Category: THE FOREST DARK LOGBOOK

The nights are getting colder.  The days become shorter and shorter. Everything changes. When we go into the forest in the autumn we enjoy the great colors of the season, red and yellow colored leaves and the last warm rays of the sun. For those among us who are more sensitive or even have some psychic abilities this time is ambivalent. Not only that Samhuinn (Halloween) is the moment when our dimension and the other dimensions overlap, there are certain energies in the air. These energies can be very strong particularly when a full moon in October rises and sometimes the days become unnaturally warm again.

It’s a good time to visit the secret places in the woods again. However the wanderer needs to know when he has to be careful. This is a time for very special dreams. Some dreams are more as pure dreams. Sometimes they seem so real. And where do they come from? Where do certain images come from which even pop up sometimes in bright daylight? Maybe there are seasons or times of the year, which present more like a change of mere weather conditions. Like many other phenomena in nature they present an idea. This perspective can be found in ancient myth, like the cult of Persephone. Today we have lost this ancient wisdom. But in certain moments moment we sense a certain atmosphere or some kind of energy, which triggers sometimes disturbing images. And again there might be ceremonial places which work like batteries, storing up energies and waiting to be released.

http://youtu.be/qbrmIJurX50

When I wrote down my thoughts about „So many secrets in the woods“, I remembered also the stories of people who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the woods. There are many cases of people who voluntarily went into the woods and were never seen again or doing strange things there in the night and when asked why they couldn’t really explain the driving force behind their actions. Modern rationalists relate such cases usually to psychological illness, drug abuse or suspect some criminal background. However there are other explanations why people behave in a way we don’t understand. As I said in “Do you remember your first call” it seems that sometimes we receive some sort of wake-up call or some signal, which is so overwhelming,  that it changes the entire course of our life.  We remember the stories of successful businessmen who suddenly gave up their business and lived like a monk or become backpackers travelling the whole world. “Into the wild” by Jon Krakauer tells the true story of Christopher Johnson McCandless, a young guy who gave up his normal life and went into the wilderness. He died because of starvation.

These calls, whereever they might come from, are not always igniting positive human development. Sometimes people indeed seem to fall under a spell. Recently a remarkable and price-winning independent movie, “Take Shelter” presented an interesting take on the subject. The movie opens with the main character Curtis LaForche watching a supercell-thunderstorm and experiences strange sensations further on. He is becoming more and more paranoid and feels a strong impulse to build a better storm shelter. When he nearly ruins his family because he looses his job due to his actions, he becomes desperate and gets convinced that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia like his mother who lives in an institution. However this turns out to be a wrong lead in the end. It is never explained what exactly happened to Curtis but we feel there is a strong sense of truth in what happens to the main character who behaves more and more like a prophet of doom. I believe we know that pattern from somewhere: Somebody taking strange actions and we can’t really explain why he is doing this but in the same way we can’t say that he is simply going crazy. Think of the character Roy Neary played by Richard Dreyfuss in “Close Encounters”, an ordinary electrician, who feels a strong pull he can’t resist to build the model of Devil’s mountain in his living room.

With Curtis, It’s more like he received a dangerous call leading him on a path of self-destruction (this is an interpretation. I don’t really know about the filmmaker’s intention). What’s important here is the lesson that we shouldn’t be to quick with our common psychological explanation.  There is even a danger in psychology because it makes us blindsided for the tremendous forces and entities which are coming from outside. The idea of demons possessing us might sound old-fashioned. But don’t we feel there is some truth in the idea of the “inner demon” which is sometimes taking over and driving our actions? I don’t refer to simply possession it’s more like what Patrick Harbour said in his excellent book  “Daimonic Realty”: “What the daimons in dreams seek is our ability, through reflection and pondering, through all our making and doing, to give shape to their dynamic shape-shifting; to order and discriminate their chaos, to body forth their ethereal volatility, to express their, not the ego’s perspectives”.

You don’t need to believe in a red-eyed demon with horns but the ancient concept of daimons, which put men under their spell is at least in a metaphorical sense not so bad. The daimons of the ancient world are not purely bad or benign. Their nature is more ambivalent but nevertheless their influence can be dangerous.

There are interesting questions considering such a concept: first, how and why does such a call happen and are you forced to follow the call which might articulate itself as some sort of inner voice or a strong need to do a certain thing? I haven’t found really convincing answers yet but it’s interesting that for example close encounters with the forces of nature seems to have a strong effect on some people like Curtis in Take Shelter. There is again a very interesting idea in ancient philosophy that there is someone behind all phenomena and that the divine is in all things.  Indeed a thunderstorm might be more as just a weather-pattern. Some people think that the world as we see it is more like the surface of a computer-screen with nature and even other planets as icons which are mere representations of something we can’t know and understand.

We know about  stories of people gone missing in the woods for some time and later claimed that they were enchanted by a deer. Encounters with magic animals in a dense wood are good candidates for igniting a profound change in the life of a person. Medieval stories tell a lot about these encounters. Sometimes they can be a masquerade. Fairies might take the form of a certain animal. “The owls are not what they seem”, says the loglady in Twin Peaks.

Of course, visits at certain places might also have a tremendous effect on the psyche. Distinct mountains have a reputation that they can be like a strong drug. The events at Witch Mountain in the Forest Dark movie project will resemble some real events.

Another disturbing aspect is that dreams could have effects, which we don’t know much about. What if something or somebody or something could intrude in our dreams and starting to “remote control” our minds like a PC connected to the web and being captured by a botnet? Curtis in “Take Shelter” has disturbing dreams driving him into madness.

Of course, we need to distinct between “inspiration” and “projection”. It is again Harpour who makes us aware that we need to understand the difference between shamanic initiation and a quest. He speaks of the “quester” as somebody “active, single-minded, even obsessive” like Odysseus. “Paranoia is always around the corner”, since “the Otherworld is to close to him, threatening to overwhelm and possess him”. Sometimes it’s the rational minded explorer who is lured by the song of the Sirens.

However we might still ask what is the driving force behind our quests. Harpour thinks the quest might be a kind of reversed initiation. Curtis dark journey in “Take Shelter” felt to me like a shamanic initiation gone wrong. Another interesting model for interpretation comes from Jungian scholar Richard Edinger particularly if it comes to apocalyptic visions. He describes the “Archetype Of Apocalypse” as a driving force in his book about the archetype of apocalypse. He explains how this archetype works and finds dramatic examples how this archetype is activated today. It’s fascinating but its always terribly difficult to explain or to define what exactly an archetype is. The most disturbing speculation about archetypes is that they are not part of the human psyche but autonomous agencies and therefore very close to the idea of the daimons of the ancient world.

We need to trust our feelings when we get the call to adventure. We can’t know who or what is behind the call from the otherworld. We can’t resist and we don’t have much choice but maybe we can feel if it is the light side of the force or the dark side, which is always at work.

In her wonderful introduction to “Magic And Witchcraft In Scotland” Joyce Miller describes the belief in a magical universe before the advent of rational science. In that time Miller says that “society regarded the world not just in terms of the physical realm but incorporated a spiritual  one as well, one which we might regard as form of magical realm. These different realms provided the basis for understanding the world and creation” Further she writes, “Although not everyone engaged actively with all of these supernatural or preternatural powers, most of society participated to a greater or lesser degree, in both sacred and profane ways, by attempting to manipulate the occult powers of nature”.

Certain places to get in touch with the occult powers of nature were always in  the woods. There, outside the controlled space within the city limits, was the room for things to be done.

A many things happened in the woods like worshipping and rituals which became often secret rituals with the introduction of Christianity. Even today if we enter the woods we often find mysterious remains of strange events which must happened there. “So what”, we might be tempted to say since Shamanism and neo-pagan rituals are a common thing. Sweat-huts are a well-known form of therapy and all kind of seminars happen in the last remains of wilderness in the western-world. Kids go always in the woods at a certain age to get their experiences.

However on my own ways through the woods I often find some strange remains, which could mean a many things. Do we really know what’s going on there when it’s getting dark? Aren’t there still some times in the year where we think we had heard something, something like strange chants and drums coming from the mountains and deep in the woods like in a well-know story from H.P. Lovecraft?

“Watch the skies!” was the credo of a 50ties paranoia B-movie classic. Stephen King did a good analysis of these movies in his book “Dance Macabre” and related the UFO-hysteria presented in these movies to collective phobias in Western society after the launch of the Russian Sputnik.

But strange things in the sky happened at all times and present much more rather than just an allegory. And there are much weirder things going on in the sky above our heads as flying saucers and ball lightning. Medieval and biblical accounts may sound pretty fantastic or a bit “psychedelic” to us today, but there are many of them and they come from around the world.

Pierre Boaistuau, in 1575 remarked:

“ The face of heaven has been so often disfigured by bearded, hairy comets, torches, flames, columns, spears, shields, dragons, duplicate moons, suns, and other similar things, that if one wanted to tell in an orderly fashion those that have happened since the birth of Jesus Christ only, and inquire about the causes of their origin, the lifetime of a single man would not be enough”.

 In Tubingen, Germany, on December 5, 1577, a 7:00 A.M, “about the sun many dark clouds appeared, such as we are wont to see during great storms: and soon afterward have come from the sun other clouds, all fiery and bloody, and others, yellow as safran. Out of these clouds have come forth reverberations resembling large, tall and wide hats, and the earth showed itself yellow and bloody, and seemed to be covered with hats, tall and wide, which appeared in various colors such as red, blue, green and most of them black….May Almighty God inspire all men to recognize Him. Amen.”(From Passport To Magonia)

It should be kept in mind that these particular images and distinct visions like this one appeared not in medieval times but in between the dark ages and modern times. It’s the time where the notorious witches hammer was written and climate change, social upheaval and the Black Death created an apocalyptic atmosphere.

As with Near-death-visions there is a similar strong influence of cultural factors embedded in the reports of visions and sightings.

Consequently we might say that we never  see exactly what’s going on and who is behind the phenomena.

This raises interesting questions about the true nature of the “celestial fires” we also find in the Old Testament. Medieval writers relate these observations to manifestations of God. Plutarch brought up the idea of the “daimons” which communicate between body and soul. Vallee interpreted UFO’s as “Windows To Another Reality”. Or does the fire in the sky represent the “archetype of the apocalypse”, which is described by Jungian Scholar Edward. E. Edinger in his analysis of the Book of Revelation? Do they mean a warning to us?

Sometimes the skies and the clouds seem to be places where the veil between our dimension and other realms becomes too thin. It might be also the time when entities from a kind we don’t understand can look down at us.  Even with thousands of reports from modern UFOS to ancient myth we have no clue about their true intentions and what’s really going on.

What we know is that these manifestations in the sky can be powerful symbols changing the entire course of live of the witness.   Again it is important that we take things not too literally. Sightings often have a weird, meaningless or funny nature like the intriguing descriptions of the Sleagh Maith from Reverend Kirk. They seem to be more like some kind of masquerade.

However whoever is behind the mask is anything but harmless. As I said in “Do you remember your first call” there might be incidents in our live, we even don’t remember consciously, which keep a hidden influence on our lives.

Of course there are many natural things particular in our days with so many planes, satellites, drones and weather balloons in the air which could lead to sightings we don’t understand simply because if we had a telescope at hand we could identify the Unknown Areal Object immediately.

But sometimes it seems like even with normal weather phenomena there is much more going on as we can see. For example, it’s still a mystery how exactly a thunderstorm does work. Some storms seem like an impressing demonstration of the powers of nature but at some times there are exceptional lightning storms. You could feel a distinct atmosphere when such an electric storm approaches and something strange may happen, which will become a theme in the movie project.  Even today in the age of science where big storms have simply become “super-cells” there are certain moment moments we do remember that uncanny feeling, which inspired many writers as H.P. Lovecraft. He reported the forbidden things happening on tempest mountain when lightning strikes in his story “The Lurking Fear”.

Electricity in the air is always a magic medium where strange things can happen. That’s what my experience is. Weird stuff like Charles Ford’s strange falls does happen till today. If the atmosphere around us become charged with energy, we might get a glimpse of the other dimensions we don’t see but which are present all the time. It’s also the mysterious moment when a communication with the unknown might happen.

Whatever the “fires in the sky” mean we should investigate, since they seem not only influence a single life. As C.G. Jung pointed out in his analysis of the UFO myth during the 50ties whole societies or the course of mankind might be under some hidden influence which works with strong symbols. The fact that these experiences seem neither of a purely objective nature nor of a completely psychological nature makes this subject so mind-boggling. In the end our paranoia doesn’t necessarily mean that our speculations are always wrong. Furthermore it’s interesting that significant sightings, which leave a deep and soul shattering experience, happen at historical transition points.  I remember people often saying ” I’ve never before seen something like this” over the last years. Maybe they only refer to unusual weather patterns, maybe not.  We should keep watching the skies!