google.com, pub-1277587689226943, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Category: Forest

Posted on

The Cosmic Connection

Scientists discovered that cosmic rays had more influence on trees rather than climate change. BBC Earth reported in an article the surprising discovery that there is a cosmic influence to tree growth. The author said, “When the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s surface was higher, the rate of tree growth was faster”.

Cosmic rays are particles in the universe which hit the surface of the Earth. However, their intensity varies with solar activity. During the heightened activity, there are more sunspots on the surface of the sun, which create a strong magnetic field. The field absorbs the cosmic rays to a certain extent.

Cosmic rays are not the only connection between the forest and the universe.

Now think of our solar system as one big spaceship. The nine planets and its surroundings are indeed in a kind of bubble travelling through space. Space is a vacuum, but it isn’t empty. There are cosmic rays. There are other stars and planets, black holes, rogue planets, and somewhere there is dark matter. Space is anything but a lifeless place. There might be intelligent clouds, alien civilisations, but also entities which are beyond our imagination.




What if Earth attracted on its endless journey through the vastness of our universe a cosmic hitch-hiker? It might be something, which was lurking somewhere in the depth of space. What if it landed in some remote forested area a long time ago? Perhaps it is still there. “He who walks behind” doesn’t show his face, but he is here. Right now.

We should also be aware that any point on the surface of Earth and other places in the solar system could be in connection with the universe. If we look at Astrology in a metaphorical sense, we get the right picture.

The cosmic-hitchhiker surprisingly gets some credibility through science. The mystery of the genesis of life remains unsolved. The most common idea is the microbial-hitchhiker sitting on some comet or some other cosmic driftwood. We know that microbes can survive journeys of millions of years in space. Some day the asteroid hits a planet. The asteroid survives the impact. The seed of life in a primordial world is the microbes on the surface of the asteroid. That’s also called the “Panspermia theory”. The theory means that life on Earth may have seeded here from other worlds. The transportation happened via microbial contamination of solid objects like asteroids.

The earliest forms of life on Earth are 3.48 billion years old. These are fossils found in Western Australia. There is no proof for any extraterrestrial origin but at this time Earth was very young. The young solar system was chaos with a constant bombardment of cosmic debris on the surface of the young Earth. There is also a prominent theory suggesting that life comes from Mars.

The unsolved riddle of the creation of life on Earth brought up even more fascinating ideas: What if there was some extraterrestrial civilisation “seeding” planet Earth? This is the idea of the “Engineers” as seen in the Alien Franchise by Ridley Scott. Okay, this is science-fiction but is it too fantastic or could it be real?




Recently Kelsey Johnson wrote in a Scientific American article about “No E.T. Life Yet – That might be a warning” that “ridiculously crazy and complex ideas are sometimes correct”. “Just because something is unlikely doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a serious academic study”. The article is mostly about why we haven’t found extraterrestrial life yet and that we shouldn’t draw simple conclusions. It says that humans are “cosmic babies” considering the age of the universe. “E.T. life is likely to be millions of years more technologically advanced than we are”.

There is another problem connected with the unsolved questions about the origins and the creation of life. That is our limited view of what life is. There might be other forms of life, which are different from any idea we have. If this is the case, we should not only watch the skies. Perhaps we are sharing our spaceship Earth with other cosmic-hitchhikers, with somebody accompanying us from the very beginning.

Posted on

LIGHT AND CHAOS

The Forest Dark Video Instalment No5 – Creation

“From the very beginning, there was light and there was chaos. Both came from far beyond” (The Forest Dark Screenplay).

Black Fire. Dark Energies in the forest. Telluric Forces. Where do they come from? There are many descriptions of the nature of haunted places. There are the remote forests and the mist-shrouded mountains where people vanish. Hidden places where rituals and sacrifices do happen. The region where mysterious lights can be seen. The haunted countryside where unspeakable forces had influenced many generations. There must be a source for this. Somewhere.

The mythological stories of mankind have many tales about something which came from deep within. There is a rich imagination about an underworld. The caves had been populated by the lower gods.

What if it came from outer space? H.P. Lovecraft described an entity in his famous story “The Color From Outer Space”. It is something which has an indescribable colour. Since it set its foot on Earth it is exerting a malicious influence. It never reveals its true nature.

In Lovecraft’s story the “Color From Outer Space” terrorises a strip of farmland. However there might be supernatural forces which are larger. They represent primordial forces. We find reports of “Chaos Gods” in any ancient culture. They are called “Ahriman” or Andra Manyu, destructive spirits, in Zoroastrianism’s hypothesis and Apep or Apophis in Egyptian mythology. Also the Norse mythology and American Indian People do know about the gods which stem from primordial chaos. Mostly these gods reside in the skies. They are opponents of the sun gods or the light.



In our times we tend to envision these forces as the “Great Old Ones” (Lovecraft) which come perhaps from a distant galaxy. But if we think about the cosmic influence it doesn’t necessarily always imply travel.

Albert Einstein who developed the Quantum mechanics described a phenomenon called “Spooky action at a distance”. It refers to the so-called “quantum entanglement”. Entanglement makes it possible to achieve what is not possible in the conventional world.

Entanglement means that if you watch a particle in one place, another particle, which could be light-years away, will instantly change its properties. It suggests that the two are connected.

This phenomenon contradicts ordinary laws of nature. Nothing can travel faster than light. But in the mysterious quantum world, there is long distance communication without any need of time.

Many scientists conducted experiments about the “Spooky action at a distance” and there are more and more results which appear to prove the existence of this phenomenon.

Perhaps the strange places on Earth, the haunted forests, are mysteriously connected with the universe. We could think of them as the cosmic forest, created by forces beyond our imagination. Thus a place on Earth could be directly be connected and influenced by something far away. It could be some sort of intelligence in a nebula or wherever the chaos gods reside.

If we follow the ideas of quantum physics we might also find that our idea of “here” and “there” isn’t any longer valid under certain circumstances. If “they” can be in touch with our everyday world here there could be also windows into the other worlds. In dreams, sometimes, very clear visions of distant worlds pop-up, which hasn’t been seen by any real explorer.

“Forest Dark Video Installment No5 – Creation” is related to the feature film project and hopefully inspires viewers about “Light and Chaos”, “Here and There” and how the forest is connected.

Posted on

The Fields Have Eyes, The Forest Has Ears

“The Fields Have Eyes, The Forest Has Ears” is revering mostly to a drawing by Hieronymus Busch who labeled it after a proverb. That proverb “The Fields Have Eyes, The Forest Has Ears” from around 1500 AD is mostly interpreted in the same way as “the walls have ears”. It means to be careful because there is surveillance.

But there is another connection here. It could be also seen in a more literal sense. The forest exerts influence upon us. And the forest knows your deepest secrets.

Alexander Porteous mentions the proverb in his famous book “The Forest In Folklore And Mythology”: “It has been said that the forest knows all and is able to teach all, and there is a French proverb to the effect that the forest, which always listens, has the secret of every mystery, while a Latin proverb of the Middle Ages says: Aures sunt nemoris, oculi compestribus oris, and similarly the German: Das Feld hat Augen, der Wald hat Ohren”.

Therefore there is probably here a different background leading to the deeper mythological dimension of the forest.

Some forests are like a big organism. There are many folk traditions where the forest is like a deity. It is something which has to be respected. The forest can be a friend but it can be also a fierce enemy. It is more like a zone with intelligence. Sometimes there is a deity known as the “king of the forest” residing in a certain tree.

The forest’s deities were also often worshipped in a grove. Furthermore,the witches met and performed rituals in these holy groves. Oracles were spoken in the glades of the primeval woods.

Sir James George Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”, a study in magic and religion, describes an ancient sacred ritual happening deep in the forest. It lies at the core of future pagan religions and others. A priest is sacrificed by his successor. Obviously, the sacrifice is made to a deity in the forest. This exchange between supernatural powers and men is the very model for human belief systems for a long time.


There are a lot of forest customs in later centuries where we see the “quid pro quo” principle: A favour or advantage is granted in return for something. If you want something from the forest(‘s deities) you have to offer something in return.

The forest has many things in store for us: food, knowledge, even protection (you can hide in the forest from your enemies). But something has to be offered in return. If the balance is disturbed the forest can take something (for example from the village in the midst of the forest). Somebody might disappear.

The forest deities exert immense power and influence. Today, we have forgotten about the older knowledge, but these forces haven’t vanished. The forest still has ears. He knows secrets and in certain moments knowledge can be gained. It doesn’t take much time and the wanderer will feel the elder gods in the solitude of a walk in the middle of a mountain forest.

In some places,strange stories happen a lot. Villagers far away from the big cities keep the old ceremonies alive. In the so-called Bennington Triangle region, Vermont, north-eastern USA, there is a ceremony that for over 50 years nobody has mysteriously vanished. There were a number of disturbing cases of vanishings which could never be solved. The area had already a certain reputation which goes back a long way. The American natives only used it as a burial ground and believed in evil spirits. An enchanted stone was suspected to swallow everything that passed by. People not only disappeared when walking in the woods but from their homes and even from a bus.

We do not know if they do something to please the spirits of the wilderness in that ceremony.

But ceremonies always need one crucial element: The belief that somebody or something is watching you and that this entity might react.

It seems that there are still places where something in the woods is watching you – “The forest has ears”.

Posted on

Tour Guide To The Otherworld

In stories with a metaphysical setting as in my The Forest Dark Movie Project, a kind of a professional guide is often introduced. The most prominent example, however, is “The Stalker” in Andrey Tarkovsky’s movie based on the Brothers Strugatzki’s novel.

In “Stalker”, there is a quarantined zone. Inside there is the danger. What happens in the zone is a secret. The government is sealing off the zone.  Entry is forbidden. No one gets in, no one gets out. The idea of such a zone appears also in other stories. A similar concept appears in “Annihilation” but without the guide. These type of stories and ideas go back a long way and most of all these zones do exist. Most people know about the “Bermuda Triangle” or “Area51” but there are zones which are much closer to civilisation and the everyday world:

In an outstanding documentary, “L’Autre Monde” (Otherworld) legendary filmmaker Richard Stanley portrays the magic region in South-West-France around Montsegur. This zone, where the supernatural is pretty alive, “a place where magic still has “currency”, is well known as the setting of the Dan Brown novels and is rich in history. It is indeed labelled as “The Zone”. Stanley and his companion Scarlett Amaris investigated over years and unearthed convincing evidence and disturbing secrets.

Montsegur is not the only place haunted: There are several zones on this planet, some places are forests, like the already mentioned “Freetown-Fall River State Forest“ with the “Bridgewater Triangle”. They are often seen as a portal to other dimensions.

In psychogeography, there are also more subtle zones, not always known as haunted but are loaded with some sort of otherworld energy.

 

Usually, a lot of people who tried to conquer forbidden zones or haunted forests are never come back. But these guides survive somehow. They must have extraordinary abilities or somehow they are connected to the “Zone”. In Tarkovsky’s movie, the Zone is described as sentient. It has itself an understanding of any kind of intruder and it responds. The guide, on the other hand, is also a highly sensible man. It doesn’t mean that he actively communicates with the Zone, but he knows things. In Twin Peaks, it is Deputy Hawk who acts sometimes as a guide person in the mysterious forest. He is a very positive person. Also “The Stalker” has positive intentions, but is a much more desperate person.




Of course, there are many real guides taking people to mysterious places or zones of the supernatural. Both the real persons as the fictional guides cannot be trusted all the times. They are intermediaries between two worlds. In a positive sense, they gain knowledge and teach others what they learned on the other side. Furthermore, they can help to survive in a dangerous metaphysical setting. On the other side, they can not always be trusted. If it is a dark place they might have become corrupted. Or they follow their own agenda.

The “Stalker” movie was a movie with interesting ideas about hidden desires. The “Zone” does know a lot of things about the visitors. If we imagine a haunted forest knowing perhaps the deepest secrets entering such a place can be a dangerous game. You can’t know what kind of “deal” you guide made with the forbidden zone, the dark forest. Perhaps he is trading you for something. Perhaps he is not always under control or can’t control himself. Things could happen.

These human guides are the opposite of the spiritual guides of the “otherworldly journey”.

What if a person wants to be a guide, a shaman, an intermediator between the worlds, but doesn’t have the gift?

You need to have some sort of sixth sense,  open-mindedness and not being a selfish guru-type person to become a positive guide person. Otherwise, such a guide can be a puppet in the hands of the dark forces lurking deep inside a zone of the paranormal.

It is a theme in my story but also, in reality, we know we have to be careful with certain guru-types who returned from who-knows-what kind of place.