Of Grumpy Cats and Alternate Realities

On Friday, May 17th, the news hit the internet that celebrity pet and meme legend Grumpy Cat had passed away, due to complications from a urinary tract infection. The famous grouch's owner, Tabatha Bundesen, made the announcement to the cat's thousands of fans through her extensive social media presence. The kitty in question, whose real name was Tardar Sauce, was 7 years old - and accomplished more in her short life than can be expected of most people.

But for some of us - this had all happened before. Some of us experienced a bit of a Mandela Effect moment...

goodbye grumpy cat pic.twitter.com/2LmoYXM1Rr

— shitty watercolour (@SWatercolour) May 17, 2019

 For my own part, internet memes - cat related or not - occupy little of my attention online. But I couldn't help but feel that I had heard of the passing of Grumpy Cat a few years ago; in fact, I had distinct memories not only of reading a headline, but of reading a short article that remarked on how her condition of feline dwarfism, which contributed to her classic scowl, had also decreased her lifespan. After tweeting this as a passing thought, attributing it to the Mandela Effect while rejecting the possibility that I might just be wrong about something, I found that I wasn't alone in having a memory of Grumpy Cat's demise. Grumpy Cat, for some of us, had died either several years ago or a few months ago... a quick glance at #MandelaEffect on Twitter gave me a better idea of how prevalent this memory is.

I have a distinct ambivalence about the Mandela Effect as a concept. My knee-jerk reaction has generally been that it's an outstanding example of arrogance inherent in Human Nature - that, rather than consider the possibility that some number of people is wrong about the spelling of a title of a children's book series, or how exactly an iconic movie line was delivered, there must by necessity be an alternate dimension or timeline, a temporal shift or some other time/space anomaly responsible. It would be hypocritical of me, however, to dismiss it outright. I've certainly considered crazier ideas. And I have to admit, finding out that Ed McMahon DIDN'T deliver giant checks to peoples' homes gave me a really eerie feeling. I was so certain that I remember seeing it in commercials while idly watching reruns of Gilligan's Island as a kid... To a lesser extent I felt similarly about Grumpy Cat.

One logical explanation for a shared memory of a celebrity cat's demise is that there have been a great many celebrity cats online, several of whom have died. Perhaps we were all remembering a different ubiquitous meme cat's venture into the great beyond? Another famously grumpy looking feline, Colonel Meow - the Guinness Book record holder for cat with the longest fur - died at the age of 2 in 2014. There's a longer list of celebrity or meme related kitties than this blogger cares to enumerate, many of whom have passed on. It's worth considering why the history of the internet (and social media, in particular) is so replete with cat photos and memes. One could argue that cats simply fulfill an archetypal need for our mental health in a data-driven world, wherein we find ourselves awash in a hopeless whirlpool of opinion pieces, bad news, and hoaxes, overwhelmed by the vast sea of information and misinformation that bombards us daily. Grumpy Cat certainly fulfilled this need for many people, who often used her image in memes expressing their dissatisfaction about any number of mundane issues. The image of, and mythology of cats has precedent in many societies throughout the world. It's not surprising that cats would hold such a powerful place within our collective unconscious - down through the ages, cats have occupied some level of metaphysical and emotional space as companions, protectors, and pets. Most obviously the ancient Egyptians held the cats in a place of reverence, and had a goddess in their pantheon named Bast. Bast was the daughter of Ra, and a protector deity.

In other cultures, cats portray a trickster nature and are associated with witches, vampires, and even genies. Black cats, according to superstition, can walk between realities, occupying a liminal territory between one world and another... and of course, in modern physics, there's the often misinterpreted thought experiment of Erwin Schrodinger, who used reductio ad absurdum to illustrate the problems he saw with the Copenhagen Interpretation - that being, when a particle is in an either/or state, it is considered to be both - known as a superposition - until it can be measured. In Schrodinger's example, a cat in a box with a radioactive particle and a flask of poison may either be alive, or dead, but without opening the box to observe, the cat retains equal chances of either state - and thus, according to the quantum view, is both alive and dead. (My apologies to any physicists reading this, I'm not a scientist but I do my best to understand these things...)

So is Tardar Sauce, aka Grumpy Cat, a modern Bast-like avatar of our era, one capable of shifting all of time and space, one who occupies a position both within the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead?

Unfortunately, it seems that the solution to this inter-dimensional quandary is much more mundane, as so often regrettably happens. In 2016, a rumor of the death of Grumpy Cat went viral, leading many of us to believe that the iconic puss-faced pussycat had passed on. It wasn't the first time either; in 2013 pranksters on Twitter created a death hoax for April Fool's Day. It would appear that many of us were duped by misinformation either three or six years ago, creating an eerie deja vu effect upon hearing the news this time. In this age of being perpetually bombarded with both good and bad information at an accelerated rate, we can hardly be blamed for the occasional false memory. Of course, this tinkering with perception may very well be causing a rift in reality itself - perhaps the Mandela Effect in this case IS real, while simultaneously a simpler and more logical solution is true. One thing is for sure, we could all use a protector deity like Bast to protect us from a Temporal Rift...

Nessie-a-Day #6 - Conjecture Time

via GIPHY

So far in the series of daily Loch Ness Monster posts, I've covered a few of the many people involved in the history of studying the mystery animal. I've also tended toward more metaphysical or downright magical explanations that have come from the likes of Ted Holiday, 'Doc' Shiels, or others who would link the monster to Crowley. To balance things out, today's post is less research intensive as it relates to specific investigators, authors, and the ideas they have; today's post is almost 100% pure speculation and conjecture about what Nessie IS. (Isn't that what we all get into Forteana for anyway? Doesn't each of us secretly think we've got it "all figured out" or that our ideas about a given subject are so much more informed than the next guy's? No? Just me? Oh. A-hem...)

The most popular depiction of the Loch Ness Monster is that of a living Plesiosaur. As a young boy that's what attracted my interest to Nessie, as I was obsessed with dinosaurs - the idea of a flesh and blood, living aquatic reptile that appeared during the Triassic Period and flourished all over the world up until the extinction event that eradicated the dinosaurs. The 'living dinosaur' theory is a very nice one, but it raises serious questions. For one thing, such a creature would presumably need to come up for air often, and thus would likely be seen more often and accepted as a natural fauna of the Loch. In addition, similar beasts have been seen in lakes much smaller than Ness - leading some toward the more magical explanations explored in previous posts. Loch Ness does open to the sea, (kind of), and I've always liked to think of it as a spawning ground for Plesiosaurs or other such like prehistoric monsters living in the ocean most of the year. That the mating period just so happens to coincide with tourist season in Scotland is neither here nor there...

Other accounts of living dinosaurs have come up from time to time through-out history, from the Thunderbirds of the Americas to Mokele Mbembe of the Congo. The lack of evidence for this as a solution is often a source of derision for skeptics who would seek to debunk the monster sightings. Meanwhile, true believers often point to the Coelacanth, a fish thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago and eventually discovered as a living specimen. The ocean may well be a fantastic place to hide creatures long thought extinct, and Loch Ness has its secrets in the murky depths as well. I've always thought perhaps there were underwater caverns, leading to a vast cave system or perhaps some manner of Hollow Earth. In the documentary Hellier, it's noted that the Mammoth Cave system on the eastern end of the U.S. is massive, extending from Kentucky up into New England. One wonders if subterranean waterways could also exist, accounting for the more landlocked lake monsters like Champ, or Ogopogo. Also, Hollow Earth theory might sound crazy, but in light of the scope of a cave system like Mammoth Caves, it starts to sound more reasonable...

Scientists are only just learning recently exactly how old some creatures in the ocean are. New methods to help determine the age of sharks like the Greenland Shark have shown, in recent years, that they can live to be somewhere between 270 to 500 years old. It's thought that they don't even reach breeding age until age 150. If some sharks can live for centuries, it makes one wonder how long a Plesiosaur might have lived. Also, various clams in the ocean are thought to have the longest lifespan, and actually become less likely to die as they age! And plant life can live on replicating itself through vast networks with other plants... I'm not suggesting Nessie is an amorphous glob of sentient peat moss, but I'm not ruling it out either!

We touched briefly on Holiday's tullimonstrom gregarium (giant slug) theory, and Shiel's elephant squid theory, which are both great because they involve invertebrates who would leave nothing behind in the way of fossilized bones, and also would conceivably not need to come up for air. And of course there is the more logical explanations of what people are seeing - otters, seals, swimming deer, logs, and whatever other no-fun dismissive reactions. But to take a step in an even wackier direction than living dinosaurs and Hollow Earth Theory, what about Time Slips?

Suppose a prehistoric aquatic creature pokes its head above water, and finds itself 150 million years ahead of where it swam up from? Then, having had a glimpse of the future, it goes right back the way it came to tell all its friends about the cool castle ruins of Loch Ness's coast. Then it writes a book on its experience, and none of its friends believe it as they've been to the Loch and never seen such things. Old prehistoric Nessie lives out her days wondering "Just what the Hell was that?"

With all the research going on in physics these days related to quantum field theory, retrocausality, and potential paradigm shifts as to the nature of space-time I tend to believe more and more that Time Slips like the one described in Versailles around the turn of the century to be a real possibility. Frankly, all of the quantum physics stuff is above my pay grade, but it makes for fun thought experiments...

Join me tomorrow for my seventh and final Nessie-a-Day installment - same Ness time, same Ness channel!

Nessie-a-Day #5 - East of the Loch, as the Crow(ley) Flies...

The Loch Ness Monster is many things to many people - to some, those perhaps with a tendency toward magical thought, Nessie may well be a dark entity or demon. As referenced in my previous entries, Ted Holiday came to believe that his Great Orm was something of another Goblin Universe, and was present for the exorcism of the Loch; Janet and Colin Bord postulated that 'Doc' Shiels' invocation rituals, as (intentionally) silly as they were, may have in fact created Tulpas - thought forms represented not only by Nessie, but by ABCs (Alien Big Cats), Black Dogs, and flying creatures. In Alien Animals, they note the proximity not only to Loch Ness but to a place called Boleskine House for a few major ABC events. Boleskine House was the scene of a legendary botched magick ritual by a young Aleister Crowley, who bought the estate in 1889. He had intended to call upon his Holy Guardian Angel, in a sacred ritual from the 1500s - the Sacred Ritual of Abramelin the Mage. The story goes that young Crowley summoned and then lost control of shadowy figures from Beyond, or that he abandoned his 6 month preparation program too soon - a full and well-written account of these events by Greg Newkirk can be found here, in a 2011 article for the wonderful Week in Weird website. But a lot has happened at Boleskine since 2011, and more has come to light regarding the rituals Crowley was engaged in.

The day of this writing, a BBC article appeared concerning Boleskine - that it is up for sale again. The house and property changed hands many times over the years, adding to the legend that Crowley's black magic had made it an evil place. Most notably, it was owned by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. In 2015, a fire broke out in the remote estate which reduced it nearly to rubble. Some would argue that the place was cursed, so a fire seems a fitting end to the building itself. But the question that is just too good and too weird to not ask is did Crowley conjure Nessie?

The Bords argue that although the modern phenomena of a monster in the Loch kicked off in 1933, stories of a monster went back centuries. Holiday also acknowledges tales of dragons, or Orm, in his second book The Dragon and the Disc. The ABCs occurring as a result of botched magical workings have precedent in occult literature - to King James I it was the Devil himself, choosing a form he liked - a lion, an ape, or a dog. The Ritual of Abramelin did involve calling forth evil entities, so the story goes, and bringing them under control after union with the Holy Guardian Angel. This is reportedly where Crowley ran into trouble.

Crowley was a complicated man who really divides people in opinion about him. Often thought of as a well-to-do kook who lived for infamy, he has just as many (or more) devotees, admirers, and people who respect and fear what he brought to the table. In addition to his aforementioned association with the Loch Ness monster, there's also his contacts with an inter dimensional being called "Lam", who seems eerily similar to our modern concept of Grey Aliens. In addition, I've noted before that his death was right around the time of the first major Flying Saucer flaps - 1947. Whatever your thoughts about Crowley might be, it's not unfair to say from an objective standpoint that his life was chaotic. Thus, it's not beyond the pale to blame him for a bungled ritual. But that might not be the whole story...

In recent years, a new translation of The Book of Abramelin has been released by Ibis Press. In 1897, S.L. MacGregor Mathers had translated the ritual from an incomplete French version of Abraham von Worms' original grimoire, and this would have been the version that Crowley brought with him to Boleskine House. Is it any wonder that his working would go sideways on him, if the book he was working with was translated from an unreliable source? In the foreword by Lon Milo DuQuette, he goes to great lengths to stress that Mathers actually did a great job of translating the French text - it's just that the French text did a poor job of translating from the original German. It seems an Erisian twist of fate that Crowley may have really done everything to the letter - but the letter itself was wrong! The famed 6 months of preparation, it turns out, should have been 18. It would seem that small discrepancies can do a lot of damage...

Also worth noting, in the spirit of Name Game synchromysticism - the Magician who authored The Book of Abramelin is called Abraham von Worms. Holiday referred to Nessie as an Orm, which can also by Worm or Wyrm in English folklore. Of course, "von Worms" as a moniker simply means that Abraham was from Worms, Germany - but that has synchronistic value as well. Worms is the setting for the first part of the Nibelungenlied, in addition to other German folktales tracing their roots to the Kingdom of the Burgundians in the the early 5th century. The legendary hero Sigurd, or Siegfried, is prominent in these tales. Siegfried is, of course, notable for having killed a dragon, before being murdered himself...

In closing, if anyone wants to loan me (or just give me, preferably) $650,000 to buy Boleskine House estate, I'll be your best friend!

References

• https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-47936223?SThisFB
• http://weekinweird.com/2011/04/11/the-boleskine-house-loch-ness-other-stranger-monster/
• The Book of Abramelin - Abraham von Worms, compiled and edited by Georg Dehn and translated by Steven Gutch. Revised and expanded edition 2015. www.ibispress.net
• Alien Animals - Janet and Colin Bord, 1981
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms,_Germany
• Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule - Micah Hanks 

Nessie-a-Day #2 - The Loch Gets Wilder

In spring of 2016, an underwater robot caught a picture of a monster in the loch - but this monster had been photographed before, some say, by Robert Rines and the Academy of Applied Science (AAS). Of course, this monster was made to be put in the movies - turns out all it needed to do was act naturally!

In 1969, the Billy Wilder movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was filmed on location in Urquhart Bay. The plot involves secret submarine tests in Loch Ness, with the test sub disguised as a lake monster - Sherlock's brother Mycroft (played by Sir Christopher Lee) is wrapped up in all of this. It seems that Billy Wilder didn't like the double hump of the Nessie model and had it removed - unfortunately, the design of the humps were part of what allowed for buoyancy for the 40 foot beastie. So, as it was towed out into the bay, it sank beneath the waves and was abandoned- the scenes involving the movie monster used a rebuilt head and neck at a London water tank.

The AAS continued to believe that the underwater photo they captured in 1975 showed a genuine living creature, despite the insistence by the press and skeptics that they had simply found the movie prop. Also, the area where the model was recently found has been a hotspot for Nessie sightings in recent years. Maybe the sunken model is something of a roadside attraction, or a sacred idol to the monsters of the Loch? Perhaps Nessie simply wants a selfie with her Hollywood double...

Joseph W. Zarzynski's 1986 book Monster Wrecks of Loch Ness and Lake Champlain covers this and other stories of sunken boats and crashed planes in both lakes, and is certainly worth reading for the lake monster fanatic. For more information on the underwater robot mentioned at the top, look here.

That wraps up Nessie-a-Day #2!