Plantoids!

 

Back in the 1950s, when Flying Saucers were all the rage, people began claiming communications from the occupants of these otherworldly craft- and one commonality between the alleged messages to these so-called "contactees" was a message of environmentalism. The abandonment of nuclear weapons, and care for the lifeforms on planet Earth seemed to have been a top priority for these planet-hopping Space Brothers. One wonders what difference it made to those living on Venus, Saturn, or Mars? Was it a message of fraternity and altruism, or did it benefit them in some way? There have been a variety of answers, ranging from Theosophically informed New Age explanations about balancing life energies to more mundane but equally fantastical ones seemingly culled from the pages of pulp sci-fi mags. 

It may seem a strange question to even pose, as most people don't consider the claims of the contactees to be worthy of consideration. UFOlogy has long had a large schism between the more esoteric types of sky watchers and the "nuts and bolts" ET hunters, but either school of thought tends toward the idea that these craft (and by extension, the entities controlling them) come from another planet. There has always been some amount of thinkers who are inclined toward the idea that the source of these strange visitors might be much more terrestrial indeed. Still others have long contended that there were more metaphysical sources for these phenomena; Meade Layne, for instance, and others in the Borderland Sciences Research Associates, promoted the idea of Etherships from neighboring dimensions of reality. When we entertain the less-than-physical theories of UFOs, we open the door for everything from hallucinations to thought projections, from the unsatisfying mundane to the extremity of psychical weirdness. We always assume, however, that these entities are here for us or extensions of us; us humans, the top lifeforms of Planet Earth. We sometimes consider the mutilated cow or the scared dog, but rarely do we think about the variety of flora in the world. 

 Forteana more broadly has classically approached plants more skeptically, as evidenced by this clipping from a December 1950 issue of FATE Magazine. It's not all too often that the stories in their pages contains a disclaimer, but the tale of the Man-Eating Trees appears to have been too tall even for the editors there. Carnivorous plants are well-documented, and though somewhat exotic aren't necessarily weird. Something about the idea of a meat-eating plant, though, seems to spark a connection and allow us to anthropomorphize plant life, to imbue it with some level of sentience that we understand. We see it in fiction, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek way, in films such as Roger Corman's Little Shop of Horrors and variations thereof. The carnivorous plant in the movie is actually an alien, which can talk, and demand blood. The vampiric plant being has precedent as well in The Thing From Another World, in which a frozen plant-based humanoid is thawed out from its apparent icy grave and sustains itself on plasma.

There aren't very many UFOlogical examples of this sort of thing, but one was recorded by Gray Barker in the 1960s- the case of Jennings Frederick, whose "Veggie Man" encounter culminated in the entity apparently latching on with suction cup fingers to draw blood. The creature, whatever it was, telepathically conveyed its need for medical assistance to the terrified Frederick, and it was implied that the being was an extraterrestrial. 

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Plant beings from outer space is a fun concept to consider, but it still relies on the idea of interplanetary or interstellar travel. It also implies the very human idea that the most superior forms of sentient being would be technologically adept and probably humanoid in appearance. The more magically inclined among us have, for centuries, accepted that plants have intendant spirit forms. Nature spirits and fairy entities from cultures around the world are intimately connected with plants, or are spiritual emanations from them in some cases. We tend also to anthropomorphize these, as in practices with plants such as the mandrake.

Less magical but still on the fringe, there has long been an argument that plants have a type of sentience- and, one imagines, such sentience would be nearly inconceivable to our monkey brains. The 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird popularized the idea, relying heavily on the "Backster Effect"- a series of findings by a man named Cleve Backster, who used a polygraph machine to test plant responses to stimuli. An episode of the popular TV series In Search of...  also focused on these ideas in the 70s, and L. Ron Hubbard claimed to confirm some of these results through the use of the same "E-Meter" he used in auditing members of his Church of Scientology. (Hubbard claimed that tomatoes "screamed" when sliced or pierced. One imagines he grinned ghoulishly while saying this.) Needless to say, the jury is still way out and plant intelligence is far from proven. Most, if not all of the ideas posed in the aforementioned media has been lambasted by scientists and disregarded as fiction. Fiction, however, provides a useful means of conjecture. Further, "sentience", "consciousness", and "intelligence" are ill-defined abstract terms using only the human mind as a baseline. Hungarian born botanist Raoul H. Francé argued for "True Botany" in his 1905 book Germs of Mind in Plants, saying that the endless categorization and study of dried plant "mummies" neglected the life, the important part of plant studies. Though useful, he felt that focusing on the minutiae of plant parts ignored the fact that humanity and plants of all types had a common bond; a will to live, that they had sensation, and a purpose. Through our animal eyes, we view other forms of sentience- if we see them at all- as either inferior or equivalent in some way to our own. It seems more likely that a non-human sentience and indeed a non-animal one would be so different from ours we may never see it at all.

There are quite a few unknowns in regard to human consciousness, and much controversy involved in investigating them. We don't quite know what happens to consciousness after the death of the body, for instance- nor do we really know the limits of the perceptions our minds can obtain. Extrasensory Perception has been studied for ages, and still unproven in the minds of many. It's worth noting that J. B. Rhine, who started the parapsychology lab at Duke University with his wife Louisa, had a degree in botany. If there are unknown borders to confine what we experience as human consciousness, who is to say whether there are overlapping borders with the neighboring lifeforms, those that sustain us through exchanges of oxygen and carbon dioxide? Further, can we really discount the mystics, the folk tales, and the magical history of nature spirits? And, if we entertain discarnate entities as emanations from the flora, how is that different from the parapsychological apport or the mystical tulpa? Can plants manifest psychic apparitions, or solid objects? Can we?

This may seem to be an insane line of inquiry, but to the mind of this writer it all sounds more plausible than flesh and blood visitors from another planet on a nuts and bolts craft. It has a degree of unreality to it which is so weird it just might be true. Bringing us back to the contactees, it resolves the ecological mission of the Space Brothers. If Orthon or Aura Rhanes were actually plantmind phantasms, it would make a lot of sense. It was jokingly suggested before on this blog that Nessie might be a sentient blob of peat moss, and as the years have gone by I have warmed up to the idea as a real possibility.  As we consider the muck monster form, it is perhaps advisable to refer once again the our fictions as a basis for speculation...

The fictional character Swamp Thing first appeared in 1971, created by Len Wein for the DC Comic House of Secrets. The story of a scientist through misadventure transforming into a monstrous version of his former self saw several changes over the years, culminating in a movie version and a sequel, and several television shows. The "muck monster" idea had precedent in the Theodore Sturgeon story "It! The Thing that Couldn't Die!" and in a comic book called Air Fighters from the 1940s, featuring a monster called The Heap. In "It!", the monster seems to be an animated human skeleton at its core, killing purely out of curiosity; its sentience is unformed and basic. The Heap was animated through the indomitable will to live of a crashed pilot. For our purposes here, we'll stick with Swamp Thing, and more specifically the Saga of the Swamp Thing series written by Alan Moore.

In Moore's story, a lesser DC villain Jason Woodrue is given conditional release from prison to examine the corpse of Swamp Thing. He discovers that all of the organs one might expect to find in a human are there, but none of them fulfill the function they would in a human body- they are replicas, approximations of what human anatomy looks like. They are flora assuming the form of man, and there is actually nothing left of the scientist Alec Holland. So what consciousness drives the Thing? Woodrue's villain persona, the Fluoronic Man, manages to tap into plant consciousness and discovers a worldwide network that operates as one functional mind. He and Swamp Thing refer to it simply as "The Green", a cosmic life force that permeates all of the non-animal life on the planet. So foreign is this manner of sentience, it drives Woodrue mad and he becomes megalomaniacal. 

Our diversion into comic book reality may bear some relevance to a reality we all fail to recognize, though it surrounds us every day. Our houseplant, the denizens of our crisper drawer, or even the Christmas tree we cut down and plant in our living room may have a mind all its own- or, it may be tapped into a network of mind, a cosmic and ethereal energy inextricable from our habitable material realm. Perhaps Plantoids can manifest, as UFOs or lake monsters, as phantoms or fairies; perhaps they can use organic material to build a form or can solidify purely psychic ones. Perhaps the reader assumes that these are the idle thoughts of a human mind under the influence of particular kinds of plants. But maybe, just maybe, the reader is afraid to know that they are not the authority on sentience.

Manifesting Our Cultural Superman: Truth, Justice, and the American Way

 

In 1978, Hollywood not only asked us to believe a man could fly- they gave audiences a directive. You will believe a man can fly. Superman came to movie screens across the United States and inspired viewers, young and old, with a character who at that point had been emblematic of our cultural values for 40 years. 

Belief is a tricky thing, though. Superman himself had trouble breaking into the pages of comic books because he seemed too unbelievable; leaping tall buildings in a single bound or traveling faster than a speeding bullet was considered too far of a stretch by the men at the top. Believing in the impossible requires a level of intellectual bravery, or, paradoxically, childish credulity. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about this as a type of "poetic faith"- that the "semblance of truth" could be conveyed through supernatural or otherwise fantastical means by simply enjoying the impossible narrative for its own sake. When we willingly suspend disbelief, we become privy to ephemeral truths about human nature, about society, and about the world in which we live. All of the best speculative fiction, even if it's considered low brow by literary standards, illustrates the usefulness of actively letting go of critical faculty- taking a leap, into the air, and flying, as an act of faith- and thus being rewarded not only through the power of entertainment and novelty but by the inherent meaning and truth conveyed.

Truth, however, is another sticky concept. Christopher Reeve, in his role as Superman in the aforementioned movie, uses the hero's old motto of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way". We see here how intimately Superman is tied to ideas about the U.S., what it stands for, or perhaps what it should aspire to. Veering away from suspension of disbelief for a moment, this motto traces its roots to the second World War, for Superman's radio show in an effort to support American troops overseas. It again became used by George Reeves in the 1950s TV series, this time as Cold War rhetoric. These are true statements, and the more cynical among us bristle at the hokeyness the tagline embodies while simultaneously being tangential to propaganda. If we employ our willingness to believe, without any umbrage or analysis, we may find that the simplicity of these basic values as stated have a kind of beauty that is often absent in popular discourse. 

Truth is not only sticky, it's very difficult to face. It's not terribly surprising that Superman has been increasingly considered corny in recent decades, or that belief in American ideals has become such a quagmire. People often rightly point out that the men who founded our nation, and spoke of freedom, largely owned human beings for the purpose of forced labor. Many examples from history directly contradict the ideals expressed in the founding documents, and it feels increasingly childish or naive to equate "the American Way" with Truth or Justice. Perhaps, however, a childlike view - or a suspension of disbelief, cynicism, and anger - is helpful in believing we can get there. In recent years, Superman has been instead saying "Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow"- and one could argue that the sentiment is precisely the same. The Truth that the founding fathers were promoting was held by them to be self-evident. One might say even a child could tell you what freedom is, what equality looks like, and what's fair. For reasons seem to be intrinsically part of human nature, the basic values of human dignity and equality are reasoned away as flights of fancy. 

There's nothing controversial or even political about Truth. If we accept for our purposes that by "men" the founders used an archaic form of "human", we see by these self-evident truths that we are all equal, and each of us has the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. There are no qualifiers in this vision of what it means to be American. It should be obvious, this Truth, or self-evident as we interact with others in the world- and yet for so many, the premise seems laughably alien. This is, perhaps, where Justice comes in. Prior to, during, and after the founding of these United States the original ideals have consistently failed to manifest in a multitude of ways. In other ways, though, this grand titanic experiment has gradually arced toward its goal. If we are to exercise our muscles in disbelief suspension, through intellectual honesty or childish optimism, we can get to a place where despite all evidence to the contrary such lofty ambitions are achievable. We can believe in a Better Tomorrow, we can believe that it's the same as the American Way, just as we can believe a man can fly.

The ugly truths and injustices of our modern world may lead us to ennui, despair, and hopelessness. It must not, however, lead us to concede defeat prematurely. There is still goodness in the world, and even if it seems less self-evident when one looks at the news or scrolls through social media, we are all equal parts of the equation and in the same boat. Xenophobia, dehumanization, and bigotry seems so obviously anathema to the very specific principles set forth in the Constitution, and yet many wave American flags while spewing such rhetoric. There's something to be said for the fact that Superman stood for these ideals even though he was not only an immigrant from another nation, but from another planet. We seem to be stuck in a binary mindset, one rife with contradiction and logical fallacies. Whether we consider the America of the idea space to be just as corny and fictional as Superman, or whether we believe in an alternate factual interpretation of traditionalism from the founders, we are becoming increasingly at odds not only with each other but also with our humanity. If we don't want the Earth to go the way of Krypton, we should do everything in our power to bring these founding principles to bear.

   As a character, Superman was born out of what became known as the Golden Age of comic books. In a literary sense, the concept of the Golden Age relates to a time before humanity suffered, a paradise that once existed and was lost. Occasionally, examples of this literary device depict a Utopian future. Myriad dimensions of this kind of idea manifest in our discourse regularly; people may speak of the "good old days", or become nostalgic for simpler times. If we are to concern ourselves with Truth, however, we realize that this nostalgia relates to a past that never was. The above image seems like a bittersweet relic of a bygone era, but worse than that, it's a message of hope from nearly three-quarters of a century ago that seems to have burned out instead. The 1950s were a complicated time, and there are plenty of reasons Superman's message here didn't match reality then- but our Man of Tomorrow was forward thinking, and many of the inequalities present at that time gradually met with Justice. Now, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, this golden utopian America seems just as fictional, cornball, and archaic as Superman himself. But Superman never dies, even despite stories in the comics and the movies; similarly, the defiant and indomitable spirit of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness can never be crushed.

The point here is that we should not discard our ideals simply because they are impossible. Real Truth exists despite our inborn need to dissect it and twist it and ultimately cast it aside. The America that is analogous to Truth and Justice, that truly embodies such values, exists in the imaginal realm and is still worthy of our aspiration. It also lives in our symbols- the flag, the bald eagle, and Superman- and can be manifested with these forms. There are stories about real-life encounters with Superman, and other comic characters, existing as a sort of tulpa to the writers and artists who bring him to life on the page. Alvin Schwartz, who wrote Superman comic strips for nearly 20 years, writes about his encounters with such manifestations in his book An Unlikely Prophet- and ultimately realizes that Superman is only one half of the character. The other half is Clark Kent, the mild-mannered reporter. While none of us can claim to fly, bend steel or have x-ray vision we can all relate to Kent. Whether we choose to believe claims such as those made by Schwartz in his book, we can nevertheless extrapolate from the idea of thought forms becoming real that the impossible may not be as far away as we think. In spite of the fact that we've never quite seen the kind of Golden Age or self-evident truths in action the way we would wish to, we must nevertheless hold space for them. We keep them close to our hearts, the way Clark wore his costume under his shirt.

Perhaps some symbols, archetypes, and forms outlive their usefulness eventually. Perhaps there are ages and epochs where the gods reign supreme and others where humanity lifts itself up. We can't wait for the deus ex machina, the blue and red bullet from the sky to come and rescue us all from the horrors we've created. But if we believe a man can fly, if we believe that a better tomorrow can be today, if we can suspend our disbelief enough to make room for such naive sounding things as Truth or Justice or the American Way, then maybe we can manifest our cultural Superman as we live our Clark Kent lives. As we look up in the sky, we can channel hope. The fight is not over, and likely it never will be. We fight in spite of it all in the hopes of that impossible future which rests entirely on poetic faith, that there will come a time when fighting is no longer necessary.

Who cares if it's corny? Believe.

On Cultivating a Weird Library

There was a time when my collection of Weird Books was only enough to fill a shelf or two of my bookcase. In that time, visitors to my abode would notice curious titles including words like "UFOs" or "Mysteries" on the spine and inquire about them. For most of my life, my interest in weird subjects was more or less one of quiet, solitary thought experimentation. People who knew me recognized my interest in such things as lake monsters or ghosts, but rarely did I ever find that they wanted to talk about it at any length. Still, when such subjects present themselves prominently on the spines of books, the curious get curiouser; this curiosity is the first thing one must cultivate when setting out to build a Weird Library.

"Weird" is subjective, of course. For the reader who might want to build a collection of their own, it's worthwhile to consider the definition and the parameters of such a term for themselves. To my mind, it covers quite a bit of ground. I have a broad range of interests, but hyper-specificity might be a wonderful way for someone else to plan a collection. For instance, one might start a shelf of specifically UFO books; but then, one might limit that to UFO books from the 1950s. Further still, the focus could be just on contactees of the 1950s, and could be focused even more on just one or some of them. UFOs are also an obvious example of Weird, and one could argue that any such granular focus on a particular subject is weird by virtue of its singular theme. Pop culture obsessions often engender this kind of weird collection, and its really that kind of enthusiasm that is a cornerstone to a well cultivated collection. For myself, such focuses are rare. My bookshelves buckle these days because rather than focusing on one or another Weird Thing, I have opened the aperture of my strange lenses to include a wide variety of subjects into my frame of Weird.

Labels and strict categories have classically been anathema to my understanding of how Things work. As a pattern seeking species, humans love to label and define and delineate, and thus become masters of reality by "knowing" an awful lot about phenomena simply because they've assigned a name to it. This isn't a criticism, really; of course we need some rubric, some system to work with to build a consensus knowledge base from which we can both teach and learn. When the phenomena in question is purely anomalous, it becomes even more difficult to assign labels since by definition, no one can really claim to "know" much of anything for certain about it. We can, however, draw from a wealth of writings and form our own ideas about what can broadly be described as Mysteries. Tangential to these are a myriad of other subjects which are less mysterious but no less fascinating. 

This is all to say that my own attempt at building a Weird Library contains volumes that in themselves aren't weird per se, but rather have relevance to others that are. There is a broad range in what one might describe as quality, or verisimilitude, or reliability. Some are incredibly problematic, while others are harmless or neutral. Broad categories included, which often intersect and overlap in ways that make shelf organization nearly impossible, span the gap from fringe to outer fringe. While many of the selections are wacky and amusingly absurd, that's not true of all of them- and inclusion in the library should not be read as an insinuation that they are.

Alongside subjects such as cryptozoology, UFOlogy, parapsychology and mysticism, we can venture toward more widely accepted fields of study and their relationship to it. For instance, books like The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks might help shed some light on how malleable human perception is, and how easily it can be altered by neurological affects. It's a popular book, written by a respected doctor, but when one considers the implications of just how fragile our grasp on phenomenal reality is one is forced to contend with that in reports of anomalous encounters. Similarly, when we look at magical traditions, we might include religious texts that informed them. It would be offensive and disrespectful to describe religious literature as "weird",  but books like The Bhagavad Gita or tracts from the contemplative Christian tradition such as The Cloud of Unknowing are instructive when considering the roots of our modern systems of magic. There are so many tangents one might follow from the above fringe subjects that might lead to including hard science books, books by hobbyists, art books, biographies, folklore, history, anthropology, and popular fiction- there is quite literally no real limit. Engage your curiosity, feed it, and let it grow.

To those interested in cultivating such a library, I would suggest, as Charles Fort did, that they begin as one might when measuring a circle- start anywhere! I might further and perhaps more helpfully suggest that the best way to grow such a collection is to do so organically. Once you've begun with a handful of books, pull on the threads and sources of the ones most interesting to you. Look at bibliographies and footnotes, and track down books cited there as potential additions to your library. Find criticisms online of these books, and track down books that have the opposing view of whatever subject it is you are interested in. Biographies are particularly good as examples of texts which will cover the same subject but be wildly different in their appraisals- and sometimes even in the "facts"! Sometimes, passing mentions in books can open up a whole new avenue of discovery, for which the Inquiring Student of the Weird may prove an opportunity to treasure-hunt more Weird volumes. Further, if you find a stumbling block in the form of references you don't understand, that may be an indicator that you need to expand your library in that direction to find out for yourself what they mean. To quote the wonderful occultist and researcher Maevius Lynn in a recent video , use your lack of knowledge on a subject as an invitation to learn more. As an example from my experience, Theosophy is a very influential and pervasive current in all manner of fringe books. I found a copy of Madame Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine years ago, and it sat on my shelf like the Sword of Damocles as something that I knew I'd someday have to read in order to understand the tradition more fully. These days, it is something I have read- and I feel much more informed and better for it.

Now that we have some direction, a few recommendations for sourcing these books might be appropriate. For those fortunate enough to have used book stores around them, I would recommend regularly checking in to see what offerings they have. I am fortunate to be within reasonable driving distance of some very good ones, such as Grey Matter Books, which has a section called "Books of the Weird". 

A "Weird Books" section, I've found, tends to be tucked away in the back of the store where it won't embarrass the shop keeper... but that's not always the case. Grey Matter's section is prominent in the front room; I was thrown for a loop in Maine once when I scoured the store for more than half an hour only to discover the weird books were directly in front of the register, near the entrance!

A great deal of booksellers do not cater so easily to us weirdos, though, so hunting for strange titles becomes a little more of a task. Think of it as a treasure hunting expedition or Easter egg hunt. Sometimes odd volumes are miscategorized; I have found classic UFO books in the Science Fiction section before. Sometimes arcane books of magic and occultism are tucked away in the Religion or Spirituality section. Categories like Folklore, or Local History are often worth glancing at- often there's at least something a little odd there. If used bookstores aren't so prevalent in your area, or if you lack really good ones, most established shops with such books have a presence online. Support your independent bookshops!

Beyond the bookshops, check out thrift shops, antique stores, and yard sales. Estate sales sometimes yield great treasures, especially if you are lucky enough to find one with its own Weird Library. I once scored a box filled with dozens of UFO related paperbacks, relatively cheaply, from the estate of a man who had been a MUFON investigator!

If all else fails, you could try magic. I have, astoundingly enough, conjured rare books out of the ether using my own idiosyncratic methods...

For those who share my enthusiasm for such things, this can be a very fulfilling hobby. It can also take over your life and your living space- there never seem to be enough bookshelves or places to put them. Be mindful of your family or cohabitants, and establish boundaries so that it doesn't drive a wedge in personal relationships. Also, be safe! Modern bookshelves should be secured so they can't tip over, and rogue stacks of books can present tripping hazards or fire hazards. Every once in a while I'll watch an episode of Hoarders to keep things in perspective. Don't let it get that bad!

It is my hope that the particular kind of weirdo that really enjoys these things, who has a genuine interest and curiosity about the out-of-the-ordinary, will benefit from my ramblings here. There are a great many barriers to having such a collection, first among them the fact that even if interested most people simply wouldn't want that many books cluttering up their home. This is absolutely reasonable! If you are among those people, or are simply curious about the books I've collected, I have started a YouTube series in which I showcase them called "Selections from the Weird Library". I hope you enjoy seeing some of the books and hearing about what they mean to me.

 
 

Until next time, stay weird and keep reading!

Elvis vs the Body Snatchers

 

In late 1978, a remake of the classic science fiction thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers was defying expectations. The movie, which starred Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy, was a box office hit and to some degree helped legitimize the remake in cinema. The tense and paranoid film overshadowed the movie on which it was based, which came out in 1956- the same year Elvis Aaron Presley released his first full length album with RCA Victor. The year before the term "body snatchers" came back into the cultural fore in reference to aliens, Elvis had allegedly passed away- and contended with some all-too terrestrial body snatchers of his own.

Clipping passed along to me by the one-and-only Tim Binnall, who insisted I do a deep dive on it...

The broad strokes of the story, as presented in the above clipping, raise a few questions- even the headline seems dubious, in its presentation of the "police claim". One wonders about the identity of the arrested men, and that of the informant; further, how any of them had expected to pull off such a scheme. In looking for answers, the saga of Elvis vs the Body Snatchers can either become a sprawling, mind-bending web of conspiracy or it can simply be the machinations of a few hackneyed criminals and their tall tales. Our narrators are unreliable, our facts are unsatisfying. All of it is, however, very interesting.

The story begins on August 16th, 1977, when news broke about the death of the King. He had apparently died while reading a book about the Shroud of Turin in Graceland, his Memphis estate. Theories about his death being faked began almost immediately afterward, while those presumably more accepting of reported facts were already angling to cash in on the rock star's death. After a funeral he was interred at Forest Hills Cemetery, in a copper coffin inside a mausoleum. The men were arrested for the attempting corpse-napping on August 28th, and by October 4th the charges were dropped in favor of a lesser charge of trespassing. What happened in the gaps of this timeline depend on whom you wish to believe. Those charged were Ronnie Lee Adkins, Bruce Nelson, and Raymond "Bubba" Green- all crooks between the ages of 25 and 30. The fourth man, mentioned in the article as having been arrested at the hospital, seems to have been released without charges. Nelson seems to have been an accomplice. Adkins and Green then will be our star unreliable witnesses.

Ronnie Lee Adkins played the role of the police informant who tipped off the cops. Within a week and a half of the arrests, his credibility was called into question with the police telling the press that the bodysnatching attempt was little more than an elaborate hoax. They had previously considered him reliable enough as an informant, and had helped Memphis law enforcement bust low level offenders over the course of a few years in exchange for reduced time at a penal colony, where he had been held on burglary convictions. Just how much the police had been strung along on Adkins' bogus claim, as they characterized it, is unclear- but by Ronnie Lee's account, which was published in newspapers at the time, the police had encouraged him to go along with the plot in order to catch the ghoulish crooks involved. Adkins spins a yarn about a mysterious man who had offered $40,000 to the four men in exchange for Elvis's coffin and remains; this was to be ransomed back to the Presley family for $10 million. This part wouldn't involve the body snatchers. Initially, Adkins claimed, the plot was to steal the remains of the King from the funeral home prior to the service at Graceland. In cooperation with police, he allegedly entered the funeral home and hot-wired a hearse; Green and Nelson were supposed to take it from there. Both being criminals out on bond, however, they were spooked by a squad car in the area and got cold feet at the last minute. This meant they would have to wait, and dig up Presley later.

In the days that followed, Adkins claims to have been in contact with both Nelson and a police sergeant named Hester. Nelson and Green were happy to learn that Elvis would be interred in a mausoleum, and not buried, as this would make the job similar to their familiar pastime of burglary and less like grave robbing. Their first attempt was on Saturday, August 27, but the crooks were once again hesitant when they spotted Sgt. Hester's unmarked car. On the night of the 28th, in Adkins' car with plates stolen from another vehicle, a trunk full of tools and a shotgun, the trio ventured back to Forest Hills for their crime. The plan was to break into the mausoleum, pull out the coffin, remove Elvis into a body bag, and hit the road. They would then meet their benefactor at a nearby Armour Packing Plant at 2 a.m. for the hand-off. Before they could get into the crypt, the gang panicked and ran, having heard police radio chatter nearby. A brief high speed chase led to a roadblock, where Green and Nelson were arrested in one car and Adkins was brought to another; he was subsequently bailed out by Hester and told he had done a fine job.

This version of events was published in newspapers alongside the official statement from Memphis Police Director E. Winslow Chapman, who presented the idea that the entire plot had been a hoax perpetuated by Adkins. Even if, he said, they had planned on bodysnatching he doubted it would have gone very far. All inquiries from the press were directed to him, and all other law enforcement personnel were instructed to stay quiet on the matter. Chapman suggested there was no evidence of an attempt to break into the crypt, because the men had no tools- although Adkins claimed that there were tools, and a gun, which had been confiscated by the cops. He had seen them himself. Charges were eventually dropped in early October, with the missing tools playing a large role. Adkins' reliability as both an informant and a witness was torpedoed a few days prior to the dismissal, when he went to a hospital and claimed to be a police officer himself in order to use city police insurance. He was then arrested for fraud, while Green and Nelson got lesser penalties for trespassing along with their pre-existing bail agreements.

It has all the trappings of a bizarre conspiracy, as though Adkins was some manner of patsy in a weird and pointless scheme. This, however, is only the case if you believe what he said. Director Chapman confirmed that he had been a reliable informant up until this caper, but everything else about his account is without corroboration. A look at where Ronnie Lee pops up in the news after the whole affair gives a clearer perspective of the man, and lends credence to Chapman's assessment. 

A 1981 article in the Memphis Press-Scimitar, for instance, identifies Adkins as an assistant to Timothy Snider, the head of the Memphis klavern of the Ku Klux Klan. Snider had been charged with kidnapping a former klansman along with another man. Adkins denies holding an official post in the organization, but is quoted as saying he was a "supporter of the Klan." The article goes on to describe his arrest record, which included over 20 arrests of petty crimes such as theft and fraudulent checks. He appears as well in a book called The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. by William F. Pepper. The controversial author's claims in the book which is reviewed here by Martin Hay, include statements made by Adkins, who apparently also used the alias Ron Tyler. The elaborate story he tells Pepper involves his father, Russel Adkins, who he claims was a 32nd degree Mason and a high-ranking klansman with powerful friends and a job as a fixer and hitman. If we're to believe Adkins here, his dear old man had a direct line to Deputy Director Clyde Tolson of the FBI, who worked directly under J. Edgar Hoover. Reverend Doctor King's assassination had been in the works for years before it actually happened, according to Ronnie, with the orders coming from the very top- he further says that as early as 1956, when Invasion of the Body Snatchers was thrilling teens along with Elvis's eponymous debut album, the FBI man Tolson had handed a list to the senior Adkins scumbag containing the names JFK, RFK, and MLK, insinuating that all three assassinations were part of the same plan. Having died before getting the chance to shoot Dr. King, Russel's duties got passed down to Ronnie which, one assumes, is how such things work. Ronnie Lee claims to have delivered the rifle to the gunman who shot MLK, at the age of 16 no less, and, according to him, it was not James Earl Ray. For more details on the insanity of these claims, the reader is encouraged to read the linked book review...

The final tragic nail in the coffin, as it were, for Adkin's credibility comes in 1992 when his mother was gunned down, and either his own children or nieces and nephews of his were injured. It seems Adkins had been given money to bail out a Memphis woman who was being held on drug charges, but the bail was never posted. Presumably, Adkins pocketed the money and his own mother paid the ultimate price for it.  

This is all to say that perhaps it isn't wise at all to trust his account of the attempted bodysnatching. The yarns he spins would have you going down all manner of ugly rabbit holes, which can be tempting but is from the outset obviously fruitless. A simple crook and stool pigeon for the Memphis PD, whose story constellates outward to include secret societies, the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, along with government involvement and cover-ups is a familiar and well-trodden path in the zeitgeist of the late 20th century. Not to mention the synchromystic connections, with the King of Rock and Roll, Martin Luther King, and the "Camelot" dynasty of the Kennedys, which all are tangential to paranoid screeds like King Kill 33. This writer draws the line here, as this well trodden path is also laden with horseshit. It was tempting to draw a line between the American Memphis and its namesake in Egypt, where the body of Alexander the Great was once interred, before being removed a generation later to Macedonia and reburied in a now unknown location; and perhaps its worth mentioning, as we include Egyptian burial rites alongside Elvis and JFK; the absurdity of it all is exemplified by this combination in the form of the movie Bubba Ho-Tep. That is to say, the purely batshit logic one employs to construct a narrative around such claims can be fun, but at the end of the day is still batshit.

The present writer would be remiss in at not at least mentioning one of his favorite movies

This brings us, in a circuitous fashion, back to another Bubba- Ray "Bubba" Green, who in recent years came out with his own version of events for a short documentary called The Man Who Dared to Steal the King. In this scenario, Ronnie Lee Adkins was little more than an acquaintance and the wheel-man for the caper who ratted on Green, Nelson, and the fourth man who he only refers to as "Mike". In Green's telling of the story, it was he who was charged with the duty of stealing Elvis's remains and was linked up with the mystery man behind the plot through his bail bondsman, Barron Blue. The characters certainly don't get more colorful than this, especially because the "yankee" who put up the money for the scheme gets referred to as "Mr. Cincinnati". Meeting in a dimly lit Tiki bar, Green was patted down and made to surrender his butterfly knife before the meeting. Mr. Cincinnati had two briefcases with him; one was filled with money, and the other detailed maps, arial photos, diagrams and other useful information related to Elvis's would-be-final resting place. The deal was for two million dollars; Green would need to recruit three men, pay them whatever he liked, and deliver the body to be ransomed for ten million. Green seems proud of himself in the documentary for the line "My own mother ain't safe for two million", which eerily harkens back to the fate of Adkins' mom. Green never mentions any plans for the funeral home, but he does account for the tools- "Mike" was waiting on the other side of the cemetery in a stolen appliance truck containing them, and got away, never to be seen again, well before things went haywire in the graveyard. 

Green credits his lawyer with the reduced charge, as Adkins was allegedly made to commit insurance fraud under threat of bodily harm from Green and Nelson at his attorney's suggestion. The case was thrown out with Adkins' flagrant unreliability as a con artist, and while Green was still in trouble he was looking at a much smaller sentence.

The story again begins to inflate with wildness as only an ex-con can deliver. Green goes on to explain that while in prison he met a Cape Cod mobster he calls "Moose", who let him in on some secrets related to Presley. In a narrative that will sound familiar to any enthusiasts of "Elvis is Alive" theories, or anyone who read the National Enquirer a lot back in the day, Moose explained that at Elvis's funeral was seen to sweat in the coffin. "Wax sweats," says Green, "dead bodies don't." 

Moose spins a tale to Bubba, or so we're told, that Elvis was beholden to the mob during his Vegas days and had been convinced to transport large sums of cash using his personal jet for them. This didn't sit well with the King, as Elvis had always thought of himself as the Good Guy and had tried to ingratiate himself with law enforcement at every opportunity. So, the story goes, Elvis made note of the serial numbers on the bills he transported and tipped off the feds, leading to arrests in the upper echelon of the underworld. 

Elvis meeting Nixon in order to become an honorary agent of the DEA

So, in Green's telling of events, Elvis didn't die at all. He was being sent to steal a wax dummy out of the mausoleum, for purposes unknown. Elvis presumably would be in hiding, from either the mob, the feds, or both. Elvis's remains, along with those of his mother, were interred at Graceland following the events at Forest Hills. The documentary seems to suggest that the whole point of the alleged attempted body snatch was to justify the move- but why such an elaborate scheme? It does bear the hallmarks, as previously mentioned, of a patsy arrangement. That Mr. Cincinnati had $2 million to burn on some low-level druggie and crook, who obviously wasn't very good at crime since he kept getting caught, in the hopes that he'd deliver the goods; that this mystery man hoped he could recoup $8 million at the end of it all boggles the mind and invites further questions. The idea that Vernon Presley and / or Colonel Parker would need some convoluted scheme to bury Elvis where they wanted to seems equally absurd, given the outrageous amount of money, sway, and sympathy they had in the wake of Presley's death. 

The brief documentary featuring Green's story ends with a screen of text, listing some of his crimes- which include manslaughter- and state that his current whereabouts are unknown. 

If we are to try that old, well-trodden and shit-strewn path of building an unbelievable narrative here, we might suggest that the Bubba Green in the documentary isn't the man who got away with attempted corpse-napping in 1977. We could also speculate wildly about the identity of Mr. Cincinnati, or be more sympathetic to the bizarre claims of the klansman con artist who almost literally threw his own mother under the bus. We might just as easily believe the characters involved were actually pod people, having replicated and displaced their original forms. Perhaps there was a rogue mummy involved, and Elvis is still out there, on the lam.

"Elvis is out there, I tell you! He's out there!"

As with seemingly everything around Elvis, there are so many divergent narratives that finding the truth of the matter often means settling for the most boring story. Like the final resting place of Alexander the Great, perhaps some things will never be known. We have "official stories" for a lot of these tales of intrigue, and for those who enjoy tugging on the conspiratorial threads there will never be a satisfactory explanation. In this case, with either unreliable narrators or authorities who brush the crime off as a hoax we may never know what really drove the miscreants to attempt the crime and you know... that's alright, mama. That's alright with me. 

Cone 143: A Magical Working Toward a Better World

 Cone 143: a Magical Working for a Better World

What follows, put bluntly, is a magical working towards the betterment of the world. It is important that it be left precisely as vague as this. It was conceived using various methods over the period of a few months, and involved a great personal struggle on the part of its author. Perhaps this is fitting, as the working involves amplifying direct emotive personal experience and struggle. It is designed to be very simple, accessible to anyone who wishes to participate. If the prospective participant wishes to make it even simpler, that is just fine- conversely, if one has their own ritual practice and wishes to incorporate what follows into it, thereby complicating it, that is also good. The name of the game here is fellowship, and direct personal understanding. 

There are several parts to this, and again the reader / participant is free to decide which are necessary. Beyond this introduction, there will be an explanatory note, Part I; a parable, Part II; and finally, the working itself- Part III. In addition, the essay Communion With the Critters helps to illustrate how this type of magic can work, even with non-human entities. The reader is welcome to dig right into the meat of it by scrolling to Part III, or to read all of it, or none at all, or to jump around in the order they choose.

Gratitude is warmly extended to Professor Wham, Stephanie Quick, and the wonderful people in the discord for the Vayse podcast- all of whom in some way helped or inspired this project.

Part I: Explanatory Notes

It may be observed that in the introductory note, there was very little in the way of directives or strict rules. This is at the core of this working. The tendency for human beings to dominate, control, or manipulate others is at the core of what we call “evil”. In a magical sense then, fighting the fire of this egregore of dominion on earth with the flame of hexing, binding, or subtle manipulative magic only serves to stoke it into a planetary conflagration. Even removing any magical lens in looking at the problem, it is hard to disagree that culture has become more divided and combative.  A glance at trends in world events over the past decade may have convinced the reader that this has already happened, and that there is no way to stop it.

Progress, however, can appear apocalyptic when you are in the midst of it. Perhaps it is quite literally apocalyptic, and one could argue that’s not the worst thing in the world. To take the word “apocalypse” at face value, from its Greek roots, it simply means revelation, the “lifting of the veil”- laying bare the evils of the world for all to see. This leads to despair, confusion, and chaos. Chaos is a fundamental catalyst in the cosmos. The road gets rocky when such revelations make themselves known; the world changes. Gripping the illusory, phantasmic past which has already gone away from us is of no use. Standing one’s ground when that ground is ever shifting, or disappearing entirely, is risky. We must be fluid, adapt, and not only anticipate the aftermath; We must help shape it. Whether the future is utopian or a post-apocalyptic wasteland is for us to decide.  

In the past, subversion of the norms has been a classic method of upending power structures, allowing for a different perspective and promoting ingenuity in addressing its exposed failings. In an environment where little agreement can be found, and chaos is the reigning commonality, such subversion is neutralized. It only serves to contribute to a fractured and destabilized structure. As we find ourselves butting heads or tripping over one another in this worldwide Babel Tower scenario, we can secure the foundations through cooperation. The most radical and subversive act one can manifest at the present time is love, kindness, and compassion.

If this sounds corny to you, if it seems naive, that is because the cruelty of the world has conditioned you to reject basic principles of humanity. This working requires that you shed away, unabashedly and intentionally, all the cynical trappings you’ve accumulated over the years. Just because it hasn’t worked before doesn’t mean it won’t; that is to say, history only repeats because we insist on repeating it. Animosity, hopelessness, apathy, and misanthropy are cultivated by the dark forces of our collective psychology. The Black Lodge, as it were, wishes for nothing more than for you to feel helpless, angry, and lost. These energetic evils, however you wish to characterize or envision them, want you to give into fear. This must at all costs be resisted.

This is the magic of Mr. Rogers. There is no wish too small, and the Land of Make-Believe is real. We are, after all, working toward World Peace. A lofty goal, to be sure, and one that seems foolishly optimistic, but this very foolish optimism is necessary. There needs to be a reckoning, a balancing of the world’s humors; and for as much rational pessimism as seems to be all-pervading in the greater world, there needs to be some glimmer of quixotic hope as a counter-weight. Breaking down the seemingly impassable barriers to faith is important. This begins with you, with the Self, which mirrors the greater reality. It’s a lovely day in the neighborhood if you want it to be, and everyone can be your neighbor. The reader who is scoffing at my corniness here will be well advised to examine their own inner walls, which partition off empathy in order to maintain their gloomy worldview and perpetuate a gloomy world.

Much talk surrounds the idea of “desensitization”, that we have all hardened ourselves to violence, cruelty, and atrocity. We have normalized these things, as a matter of self-preservation. If one stopped to really consider the feelings of each person they meet, let alone anyone they read about in the news, they would never stop weeping. It’s impractical to be empathetic. In some cases, stubbornly clinging to ideals and beliefs necessitates ignoring the pain of others, or justifying it under one cause or another. A cocktail of biases, blind spots, and moral compromises fuels this need to carry on, to ignore the plight of those around us, and to give up on the idea of ever fixing it.

Mean-spirited discourse makes itself apparent on social media, and is encouraged and rewarded by the algorithms. The point here is to recognize that part of the reason we fall into a trap, a downward cycle of negativity and animosity, has less to do with impassioned argument and more to do with the inverse- dispassionate removal. Each of us has barriers and walls in place to protect ourselves which paradoxically support the cruelty on the surface; the self-defeating cycle in each of us ripples out to a world of pain and retribution. We can short the circuit, and we must.

There are commonalities which are central to the experience of being a living human on earth. There is a direct emotive expression that cannot be conveyed through language, but which anyone can understand if only they allow themselves the compassionate eye to read it. The working, then, seeks to identify and psychically amplify these experiences within the deep self of the participant. Without coercion, or the need for convincing prose or manipulation, these waves of direct personal gnosis can wash over the unsuspecting populace like a cool breeze or mild spray of light rain. In the most subtle fashion, it is hoped that the heart-strings will sympathetically resonate; that the recipients of such broadcasts will be moved to appeal to their better angels. 

Part II: The Sage at the Shoreline

Two soldiers from opposing armies brought the Sage at spearpoint across the beach. He was to be sacrificed to the serpents of the sea. Recalling Laocoön, the prophet from Virgil’s Aeneid, the enemy soldiers had decided to appease the dragons beneath the waves with an offering. Would it end the war? Would it prolong it? Omens had directed the wise men of both opposing armies, and led to the decision the soldiers found themselves carrying out. The Sage would be fed to the snakes, what happens beyond that is in the hands of the gods.

At the water’s edge, the serpents appeared, eager for their offering- except, these were not serpents after all. An eldritch horror arose from below the waves, its flailing tendrils approximating the necks and bodies of sea snakes. It levitated above the surf, growing larger and steadfastly hesitant to assume a definitive shape. It was black, the all encompassing blackness of the unknown, as though it were made up of materialized fear. A shockwave from the amorphous monstrosity laid the soldiers to waste, but the Sage stood firm, raising his staff. Sound refused to travel; there was no language, no communication in words. In a moment outside of our concept of time, the Sage thrust forward his staff and banished the tentacled horror.

As calm returned, the atmosphere on the beach was restored to its natural state. The surf, the cool breeze, and the chirping of birds could be heard. In the distance away from the shore, a curious golden cone shaped object hovered above the trees, framed by distant mountains…

Part III: The Working

To begin, the participant must have some time and space to relax. As previously mentioned, this should be easy for someone with no magical experience or practice to try out, and just as easily could be incorporated into an existing ritual or meditation.

Each participant must envision a point above their head, which expands into a ring as it rises. The participant may envision this ring in whatever form they wish. If it's funny or makes them happy, all the better.

Once formed they must envision it rising and getting proportionally bigger in the way sonar or radar is depicted. Each time a new higher concentric circle is envisioned, the participant must recall emotional moments from their past experiences. They don't have to be the most powerful or formative moments, but they should fit this pattern:

Gratitude. Recall a time when compassion was bestowed on you.

Duty. Recall a time you were compassionate and made a difference for
someone else, and how it felt to know that you had helped.

Guilt. Recall a time you had been cruel, and the shame you felt or still feel.
Now is a good time to release it. Let it float out with its respective ring.

Victimhood. Recall a time you were wronged. Forgive that person or
entity, release the grudge with this ring. The pain and anger of the initial event,
it is hoped, can be sublimated.

Wonder. Recall a time you were overwhelmed by beauty. This ring of
peace, hope and wonder should be last in line as a soft landing back to the mundane, should you choose to change the order or skip some.

These rings should be spreading out quite a bit. During these recollections, remembering the feeling is more important than the details. Remember how it felt. As you go keep picturing the rings spreading out, spreading over and pinging off of other participants. Picture an aerial view or a map with the rings emanating from your location.

As more people get involved, the hope is that these emotional ripples in the numinal atmosphere will overlap and intensify. The heart strings, as it were, of the unsuspecting populace will get tugged on. The hope is to make the infectious negativity, cruelty, or apathy sublimate into conversation with the better angels of the average person. To break down barriers. To wash away obstacles and awaken compassion, and to reduce suffering for sentient beings everywhere.

Sentimentalism, nostalgia, and kindness find a home here. Large waves begin as ripples in the tide; this subtle, non-coercive practice just might restore a bit of sanity and decency to the world. Perhaps it won’t, but if a glimmer of quixotic faith in humanity is too much to hope for then we surely are all doomed. I strongly doubt that we are. I think we have much more sway with the Wyrd than we are led to believe, and that petitioning fate itself with subtle acts of compassion- literally, direct empathic broadcasts of emotive experiences we all have in common- we can steer our way through Apocalypse itself.

Communion With the Critters

 

I have fed the birds at my house for almost as long as I have had a house. Initially, this was more for the benefit and amusement of my cat, who loves to watch from the window, flicking her tail and chittering away as they fly around. I have always enjoyed birds anyway, and seeing who visits my house because of the feeder has been quite literally a magical experience. 

I got in the habit of throwing whatever was leftover from my cold sandwich lunch at work onto the grass under the feeder each morning for the birds and squirrels to eat. It occurred to me recently that this daily bread, as it were, is part of a mystical bond with the birds- we are eating the same meal, communing in the most vital fashion. To extend this further, every new cold sandwich that gets made in the morning has its own attendant ritual, with both my dog and my cat appearing out of nowhere for a little scrap of meat. Our “Sandwich Time” morning rite has become very important, and ties us all together- the critters inside, myself, and the birds and creatures outside my door all partaking of the same broken bread.

The indoor critters, Bernie and Lucy, alerting me that it is dinnertime

I had my avian biases. Blue Jays always seemed to me to be the bullies of the bird world, and many assess them as such. I was less than thrilled about their attendance at the feeder, until one day an injured or sick Jay took up residence under my butterfly bush. It seemed incapable of flight, and could only hop short distances. Often it would just sit in the grass pointing its beak skyward, or cocking its head strangely. The smaller birds were cruel to it. I softened in my opinion of the Jays, and did what I could to help the fella along. Eventually it got well.

Similarly I had an irrational disdain for turkeys, mostly borne out of a joke. I just thought it was kind of funny to dunk on turkeys, I suppose. One day a lone turkey strolled into my yard, and kept coming back. It caused me to wonder why a lone turkey would hang around, as I’ve only ever seen them in groups. As it happens, this turkey was a hen with a nest somewhere nearby. Mother turkeys are solitary during this time of their lives and don’t stray too far from their nest when foraging. I took it upon myself to help the expectant single mom, and bought cracked corn and peanuts to spread on the lawn for her. She came to trust me enough that so long as I avoided looking at her directly, she would come within a few feet of me to eat. Eventually she stopped coming around- but a few months later, a pair of hens appeared with a troop of over a dozen poults following them. She had returned to show me her babies. 

Upping the ante in risk factors, and moving away from the feathered friends of my locale, I developed a friendship with a young skunk. I have always loved skunks, and juvenile skunks are particularly adorable. Fear of getting sprayed causes most people to revile them, and run away like a character in a Pepe le Pew cartoon. I have always found them to be most reasonable if you talk to them. A simple “hello” goes a long way, and once a skunk is greeted it tends to make a decision to stay or go- but it won’t be startled, and you should have adequate warning if it intends to spray. My skunk friend perhaps became a little too comfortable at my house, which caused trouble with package deliveries. The pizza delivery guy called my phone from the driveway and refused to come to the door. I stepped outside and knelt down to chat with Skunk Friend, and scolded him for scaring the pizza guy. The dumbfounded look on his face as I took the pizza and mozzarella sticks put into perspective how odd my connection with the local fauna seems to the average observer.

Odder still, where I live isn’t a particularly woodsy area. The wildlife that passes through is surprisingly diverse; I’ve seen deer, possum, hawks and buzzards, groundhogs, bats, and, worryingly, coyotes.

Coyotes are a particular concern when you have a dog that barely weighs ten pounds. As such, he is never outside alone- and he always knows when the coyotes have been around. His hackles go up, he starts obsessively sniffing and barks his threats into the air, defending his turf. A persistent coyote who had unseen partners nearby tested his boundaries for quite a while, and I chased him off enough times that he gave up. I started, then, to consider the coyote as a Trickster figure, although I don’t presume to know enough about Indigenous beliefs and stories to comment too deeply. I will say that I felt particularly silly chasing him off while wearing flip flops, which made a threatening clopping sound on the walkway as I ran down it. It proved very effective, but also clownish. I wondered at that time if I was really chasing some part of myself away, and ending up with egg on my face. Later I received assistance from my Skunk Friend, who sprayed the coyote and got rid of him for good. The joke ended up being on me though; I later realized the canine adversary had tried to rub the spray off on the grill of my car, and I could smell it for weeks afterward.

In the early months of 2024, a new coyote arrived in the yard. He was more persistent than the prior one, and behaved more erratically. He seemed to enjoy upsetting Bernie, my intrepid ten pound hound, as I caught him lifting his leg or defecating under the bird feeder a few times. I began a campaign again of chasing off the interloper and this time was even more conflicted. My logical and practical mind wrestled with the more mystically and magically oriented realms of my being. I intuitively felt there was a spiritual resonance to this critter, this Trickster, this beast tormenting my dog- but on the most rational level, I know that wild animals are inherently unpredictable and not to be toyed with. I could tell the coyote, who I named Ozzie, was claiming my yard as his by marking it, and that his presence not only presented a threat to people and their pets in the neighborhood but also to him. The best thing for him, and for everyone, is that he be chased away. I had to close off any kooky mystical ideas about communion with the creature and do what was right and reasonable.

The harassment campaign commenced- he was chased away several times but always made his way back to the feeder. I suspected that voles or mice were active there at night and attractive to him as a snack. He eventually learned that although I made a good show of it, and made some scary noises, I probably wouldn’t actually hurt him. He tested the boundaries by running just far enough into my neighbor’s yard that he felt safe, and watching me from there or sniffing around. One night, out of frustration, I picked up a small bit of gravel and winged it at him, hitting him right in the hindquarters. I saw him jump vertically, then run away. Not being in the habit of throwing stones at animals I felt guilty about it, but reasoned that it was for his own good. 

The next morning I threw a bit of sandwich out, went through Sandwich Time with Bernie and Lucy, and as I was leaving for work Ozzie came slinking into the yard. He beelined to the feeder and grabbed the sandwich. I got out of the truck and he saw me, turned and ran with his mouth full of my offering to the birds and stopping at the property line. The Trickster at the boundary and I locked eyes. I was keenly aware of the line of cars behind me, as parents heading to a nearby school were dropping off their kids. I had made the situation much worse in a practical sense than it had been- any one of those parents could have seen the coyote and called animal control. What would they have done? I shuddered to think that my adversary could get hurt, or worse, that he might attack someone’s kid. This was also the first time I had seen Ozzie in the light of day, the first really good look I had gotten at him.

He was mangy. He was emaciated. One ear was broken, dangling uselessly to the side. He had probably been ostracized from the pack, and had been doing whatever he could to survive all winter and had only just barely made it through. As springtime was dawning, he stood resilient and defiant at the demarcation point between life and death, wither and growth. My efforts had failed because they had been wrong. The lessons the animals had tried to teach me was brushed off by what seemed so certainly to be a rational concern, and as a result backfired badly. He was too smart, too innovative to be driven away. He calculated that the risk at night was too great, so instead he would come in the morning, which was far worse. I knew then that following my initial impulse was the right thing to do. 

On Saint Patrick’s Day, I was fixing a bit of leftover corned beef from a dinner earlier that week into a sandwich, and found that I had leftovers of the leftovers which would surely go bad in the fridge. I resolved to offer it up to Ozzie. So that night, I brought the remaining hunk of cured meat out and placed it under the bird feeder, then sat on my steps and meditated a psychic message to the foe who had so troubled me, and who seemed so troubled. I conjured first the word, then as much of the feeling as I could: PEACE. I wished peace for him, and emanated it, with the picture of the coyote in my mind. 

Bernie didn’t bark that night when we went out, and the beef was still there. It was there in the morning as well. When I arrived home from work, it still sat on the ground where it had been.

Then, as I was sitting down to eat with my family, my son said “Whoa! Coyote!” and pointed through the window of the front door. I only caught a flash of grey going past the window, but it was him- he had waited until dinner for our communion. It was quite a while before I saw him again. 

I began to worry that he had been killed, but he was spotted across town by someone who posted a picture to Facebook.

Later still, a much better picture appeared online- very much the same coyote but looking much healthier, with a new lease on life; much less the scrawny, frantic and mangy canine who so unnerved me at the start of the year. The last time I saw him, I was sitting on my front steps and he trotted over to the feeder, a mere four or five feet from me. “Hello, Ozzie.” I said. He didn’t hear me, I suppose because of his bad ear, so I talked a little more. He looked up and jumped a bit, then casually scampered away.

 

Living his best coyote life

Animals are great teachers. They can be seen as symbols and archetypes, which they surely are, or as independent entities or as parts within an ecological control system; any way you look at them, they provide an interesting corollary to ideas about morality, compassion, and wisdom. There’s no good and evil in nature, there is only survival. An intricate web of connected organisms, life cycles, and seasonal habits promote a sustainable world for us all. The critters of my yard, from the loud-mouthed Jay to the mischievous Coyote, have been beating me over the head with the same message for years- compassion is the key. Empathy, intuition, and understanding can’t really be quantified or rationalized, but they must at all costs be considered if not strictly adhered to. For simplicity, or practical reasoning, we often close ourselves off to these primeval impulses, but what if we didn’t? What if each of us prioritized peace? 

It is certainly something to consider. I’m sure that Ozzie would agree.