Skeptical of the Skeptics

An on-line acquaintance of mine, Trevor Tocco, and someone I connected with through Chris Knowles Secret Sun, wrote the following terrific piece - which Trevor graciously agreed to have us re-print for the Lexicon blog - This offers a balanced overview of the contemporary ‘skeptic’ movement that has dominated certain areas of scientific inquiry. Skepticism has its place when it is founded on the scientific method – ala Dana Scully, the problem lies when such a foundation is built more on a ‘feeling’ in place of legitimate research, and inquiry. Ultimately, the end game, like all others in life should be the pursuit of Veritas. The question that is explored is if the skeptic movement is built upon such a pursuit.

Skeptical of the Skeptics by Trevor Tocco

According to Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, the word “skepticism” means “the philosophical doctrine that the truth of all knowledge must always be in question and that inquiry must be a process of doubting” (“Skepticism”). There is a movement known as the Skeptic movement which prides itself on debunking claims such as UFOs, ghostly phenomena, the occult, and many other bizarre topics. The movement promotes “freethinking” and “rationalism” in its crusade against religious fundamentalism and con artists. Even mainstream science and society has practically elevated such members as James Randi, Penn Jillete, Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, and others to sainthood. However, even though skepticism is a good thing, the Skeptic movement has taken the word as their own and skewed its meaning. Despite being labeled as scientists, the methodology used to “disprove” such things as UFOs and the occult may suffer from flaws. The same can be said about the movement itself. The reasons for this include inaccurate methodology, the hypocrisy of the movement, and even the scientists, along with sci-fi authors, that the movement frequently brings up would be considered “kooks” by today’s standards. Even if there is no proof of UFOs or any other weird topic, that does not mean we should not be skeptical of the Skeptics.

One of the main problems with the movement is that they use faulty methods and so-called experts. The movement continually cites people such as James Randi, Richard Dawkins, or Christopher Hitchens when supporting an argument. However, certain “experts” lack scientific credentials. It is true that this can also be said about fringe research (the actor Dan Aykroyd doing a documentary of UFOs), but when leaders of the movement proclaim themselves to be “experts” (as well as by the media), it should be known if they have knowledge of the subject. Even though Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, more revered leaders, such as Randi and Penn Jillete, have more background in entertainment than science. Randi dropped out of high school and joined the circus while Jillete graduated from the Barnum and Bailey Clown College. “He’s hell-bent on tearing apart anyone he deems a kook, including distinguished scientists and Nobel Prize-winners. This is amusing, as Randi has no scientific credentials whatsoever (although he did once write an astrology column for a Canadian tabloid and host a paranormal-themed radio show).” (Alfvegren).

Then there is Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge, a method used by the James Randi Educational Foundation to determine if someone has supernatural abilities. Even though it is praised for “exposing con artists,” there are some who point out that it is a scam. The complaints leveled against it include the length of time it takes can be corrupting to evidence, the fact that all evidence is surrendered to Randi or any other monitors, and even the prize is actually in the form of bonds. Of course, the main aspect of the challenge is “can it be replicated?” However, a recent New Yorker article explains how even this can be problematic: “But now all sorts of well-established, multiple confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology.” (Lehrer). So a simple “background check” can certainly raise questions when the person or group being checked uses faulty methods.

A major concern about the movement is the level of hypocrisy. The movement claims it supports freethinking, but they insult anyone who disagrees with them or they label them as “pseudoscientific.” The movement claims it revolves around scientific progress, but whenever a claim is made that could be a major discovery if proven, the leaders tend to treat it like a joke. Even though there are things that have been proven to be pseudoscience and superstition, other claims, such as UFOs or even magical traditions in some cases, can benefit from research, but these topics are largely ignored. Also, as cliché as it sounds, many major discoveries were considered ridiculous at one point, most notably claims made during the Renaissance. Another hypocrisy is how the movement fights against religious fundamentalism, but it has become no different than its enemy. When discussing the politics of the late Christopher Hitchens, Jeff Sparrow explains that contrary to the opinion of his more liberal admirers, the “atheist Hitchens” and the “political Hitchens” were one in the same as he praised Bush’s cluster bombs. (Sparrow). It seems pretty clear that the Skeptic movement is not based on the foundations of “rationalism,” but a biased agenda no different than an extremist group.

Then there is another interesting point: How certain scientists, and even sci-fi and comic writers, are quoted and praised by the movement, despite the fact that these particular people displayed an interest in fringe topics! Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, once tried to make a device to contact the spirit world. Nikola Tesla was likewise interested in the weird, up to the point where he has now reached celebrity status in the paranormal community. The movement also praises Sir Isaac Newton, yet Newton was involved in the occult world, notably alchemy. Then there are icons of sci-fi, fantasy, and comics that showed in interest in the paranormal. Even though it cannot be said for all of them (i.e. Isaac Asimov), some of the icons of the genre, notably Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Philip K. Dick, and even Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, displayed in interest in the occult, UFOs, etc. Kirby (Captain America, X-Men, The Hulk, etc.), Dick (who wrote the stories that would become Total Recall, Blade Runner, The Adjustment Bureau, and many others), Moore (Watchmen and V for Vendetta), and a list of others have made marks on pop culture, but what most people don’t realize is that many of the themes in their works are elements of the paranormal and occult, spurred on by their interest in these topics. Of course, figures such as Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), Burroughs (Tarzan, John Carter of Mars), and most notably Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) were involved in spiritualism, which isn’t surprising since they were around for the Victorian occult explosion.

Not to mention sci-fi conventions that feature Skeptic tracks, despite the fact that John Whiteside Parsons, one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and attendee of some of the first sci-fi conventions, was an associate of famous (or in some circles, infamous) British occultist, Aleister Crowley. Author Christopher Knowles explains in his book Our Gods Wear Spandex: “Although most of us don’t realize it, there’s simply nothing new about devotion to superheroes. Their powers, their costumes, and even their names are plucked straight from the pre-Christian religions of antiquity. When you go back and look at these heroes in their original incarnations, you can’t help but be struck by how blatant their symbolism is and how strongly they reflect the belief systems of the pagan age. What even fewer people realize is that this didn’t occur by chance, but came directly out of the spiritual and mystical secret societies and cults of the late 19th century-groups like the Theosophists, the Rosicrucian’s, and the Golden Dawn.” (Knowles, p.18). Despite the high rate of scientists and sci-fi fans who promote the ideals of the Skeptic movement, many of their heroes would be considered “kooks” by today’s standards. Many would probably ask “What about the lack of proof?” This can be a tricky question. On one hand, there has not necessarily been “solid” proof of otherworldly (or inter-dimensional) visitors or the effectiveness of magical practices. On the other hand, these ideas were spawned by some phenomena rather than simply being randomly thought up. For example, many Skeptics will explain how there is no “solid proof” that our ancient ancestors were visited by “ancient astronauts.” However, the reason why this theory is prominent is not because it was randomly thought up, but because of the similarities between what the ancients recorded and what is being reported today. It might not be “solid evidence,” but it could be evidence of some phenomena. Also, the Skeptics would probably say “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” But what classifies as extraordinary evidence? The idea that the earth is round or that humans evolved from chimps probably sounded extraordinary to people. Then there is also the risk of Skeptics claiming that a piece of evidence “is not evidence” and the requirements are increased.

Another question would be “What about how crazy proponents of the paranormal can sometimes be?” It is true that there are proponents of the paranormal that can be “crazy.” Even other proponents will agree. However, that would also mean that the idea that “all paranormal researchers are crazy” is a generalization. An example is how the Skeptic movement sometimes views people interested in the paranormal no differently than “religious nuts.” First, not only is this still a generalization, but certain proponents of the paranormal chose this as an alternative to organized religion. Ancient Astronaut Theory seems to be an alternative view to the ideas of mainstream religion, not to mention the occult explosions of the Renaissance and the Victorian era were reactions to the dominance of mainstream religion. As for credibility, Skeptics like Randi and Jillete lack credentials while writers of paranormal topics do have credibility. Jeff Kripal, whose book Mutants and Mystics explores the relationship between sci-fi and the paranormal via the experiences of Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Whitley Streiber, etc., is a professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought and even Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University. Jacques Vallee, who not only claims that we have been seeing UFOs for centuries but that they may actually from higher dimensions, holds degrees in mathematics and astronomy and has been a research assistant at MacDonald Observatory.

Jacques Vallee

Then, the big question could be “Why does it matter?” Why does any new discovery matter? From the discovery of fire to the flight of the Orwell brothers to the establishment of robotics, there was never really such thing as an “insignificant discovery.” What if we discovered that the beings we call “aliens” were real? Or that we were capable of talents we only dreamed of? Things like this could change many worldviews and, in the process, the world. Whether it would be positive or negative or somewhere in-between is unclear, but it would still have an effect on the status quo.

The views of the Skeptic movement are popular in our society. However, the movement’s claims are built on faulty research, hypocritical ideas, and contradicts the ideas of the figures that the movement praises. Despite its popularity, the Skeptic movement suffers from fallacies and hypocrisy, so who’s to say that UFOs are not extraterrestrial (or maybe inter-dimensional) craft, or that we may be capable of talents beyond our wildest dreams?
  
Works Cited  

1. Alfvegren, Skylaire. “The Problem with James Randi and his Foundation on the Paranormal, Pseudoscientific, and Supernatural.” Skeptical Investigations. 26 January 2006. Web 

 2. Knowles, Christopher. Our Gods Wear Spandex. San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2007. 

Print 

3. Lehrer, Jonah. “The Truth Wears Off.” The New Yorker. 13 December 2010. Web. 

4. Sparrow, Jeff. “The Weaponization of Atheism.” Counter Punch. 9 April 2012. Web.

Reconstructing: Urban Legends

The X-Files, in part, often referenced urban legends in their stories, and it’s a fascinating subject within esoteric studies, yet, it’s also a term that is as frequently as overused as ‘paranormal’. The term has also become so nebulous, that one must try to define what should qualify as an ‘urban legend’. Folklorists have their own definitions of what makes an ‘urban legend’, and many academics disagree on whether urban legends are, by definition, too fantastic to be true, or partly based on fact, or a little of both. The Webster definition of an Urban legend is – "a modern story of obscure origin and with little or no supporting evidence that spreads spontaneously in varying forms and often has elements of humor, moralizing, or horror."

Urban Legends aren’t easily verifiable, by nature. They are usually passed on by word of mouth or, - more commonly today – via E-mail. The rumor or gossip aspect of the tale makes it virtually impossible to find the original source of the story. There’s the cliché of Alligators in the sewers, but the range of subjects is far more varied, and the history more interesting then some might consider. Folklorist at the University of Wales, Mikel J. Koven, has commented: "Life is much more interesting with monsters in it, it’s the same with these legends. They’re just good stories."

Jan Harold Brunvald wrote in his 1981 book – "The Vanishing Hitchhiker" that "The lack of verification in no way diminishes the appeal that urban legends have for us. We enjoy them merely as stories, and tend to at least half-believe them as possibly accurate." he further added that urban legends have "a strong basic story appeal, a foundation in actual belief, and a meaningful message or ‘moral’"

While many urban legends are often false, that’s not always the case, a few turn out to be true. Many are inspired by an actual event, but evolve into something different in their passage from person to person. I illustrated that point on the X-Files Lexicon years ago with my article on the Jersey Devil, the ‘pass-it-on’ phenomenon. Which we’ll go into later.

In certain cases, some widely discredited information on a subject is lumped into the urban legend category; one example could be the belief that you will pass all of your college courses in a semester if your roommate kill themselves. Thematically while urban legends are all over the map, several elements show up repeatedly, there is the cautionary tale, or contamination tale. For example, organ harvesters, or the legend of coating tattoos with LSD to hook minors, although there’s no evidence that LSD is addictive in this fashion.

There’s the gossip aspect to an urban legend, and the assumption that a friend who passes on such a story could not lie, and there’s the assumption that if an urban legend is published in a newspaper – an ‘authoritative’ source, it must be true. One example of this could be the Halloween legend of razors in apples or needles in candy, I recall this hysteria in the late seventies over such a story, although there’s no documented cases of contamination of Halloween candy, but it has often been misreported by journalists, police officers, and authorities, bearing in mind that there is no infallible source of information.

Due to a lack of critical thinking in many cases, anyone can be duped into believing an urban legend simply due to our nature to trust, our unwillingness to investigate every single piece of information we are given. Another reason why such stories get passed on is due to their specificity, the details make them seem real. This specificity plays into our fears and anxieties about what could happen.

One of the key issues is to define what should qualify as an urban legend, there are a series of examples of contemporary legends that have a basis in truth. One being the ‘dead body under the bed Mattress’ – a couple check into a hotel room and have to deal with a foul odor in their room the entire night, only to find a dead body under the bed the following day, the staff having taken off the mattress to find a decomposing body. This has happened in Las Vegas, Kansas City MO, Atlantic City NJ, with several instances in California, and Florida.



The second being Funhouse Mummies, props at carnivals that turn out not to be paper mache, but human skin and bone. One example would be the production crew of "The Six Million Dollar Man", while filming at the Nu-Pike amusement park in Long Beach, CA in nineteen seventy six, they discovered that a body prop was in fact the criminal master mind Elmer McCurdy, who was killed in a shootout after robbing a train in nineteen eleven. McCurdy was embalmed by the local undertaker, who was apparently so pleased by his work that he propped up the corpse in his funeral home as evidence of his skills, and people paid 5 cents to see the corpse. After several years, two people who claimed to be McCurdy’s brothers, showed up to claim it. They actually were carnival promoters. The body toured America before coming to rest in Long Beach. Bear in mind that this was at the height of the P.T. Barnum exploitation era.



Another example would be the curiously realistic Halloween decoration of a person hanging from a tree, which turns out to be a genuine suicide. This happened in the town of Frederica, Delaware when a forty-two year old woman hung herself from a tree near a dusty road on a Tuesday night, and remained there the following day until someone realized it wasn’t a prop and called the police. This happened five days before Halloween in 2005.

Or the story of a teenager whom while pretending to hang himself in front of an audience, actually does. These types of incidents seem to be fairly common during Halloween, with many ‘haunt’ shows, usually implemented by securing the victim in a harness that supports his weight when they drop from the gallows so that the noose placed their neck doesn’t snap their neck or constrict their windpipe, unfortunately, these kind of stunts have gone wrong. In October 1990, it was reported in the Chicago Tribune, that seventeen-year-old Brian Jewell died performing such a stunt at a Halloween hayride. In contrast, there is the untrue urban legend regarding MGM’s "The Wizard of Oz" that a Munchkin committed suicide, hanging themselves on a prop tree, due to poor working conditions, but there is no basis in the story.

Still of the background that some perceived to be a suicide in 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz”.

Then there’s one of the ultimate urban legends, and one of the most universal, and potent of fears: to be buried alive. Not only has this happened, but in the past happened with alarming regularity. In the late 19th Century, William Tebb, a social reformer champion and British business man, tried to compile all of the instances of premature burial from medical sources of his day. Tebb managed to collect two hundred and nine cases of near premature burial, one hundred and forty-nine cases of actual premature burial, as well as a dozen cases where dissection or embalming had begun on a not-yet deceased body. Bear in mind these occurred before advances in medical diagnosis. But the concern over being buried alive was so great during that period, that the wealthy would secure "safety coffins" which would allow those inside a coffin to signal to the outside world, usually by ringing a bell or raising a flag. Even as recently as 2007, there are still cases of people waking up during an autopsy, after being declared dead, one example being Venezuelan, Carlos Camejo, thirty-three, who had been declared dead after a highway accident.



While the above examples seem rather mundane, then can offer a benchmark over what should qualify as an urban legend, as far as the basic definition.

Koven has argued that Urban legends are a good indicator of what’s going on currently in a society, "By looking at what’s implied in a story, we get an insight into the fears of a group in society." adding that urban legends "need to make cultural sense", that a lack of information coupled with such fears which tend to give rise to new legends: "When demand exceeds supply, people will fill in the gaps with their own information."

Which brings us back to criteria with how one might define a legitimate urban legend over something with no basis in truth – ultimately the criteria might involve corroborating evidence. When I wrote my piece on The Jersey Devil, I summarized, and concluded it as an ‘urban legend’, that is, the popular long held conception of the Jersey Devil as a hybrid beast might have no basis in known fact. Since the initial reports of the early 1900s, there hasn’t been any corroborating evidence regarding footprints, animal droppings, unidentified hair or skin fragments, unlike such evidence found with Sasquatch cases, to warrant it being dubbed as anything other than an urban legend, at least the old-school popular understanding of the Jersey Devil.

That doesn’t mean to say that it’s impossible that something exists in the forests of New Jersey that hasn’t been identified as of yet. I have had, over the years, personal correspondence from people who swear they’ve had Jersey Devil encounters, it might be a rare species that hasn’t been simply identified, as of yet. Chris Carter hypothesized it involved a small pocket of feral humans, it’s possible that the truth could end up being just as strange as the legend. But one shouldn’t take such legends at face value, they should seek corroborating evidence, read, research, and probe all aspects to a story, before drawing their own conclusions.

In essence, one should employ rigorous scrutiny when researching or defining this subject.

Esoteric Studies: The 'Piri Re'is' Map

The Sea Kings of 6000 B.C?

I realize that the phrase ‘Esoteric Studies’ is tautological when you consider that everything done on The X-Files Lexicon Blog, and the main site is about esoteric research. But we’re adding a new on-going feature, it occurred to me recently that one of the original goals of the Lexicon blog was to write about subjects that weren’t specifically referenced on the show, and while we have done that to a degree, it felt that this was the ideal time to dig deeper down the rabbit hole, and explore these areas.

The subject of the Piri Re’is map came to my attention many years ago, and it’s a fascinating subject, for some, it seems to demonstrate evidence of Ancient Astronaut Theory, for other’s, it validates evidence that lost civilizations like Atlantis existed, but one of the most interesting questions about the map is the possibility the map confirms the Earth is older than recorded history would have us believe. Never mind the creationist theories about the Earth being thousands of years younger, if the reverse could be proven, it would shake to their foundations our assumptions about what we know.



The story began in 1956, when a cartographer named M.I. Walter’s, from the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office, found himself looking at a copy of a map that had been presented to the office from a Turkish naval officer, it was very old, and was, in fact, dated 919 in the Muslim calendar, which is AD 1513 by Christian reckoning. Basically, it was a map of the Atlantic ocean, showing a small part of North Africa, and all of South America, but what was remarkable, almost unbelievable was the fact that these continents were in their correct longitudes, an achievement at that period when most maps were crude. It should be noted, for 1513, it was astonishingly accurate map of South America, and that it apparently showed Antarctica, which wasn’t discovered until 1818. It also showed the Mid-Atlantic range, which seems like an astonishing piece of knowledge , for any period, before the invention of sonar – unless, of course, it had been observed while it was still above water.



Comparison between a modern projection of South America, and the Piri Re'is map

The original mapmaker was known to have been a Turkish pirate named Piri Re’is, who had been beheaded in 1554. he was the nephew of a famous pirate Kemal Re’is. He had made a curious statement that he based his map on twenty old maps from the great library of Alexandria which had been destroyed by invading Arabs in AD 640. One of these twenty maps had been made by Christopher Columbus interestingly enough. The Piri Re’is map had been known since 1929, when it had been discovered in the Topkapi Palace museum in Istanbul, but no one had paid attention to it until Walter’s had gotten involved and showed the map to his colleague Captain Arlington H. Mallery, a retired navigator whom, after reviewing the map, made some startling comments, that the map did depict Antarctica, and what was more, the map had been made before the Antarctic continent was covered in ice.

But the notion seemed absurd, the assumption being that the coast of Antarctica had been covered in ice at the time of Alexander the Great: the last time men could have seen the continent without ice was many thousands of years ago, long before the earliest known maritime civilizations, which could have only meant one or two things: either ships had sailed the seas at a time when, according to historians or convention, our ancestors were living in caves, or – that there had once been a flourishing civilization on Antarctica itself, whose men had made maps that were copied down through the ages, up to the time of Alexander the Great. The controversy came to the attention of Charles Hapgood, a professor of the history of science who resided at Keene State Collage, who found the Piri Re’is map to be of interest, as he considered, it might have been able to support some of the conclusions he had drawn about the movements of the Earth’s crust – that he published in a book titled Earth’s Shifting Crust in 1958.

Hapgood’s starting point had been the great mystery of the ice age, which has remained unexplained thus far. The essence of his arguments were that Ice caps form unevenly at the poles, and this lack of balance affects the rotation of the earth – just as an off-balance wheel begins to vibrate as it spins, Hapgood argued this causes masses of ice, as well as the tectonic plates to dislodge triggering a catastrophic shake-up of the earth’s crust. He estimated that the last catastrophic movement took place between ten to fifteen thousand years ago, before that, Antarctica was 2,500 miles closer to the equator than it is today.

Hapgood assembled a group of students at Keene State Collage in New Hampshire, and set them the task of studying a number of ancient maps, including Piri Re’is. He published his findings in 1966 with the book, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. His first surprise discovery was that maps known as portolans – those used by seafarers in the Middle ages – had been known to scholars for centuries and that no one had paid much attention to them, and that many of these maps were as accurate as modern maps, the scholar A.E. Nordenskiold believed that the portolans of the fifteenth and sixteenth century were based on maps that dated back before Christ. Hapgood had noted some initial ‘mistakes’ with the Piri Re’is map, that the Amazon river was depicted twice, but it had left out a nine-hundred-mile stretch of the coastline, that Piri had allowed his map to overlap or fail to overlap.

One error could be pinned down to Greek astronomer Eratoshenes 4 ½ degrees circumference measurement; this was the first clue that the map was based on ancient Greek models. The other problem that is known to all geographers – that the earth is a sphere, and that a map that is flat is bound to distort it, today mapmakers use a ‘projection’ based on division into latitude and longitude, but the old mapmakers used a simpler method. They would choose a center, draw a circle round it, then subdivide into sixteen segments. The original center of the Piri Re’is map is actually off the map, but calculations indicated that it had to be in Egypt. While at first, Alexandria seemed to be the obvious place, after further calculation it had to be further north, where it turned out to be Syene. But Hapgood realized, this held some interesting implications.

When the geographers of Alexandria made their maps – which included Eratosthenes’s 4 ½ degree error – it was unlikely that they sailed off to visit the various places they were mapping. They must have used older maps that were incredibly accurate –without the 4 ½ degree error, suggesting that older mapmakers possessed a more accurate and advanced map making science than the Greeks.

There was already evidence that Egypt understood the circumference of the earth in 2500 BC, only to have that information rediscovered by Eratoshenes two thousand years alter, a fairly staggering revelation until you are reminded that knowledge can be forgotten with great ease. Hapgood made another discovery with the map: that the original maps from which it was drawn from must have used a slightly different length for the degree of latitude than the degree of longitude. The reason being because if you are trying to project the surface of a sphere onto a flat sheet of paper, the lines of latitude get shorter as they draw towards the poles, while the lines of latitude are less affected, being that they run parallel across the globe, and it looked as it the ancient mapmakers had used the same projection method. Hapgood concluded: “evident knowledge of longitude implies a people unknown to us, a nation of seafarers, with instruments for finding longitude undreamed of by the Greeks.”

Further evidence pointed to some other revelations, The Piri Re’is Map wasn’t the only one examined by Hopgood’s team. There was a 1531 map by Oronteus Finaeus that showed the South Pole, three centuries before its official discovery, yet it was a map of the whole polar cap, as it drawn from the air, showing a remarkable resemblance to the poles as we know them today. Furthermore, the evidence suggested that all of these maps had been based some old map that must have been much older. This was further corroborated with a Turkish Hadji map of 1550, and a map of China dated from AD 1137. All of this suggesting the idea that some world-wide seafaring civilization had existed before Alexander The Great and that it had disappeared while the civilization of Mesopotamia was still primitive and illiterate, that this civilization disappeared, either due to some catastrophe or over a long period of time.

While Hapgood merely postulated that a maritime civilization had existed, other’s jumped at the conclusion as proof of the real existence of Atlantis, or the ancient astronaut theory popularized first in The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (1960) or Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken (1957). Charles Hapgood was initially dismissed as a scientific crank by his colleagues due to these theories, yet there’s evidence that Hapgood might be vindicated regarding the significance of the anomalous map, there seems to be a growing body of evidence for an unknown ice age civilization, due to the work of De Santillana an von Dechend and Graham Hancock. Conventional scientists may arrive at the same discoveries.

Connections

One question that came to mind upon studying the history of the Piri Re’is map was – how did this connect to other historical and mythological sources? Certain aspects of the mystery triggered some odd leaps, one being the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and the “Legendarium” of his middle earth. Tolkien was a professor of English literature, and a scholar of language and mythology, and he has acknowledged that Finnish, Norse, Slavic, Greek, Persian, Celtic mythologies, Christianity, and the Arthurian legends shaped the of origins of his ‘middle earth’ tales. When one considers just how in-depth the material is – countless invented histories, maps, languages, and lineages: while the details might have been incorrect, on an intuitive level, was Tolkien touching on a universal unconscious memory of the earth being much older? It is interesting to note that Tolkien describes the events in Middle Earth as the ‘third’ and ‘fourth ages’. When film director Peter Jackson was helming his adaptations of The Lord of The Rings trilogy, he did make the odd comment of treating the material as a ‘forgotten pre-history.’ Additionally, bear in mind that H.P. Lovecraft’s abode for his ancient gods, R’lyeh, is placed in Antarctica.



Some of the questions about the revelations with the Piri Re’is map, and the age of the earth, can be raised by some strange quotes in the Bible, the book of Genesis. If one views the scriptures as allegorical and full of parables, then perhaps there’s clues, in a limited fashion, that the scriptures describe the early history of the earth. What could one make of the following passage?

"There were giants in the earth in those days: and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." Gen 6:4

Were the giants cited, actual giants, or the race of Atlantis, or another advanced civilization? Could the book of genesis be a parable describing multiple extinctions throughout earth’s early history? Could the descriptions of Adam’s descendants, their longevity, and their offspring, in Genesis, chapter five, be an allegory for different races of men?

The Nephilim are described by Father Gregory in the season five X-Files episode, “All Souls” with the following version of the legend: "In the story, the angel descends from heaven and fathers four children with a mortal woman. Their offspring are the nephilim – the ‘fallen ones’"

Yet the narrative account in the book of Enoch, a source from the Torah, seems very allegorical, for example in Chapter V:

1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. 2. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' 3. And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.'

7. And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. 8. These are their chiefs of tens.

Then in Chapter VII, it described the women bearing Giants whom turned against mankind, In Chapter VIII:

1. And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth, and the art of working them…2. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl, (taught) astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon. And as men perished, they cried, and their cry went up to heaven...

Then within Chapter IX is the following:

6. Thou seest what Azâzêl hath done, who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were (preserved) in heaven, which men were striving to learn: 7. And Semjâzâ, to whom Thou hast given authority to bear rule over his associates. 8. And they have gone to the daughters of men upon the earth, and have slept with the women, and have defiled themselves, and revealed to them all kinds of sins.

Was the great sin the creation of these giants, or the passing of knowledge to mortal man before men were ready for such knowledge? Then in Chapter X is following:

8. And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azâzêl: to him ascribe all sin.' 9. And to Gabriel said the Lord: 'Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication: and destroy [the children of fornication and] the children of the Watchers from amongst men [and cause them to go forth]: send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have.

It is believed that the Nephilim, these Giants, were wiped out with the great flood, but then how can one account for the fact that they resurface later?

"And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim); and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.’ Then all the congregation raised a loud cry; and the people wept that night." Num 13:33

When one considers that Anthropologists have found evidence of humanoid giants existed over one million years ago, and that these have been categorized under Gigantopithecus. Or considers the discovered mummified remains of two giant men in Lima, Peru, 1969, or Magellan’s account of native giant, or Don Ciezza de Leon’s account of South American Giants, circa 1553 and 1555 AD, could these giants be the descendents of the Nephilim? In any way could the Nephilim relate to the lost civilization of Atlantis? When you consider the Critias account by Plato that reads:

. . . which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within them; this war I am going to describe. Of the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens was reported to have been the leader and to have fought out the war; the combatants on the other side were commanded by the kings of Atlantis, which, as was saying, was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean.

What is known about Atlantis, and what has been described as a great island which had vanished “in a night and a day”. That it was a "great and wonderful empire" which had conquered Libia, Europe, and Etruria in Central Italy. It has been said the Atlantians were great engineers and architects, building palaces, harbors, temples and docks: their capital city was built on a hill, which was surrounded by concentric bands of land and water, joined by immense tunnels, large enough for a ship to sail through. It has been said that the city was eleven miles in diameter, a huge canal, 300 feet wide and 100 feet deep, connected the outermost of these rings of water to the sea. In the second dialogue of the Critias, Plato describes how Poseidon (Neptune), the sea god, founded the Atlantian race by fathering ten children on a mortal, Cleito, whom he kept on a hill surrounded by canals. But, as told by Cleito, the Atlantians began to lose the wisdom and virtue they inherited from the god, they became greedy, corrupt, and domineering. Then Zeus decided to teach them a lesson. It is indeed interesting to notice the similarities between the Critias and the accounts in the Book of Enoch.

Now setting aside ancient astronaut theory for a moment - could an ancient civilization like Atlantis, or one in the arctic have been destroyed because they gained too much knowledge? Or because they used that knowledge against the laws of nature, and developed a disconnect to greater cosmic powers? A disconnect from the source of all life?

To digress, in fairness, Hopgood’s theories do seem to validate the ancient astronaut theories of Erich von Daniken, and Louis Pauwels, that beings from the stars, or another dimension, shaped our development. But it would also be arrogant to assume that earlier civilizations couldn’t have reached technological advances on their own. Our understanding of ‘advanced’ based on the modern definition in an industrialized society, might differ from the criteria used in ancient civilization. Setting aside from the science fiction hypothesis’ by some Atlantis proponents, of power crystals and machines, Atlantis might have been simply a highly evolved civilization early in the earth’s history, and one could hypothesize, they engaged in an early form of eugenics, in the same manner that dogs were conditioned and bred away from their ancestral wolf instincts, for example. The symbolism behind the Atlantis or Nephilim tales might be the most important clue, parables to warn us about past cycles and history.

The season six X-Files closer, “Biogenesis” opens with a monologue that touches on an interesting theme:

"From Space, it seems an abstraction, a magicians trick in a darkened stage. And from this distance one might never imagine that it is alive."

The monologue then describes life appearing almost four billion years ago in the form of single-celled life, an explosion spanning millions of years, multiplying, then stopping, a giant mass extinction. Then plants began to evolve, insects, only to be wiped out in a second extinction, then another repeating cycle, Reptiles emerging independent of the sea, only to be killed off, then dinosaurs, the first birds, fish, and flowering plants, their decimation's being the forth and fifth extinctions. Then only hundred thousand years later Homo Sapiens – man appears, evolving, cataloging the natural world, rising to a world population of over five billion people – all descended from that single cell, that first spark of life. Then the monologue adds:

"But for all out knowledge, what no one can say for certain is what, or who ignited that original spark. Is there a plan, a purpose or a reason to our existence? Will we pass, as those before us into oblivion, into the six extinction that scientists warn is already in progress? Or will the mystery be revealed through a sign? A symbol? A revelation?"

Perhaps learning, and deciphering the past will give us that sign to help us avoid oblivion.

Major News from The X-Files Truth podcast

Our friends at the X-Files Truth podcast is conducting an historic, first time interview with none other than the nefarious Cigarette-Smoking Man himself, William B. Davis, to discuss his autobiographical book, "Where There’s Smoke", as well as all things X-Files.

On Saturday, Feb 4th, 2012 at 8:00 pm EST, - 5:00 PST

As a live Podcast / Interview with Chat. You can check out the audio promo from here.

Myself on behalf of The X-Files Lexicon will be participating as well as a host of others from the X-Files on-line fandom community, The event and interview are being hosted by Agent Shadow, and our very good friend of the Lexicon, Agent Chelsea. It is supposed to run about 45 minutes to an hour.

It looks to be great fun, I encourage everyone to keep you eyes open at The X-Files Truth Podcast on that date.

I’d try to make it if I were you - I wouldn’t want to be on C.G.B. Spender’s shortlist of people listed as an ‘unfriendly’ for not making it. (just kidding)

Sirius Mystery Debate sources...

While we have a number of substantial Lexicon Blog articles in the works soon, the following treatise was brought to my attention, regarding Robert Temple’s rebuttal to Carl Sagan’s critique of Temple’s book, The Sirius Mystery, first published in 1976.

Sagan’s critique titled, "White Dwarf’s and Green Men" was published in Omni magazine, 1979. You can find out the contents of that issue from this page.

Unfortunately, Sagan’s piece isn’t available on-line, probably due to copyright issues, but the Temple’s answer to his critics can be found, and uploaded in the following PDF file.

For anyone not familiar with the Sirius Mystery, in a nutshell, the origin of the issue deals with Ancient Astronaut Theory, an African tribe called Dogon, whom Temple argues, had contact with an extra-terrestrial amphibious race known as Nommos, some 5,000 years ago, and that this contact is reflected in their art and culture. The Dogon had knowledge of Sirius B and Sirius A, as well as a third star in that system.

Sagan’s critique has given a lot of ammunition to skeptics on the issue for decades, this piece spells out Temple’s attempts through Omni to correct Sagan’s, more lax, and sloppy data.

Anyway, this is an interesting subject for fans to chew on until we publish a new wave of articles. This month has turned into promo announcement month, expect a few more notices in the next couple of days.

Special thanks must go to Secret Sun follower, Douglas Stingley for calling attention to this.

Introducing a new blog...

There was a new blog entry I had planned to run, but due to some advice, I opted to hold back running that entry until the ideal moment.

But I wanted to call attention to a new blog venture of mine that was just launched. For X-Files fans and people who follow this blog, "Music from the Big Chair" is a 90 degree departure, but for those who have an interest in articles, or personal testimonials about music, I hope this can get your undivided attention.



This does not mean that attention will be pulled away from the Lexicon Blog, we will be featuring a slate of interesting material, nor that the main site, The X-Files Lexicon, will be affected, we will continue to be adding a lot more material, as well as some potentially interesting and exciting interviews, and we hope to see a new wave of original reference content soon.

You might have noticed that we already added this blog to our "My Blog List", and I hope you'll be enticed to check in with it. I'm excited to have created this new venture, and I believe you might find it informative, hopefully insightful, and motivational.

Ever onward...

The Past Few Years in Review

I just saw the new David Cronenberg film, A Dangerous Method on the 29th, and it was fortuitous as I had been re-reading Jung’s "Synchronicity" as well as Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious after a good many years of not visiting his work. I’d highly recommend A Dangerous Method, a fascinating character study about Jung, his relationship with Freud and the growing divide that develops between them, Jung’s affair with Sabrina Spielrein and the negative influence of Otto Gross.

It has become fairly obvious to me that I have to contend with C.G. Jung’s work in order to continue writing for the Lexicon Blog, and I am well aware there’s a broad enough swath of the public (that reads this Blog) that might be aware of Jung’s work, yet many X-Files fans might not be aware of Jung, and so we will have to spend time exploring his key theories in 2012.

I’m a big believer that life is about cycles, about growth changes that develop organically, and for those reasons I have stayed clear of allowing outside schools of thinking to influence the gut reactions that have driven many of the subjects within the blog for the last few years, but I have aspired to form my own insights, and not just regurgitate the insights of others. But you also need tools to develop and refine those insights. In the past, Joseph Campbell’s work has influenced my basic understanding of myths and hero archetypes, but one can also become shackled to such models when they no longer fill nor satisfy deeper questions. Therefore, it’s a time for reflection, research, and more personal meditation on what subjects to look into next year.

It occurred to me that some of my arguments over the past few years could be misconstrued to mean I am a ‘knee-jerk skeptic,’ in the view of some believers of the paranormal or esoteric fields of study. What has driven the tone of a certain number of topics had less to do with narrow skepticism, and more a concern with how such fields of study are depicted, and how those depictions can undermine legitimate areas of interest.

It has been apparent to me for a long time that while the skeptic community is a cottage industry (and as such an industry, they accuse the believer community of the same thing), proponents of the paranormal is also a cottage industry in its own right. In fairness, financial disclosure within various skeptical organizations has not been forthcoming, and yet as evidenced by this source, this , and this, such skeptical organizations will offer huge financial rewards to debunk psychics. So, the question remains; where do the source of their financial contributions come from? Individual donors? corporate donors? or black operations as some have surmised? This will be explored further.

The very problem with either skeptic / believer movements as cottage industries are the following: Both sides are so preoccupied with swaying public opinion that the truth--the Veritas--of any given subject, becomes the first casualty of these ideological divides.

I must have sensed the dilemma of these issues beginning in late January of 2009 with the following ‘skeptical’ piece. I still must maintain that while Richard C. Hoagland’s theories are fascinating, he also can undermine his arguments with shoddy scientific evidence, and he can be guilty of being inconsistent. While I can’t completely discount his hypotheses with various subjects, I also take a percentage of it with a grain of salt. There was a growing concern over taking UFO photos at face value when their legitimacy should have been questioned.

I followed that piece in February 2010 with a pair of fabrications to further expand through illustration on digitized depictions of UFO documentations.

In December 2010, I explored documented depictions within Cryptozoology from the past, their relationship to our deep-seated interest in pre-historic creatures, and contemporary video documentation of Cryptos.

My analysis of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. – Artificial Intelligence was used as a template for a new kind of deconstructionist / reconstructionist approach to depictions of unexplained events, from October and November of 2010. I plan to write more reconstructing articles about Urban Legends, as well as photographic and video depictions of spirit / poltergeist sightings this year.

Then there was an hypothesis put forth about H.P. Lovecraft this past February.

But these concerns have not been monochromatic, as I emphasized within these entries from December 2009 and August 2011, and furthered tackled Nostradamus and his Lost Book of symbols in late December 2009 and Early January 2010, as well as Ophiuchus, how they cycle, and in what way symbols could be interpreted.

Then there was the more contentious thread about James Randi from this October 2011. I feel it would be remiss for me not to clarify a point from that topic that wasn’t emphasized clearly enough. The Florida Federal authorities were investigating Jose Alvarez. James Randi at the time of the writing, wasn’t listed as a ‘person of interest’, nor were there any impending investigations on Randi’s personal conduct; therefore the weakness of Tim Bolan’s argument was that it consisted of inferences based on heresy, with insufficient corroborating evidence.

I’d like to close with some clarifications about my preoccupation concerning perception and the Paranormal, and hope to illustrate why this has remained such a central concern of mine for so long. One of my favorite rock documentaries of the past year was Martin Scorsese's George Harrison: Living In The Material World.

George made an observation about Catholicism and the notion of trusting a religious figure who argues to believe in God because they are told to. How can you believe in something intangible if you can’t perceive it? This was further expanded in an interview from 1982, conducted by Mukunda Goswami:

George: The word Hare is the word that calls upon the energy that's around the Lord. If you say the mantra enough, you build up an identification with God. God's all happiness, all bliss, and by chanting His names, we connect with Him. So, it's really a process of actually having a realization of God, which all becomes clear with the expanded state of consciousness that develops when you chant. Like I said in the introduction I wrote for Prabhupada's Krsna book some years ago, "If there's a God, I want to see Him. It's pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception."

Mukunda: Is it an instantaneous process, or gradual?

George: You don't get it in five minutes. It's something that takes time, but it works because it's a direct process of attaining God and will help us to have pure consciousness and good perception that is above the normal, everyday state of consciousness.

I feel that this argument about perceiving God in order to believe in God also applies to what is deemed “The Paranormal." simply believing in something because someone tells you isn’t enough, however much of an authority that person may be. To some degree, one’s beliefs are formed based on their point of reference in relationship to the rest of world, and their reality.

Therefore, I would have to come clean and admit to being a ‘borderline agnostic’ -– I don’t know what is true within the field of paranormal research, but my belief might be altered if I can perceive in something intangible.

Perhaps the point of Jung’s Synchronicity is to offer us a tool, a way to refine that perception of the intangible. Christopher Knowles commented that a tremendous amount of rigor must be applied to Synchronicity, to get past simple coincidences and happenstance, to discount minor occurrences to see the bigger picture.

Above all else, one should always seek the VERITAS of any field, and there should always be a kind of intellectual rigor, not so much to just reject a hypothesis and to not just accept something at face value, but to find a balance between skepticism and belief.

Very often intangibles might be more complex and stranger than the memes used to define them.