SubRosa_Issue4-Spread.pdf

Issue Three - December 2005

Sub Rosa | March 2006 1

Issue Four - March 2006

CONTENTS

GREG TAYLOR

Editorial

March 2006

Editorial 1

News 2

Rosa for 2006. Somehow the

team has put together yet an-

other content-packed issue, in

between ‘real’ jobs, new additions to families,

and the usual Christmas madness. We’ve had

regular comments to the effect that every is-

sue is better than the last, which is really grat-

ifying (although a little daunting to keep up

with expectation!).

This issue we seem to have developed a

theme about contact with ‘non-human intelli-

gences’. We’ve got got an exclusive interview

with one of the best scientists investigating

fringe topics, Dr Jacques Vallee. We proﬁle

cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, and also have

an article from Colm Kelleher and George

Knapp on the infamous ‘Skinwalker Ranch’ in

Utah. On top of all that, we also have an in-

sightful piece from Margaret Starbird on Mary

Magdalene – Margaret’s work has reached a

new audience lately after her books were en-

dorsed in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

A growing number of advertisers have

been contacting us, and so you’ll notice a fair

amount of ads in this issue. We try to restrict

our placements to topical and well-presented

ads, in order to keep the magazine as high qual-

ity as possible. We appreciate greatly the sup-

port of these advertisers, as the small amount

of income we earn from them is what allows

us to keep releasing issues. So please, support

them in return if you ﬁnd their ad interesting!

As mentioned in the last issue, we also now

accept donations to help support the magazine.

And if you’re not in a ﬁnancial position to offer

a donation, why not help out in some other way

– for example, passing on the web link to your

friends or online communities, or even printing

out a few ﬂyers and distributing them?

We are very serious about getting Sub

Rosa into print, and have been exploring our

options over the past few months. Currently,

we have over 500 people who have indicat-

ed they would subscribe to a print version,

which is absolutely brilliant. However, we

will need to triple that number in order to

launch the magazine and know that it will be

ﬁnancially viable. So please, let us know if you

would subscribe.

We also welcome advances from potential

investors who would like to discuss becoming

involved with a print version of Sub Rosa . We

are in the process of putting together a busi-

ness plan, and would be eager to ﬂesh things

out with any investors who feel they can bring

something extra to the project, in order to

reach even more people and guarantee the

success of the magazine. As always, we are

happy to hear your thoughts and feedback, via

subrosa@dailygrail.com.

Columns:

Greg Taylor

Ian Lawton

Michael Grosso

Feature: 14

Artist Spotlight:

The High Priest And

The Great Beast

by John Higgs

Cameron Gray

Editor:

Art Director:

Illustrator:

Columnist:

News Editor:

Writer:

Writer

Ad Sales:

Greg Taylor

Mark James Foster

Adam Scott Miller

Michael Grosso

Ian Lawton

Rick Gned

John Higgs

Colm Kelleher

George Knapp

Margaret Starbird

Rich Shelton

Cover Story:

Dr Jacques Vallee:

A Man Of Many

Dimensions

Profiler:

In Search Of. . .

Loren Coleman

Credits :

Feature:

We use public domain images and artistic

tools, or gain necessary permissions where

appropriate. If you have a query regarding

our artistic content, please do not hesitate to

The Hunt For The

Skinwalker

by Colm Kelleher Ph.D

and George Knapp

Feature:

Cover image by Cameron Gray

Loren Coleman

Harold Harrison

Mary Magdalene,

Bride And Beloved

by Margaret Starbird

Reviews 68

To submit content or feedback, please email

us at subrosa@dailygrail.com

Crystal Ball 76

March 2006 | Sub Rosa

Sub Rosa | March 2006 1

W elcome to the ﬁrst issue of Sub

News

by Rick Gned

Egyptian Tomb Discovery

New Valley of Kings ﬁnd stuns Egyptologists

News Briefs

The Beneﬁts of Meditation

announcement of the ﬁrst

tomb to be unearthed in

Egypt’s Valley of the Kings since

Tutankhamun’s in 1922.

Estimated to be about 3000

years old, the tomb is not that

of a pharaoh’s, but could be for

members of a royal court. Inside

the undecorated single-chamber

tomb are ﬁve wooden sarcophagi

with painted funeral masks, sur-

rounded by 20 alabaster storage

jars with Pharaonic seals.

“It could be the gardener,”

joked Otto Schaden, head of the

U.S. team who excavated the

tomb. “But it’s somebody who

had the favour of the king be-

cause not everybody could come

and make their tomb in the Valley

of the Kings.”

Controversy surrounds the

discovery of the tomb. The U.S.

archaeological team insist they

found the chamber completely

by accident whilst working on the

tomb of the 19th Dynasty phar-

aoh, King Amenmesses.

However, a team led by Brit-

ish Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves

claims they located the tomb six

years ago during ﬁeld-work for the

Amarna Royal Tombs Project.

“As a matter of fact we ﬁrst lo-

cated the tomb during the course

of a ground-penetrating survey of

our concession in 2000,” Reeves

told the Swiss research journal

Mysteries . “The Americans were

handed copies of our radar data

in mid-2005 as soon as we heard

of their stumbling upon it.”

Reeves’ excavation license was

consequently revoked, allowing

Schaden’s team to take credit for

the discovery. “We are in discussion

with the Supreme Council of An-

tiquities. But regrettably there is no

clarity on this issue just at present.”

Billionaire entrepreneur

Richard Branson’s Vir-

gin Galactic space travel

company has been given

the go-ahead to build a

US$200million spaceport

in New Mexico. Suborbital

ﬂights are planned for late

2008 or early 2009.

Study suggests meditation increases brain size

meditation can alter the physical struc-

ture of our brains.

Brain scans of study participants revealed

that experienced meditators had an increased

thickness in parts of the brain dealing with at-

tention and processing sensory input. Surpris-

ingly, the brain increase is more pronounced in

older rather than younger people.

“Our data suggest that meditation prac-

tice can promote cortical plasticity in adults

in areas important for cognitive and emotional

processing and well-being,” says Sara Lazar,

leader of the study and a Harvard Medical

School psychologist. “These ﬁndings are con-

sistent with other studies that demonstrated

increased thickness of music areas in the brains

of musicians, and visual and motor areas in the

brains of jugglers. In other words, the struc-

ture of an adult brain can change in response

to repeated practice.”

The increased thickness of grey matter was

found to be 4 to 8 thousandths of an inch,

which is not particularly much. “These increas-

es are proportional to the time a person has

been meditating during their lives,” Lazar notes.

“This suggests that the thickness differences

are acquired through extensive practice and not

simply due to differences between meditators

and non-meditators.”

Buddhist ‘insight meditation’ was used, rath-

er than traditional ‘om’ mantra chanting. Par-

ticipants were a mix of amateurs and others

who had been meditating for decades. They

all meditated an average of about 40 minutes

each day. Measuring the slowing of breathing

rates determined how deeply the participant

was meditating. It was found that the deeper

the meditation, the greater the changes in

brain structure.

“People who [practice ‘insight meditation’]

quickly realise that much of what goes on in

their heads involves random thoughts that of-

ten have little substance,” Lazar said. “The goal

is not so much to ‘empty’ your head, but to

not get caught up in random thoughts that pop

into consciousness.”

Lazar is cautious when asked whether medi-

tation may help slow aging. “Meditation may

help slow some aspects of cognitive aging . . .

but it’s important to remember that monks and

yogis suffer from the same ailments as the rest

of us. They get old and die, too. However, they

do claim to enjoy an increased capacity for at-

tention and memory.”

Scientists say a neutrino

detector at the South

Pole might soon provide

evidence for extra di-

mensions and other ex-

otic predictions of string

theory, boosting our cur-

rent understanding of

the universe.

Five UFOs were observed

by numerous people for al-

most six hours above Milan

in early February, in what

has been called Italy’s ver-

sion of the Phoenix Lights.

(Source: physorg.com)

(Source: news.bbc.co.uk)

Kennewick Man, one of

the oldest and most com-

plete skeletons found

in North America, was

buried by other people

more than 9,000 years

ago, according to a leading

forensic scientist.

Fossil Theory Rewritten

Soft tissue may be common in dino fossils

common in dinosaur fossils,

according to ground-break-

ing research.

Mary Schweitzer, a palae-

ontologist from North Caro-

lina State University, ﬁrst an-

nounced her team’s discovery

of ﬂexible blood vessels, cells,

and collagen-like bone matrix

within the fossils of a 70-million-

year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex in

a 2005 paper published in the

journal Science .

The paper shocked the palae-

ontology community, and now

Schweitzer’s team has repeat-

ed their original discovery with

more than a dozen other dino-

saur specimens.

Experts have always believed

soft, organic tissues cannot be

preserved in the process of fos-

silisation. However, Schweitzer’s

research is forcing a rethink of

how fossilisation works.

China will build the

world’s ﬁrst nuclear fusion

power plant, if experi-

ments planned for 2007

are successful.

A new theory suggests

seafood provided the nu-

tritious conditions for

explosive brain growth,

paving the way for human

evolution.

(Source: nationalgeographic.com)

March 2006 | Sub Rosa

Sub Rosa | March 2006 3

E gyptology is stunned by the

R esearchers have found evidence that

S oft-tissue remains may be

News

Malaysian Bigfoot Frenzy

News Briefs

Ayahuasca Victory

News Briefs

T he world of cryptozool-

T he US Government and

while they were asleep at a palm

oil plantation. They said it sound-

ed like squeals of wild pigs mixed

up with the deep barks of gibbons

– but not like owls.”

Hamid Mohd Ali, a frog-catcher,

says he came so close to Bigfoot

he could almost touch it. “We

believe that people can only see

it once in a lifetime,” Hamid said.

“But in [2006] alone, four villagers

have seen it and we think this is

because of the shrinking jungle.”

Bigfoot sightings have been re-

ported for decades in Malaysia.

However, cryptozoologists are

concerned the media frenzy will

have a detrimental effect on the

mystery, and make it harder to

sort out tabloid stories from fac-

tual encounters.

by the Native American Church.

“If such use is permitted…for

hundreds of thousands of Native

Americans practicing their faith,”

Roberts wrote, “it is difﬁcult to

see how those same ﬁndings alone

can preclude any consideration of

a similar exception for the 130 or

so American members of the UDV

who want to practice theirs.”

“This is not a case where reli-

gious groups are asking for immu-

nity from public laws, but merely

for an important check on the gov-

ernment’s ability to interfere with

religious practices,” said Melissa

Rogers, visiting professor of re-

ligion and public policy at Wake

Forest University Divinity School.

UDV is a mix of Christianity

and indigenous Amazonian sha-

manic beliefs, speciﬁcally the con-

sumption of ayahuasca. According

to the UDV’s website, use of aya-

huasca is limited to ceremonies,

and abuse of the drug is consid-

ered sacrilegious. In the United

States, there are about 140 UDV

members.

ogy is abuzz with a pleth-

ora of Bigfoot sightings

reported in the jungles of

Johor, southern Malaysia.

Reports range from a plaster-

cast of a footprint to personal en-

counters with Malaysia’s elusive

ape-man. Local villagers claim to

have seen the Bigfoot (known

throughout Southeast Asia as Sia-

mang, Mawas and Orang Pendek)

cross roads at dusk, or run from

a river-bank where it was seen

eating ﬁsh.

Vincent Chow, a Malaysian

bio-diversity expert, says Jo-

hor is rife with Bigfoot sightings.

“Fourteen large footprints were

found nearby on Saturday. Then

at 4am, workers were awakened

by 10 minutes of weird hooting, a

kind of call and response session,

An anonymous hiker found

a 6500-year-old gold pen-

dant in Greece, and handed

it in to authorities without

asking for a reward. Only

three such Neolithic gold

artefacts have been found

in Greece, a period of

which little is known.

the DEA have failed in

their bid to ban a New

Mexico branch of Centro Espirita

Beneﬁciente Uniao do Vegetal, a

South American religious group,

from consuming ayahuasca, an

hallucinogenic drink containing

the illegal substance dimethyl-

tryptamine (DMT).

The government has been

ﬁghting since 1999 to ban the

practice, but the Supreme Court

unanimously ruled that the New

Mexico church can legally import

and use ayahuasca for religious

rites until a ﬁnal hearing is held.

It is the ﬁrst religious freedom

decision under Chief Justice John

Roberts, who quickly decided

the government should stay out

of a church’s religious practice.

Roberts wrote that federal drug

agents should not have been al-

lowed to conﬁscate the church’s

ayahuasca tea. Roberts was skep-

tical of the government’s zero tol-

erance position and believed they

were demanding too much.

Roberts highlighted that fed-

eral law allows the use of peyote

The head of a red granite

statue of Amenihotep III

(1390-1352 BC) was un-

earthed in the pharaoh’s

temple area at Luxor.

The UK’s Thornborough

Henges are now believed

to be 1000 years older

than the pyramids of Giza.

Rats may be as smart as

humans, having the abil-

ity to understand cause

and effect according to

new research.

The tenth planet discov-

ered in the furthest reach-

es of our solar system has

a diameter 700 kilometers

larger than Pluto.

A US company has tagged

two of its employees with

microchips, testing the

technology as a way of

controlling access to high

security areas.

A secretive UK radar

base has been blamed

for a myriad of nearby

car breakdowns.

(Source: cryptomundo.com)

Australian researchers

have found global sea lev-

els could rise by about

30cm during this century

if current climate change

trends continue.

Scientists have sequenced

the complete genome of

the Woolly Mammoth,

discovering its clos-

est living relative is the

Asian elephant.

NASA Finds Mayan Ruins from Space

N ASA and scientists from

scure objects as close as 10 feet

away. Explorers can stumble right

through an ancient city that once

housed thousands – and never

even realise it.”

The technology was success-

fully tested in 2004 when an ex-

pedition to the Guatemala jungle

discovered a series of Maya set-

tlements exactly where the data

predicted they would be found.

Experts believe the Maya civi-

lisation collapsed due to cataclys-

mic environmental events. “The

more we know about the plight of

the Maya, the better our chances

of avoiding something similar,”

said NASA scientist Dan Irwin.

the University of New

Hampshire are adapting

space-and-aircraft-based remote-

sensing technology to locate

Maya ruins hidden in the Cental

American jungles.

The technology uses the

chemical signature of the build-

ing materials used by the Maya to

construct pyramids and temple

complexes. Archaeologists will

also help coordinate the search.

“From the air, everything but

the tops of very few surviving

pyramids are hidden by the tree

canopy,” explained NASA ar-

chaeologist Tom Sever. “On the

ground, the 60-to-100-foot trees

and dense undergrowth can ob-

Researchers at the Uni-

versities of California,

Berkeley and Chicago

suggest native language

affects how we perceive

reality. It affects the right

half of the visual ﬁeld, but

much less, if at all, in the

left half.

Sweden has begun a 15-

year plan to be oil and fos-

sil fuel free, without the aid

of nuclear power plants.

(Source: yahoo.com)

Chinese Tomb to Remain Unopened

Ufologist Preston Dennett

says numerous UFO sight-

ings along part of Califor-

nia’s coastline is evidence

of an underwater extrater-

restrial base.

clared that the tomb of

Qinshihuang (259-210 BC)

will not be excavated, and could

remain closed indeﬁnitely.

Located near the ancient city

of Xi’an, legend states the tomb

contains rivers and a lake of liq-

uid mercury, a map of the stars

made of diamonds and pearls on

the ceiling, the secret to the elixir

of youth and other treasures pro-

tected by automatic crossbows

and numerous deadly traps.

Despite remote sensing tech-

nology ﬁnding stairways and oth-

er structures within the tomb,

Duan Qingbo – the head of the

team researching the area – was

reluctant to open it. “It’s the best

choice to keep the ancient tomb

untouched,” he said.

Fossilised tracks of a 330-

million-year-old scorpion

suggest that it was about 1

by 1.6 meters in size.

A160-million-year-old fos-

sil is the oldest known

ancestor of Tyrannosaurus

Rex. Found in north-west-

ern China, it is three me-

tres long and sports a bi-

zarre crest on its head.

Researchers have found

that a single memory is

processed in three sepa-

rate parts of the brain.

(Source: www.news wise.com)

(Source: chinadaily.com)

March 2006 | Sub Rosa

Sub Rosa | March 2006 5

C hinese ofﬁcials have de-

Columns

GREG TAYLOR

Columns

Hands Dirty

What was further clear was that one cannot

study the ayahuasca experience without exten-

sive ﬁrst hand acquaintance with it. After all, it

would be strange to study dreams without having

dreamt oneself, or to investigate music without

having listened to various kinds of music.

method. “Without the checks and balances of

multiple ways of knowing, including objective

scientiﬁc methods, there is danger of succumb-

ing to what might be called ‘narcosis of the deep

mind’,” he says. “These seductions can easily

lead the explorer into a hall of mirrors littered

with the skeletons of explorers who’ve lost their

way.” Looking at the state of much of the New

Age movement, these are words worth heed-

ing. But, just perhaps, we should also be willing

at times to engage these phenomena, dive deep

into the abyss in which they are most comfort-

able, and come up for air just in time with fresh

insights into the nature of our reality.

That is not to say that Shanon disregards sci-

entiﬁc analysis of the phenomenon. His work

on evaluating the ‘universals’ behind the experi-

ence has been groundbreaking, and he presents

his scientiﬁc work within the necessary frame-

work. However, at the same time Shanon feels

that we should be willing to step beyond a cold

analysis, and feel free to come to conclusions

which may stretch into the metaphysical realms

(albeit at the personal level):

I n this new issue of Sub Rosa , we have two

Vallee recounts that when discussing this

problem with a military person, they suggest-

ed that in the above situation one has moved

beyond a situation conducive to scientiﬁc ex-

perimentation, and one should contemplate

employing intelligence-gathering. That is, if an

intelligence is manipulating results, then the ex-

perimenter needs to employ new methods to

get around this problem.

As interesting as this debate

is, however, it doesn’t address

a major problem – that of con-

vincing others of the ‘reality’ (in

the softest deﬁnition!) of the

phenomenon. Even providing a

substantial amount of indicative

evidence – as parapsychological

researchers have, from Dean

Radin in The Conscious Uni-

verse , to Jessica Utts’ statistical

analysis of the Stargate remote-

viewing program – has not

been enough to persuade or-

thodox scientists (and funders)

that there is something here

which challenges the modern scientiﬁc para-

digm. Perhaps the key then, is to have as many

of these people as possible actually experience

‘border’ phenomena.

Benny Shanon, a cognitive psychologist who

is recognised as one of the world’s authorities

on the scientiﬁc investigation of the ayahuasca

experience, points out that he feels it absolutely

necessary that one must engage with the expe-

rience, rather than study it ‘from the outside’

– as many scientists would have it:

features which discuss the scientiﬁc investi-

gation of ‘border’ experiences. Dr Jacques

Vallee has long held a reputation as one of

the most stringent researchers in ufology, and

over the course of four decades he has contrib-

uted probably more than any other researcher

to our understanding (if you can call it that) of

the UFO phenomenon. Also, the more recent

investigation into the ‘Skin-

walker Ranch’ in Utah by the

National Institute of Discovery

Science confronted many of the

same problems that Dr Vallee

has dealt with in his research,

most notably the difﬁculty in

studying a phenomenon which

seems able to interact, predict,

and ‘trick’ those who attempt

to observe it.

Both of these features re-

inforce the difﬁculty of study-

ing anomalous experiences –

from UFO sightings through to

paranormal events and mysti-

cal experiences. By modern standards, the only

way of ‘proving’ such occurrences is through

employing the ‘scientiﬁc method’, displaying re-

peatability and signiﬁcant results. However, that

method has been developed, by and large, as

a way of studying the physical world. If we are

dealing with an outside ‘intelligence’ in any of

these experiences, capable of interacting with

the experimenter or manipulating their results,

things are not so simple.

In his book Messengers of Deception , Dr

Proﬁle

Objective scientiﬁc analysis is indispensable

for the gaining of further understanding of the

non-standard cognitive phenomena ayahuasca

presents. At the same time, however, to have had

ayahuasca and remain the Western European

that one had been beforehand amounts to hav-

ing missed some of the most essential and most

precious things that the ayahuasca experience

can offer. With this, however, one ﬁnds oneself

outside the domain of cognitive psychology. One

is led to the province of philosophical reﬂection

and metaphysical speculation as well as to realms

which are very personal and as such are beyond

the context of public discourse.

Greg Taylor is the owner/editor of

the online alternative news portal,

The Daily Grail , and is also the editor

of Sub Rosa Magazine. He is inter-

ested and widely read in topics that

challenge the orthodox worldview,

from alternative history to the mys-

teries of human consciousness.

Greg currently resides in Brisbane,

Australia, and has recently published

his ﬁrst book. The Guide To The Solo-

mon Key is a guidebook to the eso-

teric history and locations likely to be

included in Dan Brown’s next book,

The Solomon Key .

Perhaps the

key then, is to

have as many of

these people as

possible actually

experience

‘border’

phenomena

I have to admit though that I disagree with

Shanon on whether the ‘philosophical’ side of

the discussion is beyond the context of pub-

lic discourse. No doubt, you won’t ﬁnd it in a

peer-reviewed science journal. But I also feel

that the sharing of experiences, the place-

ment of the phenomena within a historical

framework, and speculation on possible ori-

gins, may be a helpful way of advancing. If we

lock our research within the modern scientiﬁc

paradigm, then perhaps there is no way of un-

derstanding these phenomena which by their

very deﬁnition are outside the conﬁnes of our

current knowledge.

Parapsychology researcher Dean Radin

is wary of leaving the ‘safety’ of the scientiﬁc

Find out more . . .

http://solomon.dailygrail.com

March 2006 | Sub Rosa

Sub Rosa | March 2006 7

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