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INDEX TO EVENTS ON THIS DATE (CLICK TO GO):
MAY-09-1373 [MON] Visions Of The Devil (Lady Julian, Norwich, England, Second Of Two Nights)
MAY-09-1373 [MON]LOCATION:
WHAT HAPPENED:
RESEARCH NOTES (1373-05-09/2015-07-18): [TOP]
Image of the original Church of St Julian, Norwich (left). Originally found at Wikipedia. BESIDES PHOTOS AND VIDEOS, original eyewitness accounts (uncensored and in full) are one of the hardest things to find when a researcher or researchers (like us) goes looking for the original source material for any event. With these particular events, the source is not only easy to find, it's also available for free, online[2]: http://www.catholicspiritualdirection.org/revelations.pdf In the world of the UNeXpLaiNed (or maybe it's just us that this happens to), it's rare for something like what happened in this case, to happen. Usually we have had to dig through book after book before we finally find the best original source material, and what me and Dave consider the best original source material depends on how close to an event and the witnesses involved, we can get. Sometimes the best (or the closest) we can get to an event is an eyewitness interview, word for word, with nothing removed by a secondhand source. Of course, we always look to find the original photo or video (not a copy) if we can, and talk to the original witnesses themselves, and not read it secondhand from someone else, but most times, secondhand is the best we can get, so we just have to go with the best we got and just hope that maybe someday, the real deal will come along and we won't have to take someone else's word for it anymore. Not in this case though. The witness who experienced the event herself, wrote a book about it. That's what the link above will take you to, the book itself "Showings or Revelations of Divine Love," written by Lady Julian of Norwich in 1373. Or, you can peruse through our own personally indexed (by lines)
text version with some commentary, and chapter and word indexes:
Or finally, you can just read our text version without index or
commentary:
It took us (Dave mostly) two weeks to read through it before we finally came across the demon vision part that was mentioned on page 116 of our original source, the UFO: the Definitive Guide...[1]. Dave says he's read most of it, and no disrespect to Lady Julian, who obviously loved God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, and that she totally believed in what she was writing, but most of it was a definite snooze fest, according to Dave. Also according to Dave, it could have been titled, a thousand different ways to describe how God loves me, and how much I love God, in another thousand ways. What she writes about isn't just about that, but you do have to slog through alot of the blissful and joyful adjectives before you can figure out just where a lot of the interesting parts are, like how God is both a Father and a Mother, and how that's part of the Trinity somehow. Dave was (or still is he guesses) raised a Catholic and some of what he slogged through was interesting to him, but in order to get to that he had to plow through a lot of loving adjectives, like the following: FROM: http://www.amystrange.org/revelations.txt [BACK to the TOP] "IN this [moment] suddenly I saw the red blood trickle down from under the Garland hot and freshly and right plenteously, as it were in the time of His Passion when the Garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head who was both God and Man, the same that suffered thus for me. I conceived truly and mightily that it was Himself shewed it me, without any mean. And in the same Shewing suddenly the Trinity fulfilled my heart most of joy. And so I understood it shall be in heaven without end to all that shall come there. For the Trinity is God: God is the Trinity; the Trinity is our Maker and Keeper, the Trinity is our everlasting love and everlasting joy and bliss, by our Lord Jesus Christ. And this was shewed in the First [Shewing] and in all: for where Jesus appeareth, the blessed Trinity is understood, as to my sight... "[2] And that's just like only 18 lines out of over 7,500 lines, or over 55,000 words (according to Dave's approximations). Dave can't promise he's read ever single word in the whole thing, but he does know where to go to find the more interesting parts. He even made up a kind of line# index at the VERY BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE: http://www.amystrange.org/revelations-print-index.txt [BACK to the TOP] There you can find the line numbers for the first appearances of more than 100 keywords from her book. He also added above that a chapter index and above that he listed many of the more interesting quotes from text itself. In my opinion, it all looks really professional and quite impressive. If you can spare the time, please feel free to check it our. Anyway, Dave remembers seeing in one of the YouTube documentaries about Lady Julian (I think I remember seeing that also), where the original text of the Sixteen Revelations (which were written down soon after she had them) was only twenty pages or so long. The longer version was suppose to have been written after twenty years of reflection on her visions and revelations. The one thing that she asked God about that she never really got a satisfactory answer to, at least not to her anyway, was why he allowed sin into his creation? She reflected on his answer for years, until the day she died around 1416, but was never truly satisfied with his answer that if he allowed choice, he also had allow sin. I think I remember some of that from the YouTube videos that Dave sent me, but I didn't watche them as carefully as Dave did, so I have to take his word for it, and maybe someday I'll actually find the time to fact check Dave's claim, but for now, let's just call all that an aside, and move on. WHAT'S AN ANCHORESS?: (1552-05-17/2015-07-18) [TOP] I was lucky because while Dave had to slog through that book and those videos, I got to do some research on Lady Julian from a completely different angle. Besides being considered a mystic by some people, what really interested me about her was what she did to fulfill her greatest passion which was to become an Anchoress and become even closer to God. Now hold the phone here I thought, what in Heaven's name is an Anchoress? Dave was befuddled also so we both decided that while he would slogged through the book itself, I would find out what that was and that's the kind of stuff I love to do. There was a movie by that very name on Netflix and so Dave put it on his list and maybe someday at some some point, it'll come up and he'll actually watch it. I might even watch the movie myself some day, but right now, I didn't want to see the Hollywood version just yet, maybe later, but not right now. As best as I can, I like to start my research without any preconceived perceptions, like Dave likes to say. In other words, stay away from Hollywood, and this movie looks really dramatic. So of course, I went straight to our favorite place to find out more stuff about Lady Julian and anchoresses and that place was of course Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich [BACK to the TOP] First off, no one really knows who she was before she became an Anchoress except that she was known as Lady Julian of Norwich, which is actually the name of the church she anchored herself to, "Church of St. Julian, Norwich" like the image on this page shows. Personally, I don't care about who she originally was, although Dave would like to learn more about her childhood and the the events that led up to her choosing this kind of life, which I admit might be interesting. What I was more interested in was the Anchoress part. After watching a bunch of videos and reading up on Middle Ages history, both in books and on the web, and much debate, we came up with the following definition for an Anchoress. According to a definition we cooked up, an Anchoress is a female who, during the Middle Ages (500 - 1500 AD), was so devoted to God that she first looked for someone to support her while she was an Anchoress, second, make an application to the church, and if approved she would then have a mock funeral for herself and then spend the rest of her days in a room (usually in a church) with no way out. The Anchoress would then only have three ways access the outside world to communicate or exchange food, water, waste or news with a friend, relative, or servant and one way was through an inside opening, too small for her to get out or just a door locked from the outside, or maybe she was just put on the honor system to stay in the room and never leave. The second way was a window to the outside world where she could share thoughts, conversations, or debate with anyone who came to her seeking knowledge of God. The third way was an opening that allowed her to watch services, but not escape, or maybe the whole thing is on the honor system. I found that quite interesting, and might come back to that later and do some more research and also find out if it's still going on today. THE DEVIL: (1552-05-17/2015-07-18) [TOP] But for right now, I'm being forced to research and write about the devil and a possible UFO connection. Heaven forbid I get some kind of karmonic backlash from this and spend the rest of my days in Hell watching boring videos with Dave (making the sign of the cross, just in case), but here goes. Lady Julian wrote that she had two visions of the devil, or the "fiend" as she sometimes refers to him or them, or her, but for some reason I see the devil as a guy thing (nothing personal guys), and the first time she described him as red-faced, like new-burnt tilestone. This maybe where all our conceptions or misconceptions of the Devil come from. We, or just me, might check this out later. Here are the two passages Dave found while reading Lady Julian's book, one that refers to the Devil being red-faced and also about a stench, and the second one refers to the stench again. Dave seems to think the stench involves Bigfoot somehow. FROM: http://www.amystrange.org/revelations-print-index.txt [BACK to the TOP] [FIRST PASSAGE] (LINE: 6,171): "But herein would our Courteous Lord not leave me. And I lay still till night, trusting in His mercy, and then I began to sleep. And in the sleep, at the beginning, methought the Fiend set him on my throat, putting forth a visage full near my face, like a young man's and it was long and wondrous lean: I saw never none such. The 78 (164) (LINE: 6,181) colour was RED like the tilestone when it is new-burnt, with black spots therein like black freckles-fouler than the tilestone. His hair was RED as rust, clipped in front, with full locks hanging on the temples. He grinned on me with a malicious semblance, shewing white teeth: and so much methought it the more horrible. Body nor hands had he none shapely, but with his paws he held me in the throat, and would have strangled me, but he might not. "This horrible Shewing was made [whilst I was] sleeping, and so was none other. But in all this time I trusted to be saved and kept by the mercy of God. And our Courteous Lord gave me grace to waken; and scarcely had I my life. The persons that were with me looked on me, and wet my temples, and my heart began to comfort. And anon a light smoke came in the door, with a great heat and a foul stench. I said: Benedicite Domine! it is all on fire that is here! And I weened it had been a bodily fire that should have burnt us all to death. I asked them that were with me if they felt any stench. They said, Nay: they felt none. I said: Blessed be God! For then wist I well it was the Fiend that was come to tempest me. And anon I took to that [which] our Lord had shewed me on the same day, with all the Faith of Holy Church (for I beheld it is both one), and fled thereto as to my comfort. And anon all (165) (LINE: 6,212) vanished away, and I was brought to great rest and peace, without sickness of body or dread of conscience. [SECOND PASSAGE] (LINE: 6,349): "AFTER this the Fiend came again with his HEAT and with his STENCH, and gave me much ado the stench was so vile and so painful, and also dreadful and travailous. Also I heard a bodily jangling, as if it had been of two persons; and both, to my thinking, jangled at one time as if they had holden a parliament with a great busy-ness; and all was soft muttering, so that I understood nought that they said. And all this was to stir me to despair, as methought,-seeming to me as [though] they mocked at 81 (169) (LINE: 6,362) praying of prayers which are said boisterously with [the] mouth, failing [of] devout attending and wise diligence: the which we owe to God in our prayers. "And our Lord God gave me grace mightily for to trust in Him, and to comfort my soul with bodily speech as I should have done to another person that had been travailed. Methought that busy-ness might not be likened to no bodily busy-ness. My bodily eye I set in the same Cross where I had been in comfort afore that time; my tongue with speech of Christ's Passion and rehearsing the Faith of Holy Church; and my heart to fasten on God with all the trust and the might. And I thought to myself, saying: Thou hast now great busy-ness to keep thee in the Faith for that thou shouldst not be taken of the Enemy: wouldst thou now from this time evermore be so busy to keep thee from sin, this were a good and sovereign occupation! For I thought in sooth were I safe from sin, I were full safe from all the fiends of hell and enemies of my soul. "And thus he occupied me all that night, and on the morn till it was about prime day. And anon they were all gone, and all passed; and they left nothing but stench, and that lasted still awhile; and I scorned him. And thus was I delivered from him by the virtue of Christ's Passion: for therewith is the Fiend overcome, as our Lord Jesus Christ said afore. (170) (LINE: 6,395)"[2] The UFO connection is that there have been some reports from witnesses of aliens with red faces (WHICH WE FOUND OUT LATER WAS WRONG), but neither I nor Dave remember reading about any of those, but that just means more research, and THAT is what we do here at AmyStrange.org. Besides the Bigfoot connection that Dave made earlier, one thing that Dave doesn't remember reading about in our original source, and that was the part that touch plays in the UFO phenomenon, which we have run across before while reading many of the witness or summary reports from witnesses that after being touched, they either gained knowledge, or it calmed them, or both. We did find out later, after a reread of Dave's original source, that telepathy was mentioned and touch was how they communicated telepathically. I kind of like that idea about communicating through touch, but anyway, Dave agrees with me about my telepathy and touch conclusions. Whether the message is being sent through touch or otherwise, it's all a form of some kind of telepathy. Regardless though, the passages about "touch" were still a good find. It gave us something to go on from the reread. THIS IS WHY it's always a good idea to double check our work, even if it's someone like any of you guys out there. Don't take ANYTHING we write here as gospel. This paragraph should be a good example as to why you shouldn't. But MORE IMPORTANTLY, we always welcome anyone to double check our work, not feeding you a line of crap, and HEY, you never know, you might even learn something too... ooooh scary thought huh?! And please, feel free to vent your anger and frustration at us by Contacting Us [HERE] anytime you want, but REMEMBER, we will post anything you send us, unless you ask us nicely not to. BIGFOOT?: (1552-05-17/2015-07-18) [TOP] Anyway, to get back to the Bigfoot connection (the stench mentioned above), some people believe that a Bigfoot like creature are the ones driving around in all those fancy new-fangled UFOs that people are seeing all over the place. Unfortunately, that discussion is for another time and place, but not here, but you are certainly welcome to check out our Sasquatch webpage for more info about that stuff: http://www.amystrange.org/UNX-sasquatch.html TOUCH: (1552-05-17/2015-07-18) [TOP] Anyway, here are the three passages Dave found that refer to the touch pehenomenon. There are more, but this is a good representation of the rest. FROM: http://www.amystrange.org/revelations-print-index.txt [BACK to the TOP] [FIRST PASSAGE] (LINE: 2,201): "In this naked word sin, our Lord brought to my mind, generally, all that is not good, and the shameful despite and the utter noughting that He bare for us in this life, and His dying; and all the pains and passions of all His creatures, ghostly and bodily; (for we be all partly noughted, and we shall be noughted following our Master, Jesus, till we be full purged, that is to say, till we be fully noughted of our deadly flesh and of all our inward affections which are not very good;) and thebeholding of this, with all pains that ever were or ever shall be,-and with all these I understand the Passion of Christ for most pain, and overpassing. [LINE: 2,215] "All this was shewed in a TOUCH and quickly passed over into comfort: for our good Lord would not that the soul were affeared of this terrible sight." [SECOND PASSAGE] (LINE: 3,161): "THIS is a sovereign friendship of our courteous Lord that He keepeth us so tenderly while we be in sin; and furthermore He TOUCHETH us full privily and sheweth us our sin by the sweet light of mercy and grace. But (80) (LINE: 3,166) when we see our self so foul, then ween we that God were wroth with us for our sin, and then are we stirred of the Holy Ghost by contrition unto prayer and desire for the amending of our life with all our mights, to slacken the wrath of God, unto the time we find a rest in soul and a softness in conscience. Then hope we that God hath forgiven us our sins: and it is truth." "And then sheweth our courteous Lord Himself to the soul-well-merrily and with glad cheer-with friendly welcoming as if it had been in pain and in prison, saying sweetly thus: My darling I am glad thou art come to me: in all thy woe I have ever been with thee; and now seest thou my loving and we be oned in bliss. Thus are sins forgiven by mercy and grace, and our soul is worshipfully received in joy like as it shall be when it cometh to Heaven, as oftentimes as it cometh by the gracious working of the Holy Ghost and the virtue of Christ's Passion." [THIRD PASSAGE] [LINE: 4,386]: " ...The blueness of the clothing betokeneth His steadfastness; the brownness of his fair face, with the seemly blackness of the eyes, was most accordant to shew His holy soberness. The length and breadth of his garments, which were fair, flaming about, betokeneth that He hath, beclosed in Him, all Heavens, and all Joy and Bliss: and this was shewed in a TOUCH [of time], where I have said: Mine understanding was led into the (112) (LINE: 4,395) Lord; in which [inward shewing] I saw Him highly rejoice for the worshipful restoring that He will and shall bring His servant to by His plenteous grace."[2] REREADING DAVE'S ORIGINAL SOURCE: (1552-05-17/2015-07-18) [TOP] And finally, here is a couple short quotes from our original source concerning the visions Lady Julian had. FROM (Page 116): UFO: The Definitive Guide... " ...The document includes what Julian describes as encounters with the Devil. These alleged incidents bear a strong similarity to certain UFO close-encounter cases reported in the 20th century." Dave said he had forgotten about the UFO temperature effect which he now remembers, and I remember some too, a couple, I think, that been reported by witnesses in some of the UFO cases that we've read about. And Dave also recalls while reading her book of having a definite feeling of some kind of time-loss going on. Not your usual, I lost an hour or more of my memory, or my watch stopped for seven minutes, kind of time-loss. Nothing like that happened here, but something different, backwards. To Dave, it reminded him of many an acid trip, where, in his head, it felt like hours had gone by, when in reality, it had only been ten or fifteen minutes. That's the kind of reverse time-loss Dave's talking about. Lady Julian's writings, as a whole, gave Dave that feeling of reverse time-loss where, like Dave on an acid trip, she thought more time had passed than actually had, so there's that tenuous UFO connection also, if you don't mind stretching the bounds of credibility to almost the breaking point. Sure go ahead, be my guest. Dave will probably be tickled pink to know he has at least one friend in the whole wide world (and probably all the Universes also) who agrees with him on at least one thing. Ha ha. AND IN CONCLUSION (for NOW anyway... ) [BACK to the TOP] All kidding aside, me and Dave have debated this event long and hard for a few days now, if not weeks, and the only thing we can agree on is that Lady Julian believes she really saw the Devil. She actually, in her heart of hearts, believes she really did see the Devil, and I see no reason not to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one. But, to put it nicely, Dave believes that many of the possible UFO connections here are more probable than I do, but being the good skeptic that I am, I am also skeptical of my own beliefs, opinions and perceptions, and am always on the lookout for more and better evidence, convincing evidence. This is another thing that Dave agrees with me on, although the lack of good evidence never slowed Dave's belief in anything, and in the end, we may never find what we're looking for, but the different journeys we go down to try and find it are, if nothing else, definitely interesting, and we've also learned something new and different with each of the journeys. That's the best part and why we agreed to keep our eyes peeled for similar events and connections that might pop up in any of our future research or journeys. It seems after rereading his original source, Dave has come away with the conclusion that they aren't talking about red-faced aliens so much as they were talking about other similarities like temperature affect. We still agreed though, to keep our eyes peeled for other UFO reports with red-faced aliens in them. You never know what might pop-up while researching other events in the future. OK, enough with all that peacock-like self-righteous off-topic sanctimonious crap that has nothing to do with this event. LONG STORY SHORT, Dave believes that almost every similarity in this event definitely makes it a possible UFO case, except for that Bigfoot one that he came up with. He does have issues with Bigfoot driving around in UFOs, so he isn't ready to buy into that whole thing just yet. The only other thing he does question is the nighttime similarity. He agrees with me that it happening at night (like so many other UFO cases do) is just a coincidence. He agrees that it's probably just evidence "pile-on". In other words, the more evidence (no matter how stupid it is) is always better than less evidence. It makes it look like a stronger case than it actually is. No doubt, the boy's learnin'. I have a difficult time convincing myself that these other similarities are more than just coincidences either. For example, Julian's visions occuring at night (like Dave explained), the smoke, foul odor and physical harm are not enough, not even all together, to make this a close encounter, even slightly probable. I'll explain my reasoning and the implications as to why not at the end. Although I'm willing to be proved wrong, I need more than what's here before I'm as close to being as positive as Dave is that this is definitely a possible close-encounter with an alien lifeform. Although I do agree that the temperature effect, telepathy and voices, along with the "touch" phenomenon do give it more probability; I don't think I've ever remember reading or hearing of any UFO case where the encounter occured while other people were present and watching over the 'contactee'. This bothers me a little, but not Dave. "There's always a first time for everything," was his arguement. To me, it reads more like an hallucination than a close encounter, but that's me, and not proof of anything either. All the evidence together though, does help beg the question, could God be an alien? Could our Maker be just an advanced alien life form? To me (and Dave too), this is one of the more interesting aspects of the case and alone makes it definitely worth keeping in mind as we continue our research in other cases. The above question is also one of the reasons I want more and better evidence. When you make a claim that God is an alien, than you'd better have some damn good proof to back that up, otherwise, you're claims are no better than any other religion, based on faith alone. In my opinion anyway. And with that said, our research for this event is pretty much complete, for now anyway... BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES (1373-05-09): [TOP]
LINKS:
RELATED SUBJECTS (1373-05-09): [TOP]
(CLICK TO GO):
TEXT of LADY JULIAN'S Book (long version) ARCHIVED HERE:
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