dailygrail--2020-07-22--‘The Fruitful Matrix of Ghosts’: The psychic investigations of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This exchange , recorded by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1809 , was more than just a chance for a pleasing riposte : it demarcated a subject that had haunted the poet since childhood and to which he would return regularly in both his public and private writings .
Typically , the definitive tome that he promised never materialised ; yet over many years , in fragments and the occasional sustained burst , Coleridge evolved a psychology of ghosts , visions and apparitions that was more ambitious than any previously attempted .
His interest was not in proving that the supernatural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he believed that the rational investigation of miraculous events functioned , among other things , as “ a weapon against superstition ” .
But he was equally unsatisfied with the debunking spirit that saw all spectral experiences as no more than the errors and weaknesses of the gullible .
For him , supernatural-seeming events proved much more : they held the key to understanding the deep mysteries of the imagination , and the powers of the mind to shape reality itself .
This post is an excerpt from Mike Jay ’ s Stranger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ exploring the twilight zones of history , culture and the human mind ” ( available in paperback and Kindle formats ) .
His response to the unnamed lady , later published in his journal The Friend , had first appeared in a notebook entry dated precisely to midnight on Sunday 12 May 1805 .
On this occasion he had been dozing at a table in the vast library-cum-saloon of the Treasury in Valeta , Malta , when he had opened his eyes to see a man who wasn ’ t there .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ previous year to break the spell of his opium addiction and failed marriage , and his grand surroundings mirrored the fact that , for the only time in his life , he was holding down a steady and important job : public secretary to the Governor of the island , writing strategic reports on the Mediterranean for the British navy .
As usual he had passed a sociable evening among diplomats and civil servants , the last of whom , another secretary named Mr. Dennison , had bid him goodnight ten minutes previously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but instead had nodded off .
When he opened his eyes , he saw Mr. Dennison still sitting across the table from him .
His eyes closed once more , puzzlement mingling with sleep , and when he opened them again he realised that he was in the presence of a waking vision .
The Mr. Dennison he had just seen , he now realised , had been a wraith-like illusion , a head and shoulders suspended in mid-air like the grin of the Cheshire cat .
The one he saw now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as he roused himself to observe it , he became aware that it was somehow less substantial than the man himself .
It had a wispy quality , as if seen through thin smoke , or “ like a face in a clear stream ” .
As he focused more clearly , the table before it and the library shelves behind became more solidly real , yet the figure maintained a “ sort of distinct shape and colour ” that gave it a feeling of an illusion superimposed by some kind of optical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for his notebook and , “ not three minutes having intervened ” , began to scribble furiously , attempting to record every detail of the apparition while it was still fresh in his mind .
As he did so , he began to notice shapes in front of him that were suggestive of the now-vanished illusion .
Before him on the table , in the sight-line where the spectral Mr. Dennison had materialised , was a glass flask of port covered in leather ; it still had an oddly human shape , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hypochondrical bottle-man had a great share in producing the effect ” .
The chair opposite him , too , was upholstered in leather , with metal studs around its edges that caught the light , picking out another suggestively human shape that framed that of the bottle .
As he focused on these details , the illusion began to reform faintly , though this time “ I snapped the spell before it had assumed a recognisable form ” .
But there was more to this business than mere tricks of light , shade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a psychological component was also in play .
This had been no terrifying spectre or vengeful ghost ; it had held no more for him than a kind of curiosity and aesthetic fascination .
This was surely a product of his own state of mind as he had observed it : he had been “ pleased with it as a philosophical case ” rather than frightened by it .
How differently might the illusion have developed if the hairs on his neck had decided to rise in involuntary dread ?
And yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mind , it occurred to him that “ the state of the brain and nerves after distress and agitation ” might have played its part , too .
Coleridge rarely had to search far to identify a source of nervous malaise , and the evening of 12 May 1805 was no exception : only the previous day he had been badly shaken when three stray dogs had gone for him in the streets of Valeta , one of them sinking its teeth into his left calf .
Might his curiously placid vision have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ temporarily forgotten nervous stress , but enacted when he happened to be in a state of contemplative tranquillity ?
The causes and components of the vision , then , could be sought equally in the external stage-settings and in the inner theatre of the observer ’ s mind .
But Coleridge omits another possibility , one which many modern commentators would argue was the most salient of all : opium .
Coleridge had not yet reached the point in his life where his narcotic habit was widely known , and it was only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protégé and fellow-addict Thomas de Quincey that his reputation , and myth , would become inseparable from the drug .
But his heavy use of Kendal ’ s Black Drop , his favoured , super-strength laudanum tincture , had begun in the Lake District in the winter of 1801 , and his attempt to shake free of it in the Mediterranean sunshine had been at best a mixed success .
The voyage had begun well , with stimulating views and sea air distracting him from his medication , but storms , sea-sickness and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nerves and reduced him to almost constant dosing : he had felt himself becoming the nightmare-haunted walking corpse of his signature work thus far , The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .
Arriving in Malta , the change of scene and exotic landscapes had spurred him on to a healthy regime of country walks and clean living ; but over the winter he had relapsed once more , alternating days of brisk diplomatic business with nights of furtive indulgence in spirits , narcotics and lurid , luxurious dreams .
As he nodded off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is every likelihood that he was dosed to the gills .
Still , the spectral vision of Mr. Dennison before Coleridge ’ s waking eyes is not entirely typical of opium ’ s effects , which tend towards dreamy interior reveries rather than the hallucinatory extrusions into waking reality that are more readily achieved by other psychoactive substances .
The drug ’ s psychic hallmarks for Coleridge at this point , to judge by many harrowing notebook entries , were the nightmares that regularly woke him up screaming , sweating and gasping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being pursued , buried alive , mutilated or infected with hideous diseases .
He did not associate these with his opium use , and in fact tended to increase his dose when they occurred in the hope of a sounder sleep ; the side-effect of opium that he consciously dreaded most was constipation , with its wrenching gut spasms and the accompanying agony and shame of the only effective remedy , the enema .
Yet his periods of exceptionally high opium dosage did produce crawling visual effects at the periphery of his vision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voyage to Malta he records faces leering at him from the cloths in his cabin , and flapping sails appearing to him as fish gasping and floundering on the deck .
Opium may not be adequate as the sole explanation of Coleridge ’ s vision , but it should probably have been included in his otherwise exhaustive list .
The notebook entry that began in the throes of a vision concluded with a resolution : he would make a similar record whenever such events occurred in the future .
“ Often and often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote , “ and therefore resolved to write down the particulars whenever any new instance should occur ” .
He also began to investigate accounts of miracles and other supernatural experiences that he felt might be analogous to his own , and to develop a theory that might account for them .
Then as now , there were essentially two schools of thought , to neither of which he could entirely subscribe .
The first was a religious faith that asserted that miracles were the work of God , who permitted the laws @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circumstances to contribute to His greater glory .
This was a view that had been delicately teased apart by Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume , whose essay On Miracles had argued that since miracles were by definition impossible , there could never be any such thing as sufficient evidence for them .
Coleridge had also read the German philosophers such as G.E.Lessing who had gone further , dissecting the transmission of miracles from unknowable first-person testimonies via a process of Chinese whispers to suitably pious and inspirational narratives .
Although never without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rationalists ’ side against belief in miracles , which represented for him the irrational and obscurantist aspects of a faith that needed to justify its authority to the modern age in rational terms .
Yet his debunking zeal was tempered by his voracious curiosity about visionary experience , and perhaps even by a little envy of those who had achieved immortality by bringing their visions into the world .
He agreed with the critics who argued that the mystics had mistaken their inner worlds for external divinities , but he did not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : rather , he was searching for ways to include miracles in a novel understanding of it .
For this reason , he was equally dissatisfied with the rational alternative to religious faith .
This was the theory , developed by philosophers such as John Locke , that miracles and supernatural experiences were simply errors of cognition , perceptions that had been wrongly associated in the mind and coloured by memories , fables and fancies .
For Coleridge this theory gave too little credit to the mind , and too much to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an explanation that did more than dismiss such experiences as perceptual illusions : one that could explore , as he had with his vision of Mr. Dennison , the active role played by the imagination in their creation .
He proceeded , as he often did , to coin a new term to describe such experiences : “ supersensual ” , a rendering perhaps of the German word űbersinnlich , developed by the mystic Jacob Boehme and included by Goethe in his Faust .
‘ Supernatural ’ was a term that made grand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the laws of nature fully , and that we know the experiences that we designate as miracles and apparitions to be outside their frame .
‘ Supersensual ’ , by contrast , only asserts that these experiences break our laws of perception and consensus reality , without making any judgement about their ultimate status .
Some of Coleridge ’ s similar coinages , such as ‘ psychosomatic ’ , have entered the language and are still with us ; ‘ supersensual ’ is one that has not , but perhaps deserves to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entry in Malta , Coleridge made his most sustained attempt to describe this new territory , in a pair of conjoined essays .
The first trained his psychological lens on one of the most famous ‘ supernatural ’ events in the Christian canon ; the second , in a classic Coleridgean trajectory , brought the subject back to himself , and his fine-grained self-observation .
The first essay was entitled Luther ’ s Visions in the Warteburg , and examined in detail one of the founding myths of Protestantism : that Martin Luther @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1521 , had been visited by the Devil while translating the New Testament into German , and had banished him by throwing his inkstand at him .
Coleridge himself had visited the castle , towering on its cliff above the town of Eisenach , and had been shown the incorruptible black spot where Luther ’ s ink had hit the wall , and where “ the said marvellous blot bids defiance to all the toils of the scrubbing brush , and is to remain a sign for ever ” .
Coleridge was prepared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judgement “ whether the great man did ever throw his inkstand at his Satanic Majesty ” ; he proposed instead to anatomise Luther ’ s visions in same way that he had his own .
He began , as his self-investigations so often began , in the stomach .
Luther was not starving in a dungeon ; on the contrary , he was “ treated with every kindness ” , including a much richer diet than he was accustomed to , which “ had begun to undermine his former unusually strong health ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distressing effects of indigestion ” , with which Coleridge was quick to identify – “ the common effect of deranged digestion in men of sedentary habits , who are at the same time intense thinkers ” – and to extrapolate from Luther ’ s unaccustomed luxury to an explanation for him being “ plagued with temptations both from the flesh and the devil ” .
The nervous effects of his indigestion would have been most pronounced , as Coleridge ’ s own were , in his “ unconscious half-sleeps , or rather those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ half-waking state , which is the true witching time ” – or , in a more expressive phrase , “ the fruitful matrix of ghosts ” .
In these Luther might , as the author had done in the saloon in Valeta , “ have had a full view of the room in which he was sitting ” , with walls , floor , writing-table , pen , paper and inkstand all clearly perceived , and “ at the same time a brain-image of the devil , vivid enough to have acquired apparent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , its subtly shifting tones and contours suggesting perhaps , to Luther , not illusion but supernatural origin .
This explanation lacks the multifactoral subtlety of Coleridge ’ s dissection of his own visions , and it seems that some of his readers may have commented as much , as he followed it up with a second piece , apologising that “ the theory of Luther ’ s apparitions [ was ] stated perhaps too briefly in the preceding essay ” – and adding , with a parodic touch of self-pity , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ghost theory more clear to those of my readers , who are fortunate enough to find it obscure in consequence of their own good health and unshattered nerves ” .
This is the cue for an exquisite description of an optical effect that he used to observe regularly as the winter dusk descended on his study in Keswick , and the fire in his hearth , reflected in his window , began to superimpose itself on the darkening lake and valley outside .
The fire emerged as daylight faded , suspended in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it seemed to grow closer and more dominant , until the arrival of night , when “ the window became a perfect looking-glass ; save only that my books on the side shelves of the room were lettered , as it were , on their backs with stars ” .
Here was an optical mechanism for “ the phantom from Luther ’ s brain ” that might have played into the fruitful matrix of ghosts : the inkstand might , like the port decanter in Malta , have been a hitherto unnoticed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considerable influence in the production of the fiend , and of the hostile act by which his obtrusive visit was repelled ” .
To this optical effect must , as ever , be added the state of mind of the observer , and the human readiness to craft meaning from the random .
“ If we are in anxious expectation ” , for example , “ the babbling of a brook will appear to be the voice of a friend , for whom we are waiting , calling out our own names ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of perception .
They are the products of our minds , which are always working subconsciously to shape the reality around us ; supersensual visions are the moments when we catch them up to their constant but otherwise unnoticed tricks .
By such increments Coleridge works his way towards the beginnings of a unified theory , the “ great law of the imagination ” , that “ a likeness in part tends to become a likeness of the whole ” : the brain is always busy recognising , replicating , expanding , extemporising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right circumstances , humble decanters and inkstands can morph into human or demonic entities , at which point they may do anything that such entities might be expected to do : walk , speak , wear evening dress or waggle their pointed tails .
Visions are no aberration , but an insight into the ways in which our minds are constantly extrapolating , stitching together a plausible reality from whatever fragments are to hand , in a restless search for patterns that fit the established pigeon-holes of memory and belief .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – nothing less than a new psychology – but , having tantalised himself and the reader , Coleridge announces reluctantly that he is unable to do it justice .
“ I have long wished to devote an entire work to the subject of dreams , visions , ghosts and witchcraft ” , he insists , and “ I have indeed a memorandum-book filled with records of these phaenomena , many of them interesting as facts and data for psychology , and affording some valuable materials for a theory of perception and its dependence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the death of his collaborator on these theories , the gifted and tragic pottery heir Tom Wedgwood , makes it too painful to pursue – or , perhaps , Coleridge is aware that his insights amount to no more than flashes and fragments that he can stitch together with greater or lesser conviction in his own head , but which he fears will unravel if he attempts to order them and bring them to the page .
Yet if Coleridge abandoned his direct assault on ghosts and visions , his researches nevertheless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theories of the imagination , and particularly its implications for poetry , literature and drama .
“ In certain sorts of dreams ” he noted , “ the dullest wight becomes a Shakespeare ” : but how can these supersensual effects , created so richly and seamlessly by the mind , be replicated by the writer ?
He continued to develop the idea that the imagination was not merely a mechanical process , but an organic one , where thoughts and ideas were diffused , recombined and recreated ; his favoured analogy became @ @ @ @ @ @ @ develops from a small seed into something far greater than the sum of its parts , transcending the energies that produced it and evolving its own inner life .
These investigations led him to one of his most enduring coinages , the “ willing suspension of disbelief ” , or “ suspended state ” , that poetry or drama must evoke to allow the reader or viewer to believe in characters and scenes that are “ supernatural , or at least romantic ” .
This is an effect that is achieved by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often subconscious priming of the audience ’ s expectations and imaginations : these conditions , like those that precede waking visions , combine to make the observer receptive to supersensual effects that spill out of reality ’ s habitual confines .
Coleridge ’ s ‘ great law of the imagination ’ was never codified , but neither was it entirely abandoned : it was merely folded into his literary theories , where it vegetated , hybridised and absorbed new sustenance .
It emerged as ‘ willing suspension of disbelief ’ : the subliminal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the observer to engage their own imagination , to finesse a middle ground between scepticism and belief , and thus to transform illusion into reality – whether reading Kubla Khan , watching Hamlet , or calmly observing the apparition of a Mr. Dennison across a library table .

A lady once asked me whether I believed in ghosts and apparitions. I answered with truth and simplicity: No, madam! I have seen far too many myself.
This exchange, recorded by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1809, was more than just a chance for a pleasing riposte: it demarcated a subject that had haunted the poet since childhood and to which he would return regularly in both his public and private writings. Typically, the definitive tome that he promised never materialised; yet over many years, in fragments and the occasional sustained burst, Coleridge evolved a psychology of ghosts, visions and apparitions that was more ambitious than any previously attempted. His interest was not in proving that the supernatural was ‘real’; rather, he believed that the rational investigation of miraculous events functioned, among other things, as “a weapon against superstition”. But he was equally unsatisfied with the debunking spirit that saw all spectral experiences as no more than the errors and weaknesses of the gullible. For him, supernatural-seeming events proved much more: they held the key to understanding the deep mysteries of the imagination, and the powers of the mind to shape reality itself.
This post is an excerpt from Mike Jay’s Stranger Than Fiction, which features 24 essays “exploring the twilight zones of history, culture and the human mind” (available in paperback and Kindle formats).
His response to the unnamed lady, later published in his journal The Friend, had first appeared in a notebook entry dated precisely to midnight on Sunday 12 May 1805. On this occasion he had been dozing at a table in the vast library-cum-saloon of the Treasury in Valeta, Malta, when he had opened his eyes to see a man who wasn’t there.
Coleridge had exiled himself to Malta the previous year to break the spell of his opium addiction and failed marriage, and his grand surroundings mirrored the fact that, for the only time in his life, he was holding down a steady and important job: public secretary to the Governor of the island, writing strategic reports on the Mediterranean for the British navy. As usual he had passed a sociable evening among diplomats and civil servants, the last of whom, another secretary named Mr. Dennison, had bid him goodnight ten minutes previously. Coleridge had meant to retire too, but instead had nodded off. When he opened his eyes, he saw Mr. Dennison still sitting across the table from him.
His eyes closed once more, puzzlement mingling with sleep, and when he opened them again he realised that he was in the presence of a waking vision. The Mr. Dennison he had just seen, he now realised, had been a wraith-like illusion, a head and shoulders suspended in mid-air like the grin of the Cheshire cat. The one he saw now was a fully-formed simulacrum; yet, as he roused himself to observe it, he became aware that it was somehow less substantial than the man himself. It had a wispy quality, as if seen through thin smoke, or “like a face in a clear stream”. As he focused more clearly, the table before it and the library shelves behind became more solidly real, yet the figure maintained a “sort of distinct shape and colour” that gave it a feeling of an illusion superimposed by some kind of optical trickery against its surroundings.
Coleridge reached for his notebook and, “not three minutes having intervened”, began to scribble furiously, attempting to record every detail of the apparition while it was still fresh in his mind. As he did so, he began to notice shapes in front of him that were suggestive of the now-vanished illusion. Before him on the table, in the sight-line where the spectral Mr. Dennison had materialised, was a glass flask of port covered in leather; it still had an oddly human shape, and he “clearly detected that this high-shouldered hypochondrical bottle-man had a great share in producing the effect”. The chair opposite him, too, was upholstered in leather, with metal studs around its edges that caught the light, picking out another suggestively human shape that framed that of the bottle. As he focused on these details, the illusion began to reform faintly, though this time “I snapped the spell before it had assumed a recognisable form”.
But there was more to this business than mere tricks of light, shade and perspective: Coleridge was keenly aware that a psychological component was also in play. This had been no terrifying spectre or vengeful ghost; it had held no more for him than a kind of curiosity and aesthetic fascination. This was surely a product of his own state of mind as he had observed it: he had been “pleased with it as a philosophical case” rather than frightened by it. How differently might the illusion have developed if the hairs on his neck had decided to rise in involuntary dread? And yet, as he considered his state of mind, it occurred to him that “the state of the brain and nerves after distress and agitation” might have played its part, too. Coleridge rarely had to search far to identify a source of nervous malaise, and the evening of 12 May 1805 was no exception: only the previous day he had been badly shaken when three stray dogs had gone for him in the streets of Valeta, one of them sinking its teeth into his left calf. Might his curiously placid vision have been a mental trick triggered by a temporarily forgotten nervous stress, but enacted when he happened to be in a state of contemplative tranquillity?
The causes and components of the vision, then, could be sought equally in the external stage-settings and in the inner theatre of the observer’s mind. But Coleridge omits another possibility, one which many modern commentators would argue was the most salient of all: opium. Coleridge had not yet reached the point in his life where his narcotic habit was widely known, and it was only when he was posthumously outed by his protégé and fellow-addict Thomas de Quincey that his reputation, and myth, would become inseparable from the drug. But his heavy use of Kendal’s Black Drop, his favoured, super-strength laudanum tincture, had begun in the Lake District in the winter of 1801, and his attempt to shake free of it in the Mediterranean sunshine had been at best a mixed success. The voyage had begun well, with stimulating views and sea air distracting him from his medication, but storms, sea-sickness and his cramped cabin had eventually shredded his nerves and reduced him to almost constant dosing: he had felt himself becoming the nightmare-haunted walking corpse of his signature work thus far, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Arriving in Malta, the change of scene and exotic landscapes had spurred him on to a healthy regime of country walks and clean living; but over the winter he had relapsed once more, alternating days of brisk diplomatic business with nights of furtive indulgence in spirits, narcotics and lurid, luxurious dreams. As he nodded off at the library table at midnight, there is every likelihood that he was dosed to the gills.
Still, the spectral vision of Mr. Dennison before Coleridge’s waking eyes is not entirely typical of opium’s effects, which tend towards dreamy interior reveries rather than the hallucinatory extrusions into waking reality that are more readily achieved by other psychoactive substances. The drug’s psychic hallmarks for Coleridge at this point, to judge by many harrowing notebook entries, were the nightmares that regularly woke him up screaming, sweating and gasping for breath, with skin-crawling recollections of being pursued, buried alive, mutilated or infected with hideous diseases. He did not associate these with his opium use, and in fact tended to increase his dose when they occurred in the hope of a sounder sleep; the side-effect of opium that he consciously dreaded most was constipation, with its wrenching gut spasms and the accompanying agony and shame of the only effective remedy, the enema. Yet his periods of exceptionally high opium dosage did produce crawling visual effects at the periphery of his vision: in the latter stages of the voyage to Malta he records faces leering at him from the cloths in his cabin, and flapping sails appearing to him as fish gasping and floundering on the deck. Opium may not be adequate as the sole explanation of Coleridge’s vision, but it should probably have been included in his otherwise exhaustive list.
The notebook entry that began in the throes of a vision concluded with a resolution: he would make a similar record whenever such events occurred in the future. “Often and often I have had similar experiences” he wrote, “and therefore resolved to write down the particulars whenever any new instance should occur”. He also began to investigate accounts of miracles and other supernatural experiences that he felt might be analogous to his own, and to develop a theory that might account for them.
Then as now, there were essentially two schools of thought, to neither of which he could entirely subscribe. The first was a religious faith that asserted that miracles were the work of God, who permitted the laws of nature to be overridden in special circumstances to contribute to His greater glory. This was a view that had been delicately teased apart by Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume, whose essay On Miracles had argued that since miracles were by definition impossible, there could never be any such thing as sufficient evidence for them. Coleridge had also read the German philosophers such as G.E.Lessing who had gone further, dissecting the transmission of miracles from unknowable first-person testimonies via a process of Chinese whispers to suitably pious and inspirational narratives.
Although never without religious convictions, Coleridge had always taken the rationalists’ side against belief in miracles, which represented for him the irrational and obscurantist aspects of a faith that needed to justify its authority to the modern age in rational terms. Yet his debunking zeal was tempered by his voracious curiosity about visionary experience, and perhaps even by a little envy of those who had achieved immortality by bringing their visions into the world. He agreed with the critics who argued that the mystics had mistaken their inner worlds for external divinities, but he did not want to rid the world of miracles: rather, he was searching for ways to include miracles in a novel understanding of it.
For this reason, he was equally dissatisfied with the rational alternative to religious faith. This was the theory, developed by philosophers such as John Locke, that miracles and supernatural experiences were simply errors of cognition, perceptions that had been wrongly associated in the mind and coloured by memories, fables and fancies. For Coleridge this theory gave too little credit to the mind, and too much to a mundane conception of reality. He wanted an explanation that did more than dismiss such experiences as perceptual illusions: one that could explore, as he had with his vision of Mr. Dennison, the active role played by the imagination in their creation. He proceeded, as he often did, to coin a new term to describe such experiences: “supersensual”, a rendering perhaps of the German word űbersinnlich, developed by the mystic Jacob Boehme and included by Goethe in his Faust. ‘Supernatural’ was a term that made grand and unjustifiable claims – that we know the laws of nature fully, and that we know the experiences that we designate as miracles and apparitions to be outside their frame. ‘Supersensual’, by contrast, only asserts that these experiences break our laws of perception and consensus reality, without making any judgement about their ultimate status. Some of Coleridge’s similar coinages, such as ‘psychosomatic’, have entered the language and are still with us; ‘supersensual’ is one that has not, but perhaps deserves to have done.
Four years after his notebook entry in Malta, Coleridge made his most sustained attempt to describe this new territory, in a pair of conjoined essays. The first trained his psychological lens on one of the most famous ‘supernatural’ events in the Christian canon; the second, in a classic Coleridgean trajectory, brought the subject back to himself, and his fine-grained self-observation.
The first essay was entitled Luther’s Visions in the Warteburg, and examined in detail one of the founding myths of Protestantism: that Martin Luther, imprisoned in the Warteburg castle in 1521, had been visited by the Devil while translating the New Testament into German, and had banished him by throwing his inkstand at him. Coleridge himself had visited the castle, towering on its cliff above the town of Eisenach, and had been shown the incorruptible black spot where Luther’s ink had hit the wall, and where “the said marvellous blot bids defiance to all the toils of the scrubbing brush, and is to remain a sign for ever”. Coleridge was prepared to leave to the reader’s judgement “whether the great man did ever throw his inkstand at his Satanic Majesty”; he proposed instead to anatomise Luther’s visions in same way that he had his own.
He began, as his self-investigations so often began, in the stomach. Luther was not starving in a dungeon; on the contrary, he was “treated with every kindness”, including a much richer diet than he was accustomed to, which “had begun to undermine his former unusually strong health”. He recorded “many and most distressing effects of indigestion”, with which Coleridge was quick to identify – “the common effect of deranged digestion in men of sedentary habits, who are at the same time intense thinkers” – and to extrapolate from Luther’s unaccustomed luxury to an explanation for him being “plagued with temptations both from the flesh and the devil”. The nervous effects of his indigestion would have been most pronounced, as Coleridge’s own were, in his “unconscious half-sleeps, or rather those rapid alterations of the sleeping with the half-waking state, which is the true witching time” – or, in a more expressive phrase, “the fruitful matrix of ghosts”. In these Luther might, as the author had done in the saloon in Valeta, “have had a full view of the room in which he was sitting”, with walls, floor, writing-table, pen, paper and inkstand all clearly perceived, and “at the same time a brain-image of the devil, vivid enough to have acquired apparent outness”, superimposed upon the background, its subtly shifting tones and contours suggesting perhaps, to Luther, not illusion but supernatural origin.
This explanation lacks the multifactoral subtlety of Coleridge’s dissection of his own visions, and it seems that some of his readers may have commented as much, as he followed it up with a second piece, apologising that “the theory of Luther’s apparitions [was] stated perhaps too briefly in the preceding essay” – and adding, with a parodic touch of self-pity, that “I will endeavour to make my ghost theory more clear to those of my readers, who are fortunate enough to find it obscure in consequence of their own good health and unshattered nerves”. This is the cue for an exquisite description of an optical effect that he used to observe regularly as the winter dusk descended on his study in Keswick, and the fire in his hearth, reflected in his window, began to superimpose itself on the darkening lake and valley outside. The fire emerged as daylight faded, suspended in the distant landscape; as darkness came on, it seemed to grow closer and more dominant, until the arrival of night, when “the window became a perfect looking-glass; save only that my books on the side shelves of the room were lettered, as it were, on their backs with stars”. Here was an optical mechanism for “the phantom from Luther’s brain” that might have played into the fruitful matrix of ghosts: the inkstand might, like the port decanter in Malta, have been a hitherto unnoticed foreground detail that nevertheless had “a considerable influence in the production of the fiend, and of the hostile act by which his obtrusive visit was repelled”.
To this optical effect must, as ever, be added the state of mind of the observer, and the human readiness to craft meaning from the random. “If we are in anxious expectation”, for example, “the babbling of a brook will appear to be the voice of a friend, for whom we are waiting, calling out our own names”. These are not simply mechanical errors of perception. They are the products of our minds, which are always working subconsciously to shape the reality around us; supersensual visions are the moments when we catch them up to their constant but otherwise unnoticed tricks. By such increments Coleridge works his way towards the beginnings of a unified theory, the “great law of the imagination”, that “a likeness in part tends to become a likeness of the whole”: the brain is always busy recognising, replicating, expanding, extemporising and filling in the gaps. Under the right circumstances, humble decanters and inkstands can morph into human or demonic entities, at which point they may do anything that such entities might be expected to do: walk, speak, wear evening dress or waggle their pointed tails. Visions are no aberration, but an insight into the ways in which our minds are constantly extrapolating, stitching together a plausible reality from whatever fragments are to hand, in a restless search for patterns that fit the established pigeon-holes of memory and belief.
There is much more that follows from this – nothing less than a new psychology – but, having tantalised himself and the reader, Coleridge announces reluctantly that he is unable to do it justice. “I have long wished to devote an entire work to the subject of dreams, visions, ghosts and witchcraft”, he insists, and “I have indeed a memorandum-book filled with records of these phaenomena, many of them interesting as facts and data for psychology, and affording some valuable materials for a theory of perception and its dependence on memory and the imagination”. But the death of his collaborator on these theories, the gifted and tragic pottery heir Tom Wedgwood, makes it too painful to pursue – or, perhaps, Coleridge is aware that his insights amount to no more than flashes and fragments that he can stitch together with greater or lesser conviction in his own head, but which he fears will unravel if he attempts to order them and bring them to the page.
Yet if Coleridge abandoned his direct assault on ghosts and visions, his researches nevertheless fed into the restless stream of his theories of the imagination, and particularly its implications for poetry, literature and drama. “In certain sorts of dreams” he noted, “the dullest wight becomes a Shakespeare”: but how can these supersensual effects, created so richly and seamlessly by the mind, be replicated by the writer? He continued to develop the idea that the imagination was not merely a mechanical process, but an organic one, where thoughts and ideas were diffused, recombined and recreated; his favoured analogy became that of a plant, something that develops from a small seed into something far greater than the sum of its parts, transcending the energies that produced it and evolving its own inner life.
These investigations led him to one of his most enduring coinages, the “willing suspension of disbelief”, or “suspended state”, that poetry or drama must evoke to allow the reader or viewer to believe in characters and scenes that are “supernatural, or at least romantic”. This is an effect that is achieved by a mixture of external scene-setting and careful, often subconscious priming of the audience’s expectations and imaginations: these conditions, like those that precede waking visions, combine to make the observer receptive to supersensual effects that spill out of reality’s habitual confines. Coleridge’s ‘great law of the imagination’ was never codified, but neither was it entirely abandoned: it was merely folded into his literary theories, where it vegetated, hybridised and absorbed new sustenance. It emerged as ‘willing suspension of disbelief’: the subliminal compact between subject and object that allows the observer to engage their own imagination, to finesse a middle ground between scepticism and belief, and thus to transform illusion into reality – whether reading Kubla Khan, watching Hamlet, or calmly observing the apparition of a Mr. Dennison across a library table.


News Briefs 23-07-2020

Hope you and yours are safe and healthy 💗 • Millennial witches put a hex on the Moon for Tik Tok ratings .
Hilarity ( and consternation ) ensued .
• Restored Boleskine House at Inverness to promote Aleister Crowley ’ s doctrines of sex magick .
• Netflix ’ s Unsolved Mysteries just announced a major update in the murder case of Alonzo Brooks .
• First active leak of sea-bed methane discovered in Antarctica .
• Likely active volcanoes found on Venus , defying theory of dormant planet .
That ’ s Orthon ’ s power plants , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United Arab Emirates launched a mission to Mars .
• The state of Idaho has the highest per-capita UFO sightings in the United States .
• Here ’ s the folklore that inspired Studio Ghibli ’ s movie Spirited Away .
• Hiker believes he might have found evidence of Bigfoot .
• Humans settled in the Americas almost twice as long ago as previously thought , according to new finds from Mexico .
• Red Pill of the Day : Canadian CDC recommends glory holes for sex amid COVID-19 .
Who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us for the future ?
Quote of the Day : Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know .

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News Briefs 24-07-2020

UFOs are back in the New York Times – because 2020 news isn ’ t weird enough yet… • No longer in shadows , Pentagon ’ s UFO unit will make some findings public .
• Are Earth ’ s magnetic poles about to swap places ?
A strange anomaly gives clues .
• New study shows that dogs can use Earth ’ s magnetic field to navigate .
• The violent attack that turned a man into a maths genius .
• The brave new world of chemical romance : how love drugs will shape the future of our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had ‘ disability ramps ’ , according to this researcher .
• Britain ’ s newly discovered ancient sites : LIDAR technology has revealed a whole new timeline of human occupation across the UK .
• From Victorian demons to the Beijing night bus : why we tell each other urban legends .
• The ghostly radio station that nobody claims to run : ‘ MDZhB ’ has been broadcasting since 1982 .
No one knows why .
• Scientists : climate change is going to suck , but it won ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Day : Glimpses of Ganymede .
Quote of the Day : I think the stage is set for the appearance of new faiths , centred on the UFO belief .
To a greater degree than all phenomena modern science is confronting , the UFO can inspire awe , the sense of the smallness of man , and an idea of the possibility of contact with the cosmic .

UFOs are back in the New York Times – because 2020 news isn’t weird enough yet…
Quote of the Day:
I think the stage is set for the appearance of new faiths, centred on the UFO belief. To a greater degree than all phenomena modern science is confronting, the UFO can inspire awe, the sense of the smallness of man, and an idea of the possibility of contact with the cosmic.
Jacques Vallee


News Briefs 27-07-2020

Intermittent reminder that if you get something of value out of the Grail , please consider a $ 1/month ‘ voluntary subscription ’ via our Patreon to help pay for our time and effort ( or you can give a one-off donation easily at PayPal.me/DailyGrail ) .
Thanks !
• New York Times story opens the door a little wider for more media to cover UFOs .
• How the new NASA Mars rover Perseverance will hunt for signs of past life on the Red Planet .
• A faraway solar system is an uncanny reflection of our own .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and antibiotic-resistant in space .
• Mould from Chernobyl nuclear reactor tested as radiation shield on ISS .
This has ‘ superhero origin story ’ written all over it… • Meet the man trying to send a warning about history ’ s worst tragedies back to 1935 .
• Do dreams exist to protect the brain ’ s visual cortex ?
• The star of anti-vaxx documentary Plandemic spent years flooding flooding the vaccine court system with bad science .
• Following Twitter ’ s action last week , now TikTok has disabled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theory .
• It ’ s too late to stop QAnon with fact checks and account bans .
• Video of the Day : QAnon , coronavirus and the conspiracy cult .
Quote of the Day : Tell people there ’ s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe , and the vast majority will believe you .
Tell them the paint is wet , and they have to touch it to be sure .

Intermittent reminder that if you get something of value out of the Grail, please consider a $1/month ‘voluntary subscription’ via our Patreon to help pay for our time and effort (or you can give a one-off donation easily at PayPal.me/DailyGrail). Thanks!
Quote of the Day:
Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.
George Carlin


News Briefs 28-07-2020

• First the NYT , now Scientific American : ‘ Unidentified Aerial Phenomena ’ , better known as UFOs , deserve scientific investigation .
• Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal interviewed about their NYT UFO articles .
• Why do people keep boarding the Chariot of the Gods ?
• Kamakura ’ s sixteen wells : one of the mysteries of Kazo-ji temple .
• Humans inhabited North America in the depths of the last ice age , but didn ’ t thrive until the climate warmed .
• Ancient DNA suggests Vikings may have been plagued by smallpox .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ team unearths manipulative qualities of fungal-infected flyers .
• Related : Do microscopic parasites living inside you control your mind ?
• After serving over 20 years in prison after the infamous Kansas Missile Silo LSD bust , William Leonard Pickard is to be set free .
• Satanic temple offers higher education scholarships .
Or should that be lower education scholarships… • Remember that other crisis ?
Record heat is spreading across the Arctic .
• Image of the Day : The Hubble Space Telescope captures a stunningly clear image of Saturn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your face always toward the sunshine , and shadows will fall behind you .


News Briefs 29-07-2020

• Trump ’ s new favourite COVID doctor believes in alien DNA , demon sperm , and hydroxychloroquine .
• From Antifa to UFOs , one joke can spawn a thousand conspiracies .
• UFO debris , disclosure , and Congressional investigations : everything old is new again .
• More UFOs in the NYT : “ Do we believe in UFOs ?
That ’ s the wrong question “ .
• It ’ s still not aliens : the latest report on military study of UFOs is just as tantalizing—and unilluminating—as all the ones before .
• The real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intelligent aliens .
• NASA ’ s new Mars rover is about to embark on a hunt for ancient alien life .
• Scientists revive 100 million-year-old microbes from under the sea .
Not now , scientists…seriously !
• Theoretical physicists say there ’ s a 90 % chance of societal collapse within several decades .
• Towards ‘ eternal sunshine ’ ?
New links found between memory and emotion .
• ‘ The fruitful matrix of ghosts ‘ : the psychic investigations of Samuel Taylor Coleridge .
• Giant waves of sand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m calling it : sandworms !
Quote of the Day : Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored .


News Briefs 30-07-2020

So demon sperm and alien DNA are now part of White House press conferences .
You continue to outdo yourselves , Simulators *slow clap* • Mystery of the origin of Stonehenge ’ s megaliths solved .
Related research paper is here .
• Woolly mammoth skeleton with intact ligaments found in Siberia .
Please , God , don ’ t let society collapse before I get a chance to ride a hairy elephant !
• The Axis of Autocracy : China is using AI for totalitarian surveillance and exporting that tech to other regimes .
• Edward Snowden : The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forever .
• QAnon goes global : the pandemic has led to explosive growth for the conspiracy theory internationally .
• In 2020 , anything ’ s possible .
New government intelligence might prove alien life is , too .
• Astrophysicists study the possibility of life under the surface of Mars .
• Unsolved Mysteries co-creator reveals the thing they couldn ’ t include in the Rey Rivera episode .
• Related : the Daily Grail review of the new series of Unsolved Mysteries .
• Movie Review : Rosamund Pike is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Radioactive .
• Smashing the atom : A brief history of particle accelerators .
• Bacteria in the gut have a direct line to the brain .
• Sharks are becoming functionally extinct around the world .
• You could be the next owner of Ireland ’ s most haunted house .
• Red Pill of the Day : Mexican ghost hunter accused of organizing an illegal party during pandemic lockdown where even gunshots were heard .
No respect for the living OR the dead… Thanks to Greg and Tim Binnall .
Quote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are infinite , the universe and human stupidity , and I ’ m not sure about the former .

So demon sperm and alien DNA are now part of White House press conferences. You continue to outdo yourselves, Simulators *slow clap*
Thanks to Greg and Tim Binnall.
Quote of the Day:
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein


dailygrail--2020-07-31--Healed by Art and Absurdity: Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic

When discussing individuals who have successfully managed to blur the boundaries between Art and Magic , we might immediately think of writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison .
But Alejandro Jodorowsky , better known for his avant-garde films El Topo ( 1970 ) and The Holy Mountain ( 1973 ) , should also be included in that small category ; even more so because unlike Moore and Morrison , Jodorowsky is credited his own unique variety of magical practices , known as Psychomagic .
Trying to define Psychomagic may be nary impossible –and perhaps even pointless .
Jodorowsky himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sui-generis combination of Magic , Shamanism and Psychotherapy , but when you see the images from the 2019 documentary Psychomagic : a Healing Art , produced by ABKCO Records & Films , you quickly realize Sigmund Freud would have never endorsed the kind of things Jodorowsky makes his ‘ patients ’ do : Being buried alive while simulating vultures eating off your carcass , smashing pumpkins as a representation of your estranged parents , walking around the streets painted in gold , skydiving or riding a merry-go-round dressed as a toddler .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to describing Psychomagic is healing by art performance .
I think the first time I heard of Psychomagic was in the late 2000 ’ s when I was listening to a radio interview of Jodorowsky , who had come to Mexico to promote a book he had written about the subject titled Manual of Psychomagic : The Practice of Shamanic Psychotherapy ( 2009 ) .
In the interview Jodorowsky explained that instead of a consulting room he would just sit at an outdoor café in Paris , while throwing the Tarot card ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people to come by in search of aid .
Once , he related , there was this woman who complained of being terribly timid , and this was the ‘ remedy ’ he prescribed to her : She was to invite everyone she knew –her parents and siblings , friends , co-workers and employers– to her apartment , and once all the people were gathered she was to stand right in front of them , and without saying a word she had to get undressed , turn around , bend over , spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asshole ; if she managed to do this , Jodorowsky assured her , she would forever be cured of her shyness !
Whether the woman actually carried out the prescription or not , Jodorowsky didn ’ t say in the interview .
I guess that all medicine carries inevitable side effects , and Psychomagic would not be the exception… Yes , getting naked in front of your mom and dad sounds indeed quite absurd , but not as absurd as the way a young Native American was cured of a strange and sudden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ waking up from a strange nightmare .
The village ’ s medicine man understood that the boy ’ s dream was a powerful vision from the spirit world , and had all the tribe members perform the scenes of the dream in front of him .
The boy got cured and would grow up to be known as the famous shaman Black Elk .
Psychomagic is also not as absurd as some of the stories we hear from witnesses who claim the close encounter experience –especially the ones who call themselves ‘ abductees.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ has often compared the UFO phenomenon with an obscure art movement , due to not only its seemingly unnecessary theatricality ( why do these objects need to be lighted up as Christmas trees , for example ? )
but also because it manages to convey in an incredibly short amount of time a great deal of information , which can vary greatly from person to person depending on their own cultural baggage –the same way two different people would stand in front of Picasso ’ s Les Demoiselles d ’ Avignon and come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It is often said that UFO experiencers tend to develop psychic abilities or artistic talents after their close encounter , and researchers have often wondered if this is the result of an exposure to some unknown source of energy .
Perhaps , or perhaps this might be merely the result of a kind of ‘ paranormal psychomagic ’ performed in front of the witness , which releases the mind from long-held traumas .
This is just mere speculation from my part , but one thing is for sure to me and that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ properties .
I can attest to that personally , because back in 2012 I performed my own form of ‘ psychomagic therapy ’ when I attended the Paradigm symposium in Minneapolis , and I chose to present myself in front of Micah Hanks and other of my online friends –who have never seen my face before– wearing a red luchador mask .
From that day forth , the Red Pill Junkie became a real-life avatar for Miguel Romero , and although it didn ’ t completely cure me of my old manias and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life into a wonderfully bizarre journey .
Absurdity –it ’ s what the shaman ordered !
Psychomagic : A Healing Art will be released for streaming on August 7th of 2020 , and it will also be part of a deluxe box including digitally-restored copies of Jodorowsky ’ s movies .

When discussing individuals who have successfully managed to blur the boundaries between Art and Magic, we might immediately think of writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. But Alejandro Jodorowsky, better known for his avant-garde films El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973), should also be included in that small category; even more so because unlike Moore and Morrison, Jodorowsky is credited his own unique variety of magical practices, known as Psychomagic.
Trying to define Psychomagic may be nary impossible –and perhaps even pointless. Jodorowsky himself has said in interviews that it is a sui-generis combination of Magic, Shamanism and Psychotherapy, but when you see the images from the 2019 documentary Psychomagic: a Healing Art, produced by ABKCO Records & Films, you quickly realize Sigmund Freud would have never endorsed the kind of things Jodorowsky makes his ‘patients’ do: Being buried alive while simulating vultures eating off your carcass, smashing pumpkins as a representation of your estranged parents, walking around the streets painted in gold, skydiving or riding a merry-go-round dressed as a toddler. The best way we might come close to describing Psychomagic is healing by art performance.
I think the first time I heard of Psychomagic was in the late 2000’s when I was listening to a radio interview of Jodorowsky, who had come to Mexico to promote a book he had written about the subject titled Manual of Psychomagic: The Practice of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2009). In the interview Jodorowsky explained that instead of a consulting room he would just sit at an outdoor café in Paris, while throwing the Tarot card (another specialty of his) waiting for people to come by in search of aid. Once, he related, there was this woman who complained of being terribly timid, and this was the ‘remedy’ he prescribed to her: She was to invite everyone she knew –her parents and siblings, friends, co-workers and employers– to her apartment, and once all the people were gathered she was to stand right in front of them, and without saying a word she had to get undressed, turn around, bend over, spread her buttcheeks and proudly show them her asshole; if she managed to do this, Jodorowsky assured her, she would forever be cured of her shyness!
Whether the woman actually carried out the prescription or not, Jodorowsky didn’t say in the interview. I guess that all medicine carries inevitable side effects, and Psychomagic would not be the exception…
Yes, getting naked in front of your mom and dad sounds indeed quite absurd, but not as absurd as the way a young Native American was cured of a strange and sudden illness in the XIXth century, after waking up from a strange nightmare. The village’s medicine man understood that the boy’s dream was a powerful vision from the spirit world, and had all the tribe members perform the scenes of the dream in front of him. The boy got cured and would grow up to be known as the famous shaman Black Elk.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Psychomagic is also not as absurd as some of the stories we hear from witnesses who claim the close encounter experience –especially the ones who call themselves ‘abductees.’ My friend and colleague Greg Bishop has often compared the UFO phenomenon with an obscure art movement, due to not only its seemingly unnecessary theatricality (why do these objects need to be lighted up as Christmas trees, for example?) but also because it manages to convey in an incredibly short amount of time a great deal of information, which can vary greatly from person to person depending on their own cultural baggage –the same way two different people would stand in front of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and come up with two entirely different interpretations.
It is often said that UFO experiencers tend to develop psychic abilities or artistic talents after their close encounter, and researchers have often wondered if this is the result of an exposure to some unknown source of energy. Perhaps, or perhaps this might be merely the result of a kind of ‘paranormal psychomagic’ performed in front of the witness, which releases the mind from long-held traumas.
This is just mere speculation from my part, but one thing is for sure to me and that is that the Absurd can have real beneficial properties. I can attest to that personally, because back in 2012 I performed my own form of ‘psychomagic therapy’ when I attended the Paradigm symposium in Minneapolis, and I chose to present myself in front of Micah Hanks and other of my online friends –who have never seen my face before– wearing a red luchador mask.
From that day forth, the Red Pill Junkie became a real-life avatar for Miguel Romero, and although it didn’t completely cure me of my old manias and neurotic behaviors, it certainly propelled my life into a wonderfully bizarre journey. Absurdity –it’s what the shaman ordered!
Psychomagic: A Healing Art will be released for streaming on August 7th of 2020, and it will also be part of a deluxe box including digitally-restored copies of Jodorowsky’s movies.


News Briefs 31-07-2020

We are all the Perseverance rover… • Liftoff !
NASA ’ s Perseverance rover begins odyssey to seek out traces @ @ @ @ @ • NASA goes looking for tiny ancient Martians .
No , not this guy .
@ @ @ @ @ the Mars rover will attempt the first flight on another world .
• MIT tests @ @ @ @ @ that manipulates the content of people ’ s dreams .
• Related : From shock @ @ @ @ @ psychedelics can heal the wounds of war .
• China allegedly hacked the Vatican , @ @ @ @ @ .
• A global flood is coming , and this is what scientists expect it @ @ @ @ @ We may be able to extract ‘ movies ’ of the universe from black holes @ @ @ @ @ Day : Watch NASA ’ s broadcast of the launch of the Perseverance rover to @ @ @ @ @ Day : I would like to die on Mars .
Just not on impact .


News Briefs 03-08-2020

This is the only time you get to say the mask is worse than the virus… • Our planet is a tiny porthole looking over a cosmic sea .
What lies beyond our own horizons of perception ?
• New Hampshire is first state to allow flying cars on the road .
What about the whole “ where we ’ re going , we don ’ t need roads ” thing ?
• Related : The Arthur ’ s Seat coffin doll mystery – who made them , and why ?
• The Romans called it ‘ Alexandrian Glass ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • Archaeologist claims earliest depiction of ‘ God of Israel ’ found near Jerusalem .
• How psychedelic drugs are used as a tool of state violence .
• Magic mushrooms have been consumed for centuries .
Here ’ s why .
• Video of the Day : Graham Hancock answers the question , ‘ Were psychedelics used in the ancient world ?
’ .
Readers of Paul Devereux ’ s The Long Trip : A Prehistory of Psychedelia already know the answer to that one !
Quote of the Day : I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entire site from orbit .
It ’ s the only way to be sure .

This is the only time you get to say the mask is worse than the virus…
Thanks to Debra, David and Ray for your support of the Grail!
Quote of the Day:
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Ripley (from ‘Aliens’)


News Briefs 04-08-2020

• New York Times fallout : What journalism could teach the UFO community .
• Ancient valleys on Mars may have been carved by glaciers .
• Strange meteorites found across earth revealed as fragments of the same baby planet .
• Related : Were meteorites the original gods worshipped by ancient people , and the model for the construction of the pyramids ?
• Scientists say we need to save the world ’ s parasites before we lose them forever .
• Ancient Greek shipwreck is now protected by underwater AI robots .
• After being eaten alive , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ escape from frog ’ s gut .
And by gut , they mean butt .
• Scientists have woken up 100 million year old microbes from the ancient seafloor .
Lovecraftian horrors await us in 2021 don ’ t they… • Neuroimaging study suggests a single dose of ayahuasca produces lasting changes in two important brain networks .
Quote of the Day : “ I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
” Why so can I , or so can any man .
But will they come when you do call @ @ @

Listen carefully…
Quote of the Day:
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
Why so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?
Shakespeare, ‘Henry IV’


News Briefs 05-08-2020

• The US is at risk of attacks in space .
• Trump pledges fealty to Fox host on UFOs : ‘ I ’ ll do whatever you ask me to do — including total transparency ’ .
• Former senator Harry Reid says UFOs not necessarily from other worlds .
• Ancient Mars may have been less wet than we thought .
• Airships are no longer a relic of the past ; you could ride in one by 2023 .
• Elon Musk ’ s mysterious neuralink chip could make you hear things that were impossible to hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heads : why language remains the most flexible brain to brain interface .
• Related : Words are magic – how the language you speak ( and hear ) changes your reality .
• The nuclear waste buried far beneath the earth will be toxic for millennia .
How do you build a warning now that can be understood in 10,000 years time ?
• Related : Transmitting knowledge to the other side of the apocalypse .
• Take a tusk , drill holes , weave a rope – and change the course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tool our stone-age ancestors used to manufacture twine – a milestone in technological development • Archaeologists may have discovered the birthplace of King Arthur .
Quote of the Day : The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible .


News Briefs 06-08-2020

It is what it isn ’ t .
• Trump ’ s gift to Brazil of 2 million doses of hydroxychloroquine has hardly been used .
Why ?
Because Brazilian doctors know better .
• How do we know if a virus is bio-engineered ?
• Is QAnon the most dangerous conspiracy theory of the XXIst century ?
• The U.S. Army shows first-ever footage of their new hypersonic missile .
• On the trail of the AATIP UFO PowerPoint slide .
• Meanwhile , the cattle mutilations in East Oregon continue .
• In this week ’ s episode @ @ @ @ @ @ @ novelist and synchromystic Christopher Knowles .
• According to an Unsolved Mysteries filmmaker , there are problems with the testimonies of Alonzo Brooks ’ s friends .
• There is also new information on the Rey Rivera case .
• The five possibilities for life on Mars .
• Wild bees are worth $ 1.5 billion for six U.S. crops .
• This is your brain on ‘ shrooms ’ , according to scientists .
• Archeologists share their stories of the coolest things they ’ ve ever found .
• Why do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • Red Pill of the Day : Baboons ‘ carrying knives and chainsaw ’ spotted in Safari park .
Quote of the Day : The truth is of course is that there is no journey .
We are arriving and departing all at the same time .

It is what it isn’t.
Quote of the Day:
The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.
David Bowie


News Briefs 07-08-2020

“ It ’ s nice to think that one could , even here and now , be whisked away just @ @ @ @ @ the Day : “ Let us think the unthinkable , let us do the undoable @ @ @ @ @ grapple with the ineffable itself , and see if we may not eff it after @ @ @

“It’s nice to think that one could, even here and now, be whisked away just by hitchhiking.”
Quote of the Day:
“Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
Douglas Adams


dailygrail--2020-08-09--Ancient ‘Cup and Ring’ Stone Carvings: Who Made Them, and Why?

Variations of the prehistoric carvings commonly called “ cup and ring marks ” have been discovered on every continent of the world save Antartica , and yet their meaning remains a mystery .
In his 1979 book , The Prehistoric Rock Art of Galloway & the Isle of Man , amateur archaeologist Ronald W.B .
Morris listed 104 theories about the curious rock carvings which , he writes , are “ still strongly held and believed in by at least one archaeologist of note , amateur or professional.
” Historical researcher Jeff Nisbet notes that these 104 theories could be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use : • In burials , having some sort of unknown symbolic use to the dead on their final journeys .
• Various other more individual ( and sometimes bizarre ) theories , including , but not limited to : encoded messages from outer space , early masons ’ marks , musical notation , pilgrims ’ marks , gaming tables , boundary markers , primitive lamp bases , and even just meaningless doodles .
And in the 40 years since Morris published his book , Nisbet writes , “ many more theories have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the fantastical to the mundane ” .
And yet , “ since there is no written record in prehistory ” it ’ s likely that no theory ever will provide a fully satisfactory answer to the mystery .
But that won ’ t stop us for continuing to search for answers – and Nisbet has his own offering , which came to him when looking at an old photo of the 5000-year-old Cochno Stone in Scotland : The carved stone shown in the 1937 B & W photo , as emphasized by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ similar to something I remembered well from my schooldays — the classroom blackboard .
As a graphic designer with an abiding interest in the role art has played in our understanding of the past , I had been captivated by a 2015 news story about several old blackboards discovered hidden behind the walls of an Oklahoma City school .
The old blackboards dated from 1917 , and still contained , according to one of the many news reports of the find , lessons “ on music , math , and even the history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the report said , “ a fascinating little time capsule from an earlier era , particularly since it was one that was always meant to be wiped away.
” When I thought about the transitory nature of those early-20th-century classroom chalk marks versus the durability of ancient stone carvings , it occurred to me that the vastly different lifespans of the two mediums are not mutually exclusive , and that the one may actually serve to tell us a lot about the other .
In a paper titled “ Cup & Ring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why ?
“ , Nisbet ponders the different ways in which the evidence for learning processes would have survived in prehistory : while many skills , such as hunting , leather-working , and weaving would have been learned using organic materials that quickly decayed , leaving no permanent record , the teaching of making rock carvings would entail a near-permanent record being left in the medium being used : stone .
“ Unlike the products of early butchery and weaving , ” Nisbet notes , “ the ancient efforts of aspiring stoneworkers would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Those of us of a certain age will recall the individual hand-held slates on which we practiced our alphabets , over and over , or the nibbed pens and inkwells which made our cursive writing sing with delicate upstrokes and heavier downstrokes .
Later on in our schooling we might have taken a touch-typing course , learning the QWERTY keyboard layout by repeatedly tapping out “ the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog ” until we could type it , error-free , without looking down .
As the old Latin proverb @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Repetition is the mother of all learning .
And so it might likely have been in prehistoric times , too , when a craft would be practiced and practiced until the necessary motor skills had become second nature .
Unlike the early work of prehistoric weavers and grooved-ware potters , however , the classwork of student stone carvers would not end its life in either bonfire or midden .
Carved into solid bedrock , it would still be in place for us to see .
While Nisbet ’ s theory of a didactic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ similar to his suggestion regarding the enigmatic carved stone balls of Scotland , it ’ s worth noting that he is not simply trying to ‘ disenchant ’ the past with such pragmatism .
Instead , he notes that while he is quite taken with ‘ magical ’ explanations about the past , he feels that “ placing a mantle of undocumented superstition on the shoulders of our ancestors , no matter how pleasing the thought , runs the risk of doing them a disservice ” : Such preconceptions may blind us to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the view that there is much about the way we live our day-to-day lives that likely has not changed over the millennia — a path that might better enable us to discover some commonsense truths about our ancestors by inviting us to look more inward , at our present-day selves , than backward , at distant strangers .
Feature image : Cup and ring petroglyph in lava rock , Volcano National Park , island of Hawaii , by ‘ Netherzone ’ .
CCASA 4.0 licence .

Variations of the prehistoric carvings commonly called “cup and ring marks” have been discovered on every continent of the world save Antartica, and yet their meaning remains a mystery.
In his 1979 book, The Prehistoric Rock Art of Galloway & the Isle of Man, amateur archaeologist Ronald W.B. Morris listed 104 theories about the curious rock carvings which, he writes, are “still strongly held and believed in by at least one archaeologist of note, amateur or professional.”
Historical researcher Jeff Nisbet notes that these 104 theories could be grouped under the following broad categories of use:
In burials, having some sort of unknown symbolic use to the dead on their final journeys.
In religious or magical ceremonies.
As astronomical timekeepers.
Various other more individual (and sometimes bizarre) theories, including, but not limited to: encoded messages from outer space, early masons’ marks, musical notation, pilgrims’ marks, gaming tables, boundary markers, primitive lamp bases, and even just meaningless doodles.
And in the 40 years since Morris published his book, Nisbet writes, “many more theories have been proposed that similarly run the gamut from the fantastical to the mundane”. And yet, “since there is no written record in prehistory” it’s likely that no theory ever will provide a fully satisfactory answer to the mystery.
But that won’t stop us for continuing to search for answers – and Nisbet has his own offering, which came to him when looking at an old photo of the 5000-year-old Cochno Stone in Scotland:
The carved stone shown in the 1937 B&W photo, as emphasized by Mann’s paint,looked very similar to something I remembered well from my schooldays — the classroom blackboard. As a graphic designer with an abiding interest in the role art has played in our understanding of the past, I had been captivated by a 2015 news story about several old blackboards discovered hidden behind the walls of an Oklahoma City school. The old blackboards dated from 1917, and still contained,according to one of the many news reports of the find, lessons “on music, math, and even the history of the Pilgrims.” The discovery was, the report said,“a fascinating little time capsule from an earlier era, particularly since it was one that was always meant to be wiped away.” When I thought about the transitory nature of those early-20th-century classroom chalk marks versus the durability of ancient stone carvings, it occurred to me that the vastly different lifespans of the two mediums are not mutually exclusive, and that the one may actually serve to tell us a lot about the other.
In a paper titled “Cup & Ring Marks: Who made them, and why?“, Nisbet ponders the different ways in which the evidence for learning processes would have survived in prehistory: while many skills, such as hunting, leather-working, and weaving would have been learned using organic materials that quickly decayed, leaving no permanent record, the teaching of making rock carvings would entail a near-permanent record being left in the medium being used: stone.
“Unlike the products of early butchery and weaving,” Nisbet notes, “the ancient efforts of aspiring stoneworkers would still survive for us to see.”
Those of us of a certain age will recall the individual hand-held slates on which we practiced our alphabets, over and over, or the nibbed pens and inkwells which made our cursive writing sing with delicate upstrokes and heavier downstrokes. Later on in our schooling we might have taken a touch-typing course, learning the QWERTY keyboard layout by repeatedly tapping out “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” until we could type it, error-free, without looking down. As the old Latin proverb goes — Repetitio mater studiorum est — Repetition is the mother of all learning. And so it might likely have been in prehistoric times, too, when a craft would be practiced and practiced until the necessary motor skills had become second nature. Unlike the early work of prehistoric weavers and grooved-ware potters, however, the classwork of student stone carvers would not end its life in either bonfire or midden. Carved into solid bedrock, it would still be in place for us to see.
While Nisbet’s theory of a didactic purpose for these mysterious stone carvings is similar to his suggestion regarding the enigmatic carved stone balls of Scotland, it’s worth noting that he is not simply trying to ‘disenchant’ the past with such pragmatism. Instead, he notes that while he is quite taken with ‘magical’ explanations about the past, he feels that “placing a mantle of undocumented superstition on the shoulders of our ancestors, no matter how pleasing the thought, runs the risk of doing them a disservice”:
Such preconceptions may blind us to a simpler path of investigation paved with the view that there is much about the way we live our day-to-day lives that likely has not changed over the millennia — a path that might better enable us to discover some commonsense truths about our ancestors by inviting us to look more inward, at our present-day selves, than backward, at distant strangers.
———
Feature image: Cup and ring petroglyph in lava rock, Volcano National Park, island of Hawaii, by ‘Netherzone’. CCASA 4.0 licence.


News Briefs 10-08-2020

How ’ s August working out for you ?
• Humans have been making poison arrows for at least 70,000 years .
• Mysterious carvings and evidence of human sacrifice uncovered in ancient city .
• Who made the mysterious , ancient ‘ cup and ring ’ stone carvings , and why ?
• For the first time , CRISPR gene editing has been used on squid .
Do we really want to mess with the cephalopods ?
• The biggest AI threat is already here .
• Immunology is where intuition goes to die : trying to understand how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the woman who wants to sell psychedelic drugs to scientists .
Can we sponsor a free sample for Richard Dawkins ?
• John Cleese ’ s next act : ‘ I think there is life after death ‘ .
• Related : Is there life after death ?
John Cleese talks to the scientists who might have an answer .
• QAnon is running amok and the time has come for interventions .
• Astrologers were the quants of the ancient world .
Quote of the Day : A sickness known as hate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ microbe , not a germ – but a sickness nonetheless , highly contagious , deadly in its effects .
Don ’ t look for it in the Twilight Zone – look for it in a mirror .
Look for it before the light goes out altogether .

How’s August working out for you?
Quote of the Day:
A sickness known as hate; not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ – but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don’t look for it in the Twilight Zone – look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.
Rod Serling


News Briefs 11-08-2020

Sorry for the late news – I can explain… • Ceres : an ocean world in the asteroid belt .
• Amazon satellites add to astronomers ’ worries about the night sky .
• Pew pew !
Japanese satellite to use laser to rid space of dangerous debris .
• Related : Trapped beneath a shell of space debris – could the Kessler Syndrome explain why we haven ’ t heard from aliens ?
• Raelians hold international online forum to discuss diplomatic protocols for extraterrestrial contact .
Smart move , I ’ m not sure ‘ take me to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out that well these days… • Mysterious ‘ fast radio burst ‘ detected closer to Earth than ever before .
• New climate paper asks : should we just let Venice sink ?
• The secret to a long , healthy life is in the genes of the oldest humans alive .
• Before death became a source of disgust and denial , Europeans cheerfully painted with and ingested human remains .
• Video of the Day : Orson Welles ’ s psychedelic 1973 adaptation of Plato ’ s timeless ‘ allegory of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Day : We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark ; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light .

Sorry for the late news – I can explain…
Quote of the Day:
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Plato


dailygrail--2020-08-11--The Chupacabras is Coming to Netflix

The Chupacabras is Coming to Netflix

It was in the mid-Nineties when my sister Verónica , who was working for an important Mexican bank at the time , was picked to attend a seminar in beautiful Puerto Rico .
When she asked the family what kind of souvenir we would like her to bring us back , I knew exactly what I wanted : A Chupacabras t-shirt .
During my last years in college I used to spend whatever free time I could spare at the campus ’ s computer laboratory , learning how to use this new thing called the ‘ world wide web ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out about the latest sightings of this alien beast set loose in the hills of that Caribbean island , decimating the fowl and herds of the desperate Puerto Rican farmers , and a lot of them were not shy of blaming some American military experiment run amok for their misfortune –many of the original sightings occurred very close to secret bases .
These same areas were also active UFO hot spots back in those days , and some people were quick to connect the elusive creature with extraterrestrial visitation .
Mainstream media was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appeal this new monster had among the public .
Famous cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has written how the Chupacabras entered popular culture just in time to join the Latin wave sweeping across the United States , spearheaded by artists like Jennifer Lopez , Ricky Martin and Gloria Estefan .
Personally I suspect that , despite it ’ s morbid connotations , Americans simply like the excuse to say the damn word out loud because it ’ s quite euphonic ( even if they forget to include the ‘ s ’ at the end ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 90 ’ s –including children shows– the chupacabras even made an appearance in one of Dexter ’ s Lab episodes , in which it turned out the goat-sucking critter had in fact been created as an experiment –not by nefarious military scientists , but by Dexter himself– yet he had managed to escape and fled to South America .
This cultural example is notable not only because Dexter and Didi were simply awesome , but also because this is probably the one and only time the Chupacabras was accurately portrayed , according to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And of course , The X-Files had to have their own Chupacabras story in one of their ‘ monster-of-the-week ’ episodes , El Mundo Gira , by the show ’ s eleventh season .
In this case , Chris Carter chose to deviate completely from the ‘ cannon ’ lore of the creature , and instead the Chupacabras ( plural not only because they sucked more than one goat , but also because there were more than one ) are hapless men living in a bordertown , mutated by a parasitic fungus from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Terence McKenna to fight El Mariachi .
As years went by , the views about the Chupacabras in American pop culture changed : from an alien lizard with red eyes and powerful hind legs capable of great leaps –as it was described in the first Puerto Rican reports– to a giant bat-like creature in Mexican reports , to a mangy coyote with blue eyes which may be the result of hybridization caused by climate change , in the latest reports from Texas and the United States Southwest .
By then , the goat-sucking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ added to the American vocabulary ( like Corona or Habanero ) .
But now comes word that Jonás Cuarón , eldest son of Mexican film maker Alfonso Cuarón ( who also co-wrote with his father the script for the multi-awarded movie Gravity ) , has signed a deal with Netflix to direct a movie based on the Chupacabras .
Details on the project are very scarce at this point , but some of the few things already revealed is that the script –which was written by Marcus Rinehart , Sean Kennedy Moore and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alex , a young man coming to rural Mexico to visit his grandfather , and it ’ s in the old house ’ s shed that Alex and his cousins find the mythical goatsucker , and they ’ ll embark in a great adventure in order to save it ; from what or whom we don ’ t know at this point , yet it ’ s clear Jonás and Netflix are more interested in creating a sort of 80 ’ s-type movie like E.T .
the Extraterrestrial or Mac and Me with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the modern illegal immigration problem ) instead of a horror monster flick like Critters .
Listen , I ’ m a huge Stranger Things fan so I don ’ t care if Netflix continues to exploit my mid-life crisis and childhood nostalgia –just please , PLEASE stay away from the mangy coyotes…

It was in the mid-Nineties when my sister Verónica, who was working for an important Mexican bank at the time, was picked to attend a seminar in beautiful Puerto Rico. When she asked the family what kind of souvenir we would like her to bring us back, I knew exactly what I wanted: A Chupacabras t-shirt.
During my last years in college I used to spend whatever free time I could spare at the campus’s computer laboratory, learning how to use this new thing called the ‘world wide web’ to read UFO newsletters, and find out about the latest sightings of this alien beast set loose in the hills of that Caribbean island, decimating the fowl and herds of the desperate Puerto Rican farmers, and a lot of them were not shy of blaming some American military experiment run amok for their misfortune –many of the original sightings occurred very close to secret bases. These same areas were also active UFO hot spots back in those days, and some people were quick to connect the elusive creature with extraterrestrial visitation.
goat allegedly killed by the infamous Chupacabras.
Mainstream media was quick to take notice of the unique appeal this new monster had among the public. Famous cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has written how the Chupacabras entered popular culture just in time to join the Latin wave sweeping across the United States, spearheaded by artists like Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin and Gloria Estefan. Personally I suspect that, despite it’s morbid connotations, Americans simply like the excuse to say the damn word out loud because it’s quite euphonic (even if they forget to include the ‘s’ at the end). Because everything was bolder in the 90’s –including children shows– the chupacabras even made an appearance in one of Dexter’s Lab episodes, in which it turned out the goat-sucking critter had in fact been created as an experiment –not by nefarious military scientists, but by Dexter himself– yet he had managed to escape and fled to South America. This cultural example is notable not only because Dexter and Didi were simply awesome, but also because this is probably the one and only time the Chupacabras was accurately portrayed, according to the original reports from Puerto Rico.
And of course, The X-Files had to have their own Chupacabras story in one of their ‘monster-of-the-week’ episodes, El Mundo Gira, by the show’s eleventh season. In this case, Chris Carter chose to deviate completely from the ‘cannon’ lore of the creature, and instead the Chupacabras (plural not only because they sucked more than one goat, but also because there were more than one) are hapless men living in a bordertown, mutated by a parasitic fungus from outer space –sort of like Lovecraft meets Terence McKenna to fight El Mariachi.
As years went by, the views about the Chupacabras in American pop culture changed: from an alien lizard with red eyes and powerful hind legs capable of great leaps –as it was described in the first Puerto Rican reports– to a giant bat-like creature in Mexican reports, to a mangy coyote with blue eyes which may be the result of hybridization caused by climate change, in the latest reports from Texas and the United States Southwest. By then, the goat-sucking fiend had become another popular Spanish word added to the American vocabulary (like Corona or Habanero).
Jonás Cuarón
But now comes word that Jonás Cuarón, eldest son of Mexican film maker Alfonso Cuarón (who also co-wrote with his father the script for the multi-awarded movie Gravity), has signed a deal with Netflix to direct a movie based on the Chupacabras. Details on the project are very scarce at this point, but some of the few things already revealed is that the script –which was written by Marcus Rinehart, Sean Kennedy Moore and Joe Barnathan– will tell the story of Alex, a young man coming to rural Mexico to visit his grandfather, and it’s in the old house’s shed that Alex and his cousins find the mythical goatsucker, and they’ll embark in a great adventure in order to save it; from what or whom we don’t know at this point, yet it’s clear Jonás and Netflix are more interested in creating a sort of 80’s-type movie like E.T. the Extraterrestrial or Mac and Me with (with some possible social comments on the modern illegal immigration problem) instead of a horror monster flick like Critters.
Listen, I’m a huge Stranger Things fan so I don’t care if Netflix continues to exploit my mid-life crisis and childhood nostalgia –just please, PLEASE stay away from the mangy coyotes…


News Briefs 12-08-2020

• Indigenous Australians farmed bananas more than 2000 years ago , further dispelling the myth that they were solely ‘ @ @ @ @ @ news article references a Darklore article by the brilliant John Reppion , available here on @ @ @ @ @ Calderstones of Liverpool “ !
• Related : The Waffle Rock – what the heck @ @ @ @ @ most overhyped planet in the galaxy .
• Predicted ‘ information catastrophe ’ could be @ @ @ @ @ matter .
Big bada-boom… • Talking to the dead in the sunshine state .
• @ @ @ @ @ – an alternative narrative of the QAnon conspiracy theory .
• Why don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ ?
The answer might lie in a new frontier of neuroscience .
Quote of the @ @ @ @ @ thousand points of light For the homeless man We got a kinder , gentler , @ @ @


News Briefs 13-08-2020

I ’ m rewatching Dark season two and I just noticed how the series predicted the wearing of facemasks in the future .
• It ’ s 2020 so of course the waterfalls in Australia are flowing the other way .
• Arctic sea ice could be gone in 15 years , according to Earth ’ s climate history .
• So , you think that because you ’ re young COVID is less of a risk for you ?
Well , not if you ’ re vaping , bro .
• QAnon groups have millions of members on Facebook @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico is out of commission .
Great , now how are we supposed to receive the stargate instructions from Vega ?
• SETI ’ s Seth Shostak is still trying to use the old skeptic tricks to dismiss those darn Navy UFO videos .
Hey Seth , ever heard of Jacques Vallee ?
• Does Tom DeLonge have new information on UFOs ?
Find out Sunday .
• New Hampshire becomes the first state in the United States to allow flying cars on the road .
• Believe it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kubrick ’ s first choice for the lead character in Eyes Wide Shut .
• Some humans are carrying DNA from an unknown ancient ancestor .
• Cremation in the Middle East dates back as far back as 7000 years .
• The Charles Bonnet syndrome : Why do visually impaired people experience horrific visions ?
• Honeywell wants to show what quantum computing can do for the world .
• Red Pill of the Day : The last remaining Blockbuster is available for sleepovers , and this Gen-Xer thinks that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Quote of the Day : I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought , but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones .

I’m rewatching Dark season two and I just noticed how the series predicted the wearing of facemasks in the future.
Thanks to Greg and Jonas.
Quote of the Day:
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein.


News Briefs 14-08-2020

“ Challenging the conventional wisdom is the way to make waves in science.
” • Could we force this universal @ @ @ @ @ If you unbuild it… the fish will come .
Quote of the Day : “ @ @ @ @ @ as a complex entity involving the Earth ’ s biosphere , atmosphere , oceans , @ @ @ @ @ constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for @ @ @ @ @ ”

“Challenging the conventional wisdom is the way to make waves in science.”
Quote of the Day:
“We have since defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.”
James Lovelock


News Briefs 17-08-2020

• Tom DeLonge to “ shed new light ” on UFOs at virtual Comic Con panel .
• Controversial facial @ @ @ @ @ teaming up with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) .
• GOP congressman @ @ @ @ @ now that it ’ s mainstream .
• QAnon is a menace .
Ignoring it @ @ @ @ @ .
• The REAL Bigfoot : Gigantopithecus would have been terrifying to our ancient ancestors @ @ @ @ @ has already passed its first crucial test .
• When is someone really , truly @ @ @ @ @ re not mostly dead ?
• Scientists create a material that makes salty water safe @ @ @ @ @ • Physicists have a massive problem as Higgs boson refuses to misbehave .
Quote of @ @ @ @ @ rules , there is no will to power ; and where power predominates , there @ @ @ @ @ one is the shadow of the other .

Listen carefully…
Quote of the Day:
Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
Carl Jung


News Briefs 18-08-2020

Grail fam : one of our own could do with some support… • Scientists discovered an unexplained ‘ heartbeat ’ @ @ @ @ @ .
• Cyborg technology could enable new diagnostics , merger of humans and AI .
@ @ @ @ @ Schrödinger ’ s Cat paradox has major implications for quantum theory .
• Sorry , @ @ @ @ @ are rational explanations for military pilots ’ UFO videos .
• The strange tale of @ @ @ @ @ .
• First ever observation of ’ time crystals ’ interacting .
• The ancient @ @ @ @ @ lake ‘ .
Quote of the Day : The trouble with having an open mind @ @ @ @ @ that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it .

Grail fam: one of our own could do with some support…
Quote of the Day:
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
Terry Pratchett


News Briefs 19-08-2020

• Microbes in the clouds of Venus .
• Related : That time the Russians found scorpions on Venus .
• MIT ’ s Asegun Henry on ‘ grand thermal challenges ’ to save humanity from extinction .
• These teens want to solve plastic pollution through gene-editing .
• Tiktok ’ s latest U.S. suitor is Oracle , a company with close ties to the CIA and NSA .
• How QAnon works like a video game to hook people .
• What pro wrestling can teach us about the quest for truth .
• Did the CIA simulate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warfare experiments ?
• What would happen to Earth if humans went extinct ?
• Video of the Day : Stone cut – Surreal , audacious , unfinished , the Sagrada Família remains a divine work in progress .
Quote of the Day : God does not play dice with the universe ; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising , which might be compared , from the perspective of any of the other players [ i.e .
everybody ] , to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blank cards , for infinite stakes , with a Dealer who won ’ t tell you the rules , and who smiles all the time .

Missed by that much…
Quote of the Day:
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
Terry Pratchett


News Briefs 20-08-2020

Here is the news .
Enjoy !
• According to research published this week , the most sensitive climate models overestimate global warming during the last 50 years .
• An exploding star may have caused a mass extinction during the Denovian period .
• New astrophysical paper goes against the ‘ lone star ’ thinking of our sun ’ s origin .
• Gods from Space : The NYT takes a look at the Aetherius Society .
• What ’ s behind the Pentagon ’ s new UFO task force , aliens or superpower rivalry ?
• Unsolved Mysteries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • Why the sequel to a massive coronavirus conspiracy movie completely flopped .
• Related : Fact-checking ‘ Plandemic 2 ’ : another video full of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 .
• The computer game that led to enlightenment .
• Three philosophers set up a booth on a street corner –here ’ s what people asked .
• Trinity Cube : The piece of art which will wait 30,000 years to have an audience .
• Researchers think they solved the mystery of America ’ s ‘ lost colony ’ –and NO @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and/or pirate ships… • Here ’ s what an Ice Age dog had for its last supper .
• Tasmanian tigers were small but not fierce predators .
Then they went extinct –allegedly… • Red Pill of the Day : ‘ Flight Simulator ’ players are flocking to Jeffrey Epstein ’ s private island .
Quote of the Day : Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it .

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News Briefs 21-08-2020

• The last explosion in the universe ?
• The robot revolution will be televised… by robots .
Quote of @ @ @ @ @ self is of itself alone .
”