Wonders in the Sky (53 page)

Jane's style is as difficult and archaic as that of any 17
^th
century mystic, but what she seems to be describing is a luminous or fiery (“sparkling…flaming”) lenticular (“eye-shaped”) object that flew over London on a sunny day (“the blue firmament”). The object emitted rays or jets (“flaming streams”) and seemed to move within a wider rainbow-colored circle, perhaps accompanied by smaller objects which looked like stars. Her drawing shows an oval or eye-like thing emitting five shafts of flame or light, enclosed by a thick circle surrounded by stars. The circle's interior is labeled “The Globe of Light,” suggesting something more substantial than a mere ‘ring' or ‘rainbow.'

Fig. 27: Jane Lead's vision

Source:
The Works of Jane Lead
, op. cit.

293.

20 Sept. 1676, Uffington Fields, England: Wavy dart

A fiery ‘meteor' in the shape of a dart moved with a wavy vibrating motion. At 7 P.M., according to Morton, an “unusual meteor” was seen by residents of Northamptonshire. Mr. Gibbon of Peterborough said that

“The stem at a distance appear'd about a foot and half in length and with a narrow stream of light as if were a String of Cord affix'd to it. It had a wav'd or vibrated motion. Its duration about a minute.”

Mr. Gibbon allegedly first saw this apparition at the zenith as it made its way toward Uffington Fields.

 

Source: John Morton,
The Natural History of Northamptonshire; with some account of the antiquities
(London, 1712), 348.

294.

22 March 1677, London, England
Assaulted by unknown entities

Spiritual writer Jane Lead wrote that during the night she had been “cast as into a magical Sleep, where I saw my self carried into a Wilderness.” There she found herself in a peaceful, natural environment. Before she could enjoy these circumstances, however, a being that she had seen before and two other female entities “did make a kind of Assault upon me; but one of the Females was more fierce, and did give my outward Skin a prick, as with a sharp Needle. Upon which I called for Angelical aid to succour me, or else too hard they would be. Whereupon I was parted from them, and saw them in that place no more…”

Lead writes that after this vision, before waking up in bed, she was told that she needn't worry, that it would not happen to her again.

 

Source:
The Works of Jane Lead
, op. cit.

295.

30 December 1677, at sea West of Granada, Spain
Unknown “star”

Pierre Boutard, an officer aboard the ship
La Maligne
notes in the logbook that “on Thursday the thirtieth day of December 1677 in the morning about 4 hours, we have seen a star in the direction of northwest ¼ west, ending southeast ¼ east, but carrying (such) a great light that all on board thought there was widespread fire, but it was accompanied by over 200 rays carrying such a light, that we believed we were all lost. We dropped anchor about 9 or 10 in the morning in the small bay of Grenada.”

 

Source: Michel Bougard,
La chronique des OVNI
(1977), 97.

296.

9 February 1678, London, England
Landing of a large ship

In a diary entry entitled
A Transport
, Jane Lead writes:

“In the Morning after I was awaked from Sleep, upon a sudden I was insensible of any sensibility as relating to a corporeal Being, and found my self as without the clog of an Earthly Body, being very sprightly and airy in a silent place, where some were beside my self, but I did not know them by their Figures, except one, who went out, and came in again: and there was no speaking one to another, but all did set in great silence.”

Lead's ordeals could not be closer to the situation of a modern abductee: She is woken up in a disoriented trance-like state, possibly confusing reality with a dream or a recent half-forgotten memory; around her are ‘figures' she does not know, except for one; there is an eerie silence; next, Lead recalled seeing a gold-colored craft “come down” to “a pretty distance” from where she was.

“It was in the form of a large Ship” with four golden wings. The ship “came down with the greatest swiftness as is imaginable.” She asked some of the figures beside her if they could see what she could, and mysteriously they said they couldn't! No doubt puzzled by their answer, Jane looked again and
saw herself
in front of the others, “leaping and dancing and greatly rejoicing to meet it.”

Bar the detail about a third-person view of herself when the ship landed, this is the kind of account given by people whose cases fill countless UFO books today, and whose stories are often taken at face value.

It is not sufficient to accuse abductees of confabulation and of sharing science-fiction fantasies
because the same ‘fantasies' have been reported and believed for hundreds of years
, since long before the popularisation of the genre. Was Lead's vision a muddled memory of an earlier experience?

Lead's diary entry of February 9
^th
concludes: “But when I came up to it [the Ship], then it did as suddenly go up again, withdrawing out of sight, unto the high Orb from whence it came. After which I found my self in my Body of sense, as knowing I had been ranging in my Spirit from it for a while, that I might behold this great thing.”

 

Source:
The Works of Jane Lead
, op.cit.

297.

17 September 1680, Lisbon, Portugal
Landing of a hairy occupant

A large black cloud-like mass landed in a field, releasing a huge hair-covered being that appeared – and disappeared.

 

Source: A photocopy of the pamphlet, written by Julio Alberto de la Hinojosa, was reproduced in its entirety in
Fenómenos Celestes en el Pasado: Siglos VIII al XIX
, published by the Centro de Estudios Interplanetarios, Barcelona, 1995.

298.

17 November 1684, Saint Aubin, Brittany, France
Tear-shaped object

About 10 A.M. a priest from Lannion saw “a flame in the shape of a teardrop, as big as one's hand, coming down from the sky. Its motion was extremely slow, for it took no less than seven to eight minutes to reach the horizon. It seemed a bit bluer. Its tail threw off sparks, and it was on the opposite side from the sun.”

 

Source:
Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences
(1684), 419.

299.