Uncharted Waters

Posted on January 1, 2012

If we digress from the bounds of pure fact and traditional journalism for a moment and venture into the fantastic realms and obscure literature which seems to be making its prevalent appearance in the media today, this reminds us of a passage from “The Illuminatus!” Trilogy (“The Golden Apple”) published by Bantam in 1975 and written by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson:

“He turns to the Unbroken Circle and proposes, since it appears that earth will survive the cataclysm (he was not really sure that it would), that they plan for the future … Gruad calls upon his followers to destroy all remains of the Atlantean civilisation and then, later, to build a perfect civilisation when even the ruins of Atlantis have been forgotten. There follow several thousand years of warfare between the remnants of the Atlanteans and the inhabitants of Agharti, the stronghold of the Scientists, who now call themselves variously the Knowledgeable or the Enlightened Ones. There are earthquakes and tidal waves. Finally, only outcroppings like the cone-shaped island of Fernando Poo, rise alone from the sea where Atlantis had been. About 13,000 B.C. a new culture is planted on a hillside near the headwaters of the Euphrates and it starts to spread.”

Almost ironically, it is a belief of the oldest Bioko family, the Ramirez’, that Bioko is a mythical place with its true history going back to the time of Atlantis. Juan Carlo, the oldest surviving member of the family at 97, told us that he often sees lights from and silhouettes of old buildings which, by day, don’t exist. He also quotes a conversation he had one day 5 years ago with a foreigner who came to visit him:

It was one evening five years ago; the sun was setting and casting beautiful reflections from the water. I was sitting on the beach after taking my evening constitutional when I heard a sound behind me like rushing water. I turned round to see a dust devil whipping up on the top of the beach, and in the devil were lights flickering and flashing, most probably the sun reflected from the water. I watched it for a moment and it blew out over the track leading up to the town. I turned back to watch the sun give its light to the waters and the heavens catch the drips of light as they fell from the tips of the waves. The Moonskinners would be coming soon to wash their skeins and I should return home to my family.

Just then I heard a footstep behind me. I turned round to see a short man standing behind me. Somehow I knew he was a friend and we nodded at each other in respect and knowing. He came and sat by me and we watched the sea lap on the shore for some time. Neither of us spoke, and both of us looked out at the horizon.

“I must be going back,” I recall saying.

“That you should,” he said, “there is trouble coming. Not tonight, but it is beginning.”

I was puzzled at this strangers words and asked what he meant.

“You are Ramirez, aren’t you,” he had asked and I replied that I was. “The devil has risen in the north,” he continued.

I asked what this had to do with me.

“He has been away for many years and now returns in a new guise. In time, you will receive a gift from the heavens which you should keep safe. When the gift comes, you will know, and when you have received it, you will know what to do with it. You said you had to be going?”

I turned away for a moment to think of a question to respond to this wisdom, and when I turned my head back, he was gone without leaving a trace in the sand.

I have collected everything that fell on the beach where I sat that fell from the sky since then but none of it means anything. We’ve had it all here; frogs, ice, you name it, even shiny things.

Senor Ramirez has been reported several times in the Ebano, a local Spanish daily, as having found strange things on the beaches, and even claims to have had encounters similar to extra-terrestrial experiences being reported the world over. The local population don’t take his words seriously and often sensationalise his accounts, but senor Ramirez is adamant that this event did occur exactly as he recounts.