PROGNOSTICATIONS
By Budd Hopkins

All of us are used to hearing exactly when the UFOs will land, or when the world will come to an end, or when the so-called ”disclosure” will take place, or even when time will end. We’ve endured Hale-Bopp and the ship full of reptilians just behind it, the fears of Y2K chaos, and last year’s prediction by an actual Ph.D. of the government’s imminent announcement of UFO reality, none of which, of course, actually occurred. And now the fashionable worry-date is 2012, “the end of time.”

Take my word for it: don’t worry and don’t gather on the hilltops. But if you are planning to give away your earthly possessions, give them to me. See all of you in 2013, but in the meantime give a read of the quote below.

Evelyn Waugh on 2012
The British writer Evelyn Waugh was one of the finest comic novelists of the Twentieth Century, and a particular favorite of mine. He was especially noted for his invention of elderly, upper-class boobies, often members of the peerage, and one of them turns up in "Black Mischief," a 1932 book I'm now rereading after fifty-some years. It's about Azania, a fictional island kingdom off the coast of Africa, where Sir Samson Courteney, an utterly incompetent member of the Foreign Ministry, has been sent as ambassador because of his stupidity and the false belief that in this tiny, bizarre principality he cannot possibly get into trouble. Waugh presents a devastating and hysterical picture of the British legation on the day the mail boat arrives. The bored functionaries rip off the wrappings of months-old magazines and newspapers, read one another's personal letters, and mix all the official Foreign Ministry dispatches into the trash where they are eventually burned, unread.

But Sir Samson receives a letter which entrances him. "Good luck," he says, reading it aloud. "Copy this letter out nine times and send it to nine different friends..." "What an extraordinary idea," he exclaims. "‘The letter was started by an American officer in France. If one breaks the chain one gets bad luck, and if one sends it on, good luck. There was one woman who lost her husband and another one who made a fortune at roulette - all through doing it or not doing it...you know I should never have believed that possible…”. Meanwhile everyone else continues reading and sharing their mail until Sir Samson opens yet another unsolicited letter. "My dear," he says to his wife, "another most extraordinary thing. Look here. It's all about the Great Pyramid. You see, it's all 'a cosmic allegory.' It depends on the "Displacement factor.' Listen." And he reads to his wife and the assembled staff: "‘The combined lengths of the two tribulation passages is precisely 153 Pyramid inches - 153 being the number symbolic of the elect in our Lord's mystical enactment of the draught of 153 fishes.’" "I say, I must go into this. It sounds frightfully interesting! I can't think who sends me these things. Jolly decent of them whoever it is."

There is continued chatting and devouring of old newspapers among the staff, but the credulous old ambassador reads on. "Apparently inside the Pyramid there is a chamber of the Triple Veil of Ancient Egyptian Prophecy...the east wall of the Antichamber symbolizes Truce in Chaos…” More general conversation about several fashion magazines occurs over the old boy's continued reading. "...Four limestone blocks representing the final tribulations in 1936..."

1936!
Now I am not insisting that those currently obsessed with 2012 are as credulous and thickheaded as old Sir Samson Courteney was about 1936. I am not insisting that, I'm merely suggesting it. As 1936 has come and gone, so will 2012.

Budd Hopkins, New York
June 2010