June 30, 2006  Portugal –  Eighty-nine years ago on May 13, 1917, three children watching sheep in Fatima, Portugal, saw lightning. Then a “small, pretty lady” appeared, suspended in the air at the top of an oak tree.

The lady told them she would return to the same oak grove every month for six months. Her last visit would be October 13, 1917. Then she would tell the children who she was and what she wanted.

The lady did appear on the 13th of each month after that. As word spread that a miracle was happening in Fatima, Portugal, an estimated crowd of 50,000 people were gathered on October 13, 1917, for the sixth and final appearance. By then, the Catholic Jesuits in the parish said it was the Virgin Mary, even though the apparition suspended at the top of the oak tree never called herself that.

The oldest of the three children was Lucia. She reported to the parish priest after the last October apparition that she heard the lady say: “Build a chapel here to Our Lady of the Rosary.”

The Jesuit priests in the Fatima region then announced to the world that Christ’s mother had appeared in Fatima to convert humans to “the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

But what exactly did the three children – Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco – say they saw at the top of an oak tree?

Below is a summary of Fatima apparition descriptions from Page 18 of a 2005 book by Portugal historians entitled:  Heavenly Lights, The Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon. The authors are Dr. Joaquim Fernandes and Fina D’Armada.

She was an apparently feminine and very beautiful figure.

She was wrapped in a light “that blinded.”

She measured approximately 3 ½ feet tall.

She appeared to be between 12 and 15 years old.

She wore a skirt, a coat, and maybe a cape, which were white.

Her skirt and robe had a checkered pattern of gold thread.

She had two or three cords at her waist.

She wore something on her head that covered her ears and hair.

She had black eyes.

She had a strand of beads resembling a rosary, some type of hoop earrings at her neck,

and a luminous ball at her waist.

She came from above and disappeared, little by little, back up into the sky.

She made no facial movements and did not move her legs.

She spoke without moving her lips.

She moved only her hands, once in a while.

She turned her back to the children when she rose up in the sky.

Furthermore, in the “Official Interrogations of 1923” by the formal Catholic Fatima Parochial Inquiry, Lucia did not say the apparition was the Virgin Mary. Lucia told Church investigators that when she asked the small, glowing, young lady suspended at the top of the oak where she was from, the lady “pointed to the sky, saying she was from there.”

The historians were intrigued by the strong UFO phenomenon link to Fatima. In fact, the cover of their first book,  Heavenly Lights, The Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon, has a photograph of the three child eyewitnesses above a graphic image of three grey aliens with large black, slanted eyes.

Now in their second latest book in a trilogy about the Fatima events of 1917, the historians focus on a “conspiracy to cover-up the true origins of the Fatima prophesies.”

The two Portuguese authors formally asked Catholic Church authority for access to the original records of the Fatima incident, which had been held secretly by the Church in archives located at the Sanctuary of Fatima since 1917. Quoting from their press release about the new book:

“For the first time, they tell the esoteric history of the ‘cover story’ concocted by the Church, which has both shaped our modern view of the Fatima incident and obscured its true significance as the first major UFO close encounter case of the 20th Century. At the heart of the matter, lies a conspiracy by the Jesuits to suppress the fact that the entities encountered by the children at Fatima were not deities descending from Heaven, but rather were alien beings visiting our planet from ‘elsewhere’ in the vast cosmos.”

Recently I talked with the Portuguese authors of Heavenly Lights and the new 2nd book, Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Cover-Up, to be released in July 2006.  The English translator is Alexandra Bruce. My first question by phone to the authors was: What evidence convinced them as historians that Fatima was caused by the UFO phenomenon?

Interview:

Joaquim Fernandes, Ph.D., and Fina D’Armada, Authors, Heavenly Lights: The Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon © 2005; and Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Cover-Up © 2006, who reside and work in Portugal as historians: 

“Because of the many testimonies of disc-shaped craft, which started out silver, but became transparent and revealed the bodies of three beings inside. There were strange angelic interfaces. There were apparitions floating above a particular oak tree in a field. And Andy has interpreted the lady on top of the oak to be a holographic projection from a craft above.

The description of the being that hovered over the oak tree seemed to be directly linked to  a ray that came from higher up, beamed from on high and went up to the clouds. There was a low ceiling of clouds. When it shut off, it retracted back into the clouds. It looked like a projected image.

Also, he says it is the reports also of people feeling like they might if a fighter jet were nearby. The air trembled and literally dried up everyone. It had just rained, but everything just dried up totally around them, the clothes and the ground itself. Five or six people also reported instantaneous cures, healings.

IF THERE WAS TECHNOLOGY AND PEOPLE SAW DISCS AND SAW BEINGS IN THE DISCS AND THEY SAW BEAMS THAT WERE PROJECTING THE ENTITIES THAT WERE TRANSLUCENT, DID THE JESUIT PRIESTS THEN FORCE LUCIA TO LIE?

My answer would be yes! (laughs) There is Fatima 1 and Fatima II. Fatima I is with the kids and the eyewitnesses of the events of 1917 described. Fatima II is the version that went down in history sort of cobbled together by the Jesuits. What the authors are trying to explain is the political background during that time, prior to the establishment of the Republic of Portugal, the church and the state had been one. Many church clerics were expelled from Portugal and fled to the Dorothean convent at Pontevedra, Galicia, northern Spain.

That’s where Lucia at the age of 18 was interned in one of those nunneries where you are not allowed to speak. But she was visited and basically told what to do by Jesuits on a regular basis. She was visited by Jesuit priests who had been expelled from Spain and they built their own version of the Fatima story in the years following the apparitions.

[ Editor’s Note:  Catholic World News reported: “Sister Lucia, the last survivor among the three Portuguese children to whom the Virgin Mary appeared at Fatima, has died at the age of 97. Sister Lucia died on February 13, 2005, at her Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal, after a long illness. Living in isolation in the cloistered convent, Sister Lucia had reportedly lost her eyesight and hearing in the months preceding her death.

Born on March 22, 1907, Lucie Dos Santos was only 10 years old when the Virgin appeared to her and her two young cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, on a field outside the town of Fatima, on May 13, 1917. The apparitions continued through October 13 of that same year, and the seers conveyed Mary’s predictions of World War II, the rise of Russian Communism, and the urgent need for the faithful to pray the Rosary.

Sister Lucia also revealed the famous ‘third secret’ of Fatima, which was kept secret by successive Popes until May 2000, when John Paul II revealed the text of a mystical vision involving a ‘bishop dressed in white’ who was struggling toward the Cross, over the bodies of martyrs, until he himself was felled by gunfire. Pope John Paul concluded that the vision referred to the attempt on his own life. Some Catholics continue to insist that aspects of the ‘third secret’ have not yet been disclosed, although the Vatican insists that there is nothing more to reveal.

Sister Lucia had spoken of the Fatima promises in four published memoirs, but kept the ‘third secret’ hidden. She divulged that secret to the Bishop of Leira, Portugal, in January 1944; he confided the secret to Pope Pius XII. Sister Lucia had said that the secret should be revealed at the Pope’s discretion, but not before 1960.

The first Pontiff to meet privately with Sister Lucia was Paul VI, when he visited Fatima in May 1967. Pope John Paul II met with her on three separate occasions: in 1982, when he made a pilgrimage to Fatima to thank the Virgin for saving him from assassination; in 1991, on the 10th anniversary of the shooting; and in 2000, for the beatification ceremonies.

Francisco and Jacinta Marto were beatified by Pope John Paul in ceremonies that took place at Fatima on May 13, 2000 – the anniversary of the first apparition there. Both Francisco and Jacinta had died in their youth – in 1919 and 1920, respectively. Sister Lucia made a rare journey outside the Carmelite cloister to take part in the ceremony.

After the Fatima apparitions, and subsequent personal visions of the Virgin in 1923 and 1929, Lucie Dos Santos entered religious life– first in Spain and later, in 1948, as a Carmelite in Portugal. Questioned as to whether Sister Lucia could be canonized, as were the other two young Fatima seers, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins was non-committal. The prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints reminded reporters that the Church ordinarily requires a 5-year interval between an individual’s death and the opening of a formal cause for beatification. Moreover, the Portuguese cardinal observed, ‘sanctity is a strictly personal thing.’ He added: ‘The fact that all three children saw the Holy Virgin does not show anything about the sanctity of each one.’”]

Both “Nordic” and “Grey” Entities Present in Fatima?

IN THE BOOKS, THERE ARE TWO SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS BY DIFFERENT EYEWITNESSES OF UNUSUAL ENTITIES IN MAY 1917. ONE IS BLOND-HAIRED, WHITE-SKINNED, BLUE-EYED; A GIRL OF APPROXIMATELY 14 WHO IS DESCRIBED IN ONE INCIDENT. IN ANOTHER, THE ENTITY ABOVE THE OAK TREE IS DESCRIBED AS HAVING BLACK EYES, WHICH WOULD SEEM TO BE LIKE THE GREY EXTRATERRESTRIALS. THE BLOND, BLUE-EYED WOULD SEEM TO BE LIKE THE NORDICS IN THE CLASSIC E. T. LITERATURE.

Yes, they were two very different apparitions. The blond one was the fourth eyewitness who died only 10 months ago, who gave the story about the young blond teenager. You are right, the other apparition above the oak tree did have black eyes and very small features.

SO HOW DO THESE INVESTIGATORS RECONCILE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXTRATERRESTRIAL GROUPS BEING INVOLVED IN WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A HIGHLY DECEPTIVE SERIES OF EVENTS – SPECIFICALLY TO FOOL THE POPULATION INTO THINKING IT WAS A RELIGIOUS EVENT?

In the authors’ opinion, the extraterrestrial phenomenon is an inter-dimensional, ongoing millennial ancient thing that we’ve superimposed our own meaning upon. So, the meanings that were ascribed to the events of Fatima came from the psychological and language of the culture in those times. Then, the Jesuits manipulated it to fit their goals, which were to make Russia Christian again. It’s what Jacques Vallee wrote in his books: this stuff has been going on forever, it’s not going to stop, and it will just morph and we’ll give it new meanings as our technology and culture and subconscious evolves. We’ll start having a different relationship to these sorts of events.

Why Would the UFO Intelligence Masquerade As Marian Apparitions?

WHAT IS THE IMPLICATION FOR THESE INVESTIGATORS OF WHAT APPEARS TO BE A DELIBERATE EFFORT ON THE PART OF THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE TO MASQUERADE ITSELF EXACTLY AS MARIAN APPARITIONS WHICH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAD BY THEN ACCEPTED?

That’s an interesting question. So everyone said if the kids saw a woman dressed in white, who else could it be but the Virgin Mary? The question is: were the ETs trying to look like Catholic imagery? Or was it the subconscious in the public milieu at the time trying to make sense out of something that makes no sense. So, it’s a saint, an angel, the Virgin Mary.

Then later on in the last half of the 20th Century when high-tech started happening and sci-fi started happening, you can describe it all as something else. That’s the theme of the second book: it was not Mother Mary. It was something inter-dimensional, extraterrestrial or other, but the ‘pretty woman’ morphed over time as the Jesuits got their hands on it in a super-religious country to turn it into a miracle instead of something scary and bizarre.

I’M TRYING TO SAY IT WAS JUST EXTRATERRESTRIALS MANIPULATING HUMANS.

They don’t rule that out. But it does not seem as likely as something that is beyond our comprehension. The authors don’t feel they have enough evidence to definitively state there was direct extraterrestrial manipulation of the people in Fatima. Was it inter-dimensional? Extra-dimensional? Extraterrestrial? Holograms? It was weird – especially when you are talking about 19th Century rural Portugal. All that happened was so beyond the people involved that it’s very hard to say exactly what happened. You’re talking about a lot of illiterate people who went to church every Sunday.

BUT THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BOOK, HEAVENLY LIGHTS ARE THE DETAILS, WHICH THE SUBTITLE UNDERSCORES: A UFO PHENOMENON, WHICH IS E. T.

The authors say they were the first to point out the incredible similarities between UFO encounters that occurred in Fatima and the events reported at Fatima.

But what the hell is an extraterrestrial? We don’t know. That’s beyond our comprehension. They don’t feel right as scientists, historians, to declare. Maybe the military has stuff they don’t know about. But they know the local mythology and philosophical fairies that have been reported for eons in the area – it could be any of these things or all of them at once. Yes, it might have been an encounter with flesh and blood, nuts and bolts, extraterrestrials. But the area has been renowned for fairies and weird things forever.

The first book was more of a shock like, ‘What if Fatima was a UFOs and extraterrestrial encounter?’ The second book is going more into, ‘What the hell is a UFO? What the hell does extraterrestrial really mean? And the Jesuit manipulation of the story.

Catholic Church’s Response to Books So Far?

The initial reaction of the Catholic Church was one of total shock and surprise because they themselves had never bothered to take a look at the original documents of the 1917 Fatima events. These two historians were the first to ask for permission to view and study documents about Fatima in an historical manner. The Catholic Church has not been afraid of the discovery of something that would shake the dogma of the Catholic faith. However, the authors were forced to sign documents in order to get access to the documents and to write about them. In that way, the authors were compromised.

At the time they were writing the books, she had a scholarship at a university that was for another topic, another major. When her studies came to light, it was a time of political change in 1964 of a new democracy. When the church saw what she was writing about, her scholarship was suspended and her career as an investigator was destroyed. She explains that Fatima is not only a Catholic thing to the country of Portugal. It’s one of the biggest sources of revenue for Portugal from tourists in the 20th Century. So it’s almost like Church and State become one around the Fatima phenomena.

GIVEN WHAT YOU JUST SAID, THEN IS IT A THREAT TO THE CURRENT CATHOLIC CHURCH IN PORTUGAL, SPAIN AND THE VATICAN TO HAVE THIS WORK OUT WITH SO MANY DETAILS ABOUT THE 1917 SERIES OF EVENTS BEING UFO PHENOMENA AND NOT MARIAN APPARITIONS?

Beliefs are entrenched, but the facts do speak for themselves. It might take a century for the facts to sink in. These are not made up stories. The made up stories are what the Church/Jesuits said. Of course, these are threatening to the Catholic Church and Marian believers worldwide and to whatever cottage industry revolves around Fatima today.”

Celestial Secrets Available July 1, 2006

The new book, Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Cover-Up by Portuguese historians Joaquim Fernandes, Ph.D., and Fina D’Armada, is available beginning this weekend of July 1st at amazon.com.  I recommend reading Celestial Secrets and the first book in this trilogy about the 1917 Fatima events, Heavenly Lights: The Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon.

Source: https://www.earthfiles.com/2006/06/30/celestial-secrets-the-hidden-history-of-the-fatima-cover-up/

Over 70,000 people watched as the ‘sun’ whirled around the sky in Portugal

This story is part 1 of a 2-part series about the “Miracle of the Sun” in Fátima, Portugal. In this part, we’ll look at reports of what thousands of people described seeing. In the second part, we’ll examine what the Fátima apparition told three children tending to sheep in a field over the course of six months. 

On May 13, 1917, an apparition appeared to three young shepherd children tending to sheep in the town of Fátima in Portugal. The children were ages 7, 9, and 10. Lucia Santos, the oldest, could see, hear, and talk to the apparition, later referred to as the Virgin Mary. Lucia’s cousins, Jacinta, 7, and Francisco Marto, 9 could not speak to the vision but could see and hear her or only see her.

The apparition, glowing “brighter than a crystal” told the children she would visit them again at the same place above a small oak tree in a field called Cova da Iria on the 13th day of each month for the next six months. In Lucia Santos’ own words, the apparition was:

“A lady dressed in white, shining brighter than the sun, giving out rays of clear and intense light.”

Although the children initially tried to keep it a secret, Jacinta told her mother about the vision. The concerned mother took her daughter to the local priest, and Jacinta refused to change or deny the story. Then a state bureaucrat took all the children to Vila Nova de Ourem hoping they would recant their story. They all refused.

Word spread through the town and soon crowds started forming as the children made their way to the field on the 13th day. The crowds grew ever-larger each month even though they saw nothing, they would watch as the children stood transfixed by the vision before them. The apparition told the children three secrets but asked that they not be revealed until the time was right.

On the final month in October, a crowd of 70,000 people formed to witness what they hoped would be a final important message. The Virgin Mary told Lucia that she would give the crowd a sign.

“In October I will perform a miracle so that all may believe,” said the apparition.

The day was rainy and the crowd was walking through the mud. Though only the children could see the apparition, Lucia told the crowd to look towards the sun, and thousands of people present for miles around the location reported witnessing what came to be known as the “Miracle of the Sun.” There were reports that people as far away as 25 miles saw the miracle.

The clouds parted and thousands of people reported seeing a silvery disc emerge, which danced and zigzagged across the sky, appearing to move closer to the viewers. Bright colored lights in rainbow hues shone down in a “psychedelic, pinwheel pattern,” according to some accounts. The strange display went on for 10 minutes.

A newspaper in Lisbon described what happened:

“Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun ‘danced’ according to the typical expression of the people.”

Another secular newspaper in Lisbon described it like this:

“The silver sun … was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds. A cry went up from every mouth and the people fell on their knees on the muddy ground. … The light turned a beautiful blue as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands. The blue faded slowly and then the light seemed to pass through yellow glass. … People wept and prayed with uncovered heads in the presence of the miracle they had awaited. The seconds seemed like hours, so vivid were they.”

A young lawyer named José Almeida Garrett reported on what he saw as well:

“The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl. Then, suddenly, one heard a clamor, a cry of anguish breaking from all the people. The sun, whirling wildly, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge and fiery weight.”

José Maria de Almeida Garrett, a science professor from Coimbra, described what he saw:

“Looking at the sun, I noticed that everything was becoming darkened. I looked first at the nearest objects and then extended my glance further afield as far as the horizon. I saw everything had assumed an amethyst color. Objects around me, the sky and the atmosphere, were of the same color. Everything both near and far had changed, taking on the color of old yellow damask.”

The soggy field inexplicably dried out quickly. The soaked spectators clothing was somehow dry to the touch from the warmth generated by the strange light show. They reported feeling the heat of the sun as it approached them.

There were also reports that a mysterious substance called angel hair fell on the crowd, and even that the substance appeared to be a strange “unicellular organism” in a lab. The angel hair fell again in November 2014, and a local observer told Metro that the strange substance, which disappears if touched, was analyzed and found to react to UV light, coming “alive.”

There are some reports that the original description of what the children saw was not the Virgin Mary but an alien apparition they called the “Little Woman” or the “Little Lady,” standing 3’7″ tall.

According to Ancient Origins, when the children asked the apparition where she was from, she pointed to the sky but made no mention of Heaven. The apparition’s mouth never moved, but her words were transmitted through vibrations, a “buzzing sound that rang around them.” Lucia could hear her telepathically.

The apparition was not the average height of a human being, and in the first drawings of her by Lucia, she did not appear completely human.

“Another physical attribute that was changed by the Catholic Church was that the being was said to be less than three feet tall, and appeared to be bald. Over the course of interrogations and revisions, the children changed this appearance to that of a tall beautiful lady, more fitting to the Virgin Mary archetype of the church.”

In the book, “Heavenly Lights, The Apparitions of Fátima and the UFO Phenomenon” by Portuguese historians, interviews with the children shortly after the Miracle of the Sun suggested the apparition was between 12 and 15 years old in appearance, made no facial movements, and carried a luminous ball at her waist. She would arrive from above and then rise into the sky and slowly disappear.

Two months before the Fátima events took place, a group of Portuguese spiritualists decided to take out ads in the local newspaper, Diario de Noticias. The ads predicted that May 13th would be a “day of great happiness” and one which “the brilliant light of the “Morning Star” will illuminate the path.”

The two younger children would die just two years later due to the Spanish flu epidemic that hit Fátima shortly after the apparition’s appearances. The apparition had predicted their early deaths.

Lucia carried on, later becoming a Carmelite nun and revealing the words of the apparition in her memoir, “Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words,” and also in a sealed envelope, which we’ll look at more in the second part of this article.

Following the news of what happened, some people were angered, thinking that it was all a hoax or a collective hallucination. After a small chapel was built at the site, they attempted to blow it up.

According to the Catholic Herald, the small tree survived the attack.

“Their opposition included an attempt to blow up the little chapel which had been built at the site of the apparitions in March 1922. Although the roof of the chapel was blown off, the tree where Our Lady appeared was undamaged.”

By 1930, the Catholic Church verified that what took place was “worthy of belief.” The two children would become canonized and the mysterious words of the apparition of the Virgin Mary would predict important events in history.

There have been many explanations for what took place, including the phenomenon called pareidolia, known to psychologists. It’s the tendency to see patterns in randomness. Others suggest that people were simply staring at the sun and strained their eyes, but the fact that thousands saw the phenomena in unison is truly unexplainable.

In the next part of this story, we’ll examine in more detail the messages that Sister Lucia claimed that the Virgin Mary told her at Fatima, and in later visits.

See more about what happened, including earlier visitations by an “angel” before the appearance of the Virgin Mary, in the video below:

This story is part 2 of a 2-part series about the “Miracle of the Sun” in Fátima, Portugal. In the first part, we looked at reports of what thousands of people described seeing. In this part, we’ll examine what the Fátima apparition told three children tending to sheep in a field over the course of six months.

Twenty four years passed before Sister Lucia, then living as a nun in Tuy, Spain, would decide the time was right to reveal the first two secrets from the apparition of the Virgin Mary she saw in Fátima, Portugal. Sixty years later the third secret was finally revealed, though it remains to be known for certain if there is more to be told.

Santos wrote her memoirs in 1941 and revealed the first vision: A gruesome vision of souls burning in hell. Some see it as a Biblical message about hell, while others see it as a message about the brutality taking place at the time in World War I. This was her warning:

“The war is going to end very soon but if people do not cease offending God, a worse war will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI.”

A year after the apparition in Fátima, World War I ended, but the Pope was then Benedict XV in 1917.

The second prophecy gave two warnings

The first warning was of a mysterious light in the night sky.

“When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes.”

On January 25, 1938, the Aurora Borealis illuminated the night skies throughout Europe. At the time, Hitler was preparing for war. A month later, Hitler moved soldiers into Austria during the pontificate of Pius XI, which had indeed come to pass.

These warnings had already played out in real life by the time Sister Lucia wrote about them in 1941, but another message she wrote down would unfold in later years.

The second warning was about Russia and the spread of communism throughout the world.

The Virgin Mary called for the Consecration of Russia.

“I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world causing wars…various nations will be annihilated.”

The apparition appeared to Lucia Santos again on June 13, 1929, telling her that the moment had come for the Pope and all the bishops of the world to consecrate Russia. The Pope failed to carry out the order, which Lucia believed allowed communism to spread across the globe. World War II raged in 1941, and the next Pope, Pius XII decided to carry out the consecration of Russia. However, Lucia said it was not as the Virgin Mary had wanted. The bishops around the world did not take part in the ceremony.

There were two more failed consecration attempts in 1952 and 1964. Sister Lucia said that God remained displeased. Communism spread to China in 1949 and in Cuba in 1961. A third of the world was communist by the 80s.

Sister Lucia withheld the third secret until 1943 when she fell ill and the Bishop asked her to write it down. She sealed it in an envelope but asked that it remain unseen until the year 1960 or upon her death. The envelope was delivered to the Pope in 1944, who refused to reveal the secret in 1960, the height of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union.

Some suspected the final secret of Fátima told of the ruin of the Catholic Church or possibly of nuclear war

On May 13th, 2000 on the 83rd anniversary of the apparition at Fátima, Pope John Paul II published the third secret, although some said the entire text was not yet fully released.

“We saw an angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; Flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor radiated towards him from Her right hand.”

Some believe this may be a reference to averting nuclear war. Since Sister Lucia asked that the secret be revealed in 1960, the timing would place it shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a critical moment when the world narrowly avoided nuclear war between the US and Russia.

Pope John Paul II believed that another part of the third secret in the sealed envelope was about him personally. Sister Lucia warned of “a vision of a bishop in white falling to the ground under a hail of gunfire,” and that vision turned out to be true. The Pope faced two assassination attempts, one of which took place in Fatima, Portugal, a bizarre coincidence. Pope John Paul II believed that the Virgin Mary’s warnings saved his life.

Following his narrow escapes from death, the Pope decided to join with the bishops of the world to lead the Consecration of Russia after all. He also took the first steps to canonize the young children who had died, Jacinta, and Francisco Marto. Recently, Pope Francis followed through at a mass in Fátima.

The Consecration of Russia took place on March 25, 1984, over fifty years after Sister Lucia conveyed the message of the apparition. Sister Lucia happily acknowledged that this attempt was successful. Nevertheless, some in the church today believe the ceremony was not done properly and must be done again.

Interestingly, Mikhail Gorbachev later met with the Pope in 1989, a significant change that had been unthinkable.

On February 13, 2005, Sister Lucia passed away at the age of 97 of natural causes followed by Pope John Paul II two months later at age 84. The process to canonize Sister Lucia is underway. Over 102 years have passed since the Miracle of the Sun.

The town of Fátima was named after a princess who was named after Muhammad’s beloved daughter, the founder of Islam. Since the Virgin Mary is mentioned in the Quran, some believe the apparition appeared in the town as a significant sign of respect for those who follow Islam.

See more in part 1 of this story.

1. Premières apparitions

2. Apparitions

3. Entity Description

4. Prophecies

5. Synchronicities

6. Paranormal and UFO links

7. Phénomènes annoncés

A UFO Phenomenon (Heavenly lights)

As discussed in my last post, I decided to read the book by Joaquim Fernandes and Fina D’Armada, Heavenly Lights: The Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon (San Antonio: Anomalist, 2005). This is actually a slightly revised edition of an older book by the same authors published in 1982 under the title Extraterrestrial Intervention at Fatima: The Apparitions and the UFO Phenomenon (New York: Dial Press). The 2005 edition has a preface from Jacques Vallée. It is also part of a larger study that includes two additional volumes with the same publisher: Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Incident (2007), and Fatima Revisited: The Apparition Phenomenon in Ufology, Psychology, and Science (2008), co-authored with Raul Berenguel. The three volumes constitute a “transdisciplinary study by the Multicultural Apparitions Research International Academic Network (Project MARIAN) at the University Fernando Pessoa in Porto, Portugal” according to the book description.

The book contains extensive and meticulous analyses of the events surrounding the alleged Marian apparitions in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. The analysis is based on evidence from primary sources, however, it is interpreted from an ETH perspective.

Importance of Social Dynamics

The authors provide an interesting sociological analysis to show that the phenomenon was not construed, at first, as a Marian apparition by the three children involved. The kids were not sure as to who was the beautiful lady they claim to have seen. The pressures from the environment made them accept that it was the Virgin Mary, as the monthly apparitions unfolded between May and October 1917. Furthermore, there was a clear institutional process put in place to ensure that it remained so. Not only the site became a pilgrimage destination, but Lucia, the leader of the children, was essentially taken away by the Catholic Church at 15 years old and put in a convent. With the exception of her family, anyone else who wanted to meet with her had to get permission from Rome, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (previously known as the Holy Inquisition)!

This reminds me of von Lucadou psycho-social model for poltergeists. The children were essentially the focus person of these events, and the only one who could see the apparition. Their immediate environment, family, neighbours, and local catholic clergy interpreted the events as a Marian apparition. The naive observers, from outside town, as well as the authorities of the Catholic Church were able essentially to shield the children from the critical observers, and hence the phenomenon could continue, and continue as a Marian apparition. Although some republican and atheist Portuguese were critical, in the very Catholic Portugal of 1917, the critical observers had no chance.

The authors also mentioned, in passing, a Mexican book by Salvador Freixedo, La Religion entre la Parapsychologia y los Ovnis (Mexico: Orion, 1977) who evoked the possibility that UFOs may be a projection of the collective unconscious. Once again, it does not appear that this idea was studied in any detail. However, they reject Freixedo’s idea and embrace ideas that are “more rational and economical” (p. 24) such as the ETH.

Mindset and the paranormal

The authors are quite critical of the attitude people had in those days. They underlined that there was only two attitudes possible: either it is a hoax, or it is the Virgin Mary. In particular, they found the idea that “who else could it be but our Lady” as being narrow-minded and limited. Ironically enough, almost 100 years later, we are in a very similar setting. Either UFOs are hoaxes or they must be ET spacecraft, no room for a “third way” as they complain in the Introduction. Unfortunately, I would say that their book is guilty of a similar attitude, as it is essential written to show “who else but ETs are behind all this”.

Many of the analyses they provide could be interpreted differently than a visit from an ET spacecraft. For instance, many people heard a buzzing or humming sound; heard large noise similar to the thunder but “as if coming from an underground source”; strange clouds; luminous objects; and ramps of light. These are also the hallmarks of balls of light. Although they briefly discuss the issue of altered state of consciousness at the end, it is not used to analyze the impact on people, animals and the overall perception of the entity. Even for the issue of telepathy between the children and the entity was proposed as being focused microwave energy that resonates in their cranium ... I wonder how rational and economical is this? The issues of altered state of consciousness and telepathy as psi effects are also known to be related to balls of light. They have also several pages on angel hair, which are also directly related to more mundane paranormal phenomena and akin to ectoplasm. No ETs are needed to have angel hair.

One quote they use to support their thesis, and in rejection of any psychosociological explanation, is borrowed from an article by Pierre Guérin: “if any themes exist associated with close encounters with UFOs or alien contact, they are apparently charged with unconscious human content; other themes, on the other hand, are almost systematically absent from UFO manifestations, near or far, like war, violence, and sexuality, that have profound roots in our psyches. In this way, one can see the profound originality of the phenomenon by that which is clearly demarcated, which the unconscious human mind would naturally segregate.” (p. 234)

I am sorry, but there is nothing more untrue than this. The contactees’ era was all about avoiding a nuclear war between the superpowers, even the Fatima story had the First World War as part of the discussion with the entity. Clearly, it was part of the human psyche while UFO events occurred. Violence and sexuality are essentially synonymous with alien abductions, not to mention many episodes where there are allegedly violent, hairy and ugly entities. Indeed, from the point of view of human psyche, there is nothing original about the UFO phenomenon if compared with other paranormal phenomena.

The Miracle of Sun during the last apparition, the heavy argument in the book, could also be construed as a ball of light. The authors focus quite a bit on the “ladder” seen on Sun (the ladder is interpreted as being windows in a series, like on a school bus), yet there was only one couple who saw that, while there was an estimated 50,000 people at the site who saw nothing of it (rational and economical?).

Just to make the point clearer, I would like to quote an article from Richard Wittman, “Flying Saucers or Flying Shields”. Classical Journal 63 (1968): 223-226. Wittman quotes Cicero’s De re publica (written between 51 and 54 B.C.) where “Laelius scold the young Tubero for being overly interested in a celestial phenomenon which had been reported to the Roman Senate. A second sun had been seen. Laelius reminds Tubero that he should be more interested in the civil disorders occurring in Rome ‘before his very eyes’.” (p. 223) General similarities to the Fatima story are there, but it is two thousand years before. Either we, human, are very interesting to the ETs so that they are studying us for thousands of years (and still trying to figure out who we are? Maybe they are not that smart after all?). Or, more rationally and economically speaking, there are no the ETs but something else going on.

Most of their comparative analysis between the Fatima events and recorded UFO experiences is very selective. The rational for inclusion and rejection of cases is not addressed at all. Hence, beyond showing superficial similarities between certain UFO events and Fatima, no substantive explanatory statement can be put forward based on ufological knowledge. Lastly, nowhere the authors really envisioned seriously the possibility of psi effects. I do not know what happen in Fatima in 1917, and actually no one seems to know, but there are other possibilities than the ETH.

Overall

It is overall a very well-researched book that deals with primary sources. From that point of view, the authors should be praised. However, their analysis is very biased, and makes one question the integrity of their interpretation. Maybe the third volume (2008) brings a more nuanced perspective as the title implies, but I think it is rather an attempt to reconcile two faiths given it is part of the MARIAN project: the UFO story and the religious interpretation. Once again, the “third way” is likely to be overlooked.

So, how much useful is this for studying UFO waves? It is yet another example that shows that von Lucadou’s model is actually robust.

It can also be useful to note that the first Portuguese military contingent to arrive on the Western front was in April 1917. The first unit to be deployed on the front was on 11 May 1917, and the first brigade being fully deployed at the end of May 1917. The last brigade was fully deployed in October 1917. According to one military history website, "The 1st Brigade took its assigned place at the frontline by 30 May 1917, the 2nd Brigade by 16 June, the 3rd Brigade by 10 July, and the 4th Brigade by 23 September of the same year." Interestingly enough, in August 1917, the children were a no show at the site, as they were held up by the anti-clerical mayor of a nearby town, and there was no Portuguese military deployment for August 1917. Synchronicity?

This fits the exact timeline of the Fatima events. By 1917, the horrors of the new technological war were well-known, but not experienced yet by the Portuguese themselves. Beyond anxiety, it was a big effort for a small, relatively poor and close-knit country like Portugal. Put in its larger context, the parasociological framework developed so far appears to fit. Like in the US (and the Roman republic!), UFO waves (or equivalent) tend to occur in times of serious tensions in political and military affairs.