Werewolves, 'Mystical' Experiences, Devils, "Magical Belts", Juan Matus, Blake & Boehme Pt 1

I'm reading Dale Drinnon's Troll Skulls over at Frontiers of Zoology and Nick Redfern's Origins of the Werewolf over at Lair of the Beast.

Nick provides a good deal of material which suggests much of the Werewolf Legend's merely medical (though he also points out in his usual open minded way "some reports of werewolves do appear to involve monstrous creatures of unknown origin").

Personal experience however's forced me to come to a similar conclusion to Rupert Sheldrake that much of what passes for science - especially medical science - isn't really explanatory at all but mere catch phrases and jargonese designed to snow the inquirer into humiliated silence allowing the scientists to avoid admitting they don't really know.

In my case this conclusion's resulted from attending university first on a engineering course (for the maths and the physics) then on an environmental science one (for the biology, chemistry and earth sciences) in the hope the supposed rationality of Science'd help me snap myself free of the often extreme weirdery I've been subject to throughout my whole life.

Yet perhaps as a result of finding out how little Science really knew or understood my situation eventually got so bad I finally subjected myself to mixed battalions of psychiatry and neurology departments quite prepared at one stage to undergo electroshock therapy or even brain surgery if it'd put a stop to what was happening to me.

However as an avid consumer of books and knowledge all the time I was also avidly studying all the relevant medical texts and discovering Science knew and understood even less the workings of the mind and that 'explanations' like temporal lobe epilepsy (supposedly 'explaining' Muhammed Jesus Socrates Alexander the Great etc) were at best superficial descriptions of almost infinitely complex unknown brain processes or at worst labels intended to hide the ancient cartographer like ignorance which forced mapmakers to write on the blank parts of their maps Here Be Dragons.

So when I read Nick writing about the serial killing cannibal Peter Stumpp the Werewolf of Bedburg I find it difficult to accept the medical 'explanation' he's an example of Clinical-Lycanthropy as anything but a convenient label hence my resort to personal experience.

At this very moment as I write this I'm experiencing what I call my Medusa Effect which is the sensation there's something atop my head which at times can feel like a sort of miniature 'oil rig', rotating 'castle' or even segmented 'helmet' reaching down to and covering my face but which constantly changes not only its shape but also its 'density' so sometimes it feels like heavy aluminium other times light plastic.

But it also seems to go through organic phases where it can feel like seaweed moving slowly in shifting water, strangely moving white fire (a form I've actually seen and one of the reasons I tend to steer clear of mirrors) or very actively writhing snakes - hence the Medusa tag.

[It's also been pointed out to me it's in the same location as the Seventh Chakra and even at times seems to behave like some descriptions of it but from my point of view the Seventh Chakra's no more an explanation than Clinical-Lycanthropy or temporal lobe epilepsy].

So when I read accounts of the Medusa I find myself unable to dismiss the idea as merely a fairy tale but find myself wondering if it's evidence other people down the ages've also experienced the same inexplicable sensation others've described to me of having someone seemingly playfully dandling with their hair - even when they're wearing hats or hoods and there's no one there!

Ditto Herr Stumpp.

I note this "wealthy, respected, and influential farmer in the local community" claimed he was able to effect his werewolf transformations as a result of the Devil giving him a "magical belt".

I myself may well've undergone a version of the precise experience he was alluding to.

Ever since I started having panic attacks in my late teens in the Seventies I was periodically subject to these 'attacks' which I likened to friends and family at the time as being like that scene in Alien where John Hurt starts gagging and clutching his chest before all of a sudden to everyone's horror his chest explodes and a baby alien emerges.

I'd actually been experiencing a blissful earlier version of it where on one occasion I was on a train with my art teacher who I was deeply in love with when this sort of ecstatic force or energy rose up from somewhere deep down in the very depths of me and sort of bifurcated into two this sort of two headed affair where one 'head' seemed to split off just below my solar plexus seemingly slowing down time almost to a dead stop and making me and my art teacher have this sort of psychedelic melding experience where she sort of exploded and became this sort of vorticial version of the entire universe making this other energy version of me seem to leave my body and blissfully plunge into this infinite region of blazing female light.

At the same time the other 'head' seemed to carrying on reaching up to just past my solar plexus where it seemed to make time accelerate (so I'm simultaneously experiencing time seemingly somehow both speeding up and slowing down) and I'm bombarded with all this stuff telling me I'm SOMETHING's bitch and showing me all these future events that're supposedly go'n'o be happening a great deal of which'd be leaving me deeply unhappy for a very long time because I'd be having no say in how any of my life'd be working out.

Now if you take my SOMETHING and have it make its bitch some poor 16th Century German bastard who's got no more clue what's going on than I had then it's not that hard to imagine him thinking he's in the thrall of the Devil.

If you now quickly wind on time a few months to the point where the no longer blissful rising energy in me's started feeling like an ever more powerful solid steel battering ram periodically try'n'o bash its way out my chest until circa the Millennium I'm bouncing round the livingroom wondering if my family's correct I'm having a series of massive heart attacks only to notice for all my chestal convulsions the ambulance crew's heart monitor shows my heart's beating so steadily it's as if it's completely unaware what the blazing hot rest of me (covered in frozen foods straight out the fridge)'s going through.

Imagine then that same poor Sixteenth Century bastard undergoing something similar - no wonder he thought he was dealing with the Devil.

But it's that business of Stumpp's magical belt which clinches the deal for me.

Throughout the Nineties as well as periodically experiencing different versions of some of the above I also seemed to undergo an acceleration of something else which'd been happening to me since I was a little kid which was this periodic sense something from infinitely far away'd been launched at me which whenever it slammed into me left me with the sense I knew EVERYTHING.

I basically spent the Nineties try'n'o unravel and more importantly confirm all this raw data I was all but drowning in until one day while sitting there rocking me way through it all I suddenly became aware I had this sort of invisible metallic bronze hoop 'belt' around my waist (plus the information it'd supposedly been placed there at some point to delay my development) which as a result of mounting pressure from my inner energy 'Alien' thingy built up in me all day until suddenly exploded filling the air with this incredibly loud but melodious bronze bell sound at which point I became aware of this sort of house brick shaped 'letterbox' recessed in the area below my navel with these sort of limp extensions hanging from it.

In fact I eventually became aware of this old American Indian type guy (who reminded me of Chief Dan George out The Outlaw Josey Wales) crouching in front of me (who for some reason I took to be Don Juan Matus) telling me the way I sitting there with my 'letterbox' hanging open and my 'extensions' dangling out like that for everyone in the Otherworld to see was the Otherworld's equivalent of being an inadvertent flasher.

Now the point of all this to me isn't therefore there really ARE such things as Alien-like kundalini or 'magical belts' or Medusae or Devils or Dan Juan Matuses who look like Chief Dan George.

But even if there ARE that still wouln't explain what's going on anymore than temporal lobe epilepsy or Clinical-Lycanthropy does anything other than hint at possible explanations.

My point therefore's just like once upon a time people couldn't conceive how other people could possibly be attracted to members of their own sex (to the point they 'helpfully' fried their nervous systems with electricity or tried to 'fix' them by experimentally hacking out various chunks of their brains) then maybe people like William Blake and Jacob Boehme (and maybe even your cat when it seems to see and follow things "that simply aren't there!") aren't just seeing specks of dust floating across their eye fluid and deluding themselves they're something more.

Maybe they're really seeing and experiencing precisely what they describe.

And when I've finally summoned up the strength to tuck my dangling 'extensions' back in my 'letterbox' I'll attempt to tie Dale Drinnon's berserker observations into Nick's Werewolf stuff to suggest the possibility there may be even more going on than that.