We Have All Been Here Before

Though it's cold like November but I have been taking a stab at some spring cleaning. I'm wondering if there any support groups for hoarders? When sifting through piles of stuff that was once valuable I have to convince myself it's no longer worth keeping.

One thing in all detritus (that's a fancy word for crap) where some notes on "The Devil Mower".  In 1678 a woodcut pamphlet was published about what some say is the first recorded crop circle. As the story goes a farmer in Hartfordshire refused to pay the going rate to have his field harvested. Swore he would rather have the Devil mow it instead.

In the pamphlet it said from a distance the field appeared to be "in flame" that night. The next morning it was found to be cut, unnaturally flat and perfect. The assumption is only the Devil could have done that.

In writing a good story a little mystery goes a long way.  People are naturally drawn to it. From the time Shakespeare to the mid 1800's pamphlets were the tabloid papers of their day. They were relatively cheap and easy to make and every publisher of a pamphlet was hoping to have one go viral. The Colonial American patriot Thomas Paine wrote the most famous and probably most successful pamphlet Common Sense. Where most pamphlets sold for an English penny apiece, Common Sense sold for two shillings (24 pence) each and quickly sold over 100,000 copies. It hard to translate the value of money from over 250 years ago into today's dollar equivalent but Thomas Paine was set for life.    

So could the story of the Devil Mower be a little exaggerated to help sell more pamphlets? Could the light at night be the disgruntled farmhands cutting the field? You think the Prince of Darkness wouldn't need any extra light. 

The farmhands would have had the last laugh, even though the field was cut the grass or grain still had to be harvested before it began to rot in the next couple of days.  And who would want to handle the work of the Devil? You might have to bribe any God fearing man double his normal wages to do the work. 

Still crop circles by the Devil and later UFOs  was much more dramatic than telling a story of midnight pranksters. Everyone knows crop circles are a hoax. They have gone from cryptic symbols to almost competitive art projects. One of my favorite conspiracies deflators from 20 years was a bit of video that showed a crop circle being made by a UFO.  It was well produced but so obviously computer generated that even the hardcore UFO community was embarrassed by it.  

Crop Circles, then and now

As Harrison was taking a box my stuff to either dump or recycle, he felt it was time for another wave of craziness. That history has cycles of where conspiracies, paranoia, the paranormal and the promise of a quantum leap in enlightenment all converge together -into an age of madness.

It's like life is too boring without some extraneous drama. When you read about the Witch Trails throughout Europe you have a couple centuries of mass murder that was done for the greater glory God. Both Fascism and Communism took on the qualities of religious fervor. The Nazi party freely used and misused mystical symbolism and Heinrich Himmler wanted to create a mystical branch of the SS after Germany's final victory in Europe.  Himmler had a castle resorted to be the center of his spiritual university for the benefit of the Aryan Race. 

After the carnage of the second World War suddenly UFOs appear all over the place. History has a few possible sighting but suddenly from 1945 to 1970 the skies are like full of them.  Strangely as the camera equipment gets better and the numbers of people looking increase -the number of quality UFO sighting steadily decrease.  Coincidence? Or do you think the space aliens are getting bored with us? 

I have always marvel on how clean space aliens are. Human beings have gone to the moon about a dozen times (both manned and robotic missions) and we have left behind tons of trash up there. If you exclude what happened in Roswell, so far the space aliens have left nothing. I would expect a candy wrapper, an empty bottle or a puddle of something glowing. These space aliens, the ones not in space suits, walk around totally unafraid of our microbes and germs but they seem to be scared shitless of us. And if they do shit -they clean it all up. Maybe they have OCD? 

Harrison being the skeptic he is  brought up some of his favorite pet peeves from the Age of Aqueous. He had no problem with free love but thought it was the most ridiculous idea that human consciousness could be expanded through the use of LSD -or that ESP will be discovered, taught and developed in all of us, just like it was reading and writing.

Then of course there's alien abductions. The phenomenon  got wide spread attention with Hill Abduction in 1961 but that too has seem to drop off the popular radar screen. Harrison believes since everyone is on the internet, either the aliens have their own Facebook page and conduct research there or the aliens are afraid of smartphones. Maybe nothing scares a space alien more than a Twitter post like "OMG my new cosmic BFF is probing me".

Many cases of Alien Abduction often sound like accounts of ancient Greeks retelling stories of how they were abducted by the Gods and whisked off to Mount Olympus.  Sex with the Gods sometimes happen which could have been a cover for an accidental pregnancy but back then the forests were filled with nymphs, satyrs and gods. Thank goodness today's space aliens keep everything professional and only do medical testing.

I use to have notes and references about the stories of ordinary people in the ancient world being abducted by their Gods.  I can't find them right now and I hate alluding to anything I can't backup. Harrison has the living room littered with the contents of another box of stuff that he'll have to either clean up or take with him. 

Since science and technology are keeping the Lock Ness Monster, the Yeti and UFOs at bay; people are returning to religion and dark political conspiracies to bring back the sense of mystery to their daily lives. Over thirteen years ago the world collectively worried over Y2K, Christian groups prayed for the Rapture and the survivalist hunkered down in their homemade bunkers waiting for the unmarked black helicopters to come and take them away. And nothing happened. I'm pissed because back in 1999 I wanted to party like it was the end of millennium and everyone I knew stayed home -just in case.

We've been all here before. Bad ideas are not only poisonous but they get recycled -or better said the tensions that make bad ideas look plausible come back over and over again. Harrison thinks we on the edge of a whole new cycle of something weird coming down the pike.  Maybe I should start hoarding canned goods?