A Squatcher’s Mantra

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I have been asked by the Right Reverend Jeffrey Kelley, and several other members of the Squatcher’s Lounge, to devise a mantra for those searching for the elusive beast, that a repetition of which would help to calm them in their frequent mental typhoons over all things Squatchy.

A small subcommittee of the Lounge has insisted that I be their guru, presumably due to my long, white hair and beard. It must be the hair and beard since there is no other rational reason that I am aware of.

What, exactly, does the word mantra mean? Mantra is a Sanskrit word, dating back to well before 1000 BCE. It is derived from the Sanskrit word manas, which means to think, and also means mind as such. The English word man is derived from the same root. The second syllable, tra, means tool. Mantra therefore means tool to think by. In practice, a mantra is used to focus the mind and enable it to focus on the object of the mantra. More broadly, as the great Tantric scholar Sir John Woodroffe wrote, “Mantra in its most basal sense is the World viewed as—and in its aspect of—sound.” Explaining that statement would be an essay in itself, and not really amenable to a quasification by me.

The mantra most familiar to many of us is the Sanskrit word om. If you have been to any typical yoga class, and the class ended by sitting in the lotus posture for a few minutes, trying to calm down after sticking your feet behind your head, or done the downward facing dog, while the teacher walks behind you, obviously looking at everybody’s butt, you probably ended the meditation by chanting om.

Although a mantra is usually in Sanskrit, typically a few words that are chanted repeatedly, the basic idea is the same as repeating “Hail Mary’s”, or “Our Father’s”, is to Catholics. It quiets your mind so that you may become receptive to higher forces.

Applying the concept of mantra to finding Bigfoot seems more than a bit woo to me, but here goes.

I constructed a seven word mantra that, once you learn it, can easily be expanded to encompass more verses. I made it seven words long because, as everyone knows, seven is a lucky number. The first three words mean “come by here”, and are from the African American creole language of the South Carolina coastal islands. The meaning of the next two will be obvious, as will be the way it is chanted.

The mantra should be repeated loudly, for as long as you are out hunting our forest friends. A silent mental repetition should be used if the presence of bears or cougars is suspected. Wolves would suspect you of being a lost pack member and call back in response, so you’d be safe from them.

I shall now reveal to you the mantra. Listen with devotion and an open heart. Feel free to join in, once you have it memorized.

Kum ba ya, my Squatch, kum ba ya.

Kum ba ya, my Squatch, kum ba ya.

Kum ba ya, my Squatch, kum ba ya.

Oh Squatch, kum ba ya.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

 

 

The Wild Hunt

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Back in 1987, or maybe 1988, between Christmas and New Year’s day, my wife and I were driving back from her sister’s house in DeKalb, Illinois. It was around midnight and near blizzard conditions. No snow had been predicted, but hell, it’s the Midwest near Chicago, and around here we say, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”

The roads were nearly empty except for us, and a few other fools, and it was all farmland with few houses. The housing development boom hadn’t gotten west of the Fox river yet, and being Illinois, the terrain was mainly flat, so the wind could pick up some speed. We were heading east with the wind behind us, gusting from a few miles an hour to a sudden thirty or forty miles an hour and then to nothing, just as fast.

As we neared a road we had to go north on, the wind picked up and the snow went blasting heavily past the car. I asked the wife,”Anything feel weird to you?” She said it felt really eerie out, as though something was riding in the wind. That was exactly what I sensed. As I made the left turn onto the northbound road, a huge gust nearly shoved the car into the ditch. I drove a few hundred feet north and pulled off to the side, wanting to wait a bit to see if things would lighten up a bit, weirdness-wise.

The wind increased to a steady gale. We both saw what looked like human forms, forming and disappearing in the blasting snow overhead.

Sounds like hunter’s horns and dogs baying seemed to issue from the wind. Tingling sensations ran up and down our spines, probably our hairs trying to stand on end.

A few minutes passed. The whole shebang, wind, snow, and all, headed off to the east. I pulled back onto the road and drove us home.

What was all this shenanigans? I think it was the Wild Hunt.

The Wild Hunt is a European folk myth. Versions of it are found from the British Isles through the whole of Europe into the Slavic countries.

Jacob Grimm thought the myth was a remnant of pre-Christian Europe. The hunt, led by a god and a goddess, either visited “the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people” or they float “unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on war, hunting or the game of ninepins, the chief employments of ancient heroes…”

The leader of the hunt varies from country to country. In Wales it is Gwynn ap Nudd, king of the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair Folk, the Fairies. In the Germanic and Nordic countries it is Odin, under his various names. The point of the hunt is usually variations on a theme. That theme is death. They have come to hunt the souls of the dead and bring them to judgement.

What were they doing there that night back in the late 80’s? Were they hunting my wife and me, or someone else? My wife and I survived, obviously, and there were no new wars, calamities, or even news of anybody dying in the storm.

I think the answer is quite simple. It was late night, the Holiday season, and these buggers were just out for a joyride.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

 

From “The Spiritual Life” by Annie Besant

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To injure another is to injure yourself, for each is part of a single whole. The body as a whole is poisoned, if poison be introduced into any part of it, and all living things are harmed by harm w…

Source: From “The Spiritual Life” by Annie Besant

A Brief Review of the Latest Issue of Fate Magazine: # 726

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I have before me issue number 726, of Fate magazine. For those of you who have never seen, or heard, of Fate magazine, it is, as the subtitle on the front cover clearly states: True Reports of the Strange and Unknown.

I first learned of Fate: True Reports of the Strange and Unknown, when I was quite young. My mother regularly bought each monthly issue. It was founded in 1948, by Raymond A. Palmer (editor of Amazing Stories) and Curtis Fuller, a professional editor. I could go into further details, but I’d just be quoting Wikipedia.

It was actually a pretty decent read, until 1988, when it got into the hands of Llewellyn Publications. It went full bore New Age. I’ve nothing against New Agers, as such, but they frequently lose all grasp of anything properly sciencey, and accept wild claims at face value. It now belongs to Galde Press, Inc., which is as New Agey as they come.

The cover has a painting of what appears to be a near albino Bigfoot, presumably inspired by the lead article, the which article is entitled “Sasquatch”, by one Kewaunee Lapseritis, subtitled “Up close, personal communication with the Wise Ones”. Anyone familiar with Mr. Lapsertis will know that the article has no proof of anything, other than his say so. When you get to the actual article, the subtitle has changed. It now reads “Sasquatch A Terrestrial-Extraterrestrial?”.

I will quote from the second paragraph. That will be a sufficient review in itself. “After 57 years of research in cryptoanthropology, I have discovered the forest giants are really an evolved, nature people who migrated to earth with the help of friendly Star People millions of years ago, long before hairless humans were“seeded” here (their words). That was in September 1979 when both an ET and Sasquatch spoke to me telepathically. It was the shock of my life!”, end quote.

The cover is followed by several pages of advertisements, one for a warehouse bulk sale of old print issues of Fate (how could they possibly have not sold every copy of every issue?), and another for a book, Rulers of the Earth: Secrets of the Sons of God (now, who wouldn’t want to know that?).

Next comes the table of contents page. There are thirteen articles, four regular columns, and four departments who report in. The whole magazine is one-hundred and twenty-four pages long. There are ads scattered throughout. The ads are amazing in themselves. The last six pages are classified ads, about half of which are for over the phone psychic readings. The one for ROBERT “One of the best known

psychics in the country!”, is particularly enticing. That’s all it says, along with contact information, website and such. ROBERT “One of the best known psychics in the country!”

I’m giving up on anything like a real review at this point. Here’s just a few of the articles:

“Vanga: Famous blind prophet and clairvoyant of Bulgaria”

“The Rise of the Planet of the Bigfoot: What are we doing to aggravate Bigfoot?” by Brad Steiger, of all people.

“Time-Slowing Tabbies: Is this the answer to immortality?”

“Fate Missing Persons Bureau: Can you help find this missing woman?” It asks for any psychic help available.

The column by the editor, “From Your Editor”, highlights an experience she had when, years earlier, she had laid out several Atlantean Crystal Wands she had just made, on her dining room table, waiting for the leather wrapping to dry. I quote her, “Later, clairvoyantly, I saw a large, brown-haired Bigfoot walking around the table inspecting them. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and was intently looking at them.” End quote.

Since that is precisely how Kewaunee Lapseritis gets all his knowledge of the Wise Ones, we have come full circle in this review.

I must now go and order an Atlantean Crystal Wand, some smudge sticks, and evil psychic influence removing, specially ritually blessed and scented, Wiccan guaranteed cruelty free, vegan soap, to purge this review from my soul.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

The UCU Bigfoot eats people in SA – SLP4-36

 

Goblins: Their Habits and Haunts

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From Wikipedia, the source we can all quote from and not get sued:

A goblin is a monstrous creature from European folklore, first attested in stories from the Middle Ages. They are ascribed various and conflicting abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. They are almost always small and grotesque, mischievous or outright evil, and greedy, especially for gold and jewelry. They often have magical abilities similar to a fairy or demon. Similar creatures include brownies, dwarves, gnomes, imps, and kobolds.

Whoever wrote this obviously has no real experience with goblins. For that, we must go to primary sources. These sources do not include J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien used the term “goblin” in The Hobbit. He later wished that he had used the word “orc”, which is not the same creature as a goblin.

No, we need to go to someone who has accurately described goblin behavior and appearances. That would be James Whitcomb Riley. He’s been dead long enough that I may quote him liberally, like unto Wikipedia, with no ensuing legal consequences.

So here goes:

Little Orphant Annie

Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,

An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,

An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,

An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an-keep;

An’ all us other childern, when the supper-things is done,

We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun,

A-listenin’ to the witch-tales ‘at Annie tells about,

An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you

Ef you

Don’t

Watch

Out!

Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers, –

An’ when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,

His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl,

An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wuzn’t there at all!

An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,

An seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’-wheres, I guess;

But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an’ roundabout: –

An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you

Ef you

Don’t

Watch

Out!

An’ one time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin,

An’ make fun of ever’ one, an’ all her blood-an’-kin;

An’ wunst, when they was “company,” an’ ole folks wuz there,

She mocked ’em an’ shocked ’em, an’ said she didn’t care!

An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,

They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,

An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘for she knowed what she’s about!

An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you

Ef you

Don’t

Watch

Out!

An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,

An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!

An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,

An’ the lightnin’bugs in dew is all squenched away, –

You better mind yer parunts, an’ yer teachurs fond an’ dear,

An’ cherish them ‘at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,

An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ‘at clusters all about,

Er the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you

Ef you

Don’t

Watch

Out!

From my own experience, you can catch one in a properly baited snare, utilizing locally caught, free range, naughty children. They have a nice pelt and they taste like chicken. The goblins, that is. Don’t eat the children. You can sell their left over bits to the wicked witch down the street, thereby destroying the evidence.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

Scientific Evidence That Bigfoot is not a Gigantopithecus

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Grover Kranz was the first to propose that Sasquatches are descendants of some species of Gigantopithecus.

There are three known species of Gigantopithecus: blacki, bilaspurensis, and giganteus. Bilaspurensis fossils have been found in India. Giganteus fossils are from north India and western China. Blacki is the youngest of the species and fossils are from eastern China. Gigantopithecus blacki is therefore the culprit most likely to have been able to cross over the Bering Straits land bridge, since its youngest fossils are from about 100,000 years ago, and lowered sea levels from glaciation would have exposed the land bridge. Lots of different animal species did likewise, and migrated between the North American continent, and Asia, in both directions. Camelids, such as camels and llamas, evolved in North America, and scooted to Asia via that land bridge, for example.

Gigantopithecus blacki’s diet is known to have been fibrous plants, consisting of leaves and various grasses, especially bamboo. Bamboo seems to have been its favorite food, based on analyses of plant debris ground into the teeth that have been found.

An interesting sidenote: Gigantopithecus teeth were first identified by an anthropologist. They were found in 1935 by Ralph von Koenigswald in an apothecary shop in China. They were being sold as dragon teeth.

Now, relative to the scientific evidence that Bigfoot is not a kind of Gigantopithecus. The evidence comes from an experiment I have been conducting for quite some time.

Regular viewers of the Squatcher’s Lounge podcast will recall that I came to the aid of the Reverend Jeff and Mr. Batdorf, pseudoscientist, back in August, when Mr. Batdorf suddenly had the urge to wed his longtime female companion, and therefore was unable to uphold his end of that week’s podcast. We all hope, and presume, that, contrary to rumors, shotguns were not involved in inducing the marriage proposal.

But I digress.

In that podcast, I demonstrated that, contrary to rational thinking, there are indeed occasional Bigfoot sightings in the general Chicago area, some even within a mile or two of my house. Parenthetically, the name Chicago translates to smelly, or skunk, onions in the language of the Miami-Illini peoples who lived here, so maybe what we have here are skunk apes.

But again, I digress.

Based on the fondness of Gigantopithecines for bamboo, and the occasional nearness of Bigfoot to my house, I planted hardy bamboo around my house. I now have the largest patch of bamboo that I have knowledge of for several miles around. It has been here for almost 10 years now.

After ten years, I have found no evidence of any Bigfoot feeding on that bamboo. Nary a footprint, odd looking hairs, nary a gifting, nor portal, nor portal demons, have left any trace, physical, psychic, or otherwise.

I can confidently therefore announce that Bigfoot is not any kind of Gigantopithecus.

I have caught a couple three pandas, though. They have a nice pelt and taste like chicken.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?

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Night before last, when I was trying to come up with a topic for a quasi-theory for last night’s show, I whined in a message to the Reverend Jeff that I was drawing a blank on said topic. He suggested doing one on time travel. I replied that I didn’t believe in time. This, despite the evidence of my hair turning white. He then gave me time to come up with a topic by moving the show to Thursday night, although it was not moved simply to accommodate me.

Why do I not believe in time? It’s because whenever I look, it is always now. I think we think time is real only because we look at time through the wrong end of the telescope of consciousness, so to speak, so to speak metaphysically.

Physics says the universe has four sensible: dimensions, up and down, sideways, front and behind, and time. The number of necessary dimensions to account for everything below the atomic level are open to some debate, but 10 or 11 are broadly agreed on. But the now doesn’t really show up as one of them, as far as I can tell, but it is there as an assumption.

The old metaphysics of the ancient world took the now as the eternal basis for everything else. I will briefly discuss the Hindu version of this, one, because I consider myself a Hindu, philosophically, and two, because they are still alive and can explain it. I will leave the Sanskrit terms out of it.

What do I mean by the eternal now? It is that in which the past, present, and future appear to occur. It is that in which all individual discrete things exist. It is consciousness itself, before the objective universe pops up. It is the ocean of all consciousness, unconditioned pure beingness. There is no time as such. Time is a limitation that consciousness imposes on itself, so that limited creation can appear.

There are five of these self-imposed limitations. They are time, space, limited power, limited knowing, and desire, desire for limited, objectified experience. These five limitations make an infinite number of limited beings within the ocean of all consciousness, beings which include all the gods and goddesses, all the universes, galaxies, planets, us, all the what all there is, has been and will be, anything which is perceived as an individual object, is the result of those five limitations.

The five limitations make us look through the wrong end of the telescope of our consciousness. They are the telescope of our consciousness. Reverse the telescope and you begin to see the now. The now is very quasi.

Woo Squatches know all of this, of course, which is why we must habituate them and learn to use those portals and mind speak with them. The ancient aliens taught them everything.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

 For the reading impaired, an audio version of this quasi theory may be found here:

It’s Gone Viral!

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Viruses are everywhere. There are 1033 of the teensy buggers on the planet. Just the weight of those in the ocean equals 75 million blue whales. They’re in your gut track, in dirt, in food; they’re even on the fringes of space, way high up in the atmosphere. Most viruses are not pathogens. We don’t even know what the hell most viruses do, other than that they exist.

Chunks of viral DNA make up a good part of the chordate genome. All of us creatures with anything like a backbone are chordates. This viral DNA in us is pretty much from viruses called retroviruses. They get in a cell and high jack the DNA, sticking their little genome into the DNA of the host cell, to make the host cell crank out more of the virus when the cell does it’s usual business.

Now retroviruses are messy little buggers when it comes to reproducing themselves. When a new little retrovirus pops out, it frequently has a bit of the host’s DNA as part of it’s genome, which then gets jammed into the DNA of a new host. The interesting part of the show happens when the retrovirus attacks an egg or a sperm cell, and the egg or sperm cell gets lucky, and I do mean in the naughty nudge nudge wink wink say no more kind of lucky.

The newly formed chordate progeny now has some of whatever that virus has been in before stuck into it, which can be made more interesting if that virus has gone and jumped species, like from pigs to birds to humans to… well you get my drift. Genetic drift.

Important things are known to have come from such retroviral shenanigans. Things like how placentas form during pregnancy in different mammals, where similar things occur but were caused by chunks of DNA inserted by different retroviruses in different species of mammals. Geneticists and microbiologists are just really beginning to look into this.

Here’s where I go all quasi on the subject.

I’ve been thinking that viruses are small enough to be quantum entangled. That is, you can produce a state in a group of them such that, if you tickle one of them, the others will start giggling, too. What you do to one of them happens to the other ones, as well.

I therefore googled it and found out that I’m not the only one who thinks so. There are scientists actually doing research, real experiments on the hypothesis, and there’s evidence that it really happens.

Now, if viruses are a major force driving evolution, and they apparently are, and they can be quantum entangled, which they apparently can, and quantum entanglement works through a higher order reality, or dimension, which is what theoretical physics currently thinks, is there a higher order intelligence, or intelligences, doing some of that quantum linking? When I look at evolutionary history, I see life going from exceedingly simple organisms, to more complex ones, to a highly complex, highly interdependent system, which is the opposite of what the theory of entropy says should happen.

And by higher order intelligences I do not mean ancient aliens.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

 

Divining Divination

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This quasi was originally going to be on applied phrenology, an invention of mine, that used the old method of determining personality traits by feeling the bumps and dips on the outside of the cranium. After feeling up a client’s noggin, the phrenologist would then consult a chart of a generalized skull with the areas of various personality traits drawn on the skull, to do a character analysis of the client. A bump here meant one thing, a divot there another. This lump says you have criminal tendencies, that flat spot says you love children, maybe a little too much. Applied phrenology would use a mallet, ball peen hammer, and maybe a flat iron, to correct evil tendencies, and enhance good qualities, by enlarging, or flattening the appropriate place on the skull.

I decided not to do a quasi on that. Please feel free to use my invention however you see fit.

No, when I started looking up phrenology, I got other references to other forms of divination and got distracted. I blame Google.

Just on Wikipedia I found a list with over a hundred kinds, and that was just under the ones starting with A, B, and C.

Let’s list a few, in no particular order.

We all know about haruspication. I mean who hasn’t tried to figure out what’s going to happen next by examining the guts of some animal you have sacrificed for that purpose, especially sheep and poultry. I did that both in high school and college, looking for how to pass the biology class. The liver was the favorite organ for many and that aspect of haruspication is called hepatoscopy, which means “looking at a liver.”

Batrachomancy is divination by watching frogs. Armomancy is divination having one’s shoulders examined. Labiomancy uses the lips, the lips on the mouth. Get your minds out of the gutter.

Then there’s the always popular necromancy. How about abacomancy, reading dust? Gematria is one of my favorites. The modern form is numerology. Gematria assigns a numeric value to each letter of a given alphabet. You then add, subtract, divide, multiply, hell, maybe take the square root of, the numbers you come up with when you translate the letters of your name, or whatever, into the numeric equivalent.

I’m just going to list some more with no explanation. Getomancy, cattabomancy, bletonomancy, drimimancy, micromancy, molybdomancy, skatharomancy. This is driving my spell corrector nuts.

I’ll end with a completely idiotic one, a modern one, only possible since the invention of digital playlists: Shufflemancy. Yes, there are those among us who believe you can predict the future based on putting your favorite playlist on shuffle and examining what the shuffle comes up with.

I am sure that a good haruspication would be more accurate, if you’ve got the guts to do it.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast: