The Mystical Fairy Faith -fad or deceptive reality?
+-
Yet another kook screed to put Marky Zahn in perspective
Noah's Dove wrote:
>
> The Mystical Fairy Faith -fad or deceptive reality?
>
> In our times there is a surprising revival of sorts going on. This
> revival is the post modern fairy faith. There are signs of it in several
> feature films*, festivals, art work, books, Fairy shops and
> numerous web sites, if you are observant you should spot some
> indications of it in the malls of America and other English countries.
> ..there are all kinds of fairy things for sale: cards, calendars, fairy
> ornaments, fairy costumes, candle holders, fairy statues for gardens
> etc. This last June the Third Fairy Congress was held in the Cascade
> Mountains of
> Washington state. Some of the speakers were from the Findhorn New
> Age community of Scotland. Workshops included talks on how to contact
> nature spirits (fairies) for guidance and help. Some casual observers
> who have noticed this growing interest in the fey or fairies
> consider it a fad. Is it just an innocent fad as some say or
> is there a reality and a darker side to the world of fairie?
>
> The following news clip, quotes from articles and information web links
> may answer this question.
>
>
> *some films with fairy theme or fairy encounters
>
> The National Film Board of Canada's production, The Fairy Faith
> Fairy Tale a True Story
> Photographing Fairies
> The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
> Legend
> Willow
> Ladybrinth
> Peter Pan
>
>
> A faerie affair
> Elusive folk and their followers to alight in Sedona for all-day
> festival
>
> Michael Kiefer
> The Arizona Republic
> May. 6, 2003 12:00 AM
>
> Amy Ford sees fairies.
>
> Some are as small as houseflies, others 18 feet tall. They're pixielike
> or feminine, sometimes androgynous, and once, she claims, she woke up
> in the woods near Cornville to find herself held captive.
>
> "It was just like Gulliver's Travels," she says. "The fairies had tied
> me down with dried grass," while one laughed right in her face.
>
> "It scared the crap out of me."
>
> Ford claims she's seen fairies all her life, and though she won't say
> exactly how long that is, it looks to be 30-some years. She's a
> musician and astrologer from Scottsdale, short and buxom with long,
> dark hair and darker eyes. And though she seems reasonably sane, she
> acknowledges, "I'm wired way different."
>
> Ford is part of a growing subculture of fairy folk, not all of whom
> claim to see fairies - though that number is bigger than you might
> expect. The concept has allure for children, folklorists and
> all-purpose whimsical folk, as well. There is fairy music, much of it
> borrowing Celtic sounds and rhythms; there are T-shirts with fairy
> pictures that sell big at teenage boutiques, and fairy cards and
> posters in New Age bookstores. And a British artist named Brian Froud
> has sold more than 8 million large-format books of paintings of
> fairies, which he, like most fairy folk, spell the old-fashioned way:
> "faeries."
>
> "Faeryland is like the sea," Froud says. "It's like the tide, and
> sometimes the tide is out a long way and Faeryland is very difficult to
> reach. And sometimes the tide is in. And it does seem to me that the
> tide was out for some years, but it's really come in now."
>
> That tide has come in far enough that promoters expect more than 4,000
> people to attend an all-day Faerieworlds Festival on Saturday at Sedona
> Cultural Park. The festival will include music, multimedia shows, live
> interactive performances and, especially, Froud and his artwork.
>
> The expected attendees will be true believers like Ford, but also
> Renaissance Faire fans, families with young children, masqueraders, New
> Age dabblers, Goth kids who have "discovered Faery," as one promoter
> put it, and even "folks factioning out of the old Grateful Dead days
> who don't have anywhere to go."
>
> Fairies originated in Celtic folklore, and, more often than not, they
> were frightening, otherworldly forest beings that were blamed for
> unexplainable events, such as ill children, people turned mad and dark
> thoughts.
>
> "They're about expression of things in everyday life that we can't
> express openly," says Ari Berk, a professor of folklore at Central
> Michigan University. "Fairies have always spoken to the human desire to
> have some kind of conversation with the environment around them."
>
> They've populated art and literature for centuries, not just as fairy
> tales, but also in Shakespeare and in the poetry of William Butler
> Yeats. More recently, they appear in the Lord of the Rings films, as
> the elves.
>
> Although children are naturally drawn to fairy tales, the current pop
> phenomenon is not really about children. Froud's art, for example, is
> not only well researched but very adult.
>
> "Fairies have been relegated to the nursery for far too long," Froud
> says. "That's a 20th-century point of view really. Fairies have always
> been dangerous creatures. That's why they had to be placated. That's
> why little gifts were left out at night, little saucers of milk, or,
> otherwise, your cattle died, or, indeed, your children were stolen or
> people died. The word 'stroke' comes from 'elf stroke' because a fairy
> had touched you. So fairies have always been dangerous. And one way
> that people have tried to make them safer is to turn them into fairy
> stories, something that was safe, and say, 'Oh it's just for children,
> isn't it?' "
>
> Froud, 56, lives in Dartmoor, England, an area he says is slightly wild
> and desolate, and whose landscape influenced his palette.
>
> "When I looked at trees and rocks and hills when I moved to the
> country, I wondered what the inside of them looked like," Froud says.
> "And as I was wondering that, then I started painting fairies, and they
> were indeed at the souls of trees and landscapes."
>
> He was inspired by illustrations of fairy tales and did a lot of
> research with his collaborator, Alan Lee, for his first book, Faeries,
> which they published in 1978. It has sold more than 5 million copies,
> including more than 100,000 since last October, when a 25th-anniversary
> edition was published.
>
> Froud followed up with several other titles, including Good Faeries/Bad
> Faeries, whose paintings sometimes verge on the erotic, with lithesome
> near nudes, a merging of several tingling and anticipatory fantasies,
> and decidedly not for children. His art was the inspiration for the Jim
> Henson films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and Froud's wife, Wendy,
> was one of the puppetmakers who designed Yoda for the Star Wars films.
>
> Since he began painting fairies, Froud says they now present themselves
> to him as, he believes, they present themselves to others. The
> paintings, he says, are like maps that allow people to safely go on
> their fairy journey, as he puts it.
>
> "A lot of people go on the journey and don't return because they lapse
> into madness," he says.
>
> Saturday's festival in Sedona promises plenty of controlled madness.
>
> "Right now, everything's so heavy and intense on the planet that I
> think people need a fantasy to go to where they feel like they have
> power, where they feel they have something to go to," says Emilio
> Miller-Lopez, one of the festival's organizers. "What our events offer
> people is a chance to participate. Everybody's part of the show."
>
> Miller-Lopez is a spritely fellow of 28 with a shaggy gnome's beard and
> a shock of hair long enough to evoke memories of the early 1970s. His
> wife, Kelly, 27, has cascading Maid Marian locks and glittery makeup.
> Both dress elfin, in earth tones and billowing sleeves. They draw
> stares even in Sedona.
>
> The couple perform in Woodland, a band with Celtic-music roots and a
> rich New Age sound, which will play at the festival. Kelly says she has
> seen fairies since she was a child, and she first latched onto Brian
> Froud's work when she saw The Dark Crystal and then bought the Faeries
> books, which she eventually showed to her husband. Together, they
> sought out Froud's agent, Robert Gould, who is also a fantasy artist,
> well known as the illustrator for Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone
> novels.
>
> Working with Gould's company, Imaginosis, they staged multimedia fairy
> shows in Prescott, Santa Fe and Los Angeles. Fairy fans turned out in
> droves.
>
> "It was incredible," Gould says. "People were standing in line for an
> hour. Everyone was in costume. Families came. It was pretty wild."
>
> The Santa Fe show took place on Halloween, and the upcoming Sedona
> festival is just after May Day, which, as Kelly Miller-Lopez explains,
> are those times of the year when the veil is thinnest between the real
> world and the fairy world and human-fairy encounters are more likely.
>
> Gould would like to take the show on the road and maybe develop it into
> a Cirque du Soleil-style of interactive performance.
>
> As for the people who claim to see fairies, even Froud is not sure how
> many really do.
>
> "It took me a long time to actually work that out," he says. People
> constantly ask him how they can see them, too.
>
> "You don't use your eyes," he answers. "You see a fairy through your
> heart."
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Fairies have been attributed many origins, from natural causes to the
> darkest element.
>
> They are the creatures of the wild, primitive and untouched realm of
> fantaisy that exists beside each society.
>
>
> Fallen angels. In the lore of Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland, when
> God cast out the arrogant angels from heaven, they became the evil
> spirits that plague mankind, tormenting us and inflicting us with harm.
> The ones who fell into hell and into caves and abysses became devils
> and death-maidens. However, those who fell onto the earth became
> goblins, imps, dwarfs, thumblings, alps, noon-and-evening-ghosts, and
> will-o'-the-wisps. Those who fell into the forests became the
> wood-spirits who live there: the hey-men, the wild-men, the forest-men,
> the wild-women, and the forest-women. Finally, those who fell into the
> water became water spirits: water-men, mermaids, and merwomen. These
> angels were condemned to remain where they were, becoming the faeries
> of seas and rivers, the earth, and the air.
>
>
> Nature spirits : in most pagan religions, supernatural forces are
> associated with animals, the five elements and the Goddess. Sometimes
> the fairies were called Goddesses themselves. In several folk ballads
> the Fairy Queen is adressed as 'Queen of Heaven.' Welsh fairies were
> known as 'the Mother's Blessing.' Breton peasants called the fairies
> Godmothers.
>
>
> Are fallen angels now appearing also as aliens, new age spirit guides,
> pagan gods, spirits of shamans, Marian apparations, etc?
>
>
> The following is from the book "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries'
> published in 1911/ and a quote form a web site on theories of fairy
> origins.
>
> http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/
>
> Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 2)
>
>
> III. IN SCOTLAND
>
>
>
> Introduction by ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL, Hon. LL.D. of the University of
> Edinburgh; author of Carmina Gadelica.
>
> The belief in fairies was once common throughout Scotland -- Highland
> and Lowland. It is now much less prevalent even in the Highlands and
> Islands, where such beliefs linger longer than they do in the Lowlands.
> But it still lives among the old people, and is privately entertained
> here and there even among younger people; and some who hold the belief
> declare that they themselves have seen fairies.
>
> Various theories have been advanced as to the origin of
>
> [85]
>
> fairies and as to the belief in them. The most concrete form in which
> the belief has been urged has been by the Rev. Robert Kirk, minister of
> Aberfoyle, in Perthshire. (1) Another theory of the origin of fairies I
> took down in the island of Miunghlaidh (Minglay); and, though I have
> given it in Carmina Gadelica, it is sufficiently interesting to be
> quoted here. During October 1871, Roderick Macneill, known as 'Ruaraidh
> mac Dhomhuil, then ninety-two years of age, told it in Gaelic to the
> late J. F. Campbell of Islay and the writer, when they were
> storm-stayed in the precipitous island of Miunghlaidh, Barra :--
>
> 'The Proud Angel fomented a rebellion among the angels of heaven,
> where he had been a leading light. He declared that he would go and
> found a kingdom for himself. When going out at the door of heaven the
> Proud Angel brought prickly lightning and biting lightning out of the
> doorstep with his heels. Many angels followed him -- so many that at
> last the Son called out, "Father! Father! the city is being emptied!"
> whereupon the Father ordered that the gates of heaven and the gates of
> hell should be closed. This was instantly done. And those who were in
> were in, and those who were out were out; while the hosts who had left
> heaven and had not reached hell flew into the holes of the earth, like
> the stormy petrels. These are the Fairy Folk -- ever since doomed to
> live under the ground, and only allowed to emerge where and when the
> King permits. They are never allowed abroad on Thursday, that being
> Columba's Day; nor on Friday, that being the Son's Day; nor on
> Saturday, that being Mary's Day; nor on Sunday, that being the Lord's
> Day.
>
> God be between me and every fairy,
> Every ill wish and every druidry;
> To-day is Thursday on sea and land,
> I trust in the King that they do not hear me.
>
> (1) It was the belief of the Rev. Robert Kirk, as expressed by him in
> his Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, that the fairy
> tribes are a distinct order of created beings possessing human-like
> intelligence and supernormal powers, who live and move about in this
> world invisible to all save men and women of the second-sight (see this
> study, pp. 89, 91 n).
>
> [86]
>
> On certain nights when their bruthain (bowers) are open and their lamps
> are lit, and the song and the dance are moving merrily, the fairies may
> be heard singing lightheartedly : -
>
> Not of the seed of Adam are we,
> Nor is Abraham our father;
> But of the seed of the Proud Angel,
> Driven forth from Heaven.'
>
> Theories of Fairy Origins http://home.att.net/~waeshael/origins.htm
>
>
> Many of the folk theories of the fairy origins have a theological
> Christian background, and that highlighted by Professor Christiansen is
> the one common to Ireland and the Scottish Highlands - the fairies are
> fallen angels. A vivid and detailed account of this is given by
> Alexander Carmichael in Carmina Gadelica and repeated in The Fairy
> Faith in Celtic Countries.1 According to this some of the angels
> seduced by Satan were not prominent in his councils, but might rather
> be counted his dupes. When Michael hurled the hosts of Satan out of
> Heaven they were followed by an almost endless stream of these
> comparatively innocent victims of his unholy eloquence. The Shining
> Host of Heaven was thinning rapidly, and the Son, seeing the danger,
> cried out: 'Father, Father, the City is being emptied!' God raised his
> hand; the gates of Heaven closed, the seduced angels stopped bewildered
> and recollected themselves, and those who were already descending
> stopped in their tracks, some in the sky, some in the sea, some on
> mountains and in woods, some further on their way towards Hell, in
> bowels of the earth, and the foremost angels, wholly committed to evil,
> in the burning lake. This origin makes the final position of the Sidh
> at the Day of Judgement a very perilous one. In Scotland Kirk, the
> author of The Secret Commonwealth,2 describes their destiny as
> 'pendulous' until the Day of Judgement, but according to Christiansen
> the general verdict in Ireland is that they are damned souls. He
> mentions several Irish anecdotes in which a human is anxiously
> questioned by some of the Sidh as to their final destination. The
> human, pitying them, asks the question of a Saint, or of the priest
> during the elevation of the Host when he cannot lie. Always the answer
> is unfavourable, and when this is reported to the Sidh they break out
> into terrible lamentations. A similar story is told by J. F. Campbell
> of Islay in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands.3 The Scandinavian
> assessment of the fairy fate is more charitable, but as Christiansen
> points out, their supposed origin is different, and allows more
> possibility for hope. There are variants of this legend, but the most
> commonly told is of the hidden Children of Eve. After the fall Adam and
> Eve settled down to domesticity and were the parents of a large number
> of children, so many that Eve was ashamed of them. On day God, walking
> through the world, called on Eve and asked her to present her children
> to Him. Eve sent half of them to hide and brought out those she thought
> most presentable; but God was not deceived. 'Let those who were hidden
> from me, ' He said, 'be hidden people.' A different story is that the
> Huldre were the offspring of Adam and his first wife, Lilith, about
> whom there was much apocryphal information. At any rate in the
> Scandinavian beliefs the fairies were half-human in origin and were not
> creatures of another order as the angels were, good or bad.
>
> An earlier investigator of fairy beliefs, though still of this century,
> was Evans Wentz, from who book, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, I
> have already quoted.
>
> In 1908 Evans Wentz, an American of Celtic descent, who had worked for
> some years under John Rhys, the Oxford Professor of Celtic Studies, set
> out on an exploration of the Celtic area - Ireland, the Highlands of
> Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Brittany. He began by
> consulting the leading folklore experts of each region, Douglas Hyde in
> Ireland, Alexander Carmichael in the Scottish Highlands, John Rhys of
> Wales, Henry Jenner of Cornwall, Sophia Morrison of the Isle of Man and
> Professor Anatole le Bras of Brittany; then he travelled through all
> the regions, for the most part on foot like J. F. Campbell and
> Alexander Carmichael, visiting and living in peasant cottages and
> collecting material from people of all classes of society. It was no
> doubt a help to him in his researches that he was himself a believer in
> fairies, so that though he researched as a folklorist he encountered
> believers without any trace of scepticism or condescension, and was
> therefore given access to experiences and beliefs that would have been
> withheld from a more sophisticated investigator. Most of these point,
> as do many of Lady Wilde's4 stories, to a strong connection between
> fairies and the dead. Christiansen still found traces of this, but
> believed that the fairies were the captors and guardians of the dead
> rather than the dead themselves. The recently dead are certainly often
> described as being among the fairies, but the dead of the ancient
> tribes of Ireland are also thought of as The Gentry. John Boglin, for
> instance, of Kilmaeean, near Tara, who was about sixty years when he
> gave his evidence, reported this of the fairy tribes:
>
> "There is said to be a whole tribe of little red men living in Glen
> Odder, between Ringleston and Tara; and in long evenings in June they
> have been heard. There are other breeds or castes of fairies; and it
> seems to me, when I recall our ancient traditions, that some of these
> fairies are of the Fir Bolgs, some of the Tuatha de Danaan, and some of
> the Milesians. All of them have been seen round the western slope of
> Tara, dressed in ancient Irish costumes. Unlike the little red men,
> these fairy races are warlike and given to making invasions."5
>
> Later on in giving his evidence, John Boglin said:
>
> The Fairies are the Dead - 'According to the local belief, fairies are
> the spirits of the departed. Tradition says that Hugh O'Neil in the
> sixteenth century, after his march to the south, encamped his army on
> the Rath or Fort of Ringlestown, to be assisted by the spirits of the
> mighty dead who dwelt within this rath. And it is believed that Gerald
> Fitzgerald has been seen coming out of the Hill Mollyellen, down in
> County Louth, leading his horse and dressed in the old Irish costume,
> with heartplate, spear and was outfit.'6
>
> In Scotland, which was next visited by Evans Wentz, the evil fairies,
> The Host or Sluagh, were thought of as the dead, and the fairies or
> Shee are spirits who were decoyed out of their natural allegiance by
> The Proud Angel. In a footnote to one piece of evidence, taken from
> Carmina Gadelica, (p. 108), Alexander Carmichael explains the
> difference:
>
> Sluagh. 'hosts', the spirit-world. The 'hosts' are the spirits of
> mortals who have died...According to one informant, the spirits fly
> about in great clouds, up and down the face of the earth like
> starlings, and come back to the scenes of their earthly transgressions.
> No soul of them is without the clouds of earth, dimming the brightness
> of the works of God, nor can any win heaven, till satisfaction is made
> for the sins of the earth.7
>
> In Man again, the same belief of 'The Proud Angel' is held, though
> there are traces of the fairies as the descendants of the ancient gods,
> particularly Mannanon, son of Lir, a belief we also find in Ireland. In
> Wales the origin is more vaguely given in such sayings as 'The old folk
> thought them a kind of spirit from a spirit world'. In Cornwall the
> connection between the pixies and the dead seems to be closer, at least
> among the country people. On P. 172, for instance, we have:
>
> Nature of Piskies - 'I always understood the piskies to be little
> people. A great deal was said about ghosts in this place. Whether or
> not piskies are the same as ghosts, I cannot tell, but I fancy the old
> folk thought they were.'8
>
>
> Abductions Through The Ages
> http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/abduct050.html
>
>
> UFO-like abductions and alien sexual encounters are nothing new.
> Witches supposedly were taken into the air for meetings with the devil.
> People who had been abducted by fairies were left with distinctive body
> scars similar to those in UFO abductees. And the incubus and succubus
> of medieval times did the exact same things to their abductees as
> today's sexually-inclined aliens do to their abductees.
>
> According to fairy lore, fairies create a circular cluster of small
> bruises as their mark. The phenomenon is known as "fairy bruising" and
> is a sign of either favor or disfavor. The ring of bruises is often
> found around the genitals. They did this, according to various 17th
> century accounts, by pinching their victims:
>
> An Encyclopedia of Fairies (Briggs, 1976) gives numerous ancient
> examples of fairy abductions. Almost always a special drink was given
> to the abductee. This drink, usually described as a thick liquid, was
> an essential part of the fairy abduction. Women are abducted much more
> often than men and some fairies take special delight, in repeatedly
> capturing women for amorous motives. In short, some fairies simply
> liked having sexual relations with mortals.
>
> Fairies abduct their victims through paralysis; then they simply carry
> (levitate and fly) the abductee away into "fairyland." Fairyland is
> always nearby; under normal conditions we can't see or perceive it. The
> paralysis induced on the victim is how fairies get their abductee to
> enter fairyland. The modem word "stroke" (meaning paralysis) is derived
> from the ancient terms "elf-stroke" and "fairy-stroke." Fairies travel
> in circular globes of light, sometimes called "will-o-the-wisp."
>
> There are so many different types of fairies that going through them
> would be tedious. Some of them, however, are virtually
> indistinguishable from what have been described as demons. One
> particular type, the "bogie," looks a lot like the traditional bigfoot.
> Virtually every society has some lore of these "little people" and
> myths of them forcing their sexual attentions on human victims.
>
> Fairy lore has a tradition of thousands of years. Fairies have been
> said to be abducting humans, human babies, flying in lighted globes,
> striking paralysis and amnesia on their victims, forcing strange drink
> on their victims, and having sexual relations with humans for all time.
> If we could remove the mythological aspect from fairy abductions and
> dress them a little differently, the folklore reports of a thousand
> years ago would be virtually indistinguishable from present UFO
> abduction reports. The same thing could be said for the reports of
> demons.
>
>
>
> The Secret Commonwealth of Elves Fauns & Fairies
>
> To see photos http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/UFOs/past.html
>
>
> Malachim: 5,000 year old figurine that bears striking resemblance to
> ET, or an Alien.
> The so called learned men of our day are the first to oppose new ideas
> and the bearers of these.
>
> - Augustus LePlongeon
>
> The photo on the left is a 5,500 year-old Sumerian clay figurine. The
> resemblance to today's grays is overwelming. I would like to draw your
> attention to the rod in its hand. This instrument was described by
> various abductees and Paiute Indians as a device to subdue, and
> paralize potential captives.
>
> The 5, 000 year-old figurine does resemble descriptions and drawings of
> UFO occupants, but the startling thing is the rod ? or in fairy lore,
> "wand"! One modern case in particular warrants investigation for
> historical comparison.
> ...pointed a pencil like instrument at him and he found himself
> immobilized...
>
> For several mornings in 1965, Maurice Masse living near Valensole in
> the French Alpes, found to his annoyance that some of his plants had
> been 'tampered with', the new shoots plucked out. Around dawn on July
> 1, as Masse was standing near a hillock at the end of a field, he heard
> a whistling noise. There was a French atomic station in Vaucluse, and
> as the army often carried out maneuvers in the vicinity, Masse glanced
> around and expected to see a military helicopter. Not so. He saw a
> machine, shaped like a football and about the size of a Dauphine car,
> standing on six legs in the middle of his lavender field.
>
> As he watched, Masse saw what he took to be 'two boys of about eight
> years' emerge from the object and begin to steal more of his plants.
> Furious and determined to catch them, Masse, a former Maquis
> fighter,tried to skeak up on the theives. When he was only a short
> distance away he realized they were not little boys, but funny
> creatures with pointed chins, almond shaped eyes that curved around the
> sides of their heads, and slits or holes ('un trou') for mouths. Later
> he described their heads as'courgourdo tete,' the Languedoc dialect
> word for 'pumpkin head'. They had no voices but communicated by
> grumbling noises that seemed to come from their bodies.
>
> Masse broke cover and rushed at them. When he was not more than five
> meters away, one of the creatures pointed a pencil like instrument at
> him and he found himself immobolized. He was conscious but frozen in
> his tracks.The other creature carried a larger stick or rod which,
> Masse later speculated, could have stopped an army.
>
> Masse goes on to say the creatures who were four feet tall and wore
> close-fitting gray green clothes, went 'bubbling' up a ladder of
> light....and the craft took of to a height of of about 20 meters. Then
> it suddenly vanished.
>
> A police spokesman said,'We've established the reality of the landing
> gear impressions on the soil. Witnesses other than the farmer verified
> his statements.'
>
> A curious feature to the Valensole case is Masse's reaction to a
> photograph of an American UFO. In April 1964, in New Mexico, a
> policeman named Lonnie Zamora witnessed a landing near the town of
> Soccoro. The air force had built a model of the craft from Zamora's
> description and French ufologist Aime Michel obtained a photograph of
> the model which he showd to Masse.
>
> According to Michel, Masse stared at the picture 'as though he had just
> looked upon his own death', and then said, "Monsieur, when did you
> photograph my machine?" Quoted from Beyond Earth: Man's Contact with
> UFOs; Ralph Blum with Judy Blum
>
> This is but one of hundreds of reported cases in which the creature
> uses this rod-like instrument to paralize captives or to make a hasty
> exit. I chose this particular one for the startling similarity to our
> 5,500 year old figurine. Indeed, Masse's description of the creature's
> facial features match precisely. The distinction between fairies,
> sylphs, gnomes, aliens and demons gets even more fuzzy when we find out
> that hundreds of years ago, there were scholars who gathered the
> accounts of "common-folk" who related fantastic stories comparable with
> what modern-day contactees describe ? in a non-technical fashion, which
> would only be natural considering that these people had never even
> encountered a hot-air balloon!
> Of Sylphs and Fairies
>
> In 1691 a Scottish scholar, Reverend Kirk of Aberfoyle, gathered all
> the accounts he could find about the visitors and wrote a manuscript
> intitled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. It was
> the first systematic attempt to describe the methods and organization
> of the strange creatures that plagued the farmers of Scotland.
>
> Here's a short summary of his findings compiled by Jacques Vallee in
> his book:Passport to Magonia
>
> 1. They have a nature that is intermediate between man and the
> angels.
>
> 2. Physically, they have very light and fluid bodies, which are
> compared to a condensed cloud. They are particularly visible at dusk.
> They can appear to vanish at will.
>
> 3. Intellectually, they are intelligent and curious.
>
> 4. They have the power to carry away anything they like.
>
> 5. They live inside the earth in caves, which they can reach through
> any crevice or air passes.
>
> 6. When men did not inhabit the world, they used to live there and
> had their own agriculture. Their civilization has left traces on the
> high mountains; it was flourishing at a time when the whole countryside
> was nothing but woods and forests.
>
> 7. At the begining of each three month period, they change quarters
> because they are unable to stay in one place. Besides, they like to
> travel. It is then that men have terrible encounters with them, even on
> th great highways.* *
> Kirk notes that the scots avoid all travel during those four
> periods of the year, and he adds that some country folk go to church on
> th first Sunday of every three-month period to have their family,
> crops, and cattle blessed in order to keep away the elves who steal
> plants an animals.
>
> 8. Their chameleonlike bodies alow them to swim through the air with
> all their household.
>
> 9. They are divided into tribes. Like us,they have children, nurses,
> marriages, burials, etc.,unless they just do this to mock our own
> customs, or to predict terrestrial events.
>
> 10. Their houses are said to be wonderfully large and beautiful, but
> under most circumstances they are invisible to human eyes. Kirk
> compares them to enchanted islands. The houses are equipped with lamps
> that burn forever and fires that need no fuel.
>
> 11. They speak very little. When they do so, when they talk among
> themselves, their language is of a whistling sound.
>
> 12. Their habits and their language when they talk to humans are
> similar to those of local people.
>
> 13. Their philosophical system is based on the following
> ideas:nothing dies; all things evolve cyclically in such a way that at
> every cycle they are renewed and improved. Motion is the universal law.
>
> 14. They are said to have a heirarchy of leaders, but they have no
> visible devotion to God.
>
> 15. They have many pleasant books, but also serious and complex
> books, rather in the style of the ROSICRUCIANS, dealing with abstract
> matters.
>
> 16. They can be made to appear at will before us through magic.
>
> Vallee goes on to say that both Paracelsus and Kirk agree that a `pact
> can be made with these creatures, and they can be made to appear and
> answer questions at will.`
>
>
> Morphodeception
>
> Throughout the Bible (evil spirits, demons, fallen angels, nephilim),
> folklore (sylphs, fairies, gnomes, spirits of the air), and UFO (grays,
> reptilians, ETs, space brothers, chupacabra) literature, we find our
> visitors have the ability to manipulate time and space. To choose a
> form at will. They seem to be toying with their true nature. Almost
> laughing at us mere mortals.
>
> A quick browse through the encounters of all ages, and this
> 'morphodeception' becomes apparent. Vallee, "...we have had to note
> carefully the chameleonlike character of the secondary attributes of
> the sightings: the shapes of the objects, the appearances of their
> occupants, their reported statements, vary as a function of the
> cultural environment into which they are projected."
>
> Inorganic Beings? You can read many accounts and descriptions of
> various entities describing what seems to be one phenomenon with many
> names. If anyone has read any of Carlos Castaneda's books, Don Juan
> teaches his students about powerful beings called 'allies'.
>
> Don Juan, "....They take any size or shape that suits them. They could
> be a pebble or a mountain. In the company of men they behave like men.
> In the company of animals they behave like animals. Animals are usually
> afraid of them."
>
> In later explanations of allies, Castaneda's Teacher gives further
> details, calling them inorganic beings. Don Juan explains to his
> student that they live in a dimension with a different energy level.
>
> Don Juan, "...with inorganic beings,however, since they are separated
> from us by a most formidable barrier ? energy that moves at a different
> speed ? sorcerers must gauge their expectations and sustain the
> solicitation for as long as it takes to be acknowledged. ....inorganic
> beings veil themselves in darkness or mystery....the inorganic beings
> are after our awareness. They'll give us knowledge, but they'll extract
> a payment: our total being".
>
>
> He further explains that inorganic beings are of an awareness that is
> immobile and awareness like that has to seek movement and it does this,
> "by creating projections, phantasmical projections at times." He
> explained that inorganic beings are superb projectionists, who delight
> in projecting themselves like pictures on a wall.
>
> Demonic ProjectionsThese 'allies' are further described as tenuous
> energy projected through worlds, like a cosmic movie, a 'rarefied
> energy' projected through the boundaries of two worlds. At this point
> Carlos asks.., "But what about inorganic beings in their world? Are
> they also like moving pictures?", to which Don Juan's answer was
> unequivocal, "Not a chance. That world is as real as ours. The old
> sorcerers protrayed the inorganic beings' world as a blob of caverns
> and pores floating in some dark space. And they portrayed the inorganic
> beings as hollow canes bound together, like cells of our bodies. The
> old sorcerers called that immense bundle the labyrinth of penumbra".
>
> Subtlety of Spirits
>
> The medieval occultist's wrote painstaken works of great length,
> defining and classifying the visitors. This documentation did not
> confine itself to European writers. In Islam this same classification
> was in full progress. Only now are these works being appreciated, and
> it seems that these writers had an even deeper understanding, than
> their European counterparts.
>
> The European's of the age, thought all invisible beings can be divided
> into four classes; the angels, the gods of the ancients; the devils or
> demons, the fallen angels; the souls of the dead; and the elemental
> spirits, which correspond to Kirk's Secret Commonwealth. Vallee, "In
> the fourth group are the gnomes, who inhabit the earth and correspond
> to mine-haunting fairies, goblins, pixies, korrigans, leprechans, and
> the domovoys of Russian legends, and the sylphs, who inhabit the air'.
> To subdivide these visitors is obviously extremely difficult, and you
> might find yourself running in circles. However, I believe it is
> imperative we try. Concerning the Elementals, Kirk says their of an
> elastic semi-material essence, ethereal enough so as not to be detected
> by physical sight, and may change their forms according to certain
> laws.
>
> Today's modern UFO literature abounds with these exact descriptions,
> describing the 'ETs'. Aliens passing through walls, disappearing at the
> blink of an eye, various reports of UFOs merging into each other. And
> we haven't even explored sexual aspect of the abduction phenomena. This
> would correspond to the incubus and succubii of medieval accounts.
>
> If the reader has read through this page, your understanding of the UFO
> situation as it presents itself to modern man, has probably changed,
> that's assuming you subscribe to the 'nuts and bolts' theory of Aliens
> from 'outer space'. On the other hand if the reader has been
> contemplating the 'Inter-dimensional' or 'Ultraterrestrial' theory
> which seems a more likely explanation, then maybe I've added some food
> for thought.
>
>
> Copyright © Terry Melanson, unless otherwise noted. Reproduction is
> granted, and encouraged, on condition of author citation and a
> hyperlink back to this page.
>
>
>
> Fairies and UFOs?
> By Ken Korczac
>
>
> The most popular belief today is that UFOs are spaceships piloted by
> aliens from outer space.
>
> But another good theory which never gets as much press is that which
> says UFOs may, in fact, be right here from earth.
>
> Instead of being Extraterrestrials, UFO aliens might be
> Ultraterrestrials -- a species that has always been here, which evolved
> on earth along with homo sapiens, but which represents a species far
> superior.
>
> These Ultraterrestrials are so superior to us it's almost impossible
> for us to comprehend their existence. All we know of them are fleeting
> glimpses of lights in the sky, occasional bizarre encounters between
> human beings and so-called aliens, and other unexplained phenomenon.
>
> Think of how a group of monkeys in the wild perceive human beings.
> Because their own level of consciousness is so limited, they cannot
> comprehend that we humans are beyond being just another kind of animal.
> They may see a jet or a helicopter or a car, but to the monkeys,
> nothing in their consciousness can explain these amazing things.
>
> A monkey may think of an airplane as some kind of magical giant bird.
> They relate to it with the level of understanding they have about their
> environment. The speculation of the monkey, at best, is a crude idea
> about the total truth of an airplane, and the fact it represents entire
> levels of consciousness that are so advanced, they are literally
> invisible to monkey mind.
>
> Now think of a human being who encounters a UFO. To us a UFO seems to
> be some kind of flying, mechanical aircraft -- but the true nature of
> the UFO may be as different from a spacecraft as a bird is from an
> airplane. Like the monkey, we we just don't have the advanced levels of
> consciousness we need to comprehend the true nature of a UFO.
>
> As humans, we make the naturally egotistical assumption that we are the
> species at the top of the heap -- we see ourselves as the peak of
> achievement of evolution. We even make the bold claim that God, the
> supreme architect of the entire universe, created us in his own image!
>
> But it's not a big leap to consider that we are just another link in a
> vast chain of species, many which are below us, and some which may be
> above us.
>
> People who support the Ultraterrestrial theory point out that
> supernatural beings seemingly superior to humans have been reported
> throughout history. In previous eras they were called gods, angels,
> ogres, fairies, brownies, little people, demons, and more.
>
> The Bible is filled with references to supernatural creatures,
> including giants, "wheels" flying in the sky out of which incredible
> creatures emerge, and more.
>
> But references to flying disks were recorded centuries before the texts
> of the Bible. Cave drawings dating to 30,000 B.C. depict numerous
> drawings of disks floating around in the sky, remarkably similar to
> modern UFO photographs.
>
>
>
> Some maverick UFO investigators have pointed out the amazing
> similarities of modern UFO aliens to that of elves, fairies and the
> various "little people" famous in the folklore of many cultures.
>
> Fairies are well known for kidnapping people, the same irritating habit
> UFO aliens have. People who are abducted report incidents of missing
> time, a phenomenon very similar to time lapses reported by people taken
> to and returned from "fairyland.
>
> Fairies, like modern aliens, tend to be diminuitive creatures with
> large magical eyes. Many reports of alien abduction even include "power
> rods" used to paralize abductees, just as fairies wield "magic wands".
>
> One of the most interesting comparisons between aliens and fairies is
> that both are interested in stealing babies. One of the most common
> fairy activities is swiping babies from cribs, and sometimes replacing
> them with a false double, or "changeling" as they are sometimes called.
>
> A large part of modern UFO literature involves aliens abducting women,
> impregnating them, and later abducting them again, only to remove and
> take the unborn baby right out of the womb.
>
> Crearly, both UFO occupants and fairies have a strong affinity for the
> baby stealing business.
>
> Fairies are closely associated with nature, just as modern aliens also
> display a certain obsession with environmental issues. One of the most
> common alien abduction scenarios involves aliens who force people to
> watch "movies" depicting massive environmental degradation caused by
> modern human civilization. The aliens then give them a lecture on
> environmental issues and let them go.
>
> If aliens truly are a superior species from earth and evolved on earth,
> it would make sense that they would be concerned about another species
> wrecking the planet.
>
> But then you might ask, why don't the Ultraterrestrials simply step in
> and "manage" us the same way humans "manage" wildlife, including chimps
> and other large primates? The Ultraterrestrial theorists answer: "They
> are!". That's what all the abduction and experiments are about!
>
> Just as human beings capture and tag various species, UFO abductees
> report experiences of extreme similarity. Many people report being
> "tagged" during frightening sessions on a UFO operating table. Some of
> these "tags" have even been recovered, or show up on MRI exams, and
> remain unexplained.
>
> It's also possible that Ultraterrestrials comprehend and operate within
> higher levels of dimension than we experience at the human level. A
> monkey could never understand that time and space are actually two
> parts of the same dimension, as scientists have discovered.
>
> Mathematicians tell us that many additional dimensions of reality exist
> Ð dimensions which only the most brilliant math minds can glimpse
> through numbers, although they cannot experience them psychologically
> in any meaningful way.
>
> If Ultraterrestrials can exist "above" or "beyond" spacetime, that
> means they can easily see us, trick us and manipulate our existence,
> while we can't see them at all, or only in the most crude manner, or
> perhaps only when they allow us to see them.
>
> Imagine when a bear is shot with a drugged dart from a helicopter
> hovering above him. Imagine how terrified the bear is of the bizarre
> flying monster and the noise and lights that come out of it. Now
> imagine that the bear thinks of the strange beings that come out of the
> flying monster. The strange beings poke and prod him, look inside his
> mouth, apply a tag to his ear, and then let him go. Why?
>
> How can a bear understand or interpret the meaning of this incident on
> its level of consciousness? It can't. It just seem to make any sense.
> Human beings are so advanced and superior as to incomprehensible.
>
> Is it so difficult to believe that the ongoing bizarre and seemingly
> incomprehensible phenomenon of UFOs and their activities are the
> actions of an earth-born species far advanced and superior to human
> beings?
>
> Just ask a bear or a monkey.
>
>
> A Christian Response to the New Age Movement
> copyright © 1990 PWM Team Ministries
>
> Contents
>
> 1. A Christian Response To The New Age
> 2. Monism/Pantheism. 'All is one'
> 3. God within you. 'The only way out is in'
> 4. The Christ of the New Age
> 5. The New Agenda
> 6. The New Age and the Church
>
> Chapter One
>
> I first became aware of the New Age movement by name early In 1988. I
> say 'by name' because I soon realized that many of the ideas I had come
> up against through evangelism, through my work as a teacher in London
> comprehensive schools and even from experiences within the church
> actually came from this source or were moving towards it. Perhaps this
> is the first lesson Christians need to learn about the New Age
> movement. It is not always easily identifiable like the Jehovah's
> Witness who arrives on your doorstep offering you "The Watchtower.' In.
> fact many people who are putting over New Age ideas may not even be
> aware that they are doing so. So we need to ask the Lord for
> discernment in order to 'watch out that no-one deceives you' for as the
> Lord warned, a sign of the end of this age and his return is that 'many
> false prophets will appear and deceive many people' (Matthew 24:11).
>
> Defining the New Age Movement
> So what is the New Age movement? Certainly its profile has been raised
> over the past year with articles in both the religious and secular
> press familiarising people with the term. Yet there are many within the
> movement who are reluctant to use the term of themselves and unclear
> about how to define it:
>
> A New Age writer Jeremy Tarcher has said, 'No one speaks for the entire
> New Age community. Within the movement there is no unanimity as to how
> to define it or even that it is significantly cohesive enough to be
> called a movement.' New Age as a Perennial Philosophy (Los Angeles
> Times Book Review, Feb '88).
>
> At best it is a loosely connected movement linking together a wide
> range of ideas and philosophical systems in an attempt to formulate an
> understanding of humanity's place within the whole order of natural
> creation. What is important for Christians seeking to recognise and
> respond to the New Age movement is not just to look for the term 'New
> Age' but to be able to recognise the ideas behind it and to understand
> why they conflict with the revelation given us by God in the Bible.
> Then hopefully we will be able to give a 'reason for the hope that is
> in us' and respond not with fear and paranoia, but with confidence in
> our faith and with love for those who are being misled and a desire to
> lead them out of darkness into the light of faith in the Lord Jesus
> Christ.
>
> That is the main purpose of this booklet, rather than to give a
> detailed analysis of the New Age Movement in all its various
> manifestations. Origins of the New Age Movement Solomon said there is
> nothing new under the sun and in many ways there is nothing new about
> the New Age. There is a strong link with Hinduism, which is not
> accidental, as many of these ideas began to take root in western
> culture in the 1960s with the interest in yoga, transcendental
> meditation and eastern gurus which characterised the 'hippie' movement.
> The Beatles looked to India and became for a short while the most
> famous 'evangelists' of the New Age world view. The line from their
> song I am the Walrus. I am you and you are he, and he is she and we are
> one together' is as we shall see straight New Age teaching. There is
> also a link with the mystical ideas of all the major religions and
> particularly with the early Christian heresy of Gnosticism. It is
> significant that there is a growing interest in the Gnostic gospels
> amongst radical theologians and those interested in the New Age. The
> idea is being raised that these may represent the authentic teaching of
> Jesus which was suppressed by the early church.
>
> This quotation from the 'Gospel of Thomas' in which Jesus is supposed
> to be speaking expressed perfectly the New Age view of ' All is One',
> God is in everything:
>
> It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the
> All. From me did the All come forth, and unto me did the All extend.
> Split a piece of wood and I am there. Lift up a stone and you will find
> me there.' (James M. Robinson ed. The Nag Hammadi Library, p. 126)
>
> In addition the New Age draws heavily from pre-Christian tribal
> religions, from the Druids to native American (Red Indian) medicine
> men. The occultic art of astrology is a strong influence as the New Age
> is seen to be the transition from the 'dark violent Piscean age' (i.e.
> this age) into the Aquarian Age, 'a millennium of love and light'. In
> the words of the musical Hair the 'Age of Aquarius' will be at a time
> when ' . . -peace will guide the planets and love will steer the
> stars... Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding. No
> more falsehoods or derision, golden living dreams of visions. Mystic
> crystal revelation and mind's true liberation.
>
> New Age Goals - World Transformation
> What is new about all this is the coming together of so many diverse
> influences in a recognisable movement which hopes to 'cover the globe
> with a myriad of 'networks' - interconnecting ideas, people, services
> and organizations in order to implement world transformation' (DR
> Groothuis Unmasking the New Age. 31). The 'networks' are an important
> aspect of the New Age Movement. There is no central organization, taut
> like minded people coming together for a common purpose. Marilyn
> Ferguson in her book The Aquarian Conspiracy makes the point that
> 'Networks are a source of power never before tapped in history:
>
> 'multiple self sufficient social movements linked for a whole array of
> goals whose accomplishment would transform every aspect of contemporary
> society.'
>
> When we begin to recognise this influence we detect it in such areas as
> entertainment, the media, education, health care, religious and
> political groups, environmental and feminist groups. With modem
> communications and travel facilities ideas can quickly cross
> linguistic, national and political boundaries, and the New Age
> influence has taken root in Capitalist America and Communist Russia
> with the aim of transforming both and merging them into the New Age.
> The battle has begun and Christians cannot opt out because the goal of
> the New Age is a radical change in the way people see themselves, the
> world around them and God. This involves a definite denial and
> opposition to Christianity as John Dunphy writing in The Humanist (Jan
> -Feb 1983) on 'A Religion for the New Age' says:
>
> 'I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged
> and won in the school classrooms by teachers who correctly perceive
> their role as the proselytisers of a new faith: a religion of humanity
> that recognises and respects the spark of what the theologians call
> divinity in every human being. The classroom must and will become an
> arena of conflict between the old and the new - the rotting corpse of
> Christianity, together with all its adjacent evil and misery and the
> new faith resplendent in its promise.
>
> The appeal of the New Age is clear. The 'gods' of the old age -
> Christianity, Secular Humanism, Capitalism and Communism - have all
> failed; the earth is on the brink of environmental catastrophe; we must
> work for a new age in which we rediscover the sense of the sacred in
> nature and in ourselves in order to save the world. It all sounds so
> plausible - but that is the nature of deception' The New Age movement
> probably represents the greatest (and most subtle and sinister)
> challenge to Christianity since the heresies of Arianism and Gnosticism
> assailed the Early Church in the Second Century AD.
>
> Love and Light or Doorway to Occult
> The more we study the ideas behind the movement, the more we come to
> recognise that for all the Fine sounding words such as love' and
> light', which are extensively used in New Age writings, there is a
> demonic influence at work within it, manipulating those who are
> involved. This should not surprise us as Satan is able to transform
> himself into an angel of light in order to deceive those who reject the
> Lord. The New Age appeal will always be to improve the quality of
> people's lives, relating to different kinds of people in different
> ways. For example it appeals to those concerned for the environment by
> promising that when people are 'attuned' to New Age ways of thinking
> they will naturally work for the 'healing of the planet.' To businesses
> and individuals wishing to improve their efficiency and earning power
> it offers programmes on how to relieve stress, increase concentration
> and visualise your dreams and work for their accomplishment. Many of
> these programmes use yoga and eastern meditation techniques either
> openly or packaged in some westernised 'non religious' form.
>
> The New Age also seeks to influence Christians through using titles
> which will appeal such as 'Creation Centred Spirituality' or 'A Course
> in Miracles'. The following advertisement from the Findhorn Foundation
> in Scotland illustrates this:
>
> 'A Course in Miracles is a channeled three-volume set of books in a
> self study format. The goal of the course is inner peace found through
> forgiveness and turning within for guidance. In the supportive
> environment of a group we will look honestly at our relationships,
> seeing when through fear we deny and project our guilt onto others and
> how we can learn to love ourselves and each other by forgiving rather
> than judging. Using meditation, guided imagery and higher self
> exercises we will endeavor to make contact with the guidance of the
> Holy Spirit within.' (Guest Programme. April - Dee, Findhorn Foundation
> 1990, P- 22).
>
> We should note that the word 'channelled' refers to the New Age
> practice of receiving insights intuitively or psychically from
> 'non-physical entities.' Alert Christians should have no difficulty in
> identifying such entities as demons. We should also note that this
> programme offers the guidance of the Holy Spirit, inner peace and
> forgiveness without reference to the Lord Jesus, the one to whom the
> Holy Spirit bears witness and who offers us peace and forgiveness
> through the blood of his cross. Biblical 'Fall and Redemption' theology
> is ridiculed and rejected by New Age teaching and is held up as the
> main barrier to people achieving peace through discovering the 'god
> within.' Of course as an 'angel of light', Satan offers good things,
> not evil, to those whom he seeks to deceive.
>
> http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:U2T179FdNLIJ:www.tmtestimony.org.uk/
> library/1998_9.htm+pan+findhorn+deception&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
>
> In The Magic of Findhorn, the story of the community by Paul Hawken,
> the author relates how Robert Ogilvie Crombie (Roc), an associate of
> the Findhorn Community met a spirit being whom he recognised as 'Pan'.
> This being, during the course of the ensuing conversation, asked him,
> 'Do you love my subjects?' "Yes'. In that case do you love me?' 'Why
> not?' 'DO YOU LOVE ME? "Yes' ...'You know of course that I am the
> Devil? You have just said that you love the devil.' 'No you are not the
> devil. You are the god of the woodlands and countryside. There is no
> evil in you' There are many other references in the book to contact
> with spirit beings.
>
> David Spangler, one of the leaders of the New Age movement states in
> Reflections on the Christ (p. 40-44), published by the Findhorn
> Foundation, 'Christ is the same force as Lucifer, .(who) is an agent of
> God's love acting through evolution - . . Lucifer prepares man . . for
> the experience of Christhood . . . The light that reveals to us the
> path to Christ comes from Lucifer . . . the great initiator . . .
> Lucifer works within each of us to bring us to wholeness as we move
> into the new age . . . each of us is brought to that point which I term
> the Luciferic initiation , . Lucifer comes to give us the final
> Luciferic initiation . . that many people in the days ahead will be
> facing, for it is an initiation into the New Age.'
>
> Could such an 'initiation' be the 'powerful delusion' of which Paul
> speaks in 2 Thessalonians 2, causing people to worship the 'man of
> sin'? Whatever our conclusions on this point we have to recognise that
> we are dealing with a powerful force of antichrist, whose goal is for
> Lucifer to take the place of Christ, which means for Satan to take the
> place of God.
--
+-; the point where things begin and end, where the end is start and start
comes to it's final end.....
ordosclan
"Mountain person" is too degrading or perplexing to laymen.
Missionarys where awlays trying to tell the chinese that Tien is
synonymous with jesus and god the father. Its not. Tien has the
character for man and represents a godlike person. But not
nessessarily trancendant (as in transitional from one state to
another, upwards in the vibration scale) as is the case when its used
to denote nobility. The top line use to be a circle representing a
halo or crown. What these people are seeing could have all kinds of
explainations, but if there is a realness to it, its limited to those
ethnic/racial groups as the descriptions are very mytho/ethnopoetic.
Drunks are said to see things. But alchohol is also the number one
substance used to self-medicate many mental symptoms. Often, leading
to an enhancement of the symptoms. I've heard that women that are
pregnant sometimes see little men following them. Its supposed to be
common but most women dont talk about it because they are afraid
people will think they are crazy.