Chapter 3

I'd like to make some notations about some things. I have extracted some published references to many of the 'Old Woman's" abilities and one portion of 'The Books Of Ptolemy'.

These are not my made up comments, they are 'real'.

First Flashback Seated on the floor, within the markings of a Pentagram sat, what could only be described as a haggard witch. She bade me to sit down with her hand and asked me a question. "What is it that you want more than anything, and what will you 'Trade' for it."

Magic is defined as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will", including both "mundane" acts of will as well as ritual magic.

"One must find out for oneself, and make sure beyond doubt, who one is, what one is, why one is ... Being thus conscious of the proper course to pursue, the next thing is to understand the conditions necessary to following it out. After that, one must eliminate from oneself every element alien or hostile to success, and develop those parts of oneself which are specially needed to control the aforesaid conditions."

Mind reading and Remote Viewing Mind reading may refer to: Telepathy, the transfer of information between individuals by means other than the five senses The illusion of telepathy in the performing art of mentalism * Technological Thought identification, the use of Neuroimaging techniques to read human minds Extrasensory perception (ESP) involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind. It is also sometimes referred to as intuition. The term implies acquisition of information by means external to the basic limiting assumptions of science, such as that organisms can only receive information from the past to the present.

Remote viewing is a mental faculty that allows a perceiver (a "viewer") to describe or give details about a target that is inaccessible to normal senses due to distance, time, or shielding. For example, a viewer might be asked to describe a location on the other side of the world, which he or she has never visited; or a viewer might describe an event that happened long ago; or describe an object sealed in a container or locked in a room; or perhaps even describe a person or an activity; all without being told anything about the target -- not even its name or designation. From this explanation, it is obvious that remote viewing is related to so-called psi (also known as "psychic" or "Para psychological") phenomena such as clairvoyance or telepathy. Whatever it is that seems to make it possible for human beings to do remote viewing is probably the same underlying ability that makes such things as clairvoyance work.

Second Flashback(By the way, I actually saw the Book and had someone who could read it) One day, before we were scheduled to leave, a 'Special Delivery' package arrived. I signed for it thinking it was the passport and visas for our trip. Imagine my surprise when I opened it and inside was a book. It was a very old book, in Greek and Roman, side by side. It was 'The Book Of Ptolemy'.

Claudius Ptolemy (Greek, Klaudios Ptolemaios; Latin(Roman): Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. AD 90 – c. AD 168) was a Greco-Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology.[ He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, but few reliable details of his life are known. His birthplace has been given as Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid, however, there is no reason to suppose that he ever lived anywhere else than in Alexandria, where he died around AD 168.

His Book(s) first translated from Arabic into Latin by Plato of Tivoli (Tiburtinus) in 1138, while he was in Spain. The Tetrabiblos is an extensive and continually reprinted treatise on the ancient principles of horoscopes and astrology. That it did not quite attain the unrivaled status of the Almagest was, perhaps, because it did not cover some popular areas of the subject, particularly electional astrology (interpreting astrological charts for a particular moment to determine the outcome of a course of action to be initiated at that time), and medical astrology, which were later adoptions.

Ptolemy's astrological outlook was quite practical: he thought that astrology was like medicine, that is conjectural, because of the many variable factors to be taken into account: the race, country, and upbringing of a person affects an individual's personality as much as, if not more than, the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets at the precise moment of their birth, so Ptolemy saw astrology as something to be used in life but in no way relied on entirely.

Several of Ptolemy's works have survived, covering a broad range of subjects, and each having exerted varying degrees of influence in the history of science through antiquity, the Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance. Among these are the Harmonics, on musical theory, the Optics, and the Geography, which had a considerable influence on the work of Islamic geographers and, although it came late into the West, was immensely popular thereafter, so that although its geographical data were already becoming obsolete, its theories of map projection exerted enormous influence. The Tetrabiblos was the most popular astrological treatise in antiquity, and the Planetary Hypotheses, a cosmological work, provided a vision of the universe, of contiguous nested spherical "shells" within which the planets moved, that dominated Islamic and western medieval astronomical thought and was still present even with Kepler. These last two works were companion-pieces to the Syntaxis (also known as the Almagest), a comprehensive presentation of mathematical astronomy, and it was through this Ptolemy became one of the most important figures in all the history of astronomy.

The Syntaxis was, perhaps, the first complete synthesis of mathematical astronomy into a single work. It was certainly the most successful because it was quickly accepted as definitive, and if there were any earlier such attempts, they have not survived. This was Ptolemy's great contribution to astronomy. He did much more, however, than merely collate and systematize previous work. His models were sufficiently superior as to render his predecessors' obsolete, and in at least his development of kinematic models for the planets other than the sun and moon, he was a pioneer.

The importance of the Syntaxis in the history of astronomy is thus twofold, in its consequences for the survival of earlier material, and in its influence upon what was to follow.

Through Ptolemy's references to his predecessors the Syntaxis contains much of what we know of earlier Greek mathematical astronomy. By the fourth century AD, when commentaries had been written by Pappus and Theon, the Syntaxis had already become the definitive manual of mathematical astronomy, and earlier works were no longer copied.

Secondly, the Syntaxis dominated almost all subsequent astronomy for some 1500 years, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, in both the Islamic and Christian worlds. Islamic astronomers improved some parameters, and worked to eliminate certain geometrical elements of his models that they found philosophically distasteful (such as the equant point, seen as violating the principle of uniform circular motions in the heavens), but always these were variations from the standard models that Ptolemy had provided.

As another side note, this author has seen evidence and proof of the things related about the 'Old Woman' and the 'Book of Ptolemy'.

Our Story Continues. James, in his previous life, had 'reason' to participate in some 'Special Project's', not only because of his abilities, but that he would be 'expendable.

Although not the only one he had been involved with, the following brief required a participant with 'Majestic' level clearance. Here is a short summary of one project, from a published book.

STAR GATE was one of a number of "remote viewing programs" conducted under a variety of code names, including SUN STREAK, GRILL FLAME, and CENTER LANE by DIA and INSCOM, and SCANATE by CIA. These efforts were initiated to assess foreign programs in the field; contract for basic research into the phenomenon; and to evaluate controlled remote viewing as an intelligence tool.

The program consisted of two separate activities. An operational unit employed remote viewers to train and perform remote viewing intelligence-gathering. The research program was maintained separately from the operational unit. This effort was initiated in response to CIA concerns about reported Soviets investigations of psychic phenomena. Between 1969 and 1971(Actually as early as 1947), US intelligence sources concluded that the Soviet Union was engaged in "psychotropic" research. By 1970, it was suggested that the Soviets were spending approximately 60 million rubles per year on it, and over 300 million by 1975. The money and personnel devoted to Soviet psychotropic's suggested that they had achieved breakthroughs, even though the matter was considered speculative, controversial and "fringy."

The initial research program, called SCANATE [scan by coordinate] was funded by CIA beginning in 1970. Remote viewing research began in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute [SRI] in Menlo Park, CA. This work was conducted by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, once with the NSA and at the time a Scientologist. The effort initially focused on a few "gifted individuals" such as New York artist Ingo Swann, an OT Level VII Scientologist.

Many of the SRI "empaths" were from the Church of Scientology(Eat you heart out Tom Cruise). Individuals who appeared to show potential were trained and taught to use talents for "psychic warfare." The minimum accuracy needed by the clients was said to be 65%, and proponents claim that in the later stages of the training effort, this accuracy level was "often consistently exceeded." GONDOLA WISH was a 1977 Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) Systems Exploitation Detachment (SED) effort to evaluate potential adversary applications of remote viewing.