The alien mountain in the French Pyrenees.
They call them hippies - and supposedly they are flocking to magic mountain to await the apocalypse expected on December 21, 2012 - because that's when the Aztec calendar runs out, you know. Many say and believe aliens inhabit the interior of the mountain, and sometimes naked people climb the mountain - in your face nudity for the aliens is the way I see it - and you know what Bishop Sheen says about that: Love of nudity is one of the three signs of the diabolical.
'un garage à ovnis'
They believe that when apocalypse strikes on 21 December this year, the aliens waiting in their spacecraft inside Pic de Bugarach will save all the humans near by and beam them off to the next age.
For decades, there has been a belief that Pic de Bugarach, which, at 1,230 metres, is the highest in the Corbières mountain range, possesses an eery power. Often called the "upside-down mountain" – geologists think that it exploded after its formation and the top landed the wrong way up – it is thought to have inspired Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Since the 1960s, it has attracted New Agers, who insist that it emits special magnetic waves.
Further, rumours persist that the country's late president François Mitterrand was transported by helicopter on to the peak, while the Nazis, and, later, Israel's Mossad, performed mysterious digs there. Now the nearby village is awash with New Agers, who have boosted the local economy, though their naked group climbs up to the peak have raised concerns as well as eyebrows. Among other oddities, some hikers have been spotted scaling the mountain carrying a ball with a golden ring, strung together by a single thread. - Read more.
And yet New Agers say Roman Catholics are nuts... and they aren't talking about those who offered workshops this weekend at the LA Religious Ed Congress, or the get naked touch retreat at St. John's Abbey either. (The retreat was cancelled BTW - I wonder why the LA Congress wasn't?)
Photo: Bob, the retreat master: "Ready for the climb."
Pic de Bougarach
