The complete story is told in: Tequila and Chocolate, The Adventures of the Morning Star and Soulmate, A Memoir.

I don’t believe in otherworldly beings. I know otherworldly beings. “If you are blind and have never seen the sun rise, it doesn’t matter how many hypotheses you can array; you still don’t know. Belief is simply the adoption of someone else’s idea. Once you have seen the sun, you don’t believe in it; you know it.”[i]

I have been in the presence of otherworldly beings, which my wife identified as angels, but they just as well could have been identified as gods or goddesses. No matter what identity is assigned, most importantly, I have not seen angels in my mind, in a cloud formation, or in my dreams or as some type of human figure. I’ve been in the presence of and witness to an archangel and two assisting angels.

Having been in their presence, I know angels in the same way that I know a sunrise, the buzz of a bee, or rain falling on my head. I know otherworldly beings not with my mind but with my senses—no filters. It was a sensory firsthand experience.

The term I use for this unprecedented event is the Visitation, which was witnessed by my wife, Sherry, and twelve of our apprentices. It occurred on the night of the new moon, Sunday, August 3, 1997, in the woods of Maine. I was also born on a new moon. Numerically, the date of the Visitation is a 10. The number 1 symbolizes the Absolute, the One, the Divine, the Great Mystery, the Creator. The number 10 symbolizes the reflection of the Divine or the perfection of creation.

Otherworldly beings are awesome, essential, and most assuredly significant heavenly beings of creation who exist in a state of timelessness, not linear time. But since timelessness and linear time interpenetrate, they may appear anytime and are as close as a breath of air. But for them to physically appear and step into the stream of linear time and our reality, a purification of the elements that compose linear time must occur. Early on that Sunday afternoon, we experienced an otherworldly storm. One moment, the sky was crystal clear, tinged only with a few clouds, and in the next moment, the sky darkened into an ominous, swirling bluish-black tempest. There was a moment as if the world paused—there was no sound or movement as if a jötunn (giant) was holding its breath. And then…thunder, lightning, and rain—Þórr’s presence. Torrents of rain fell as thunder boomed overhead and lightning struck all around my wife, me, and our twelve apprentices. Everyone ran to huddle underneath the cooking tarp, shaking and scared by the otherworldly intensity. People were terrified at the suddenness and force of the wind and the rain, the thunder and the lightning.

As the storm abated, the earth felt different—a purification of sorts. It was only later that I had a sudden realization that the pre-Christian Hawaiians would recognize this sudden downpour as a sign of the presence of the Akua Lono—the white god. Our apprentices were milling around, slightly disoriented by the storm. The good news—now we could have a fire. However, the storm changed the timing of building the death spiral. It would now occur later than we had planned.

At the time, we didn’t know what to make of such an unusual natural occurrence. Approximately eight hours later, with the appearance of an archangel and two assisting angels as three immense pillars of light, the reason for the storm became apparent. The volume and intensity of the thunder and rain and the strength and force of the lightning was a purification of the earth and its elements. A major sanctification had taken place.

For the remainder of the afternoon, we finished building the death spiral and prepared for the death-and-rebirth ceremony. When we were almost finished building the spiral, one of our apprentices took a picture of me within the center of the spiral. (the picture above) One of the universal symbols of the serpent is the spiral. Our spiral was a narrow path, the way of the serpent, to reach the center where our apprentices would experience the death of their old selves (shedding the skin and leaving the old self behind) and then the rebirth of their new selves.

After the death spiral, the apprentices fashioned images out of wood of one of their fears. The fear was to be minor, one that they could let go of in the night’s exercise. Darkness came around nine o’clock when I lit the fire to begin the experiential exercise. Everyone sat on the ground in a semicircle with the fire in the center and the west direction open so that each apprentice could approach the fire from the west. Symbolically, this is the black direction of fear but also the direction of rebirth.

One after another, the apprentices approached the fire and laid the symbolic image of their fear before them. When they were ready, they fought their fear with the wooden sword and then tossed the remains into the fire.

Whether it was tiredness or the effects of the death spiral, the apprentices only halfheartedly fought their fear. When all were finished, I looked around the semicircle, and each apprentice’s head was hanging low, staring into the fire. It was evident that they knew they had listlessly and with little heart fought their fear. A few were accomplished martial artists. How was I going to tell them that they blew it? They had squandered an awesome opportunity to release one of their fears. With these thoughts going through my mind, I decided to stand and talk more philosophically about releasing fear rather than giving them a searing commentary on—you blew it.

I stood and began a more nurturing synopsis of the exercise, only stating a few things before…before I felt my neck twitching and an icy-fire sensation around my head—I recognized the feeling. It is the one I always get when there are otherworldly energies around. But this time it was different, much more intense and strange. I turned my head to look behind me into the woods. Everyone else was still seated on the ground, staring into the fire. No one else was looking up.

This was the night of the new moon, and the only light in the clearing was cast by the small fire. The night before, while the apprentices were sitting alone in the woods on their vision quest, I had stood in this very same spot observing the dark woods. I was listening and making sure that everyone was all right. When I had turned off my flashlight, I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me.

“What…no.” These two short thoughts coursed through my mind as I turned my head back around to see if there was some other light source coming from my front other than the small fire. And when I observed nothing that could explain what I just saw, I turned my head back around again in disbelief—making sure I saw what I saw. This all took less than a minute.

“Please stand, and be quiet. We have visitors,” I said as calmly as possible, all the while not knowing what I was seeing.

As Sherry stood up next to me, looking at the lights, I leaned over and whispered into her ear, “What are they?”

Without any hesitation she said, “Why, they’re angels!”

And then I remembered my prayer for a sign of who I had been. It all made sense, but I never expected a sign like this.

“A shooting star,” someone said as we all looked up as it blazed across the night sky.

“A white dove,” an apprentice exclaimed as it flew over our heads.

“Look at the stones of the death spiral,” another said.

The stones had increased at least fivefold in size; some were now the size of boulders. But the most unusual thing was the greenish, otherworldly glow that surrounded each.

After this, no further words were spoken. Time seemed to be suspended as Sherry and I and our twelve apprentices witnessed in awe a massive pillar of light—a living pillar of iridescent light a few feet off the ground, at least six feet wide and five or six times as tall. This light was in the north by the entrance to the death spiral. It was a light that was whitish and not of this world.

Suspended higher up by it were two other pillars of light, not quite as bright or as large. The legends have always told that an archangel is always assisted by two helping angels. Many traditions believe that the north direction is symbolically the direction of the ancestors and heavenly beings, such as angels.

At the Visitation, as messengers of the divine and in answer to my prayer, the archangel and the two assisting angels announced who I was in my previous incarnation through their presence and the other signs that were shown along with their appearance. “In biblical accounts, angels traditionally appeared in order to make an annunciation or a revelation of transcendent import. Usually an angel’s message is one of concern not only to the individual who sees the vision, but to the collective group as well. Such visionary experiences mark dramatic turning points personally and culturally.”[ii] In the case of our twelve apprentices, my wife, and me, the Visitation was not a visionary experience but an actual physical, sensory, extraordinary event.

It was late on an October afternoon of the same year when one of our apprentices contacted me. “J C, you’ll never guess what I have,” he said in an excited tone. “While you were finishing the late-afternoon building of the spiral, I took a picture of you in the center of it. When I got home, I just threw the camera into my truck. Last week I finally got around to getting the pictures developed. I knew something was up when the photo shop lady said, ‘One of your pictures has caused quite a stir.’”

He paused and then said, “Guess what? I have a daylight photograph of the archangel and the two assisting angels. They were observing us building the spiral…and no one ever suspected!”

The picture is sacred and precious. Closer examination of the picture revealed a very faint image of what looks like the shape of a sword (sword of light) or an elongated, four-pointed star pointing to the heavens. This dim image is within the center of the reflected light. This is the picture at the beginning of this page.

The Effect of the Visitation on Spiritual/Philosophical/Religious Knowledge

During the Visitation, we experienced something that few humans believe in and even fewer get the experience to know. The majority of humanity’s spiritual/philosophical/religious beliefs are based on secondhand knowledge, either written or oral, from others who have also based their beliefs on secondhand, thirdhand, and further removed knowledge.

This miraculous happening opened the gateway to knowing certain truths concerning spiritual/philosophical/religious beliefs. I will attempt to lay them out as best as I can:

Knowledge: The interconnection and interpenetration of consciousness throughout the seen and unseen universe.

David Bohm theorized a new reality of the universe. He named this reality the implicate order—the “hidden” aspect of the universe. “The theory of the implicate order contains an ultraholistic cosmic view; it connects everything with everything else. In principle, any individual element could reveal ‘detailed information about every other element in the universe.’ The central underlying theme of Bohm’s theory is the ‘unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided, flowing movement without borders.’”[iii] In other words, “Within the implicate order, everything is connected; and, in theory, any individual element could reveal information about every other element in the universe.”[iv] Bohm named the known or visible universe or manifest world the “explicate order.” In the implicate order, “‘everything is enfolded into everything.’ This is in contrast to the explicate order where things are unfolded.”[v]

The Visitation provides proof of Bohm’s theory as the physical appearance of the angels (immense pillars of light) was due to my prayer. For the angels to respond while in the implicate order, they would have had to have received the information from myself in the explicate order.[vi]

After the intense, unusual storm, they were present in the afternoon but hidden41 while they were still in a layer of the implicate order. It was only in the evening that they became visible to us in the explicate order—in Bohm’s terms, when they unfolded.

Knowledge: Reincarnation.

Based on what I knew within my heart I prayed for a sign to be given of who I was in my last incarnation: “Let them see a sign knowing that I was ________________.” I mentioned the name, as people would recognize it today.

The angels responding to my prayer indicated that I was alive before in a different body, place, and time. I am no different than anyone else. If I have had a past life (lives), then everyone else has had past lives. This is proof, as far as we can take it, considering we are attempting to prove the unprovable mysteries of life and creation—that our lives on earth are not a one-shot deal with a result of Heaven, Hell, or oblivion waiting for us.

But it is an ongoing death and rebirth evolution of our soul—our Golden DNA or Divine Spark/Starlight.

Knowledge:

Sentient beings that humanity has named angels, gods, goddesses, bodhisattvas, and so forth physically exist even though they are usually hidden from sight while they remain in Bohm’s implicate order. This leads to a conclusion that other sentient beings exist, namely gods and goddesses and others, such as elves and faeries and, in Iceland, the hidden ones. But once again, they are in the implicate order and hidden from our senses and sight.

[i] Malcolm Godwin, Angels An Endangered Species, 237.

[ii] Sallie Nichols, Angels and Mortals, 190.

[iii] Beatrix Murrell, http://www.bizcharts.com/stoa_del_sol/plenum/plenum_3.

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[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Bohm’s theory of the implicate order stresses that the cosmos is in a state of process. Bohm’s cosmos is a “feedback” universe that continuously recycles forward into a greater mode of being and consciousness. Ibid.