ALLEGORIES GONE WILD: OF MASKS, MASQUERADES, AND MARTIAN LANDSCAPES

And now, another long-awaited episode of ALLEGORIES GONE WILD! And, whoo-hoo! Have I gotta a wild one for y'all this time!

It all began on a dark and stormy night...aw, bollocks, never liked Bulwher-Lytton that much (though Snoopy swears by him). It began with the infamous Face On Mars, and very quickly spiralled into a maelstrom of baroque meritocracy that would make even Charles Forte flinch.

All pioneered by one Richard Hoagland, who, according to answers.com:

""Richard Caulfield Hoagland (born April 25, 1945) is a propounder of theories on astronomical topics that are considered offbeat by many. His major focus is on extraterrestrial life in the solar system, in particular Mars. While Hoagland's books have sold very well, most in the scientific establishment consider his theories to be pseudoscience.

Hoagland is a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM, making several appearances a month, often merely repeating the same information from his previous visit. He has more airtime than any other guest on the show, and is regularly permitted to solicit money from Coast to Coast's audience."

Career

"Hoagland has served as a "Curator of Astronomy & Space Science" at the "Springfield Museum of Science" (Springfield Science Museum) located at The Quadrangle in Springfield, Massachusetts, and a science adviser to Walter Cronkite and CBS News during the Apollo program."

"Hoagland claims to have co-produced with WTIC (AM) a Peabody Award-nominated radio program, "A Night of Encounter," covering the July 14, 1965, Mariner 4 flyby of the planet Mars. However, the official Peabody Awards entry form (51-65R) held at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia Libraries in Athens, Georgia, submitted by Paul W. Morency, President of Broadcast-Plaza, Inc., lists only Charles Renaud as the producer of the program. WTIC announcer Dick Bertel hosted the program and interviewed Hoagland. The program featured a conversation between Hoagland and astronomer Dr. Robert S. Richardson, Associate Director of the Griffith Observatory.

In 1993, Hoagland was awarded the "International Angstrom Medal for Excellence in Science.".

That last entry is most striking, because when I google "International Angstrom Medal for Excellence in Science.",-hoagland (that's any mention without Hoagland), I get ZERO hits. I find that odd. But it gets zanier from there:

"Theories

Hoagland has made numerous claims about the existence of extraterrestrial life (or intelligence, at some point), which he believes is supported by the presence of the so-called Face on Mars. He claims that the face was part of a city built on Cydonia Planitia by extraterrestrial intelligences. The "city" apparently consists of very large pyramids and mounds arranged in a geometrical pattern, with the ratios between measured angles roughly equaling mathematical constants like pi, e and the square root of two. Hoagland's numerous theories are also frequently supported by numerological justifications, such as his Iapetus theory revolving around Base 60 and the numeric factors of platonic solids."


(snip)
"Controversies

Hoagland's claims and theories are, obviously, not without controversy:

* The claim that Hoagland is most famous - or infamous - for is that of the Face on Mars that appears in a Viking Orbiter image taken of the Cydonia region on Mars. Hoagland claimed at the time that this 'face' was actually evidence that an advanced civilization existed on Mars, and that NASA was suppressing the evidence for reasons never specifically explained. In 1997, the Mars Global Surveyor probe sent back extremely high resolution images of the Cydonia region that provided irrefutable evidence that the 'face' was nowhere near as symmetrical as Hoagland's claims called for, and was in fact nothing more than an irregular shaped mountain. Hoagland refuses to accept these images as valid.

* Hoagland has also claimed responsibility for the theory concerning the presence of water on Jupiter's moon Europa. However, several scientific articles about this subject were written years before Hoagland's article was published.

* The claim that the Galileo Probe caused a "mysterious black spot" has since been debunked by both NASA and several independent astronomers, with photographic proof that the "black spot" was present in imagery of Jupiter for several years prior to Hoagland's "discovery" of it.

* Finally, Hoagland has claimed a close friendship with legendary CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. While Hoagland was a minor fact-checking assistant to Cronkite during the Apollo Missions, Cronkite has specifically distanced himself from Hoagland and his pseudoscience. According to his daughter, Kathy Cronkite, during an on-the-air radio morning show on KLBJ-AM in 1994 where hosts Dale Dudley and Bob Fonseca were discussing Hoagland's claims, Kathy was very frank in relating her father's wishes that Hoagland would 'quit referring to [her father] ever again as long as he keeps acting like a kook'. "

Is that silly enough for ya? But wait! There's more! Much more! Too much more!

From the website promoting David Flynn's science fantasy book, 'CYDONIA: The Secret Chronicles of Mars':

"Flynn 's Cydonia: The Secret Chronicles of Mars reveals:

• 2012, the great Cosmic Clock embodied in the symbol of the Ouroboros


• the "gods" who ruled the planets in the ages before Adam


• the distinctly Martian influence on human civilization from earliest times to the present


• the meaning behind the esoteric tenet "As Above, So Below"


• Freemason symbolism, the Mystery Schools & the modern alchemists of NASA

"

And THEN, this yahoo claims:

"The Milky Way Galaxy is the inspiration for the symbol of the Ouroboros. Myth refers to a serpent of light residing in the heavens. The Milky Way is this serpent, and viewed at galactic central point near sagittarius, this serpent eats its own tail. "

Well, I hate to break it to you fella, but answers.com says of Ouroboros:

"Antiquity

The serpent or dragon eating its own tail can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, circa 1600 BC. However the pig dragons of the Hongshan culture (4700--2200 BC) of China are older. From ancient Egypt it passed to Phoenicia and then to the Greek philosophers, who gave it the name Ouroboros ("tail-devourer")."

And the only way people can see the Milky Way, is through a telescope. Excuse me: when was that invented?

Telescope:

"The first practical telescopes were refracting telescopes produced at the beginning of the 17th cent. By 1610, Galileo had made extensive astronomical use of the simple refractor. The best telescopes of this period had very long focal lengths to minimize the chromatic aberration inherent in the single-element objective."

Of course, if you have ET as a patron, that resolves that little issue, don't it?

And here of course, some clinchers: the Bible helps bolster the theories!

"UFOs & the Bible: Nephilim 101

Medieval Painting depicting UFO & MARY from article in Fate Magazine 1999

Fate Magazine. Whadda surprise, ey?

It has been said that Christians are "pretty narrow minded" to limit the population of the universe to merely GOD, ANGELS, AND MAN. After all, there are "billions and billions" of stars which perhaps have planets, which perhaps have civilizations etc. However, within the classification of angels [non-human intelligent beings] exist diverse myriads. Hierarchies of innumerable angels still populate the universe. These angelic non-human intelligent beings built civilizations in our solar system -- even upon the Earth -- before Adam.

ANGELS ARE INTELLIGENT BEINGS WHO ARE NOT HUMAN, MYSTERIOUS BEINGS WHO ARE "ALIEN" TO US. Angels are non-human intelligent beings who have superior technology and comprehension of physics, having been present at the creation of the material universe.The concept of an ANGEL comes from the Greek aggelos; from the Hebrew ago for "one going forth" or "one leading"; messenger. Not all angels are "good". Although the angels were originally created by God to convey His "message" for His purposes according to His plan, some angels rebelled, some angels go forth to give their own message, to carry out their own plans. "

(snip)


"Ancient deity Baal was lord of war and of the sky. Many titles were given to Baal by adding endings to his name. Some examples found in scripture are Baalhazor "Lord of the Fortresses", Baalbamoth = Lord of the high places, Baalzebub = Lord of those who fly, or, flit. Zebub is a Hebrew verb which means to flit from place to place , having been popularly translated as "Lord of the Flies" it is more properly rendered "Lord of Those Things that Fly". Baal is identified as Satan by Jesus himself, Matt.10:25 Mark. 3:22 Luke 11:15. Paul says we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, with spirits in high places, literally, "in the heavens" "in the aerial regions" Eph.6:12. Hence Satan is called "the prince of the Power of the Air" "the prince of the aerial host" Eph.2:2. Imagine the confederation of rebellious angels seated in the atmospheric heaven in the spaces above and around our planet. This fundamental of scripture contradicts many traditional concepts of "hell" as the domain of the devil and his minions... the popular notion of "satan ruling the underworld" is not found in the Bible. King David realized the "sons of the mighty" inhabited the sky:"

Oh great. Evil aliens. Never heard THAT one before. If this nitwit actually did some research:

"Baal-zebub ) [Heb.,=lord of flies], a deliberate Hebrew distortion of the name of the god of Ekron in 2 Kings. In the Gospels of Mark and Luke, Beelzebul, the Greek form of the epithet Baal-zebul [Baal the Prince], is encountered. See Baal and Satan."


"Jesus Christ explained to His apostles what events would immediately precede his second coming, "It shall be exactly as in the days before Noah entered the ark". Matt 24:38 , Luke 17:27. What is the significance of this statement and how does it relate to Ufos? The Flood epic Gen. 6 begins with a strange account of the "sons of God" (b'nai Elohim), taking wives from among the daughters of Adam. "

Sufficient to say, these yobbos draw also on the Book of Enoch as well. And get this: crop circles are warnings from On High! At the bottom of the webpage, a direct link to this site (Goro Adachi) says:


"'Crop circles', while beautiful and puzzling, had never been something I would actively investigate. Like ghosts, I felt that the phenomenon was a dead-end street; tangible answers were just not likely to come from it. So it was a strange development when I personally facilitated the entry of a certain crop formation in England into the ongoing drama surrounding Cydonia (see the Endgame: Odyssey and the Martian Trojan Horse article). The link was not explicit, but there were striking, multi-layered associations and hints that I just found difficult to ignore."

Sure. Lacking a real hobby or a girlfriend, EVERYTHING'S hard to ignore. Bad news fella: Crop circles are a myth. From here:

"Crop circles are areas of cereal or similar crops that have been systematically flattened to form various geometric patterns. The phenomenon itself only entered the public imagination in its current form after the notable appearances in England in the late 1970s. Various scientific and pseudo-scientific explanations were put forward to explain the phenomenon, which soon spread around the world. In 1991, more than a decade after the phenomena began, two men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, revealed that they had been making crop circles in England since 1978 using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools. Many other people around the world are also openly making crop circles, notably Circlemakers.org. Although the commonly accepted view today is that crop circles are a man-made phenomenon, paranormal explanations, often including UFOs, are still popular."

There goes another theory, eh?

"For some reason, the crop glyph seemed to suggest that they were to be tied in with NASA's Odyssey IR image mysteriously acquired by Richard Hoagland's Enterprise Mission team on July 25, 2002 in the United States. "

Cue the weird whistle music from the X Files.

"Previously, we noted that both the 'SETI response' crop glyph and the Cydonia issue involved the idea of 'First Contact' with extraterrestrial intelligence, and that the timing of the crop formation directly overlapped the initial stage of the Odyssey picture controversy that straddle the month of August. Curiously, August was also exactly when Signs, the Hollywood film about crop circles, was released - as if to underscore the significance of the events in this time window."

Not to mention your medication ran out a week before, and you never got a new prescription.

"I also pointed out in the Endgame article that the disk in the alien glyph was likely an allusion to the golden disk onboard the Voyager spacecraft (launched 1977) which carried encoded SETI messages, intended for some potential ET civilization out there. I considered this postulation plausible because of the fact that the other crop formation created exactly one year prior (Aug. 14, 2001) in a nearby field was clearly stylized as a response to the SETI message transmitted by the Arecibo radio telescope in 1974."

Clearly stylized? Look for yourselves - this is a thin premise at best, I'd say. It's in a CIRCLE....wooo-eeee-ooooh!

"This context then nicely related back to Hoagland, as it was him -- then an adviser to NASA -- who first came up with the idea of sending a SETI message on spacecraft (Pioneer 10, 1972)."

Let's tie it all together with your hero, then.

"Strengthening the Martian connection further was the message found encoded on the disk of the 2002 alien crop formation:

Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts & their BROKEN PROMISES. Much PAIN but still time. EELRIJUE. There is GOOD out there. We OPpose DECEPTION. Conduit CLOSING (BELL SOUND)"

Bell sound? I thought the crap (whoops! Crop) circles didn't make noise?

A 'false gift' designed to deceive would archetypally be embodied by the Trojan Horse of Greek mythology. To get inside the city of Troy, the Greeks constructed the wooden horse and left it as a gift in front of the city. The Trojans, though initially suspicious, eventually dragged the horse through the gate into the city, not realizing that it was a big military operation carefully designed by the Greeks. At night, the soldiers who were hiding inside the wooden horse came out, opened the city's gates from inside, and a bloody surprise attack on the city ensued. Thus Troy finally fell. And it was all thanks to the 'false gift' of the Trojan Horse."

Aye caramba! So now Homer was in on it? (The writer, not the cartoon figure).

"Who was the genius that concocted this scheme against the Trojans? It was a figure named Odysseus, whose adventures are detailed in Homer's great epic, The Odyssey. Needless to say, 'Odyssey' is the very name given to the NASA Mars probe currently orbiting the Red Planet and giving us intriguing Infrared images - including Hoagland's Cydonia picture presently at the center of controversy."

Needless to say: go get your olanzapine prescription filled. And fire your therapist: he's not doing you any good at all.

"The name 'Odyssey' also nicely correlates with the underlying theme of 'Contact' - with alien intelligence. Exoterically, the name is an obvious reference to the popular book/film written by Arthur C. Clark, '2001: A Space Odyssey', that deals with the subject of contact with higher intelligence. Consequently, I speculated in my first Endgame report that the Odyssey's controversial Cydonia data might represent some kind of a 'false gift' as well."

Bing! Synchronicity confirms it! Yeesh, get a clue, fella.
(snip)
" I looked at the Ultra-Tech logo again and saw the "Personal Computer Service" part, and then the computer chip inside the 'disk'.

High-tech, computers, Trojan Horse, the alien disk encoded with computer ASCII language code, the crop alien appearing 'digital'...

Then it hit me. Could the alien warning be about, at least on one level, some kind of computer virus, particularly the type known as 'Trojans', which, like the mythical Trojan Horse, infiltrate computers by passing itself off as something else? Could this perhaps be how the terrorists might attack the United States or its allies next?"
(snip)
Like water on a hot griddle, this guy's all OVER the place!

"According to the growing opinion of the scientific community today, meteorites can literally be 'seeds'. This increasingly popular view contends that cosmic rocks flying through outer space may be carrying microbial life - or perhaps "virus" - and that they are capable of seeding planetary bodies with this extraterrestrial life. Of course, many environmental conditions must be met for the alien life to survive and flourish. But to a receptive and nurturing 'garden', this cosmic seed would be the beginning of life or the introduction of a new form of life. It would be, in a way, the moment of 'creation'."

I'm surprised, at this point, that no 'biblical evidence' is being trotted out here. But there will be.

"This theory got a big boost when NASA announced triumphantly in 1996 that a Martian rock, labeled ALH84001, contained fossils of bacteria-like organims that may have lived on the Red Planet billions of years ago. Thus we learned that the meteorites theoretically responsible for seeding Earth may well have come from the Red Planet."

So some ET civlization spat 'life' onto Earth from Mars?

"At this point, then, the implication would emerge that the 'false gifts' mentioned in the 2002 alien message might also relate to the 'fallen angels' in some way. Actually, this cannot be more fitting because the key function of these angelic beings in ancient tradition was to impart the 'gift' of advanced knowledge to mankind. In Greek myth, this story is repeated by Prometheus giving 'fire' to mankind, immediately followed by an unfortunate event involving Pandora's Box, a 'false gift' sent by Zeus. These, we are told, led to the corruption and suffering of man."

Newsflash: why do you think it's called mythology?

"Traditionally, the forbidden distribution of knowledge paves the way for the Great Flood - a drastic measure taken by 'God' to eradicate the 'virus' in the system."

Bing! Synchronicity strikes again!

"Turning back our attention to our own time, note that the biggest event witnessed in the year of 'Odyssey', 2001, was the 9/11 terrorism. And as those who have read my previous articles would know, the destruction was in many ways the modern version of the Great Flood (see Mystery, Babylon the Great, etc.). The parallel was very clear on many levels."

" Babylon Revisited

Immediately following the tale of Noah's Great Flood in Genesis is the famous story about the Tower of Babel, the modern version of which was the destroyed twin towers in NYC, as explained in my previous writings."

Hmmmm....and yet here we are, still able to communicate with one another.

"And here, too, appears the shem, i.e. the 'gift' of the heavenly stone:

…let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a shem, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. "

And yet they still were. And here, we have...ta-DAH! Kaballah yet again!

"The term 'Babel' denotes 'confusion', which in turn relates to the word Kabalah/Kabbalah that similarly implies confusion; and, to corroborate the underlying theme, the latter also happens to denote 'that which is received', i.e. 'gift'"

Hey, I think you missed the Popul Voh.

"In the post-9/11 era, many priests, the self-appointed mediator between God and people, have been publicly exposed to be pedophile, sexual predators, who have habitually terrorized countless innocent children. This situation is remarkably evocative of the deeds of the shadowy 'fallen angels'.

As written in Genesis, "the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men," or in other words, the angels - the mediator between God and man - had an inappropriate sexual relationship with young members of mankind."

And dragging pedophiliac RC priests into the mix? Can you say 'baroque meritocracy', boys and girls?

(snip)

"But what gives some seriousness to this humorous interpretation is the December timeframe. As explained in The Message of Cycle 23 and Endgame, there are various indications that the coming December of 2002 could be an important time window for something big. Tentatively, in fact, I postulated that this window might see the exit of the Pope or the US President - both being the leader of 'Babylon'. "

Mwhraaaannnk! Wrong-o.

"And we can also plausibly add Iraq and Saddam, i.e. the ancient Babylon, to the list. Whatever the case, it is eerie to see how the 'alien warning' relatable to Christmas, the time of 'gifts', would nicely fit into the projected time window. There may well be something to the Christmas connection."

Hey, who couldn't see THOSE two coming anyways? You didn't need to be Madame Cleo to figure THAT one out. Still off on the 2002 date. But wait! There's even more! He brings the fucking Nazis into his wild Daliean tapestry:

"It is quite well known that the Nazi regime, especially the infamous SS squad, held bizarre mystical beliefs and was driven by them. Indeed, the Third Reich was the first state in Western history since ancient Rome to be based mainly on religious/magical principles. It was a big 'anomaly' in modern history and the world today still deeply feels its impact after all these years. Most of us sincerely hope that we will never have to deal with such a ruthless and able killing machine again."

Wait...you're accusing the SS of having 'bizarre mystical beliefs'? Try looking in a mirror sometime soon.

"Though seemingly the stuff of wild conspiracy theories flying around out there,"

Man, talk about pot.kettle.black!

"the idea of the Reich surviving the WW 2 defeat is really nothing new. And, in fact, on various levels their continuation is very real. At the very least, it is no secret that the remarkable technological aspect of Nazi Germany was allowed to continue in other countries such as the U.S. and Soviet Union. For example, we know that many of NASA's founding fathers and leaders of the aerospace industry - such as Wernher von Braun (director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center), Walter Dornberger (vice president of Bell Aircraft Company and Bell Aerosystems Company), Dr. Kurt H. Debus (director of Kennedy Space Center), Richard Gompertz (head of NASA's Chrysler space division) - were former Nazi scientists/officials. Many of these former Nazis were connected to one of Germany's most secret weapons programs, the V-2 rocket. Their contribution to the US space program was such that it would not be an exaggeration to state that without the the technological 'gift' from the Reich, the Apollo missions to the Moon, one of the greatest achievement of mankind, would not have been possible. In a sense, interestingly, the intense space race between the US and Soviet Union, which also acquired many Nazi technological secrets at the end of the war, was collectively the continuing legacy of Nazi technology."

Oh, great. Like you didn't sound like a loon before.

Goro then goes on and on about NASA/Nazi collaboration, secret recruitment, all the old lunatic fringe denouements.

Goro Adachi is also a proponent of the concept of Time Rivers.

"The Time River Theory (TRT) is ultimately about the discovery and decoding of the 'blueprint' of reality - a blueprint that was literally carved on this planet by an unknown high intelligence. This is a brand new field just activated in 2003 via the publication of The Time Rivers. It's about time we opened up the Gateway... to a new dimension.

To get a little more specific, here is an abbreviated list of what the Time River Theory is about and what it reveals (at least in the book The Time Rivers):

* A grand system of literal 'rivers of time' flowing on our planet, created by some mysterious, higher intelligence.
* The intricate 'Time River scheme' produced by the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Mississippi, etc. showing us the entire timeline of human civilization, both past and future.
* Solutions to deep ancient mysteries of Egypt, Sumer, and even Mars.
* Encoded 'messages' revealing extraterrestrial and/or extra-temporal origins of human civilization.
* The 21st century being specifically pinpointed as the edge of time, when a 'timegate' opens up to bring mankind back to the realm of 'Genesis'.
* Tangible and unique solutions to the biblical events of Genesis such as Creation, the fallen angels, the Great Flood, the Ark, etc.
* An encoded timeline of the United States anticipating '9/11', an event suggested to mark the 'end' of the United States.

Please note that the the theory is extensive and still rapidly evolving, thus the above should be viewed as only the tip of the iceberg."

I'm waiting for him to tie this up with other multiple theories, along with Star Trek TNG, Stargate DS-1, and maybe even the sinking of the Titanic. He says that it's a new theory, I'll not go after this right now, other to say: THERE'S NO PROOF. It sounds like a great idea for a Sci-Fi novel, but until actual physical evidence is presented this is all a theory, definition #6 - "An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture."

There's also a debunking here, on Bad Astronomy.

Multiple and profuse apologies for being all over the place on this, folks, but there was just so MUCH content, and if I were to do a Fiskian rebuttal, well, that woulda been a whole lot less fun.
Covered a great deal of ground though.
Until the next post, then. Dubito ergo sum.