Friday the 13th At Waffle House

Police say a Waffle House cook shot and killed a customer after an argument the morning of Friday, June 13th, 2014.

As you will recall, I was drawn to Eric Frank Russell's quote on June 12th, about death from the Martin Building.

It appears the suspect in the Waffle House shooting is a Martin. His name is Quintavius (which means "the fifth born") Martin (derived from Martis, the genitive case of the name of the Roman god of war, Mars).

  
Officers said they were called to the Waffle House, outside Atlanta, Georgia, on Fulton Industrial Boulevard and Shirley Drive, south of I-20, right after 4:30 a.m.

"Three people came in and they were being unruly,” said witness Ontray Haley. “The female that was with them they asked her to leave so she left, but the two guys hung around and one of them got into it with the cook and the security guard. Next this I know shots rang out and it was a chaotic scene. Everybody was running and ducking.”

Fulton County police detectives said the customer, identified as 33-year-old Adrian Mosley, may have thrown water into 25-year-old Quintavius Martin’s face before Martin, the Waffle House cook, pulled a gun.

“The guy was threatening the cook saying he's from this side of town and (Martin) said you can take it outside because I’m going to fire you up, which I guess he meant he wanted to shoot him or whatever,” Haley said. “I didn’t know the cook had a weapon on him because I thought the security guard shot him.”

When the gunfire stopped, Mosley was dead, police said.

“I hit the floor, got out of the way of gunfire,” said Haley. “It was crowded. People were just coming from the club up the street.”

Martin is charged with murder, among other charges, according to police.

Police said they are reviewing surveillance video from the restaurant.

The Waffle House was open for business by Friday afternoon of the same day.

Waffle Houses seem to attract such events....

In the early morning hours of Saturday, May 31, 2014, Kevin Jordan, a 43-year-old Griffin police officer and father of seven was shot and killed outside of the Waffle House at 1702 North Expressway, in the Atlanta, Georgia area. He was working as an off-duty security officer, in full uniform.

Griffin police said three drunken white individuals accosted Jordan, an African-American, with racial slurs before one of them, Michael D. Bowman, 30, shot Officer Jordan multiple times in the back.

A rather infamous multiple killing occurred at a Waffle House that is east of Interstate 75 in Davie, Florida, about 10 miles southwest of Fort Lauderdale.

On March 11, 2002, robbers left two employees dead and one injured. The victims, one man and one woman, were found in a freezer area of the Waffle House. Gerhard "Chip" Hojan, 28, and Jimmy Mickel, 34, had robbed the Waffle House of $1,888, and did not wish to leave any eyewitnesses. They did shoot Christina Delarosa, 17, a waitress, Willy Absolu, 29, the cook, and Barbara Nunn, 38, also a waitress. Nunn, however, survived the bullet to the back of her head, and identified the killers.

One site says that due to these "Waffle House Murders," this location is now haunted.

There is something a little bizarre about Waffle Houses, perhaps.

See also, the 2012 article, "15 Strange Crimes That Took Place At A Waffle House."

Full Moon on Friday the 13th: PsyWar or SubGenius?

"There is a dark poetry to ritual murder, to twilight language, to the fantastic convergences known as coincidence. Most 'conspiracy researchers' miss this. The best investigator – of the occult or of almost anything else – has a child-like sense of curiosity and wonder about seemingly mundane things." ~ Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare by Michael A Hoffman II (IHR: 1989, rev. 2001, page 7).

PsyWar. Wag the dog. Psy Ops. Black ops. Political warfare. False flag. Astroturfing. There are so many words being used in common jargon today that few understand the depths or even reality of psychological warfare taking place. How much of it is actually activated by a third party? That hardly seems important any more, due to the mere fact that the copycat effect, behavior contagion keeps the cycle going within its own self-repeating process.

Sometimes people get a feeling deep in their bones. They don't know why or what's going on. But it is very real to them. They don't know where it's coming from. Among some folks, the ones triggered and vulnerable, who are pushed around and sparked by such things, this Friday June 13th may be especially troubling. There is the sense to some that this Full Moon Friday the 13th might be one in which the human mood is provoked by the tidal wave of lunacy and phobias that haunt some people.

Let us not get bogged down in theories, beliefs, and conspiracies. I suggest we look at the data, open our eyes, and watch what happens, but not in some analytic frozen state.

I say, "Be aware. Be alert. Be ready to act. Or react."

On February 13, 2014, The Washington Post observed that there "have been at least 44 school shootings on K-12 or college campuses in 24 states — an average of more than three a month — since the deadly 2012 attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn....Twenty-eight people have died and 37 have been injured."

But there's even disagreement on the numbers, it appears.

On June 10, 2014, Huffington Post published a map (below, click on it to make it larger) noting that there had been 74 school shootings during the 18 months since the Newtown event. (Some questions have been raised about this chart, and the reasons for the debunking can be examined here.)

Full moons and new moons send out tidal waves that humans have believed for centuries do impact them. "Lunacy" is in the mind of the beholder, in more ways than one. Is it real or drama? The Newtown school shooting happened on December 14, 2012, right after the New Moon of December 13, 2012. That Sandy Hook time was visited by a dark night/dark knight.

Newtown bookended a violent year that many will recall dawned with the mass shooting on July 20, 2012, at a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, leaving 12 dead and 58 injured, 15 minutes after the film began. The active shooting took place in Theater No. 9 at the Century 16 Movie Theaters, located in Aurora, Colorado.

"The night is darkest just before the dawn.

And I promise you, the dawn is coming."

~ The Dark Knight (2008)

The name Aurora means "dawn." The Roman goddess of the dawn was named Aurora, and her siblings are Sol (Sun) and Luna (Moon). These names in Latin and Greek are Aurora/Eos, Sol/Helios, and Luna/Selene.

While using the ridicule curtain to counter the "lunacy" thoughts that are reflective of full and new moon experiences of mental health workers and hospital ER front line workers, with jokes about werewolves, some notes from research demonstrates some actual data linked to pets too.

A 2007 study at Colorado State University found that veterinary ER visits by cats and dogs went up on full-moon nights. It's possible that owners and their pets simply spend more time outside on nights when the moon is bright, increasing the risk of injury, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
Perhaps for similar reasons, a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2000 found that emergency-room admissions for animal bites went up at one hospital on nights with full moons, but studies in other places have failed to find a similar link.

Considering the almost mythological fear that a few in our society have for Friday the 13th, what happens when a full moon is added to the mix?

How rare are they? From 1990 through 2030, according to one source, there are only two Friday the 13ths taking place at the same time as a full moon. One, of course, is June 13, 2014. The other happened on March 13, 1998. Almost a hundred years ago, there was a full moon on Friday, June 13, 1919. What occurred on the 1998 date?

Deaths are sometimes insightful. Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain (born December 14, 1911) was a German engineer, and the designer of the first operational jet engine. He died on Full Moon, Friday, March 13, 1998. Alexander Minto Hughes (born May 2, 1945), better known as Judge Dread, was an English reggae, ska musician, and the first white recording artist to have a reggae hit in Jamaica. He died from a heart attack as he walked off stage after performing at The Penny Theatre in Canterbury on Full Moon, Friday, March 13, 1998.

One death, that of Philip Gale (pictured, born in 1978), was a dramatic and sad suicide of a young genius. At the time of his death, Gale was an American pioneering Internet software developer, computer prodigy, and sophomore student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was notable for having written Total Access while at MIT, and was hired by EarthLink at the age of 16 to work on its development. Since the age of eight, Gale lived and studied at The Delphian School in Sheridan, Oregon, a private Scientology boarding school. 

Years later, a friend at Earthlink would introduce Gale to the Church of the SubGenius, run by the fictional figurehead, J. R. "Bob" Dobbs (pictured at top).

On Friday the 13th of March 1998, on a full moon night, Gale's depression allegedly due to his father's death three years earlier and his sense of boredom, came to a head.

For weeks, Gale had been asking classmates how to get access to the roof of MIT's tallest structure, informally known as the Green Building and formally as the Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences Building. On March 13, 1998, at about 7:30 p.m. in an empty classroom on the 15th floor of the Green Building, Gale wrote and drew the following on the blackboard: Isaac Newton's equation for how an object accelerates as it falls, along with a sketch of a stick figure tossing a chair. He signed it, "Phil was here," picked up a chair and hurled it through the heavy glass window. Witnesses said that he cleared the glass shards away and then jumped out the window. (Source. For more, see here and here.)
Eric Plosky, a student at MIT, was inside an adjacent dorm watching television at the time of Gale's death, and heard a crashing sound. Plosky recounted to National Public Radio, "The windows of the building were sealed. So he actually had to throw a chair out the window to break it so that he could jump through. The noise that we heard was that chair hitting the ground. Some of the people in my dorm actually looked out the window in time to see him fall." 

Beyond the record of such deaths as Gale's, nothing, seemingly, Earthshaking took place on March 13, 1998, although the High-Z Supernova Search Team became the first group to publish evidence that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

Maybe I missed something historically. Maybe I didn't. Certainly, it may be the context of the moment in time, more than the actual date. In March 1998, President Bill Clinton was fighting off statements from new women coming out of the woodwork with accusations of sexual improprieties. That was a melodrama in and of itself.

But that above noted source was incorrect about the number of incidents, and there was a Full Moon Friday the 13th on October 13, 2000, as well. Indeed, here's better data on the Friday the 13ths that overlapped with concurrent Full Moons:

Source.

Taking that chart, and looking at other data and another list with historical deaths and events, we have the following overlaps (listed in the American style, month/date/year) during a few Full Moons on Friday the 13ths:

10.13.1905 - Sir Henry Irving, 1st English actor to be knighted, the inspiration for the title character in Bram Stoker's 189 novel Dracula (1838-1905).

11.13.1970 - Bhola cyclone: Speeds up to 190 km/h (115 mph), tropical cyclone devastates the densely populated Ganges Delta region in the East of Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Estimated 500,000 people die. The biggest cyclone catastrophe of the 20th century.

03.23.1998 - Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain, designed first jet engine (1911-1998); Alexander Minto Hughes, a/k/a Judge Dread, first Caucasian singer with a reggae hit in Jamaica (1945-1998); Philip Gale, Netnerd genius, author of Total Access (1978-1998).

10.13.2000 - Tony Roper, NASCAR driver (1964-2000); Jean Peters, American actress, former wife of Howard Hughes (1926-2000).

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He was strolling along West Fourteenth, New York, when for no particular reason he cast a casual glance up the sheer side of the Martin Building, saw a human figure falling past the twelfth floor. ~ Eric Frank Russell, Sinister Barrier* 1939.

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In the last few days of May 2014 and first days of June 2014, hardly anyone would not acknowledge we have seen the unfolding of a bizarre psychodrama, verging on the scale of the Aurora copycat outbursts, which were activated by The Dark Knight Rises theater shooting. Over this past weekend, a couple from Lafayette living in Las Vegas, who occupied a comic book fantasy and anti-cop world, thought they could "start the revolution" by killing two innocent police officers. What's next?

What will happen on June 13, 2014? Does it really matter? After the last few days, the USA is overwhelmed and tired of such news. Maybe everyone feeling a bit awful will sleep in all day.

"What we are witnessing in the wake of the public enactment of these alchemical psychodramas, whose spiritual consequences for mankind are far more momentous than most have thus far guessed, is a process of global occult initiation." ~ Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare by Michael A Hoffman II (IHR: 1989, rev. 2001, page 92).

*Footnote: I found and shared the above quotation on June 12th. Perhaps it will be revealed over the weekend, in something that happens, why I would be drawn to quoting that specific passage from Sinister Barrier. Eric Frank Russell is credited as one of the earliest science fiction writers to pull mundane happenings and the spirit of the works of Charles Fort into his novels.

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LIVE UPDATES for June 13, 2014:

Car crashes into CNN Center

Talk about starting out the day with a bang, with an event hitting right at the heart of the media.

Atlanta police this morning were trying to determine what caused a car to slam into the lobby of the CNN Center downtown. The Mercedes-Benz convertible crashed through the glass facade on the Marietta Street side of the building shortly after 4 a.m. No serious injuries were reported, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Atlanta Police Officer John Chafee said the driver, 22-year-old Gerlmy Javon Todd, was taken into custody. Todd admitted to smoking marijuana earlier in the morning. He has been charged with DUI, reckless driving and marijuana possession.

Richard Rockefeller Dies in Plane Crash

This day just turned tragically personal. I knew, and had dined with Richard Rockefeller, through mutual friends in Maine.

A small plane crashed outside New York City on June 13th, killing a great grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.
The single-engine plane took off just after 8 a.m. Friday and went down after hitting some trees west of the airfield.
Richard Rockefeller, of Falmouth, Maine, was the only person on board the Portland, Maine-registered aircraft.
The 64-year-old was a doctor and father of two. He had recently been working on a way to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in wounded war veterans.
Rockefeller was a nephew of Nelson A. Rockefeller, the 41st vice president of the United States and governor of New York from 1959 to 1973. On Thursday, he ate dinner with his father, David Rockefeller, in Westchester to celebrate the family patriarch's 99th birthday.

Nigerian gospel singer Kefee dies

The Nigerian singer Kefee Don Momoh, who was reportedly pregnant, fell into a coma 15 days ago, while on a flight to Chicago, where she was working. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing and she was rushed to the ICU of an hospital in Los Angeles. Sources close to the family confirmed to Nigerian media that the Kokoroko crooner has died on the morning of June 13, 2014.

CNN to Drudge Report: The Iraqi situation is all over the news

Baghdad is in danger of collapsing, due to the advances of an armed group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

[Name Game: Isis (Ancient Greek: Ἶσις, original Egyptian pronunciation more likely "Aset" or "Iset") is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the patroness of nature and magic. She was the friend of slaves, sinners, artisans and the downtrodden, but she also listened to the prayers of the wealthy, maidens, aristocrats and rulers. Isis is often depicted as the mother of Horus, the hawk-headed god of war and protection (although in some traditions Horus's mother was Hathor). Isis is also known as protector of the dead and goddess of children.]

Will Lunar Eclipse Bring Forth Bizarre Sports Behaviors Tonight?

What will happen during this "dark knight" of November 28th? Will the stronger than usual pull of the alignment of the moon, earth, and sun cause earthquakes and suicides?  Or a sports fan to go wild?

Or will it just be another opportunity for more debate about "lunacy"? Tonight's events (or Thursday's or Friday's, the effect can cause ripples) remain to be seen, so I am not giving away any spoilers.

Most media folks downplay the link between the strong tidal influences of full and new moons, but for those of us who have worked in the mental health field, caution is always the watchword.

It is a fact that "80 percent of nurses and 64 percent of doctors [believe] that the lunar cycle is a major player in mental health," as mentioned in the skeptical "Penumbral Lunar Eclipse 2012: November 28 Event Won't Bring Out 'Lunatics'."

As that article notes,

During the Nov. 28 lunar eclipse the full moon will pass into the hazy outer edge (penumbra) of Earth's shadow. This subtle shadow across the moon's surface will be visible in East Asia, Australia, Hawaii and Alaska, with possible views at moonset and moonrise for the western United States and parts of Europe and Africa.

While using the ridicule curtain to counter the "lunacy" thoughts that are reflective of full and new moon experiences of front line workers, with jokes about werewolves, some notes are shared about non-human animals.

A 2007 study at Colorado State University found that veterinary ER visits by cats and dogs went up on full-moon nights. It's possible that owners and their pets simply spend more time outside on nights when the moon is bright, increasing the risk of injury, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
Perhaps for similar reasons, a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2000 found that emergency-room admissions for animal bites went up at one hospital on nights with full moons, but studies in other places have failed to find a similar link.

But I wonder if people are ignoring the more bizarre human "tidal effects" that are caused by the phrases of the moon. When I was working with suicidal folks, I tracked the suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge. I certainly noticed an increase around the new and full moons. Earthquakes seem to be experienced more intensively by humans too. And pets do go missing around these times.

However, it may be the strangest human behaviors that are missing our notice, because they are so rare and so, seemingly, out of character for Homo sapiens.

The combination of the moon-related behaviors and the copycat effect sometimes does happen.

Here's an example from The Copycat Effect (2004):

It was a typical fall Thursday night at the ballgame in Chicago. The date was September 19, 2002, and the crowd was excited to see the White Sox take on the out-of-towners, the Kansas City Royals. But then something happened in the game that would turn into a repeating copycat cycle, bringing a fear of “terrorism” to the very fields of dreams.

Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa was calmly watching home plate. During the ninth inning of a game that had no bearing on the playoffs, Gamboa took a short trip into hell. He didn’t know what hit him. Two men, a father and his juvenile son, both shirtless, were on top of Gamboa, punching away at him and slamming him to the ground. The 54-year-old coach told ESPN he felt like a “football team” had hit him. Soon Gamboa’s teammates, as well as the umpires and the White Sox team, piled on to get the attackers off. Security then quickly moved in. Royals’ first baseman Mike Sweeney told ESPN: “If it wasn't for them, we'd probably still be beating on those guys.”

Gamboa walked off the field to a standing ovation from the crowd at Comiskey Park, where the Royals beat the Chicago White Sox 2-1. Gamboa escaped with only a few cuts and a bruised cheek (though a year later he suffered partial hearing damage in his right ear and had to be moved to the bullpen), but the attack was a shock to Major League Baseball. A folded-up pocketknife was found on the ground near the scene, and White Sox outfielder Aaron Rowand said he saw it slip out of one of the attacker’s pockets.

Attacks against sports figures by fans are rare. The most notorious came when tennis star Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by an obsessed fan in 1993 during a match in Hamburg, Germany. In 1995, at Wrigley Field, a 27-year-old bond trader who ran out of the stands charged Cubs reliever Randy Myers. Myers saw the man coming, dropped his glove and knocked him down with his forearm. In 1999, a 23-year-old fan attacked Houston right fielder Bill Spiers at Milwaukee. Spiers ended up with a welt under his left eye, a bloody nose and whiplash.

“It's sad and disturbing, very disturbing,” said general manager Kenny Williams, who apologized to Gamboa and the Royals after the game. “Words don't express the sorrow when you look at a man and he's got blood on his face. All he was doing was coaching first base.”

Then less than a year later came the copycat incident. During the night of April 15, 2003, fans ran on the field during a White Sox game with the Royals in Chicago. According to the Associated Press, the first fan came out before the top of the seventh inning, while the second one ran on to the field to start the bottom half of the inning before he was nailed in center field by security. Another fan raced toward the infield minutes later, following a strike fired by left-handed reliever Kelly Wunsch as he was facing Raul Ibanez with the bases loaded, two outs and the White Sox leading by one run.

Then in the ninth inning, a fan attacked first base umpire Laz Diaz, who stood near where Gamboa had been attacked in the ninth inning of that September 2002 game, also between the Royals and White Sox. The field has been renamed U.S. Cellular Field, but the location was the same. Soon, Royals, security, White Sox, and MLB umpires were wrestling the attacker to the ground, in an eerie repeat of the previous year.

“When the guy ran on the field and came after the umpire, it did bring back memories of last year (with Gamboa),” said White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko to ESPN shortly after the second attack in two years. “I don’t know how you prevent it, unless you have someone every inch of the way.”

The reality of copycat behavior of this kind has hit baseball hard. Security has been increased and improved since the 2002 season, with 60-to-70 police officers at the stadium in Chicago, for example. But it is a well-known fact that the security force will always be outnumbered, even on nights of low attendance.

White Sox veteran Frank Thomas mentioned that the actions could have had something to do with the full moon. Billy Koch, who blew the save in the ninth with four runs, joked, tongue in cheek, how the last fan should have waited a few batters to charge him. But more seriously, White Sox manager Jerry Manuel and Royals manager Tony Pena expressed concern and even some fear over the growing number of incidents. “It’s kind of a sad commentary for Chicago, at least our ballpark,” Manuel told reporter Scott Merkin at MLB.com. “I don’t believe it reflects who we are as Chicago people. It’s unfortunate that it happened, and unfortunate that it happened in Chicago when Kansas City comes to town.”

Pena commented, also to reporter Merkin: “There’s no question I was concerned. That’s what I told the umpire, ‘How can I know my players will be safe or not?’”

Cinco De Derby Moon

 

Saturday is El Cinco De Mayo ("The Fifth of May" in Spanish), which commemorates the defeat of the French army by the Mexicans led by General Ignacio Zaragoza at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862.

Many cities with significant Mexican and Chicano populations throughout the United States schedule special events on the 5th of May. It has been embraced as a day to celebrate Latino culture throughout Hispanic America, which, of course, today covers all of North America, as well.

In 2012, in North America, look for this to be a powerful weekend, for a lot is going on.

Saturday will also see the 138th running of the Kentucky Derby, a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbred horses held annually at Churchill Downs, in Louisville, Kentucky. It will take place on May 5 at exactly 6:23 pm EST. The race will be televised in the USA on the NBC television network.

Saturday night also features a "Super Full Moon." The full moon will be occurring on the same night that the moon is at its nearest point in its orbit to the Earth, known as perigee. This "coincidence" (thanks RDR) of the full moon and perigee happens once every 14 months, so it is not highly unusual. However, with the full moon looking 25 percent brighter due to this occurrence, people usually notice it, especially if they are outside, for example, celebrating El Cinco De Mayo or the Kentucky Derby. Watch for earthquake activity and volcano eruptions in the wake of the Super Full Moon, over the following days. Indeed, will Mount Popo in Mexico decide this is the perfect time to blow?

I'm not through. There is more to look forward to, for, in my continued tip of my hat to El Cinco De Mayo, we should also celebrate El Chupacabras De Mayo, in honor of the beginning of the season for Chupacabras sightings.

Below is a copy of the original drawing describing one of the first sightings of El Chupacabras ("The Goatsucker") from Puerto Rico.

   

My personal favorite quotation is this often-noted response I gave to a question from ABC News about the then apparently new cryptid.

 Chupacabras: "It's sort of like Jennifer Lopez, kind of cross-cultural." - Loren Coleman, 1999.

Interested in knowing why using "Chupacabra" is just so wrong (in spite of the Skeptic Inquirer's Ben Radford)? See "Chupawhat?".

   

What interesting events do you think will occur this weekend?

July 21: Moon, Death, Masons and Golf

The flag that Brother Mason Buzz Aldrin unfurled on the Moon on July 21, 1969, when he stated "our flags" were being planted on the lunar surface.

July 21, 1961 – Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission – Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).

Grissom was scheduled to be the first man to walk on the Moon. Instead, Grissom was killed January 27, 1967, along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee during a training exercise and pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at the Kennedy Space Center.

Grissom was born in Mitchell, Indiana. Grissom was a master Mason and member of Mitchell Lodge 228.

July 21, 1969 – Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission.

Buzz Aldrin is a 33rd degree Scottish Rite Mason, a Masonic Knight Templar, and a Shriner.

Buzz flew the Supreme Council's flag on the moon. That flag is now on display in the Masonic Museum of the Supreme Council Scottish Rite Temple in Washington, D.C.

Anderson Luster's model of Alan B. Shepard's last of three swings at Moon golf.

July 21, 1998 – Alan B. Shepard, American astronaut dies.

Shepard was the first American in space. He later commanded the Apollo 14 mission, and was the fifth person to walk on the moon.

While on the Moon, Alan Shepard famously played golf with a Wilson six-iron head attached to a lunar sample scoop handle. Despite thick gloves and a stiff spacesuit which forced him to swing the club with one hand only, Shepard struck two golf balls with a six iron, driving the second according to the official record, but what was actually his third stroke, as he jokingly put it, "miles and miles and miles."

The symbolism of playing golf on the Moon, a sport tied to Freemasonry, with a six iron, with three strokes was not lost on Shepard's Brother Masons.

The origins of golf in Scotland is linked to Masonry, and the membership of the early golf clubs were Freemasons.

For example, St. Andrews cornerstone was laid by Masonic Brothers.

Leith, July 2, 1768

This day William St Clair of Roslin, Esq., the undoubted representative of the Honourable and Heretable G.M.M of Scotland, In presence of Alexander Keith, Esq., Captain of the Honourable Company of Goffers, and other worthy Members of the Goffing Company, all Masons, The G.M., now in his GRAND CLIMAX of GOFFING, laid the Foundation of the GOFFING HOUSE in the S.E. corner thereof, by THREE STROKES with the Mallet.

ALEXR. KEITH, C. Wm. ST. CLAIR, G.M.M.

GMM stands for Grand Master Mason. The St Clairs of Roslyn were hereditary patrons of the Masons in Scotland for centuries and William St Clair was the first elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1736. He was Captain and prominent member of both the Leith and the St Andrews golf clubs. Apart from laying the foundation stone of the world's first golf clubhouse, his name is on the St Andrew’s minute shortening the Old Course to be eighteen holes in 1764. He died in 1778 and is buried in Roslyn Chapel.

The Royal Blackheath GC was open only to Freemasons until 1789 and, until 1825, it still contained a hardcore group of Masons called the Knuckle Club who played out-of-season to avoid the non-mason members.

According to the Masonic Service Association, one of the most frequently asked questions is:

Which Astronauts Are Masons?

Answer:

Edwin E. Aldrin
Montclair #144, Montclair, NJ

Leroy Gordon Cooper
Carbondale #82 Carbondale, CO

Don F. Eisele
L.B. Turner #732 Columbus, OH

Virgil I. Grissom (Deceased)
Mitchell #228, Mitchell, IN

Wally M. Schirra
Canaveral #339 Cocoa Beach, FL

Thomas P. Stafford
Western Star #138 Weatherford, OK

Edgar D. Michell*
Artesia #28 Artesia, NM

Paul J. Weitz
Lawrence #708 Erie, PA

James B. Irwin
Tajon Lodge No. 104 Colorado Springs, Co

Astronauts Who Have Fathers Who Are Or Were Masons

Allen Shepard

Vance Brand*

John Glenn*

Anthony England

William Pogue

Neil Armstrong

Edgar Mitchell

* Former DeMolay

Source: "Masonic Astronauts," Dunn's Rock Masonic Lodge #267 A.F. & A. M., Brevard, North Carolina.

Masons, Moon, Mars

July 20, 1969: The day that Freemasonry landed on the Moon.


















Now, it is definitely onward to Mars.

December Omens

As we ride a bumpy road into the last month of 2008, precursors all around seem to be pointing to troubling times immediately ahead. Twilight language read with care sometimes can give an indication of what may be in our futures. Sometimes chasing the dragon can be a fool's game. But there is no reason to ignore its fiery breath if you wish to not be burned.

On the evening of December 1, 2008, a 39-year-old man called a friend at 2:30 pm local time (twilight number = 23) and left a voice mail message, saying goodbye. It took the friend about 20 minutes to get through to the original caller, at which point, the suicidal man said he was "at the cathedral and I'm going to kill myself."

Moments later, running to the Guildford Catherdral in Surrey, UK, the friend found that the police had shot dead his suicidal friend. It appears clear that the victim had died by "suicide by cop." A fake gun was being carried, and the situation forced the police into shooting the man dead.

Several intriguing twilight details must be considered in this incident. The site is the Cathedral Church of the Holy Spirit, Guildford, the Anglican cathedral at Guildford, Surrey, England. It stands in a commanding spot on Stag Hill, so named because the Kings of England used to hunt here.

The Guildford Cathedral was used in the filming of the classic Satanic/demonic movie The Omen as the setting for several scenes.

The 1976 film about the childhood of Damien Thorn (as in a "crown of thorns"?) was directed by Richard Donner. It followed a cycle of "demonic child" movies, including Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, and was itself followed by sequels and a number of copycat films such as the Italian-made Kirk Douglas movie Holocaust 2000. A remake of The Omen premiered on June 6, 2006, with a release date chosen to reinforce the "666" (6/6/06) motif.

As Ben Fairhall has noted over at The Daily Behemoth, regarding the use of the site for the movie The Omen: "When a young boy sees the spire and the building comes into view he is thrown into a rage. He foams and the mouth and tries to bite his mother."

While the Guildford Cathedral is used throughout the film, there is one pivotal scene at the end that somewhat bizarrely foreshadowed what happened on December 1st.

On a mission to end the life of the demonic 666-birthmarked Damien, his father, Robert Thorn takes the child to the cathedral. He lays Damien on the altar for a ritualized killing. Robert reaches for the daggers he must use and pulls the first one out. But just as he is about to stab Damien, the police arrive and order him to stop. When Robert does not comply and tries to stab Damien, he is shot dead by the police.

The police on Sunday, December 1st, asked David Sycamore, 39, to drop the gun they saw he had. He refused and was hit twice by gunfire, once in the right arm and once in the chest. The second bullet killed him. It was learned soon after that Sycamore's gun was non-lethal, one of the pellet guns the man had collected.

That this man who died in The Omen's churchyard was a Sycamore is noteworthy.

Since ancient times, the significance of the sycamore tree and its spiritual/predictive nature has been acknowledged. The use of the names "sycamore" and "sycomore" in the Old and New World is linked to the "specialness" of these trees.

The sycamore (or sycomore) of the Bible is a species of fig, Ficus sycomorus, also called the sycamore fig or fig-mulberry, native to the Middle East and eastern Africa. This tree was used in Ancient Egypt for medicine and mentioned in Egyptian mythology.

The Egyptian goddess Hathor was known as the Lady of the Sycamore. Many artifacts made from sycamore are known from the New Kingdom period.

The Bible says that when Joseph and Mary made their flight into Egypt they rested under a sycamore tree. The sycamore is mentioned in the Bible several times, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament (e.g. Amos 7:14, Jeremiah 24:2, Luke 19:4).

A tree in El Matareya near Cairo called the Virgin Mary Tree is said to be a resting spot of Mary, Jesus and Joseph and is a pilgrimage spot for Christians. The tree died in the 17th century and a new sapling in 1672 was planted. That died in 1906, and a new one was planted, which is what is present today. The tree is enclosed in a compound and the government charges admission fees to it. Both Coptic Christians and Muslims visit the site for healing by the Virgin (a practice that is unorthodox in Islam).

The sycamore of Britain and Ireland is a European maple tree, Acer pseudoplatanus, also called sycamore maple, great maple, or, inaccurately and leading to confusion, the plane tree in Scotland.

A sycamore tree is said to be the oldest tree in Cyprus, planted in the 13th century, making it more than 700 years old.

In the November 21, 1922 issue of The New York Times an article was published entitled "Raven of Ill Omen Reappears in Paris; Superstitious See Danger for Millerand in Return of the 150-Year-Old Bird. Heralded Many Disasters ~ Marie Antoinette, Marie Louise, Carnot and Faure Saw It Before They Fell."

The news item told of how the appearance of a certain famous raven in the gardens of the Élysée Palace (Palais de l'Élysée) - a bird of ill omen which for a hundred and fifty years has heralded various kinds catastrophes to the chief of State each time - had been seen again in 1922. Where had the bird specifically appeared? It had perched in a special sycamore tree in the President's ground. (Today, nearby Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets in the world, and is lined with sycamore trees.)

American sycamores (Platanus occidentalis) have touched United States history, as well.

Besty Ross' sycamore tree is famed.



In November 2007, in California, eyewitnesses said they could see the image of the Virgin Mary, in a sycamore tree that had been burned by recent wildfires, on the side of the Sierra Highway in Los Angeles County. The tree was a victim of the Buckweed Fire. Its trunk was then saved by county road crews.

Considering these times of dire predictions related to the Stock Market, perhaps it is worthy of mentioning that the terms under which the New York Stock Exchange was formed is called the Buttonwood Agreement, because it was signed under a Buttonwood tree (an early name for a sycamore tree in the USA).

Has a "Sycamore" shown up on the radar via the media, on December 2, to send out a twilight telegraph?



As I was reviewing all this on December 2nd, I received an email from a friend and colleague.

Former psychosynthesis psychotherapist and founder of Sirius Astrological Services, the insightful and creative Philip Levine wrote me that he sees "that this month of December 2008 is anything but quiet. It would appear the gods and goddesses are in conflict this month and that we can expect a higher degree [than normal] of hostility, conflict, struggle, and tension."

Levine points to the details of his prediction on his site, here.

One of the items he pinpoints for this "tough month" is the Full Moon on December 12th, 2008, at 11:38 AM EST/ 8:38 AM PST. For anyone that has been watching the sky, you have visibly seen what is occurring.

The Full Moon intensifies the Saturn-Uranus opposition as the Sun and Mars square Saturn and Uranus for a Mutable Grand Cross.

Other sites are talking about what is upcoming, as well. In 2008, the moon's closest perigee occurs on December 12 and coincides with a powerful Full Moon. At 9:48 p.m. Universal Time on December 12, 2008, the moon will be closer to Earth than it’s been in the last 15 years. It is the nearest and largest full moon since March 1993.

It signals "red-alert” dates, which cluster around very high tides (perigean-spring tides) that peak 1–2 days after this Full Moon when the Moon is in its perigee. When a Full Moon coincides with perigee, the Sun, Earth and Moon make a line in space, and the tidal forces are intensified.

During such events, it has been shown that this is a scientifically verified time of coastal flooding, strong storms (like a Nor'eastern in New England USA), and earthquakes any place around the globe.

It might be time to prepare for something big that is going to happen, in terms of human behavior or geodynamically. Clearly, tidal influences do have an impact on humans, so do not neglect this warning of "tough times" coming between December 12-19, in merely a few days.

Full moon: December 12, 2008 at 16:37 Universal Time

Moon at perigee (356,566 kilometers): December 12, 2008 at 21:48 Universal Time

Extreme Perigees: The last time the moon was less than 356,400 kilometers distant was on January 15, 1930 (356,397 kilometers) and the next time will be on January 1, 2257 (356,371 kilometers), p. 39, More Mathematical Astronomy Morsels, by Jean Meeus.