Continuing with Energetic Memory we get into some more fun things to talk about like creatures of fantasy and folklore!! But also talk about animals that exist or existed at one point.
Children seem to have this amazing ability to dream up the most fantastic creatures before they “grow up.” Some of them never lose that ability and become amazing artists, novelists, etc. after having grown up. Look at Hayao Miyazaki as a wonderful example of this. But what if we re-evaluate what imagination is? What if instead of simple make-believe we thought in terms of Energetic Memory? This wouldn’t be that much of a stretch if we study the threshold between fantasy and reality.
If I told you that living on this planet is a giant black lizard the size of a human adult you would most likely think, “Of course there is. You’re talking about the Komodo Dragon.” In the world we live in today, Komodo Dragons are scientifically classified animals that live on the island of Komodo. But they were once part of folklore. Komodo dragons were not “discovered” or scientifically cataloged and documented until the year 1910. Before 1910, they were dismissed as folklore of the people who lived in the various places around Komodo Island. I am writing this post in 2024 which means Komodo Dragons have only been “real” for 114 years.
114 years seems like a long time to us but compare that to all of the life that has existed on our planet and it is a very short amount of time. Life is estimated to have started on our planet between 2 and 4 billion years ago. Let’s put that in perspective using the long form of the numbers.
114 years
2,000,000,000 years
Here’s another perspective. In 2 billion years, 114 years have gone by 17,543,859 times. 114 years is still quite recent, historically.
And in the 114 years we have known of Komodo Dragons, we are still discovering new things about them. Walter Auffenberg went to live on the island with the dragons in 1969. He stayed there and observed them in the wild to study their behaviors. In 1981 he published his observations. A key part of this publication was the idea that the Komodo Dragons had bacteria in their saliva which would incapacitate their prey. From 1910 until the release of Auffenberg’s publication in 1981, that’s 71 years of knowing these creatures existed, the basic thought was they just attacked and swallowed prey. In 1981 we suddenly thought they had this deadly bacteria in their saliva BUT that became common uncontested knowledge without anyone stepping in for testing or verification of this. Remember how we talked about personal vs. verifiable gnosis because one respected scientist said it the entire scientific community accepted this as truth. That is verifiable gnosis being proven wrong.
What do I mean by that? From 1981 until 2009 this was the accepted scientific fact about Komodo Dragons. What changed in 2009 was Dr. Bryan Fry. Dr. Fry took a recently dead captive Komodo Dragon and did an MRI of its head. This MRI revealed venom glands and thus Komodo Dragons were reclassified as venomous animals. It took 28 years for someone to challenge what was already deemed scientific fact. Now you may think, “Well the other scientist didn’t have the tools to be able to test his bacteria statements. WRONG! MRIs were first used in the 1970s and the first use on a living human was in 1977. Auffenberg, zoologists, herpetologists, toxicologists, microbiologists, pathologists, etc all had the technology but it took Dr. Fry to step up and challenge the previously accepted verifiable gnosis to change the understanding of the Komodo Dragon.
What does any of this have to do with Energetic Memory and imagination? A whole lot. For starters, the story of the Komodo Dragon stands as a testament that scientists can say a lot of things that don’t necessarily hold up under scrutiny. Secondly, as we are coming to see, language itself is an organic thing that evolves as well. The Komodo Dragon has Dragon in the name. What is the most famous thing dragons are known for? Dragons breathed fire. Let's take a second to look at that sentence.
The word “dragons” is the subject of the statement. Breathed is the verb of the statement. Finally, fire is the object of the verb. Again language has evolved from very simple ideas to enormously complex ideas over time. Through translations, we come to our best guess of what idea was being conveyed from ancient statements. I say ancient because dragons are famously found in stories around the entire world. What if we shift our perspective and shake up the sentence structure? Let’s make “dragons” a possessive, switch “breathed” from verb to noun, and then transform “fire” from an object to a verb. The sentence takes on a whole new meaning when we say, “The dragon’s breath burned.”
There are many animals in the world that can spit and shoot acidic fluids from their bodies. The vast majority of them are invertebrates such as ants and millipedes with a few showing up in aquatic vertebrates. But there is the spitting cobra which has been recorded spraying venom up to 8 feet. If I were to get a cup of acid thrown on me it would burn like fire. If I were to get hit with venom in the eyes or mouth where soft tissues could easily absorb the venom I would feel intense burning sensations. Most venomous animals are equipped though with some form of envenomation structure like fangs, spines, barbs, nematocysts, etc. These tools are simply more effective at delivering venomous compounds to prey or attackers when used defensively.
But life has been evolving for billions of years. What is to stop us from envisioning pre-historic creatures being able to spray venoms from their mouths, spines, or whatever? Well, paleontologists are what is stopping us. But I have to bring them into question about this subject. If you do simple precursory research into prehistoric venomous animals of the fossil record you find exactly one verified creature. That is Euchambersia.
I used every kind of search term you can think of. Venomous animals in the fossil record, venomous vertebrates of the fossil record, pre-historic venomous animals, pre-historic venomous vertebrates, venom in the fossil record, etc, etc. Everything brought me to one animal and virtually no others over and over again. Euchambersia is a mammalian ancestor that lived around 260 million years ago. It is the earliest verified venomous vertebrate in the entire fossil record. Of course, I am not counting invertebrates but even finding documentation on them with relation to venom is scarce.
Following Euchambersia, the next mention I could find about venomous animals in the fossil record was for snakes in Africa about 25 million years ago. Paleontologists maintain that it was “impossible” and there is no evidence to support that any dinosaur was venomous.
That tells me that scientists want us to believe that between 260 million years ago to 25 million years ago venom in vertebrates spontaneously showed up, disappeared, and then spontaneously evolved again. For 235,000,000 years there were absolutely no other venomous vertebrates on Earth? That implies that venomous vertebrates today are all spontaneous evolutionary divergences, or mutations, that started 25 million years ago with snakes. Even the Platypus is a venomous animal, but no dinosaurs can't have been venomous. Empiricism in science is the biggest downfall of science.
Again, evolution is a weird thing. It is Discord at its absolute finest. I can get that no hypodermic fangs have been found in the fossil record but that doesn’t mean there weren’t inefficient methods of delivering venom. Maybe the spitting cobra is more of a living fossil with its toxin-spraying behavior being linked to earlier ancestors. And there is the example of the Slow Loris which is a venomous primate with a highly unusual and inefficient venom delivery system. The gland is on its arms and it has to lick the secretion into its mouth. The saliva mixes with the venom to activate it and then it bites to envenomate its target. Maybe this is also a living fossil of inefficient venom delivery systems. To clarify, what I mean when saying “living fossil” is that these venom delivery systems may appear unique to modern animal husbandry but could have been more common in animal ancestry.
The fact of the matter is that soft tissues very rarely fossilize. That’s why we are just now realizing how dinosaurs were more closely related to birds than to modern lizards. Because we have found rare fossils that were able to imprint proto-feathers.
Most of this does sound very speculative versus fact-driven. I needed something, anything in my research to put in the middle of Euchambersia and ancient snakes. It took a lot of digging, but I found it. The dromaeosaur Sinornithosaurus. This dinosaur lived in the early Cretaceous Period. This puts it somewhere around 130 million years ago. Analyzing the skull fossils, a team of paleontologists began the argument that this Dinosaur could have possibly been venomous. Its skull is described to have particular expanses to fit venom glands and the teeth have grooves to allow them to bite and chew pushing the venom into their prey. Why is that important? Because Euchambersia and the Komodo Dragon have similar tooth structures to do the same. There are even rear-fanged snakes like the False Water Cobra which do not have hollow fangs to inject venom. They have grooved rear teeth and the act of chewing puts pressure on the venom glands causing venom to excrete and travel down the grooves slowly entering the bloodstream of their prey.
But of course, some purists looked at the teeth of Sinornithosaurus and said, “No, that’s not viable enough evidence.” So poor Sinornithosaurus remains a speculative venomous animal rather than verified. And also there is debate on if it could even be classified as a dinosaur if it was Again this is the human nature of being right rather than connected and well-rounded with adaptability in perspectives.
Here is an excerpt from the Smithsonian article, “Were Feathered Dinosaurs Venomous?”
“These are some pretty fantastic claims, but do they hold up to scrutiny? Dinosaurs belong to a wider group of reptiles called archosaurs which also includes crocodiles and birds. To date, no evidence has ever been found of a venomous archosaur. But in the introductory portion of the paper, Sinornithosaurus is described as an "avian dromaeosaur" that was part of the "early avian radiation." That means the authors are suggesting that Sinornithosaurus was not a dinosaur at all but a true bird that became secondarily flightless. Despite the overwhelming evidence that birds are dinosaurs, some scientists disagree, and the only way some of these critics (such as Larry Martin, one of the authors of the new paper) can make sense of feathered dinosaurs it to claim that they really were birds which were unrelated to dinosaurs.
The significance of this alternate view is that if Sinornithosaurus was a venomous bird derived from a more ancient stock of lizard-like reptiles (and hence unrelated to dinosaurs) it would have been evolutionarily closer to lizards and snakes, two groups that we know have venomous members. This association would not be proof positive that Sinornithosaurus had a venomous bite, but it would make it seem more likely that Sinornithosaurus was also venomous. Unfortunately for the authors, though, Sinornithosaurus was a feathered dinosaur that was only a cousin of some of the earliest avians (which were flying around during the time it lived). The existence of a venomous archosaur is still an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.”
The critics of the findings are saying, “If it were a bird or lizard relative we would accept the evidence but because it is a dinosaur then no it is not viable enough.” Am I the only one rolling my eyes? What is interesting is that they “know” there were venomous lizards and snakes at the same time as the dinosaurs, maybe Google just isn’t powerful enough to find information about them. That or I still wasn’t using the right search terms.
But because of fangs and grooved teeth, let’s say there weren’t venom “spraying” apparatuses in pre-historic creatures. Does that make my entire argument about, “The dragon’s breath burned,” fall apart? No, it doesn’t. Simple logic question for you, if you are close enough for someone to feel your breath are you also close enough to bite them? And I mean just normal breath, not forcefully blowing air at someone. The answer is yes. If you are close enough to feel someone’s breath then you are close enough to be bitten by them. Or maybe you were already bitten. If a large creature had to slightly chew on you to envenomate you I’m sure you would feel their breath. The first bite wouldn’t be the killing bite. It would be slower with a painful BURNING sensation as the venom entered and worked through your blood vessels. Let’s add to the sentence now, “When you feel the dragon’s breath you will burn.” Simple concepts and ideas are re-imagined to how we process information with greater complexity today.
Let's switch from Dragons to something else for a second. The Cockatrice and the Basilisk, for example, are mythical creatures said to have a different kind of power than dragons. The Cockatrice’s breath was said to turn its victims to stone. The Basilisk’s gaze was supposed to be enough for the same effect. Applying the same logic to the sentence structure of a dragon’s breath we come to a new conundrum.
Again, simple language needs to be re-tooled. What would it feel like to turn to stone? Paralysis would. Having your body seize up and no longer be able to move certainly sounds like turning to stone to me. For the cockatrice’s breath, we can apply the same logic for dragons when you feel its breath it is already biting you and envenomating you. The basilisk, on the other hand, paralyzes through its gaze though. What if by the time you saw it, it was too late and it struck you with fangs, barbs, or quills? That brings up another interesting thought, quills and barbs are mostly found as keratin-based external structures in the animal kingdom. Meaning they are soft tissue and would be very difficult to find as fossilized specimens much like proto-feathers. Also, we are changing the venom of these creatures from blood-based burning toxins to neuro-toxins attacking the nervous system and inducing paralysis.
Let’s look again at Sinornithosaurus but as scientifically reconstructed renderings:
(Insert pictures of Sinornithosaurus)
Now let's look at artistic depictions of the Cockatrice:
(insert pictures of Cockatrice)
Now…I’m not saying they’re the same creature…but I am saying I don’t believe in coincidences.
All of this information is in our Energetic Memories. We are products of at least 2 BILLION YEARS of evolution. Locked within our DNA is the energy of the past. As it has been recycled and reformed in countless iterations across time. People didn’t imagine mythical creatures, they tapped into their deepest reserves of energy and experienced the lives of our evolutionary ancestors.
They experienced the memories of the prey creatures. They experienced the memories of the predators. As they came back to the “real” world from their immersion into the stored memories of energy, in the World Soul and Source found within us, they brought back the stories of these creatures and described the experiences as best they could. Even with limitations and constraints on language. They conveyed what they knew in a way that the people of that time would understand. We took the descriptions as literal and chalked it all up to magic and fantasy. When what we should have done was further expound on the less complex statements.
The further we diverge from energetic principles of spirituality the more lost we become. The people of the past who tapped into these energetic memories helped to lead others towards better futures. They provided guidance and counsel as we will discuss later in the history posts. The point though is that science needs to acknowledge that spiritual lessons are relevant and the more we plod along without acknowledging the spiritual lessons the more damage we do. Not only to the world around us but also to ourselves.
That is going to lead us to the next post about Energetic Memory. If you want to escape to a fantasy world of strange and amazing creatures go into your energy field and seek out the energetic memories locked within yourself. But the future is also determined by Energetic Memories. The recent past and current events create new energetic memories that determine the ways we evolve and change.
The next post is not a very…happy one. I am going to talk about some pretty dark times in our recent history. But again it all needs to be understood. Energetic memory needs to be understood because once you do understand it you carry yourself and behave so differently than you did before. People deep in spiritual paths can be soft-spoken and relentlessly stubborn at the same time. It is very hard to find deeply spiritual people who run around sing-songing, “Love and light to all.” No, most of us are very aware of who we are and what we are about. This makes us quick to, for lack of better terms, not take shit from anyone else. We are kind but we know there is a difference between being kind and being nice.
And the next post is going to drive the reasoning for that phenomenon. Again, it is going to be a hard one but hopefully, that will make it all the more inspiring.
Thank you for reading as always. Take some time to open up your imagination because it is through your imagination that you can tap the energetic memories of the past. Live in those fantasy worlds because through dreams you may learn something real.
Resources
Komodo Dragons
Auffenberg
Publication, “The Behavioral Ecology of the Komodo Monito” University Presses of Florida, 1981
Fry
Pre-historic Venom
Sinornithosaurus
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