From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: J.Z. Knight, Ramtha's Channeler, on Trial
Organization: LLNL
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 00:36:56 GMT


	A couple days ago, I caught some news about how J.Z. Knight
was being taken to court by her ex-husband over some issues, such as a
property settlement he believed unfair. He even claimed the JZKn had
assured him that Ramtha could cure his case of AIDS, or something like
that.

	Who is Ramtha supposed to be? One day, JZKn had a vision of
him, and ever since, she has been spreading His Word. He is supposedly
an Atlantean warrior from 30,000 years ago in North America.

	She has acquired a whole cult of followers, who call
themselves Ramsters, and she has undoubtedly made a lot of money off
of them. Some ex-Ramsters charge that she sent them through some weird
rituals, like make them wander around blindfolded.

	One one-time Ramster was Shirley MacLaine, but she quit when
she learned that one of Ramtha's tidbits of wisdom was that AIDS was
nature's way of getting rid of homosexuals.

	There are certain difficulties with this whole hypothesis,
that I'm not sure JZKn has confronted. For instance, Atlantis was
described as a seafaring nation with metalworking, but no putative
Atlantean artifacts of the appropriate age have _ever_ been found.
There are some possible historic sources for Plato's story, such as
Syracuse in Sicily and some half-remembered stories told by the
Egyptians about the Minoans and the Sea Peoples of some centuries
before, but that's about it.

	How she figured out the age of 30,000 years is an interesting
question; it _might_ be tested by astronomical observations, but I
don't think that Ramtha had been into that kind of subject. The method
would be something like that used in _Scientists Confront Velikovsky_
to date the Ammizaduga Babylonian omen tablets, which record (among
other things) sightings of Venus in the morning and evening at various
times. Since the more prominent celestial phenomena are generally
periodic, one might use combinations of those to find likely long
periods. Solar eclipses are spectacular, but occur only once ever 360
years per observation spot (on the average), at semi-regular (at best)
intervals. Lunar eclipses are somewhat better; they recur on a cycle
of about 18.67 years, though they are not always visible from any
given point. Planetary conjunctions occur on a regular basis; what
constellation they are in should provide additional information. A
conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, for example, occurs at about every
20 years (19.86 years to be precise), and advances about 243 degrees
each time. This means that it comes to a little ahead of its original
location every 60 years, and this 60-year conjunction point makes a
complete loop every 2700 years or so. Mars is at brightest during
opposition, and that occurs at about every 2 years (2.135 years to be
precise). It is at its _very_ brightest during a "favorable
opposition", which occurs when Mars is near its perihelion; and this
happens as the opposition point goes around in a cycle of about 16
years (15.77 years to be precise). Venus goes through a complete cycle
of evening and morning appearances about 5 times every 8 years.
Combinations? the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction and the lunar-eclipse
cycles are nearly equal in length; they do a complete shift of phase
relative to each other about every 312 years.

	I thus conclude that it would be difficult to check JZKn's
reported age of Ramtha, even if he had astronomical records from when
he supposedly lived on hand.

/Loren