Graham Hancock- shamans, fairies, aliens, saints and DNA

So Cooks, what did he have to say? :D

He states that somewhere along the way humans have lost memory of a big part of human history (amnesia) since there are so many clues in our ancient history about aliens, such as the pyramids where some of them we have no clue exactly when it was built, with their amazing accurate architectural technology. He also gives an example about some spectacular monuments built in a great altitude in Bolivia, where no way this could have been done only by humans.

I really recommend this documentary. So interesting.

Cool guys, I'll definitely check it out. :D

Just wanted to say that thanks to this topic I purchased the book and can't stop reading it. Excellent book. He explains his theories in such a convincing and interesting way.
Thanks Beekeeper.

Okay, this one's dedicated to Cooks, who doesn't need to read it because he/she bought the book! :lol:

Hancock makes the point that the original supernatural experiences at the base of mainstream religions are in the distant past and that today’s salaried priests, rabbis and mullahs present themselves not just as administrators but as “true and exclusive intermediaries between humanity and otherworldly powers.” Thus, they never present us with any new supernatural experiences of their own.

He believes rot sets in when cultures devalue shamans and place spiritual trust in a sacerdotal class that can only teach what it has been taught but not what it has experienced. He identifies Christ as shaman,

It is not only his pedigree as half human, half-divine hybrid that makes him so, or his heaven-sent gifts as healer. His ordeal of crucifixion and piercing followed by death and subsequent resurrection as a spiritualised being equipped with the power to save souls is essentially the story of the wounded man – the story that is told by all shamans everywhere of their own initiatory agonies, death and resurrection. P604

[I struggle a bit with the last part of this as I tend to accept the accounts of Christ’s death are literal, though I am aware of writings that argue otherwise.]

Hancock discusses the early Christian Gnostics, who believed in knowledge through direct experience and that reality could only be experienced in a visionary state. (Apparently the Jivaro of Ecuador shared the belief that the everyday life was illusion and that reality could be accessed through trance experiences). There is evidence that Gnostic Christian groups practised austerities and possibly consumed psychotropic mushrooms. Their views of reality were actively repressed from the 4th century.

Vestiges of the shamanistic origins of Christianity can be found in the symbolism around Santa Claus and in the cult of saints. For instance, St Christophoros is often portrayed as a therianthrope with the body of a man and the head of a dog. Saint Sebastian, pierced by multiple Roman arrows, is also recognisable as the wounded man (again, I have trouble with this association, as Sebastian’s wounds were not received in a shamanic trance but were literal wounds. Am I missing something here?) He continues to describe saints Ursula, Justina and Stanislaus who were similarly hacked or pierced. St Theresa of Avila is more convincing as she had an angelic piercing through the heart in trance state.

The first question asked Jeanne d’Arc when she was interrogated by the Inquisition was if she knew anything of those who went to Sabbath with the fairies or had assisted at the assembly at the fountain of the fairies near Domremy, around which danced malignant spirits. She admitted she visited the Tree of the Mistress, or the Tree of the Fairies, nearby which was a spring with healing water.

Dianne Purkiss, an English don at Oxford University, reports that the Inquisition often mixed the terms for fairies- “white ladies,” “good ladies” and “Our Lady.” This was still the case hundreds of years later with Bernadette Soubirous at the Shrine of Lourdes.

The fountain of Lourdes had a reputation of miraculous healing and was associated with fairies long before the Virgin apparently appeared to Bernadette. Interestingly, Bernadette referred to the lady in the apparitions as uno petito damizela, a little lady. She reputedly carried a rosary, though Hancock dismisses this as expedient. She wore white, another association with the “white ladies,” and instructed Bernadette to eat a certain herb. Hancock finds himself questioning if, in fact, she was instructed to consume a certain mushroom. He also points out that Lourdes stands near the geographical centre where the greatest number of painted caves dating from the Upper Palaeolithic have been found.

Bernadette reportedly fell into trances when encountering “Our Lady.”

As explanation for mass witnessing of spiritual phenomenon, Hancock provides a theory by Michael Persinger, head of the Neuroscience Lab at Laurentian University, Ontario. “His work has shown that certain, almost imperceptible electromagnetic fields, often associated with earth quakes and other seismic events, seem to interact with the human brain in such a way as to trigger temporarily altered states of consciousness every bit as deep and every bit as ‘hallucinatory’ as those induced by drugs like DMT, psilocybin and LSD. These effects are especially pronounced in the case of individuals with unusually excitable temporal lobes. ” p616 He has proven this to be so under laboratory conditions.

After an appearance of the Virgin Mary in 1879 the village of Knock in County Mayo, Ireland, Christians flocked to the field where it happened. A large globe with golden light appeared to three men, six women and two children. Within the globe three glowing humans were seen, two men and a woman. One man held a book open. The woman wore white and was described as “strikingly white.”

Hancock similarly attributes the Marian apparitions at Fatima to the same experiences of shamans elsewhere. He notes that the children experienced visitations by other beings that they construed as angels, in the two years prior to the experience at Fatima. An angel, whiter than driven snow, appeared to them amidst a strong wind that shook the trees, as is sometimes reported in UFO sitings. The Marian apparitions subsequently experienced, occurred near a sacred spot called Cova da Iris (the Cave of St Irene). A blinding flash of light drew the children to a hovering light above a tree in the midst of which they saw “a little woman” who instructed them to return once a month. Eventually, others experienced phenomena such as buzzing, loud bangs and hovering clouds and changing colours and a globe in the sky, while the enraptured children conversed with invisible spiritual beings. Two Jesuits who had been sent to debunk the children, included the globe witnessed by all, a white cloud and petals falling from the sky (entopic dots?) in their report. On another occasion, witnesses saw a multicoloured disk in the sky that plunged down and then up towards the sun. A witness with binoculars said he saw a ladder with two entities emerging from it. At both Knock and Fatima, hundreds reported cures for their life-threatening illnesses.

Years ago, when Persinger's experiments were featured in various articles, I asked myself- if certain frequencies excite the temporal lobe to create the selfsame phenomenon in those who experience it, my question is, who put the recording in our brains in the first place?
Kind of like finding a hidden message encoded in our brain structure. I frankly don't think the phenomenon is accidental organic happenstance. JMO. :lol:

And is it always the same "recording" from mass event to mass event or is it in fact the perceiving of a co-existing reality that isn't normally available to perception?

I finally finished the book this week. All I can say is WOW... Mind expanding...
Consequently I bouhgt the book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" by Rick Strassman.