Cosmic Evolution

Viruses, Panspermia and the Mystery of the Grail

Guest article by Paul G. Vaughan

Introduction by Occult Mysteries

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, many readers may now think they know all about viruses. But do they? Scientists argue about almost every aspect of viruses; where they come from, whether they are alive and when and how they first appeared on earth. These remarkable organisms are one of the most intriguing of all 'occult' mysteries, no less so than the Grail; two seemingly unconnected subjects which Paul G. Vaughan has coupled with the theory of Panspermia and woven into one of the most original and thought-provoking guest articles we have ever received.

Before we share the author's thoughts, a bit of background on the subjects he has chosen to write about may be helpful. Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, and is distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and comets. The term is derived from the Greek pan, meaning 'all', and sperma, meaning 'seed.' Panspermia is not a new theory. It is found in the writings of the 5th-century B.C. Greek philosopher Anaxagoras whom we mentioned in our article on The Temple of Man. In the nineteenth century the idea was taken up by British physicist Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) and Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) who argued that life could come from outer space. There the matter may have ended had it not been for the pioneering work of two British astrobiologists, Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) and Chandra Wickramasinghe (1939- ), who rekindled interest in Panspermia. By careful spectroscopic observation and analysis of light from distant stars they found evidence of life in the intervening dust. They also proposed that comets, which are largely made of water-ice, carry bacterial life across galaxies and protect it from radiation damage along the way.

Although it is now widely recognized by most scientists that space contains the "ingredients" of life, they remain reluctant to accept that comets may be responsible for epidemic outbreaks, such as coronavirus. the author argues cogently that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are right. Several astrobiology experiments were conducted outside the International Space Station (ISS) between 2008 and 2015 in which a wide variety of microorganisms were exposed to the so-called 'vacuum' of space for over a year, many of which survived, simply by 'switching off.' In April 2018, a Russian team reported that they had found bacteria on the exterior of the ISS similar to microbes previously observed in the Barents and Kara seas' coastal zones. They concluded that the marine bacteria may have reached earth from space. In November 2019, scientists detected sugar molecules in meteorites, suggesting that chemical processes on asteroids can produce some fundamentally essential bio-ingredients important to life. All this confirms the work of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, as well as the theory of Panspermia.

If you google "Holy Grail" the number and variety of results shows there is no consensus as to what this mysterious object may be. Wikipedia tells us it is "a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature." Not much help there! The Grail is most commonly associated with the cup said to have been used during the Last Supper and at the Crucifixion, when it received the blood flowing from Christ's wounds, from whence it is said to have been brought to the British Isles by Joseph of Arimathea. Is this literally true or is it perhaps a metaphor or allegory? We would not like to say. Paul G. Vaughan has his own ideas which we feel sure our readers will find both fascinating and topical.

In the midst of the present turmoil, caused by the worldwide coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, few people have dared to question the official narrative concerning the origin of the virus. We are made to believe that it originated in a wet market in Wuhan, having been transmitted from wildlife to a hypothetical first human 'super-spreader'; that it was first concocted in a bat soup; or in a secret biowarfare lab in the United States, whence it was brought to China by nefarious actors; or that it accidentally got out from a microbiology lab in Wuhan itself, etc., ad infinitum.

These speculations, rumours and conspiracy theories have created a climate of fear, panic and confusion on a scale never seen before, prompting a chaos of contradictory measures and advice from the various governments of the world. But there are a few scientists bold enough to suggest a very different origin for the virus, and in fact of all the viruses known and unknown to man: space. The theory of viral diseases arriving on our planet on comets has been around for nearly half a century, thanks to the fascinating work of Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe mentioned by Occult Mysteries in their introduction to this article.

Anon — 15th century Illustration of a comet — tempera on board ca. 1450

Readers unfamiliar with the work of these pioneering astrobiologists may be surprised to learn that many of their hypotheses have been confirmed in recent times. A particularly revolutionary paper was published in the August 2018 edition of Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology. The paper—entitled Cause of Cambrian Explosion—Terrestrial or Cosmic?—was authored by more than 33 scientists under the leadership of Professor Wickramasinghe. No prizes for guessing which hypothesis the authors proposed! Unsurprisingly, the response to this revelatory (revelatory because of the irrefutable evidence furnished throughout the paper) publication was near silence from the orthodox scientific community.

The prevailing consensus concerning the origin of life on Earth is based on the Aristotelian idea of abiogenesis, or the spontaneous generation of life from inanimate matter, further reinforced by the Oparin-Haldane theory of the primordial soup. While it is hard to believe that we must still wrestle with the spectre of Aristotle's oft flawed observations of Nature (his geocentric view of the Universe was only finally discarded by science in the 16th century!), the theory of abiogenesis and the 'primordial soup' is meant to represent the 'solid' ground floor upon which the super omnia regna of scientific materialism is built. If this paradigm is questioned and undermined, the entire house of cards collapses. This, of course, cannot be allowed.

It is for that reason that the theory of Panspermia, despite its illustrious proponents which include Hoyle, Wickramasinghe, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and even Francis Crick (the Noble-winning discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA), has struggled for wider acceptance among scientists. No wonder that Wickramasinghe's prophetic warning published in the peer-reviewed journal Current Science on 25 November 2019, concerning a possible pandemic outbreak of a viral disease was completely ignored. He wrote: "On the basis of this data, there appears to be a prima facie case for expecting new viral strains to emerge over the coming months and so it would be prudent for Public Health Authorities the world over to be vigilant and prepared for any necessary action. We need hardly to be reminded that the spectre of the 1918 devastating influenza pandemic stares us in the face from across a century."

His warning was inspired primarily by the simple observation that we are now in a deep solar minimum, perhaps even the deepest sunspot minimum for a century, and so the natural defence mechanism of our planet against the flux of cosmic rays and interstellar dust particles carrying biological entities and possibly novel virion strains is drastically weakened. Many of us will be aware of the discovery of various bacteria and microbes in the stratosphere, as well as on the outside of the International Space Station mentioned by Occult Mysteries in their introduction. If these microbes can survive the harsh conditions of such environments, there can be no doubt that viruses can too. Professor Wickramasinghe makes a compelling case for the space origin of the Spanish Flu pandemic (which also coincided with the 11-year cycle of sunspot minima), and even the famous Plague of Athens which killed an estimated 100,000 people in 430 B.C.

What increased my admiration for the good Professor and his late colleague and collaborator, Sir Fred Hoyle, is that they have never quite subscribed to the Big Bang theory which most scientists cling to with commendable, but indefensible tenacity. Instead, they proposed a 'steady state' theory which implies that the Universe is eternal, and that there has never been a time when life has not existed. How infinitely refreshing! How much more convincing and satisfying this is than the 'gradualist', Earth-centred and inherently flawed Neo-Darwinian model of evolution. In its place, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe proposed that the Cambrian explosion, the rise of the mammals, and many other otherwise inexplicable spikes in the evolutionary history of our planet were caused by "extraterrestrial genetic material spliced into the genome of evolving organisms on Earth," and delivered by visitors from space. Not—I hasten to add—Annunaki from non-existent planets like Nibiru, but comets bearing exotic materials, metals, minerals and indeed: VIRUSES. Viruses and retroviruses which, as science is now gradually learning, are inextricably linked to the evolution of DNA and RNA strains on our planet.

Wickramasinghe and his colleagues have postulated that various epidemics in the history of mankind were caused by intrusive comets and meteors bearing extraterrestrial viral strains. If we accept that life was seeded on Earth by life-bearing comets, this idea should raise no eyebrows. Moreover, it should help the leading lights of the present 'fight' against coronavirus (Covid-19) to develop a different approach to curtailing and preventing the spread of this, and future, epidemic diseases—but alas, this is too much to hope for. . .

Dante Gabriel Rossetti — How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival were Fed with the Sanc Grael; But Sir Percival's Sister Died by the Way — watercolour on paper 1864

The Mystery of the Grail

Which leads me to the more occult aspect of this article: the cosmic interpretation of the Grail mythos and its hidden science. There is a sort of cosmic symbolism that runs like a golden thread through the various narratives of the Grail legends. All of these, however, are intimately linked to the sacred science of personal, spiritual and planetary regeneration, and are yet another re-clothing of the Hermetic and alchemical symbolism of the Great Work and the Philosopher's Stone. The healing of the debilitated king; the restoration of the wasteland and the lifting of the blight which was laid upon it; the fecundation and replenishing of the kingdom, are all allegorical representations of this abiding mythos.

For brevity, let's recall but one of the many extant renditions of the Grail romance, that of the twelfth century French poet, Chrétien de Troyes, who describes the following scene in his Perceval: The Story of the Grail: Perceval arrives at the castle of the King, and sitting beside the debilitated lord, witnesses a strange procession in the castle hall, described as "that hall of light," filled with burning candles. This evokes the image of the celestial vault, alight with stars. While he speaks to the king who is laid impotent on his bed, a squire enters bearing a white lance with a white point, from which oozes a drop of blood. He is followed by others bearing candelabra with burning candles, and then by a maiden who carries the Grail itself, which emits so dazzling a light that "the candles lost their brilliance like stars when the sun rises, or the moon." Finally, a bowl or chalice is carried across the hall, and the mystical procession ends.

The cosmic interpretation of this procession is astoundingly simple: the white lance dripping with blood symbolizes a comet with its tail, which often has been depicted throughout history in the shape of a lance, or a sword, just as we can witness today when comets race across the sky, their passage immortalized in medieval paintings and modern, astronomical photographs, such as those which illustrate this article. The point dripping with blood suggests its payload of exotic materials and life-bearing components, which often result in blood-rains, like the one which fell in Kerala, South India between July and September 2001, and at countless other times and in other places too. This payload is the key component of the cosmic alchemy induced by cometary impacts, and clues to it are found in the sacred writings of the ancients.

"The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the Earth...."

(Revelation).

"Blood dropped like rain out of heaven...."

(The Mahabharata).

"Zeus poured bloody drops earthwards...."

(Homer's Iliad).

The candelabra carried by the squires symbolize the stars of heaven, or, depending on the version of the Grail romance and the number of candles, the seven or nine planets, which have a direct correlation to the mechanism by which cometary bodies are transferred from the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud by means of the gravitational (magnetic) fields of the planets. The distance between the planets of our solar system has been shown to facilitate the operation of this mechanism perfectly, in which Jupiter plays perhaps the most significant role as both the shield and medium of transmission. Which gives another clue to the thunder-bearing image of Jove!

Finally, the Grail itself—or, in this interpretation of the Mystery, the exceedingly bright cometary body, entering our atmosphere in a fiery show of blinding incandescent light, which dims stars and even the sun itself, as many eye-witnesses have reported throughout history, most recently in regard to the Tunguska and Chelyabinsk meteors. Lastly, we have the bowl—an apt symbol of the crater formed by the meteoric impact, suggesting an alchemical cauldron, such as the Cauldron of Lug, where the transmutation of rare exotic minerals and metals, and the fusion of terrestrial and celestial matter occurs at incredibly high temperatures. The help of this 'special'—we might call it 'Heavenly' fire—introduces mysterious, life-inducing and life-changing processes into the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and eventually: the biosphere itself. As one writer claims: "here is to be found the secret of evolution." Not in the primordial ooze postulated by materialist science, for life cannot spontaneously arise from 'inert' matter any more than something can come out of the proverbial nothing, as every sane Occultist knows!

This is a very cursory treatment of an incredibly complex subject and of necessity I am omitting many facets of the symbolism and the occult-scientific processes involved. One particularly fascinating mechanism is evidenced by the fact that intense cometary bombardments have developed fault-lines across the lithosphere of the Earth, fracturing it in countless places and thus allowing the circulation of subterranean streams which are filled with the materials derived from the cometary payload, further disseminating the products of cosmic alchemy resulting from the cometary impact. It is no wonder that these fault-lines were the favourite spots for the ancients to raise their temples and their megalithic monuments, harnessing the electro-magnetic currents of the Earth for ceremonials, initiatory rites and even for inducing growth in food-bearing crops. This too is a vast and utterly fascinating subject I don't have time to explore further.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti — The Damsel of the Sanct Grael — oil on canvas 1874

As for Grail legends themselves, the poems of the sixth century Welsh Bard Taliesin may have had something to do with their conception and dissemination, for there are ample records that during the times he flourished, a blight descended upon the British Isles in the form of a comet, causing great malice, plagues and awful mortality; effectively ushering in the Dark Ages. Perhaps it is just such a cosmic visitor he refers to in the Book of Taliesin, poem XXV.

"IT broke out with matchless fury.
The rapid vehement fire.
Him we praise above the Earth,
Fire, the fiery meteor of the dawn...."

This may relate to one of the many disasters that befell Atlantis discussed by the authors of this website in their articles on the lost continent. On the other hand it may recall a more recent event: a cometary impact (or impacts) which 'debilitated the king' and laid waste his kingdom, as suggested by an unusual event recorded in A Meteorological Chronology to AD 1450, published by the British Meteorological Office in 1937. "In the year of grace AD 541, there appeared a comet in Gaul, so vast that the whole sky seemed to be on fire. In the same year, there dropped red blood from the clouds, and a dreadful mortality ensued."

This date seems to coincide with the legendary Battle of Camlann, said to have been fought in the sixth century which resulted in the death of King Arthur. It also coincides with the records of The Syriac Chronicle which recall "a great and terrible comet" that appeared in the sky for one hundred days around 538-539 A.D. "....like the wheeling of a fiery meteor over the Earth...." to quote Taliesin again. Shortly afterwards the Plague of Justinian struck Europe, killing between thirty and fifty million people. Another coincidence? You decide!

Conclusion

All this makes one wonder what the place and significance of viruses is in this fascinating panorama of cosmic evolutionary processes. Do we have any idea whatsoever about the true purpose of those miniscule, seemingly inert creatures? Are they truly evil or do they only seem so to our limited perspective and erring human senses? If so, what lessons does Covid-19 have for us? Will the present crisis lead to greater understanding, compassion and wisdom on the part of humanity or yet deeper ignorance, selfishness and folly? Perhaps the Masters of Wisdom who are said to inhabit the snowy fastnesses of the Himalayas and desert places of Egypt know, or perhaps they do not. Only time will provide the answers to these questions.

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Cosmic Life

Afterword by Occult Mysteries

Our afterword has been adapted from Vision 8—The Kosmos—of The Golden Star. We previously used some parts of this chapter in the afterword to our article on 'Why matter matters' (see further reading list below), but now draw on those which have a bearing on the themes discussed by Paul G. Vaughan in his article.

In Vision 8 we are told that our entire Solar System, and the whole of our Milky Way galaxy too, is contained within what Occult Science calls the 'Auric Envelope.' Beyond this electro-magnetic shield there are countless Universes without end, so unimaginably many, and so vast, that it is impossible to conceive their existence or their nature. There literally is no end to Eternity or to Boundless Space.

It is this Auric Envelope which insulates all that is contained within it from external influences—spiritual and material—in exactly the same way as the human aura acts as a barrier against such forces and conditions, good, bad and indifferent. This Auric Envelope, in the case of human beings, can be opened at will, and then it can allow entrance to any forces or conditions with which the mind within the human body wishes to come en rapport.

When the aura is kept in a closed condition by an effort of the Will, it can keep at bay all thought-forms, mental images from outside sources, or spiritual inspirations, whether good or bad. By opening the aura we can let in light or darkness, good or bad influences, and this applies in the macrocosm too—the Solar System which, as we said just now, is also surrounded by its own aura—the Auric Envelope.

This explains how viruses, as well as other living organisms, may penetrate the Aura of a man, a planet, or an entire Solar System. Hence the Hermetic axiom 'as above, so below,' is a true one that applies to the microcosm as well as the macrocosm. Minerals live, suffer from communicable diseases and reproduce their own kind. Crystals move and exhibit generative processes similar to those of plants; and they can be poisoned. These facts of nature have been known to occult science for thousands of years but have only recently been recognised by material science as it probes ever deeper in to the mysteries of the origin of life.

In The Secret Doctrine, published over 130 years ago, we may read: "the Mother is the fiery Fish of Life, She scatters her Spawn and the Breath (motion) heats and quickens it. The Grains (of Spawn) are soon attracted to each other and form the Curds in the Ocean (of Space). The larger lumps coalesce and receive new Spawn—in fiery Dots, Triangles and Cubes, which ripen, and at the appointed time some of the Lumps detach themselves and assume spheroidal form, a process which they effect only when not interfered with by the others. After which the Secret Law comes into operation. Motion (Breath) becomes the Whirlwind and sets them into rotation" (Volume 1, page 97).

Here, in a few lines, is a succinct summary of the origins of life and the formation of the Universe which puts the 'Big Bang' theory of science in the shade. The language is deliberately metaphorical and allegorical, but in terms like 'Fish', 'Spawn' and 'Curds' we can discern the agglomerations of matter which lead to the formation of the comets ('fiery fish') suns, planets and galaxies of the macrocosm and the electrons, atoms, amino acids and cells of the microcosm.

From this we may deduce that life as material science understands it—or rather, only partially and erroneously understands it—may have begun on planets so infinitely minute that they become as awesome as the largest star in space. And whilst the majestic march of time passes, there are born the minute specks that will foregather and combine to form ever larger and more complex life-forms.

In the blood of animals there swarm multitudes of living entities. Four-and-a-half million tiny red cells, with lots of room to spare float in the fluid of a cubic millimetre of our blood! On a square millimetre are crowded a million bacteria, each measuring about one micron in diameter.

Two-thousand million bacteria are normally present in a single teaspoonful of soil. It has been calculated that a handful of this marvellous stuff which some people disparagingly refer to as 'dirt' contains more living creatures than all the human beings who have ever lived on Earth—a truly staggering thought.

The amoeba is one of nature's simplest organisms, yet shares many common features with nature's most advanced beings—us! There are trillions of these single-celled marvels distributed throughout the natural world. With no known shape of their own, they are like specks of living jelly; crawling about in their own peculiar amorphous manner, and extending any part of their bodies to enwrap particles of food. When in a resting condition in fluids they are spherical in form.

Every human being or other mammal starts life as a single cell, the mammalian single-celled embryo being formed by the fusion of a male sperm-cell with a female egg. This has one nucleus, and when the nucleus and the cell which contains it divide into two, the halves are nearly—but not quite—identical.

The microbial cell is not only capable of independent existence, but can reproduce itself by division: by dividing they multiply. Science does not yet know in detail what it is that induces microbial cells to double themselves by division. Nor does it know why some of these minute life-forms have remained virtually unchanged for billions of years.

One reason for this ignorance on the part of science is that it knows nothing of the occult elemental forces, under direct control of intelligent Entities, who build and mould, form and alter, and who have the secrets of all these living wonders in their charge. Wonders that include viruses which science now believes may be the oldest living organisms on Earth and the longest lived.

Viruses are generally defined as particulate bodies capable of causing infectious disease in animals or plants, but there is much more to these sophisticated life-forms as science is only now discovering. It is only during the last fifty years that we have been able to see viruses at all thanks to the development of instruments like scanning electron microscopes (SEM); nor is there any known filter through which many of them cannot pass.

Whereas plants and animals die, viruses are potentially immortal. They only die by some violent death from a cause outside themselves. The reason is that viruses have nothing in common with the complex processes of reproduction and recapitulation that are undergone by higher animals, plants and many bacteria. Viruses have nothing to recapitulate, being already at the lowest stage of evolution, but this does not mean they are primitive organisms nor that they lack intelligence, however primitive.

It may seem a leap too far to credit viruses with intelligence, but we know of no other quality that adequately explains their prodigious ability to remake themselves and so escape detection and destruction. Viruses are in a league of their own when it comes to mutation, as science calls the ability to rapidly evolve and adapt to changing hosts and different environments.

As we saw in Paul G. Vaughan's article, viruses present material science with many difficulties and surprises. Some scientists argue that viruses are just non-living bits of DNA and RNA, while others believe they are not only very much alive, but that they emerged before the first cells. Recent findings challenge the notion that viruses are only parasites that depend on their hosts to proliferate. The discovery of giant viruses, which were first misinterpreted as bacteria, are providing new insights into how cells could have evolved during the early history of the Earth.

One of the most fascinating aspects of viruses is the discovery of bacteriophages during the late nineteenth century (see illustration below). These remarkable organisms are small, virus-like organisms composed of a protein capsule around an RNA or DNA genome. Their ability to replicate inside bacteria means they can and are used to fight disease—not cause it as the coronaviruses do.

The structure of bacteriophages, or phages as they are more generally called, is still not well understood by science. Most bacteriophages have a 'head', central shaft or 'body' and appendages which look remarkably like legs. These legs attach themselves to bacteria, allowing the phage to inject genetic material through the shaft into the host cell, where it replicates and reassembles into its 'children'!

As we said earlier, viruses can never die. Some scientists dispute this by saying they aren't alive in the first place, while others say just the opposite. As science does not know what life is in the ultimate it is not surprising that it can't decide whether viruses are alive or not. Occult science, as many of our readers will know, takes a very different view of 'life' and 'death.'

We would argue that by any sensible definition, any organism that can affect any other organism (such as a virus invading a cell to cause influenza) is very much 'alive', just as a seemingly 'dead' body is alive owing to the activity of vast numbers of living organisms from worms, through insects and plants, to the billions of bacteria, all busily at work breaking it down into its constituent elements.

So—as we said in our introduction—viruses are one of the most intriguing of all 'occult' mysteries which—so far as material science is concerned—may well conceal the key to how life arrived on Earth from outer space. How it got there in the first place is a greater mystery still which we doubt science will ever solve as it would require recognition of the existence of Spirit—a step too far for most scientists to even contemplate, never mind essay.

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