Parting the Red Sea

One of the points that I make all the time is that when magical spells influence the physical world they generally act through some sort of physical medium. In other words, you can usually look at the set of circumstances leading up to the manifestation of a particular magical goal and identify what the physical mechanism was. Those circumstances often prove to be collections of unlikely occurrences that surround the goals of the spell, but they nonetheless generally conform to accepted laws of physical reality. This is true of miracles as well - after all, a miracle is simply a magical operation that results in some sort of dramatic success.

One of the most famous miracles in Biblical history is the parting of the Red Sea, said to have been performed by Moses during the exodus from Egypt. I've noted elsewhere that one of the dangers of relying on Biblical history is that the Torah was most likely only written down around 538 BCE following the Babylonian Captivity, and thus had to summarize nearly a thousand years of oral tradition. The accuracy of such a summary is always going to be hit or miss - for example, historical evidence suggests that the Jews were never slaves in Egypt. And while there is a brief notation in the written Egyptian histories referring to a group of people who left to settle in the lands further east around the time given for the exodus, there is no mention of pursuit by Pharaoh's armies or any significant unrest that accompanied this group's departure. Still, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that an event as dramatic as the parting of a sea might have seemed so incredible that it would be hard to forget.

Scientists have now worked out a model that offers a possible mechanism for the crossing detailed in the book of Exodus. It relies, first of all, on correcting a simple translation error in the story. The Hebrew that is rendered into English as "Red Sea" in some translations of the Bible in fact means "sea of reeds," and most experts believe that it refers to an area further north toward the Mediterranean Sea that includes part of the Nile delta. This is a region of marshy lakes and lagoons much shallower than the Red Sea proper. The mechanism is a phenomenon called wind setdown, that has been proposed as a possible explanation since the nineteenth century. This fits the text well - the description in Exodus claims that the water was driven back by a "mighty east wind" that blew throughout the night.

Computer simulations, part of a larger study on how winds affect water, show wind could push water back at a point where a river bent to merge with a coastal lagoon, the team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder said.

"The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus," Carl Drews of NCAR, who led the study, said in a statement.

"The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in."

Religious texts differ a little in the tale, but all describe Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt ahead of a pharaoh's armies around 3,000 years ago. The Red Sea parts to let Moses and his followers pass safely, then crashes back onto the pursuers, drowning them.

Drews and colleagues are studying how Pacific Ocean typhoons can drive storm surges and other effects of strong and sustained winds on deep water.

His team pinpointed a possible site south of the Mediterranean Sea for the legendary crossing, and modeled different land formations that could have existed then and perhaps led to the accounts of the sea appearing to part.

The model requires a U-shaped formation of the Nile River and a shallow lagoon along the shoreline. It shows that a wind of 63 miles per hour, blowing steadily for 12 hours, could have pushed back waters 6 feet deep.

"This land bridge is 3-4 km (2 to 2.5 miles) long and 5 km (3 miles) wide, and it remains open for 4 hours," they wrote in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.

"People have always been fascinated by this Exodus story, wondering if it comes from historical facts," Drews said. "What this study shows is that the description of the waters parting indeed has a basis in physical laws."

And, I would point out, a basis in magick theory, since the land bridge formed at the precise moment that it was needed. This implies that Moses may very well have been a weather worker who conjured the wind in order to make the crossing. 63 miles per hour is indeed a mighty east wind, and summoning it out of a clear sky still would have been just about impossible. But there's an additional key point in the story:

And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness [to them], but it gave light by night [to these]: so that the one came not near the other all the night. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go [back] by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry [land], and the waters were divided.

That "pillar of cloud" sounds just like a thunderstorm, and I can tell you from my own experience that summoning a high wind out of a thunderstorm is well within the power of a decent weather worker - like, say, me. And it wouldn't surprise me to find that a number of people reading this blog could do it as well. You read that right - one of the most famous miracles in history might very well be something that a decent percentage of skilled magicians could accomplish.

I guess now I need to get started on raising the dead.

Review: She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror edited by Tim Lieder

Even though I write fiction, these days I read a lot less of it than I used to. But this story collection caught my attention (really, how could it not with a title like that?) and I was willing to make an exception. I found my time well-spent and I think that this collection represents just the sort of fiction readers of this blog will enjoy.

This particular anthology is a collection of horror stories based on stories found in the Bible, and it's as entertaining as it sounds. You don't need to know the stories on which they are based to enjoy these tales, but if you're someone like me who has read the Bible cover-to-cover it's even more fun to look at the original stories and in most cases see just how few modifications were required to make them fit soundly into the horror genre.

It begins with the story of Ruth told from the point of view of a vengeful demon and ends with a Jesus-as-vampire tale, an idea that I honestly thought had been completely done to death (so to speak) until I encountered the author's fresh and original take on it. In between you will find Daniel cast as a prophet for a modern multinational corporation, a retelling of the story of Jonah inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and much more.

All in all, this is a great anthology for those interested in the esoteric and horror fans alike.

Want to buy your own copy of She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror edited by Tim Lieder? Order from my Books and Media page and you can help support Augoeides.

Devil in the Bathroom

Normally people report the face of Jesus showing up in odd places - chicken feathers, drainpipes, and even Google maps - but the latest mysterious image, found in a bathroom in Budapest, proved much more sinister. It appeared to be the face of the Devil!

Husband Laszlo, 52, had renovated the room at great expense, fitting it with a heavenly new bath, shower and tiles – but it’s made life hell.

Forty-seven-year-old Mrs Csrefko spotted the terrifying horned image after her first shower.

She told The Sun: "I was naked coming out of the shower and I could suddenly see his eyes staring into me. I just screamed and ran."

Well, I suppose it is a part of the conventional folklore that the Devil makes women run around naked. Seriously, though, the image strikes me as a classic mosaic situation. Once the brain notices a specific pattern in a random field of shapes and colors it will seem to suddenly appear out of nowhere.

Laszlo added: "We can't clean it off and it wasn't there when we put the tiles up. It just appeared overnight and nothing can move it.

"The room is always ice cold no matter how high we turn the heating up and we've just stopped using it because it's too spooky.

"We wash in the sink downstairs now."

It is possible that if the room wasn't extra cold before the renovation and also if the cold is not due to all the walls being tiled - which does happen even in the absence of paranormal forces - the Csrefko family might have something going on besides hysterical overreaction. In one of the few Goetic evocations that I've done I will say that I saw something kind of similar. The thing is, I highly doubt what I saw could have been photographed because there was clearly some sort of psychological and/or spiritual component involved.

We had the triangle hung on a wall covered in textured plaster, and I swear that when we finished the conjurations a vague image kind of like a face seemed to form inside it. The face lasted throughout the ritual and then disappeared when we closed down the temple. Skeptic that I generally am about such things (believe it or not) I spent awhile afterwards playing around with the triangle and lighting to see if I could get the face to appear again, but was unable to reproduce it no matter what I did.

It looks like getting rid of the image is a job too big for Flash – the Hungarian couple are summoning an exorcist to flush the evil spirits from their lavatory tiling.

What I would find extremely interesting about this case is whether or not the "face" can still be photographed after the exorcism. If it actually disappears I will grant that something paranormal is going on here - though I highly doubt the real Devil would bother haunting some poor couple's bathroom. It's more likely that this is a spirit bothered by the renovation trying to scare them, and even more likely that the image is nothing paranormal at all.

UPDATE: Not only does the Devil also appear in fire, as one might expect, but mysteriously he also looks exactly like Disco Stu from "The Simpsons!" Aren't mosaics fun?

Family Ghost Hunting

As a parent of two young children my first reaction to anything described as a "family activity" is that it will likely bore me out of my skull. Not only do children find things that are simple and repetitive a lot more interesting than adults do, but it also seems like a lot of entertainment for children suffers from a distinct lack of quality control. It's as though some performers figure that since kids aren't that discerning they don't necessarily even need to put on a decent show.

However, one family in England gives me hope that things won't always be this way. They and their teen daughter have taken up a hobby that's right up my alley - ghost hunting!

While most opt for a day trip to the countryside or beach, parents Wendy and Gary and teenage daughter Nikki prefer to explore the tunnels of a Victorian coastal fort.

"We have never been down there and not heard something," said hairdresser Mrs. Canham.

"It’s everything from tapping, cold spots and strange light orbs, which we’re told are spirits."

Armed with a torch and digital cameras, the family from Stanford-le-Hope in Essex have taken shots they say show spirits floating around their head and torchlights inexplicably bending. The Canhams caught the bug two years ago when 16-year-old Nikki’s parents were invited to Coalhouse Fort in Tilbury with her school drama class for Halloween.

"While we were there, I heard a lot of strange noises," said Mrs. Canham, 37. "I heard dragging, scraping and tapping and my hands kept going cold for no reason."

Unfortunately for the Canhams the photo accompanying the article that they claim shows "orbs" is nothing paranormal. It's either the camera flash or a flashlight reflecting off the door in front of them onto dirty spots on the lens or possibly dust - but I still give them points for trying. There are only a handful of ghost photos out there that look like they might be anything paranormal, and even very active groups like TAPS (of Ghost Hunters fame) rarely capture anything resembling an entity or even a genuine orb on film or video.

Since then, they have spent about £2,000 on entrance and guide fees.

So it is expensive, but it sure beats sitting around watching puppets, cartoons, or dorks dressed up as animals or fictional characters.

Nikki admitted friends think her hobby is a little weird but she cannot wait to turn 18 so she can go to more haunted buildings.

"I’d love to go hunting somewhere like Hampton Court," said Nikki. "I want to find the most haunted place and spend the night there."

That sounds like a lot of fun to me too. My oldest daughter is still young enough that she finds the Ghost Hunters TV series a little scary, but I expect she'll grow out of that in a couple of years. Maybe once that happens we can organize our own paranormal family excursions.

Oklahoma Satanists to Exorcise God

Most people think of Oklahoma as part of the Bible Belt, but on October 21st a Satanic church plans to hold an "exorcism of God" at the Oklahoma City Civic Center. No, really!

The Church of the IV Majesties is inviting members and the public to view the ritual, in hopes of erasing a lot of the unfounded fears many have about Satanism.

"We don't kill animals, we don't kill children," James Hale, the church's Lord High Master, told ABCNews.com.

"We just decided that being right here in the middle of the Bible Belt, it wasn't a good idea to keep the secrecy you see in the traditional Satanist churches," he said. "Because secrecy breeds fear. And we're not looking to scare anyone."

In my opinion running around and calling yourself a "Satanist" when you're a LaVey Satanist and thus pretty much an atheist who likes being spooky doesn't serve much of a function aside from shocking people. So if you then turn around and say you're not trying to scare anyone that seems pretty self-defeating.

Citing concerns for privacy and safety, Hale declined to say how many members the church has besides the seven members who are named on the church's state listing as a tax exempt religious organization, a designation they were awarded this spring.

Those seven members will take the stage Oct. 21 for the ritual, which Hale described as an exorcism to extract the gods of what he called the "right handed path" or traditional religions, such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

"It's a parody of the Catholic rite of exorcism. It's just a blasphemy ritual," Hale said.

As an occultist you would never see me getting involved with an event like this. If the ritual is really just a big parody, why bother? I have plenty of other things to do with my life besides joke rituals. I suppose this could make sense as a piece of performance art, which may be what they are going for, but I've never seen the point of such things. I want my rituals to work, not just make people laugh, and they do. I'm left wondering if someone who sees magical rituals as nothing more than performance art has any magical power at all.

Hale, who co-wrote the exorcism and has attended similar private ceremonies, said he's welcoming of anyone who wants to watch, as long as they aren't there to stir up trouble based on their own misconceptions.

"We get a lot of sacrifice garbage," he said of the public's perception. "Satanism is not, does not and has not involved sacrifice."

Hale, the son of an all-faith Christian minister, has been a practicing Satanist for more than 30 years. Though there are varying threads in Satansim, including some who believe in spirits, all modern Satanists believe in one god -- themselves, he said.

"Satanism is pretty much your own god. I am my own god," Hale said. "We don't worship anyone but ourselves."

Is it just me, or is it totally cliche that Hale is a minister's kid? Unlike a lot of occultists, I never had any bad experiences with Christianity growing up aside from thinking that for me a lot of their theology didn't make much sense. But it seems like there's this whole subset of occultists who seem to get interested in magick because they want to shock their parents or people in general who follow their parents' faith.

Now, if Hale has really come up with a ritual form that can exorcise gods I'd be very interested in checking it out to see how it works - but I'm not holding my breath.

EMF and Evocation

A while back I wrote about doing some research on magical fields with an EMF detector, a device that measures electromagnetic fields. So far I've gotten a lot less done on that project than I would have liked over the course of the summer, but I did do some testing with it this last weekend and got some pretty interesting results.

Up until then I had done tests on particular tools and objects and walked through a couple of houses without finding anything all that unusual from a scientific perspective. Magical tools do not seem to produce any sort of EMF unless they incorporate something like a magnet that would normally do so, and the sensation I get when picking up a magically charged object does not seem to be electromagnetic in nature. Checking out houses has likewise produced nothing unexpected - there have been a few high readings from doorbell transformers and ceiling fans, but nothing that would qualify as paranormal.

This last weekend I finally got around to testing the detector in conjunction with an evocation. My magical working group has been going through a series of rituals evoking the archangels associated with the signs of the Zodiac, and as this month is Virgo I figured that some scientific analysis would be very appropriate to the nature of the sign. I also had noticed in previous evocations in this series that it felt as if the area over the center of the altar felt colder once the archangel was present, and I wondered if this effect might have anything in common with cold spots supposedly produced during hauntings. Those cold spots often correspond to a high electromagnetic field.

The overall baseline EMF reading for the temple is about .2, which is fairly typical for a normal room inside a house that has electrical service. For the experiment I placed the probe from the detector in the center of the altar on top of the Virgo flashing color tablet that we would be evoking the archangel into. The reading remained steady, around .2, as the ritual commenced, persisting through the opening of the magical field by LBRP, LIRH, and GIRH - Virgo. It remained at .2 through the preliminary conjuration of Raziel. However, as soon as I finished off the specific conjuration for Hamaliel, the archangel of Virgo, the detector shot up to a little over .4 and started beeping. .4 the point at which it goes off in high sensitivity mode.

Now, so far I only have the one test case so the effect will need to be replicated enough times to produce a reasonable confidence interval, but the result proved quite encouraging. It's always possible that it could have been random environmental interference or some sort of household power surge, but the detector was on through the entire opening of the ritual and went off within a couple seconds of finishing the conjuration - that is, at the moment in which the archangel was expected to appear. As usual, I also was able to feel the cold spot forming in its usual location at the same time, which would suggest that there is indeed a connection between the cold, the EMF, and the manifestation of the spirit.

If this effect can be replicated it could give magicians a great new tool for determining the presence of a spirit during an evocation. We would no longer have to rely on subjective feelings of "energy" or whatnot, and we also would not be stuck expending the power of the spirit on stupid tests like poltergeist phenomena, which I'm convinced only detract from the effectiveness of the overall working. If any other magicians out there are interested in this sort of research I highly encourage you to pick up your own EMF detector and try it out. If you do, I would love to hear about your experimental results and I hope that you will feel free to post them here.

The 2011 Apocalypse

With all the nonsense about 2012 being thrown around by folks who didn't even bother to check with any of the real Mayans who still live in Central America and find out what their calendar cycles mean (hint: not the end of the world or anything related to it), the mainstream media has completely ignored the works of Christian visionary Harold Camping. Who is Harold Camping, you ask? Why, he's the man who has predicted the true date of the apocalypse - May 21, 2011!

On the plus side, that's three days after my birthday so at least I'll get presents before everything hits the fan.

Some realize that God knows how and when the end of the world will come, so they wonder if He tells us. Rather than turning to the Bible as the source of all truth for these answers, they turn to the churches and religious leaders. They may be told that the end will not come until Antichrist rises as a political leader who will make them take the "mark of the beast." Many are told that God will rapture His people before a 7 year Great Tribulation after which Christ will set up a 1000 year reign from an earthly throne in Jerusalem. Others are told that Christ will come to rapture believers the same day he destroys the world. While just about every church has a different idea as to what the Bible teaches concerning the end, they all seem to agree on one thing; no man can know the day or the hour of Christ's return because the scriptures say that He is coming as a thief in the night. But are they correct? Can We Know?

This web site serves as an introduction and portal to four faithful ministries which are teaching that WE CAN KNOW from the Bible alone that the date of the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 and that God will destroy this world on October 21, 2011. Please take your time and browse through the teachings of Harold Camping, President of Family Radio.

To Camping's credit the first paragraph is largely accurate. Many current ideas about the "endtimes" are not biblical but are instead derived from the interpolation of particular passages. Often these interpretations take the quotes in question completely out of context to arrive at predetermined conclusions favored by particular Christian leaders vying for followers and their donations. However, by jumping on the rapture bandwagon Camping is doing pretty much the same thing. The whole "left behind" worldview is itself a modern interpretation that only goes back as far as the dispensationalists of the nineteenth century, and if there were any Millerites left you could ask them how well that 1844 second coming worked out for them.

Let me predict the real future for you. I'll be following the story, which means that on May 22nd of 2011 I'll put up a link back to this article and ask why nobody has disappeared. Then, on October 22nd of 2011 I'll put up another article pointing out that the world is still here. How do I know, you ask? No paranormal powers are required this time. Call it intuition, or maybe just plain common sense.

Bored Teens Discover Brain Machine

I've been busy this month promoting and getting ready for last weekend's book signing event at Magus Books, which went pretty well, and I apologize for the recent lack of posts. I'll be setting up more such events soon, so watch the feed from my author web site over on the right hand panel for details.

I've written in the past about the brain machine, which is a device that uses flashing lights and binaural sounds to stimulate particular brain wave frequencies. The machine that I have is a Nova Pro 100, which is one of the nicer models available, and I've found it to be particularly helpful for getting me into the right frame of mind for scrying. Without the brain machine I'm not very good at it, but if I run the alpha/theta brainwave program for about ten minutes before giving it a try I get much better results.

The Nova Pro comes with software that you can use to put together your own light and sound programs. You select the brainwave frequency you want to target and how long you want that portion of the program to target and the machine does the rest. I haven't gotten as much of a chance to play around with this as I might like, but it seems to me that it has a lot of potential for magical work. My basic hypothesis is that in a magical ritual brainwave frequencies start low, around the alpha/theta range, increase as the ritual approaches its climax, and then drops back down to the alpha/theta range as the generated thoughtform is released, and at some point I plan on putting together a custom program that follows this pattern and testing to see if it increases the probability shift that I can generate.

Some enterprising individual on the Internet has gotten a completely different idea and is using various custom programs to make money by marketing them as "JUST LIKE TAKING DRUGS!!!" You do a little research to see what brainwave frequencies are generally present when taking a particular drug, whip up a program on the Nova Pro or similar machine, and then record the audio output from the machine as an MP3. Teens can then download the MP3's, play them with their eyes closed or covered, and convince themselves that they're getting high. The phenomenon has been dubbed "i-dosing," and it's really not a lot different than what I did at that age, which was sit in the dark with headphones and blast Pink Floyd albums.

I-dosing hit the mainstream media a couple of weeks back with the predictable moral panic nonsense that these MP3 clips could become addictive, or by some mysterious "gateway drug" mechanism could get teens hooked on real drugs.

But there has been such alarm in the U.S. that the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs has issued a warning to children not to do it.

‘Kids are going to flock to these sites just to see what it is about and it can lead them to other places, spokesman Mark Woodward said.

He added that parental awareness is key to preventing future problems, since I-dosing could indicate a willingness to experiment with drugs.

‘So that's why we want parents to be aware of what sites their kids are visiting and not just dismiss this as something harmless on the computer.

‘If you want to reach these kids, save these kids and keep these kids safe, parents have to be aware. They've got to take action.’

The "gateway drug" hypothesis was debunked by the La Guardia Committee all the way back in 1944 based on research involving real drugs, but nonetheless prohibitionists still throw it around like it was actual science. Here are a few facts about binaural sounds - first off, they're nothing like dumping outside chemicals into your brain because there are no outside chemicals involved. Second of all, my understanding is that most of the research that went into the development of the brain machine showed that it was primarily the flashing lights that produced specific brainwave frequencies and the binaural tones produced a secondary effect at best. Since you need special glasses with diodes in them to experience the light effects you can't just sell the light tracks - but most teens these days have MP3 players.

To tell the truth, this is a brilliant snake oil marketing scheme and I wish I had thought of it. I've had my machine and the programming software for years, and I could have spent those years cranking out the tracks and pulling in big money. It's a well-known fact that the placebo effect means a lot of people will get results if they believe they are going to get them, so even if my MP3's weren't made on a brain machine and just sounded weird I would most likely have tons of testimonials about how awesome they were in no time. A "for entertainment only" clause would free me from any lawsuits and nobody would get hurt because all I was selling them would be a bunch of strange droning sounds that do little besides waste peoples' time and get reporters all worked up.

The fact is that even if binaural beats produce specific brainwave patterns in some people there is no way that anyone could become addicted to them like real psychoactives. The main mechanism by which drug addiction works is that extra psychoactive chemicals mess with the homeostats in the brain that regulate neurotransmitters and/or other chemicals such as endorphins. The brain's regulatory system thinks too much of the chemical is floating around and down-regulates it, so in order to keep feeling good you need to keep taking more of the drug. This results in drug tolerance and produces withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking the drug. That's pharmacology 101.

Proponents of "behavioral addictions" or "psychological addictions" (food, sex, or just about anything else that people really enjoy) at worst confuse addiction with having a good time and at best confuse it with compulsion, which is a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD can manifest as any particular behavior or set of behaviors pretty much at random. Some individuals wash their hands over and over, some flip a light switch a certain number of times when leaving a room, and some overeat or act out sexually. What the "behavioral addiction" folks fail to understand is that the presence of food, sexually explict material, sinks, or light switches have nothing to do with the behavior in conjunction with which OCD will manifest.

OCD results from a chemical imbalance in the sections of the brain that control conditioning loops and is best treated with drug therapy. "12-Step" methods adapted from chemical dependency treatment do nothing for OCD, and in fact some neuropsychologists contend that they do a lot less for real drug addictions than their proponents claim. Without pharmacological intervention even if you can manage to stop one compulsive behavior completely another is going to take its place. It's not impossible that somewhere you could find a kid with OCD that manifests as a compulsion to play lots of binaural MP3's. But even that wouldn't mean the clips are addictive, it would just mean that there's a kid out there with untreated OCD.

In fact, thinking about it I wonder if a "reverse-gateway drug" mechanism could be at work here. If teens believe that a binaural MP3 is just like taking a drug and then find the experience boring or unpleasant it seems to me that they might decide taking real drugs is a bad idea, or at least not nearly as interesting as the prohibitionists make it sound. That sounds like a win all around, even if the clips themselves do absolutely nothing but line the pockets of some clever brain machine programmer who knows how to market.

My advice to anyone who tries out these clips and finds them interesting is to get your own brain machine and see how much better it works. The Nova Pro is kind of expensive but there are many models available that are quite a bit cheaper. The sound programs are much more effective with the lights and with the machine you can run your own programs instead of having to buy someone else's.