News Notes
Zip Dobyns
For astrologers who would like to increase their knowledge of astronomy, there are several good publications available. Astronomy and Sky & Telescope are both monthly magazines with gorgeous pictures accompanying their articles on astronomy. Science News is a weekly with shorter articles covering all of the basic sciences, both physical and social sciences. All three magazines are written for intelligent lay people, so you do not have to be a specialist to understand them.
The latest issues, January 1996, of both Astronomy and Sky & Telescope include articles on recent evidence for planets orbiting other stars. In light of the incredible number and variety of stars in the cosmos, it seemed logical that many might, like our Sun, have planets associated with them. But firm confirmation of this theory is quite recent as modern technology has expanded our reach. The article in Astronomy describes the work with a rapidly spinning star called PSR 1257+12. Its name is its coordinates, its position in the sky. Such spinning stars are called pulsars because they send out pulses of energy as they rotate. It was originally assumed that these blasts of radiation would prevent the formation of planets in the vicinity, but there is now strong evidence for at least three and possibly four planets around PSR 1257+12. However, it is assumed that the radiation would prevent any life on the planets.
The article in Sky & Telescope describes the discovery of a planet orbiting a relatively near-by star in the constellation of Pegasus. 51 Pegasi is similar to our Sun and “only” about 42 light years away. Evidence to date suggests that the newly discovered planet is about half the size of Jupiter. A Swiss team announced the discovery at a conference in Florence, Italy. In the same issue of Sky & Telescope, and from the same conference, the discovery of a “brown dwarf” was announced, said to be in orbit around the star Gliese 229. Gliese is “only” 19 light years from earth and is described as “redder” than any other known star. Additional brown dwarfs may also have been spotted in the Pleiades, but they are younger and brighter and not yet definitively identified as brown dwarfs which are a hypothetical class of objects that lacked enough mass to sustain hydrogen fusion like a normal star. The prospective brown dwarf which is orbiting Gliese 229 and named Gliese 229B is thought to have about 50 times the mass of Jupiter.
The October 21, 1995 and November 25, 1995 issues of Science News had short but excellent comprehensive articles about the work with the new planets. They were initially theorized by observing slight variations in the color of the stars through ground-based telescopes. Following the original observations, pictures taken through Hubble’s telescope which is orbiting in space have given us the first images taken in visible light of Gliese 229B.
UFOs are still here and still mysterious. The December 1995 issue of Fate magazine has an article by their regular columnist on the topic, J. Antonio Huneeus, on a film which some of our readers may have seen on TV. British producer Ray Santilli obtained the film which was said to show an autopsy of an alien done in 1947. It was internationally broadcast on August 28, 1995. Most of the mainstream U.S. media have ignored the film, but the Fox network got 14% of the viewing audience when they showed it, and the good ratings led them to air it again a week later with added footage.
The controversy over the authenticity of the film had been boiling for months in Europe and in UFO circles and on computer nets. The Fox broadcast also included material on the controversial crash story from Roswell, NM. Huneeus presents the claims and doubts in a very even-handed way. The body in the autopsy looks quite human though it has six fingers and six toes rather than the normal five. The story of the unnamed photographer of the autopsy was posted on the Internet by Bob Shell, a film expert who is helping Santilli try to validate the age of the film. The description of the photographer’s arrival at the scene of the crashed UFO is horrific. The “freak creatures” were described as lying by the vehicle, screaming, and clinging to boxes which they held close to their chests with both arms. The soldiers killed one of the creatures by hitting its head with the butt of a rifle in order to grab the box.
If these reports are true, it is no wonder the “aliens” have been hesitating to land openly and try to communicate with the natives of earth.
There is at least a strong possibility that the alien film is a fraud, and the famous Roswell NM crash an advanced and secret (at the time) weather balloon. I rarely see the Skeptical Inquirer which is published by CSICOP, the official debunkers of anything spiritual or paranormal, but the November-December 1995 issue had several interesting articles. Despite my negative evaluation of the professional skeptics, I strongly endorse healthy doubt about much of the material that is flooding our current world. We need to test the claims of “true believers” in all areas, including UFOs, astrology, psychic phenomena, monsters, ancient civilizations, etc., not meet the claims with automatic rejection or belief. The articles in the current issue of the Skeptical Inquirer point out some of the clues in the purported alien film which suggest that a latex dummy was used. Both autopsy and special effects film experts watched the film and concluded that it was a fraud. Other articles in the same issue reported recently released government information which described the crashed materials near Roswell as part of a secret government test of high-altitude balloons outfitted with acoustic sensors to detect when the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon. Out of secrecy, myths can be born
For conspiracy buffs, there is a fascinating magazine called Perceptions which is published in the Los Angeles area at 10734 Jefferson Blvd., Suite 502, Culver City, CA 90230. It includes a mix of stories about alternative health, astrology, UFOs, and claimed government secrecy and misdeeds. Being an investigator is not always a safe occupation. One of the regular contributors to Perceptions was recently shot and killed under mysterious circumstances.
The November-December 1995 issue of Perceptions has an article by a clinical psychologist who has worked extensively with clients who think they have been abducted by UFO aliens. I heard Dr. Boylan speak at a Whole Life Expo, and also read his book on his work with the abductees. The article in Perceptions is called “Birds of a Feather No More.” It describes a covert network of men with high security clearances who were working on various aspects of UFO research and policy and who began to meet in the 1970s to pool their information. By coordinating their information, they hoped to attain a better understanding of the big picture and to attain still more information which was theoretically in the hands of a top-secret government group which remained independent of presidential or congressional control. ?? This mysterious (and possibly mythical) government group is reportedly hiding vast amounts of data and is called a “black arm” of the government. The term “black” is applied to money which is authorized by Congress for one of the secret services such as the CIA and a detailed accounting of its use is never given. An aide to Senator Byrd and a member of the NSC (National Security Council), an intelligence organization like the CIA, said in 1991 that the NSC was trying to identify the “black arm” supposedly controlling the UFO secrets. When one government intelligence agency does not know the identity (or reality?) of another, it sounds pretty bizarre.
The group described by Boylan is called the Aviary since each member is using the name of a bird as a pseudonym. If Boylan’s information is reliable, the members are from the military, intelligence, and scientific communities. Of the 14 listed, I was familiar with three of them from reading their books or hearing them speak at conferences. Boylan writes that sources close to some Aviary members say there is currently a split within the group with some feeling that information about UFO and ET contacts should be broadly disclosed to the public, that they are ready to handle it, while others are resisting such disclosure. The latter may want to hold on to their “information monopoly” or they may not welcome close public scrutiny of their role in the UFO cover-up. Boylan suggests that though most of the Aviary members are well-intentioned scientists or former military or intelligence officers whose actions stemmed from sincere beliefs that secrecy was once vital, it is possible that some engaged in illegal or injurious projects and operations.
The drama is likely to increase in the coming years. The movement of three major planets into fire or air signs points to more disclosure. Fire and air are not good at keeping secrets.
There are several other interesting articles in this issue of Perceptions, including one on the development of “customized” vaccines to eliminate terminal illnesses and one on producing your own colloidal silver, a product from the past which has been “rediscovered” and is being touted for healing. The article credits it with the power to protect one from more than 650 pathogens, viruses, microbes, fungi, and parasites. Personally, I still like having my subconscious take care of my body. Unfortunately, I do not agree with the article on astrology in this issue of Perceptions. It claims to offer “ancient wisdom” but it follows some current astrologers’ beliefs that the south lunar node is a “negative energy” to be avoided while the north node is a sure path to happiness. I think that avoiding any part of our nature is a sure path to trouble—that we need to integrate the nodes, turn them into a partnership so they work together. Oppositions are natural partners. Denying one side will lead to repression and illness, or to projection which attracts others who overdo it for us, or to displacement when it is done in ineffective, inappropriate ways or times.
A fellow-astrologer and UFO buff has been sending me her newsletter called Astro-Logical Liaisons. In the last issue, Libra to Sagittarius 1995, she reported that her publication was being turned over to another local astrologer and psychic since Roxanne planned to leave Florida. Like most astrologers, Roxanne is expecting dramatic changes with Pluto in Sagittarius, Uranus in Aquarius, and Saturn in Aries during the coming years. She expects increased freedom and revelations of knowledge, including the truth about UFOs. Roxanne thinks there is some truth in each of the wildly differing UFO claims, from the ones which describe the aliens as friendly and helpful to the ones who say they are “using” humans for their own purposes, to produce hybrids among other claims. She believes that there are a host of species observing and fighting over us, and that the next 13 to 17 years (which includes the passage of Uranus and Neptune through Aquarius) will bring unimaginable racial and legal issues. If she is right, the OJ uproar and Million Man March are hardly a taste of the coming complexity. Roxanne suggests that the Nostradamus prediction of “war in the skies” refers to a coming confrontation involving UFO aliens. This scenario implies physical aliens from a physical planet, but Roxanne believes, as I do, that many if not most of the aliens are from non-material dimensions. If this is the case, materialistic scientists are in for a really rough time as their world-view comes crashing down and even people who accept the reality of psychic dimensions may be challenged by a mixture of friendly and hostile aliens, some in physical bodies and some able to appear and disappear in our material world.
Many of the abduction and other UFO accounts make it clear that psychically open individuals can have what are “real to them” experiences while others who are present with them see nothing. The ability of the materialists to classify such psychic experiences as delusions and self-deception can only be sustained while the materialists are in the majority and hold the power in the world. The age of materialism is a very brief episode covering about the last 300 years in the “developed” western world. It may have been necessary to break the strangle-hold power of narrow, dogmatic religion in the west which was stifling free inquiry. But it created its own rigid dogma which cannot look beyond physical forces, so we must again break loose to widen our understanding. Since our beliefs do set the limits of what we can conceive and therefore what we can perceive, all of us need to stay tentative in our conclusions. This is hard to do unless we have considerable faith. The hunger for the security of certainty and fear of the unknown can lead to the religious extremism which seems to be currently increasing in the world, with tragic consequences. “Science” is practiced by human beings who are, therefore, living in their own belief systems. But science still pays lip service to the primary value of tentative conclusions which are subject to change when new evidence is found. We need that reminder.
Materialistic science also retains a valuable role in our physical world, and continues to produce useful information. The December 1995 issue of Discover magazine describes the discovery by a Japanese physicist in Kobe that video cameras could record earthquakes in their own unique way. Many stores in Kobe had security cameras running as a way to identify criminals. Kikuchi discovered that they provided a way to estimate ground motion because all the free objects such as chairs, lockers, and papers hung on walls were in common oscillation. He could tell which way the ground was moving from the way the objects moved at different locations. He was able to obtain 20 cameras, and found that some stores just half a mile apart moved in opposite directions—a sure sign that the fault lay between them, so he was able to locate the fault more precisely than had been possible with seismographs alone. The cameras also recorded the reactions of the humans who were present, and can be used to teach people how best to protect themselves.
Another earthquake report which was carried in the October 21, 1995 Science News offers hope of a major breakthrough in forecasting quakes. U.S. researchers have remained skeptical of reports from Greece and other countries that electric signals may herald quakes. A Greek physicist named Varotsos has been setting up observation stations in his country since 1983, but U.S. observers claimed his results were no better than random if you know that tremors tend to cluster together. But Varotsos got the attention of some U.S. researchers by faxing his predictions to 29 institutes outside Greece before quakes on May 4, May 13, and June 15, 19 95. His theory is now getting more serious consideration, including a workshop held in Berkeley to discuss possible techniques. One problem is that the electric signals only reach certain sites, but some have been detected preceding recent quakes in California.
To continue with the topic of earthquakes, Bill Wrobel was the co-author of my book Seven Paths to Understanding and has been a subscriber to The Mutable Dilemma from its beginning in December 1977. Bill recently attended a conference at the Cayce Headquarters (ARE) in Virginia Beach, VA, and heard a lecture by Gordon-Michael Scallion, one of the psychics who has been predicting major earthquakes and much of coastal U.S. sinking under the ocean. In a previous issue of The Mutable Dilemma, I discussed Scallion’s horoscope, but Bill learned from him that his birth time reported in his journal was an hour off. His revised chart for the (hopefully) accurate birth time is included in this issue of The Mutable Dilemma.
Scallion’s latest prediction is for an 8 or 9 magnitude earthquake in southern California by January 1996. I see no sign of that in the Capricorn ingress chart calculated for Los Angeles, and the chart would not be very different in other areas in the southern part of the state. Some of Scallion’s other predictions were also given to me by Bill from notes he took at Scallion’s lecture.
1. In 1996 the existence of UFOs and alien life forms outside earth will be acknowledged. ((I do not believe it will be done in a single year. I think it will continue to dribble out and gradually be acknowledged by increasing numbers of people. If much of the UFO phenomena is psychic rather than physical, it can only be acknowledged by people who accept the psychic as part of reality.))
2. In 1996 the existence on earth of ancient races of people, 12,000 years or older, will be acknowledged (Atlantis etc.) ((Since paleontology and archaeology trace humans back more than 2 million years, I assume Scallion is referring to advanced civilizations at this early date. Humans are now known to have had agriculture, domestic animals, and towns some 6,000 or more years ago.))
3. Children born in the near future will live 200-300 years and be born intuitive. All children’s diseases will be gone, along with cancer and AIDS. The common dog after the turn of the century will look more like a combination of a goat and a dog as new life forms emerge and most large land animals cease to be. ((Such “over-night” changes are extremely doubtful.))
4. A new, small, blue Sun will reach our solar system by 2002, bringing major changes. To questioners who asked whether the Hale-Bopp comet might be this new Sun, Scallion said ‘no,’ the blue Sun was not a comet but was condensed light. ((Anything bright enough to be a “sun,” even a “small blue” one, and close enough to reach us in 7 years would be visible already.))
5. A large new land mass is to appear off the coast from VA to NC with six times the land mass of about seven states. It will rise during a ten year period. ((We have no evidence for that kind of speed in major geological shifts.))
6. A golden age without war or most illness is to begin in 2002, but in the meantime, huge earth changes are predicted and the volcanic ashes and air turbulence is predicted to decrease domestic air flights by 90% by 1999. Just military and special flights will be possible. It will also be colder during this interim period but early in the next century Virginia will feel more like Jacksonville, FL. ((I have written repeatedly in the past about the reversal of the barycenter and the Sun which is associated with more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions than usual, but I think that Scallion’s predictions are an enormous exaggeration of a small reality.))
That is enough to give you some idea of Scallion’s visions. Needless to say, I think the odds against all of them are astronomical. But I also think the millennial scenarios of some of the fundamentalists are equally bizarre. The September 15, 1995 issue of The Washington Spectator was mostly devoted to a report on the increasing religious fanaticism in the world and especially in the U.S. The author, James Haught, has been a newspaper reporter in West Virginia for years and has written two books on religious extremism. I’m sure he knows nothing about astrology, but his prediction that the 1990s would see increased religious fanaticism fits the recent movement of Pluto into Sagittarius. He describes the goals of the so-called-Christian right (a major force in the Republican Party) as: ending a woman’s right to choose abortion, increasing death by execution, imposing religion in public schools, ostracizing homosexuals, curbing sex education, censoring movies and magazines, cutting welfare for the poor, reducing the number of day-care centers, providing tax-money for church schools, ending public funding for the arts, allowing citizens to carry pistols, and amending the Constitution to require a balanced budget. He described a Perot reunion in Dallas where a “Christian” booth in the adjoining exhibition hall sold aprons with two special pockets—one for a bible and one for a pistol. Many of the newly elected members of Congress seem tilted toward political extremism. I can’t remember where I saw it, but one writer referred to the extremists as the Hamas wing of the Republican Party. It is hard to believe that sane people can call themselves Christian and advocate making women have babies they can not care for properly, then let the mothers and babies starve on the streets, and if the babies manage to grow up and become criminals to survive, kill them as adults.
One of the newest political stories was covered by Time magazine. I do not have Time, but the story was also reported in The San Diego Union-Tribune on November 27, 1995. Five Democrats and two Independents are said to be planning an independent campaign for one of their members. The seven include NJ Senator Bill Bradley, former CT governor Lowell Weicker, former MA Senator Paul Tsongas, former CO Senator Gary Hart, former CO governor Dick Lamm, former MN Representative Tim Penny, and Maine Governor Angus King. The group started with a conference call on October 22, 1995, which lasted nearly two hours. They then wrote position papers which were sent to all members of the group, and had a second two-hour conference call the week before the article in Time. They agreed that people really wanted a party which was fiscally conservative but socially liberal, pro-environment and favoring campaign reform. None of the group want to join Perot’s new party (see the article on that in the fall 1995 Asteroid-World. IF one of these seven run—Bradley seems most likely—it will certainly spell the end for Clinton and might be the split which gives the election to Bob Dole. As I wrote months ago, I am afraid that Dole is the likely winner in 1996.
From the folly of politics and religion we will end with the folly of the medical establishment. The November 13, 1995 issue of U.S. News and World Report offers an article on food and diabetes. In a previous Mutable Dilemma, I reported the research by Dr. Atkins who put dozens of Type II (adult-onset) diabetics on his high protein, moderate fat, low carbohydrate diet. 85% were able to stop taking insulin and the rest were able to reduce their doses. Also, their “bad” cholesterol and triglycerides went down. Most “experts” are brain-washed to think that fat and protein are the enemies, but they do not differentiate between the essential fatty acids found in fish, avocados, olive oil, flaxseed, oil etc., and the harmful trans-fatty acids which include margarine and commercial fats which are solid at room temperature. Some fat in the diet is essential for the body to produce vitamin A, so if the fat phobia of the establishment is accepted as true, we may have widespread Vitamin A deficiency. It is known that though insulin can be a life saver for diabetics, it also can be harmful in time. The orthodox medical establishment has finally discovered that the body reacts to many carbohydrates just as it does to sugar. Did the American Diabetes Association change their advice to diabetics to eat mainly carbohydrates? No, they just said as long as there was no real difference between the carbs and sugar, the diabetics might as well enjoy sugar like everyone else! Just don't eat “too much.” What is left for the diabetics to eat if protein and fat are bad for them and carbohydrates and sugar cause their diabetes? That leaves water for them.
The same issue of U.S. News reports that between 1985 and 1993 in the U.S. the average consumption of milk dropped from 27.6 gallons to 24.8 gallons while the average consumption of soft drinks rose from 35.1 gallons to 46.6 gallons. Soft drinks are largely sugar or sugar substitutes which have been implicated in neurological damage. Alternative health practitioners (which does include some enlightened MDs) expect an explosion of diabetes and other chronic health problems including increasing obesity in the near future as people follow their advice to mostly eat grains. Cattle are fattened by eating grains while confined in pens. Humans can do the same by eating popcorn in front of the TV.