Alizzed re-threads the tred of the thread

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There was the thread, the thread you see, and she followed it. Curdie, no that was a boy, Curdie and the thread, the good boy, he got her through. Or there was a fall of rock and it was buried, she had to scrabble with her hands and they never got them out those people trapped underneath when the earthquake collapsed the buildings. I can remember the man with his bare hands, they were bare, raw, that's it, skinned - but it must have been a pic-ture of course. But the thread was there, sometimes - he was losing it, losing his thought. Yes, that was the way the thread went, it came and went, elu- sive as thought - now it flashed into focus, now he had it, him sitting reading to his little girl - but he can't have had that book as a child, he hadn't had that sort of childhood. Thinking about the thread, the idea, myth of the thread was a good way to get you applying yourself, persisting, and he had, hadn't he, he'd gone on searching with his dog in the rubble long after the others had given up. So that thinking, which he'd thought he'd come to as a solid thing like chipping away shale and muck to get at a bit of core, a thing like a lump of coal, usable, source of energy, so that it didn't matter what you thought, it was a rope ladder to get you across somewhere, get you through the mess, something you pretended, no, not pretended - made up? - to be doing to give a reason for going on. Made up. Ah perhaps something you made, engineered, he'd like it when they called him Monsieur l'lngenieur, ingenious. Not for a reason - you don't need a reason for going on, you need a road, a way, ah yes a means. A way of going. That was tautology. You could just say 'a way'.
'Tell Alice' (you think I don't know she's dead, he heard his crafty thought within his head and in the same flash behaved as if he didn't), 'keep her fingers on the golden thread.' If it's all a fancy, if there isn't something that's true, then there isn't untrue and you were back where you were. He was getting there, getting down that path and this time he would get there, he could still breathe he could still tell them even though they couldn't move the rock off him.
If there isn't anything that's true, the opposite of true was false. But it couldn't be false because you can't have an opposite to some- thing that doesn't exist. Though what about negative numbers?
 
 

Page 7

"...There were formerly two other letters, representing numbers 90 and 900, but they became obsolete in literature, retained only as numer-cal symbols. Another letter, the digamma of value 6, also fell out of use and was replaced..."
"Thus the value in Gematria of..." "...a cross is either

The number of the beast in Revelation 13..." "...= 666..."
Jesus, has the number 888. By the conventions of gematria one unit, known as a colel, may be added to or subtracted from the value of any word without affecting its symbolic meaning. Thus'..." "778, Church of God, is equivalent by gematria to..." "..777. "
 
"These triple numbers, such as 111, 666, etc., all mutiples of 37, are of particular significance in gematria, and in the dimensions of temples. The plan of Noah's Ark in Genesis 6.15 measures 300 x 50 cubits which, if the royal cubit of 1.72 feet is the appropriate unit is equal to 4440 square feet. 444 is the number of..." "...flesh and blood (1 Cor. 15.50). 37 x 64 = 2368 which is the number of the Christian holy name'..." "...Jesus Christ, occurring

Page 8

several times in New Testament gematria including fo example, the passage ( John 15.1) where Jesus announces his divinity

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman,'
The interpretation by gematria of this sentence is

The true vine,..."                      "...= 558
(my father the husbandman,..." "...= 1810

"...= 2368

 

The Temple

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"In the course of the following chapters we shall examine a certain way of thought which in some ages is considered as the justification for human existence, in others as an aspect of madness, for ideas, being emanations of the gods, follow a cyclical career and their influence waxes and wanes accordingly. The attraction of this philosophy is that it professes to interpret a wide and varied range of phenomena by means of a few simple laws, which are those of natural growth and movement. Its masters are both mystics and logicians, insisting that nothing be accepted as true that can not be proved so in two ways: by reason and poetic intuition. These two criteria are brought to-gether through the medium of geometry and musical harmony, arts which are founded on rational principles yet may also be appreciated directly by the senses." The last occasion on which this way of thought achieved any great influence was at the start of the Piscean age which coincided with the rise of Christianity; the history of the last 2000 years records its suppression and gradual decline."

/ Page 24 /

Yet 2000 years ago it was believed that the secret of the elemental science, by which the forces in nature may be recognised and controlledcontrolledcontrolled,was at last returning. The decaying fabric of the old world, finally destroyed by the legions, had been replaced by a new order, formed after the military and commercial image of Rome. It was naturally understood by the scholars and initiates of Alexandria that this unbalanced situation would inevitably bring forth opposition to the imperial power, which they identified with the principle bearing the number 666. This opposition would take the form of a prophetic revival at the instigation of the earth spirit,.." "...whose number, 1080, represents the antithesis of 666. At the same time the sun was entering Pisces, and it was reckoned that the appearance of a new sun god in conjunction with the upsurge of the terrestrial spirit would introduce a fresh epoch in sacred history. The portents associated with the end of an era had long been apparent. The uncertain state of the world had created a renewed nterest in the hermetic philosophy and the mysteries of initiation. People had taken to withdrawing from the cities and founding lonely communities in search of a new approach to life, and among the many prophets and teachers of the time were several of whom it was claimed that they were the Messiahs of the age
The great event took place probably at Alexandria in the shape of

/ Page 25 /

a birth long awaited by the astrologers. The reborn spirit was that of an ancient system of knowledge which, even in the time of Plato some 500 years earlier, had already been generally forgotten outside the hermetic schools of Egypt. The essence of this tradition, which consists ultimately of a mathematical demonstration of cosmic law, is so elusive, that it can only be grasped at certain times, when the influences of the age are favourable to vision and prophecy. Yet even though it may vanish for generations and appear to have be-come lost for ever, the tradition is always revived, for its spores are deeply embedded in human nature, and the truth to which it refers is constant and unique.
Although it is known as the hermetic or secret tradition, its ma-terial content has never been hidden from anyone who felt inclinedto study it. There are no esoteric schemes of geometry, no secret laws of mathematics, lost chords or musical harmonies which may not be discovered by searching. A profound scholarship in the various indi-vidual arts and sciences is open to whoever cares to achieve it without the necessity for any mystical initiation. The sum of all that has ever been discovered about the physical nature of the universe may be aquired through application and the use of reason. 
However, there comes a stage in the work of every mature scientist and philosopher when the language of ordinary communication is no longer adequate to express certain aspects of his subject, of which he has become intuitively, but nonetheless certainly, aware. The disadvantage of the analytical approach is that it artificially isolates phenomena which are, like all else in nature, relative, having no individual significance other than in terms of the system to which they belong. The study of systems and of the laws which determine the relationships within and among the various classes of phenomena was therefore the chief concern of the ancient philosophers, and for this purpose they made use of a metaphysical, numerical language, ser-viceable in every department of science. This language may be dis-cerned in the foundations of all great philosophies and religions of antiquity, including Christianity. Its expression varied according to the national characteristics of its adepts, but its numerical basis was everywhere identical. By means of this language it is possible to identify areas of reality normally beyond investigation, to extend logic into the realm of intuition and to activate parts of the mind otherwise dormant. Einstein experienced the need for it when he warned his students that it was necessary to follow their intuition in order to understand his cosmology; Jung also when he wrote that only a poet could appreciate his work. Both these masters were

/ Page 26 / 

impeded in their attempts to share their revelation with others for lack of a precise metaphysical language to guide the thoughts of their pupils towards a personal realisation of the same truth. The visionary quest for a simple formula to express the one creative process that governs the entire range of cosmic motion is now gener-ally regarded as the chimera of an earlier, more credulous age. Yet, even though it may appear to have no reasonable justification, the vision of a comprehensive world system remains an eternal poetic truth, an infallible stimulus to the imagination and thus a potential influence in human affairs. In former times, when little distinction was made between the physical and the psychological needs of a healthy society, the natural human longing for a true understanding of the cosmic order as the model for a perfectly harmonious way of life was more generally appreciated. The most cherished possession of every race was its sacred canon of cosmology, embodied in the native laws, customs, legends, symbols and architecture as well as in the ritual of everyday life. The inner secrets of this life giving tradi-tion were preserved in the principal temple which both sheltered and displayed the sacred canon; for the temple was itself a canonical work, a model of the national cosmology and thus of the social and psychic structure of the people The functions and attributes of the temple were so numerous, that they may only be summarised in the ancient concept of the temple as a living organism having both body and spirit. The body was that of God the macrosm, for its form and dimensions were determined by reference to the structure of the heavens; but it was also the body of a man, the same set of proportions being found applicable on each scale. The ritual varying with the seasons and cycles, provided the spirit and transformed a symbol which has no life of its own but contains a vast living potential, into an instrument of light and fertility that illuminated the entire nation..
The temple was also the seat of government, and everything that took place there was understood to have a direct influence on the life of the people. It was therefore a matter of the greatest concern that the ritual observances should follow the cosmic rhythm, for if the temple fell out of tune with the times, if the rulers became insensitive to the current forces or failed to preserve harmonious relationships among themselves, the same defects would appear throughout society, A rational explanation of this belief in the wide efficacy of acts per-formed at the sacred centre is provided by Lord Raglan, who in The Temple and the house derives the origins of the feudal mannerhouse, the palace of the local lord, from the ancient cosmic temple: 'All new

/ Page 27 /

features start in the palaces and spread to the cottages; they start in the capitals and spread to the provinces; they start in the centres of civilisation and spread to the wilds..." " This may represent an extreme aristocratic view of the natural order, but it comes of a far deeper understanding of human society, which is inevitably hierarchical, than is revealed in the most ingen-ious utopias of egalitarian world improvers. It was formerly reckoned that since every system must have its sun and every society its king, it were better that the royal prerogative be sanctified, defined and limited by law, than that it be usurped by whatever gang leader might aquire the power to do so. However, the significance of the temple was not merely social and political: its chief function was as the local power station, the generator of a current which obviated the need for any further technological contrivance. The considera-tions behind the plan and position of the temple were astronomical, geometrical and numerical, and they were also geological, for the site of the temple was decided by reference to the field of terrestrial magnetism and located where the fusion between the earth current and the forces of cosmic radiation would naturally occur.
. Of the Temple at Jerusalem, the mystical centre of the Jews, Dr Raphael Patai writes in his book Man and the Temple:. 'Nor was the cosmic significance of the Temple exhausted with the light that emanated from it. In the middle of the Temple and con-stituting the floor of the Holy of Holies, was a huge native rock which was adorned by Jewish legends with the peculiar features of an Omphalos, a Navel of the Earth. This rock called in Hebrew Ebhen Shetiyyah, the Stone of Foundation, was the first solid thing created, and was placed by God amidst the as yet boundless fluid of the pri-meval waters. Legend has it that just as the body of an embryo is built up in its mother's womb from its navel, so God built up the earth concentrically around this Stone, the Navel of the Earth. And just as the body of the embryo recieves its nourishment from this Navel.' The invariable practice in antiquity of locating sacred buildings immediately above underground springs and watercourses, as at the Temple of Jerusalem, constitutes one of the greatest mysteries of the past, for evidently some principal was involved of which we are now totally unaware. It is a fact, however, that the feeling which comes to many sensitive people at ancient ritual sites, that they are standing on ground which is in some way inherantly sacred, accords with the experiences of dowsers or water diviners, who detect underground

/ Page 28 /

springs beneath every old church and the sites of prehistoric stones. Further information on this subject has recently been provided by the dowser Guy Underwood, in his book The pattern of the past, in which he shows that the groundplans of churches and temples are in some way related to the pattern of underground water beneath them. Yet in accordance with the remarkable unity between the symbol, the thing symbolised, and the spirit behind them both, that charac-terises the omphalos or sacred centre, the actual existence of underground water was seen as a token that the spiritual water was seen as a token that the spiritual water the stimulus to prophetic inspiration, would also be present at the spot. And it was this quality that rendered the site of the Temple peculiarly suitable as the centre of the nation, the oracle and seat of government. For at that place the priests and governors would be most susceptible to the spiritual influences, and find a supernatural guidance in their conduct and decisions."
At this point the account of wah Brother Michell, held itself in humble abeyance, whilst, as if out of nowhere, the esteemed words of wah Brothers, Lethbridge and Wilson gave common voice.

Page 16

"NO ONE WHO is interested in the paranormal can afford to ignore Tom Lethbridge, yet when he died in a nursing home in Devon in 1971, his name was hardly known to the general public. Today, many of his admirers believe that he is the single most important name in the history of psychical research his ideas on dowsing, life after death, ghosts, poltergeists, magic, second-site precog-nation, the nature of time, cover a wider field than those of any other psychical researcher. Moreover, they fit together into the most exciting and comprehensive theory of the 'occult' ever advanced.
. These ideas were expressed in a series of small books published in the last 10 years of his life. The odd thing is that Lethbridge took no interest in psychic matters until he retired to Devon in his mid fifties. He was trained as an archaeologist and a historian and spent most of his adult life in Cambridge as the Keeper of Anglo-Saxon Antiquities at the University Museum. Together with his wife Mina he moved into Hole House, an old Tudor mansion on the south coast of Devon. He ment to spend his retirement reading and digging for bits of broken pottery. In fact, the most amazing period of his eventual life was about to begin.
. The person who was most responsible for the change of direction was an old witch who lived next door. This white haired little old lady assure Lethbridge that she could put mild spells on people who annoyed her, and that she was able to leave her body at night and wander around the district - an ability known as 'astral projection' Lethbridge was naturally sceptical - until something convinced him."
At this point, after the words 'astral projection'. Zed Aliz Zed said, here you are scribe, perchance to dream, one of those delightful coincidences that never was, provided by that good wah brother of all our sisters, our man Thomas.

Page 150

"...I could stand it no longer, I shook their dust from off my feet and I bolted."
. "You raised your flag and took to your heels," Frau Stohr stated.
. "Precisely," shouted Settembrini. "I fled with my flag. Ah, what an apt phrase! I see I have come to the right place; nobody else here knows how to coin phrases like that. - May I be permitted to enquire after the state of your health, Frau Stohr?

      It was frightful to see Frau Stohr preen herself.

. "Good land!" she said. " "It is always the same, you know your-self two steps forward and three back. When you have been sit-ting here five months, along comes the old man and tucks on an-other six. It is like the torment of Tantalus : you shove and shove, and think you are getting to the top -"
. "Ah how delightful of you, to give poor old Tantalus a new job, and let him roll the stones uphill for a change! I call that true benevolence. - But what are these mysterious reports I have been hearing of you, Frau Stohr? There are tales going about - tales about doubles, astral bodies, and the like. Up to now I have lent them no credence - but this latest story puzzles me, I confess."
. "I know you are poking fun at me."
. " Not for an instant. I beg you to set my mind at rest about this dark side of your life; after that it will be time to jest. Last night between half past nine and ten, I was taking a little exercise in the garden; I looked up at the row of balconies; there was your light gleaming through the dark; you were performing your cure, led by the dictates of duty and reason. 'Ah,' thought I, ' there lies our charming invalid, obeying the rules of the house, for the sake of an early return to the arms of her waiting husband.' - And now what do I hear? That you were seen at that very hour at the Kur-haus, in the cinematografo" (Herr Settembrini gave the word the Italian pronounciation, with the accent on the fourth syllbable) and afterwards in the cafe, enjoying punch and kisses, and - afterwards in the cafe, enjoying punch and kisses, and -"
. Frau Stohr wriggled and giggled into serviette, nudged Joa-chim and the silent Dr Blumenkohl in the ribs, winked with coy confidingness, and altogether gave a perfect exhibition of fatuous complacency. She was in the habit of leaving the light burning on her balcony and stealing off to seek distraction in the quarter be-low. Her husband, meanwhile, in Cannstadt, awaited her return

/ Page 151 /

She was not the only patient who practised this duplicity.
. And went on Settembrini, "that you were enjoying those kisses in the company of - whom, do you think? In the company of - whom, do you think? In the company of Captain Miklosich from Bucharest. They say he wears a corset - but that is little to the point. I conjur you, madame, to tell me! Have you a double? Was it your earthly part which lay there alone on your balcony, while your spirit revelled below, with Captain Miklosich and his kisses?"
. Frau Stohr wreathed and bridled as though she were being tickled.
"One asks oneself, had it not been better the other way about," Settembrini went on; "you enjoying the kisses by yourself, and the rest-cure with Captain Miklosich - "
"Tehee!" tittered Frau Stohr."

Page 467

Mans subtle body of light, prana or lifetrons, the second of three sheaths that successively encase the soul: the causal body (qv), the astral body, and the physical body. The powers of the as-tral body enliven the physical body, much as electricity illumines a bulb The astral body has nineteen elements: intelligence, ego, feel-ing mind (sense - consciousness); five instruments of knowledge (the sensory powers within the physical organs of sight, hearing, smell , taste, and touch); five instruments of action (the executive powers in the physical instruments of procreation, excretion, speech, locomotion, and the exercise of manual skill); and five in-struments of life force that perform the functions of circulation, metabolization, assimilation, crystallization, and elimination."
At this point in time and, you may think, not before time. That very far yonder scribe asked Alizzed "What is the point of all that." You will just have to wait and C C C see, scribe, said Zed Aliz.

..."Lethbridge's neighbour, a 'witch' or 'wise woman' whose strange powers' convinced Lethbridge that the world of the paranormal was worth investigating..." The witch explained to him one day how she managed to put off unwanted visitors. What she did was to draw a five pointed star - a pentagram - in her head, and then visualise it across the path of the unwanted visitor - for example on the front gate. Shortly afterwards, Tom was lying in bed, idly drawing pentagrams in his head, and imagining them around their beds. In the middle of the night, Mina woke up with a creepy feeling that there was somebody else in the room. At the foot of the bed, she could see a faint glow of light, which slowly faded as she watched it. The next day, the witch came to see them. When she told them that she had 'visited' their bedroom on the pre-vious night, and found the beds surrounded by triangles of fire, Tom's sceptism began to evaporate. Mina politely requested the old witch to stay out of their bedroom at night. Three years later, the old lady died in peculiar circumstances. She was quarrelling with a neighbouring farmer, and told Leth-bridge that she intended to put a spell on the man's cattle. By this time Lethbridge knew enough about the 'occult' to take her serious-ly, and he warned her about the dangers of black magic - how it could rebound on to the witch. But the old lady ignored his advice. One morning, she was found dead in her bed in circumstances that made the police suspect murder. And the cattle of two nearby farms suddenly got foot and mouth disease. However, the farmer she wanted to 'ill wish' remained unaffected. Lethbridge was convinced that the spell had gone wrong and 'bounced back'

Page 17

But the old lady's death resulted - indirectly - in one of his most important insights. Passing the witch's cottage, he experienced a 'nasty feeling', a suffocating sense of dep-ression. With a scientist's curiousity, he walked around the cottage, and noticed an interest-ing thing. He could step into the depression and then out of it again, just as if it was some kind of an invisible wall.
The depression reminded Lethbridge of something that had happened when he was a teenager. He and his mother had gone for a walk in the Great Wood near Wokingham. It was a lovely morning; yet quite suddenly both of them experienced 'a horrible feeling of gloom and depression, which crept upon us like a blanket of fog over the surface of the sea'. They hurried away, agreeing that it was something terrible and inexplicable. Afew days later, the corpse of a suicide was found a few yards from the spot where they had been standing, hidden by some bushes.
About a year after the death of the witch, another strange experience gave Tom the clue he was looking for. On a damp January afternoon, he and Mina drove down to Ladram Bay to collect seaweed for her gar-den. As Lethbridge stepped on to the beach, he once again experienced the feeling of gloom and fear, like a blanket of fog descend-ing upon him. Mina wandered off along the beach while Tom filled the sacks with sea-weed. Suddenly she came hurrying back, saying: 'Let's go. I can't stand this place a minute longer. There's something frightful here.'
The next day, they mentioned what had happened to Mina's brother he said he also had experienced the same kind of thing in a field near Avebury, in Wiltshire. The word 'field' made something connect in Tom's brain- he remembered that field telephones often short-circuit in warm, muggy weather. 'What was the weather like?' he asked. 'Warm and damp, said the brother.
An idea was taking shape. Water. . . .could that be the key? It had been warm and damp on Ladram beach. The following weekend, they set out for Ladram Bay a second time. Again, as they stepped on to the beach, both walked into the same bank of depression - or 'ghoul' as Lethbridge called it. Mina led Tom to the far end of the beach, to the place she had been sitting when she had been overwhelmed by the strange feel-ing. Here it was so strong that it made them feel giddy - Lethbridge described it as the feeling you get when you had a high tem-perature and are full of drugs. On either side of them were two small streams.
Mina wandered off to look at the scenery from the top of the cliff. Suddenly, she walked into the depression again. Moreover, she had an odd feeling, as if someone - or something - was urging her to jump over. She went and fetched Tom, who agreed that the spot was just as sinister as the place down on the seashore below.
Now he needed only one more piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and he found it - but only years later. Nine years after the first known experiences of depression were felt on those cliffs a man did commit suicide there. Lethbridge wondered whether the 'ghoul' was a feeling so intense that it had become timeless and imprinted itself on the area, casting its baleful shadow on those who stood there.
Whether from the past or from the future the feelings of despair were 'recorded' on the surroundings - but how?
The key, Lethbridge believed, was water. As an archaeologist, he had always been mildly interested in dowsing and water - divining. The dowser walks along with a forked hazel twig held in his hands, and when he stands above running water, the muscles in his hands and arms convulse and the twig bends either up or down. How does it work? Professor Y Rocard of the Sorbonne dis-covered that underground water produces changes in the earth's magnetic field and that is what the dowser's muscles respond to. The water does this because it has a field of its own, which interacts with the earth's field.
Significantly, magnetic fields are the means by which sound is recorded on tape covered with iron oxide. Suppose the magnetic field of running water can also record strong emotions - which after all, are basi-cally electrical activities in the human brain and body? such fields could well be strongest in damp and muggy weather.

Page 24

"In 1962, FIVE YEARS AFTER his move to Devon, Tom Lethbridge's ideas on ghosts, 'ghouls', pendulums and dowsing rods began to crystallise into a coherent theory, which he outlined in a book called Ghost and divining rod. This appeared in 1963 and it aroused more interest than anything he had published so far. It deserved to be so popular, for its central theory was orginal, exiting and well argued.
He suggested that nature generates fields of static electricity in certain places, par-ticularly near running water. These 'fields' are capable of picking up and recording the thoughts and feelings of human beings and other living creatures. But human beings are also surrounded by a mild electrical field, as the researches of Harold Burr of Yale Uni-versity in the United States revealed in the 1930s. So if someone goes into a room where a murder has taken place and experiences a distictly unpleasasant feeling, all that is happening is that the emotions associated with the crime (such as fear, pain and horror) are being transferred to the visitor's electrical field, in accordance with the laws of elect-ricity. If we are feeling full of energy, excite-ment, misery or anger, the emotional trans-ference may flow the other way, and our feelings will be recorded on the field.
'But if human emotions can be imprinted in some way on the 'field' of running water, and picked up by a dowser, then this world we are living in is a far more strange and complex place than most people give credit for. To begin with, we must be surrounded by hidden information - in the form of these 'tape recordings' - that might become ac-cessible to al of us if we could master the art of using the dowser's pendulum.
It looks - says Lethbridge - as if human beings possess 'psyche fields' as well as bodies. The body is simply a peice of ap-paratus for collecting impressions, which are then stored in the psyche-field. But in that case, there would seem to be part of us that seeks the information. Presumably this is what religious people call the spirit. And since the information it can aquire through the pendulum may come from the remote past, or from some place on the other side of the world, then this spirit must be outside the limits of space and time.
It was this last idea that excited Lethbridge so much. His experiments with the pendulum seemed to indicate that there are other worlds beyond this one, perhaps worlds in other dimensions. Presumably we cannot see them - although they co-exist with our world - because our bodies are rather crude machines for picking up low-level vibrations. But the psyche field - or perhaps the spirit - seems to have access to those other invisible worlds.