It seems like over the past year or so, that the Slender Man has become really popular.

It seems like at least once a month there’s a new blog or YouTube-based video series revolving around him, you can’t sneeze without finding new images (either photoshopped or done in a traditional artistic style like the above); there’s even a sub-reddit dedicated to Ol’ Longshanks.

Hell, one of the two most popular entries here at red&yellow is my previous one about the Slender Man (the other is my entry regarding the Moth Man and other tulpas).

And though I previously pondered the possibility of the Slender Man slowly but surely developing into a tulpa, I didn’t honestly think that it would happen any time in the near future. Now, I’m not so sure. Do I honestly think that I’ll wake up in the middle of the night sometime soon and see a tall, faceless figure peering into my bedroom window? No, not unless some jack-ass chaote somewhere decides to willfully shape the “Slendy Current” with some ritual working and actually make a Slender Man egregore.

But…damn, if Mr. Tall, Dark, and Creepy isn’t spreading like a bad case of herpes. It just makes me pause and think, that’s all

]]> http://rauthoggulur.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/slender-nation/feed/ 0 crow365 slender_man_by_arborrelli http://rauthoggulur.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/magic/ http://rauthoggulur.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/magic/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:00:00 +0000 crow365 http://rauthoggulur.wordpress.com/?p=256 ]]> I’ve written previously about the subtle intricacies in the popular conception of “magic”, about how our limited understanding of what is “magical” and what is mundane and banal can cloud us to the magic that unfolds around us on a daily basis. But, advanced technologies and “mundane” acts of will aside, what is magic?

First, though, a tangent: one might ask, “Why do you even believe in ‘magic’? Isn’t it just silly superstition? Infantile wish-fulfillment and all that jazz?”

I’ll answer that with a story.

When I was in 6th or 7th Grade, I came across my first mentions of out-of-body experiences, astral projection, and spirit travel. Oddly enough, they weren’t in any sort of dog-eared book in a store’s “New Age” section, but instead articles on a form of low-scale internet that we had access to over dial-up in my town called “FreeNet.” I became hooked on the idea of OBEs (yes, partly because, as an adolescent male, I entertained fantasies of non-corporeally slipping into the girls’ locker room; but that’s neither here nor there) and consumed as much of the literature as I could. I snatched up the books of Robert A. Monroe when I could and they became my de facto Bibles for a time. I tried many different methods to achieving the out-of-body state, but could never quite cross the finish line.

Until one night in Eighth Grade.

I’d been reading Journeys Out of the Body before bed and as I fell asleep I tried lulling myself into (what I would now recognize as) a light trance state. I soon became aware of myself walking up the sidewalk to my childhood church, passing between two handicapped parking signs, and as I did so I began to oscillate rapidly around the axis of my spine. The next thing I knew, I was rolling to my right, it was dark, and I could see the floor and ceiling of my bedroom simultaneously. My only thought, though, was an instinctive fear that I would hurt myself was I landed on the hardwood floor of my room. Instantly, I’m back in bed, and something along the lines of 10,000 volts of electricity is painlessly cycling through my body; cycling down and cycling down until eventually it faded after a few minutes.

I’ve had two other experiences like that – one during my Sophomore Year of high school and one during my third year of college – all of them brief, momentary things, but long enough for me to realize that I was outside of my physical body. Some might argue that they were exceptionally vivid dream states – the gods know that each one was preceded by a dream – but as someone who labored for years between all three Incidents to use lucid dreams as a springboard for out-of-body experiences and experienced many a “false awakening”, I know this: there is a distinct qualitative difference in awareness and consciousness between a dream (even a particularly vivid lucid dream) and the out-of-body states that I experienced.

I know what I experienced. And what they taught me was that there was a state of existence beyond the mere physical state of our day-to-day existences that we all know so well. That there was something along the lines of the soul or the spirit. And if there was a spiritual state of existence…maybe there was magic, too? It may not be the super-high-budget style magic you find in movies or fantasy novels, but that doesn’t make it any less magic.

It wasn’t such a giant leap of faith, really. So, that’s why I believe: I’ve experienced something beyond the mundane that makes it easier for me to accept such a proposition. And since then, I performed magic that I haven’t been proud of (making someone temporarily impotent) and much that I have been (protecting a friend’s home from threats both physical & spiritual, etc.).

Years ago, during my initial forays into the occult, I came across the five models of magick: spirit, energy, psychological, information, and meta. It was an attempt on the part of an occultist to sketch out five generalized views on how magic works, and it’s something that I still find use for to this day. Is it perfect? No. But it works, and for the time being, that’s good enough.

Simply put, it describes five different historical/contemporary paradigms of magic: in the spirit model, the magician makes use of spirits to manifest the changes he wishes to make in the World; in the energy model, the magician manipulates impersonal, spiritual energies to manifest the desired changes; in the psychological model, the magician encodes the desired changes into his sub-conscious, which then manifests said changes for him; the information model is bit like a hybrid of the energy and psychological models – the magician encodes energy with symbols of his desired intent; and the meta-model flits between the other four as the situation necessitates.

Personally, my understanding of magic falls somewhere in the category of the meta-model. My understanding of what magic is at this point in time is that it is, essentially, a psychic phenomenon, a component of consciousness. Every human being has innate psychic aptitude, even if it’s just something as simple as a sense of being stared at. Perhaps it’s a primary attribute of consciousness, something even more fundamental than the misnomer of “sixth sense”. The sensing of energy is akin to clairvoyance (perhaps “clairsentience” would be more accurate?), dealing with spirits in a “concrete” way is along the lines of mediumship, allowing the “sub-conscious” to manifest encoded intents could be seen as a form of semi-conscious psychokinesis. What it comes down to is that human consciousness seems to be one of the primary sources of magic…or perhaps it’s just consciousness itself, whether human or not (especially when we get into spirit magic and theurgy).

Magic is Consciousness sensing and shaping the Cosmos.

Now, if you’re of a monistic bent like myself (see previous entry, A Fable) that’s essentially like saying that magic is Consciousness sensing and shaping Consciousness (like a dreamer lucidly re-shaping their dreamscape), but that doesn’t really help our understanding much at this point. So, what does it mean? It means that magic is, at root, a function of consciousness. Magic is the manifestation of intent, will, desire – whether that’s the desire to know, to interact with, to shape, or to change the Cosmos; whether that’s the will to shape a business from the ground up or to summon up a spirit. Consciousness is integral, obviously, at every single step.

Words cannot describe it, concepts cannot contain it; it is infinite and ineffable. If words can come close to describing it, the Void would be called “Awareness”, but even that is inherently lacking. The Void of Awareness is ageless; it was before the Cosmos exploded into being and it will be after the last star dies. It is the Unborn and the Undying, the Uncreated and the Undestroyed; it is the Alpha and the Omega; it is the 10,000 Things, their Source, and their Ultimate Destination.

For eons upon eons, the Void was all that there was – and, verily, it remains all that truly exists in any concrete sense. But the Void grew bored and lonely, if such limited concepts can come close to describing the infinite, and it decided to play a game: a game of forgetting and Dreaming.

The first Dream filled the Void of Awareness with an infinity of thoughts, emotions, concepts, and other ephemera. And the Void delighted in these constantly fluxing dreams and nightmares, surfacing every-so-often from the sea of forgetfulness to realize that they were dreams to be delighted in, no matter how cruel, sadistic, and painful they might be at times.

After an eternity, though, parts of the Void that were unaware of their true nature beyond the Dream desired something more stable, something less ephemeral. And so was born the gross realm of matter, interpenetrating the subtle realm of dreams and spirit. In actuality, the gross realm was just as ephemeral as the subtle realm, but as with all dreams, while the Void was caught in the grips of the Dream, that realm was more concrete, more stable. Just as infinite variety had blossomed when the subtle realm had arisen within the Void of Awareness, so did that when the gross realm arose, as well.

And the Void – the Dreamer, as it were, of this infinite, endless Grand Dream – danced in these infinitely variegated dreams: exalting in lifetimes as kings and emperors; knowing the servility and submissiveness of enslavement; tasting the divinity of being a god and knowing the fleeting beauty of being mortal; delighting in both sadism and compassion equally. And at times, the Dreamer would Awaken with the midst of the Dream and remember that it was the Void and that what it experienced – the subjective nature of the Dreamer, the objective relation to that which was Dreamed, and the narrative flow and coherent whole of the Dream – was nothing more or less than itself. Sometimes, after these moments, the Dreamer would despair that the Dream was not the eternal, changeless ground of the Void, that the Dream was to be reviled as illusion; at other time it would view the Dream as the only holy thing in existence. Both were right in their own, limited ways.

In the best moments, the Dreamer would remember that the illusion of the Dream was the reality of the Void, that there was no separating the two, since the Dream was a manifestation of the Void of Awareness within Itself. That while lucidity and remembrance – along with the expansive self-knowledge that they engendered – were important, enlightenment as an escape from the Dream was pointless: eventually, it would feel the cold loneliness of the Void and sink back into the Dream once more.

The cycle of Dreaming and Waking repeating endlessly. Because:

Before the Beginning and after the End, there is the Void.

Every other type of “lesser” good – health, wealth, etc. – is seen as being “indifferent”. This is because their presence or absence does neither add to nor detract from, respectively, the innate goodness of a human being who is already cultivating the Virtues – those things that are truly good.

“Indifferent” is one way of describing these things. For years before coming across Stoicism or really being all that acquainted with Platonic philosophy, I used the word “incidental” to describe such things in my own ponderings on Life, the Universe, and Everything.

This was born mainly from my own familiarity with the teachings of the Hindu mystic Sri Ramana Maharshi. Maharshi was famous for his oft repeated exhortation to students or seekers after wisdom, that the fastest way to Enlightenment was self-inquiry – constantly asking oneself, “Who am I?” The idea behind it was to keep stripping away layers of self-identification that were extraneous.

Who am I? John Doe.

No, “John Doe” is a name, a title, a designation, a certain stringing-together of sounds. It is not who I am. 

Who am I? I am a lawyer.

No, a “lawyer” is a job title. It is a function, a role within society. It is something that I do, not who I am.

Who am I?

Et cetera, et cetera – on and on until one has that flash of insight (kensho or satori as the Japanese Zen monks would call it) that confers a fundamental, ineffable understanding of the self and the Cosmos.

But all those things that get stripped away – one’s identification with family, with wealth, with a career, etc. – all those things are incidentals. They are things of happenstance, often times outside of one’s control to either gain or reject. Being a man or a woman, a child or an elder, smart or dumb, rich or poor, all of these things are out of our control. All of them have their own pros and cons associated with them.

None of them are final, “the buck stops here” identifiers of who we are. None of them define us as “good” or “better” or “worse”. They simply are.

But, one might argue, I can choose my career and I can work real hard to make myself rich. How are those “incidental”?

True – to an extent. If one really loves football or basketball, but is born a dwarf, well…they can certainly choose to become a football or basketball player, but it is highly unlikely that they’ll ever actually become one. And, of course, all we have to do is look at the Medieval folklore concerning “the Wheel of Fortune” to see how uncertain it is to remain rich even if one has striven their entire life to build and maintain wealth.

The indifferents, the incidentals, are those things that come and go in Life. They are those qualities or attributes that either are congenital (and thus we have no real choosing over) or are chosen by us later in life but have no real meaning other than what we give to them. The true goods – the virtues – are the way that we act, they are the decisions that we make, and those cannot be taken away from us. If one is a good, virtuous person not even the mightiest of the gods can change that fact without our consent.

It is our actions, ultimately, that define us. Not our genitals, not our age, not our bank accounts, or how many shiny new gizmos we have, or the size of our house. Those things are window dressings that only gain meaning by the type of person we choose to be – virtuous or vicious, good or evil.

So, as a caterpillar once queried, who are you?

The idea at the time (which, may mean jack squat at this point) was that because Great Apes – including hominids – had less “junk DNA” in their genomes, we all evolved mental/behavioral abilities for adaptation as opposed to the traditional biological ability seen in the evolutionary process. Chimpanzees use primitive tools and pass on the knowledge of how to make and use such tech; gorillas have been known to use a primitive form of sign-language in the wild; and orang utans have been observed practicing forms of social interaction that vary from band to band even a few miles a part.

Humans, obviously, have created the Internetz.

So, the idea went, cultural traits and variations seen in human societies represented analogs to biological adaptations to changing environmental factors. The tools and ritualistic behavior that one society used to hunt or fish or deal with surrounding groups was an adaptation that represented their specific situation and would probably differ greatly from another group 1,000 miles away.

Being that I’m a big religion nerd, over the years I’ve come to figure that (even if the “genetic argument” is less than tenable at this point) religion is a cultural adaptation to a society’s surroundings. Religion, in my opinion, expresses a human culture’s understanding  of its collective and individual (as in the individual members of that culture) relationship to:

• other human groups and individuals
• the rest of the World/Cosmos (both inanimate & animate aspects)
• “the Divine”

Taoism is different from Christianity because there were different social and environmental factors at work in the China and the Middle East. Aztec beliefs were different from pre-Christian Celtic beliefs because there were different social and environmental factors at work in Meso-America and Northwestern Europe.

One can even see this form of cultural evolution at work within differing sects of a specific religion or along the lifetime of its existence. The different sects of Islam arose as a response to various social factors within Arabic/Semitic societies in the Middle East; different “cults” of Greek/Roman/Norse/etc. deities evolved in slightly separate directions due to the surrounding social factors and environmental factors of place (e.g. – the mythos and understanding regarding Cretan Zeus is slightly different than Athenian Zeus). One can see this evolutionary process at work when one considers the differences between Paleo-Paganism, Meso-Paganism, and Neo-Paganism: Paleo-Paganism generally only had other polytheistic faiths to interact with and color it until the advent of Christianity in the first several centuries of the Common Era; Meso-Paganism is marked by the revival of some Paleo-Pagan traits and practices, but firmly within the context of a wider Judeo-Christian society; and Neo-Paganism is marked by the reconstruction of as many Paleo-Pagan practices and beliefs as is possible, but within the context of a wider Judeo-Christian/Humanistic society (e.g. – modern Neo-Pagans generally don’t perform animal sacrifice or head-hunting, etc.).

A similar cultural evolution can be seen in Christianity: from the diverse gnostic and Jewish-Christian sects of Judea during the First Century C.E., to the establishment of the Roman Church and the eventual ascendance of Christianity to the position of Imperial religion, to its evolution into both a cultural and political superpower unto itself  during the Medieval period, to its Babel-like “diaspora” and internecine warfare during the Renaissance in the 1500s & 1600s due to the Protestant Reformation, to its sectarian rivalries to continue shaping the cultural future of the West in the Modern period. At each step, changing cultural and physical factors of the environment – both at home and abroad – forced evolutionary adaptations.

Of course, this is not to support the fallacious understanding of “evolution” as the future forms or developments are better than older ones – evolution, whether it’s biological or (hell, especially) cultural, doesn’t work like that. Evolved mutations to environmental factors (whether social, biological, or physical) are simply those that will possibly work better than previous ones. Given time, it may turn out that the previous adaptation was actually better than its “offspring”.

We also have to consider that actual paranormal (a.k.a. – “spiritual” or “religious”) experiences with beings considered gods or ancestral spirits or “non-god” spirits of place/nature/etc. would, of course, elicit their own evolutionary adaptations; but they just represent one more factor that has to be considered alongside the more mundane ones of cultural, physical, and biological factors, and not necessarily as primary determining factors in and of themselves.

This view, I think, can help us to understand why some religions “succeeded” when others didn’t. Why did Christianity ascend to such prominence within the late Roman Empire when previous Imperial cults meant to unite the Empire, like those of Mithras or Sol Invictus, didn’t? Because the right environmental factors were in place for a religion like Christianity to take root and grow strong – not necessarily because it is a “One True Religion for all the World.” (No offense to any Christians who might be reading this, but I’m trying to consider this from as academic and objective a perspective as possible). What those exact factors were (e.g. – appealing to the marginalized and “down-trodden” of Roman society, etc.) is a field that could fill dozens of books and academic papers, and I really don’t have the time or inclination to ponder them here at the moment. But, hopefully this serves as a good jumping off point for others.

I’ll with a simple one:

Stand or sit in a comfortable position and take a few calming breaths. When you feel centered, take a slow, deep inhalation and bring your awareness into the energy centers in your forehead, your sternum, and just below your navel[1]; when your lungs are full, simultaneously exhale and send your awareness down from Head/Inspiration through Heart/Action and Loins/Life, down through your legs and into the ground, seeing your awareness become roots digging deep down into the Earth; through dirt and bedrock they travel before emerging in a dark, cavernous space filled with water. The roots submerge themselves in the water, and on your next inhalation, begin pumping water upwards. Feel the cold, crisp water – the Power of the Earth, of the Underworld, of Potential – flow up your legs and into the Cauldron of Life; and then on upward into the Cauldron of Action; and then on upward – with your continued inhalation – into the Cauldron of Inspiration, before water erupts out the crown of your head and the palms of your hands.

On your next slow exhalation, send your awareness up, out the fountain of your crown into the sky above, past clouds and atmosphere to the spinning wheel of stars. See your awareness touch one of those stars, establishing a conduit. As you slowly inhale, see star-fire flow down that conduit, setting a flame alight atop the water in the Cauldron of Inspiration, continuing down to light another flame in the Cauldron of Action, before finally lighting a flame atop the water in the Cauldron of Life. See the fire and the water combined in the Cauldrons within you, and see a flame sprout from the water flowing out of each of your palms.

Breathe somewhat slowly, but regularly, and see the Fire of the Heavens and the Water of the Earth mix inside the Three Cauldrons, forming the Mists of Magic – a natural result of the mixture of Fire and Water. As you breathe, feel the Mists flow throughout your body for a bit; when you’re ready, focus on the Cauldron that seems appropriate and see it overflowing with the Mists. Direct those Mists down your arms and out your palms, forming a ball in your hands. In your mind’s eye, see the Mists swirl into a sphere – and feel the subtle tension (like two similar magnetic polarities pushing against each other) its presence causes.

When finished, pull the Mists back into your body, take a deep breath and ground yourself if necessary.

There, a fairly simple variant on ADF’s standard Two Powers meditation/working, but good nonetheless in my opinion. Another variation would involve acknowledging the presence of the Mists (or, just subtle energy in general) flowing through the Cosmos all around us and directly tapping that (without grounding via the Earth- and Sky-Power):

Stand, sit, or lie in a comfortable position and center yourself with a slow, deep breath or two. When ready, slowly inhale and see Mist laying low on the ground in your surrounding environment, moving toward you as you breath in. As your inhalation continues, see the Mists enter your legs and travel up them – pouring into the Cauldron of Life; continuing upward (perhaps even spiraling in a double-helix or like a caduceus) to pour into the Cauldron of Action; and finally pouring into the Cauldron of Inspiration.

This simple pulling in of energy from the surrounding environment can repeated in a single session as many times as necessary, seeing/feeling the Cauldrons filling up and brimming with the Mists more and more as you do so.

But, now that you pulled in this subtle energy, what to do with it? (Even though the exercise of pulling it in or grounding/centering can be a beneficial end in and of itself) Well, one could charge an object to use as a talisman of some kind:

Stand or sit comfortably, taking a few deep breaths to center yourself. When ready, take up the object to be charged and pull the Mists into yourself (either directly from the surrounding environment or through the Two Powers). Once the Mists are flowing within your, concentrate them in whichever Cauldron feels appropriate before sending through arms, out your hands, and into the targeted object to be charged. As you charge the object, speak a statement of intent for the object (this can be chanted several times, if needed; the repetition can help anchor the intent and associations within your subconscious). Continue charging for as long as you feel necessary, but when you are finished, stop the flow of Mists from your hands and see them disappear into the object.

This is one optional hand-position...

...and this is another.

Now you have an object charged with the Mists of Magic and a specified intent. Ta-da! But, using the Mists as your visualization can be used in pretty much anyway you would do energy-working, including shielding:

Pull the Mists into yourself (or, generate them from your own Cauldrons, if you been working with the Two Powers for awhile) and, when ready, see the Mists emerge from you: through orifices, pores, what-have-you. The Mists push outward, creating a bubble around you – repelling anything outside them or even masking you within their murky depth.[2] When the Mists are no longer needed, either draw them back into you or let them collapse and disperse out into the surrounding environment.

There you have it. Some simple ways for how using “the Mists of Magic” as a primary visual for doing energy-work can be effected.

In ADF, the use of subtle energy primarily arises within the framework of the “Two Powers”: the use of the Chthonic and Celestial energies, those of the Lower- and Upper-worlds, of Potentiality and of Manifestation, primarily envisioned as Water and Fire, respectively. In ADF ritual, the Two Powers are generally used for “grounding” and “centering” – grounding in a metaphysical sense very akin to the mundane, electrical use of the term. In practice, the Two Powers can be used in works of healing, enchantment, and blessing.

I’ve personally run into some trouble with this visualization over the years, especially the combined result of the Fire & Water. However, over the past few months, I’ve found that the natural, mundane result of fire and water is actually the best visualization for me.

The “Mists of Magic” – taken from concepts in Irish lore – are referenced in some ADF ritual within the context of visualization as an Otherworldly phenomenon, separating (and connecting) the mundane Middle-World from the other spiritual aspects of the Cosmos. But, for myself, I’ve found that incorporating the same visualization with the Two Powers is highly effective.

Working the Two Powers as normal is fine and all – drawing in the Water of the Underworld and the Fire of the Heavens, feeling them mingle within the Three Cauldrons (the three primary energetic centers focused upon in ADF), and then the Mists result. The Mists are amorphous and malleable, usable for everything from shielding to imbuing objects with intent/power, etc.

Over the next few months I’ll be releasing three more of these packets for Loaf-Fest, Gleichentag, and Dieses before the full version of Sunna’s Journey will be (hopefully) published around Yuletide. The full book will include rituals for each of the standard Eight High Days, individual devotionals (daily, Kindred-oriented, etc.), Sun and Moon devotionals, and more. While the full book is currently planned for an initial release through Garanus Publishing, the packets will be released through Amazon’s Kindle Publishing. Don’t have a Kindle? Well, that’s no problem at all: Amazon has free-to-download Kindle apps for a variety of platforms and the packets themselves are slated to only run $0.99.

So, even if you’re just slightly curious, download a copy and give it a gander.

Partly because of a super-secret fiction project that I’m slowly plugging away at (so super-secret in fact, that even though my fiancé knows of it, I’ve only toward her generalities in regards to what it’s about) and partly because there’s hardly been a day that’s gone by where I haven’t thought about it in the past year since I read that slim, little book. The thrust of it is a long meditation as Tonnies waxed philosophic on UFOlogy, alien abduction, and related Fortean phenomena all with the prime point being that it doesn’t necessarily have to be aliens (whether extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional) as the culprits. Tonnies opined that it was possible that some cases of UFO encounters and alien abductions might actually be perpetrated by other members of the Homo genus, hiding among us.*

As one reviewer over on Amazon pointed out, it’s not technically a new idea: for millennia people have conjectured that we might be sharing the planet with other races of intelligent beings, from faeries and other spirits through on to Atlanteans or Lemurians inhabiting the caverns of a Hollow Earth below our feet. Hell, the idea has popped up in pop-culture over the last few decades, particularly in the ABC TV show Prey and in the Assassin’s Creed game series’ “Those Who Came Before” (script writer Darby McDevitt has confirmed that they’re not extra-terrestrials; the most logical answer would be that they’re hominids of some kind) But, it is the first time that I’ve heard it brought up as a possible explanation in semi-opposition to the Extra-Terrestrial and Extra-Dimensional hypotheses (I say “semi-opposition” since Tonnies himself admitted that none of the three were mutually exclusive and, depending on the scenario being investigated, any of them could be a viable explanation). Tonnies speculates that possibly these other hominids are on the decline (either from encroachment by us, H. sapiens, or possibly due to some genetic malady) or that they consciously decided to go incognito as they saw – more and more often – how we treat members of our own species that we fear or dislike. Whatever the explanation for their decision to hide, Tonnies points to several repeating scenarios where members of our species have encountered “aliens” who suspiciously made it extremely clear that they came from outer space  – suspicious because many of the incidents smack of a “methinks thou dost protest too much” air when looked at in this light.

Example: someone’s driving along a deserted country road late at night and they just happen to notice some strange lights coming from the nearby forest. They pull over and enter the woods, where they just happen to come across a group of humanoid aliens collecting dirt and plant samples near their spaceship. “Oh, drat!” says one of the aliens. “You’ve stumbled upon us! And we were trying so hard to be covert about this expedition. Well, come on, chums: let’s go back to space! You know…where we’re from.”

Number one: the likelihood of there being extraterrestrials that naturally evolved to look humanoid in even the vaguest way (as opposed to looking so due to genetic engineering, some form of highly advanced cosmetic surgery, holographic projection, et cetera) is slim to none. The fact that numerous alien abduction and alien encounter stories involve some form of sexual intercourse (see: the case of Antonio Villa-Boas) or harvesting of semen/ova for genetic testing or experimentation is odd: we can already get all the DNA we need to do genetic testing/engineering by swabbing the inside of a person’s mouth, but a species that has mastered interstellar travel has to commit rape (or, at the very least, an unwanted hand-job)? Suspicious.

Number two: a species that has mastered interstellar travel can’t come up with some kind of cloaking device for their crew-members or their ship when they’re “covertly” scouting a primitive (and possibly hostile) planet? We are a few decades off from having that capability. Granted, the aliens might not really care about hiding, but it should still raise an eyebrow.

Tonnies uses the above observation in regards to semen/ova harvesting as support for the possible explanation that these beings may indeed be some kind of cousin of ours who is suffering from some sort of genetic disease or seemingly-incurable population die-off. Which, to a degree, would make sense – especially if they’re not super-advanced, star-hopping beings from across the galaxy and only have a level of biotechnology roughly equal to or slightly exceeding our own.

I’m not going to sum up Tonnies’ entire musings here – buy his book if you’re interested in that (I suggest it). My point here is that, while I don’t believe that Tonnies is correct, I do however think this idea is an extremely viable solution to the UFO/alien abduction conundrum.

Think about it: if you look at what we know of fossil history, for the majority of our species’ lifetime there have usually been at least two or three other members of the Homo genus inhabiting the planet alongside us. And now…we’re all alone? If we are any indicator of what the species of our genus are capable of in terms of adaptability and intelligence, it should be extremely odd for us be the sole members of our genus alive. Even if other hominid species had experienced pressure as our populations expanded (and, really, our populations have only significantly expanded in any way that might impact another intelligent species during the last 12,000 years or so) they should have been able to adapt like we did. Or move.

Or, perhaps, blend in with the invading population.

It’s not unheard of. During the period of the Spanish Inquisition, a great number of Jews “converted” to Catholicism, while keeping their Jewish practice secret (they became known as conversos or “crypto-Jews“). Is it impossible to conceive that some hominid cousin of ours might have run the numbers and thought that going “underground” for a while might be the wisest decision? And if you think “There’s no way non-Human hominids could hide among us without us knowing; they’d stick out like sore thumbs!” Well, take a gander at the mugshots on this Daily Mail article. I’ve seen members of H. sapiens who look more freakish on Maury. We know that some populations of H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis not only lived side-by-side, but actually interbred - with most current members of H. sapiens carrying between %1 to %4 of H. neanderthalensis DNA in their make-up. So, such over-lapping of populations has taken place in the past – is it really inconceivable that it might be happening, covertly, in the present?

And they needn’t be technically living among us, they could be living on the fringes of our society, off in the wilderness. Already, in the wake of the discovery of H. floresiensis‘ survival up to at least 12,000 years Before Present some researchers have suggested that the reports of cryptids like the Orang Pendek could be based on encounters with extant populations of the so-called “hobbits.” Hell, Sasquatches and Yetis could be explained as descendant species of something like Paranthropus robustus.

What if there are other hominids inhabiting the planet alongside us? What then? Obviously, if some kind of disclosure were to take place (a “family reunion” of sorts?), it would change our world-view just as surely as First Contact with an extra-terrestrial species would. For starters, the Abrahamic faiths would be facing a series of questions: are all hominids made in “God’s image” or just H. sapiens? Do these other hominids, under theological doctrine, have souls? Are they “Fallen” like H. sapiens? And many more. In a broader context, we would have to admit that we are not the sole occupants of the Earth (technically even now, if we are the only hominids, we’re not the sole occupants: we inhabit the planet with millions of other species who are just as much rightful tenants of this world as we are) and no longer have carte blanche to trash this planet. Sure, things would be crazy for a bit as we all reconfigure how we see ourselves and our place in the Cosmos, as we learn how to deal with one another and hopefully not destroy ourselves (just as surely as H. sapiens is not made of %100 savages or %100 saints, any other hominids would be just as spread out along the behavioral spectrum).

But you know what? We’d also know that we’re not alone. That we share the Cosmos with other intelligent beings and not only that, but that they’re our cousins. They are family.

But, that’s assuming that Tonnies’ conjecture and philosophical musings were accurate. That there are other hominids sharing the Earth with us. Maybe there are, maybe there aren’t. But if there are, hopefully they’ll make themselves known sometime soon – hopefully we’ll deserve that contact.

And if any of them happen to be reading this meager blog: I wouldn’t mind partaking in a family reunion. Just…please don’t appear in my bedroom some night. FYI, that shit is just plain creepy.

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*- Granted, Tonnies doesn’t limit his speculation to only hidden members of the Homo genus – he lobs out the idea that humanoid beings like the (now) archetypal “Gray” might be a hybridized creature (half-human and half-alien) or that pulling the strings of some of these human-like beings might be a “rogues gallery of progressively stranger beings lurking behind the curtain.” (Tonnies, 51)