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rest upon them." When the Lady of Lourdes looked at Bernadette, all fear left the girl, but she seemed to no longer know where she was. She wanted to pray but as she tried to lift her hand to her forehead her arm remained paralyzed, and it is only after the Lady had crossed herself that Bernadette could do the same. When the story became known it was met with incredulity by the local authorities and by the prisets. Father Peyramalle, who was the curé of the town, was especially angry and suggested that the Lady should make the rosebush bloom before the whole crowd in order to convince everyone. When Bernadette conveyed to the Lady this demand on the part of the local priest, the apparition simply smiled. For fifteen days she appeared to Bernadette, and their conversations centered on the Lady's request for a chapel and for processions there. At times the dialogue was totally absurd, and it was absurd in the same sense as the conversations with "ufonauts" we have reviewed. On one occasion, the Lady told Bernadette to go and wash herself in a nonexistent spring, and in another she ordered her bluntly to "go and eat the grass that grows over there!" A study of these events from the point of view of the esoteric tradition might be rewarding. Occult masters like Gurdjieff and Crowley were wont to send their disciples on insane errands such as carrying stones to a mountain top as a test of their devotion or as a discipline conducive to a spiritual awakening. The early story of Mary herself, and the miracles that surrounds her life, point to intriguing similarities with earlier deities, and in particular with the Egyptian goddess Isis. Like many targets of UFO manifestations, Mary was hit by a mysterious beam of light and subsequently bore a fatherless child. The scene at Fatima is reminiscent of the Phoenician amulets described earlier. However, we are not concerned here with an interpretation of mythology but with an attempt to deal with reports of observations that seem to form extraordinary patterns. One such pattern is that of the cloud and the cave, a common thread between Fatima, Lourdes, and other apparitions. In a 4 1 wos a They stood in the place of the cave: And behold a bright cloud overshadowing the cave. And the midwife said: My soul is magnified this day, because mine eyes have seen marvelous things: for salvation is born unto Israel. And immediately the cloud withdrew itself out of aatiaa 1 a a 1 th kad the cave, and great light appeared in the cave so that our eyes could not endure it. And by little and little that light withdrew itself until the young child appeared. A superficial examination of the phenomena of Lourdes would seem to indicate that a rather simple firl (Bernadette was illiterate and spent most of her day repeating prayers while accomplishing some menial chores for her very poor parents) simply turned into a visionary and soon shared her insanity with increasingly large crowds. But the story deserves closer examination. First, there is the matter of the spring. During the ninth apparition of the Lady, Bernadette was instructed to "go and wash and drink in the spring" — but there was no spring! Bernadette looked for a spring, found none, and in despair began to dig into the sand. Water appeared and filled the hole, turning the soil to mud. Bernadette tried to wash and only managed to smear her face with the mud. The crowd laughed at her, especially when she attempted to drink and later to eat the grass. Bernadette had dug the hole "in a sort of stupor" but seems to have done so at just the right time and place for a spring to appear. Indeed, the next day there was a clean little stream at the spot. A blind man named Louis Bourriette bathed his eyes in the spring and regained his sight. A dying baby was said to be restored to full health. The attitude of the crowd changed. The next phase of the apparitions was marked by a request for penance. Bernadette was instructed to "kiss the ground for sinners." The girl, and all those in attendance, began kissing the ground as a gesture of humility. The gesture is indeed a moving one. It is even interpreted by some as a sweeping social panacea, as, for example, Stephen Breen says: They were setting an example of prayer and humility which could save Europe if applied to the social problems of the time, which, after all, are only a collection of personal problems, the tree were bent in the form of a parasol and remained thus as if an invisible weight had come to the Apocrypha we find the same pattern: