E Tenebris, Lux

Darklore, Volume 3. Daily Grail Publishing, 2009
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Lots of interesting stuff as usual. For Magonians probably the prime interest will be Nick Redfern's piece on the great Japanese prisoner of war Roswell conspiracy, part 2. He does seem to have found some possibly relevant documentation, but on the other hand there are more anonymous sources.

The trouble with anonymous sources is that they tend to tell you want they think you want to hear, and just about any conspiracy theory you could possibly imagine, and many you couldn't are backed up by 'anonymous sources'.

Also within the ufological compass are the two pieces on the Allende Letters, which if you know anything about, you are clearly showing your age! One by 'The Emperor' tells of an intriguing connection between the saga and some of the leading lights of science fiction (including L. Ron Hubbard) and who else but Ivan T Sanderson. The other piece by Blair Blake really comes to no conclusions, but does present Morris K. Jessup as a 'distinguished scientist'. In reality at the time of his death he was a university drop-out, used car salesman with mental health and family problems.

Adam Gorightly's piece on 'Sex, drugs and UFOs', which ranges from Truman Bethurum to Antonio Villas Boas and Claude 'Rael' Vorilhon and thence on to Terrance McKenna via Wilhelm Reich will be rather old hat for anyone who has been around the UFO scene for any length of time. Much of it could have been (indeed was) written about by John Keel 40 years ago.

Another name from the ufological past is Geoff Falla who writes a piece on earthquakes and earthquake lights, including a possible, but very speculative, connection to Fatima.

Greg Bishop describes the curious compartmentalised life of psychologist and occultist Mario Pazzaglini. I knew that Pazzaglini had written a book (not seen) and articles on 'alien scripts', but here it is revealed that Pazzaglini was a practicing occultist much into things like Enochian.

Language can trip you up though. Michael E. Tymm examines the story of Bligh Bond, the archaeologist who carried out excavations at Glastonbury on advice from alleged medieval monks, via automatic writing. If they had communicated in genuine Middle English that would have been quite a challenge to sceptics, however the pieces reproduced here are not written in this, but in the mock antique olde Englysh so beloved of historical romance writers in the early 20th century.

Greg Taylor introduces some pre-Moody near death experience stories, including that of Private Ritchie, Like many other writers, Taylor censors this story, removing the elements which show it was an evangelical Christian tract (like the bit in which Jesus takes Ritchie in astral form to a bar, where he sees demons jumping into the bodies of alcoholics).

It would probably take Kevin McClure to comment properly on Theo Paijmans article on 'The Occult Roots of Nazi Technology', except to say that it is not the exploitation piece that the title might suggest, and adds to the suspicions that the origins of the space programme in earlier rocketry include some very strange byways indeed!

Neil Arnold discusses some of the legendary folk beasts of the Netherlands, many of them apparently believed to cause aware sleep paralysis, and others born out of bitter class conflict.

Mike Jay examines what literary sources such as Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde and the stories of Sherlock Holmes tell us about the role of cocaine in the latter half of the 19th century - the era known as 'The Great Binge'.

The three ancient history/archaeology pieces , Robert Bauble on a lost Egyptian sarcophagus, Philip Coupons on the role of the star Canopus and Robert Schoch on the true location of Mount Sinai and the early history of Judaism, are outside my areas of interest, and my reaction to all three is 'so what?'. Perhaps there are hidden agendas here which non-initiates like me just don't get.

As always with DarkLore, a bit of a curate's egg, but one well worth cracking the shell! - Peter Rogerson.