CIA Found the Ark of the Covenant Using Psychics

File this under very interesting but not substantiated:

According to an article in the Independent, declassified CIA documents claim that the mystical Ark of the Covenant was located by a psychic decades ago in the Middle East as part of one of the intelligence agency’s experimental, secret projects in the 1980s.

The Ark of the Covenant was thrust back into the spotlight as globetrotting archaeologist Indiana Jones attempted to uncover the artifact in Steven Spielberg’s 1981 Oscar-winning Raiders of the Lost Ark.

According to Jewish and Christian tradition, the gold-plated wooden chest housed the two tablets bearing the Ten Commandments, which God, in theology, gave to Moses between the 13th and 16th centuries BC.

The CIA conducted experiments as part of the secret Project Sun Streak with individuals known as “remote viewers”, a type of clairvoyant, who claimed they could project their consciousness to receive information about faraway objects. There is no credible scientific evidence that remote viewing exists, and it is generally regarded as pseudoscience.

In a remote viewing session on 5 December, 1988, remote “viewer #32” was tasked with identifying the coveted Ark, according to CIA documents recently circulating on social media. The documents were first declassified in August 2000. They allegedly did not know the object they were being tasked to find.

The psychic described a location in the Middle East that they claimed housed the object and said it was being “protected by entities”, says the CIA document. “Target is a container. This container has another container inside of it. The target is fashioned of wood, gold, and silver,” they said, allegedly not knowing they were trying to find the Ark. “Similar in shape to a coffin and is decorated with seraphim.”

The declassified document shows several pages of drawings depicting one of the four seraphim standing out on the corners of the Ark, along with a drawing of mummies lined up on a wall. “Visuals of surrounding buildings indicated the presence of mosque domes,” they added. They said the object was hidden underground in dark, wet conditions. “There is an aspect of spirituality, information, lessons and the historical knowledge far beyond what we now know,” remote viewer #32 continued.

They described the Ark as being protected by entities that would destroy individuals who attempted to damage the object. “The target is protected by entities and can only be opened by those who are authorized to do so – this container will not/cannot be opened until the time is deemed correct,” the remote viewer continued. “Individuals opening the container by prying or striking are destroyed by the container’s protectors through the use of a power unknown to us.”

When a remote viewer is tasked with locating an object, information is written down on paper and placed into an envelope. Joe McMoneagle, a US Army chief warrant officer and the first person to do remote viewing for the CIA, told The New York Post that they allegedly do not know what was scrawled down and are guided through the process by another person. However, Mr McMoneagle does not believe that this remote viewing case is worth the paper it is written on, claiming the session is “bogus”.

“If someone claims that remote viewing proves the existence of something, such as the Ark of the Covenant, they must produce the Ark to substantiate their claim,” he added.

 

See the Future In Onions

Here is a fascinating article in Atlas Obscura about using onions to predict the weather. Here is an excerpt and a way to make your own onion calendar. Enjoy!

On a cold New Year’s Eve in 1967 in Ashley, North Dakota, Donna and Delbert Eszlinger sliced excitedly into a large, round yellow onion. First, they split it lengthwise down the middle. Then, carefully, the couple peeled back the onion’s layers, laying 12 fresh, eye-watering sections side-by-side, and topping each with a teaspoon of salt. The onion wasn’t the makings of a celebratory dish for the new year, but a window into the future. While the ground outside was still frozen, the couple looked to the onion layers to predict the coming year’s weather for their farm.

Early the next morning on New Year’s Day, the couple rose to check their results. How each onion slice reacted to the salt overnight foretold how wet or dry each month would be. They examined each piece in order—the first representing January’s precipitation, the second predicting February, and so on. Some pieces were left with dry salt, indicating a dry month, while the next might have a pool of briny liquid in its center, indicating heavy rains or snow. Caked or crusty salt crystals meant frost, and bubbles hinted at humidity.

The onion calendar, or onion oracle, dates back to the Middle Ages, when onions and other root vegetables were used by farmers to predict precipitation for the year ahead. Some of the oldest records of using onions as an oracle are from the small town of Urbania, Italy, where the tradition is still practiced today.

In Urbania, they do the ritual on the night of January 24, the eve of what’s known in the Catholic calendar as the Conversion of St. Paul, when the man named Saul was struck to the ground by a divine light and decided to become a Christian. Paul had received a sign of things to come on that night, so practitioners believed that the onion could best be read on the magical date.

While the tradition today is best known around Urbania, it can be found elsewhere as well. Australian farmer Halwyn ‘Hally’ Herrmann, for example, used the method for 65 years.

How to Make Your Own Calendar

The practice of making an onion calendar can vary slightly depending on what area you’re in, but the tradition goes something like this:

Step 1: Select a nice round onion. While the color and where it’s grown don’t matter, everyone has their preferences. The Eszlingers prefer yellow. “The yellow one seems to be a sturdier onion,” she says. “So you probably get a better reading that way.”

Step 2: Cut the onion in half lengthwise and carefully separate the six outermost layers so that you have 12 sections total. Lay the sections out in two rows: The first half should be January through June, with January being the outermost layer and June the innermost. The second half represents July (the outermost layer) through December (the innermost).

Step 3: Add a teaspoon of salt in the center of each onion cup.

Step 4: Let sit overnight. Some people keep it inside, but many agree it should be outside to get the most accurate reading.

Step 5: In the early morning—ideally around 5 a.m.—bring the onion inside and quickly jot down your readings before the inside temperatures change the results.

Step 6: Enjoy consulting your onion calendar throughout the year!

Vanderbilt's Fortune Teller

Who knew that Cornelius Vanderbilt relied on a fortune teller to guide him? All was revealed at the reading of his will.

In his opening statement over the dispute of railroad tycoon “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt’s will, attorney Scott Lord proclaimed that Vanderbilt was “a believer in spiritualism” and “clairvoyance and was governed by its revelations.” Lord argued that these beliefs, among other “impairments,” rendered Vanderbilt susceptible to undue influence towards the end of his life while drafting his will. The will allocated the majority of Vanderbilt’s massive fortune to his eldest son, William Henry Vanderbilt, with comparatively modest sums going to the rest of the heirs. The claims of supernatural intervention brought the name of a well-known 19th-century fortune teller, Madame Morrow, into the contentious court battle between William and his siblings.

Read all about it in the book Mortimer and the Witches

Under the pseudonym Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P. B., humor writer Mortimer Thomson went undercover to investigate and report on the fortune tellers of New York City’s tenements and slums. When his articles were published in book form in 1858, they catalyzed a series of arrests that both scandalized and delighted the public. But Mortimer was guarding some secrets of his own, and in many ways, his own life paralleled the lives of the women he both visited and vilified. In Mortimer and the Witches, author Marie Carter examines the lives of these marginalized fortune tellers while also detailing Mortimer Thomson’s peculiar and complicated biography.

Word of the Day - Pythoness

I am always trying to improve my new age vocabulary and just found a new word - Pythoness!

A Pythoness is a woman who practices divination, a female soothsayer or conjuror of spirits. The word comes from the late 14c., phitonesse, Phitonissa, "woman with the power of soothsaying," from Old French phitonise (13c.) and Medieval Latin phitonissa, from Late Latin pythonissa, used in Vulgate of the Witch of Endor (I Samuel xxviii. 7), and often treated as her proper name. It is the female version of of pytho "familiar spirit;" which ultimately is connected with the title of the prophetess of the Delphic Oracle, Greek pythia hiereia, from Pythios, an epithet of Apollo, from Pythō, an older name of the region of Delphi (see python). 

The Fourth Turning Enters Pop Culture

Last October I wrote about The Fourth Turning which occur every 20-25 years or so. The final one in the cycle of a general human lifespan of 80-100 years is the Fourth Turning, a time of global cataclysmic change bringing an era of destruction, often involving war or revolution, in which institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival. After the crisis, civic authority revives, cultural expression redirects towards community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group. The previous Fourth Turning in the US began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and climaxed with the end of World War II.

They say Steve Bannon is inspired by the Turning concept and now, according to the New York Times, so is pop culture which is weaving Fourth Turning references in plot lines. Here is an excerpt of this recent NYT article:

Close watchers of “The Watcher,” the popular Netflix series about a couple who move to the New Jersey suburbs, only to be stalked in their dream home, may have caught the reference. It comes when one of the main characters, played by Bobby Cannavale, stumbles upon a creepy man in his kitchen who describes himself as a building inspector. After Mr. Cannavale’s character remarks that people are fleeing New York City, the man replies: “It’s the fourth turning.” The puzzlement on Mr. Cannavale’s face invites an explanation.

According to “fourth turning” proponents, American history goes through recurring cycles. Each one, which lasts about 80 to 100 years, consists of four generation-long seasons, or “turnings.” The winter season is a time of upheaval and reconstruction — a fourth turning. The theory first appeared in “The Fourth Turning,” a work of pop political science that has had a cult following more or less since it was published in 1997. In the last few years of political turmoil, the book and its ideas have bubbled into the mainstream.

According to “The Fourth Turning,” previous crisis periods include the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II. America entered its latest fourth turning in the mid-2000s. It will culminate in a crisis sometime in the 2020s — i.e., now. One of the book’s authors, Neil Howe, 71, has become a frequent podcast guest. A follow-up, “The Fourth Turning Is Here,” comes out this month.

The theory is popular with people at both ends of the political spectrum. It also inspired an acclaimed Off Broadway play, “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” which features a conservative Catholic writer, Teresa, who is obsessed with the book and its promise of a coming revolution. The play’s author, Will Arbery, 33, said he heard about “The Fourth Turning” while researching Stephen K. Bannon, the right-wing firebrand and former adviser to President Donald J. Trump, who is a longtime fan of the book.

A writer for the HBO show “Succession,” Mr. Arbery said he had also found references to “The Fourth Turning” in modern corporate culture. He described it as “this almost fun theory about history,” but added: “And yet there’s something deeply menacing about it.” Mr. Arbery, who said he does not subscribe to the theory, sees parallels between the fourth turning and other nonscientific beliefs. “I modeled the way that Teresa talks about the fourth turning on the way that young liberals talk about astrology,” he said.

“The Fourth Turning” was conceived during a period of relative calm. In the late 1980s, Mr. Howe, a Washington, D.C., policy analyst, teamed with William Strauss, a founder of the political satire troupe the Capitol Steps. Their first book, “Generations,” told a story of American history through generational profiles going back to the 1600s. The book was said to have influenced Bill Clinton to choose a fellow baby boomer, Al Gore, as his running mate. Mr. Strauss died in 2007, and Mr. Howe has carried on the pair’s work since then.

When it was published, “The Fourth Turning” drew a withering review in The New York Times by the writer Michael Lind, who criticized the authors for cherry-picking facts and lumped them in with “purveyors of pseudoscience.” But when the 2008 financial crisis hit at almost exactly the point when the start of the fourth turning was predicted, it seemed to many that the authors might have been onto something. Recent events — the pandemic, the storming of the Capitol — have seemingly provided more evidence for the book’s fans.

Historically, a fourth turning crisis has always translated into a civil war, a war of great nations, or both, according to the book. Either is possible over the next decade, Mr. Howe said. But he is a doomsayer with an optimistic streak: Each fourth turning, in his telling, kicks off a renaissance in civic life. In the new book, he describes what a coming civil war or geopolitical conflict might look like — though he shies away from casting himself as a modern-day Nostradamus. “This big tidal shift is arriving,” Mr. Howe said. “But if you’re asking me which wave is going to knock down the lighthouse, I can’t do that. I can just tell you that this is the time period. It gives you a good idea of what to watch for.”

 

A version of this article appears in print on July 9, 2023, Section ST, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: A Doomsaying Theory Resonates in Pop Culture.