Omens

I once saw a tiny reptile and a tiny vole locked in existential combat, on a pavement in a state park north of San Diego.  The vole was, for the time, the aggressor.  (The reptile was lethargic even in such circumstances in the cool of the morning.)  The rodent held the lizard's neck in his jaws.

Two naturalists attached to the park watched the struggle alongside us.  They were dumbfounded and fascinated by the behavior of the vole, who was, in their view, decidedly "off script."  Perhaps he was rabid.

Carl Jung has an essay in his "Modern Man in Search of a Soul."  It is clear from the essay that Jung spent much time in the company of peoples that he calls "archaic" or primitive.  The principal theme of the essay is that the world-views of such people are not inferior to, nor less accurate than, our own.  They are shaped by the circumstances in which the people have lived for thousands of years.  Among other things, these people face natural perils that would defeat us in no time were we to be dropped into their environs.

When something happens that does not ordinarily happen, the people interpret it as reflecting the agency of important beings that reside in the spirit world.  The normally timid crocodiles might pull an adult male of the village into the river and eat him; the famously nocturnal anteater might stroll through the village when the sun is at its zenith.  These are not natural and predictable aberrations; they are signs and portents.

It is that classic New Yorker cartoon in its many variations, the one with the volcano spewing rocks in the background and the natives remarking that the gods must be off their feed.

Ross Coulthart reports, as others have reported, that Jimmy Carter, early in his presidency, was given a top-secret briefing on the subject of alien intrusions, alien visitations, and what the government knew about them.  After the briefing the president of the United States was seen with his head in his hands, crying.

Why do I feel that the veil is about to be torn, irrevocably, that we are about to be flooded with "high strangeness" that has no explanation?

A phalanx of demons.