The Revelation of Cosette Willoughby

Cosette Willoughby had some very strange neighbours. She had been co-existing with the so-called Serpent People for three years by the time she wrote into Richard Toronto's Shavertron Magazine in 1981. Her story would be published in the Winter 1981 edition of the magazine, the tenth issue ever to be published. It would then be promptly forgotten by the esoteric community at large. I'm here to change that.

Subterranean Symbiosis 

It seems from her description that she never really saw these Serpent People up close. No, instead she would occasionally catch glimpses of her mysterious fellows. She described some of them as 'monkey-like', but gave them their serpentine name due to their strange, sinuous style of movement. Some of them are said to leave large tracks like the iconic Bigfoot prints, while others leave three-toed footprints instead. Seemingly her best glance at one of the creatures revealed a diminutive, naked humanoid with all its hair somehow 'piled on top of his head like a big glob'. The entities are apparently masters of camouflage, with their primary purpose in life being to never be seen. 

Their language sounds echoey, and they are adepts at the art of voice mimicry. Apparently one of them can easily sound like an entire yard full of playing children. When Cosette ventured up onto one of the cliffs in which the entities make their subsurface dens, she was able to hear heavy footsteps coming from underground. Despite the seemingly primitive nature of the creatures' society, Mrs. Willoughby claims that they are capable of crafting some extraordinary stone amulets, which they apparently leave all over the desert, for reasons Cosette speculates may have something to do with warding off rattlesnakes - seeing as she rarely spotted the reptilian pests while out looking for the amulets left by the strange critters. If or when she did run into snakes, she seems to imply in her account that the entities would somehow warn her.

Cosette had been trying to make friends with them for quite a while, and only just before she set about writing the article for Toronto's magazine had the creatures started to respond positively. She had been giving them candy, which they seemed to like very much, as well as some clothing and a mirror. A few months after she gave them the latter item, she claims that she saw one of the entities flash it at her. Although she knew where the entrances to their subterranean dwellings, she never once tried to enter or disturb them. Eventually the creatures would start leaving gifts for her in places they knew only she would go. These gifts included plastic toys (on two separate occasions), money (a quarter, a nickle and two pennies), a 'fabulously carved piece of golden glass' and what she described as her 'famous crystal machine'. She also found some strange-looking script on a rock as well, which is reproduced here for your viewing pleasure.

Through the Looking Crystal

She found her so-called crystal machine while out on the low hills hunting for the amulets left behind by her cryptic neighbours. When she first found it, she quickly noticed that it was no ordinary stone, seeing as it had something resembling a carved window on the side of it. She examined this window with a magnifying glass, and was able to see 'an endless series of pictures' through it. These pictures were small but apparently gave her the immersive feeling of seeing them on a much larger scope, as if she were actually there, among the beautiful fantasy scenes she apparently saw through the rock. 

There were stunning palaces filled with gold and jewels among tall, marble buildings which made up great cities. The people inhabiting these cities were apparently so real-looking that she would sometimes almost catch herself speaking to them. The clothes worn by these mysterious people were richly decorated with jewels and gold, and the women of their kind wore crowns of rubies, pearls and 'every stone you can think of'.

Utterly enraptured by the curious rock, she started to ask it specific questions. She requested to see the 'wizzards of olde' and was shown six of their number, all wearing intricate gowns with pointed turbans. The sages looked directly at her and greeted her as if they could actually see her - but surely that was impossible, right? She asked to see the tree of life, and was rewarded with a vision of a mist-filled alcove. As the fog cleared, she was astounded to see a bizarre tree with tentacular branches and a gold and turquoise light shining out from behind it. She would later describe the branches as looking more like roots than branches, and as lacking leaves. Upon looking up the tree of life in HP Blavastky's The Secret Doctrine, she found that it was described as much the same thing she had seen through the amazing crystal machine. Apparently this is a tree that grows upside-down, with roots for limbs. 

When she asked to see the King of the World as referred to in worldwide esoteric literature, she was greeted by a view from below a mighty face which seemed to be looking down at her and studying her. She bade Rigden Djapo her greetings, and he seemingly responded by telling her 'volumes without words'. She felt intense love towards him, and she somehow knew that he felt the same for her. The last thing of note that she describes having seen in the crystal is something that she called the Second Adam. She had apparently never heard of this esoteric concept before, but the wisdom imparted to her by the weird crystal and the writings of HP Blavatsky provided her with the tools to reconstruct the genesis of the universe as she would come to believe it truly was. 

In the beginning, the Elohim had created what Cosette calls the First Adam. This Adam was etherical, perhaps lacking a physical body at all. Then came a colossal serpent-like being that emerged from the void of deep space and covered our planet Earth in its entirety. This serpent was what was known as the Cosmic Mother. This motherly being eventually 'blended into' a powerful life-giving force, potentially mating with the incorporeal First Adam. From this bizarre unison, she grew pods all over her body from which emerged the Second Adam. At first, this new Adam was spherical in shape - a hermaphroditic amphibious creature capable of reproducing asexually. 

As time passed on this primordial Earth, the Second Adam appeared in different places all around the world, and as he did so he started to grow a tail-like structure behind him. In his need to survive, this tail began to grow a body for some strange reason which isn't adequately explained. Arms appeared, and then legs. After this, the Second Adam became male and female, and was eventually able to live independently from the Cosmic Mother. The Cosmic Mother, now seemingly wont for a purpose, was absorbed into the Earth and became some sort of terrestrial life-force. Humankind was now far more independent of her, but Cosette warns that it seems as if we still need some contact with our Cosmic Mother, seeing as astronauts apparently become weaker the longer they're in space. 

A Mundane Revelation?

This is possibly the strangest article I've ever written on any of my many blogs. Anyways, Shavertron Magazine was unable to verify Cosette's claims - and the closest they came at first was in the form of an anecdote from one Joan O'Connell of the New Atlantean Journal who was apparently sent one of what Cosette called her 'drinking rocks'. She placed this rock in some water, and nothing happened. She then put it in some beer, and 'it didn't even hiccup'. 

Somehow, Shavertron managed to get their hands on some of Cosette's fabled stones - whether this was through O'Connell or otherwise I cannot possibly say - and they quickly handed them to their rock-book expert, one Bill Bliss. Bliss scrutinised the stones and found what he referred to as 'some low grade images'. The clearest one was apparently of a bald fat man's head. He made some carbon tracings of the pictoral stories in the stones, and said that images can be seen in these tracings if they're viewed from a distance of 10ft away. To be honest, I don't see anything in the tracings. 

And so that brings us onto the monumental question of just what the hell is going on with this case. This reminds me of Joseph Smith's use of a seeing stone to transcribe the Book of Mormon from the golden tablets, and also of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic creation myth in terms of the multiphasic creation story involving numerous divine beings splitting and merging. The script allegedly found on one of the stones by Cosette seems to resemble John Dee's Enochian writing. This story is comprised of a rich soup of all sorts of weirdness from all sorts of sources. I don't quite know what to make of it.