Exorcise Your Cat!

No, not exercise, exorcise. Today's article can't help but remind me of Bill Murray in Ghostbusters 2 pushing his no-budget paranormal TV show. "Next week on World of the Psychic, hairless pets. Weird." The joke, of course, being that there's nothing paranormal or psychic or ghostly or demonic or whatever about having an unusual-looking pet.

Now that joke would be even funnier if there weren't clueless people out there taking it way too seriously. The article concerns a cat named Pixel who is a Cornish Rex. Cornish Rexes are a breed with far less hair than regular house cats, and they're fairly rare so a lot of people aren't that familiar with them. Pixel's owner, Alyson Kalhagen, recently posted some photos of the cat online and got some pretty bizarre responses.

One such message was from an exorcist who told Kalhagen that a demon was using her pet as a 'puppet' and instructing her to keep Pixel caged and pray 'over and over' in front of him to get the demon out. 'I had a message from this person telling me that they were an 'exorcist' and Pixel had been 'taken over by a demon that was controlling his face'.

'I think he was trying to tell me that's why my cat is making all of these crazy faces,' Kalhagen said. 'In that photo he's got kind of a blank stare with his weird little grin on his face - like maybe the lights were on or no one was at home, or whoever was at home wasn't up to any good.

'All the time people say 'this is the creepiest cat I've ever seen', 'my sleep paralysis demon has come to life' and if they saw him in the middle of the night they'd have a heart attack and it would scare them to death.

'People say all the time that he's a 'demon cat' who 'must be possessed' and that the devil's taken control of him. It's kind of a recurring theme. I think it's pretty funny because I usually just say 'imagine coming face to face when you're trying to scoop the litter box'.'

Mike Pence - Evil Wizard?

The 2020 Vice Presidential Debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence was held the evening before last. There's plenty of analysis and commentary out there with respect to the issues discussed by the candidates, and the effectiveness of the format and moderation. But of course this is Augoeides, so I'm posting about the effing fly.

About two thirds of the way through the debate, a housefly landed on Pence's head and just sat there for a couple minutes. His hair is white, so the black fly was really obvious. Where this enters into paranormal territory is that apparently there's an old superstition that flies like to land on evil wizards. I have no idea whether or not this is true, but it's funny, so I'm going with it.

According to conventional Christian theology, you aren't supposed to pray for specific things. You're supposed to be humble and have faith, and trust that God has your best interests in mind. The classical example of this is the Lord's Prayer, which is what Jesus demonstrated for his disciples when they explicitly asked him how to pray. But this message has gotten pretty distorted in some modern Christian circles.

What I'm talking about is a practice called "imprecatory prayer," which is engaged in to obtain specific material results. Some of these intents clearly fall into what is generally considered "evil," like this guy who claims that his prayers were responsible for Ruth Bader Ginsberg's recent death. I'm not even going to quote from that - you can go and check out the link for yourself if you want.

Penis Candle Toad Venom WHUT???

Possible captions include "Don't lick it, man!" and "Does this toad look high to you?"

This story from AV Club seemingly has it all - penis candles, rituals, toad venom, and manslaughter. Oh, and Spain. If you're wondering what the hell I'm going on about, you're not alone. But here's deal, according to the article:

Today, in ritualistic toad venom death news: A man best known as a prominent Spanish adult film actor—but who also has a sideline selling candles shaped like his own penis—has been arrested on charges of involuntary manslaughter in relation to, well, a death from ritualistic toad venom ingestion.

Ignacio “Nacho” Vidal—a well-known porn performer with several AVN awards, and more than 1,500 credits to his name—was, per The Guardian this week, reportedly arrested in relation to the death of photographer José Luis Abad, in July of last year. Abad died after inhaling vaporized secretions from Incilius alvarius, a species of North American toad that secretes multiple hallucinogenic compounds (and also a few different potentially lethal poisons) when threatened.

Incilius alvarius (a.k.a. the Colorado River toad) has a long and complicated history as a controlled substance (or provider of same), and is both endangered and illegal to transport in a number of states. In addition, Bufotenin, one of the primary hallucinogens excreted by the animal, is considered a Class I controlled substance in the U.S., although it’s not immediately clear whether it carries similar restrictions in Spain, where Abad’s death occurred.

Spanish police have arrested three people in relation to the incident, with Vidal believed to be one of them. Police have accused Vidal of serving as a guide for a “mystical ritual” using the venom, and argue that he encouraged participation from “highly suggestible people who were especially vulnerable and were seeking alternative ways to cure certain ailments or addictions.” (They also claimed he downplayed the potential lethality of the secretions.)

Is This a Spell?

While we're on the subject of occult crime, or possibly occult crime, or for that matter just weird crime, here's a bizarre story from Boston, Massachusetts. A woman out walking her dog came upon a severed goat's head on the hood of her car, along with a photograph of her under the windshield wiper blades. Goats are commonly associated with the occult, though this also reminds me of that scene in The Godfather with the severed horse head in the bed. It might be less a magical ritual and more a terroristic threat.

Boston police said they received a report around 6 a.m. from a woman who said she was out walking her dog on Garfield Avenue when she noticed blood and the head of an animal, later identified as a goat, on the hood of her car. The 48-year-old woman also found a photo of herself tucked underneath the vehicle's windshield wiper blades. The woman told police she doesn't recall taking the picture or the time frame when it might have been taken.

Iris Robles says the victim is her cousin, a mother of four with a young son. "Like any other mom, she has a child she has to protect," Robles said. Animal control responded to the scene and removed the dead goat from the woman's vehicle but Robles says her cousin and family are left with questions, like who would do this? She has no idea whatsoever, and she has no enemies," Robles said. Why would someone want to terrify this mother of four?

Robles said, "They are insane, this is insane. They are so disturbing." People in the neighborhood are also confused and concerned about the gruesome and gory discovery. “Shocked, very shocked. Where would they even get something like that?” one woman asked. “Today with the horror and stuff, someone’s probably just trying to mess with someone’s mind to intimidate them,” Tom Flanagan said. “And that’s not OK,” a woman added after Flanagan’s comments.

Hopefully I'll be able to follow this story and post an update once the culprit has been apprehended. I'm wondering if this will turn out to be a (crude) attempt at magick related to, say, Capricorn - which rules the Evil Eye - or just a garden variety threat that some heavy metal kid or somebody like that thought would be scary. As I've mentioned here before, so few people are actually interested in occultism that it probably is the latter, but I'm not going to rule anything out without more information.

Personally I wouldn't cast a spell this way because I try to evaluate my results scientifically. If you let your target know that you're cursing them, they might change their behavior based on that knowledge rather than due to the spell itself. But I also know that not all magicians are concerned with such things.

Loch Ness Monster DNA

Totally not a sturgeon or a catfish. Also, totally fake.

I haven't done many cryptozoology posts for awhile, but this story from Reuters caught my eye. Scientists are planning a DNA hunt for the Loch Ness monster, which may finally settle the sturgeon versus catfish debate between longtime monster hunter Steve Feltham and myself. I say sturgeon, he says catfish. Whatever turns up, I'm hoping that it turns out to be more enlightening than the "bigfoot DNA" that turned out to be possum from back in 2013.

Whenever a creature moves through its environment, it leaves behind tiny fragments of DNA from skin, scales, feathers, fur, faeces and urine. “This DNA can be captured, sequenced and then used to identify that creature by comparing the sequence obtained to large databases of known genetic sequences from hundreds of thousands of different organisms,” said team spokesman Professor Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago in New Zealand.

The first written record of a monster relates to the Irish monk St Columba, who is said to have banished a “water beast” to the depths of the River Ness in the 6th century. The most famous picture of Nessie, known as the “surgeon’s photo”, was taken in 1934 and showed a head on a long neck emerging from the water. It was revealed 60 years later to have been a hoax that used a sea monster model attached to a toy submarine.

Countless unsuccessful attempts to track down the monster have been made in the years since, notably in 2003 when the BBC funded an extensive scientific search that used 600 sonar beams and satellite tracking to sweep the full length of the loch.

Supporting Feltham's side, we know for a fact that Loch Ness is home to a population of Wels catfish because the Loch was seeded with the fish back in Victorian times. It is speculated that the Wels catfish can grow to thirteen feet or so, though the verified record is more like nine feet. Still, that's a big catfish.

But many of the pictures I've seen of the monster look more like a sturgeon to me. European sturgeons can grow longer than the Wels catfish, up to twenty feet. They also look a lot weirder and less like a fish that's easily identifiable, and they go back and forth between rivers and the ocean to spawn, like salmon. But we don't know whether or not sturgeons live or spawn in the loch.

Psychic Animals Here to Stay

A few years ago, World Cup Soccer went wild for "psychic animals" that seemed to possess the ability to predict the outcomes of matches. The animals would be offered two bowls or containers of food, one bearing the flag of each country. Then the one they selected would be deemed the winner - and a few of those animals proved quite accurate. This year, a Russian cat named Achilles has been selected ahead of the 2018 World Cup tournament as its official "animal psychic."

Achilles, a white-furred deaf cat who lives at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, has been selected to predict the 2018 FIFA World Cup winners.

The male clairvoyant cat was also picked as the official oracle to forecast the traditional pre-match predictions for last year’s Confederations Cup, where he correctly predicted three of the four-match outcomes, reported Russian News Agency Tass.

Hermitage cats press secretary, Maria Khaltunen, claims the feline was chosen for the role because he demonstrated "capabilities for choice, analysis and unusual behavior.” In addition, Achilles is deaf, which means he will not be easily distracted by surrounding noises.

For the 2017 Confederations Cup, the white cat was made to choose between two bowls of food, each with a different country’s flag. “This decision has been made, the papers have been signed,” Khaltunen told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency on Monday.

According to Khaltunen, Achilles will receive a fan identification card (otherwise known as a fan passport). He will also go down in history as the only animal to have attained the prestigious documentation. "Animals are not given [Fan IDs,] as there are questions concerning photos," Khaltunen said.

Now here's where this gets interesting. The main skeptic claim about psychic animals is that what's really is going on is that hundreds of people have animals doing this, and simply by chance some of them will turn out to be right. Over time, this creates a sort of "sifting process" where the only animals left in the pool by the end of the tournament are the ones that chose correctly. So the most successful animals are not psychic, just lucky.

But when you pick an "official" psychic animal ahead of time, that whole dynamic changes. Since one of the basic tenets of probability theory is that each subsequent pick in cases like this should be entirely independent of past picks. So if this is all due to chance, the odds that Achilles will be able to pick successful matches again should be pretty low. If he's successful this time around as well, I would say that warrants further paranormal investigation.

Rupert Sheldrake has provided some evidence of rudimentary psychic abilities in animals, and has proposed his morphic resonance hypothesis to explain it. If Achilles can repeat his performance this year, with all the experimental variables declared ahead of time, it means that at the very least what is going on is probably not sheer luck.

More Bees!

No, it probably didn't look anything like this. But it's funny to imagine that it did.

I just can't get enough of this African spell that sends swarms of bees after your enemies. As I've mentioned previously, bees aren't just regular vengeance, they're also amusing vengeance. On Monday, a car thief was apprehended in Kenya with the help of the spell.

A suspected car thief on Monday ran into a police station and surrendered himself after he was attacked by a swarm of bees, which only left him after a witchdoctor performed a ritual.

Mr Francis Sikadigu had allegedly drugged the car owner before driving off to an unknown destination. When the Nation caught up with him at the police station, Mr. Sikadigu, a middle-aged Ugandan, was groaning in pain and moving in circles as the bees stung him.

He had abandoned the car at the gate to the Bungoma County Assembly. Bungoma OCPD David Kirui said the suspect was in custody and would be charged in court once investigations are complete.

The bees continued to accost the thief until he could be taken to another witchdoctor who lifted the spell. I totally need to learn this one, because there are a few people out there that I think deserve some bees. As I think I also have mentioned previously, summoning bees probably falls under Leo, "The Power of Taming Wild Beasts," in Liber 777.

I haven't had a chance to experiment with it yet, but rest assured that it's on my list.

"Man-Sheep" Born in South Africa

Here's one more case showing that the paranormal should never be regarded as the default explanation. A "man-sheep" - a lamb that looks like it could be part human - was recently stillborn in South Africa. As usually happens with weird events like these, many fear that bestiality and witchcraft played a role in the conception of the bizarre-looking creature. But veterinarians who examined the body have a different, more prosaic explanation.

The panic got so great that the Eastern Cape Department of Rural Development sent out experts to carry out tests after pictures of it spread through the community. Chief Director of Veterinary Services Dr Lubabalo Mrwebi admitted that at first glance the lamb which was born dead did resemble a human being but was not part human.

Dr Mrwebi said: “We can confirm this not a hoax photo but that the severely deformed lamb was born by a sheep in Lady Frere this week which at a glance resembles a human form. “It is not however human but a deformed stillborn lamb sired by a sheep and was subsequently infected by a Rift Valley Fever at an early stage of its pregnancy.

“It is worth noting that a sheep has 28 pairs of chromosomes while humans have 23 pairs which is important in dispelling the myth that a union of a sheep ovum and a human sperm can lead to a development of a viable life form. “The deformed lamb exhibits signs that are consistent with an early foetal development that went wrong as a result of a viral infection and nothing more” he said.

So it's not the result of a spell or animal husbandry gone wrong. It's the result of a viral infection. I suppose somebody could cast a spell that made it more likely for a particular sheep or flock of sheep to catch an infection, but that's about all you could do along these lines with magick. Biological explanations are a lot more compelling.

This isn't the first case of a "man-sheep," so apparently sheep fetuses do go through a stage where they look more human than you might expect. Mostly it's the lack of wool, which is unsurprising for a fetus, and the flattened face, which is a mutation that is bred for and viable in some breeds of dog like pugs.

That raises the possibility of breeding a viable flat-faced sheep. Maybe the result would be too disturbing, but maybe that would be the whole reason to do it in the first place.

He Picked the Wrong Water

Even though it sounds like something out of The Onion, this story from back in March is from Zimbabwe Today, which as far as I know is a legitimate African newspaper. According to the story, a pastor trying to demonstrate "walking on water" was instead eaten by crocodiles.

It is said that Pastor Mthethwa walked into the water and when he was 30 meters inside the river, he attempted to ascend above the water so he can start walking, but the 3 crocodiles appeared out of no where and started feasting on him.

"They finished him in a couple of minutes. All that was left of him when they finished eating him is a pair of sandals and his underwear floating above the water." said Deacon Nkosi.

ER24 responded to the scene 30 minutes after, but upon arrival there was not much they could do as the man of god was already dead, digested by the crocodiles.

Above and beyond the irony factor, what I find interesting about this story is how the pastor's actions are described. Instead of just walking across the water from the shore, he walked 30 meters in and then attempted to "ascend?" I can do that trick. I just have to be in the right place, and I only know of one that fits the bill - the Gulf of Mexico coast off Sanibel Island in Florida. But I'm sure there are many others around the world.

The deal is that off Sanibel island, there's a shallow sand bar about that far out from shore. So I could walk out into the ocean and then appear to rise until I was only knee-deep or ankle-deep in the water and walk for a ways. Obviously, anybody who followed me would discover they could do the same thing - but if, say, the body of water happened to be infested by crocodiles so nobody ever went in? That would keep the secret pretty well.

I don't know whether the pastor really believed he could do it, or if he was pulling a trick that meant he had to do at that precise location. Either way, luck was not with him. Even in waters with a lot of crocodiles or alligators, they usually are willing to leave people alone for a short period of time unless they are especially hungry - time enough to wade out, walk around on a sand bar or, I suppose, on the water itself, and then wade back. But not this time.

Maybe if he really was trying to pull a trick on his congregation, the crocodiles were just God's way of saying "no."

Turkey Ritual

Over the last five years or so, wild turkeys have been making a comeback here in the Twin Cities metro area. These birds are large, social, far more intelligent than their domestic cousins, and known for their skills in magick. When a coven of wild turkeys comes together to perform a spell, the power that they can raise rivals that of...

Wait a minute. What the hell is going on here?!

The image above, taken from Twitter video, does not appear to be staged, and is exactly what it looks like - eighteen wild turkeys circumambulating deosil around a dead cat in the middle of a road. Are they trying to resurrect the cat? Or perform a necromantic operation to contact its spirit? Various theories have been proposed, but what everybody agrees on is that the whole thing is pretty strange.

Here are 18 turkeys tracing a patient, steady circle around a dead cat. “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” the film’s creator says, and while that is not exactly true in a world where (say it with us) a racist orange reality-TV steak grifter is the president, it is still extremely valid and strange!

The Verge sought out explanation for this strange phenomenon from a biologist, who suggested the turkeys were doing a thing called “predator inspection,” in which they take a look at an animal higher up on the food chain, except in this case that predator is a fucking dead cat, so why would they be inspecting him? This is a line of thinking that lead to another, even more unsatisfying conclusion:

"What could be happening is that the turkeys are stuck in some kind of never-ending circle, with each bird following the tail in front of it. “It’s not unusual for them to get into those dances where they chase each other around,” Scott Gardner, a turkey expert with the California Department Of Fish And Wildlife, tells The Verge."

Sure, that might be the case. Or they might be locked in a pagan resurrection rite, or they might have killed the cat themselves and are now taunting its family, or maybe this is a duck blood orgy, or maybe they have sensed and are earnestly attempting to warn us humans of our own impending doom via climate change.

I don't know that the "predator inspection" thing is necessarily that far-fetched. I can see a domestic cat going after a wild turkey, though I can't see a cat actually killing one given the size difference. A cat will sometimes go after a goose, which is about the same size as a wild turkey - and wind up regretting it because geese are nasty. And maybe they are doing some kind of a dance following each other around, but why deosil around a dead cat? That's the big question.

I'll keep an eye out for any more cases of apparent turkey spellcasting to see if this constitutes a trend. If so, the birds may be more powerful than we know - even though, according to reports, the cat did remain dead.

Dueling Groundhogs

Over the years I've followed the predictions of Punxsutawney Phil, the country's most famous predicting groundhog. Years ago an article noted that Phil only appears to be right 39% of the time, and an astute commenter pointed out that Phil was in fact quite accurate, so long as you reversed every prediction he made. Today, Phil predicted six more weeks of winter, which is apparently par for the course.

This year, though, Phil has some competition. Dunkirk Dave, a rival groundhog from New York, agreed with Phil, but General Beauregard Lee, a rival from Georgia, predicted an early spring. Since we have some data points to work with, we can finally see about testing Phil's accuracy against his peers.

Records dating to 1887 show Phil predicting more winter 102 times while forecasting an early spring just 18 times — including last year, the AP reports. There are no records for the remaining years.

Dunkirk Dave also predicted six more weeks of winter after emerging in Dunkirk, New York. Dave, actually a female groundhog whose non-stage name is Sidewinder, is claimed to be the world’s second-longest predicting groundhog.

But, Gen. Beauregard Lee, a resident groundhog at Georgia's Yellow River Game Ranch in Gwinnett County, predicted an early spring, along with a Super Bowl win for the Atlanta Falcons.

The Groundhog Day tradition has its origin in a German legend that says if a furry rodent casts a shadow on Feb. 2, winter continues, the Associated Press reports. If not, spring comes early.

Where I live in Minnesota, you generally are pretty safe predicting six more weeks of winter at the beginning of February. February is always cold, so that's four more weeks right there. We did have one crazy year awhile back where we had summer temperatures at the beginning of March, but as far as anyone could remember that had never happened before.

This winter has been pretty mild here so far, so I'm wondering if Phil might be wrong again, or at least as wrong as he's likely to be given the climate of my state. It didn't really get cold until Thanksgiving this year, and we only have had one day below -20 so far, back in December. So we'll have to see this year how well the reverse-groundhogmancy method manages to work.

Brazilian Vampire Bats Feeding on Humans

For the most part, vampire bats get a bad rap. Even though the creatures helped to inspire Bram Stoker's famous novel Dracula, in real life vampire bats are not know to seek out humans as prey. That is, until now. Thanks to DNA analysis, Brazilian scientists have recently identified a species of vampire bat that appears to have developed a taste for human blood.

However, recent reports have confirmed what humans dread the most—that some of these wild creatures have been proven to include people’s blood in their diet. According to the New York Post, some species of the winged-mammals, which are commonly found soaring across America, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, have indeed been secretly sucking human blood.

Scientists at Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil claim that a colony of hairy-legged vampire bats are the culprits, after tracing human DNA from 70 feces samples of these bats. Enrico Bernard, the lead researcher from the university, said he and his team “were quite surprised” by their recent findings. “This species isn’t adapted to feed on the blood of mammals,” he revealed.

The chilling revelation contradicts previous experiments on the air-gliding critters, which reflected that they would rather starve than eat any other mammal blood. Bernard said that its no longer the case with these bats, who seemed to discover that human blood is thicker and higher in protein than the fatty bird plasma.

There's no word as of yet on any connection between this strain of bat and actual vampires, or any increase in the numbers of the Brazilian undead. But scientists do fear that this new strain of vampire bat could contribute to the spread of diseases. The bats fly and are also far tinier than what vampire hunters are used to, so driving little bat-sized stakes through their hearts is quite impractical.

Not the Bees!

Now this sounds like a fun spell that I totally have to learn. According to Kenyan news outlet Tuko, a man hired a witchdoctor to summon a swarm of bees to hunt down a stolen motorcycle. This reminds me of the "mystical snakes and bees" unleashed against Boko Haram back in 2014, so it sounds to me like there are a number of folks in Kenya and Nigeria who know how to cast it.

Residents of Mbooni, Makueni County were left in shock after a man sent a swarm of bees to recover his stolen motorbike.

The unidentified man is said to have been robbed of his motorbike and went to consult a witchdoctor in order to recover his property.

In an incident that has shocked many, the man is said to have sent a large swarm of bees that invaded the local market and landed on the stolen motorbike.

The bees sent the thief running for dear life as they settled on the motorbike.

This spell has all sorts of potential applications. Somebody messes with your family? Bees! Something gets stolen? Bees! Somebody is making your life miserable at work? Bees! It's not just regular vengeance, it's amusing vengeance - though I expect for anybody with an allergy to bee stings, facing it would likely be pretty terrifying. African bees are more aggressive than their European counterparts, and they can sting multiple times without injuring themselves - so that can't be good.

Liber 777 associates bees with Binah, the sephira of Saturn. So that would probably be one approach. Nema also associates bees with the goddess Ma'at, so that might mean the path of Libra is a possibility. Another might be the path of Leo, the "Power of Training Wild Beasts." Clearly, some experimentation is required. But if I can really manage to figure it out, just deploying it once would make all the work totally worth it. You know, as long as I could watch the whole thing unfold. Because awful though it is, summoning a swarm of bees is also pretty darn funny.

Psychic Animals Called It

This Chinese monkey totally wants to make America great again.

Going into Tuesday's election, pretty much all the polls turned out to be wrong. In a surprise upset, Donald Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to win a majority of votes in the electoral college. The election was very close, with Hillary Clinton winning the nationwide popular vote.

The pollsters may have been wrong, but one demographic saw it coming - psychic animals. On Monday, Huffington Post reported that psychic animals around the world had picked Trump to win.

Various people around the world have attempted to predict the election results by asking animal oracles for their input.

The Shiyanhu Ecological Tourism Park in China’s Hunan province recently had Geda, a simian seer known for accurately predicting the winners of European soccer matches, take a stab at political forecasting, according to The Washington Post.

The monkey, whose name means “goose bumps,” was presented with life-size cutouts of Trump and Hillary Clinton. Geda not only chose Trump ― he climbed onto the cutout to give the man a kiss.

The article includes more examples of trials involving psychic animals, all of which came out in Trump's favor. So here's the question - are these animals really psychic? Some have shown seemingly remarkable abilities to make predictions, beyond what chance would expect. British biologist Rupert Sheldrake has done some interesting experiments with psychic pets, though few mainstream scientists accept his results.

And here's another - will Trump turn out to be the president who embraces the support of these psychic animals and genuinely cares about their issues? I mean, I don't know what those are, but they must want something, right?

Goat Yoga?

So perhaps this is the real reason fundamentalist Christians think yoga, even when stripped of all vestiges of Asian religion, is evil - because it's better with goats. It always has confused me that non-sectarian yoga is still considered problematic by certain Christians, because without any of the Asian religious trappings, it's just stretching. And if God hates stretching, there are a lot of other things the truly devout would have to eliminate from their lives. Like, say, movement.

But now it all makes sense. Christ is the lamb of God, and the Bible tells us that Jesus will come to separate the sheep from the goats. It should be clear that anyone who engages in goat yoga has taken a side, and it's not the side of Christ. The goat is Capricornus, who is, of course, the devil of the Tarot - Levi's rendering of Baphomet. So if goats like participating in yoga classes, what's the message? Clearly the devil loves it, which means that by definition God must hate it. Or something like that.

Goat yoga is the brainchild of Oregon resident Lainey Morse, who recently started holding yoga classes at her goat farm. The goats enthusiastically joined in, and it now looks like goat yoga could be a hit. But that's the whole point of evil, right? It's fun, so it's tempting - and therefore it leads all who participate into damnation. And probably the goats as well. You know, if you happen to buy that sort of thing.

But here's a better idea. How about we end this whole "war on stretching" nonsense, and focus on issues that really affect people's lives? That way, anybody who disapproves of yoga can just not do it without making a fuss, and those who want to do it can - including those who would rather do their yoga with goats.

A Qigong Sleep Spell?

I don't usually post videos this long here on Augoeides, but I found this one particularly fascinating. It shows footage of a Japanese Qigong master putting animals to sleep using the power of energy work. As a student of Qigong, I'm aware of techniques that you can use to make other people tired or help them wake up. But this seems to be a whole other level.

A caveat - this is from a television program, so hypothetically it could have been staged. Generally speaking, I'm not one to jump to the conclusion that anything on television is automatically a hoax, and I haven't found any evidence or testimony that these demonstrations were faked. So I'm assuming that the footage is genuine, with allowances for editing and such.

Most of what I was doing while watching the footage was trying to figure out exactly what the Qigong master was doing so I could see about imitating it. He's using his cupped projecting hand, and appears to be alternating slow "down" motions with quicker side-to-side motions with his arm slightly bent at the elbow.

In addition to this, I assume he's doing proper Qigong breathing along with a visualization something like the macrocosmic orbit, which extends from the core of the body to the "bubbling well" points on the palms of the hands and feet. The hand motions make me guess that what he is trying to do is increase the amount of Earth energy in the animals' subtle bodies relative to Heaven energy.

According to what I have been taught, Qi comes in two forms - Heaven and Earth. Earth moves from the feet upwards and Heaven moves from head downward. Earth is calm, placid, and sedate, whereas Heaven is active, alert, and in extreme cases on edge. The "down" motions could amplify Earth, whereas the side-to-side motions could disperse Heaven to keep it from descending as fully through the body.

Theoretically, that could put an animal or a person to sleep, but I expect that it would take a lot of practice to get to the point where I would be able to do it this reliably. At the same time, that's what practice is for, right?

Chimpanzee Rituals?

No, not rituals involving chimpanzees, rituals performed by them. Chimps are our closest living relatives and share more than 99% of their DNA with humans. And recently, a group of biologists in the Republic of Guinea happened upon a group of chimps who engage in what might be some form of ritual behavior, which has previously only been identified in humans. After a wildlife camera captured a chimp picking up a stone, fixating on a particular tree, and then hurling the stone at it in such a way that the stone landed in a hollow within the tree, they investigated further and found that this was far from a unique occurrence.

I spent many months in the field, along with many other researchers, trying to figure out what these chimps are up to. So far we have two main theories. The behaviour could be part of a male display, where the loud bang made when a rock hits a hollow tree adds to the impressive nature of a display. This could be especially likely in areas where there are not many trees with large roots that chimps would normally drum on with their powerful hands and feet. If some trees produce an impressive bang, this could accompany or replace feet drumming in a display and trees with particularly good acoustics could become popular spots for revisits.

On the other hand, it could be more symbolic than that – and more reminiscent of our own past. Marking pathways and territories with signposts such as piles of rocks is an important step in human history. Figuring out where chimps' territories are in relation to rock throwing sites could give us insights into whether this is the case here. Even more intriguing than this, maybe we found the first evidence of chimpanzees creating a kind of shrine that could indicate sacred trees. Indigenous West African people have stone collections at “sacred” trees and such man-made stone collections are commonly observed across the world and look eerily similar to what we have discovered here.

The latter theory is the more compelling of the two, though it will need to be confirmed by subsequent research. It makes sense that if humans are built to perform rituals humans might be as well. But going a little further, what if these rituals confer some paranormal benefit upon the chimps that perform them? That's not something we're likely to hear a biologist address any time soon. But I could see where, for example, the rocks could serve as some sort of offering to forest or tree spirits who respond by providing them with good fortune. That might explain the survival benefit of performing them, and would provide one more piece of evidence testifying to the effectiveness of magical operations.

Or maybe these aren't rituals at all. It's just interesting to speculate on the ramifications if that's what they turn out to be.

Reverse-Groundhogmancy for 2015

Last winter my attempt to apply reverse-groundhogmancy failed spectacularly. To recap my ongoing attempts to apply this potentially remarkable divination tool, back in 2012 a meteorology website put together an analysis of the predictions of Punxsutawney Phil, the world's most famous groundhog. According to folklore, if Phil sees his shadow on Groundhog Day there will be six more weeks of winter. If he does not see his shadow, spring will come early. But what the analysis showed is that Phil is only right 39% of the time.

A commenter here on Augoeides noted that in fact the analysis meant that if every one of Phil's predictions were reversed, his accuracy would be 61%, substantially better than chance. It was with that revelation that I embraced the dark art of reverse-groundhogmancy. In 2013 it worked just fine - Phil predicted an early spring which did not come to pass, making the reverse prediction correct. Last year, though, he predicted six more weeks of a winter that was truly awful in Minnesota, and was not just correct but overwhelmingly so. The winter of 2014 endured longer than a mere six weeks, including a blizzard in April.

This year I'm more hopeful, for both the weather and the reverse method. Today Phil once again saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter. Unlike last year, though, this winter has been relatively mild here in the Upper Midwest, with above-zero temperatures every couple of weeks. And now according to the reverse method we will have an early spring, so that's my prediction and I'm sticking to it.

We'll see how it works out this time.

Megan Fox Must Be Trolling

Creationist and anti-science blogger Megan Fox is back in the news this week, and now I'm convinced that her persona has to be some sort of ongoing performance art piece. Nobody could possibly be this stupid in real life - could they? This time around, Fox has posted a video of herself "auditing" the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. Not only does she confuse ordinary lizards with mythical dragons, as in her previous videos she sees "leftist propaganda" everywhere.

“Look, I found a dragon!” she exclaims as she examines what appears to be an iguana. “Spikes, claws, scales, nails – it’s a dragon!”

Fox, whose stupefying video audit of a science museum went viral last month, toured the Brookfield Zoo in another series of videos posted on her YouTube channel.

She complains that the zoo is exhibiting “anti-human” prejudice in a display that shows 90 percent of the world’s primates are threatened with extinction due to the actions of one species of primate.

“There are tons of (displays) here that say, you know, humans are bad,” Fox says. “There’s all kinds of anti-human and green initiative stuff that we can look at here, so it’s going to be fun.”

The PJ Media blogger argues, as the camera lingers over the Spanish translation of “water,” that a display on water conservation has nothing to do with animals and is instead leftist propaganda.

Yes, clean water has nothing to do with animals because none of them drink. Or swim. Or do anything that polluted water might affect. Clearly Fox has never kept fish, because even trace amounts of chlorine or soap can be toxic to them. Many of the chemicals we use for cleaning are even worse. As for the facts of biology being "anti-human," the truth is that human population growth and subsequent development has not been a good thing for most animals. As their habitat is reduced, their numbers dwindle. That's just math.

But I'm not going to bother debunking her ridiculous comments any further. I'm calling it now - Fox is engaged in some sort of a satirical project specifically designed to make religious people look dumb. She has to be. I'll freely admit that I fell for it last time, but no more. I expect that one of these days Fox is going to out herself as a member of the Landover Baptist Church. Either that, or one of these days she's going to go on some conservative television program and cite the mocking of her satirical videos as proof of how "intolerant" liberals are.

When she does, you can tell all your friends that you heard it here first.

Slovenian Hunter Bags Unicorn

No, that's neither a joke nor a typo. A hunter in Slovenia recently killed a roe deer with a single antler growing out of the center of its head. Unicorn goats can be created by surgically relocating the cells that produce horns into a single central patch, there was little evidence that anything similar happened naturally. That is, until now.

So you read that right, folks. Unicorns are officially real. The animal's actual skull is shown in the image above, and National Geographic will be running a feature on it in the December issue.

Shot by a hunter in Celje, Slovenia, in August, the roe deer has an extremely rare type of antler deformity, likely caused by an injury early in the antlers' development. Such injuries are common in deer and often lead to antler abnormalities, including bizarrely shaped racks. The abnormal antler on this Slovenian "unicorn" is so unusual that scientist Boštjan Pokorny, who verified the animal's authenticity, said he's never seen anything like it in nature.

"In this species, only males grow antlers, which are bilateral and usually symmetrical bone structures that appear from two antler pedicles, i.e. extensions of the skull," Pokorny, assistant director of the ecological research institute ERICo Velenje, said in an email. "However, in the case of this very untypical and interesting buck, both pedicles, which should be separated, grew up together in one large pedicle."

This is another case showing that most mythology is at least partially rooted in fact. In the middle ages, unicorns were believed to exist but were thought to be rare. The "unicorn horns" that have survived from the period generally come from narwhals, a species of whale with a single large hornlike protrusion. But the existence of this deer suggests that perhaps one like it was seen from time to time roaming European forests, which would have reinforced the myth or possibly even started it off.