I see there was a call for some “serious weirdness” on a neighbouring thread that is still live. Since a fair number of people seemed interested in my “blinding flash of telepathy” story, I thought I would share this one too. In my lifetime I’ve had four seriously weird experiences, and a few minor ones. Of the “seriously weird”, this ranks number 2. Unfortunately for devotees of stories like Tamam Shud and the Lead Masks I guess it will be a little unsatisfactory, as it’s maybe a bit too mainstream and there isn’t any corroboration available – I’m afraid you just have to take my word at face value. But it will maybe keep people going until something better comes along…
It happened to me and my son in the late 1980s, when I was in my 30s and he would have been 4, or perhaps only just 5 years old. It’s worth adding as a foreword that my son was born in Scotland, but spent most of his early years in a village France, and we were living in the French-speaking area of Belgium at the time.
One evening I was sitting chatting to him (in English) in the living-room of our flat. I can’t remember how the subject came up, but for some reason I mentioned the word ‘spirit’ (in the metaphysical sense).
“Dad, what’s a ‘spirit’?” asked my 5 year old.
Ok. Tricky one. I suppose if I had been a Dawkinsian zealot I would have taken the buckle end of my belt to him, given him a thrashing, and told him: “There’s no such thing as ‘spirit’ - don’t ever use that word again!”
Instead, being a fairly open-minded kind of chap. I decided to make an effort to answer the question. So. Where to start, in explaining what ‘spirit’ is to a 5-year old? As I recall, my explanation went something like this: “Well, you know the bit inside of you that feels like ‘you’. And you know how it feels like it’s happening inside your head? Well it’s not really happening inside your head. That’s just what it feels like. That bit, that’s your spirit.”
I doubt if David Hume would have been very impressed, but hey, with a 5-year old, on the spur of the moment, it was the best I could do.
My son looked very thoughtful for a few seconds, as if he was trying to grasp what I was talking about. Then suddenly, in a very matter of fact voice, he said to me: “Dad. I can see a godhead.”
Anybody who has ever had kids that age will know for themselves that it really isn’t very hard to tell the difference between a toddler who’s lying, one who’s playacting, and one who’s telling the truth. I am absolutely certain that my son was neither lying nor playacting.
Obviously I was rather taken aback, and very intrigued. So I said back to him, in an equally matter of fact voice: “Really? Where is it?”
He pointed to a spot about two or three feet from my chair. “It’s over there, hanging in the air, just near you.”
“What does it look like?” I asked.
“It looks like a kind of funny bear, with horns. And it’s got lines going across its face, like the television.” (Our television was rather old and the vertical hold was slightly wonky – old folk will know what I mean.)
“Is it scary?”
“No.” He looked at it for a few seconds longer. “It’s gone now.” The whole experience had lasted for maybe 20 or 30 seconds.
Obviously, I immediately thought of all the things I should have asked him. “Ask it where it comes from,” for example.
But it wasn’t until many years later, by which time he had forgotten the incident, that I thought of one of the most interesting questions I could have asked him - even after it was gone - which was: Why did he call it a ‘godhead’?
Bear in mind that he was either 4, or only just 5. Why didn’t he tell me he could see a funny animal? Or a bear’s head? Or a funny bear with horns? Where did he get the concept of a ‘godhead’ from, never mind the word itself?
We weren’t a religious family. We didn’t say prayers, or grace before meals. My wife did go to church fairly regularly, and sometimes took him along. But she was more of a ‘social’ Christian (by which I mean somebody who goes to church with the principal aim of exchanging malicious gossip about her friends and neighbours). And even so, the church she went to was the village church in France, where all the service would have been in French. My son was pretty much bilingual, but I don’t know of any common reference in Catholic services to “la tête de Dieu” or anything similar, which my son might have heard and translated into English for himself as ‘godhead’.
I’m vaguely aware of various rumours and legends of the worship of disembodied heads among heresies and unorthodoxies like the Cathars and the Templars, but have never been able to find any detail on these. I would be very interested in hearing from anybody who does know more about the subject, and whether there is anything in these stories that sounds like what my son said he saw.
It happened to me and my son in the late 1980s, when I was in my 30s and he would have been 4, or perhaps only just 5 years old. It’s worth adding as a foreword that my son was born in Scotland, but spent most of his early years in a village France, and we were living in the French-speaking area of Belgium at the time.
One evening I was sitting chatting to him (in English) in the living-room of our flat. I can’t remember how the subject came up, but for some reason I mentioned the word ‘spirit’ (in the metaphysical sense).
“Dad, what’s a ‘spirit’?” asked my 5 year old.
Ok. Tricky one. I suppose if I had been a Dawkinsian zealot I would have taken the buckle end of my belt to him, given him a thrashing, and told him: “There’s no such thing as ‘spirit’ - don’t ever use that word again!”
Instead, being a fairly open-minded kind of chap. I decided to make an effort to answer the question. So. Where to start, in explaining what ‘spirit’ is to a 5-year old? As I recall, my explanation went something like this: “Well, you know the bit inside of you that feels like ‘you’. And you know how it feels like it’s happening inside your head? Well it’s not really happening inside your head. That’s just what it feels like. That bit, that’s your spirit.”
I doubt if David Hume would have been very impressed, but hey, with a 5-year old, on the spur of the moment, it was the best I could do.
My son looked very thoughtful for a few seconds, as if he was trying to grasp what I was talking about. Then suddenly, in a very matter of fact voice, he said to me: “Dad. I can see a godhead.”
Anybody who has ever had kids that age will know for themselves that it really isn’t very hard to tell the difference between a toddler who’s lying, one who’s playacting, and one who’s telling the truth. I am absolutely certain that my son was neither lying nor playacting.
Obviously I was rather taken aback, and very intrigued. So I said back to him, in an equally matter of fact voice: “Really? Where is it?”
He pointed to a spot about two or three feet from my chair. “It’s over there, hanging in the air, just near you.”
“What does it look like?” I asked.
“It looks like a kind of funny bear, with horns. And it’s got lines going across its face, like the television.” (Our television was rather old and the vertical hold was slightly wonky – old folk will know what I mean.)
“Is it scary?”
“No.” He looked at it for a few seconds longer. “It’s gone now.” The whole experience had lasted for maybe 20 or 30 seconds.
Obviously, I immediately thought of all the things I should have asked him. “Ask it where it comes from,” for example.
But it wasn’t until many years later, by which time he had forgotten the incident, that I thought of one of the most interesting questions I could have asked him - even after it was gone - which was: Why did he call it a ‘godhead’?
Bear in mind that he was either 4, or only just 5. Why didn’t he tell me he could see a funny animal? Or a bear’s head? Or a funny bear with horns? Where did he get the concept of a ‘godhead’ from, never mind the word itself?
We weren’t a religious family. We didn’t say prayers, or grace before meals. My wife did go to church fairly regularly, and sometimes took him along. But she was more of a ‘social’ Christian (by which I mean somebody who goes to church with the principal aim of exchanging malicious gossip about her friends and neighbours). And even so, the church she went to was the village church in France, where all the service would have been in French. My son was pretty much bilingual, but I don’t know of any common reference in Catholic services to “la tête de Dieu” or anything similar, which my son might have heard and translated into English for himself as ‘godhead’.
I’m vaguely aware of various rumours and legends of the worship of disembodied heads among heresies and unorthodoxies like the Cathars and the Templars, but have never been able to find any detail on these. I would be very interested in hearing from anybody who does know more about the subject, and whether there is anything in these stories that sounds like what my son said he saw.
