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.

The Esoteric Secrets of the Three Stooges

There are, on occasion, people and things within the scope of our collective cultural reference that loom so large that they become an omnipresent, subliminal spirit of their essence that infuses and informs everything that comes after them. The Three Stooges were just such a phenomenon. Even if you're not a fan, or have never seen one of their films, the slapstick and goofiness of what would eventually be 6 men are immediately recognizable whenever they are referenced, invoked, or otherwise drawn from. It seems timely, as a writer's strike is going strong while I write this, to note that the iconic buffoons were never really adequately compensated- even though the Boys became Avatars of Cosmic Silliness in our collective psyche, inspiring joy for nearly a century, they were also victims of the Hollywood machine. 

I could easily write about my appreciation for Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and to a lesser extent Joe Besser and Curly Joe DeRita, in a very straightforward way. I would go on for pages and pages with little factoids and pick apart precisely how funny they all were, and how much it has meant to me in my life. I could do this, but it would be betraying the stated goal of weirdness that this blog is designed for. Besides, I would be derelict in my duties as a Master of Mystical Flapdoodle and as a Certified Kook if I didn't share with you much wilder ideas - the Esoteric Secrets of the Three Stooges.

This concept has been with me for quite a while. In a former life, I was known for performing music and poetry, and one of my earliest poetic efforts was a piece called The Tao of Curly. I have revisited this work and made a video for your enjoyment here:

(Note: the following poem contains quotes from the Stooges' short Men in Black (1934). The high strangeness folks may raise an eyebrow at the title, as it seemingly references those shadowy figures who intimidate UFO witnesses. It's actually a send-up of a title from a popular film at the time called Men in White, which came out the same year. In a synchromystic sense it's worth noting that one of the first books to mention MiB was Albert Bender's Flying Saucers and the Three Men.)

The above poem gives some idea of what I mean when I refer to Mystical Stooge-ism. The Eternal Stooge is within us all, and channeling that Stooge energy may well be a missing and necessary element of your own occult practices. I do not mean to imply that any of the funnymen were occultists or mystics themselves, at least not intentionally- in my years of watching them and reading about their lives I've never come across anything that would suggest such a thing. What I will lay out is that humor itself is among the most powerful forms of magic, and that these knuckleheads unknowingly tapped into a current of esoteric power that still can be felt and employed decades after they each took a pratfall off of this mortal coil. Like a well-thrown pie, the insights to be gleaned from these Masters hit home in surprising ways, and it can get a bit messy. So spread out! Let's get going!

We'll begin with the 1935 short Hoi Polloi. The premise of this film was suggested by Moe's wife Helen, and is similar to the play Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw. The title of the play refers to a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses, about a king who is disgusted by humanity and becomes a sculptor, eventually falling in love with a statue of an ideal woman he created. The woman is granted life through the magic of the gods, and the name "Pygmalion" has become synonymous with transformation in storytelling. In the Stooges short, two professors enter into a spirited debate about nature versus nurture- with one insisting that environment is the determining factor in how someone turns out, and the other arguing that it's purely hereditary. A wager is set, and upon discovering Moe, Larry, and Curly, who are working as trash collectors, the subjects for such an experiment are found- the professor must turn the three uncouth slobs into gentleman in order to win the bet. Of course, hilarity ensues- but hidden amongst the puns, slaps, and eye-gouges the ideas of personal transformation offer glimpses of accidental profundity.

This particular story always stuck out to me because of a scene where Moe, in his newly established gentleman-hood at a high society affair, is conversing with a woman on a couch. He nervously pokes his finger down into the cushion as she speaks to him, seemingly seeing in his rough hewn Stooge face a guru of prodigious knowledge. "When I gaze into your burning eyes, I know that you have studied the mystic powers of Brahma, and that some day you will find the Eternal Spring!" "Find it?" Moe replies, his finger caught in a literal spring he has now pulled from the couch- "Lady, I've got it!" This bit of dialogue seems to exist purely as a way to introduce the spring, which gets stuck to Curly's rear-end upon Moe's discarding it. The liminal, expository nature of the scene allows for a peak into the magic of Moe. Perhaps the woman was meant to be a send-up of high society flakes who had a vague interest in occultism, but whatever the case it's oddly incongruent with what one expects to find in a Three Stooges short. Moe Howard, in real life and in the schtick, was the leader and the enforcer imposing order in the chaos. His attempts to keep the other two in line, in tandem with his own stupidity, belied a delicate dynamic that always seemed to work so well- at inspiring laughter, anyway. The fact that they were a trio is significant in a metaphysical sense, in that the number three has since ancient times been considered a perfect number. Referring back to Ovid, for instance, the number three is always associated with magic in the old Greek myths. In the Western Hermetic traditions, much is derived from Hermes Trismegistus, or "Thrice-great Hermes". Hecate has three faces, and moving forward through all manner of religious and magical ideologies the Trinity appears time and again. Calling to mind the Three Wise Men, we might just as well refer to the boys as the Three Wiseguys. Moe was always the leader, Larry was the connective tissue that held everything together, and Curly- later replaced by his brother Shemp, was the overgrown man-child and blissful fool. In this way they illustrate the three-fold nature of man- Moe, as the brains of the operation, representing the Spirit; Larry, the mediating force carrying the team along, the Body; and the ever-changing third spot representing the Soul of the trio.

The unintended effects of the bet between the professors culminate in the transformation of all of the high society party-goers into Stooges themselves. Transformation can be gradual, as it was when the boys were taught etiquette, or it can be sudden and dramatic. Neither environment or heredity determines the outcome, but rather a random catalyst that no one would have seen coming. The creative and destructive influence of Moe, Larry, and Curly left all who encountered them different people than they had been prior. 

Hoi Polloi is significant in this respect because the basic plot was one that the Stooges would return to twice- first, with Curly's final appearance in the trio, 1947's Half-Wits Holiday, and again later with Joe Besser in Curly's spot for 1958's Pies and Guys. This gets us into a thread of metaphysics related to death and transmigration; as previously mentioned, Moe and Larry were the two who stuck together and found a third to complete the team three times. They represent a misleading kind of duality, that needs a third to complete them forming a numinous whole entity as the Three Stooges. There is something unnerving about watching Joe do the same bits Curly did in Pies and Guys. The script is almost exactly the same, and they even cut in footage from the Curly original. Curly was conspicuously absent during the crescendo of Half-Wits Holiday, which is that most sublime of comedic turns, the Pie Fight. He was in poor health by then and a series of strokes eventually side-lined him permanently. Larry and Moe are very good in their dual aspect, each slapping pastry against the other's face, but it seems hollow without Curly there. Joe gets hit with a single pie in his version, the new footage jarringly cut in with some from 1947. Besser was a funny man, and a friend of Shemp's, having appeared with him in Abbott and Costello movies. He was good, but nowhere near the level of his predecessors. He does however figure prominently into our exploration of the afterlife in the Esoterica of Stoogedom.

Reincarnation struck me as a weird idea for old comedies to play around with. An examination of afterlife depictions in early cinema would be a fascinating rabbit hole to dive into, but that is beyond the scope of this post. In 1957's Hoofs and Goofs, our boy Joe Besser becomes very interested in the subject. He misses his sister Birdie, who had passed away, and is obsessed with the idea of discovering her in her transmigrated form. 

This is contrasted by the depiction of the afterlife shown in the 1948 Shemp picture Heavenly Daze. Shemp dies, which is quite a dark premise for something as silly and fun as these old films- but that event merely sets the plot. Shemp goes to Heaven, where he confronts his Uncle Mortimer (played by Moe), acting as something of a Saint Peter at the Gates of Paradise. He informs Shemp that he must return to Earth and reform his brothers Moe and Larry before he can enter into eternity. The film was remade in 1955 and called Bedlam in Paradise, using footage from the original. Incidentally 1955 was the year Shemp died in real life of a sudden heart attack. The Stooges needed several films in order to fulfill their contract when Shemp unexpectedly died, which caused them to reuse previous footage and develop a concept informally called the "Fake Shemp". Longtime bit player Joe Palma would stand in for Shemp, shot from behind or otherwise hiding his face to give the illusion that Shemp was in the scene. The term "Fake Shemp" came to be used for any such body doubles.

Following Shemp's death, getting back to Hoofs and Goofs, Joe does find his sister Birdie- who has reincarnated into a horse! In the end though, it turns out that it was all a dream- which is the same way Heavenly Daze resolves. Incidentally, the only short that has both Shemp and Curly in it is Hold That Lion! (1947), in which Curly appears as sleeping passenger on a train. For the position in the trio, there appears to be a somnambulist aspect tied to the astral realm, a fleetingness of material presence and a lasting impression in the psyche. It should also be noted, lest anyone think I don't know my Stooge history, that Shemp had occupied that position before Curly, so that his appearance back with the team was actually a return. Digressions aside, "Fake Shemp" Joe Palma appears in Hoofs and Goofs, briefly, as well- this time standing in for Moe. Moe is in drag for this scene, playing their sister Birdie.

So with Shemp's return to the act, they make a film in which he dies; they remake this film the year he actually did die; his sudden death necessitates the introduction of the Fake Shemp, who later appears as Moe in a short about reincarnation featuring Shemp's replacement Joe Besser. It's enough to make one's head spin, or perhaps to cause one to make Shemp noises for a minute and a half straight:

I would also like to mention that some researchers claim to have discovered who the Stooges reincarnated as, and the conclusions may surprise you.

To wrap this up and get to the final punchline, I thought it pertinent to bring out an old tweet of mine which itself is a joke that is also kind of true:

I sometimes worry that there’s confusion about me and the type of magic and Occult practices I ascribe to, so I’ll take a moment to recognize a spiritual forefather to help clear things up: The Maharaja of Canarsie. pic.twitter.com/gZFU02w7ui

— AP Strange (@AProdigiosus) January 19, 2022

While Curly isn't presented as a mystic in the short Three Little Pirates (1946), but he is in disguise as a stranger from a far-off magical place- the Islands of Coney and Long. He bears rare gifts through his interpreter, the Gin of Rummy (Moe) and the two engage in a hilarious conversation of gibberish and double-talk. They are ordinary things that the governor who would be keeping them prisoner finds enthralling- he thinks a big heart-shaped lollipop is a ruby. Curly breaks his doublespeak to say "It's raspberry!" The governor is thrilled; he's had many red rubies before, but, he says "never have I been given the raspberry!" I was curious to see who would catch the reference when I presented Curly as the Raja as a "spiritual forefather", but as with most jokes there is a truth concealed there. I often come with rare gifts, which are in fact mundane things, but looked at as though through new eyes they become something marvelous and strange. Virtually everything I say is 75% joking around, 50% deadly serious, and 110% bad math. One could do worse than adopting a character who only existed as a ruse in a comedy film from 1946 as a source of spiritual and magical inspiration. When the governor in this scene dismisses our heroes, to procure some girls for him, he says "On your way, with winged feet!" Those mercurial feet, that shuffled and dragged- the feet of the Trickster.

Venturing to write this at all seems an exercise in stupidity, perhaps. I've long abandoned any pretense about being judged harshly for my silliness, and I take my silliness very seriously. I do wonder occasionally if, perhaps, this time I've gone too far. Time will tell, I suppose, and if I'm burnt at the stake for my ridiculousness I will have to accept that at the very least a hot stake is better than a cold chop. I do hope the reader has found some value in these words, and I can only recommend that you seek out some of those old movies and allow yourself to laugh fully while watching them. I will leave you with a drawing I made of Aleister Curly, who encourages you to Do as Thou woo woo woo woo woo woo!

From Brooklyn to Neptune: The Bugs Bunny / UFO Connection!

 On July 27, 1940, Bugs Bunny appeared for the first time in movie theaters in the Tex Avery directed cartoon A Wild Hare. Earlier versions of the cartoon rabbit had appeared before, but in Looney Tunes cannon, this cartoon is officially Bugs' debut. Eight years later, he'd become the first living thing to visit the Moon in the cartoon Haredevil Hare, and also the first to meet an extraterrestrial. One of the most popular and enduring characters of all time, with a career spanning 80 years, he leapt from the screen and into our collective psyche during World War II with his signature question "What's up, Doc?" By the end of this article, you'll be asking the same.

Haredevil Hare was released on July 24, 1948 - 13 months after Kenneth Arnold's UFO encounter that popularized the term "Flying Saucer". The saucer zeitgeist apparently had not reached Chuck Jones and his team of animators and storyboard artists, as both Bugs and Marvin Martian (in his first appearance) arriving on the Moon in rocket ships. The cartoon is memorable as Bugs arrives just in time to prevent Marvin from blowing up the Earth with a "Kaboom" using his Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator. (Illudium seems to be a fascinating and versatile fictional element - In Marvin's third appearance, 1953's Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century, Daffy Duck in the title role of Duck Dodgers is sent to Planet X to obtain Illudium Phosdex - the shaving cream atom.) As such, our intrepid rabbit hero becomes the savior of our planet, thwarting our would-be destroyer. The return of the Martian menace, however, is where the story gets really weird.

Bugs Bunny is loved around the world, but how does he rate in the farther reaches of the solar system? If we're to believe the contacts via channeling, message board, and radio by George Hunt Williamson and his associates Alfred Bailey and radio man "Mr R", we can be confident that Bugs has fans at least as far as Neptune. Williamson is a problematic and controversial figure in the weird world of 1950s contactees. His association early on with the far-right fascist William Dudley Pelley should be borne in mind; his sketchy archaeology "credentials" and the dubious ancient alien theories that came as a result along with his promulgation of conspiracy theories about "International Bankers" should give anyone pause for caution. He was, however, very influential on flying saucer culture, for better or worse. He and Bailey were both present when George Adamski allegedly met Orthon, and though they had a falling out almost immediately thereafter, Williamson continued to back up Adamski's account of events with only minor variations. Adamski and Williamson differed on the value of contracting space people via channeling or radio; Adamski seemed to recognize the ambiguous and possibly trickster-ish nature of entities contacted this way while Williamson seemed to wholeheartedly accept the messages he received from virtually every known planet, although he was warned against talking to the evil beings from Orion. With that background information out of the way, viewed in isolation, the following anecdote is a fun and interesting ride. 

On September 20, 1952, at 8:30 p.m., the following message was received via 'the board' (similar to an Ouija board) from Zo, an intelligence from Neptune:

...We have impressed you from time to time, and will continue to do so. Now what I am about to tell you will seem foolish. It is the way we do things at times. This is so it will all appear in a most conventional manner. You were impressed to go and see a certain motion picture. You did not know that the cartoon was Bugs Bunny in 'The Hasty Hare'. We mentioned Bugs Bunny to you several times before, but you thought it was foolish and did not enter it into your records. We had our reasons. This cartoon was about a flying saucer and its coming to Earth. You saw the letter held in the hand of the saucer pilot and you noticed that its date was 9-27. This date is important in 1952. You will see!

The Hasty Hare had been released a few months prior, and was the second appearance of Marvin Martian, although at this time he still had no name. It has been noted by Robert Anton Wilson that Bugs is the first alien abductee, this cartoon predating the Betty and Barney Hill encounter by nearly a decade. As noted by Zo in the above message, Marvin has also traded his rocket for a nifty flying saucer!

An amusing feature of Zo's message is the recognition of how absurd the Bugs Bunny connection is. He seems to apologize upfront for the "foolishness" of it, and also seems to chide Williamson et al for not recording the prior messages about the cartoon hare. "It is the way we do things at times", he says; and that does seem to ring true of UFO stories of all kinds. The Trickster element of unbelievably silly things, things that even Williamson would be reticent to share, thrown in with messages of dire consequence has that quality of being too weird to be fake. As alluded to, the saucer contacts are capable of telepathy and are well aware of what was recorded and what wasn't. They are also capable of 'impressing' those they wish to, controlling them in a way or psychically guiding them to see a cartoon at the local theater. It all seems to be a very elaborate and silly way to convey the importance of the date 9-27-1952. 

Isabel Davis, in an article entitled Meet the Extraterrestrial (Fantastic Universe Science Ficion, Nov. 1957) makes sure to mention the Bugs Bunny connection when addressing Williamson's contacts. Davis, a highly respected Fortean and UFO researcher of that time, picks apart the various books of Williamson and other contactees in this article. "What is unquestionably revealed to the reader, with painful clarity," she says, "are the intense, tragic fears that haunt the apostles and disciples of the contact-communication stories. Many passages are an almost rhythmic see-saw between terrors- of war, of soil sterility, of strange weather, of the atom - and feverish reassurances that the space beings will somehow give protections from these dooms."  Like Bugs Bunny swiping a dangerous Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator away from a Martian whose view of Venus has been obstructed, the saucer folk always seem to be arriving just in time to save us from ourselves. This is certainly true in the chronicles of Williamson's contact, recorded in his book The Saucers Speak! A Documentary Report of Interstellar Communication by Radio Telegraphy. There's an urgency from the space people that time is short, that they must act quickly if we are to be saved. But there's always time to watch a cartoon.

So what was so important about the 27th of September? For Williamson, Bailey, and "Mr R" it was the communication that arranged for them to finally meet their space contacts, face to face. At 5:30p.m. they were informed that their space friends were passing over Winslow, AZ, where the radio shack was located. At 5:55 p.m. they heard the craft fly over and saw them in the distance. It was also their "first and last contact by radiotelephony". Before and after the 27th, all radio contact was done through ham radio code that had to be transcribed by the very adept "Mr R". The one audible transmission was only barely so, according to their account. "It seemed a speech was being given in a large auditorium. The static was terrible and we could only hear a word now and then. The voice was loud and masterful and spoke perfect English. There was a reference to Germany and America and that they could no longer appeal to reason, etc." The rest of the evening was spent deliberating with the space people whether they should bring "Mr R"'s debilitated father-in-law to the saucer landing the next day, and the verdict was "No." Ultimately the meeting didn't happen, as logging trucks had kicked up a bunch of dust and separated the would be ambassadors to the stars...

Surprisingly, some notable UFO sightings did happen elsewhere that day. In Hempstead, Texas, USAF pilots reported seeing silvery, disc shaped crafts moving at speeds in excess of 600mph. Later that night in Inyokern, California, two couples viewing the night sky through a telescope witnessed a large, round object change colors as it flew on a level, straight path. If you were to go from Hempstead to Inyokern as the crow (or in this case Flying Saucer) flies, you'd pass somewhat near Winslow!

Also, relevant to the mysterious voice that mentions America and Germany - September 27, 1952 in the areas around Kiel and Hamburg Germany, a brightly lit UFO with at comet-like tail was witnessed moving irregularly through the air by personnel involved with Operation Mainbrace , the first large-scale naval exercise under NATO. 

As wacky as the entire scenario is, there does seem to be some eerie accuracy involved- and that wascally wabbit is in the middle of it... In many ways, Bugs does seem to embody the Trickster which so many equate with the high strangeness around UFOs. An NPR Segment from 2008 makes a pretty good case for Bugs-as-archetypal Trickster, the mercurial rule-breaker from whose actions we all end up benefiting. As mentioned earlier in this post, Robert Anton Wilson had an affinity for the wisecracking rabbit. He joked in The Illuminatus! Trilogy that there were hidden messages in Bugs Bunny cartoons, implanted by Illuminati agents in Hollywood, based on Adam Weishaupt's comparing of a shoggoth to a cursed rabbit -  'du Hexen Hase' - 'that wascal wabbit'. Several years later he'd feel that the joke was on him, as he pondered the synchronicity of the brief appearance of Bugs in the 1977 Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Wilson's own telepathic contacts with space intelligence was intimately entangled with Sirius, and the momentary clip of Bugs Bunny is one of him saying "Set the coordinates for the Dog Star!" "I thought I was kidding" Wilson writes in incredulity later. Beyond just Bugs, Wilson went down a 'rabbit hole', as it were, of bunnies in association with UFOs, which he referred to as Lepufology.

As previously mentioned in another entry on this blog, Bugs also makes an appearance during the 1977 ITV Broadcast Intrusion, just as the picture starts to come back under control. The cartoon Falling Hare, a WWII era story with the Fortean plot line of our favorite rabbit being terrorized by a gremlin. It's one of the few examples of Bugs not having the upper hand - a reminder that even the Trickster can sometimes be tricked. Sometimes we take a left turn in Albuquerque, and wind up way off course. Sometimes the mercurial nature of the Phenomena can make us laugh, while other times it can be scary and leave us wanting for a savior - be it Saucer or Wisecracking Leporidae. What's up, Doc? What's up, indeed.

 

Sources:

Meet the Extraterrestrial, Isabel Davis, Fantastic Universe Science Fiction

Illuminatus! Robert Anton Wilson and Bob Shea

A is For Adamski, Adam Gorightly and Greg Bishop

Bugs Bunny: The Trickster, American Style, JJ Sutherland, NPR

The Saucers Speak! Calling All Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, George Hunt Williamson aka Brother Philip w/ Alfred Bailey, Timothy Green Beckley, and Sean Casteel

Operation Mainbrace Sightings, Richard Hall 

https://www.thinkaboutitdocs.com/1952-september-ufo-alien-sightings/

Coincidence or Cosmic Conspiracy, Robert Anton Wilson, in The Berkeley Barb Vol 27 issue 20, May 1978