The Forest Dark

Sometimes there are random encounters with people you never will forget. I remember an elder man I saw a couple of times in a pedestrian zone wearing transparent plastic gloves and a transparent raincoat all the time. He was always talking of “Fatima”.

I never learned anything about the background of that old man or what might had happened to him. But something must have made a life-changing impact on him.

“Fatima” was one of the most mysterious events in the 20th century and was accepted as a miracle by the Roman Catholic Church. The Miracle of the Sun was an event which occurred on Sunday 13 October 1917, attended by some 30,000 to 100,000 people who were gathered near Fatima, Portugal. Many people claimed to have witnessed extraordinary solar activity (Wikipedia, Miracle Of the Sun).

The whole story of Fatima includes much more than the “miracle of the sun” event. It is a complex case consisting of a chain of events. It began with three children, Ludica dos Santos, Jacinta Marto and Francisco Marot who claimed to have seen “Our Lady Of Fatima” and other visions.

They became famous not only because of the miracle of the sun and the apparitions but also because of the “three Secrets Of Fatima”, which included prophecies.

“The most widely cited descriptions of the events reported at Fatima are taken from the writings of John De Marchi, an Italian Catholic priest and researcher. De Marchi spent seven years in Fátima, from 1943 to 1950, conducting research and interviewing the principals at length.[14] In The Immaculate Heart, published in 1952, De Marchi reports that, “[t]heir ranks (those present on 13 October) included believers and non-believers, pious old ladies and scoffing young men” (Wikipedia, Miracle Of The Sun).

There are variations in the reports but a typical report sounds like this:

“The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible.”—Dr. Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University.[17]

There is a lot more material and also reports including further phenomena for example strange weather events.

However there is one unique experience at the bottom of these reports: they sound more like some completely strange psychedelic sensation rather than the sighting of a “flying saucer” or the simple appearance of a fantastic object.

The problem with “Fatima” is that it’s impossible today to distinct what people really saw and what was brought up later as an interpretation. “It’s like a crime site trampled over leaving few usable traces for forensics”.

However there are a many things here we do know for certain:

The events had a tremendous impact on many people’s lives. There must have happened something which left a very deep impression. Ludica dos Santos became a nun.

Furthermore also the potential of such events to become a legend deeply affect people. The old man ( I’don’t think he was an actual witness) I watched wearing that transparent raincoat even the sun was shining looked a bit like somebody who is afraid of some sort of contamination or radiation – he made his own makeshift biohazmat.

What’s really interesting is that this happened not the first time. In my previous post “Watch The Fire In The Sky” I described similar events hundred of years before Fatima for example in Tuebingen, 1577. Thus there is a tradition for that kind of events.

From a more sceptical point of view we could ask if these “miracles of the sun” are kind of a cultural phenomena or is it simple a strange weather phenomena as some researchers thought.

It’s hard to say but what we can say is that “the dance of the sun” sounds like a typical visionary experience, something which looks like taken from a shaman’s journey but what happened on a collective level.

There is a strong apocalyptic element here and a very strong ambiguity: it’s wonderful and frightening at the same time, it could be benign but also threatening and it’s really weird. It is more like a collapse of the eternal boundary between matter and mind not like a real physical phenomena. It’s both psychological and its very real in a way.

If we look for real signs of the otherworld it might be exactly these type of events in human history – which perhaps changed or even manipulated the course of our history – we should look for. The “dance of the sun” is the kind of event which sets up the idea in our mind that our most cherished beliefs (about what’s real) could be wrong. Since we don’t know much about the nature of these events there is also a danger for misinterpretation and also abuse in a political sense here.

Phenomena like the dance of the sun work like reality changers, something I am dealing with in my movie project.

Further reading (excellent case study of Fatima included):

The idea of otherworldly guardians in our lives suggests that there must be some form of communication between us and the agents of the otherworld.

A lot of people claim that they receive some call from the spiritual world during their lifetime. Ghosts disturb electricity. Demon’s leave their frightening marks. Since the early beginning of mankind priests and diviners try the interpret signs of the Gods.

Is there a chance to distinct between projections and something real? Is it true that our world is full of otherworldly signs but we don’t see them because we are blind?

I’ am afraid that there is no clear answer to this if we stick to our usual patterns of rational thinking.

The signs of the otherworld often appear as a mystery, or at least we think there must be some sort of a riddle which can be solved. Thus the first question is not if there are daimonic traces in our world or not but how to interpret them.

Furthermore, is there a message or not and can we read the message? We know from many alien encounters as fairy encounters in former times that these beings obviously love to talk in riddles. The same goes for psychics and daimonic humans; “the owls are not what they seem”  the Log Lady in Twin Peaks says.

When somebody is haunted by daimonic phenomena it might be something which Patrick Harpour calls a kind of initiation (which) happen the other way around: “The Otherworld enters this world” (Daimonic Reality, page 250). He calls it a quest and describes it as a goal-oriented kind of initiation where the quester, bombarded by the otherworld, is vulnerable to a mixture of delusion and revelation.

If we think of X-File’s Agent Mulder we find the perfect example of a quester on the brink of madness. Perhaps the series creators took the example of Mr. Keel, an Ufo-researcher, described by Harpour as an example.

Keel claimed that “that the phenomenon actually led him back on to the right path” which means that the confrontation with otherworldly events had an educational quality. The guardians obviously were teaching him a lesson – don’t trust the obvious.

Thus if we look out for signs of the otherworld we should look not for the obvious (proof of the ghost, alien landing, demon possession) but perhaps the truth lies in the contradictory nature of many reports.

Experiencing otherworldly events and studying the signs could be some sort of learning experience. However in the end the riddle gets not solved in an usual way but in a deeper understanding. It’s a bit like the quest for the Holy Grail where the knights gained insight during the journey. The Holy Grail is a very good example because it has many ambiguous meanings and serve as a symbol.

Otherworldly traces often are kind of symbols but it needs a lot of patience to understand the symbol.

But how could we detect “signs from the otherworld”?  There is no proof to this but if we experience something strange and cannot forget it or something which pops up as a memory later again and again, it might be worth to think about the nature of the event.

Signs from the otherworld might be not necessarily something which appears as something supernatural or as a kind of wonder to us at first sight. It might be strange sets of circumstances which direct our lives in a certain direction. Perhaps we aren’t even aware about these turning points. The only chance is to keep a good memory and understand later the hidden patterns behind certain events.

Of course, paranoia isn’t far away. And it doesn’t take so much to think that a strange cloud in the sky conveys a personal message or there are mysterious signs everywhere in the street, on a train ride or in your apartment. The quester is always walking on a thin line and you need to be on alert to not lose your grip on reality.

The irony however is that the rationalist if much more in danger to lose his wits when his explanations fail rather than the open-minded. Its good to become sometimes only an observer and not necessarily an interpreter.

But here comes another interesting issue with otherworldly signs: if I start a project, for example a movie project or a book which deals with otherworldly themes, it could become a similar quest like Keel’s Ufo-research. Like Harpour says, there are moments “our everyday reality becomes heightened, full of extraordinary synchronicities and paranormal events”(Daimonic Reality). I am convinced that happened already a couple of times and perhaps I wasn’t even aware of it. And this is the moment, when the popular ” story based on true events” could work the other way around. The idea of a project and its development might provoke something. It might not something on a grand scale but subtle events shaping the course of development.

“I was guarded”. Many people share this experience. It might happen in extraordinary circumstances, but also in everyday situations and in near death experiences. Some people are convinced that their whole life was shaped by some sort of Guardian, as the famous psychologist C.G. Jung. The guide figure or protector (guardian angel) is related to Greek and Roman ideas of the personal daimon. These otherworld guides however are much more than friendly guardian angels.

Carol Zaleski writes in “Otherwordly Journeys” the advent of a guide is therefore a crucial event for most medieval otherworld vision; she says that “mere departure from the body does not suffice to make the (newly deceased) soul a fullfledged citizen of the next world…in Victor Turner’s phrase, ‘the soul is bewixt and between…an otherworld guide is needed..to usher the immigrant soul into its new surroundings. In the return-from-death-story, the soul’s assimilation into the other world is, by definition, incomplete, yet the temporary visitor would be lost without the services of an experienced escort, capable of interpreting alien sight” (Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, pages 52-53).

If we take this further there are a lot of implications about the true meanings of Guardians and the hidden patterns in our lives.

If the Otherworld Journey is a crucial moment for the guiding angel what’s his function during our life-time? The most common belief is that guiding angels are protecting us; “my Guardian Angel saved me”.

But maybe this is part of a larger pattern, the preparation of the soul for the next world during lifetime. It’s interesting that the guide is also an interpreter; it sounds like the guide who helps you to understand rules and conditions in an exotic country.

Some visionary encounters and modern unexplained (UFO) encounters could be seen in a different light if we assume that we have a companion in life, either a personal daimon, a guardian angel or a psychopomp. This guide might visit us in different disguise. Perhaps he wants to teach us something about the otherworld in our lifetime. Certainly a lot of supernatural encounters in the forest look like some reminder of the nextworld.

The aliens or former fairies and demons might be not some strange visitor, but something very familiar. It could be somebody who was already here all the time.

Carol Zaleski says, “at the same time, the presence of the guide is a sign of continuity between the otherworldly journey and the spiritual path in life” (Otherworldly Journeys, page 55).

The need for a guide appears not only in Near Death Experience but also in dreams or meditation, Mrs. Zaleski thinks. “A spiritual guide is as necessary for the living as for the dead”.

It would be an interesting question if when this spiritual guide makes his first appearance in our lives if this has to be always a pleasant experience. It might be also frightening. It could be a moment of recognition, changing our life forever. This is a theme I am dealing with in my movie project.