishment to naughty children, he detailed. Even Santa's red and white garb mirrors the look of the Amanita mushroom, he continued. Regarding current religious uses of mushrooms, James "Flaming Eagle" Mooney of the Oklevueha Native American Church told Irvin that Native Americans still very much respect the Amanitas and the mushrooms, even though their church is more recognized for their use of peyote. Interestingly, Mooney and his associates are working on research that shows that the Mormon religion was originally founded on both the use of peyote and the Amanita "muscaria, Irvin r

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas

" Lawyer and medium Mark Anthony discusses on his psychic abilities and work with spirits. Anthony revealed that he was born into a family with psychic abilities, and could see spirits from a very young age—an ability also shared by his parents. Anthony said he eventually embraced his mediumship and went on to study the topic of evidential mediumship at a formal educational institution. He defended his practice against those who would use the Bible to condemn it, noting that several biblical characters, including Joseph and Elijah in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament, demonstrated what appears to be psychic medium powers. "We are all instruments of the will of God," he added. Anthony spoke about the esoteric elements behind various Christmas traditions, such as the Star of Bethlehem. Two thousand years ago, adept astrologers known as Magi observed and tracked a unique alignment of planets in the constellation of Aeries, he explained. This astrologically significant event occurred on April 17, 6 B.C., will never happen again, and signaled the birth of a divine king in the region of Judea, Anthony noted. In 350 A.D., Pope Julius I declared that the birth welcomedof Christ would be celebrated in the month of December to supplant Roman pagan festivals, he added. Anthony also discussed the significance of the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh given to the Christ child, as well as how holly wreaths are symbols of eternal life. It represents the crown of thorns worn by Jesus at his crucifixion, with the red berries signifying his blood, so in a mystical sense the holly wreath is the gateway to eternal life, he said."

Saturday, December 24, 2011

New Take On Gifts Of The Magi

"Were the gifts of the magi meant to save Jesus from the pain of arthritis? It's possible, according to researchers at Cardiff University in Wales who have been studying the medicinal uses of frankincense. Since the early days of Christianity, Biblical scholars have offered varying interpretations of the meaning and significance of the gold, frankincense and myrrh that the magi presented to Jesus (Matthew 2:11). These valuable items were standard gifts to honor a king or deity in the ancient world: gold as a precious metal, frankincense as perfume or incense, and myrrh as anointing oil. But it is also possible that the gifts of the magi were a bit more practical--even medicinal in nature. Researchers at Cardiff University have demonstrated that frankincense (pictured) has an active ingredient that can help relieve arthritis by inhibiting the inflammation that breaks down cartilage tissue and causes arthritis pain. The new study validates traditional uses of frankincense as an herbal remedy to treat arthritis in communities of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, where the trees that produce this aromatic resin grow. Did the Magi “from the East” know of frankincense’s healing properties when they presented it to young Jesus?

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Mexico Begins Count Down For 2012

Both BBC and The Times newspaper say Mexico expects to cash in on the 2012 enigma, "Idigenous Maya communities in southern Mexico have begun a year-long countdown to 21 December 2012, which will mark the end of a five-millenia cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar. Some people have interpreted the prophecy as predicting the apocalypse. But experts say it signifies the end of an era, not the end of the world. Maya priests have been holding special religious ceremonies, and Mexican tourism officials are preparing for a surge in visitors to the region. Mexico's tourism agency says it hopes to draw around 52 million visitors in 2012, with many heading to the Maya heartland in the southern states of Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo and Tabasco. The Mayan civilisation, which reached its peak between 250 and 900AD, was fascinated by astronomy, mathematics and the cycles of time. Its Long Count calendar began in 3114BC and moves forward in 394-year periods known as Baktuns. The winter solstice in 2012 marks the end of the 13th Baktun, a date of special significance that reflects celestial alignments recognised by modern astronomers. The idea that it could mean the end of the world - based on a Mayan text carved into a stone 1,300 years ago - has been spread on thousands of websites. But archaeologists and Maya experts say the prophecy predicts the return to Earth of a powerful god and the start of a new era, not a global catastrophe. They point out that other Maya prophecies refer to events far in the future. This has not stopped the spread of millennial fears around the world. Tourism officials are hoping that some of those who believe the end of the world is nigh will take the opportunity to visit the Maya region before it is too late.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

More Mystery For The Mary Celeste.

Many of you know of my fascination with the "Ghost Ship" Mary Celeste from previous entries two years ago and the delight of hearing from a survivor of the unfortunate Captain who vanished with his wife, child, and crew. Recently read at Phantoms and Monsters an improbable further history of the ship many swear was "Cursed"..

The Mary Celeste Enigma

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 07:31 AM PST
It’s the stuff of maritime legend: a ship sighted in the distance, hailed without response, and boarded to reveal a vessel under full sail, its wheel creaking aimlessly, cabin doors slamming open and shut in the wind, and … not a soul onboard.

On Dec. 4, 1872, it actually happened. The Mary Celeste was discovered between the Azores and Portugal—her crew vanished without a trace of a struggle, the ship still fully provisioned. What calamity befell the ship remains a mystery. A final log entry, on Nov. 24, showed no hint of distress. The cabin of Capt. Benjamin Briggs was untouched, right down to the sewing machine and parlor melodeon belonging to his wife and infant daughter; the child’s ghostly indentation remained visible on a bed. The crew must have “left in a great hurry,” reported the boarding party, for their pipes and tobacco were still there—and no sailor, they noted, willingly abandons ship without his pipe.
...Theories on the cause of the disappearance have ranged from cargo fumes to mutiny to (inevitably) alien abduction. The Mary Celeste’s fate inspired fictional solutions in an Arthur Conan Doyle story (which blamed a race war), a 1935 Hammer horror film (a hook-armed Bela Lugosi), and a Dr. Who episode (Daleks, of course.)

What’s not as well-known is that the Mary Celeste was also at the center of a second mystery. The disconcerting disappearance of its crew notwithstanding, the Mary Celeste still had plenty of life left in her, and soon went back into service. Thirteen years and 17 hapless owners later, Mary was mostly infamous for being in poor shape and for losing money on runs from Boston to Africa and the West Indies. It was merely one final indignity when she wrecked off Haiti in January 1885, slamming squarely into Rochelois Reef, a known hazard. The ship didn’t sink, but its hopelessly splintered remains would never leave the reef. Capt. Gilman Parker declared the cursed ship a loss, and then went ashore to sell the salvage rights to a load of ale, cutlery, and shoes for $500. That’s where the story might have ended—except that police showed up at the captain’s door in Boston three months later. The Mary Celeste, they charged, was a 282-ton, fully-rigged insurance scam.


The July 1885 trial of Capt. Parker and the ship’s co-owners, now buried in the Boston Globe archives, offers a fascinating glimpse into a Gilded Age flimflam.
Laying out charts and totting up blackboard figures in a broiling Boston courtroom, prosecutors revealed a chain of scams that reached from Haiti back to the alleyways of their own city.

Capt. Parker might have pulled it off, too, except that he’d gotten greedy: Not content to rip off just his insurers, he also tried to con the local salvager in Haiti. The salvager hadn’t found anything near the 125 casks of Bass ale promised on the ship’s manifest, and the few he did locate weren’t exactly good drinking. Called to the stand, a Boston bottler revealed they were moldy blanks with Bass labels pasted to them, and filled with “ullage”—bottom-of-barrel runoff from smashed and leaking bottles. The bottler hadn’t even bothered filling many of them; some were “half full, some a third full, and some just enough to wet the bottle."

The rest of the cargo was similarly suspect. The 975 barrels of “New Fortune Herring”? That was actually 780 barrels of rotten fish that stank so badly that one fish merchant said it was good only “for fertilizers.” Wooden barrels of “Fine” butter proved to be rank “slush.” The Haiti-bound food cargo was so foul that one conspirator was overheard musing, “If these n— eat that fish and drink that beer, they will all be dead.”

A crate supposed to contain $1,000 in cutlery, when pried open, revealed $50 worth of dog collars. Boxes of “women’s high-button boots” were old galoshes. The ship and its cargo, covered by five insurers for a whopping $34,000, were hardly worth the kerosene necessary to burn the wreck. Capt. Parker, in short, was in deep trouble.

“The defense lawyers were wild,” one investigator later marveled of Parker’s shambolic team. Parker’s attorney cited famed Massachusetts eccentric “Lord” Timothy Dexter—a late-18th-century merchant who supposedly shipped mittens and warming pans to the West Indies—to assert that the Mary Celeste’s cargo belonged to a splendid tradition of crazy-like-a-fox speculations. If the vulpine side of the simile was left unexplained, the crazy part was easy to spot. Haitians did“They say the goods were overinsured. Suppose they were. It is a common thing to overinsure,” sputtered Parker’s attorney. And if the crew said the goods were worthless, well, everyone knew they liked to tell stories. “Spinning a yarn is a sailor’s phrase,” he insisted.

Perhaps yarn-spinning could also explain the crew members who saw Capt. Parker toss the ship’s papers overboard, proclaiming “They’re gone. No one will know what’s in them.” And maybe it accounted for the first mate’s claim that he’d dissuaded Parker from a plan to wreck by the more dangerous Turks Islands, pleading, “For God’s sake don’t pile her up there; we shall all be drownded.”

But it wasn’t so easy for the defense to explain a letter in the captain’s hand, dated two months after the wreck, which the first mate also produced:n’t typically buy new Bass ale or salted herring, let alone rotten beer and fish.

“They say the goods were overinsured. Suppose they were. It is a common thing to overinsure,” sputtered Parker’s attorney. And if the crew said the goods were worthless, well, everyone knew they liked to tell stories. “Spinning a yarn is a sailor’s phrase,” he insisted.

Perhaps yarn-spinning could also explain the crew members who saw Capt. Parker toss the ship’s papers overboard, proclaiming “They’re gone. No one will know what’s in them.” And maybe it accounted for the first mate’s claim that he’d dissuaded Parker from a plan to wreck by the more dangerous Turks Islands, pleading, “For God’s sake don’t pile her up there; we shall all be drownded.”

But it wasn’t so easy for the defense to explain a letter in the captain’s hand, dated two months after the wreck, which the first mate also produced:

I wood advise you not to know to much a bout cargo fer the shipers have put in their bill of Invoice to the adgestors and the protest and Log Book as that stand is all that I want. You will be cald over to the Insurance look out you do not get in the Roung track by knoing to much.
After days of testimony, now it was the jury who knew too much. They had to decide whether Parker’s plot deserved a conviction on the maritime charge of barratry—deliberate destruction of a vessel—a crime then punishable by death.

After counts and recounts, the jury returned with a shocker: They’d deadlocked, 7-5, with the majority in favor of conviction. The five holdouts, it seemed, just couldn’t bring themselves to send a man to the gallows over rotten fish and bad butter. Three years later, and perhaps with the abandoned prosecution of Capt. Parker in mind, a Massachusetts congressman worked to amend the barratry law so that it would no longer be a capital offense.

“The penalty of death would be simply shocking,” he admitted to a House committee. “In many cases juries refused to convict, even when guilt was proved, as the only way to prevent a greater evil.”

But the doomed ship seemed to carry its own sentence: Nearly everyone else indicted in the conspiracy went bust, and Capt. Parker died under obscure circumstances just three months after his trial. They might have taken heed of the fate of David Cartwright, a previous owner who had already lost a small fortune on the Mary Celeste. “Of all the unlucky vessels I ever heard of,” he would recall, “shewas the most unlucky.” - slate.com - Paul Collins

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Ancient Aliens


If you follow the series on History channel you may know the presenter recently on Coast to Coast AM.

"Renowned investigative journalist and author, Philip Coppens, discussed Earth mysteries such as the Nazca lines and evidence for the existence of ancient visitation of astronauts from outer space. "Our ancestors definitely believed that we were not alone," Coppens declared, citing numerous cultures where their writings and traditions state that the 'gods' lived among them. He speculated that part of the reason why it is not better known that our ancestors were influenced by off-world beings is because their descendants were so poorly treated by Western culture that they became reticent to share this secret knowledge.

mainstream cannot accept that our ancestor held these beliefs and also refuse to contemplate that we are not alone. However, Coppens was optimistic by recent changes in the scientific community as the concept of panspermia, which suggests life originated elsewhere and naturally arrived on Earth, has begun to gain supporters. Additionally, he noted that there are some mainstream scientists who have suggested that ETs have visited our planet in the past, albeit before the dawn of human history. Coppe
s vehemently disagreed with this limited perspective, saying "archaeological, anthropological, mythological, and historical evidence from our ancestors clearly shows that this contact happened within the lifespan of human habitation."

perspective on the abilities and culture of an ancient people. To that end, he credited pioneering esoteric researcher Eric Von Daniken, who championed the site as evidence for ancient astronauts and spawned intense interest in the mysterious landmark. Coppens observed that, after forty years of researchers studying the Nazca Lines, "they really have had to concluded that, yes, indeed, these people could take to the air." One potential form of flight used by the Nazca creators, he suggested, are seen in small artifacts known as "gold flyers," which scientists claim represented winged insects. However, Coppens pointed out that, in the 1990's, German engineers reconstructed a scale model "gold flyer" and it "flew perfectly."


His interesting site has more http://www.philipcoppens.com/articles.html
Pictures are from the Ancient Alien Jewelry from Paranormal Presents At Etsy.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Interesting Sightings In North Carolina





Recently these accounts came to my attention as they were in my area,they were especially significant!

11/12/2011 - North Carolina: "I was out jogging on the 12th as I normally do on the weekends. I decided to jog a nature trail located over in Guilford County. I started my run at about 8am and stopped to rest at about 9:30am. I saw something down the trail from me. It was short like a midget and it was white and had a metalic colored suit on. It was just standing there looking at me. I had not seen anyone else that morning on the trail. I thought it was just another individual ahead of me that had stopped to rest. I get up and continue down the trail. I look at my watch and it was approx. 9:45am. That is all I remember doing. When I woke up, I was back in my car. It was almost 11am. I can still see the dwarf in my memory. I keep repeating it over and over in my head, tryng to remember what happened. I can't remember anything other than being very tired when I woke up in my car and having a small cut just behind my left ear. I wish I could remember more."




11/23/2011 - North Carolina:" The witness is husband to a lady that has had sightings, missing time, and found herself standing naked in her living room at 2 AM recently. The husband saw what he described as a being 4 feet tall with long hair. It was in the hallway for 2 seconds looking at him. It then disappeared into a mist."
Thank you for sharing these experiences.
The pictures are Christmas Gift options from Paranormal Presents at Etsy.com

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Ghost Phobia?


Spectrophobia - The Fear of Spectres or Ghosts

Spectrophobia is a specific phobia that involves an intense fear of ghosts and aspirations known as specters. Most adults will admit to being a bit afraid of ghosts, but people with spectrophobia feel that ghosts and specters are powerful black magic phantoms who can steal souls and even lives. Like most phobias, people who suffer from spectrophobia usually have experienced some sort of mental or physical trauma in their life. This experience then becomes associated with specters, ghosts, or apparitions. The symptoms of this phobia can range from a mild uncomfortable feeling to full blown anxiety or panic attacks. It is a rare disorder that is usually self-diagnosed, as the individual realizes the fear is interfering with their ability to function. Some treatments include traditional talk therapy, self-help techniques, exposure therapy, support groups, and various relaxation techniques.

Picture is from Paranormal Presents at Etsy.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Larry King Wants to Be Frozen After Death


Larry King reveals he wants to be Cryogenically Frozen: ‘I fear death’

Larry King overshadowed his guests on Sunday night for one of his specials, CNN Presents: A Larry King Special: Dinner with the Kings. The entertainer invited Conan O'Brien, Tyra Banks, Shaquille O'Neal, Seth MacFarlane, Jack Dorsey, Quincy Jones and Russell Brand to his dinner table to talk life, entertainment and all parts in-between.

While the news broadcaster was hoping to make headlines with his guests, the headings he made were more about himself and the idea that he wasn’t to be Cryogenically Frozen.

"Oh, I fear death," said Larry King. "My biggest fear is death, because I don't think I'm going anywhere. And since I don't think that, and I don't have a belief… I'm married to someone who has the belief, so she knows she's going somewhere.”

The entertainer seemed to shock his guests talking about being frozen and what happens after he is frozen after death.

"I want to be frozen on the hope that they'll find whatever I died of and bring me back," said Larry King.