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Has the Dragon Bolted? - Earth mysteries is an enigmatic area of research. Little evidence has been found to prove effects from sacred sites. Could this be because the nature of the planet has changed since earlier times? And if so, could the present changes in the planet offer Earth mysteries a new role in environmentalism?

 

 Incredible Creatures - The Loch Ness Monster and Abominable Snowman are among the most famous of mysteries, but what really lies behind supposed sightings? Are they physical creatures, mere delusions, or could it be that they are distinct memories of the past?

 

has the dragon bolted?

 

 I’ve always had a problem with Earth Mysteries. I’ve felt the pull of the countryside, and of particular sites within it, and am sure this plays a part in what we call spirituality (a concept I would rather see as bonding). But the actual concept of leys and earth energies coursing through the land is problematic.
   My major objection is this: if earth energies exist, we can argue they would be consistent throughout the planet. Yet whilst in the west they are said to go in straight lines, in many parts of the east they abhor straight lines and meander.
   This inconsistency is damning. Rather than having real Earth energies, we can better see such ‘energy paths’ as social and cultural constructs designed to offer human understanding and guidance of ideas of higher consciousness and its effects.
   This remains my position on Earth energies. But research into Lost Civilisations has posed another possibility of interest. Should a previous civilization have been ‘lost’, then the most likely candidate would be an early sea-faring society, which disappeared as the sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, swamping coastal communities.
   Imagine the mind-set of any surviving priests to those events of 10,000 years ago. To them, their sea gods would have destroyed them. As mythologies develop, it would become clear that floods were punishment by the gods for man’s improper ways. Being superstitious, they would be searching for signs and enlightenment of how they were now to live. But from where would those signs come?
   We see the main effects of the end of the last ice age in terms of rising sea levels. But in geophysical terms, much more was occurring. Glaciers were retreating, easing stresses on the land. Permafrost was also disappearing from vast areas of land. Under the land the water table was rising. And whilst these geophysical effects would not necessarily cause massive earthquakes, they would have caused geophysical disturbances great enough to disturb existing cracks and release massive pulses of electromagnetism along these cracks.
   The researcher of Earth mysteries should now realize where I’m going. We know that electromagnetic bombardment of the brain can cause hallucinatory effects. Hence, we can see our early priests finding these sites of particular importance for receiving messages from their gods – in effect, hallucinations would be more likely to happen at such sites. They were even, perhaps, drawn to them by signs in the sky in the form of Earth Lights, also known to occur near geophysical disturbances. And it is not hard to imagine them picking these sights for their new temples to appease their new gods.
   Of course, that was 10,000 years ago. The land would have taken centuries to calm down, and even today certain effects would occasionally be monitored. Such effects seem to have been found, but only slight. So perhaps the haphazard nature of monitored effects at some sacred sites can now be understood. There is no pattern, for the time when the pattern was evident has gone.
   Such a theory gives leys no more importance than that originally envisaged by Alfred Watkins – simple lines that people followed. But in a surprising way, it could give vital importance to Earth mysteries research if ever accepted as a possibility. For through global warming, we could be approaching a time when sea levels and water tables begin to rise once more. What better predictor of such a time could there be than the growing increase in effects at these sacred sites – an increase that must inevitably occur if the above hypothesis is correct.
 
© Anthony North, January 1999
 

incredible creatures

 
  There are many incredible creatures said to stalk the Earth, but none have raised so much controversy than the Loch Ness Monster and Abominable Snowman. Do they exist, or are they figments of the imagination?
   The Loch Ness Monster - or Nessie, as he is lovingly known - is said by many to have appeared in 1933. This mistaken assumption is due to the fact that in this year a new road opened running along the northern shore of Loch Ness, affording the first clear view of the lock. However, 'water horses' have existed in mythology for millenia, usually finding small children most tasty. The missionary, St Columba, even commanded the monster to go when it threatened local residents.
   Rupert Gould brought Nessie to popular attention in his book of 1934. Generally described as greyish in colour with a long neck, humps, a snake-like head and with a mane or small horns, the beast has been seen on thousands of occasions and even been photographed, the most notable photo taken in May 1977 by Anthony Shiels. However, many such photos could be faked, such as the infamous 'Surgeon's Picture' taken in 1934. Showing a large, long-necked monster on the surface of the loch, it is now generally accepted as a model fixed atop a toy submarine, organised by a known hoaxer.
   Many expeditions have surveyed the loch, the most comprehensive being Operation Deepscan in 1987, involving boats making total sonar sweeps, but without significant  success. Often, sightings turn out to be otters or driftwood, or even a boat's wake. Researcher Steuart Campbell has also suggested that Nessie is a figment of the imagination, pointing out that many classic anecdotes can be traced back to unsubstantiated letters. There is certainly an impulse for making more of such 'tales' than there is - namely, tourism.
   On the other hand, believers point out that Loch Ness is 24 miles long, one mile wide and in places a thousand feet deep. Such a vast area could easily hide a monster, or even a group of monsters - the favourite is the plesiosaur, a prehistoric sea creature that some people believe may have survived. But when thinking of Nessie, it must be remembered that he is not alone. As well as lake monsters in other Scottish lochs, they are found in North America, Japan, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Russia, Africa and Iceland. Are they all merely stories?
 
   The Abominable Snowman is equally illusive. He came to western notice in 1832, when B H Hodgson - British Resident at the Court of Nepal - talked of natives being frightened by a 'wild man' covered in long dark hair. Later, in 1889, while exploring the Himalayas, a Major Waddell came across huge footprints in the snow at an altitude of 17,000 feet. Numerous similar incidents occurred, and then, in 1951, the Everest explorer Eric Shipton returned from the Menlung Glacier clutching a photograph of a footprint 18 inches long and 13 inches wide.
   This is all part of the known history of the Abominable Snowman, or Yeti. Many stories have been built up about the creature. It is hard, now, to work out whether we are dealing with fact or myth in such tales. For instance, we have the story of Zana, a wild woman who was taken in by a Himalayan tribe and had several children by various tribesmen. Unfortunately, Zana died about 1890 and no proof can be forwarded that she was a Yeti.
   As with Nessie, the Yeti has many cousins, including the Sasquatch - or Bigfoot - of the Americas, and the Russian Alma. In 1967 Bigfoot is said to have appeared on a movie film taken at Bluff Cove by ex-rodeo cowboy Roger Patterson. This is just one of hundreds of sightings; if, of course, it wasn't a clever hoax. So again we have creatures covering many cultures, and while Nessie frequents most remote lakes worldwide, the Yeti frequents snowy, rocky uninhabited regions throughout the world.
   Sherpa Tensing - of Everest fame - described the Yeti as some 5 feet tall, bipedial with a conical head and covered in reddish brown hair. From this and other sightings we get a picture of a creature with teeth like a man's but larger; with no under layer of hair, skin can sometimes be seen, and they often grasp things but without using the thumb. They climb trees, swim and run as fast as a horse. They shelter in holes, travel in breeding pairs, throw stones, eat small animals and vegetable roots and have a distasteful smell.
   With many human characteristics, Dr Myra Shackley has suggested that he is the last vestige of Neanderthal Man. Others have suggested he is the missing link, while still others have put sightings down to the Tibetan Blue Bear. But perhaps the best way to sort out the mystery of Nessie and the Yeti is to take them together. What allies them? Both creatures are illusive and exist worldwide in uninhabited regions. Do these facts give a hint to what is going on?
 
   The researcher F W Holiday was amazed by the illusiveness of Nessie. Witnessing it himself, he came to the conclusion that it was part of a 'psychic menagerie', existing only in our imagination. But why should an imaginative creature proliferate so widely, in so many cultures, yet stay remarkably similar? Perhaps because they are memories of the past.
   If we consider evolution, we know that life began in a 'primeval soup'. From here, micro-organisms evolved to higher forms. However, there are two periods of evolution that would appear traumatic in human terms. The first is when creatures first broke the surface of the sea and saw the immense sky. The anxiety would be phenomenal. And such a creature would have been remarkably similar to the Loch Ness Monster.
   The second period would have been when our immediate ancestors came out of the trees and walked the land, frail compared to the dangerous animals that roamed. Such an ancestor would have been smaller than us, hairy, would have roamed in breeding pairs and would have been almost an erect walker. He is remarkably similar to the Yeti.
   The psychoanalyst Carl Jung was convinced of the existence, at a deeper level of the unconscious, of a 'collective unconscious'. He came to this conclusion when noticing racial archetypes in dreams, myth and folklore. Today, we can add to the debate the possibility of genetic memory. If such concepts exist, then memories would also exist reaching deep into our prehistoric past. And those memories that remain the longest would be the traumatic ones.
Here I believe we have a possible answer to Nessie and the Yeti. Perhaps they are not creatures in a physical sense, but neither are they simply imagination. Perhaps, when we are alone in remote areas, where the hustle and bustle of modern life recedes, we access deep, evolutionary memories from the past, and play them out in hallucinatory form before us. We see, in a word, ghosts - Super Ghosts of the traumatic memories we would rather forget.
 
© Anthony North, June 2004