Tea Leaves LA

Happy Friday the 13th! You’ll be pleased to now that this is the first of THREE Friday the 13ths this year, occurring exactly 13 weeks apart. Though there are often three Friday the 13ths in a year, this year is particularly rare because it’s a leap year. A year like this won’t occur again until 2040.

And if that isn’t enough rare superstition for you, keep in mind that it’s also 2012, the Year of Impending Mayan Doom. Yay! Bad luck for everyone!

The origin of this unlucky day and number is appropriately shrouded in mystery (because most of the stories you’ve heard are complete fabrications). Many claim superstitions about the number 13 date back to Babylonian times, so we’ll start there.

The Code of Hammurabi allegedly omits the 13th law because Babylonians believed the number brought bad luck. This is absolutely untrue. The original manuscript contained no numbers, and it was actually the 1910 translation by L.W. King that omitted the 13th law. Other translations, such as Robert F. Harper’s, include the number 13.

Another popular myth is that the superstition dates back to Norse mythology. It is said that when the mischievous god Loki showed up uninvited to a dinner, making him the 13th guest, one of Odin’s sons, Baldr, was accidentally killed. I skimmed the Prose Edda this morning, specifically the tale of Baldr’s death and while Loki does crash the dinner party, there is no mention of the number of guests in attendance.

And that brings us to the Christian/Biblical ties to Friday the 13th. Everyone knows there were 13th guests at the Last Supper, which is why Judas betrayed Jesus. There are also claims that biblical tragedies often occurred on Friday. Eve gave Adam the apple on a Friday, the Great Flood began on a Friday, and Jesus was executed on a Friday. If anyone can find actual historical evidence to support any of these Friday claims, I will buy you an army of unicorns (standard shipping rates apply).

Fast forward to 1906. A Boston businessman and author named Thomas W. Lawson published a book in serial form that became surprisingly popular. Friday, the Thirteenth tells the story of a greedy stock broker who sends Wall Street into a panicked financial frenzy on a Friday the 13th in 1907. Lawson’s serial novel is the actual origin of our modern superstitions about this date. Many academics agree that attempts to root the superstition in ancient times began after this novel was well-known.

As the father of Friday the 13th, Lawson wasn’t exempt from the bad luck surrounding the date. In 1907, a schooner named after him sank on Friday the 13th, the same date he modeled his novel around.

Quite a coincidence, right? It’s up to you to decide which superstitions to believe and which ones to ignore. So I wish you all a safe Friday the 13th, and keep an eye out for black cats, ladders, and deranged killers in hockey masks.

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The effects of misinformation, propaganda and other forms of psychological manipulation have been studied since the 1940s. Conspiracy theorists have traced the long history of this type of “mind control”, citing the government’s MK-Ultra project and patents that claim the brain can be influenced and manipulated by subliminal messages hidden in radio and tv broadcasts.

University of Utah’s Jacob Jensen recently published a study that revealed you don’t need electromagnetic mind control waves to skew the public’s perception. All you need to do is place your propaganda neatly between actual facts, and the human brain will do the work for you.

“Two studies have now shown that fiction (written and televised) can produce a delayed message effect,” Jensen and his colleagues write. This is troubling, they add, noting, “People are bombarded by mass media every day all over the world, and a sizeable (and growing) body of mass communication research has demonstrated that much of this content is distorted in a multitude of ways.”

Even if your initial response to information on television is skeptical, that skepticism wanes as time goes by. Your brain forgets the origin of the misinformation and without a source, falsehoods can be filed away as facts.

This is known as the sleeper effect, when one retains a piece of information but gradually forget that it came from an unreliable source. A 2004 meta-analysis confirmed this effect is highly successful in convincing people that propaganda and misinformation is factual information. Though the effect works with any medium, television and other visual medias are the easiest methods of conveying misinformation to a large audience. 

These studies show how dangerous misinformation, like every program on FOX News, can be to the general public. It is very easy to influence someone’s world beliefs by hiding falsehoods within a fact-based model (like newscasts). Be careful and think critically while seeking out the facts. Never rely on anyone’s “research” except your own. 

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The doomsday astronomy is really getting out of hand. I won’t lie, I saw both 90’s asteroid-destroys-Earth movies. I think most humans are fascinated by the idea that something from space could end existence as we know it. 

With the Mayan end-of-the-world deadline rapidly approaching, amateur astronomers and conspiracy theorists are churning out theories about comets guiding mysterious brown dwarf planets toward Earth and NASA’s obvious cover-up of the entire impending disaster.

I think it’s time to clear up a few things about the comet Elenin and the supposed brown dwarf Nibiru. Let’s explore the origin of the theories, which date back to Babylonian times. 

The ancient Babylonians worshiped many gods, with Marduk being their highest creator god. Each god had its own planet, and Marduk’s was the largest in the sky. The Babylonians called it “Nibiru”. Nibiru rose and became visible around the fall equinox, a sign that the Babylonian’s Nibiru could be Jupiter. It’s also possible the ancient civilization called all stars used for navigation “Nibiru”.  Regardless, Nibiru is not an extra planet that will show itself in October 2012. 

Sci-fi writer Zecharia Sitchin furthered the myth by using Nibiru in his writings. He believed an ancient alien race lived on the planet, which visited our solar system once every 4,000 years. His interpretations of physics and mythology have been ridiculed by the scientific community. Though he plays a large part in keeping the Nibiru myth alive, his findings and conclusions are based on nothing scientific or academic. 

Elenin is a distant long-period comet discovered by Leonard Elenin in 2009. The conspiracy has changed over the years to suit the scientific evidence. First, theorists speculated the comet itself would impact Earth. Now it is believed the comet is dragging a large brown dwarf planet toward Earth which would cause a catastrophic collision.

NASA and amateur astronomers are carefully tracking Elenin, though it poses no real threat to Earth. It will pass closely by Earth on October 16, 2012. When I say “close”, I mean close in terms of the size of the entire universe. It is predicted to be no closer than 22 million miles from Earth. For comparison, the short-period Honda comet passed by Earth on August 15 at a distance of only 5 million miles. You didn’t even notice, did you?

Neither of these cosmic bodies pose a real or impending threat to Earth. It is merely an Internet legend, keeping itself alive through conspiracy forums and YouTube videos. Though it’s very easy to believe that NASA withholds certain information, I don’t think there’s any merit to the Nibiru/Elenin theory. It is a patchwork theory crafted from several sources, including works of science fiction, that probably provides a nice distraction to what NASA might actually be doing and hiding from the public. 

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Some people are blessed with youthful looks. Keanu Reeves is one of those people, and because he hasn’t appeared to age over the course of his twenty-year career, conspiracy theorists suspect Reeves might be an immortal.

The site keanuisimmortal.com houses all of the ‘evidence’ that reveals the many previous lives of the actor. The most famous person believed to be Reeves is the Roman emperor Charlemagne, who died in 814. 

French actor Paul Mounet (pictured above) does look a lot like Reeves, and he is the most common previous life mentioned by theorists. They claim Mounet died under mysterious circumstances and that his body was never found. The New York Times listed Mounet’s cause of death as heart disease at age 75. I was unable to trace the claim that his body was never found, but I was also unable to find Mounet’s place of burial. 

So is Keanu Reeves an immortal, or perhaps a vampire, who has lived for thousands of years as various people in various countries? It’s definitely a fun idea to think about.

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by Kate

JoAnne Scarpellini has an interesting theory about crop circles. The retired professor of neurology believes something other than hoaxers and artists are creating the patterns that have appeared in crops, ice, sand and snow for the hundreds of years. According to Scarpellini, the circles are made by unobserved plasma events, much like lightning, that naturally creates bizarre, artistic designs in fields. 

Scarpellini works closely with the BLT Research Team, which has scientifically studied crop formations for the past 20 years. They claim changes in the electromagnetic field, mutations in seed growth, burnt crops and reports of Balls of Light in the area all point to a plasma event like the Northern Lights or ball lightning as the cause of crop formations. 

This chart highlights some of the physical evidence pointing toward a weather anomaly or plasma event as the creator behind crop circles. The BLT Research papers have been widely scrutinized, most recently by Richard Taylor. Taylor believes the “data” gathered by the BLT is actually proof crop formation creators use GPS, lasers and microwaves to build the circles. 

Whether the culprit is a group of high-tech artists or an unknown weather plasma phenomenon, it is promising that researchers are able to gather actual scientific data to explain the mysterious formations. 

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by Kate

The Georgia Guidestones created by R.C. Christian have provided Elberton County 30 years of mystery and intrigue. There is only one living person who knows the true identity of R.C. Christian, and he has sworn to take the secret to his grave. Regardless, many theorists believe they have linked the Guidestones and Christian to a 500-year-old esoteric group known as the Rosicrucian Order. 

Rosicrucianism was founded in Germany in the 1600s. Legend states a man named Christian Rosenkreuz was its founder and author of the group’s manifesto, Fama Fraternitatis (1614). It is unclear whether or not Rosenkreuz was a real person or merely a mythical founding father for the secret society. The legend detailed in Fama describes Rosenkreuz as an alchemist who became enlightened after a trip to the Middle East to study Eastern and Arab religion. He founded the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross and two more manifestos were published after 1614 describing the Rosicrucians’ esoteric Christian philosophy. 

The Rosicrucian movement gained more followers in the 1700s, and Masonic societies incorporated Rosicrucian beliefs into their philosophical guidelines. The movement spread to America, and the early 1900s saw the rise of several Rosicrucian orders, some of them still operating today.

This secret society which promoted an age of Reason and Enlightenment seems like a perfect match for the enigmatic Guidestones and the philosophy behind them. Many believe the pseudonym R.C. Christian alludes to the mythical Rosicrucian founder, Christian Rosenkreuz (which means Christian Rose-Cross in Latin). The Guidestones state: “Let these be Guidestones to an Age of Reason”. Some believe this points to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason. Paine himself was a famous Rosicrucian. 

We may never know the true identity of R.C. Christian or the group allegedly behind the Guidestones’ creation. The Rosicrucian theory does seem to fit with the message and purpose of the Guidestones. These commandments could be a new world philosophy founded on the beliefs of medieval alchemists and the politicians and thinkers who followed their manifestos. 

The Guidestones still offer intrigue and perhaps comfort to the many visitors who stop to inspect the strange monument. Each individual has their own interpretation of the true message left by R.C. Christian, and this conspiracy will probably be around for as long as the Guidestones stand on the outskirts of Elberton, Georgia.

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