Screek

We just received a complimentary copy of the journal to The National Spiritualist Summit (TNS) -- thanks to the Editor, Laura Lee Perkins -- in which Michael Tymn's review of The Risen is featured in the section, "Reading Matters." For those who haven't read it, the review can also be found at Amazon. A well-known and highly respected journalist on all things psychic and the afterlife, Michael's featured an interview with August as part of the "opening ceremonies" of his new blog at White Crow Books (4/30/10). Mike is also the author of the recently published book, The Articulate Dead.

The TNS Journal, which is published out of Arizona, is quite thick and full of interesting writing, including historical information and reproductions of past mediumship endeavors and current articles on spiritual healing. Especially fascinating was a feature story on a device called The Ovilus 1, a hand-held device which is said to be able to detect speech and phonetic speech from the immediate environment, i.e., digital dowsing! A look at the inventors' website revealed that a newer version — the PX 1/2 Ovilus 1/2 Puck ALL ITC — has already rendered the Ovilus obsolete, suggesting significant progress in the technology. "What does it do?" you ask. According to TNS, it works "by measuring changes in the environmental energy fields around it. It modulates the energy changes into audible speech using a synthesizer chip, an extensive dictionary of English words, and a function that sounds out words."

For example, visiting a place called the Caledonia Wine Cottage, the device said, "Caledonia shot stomach." The site had once been used as a Civil War hospital and quarantine area. Located in Pennsylvania, the building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is said to have been built by Jacob Fisher in 1824 as a stage stop and inn and that originally the house had 12 rooms and a dirt floor basement with separate quarters in the back for slaves. It would have been standing when thousands of Indians with the Trail of Tears passed through Caledonia in 1837/1838. It also has a documented history of haunting.

One reviewer cautioned that because the device can generate "unexpected and sometimes disturbing speech of text" it should not be used "around or by children, anyone suffering from mental illness or emotional trauma, or those easily offended." Definitely a must-bring for your next church administration meeting.

For the spirit-communication geek, or screek, there are instructions for building your very own "ghost box radio" prefaced with the caution, "If you don’t own a soldering iron this is definitely not for you!" This is Part 1 of a 3-Part Series for the device's construction.

There is also something there called The Crossovertalk ITC, and "now it's back online" -- to use "just skype crossovertalk." We have no idea what this is, so if anyone tries it out, please let us know what you find out so we can share it with everyone else — we're too chicken to attempt it.

The idea of paranormal dowsing is also prominently featured in the book, "Secrets in The Fields: The Science and Mysticism of Crop Circles" by Freddy Silva. This is a fantastic book with a great deal of research and empirical evidence crossing what seems to be every branch of science. Although a great deal of dowsing goes on, the actual dowsing techniques aren't discussed (as far as we can see) other than indications of the use of traditional rods. We wonder how the Ovilus Puck would do and what it would say, especially since crop circles apparently emit all kinds of electromagnetic energy, sound and light, and even time distortion effects.

("You're...standing...on...my...foot...")

It isn't until the final chapter of this book that the seminal work of C.W. Leadbeater is briefly mentioned in one short paragraph. At the turn of the 20th century, Leadbeater and Annie Besant had clairvoyantly explored and described their discernment of sub-atomic particles. The results, which were presented in highly detailed, ultra-precise renderings, were published in the mind-bending book, Occult Chemistry: Investigations by Clairvoyant Magnification into the Structure of the Atoms of the Periodic Table and Some Compounds. Occult Chemistry proposes that the structure of chemical elements can be assessed through clairvoyant observation with the microscopic vision of the third eye. Leadbeater would go into a deep meditative trance and examine samples of elements of the then-known Periodic Table. He was quite literally able to count atomic and sub-atomic particles, a testament to his outstanding abilities; he was also quite exhausted after a session. Many of these elements were rare and difficult to obtain, yet Leadbeater and Besant were able to get them with the assistance of Sir William Crookes (1832 –1919) of The Theosophical Society. (Crookes was a prominent, highly-respected theoretical physicist and inventor of the prototype of the TV tube and fluorescent lighting; he was also an important member of the Society for Psychical Research.)

Observations were carried out between 1895 and 1933. The work consists both of "coordinated and illustrated descriptions of presumed etheric counterparts of the atoms of the then known chemical elements, and of other expositions of occult physics." First published in 1908, and up until recently, very difficult to find, it's now in reprint, and also can be read online courtesy of Project Gutenberg. Here is a good instant download, complete with the renderings, so you can take a look at it now.

We mention this book because of the diagrams of the various atomic elements in it, which August had noticed -- quite a few years ago -- were startlingly, and sometimes exactly, like crop circles. He even brought it to the attention of a then well-known crop circle researcher, who, to put it lightly, blew him off, citing some odd reason about not wanting to obtain and look at the Besant's renderings because of "copyright issues." It seemed clear that there was a lot of political in-fighting amongst the crop-circle community and battles over what some considered proprietary material. Ah, how the ego-mind loves battles.

Freddy Silva and others since have produced obvious evidence that shows the crop circles reference atomic elements, their vibrations, and quantum physics, but it's still baffling as to why Leadbeater and Besant's clairvoyant techniques are not held up as a primary ways and means towards further deciphering the mystery of crop circles.

To just briefly illustrate our point, we draw your attention to one of the many hundreds of plate illustrations found in Occult Chemistry — in this particular case, the clairvoyantly discerned rendering of the rare element, Yttrium — atomic number 39. It is a silvery-metallic transition metal chemically similar to the lanthanoids and has historically been classified as a rare earth element. Yttrium is almost always found combined with the lanthanoids in rare earth minerals and is never found in nature as a free element. (We like it because it's coincidentally known as a "transition" element.)

The text accompanying it is very technical and not unlike the same seen in the analysis approaches of Freddy Silva and others:

Here we have a quite new arrangement of bodies within the funnel—the funnel being of one type only. Two "cigars" whirl on their own axes in the centre near the top, while four eight-atomed globes (see 4 e) chase each other in a circle round them, spinning madly on their own axes—this axial spinning seems constant in all contained bodies—all the time. Lower down in the funnel, a similar arrangement is seen, with a globe (see 4 d)—a nitrogen element—replacing the "cigars," and six-atomed ovoids replacing the globes.

The "nitrogen balloon" occupies the third place in the funnel, now showing its usual shape in combination, while the b globe (see 4 b) of scandium takes on a lengthened form below it.

The central globe presents us with two tetrahedra, recalling one of the combinations in gold (see Plate VII d), and differing from that only by the substitution of two quartets for the two triplets in gold.

One funnel of yttrium contains exactly the same number of atoms as is contained in a gaseous atom of nitrogen. Further, a, b, and d are all nitrogen elements. We put on record these facts, without trying to draw any conclusions from them. Some day, we—or others—may find out their significance, and trace through them obscure relations.

YTTRIUM: 6 funnels of 261 atoms 1566

Central globe 40---- Total 1606 -- Atomic weight 88.34, Number weight 1606/18 89.22

The corresponding negative group, of nitrogen, vanadium and niobium, is rendered particularly interesting by the fact that it is headed by nitrogen, which—like the air, of which it forms so large a part—pervades so many of the bodies we are studying. What is there in nitrogen which renders it so inert as to conveniently dilute the fiery oxygen and make it breathable, while it is so extraordinarily active in some of its compounds that it enters into the most powerful explosives? Some chemist of the future, perhaps, will find the secret in the arrangement of its constituent parts, which we are able only to describe.

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Their use of the word "funnel" is interesting, a word which crops up (pun intended) quite frequently in the research literature of Silva and others to describe theories of how the phenomena are created.

Here is our personal favorite, Radium:

Many of these renderings also greatly, if not perfectly, resemble ancient pictographs and designs found on cave walls and carved into st one monuments all over the globe. Silva's book also makes this comparison between such symbols and many crop circles. But we've yet to find any references to the achievements of Leadbeater and Besant and the intriguing correlations to be found. Note these modern crop circles as you ponder the mysteries therein. One especially reflects the celtic triskele, which is also seen in Leadbeater's renderings of Yttrium.