There is also the curious scene during which an angel gives the children “Communion,” or at least some kind of liquid and solid that were meant to look like the Catholic sacrament. Interestingly, the main visionary, Lucia, received a solid “host,” whereas the two other children received a strange liquid. Francisco at least could not identify whatever it was he drank from the chalice. Joaquim Fernandes and Fina D’Armada make comparative sense of this scene by describing multiple UFO encounters in which the contactee is given a strange substance to eat or liquid to drink and then has a mystical vision or is made to understand a message. Their conclusion is clear enough: “The recurring theme in all of these types of cases involves the access to communication and dialogue requiring the ingestion of drugs as a means of entering into an extra-human plane.” On the tragic side, Michael Persinger points out that whereas little Francisco died during the influenza epidemic of 1918, Jacinta’s premature death displayed symptoms strongly suggestive of lung cancer, which he relates to radiation emitted around the tree before, during, and after the visions. This, after all, was also the children’s common playground.
Persinger has written extensively on paranormal phenomena. He is well known in ufological circles for his lab research on the “alien visitation” phenomenon, a humble analog of which he is able to induce in the lab with electromagnetic fields mathematically calibrated to “entrain” specific altered states in the temporal lobes of a human brain via a helmet fitted with solenoids. He is also well known for his tectonic strain hypothesis, which interprets the balls of light common in UFO encounters as temporary spikes of electromagnetic energy created by stressed tectonic plates in the earth, which then interact with the subtle magnetic fields of the human neural net to create the various local illusions and religious visions of the typical UFO encounter (or Marian apparition). Persinger has also suggested a correlation between high geomagnetic activity and poltergeist activity and hauntings, a suggestion that recalls Jung’s earlier comparison of UFOs to planetary poltergeists. Also, for what it is worth (quite a bit, I think, in this context), Fort repeatedly suggested that all those “super-constructions” in the sky appear during or around earthquakes. In this haunting reading, the Virgin, or the energy spike that produced her, at least, actually killed little Jacinta. To support such an interpretation, Persinger points out that the Fátima area is well known as a tectonic strain hotspot, and that the strongest earthquake on record was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 (Fátima is about eighty-six miles north of the city). Fernandes and D’Armada make the same point, citing an earthquake that measured an astonishing 9.0 on the Richter scale that once ripped through Fátima itself.27 The seismic activity could have created immense geomagnetic fields, which would then collect and discharge on tall structures, like the tree on which the apparition appeared. As for the regular periodic nature of the six monthly events, Persinger relates these to a lunar phase, that is, another supermagnetic phenomenon with a strong, predictable, periodic nature. The same magnetic discharges, he speculates, would have powerfully stimulated the children’s temporal lobes, resulting in the visions. The specifics and, of course, the later interpretation of the apparitions were shaped “by their obsession with religious themes, their lack of education [all three children were illiterate], and their behavior at the time of the experience . . . If they had grown up in a world of Star Wars, they would have seen and heard some variant of Luke Skywalker.”28 Not that the visions were entirely consonant with the children’s Catholicism. As we have seen, they were not. Francisco, for example, did not hear the little lady speak and remembered seeing a haze that he interpreted as a headless angel!
There is more than a little justification for such a literally radioactive reading. Numerous individuals reported intense heat and the almost instant drying of both their clothes and the previously soaked soil during “the Miracle of the Sun,” features entirely consistent with immense bursts of electromagnetic radiation. The “buzzing” noises can be fit in here as well, as individuals exposed to microwave radiation between 200 and 3,000 MHz commonly experience buzzing noises inside their heads. Raul Berenguel goes even further, pointing out that hearing voices in the interior of the cranium and the phenomenon of buzzing “is identical to what is felt by individuals subjected to mind control technologies that use microwaves.” We are back to an eerie and potentially troubling scene reminiscent of Vallee’s alien-control hypothesis.
A Venus-Virgin with a knee-high skirt, alien insectoid buzzing, and spinning metallic disks in the sky above Fátima. In effect, a Marialien. Now that would have changed how I prayed my rosary. I might even still be praying it.
Kripal, Jeffrey J.. Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (p. 282). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
Persinger has written extensively on paranormal phenomena. He is well known in ufological circles for his lab research on the “alien visitation” phenomenon, a humble analog of which he is able to induce in the lab with electromagnetic fields mathematically calibrated to “entrain” specific altered states in the temporal lobes of a human brain via a helmet fitted with solenoids. He is also well known for his tectonic strain hypothesis, which interprets the balls of light common in UFO encounters as temporary spikes of electromagnetic energy created by stressed tectonic plates in the earth, which then interact with the subtle magnetic fields of the human neural net to create the various local illusions and religious visions of the typical UFO encounter (or Marian apparition). Persinger has also suggested a correlation between high geomagnetic activity and poltergeist activity and hauntings, a suggestion that recalls Jung’s earlier comparison of UFOs to planetary poltergeists. Also, for what it is worth (quite a bit, I think, in this context), Fort repeatedly suggested that all those “super-constructions” in the sky appear during or around earthquakes. In this haunting reading, the Virgin, or the energy spike that produced her, at least, actually killed little Jacinta. To support such an interpretation, Persinger points out that the Fátima area is well known as a tectonic strain hotspot, and that the strongest earthquake on record was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 (Fátima is about eighty-six miles north of the city). Fernandes and D’Armada make the same point, citing an earthquake that measured an astonishing 9.0 on the Richter scale that once ripped through Fátima itself.27 The seismic activity could have created immense geomagnetic fields, which would then collect and discharge on tall structures, like the tree on which the apparition appeared. As for the regular periodic nature of the six monthly events, Persinger relates these to a lunar phase, that is, another supermagnetic phenomenon with a strong, predictable, periodic nature. The same magnetic discharges, he speculates, would have powerfully stimulated the children’s temporal lobes, resulting in the visions. The specifics and, of course, the later interpretation of the apparitions were shaped “by their obsession with religious themes, their lack of education [all three children were illiterate], and their behavior at the time of the experience . . . If they had grown up in a world of Star Wars, they would have seen and heard some variant of Luke Skywalker.”28 Not that the visions were entirely consonant with the children’s Catholicism. As we have seen, they were not. Francisco, for example, did not hear the little lady speak and remembered seeing a haze that he interpreted as a headless angel!
There is more than a little justification for such a literally radioactive reading. Numerous individuals reported intense heat and the almost instant drying of both their clothes and the previously soaked soil during “the Miracle of the Sun,” features entirely consistent with immense bursts of electromagnetic radiation. The “buzzing” noises can be fit in here as well, as individuals exposed to microwave radiation between 200 and 3,000 MHz commonly experience buzzing noises inside their heads. Raul Berenguel goes even further, pointing out that hearing voices in the interior of the cranium and the phenomenon of buzzing “is identical to what is felt by individuals subjected to mind control technologies that use microwaves.” We are back to an eerie and potentially troubling scene reminiscent of Vallee’s alien-control hypothesis.
A Venus-Virgin with a knee-high skirt, alien insectoid buzzing, and spinning metallic disks in the sky above Fátima. In effect, a Marialien. Now that would have changed how I prayed my rosary. I might even still be praying it.
Kripal, Jeffrey J.. Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (p. 282). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
(This post was last modified: 2020-01-03, 07:53 PM by Sciborg_S_Patel.)
- Bertrand Russell
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