The surprising recurrence of the Kabbalistic number 7
Talking about coincidences, I received today the most shocking email you can imagine. The message lists each time the number 7 appeared here, related to the extraordinary events that I’ve been describing. It was signed by “Ouroboros”, a rather enigmatic nickname. After googling a little I learned that Ouroboros is the name of an ancient symbol that depicts a snake eating its own tail… But let’s return to the email itself. The text was written in Spanish and this is my translation:
Your grandfather had spoken. Listen to the music of the spheres to understand his revelation. Seven notes will guide you:
- Samuel Goldstein died this year on July the 7th. That’s 7/7/7.
- He had 77 years when he died.
- He talked to you through the Spica for the first time 7 days after his passing.
- That day it was a Saturday, the 7th day of the week (according to the Bible and the Jewish calendar).
- 7 was the number engraved in the Parker 51 that belonged to the Devil.
- 7 were the ones who attended to that spiritist session were Aleister Crowley’s ghost materialized (half a dozen plus Fernando das Neves).
- Satan’s pen auction ended with 7 bids.
Ouroboros
I ignore who wrote this but I sure admire his (or her) portentous numerological wizardry. I’m still amazed, totally amazed.
A silent presence roams my house
I’m pretty sure that there is some sort of entity hanging out in my home. I can’t prove it, though, since it’s very difficult to collect irrefutable evidence in this case. I don’t know if this is my grandfather’s presence, neither; but if it happens to be him, then why doesn’t he speak to me through the radio receiver?
The day before yesterday I started to feel that annoying impression of being observed, specially in the kitchen or when I’m about to sleep. I noticed also that each time I approach the shelves filled with books I feel a sudden low temperature around me. That’s a very nasty and uncanny sensation: those chills sloping down the back of your neck, and the air that becomes as solid as glass… If you consider that here, in the southern hemisphere, I’m enjoying one quite hot Springtime, you can conclude (as I did) that the feeling is particularly odd and can’t be attributed to natural causes of any kind.
Balthazar, my cat, is also behaving in a rather atypical way, hissing to the air and growling relentlessly. He seems aware of something that I ignore. But as I said above, is just a matter of sensations, one of those truths that can only be known by intuition.
Strange coincidences
Wow. Goldstein Collection’s first item was sold. I’m amazed. But I also realized that I better catch a faster pace if I want to subsist only on this new weird commercial activity. The second artifact is as well already to be shipped to its new home. But A T, the winner of the pipe, did not contact me again. Which is at least curious, not to say enigmatic.
These last days I received a lot of input from some old readers and a few new passers by. I want to expose here a pair of coincidences that some perspicacious readers noted:
Coincidence 1: monica left a comment regarding that utterly strange formation above the bald man’s head in the snapshot. And a couple of minutes later an email from David fell into my inbox, mentioning that same unnatural figure. Monica guesses that it’s the Devil, while David envisions a suspicious face. I see there a skull. Three interpretations of the same chilling shape.
Coincidence 2: And this is quite fascinating… Sven, a guy from Finland who follows this weblog from its beginning, wrote me:
(…) I got in love with the Orloj and studied it for a few days. The clock has some captivating marionettes which exhibit some well known christian motifs. There are four little statues at the bottom of the Orloj: a chronicler, an angel, an astronomer and a philosopher. See that?!
You are the chronicler (isn’t *chronicle* one of your categories?)
The angel is Angel Manoukian (quite obvious)
Your grandfather is the astronomer (your said that he was an *astronomy devotee* or something like that).
The philosopher. I don’t know who might be, do you Matt?
Sven’s magical message left me thinking for the whole weekend. I have no answers for that last question whatsoever. Yet.
I saw the video one thousand times now but I can’t find nothing worthy about it. It seems just another dull touristic footage. I really wonder what’s its possible relation with Goldstein’s death. By the way, Goldstein wasn’t showing up lately so I’m staying with my bag full of unanswered questions again.
Brazilian Spiritist pipe
Brazil holds this strange world record: to have the biggest amount of declared spiritists among its population. And for spiritists I mean common people that can communicate with the spirits of the dead through specific rituals or certain spiritual “techniques”. In fact, in Brazil, Spiritism is considered as a whole religion, with more than two million mortals following its principles and practices. No wonder, then, that was there, in Brazil, where this spiritist pipe’s uncanny story happened…
It began on October the 5th, of the year 1949. That day occurred the most important gathering in the World’s History of Spiritism. The summit was called “Pacto Aureo” (an enigmatic Portuguese name, which can be translated as “Golden Covenant”), and there were set the rules and prescriptions upon the actual Spiritism’s social structure was built. That very same day Fernando Das Neves was born. And since his birth coincided with such a fundamental reunion, his family augured to the baby a bright future within the Spiritist movement. Fernando’s uncle, going far beyond the rest of the family, prognosticated that the new-born was called to be the most powerful medium of the XXth century.
Time passed and Fernando grew up. But his “natural abilities” didn’t show up. So, at the age of 21, Fernando was sent to Uberaba, a district in Minas Gerais state. There lived the legendary Chico Xavier, whose list of extraordinary attributes and deeds is boundless: a superlative prophet, an outstanding prolific writer (with more than 400 books which were dictated by different entities, written thanks to his psychographic skills), a bullet-proof humbleness, an unmatchable sense of charity… were all characteristics of the one who was later considered the Pope of Spiritism.
Fernando entered Chico Xavier’s institution and, thanks to his influential family intervention, he soon became one of his disciples. The idea was to let Chico help him develop his psychic powers. And the lessons started almost instantly.
It took ten years for Fernando Das Neves to recognize that his training was going nowhere. And even more, he started to think that he was a fraud: in his lifetime he did not experience any communication with the dead, not even once. So, exhausted and depressed, he packed his possessions and returned to Rio de Janeiro
Back in Rio, he announced to his family his retirement from the spiritual path. But his uncle convinced him that the failure wasn’t his responsibility at all, but instead, a wrong selection of a spiritist environment. He explained to Fernando that a medium has two very different groundings to choose from. One is the Kardecist movement: based on Allan Kardec’s philosophy, this tradition promote a clean body as a condition to contact the spirits. On the opposite site, or almost, you can find the Umbanda Spiritism: grounded in several African cults, this faction believes in inducing the medium in a trance (through substance experimentation or any other ritual practices, for example). Chico Xavier was the ultimate Kardecist. Now Fernando needed to experiment the other option, inspired by the previous experiences of Aleister Crowley’s Golden Dawn. And his uncle was so eloquent that made him change his mind.
A couple of weeks later, Fernando’s uncle introduced him to the members of one extremely closed esoteric group, whose ritual’s line was unmistakeably umbandistic. They were going to held a spiritist session that same Sunday night and invited Fernando to join them, something he accepted without knowing that this decision will put him in great danger…
Sunday arrived and Fernando ended up in a minuscule apartment with half a dozen other people. His uncle, who was not present, had praised his nephew’s talents in such an emphatic way that the group agreed unanimously to let Fernando be the one to carry away the ceremony as the mediumnic channel. That accorded, someone brought a little wooden pipe, filled it with cannabis and passed it to Fernando saying “We are ready”. That became his first contact with a “toxic” substance…
Fernando smoked with fruition. But nothing happened. I mean, nothing “supernatural” happened. And although he felt quite easy about this, the others don’t. So one of the attendees, an extremely tall man, grabbed the pipe in disgust and refilled it, but this time with Madak (a powerful mix of Opium and Tobacco). That made a drastic difference. Really.
Twenty minutes later, Fernando entered in an irrevocable trance-like state. Or worse. While lying on the floor, unconscious, shaking and sweating and mumbling incoherent things, his colleagues panicked. The last thing they wanted was a dead overdosed body in the room. And in the middle of this mess someone knocked at the door. Sharp looks were shot between each one in the room. Two young guys pulled Fernando through the floor and left him alone in the bathroom. Then silence. And again three knocks. Instinctively, the only woman in there approached the entrance and said “Yes?”, using a childish voice, very common among Brazilian females. From the other side someone answered: “Let me in”.
It was strange, but everybody in that apartment felt compelled to open the door. And so did the woman. Precisely. What they saw was quite peculiar: an elder man in a black tunic, his face almost all covered up with a thick hood.
The elder man got in and went directly to the bathroom, where Fernando was. And entering there, he slammed the door in rage. Everyone seemed horrified, specially after hearing Fernando’s maniacal scream.
The tall guy quickly opened the door and, to his surprise, the elder man wasn’t there anymore. Fernando was awake, seated in the floor beside the toilet, crying in silence. Upon the general consternation someone suggested that he recognized the apparition: it was Aleister Crowley, one of the most notable “initiated” of the XXth century. The lady in the room commented that Crowley’s death occurred in 1947, more than 30 years before. Then, Fernando interrupted the general amazement: “I’ve just saw things that were not meant for the human eye”. But he never explained what was that monstrous thing he saw. Not even years after the shocking event. When all quieted down in the apartment, the tall attendee snatched the pipe and took it to his home. Then wrote down the chronicle of events, and send both (the pipe and the letter) to my grandfather.
This is a wooden handcrafted pipe, carved with some very stylized Indonesian patterns. The polished design is somewhat abstract, but in a way it resembles a botanical layout, with leafs and branches, divided with ring separators. The inner part of the bowl is made of ceramic so that the pipe itself doesn’t get impregnated by the herb’s strong perfumes: something ideal for those who want to keep their smoking ritual in secret.
The video was found! We have a winner!
I’m shocked! I’m really shocked… The video was finally pinpointed. It all happened so fast today that it was really breathtaking… It started with the contest entering Digg’s homepage (Sven, a loyal reader of Goldstein Collection and already a friend of mine, helped me with the promotion), then the traffic was so humongous that the server admin had to disable the site for an hour or so. And finally, when it went online again, I received an email from “A T” with the requested url:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=VsojXx7fGeo
I wrote back to A T in order to arrange the shipping of the Brazilian pipe. By the way, due to obvious reasons I’ll leave its strange story for later.
I’m rushing now to write this post in order to announce that there is already a winner…
I’m exulting!
Now, I’ll start to analyze the video and see what this movie has for me.
And here is the footage:
Find a mysterious YouTube video and win!
As you may already know I’m after a truly evasive YouTube video that will reveal the secrets behind my grandfather’s eerie death. I’m not alone in this quest, though, since a bunch of really great people is already helping me out. But we feel stuck, halted in what it seems to be a dead end… Thinking about how to overcome this situation I had a stunning idea: to run a contest offering a splendid reward!
So here it is… The wicked Goldstein Collection’s YouTube contest!
The objective: To find the footage within the gazillions of videos in YouTube’s massive database.
The prize: a strange cannabis smoking pipe, involved in a bewildering Brazilian spiritism session where the ghost of a famous black magician was invoked. (If you want to know the complete story of the pipe, please wait for my next post).
The rules: There aren’t any. Who needs them anyway? The winner will be the one who first sends me the url of the video. My email address is goldsteincollection@gmail.com. Simple.
The starting point: This fascinating frame…
In a previous post I already explained how did I get this snapshot. There you will also be able to read more about the puzzling events that surrounded Samuel Goldstein’s passing away.
With this giveaway I expect to add an incentive interesting enough to renew the strengths of the team that’s already working in this case, and to sum new people to this weird pursuit. The more we are, the faster that video will appear…
So, do you want to win a paranormal object from the Goldstein Collection? Then go and find the video!
Devil’s Parker 51 Pen stolen from Satan’s pocket
This is the first item of Samuel Goldstein’s private collection up for auction. It’s a luxury Parker 51 pen that belonged to the Devil himself and was stolen from Satan’s pocket right after signing a deal with him.
If you want to know the full story of this luciferian item, please read further. I’ll try to reproduce its tale as it was told to me by my grandfather.
The following events took place in a small town lost in Argentina’s vast and forgotten North, about half a century ago. Our main character was a common burglar, a chicken thief that one unlucky night got caught by the local police. Thrown to a filthy prison for a couple of days, he shared there a cell with a very strange and obscure man, a person convicted for killing at least three nuns. This silent individual was a devotee of “San la Muerte” (a powerful entity sometimes associated with the Devil) whose cult grew massive among Argentinian criminals. Both of them mutually confided all their difficulties and ambitions, and in almost no time at all, they became fond of each other. When our robber got finally kicked out of jail, his cell mate scribbled some weird symbols in the floor, lightened a red candle and said: “He will appear to you anytime soon. Take advantage of the deal”. After that, the assassin spitted cheap whiskey over the flame, snuffing it.
That night, while sleeping in a barn, the burglar felt a pestilent sulfur odor, so strong, that woke him up. Then someone entered the place… An average human figure came out of the shadows and stared at him with a pair of sinister eyes. Half drunk as he was after celebrating the end of his short stance in prison, he overlooked the terrible nature of that manifestation. Much to his disgrace, may I add.
He surely was confused. At first, the thief thought that that man was the owner of the land and feared to end up again behind bars just for trespassing private property. But eventually, while hearing the persuasive voice of the stranger, he remembered his confined friend’s uncanny ritual and the premonitory goodbye words. And finally understood the true identity of that “man” he had in front of him.
There were no presentations whatsoever. The Devil said something like: “We both know what the other wants. Sign here and I’ll concede it”, and offered him a rolled paper along with the pen. When the burglar said “Ok”, the Devil took the thief’s left hand and made a fast cut with his sharp nail. Blood begun to flow and the Devil added: “Lets use this as ink”. After the contract was sealed with a human signature, Lucifer saved paper and pen into his pocket and was about to leave the barn when, suddenly, a white dove arrived flying directly towards Satan, and punched him in his chest. That was an odd situation indeed: a human-like demon with a bird flapping hysterically around him… And the thief, excited by the overall consternation, decided to keep a “souvenir” of such a bizarre encounter. So, in one of his usual kleptomaniacal raptures, he bravely slipped his hand into Satan’s pocket and grabbed the pen. The robbery went unnoticed (or at least that’s what the thief thought), because the Devil seemed only interested in breaking the dove’s neck, something that was attained with one skillful wrist movement. Then, Lucifer said in an impossible low pitch voice: “Another miscarried one”, and, offering the cleanest smile the burglar ever saw, he disappeared into the night.
From next day on, things started to change for the burglar. A local politician hired him to perform some dirty work, threatening his adversaries, keeping in order some illegal businesses. That was the kick-start of an unstoppable career that was crowned, a decade later, with a first son to be born from the womb of the gorgeous and wealthy landowner’s daughter, and foremost spectacular, when the thief became the elected Mayor of the town.
On his first week as a Mayor he signed several decrees, mostly giving his consent to corrupt deals with private firms. The hooking feeling of power, the arrogance and the impunity given by a rotten political structure, made him sign all those edicts with the Parker 51 pen. He did not use blood though, but regular blue ink instead. Surprisingly (or not really), included among one of those authorized decrees was an agreement to give a huge amount of public money to restore and expand the local catholic chapel. And he signed that also, without much hesitation. But the consequences of that cynical act were not so good…
A couple of days later, some terrible news interrupted the burglar’s peaceful afternoon at the Town Hall: his pregnant wife had died in a car accident. He left the building and hurried to where the crash took place. And upon his arrival, he recognized not only the devastated corpse, but also a shocking sulfur odor that he remembered instantly. He stayed there for less than two minutes. Then he returned to his office, buried every attempt to investigate what really happened under tons of bureaucracy paperwork, and resigned to his charge. That was the last time he used the Parker 51.
That night he traveled to a neighbor town to contact a well known priest (that happened to be a demonologist with several successful exorcisms in his resume). They talked for a couple of hours and the burglar confessed to the cleric the story of the pickpocketed pen. He also handed the pen to the priest for him to keep. The burglar received the priest’s blessing, jumped into his car and left the town. No one saw him again.
How come the pen was added to the Goldstein Collection you may wonder. Well, the priest was a friend of my grandfather, they met a couple of times and maintained written contact every now and then. In 1983 the cleric was diagnosed with a terminal disease so he gave the Parker 51 to my grandfather and told him its obscure origins.
Now, about the pen… The Parker 51 was regarded (and still is) as the best fountain pen ever made. It has a clever “vacumatic” system to fill its barrel with ink. A beautiful gold filled metal cap with parallel lines engraved all over it and a top pearlescent jewel.
The vacumatic system was sure a standout feature if you consider the sick use this pen had. As explained above, the Devil demanded to sign the contracts with blood. So I guess that, for that purpose, this was the usual procedure: to inflict a slight cut in the signatory’s skin, then, when blood arises, to recline swiftly the nib over the injury, and finally, to pull back the Parker’s diaphragm sucking blood with this movement, filling the container. In fact, if you look close enough, the nib still has some creepy stain marks, nor red neither blue (something between cyan and magenta), that I suppose were a product of mixing blood fluid and common ink.
The pen’s hood have some strange marks in its front. These scratches seem made by an extremely hard and sharp fingernail or some sort of tiny claw.
The outer part of the barrel shows also some inscriptions such as a mysterious number 7, a cabbalistic tiny digit which was profoundly engraved.
This is what I know so far about the devilish Parker 51 pen. But if you want to ask me something, I’ll try to answer all your questions. Just contact me or leave a comment and I’ll do my best to clarify the story of this bizarre item.
Goldstein Collection’s first item up for auction
After finding a way to receive money from the abroad (it’s not so easy if you live in Argentina), I listed on eBay the first item of the collection. It’s a vintage Parker 51 pen that belonged to the Devil and was stolen from Satan’s pocket right after signing a deal with him. If you want to bid for the item please follow this link:
Devil’s Parker 51 Pen stolen from Satan’s pocket
This acution ends on Nov-16-07.
In the next post I’ll copy the item’s description, starting this way the desired gallery of paranormal artifacts and mystic paraphernalia which compose the Goldstein Collection. For this purpose, I’ll create a new “Collection” category. So if you click it, you’ll see post after post, my grandfather’s wonderful assortment.
What happened with EVPs?
I had not even one instance of paranormal communication lately and I’m sort of disappointed about that. I believed that after quitting my job the messages’ frequency rate would be greatly increased. But that did not happen. The Spica is now operating almost all day long, specially by night, since I found that, without the imposed schedule of a regular daytime job, I’m a rather nightly creature.
So now, if you want me to put things clear, I would say that I’m following three simultaneous and entwined directions:
- To keep alive the connection with my deceased grandfather.
- To find that YouTube video Goldstein was seeing when he died.
- To sell the Goldstein Collection.
These last days I’ve been centered primary in the first goal of the above list. Maybe too centered. EVPs can be as tricky as addictive and that’s the possible reason for my lack of success in hearing my grandfather’s voice. I’m not a Latin expert, but could it be that the word “addiction” is derived from the negative prefix a- plus the term “diction”? If this is correct, according to my speculative etymology, “addiction” could mean literally “without diction”, “without spoken expression” or “mute”. That’s pretty amazing because it explains why my obsession (call it addiction) interferes -or simply pauses- my grandfather’s diction.
I have two other objectives to watch over. Therefore I must let it flow and remember to stay in motion.
My selling plans for the Goldstein Collection
To wake up without the alarm-clock’s buzz is quite an experience. I really recommend it to everyone. Add to it a slow-paced breakfast and the satisfaction is complete.
But lets talk about the collection… I’ve spent this past weekend delving into my grandfather’s treasure, re-organizing it and thinking about what would be the best way to trade this fascinating paranormal bonanza. After meditating for several hours, I finally decided to sell each object separately. This kind of “retail” solution will allow me to show the collection in its fullness, adding to www.goldsteincollection.com the following feature (which, by the way, was this site’s original purpose): to serve as a gallery for the quintessential assortment of haunted artifacts and mystical paraphernalia that Goldstein had gathered during his lifetime. In that sense, the “one at a time” plan is ideal since it will give me occasion to gradually tell here each object’s own curious story -and post along some pictures.
While I was surrounded by these amazing items I realized the huge sentimental value of this collection as a whole. And, of course, I won’t even try to hide that fact. There is also an enormous amount of sorrow involved in this idea of selling it. But freedom is more valuable than any material possession, and that is something Goldstein would agree with; the idea was his after all.