The Eidolonica Papers! Compiled, Edited and Sometimes Written by Greg Webster - Issue 5 Volume 1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ok, as promised, I'm going to jump into this issue with a request for some feedback from you. In the past couple months I've been playing with the title bar (of the word "Eidolonica") and now is your chance to decide which is the best. Will it be: Choice A? ,gggg, ,dP"""Y8b 8I ,dPYb, d8' `"' 8I IP'`Yb 88 gg 8I I8 8I gg `8baaa "" 8I I8 8' "" ,d8P""" gg ,ggg,8I ,gggg, I8,dP ,gggg, ,g,,ggg, gg ,ggg, ,ggg,gg d8" 88 dP" "Y8I dP" "Y8ggI8P" dP" "Y8gP"8P" "8, 88 dP" "Yb dP" "Y8I Y8, 88 i8' ,8I i8' ,8I I8, i8' ,8I 8I 8I 88 i8' i8' ,8I `Yba,.__d88,d8, ,d8b,d8, ,d8' `Yb,,d8, ,d8' 8I Yb,88,d8,_ _,d8, ,d8b, `"Y888P""V"Y888P"`YP"Y888P" "YP"Y888P" 8I `YP""V""Y888PP"Y888P"`Y8 Choice B? .:::. : '. 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I$T'`$H O$ ,X8' `"H `' .O$I $$ `TX O$ $$ $$ I$O T$I O$X I$X T$I I$I $H O$ I$8 ` .d$$$I $$ ` O$ $$ $$ I$O T$I O$X I$X T$I I$I $H O$ I$8 . d8H"O$I .$$ .d O$ $$b d$$ IXXb dH8' O$X IOOb dX8' I$I $H O$ `O8b dH $$' X$Lb .d$$sssdXX dX$ TXXXX$P THXXHHP ;X$X THXXHHP .O$I .$H dX$ `I8)iOO O$OXO$$H XXXXXXXXXX XXXb TXXXX' `XXXP' iIIXB `XXXP' dIII III XXXb `TIIP' `VXXXXI' Ok, folks, the choice is up to you...just reply to this issue with your choice. In the event of a tie, I choose, and in the event that no one chooses, I choose again and curse you all. :) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The Eidolonica Papers homepage is nearly fully operational! While it looks passably ok, I'm having a couple bug problems. I can't seem to get the counter to work properly (though I think I know what the problem is now), and the forms apparently don't work properly with some browsers. The forms DO work with text-only browsers, such as Lynx, but I've had a report of them being screwed when used via netscape. If anyone out there has some knowledge in this area, I would appreciate if they would take a quick look at the homepage and see what the problem is. This has been my first real attempt at HTML, and I'm still learning. Many thanks for your help. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= So, again into the quest for a little bit of knowledge about our strange world...this month (after having a somewhat successful request for submissions), I'm publishing two articles by our readership before I delve into my own past and the bit of strangeness I have encountered. The subject of The Eidolonica Papers this month is: Mental powers: telekinesis, pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, clairaudience, precognition, and various other ways our minds can affect our world. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This issue dedicated to the souls of Dunblane, the children whose lives were cut short. May their future journeys be joyous ones. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= And now to jump right into the issue with one of the most prolific of our submissors, Mr. Burns. This is an excellent article, not about any specific event in our subject really, but more as an explanation of the subject itself. If you've had a problem grasping the subject in the past month since I delivered it to you, perhaps this will help. Every time Greg Webster tells us the theme of the next issue of EIDOLONICA PAPERS I think, "Hey, I've been there. I can write that. No problem." Then I sit down to write (which is no small task for me, I'm still very kinetic, even at forty two). Then it starts, the feeling that I have something to say and no clue as to how to start. I guess its the aroma of scientific fact coming from this zine. I often write about most of these subject areas, but in fiction and fantasy. Here, I feel compelled to speak only the truth. I've had many experiences in these areas, but they are personal and I do not want to force I concepts on others because I do to want others to force their concepts on me. Take anything I write with a grain of salt and remember, we are all at some point on the learning curve. My friend drops into a chair and says, "They have found that there is nothing psychic to dreaming. It's just the brain stem keeping the brain active while you sleep. There is no purpose to it." Scientific research is and must always be the tool of the left hemisphere of the brain. Its great for understanding the rules of the Newtonian Universe, in all of its deterministic glory. The scientific method is great for figuring out the wave lengths of 'red' and the proper scale for measuring absolute zero. Its unsurpassed at telling you how things work. The Scientific method fails, however, to define chaotic systems and this bothers those folks who are dependent on only one type of thinking, those who don't like right hemispheric thinking. Science fails to tell you why the color red excites humans. It can't tell you how cold it feels between the stars. It can not describe the qualitative nature of human existence, nor should it. Face it, there is no limit to the people who want to tell you that science and technology are the only answers to all of life's questions. They are almost as annoying as the people who say we have no need for science and such. Both groups should grow up a little. The highest life is one that seeks balance and truth in all things. Where Reason doesn't apply, then we must rely on Rhyme. You are the owner of a human mind, and a human fuselage. Your mind is a ghost inside a sealed box. If we open the box the ghost is not there. If we re-seal the box the ghost returns. You want to read something mystical? Read some of the work that's going on in quantum physics. Modern medicine has discovered that humans can not be treated as though they are just organic machines. There is considerable evidence that healthy states of mind will manifest in healthy physical states. I am not saying we should throw modern drugs and procedures out, returning to the Dark Ages. I am saying apply science to scientific questions and spiritual understanding to mental questions. I do not find the two mutually exclusive, the Universe is big enough to contain both. If you require that things be only one way or the other, then ask yourself why you wish to impose your prejudices upon the Universe, instead of opening yourself to a accurate understanding of it. Who is the proper judge of the limitations of your mind? Perhaps you hold a talent, or aspect, for telekinesis, precognition, or any of the others (by the way, don't get too hung up in the names, we're trying to name the unnameable). To develop your talents, you must first explore your potential with and open mind. Insisting that you have no such aspects, will cause them to deteriorate. Richard Bach will be one of the first to tell you that if you argue that you have limitations, sure enough, you'll get them. Approach the Universe with an open hand. If you happen to discover a talent enshrouded in your mind, it will not violate any of the laws of science as we KNOW them (I use the word 'know' here advisedly). If there is a contradiction, then perhaps we are not seeing the whole picture, as has often been the case in the past. For instance, if something is moved via telekinesis, energy will be expended and the total mass will be retained. This is why I think we tend to see more of the information talents, like empathy, telepathy and clairaudience. They would not require enormous energy expenditures. Most likely we will discover that many talents involve influencing chaos systems, like the turbulence of a candle flame, or the way smoke curls into the rafters. Developing the potential of your human mind will make sense. Avoid the nonsense mongers and all situations where money or personal manipulation/domination games are involved. I've seen it destroy promising situations. Your development is very personal and it affects you intimately. Do not endanger your health, either physical or mental. Do not throw your money away on icons and rituals. This is not the path. I guess I'm saying, there is a lot of wonder in this old Universe, and you are a part of it all. These are trying times. Do not squander your invaluable existence reaching for sickness and fear, when there is so much amazement in this ever expanding Universe. Frank Zappa said "Change is not only inevitable, its necessary." Be an agent of that change. We all chose the kind of hero we want and the hero want to be. Pick well, the future of the entire species depends on you and the choices you are making. Sorry to evangelize, I just get real excited about this kind of thing. Pax in centuro vicesimi primi =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= I found this next bit extremely enjoyable to read. As a child I loved ghost stories, even if they did leave me with many sleep- less nights and a fear of the dark for a few years in my childhood. This article reads a lot like those stories, it has the perfect attention-grabbing elements and smooth style of those stories. But this appears to be a true tale. There was a second tale included here, which I found quite interesting, about a man who could forecast the weather very accurately. Unfortunately, I try very hard to have some names or other background to the stories before I pub- lish them because of my need for these to be seen as real events, and this articles, while believable, did not have these elements. From: tdavis@LEIF.UCS.MUN.CA Credit me as "Adam Bragg, from Newfoundland, Canada", my email address is "Tdavis@leif.ucs.mun.ca". If you require any further info on me or the stories, please don't hesitate to ask. When my great-grandfather was alive, there was a man who belonged to the local Orange Lodge that my great-grandfather went to who had what can only be called a telekinetic ability. This man was about ten years older than my great-grandfather, who himself died in his nineties in the early 1960's. He lived all his life in an area of South River called Salmon Cove, in Newfoundland, Canada. He was capable of moving objects like a spoon or a salt shaker across a table. He would just look at the salt shaker & it would slide along the table until it was within his _physical_ reach, at which point he would then pick it up & use it. The unusual part of this story isn't that he could do such things, there are countless stories of this type from around the world. What makes this story different is that it was taken for granted. To others who knew him, it wasn't a supernatural ability, it was just something unique that he could do. No one treated him any differently than if it was no more than the ability to juggle or if he were double-jointed. When the he was on his deathbed, he called in his nephew (he had no children) to "give him the Gift". When the nephew came out, he was as white as a sheet. People asked him if the Gift had been passed on and his reply was that he didn't want any part of it, claiming that it was the "Work of the Devil" & that he'd never do it. Of course, after that, many people thought that what had really happened was that when the old man told him how to do it and the nephew tried to use the Gift, nothing happened. So, he concocted the "Devil's Curse" excuse to explain his lack of telekinetic ability. The nephew didn't ever confirm this explanation. ---A--- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= And now my own offering. Telekinesis =-=-=-=-=-= I guess these strange sorts of things follow patterns and families. I remember all the old movies where the gypsy fortune-teller explained how she was given the 'gift' from her mother, or grandmother, or a strange maiden aunt, and maybe my family is a little (very little) like that. My mother has been into the strangest things since before I was born. She was a member of a seance group for quite a while before me, and has at various times done spirit writing (not sure I believe in that), and exhibited signs of telekinesis. The telekinesis I have no proof of, and my memories of childhood may be wrong or fading badly, so I can only tell of what I remember. I was about 10 I suppose, when my mother first told me about how bored she was lying in bed waiting for my father to come home (he was a long distance trucker at that time, and was away for quite long periods), and how she spent the time laying there with her bedroom door opened looking down the hallway and turning the dimmer switch for the hallway light up and down with her concentration. Of course, being a young male, I was thinking, "Yeah whatever, Mom.", but a while later, I was laying in bed thinking and unable to get to sleep when the light in the hallway started going up and down. My door was open, and I could easily see the light shift quite a bit. Now, I don't know whether I'm somehow having my memories change to fit the events, but I seem to remember that part clearly at least. And me =-=-=- I suppose I was about 16 when I got ahold of this plastic toy gun and hung it from my ceiling. I was in pretty constant emotional turmoil at that point in my life, my parents had split up a couple years before, and my mother and my sister and I were living in a house with my mother's boyfriend Bruce. I couldn't (and still can't) stand him. He is emotional and verbally abusive to the extreme, and many times I had to protect my sister from his tirades...in the times I was at home, and not kicked out by him. Researchers say that emotional intense periods occasionally bring out episodes of psychic abilities, poltergeist activity is almost always linked with a child with emotional problems. Anyway, I had hung this gun from my ceiling above my bed, and since I was now getting to the point where I was very interested in such things (and since you are reading this, you know I still am), I decided I would attempt to control the twisting movements of the toy gun. I spent probably an hour a day before falling asleep trying to control it's movements, for about a month. Then, one day I realized that I was able to control it's full range of movement, stopping, starting, turning either way, etc. It was still very slow moving, but I did seem to have some control. I showed my sister this, which of course led her to tell my mother, and me getting in trouble. My mother told me not to do it, and not only that, not to tell or show my sister, because she might have nightmares. Lovely family I have got. I kept at it for a bit, but it kind of lost it's charm. I took down the gun, and didn't bother with anything else. Since then, I've very occasionally tried the same thing for short periods, but I have had no real success. I don't have the concentration I had then. Now, I'm sure I experienced the latter event pretty well exactly as I've written here, but I can't say the same for the earlier occurrence with my mother. In either case, I can't see how it matters much. Except that because of those events, I can say I am writing this ezine. It's a love of the strange bred into me by genetics, and experience. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Next month's topic: Religious experiences: Speaking in tongues, guardian angels, voices from God (or any other Deity), etc. Now, I don't have much in the way of experience in this, but I will provide some research on the topic to fill my place in the issue, plus perhaps my feelings on faith. A reminder, The Eidolonica Papers is made up mostly of your contributions. Without writings submitted by our readership, T.E.P. falls apart, so please...if you have any experiences you would like to relate, send them in. I will help, if requested, on format and writing, to your satisfaction. Many thanks, see you next month. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Subscriptions may be relayed to: kick@vcn.bc.ca Submissions go to the same place. FTP access is available at: ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/EidolonicaPapers/ And again many thanks to Rita for the help getting it there. You can find a link to that FTP site at my webpage (which will eventually be purely for The Eidolonica Papers) at: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aq008 And thanks to the people at National Capital Freenet for allowing personal webpages. Submissions will be always be accepted, the more submissions, by far the better ezine. I hold the right to edit things as I choose for any reason I feel is appropriate, but keep in mind that I hate doing it, so your submissions will probably be safe from my evil hands. Everything here is (c) 1996 unless I say otherwise. You may feel free to copy it for any non-profit use you wish, as long as it remains unedited. If you wish to edit something for use, or wish to charge money in any way for what you read here, then you MUST contact me for permission. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=