Aspects for Synthesis

Seventh Year Blog Anniversary
April 26, 2009 - April 26, 2016

This montage accompanied one of the 315 previous posts at this blog.   

 

 

Above are nine examples of people whose lives have been chronicled in biographical books and case studies encompassing 'unexplained phenomena.'  The first of these is the man known by the name 'Nostradamus' (1503-1566).  Ian Wilson mentioned in Nostradamus: The Man Behind the Prophecies (2003) that a local landmark from his day still exists in the French village of Michel de Nostredeme's birth.  Although the main neighborhood church collapsed into rubble in 1818, the church's 14th Century bell tower is still standing.  As mentioned in a previous article, an English translation of a letter in Latin by Nostradamus to Francois Bérard dated August 27, 1562 appears in The Unknown Nostradamus (2003) by Peter Lemesurier and includes the following statements: "Be advised therefore that for nine nights in succession I have sat from midnight until about four o'clock both with my brow crowned with laurel and wearing the skyblue stone and, as it were on the tripod, have wrung out of that good spirit about your ring.  Therefore, having plucked a swan's quill (for he thrice refused a goose one), and with the spirit dictating to me, as though carried away by a poetic frenzy I launched myself into the following lines . . . ."  In this letter "Michael the Archangel" is mentioned as "my invincible patron."
 
The extant collection of diaries written by John Dee (1527-1609) provide details of his life in Elizabethan England for one who chronicled communication with 'spiritual creatures' and 'good angels.'  Crystal gazing was the primary method for Dee and his scryers (mediums).  There were also occasions when there were other forms of interaction with people from other spheres of existence.  In the 'private diary,' there are such practical domestic comments as on July 21, 1596: "Isabell Bordman from the chamber to the kitchin."  In a diary of 1584, the comments attributed to the angel Gabriel refer to God as “all power” and scryer Edward Kelly is noted to have asked, “As concerning the power, What is it?”  Gabriel responded, “What it is, that it is, for the knowledge of it may lead you to error.”  Dee wrote: “This answer offended greatly E.K. and thereupon he left off, and would receive no more at their hands.”  The predicament was one of many similar occasions showing how Dee and Kelly had two very different temperaments in relation to supernatural revelation.
 
When Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) entered a trance state during hypnotic sessions, his body was used as a channel.  The communicating Intelligence would speak in plurality, usually beginning a 'reading' with a statement such as "We have the body . . ." and finishing upon saying "We are through for the present."  Some of his other activities included churchgoing and reading the Bible, gardening and fishing.  David Kahn wrote in My Life with Edgar Cayce (1970): "He became a teacher in Sunday school, and preached in the Campbellite Christian Church until he went to Virginia Beach, where he became a member of the Presbyterian Church."  The channeled reading transcripts involve such topics as metaphysics, dream interpretation, psychic abilities, reincarnation, health and Oneness.  There are sections of the transcripts where words spoken by Michael, 'Lord of the Way,' are presented.  In comparison with the vast knowledge communicated during his trance 'readings,' Cayce had left school after the sixth grade.  In Venture Inward (1964), Hugh Lynn Cayce wrote about his father: "There was never an indication that Edgar Cayce was conscious of a single word he uttered while in the self-imposed unconscious state.  All of this material seemed to come through or out of his unconscious mind."
 
The presence of Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) was sometimes accompanied "by the making of 'spirit raps' on the table or silvery bell-tinkling in the air . . .," as her close acquaintance Col. Olcott wrote in Old Diary Leaves (Third Series 1904).  A New York Times reporter in 1885 wrote: "If the bell tones of the invisible 'attendant sprite' Pou Dhi were heard as they were heard by scores of different persons, this phenomenon so minutely described by Mr. Sinnett in The Occult World, was as likely to be chaffed good-naturedly by an obstinate skeptic as it was to be wondered at by a believer.  But even the skeptic would shrug his shoulders and say, when hard pushed, 'It may be a spirit.  I can’t tell what it is.'"  As chronicled in Old Diary Leaves (Second Series 1900), during one eventful evening HPB commanded the flame of a lamp to "Go up!" and "Go down!" in intervals with success.  Olcott divulged about this incident: "She said it was very simple: A Mahatma was there, invisible to all but herself, and he had just turned the lamp up and down while she spoke the words."
 
Irish trance medium Eileen Garrett (1893-1970) in her book Awareness observed about the 'controls' who spoke through her for intervals: “. . . the controls are always generous.  They state and hold fast to their own reality; they refer to me as being ‘beloved’ of them.  And here are purity and greatness, since loving involves giving, and there is no giving that exceeds serving and creating for the beloved.  I have always been aware of this truth.  It has taught me the renunciation of pettiness and the glory of service.”  Garrett was unable to resolve her questions to make any certain conclusion about the controls yet she affirmed that she accepted “with graciousness and good will, the controls whom I cannot explain or definitely understand.”  The expression 'beloved' is notable in other cases of transcendental communication, as indicated in many previous articles at this blog.
 
A Scottish medium known for trances and materializations during seances was Helen Duncan (1895-1956).  Duncan’s daughter Gena Brealey co-wrote with Kay Hunter a 1985 biography of the 'physical medium,' The Two Worlds of Helen Duncan.  The book explains many circumstances in Helen’s life.  Another daughter, Isabella, was the namesake of Helen's mother who'd been disturbed by childhood indications of Helen's psychic abilities.  Brealey revealed that the suggestion for a home circle was one of the instructions about Helen's mediumship made by 'Dr. Williams,' the first ‘control’ to make himself known to Helen and her husband Henry while she was in the trance state.  Other prominent controls were ‘Albert Stewart’ and ‘Peggy.'  Helen was the victim of what Maurice Barbanell called "a gross miscarriage of justice" when she was convicted and imprisoned under the archaic Witchcraft Act of 1735.  The biography by Brealey quotes Chief Constable A C. West of Portsmouth as having mentioned at the trial: "In 1942, Mrs. Duncan was reported for having transgressed the security laws when she foretold the loss of one of His Majesty's ships before the fact was made public."
 
I mentioned in a 2015 blog article that Mark Probert (1907-1969) worked as a bellman or 'bellhop' before he became a trance medium (or what today would be known as a "channeler").  Bryant and Helen Reeve in Flying Saucer Pilgrimage (1957) commented about Probert: "Mark Probert is the famous and respected 'sensitive' of San Diego, California, whom Meade Layne worked with in bringing forth the remarkable book The Coming of the Guardians [subtitled "An Interpretation of the 'Flying Saucers' as Given from the Other Side of Life"].  It is a veritable treasure house for the more advanced researcher who is not afraid of tackling the higher aspects of outer space."  The 1957 Third Edition Foreword includes the statement: "Science is only beginning its exploration of sub-atomic matter; along with this must go new concepts of space, time, the ether(s), tele — or apportation, the energetic character of thinking — and also of high importance, the reality of communication with etheric peoples, the Star-Wanderers and Guardians, and with wise and good people of our own race, who are in the regions of the so-called dead but indeed very much alive . . . ."  The book's biographical notes concerning ten Mark Probert 'controls' (communicators) include one familiar name, Thomas Edison.  The others include 'Lo Sun Yat,' 'Arakashi' and 'Yada di Shi'Ite.'
 
The focus of the current series of blog articles is Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint (1911-1994).  One sitter of Leslie Flint was the widow Eira Conacher who on one occasion discussed with 'Douglas Conacher' the possibility of a new age for the earth-world.  Chapters of Experience (1973) is a compilation of seance transcripts from tapes recorded by Eira.  The voice of her husband is quoted at a seance circa 1965-7: "What is going to happen—and I am sure I am right in this—is that beings from other worlds, or other planets, are going to make themselves known very soon.  In other words, they are going to come in such a way to earth, that man will realize to the full the living reality of peoples on other planets."  On another occasion the comment was made: "The point is that all our worlds, all the spirit worlds, are planets.  I do not know quite what some people assume about our world, but of course we are in worlds such as yours, but of a higher order."
 
Arthur Shuttlewood (1920-1996) is the UFO newspaper reporter and 'contactee' who wrote a series of books about his experiences.  An early article in The Warminster Journal was entitled "Bell Hill Mystery."  Shuttlewood wrote in Warnings from Flying Friends (1968) about glimpsed "elegant spaceships and their crews": "The most common daylight variety is a gunmetal grey that sparkles . . . Basic shapes are round, bell and long or torpedo."  The book detailed new encounters with people from 'Aenstria' after initially "three persons purporting themselves to be space visitors . . . regularly rang me during a seven-week period in September and October 1965."  One of them is reported in The Warminster Mystery (1967) to have referred to 'the great Creator' as 'the Living Force.'  Shuttlewood described receiving an afternoon telephone call from 'Karne of Aenstria.'  After Shuttlewood demanded an in-person contact and slammed down the phone, seconds later the doorbell rang and a face-to-face conversation with Karne ensued.  Shuttlewood recalled the warnings given, including: "All indications are that there will be a third World War . . . Man must learn to use his faculties . . . But the forthcoming years presage the death of your old civilization and the birth of a new and glorious age."

Update: The article of the following week offers another portentous example of 'the Bell pattern.'  Each of these people's lives also show diverse instances relating to 'The Michael Pattern.' In the case of Eileen Garrett, in Telepathy (1941) she wrote about childhood interaction with a man named Michael whose duties were taking care of a house she would visit.  He was involved in an episode of her life that first made her aware of a "universal consciousness."