Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (487 page)

them?

It can be proved from the small selection of visions I have described that in several cases the visionaries did not 'see' the complete apparition spontaneously or suddenly: if anything they were confronted with a 'hazy indefinable greyish-white mass'. They only perceived the visionary image in this 'mass' after an intensive effort (autosuggestion!). The Heroldsbacher girls 'saw' only a 'white gleam' during the vision of 12th October, 1949 - not until later did it assume the form of 'a white lady', and then it was visible only to the boys. Mama Rosa of San Damiano also said that at first she saw only a 'hazy figure' which later 'solidified' into the Mother of God. (Let me remind you of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher who considered 'mists and vapours' helpful when water-divining in likely spots.) The official records of the visions seen by the children at Fatima entitle us to conclude that physical events were concerned. The visions always announced themselves with 'lightning', whose electric discharges were accompanied by roaring and cracking noises. The little Lucia said that whenever a vision disappeared she heard a noise as if a 'firework rocket had exploded in the distance'.

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[*] ESP = Extrasensory Perception

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When the Fatima children had their fifth vision on 13th September, 1917, several thousand spectators clearly saw a ball of light floating slowly and majestically heavenwards. On 13th May, 1924 pilgrims observed a 'strange white cloud' above the oak tree where the visions always appeared. They said that objects like snowflakes fell from it that dissolved into nothing just above ground-level. Lucia wrote later that the vision of the Blessed Virgin had always approached slowly in 'the reflection of a light', and that the children had always seen the Madonna for the first time when the point of light stopped still above the oak. When Lucia was asked at the official inquiry why she frequently lowered her eyes during the visions, instead of looking the Blessed Virgin straight in the face, she answered: 'Because she often blinded me [19].'

In the case of Lourdes the idea of the materialization of an alien form of energy is literally served up on a silver platter! In the first as yet unembellished accounts, Bernadette Soubirous explained that originally she had seen only something indefinite ... something 'like a fluttering white cloth or a flour-sack [20]'; in addition she had heard a muffled noise 'like a gust of wind' in front of the grotto. (Record

'by Doctors Lacrampe, Balencia and Peyrus, dated 27.3.1858.) Bernadette also gave these details to other personalities [21].

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1. A vision does not appear suddenly; it must first arrange its atoms into a visible 'image'. (The frequent occurrence of the word 'suddenly' in the records is explained by the indifference of the