The Free Radical

Prior Episodes of Running Dialogue:

First Episode
Second Thoughts
Third Time’s The Charm
Fourth Movement… Forth
Fifth Element
Sixth Sense
Seventh Direction
Eighth Wonder of the World
Ninth Life of Schrödinger’s Cat
Tenth of One Percent
Eleventh Dream of Seventh Heaven
Twelfth Tribe of the Ancient Sorcerers

(As The World by Echolyn)
“To shake your head as the world just nods away.”

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance– that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” 
~ Herbert Spencer

“Create a belief in the theory and the facts will create themselves.” ~ Joseph Jastow

Thirteenth Floor

God in a Bottle
by Felix

Eeny… meanie… money… mine…
Catch a godling in his mind.
Fee Fi Fo Fum
God is under his own thumb.

Even before we got off the mountain, quick on the heels of our visit to the Magick Cave, I knew that I would be returning, probably solo, and likely sooner than later. This first introduction to the living remnants of true Earth magick had really been Felix’s gig. I felt like I had been permitted to tag along. But there was something there inside that cave that was specifically for me.

That conversation with Teal and Phaedrus belonged to Felix. The cave had been answering his need. I’m not sure that I would’ve heard anything of that dialogue had I not been there with Felix. I didn’t know what mystery the cave held for me in particular, but I knew that I would be coming back to find out.

As usual, as we sidled down the steep mountain slope, I sought to engage Felix in conversation. He had this wonderful knack for blowing my mind wide open– when he wasn’t putting the barrel of a gun next to my head. I swear my ears were still ringing from that bizarre escapade!

“So how am I to regard the appearance of the Fae?” I asked. “Was that real? Was that just fantasy? Hallucination? Were we again in the brainwave pattern of the second attention? Or was that some kinda astral trip?”

“Definitely not astral,” answered Felix. “I’d say that was well rooted in the etheric energy realm.” I wanted to know clearly how Felix distinguished between the astral realm and the etheric, so I asked him to explain the difference to me, and he continued. “The etheric realm is the invisible energy realm which underpins our existence in the physical. It may be identical with what is modernly referred to as the morphogenic field. Every living thing possesses its own etheric body, the specific energy configuration supporting its physical form. That etheric body, though distinct, is further tied into the planetary energy body along with all other living things. That is what makes up the etheric realm of Earth. It is theoretically possible that beings exist within Earth’s etheric reality which do not manifest in the same physical plane as we do, or perhaps having no current physical expression at all. The Fae would seem to fit within that category.” I had something to say about etheric bodies, memories from my far distant youth, but Felix was determined to continue on.

“The astral realm, on the other hand, is a place of creative mentation, without much in way of rules or even convention. Some might say that it is a place of pure fantasy… while others insist that order indeed exists within the astral abyss somewhere beyond the immediate phantasmagoria. It is the physical human, imbued with divine imagination, which underpins the astral reality. It can be said, and I happen to agree, that the astral is an outward projection of human creative imagination. More than mere daydreaming though, astral entities, archetypes and principalities assume lives of their own in the universality of self-preservation.” I had some things that I wanted to say about this too, but Felix wasn’t quite finished. He continued.

“If we say that the human– along with his living companions– occupies the 3rd position, also known as our familiar 3D existence, then the astral occupies the 4th position– and possibly beyond– outwardly, as reality projects itself through the human being in never-ending expansion. The etheric realm then occupies the 2nd position, inwardly, in such a manner that the physical human may be considered the outward projection of that energy template. The 1st position, inwardly, is of course occupied by Source– the potential for all to exist in unmanifest non-differentiation, or unstructured consciousness.”

“Whoa! That got pretty heavy pretty fast,” I quipped.

“I knew you could handle it,” replied Felix with a wink. “You were going to say something…?” he prompted me.

“Just recalling a fond memory from my youth. I was maybe four, definitely no older than five, and I remember sitting at the kitchen table staring at the thumb and index finger of my left hand. My hand was sideways so that both my index finger and my thumb were closest to me.” I held up my hand to demonstrate to Felix. “I would bring the tip of my finger into close proximity to the tip of my thumb while allowing my eyes to unfocus. I could see a faint smoky blue sheath of translucent energy surrounding my fingertips. And at a certain point when I brought them together– but not touching– the energy sheath around my finger would suddenly jump and merge with the energy sheath around my thumb, forming a bridge between them. I was playing around to determine the distance between my thumb and finger at which the bridge would spontaneously form. It was a happy memory, at least until my older brother sat down across the table from me and asked what I was doing. I explained it to him as I demonstrated it to myself again. He promptly informed me that I couldn’t actually see what I was describing… and lo and behold, from that moment on I could no longer see my own energy body. I’ve always regarded that smoky blue subtle body as an etheric double which interpenetrates my physical being and extends slightly beyond. It’s something distinct from auras ‘cause I was never able to see auras. I suspect that auras might belong more to astral perception,” I finished up.

“How did you know about the unfocusing of your eyes? That’s a hard skill to teach.”

“Tell me about it! I can’t really do it anymore. As a kid, it just came naturally. There just didn’t seem to be the same urgency then to keep reality so strictly dialed in. I relaxed my gaze often… and I remember that I saw the most interesting things when I did. It was kinda self-reinforcing… until my brother told me that it was utterly impossible to see such things.”

“Yup, we police each other relentlessly to make sure we’re all tuned in to the same gross perception… and the unique and interesting details from our youthful innocence get systematically weeded out. In the realms of perception we tend to be hopeless conformists.”

We both nodded in commiseration. We were nearly down the mountainside and not too far from camp.

We were lucky enough to stumble upon this beauty, Strawberry Blite. That was only the second time I’d found it. What looks like a blight is really just the plant’s normal flowering. It’s one of my all-time favs!

“What’s it taste like?” asked Felix sceptically.

“Almost exactly like beets, earthy and sweet, but with little seeds like strawberries.”

“Beets? Ah, not a fan. It’s all yours.”

I stripped the flowers from the stem, staining my fingertips bright red. Yup, it was as good as I remembered. I savoured the taste a moment and then we moved on. I turned the conversation to some lighter fare.

I wanted to turn momentarily away from the woo-woo world and peer into the more mundane aspects of social and political transformation– if even such a thing was possible. I expressed my impatience with the slow chaotic meltdown of our insane society, knowing that Felix would have something ‘good’ to say about it.

“You want a prediction?” asked Felix with venom and barbs. “I’ll give you a prediction,” he said, planting his walking stick in the dirt, gathering unto himself a greater credibility with his tripodal stance, like the Lawgiver with his staff. “A watershed moment is coming… and I think it will first become visible in the political sphere. There’s going to be a revelation, a reckoning, one that catches just about everyone off guard. And it’s going to be global– not just the local fallout from the US election debacle. And you know what’s going to be revealed? The public’s own profound ignorance, that’s what! Maybe it’ll start with the dissection of that slimy octopus The Clinton Foundation… or maybe somewhere else entirely, unseen yet undeniable. There’s a thousand festering boils all coming to a head… and the lancing of one will immediately drain the puss from them all. The public, the world over, will come to a sudden and shattering realization that nothing of common political discourse for generations has had any basis in reality whatsoever. It’s all carefully layered deceptions, without even a shred of truth lending validity. Politics is the commerce of lies. We’ve all known it for generations, and yet we pretend– even insist– that we ourselves can know the truth. These are the most unconscionable deceivers the world has ever known… and they have agencies and entire industries backing their incessant spin-doctoring. But even the nuggets and morsels that get spun into outrageous narratives are vapid, empty fabrications themselves. There’s no substance. None. And that’s going to suddenly become apparent to everyone on Earth in the course of a few days. I don’t know the truth; nobody I know knows the truth. In the decades-old climate of compartmentalization, coverup and plausible deniability, there’s no one on the face of the Earth who actually knows what’s going on. Oh sure, there’s a master plan; there’s actually more than a hundred of them! I’ve had my fingers in a few… and after thirty years of meticulous skullduggery, I haven’t a clue which masters I’ve served, or which I’ve thwarted… or whether I’ve affected any cause at all. It’s a fucking mess… and that’s the god’s-honest truth.”

The irony wasn’t lost on me… that Felix was basically saying that the truth of the matter was that average Joe Citizen was utterly helpless in trying to discern the truth of his political situation. The best that anyone could do, I inwardly concluded, was to gather as many perspectives as possible, and to hold them in mind as mere possibilities. The trick would be to invest one’s belief in none of them, if indeed one felt a strong desire to enter into the political farce at all.

And that kinda did it for the everyday world of the average earthling: it was an indecipherable mess. I had no argument, so I shifted gears once again.

“What about all this ‘higher frequency’ stuff?”

“What about it?”

“Do you think there’s anything to it? Are we being bathed in and penetrated by some galactic high vibes on some cosmic schedule? Or is that just more New Age fabrication?”

Felix pondered for a moment. “I wish I could measure it, or at least know how to measure such a thing.” He shrugged. “But I can’t dismiss it altogether… mostly because I feel it. There’s something external and unseen that’s prodding us. Maybe we created it ourselves. But whatever it is– this higher frequency– it’s nothing like the New Agers would have us believe.”

“How so?”

“It’s not supportive. It’s irritating, destructive even. It’s a polarizing frequency. It pushes us to our personal limits… and then it’s up to us to break on through those barriers we find ourselves up against. It’s designed to drive us crazy, so we can see all the places crazy has been. It’s a provocation like a gun to the head that says ‘Evolve or die.’ There’s no comfort in this high vibe. It’s like a sweltering sun during a heatwave; it makes you seek out the shade, just for the sake of survival. It poisons and taints everything external, making familiar comforts uncomfortable. Ultimately, it drives us inward, to seek solace in ourselves– in our own self-reliance, in our freedom to be as we are. It strips us naked of all the illusions we’ve gathered over lifetimes. No, it’s not there to coddle us, or fix us, or entrain us to a new reality. It’s here to destroy us– our cherished delusions– and all of the prisons we’ve built. If it’s love, it’s the toughest love there is, the kind I’d expect from Lucifer himself.”

“Will it ever stop?”

“Nope. It’ll always be there… getting more and more intense, for the outward-seeking eye. It’s as though external reality has an expiry date; all the old structures and materials get too hot to handle, so we’re forced to bring in the absolutely new, from our innermost knowing. Now that’s evolution!”

And with that, we were back at camp again and it was starting to get dark. We were both hungry, so Felix got busy building a fire as I rustled up some pasta and a pot of water. Wild onions and puffballs were easy to find, even in the half-light. It wouldn’t be fancy, but it would definitely be good.

Over dinner, Felix reopened the conversation, kind of chastising me for the relative superficiality of my most recent queries. “Don’t you have something more meaty you’d like to discuss?”

I wasn’t sure if that was a subtle jab at the lack of meat in our dinner, but I took the question at face value and tried to think what I REALLY wanted to ask Felix. He was obviously in the mood to be accommodating and forthcoming. After a moment’s pause I dove straight into the heart of the matter.

“What prompts a lifelong Mossad agent to defect anyway? And while we’re at it, how is something like that even remotely possible? I mean, there’s gotta be some serious safeguards against agents going rogue. I’d think that’s about the most intolerable situation of all for the puppet-masters and string-pullers. How’d you manage it?”

Felix was smiling widely. I could tell that he liked my question. And as I was to find out before the night was over, the answer to that question would open up the gnarliest can of worms ever!

“I think I’ll tell you a story,” he began slowly, “one from my training days more than thirty years ago.” He paused to poke the stray embers in the fire and to organize the tale in his mind. “I have a lot of secrets, but honestly, the inevitability of my eventual defection was clear to me even before I had begun my training in earnest. This is a tale I’ve scarcely told.”

He leaned back into the cool shadows and began. “You don’t really decide for yourself one day that you’re going to be a spy. Those who would decide that for themselves usually make for really bad spies. I was eighteen years old and military service was mandatory in Israel. Like most of the other young men my age, I was determined to make the best of it. I’d already figured out that fighting the inevitable was just plain stupid. So I showed up to basic training with a good attitude; that already had me cast in a favourable light… at least among those who watch from the shadows.

“Physically, I was really only average. I could keep up well enough to the physical challenges, but it was my mental stamina and dexterity which finally set me apart. You have to understand that the main purpose of basic training in any military is to break a soldier’s spirit, to break his independent will. And the basic-training staff knows this all too well… and I wasn’t easily broken. So there were a couple of months of real hell, where my superiors threw everything at me to shatter my resolve to essentially remain myself and not become just another toy in their army playpen. The irony is that the ones who prove themselves to be rather bomb-proof end up being selected for special service. When I clandestinely received my invitation from Mossad, I jumped on it, and the rest of the guys in basic training were left to assume that I’d finally been kicked out or had found the foolish gumption to desert. Yeah, I took a stab at the life being offered.

“Mossad special training is really a whole other deal, completely separate from regular military. We were assigned individual rooms in large dormitories, where there was little to nothing in the way of communal life. The compartmentalization begins on day one. Mossad ain’t no kibbutz.

“I was lucky to have gotten in. New recruit training sessions had already been underway for several weeks, but a spot opened up in the barracks apartment building due to a sudden departure. I showed up to the Registrar’s a few hours earlier than expected and asked for the key to my new place. The Registrar didn’t see any reason why not… to let me get settled in and comfortably oriented. I got my key: Room 1433.

“From the outside, the barracks building looked like a regular cheap apartment building, but no balconies, just a crap load of windows. It looked to be about twenty stories high. When I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fourteenth floor I noticed immediately that there was no thirteen. It had been omitted. Of course that meant that I would be living on the ACTUAL thirteenth floor even though it was labelled as the fourteenth. I found that to be amusingly absurd.

“The tiny room was easy enough to find, but as I stood in front of it I noticed that the door was slightly ajar. It wasn’t even locked! Oh well. As its new occupant I barged right in… only to find that the previous tenant hadn’t quite vacated it yet. And even more surprisingly, that the former occupant was an asian woman. I really wasn’t expecting that.

“She was gathering the last of her things; a cardboard box sat open on the tiny desk. I had startled her, but when I met her gaze, it seemed that her eyes held a more genuine enduring fear, subtle and yet insistent. I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but it went the direction of why she was leaving. When I verbalized the question, she couldn’t answer. Those black eyes said that there was too much to tell. Fair enough, and I’m just some stranger, after all.

“‘Come, I want to show you something,’ she suddenly said, grabbing a notepad and a pen from the box. She pushed the box aside to make room for herself and for me to peer over her shoulder, as she started telling me a story, complete with illustrations. It went something like this…

“Well, the first thing she did was write across the top of the page a simple formula, a mathematical equation. I know, right? An asian woman… and here we are doing math on the first date! There was no preamble to this, no explanation, no context given, but she dove straight into this scenario right out of a physics class or something.

“Alice, Bob, Cameron and David live on a giant magic ball– she’s telling it with this really cute accent though. Anyway, Alice lives at the shoreline of a small lake 2 miles across. Bob lives on an island halfway across the lake. Cameron lives a mile past the island on the far shore directly across from Alice and Bob. David has a boat and some infallible measuring devices for measuring the curvature of the ball that they all live upon.”

I shuffled nervously in my seat and looked unflinchingly at Felix. I was just about to object to where this appeared to be heading, but he quickly resumed the tale to pre-empt me.

“Leaving one of the infallible measuring devices with Alice, David rows his boat from Alice’s shoreline out to Bob on the island a mile away. When he arrives on the island he radios back to Alice to ask how far over the horizon– vertically– he is according to the device. Alice informs him that he is 8 vertical inches over the horizon from her perspective. David turns on another of the devices and hands it to Bob, and has him confirm that the infallible device indicates that Alice is also 8 vertical inches over Bob’s horizon there on the island. Alice and Bob are in perfect agreement, which is also in agreement with the mathematical calculation.

“Then, David rows his boat the next mile to Cameron on the far shoreline. When he arrives, he radios back to Bob on the island to ask how far over the horizon he is. Bob confirms the expected answer of 8 inches. This makes sense to David, as the second mile was identical to the first mile, so 8 inches in the first mile and 8 inches more in the second mile. Next, David radios Alice and is somewhat perplexed to find out that he is now 32 inches over Alice’s horizon. He checks the math and finds that it is indeed correct. The device he has given to Cameron confirms that Alice’s device is 32 vertical inches over the horizon and 2 miles away. Bob, who has been listening in on the radio chatter is really perplexed. He can confirm that Alice is 8 inches over the horizon a mile away in one direction, and Cameron is 8 inches over the horizon a mile away in the opposite direction. But Alice and Cameron are 32 inches over each other’s horizon!?? That doesn’t really make much sense to Bob, so he asks David what the device on the rowboat reads for the amount of curvature experienced during the entire two-mile journey, and the infallible device indicates 0 curvature experienced. David begins to wonder whether the infallible measuring devices are in fact malfunctioning because it just doesn’t seem to add up. But no, all of the values given are absolutely correct.

“She said it twice,” Felix emphasized, “that all of the values given were absolutely correct. And that was the story she chose to tell me in that brief moment of our first and only meeting… as though it was the damnedest thing ever.”

“As far as stories go,” I reckoned, “it’s not that great.”

“That’s what I thought!” agreed Felix. “The whole thing was surreal and seriously absurd– not so much the contents of her tale, though the math seemed kinda wonky, but rather that she chose to tell me this with genuine concern and palpable fear… all in answer to what I thought was an innocuous question!

“She kept looking at me imploringly with those big black eyes… and before I could ask her for something– anything– in the way of further explanation, there was an abrupt knock on the door which was still mostly ajar. There in the open doorway stood a uniformed security guard… military police? I don’t know. He curtly told the asian woman that he was there to escort her out… away? I don’t remember exactly what he said. She nodded to him in acquiescence and turned sharply to me. I reached for the box on the desk and said ‘Your things…’ And she said matter-of-factly ‘Those are yours.’ I mumbled something in agreement as I read a definitive question in her eyes. The fear had been put into words and it asked ‘Am I about to be taken out back and shot?’ And then she turned and left with her escort. And I was left with a quirky math problem and a box of her belongings. Weird.”

“So what was in the box?” I asked as though the story might yet be salvageable.

“The only interesting contents were some photocopies of some really old historic documents, maybe letters or memoirs, but only fragments. Two of them I found to be of significant interest.” Here Felix reached into his pocket to access his wallet.

“What? You keep them on you?”

“I knew that one day we’d have this conversation. These are just copies of the photocopies.” He handed me two sheets of paper freshly unfolded. “I also corrected the archaic spellings in most cases. As near as I can tell they were originally written in english, though that’s about the last thing I’d expect. Have a look.”

They were a bit difficult to penetrate upon first perusal, but I could immediately see where they tied in with the story. This is what I read:

In close order, and with permission, in collusion and established abidance with the Byzantine Entente (1454), and incursionary to the borders of the Orient under the esteemed Elders, let it come to pass that troublesome recreants of the whole Earth shall imminently receive by agency of Divine Authority in scientific craft, demonstrations and proofs steeped in esoteric maths to confabulate all position in body and mind pertaining to the common conceptualization of Home. Henceforth, apostates and magi alike will suffer the confusion of directional orientation and profound dislocation when practicing their traditional arts upon the Good Earth. Furthermore, in the subordinate mind, behind a veil of Absolute secrecy to the very Self, the inaccommodation of collective and common experience for the sharing of multiple perspective and indeed common sense will be achieved with the willful acceptance of the spherical world as the New Ground of Being. The desired resultant can be reliably shown as a fractious and ineffectual psyche unable to act in communal defiance henceforth. Individual isolation together with a protracted period of fierce competitiveness shall ensue in ubiquity among men, within men, and indeed shall it prevail upon the whole Earth until such time that the globular infection becomes thoroughly dismantled in the subordinate mind once again, and consequently, finally, underfoot, in centuries hence… by the will of Divine Authority.
-Brother Scribe Fernando of The Alumbrados, Seville, 1490

And the second one:

Luthor D’Magus (Rus’ 1143): North layeth the inmost pode of naught dimension. South be the circumferal antipode, directionally; and maximally distant as the length of the radius ascribed. West turns the deosil arc, East the widdershins same. Up is always up, and down forever down. Inward is in the contemplation of the dimensionless northern pode, and outward lies everywhere beyond the southern antipode. Thus ruleth the directions for local magicks. And, in the works of collective sorceries beyond the circle of the world, the convention of a consensus be agreed upon– all ye magi– for the designation of cardinal points outside the magick circle. And all within the circle be ye oriented to the same inmost pode. And thus whirls the conjuring of universal magicks proper. Fare thee well.

I nodded to Felix with the papers still in hand. “Okay, I kinda get it,” I said hesitantly. “But really? REALLY? Do we really have to go there?”

Felix laughed a good hearty genuine laugh and said “Yup. Welcome to the f–”

“Don’t say it!” I interjected. “Just don’t say it. Give me some time to think on this. That this is the answer to my question about your inevitable defection… is truly bizarre. But yeah… I get it. I get it,” I kept insisting.

Felix was obviously pleased. I think he was just glad for the intellectual company. He must have suffered a strange isolation these last 30 years. I told him that I would take the information to bed with me and we could discuss it the next day.

“That is precisely what I want,” he said. “I have no desire to tell you outright what to think about all this. I’d rather hear what you might make of it without the poison of my own interpretation. But let me add just one more thing… and this doesn’t come from any obscure historical sources. It’s just something I heard a long time ago that instantly made sense. It is this:

“Thoughts are electrical, emotions magnetic.”

It was fully dark now. We let the fire burn out and retired to bed. I took a teaspoon of kratom to quash my restless mind, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to sleep with lightning striking in my brain all night. Kratom worked to smooth out all of my disturbances in both body and mind. I slept well.

The older I get the more difficult I find it to sleep past 6:00 am. I was up with the sun as Felix elected to properly sleep in. I needed some alone-time anyway, and I do my best contemplating in the early part of the day. And here I should point out that contemplation is about my favourite activity in the whole world– better than sex, if you ask me.

The raptors can read my mind, it seems. For some reason, I was expecting Eagle to attend these contemplations but wasn’t surprised when Vulture showed up… almost hovering impossibly motionless right above me.

Vulture’s gaze looks to a new vision…

I had my laptop to check the basic math and verify a few things. I quickly saw how volatile was the topical arena I was entering. I understood almost immediately that the subject which had been broached by Felix’s stupid little story was about the most contentious subject on the entire internet! Huh, who knew?

What I further discovered was that there was so much here for thought and speculation. There was so much to unpack and consider! After about five hours I was ready to make my initial report back to Felix.

“Good morning,” I greeted Felix as he emerged from the tent. It was already past eleven, so the statement was still true for only a little while longer. He muttered and nodded, said something about coffee, and came over to revive the fire. I put the kettle on for him, realizing again that I was much more of a morning person than was he.

“So what’ve you got for me?” he asked as we waited for the fire to rev back up.

“Almost too much,” I had to admit. “It’s an overwhelming topic… which, I guess, brings up the first really important point I’d like to make. Well, two points, really. The first is about open-mindedness in general. Very simply, open-mindedness is about entertaining alternative possibilities. There’s no requirement to invest any belief or even any emotion in those new possibilities. The only thing that can be lost in any open-minded inquiry is close-mindedness itself. Everything else is pure profit.” Felix nodded his agreement.

“The second thing– and this cannot be overstated– is that if we are to grant the possibility of a non-spherical Earth, the very first thing we must do is grant that such a consideration necessarily means that a massive deception is involved. And, I’ll add, that there must be a very powerful motivation for initiating and perpetuating such an enormous fraud… right into our modern technological age.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Felix. The kettle was boiling. He retrieved it from the leaping flames with a sturdy stick. Then, using his sleeve as an oven mitt, he poured the water into the coffee bodum. “It’s certainly not a subject to be taken lightly, or, as is quite often the case, dismissively.”

“Exactly,” I said. “To consider the topic at all, absolutely demands a deeply ponderous inquiry. Dabblers and ‘two-minute debunkers’ need not bother; they are a service to no one. Now, having said that, I’m not exactly qualified to unravel the whole tangled yarn with a mere five hours of cursory research and these contemplative beginnings. I will say that I’m fascinated and that there are intriguing implications with deep historic reverberations involved with what you shared with me yesterday. The asian woman was actually brilliant in delivering that almost innocuous-seeming story as she did. In just a couple of minutes, she busted the topic wide open, and pointed directly to the heart of the matter.”

“And what do you feel is the true heart of the matter?” Felix was sipping his coffee now and settling into the rapture of a promising discussion.

“Let’s call it the inherent problems with multiple perspectives while residing on a sphere. Some interesting things begin to happen when you have three or more perspectives living on the same sphere.

“So the first thing I did this morning was to check the mathematical formula given for the asian woman’s story. As near as I can tell, that’s the Rowbotham formula, and is generally accepted as correct. Interestingly though, when I typed ‘curvature of earth’ into Google, I wasn’t immediately directed to Wikipedia as I’d expected. I’m so used to Wikipedia coming up first on the page for any science-related searches. Not so this time. Eventually I did confirm that the eight-inches-per-mile-squared formula is generally accepted by mainstream science– Stephen Hawking included.

“Now, the interesting perspective in the story is Bob’s, looking from the island in the middle of the lake. Alice is 8 inches over the horizon in one direction, while Cameron is 8 inches over the horizon in the opposite direction… and yet they– Alice and Cameron– are 32 inches over the horizon from each other, exactly twice what Bob might expect. And if we want to take the same scenario to an extreme, imagine 25,000 volunteers aligned along the equator at exactly one mile intervals. The arc of curvature is identical for each and every mile between them. They will all, of course, measure the same 8-inch vertical curvature between themselves and the nearest volunteer. If we tally the results: 25,000 times 8 inches per one-mile arc is a little over three miles… which falls short of the accepted value by a little less than 16,000 miles (twice the diameter of the sphere is the total vertical displacement due to curvature in one circumnavigation).

“So each person can accurately calculate the total curvature independently and individually from their own perspective, but they cannot share the task with others and arrive at a reasonable answer collectively. In terms of experiencing the curvature of living on a sphere, perspective becomes separated, isolated. Common sense breaks down, and with it, conscience.”

Felix raised an eyebrow at that but allowed me to continue.

“The next interesting thing I found was that living on the surface of a sphere is reasonably supportive of a binary system. When you have only two perspectives, each will calculate and measure values which agree with respect to the other. As long as they’re only considering the arc between them– their separation– they will always agree on the value of that separation. But when a third perspective is introduced, the consensus deviates from common sense. It stops making sense in simple common arithmetic terms… and that reinforces the supremacy of singular perspective, ego. Each person residing on the surface of a sphere stands on the singular top of the world– the master perspective. A binary system for the interaction with ego’s neighbours is supported, as long as everything is considered in strict dualistic terms. The math supports it, and consensus reality remains coherent within that strict binary system; that’s what living on a sphere supports.

“And it doesn’t matter whether we’ve each done the math or not. The spherical earth is deeply conditioned and embedded in our individual psyches as well as in the collective consciousness of humanity. For the most part, our subconscious minds have accepted the ball-earth program which inherently makes it difficult to relate to multiple perspectives and favours duality. It’s a world view that has cognitive dissonance built right in… and it’s spatially, mathematically based.

“On our globe earth, we have great difficulty relating to each other. That much is obvious. We have no fixed directions. If I’m on the telephone to someone on the other side of the globe and I ask them to point west, they will be pointing in the opposite direction to what I call west. If I ask them to point down, they will be pointing in the direction I call up. And the globe is always spinning, so the directions of the world in its larger context are constantly changing every moment. We cannot agree on the basic directions, except locally. Our cosmology has been set adrift with no possibility of ever finding our bearings. There are no directions in space, just relative motions.

“I’m not so much looking at this as a physical reality but as a psychological reality. Accepting the ball-earth paradigm definitely poses unique challenges when multiple perspectives meet.” I paused there a moment as I felt I had concluded my first major point.

“I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed,” said Felix. “But surely there’s more.”

I exaggerated a nod. “Let’s see… where next?”

“Surprise me.”

“Okay, as you might’ve guessed, our inability to define directions agreeable to all of humanity in any given moment– that idea came from the historical excerpt you provided– the one by Luthor D’Magus. He seemed to be explaining how to go about assigning directions pertaining to a magic circle encompassing the whole world and beyond. The directions have always been central to earth-based magic, and I have to surmise that the instructions for defining and assigning them were not referring to a globe.”

“I concur,” interjected Felix.

“I’m also going to assume that magic has always played a central–albeit a clandestine– role in humanity’s collective experience. Many are convinced that the world is currently controlled and manipulated by Black Magic ritual and blood sacrifice. And it would seem that the dark occultists are quite effective in their arts… while at the same time, humanity can’t seem to make a magic fart stink. It’s as though one side knows something vital of which the other side lacks awareness completely. Could it be as simple as not being able to locate ourselves and our relations due to the vagaries of directionality on a spherical earth?”

“I’ve definitely wondered the same,” agreed Felix. “Let’s talk cosmology, if you don’t mind.”

He must have known that this was something I could speak to extensively. I smiled and dove right in.

“Cosmologies are important. The human being is a mythic creature. Let’s look at the cosmology we’re being force-fed in the modern age.

“The Hero’s Journey, that sacred mythological quest which defines the very meaning of our lives, has been cast adrift in space. Not only do we reside in ever-changing relativity, but we are surrounded by unthinkable distances of the most inhospitable environment imaginable– outer space. Each of us is merely the tiniest most insignificant speck of a random accident hidden away in unfathomable vastness. We are nothing and we are lost… with scarce hope for redemption. We are isolated. That is our modern scientific cosmology.

“It defeats the very purpose for having a cosmology. It disconnects us from everything in the deepest parts of our psyche. There is no Hero’s Journey in the Copernican cosmology. We have no meaningful past, no real sense of community, no inherent purpose. We are all just drifting through space… like dust.”

“So where did this abomination of a cosmology come from?”

“I suspect that the deepest origins are Aristotelian, but it took root primarily with the scientific enlightenment and specifically with the Copernican Program about 500 years ago.” Felix expressed his approval of the term ‘Copernican Program’ and I continued. “Beginning with the globe earth and the heliocentric model, numerous subsequent theories and mathematical proofs were piled on, in particular, a total revamp of gravity.”

“Ah yes, gravity,” said Felix wistfully, “such a simple thing when considered merely as a terrestrial phenomenon. But take it out into space, and oh what a monstrosity it becomes!”

“I know, right? A number of years ago I read a book by a guy who had come up with an alternative theory for gravity. His simple explanation was that everything was in continual expansion. The earth is getting bigger and so am I, so being in close proximity we push against each other. The book went through all the ways in which this simple explanation could explain the majority of the effects attributed to gravity. I didn’t find it all that compelling, but the very idea that a guy even COULD come up with a completely different explanation for gravitational effects that worked about as well as the modern theory, that said something about modern gravitational theory.”

“Most scientists agree that it’s a weak theory; it’s flawed. So what do you think about Relative Density instead of gravity?” I wasn’t sure what he meant, so Felix explained. “Here on good old terra firma, if I’m holding a helium balloon in one hand and a rock in the other, I can explain their motions upon release without even needing to resort to any mention of gravity. When I let go of the helium balloon, it’s the relative density of the helium compared to the surrounding air which makes the balloon rise. Likewise, when I release the stone, it is more dense relative to the surrounding air and therefore falls. Objects with lower relative density than their surroundings rise, while objects with greater relative density than their surroundings fall. The motion is an inherent property or expression of relative density; no gravity required.”

“I like that,” I said. “It’s simple and elegant, and amenable to common sense. It seems that gravity only gets hopelessly complicated when we take it out into space. And then we get walls of chalkboards filled with complex, nearly-impenetrable mathematics which inform us that space itself is curved. What does that even mean? And now we’re told that the known universe is up to 97% dark matter. We can’t see the dark matter; we don’t know how to detect it, but the math assures us that it assuredly exists– it HAS to, or else everything is wrong. The cosmology we’ve adopted is mathematical… and is nearly impossible to relate to in any meaningful human terms. It serves us in no beneficial manner; it’s psychologically devastating.

“And here’s an interesting thing,” I continued, “even if we have the gumption to attempt venturing outside our world, out into space, currently we have no choice but to subordinately align ourselves with the very voice of Authority, the only ones who can promise to deliver us safely into space… and hopefully back home again.”

“There’s no independent verification that space even exists,” added Felix. “Our entire knowledge of space comes exclusively via official scientific authority. There’s absolutely nothing that we can test or verify for ourselves.”

“We can buy a telescope and make our own observations,” I offered lamely.

“Yes, but we will just automatically frame our observations firmly within the paradigm we’ve been given, without question. We will never likely consider that the moon may be a dragon’s egg, for instance. Why bother creating untestable hypotheses? It’s much much easier to just assume that the Authority is correct and has no penchant for deception. The one who hypothesizes that the moon is a dragon’s egg will be the very last to be taken to the moon anyway.”

I could only nod and quietly laugh. From a writer’s point of view, the story we’d been given over the last five hundred years seemed a bit contrived; it wasn’t really all that believable. The pieces were made to fit no matter how clumsy and unwieldy the whole thing got… and it was all based on math that hardly anyone understood. All of this was true, but it didn’t prove anything.

“What do you think of NASA?” Felix asked.

“Oh fuck,” I really guffawed now. “There is something a bit off with NASA,” I deliberately understated.

“So what was it for you that first made you ask dafuq?”

“I have some serious doubts about the Apollo missions… and the fact that no one’s gone back to the moon since 1972, but there’s something more recent that irks me even more. It’s the women on the International Space Station with their long hair, giving interviews.” Felix laughed uproariously; he knew what I meant. “It’s like their hair is hairsprayed straight up in a permanent Medusa style. When you watch them move throughout the ISS their hair does not behave at all like long hair would in zero gravity. What really bugs me about it is that it’s so fucking obvious… and yet the general public watches these interviews and accepts them at face value. There is without question something deceptive going on there. Hey NASA, what’s with the crazy hairdos on the ISS?”

“I know what you mean,” added Felix, “if it was a B-movie you’d be disappointed with the director. Surely he could’ve come up with something better than stiffly starched hair. It’s not at all believable.”

“Yeah, just that one thing is enough for me to question absolutely everything about NASA. Three trillion dollars over the years for what? Bad B-rated movies? NASA is a bad taxpayer investment when judged on its returns. At least what it offers up as scientific proof should be solid, unassailable. But all we get is pageantry, clumsy and grotesque.”

“We could list hundreds of NASA fails, but there’s nothing you or I could say that would definitively prove the fraud,” said Felix. “There’s no singular elegant argument that can stand as proof one way or the other, so what’s the bottom line for you?”

“I’m not qualified to say exactly how reality is; maybe the shape of the World is irrational. I know we’ve just scratched the surface of this topical iceberg, but just with what we’ve touched on today I have every reason to question the cosmology I’ve been given. Occam’s Razor is lost in space. Maybe together– all of us– we can hit the reset and reconsider everything.

“We often wonder how the World got lured into this matrix reality, whether there was a precipitating event, a base program that enabled the rest. I think that it’s worth considering the possibility that the Copernican Program fits the bill quite well. It is widely touted as our enlightenment. How enlightened have we truly become these last five-hundred years?

“The closest we have to a relatable modern collective myth is Star Wars. We are the rebels arrayed against the sprawling empire; the Hero’s Journey is out in space. And the Authority will allow us our plucky victories on the Big Screen… just as long as we stay focused outwardly, always thinking that the Great Mystery is out there in the vastness– the final frontier and all. But the endless Mystery is right here, on Earth, inwardly… and outwardly reflected, projected through the filters which are the programs running in our minds, shaping the world of our experience. Shouldn’t we ALWAYS question that? As soon as we accept the Earth as a physical sphere, then perhaps the Copernican Program is off and running…

“And that’s our cosmology, the story we tell ourselves of who we are, where we came from, and what’s our purpose for being. It’s a story worth attending to. But the answers aren’t easy and the inquiry not easily dismissed… if you really take on genuinely, authentically, the possibility of a Grand Deception… you owe it to yourself to investigate thoroughly if it mightn’t indeed be so.

“In the truth-seekers communities we’ve always been led to believe that time is the main culprit in our entrapment… and that the magical Now will deliver us from this evil. But maybe it’s time to consider that our problems in relating to one another are more spatial in nature. We’ve been handed a world that’s spatially irrational. Now, as I’ve already said, maybe the true shape of the world really is irrational; currently, the data supports such a conclusion. We can’t really get very far in our mathematics without introducing irrational numbers. Circles exist, and the relationship of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is irrational– not able to be precisely defined– that relationship being called pi. And then there’s the whole realm of imaginary numbers too. What the fuck is the square root of negative one? It’s the basis for all imaginary numbers– but we have no clue what it might actually be! We only know what it’s not. It’s not a positive number; it’s not any negative number; and it’s not zero. It’s something else… something else, interestingly, that we can’t even imagine. And why does this matter? Because the square root of negative one is used extensively in developing modern technology, especially electronics. Our technology couldn’t exist without it– at least not in the current mathematical system we employ. We utilize irrational and imaginary numbers pretty extensively in engineering our cool modern gadgetry. What does that tell us about the reality we inhabit? I honestly don’t know, but I’m posing the question… because I think it’s high time for some meaningful answers.”

“Can it be done?” asked Felix cynically. “You said yourself that this is the most contentious topic on the internet right now. Is it even possible to have this discussion?”

“I think it is. Maybe not with the mainstream followers, but there’s enough people out there now who don’t just automatically invest their egos into the things they’re discussing. They know how to hold new possibilities at arm’s length and give them due consideration. Two years ago, however, I’ll grant that it was still impossible. Now… maybe we’re ready.”

“I like the irony of it… that the most divisive topic there is will be the one to finally unite us. Well Niels, welcome to the Flat Earth Collective Knowing…”

“FECK!”
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Also, look for the controversial geocentric documentary called The Principle.

A good introduction:

The larger a spinning object is, the slower the “safe” rate of rotation.

At the equator, the edge velocity of Earth is approximately 1040 mph, a very substantial edge velocity!

At the outer edge of the atmosphere (which is said to rotate in lockstep with the Earth), and bordering the near-perfect vacuum of space, the edge velocity would be significantly greater… and Earth’s gravitational pull would be significantly reduced due to the distance from Earth… yet the atmosphere stays put due to gravity– science’s red-headed stepchild.

This is very simple, straightforward and very well done (maybe a tad over-explained):

Some good questions:

A good primer to get you started: