Middle East

April of 2009

          With the global financial crisis ever worsening, and trouble imminent in the greater Middle East, I felt some urgency to extend the sheng canopy over that area. When the unusually long winter receded from the Palouse in the beginning of April, I set off toward Dubai for a beginning on the Persian Gulf.
          The trip began inauspiciously, as I misread my plane schedule and arrived at the airport of my home town just ten minutes after the plane had left. My good friend Clare Wiser drove me up to Spokane, where I found a flight to Seattle. Here I just missed the second phase of my regularly scheduled flight to London. Several hours later I made it onto a flight to Vancouver, and thence to Calgary, where I finally did board the third stage of the London flight. In London I found that my baggage had not fared so well, and said baggage, while later spotted variously in Dubai, Nicosia, and Malta, never did catch up with me, its present location being unknown.
          The result was that I was for nearly a month with only two shirts, two pair of underwear, one pair of pants, one pair of socks, and no shoes (just a pair of sandals). Much more important however, was that all my TBs were in that baggage, and I had nothing with which to open a vortex on the Persian Gulf. I located a latent vortex on the beach near Dubai, in the hope and expectation that the baggage would arrive before I had to leave. But that was not to be.
          Since this was the last time I was to see that area without a sheng canopy above it, I should record that at this time the qi in the sky was slightly worse than normal, but not the worst pre-sheng canopy I had seen. It was similar the the qi in the sky I was to feel when I first arrived in Israel and Egypt, but as I recall, it was a bit worse than that which I felt when first flying into Cyprus and Turkey.

          On the 12th I left the United Arab Emirates for the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean. I was met at Larnaca Airport by the doughty Antoine, who has gifted so many towers on the island. The next day we created many TBs , as well as two new CBs , and opened up a latent vortex in the suburbs of Antoine’s home city of Nicosia.
          The day after that we headed for the mountains, where Antoine’s grandparents have a summer cabin. Within a mile of the cabin we found and opened a good latent vortex, and within a hour’s drive from there, near a weather ball on one of the highest mountains of Cyprus, we found and opened a quite strong latent vortex.


          The following day Antoine drove us along the southern coast to the east, and we opened up several more latent vortices. The most interesting of these was on the site where the main temple of Aphrodite had stood throughout antiquity.

It was one of those semi-rare sites where the qi of a latent vortex comes to the surface not just at a few points, but over an area of several acres, and one can open the latent vortex by placing a TB anywhere within that area.

          On the 16th Antoine drove me to the de facto Greek-Turkish border crossing in Nicosia, whence I took a taxi to the Ercan Airport on the Turkish side, for a flight to Istanbul. The sheng canopy was now over Cyprus, likely having come down from the Balkans to the northwest, which had been under a sheng canopy since the summer of 2007.
          Cesco, who had come down from Oslo via Baltic Air, met me at the airport with a goodly supply of TBs . The first day we found and opened latent vortices on both sides of the Bosporus, which connects the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.
          Next day we found a third latent vortex in the city, but it being in rather a crowded and well-watched area, we had to hang around a couple hours until we had opportunity to secrete our TBs undetected. On the way back to our room downtown, someone filched my passport on a busy streetcar. This was on a Friday evening, and the US Consulate being then closed until Monday, we were unable to take the trip to eastern Turkey we had planned. During the weekend we did however take several ferry trips and opened several more latent vortices on the eastern part of Turkey. It was during that weekend the the sheng canopy first appeared overhead in Istanbul.

          On Monday I obtained a new passport, as well as a new visa (from a quite efficient and helpful Egyptian Consulate in Istanbul).
          On Tuesday the 21st we left Istanbul for Tel Aviv, flying directly over Cyprus. We continued under the sheng canopy all the way, until about a third of the way from Cyprus to Israel, where we flew out from underneath.


          After learning that my baggage had not reached Israel, we hopped the first bus to Jeruselem, and at the bus station there searched the internet for a suitable place to pass the night. We wanted an inexpensive place in the Old City, and found it in the New Swedish Hostel, on King David Street. This hostel was not new, being a warren of rooms within ancient stone walls, and the only thing Swedish about it was a blue and yellow sign above the entrance. It was said to have been founded by a Swedish woman many years before, as safe and modest accommodations for single women visiting the Holy City. Now it was run by a bluff frank Arab, who seemed not much to care if his visitors stayed or not. The small common kitchen was upstairs and adjacent to an even smaller office. Other guests for the night included a Romanian French teacher on holiday who hospitably insisted that Cesco and myself share each part of her evening meal with her; a German man working in visual arts who took us to a small but good restaurant in the Arab quarter, where everything was relatively inexpensive; and a retired circus performer from the Ukraine, with a gold wig and purple nails, accompanied by her elderly father. The conversation around the kitchen common that evening was bizarre but hilarious, with a mix to languages including Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, German, and English. With the exception of the manager, who was something of a polyglot, most of us only understood about a third of what was said, but that did not diminish the good feeling. I however slept the night in the common sleeping room, with my passport and wallet under my pillow.

          Many of the streets of the Old City are narrow, and the walls meet overhead so that one does not see the sky. We were told that this is in part because it makes it difficult for visitors to find their way about, and so gives employment to guides. In the morning we left the Hostel with all our possessions on our backs, and made our way eventually to Temple Mount, or Mount Moriah as it was known in the Days of Eld. The old stories have it that it was hither that Adam was led when turned out of Eden; that it was here that Abraham was told by the Lord to sacrifice his son Israel (which in the end did not come to pass of course); that it was here that Solomon built the temple containing the the Holy of Holies (sanctum sanctorum) in which was deposited the Ark of the Covenant; that it was here that the remains of Solomon’s architect Hiram Abif were deposited by his murderers under the roots of an Acacia tree; that it was here that the Romans, after destruction of the second temple, left standing as an admonition to the Jewish people, what later became known as the Wailing Wall (or Western Wall, as it was called when we visited it); and it was here, whence Mohammed is said to have ascended to Heaven to collogue with his predecessor prophets, and over the rock from which he was said to have departed, and on which he was said to have returned, was built that golden dome: now known as the Dome of the Rock.
          In these days, to approach the Western Wall, one must pass through metal detectors and a search resembling that which Homeland Security subjects those boarding a airplane in the US. We of course had our TBs , and the guards were more than a little suspicious that these might be bombs or something else nefarious. At length however, we so far persuaded them that the TBs were harmless, that we were permitted admission onto the square to the west of the wall. There were many orthodox Jews next to the wall reading aloud from the Torah. I walked over to see it more closely, and found that there was a holy entity about three fourths of the way up on the right hand or southern half of the wall. I knelt to offer condign respect, and asked if there was anything with which someone with physical presence could do to help. An answer came in the affirmative, and directions came to perform a sort of (mental) scrubbing and spreading of the qi throughout the wall. At some point in this process I felt I should enter the shelter on the northern end of the wall to continue. As I entered, an elderly Jew dressed in black with broad-brimmed hat approached me, and asked if I were Jewish. After receiving my answer, he asked consecutively if my mother were a Jew, if my father were a Jew, or if any of my grandparents were Jewish. All of which questions being answered in the negative, he then told me that if I were to enter, I must first give him some money. This seemed strange to me, but as I had a duty to perform, I emptied my pockets of change, gave it to him, and entered.
          Afterwards I found Cesco, and we entered a line of people queued in front of the single entrance to the top of the Temple Mount. Here again we had to pass through strict security with our back packs. Upon entrance, we found that by far the most impressive structure was the Dome of the Rock, above and in which could be felt a quite strong and holy presence.
          One thing which sets Old Jeruselem apart from any of the other cities I have visited on my trips, is the omnipresence of people in uniform with guns. It may very well may be necessary to protect the innocent, but at the same time it is rather disconcerting. One such soldier, apparently a Muslim rather than a Jew, from the manner in which he answered our questions, was seated opposite to the entrance on the west side of the Dome. I asked if it were permitted non-muslims to enter the building, and he said, "No Way!" I learned later that others had been permitted years ago, but that some zealot from Australia had set fire to the place, and since then only believers of Islam have been permitted in, except in special cases. Cesco went off to the side to show his respect in private, and I walked around the building once for examination. Coming back to the western entrance, and wishing to show my respect to the holiness within, I removed myself back a distance from the entrance, laid down my pack, and faced the place in an attitude of prayer. The armed guard became immediately incensed, jumped out of his seat, and ran over to me, angrily demanding I pick up my stuff and follow him. I told him that I had not known prayer was not permitted from without. This mollified him no whit, and he forcefully escorted me off the Temple Mount, depositing me at the Western Gate, earnestly enjoining me, never to come back. I told him that my friend would not know where I had gone, to which he replied, "Tough luck!"
          There are two sheng lines which cross under the Dome of the Rock. Below is a photo showing how this goes, the arrows showing the direction of sheng qi -flow:


          After a couple hours, Cesco and I eventually connected back together at the New Swedish Hostel on King David Street, but we both felt that we had had our fill of Jeruselem. We found a place for breakfast, and by good fortune made acquaintance there with a young man whose brother owned a car.
          I thought that it was quite important that we open up a number of latent vortices in Israel, and suspected that the Dead Sea would be a good place to do this: the area was centrally located, it was near a body of water, and it was sparsely populated.

However, like other places in Israel, there were Security Guards to avoid, and so we felt it would be good for someone who knew his way around to drive us. With his help we were able to open five latent vortices that afternoon, on or near the Dead Sea shore, and the driver, in due time, deposited us near the border city of Taba, not far from the northern cost of the Gulf of Aqaba.

          When Cesco had had his passport photo taken, his beard and hair were both rather long. On this trip they were trimmed short, he often passing as a clean cut young muslim. As we crossed into the Egyptian side of the border and showed our passports to the mustachioed guard on duty, he looked long and hard at Cesco’s photo, then at Cesco, and gravely shook his head. The guard asked me if I knew Cesco, and of course I vouched for him, saying I had taken many trips with him. The guard stared at the photo again, then at Cesco, and shook his head again, quite dolefully. "What is then to do?" exclaimed Cesco, looking worried. The guard burst into a huge smile, laughed, embraced Cesco, and waved us across the border.

          It was now nearing dusk, we had had a long day, and so we hired a car to take us on to our next stop, the small town of St. Catherine, in the middle of the Sinai desert.
          Several years before, Cesco had come upon a book The Ladder of Divine Ascent, written by one Saint John Climacus, living as a hermit about 600 AD. This work was written to guide monks along the path of religious perfection. Climacus lived only a few miles from the monastery of Saint Catherine. This monastery is situate at the foot of Mount Sinai, where Moses was said to have received the Commandments from God, and a bush said to be a direct descendent of the Burning Bush of Scripture grows within the monastery walls. Due to the historical location of the site, it had been the destination of pilgrims from early times, and the monastery was constructed in the 5th century by the order of the Emporer Justinian.
          Cesco had been much impressed by The Ladder of Divine Ascent, and suggested to me that Saint Catherine’s might be an interesting place to visit.
          We arrived after dark, and in spite of our representation to our driver that we wanted a cheap place to stay, he took us to a rather fancy hotel in town. Fortunately for us the place was already full, and so he took us to a much more suitable place called Fox Camp, where we found accommodations for 25 Egyptian Pounds (about $5 US) per night, per person. The clientele ate together in a Bedouin tent around an open fire. The bathrooms were outside, but functional, and we ending up staying four nights.
          Fox Camp was about a 20 minute walk from the Saint Catherine Monastery, and we arrived at the monastery’s the only public entrance, just before opening time at 9 the next morning. There was quite a large gathering of tourists there ahead of us, they having arrived mostly on buses. We decided to open a latent vortex first, and come back later when the crowd had disipated somewhat. The latent vortex we had located was on a mountain not far away, which we later learned was named Mount Jethroe. One of the monks told us the next day, that according to old lore, Moses climbed that mountain each day during the time he and his people sojourned in the area. The vortex was special, in that it fed a river of qi, which passed directly over the valley of the monastery. Here is one of the sylphs which appeared to us as we sat resting after our ascent:


          From the top of Mount Jethroe, Cesco and I gazed down over the Monastery,

and he asked me what I thought of the qi about the place. There was a line of qi passing down Mount Sinai, through the basilica, across the small valley separating the monastery from the mountain on the opposite side, and up that mountain. It was a sha line and there was a massive negative entity feeding on it, beginning at monastery and extending all the way up the opposite mountain. We decided to climb that mountain, to try to do something about it.
          So we made our way down Mount Jethroe and up a trail which extended about halfway up the other mountain (lying to the right in the photo above), ending at a small uninhabited complex of buildings in a locked compound. Cesco found a way to circumvent the complex, and we slowly made our way up without a trail. The mountain was actually cleft in its upper part into two parts.

This made the climb much less difficult than it would have been otherwise, and it also made us nearly invisible from anywhere but inside the cleft. Not far from the top we came to where the sheng line crossed. The sha being feeding off the line was quite annoyed. In fact, it seemed as if it somehow knew we were about to cause it trouble. Fortuneately there was one spot on the sha line over which had accumulated soil sufficient that we could bury and conceal a circle of 6 TBs . After setting the circle up optimally, and burying it, the sha line became a sheng line quite rapidly. The dominant emotion of the sha being changed from anger to pain, and within a short time we could feel no more trace of it. Cesco directed my attention up to the sky, where there were quite nice sylphs displaying good cheer.


          By the time we had made our way back down, it was late afternoon, and the monastery had long shut its doors to the public for the day. We were weary, and headed back to Fox Camp for a rest.
          Next morning was Friday, and the monastery would only be open to the the public for an hour in the morning. We took care to arrive on time, and this day we saw the bush and the beautiful basilca. But more that this we felt the positive river of qi flowing above and the sheng line flowing through the monastery. Below is a lithograph of the place made by one David Roberts in 1839, with a Mount Horeb in the background.

That afternoon I noted that there was another latent vortex part way up the mountain at the northen side of St. Catherine town, and climbed up to open it. Coming down, and turning back to check it out, I noticed that away to the north, just above the crest of the mountain, was visible the edge of a sheng canopy flowing rapidly our way, perhaps 30 kilometers distant. Within an hour or so it had arrived, halting just above river of qi. We remained in St. Catherine another day and a half, but the sheng canopy did not avance further south during that time.

          Our plan had been to take a bus north and west to Cairo, thence to inspect the pyramids. However events had transpired over the past weeks which demanded my early presence both in Taipei, and back in the Palouse. Furthermore, it was reported that Taliban troops were fighting Pakistani Government troops only 60 miles from Islamabad, and rumor had it that American troops would be sent into Pakistan if the Government turned out to be unable to handle the situation. Cesco and I talked it over, and we both felt that as we had completed most of what we had set out to do, we should leave Egypt. We modified our travel schedules, and two days later left St. Catherine for the nearest international airport at Sharm Al Sheik.
          We left Fox Camp early in the morning by auto, and spent a couple hours at the town of Dhahab, on the Gulf of Aqaba, waiting for a bus. Here we found another latent vortex, which we gifted.


          At Sharm Al Sheik we found a strong latent vortex on the seashore, but this was more difficult, for the shoreline at this resort town is mostly not open to the public, but taken up by various hotels. We were denied entrance by one hotel (for security reasons they said), but one of the guards was sympathetic, and showed us where we could climb up and follow the fence between his hotel and the neighboring one. Cesco watched our bags while I followed the fence, and fortuneately was able to pass by the guard of the other hotel without hindrance, to reach and treat the vortex on the seashore.
          That night when we flew out to Cairo, the sheng canopy was overhead, and it continued overhead for the the remainder of my trip. Reaching Cairo, Cesco and I parted ways, he for Oslo and I for Vienna, where I hoped to catch a Monday flight for Taiwan.

          I did not make the Monday flight, and the next was not until Wednesday morning, so I phoned up my friend Manfred in Pinkafeld, and he graciously agreed to put me up for the interim. His family, especially his wife and daughter, was quite gracious in feeding me and giving my clothes a much needed washing. Manfred took off work for Tuesday, and took me around to various interesting places in the vicinity, including a latent vortex on a hill, which we opened, and the remains of an old Nazi temple on a hill commemorating the Anschluss (or incorporation of Austria as part of Germany in 1938). At one time there was a great golden eagle on a pedestal in the center of the temple, but that had been long gone when we visited it.

There was a sha line through the temple, and Manfred and I made it positive using 6 of his good TBs .
          I much enjoyed my time with him, as I found his sensitivity of qi rather similar to mine, and we were able to discuss and compare things with each other, which we seldom have opportunity to do with others.

          The first leg of the flight from Vienna to Taipei was over Turkey, Syria, and Iraq to Abu Dhabi, which city is less than 100 miles from my first stop of the trip Dubai, where due to non-arrival of my baggage, I had been unable to open a vortex. However the sheng canopy was overhead throughout the flight, and I was gratified to learn that this sheng canopy was now over the entire area.


          The next leg of the trip passed over the gulf of Oman, and Karachi, before heading east over India and China to Taiwan. We were ever under the sheng canopy , from which I infer that the Euopean canopy is now connected to that over East Asia. Since I know that, as of last November, the latter was at least as far north as Amritsar on the Pakistani border, I should not be surprised if it is now over the remainder of Pakistan and even Afghanistan.

          Thanks are due to Antoine, Cesco, and Manfred; and recognition to Google Earth and MSN Encarta; for the illustrations in this report.