β€œPassport to Magonia”: from folklore to alien myth

Finally, more than half a century after its release, thanks to Venexia Editrice it has been translated into Italian "Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying Saucers ”by French researcher Jacques VallΓ©e, theβ€œ Book of the Damned ”of the so-calledβ€œ paraphysical hypothesis ”.

Some reflections on John Keel's "superspectrum" theory

In this article we will consider the superspectrum theory of John Keel, the founder together with Jacques VallΓ©e of the β€œnew ufology”. We will be concerned essentially with four questions: we will try to highlight the importance and significance of John Keel's personality and work in American ufology; we will present and comment on John Keel's theory of the superspectrum; we will highlight the similarities and differences between Keel's and VallΓ©e's theories; finally we will consider some of the possible applications of the superspectrum theory to phenomena belonging to the mystery dimension.

The kidnappings of the Fairies and the mystery of the "Missing 411"

Every year dozens of people suddenly disappear in US National Parks, in unexplained situations and without leaving any trace; Detective David Paulides, who for decades has been studying these mysterious cases he defined as "Missing 411", has identified some recurring patterns which, analyzed with an eye to ancient traditions (both European and Native American), bring us back to the folklore beliefs concerning the "water-babies" and other feral entities residing in the "invisible world", to which it is sometimes believed that the human being, willy-nilly, is able to access, sometimes never to return to our world.

Charles Fort and the restlessness of the extraordinary

Critic of science that he defined as "exclusionist", that is, inclined to accept only data that confirmed accepted theories and reject data that cast doubt on them, Charles Fort proceeded, in the manner of the ancient collators of "wonders", to collect and analyze all the so-called anomalies, those "damned facts" that had no place in scientific models, influencing to a certain extent the whole sphere of the "alternative reality" of the twentieth century, such as ufology, space archeology and cryptozoology.

Towards β€œTimeWave Zero”: Psychedelia and Eschatology in Terence McKenna

In addition to being one of the "prophets" of the psychedelic Counterculture of the second half of the last century, Terence McKenna was able to build, in the course of thirty years of studies and experiments, a real eschatological system for the Third Millennium, in view of final explosion, based on the recovery of shamanic practices, on a new interpretation of the Sacred as "Mysterium Tremendum" and on the vision, beyond the ordinary dichotomy between life and death, of what he called an "Ecology of Souls".

Vampirism in the light of Jacques VallΓ©e's theories

In this article we will try to give an explanation to a sensational and inexplicable case of vampirism that occurred in Transylvania in 1816 using some theories of the French-American ufologist Jacques VallΓ©e, namely the existence of the dimension of Magonia, the ability of the inhabitants of Magonia to manipulate humans and the theory of the "thermostat effect".

Who is hiding behind the mask? Visits from Elsewhere and the paraphysical hypothesis

The examination of the theories of John Keel and Jacques Vallée based on the "paraphysical hypothesis", the "superspectrum" and the "thermostrate effect" allows us a reflection on the Other World and a parallelism with the cosmographic model and the "antichtōn »By Filolao 

The phenomenon of sleep paralysis: folkloric interpretations and recent hypotheses

The myths and the chronicles of folklore have transmitted to us with extreme clarity the way in which the ancients framed this phenomenon: surprisingly, all the chronicles and legends of antiquity agree in affirming that responsible for these disturbing experiences is a certain type of astral entities - sometimes labeled by modern minds as 'spirits', other times as 'demons', often also as 'fairies' and the like - who conduct their attacks only during the night, often pressing on the sleeping victim's body and sometimes entertaining with the subject has a sexual relationship. These entities, in various cultures, have been called in numerous ways, the best known of which to us Westerners are those of Latin derivation: 'succubi', 'nightmares' and 'larvae'.

di Marco Maculotti
cover: Johann Heinrich FΓΌssli, Nightmare

Sleep paralysis, also called hypnagogic hallucination, is a sleep disorder in which, between sleep and wakefulness (therefore in the moment before falling asleep or in the instant before waking up) one suddenly finds himself unable to move. Most of the time, according to what those who suffer from this disorder say, the paralysis begins with a tingling sensation that goes through the body, reaching the head, inside which the subject feels a kind of hum "like a swarm of bees ”or a sound similar to that of a washing machine or aβ€œ thumping and screeching of metal objects ”. Often the victim of this experience tries to scream for help, managing at best to whisper faintly, also experiencing the unpleasant sensation of hearing his own voice suffocated by something abnormal.

Often, if the victim is in bed with someone, the latter cannot notice anything, to the point that often even the most disturbing phenomena (terrifying sounds and noises, incomprehensible voices, sometimes even strange unnatural lights coming from outside) succeed to arouse the attention of those who do not undergo the episode in first person. It can also happen that the succubus (which, if once the name for the mysterious entity causing the phenomenon, is now the term by which medical science refers to the 'victim') hears familiar voices - or, sometimes, even 'demonic' - calling him, or arguing with each other behind the subject's back or, worse still, whispering close to his neck, often from behind, in a disturbing voice.

Science believes that this abnormal state is due to the persistence of the state of atony that the muscles present during sleep and is caused by a discrepancy between the mind and the body: with the consequence that, although the brain is active and conscious and the subject can often see and perceive clearly what surrounds him, despite this the body remains in a state of absolute rest, to the point that any movement is precluded for the duration of the experience. Of course, science denies the reality of the experiences experienced during this mysterious experience, reducing them to mere hallucinations caused by equally mysterious alterations in the subjects' brain balance, which would occur at the exact moment of the transition between wakefulness and sleep β€” and vice versa.