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MARIAN APARITION
EXPERIENCES IN FTIMA, 1917
- PRELIMINARY SYSTEMATIZATION AND MODELLING
Joaquim Fernandes
Introduction
The first signs of a different, non-conformist and plural reading of the marian
religious phenomena, should be reminded from the publication, in the 1980s, of works
with an historical background, documented by the research of the author in cooperation
with the historian Fina dArmada. 2
It is within this legitimacy, assumed by the authority of universal knowledge that
we set out for a review of the phenomenology of the marian apparitions in Ftima.
Gradually, we realized that our correlations and suppositions were gaining momentum
and a worthy allegiance as far as scientific collaboration is concerned. From these
collaborations, which are from various origins, we must point out the continuing and
fruitful dialogue we have been keeping since the beginning of the 80s with Auguste
Meessen, theoretical physicist in the University of Louvaine. This researcher combines
his condition as an indefectible catholic with an exemplary feeling of not feeling
imprisoned by dogma and believing that our duty will always be that of searching for the
truth. 3
Our sources are built upon the original interrogations of the three SEERS as well
as from first hand reports, dated and selected according to their informative wealth. With
this documental base approximately one hundred testimonies we have elaborated an
information support which, in its variety and subjectivity, presents the possible,
nevertheless historically verifiable, portrait of the 1917 events which took place on that
wasteland of the Portuguese countryside.
This material, due to its intrinsic wealth, was thoroughly and systematically
compared to a variety of effects and characteristics demonstrated in close proximity
experiences of non-identified aerial phenomena, and to symptomatic frameworks of
communication and contact in lay mans terms, registered in the course of the last 50
years.
One of the most curious and intriguing pieces of conviction comes from Lcias
original description when, in the Parrish Inquiry of 1917, she speaks of a very
luminous lady () who held a glowing ball in her hands and turned her back on the seers
when she went away. 4
The careful evaluation of the seers descriptions allow us to suppose the means of
locomotion of the luminous lady, how she appeared at the top of the tree and how
she was removed from it: through the gradual manifestation of a cone-shaped luminous
beam which was retractable and came from up high a supposed cloud which had
peculiar moving patterns since it moved against the wind and which enveloped the
feminine figure in its central section. There are examples, in the available literature,
coherent with this kind of luminous beams which some authors designate as solid light.
5
All of these reactions were consecutive to the apparent descent of the solar object
over the crowd gathered there. The described triple effect seems to suggest the hypothesis
of a manifestation of great thermal amplitude coming from a source outside the
witnesses. The anomalous movements of the object which supposedly imitated the
sun together with the simultaneity of its physical consequences, bring some obstacles for
the different explanation models regarding the hallucinatory nature of such events.
Within this context, we remind the discussion, which is still open, about proposals of
image projections which are typical of the several hypnotic states. 6
Results
Discussion
The sequence of physical aspects, which will eventually become a model due to
further investigations, cant be put aside or minimized only by whims of chance,
coincidences or collective hysteria/imitation. Laboratories dont sympathize with
subjectivity. In the same sense, the exploration of these nexus, at the neurological level,
has the potential to become an open road for the analysis of the formation of the
messages elaborated by the contacted, ancient and modern, religious or lay, in
different cultural times and spaces. Of special interest are the implications for the
formulation of a model of non-verbal communication, extensive to contact experiences
both lay and religious, transcultural and timeless, and the emergence of a new
transdisciplinary area: the neurotheology or neurobiology of religion.
As will certainly be verified, the future of science as told by its past history
promises new and stimulating readings of the temporarily unexplainable which runs
along the margins of current knowledge and systems of beliefs.
References
1
Cf. Morin, Edgar. O Mtodo III. O conhecimento do conhecimento/1, Mem Martins, Publicaes
Europa-Amrica, 1987.
2 Cf. Armada, Fina d, O que se passou em Ftima em 1917, Amadora, Livraria Bertrand, 1980;
Armada, Fina d; Fernandes, Joaquim. Interveno Extraterrestre em Ftima as aparies e o
fenmeno OVNI, Amadora, Livraria Bertrand, 1982; Armada, Fina d; Fernandes, Joaquim. As
aparies de Ftima e o fenmeno OVNI, Lisboa, Estampa, 1995; Armada, Fina d; Fernandes,
Joaquim. Ftima nos bastidores do segredo, Lisboa, ncora Editora, 2002; in English, see The
Fatima Trilogy, ed. Anomalist Books, 2007 and 2008: Fatima Revisited. The Apparition
Phenomenon in Ufology, Psychology, and Science. Compiled by Fernando Fernandes, Joaquim
Fernandes & Raul Berenguel. Translated from the Portuguese & Edited by Andrew D.
Basiago & Eva M. Thompson. Foreword by William J. Birnes. Anomalist Books, 2008;
Fernandes, Joaquim& Fina dArmada, Celestial Secrets. Anomalist Books, 2007; idem, Heavenly
Lights, Anomalist Books, 2007.
3 Personal communication, 7/12/1980.
4 Armada, Fina d; Fernandes, Joaquim. Interveno Extraterrestre em Ftima as aparies e o
fenmeno OVNI, Amadora, Livraria Bertrand, 1982, p.33.
5 Heering, Jan. A Comparative Analysis of 62 Solid Light Beam Cases, in UFO
Phenomena, Bolonha, vol.2, 1977; Cf. tambm Meessen, Auguste, in Inforespace, Bruxelas,
Maio/Setembro, 1978; Cf. Also for an exposition of physical and physiological results,
Niemtzov, R.C.. Physiological and Radiation Effects from Intense Luminous Unidentified
Objects, in UPIAR Research in Progress, Bolonha, vol.II, ns 2/3, 1984.
6 Olmos, Vicente-Juan Ballester, Guasp, Miguel. Los Ovnis y la ciencia, Madrid, Plaza Y Janes,
1981, cap. XI., p.314 e segs. Cf. also Persinger, Michael A. et. al. Issues Forum: Tectonic
Stress Theory, in Journal of UFO Studies, Chicago, 1990, vol. 2, pp. 99-176; Lawson, A.H.,
Hypnosis of imaginary UFO abductees, in UFO Phenomena, Bolonha, 1978/1979, vol.III,
n1, pp. 219-258.
7 Armada, Fina d; Fernandes, Joaquim, ob.cit., supra, pp.64-70.
8 Cf. The paper presented in this same volume by researcher Raul Berenguel.
9 McCampbell, James. Ufology, Belmont, Jaymac Company, 1973.
10 Cf. footnote 8 above.
11 Cf. Procedings of the IEEE, vol. 68, n1, Janeiro, 1980.
12 Cf. For the lay cases studied from the view point of psychotherapy, Mack, John. Sequestro.
Lisboa, Planeta, 1994, and more recently, by the same author, Passaport to the Cosmos. Human
transformation and alien encounters, New York, Crown Publishers, 1999.
13 Armada, Fina d; Fernandes, Joaquim. ob.cit, nota 4, pp. 361-372.
14 Personal communication, 3 de Dezembro 1983.
15 Cf. Raul Berenguel paper and the historical body of research in a military and defense
framework of USA and former USSR.
16 Rifat, Claude. A Theoretical Frame Working for the problem on Non-Contact between
an Advanced Extraterrestrial Civilization and Mankind: Symbolic Sequential Communication
versus Symbolic Non-Sequential Communication, in UFO Phenomena, Bolonha, vol. 3,
1978/9, pp. 273-288; Cf. also by the same author, Is the Locus Coeruleus, an important
anatomical center of the brain, involved in the most bizarre aspects of UFO reports? The
induced dream hypothesis, in UFO Phenomena, Bolonha, vol.II, n 1, 1977.
17 Newberg, Andrew B.; dAquili, Eugene G.. The Neuropsychology of Religious and
Spiritual Experience, in Andresen, Jensine; Forman, Robert K.C. (eds.), Cognitive Models and
Spiritual Maps, Thorverton, Imprint Academic, 2000, pp. 251-266.
18 Levengood, C.; Talbot, Nancy. Dispersion of energies in worldwide crop formations, in
Physiologia Plantarum, Stockolm, n 105, pp. 615-624, Junho 1999.
19 Note sur les apparitions mariales, personal communication, 8 de Janeiro 2001.