Ghost Lights: Wales, 1905

In January of 1905, a Welsh family reported seeing three Ghost Lights "hovering above a certain farmhouse." The eyewitness described them as "three lamps about three yards apart," and said that the Ghost Lights jumped, "brilliant and dazzling," in the sunlight of the hot day.

The reporter's entire family witnessed the event, which lasted approximately 10 minutes, and remains unexplained.

A 1904 report of Ghost Lights in Wales may be related.  It, too, remains unexplained.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Ancient Magic: Circe

Circe (Oliver Wetter)

Circe is one of the oldest and most powerful of wizards. She was also one of the many evil sorceresses who bedeviled the era's heroes at every turn -- and Circe was particularly vicious. She was a feared sorceress known for her skill with herbs, drugs, and potions, and had a fondness for transforming her victims into animals whom she, in some versions of the legend, then ate.

Circe lived alone on the island Aeaea, which was overpopulated by swine, wolves, and bears -- many of which once were sailors Circe had lured to her island with her singing. In one particularly evil display of power, Circe set upon a beautiful, young nymph named Scylla. Circe desired Scylla's shepherd lover, so she snuck down to the river where the nymph bathed each morning and poisoned the waters there with an emerald-green potion poured from a large, crystal bowl.

When Scylla entered the river, the waters churled! Emerald-green tendrils emerged and pulled her under, where she was transformed into a horrible sea-creature which became the bane of sailors throughout the area. Scylla continued to reign on her wooded isle, later turning many of Odysseus' crew into pigs, but the tale does not mention the coveted shepherd's fate.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Our Drunken Ancestors

A US team under the leadership of the Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, Patrick McGovern, used organic compounds and cutting-edge science to determine that liquid recovered from a vase some 5000 years old contained alcohol.  The container was excavated from Egyptian tombs dating back to around 3150BC.  They are the earliest jars, or amphora, discovered so far containing liquid.

Professor McGovern said the findings prove that our ancestors were using trial and error to develop medicinal concoctions, and that alcohol was a key ingredient in their treatments.  Other ingredients in the liquid are known medicinal components, including herbs and tree barks.  McGovern notes that alcoholic brews would have been particularly well-suited for dissolving these ingredients.

The professor is now collaborating with a team at the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center in testing the oldest alcoholic beverage in existence -- liquid found in China which dates back to around 7000BC.  He is hoping to recreate some of the compounds.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009

The Ancient Art of Alchemy

Most balk at Alchemy, though they know nothing about it.  The truth is that Alchemy and its practitioners -- the Alchemists, Witches, and Wizards of their day -- were the very forefathers of modern-day scientists, doctors, pharmacists, and more.  They were persecuted mercilessly by the emerging medical practitioners, mostly under the auspices of the Catholic Church.

While Alchemy was, at its basest, the search for transmuting lead into gold, this was only the most physical aspect of the art (and the ultimate prize); Alchemists claimed that its study brought forth interior changes -- psychical changes within the Alchemist himself which transformed the "lead" of his everyday life into spiritual "gold."

One of the most famous, and most recent, alchemists was none other than Israel Regardie himself, author of the now infamous Golden Dawn (whose publication got him thrown out of the circle and scorned by his peers and one-time colleagues), though he admitted he never actually completed any great Transmutation through the practice.

One of the most authoritative documents claiming to have succeeded in Alchemy is almost certainly a fraud:

Attributed to one Nicholas Flamel, it first appeared in 1612.  A very rich man who had made public his interest in Alchemy (1130-1417), Flamel was a scrivener, a preparer of legal documents, and the date of his supposed Alchemical breakthrough given in this autobiography was Monday, January 17^th, 1382.   But the 17^th of January, 1382 was not a Monday --- an easy mistake for anyone else, but an unlikely one for a scrivener.

We'll delve much further into the Art of Alchemy as the weeks go on.

© C Harris Lynn, 2007