Erich Daniken - Miracles of the Gods

I extracted a lot of information from Mythology when working on my theory about visits to our globe by extraterrestrial beings. I was fascinated by the knowledge of the old chroniclers, because it handed down to mankind factual information the importance and scope of which the writers did not appreciate in their own days. As far as contacts between the other world and this one are concerned, mythology is an equally valuable source of information. Here are some examples.

The Indo-Germanic Celts were driven across the Rhine by the Germans and later occupied the British Isles. These insular Celts of the first post-Christian centuries were on familiar terms with fairies, beautiful, magic-working, daemonic beings, nature spirits, who constantly went back and forth between the natural and the supernatural world. They astonished the island Celts by their knowledge of the future and when they visited the earth they inspired great respect because they enticed chosen vessels into their 'kingdom' and then let them return to earth again.

The North Germans were firmly convinced of the existence of a 'second I', which they called Fylgja. It accompanied people like an invisible shadow. Fylgja belonged to the personal consciousness, but could also become free from it and appear elsewhere. The Scandinavians looked on Fylgja as a familiar guardian spirit, who, when needed, but especially when danger threatened, could speed into the other world and return with a wealth of information to help earth-dwellers out of their trouble.

The Druids, the ancient pagan priests of the Celts, would only recognize as their prophet the man who could produce the Druid's cauldron, an exquisite and miraculous vessel, which was made out of the

'spirit of the other world'. Not even Uri Geller could cook up all the prophecies the Druidic seers brewed in their cauldrons.

In the phantom-ridden night of the Samhuin (a phenomenon from the ancient Indian Vedas), even the boundaries between this world and the next are supposed to have fallen. Spooky figures of all kinds are supposed to have materialized from the void.

The 'astral body' plays a great part in the occult literature of all ages. This remarkable phenomenon is supposed to be a 'delicate envelope' for the body and soul. The gnostic religion, which makes man's salvation dependent on his knowledge of the secrets of the world, asserts that the astral body penetrates the human body and forms something like a connecting link between the earthly and the 'higher' body.

One cannot mention astral bodies without mentioning auras. Aura means air or breath in Greek. Not only has it been a topic of conversation since ancient times, but it is reputed to have existed always.

And precisely today this generally invisible envelope which surrounds human beings is the subject of para-psychological research. (Indeed we say that such-and-such a poet, scholar and even politician has a 'certain aura' in the sense of charisma!)

I do not intend to quote all the periods in which the undefined aura is supposed to have been definitively discovered. But as a proof that serious scholars were interested in this problem, I must mention the scientist and chemist Carl-Ludwig Freiherr von Reichenbach (1788-1869), who discovered paraffin-wax and creosote in wood-tar. Reichenbach was convinced of the existence of this invisible original force (which could be made visible), which he called 'Od force' (from the Germanic

'od' = original) - so convinced that he devoted two whole decades of his working life to its discovery.

Like Franz Anton Mesmer, Reichenbach believed that the Od force could be transferred from one person to another. Yet this remarkable phenomenon, astral body, aura or Od force, was first confirmed technically by chance in our own day.

In the second half of the forties, the Russian engineer Semyonov Davidovich Kirlian from Krasnodar on the Kuban noticed that discharges appeared between the body of a patient and the electrodes in the high frequency range of an apparatus for electrotherapeutic treatment. Kirlian was keen to know whether this state, which was visible to the eye, could also be photographed. He and his wife Valentina undertook the difficult job of developing these photographs.

Kirlian photography, which is used everywhere today, exhibits the so-called Kirlian effect. In high frequency alternating current fields which are harmless to man, animals and plants, bodies acquire a luminescence that can be photographed, but are not caused by high temperature. It is also known as

'cold luminescence'.

As a passing example of the phenomenon which Kirlian photography can make visible, I should mention photos that show a fresh flower with many blossoms and the same flower with some blossoms cut off. In the place where the blossoms were their outline still showed up in a photograph taken seconds after the cut was made and they were no longer there. Countless exposures have been taken all over the world using the Kirlian effect. They show radiations around men's bodies that are not visible to the naked eye.

For example, there is a photo taken after a hand was amputated: the outlines of the amputated hand appear on the photographic plate. And most remarkable of all, a man lay down on a sofa, then stood up and went away, and a photo taken of the sofa just afterwards shows the outline of the man lying there!

Here an unknown force obviously causes a physical phenomenon. When the technique is developed further, mankind will have a brand new principle, for at the moment the photographed aura - or whatever it is - varies considerably in quality, i.e. clarity.

I am always shaken to observe how almost daily unintelligible passages from myths and holy scriptures turn out to be realities. People used to talk about the aura that surrounded certain people - and it exists! It can be photographed. The way in which the Kirlian effect works has been explained in principle. It is not denied by physicists that every body 'radiates' to a greater or lesser degree. Kirlian discovered how to photograph the radiations. But how do we answer the 'phenomenal' question of how a no-longer existent object (cut blossom, amputated hand, man who has left the room) continues to radiate for a brief period, i.e. can still be 'active' in its former position? When all is said and done scholars claim that the bodies are the cause of the radiations. Could it possibly be the other way round?

Whither was the energy radiated?

In the physical sense every radiation is 'material'. This applies to light radiation (quanta) and all kinds of corpuscle radiations (particle radiations). Radiation energy disintegrates. Disintegrates into what?

According to the energy principle nothing can vanish into the VOID. That is the point at which even nuclear physics is baffled. It is impossible to prove the existence of certain atomic particles after their conversion into energy. A physicist at the European Council for Nuclear Research at Geneva told me

(with a plea not to mention him by name): Supernatural states begin for us here. We record certain effects, we try to establish their working according to laws. But when it comes to the reason for these effects we are overwhelmed with questions. This is really where the spirit world begins.

Was Dr. Leonid L. Vassilev, Professor of Psychology at Leningrad University, holder of the Order of Lenin, trying to resign? or was he expressing a hope when he said: The discovery of ESP (*) energy will be just as important as the discovery of atomic energy.'

This apparent detour via para-psychological phenomena to get to apparitions is not a detour. Visions and apparitions are para-psychological phenomena. There is energy behind every vision. Where does it come from? What causes several milliard atoms to make themselves visible at a specified time in a specified place and demonstrate intelligent behaviour by this action? Why are visions always perceived only by a few people? Why do hundreds and thousands of people who are present notice nothing? Why do visions appear to the visionaries for preference at the same place? Are they incapable of changing the venue, once it is established? The visionary is always asked to be at a prescribed place on a certain day at a certain time. Are ('divine') visions incapable of appearing exactly where and when it suits them?