Is this Bownessie?

Here's the really cool part. From the article:

They had kayaked about 300 yards from the shore near Belle Isle when ‘something the size of three cars’ sped past.

[...]

Clearly, then, the USO was not a dog or a seal. Biologists also dismissed the notion of it being a giant catfish. A humungous snake, perhaps? Yes, said Sarah: ‘It was like an enormous snake. It freaked us all out.’

October 23 said:
Q: (L) A*** wants to know what the Loch Ness Monster is.

A: Serpent. 40 feet long average. There are 51 in the lake. They live in underwater cavern system and are leftovers from pre-cataclysmic times.
 
This is only a tip of a iceberg, there are so many encounters with some kind of creatures that could be 3D or 4D beings but it isn't widely known and reported. Here are few examples from all over the world:

THETIS LAKE MONSTER: (CANADA)

This terrifying, man-sized, silver-scaled humanoid was known to attack its victims with the razor sharp fin, which adorned the top of its skull.

Located in the wilds of Victoria, British Columbia, near the community of Colwood, the relatively small body of water known as Thetis Lake is the reputed home of a legendarily voracious, razor-finned, quasi-humanoid. Compared by some cryptozoologists to the notorious GREEN CLAWED BEAST and the LOVELAND FROGMEN of the Ohio River area, this unique cryptid would seem to represent a bizarre Darwinian bridge between the bipedal primates — which currently infest the Earth — and their amphibious cousins who never seemed to have the same tenacity when it came to climbing the evolutionary ladder.

First brought to international attention in the early 1970′s, this grisly aberration of natural selection has been described as being nearly 5-feet tall and weighing approximately 120 lbs., with an epidermis consisting solely of silver, fish-like scales. This animal’s horrifying visage is made complete by the six, razor-sharp spikes — connected to one another by thin, membranous webbing — which are said to protrude from its amphibious skull. With its dark, bulbous eyes, fish-like mouth and allegedly webbed hands, feet and ears, the Thetis Lake Monster bears more than a passing resemblance to the iconoclastic image of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

What lends credibility to these reports however, is the fact that for centuries North American natives have reported numerous — and oft times fatal — face to face encounters with various creatures which they describe as being carnivorous, aquatic-humanoids. These man-like anomalies purportedly lurked in the mist shrouded lakes and rivers of the Pacific northwest. One of the beasts chronicled in these Native American legends was the Pugwis, which reputedly tormented the Kwakiutl Indians of the Puget Sound region for years. These accounts, of course, vastly pre-date the Thetis Lake Monster as well as its cinematic counterpart.

On August 19, 1972, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) launched a brief investigation into this phenomenon after two teenage boys – 16-year old Robin Flewellyn and 17-year old Gordon Pike — claimed to have been attacked by the creature while cavorting on the shores of Thetis Lake. According to the two witnesses, they were standing on the beach near the Thetis lake recreational center when they both saw a spontaneous swelling of water just off the shoreline. Suddenly, the monstrous head and silver-scaled torso of this creature rose from the lake and shot from the churning surf toward the two terrified teens.

Within seconds, the bizarre beast was hot on the heels of the boys, who — fearing for their lives — immediately sprinted toward their parked car. As the duo jumped into the vehicle, one of them noticed the being lunging forward. He claimed to have felt an intense pain in his hand as they slammed the car doors and hastily drove away, leaving the scaly fiend in their dusty wake.

After narrowly escaping this vicious predator, Flewellyn and Pike made their way to the nearest RCMP station, where the injured – yet surprisingly unspecified – teen displayed a laceration across his hand, which he claimed was the result of contact with the spike-like fin that adorned the HYBRID BEAST’S skull. The officers on duty were so impressed by the sincerity of the young men’s tale that a manhunt (or monster-hunt, as the case may be) was immediately launched. According to one of the investigating officers: “The boys seem sincere, and until we determine otherwise we have no alternative but to continue our investigation.”

Sadly, nothing was turned up on that occasion and the investigation was summarily concluded. That was until just four days later, at approximately 3:30 pm. on the 23rd of August, when the beast reared its ghastly head yet again.

This time the creature — which uncannily matched previous descriptions — was spotted by 12-year old Mike Gold and 14-year old Russell Van Nice, who were fishing on the opposite side of the lake. Unlike the encounter of the previous week, these witnesses claimed that the creature merely rose out of the water, looked around, then submerged. The boys further maintained that they did not linger long enough to see whether or not the beast would manifest its previously displayed tendency of aggressive anti-human behavior. According to one of the boys:

“It came out of the water and looked around. Then it went back into the water. Then we ran! Its body was silver and shaped like an ordinary body, like a human being body, but it had a monster face, and it was all scaly with a point sticking out of its head and great big ears and horrifying eyes.” The RCMP re-launched their investigation of this unusual phenomenon with vigor, but hard evidence remained elusive. The lack of proof notwithstanding, it wasn’t long before this UNCLASSIFIED creature made headlines in the Victoria Daily Times, wherein an artist was commissioned to ender the first “official” portrait of the monster. From there tales of the “gill man” quickly spread across the globe.

According to Wikipedia, on August 26th, 1972, a newspaper called The Province allegedly received a phone call from a man who claimed to have lost his pet tegu lizard near Thetis Lake the previous year. The article further asserted that this pet lizard — which can grow up to 3-feet in length and is indigenous to the exceedingly warm climate of Latin America – was the entity responsible for the “monster” sightings.

The article did not explain how the witnesses in question mistook a striped, four-legged tengu lizard for a silver-scaled, bipedal fish-man, nor did it state how said reptile could survive a harsh British Columbia winter in the wild. Ironically, crypto-skeptic and editor of the Junior Skeptic magazine, Daniel Loxton, wasn’t satisfied with the theory that a pet teju was loose either. He spoke with a Royal B.C. Museum expert, who claimed the South American lizard likely would not have lived through a Victoria winter. Officially debunking that theory.

Next Loxton managed to track down a 49-year old Russell Van Nice — one of the young boys involved in the second sighting in ’72 — who decided to renege on his original testimony, claiming: “It was just a big lie… (Mike Gold was) trying to get attention.”

Assuming that the quote is authentic, then perhaps it serves as the final epitaph for this magnificently mysterious monster. But even if it is a genuine citation, one simply cannot underestimate the social and economic toll that being involved with an incident such as the extracts from an individual. The years of ridicule and negative press would be enough for anyone to want to wash their hands of their encounter with the unknown. That having been stated, one also cannot dismiss the fact that there was a second pair of witnesses — one of whom was severely injured by the creature — who claimed to have encountered this fiend first. Is it possible that Van Nice is telling the truth and that he and Gold were nothing more than a couple of middle school kids trying to hop on the popularity bandwagon by claiming that they too saw the beast? Perhaps, but either way it in no way invalidates the claims made by Flewellyn and Pike.

Whether the Thetis Lake Monster was a hoax or a genuine brush with an anomalous animal that once stalked local natives, the fact remains that as the weeks lingered on and summer gave way to autumn there were no further reported sightings of the Thetis Lake Monster and the RCMP was forced to close the files on this frightening, fascinating and ferocious AQUATIC ENIGMA.

MAMLAMBO: (SOUTH AFRICA)


Known to natives as the “Brain-Sucker,” this quasi-reptilian monstrosity terrorized the villages around the Mzintlava River in South Africa, and was notorious for dragging its victims into its murky depths, where it would devour their faces in order to consume their brains.

Although it often seems that the British Isles have a monopoly on the carnivorous, aquatic WATER-HORSE phenomenon, in 1997 the residents of South Africa’s rustic Mount Ayliff region endured a horrific ordeal with their very own predatory aquatic-equine. Said to inhabit the Mzintlava River, also known as the Umzimhlava River, thise animal has been described by eyewitnesses as being an astounding 67-feet in length. Other descriptions include a long tail, four, stubby legs, a crocodilian torso, a serpentine neck and a horse-like head.

It has even been suggested that this animal may be bioluminescent — not unlike Russia’s BROSNO DRAGON — as an elderly eyewitness, known only as Matshunga, claimed: “It is a big snake, and I have seen what it does… (it has) the head and neck of a snake, and it shines at night with a green light.”

Witnesses have also claimed that this animal has two, gleaming, green eyes, which — according to native legend — possess the power to mesmerize anyone unfortunate enough to make eye contact with the beast. This is a trait shared with Ireland’s ALASTYN and Scotland’s EACH-UISGE, which are also said to be able to lure in its victims with an almost hypnotic trance.

Thought by many area natives to be the physical manifestation of the notorious predator known in Xhosa tribal mythology as the Mamlambo, legends of this horrifying creature date back centuries. The Xhosa claim that any warrior brave enough — or foolish enough for that matter — to go toe to toe with one of these monstrous beasts and survive, would be the recipient of a tremendous amount of wealth, not to mention their fair share of prestige.Like its vicious European cousins — such as the CABYLL-USHTEY and the DOBHAR-CHU — the Mamlambo is notorious for dragging its victims into its watery domain, where it proceeds to drown them. Once its prey has perished, the Mamlambo then cracks open the skull of its quarry and proceeds to siphon the brains and, ultimately, all of blood from the corpse, hence its graphic nickname.

The key difference between these other AQUATIC ENIGMAS and the now legendary Mamlambo lies in the fact that unlike these other creatures, the activities of the Mamlambo have been closely tracked by public officials in the area.In fact, on April 29, 1997, the Reuter wire service reported that at an Eastern Cape legislative meeting held in Bisho, South Africa, the agriculture minister — one Ezra Sigwela — told an astonished governing body that a “half-fish, half-horse monster” had devoured at least seven victims in his region of Mzintlava River.

Sigwela pledged that he would solicit the help of the national agriculture ministry, in the hopes that they would organize a mission of armed nature conservation officers in order to hunt and kill the beast, thus ending its reign of terror.

Kokstad freelance journalist, Andile Nomabhunga, also claimed that he had received numerous reports about this vicious creature. According to Nomabhunga, nine people had been killed since January of 1997. The most recent victim being a young schoolgirl who had been buried only a month before.Sadly, the family of this young girl were not the only ones mourning in the rural, backwater villages of South Africa. The tragedy seemed to run even deeper as 6 year-old, Mthokozisi Sigcobeka, tearfully recounted his father’s fatal encounter with this mystery monster, concluding with the cryptic vow that when he got older he would get a gun and kill the animal himself.

As in most cases of cryptozoological encounters, the local police state that the monster’s purported victims were actually only drowning casualties, resulting from the swelling of the Mzintlava River during the heavy rains of the Lesotho wet season. Captain G. Mzuko of the Mount Ayliff Police — a firm skeptic regarding Mamlambo accounts — credited crabs for the disfiguring injuries discovered on most victims’ corpses:“I have seen some of the bodies of the so-called monster’s victims. They had all been in the water for some time and, as is often the case, river crabs had eaten away the soft parts of the faces and throats. In one case, the crabs were still clinging to the body when it was brought in. As far as we are concerned, there were cases of drowning, plain and simple.”

Despite police’s dismissal of native accounts, the villagers who resided near the ominous river claimed that they were not merely superstitious tribesmen — who were desperately grasping at legends to explain away natural occurrences — but educated people who were being terrorized by this savage predator.Although some physical attributes of this creature vaguely resemble those of other Dark Continent nativecryptids — such as MOKELE MBEMBE — its crocodile-like body, equine shaped head and carnivorous disposition have led many researchers to surmise that the Mamlambo maybe the South African equivalent of the Congolese, mosasaur-like MAHAMBA. Others have speculated that — much like the Sudanese LAU — this mystery monster may be akin to the FORMERLY EXTINCT elasmosaur.

The most recent sighting of what was described as a “giant reptile” was reported near Lubaleko, a village nestled on the Mzintlava River in the vicinity of Mount Ayliff — which is located about 110 miles southeast of the coastal metropolis of Durban — in April of1997. Those who still dwell in the Mount Ayliff area pray that it will never rear its cranium puncturing head again.


EUROA BEAST: (AUSTRALIA)

The Melbourne Zoological Gardens mounted a “monster hunt” for this 30-foot long, bulldog-faced, ostensibly amphibious beast in 1890, after hysterical eyewitnesses demanded that this creature’s reign of terror be halted.

The first accounts of this bizarre event were published in The Brisbane Courier, then in the Melbourne Argus on February 28th and again on March 1st, 1890. The almost unbelievable story begins in an area known as Wylonemby — located near the township Euroa, Australia — where a cadre of credible witnesses testified that the swamp had been infested by an unidentifiable, 300-foot long monstrosity since 1884.

The Brisbane Courier published this article — which they claimed was written by the Euroa correspondent of the Melbourne Argus — on February 25th, 1890:“Considerable excitement has been caused in Euroa by reports as to an extra- ordinary animal having been seen in a swamp at Wylonemby, about fourteen miles distant. The swamp is about 150 yards across, and a creek flows through it. For six years or more the swamp is reputed to have been the haunt of something abnormal, tales being told of dogs flying out of the place, and never again being induced to enter.”

“Last week a couple of young men went into the swamp for the purpose of cutting reeds, which are 6ft. high and very thick, when they were alarmed by a sudden splashing and snorting near at hand, and the rushes waved as if allowing passage to some large animal. They quickly retired, but next day one ventured back to carry out the reeds he had cut, when he was again alarmed by strange sounds, he leaped upon a log, and at some thirty paces away saw a large head upreared, which he likens to that of a bulldog. It kept this position for about ten minutes, when it disappeared, the motion of the rushes giving the idea of an animal some 30ft. long. The young man was greatly scared.”“On a report of the occurrence appearing in the local journal a party of Euroa sportsmen went out to the swamp, where they were joined by local residents on horseback. After beating about for more than an hour they were about to give up the quest, when a sudden rustling was heard, and two of the party saw an enormous tail as thick as a man’s thigh disappearing into the large trunk of a fallen tree.”

“A shot was fired at the animal, but, its effect is a matter of conjecture. Attempts were made to dislodge the bunyip, but without avail, the only result being a small black snake, which was quickly dispatched. Night coming on the party retired, but will again visit the scene on Saturday. Those who saw the animal describe it as being of a yellow color underneath and a dark brown above, ‘as thick as Mr. Barr’s bell-topper.’ It is supposed to be an immense serpent, such as is found in Queensland.”Assuming that the “bell topper” in question is referring to a top hat — and taking into consideration the fact that this creature was apparently able to scamper inside the “trunk of a fallen tree” — it must be assumed that this is a relatively narrow beast, perhaps not unlike an otter. Of course, this theory is hinged on the speculation that this hunting party actually saw the same 30-foot, canine-like creature that the young reed cutters claimed to have encountered just days before.While it is tempting to lump these reports in with accounts of Australia’s notorious AQUATIC ENIGMA the BUNYIP, some investigators have speculated that this pug-faced beast may actually be an ancestral amphibian known as “Pederpes finneyae.”

These short, squat, presumed extinct crocodile-like tetrapods hailed from the early Carboniferous and represent what many scientists believe to be the missing link between fish and land animals.

Whatever this creature was or was not, it sent waves of panic rippling throughout the small community of Euroa and the surrounding regions, forcing the towns people to solicit the help of the executives at the Melbourne Zoological Gardens. The Garden officials — who were understandably skeptical about the whole ordeal — felt that the accounts deserved further scrutiny and swiftly dispatched an emissary to Euroa.Armed only with what the articles referred to as a “big net,” this intrepid — and apparently anonymous — scientifically sanctioned dragon slayer entered into the midst of this terror stricken town and wasted no time in organizing a party of forty men all of whom where no doubt hell-bent on pursuing and capturing this UNCLASSIFIED beast.

The posse hunted throughout the day and into the night, but the only thing they had to show for their efforts were the discovery of a set of gigantic tracks, which sadly terminated before the monster could be found. One can only assume that either casts were not made of these prints or that they have been lost to the ravages of time.Sadly, this is the last known account of this mysterious monster, but this case has often been mentioned in company with the equally inexplicable creature known as the MASTERTON MONSTER of New Zealand.

http://americanmonsters.com/site/

And this are just few cases of many. Here is about sea monsters http://americanmonsters.com/site/category/monsters/sea-monsters/
 
October 23 said:
Q: (L) A*** wants to know what the Loch Ness Monster is.

A: Serpent. 40 feet long average. There are 51 in the lake. They live in underwater cavern system and are leftovers from pre-cataclysmic times.

Thanks, Shijing.

What struck me about this comment from the C's was the fact that they used the word "serpent", instead of the more usual scientific term, "snake". Doesn't that strike anyone as a little unusual?

The word "serpent" is a more poetical term, and it's a term which is applied to a snake in contexts which are more religious or mythological. (Unless, of course, the C's are just shortening the common term for such beasties, i.e. "sea serpent"; but if that was the case, why didn't they just say "sea serpent" outright, instead of leaving us with this ambiguity? Perhaps they meant to be ambiguous, and set up a set, or series, of associations here.)

So I just thought about it a little more. A snake mentioned in a religious context, and called a "serpent", is the tempter in the Garden of Eden. And indeed he did come just before a cataclysm of sorts - if we think of the Fall as a cataclysm. (Obviously, the word "cataclysm" would more normally refer to something like a cometary shower, or whatever. But I was just thinking things through ... and the Fall COULD be described as "cataclysmic" - or, at least, you wouldn't be wrong in using the word "cataclysmic" when referring to the Fall.)

So much for religion. But the Garden of Eden story isn't just historical, or religious, or mythological: it's a combination of all these 3 modes of thinking and expression. And there's another serpent which crops up in modern mythology. Okay, not quite mythology: more like children's literature. I'm thinking of course of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets".

So - in this book, Rowling has a basilisk, and it's a monstrous serpentine creature. Apparently, Rowling's basilisk is a great deal bigger than its original mythic counterpart: it's between 40 and 50 feet long. (At least, that's what Wikipedia says; I haven't gone to the trouble yet of verifying this in the actual text. So if anyone can tell me I'm wrong on this point, then that's all well and good and useful.)

Now, in all this, I'm not suggesting of course that the C's aren't being totally literally true. But it's the way they're giving the information, which might hint at another level of meaning, which we might be able to access by some sort of literary analysis - and I wonder if the use of the word "Serpent" right at the beginning of their comment hints at the possibility of another level of meaning?

In alchemical texts you get a lot of playing around with words, because they want to hint at another level of meaning, and perhaps the C's might also do this from time to time - especially if the question raised ("What is the Loch Ness Monster?") is a nagging question in any person who has an ounce of curiosity, but is nevertheless not superly significant to what we or the C's are aiming to do.

We already know that this sort of literary analysis is entirely appropriate when dealing with the Bible. This wasn't really the fashion up until the 1990s, and is still rather suspect in American religious and academic environments, but this Minimalist (or Copenhagen School) approach seems to be especially useful when teasing out the meaning of Biblical texts. And funnily enough, when the C's use a word like "Serpent" right at the beginning of their answer, it does look as though they might be going all Biblical or literary on us - because that word isn't scientific, but it IS Biblical (in the King James Version of the Bible at any rate) and it IS literary.

With literary analysis, you'd be looking to match up different texts to expand upon or explicate the particular text under discussion. (Thomas Thompson, especially, in his book "The Messiah Myth" does a number of such expositions, and they're really quite brilliant imho, and in doing this he'll bring in, not just other Biblical texts, but also stuff from Western Asian and Egyptian mythology.)

Anyway, Rowling's basilisk is an ancient evil underneath Hogwarts. It's been there more or less from the foundation of the school, and it kind of lives under the foundations of the school, too. I say "kind of" because, although the Chamber of Secrets is accessed from the school, the Chamber itself is most probably underneath the lake, on the banks of which Hogwarts itself stands. So the Chamber of Secrets is an "underwater cavern system", perhaps like the one that the Nessie snakes live in. (Incidentally, the Nessie beasties would have to breathe air, which I guess implies that they live above the level of the loch, underneath the surrounding hills. Whether this is so or not, it does seem odd that the C's state that they live in an underwater cavern system. How would that actually work? It couldn't be beneath the lake, because it would be permanently flooded, wouldn't it? The word "serpent" implies an air-breathing creature, rather than, say, a gigantic eel. But if it IS an eel that they're talking about (and I don't think we can rule that out) why don't they say "eel" rather than "serpent"? I think they ARE talking about eels, but need to couch it in a particular way to indicate another level of meaning. Anyway, that's just my guess at the moment, fwiw.

So what's the meaning? Is this a reference to the Lizzies, living underground, and partly in 4D, in their underground cities? Well, it might be. Are the C's indicating something of how to deal with the Lizzies - or, rather perhaps, with the ancient evil inside us: the Predator - which could be described as serpentine in various ways. Are there indications in the battle Harry Potter has with the Basilisk of ways in which we can deal with the Serpent inside us, and in the 4D STS realm? Rowling's narrative does of course have parallels with St George and the Dragon, and with Perseus and the sea serpent Cetus.

Anyway, perhaps literary analysis might be useful when dealing sometimes with something the C's might say. Like alchemical texts, there might be more than one level of meaning, and we might get to that meaning, perhaps by word-play, and perhaps by following lines of association between different texts. If anyone thinks I've kind of gone overboard on this, or am just reading more into a single answer from the C's than is at all warranted, then by all means set me straight!
 
Also, the number 51 seems vaguely significant. What about Area 51? Could that be what the C's are nodding towards?

Apart from that, 51 as a number is formed by multiplying two prime numbers, 3 and 17. This might be significant, because we get something similar in John's Gospel. The exact number of fish caught by the disciples is mentioned in 21:11 - it's 153 - and the very mention of the exact number is itself jarring in the flow of the text - as though the disciples actually went to the bother of counting them! It's like a hiccup in the text. The Philokalia goes to the trouble of explaining what this number means, and you get a whole lot of maths on the page at this point. Could there be a similar mystical/mathematical meaning with this number here too - which then gives us the hidden reason for Area 51 being called Area 51?

Just some ideas fwiw.
 
Another interesting fwiw observation:

Loch Ness is 51 feet above sea level (though it should be mentioned that other sources give the surface elevation as 52 feet). It's also 23 miles long - another prime number.
 
Regarding the serpent as mentioned in the bible, it seems to be implied that prior to the temptation of Eve he may have walked upright. The C's may be talking about a creature that is different qualities than a snake.

Genesis 3:14

"And the Lord God said to the serpent,
because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the
field;
On your belly shall you go,
And dust shall you eat
All the days of your life
:"
 
Ottershrew said:
What struck me about this comment from the C's was the fact that they used the word "serpent", instead of the more usual scientific term, "snake". Doesn't that strike anyone as a little unusual?

After I read your post last night I picked up a (perhaps not very credible) book I have on strange phenomena, to look for lake monsters and creatures alike. In the book all of these creatures were referenced as serpents. Which makes me think that perhaps this is how these creatures are generally called.
This doesn't mean that there's no significance to it, I think, particularly given the possible symbolism with the prime numbers.

Edit: clarity
 
Here's some film taken at Windermere of some animal, whether it's the mysterious beastie or not I wouldn't like to say. A mundane explanation might be a family group of otters swimming behind each other in a straight line. But then again that seems unlikely as you only see what appears to be just one head during the sequence filmed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuUynJXvMpg

Btw a good reference book and fun read about lake monsters, bigfoot and Cryptozoology in general is Alien Animals by Janet and Colin Bord. Osit.
 
treesparrow said:
Btw a good reference book and fun read about lake monsters, bigfoot and Cryptozoology in general is Alien Animals by Janet and Colin Bord. Osit.

Thanks for the tip treesparrow.
 
Thanks, Teresa – that’s a useful observation.

The Garden of Eden story imagines its serpent-character to originally have had legs. However, these were taken from him, and he thus became a regular leg-free snake (and presumably we’re asked to imagine that all subsequent serpents or snakes were descended from him). Or, if you like, he became a snake with a whole load of ribs, each rib acting as a kind of leg for locomotion. So you could call a snake a 30-footed beast, or whatever, according to the number of ribs, or pairs of ribs, that particular snake had. So in that sense a snake has more feet than most beasts have, and those extra feet allow for its very fluid motion. This picture here of a snake’s skeleton gives an idea of the number of pseudo-legs a snake actually has – they’re kind of legs, but encased within the body of the animal. And perhaps fluid motion is what this is all about. With a serpent living in water, you even have fluid motion within a fluid context.

And thanks, Treesparrow, for the reference to the book “Alien Animals”. It’s a decent enough introduction to window-fallers, I thought. I read it in conjunction with Stan Gooch’s book “Creatures from Inner Space”, which is also imo useful, and an entertaining read as well.

And, for sure, Gertrudes, such creatures might regularly be called "serpents". Here’s a list from Wikipedia of such monsters occurring in any number of lakes around the world. It seems, though, that such creatures tend to be given the general name “lake monster”, as opposed to such monsters in the oceans, which are regularly termed “sea serpents”. So to call a lake monster a "serpent" does still strike me as unusual. But that’s just my take on it.

edit: clarity
 
Another thing perhaps to bear in mind is that there is a further correlation between Loch Ness and the final chapter of John’s Gospel.

Both involve a lake: Loch Ness or the Sea of Galilee (i.e. Lake Tiberias).
In Loch Ness there are 51 serpents;
in the Sea of Galilee the disciples get hold of 153 fish.
3 x 51 = 153

The Philokalia, in its commentary on John, has a diminishing triangle to illustrate that the number 153 is important – or at least that it has a certain symmetry, if nothing else. In other words, the number 153 is a triangular number, the sum of the first 17 integers - which suggests once again the numbers 3 (it's a triangle) and 17 (it's the 17th triangular number). This parallels the fact that 51, as a subprime number, is the product of the prime numbers 3 and 17: so that's 3 and 17 cropping up again. An illustration of 153 as a triangular number can be found here. But what might this actually mean esoterically?

For that matter is it a good or useful idea to take the C’s statement about Loch Ness in an esoteric way, or look for a subtext underneath the literal text? I wonder if Loch Ness in itself is necessarily all that significant? After all, pretty nearly every major body of freshwater (and quite a few really small lakes that are practically ponds) apparently have monsters in them. And it’s interesting that the C’s didn’t mention other Nessie-type creatures. Why would that be?

The answer might be that they intend this to be taken generically – and that therefore the serpents in Loch Ness have a general significance, rather than a significance that is only applicable to Loch Ness. That may seem contrary to the statement itself, which seems to say, quite specifically, that there are 51 giant snakes in this one particular Scottish lake. No mention of any other lake-monsters though in other lakes. It may be literally true insofar as it goes, but why don’t they mention any other lake-monsters? It’s almost as though they’re pointing to the general applicability of these monsters BY OMISSION – i.e. omitting the glaringly obvious in order to draw your attention to it. Well, that’s maybe just the way I’m reading it – but if something brings one up sharp in a sentence, it’s as well to shine a bit of a spotlight on it, to see if there’s a subtext which needs to be read.

Perhaps, for instance, we have a reference to DNA. Photo 51 was the critical piece of evidence which confirmed the double helical structure of DNA. (This was an X-ray diffraction image taken by Rosalind Franklin at King’s College London in 1952.)

The 153 fish in John are netted in the context of the Resurrection: this is a Resurrection appearance story. The Resurrection appearances continue for a period of 40 days, because Easter Day to Ascension Day is 40 days. So we might have another link with the numbers given here by the C’s. (Not, of course, that the C’s are necessarily referring us back to the New Testament – but that BOTH may have an esoteric subtext.)

40 is thus a length, and a length of time. Of course time itself is cyclical, and our perception of it does seem to be distorted in some major way. Perhaps there’s a clue to how time really works simply in the numbers – and perhaps specifically in prime numbers, or multiples of prime numbers. Now 40 can be formed from the addition of two prime numbers: according to Goldbach’s conjecture, it’s suspected that all even numbers greater than 2 can be formed by the addition of two prime numbers. What's so critical about prime numbers. Well, of course the C’s have been insistent on their significance: as they’ve said: “Prime numbers are the dwellings of the mystics”.

I don't really know where all this is tending, but then, as Perceval recently pointed out:

Perceval said:
Session answers are not given as "gospel", so they can't really be called right or wrong. They are given (and are meant to be received) more in the form of hints, clues and approximations, with the intent that they be used for further research and investigation.

edit: clarity
 
Ottershrew said:
For that matter is it a good or useful idea to take the C’s statement about Loch Ness in an esoteric way, or look for a subtext underneath the literal text? I wonder if Loch Ness in itself is necessarily all that significant? After all, pretty nearly every major body of freshwater (and quite a few really small lakes that are practically ponds) apparently have monsters in them. And it’s interesting that the C’s didn’t mention other Nessie-type creatures. Why would that be?

I tend to think that it is simply that the C's answer what is asked. They rarely add 'unasked for' information unless it is a very, very, very important point that they are trying to make.
 
Back
Top Bottom