Star Strike

Introduction

What follows is an account of how I met with, what might be termed, a Universal Force. I make no claims to understand this phenomenon and can’t say much about it except that it is likely to present itself uniquely, tailor-made for each and every one of us. For sure you’ve come across it but perhaps not recognised it for what it is. Hopefully this will help.

The Universal Force said 'hi!' to me when I started working on a theory that Bible stories are not what we have been led to believe; not the word of God, but simply stories, complied from an ‘image bank’ of star pictures in the night sky. That the Universal Force chose to aid me in such a quest is, I feel, significant; a truly supernatural force calling the usurper’s bluff.

At the root of all religion lies the concept of a Something, way bigger and far beyond ourselves, which will interact with us. Various Faiths have hijacked this Super-Something in the name of one or other god, creating division where there was none and alienating those who cannot believe the God stories. Remove religion (the stars can do this) and other doors will open. Quite what lies beyond remains a mystery, but I suspect it could be beautiful.

Aside from any personal experience I feel that, if we are to emerge from the mess we are making of both ourselves and the Planet, it may be beneficial to side with something that is prepared to help. Gods are useless, being little more than footballs to be kicked by opposing teams. We need a reason to unify. We need a reality check.

Judging by my own experiences, the most pertinent of which are related here, it seems that the Universal Force is upping the ante. However, our fate, as always, surely lies in our own hands.

What's in a name?

I live near Schull (pronounced Skull and spelt thus on the O.S. maps). Schull is a fishing village with a population of about 800 and has, intriguingly (as you may come to realise), one thing no other village, town nor city in the whole of southern Ireland has: a fifty-seater Planetarium.

I moved here, at the age of 30, knowing I needed two things from Life; nature en masse, with the peace and mental tranquility that it brings, and blackness at night. Nothing else was of consequence. My mind had to be free from artificial noise and free to enjoy the night. I had to live as close to natural as possible. This I knew from the innermost quarters of my knowing.

I lived on a shoestring. I gave up the car; never had a T.V.; cycled everywhere; grew vegetables and waited... and watched... and read and listened... and waited. I kept my doors open. I was seeking something without consciously admitting it, at least initially.

I kept keeping my doors open and eventually in walked Georg. And Nigel. Opposite ends of the spectrum though both had balding heads and bushy beards; one in the style of a professor, the other a replica of an Old Testament prophet. Perfect casting.

Nigel introduced himself as a born again Christian yet seemed to have little time for most other Christians, or most other people, come to that, but he was a god-send at times. We had many a jolly jaunt, on all manner of useful quests. He certainly seemed to be in touch with something outside himself, but if the God he professed to be akin to thought Nigel would be a good ambassador then He was gravely mistaken. I would prefer to dance with the Devil than spend eternity with the Nige, but we had great fun and I learned a lot.

Georg was a both a thinker and an extraordinary artist. When I first met him he was paying great attention to the standing stones, stone circles, ring forts and rock art for which West Cork is famous. We had many fabulous outings, cycling the back roads and boreens, in search of such attractions. We had great fun for many years and it was Georg who, unwittingly, ignited the fire...

The beginning

One day I visited Georg in his tiny tin house, an hour's cycle ride away. It must have been a nice day but the only thing I remember was him showing me a page in the Collins Gem ‘Night Sky’ book; ‘This is the story of Adam and Eve’ he said. Now, my life didn’t change in that instant, not really my thing at the time, stars and Bible stories. It took a three day flu, two weeks later, for ideas to start formatting themselves in my brain and thus, amid the hot sweats and cold of a clammy bed, it began. Relentlessly. Stories in the stars. Mythological star stories. Mythological, arty pictures amid the constellations. Mythological stories from pictures in the stars. Got it!

One problem; I knew nothing about the stars nor did I know much mythology. Of course, this turned out for the best as I could approach both with untutored eyes.

Right from the outset is was obvious to me that the pictures in the stars would have to look real. The fancy artwork showing constellation characters (as depicted in books and horoscopes) could never work in the night sky. Our ancestors surely developed a technique for seeing realistic pictures in the stars and it was this technique that I sought to develop.

Actually, it was relatively easy. Anyone can do it, given clear night skies and a clear idea of what defines any given object. Defining points do just what they say, they define what it is you are looking at. A human, for example, needs a head (one star, preferably a bright one), two shoulders (two stars, preferably fainter than the head, located in the appropriate position) and limbs, defined by, but not necessarily including; elbows, hands, bum, knees and feet. The position of these stars determines what the human is doing. Here are two human figures in different poses:

The Universal Force lends a hand

The advantage of not having learned the constellations in an academic way meant that I was free of any unnatural boundaries. When I looked at the stars I didn’t see Perseus or Cassiopeia (I didn’t know of them), I saw figures and fish. In Cassiopeia it is easy to see a figure rejoicing or recoiling, while in Perseus there is a very fine salmon. On a dark night you can even see the waterfall up which the fish is leaping, namely the Milky Way.

About this time I bought a book of Irish mythology and within those pages I came across a description of a fisherman, a king, who rejoices when he lands a salmon. Ah-ha, I thought, I’m starting to see how this might work.

The episode with the spark had opened my mind to the possibility of external help. At first I referred to this help as The Arrangers for that is what appeared to happen, arrangements were made, which is how I came to understand the nature of the Star of Bethlehem.

My friend Georg passed on to me a book (found in a secondhand bookshop in Skibbereen) of a classic English mythological story. I’d never heard of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight but within those pages was the unmistakable description of an image of a star; disguised, of course, for to talk of such matters would have been heretical in those ancient times.

Importantly Sir Gawain, like the Nativity, starts at Christmas, thus determining the night sky in which the pictures can be found. Moby-Dick is another such story; the Pequod setting sail on Christmas day. It was while working on Moby-Dick that the Universal Force gave me a nudge, for I was struggling to find the carpenter of said book as well as the carpenter of the Nativity (Jesus).

I’d been pondering the carpenter image for several years and badly needed it for an upcoming presentation. One cloudy night I happened to go outside; the sky was overcast but a small hole appeared revealing an even smaller group of three faint stars. Bingo! Unmistakably an elbow (at Star’s left tip) and at last I was on my way to understanding how the Moby-Dick carpenter symmetrically supplies the (star) constellation.

While this Star of Stars heralds the birth of Jesus, the image behind his traditional demise occurs in the northwest, as Cygnus sinks towards the horizon.

Seeking the star pictures behind a storyteller’s words is a challenge and I spent years honing my stargazing skills on Irish myths. As my appreciation of the complexity of these works grew so did my certainty that many such stories could only be the work of monks. The reasons for this are as follows: some stories seem to parody the Bible, which indicates a profound knowledge of the Scriptures, plus the ability to read them in Latin or Greek; reworking Biblical stories requires an intimate knowledge of star pictures, plus a means to work at night without fear of drawing attention, i.e. somewhere remote and secure; the stories were spread far and wide and monks, being above suspicion, were free, able and encouraged to travel.

No way to prove this subversive activity, you’d think, yet...

Many cultures used the world of star pictures simply for entertainment, weaving wondrous stories of heroes and villains, epic journeys with monsters and damsels in distress. It is easy to imagine storytelling competitions with Bards, jousting for verbal and visual supremacy, whirling their audiences through the pictures of a starlit sky. These starry pictures would be well known so a Bard’s skill lay in combining them in ever cleverer ways:

And out of the smoke locusts came forth... and the likenesses of the locusts resembled horses prepared for battle; and upon their heads what seemed to be crowns of gold, and their faces were as men’s faces, but they had hair as women’s hair... And the sound of their wings as the sound of chariots of many horses running into battle.

The weirder the wording the easier it can be to find the images. In the above passage from the New Testament book of Revelation the description is simply a list of star pictures you can find in and around Ursa Major. Nothing sinister, nothing end-of-the-worldly, just human imagination playing with patterns in the stars. Maybe.

Maybe not, for there is a curiosity that needs addressing and it is this: in the New Testament story Jesus is taken to a place called Golgotha for his execution (see The Crux in Star Strike). Golgotha is not a place on Earth but an area of stars which today goes by the name of Cygnus. Within Cygnus can be found the image (a skull) behind the meaning of the word Golgotha; Place of the Skull, and in Schull/Skull there is, as mentioned before, a fifty-seater Planetarium which, at any time of day or night, rain or shine, can show this execution once again.

Could the two Skulls, with regard Jesus’s executions - 2000 years apart - simply be a coincidence, or do I detect the influence of the Universal Force? If so, how long a game is it playing!?

It's hard to ignore nature when it starts behaving in very specific ways around you. Coincidences that, in the past, would be remarked upon but then forgotten start to take on a new significance. If a spark can hit a target... if a sea squirt can squirt on cue... if swans can fly round and round and round and round. What, then, is also possible?

A steady stream of such events hints strongly at a power beyond our understanding. Religions claim to represent such a power but impose their own interpretations and rules on what should be unique to each and every one of us and which cannot be second-guessed or governed.

Unofficial history

As my quest to find and understand the pictures of the night unfolded, so I became aware of an Unofficial History, found throughout human culture. Pangur Ban is a purrrfect example, for the poet-monk tells us what we really need to know; that the night is full of words and that he (and his kind, presumably) were seeking them.

History, so they say, is written by the winners, but this is only partly true. More correct would be to state that ‘Official History’ is written by the winners. The losers (in this case all those who opposed the New Religion) scattered jigsaw puzzle pieces of Unofficial History wherever they could; amongst tall tales, nonsense verses, language, expressions, diet, gestures, art, anywhere where it could be secreted away, yet hidden in plain sight.

Disguising knowledge amid apparent trivia was the safest way to pass it on. No one would have been burned at the stake for yelling at the departing Bishop 'God 's peed!' . The wonderful Terry Pratchett summed up this rear-guard action to perfection:

“People remember badly. But societies remember well, the swarm remembers, encoding the information to slip past the censors of the mind, passing it on from grandmother to grandchild in little bits of nonsense they won’t bother to forget. Sometimes the truth keeps itself alive in devious ways despite the best efforts of the official keepers of information.”

The little bits of nonsense include Nursery Rhymes. People have tried giving earthly meanings to these enchanting childhood verses, but their origins lie in the stars. Indeed, our most famous rhymes are tools for learning star pictures. The Lion and the Unicorn will teach you the winter constellations, while Jack and Jill is a summer rhyme.

‘Jack Sprat could eat no fat,’ and neither could the God of Isaiah 1:11. ‘And so, betwixt them both, you see...’ is telling you to look, as is 'see how they run, see how they run', both rhymes mimicking the words oft used in the Bible: ‘Lo! and behold’, or ‘Look!’.

‘Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be sought.’

Knowledge will always trump belief, this is a fundamental truth, yet what I have seen with my own eyes tells me that things exist about which we have no knowledge, save that they exist... and in the case of a Universal Force, for me, that is enough.

I have been lucky in life. I was able to free up my mind by surrounding myself, for many years, with pure nature. I had no distracting relationships or situations and could focus on the search. I know most people will never have that chance, but I also know that the Universal Force has no limits. If you are reading this then that is all you need, for the Universal Force can surely work with anything, anywhere, any time. All that is required (I think) is that you are observant and trust your senses, though sometimes a spark might help...

... hence this little effort.

Essentially the drift of my observations is this:

Forget religions, for they are all based on some or other fantasy star story. I can show: the Hindus their sacred cow (it’s a Dexter); the Jihadi warriors their waiting virgins; the Jews their father Abraham, plus his laughing son; the Christians their very fishy Christ.
Belief is counter productive and isn’t necessary in the real world.
The Universal Force is open to everyone and everything.
The Universal Force requires nothing from us (no adulation, no followers, no doctrine).
The Universal Force is quite prepared to work with us.
The Universal Force is unique to each individual.
The only way to complete unity is for each individual to be their own unit: ‘I am me’ and if enough ‘me’ is aligned with the Universal Force then things could get better...

...but don't hold your breath. When I look at the world situation I am, quite honestly, in despair. For every glimmer of light there appears a blanket of darkness and, even though we know the consequences of environmental degradation we do little about it; the arms trade flourishes; many animals are on the brink of extinction; human individuality is crushed.

I suspect we could turn it around by aligning with the Universal Force, but unless huge numbers of people do so the global effect will be negligible. In the world of spirit - for I suppose that is what it is - no one is going to do for us what we need to do for ourselves. There will never be any Great Redeemer, no eternal Paradise, for that would spoil the plot and we’d never learn.

True learning, real knowledge, builds from within, accruing from our observations and interactions. The things we need to know we will find if we keep our eyes and minds open and follow our senses. This might take some practice.

Star watching and the Universal Force are, for me, inextricably linked. Many times I have been amazed at the synchronicity of events surrounding a new find in the stars. For example: a flash of lightning in a clear sky the instant I saw the impalement image for the first time; or the circular, swirling cloud that stopped in front of a circular pattern of stars, showing me where to look.

Such events mean little or nothing outside the moment, but inside that moment we catch a glimpse of the infinite, of a Universal Force at work. There was no such occurrence when I located the lost Lamb of God for the first time; the Lamb’s big surprise was yet to come.

The Lamb lies in close proximity to the awesome Star of Bethlehem and is a beautiful picture based around the Hyades star group. In this group you can also see two people having sex; it is a gloriously pornographic image that will surely make you chuckle.

Now, the Lamb of God, aka Jesus, was sent to take away the sin of the world and one of those sins occurred in the Old Testament city of Sodom (let the reader understand). This doggy-style position is adopted by the couple in the Hyades star group and, importantly for what follows, from these same sexed-up stars you can also form the head of the Lamb.

‘Pan is dead!’

Surprisingly - or not - no immortal has lived forever; every god/dog has its day and then their time is up. Quite what determines the timing of their demise I have no idea but Ra, Isis, Jupiter, Quetzalcoatl, Zeus, Athene, Pan and Thor, to name but a few, were all at least as powerful, in the human imagination, as the present incumbents are today. All had their stories, their followers, their temples and all existed solely because of Belief. Once the Belief goes then so does the god.

In the present era the fog (Fear Of God) has lifted (in much of the West, at least) and we are free to speak of long forbidden things. And, like a fog on the coast, once it starts to lift you know sunshine may be only minutes away.

We are due for a change. Just as ice-ages have their epochs so do gods and if the Universal Force (or whatever you want to call it) really exists then it appears that now might be a good time.

Unlike past and present gods the Universal Force has no back story, nothing for we humans to argue and fight over. What it does have, though, is an infinite number of individual stories, ones like the shagging sheep and squirting sea squirt. Maybe it is time to start sharing such stories, for the more we tell the more we encourage others to recognise their own real-life ‘miracle’ stories. These stories-of-the-senses (as opposed to the non-sense stories of belief) can unite us, for although they are unique to each and everyone of us they are also common to all... and they are great FUN!!

- of course, we could just carry on as we are -