Table of Contents
Harvest nights in Brazil are where Paul Wallis says he first heard a story under Catholic names. A guide told him the outdoor festival was not the Mass. Further questions turned the queen of heaven into a visitor from the sky who, long before the church’s Mary, showed ancestors how to grow corn. Wallis later set that memory beside Maya, Zulu, Dogon, and Babylonian tales of a nonhuman teacher of plants and settled life. He presents papal cleanup in Brazil, a medieval slaughter in southern France, burned libraries in the Americas, and British schooling in Ghana as one pattern of deletion. Prestige, he argues, taught people to scorn grandmothers who still healed in the old way. Residential schools in Canada, the United States, and Australia took children and forbade their languages. Surviving elders, in his account, still offer present help. A healer sees a person arrive with unseen company, and the listener is told to keep sovereignty. He even reads Plato as a writer who drew on contact and altered awareness. This is Wallis’s case for listening again.
Key points
- Wallis recalls Brazilian festivals whose outdoor rites, he was told, were not the church service that followed.
- Further questions turned a harvest figure into a sky visitor who taught people how to cultivate corn.
- He lines that memory up with Maya, Zulu, Dogon, and Babylonian tales of a nonhuman teacher of living on the land.
- Churches and colonial states, he argues, tried to delete priesthoods, languages, and healing knowledge, including through residential schools.
- Traditional healers, in the account he favors, leave the listener in charge while unseen helpers stand nearby.
- He presents altered awareness and ancestral company as practical help, and he urges people to recover their own older stories.
Short quotes
came down from the stars came down from out of the heavens and taught our ancestors how to cultivate
Paul Wallis, Indigenous memory and cosmic help
In Brazil he heard the harvest figure explained as a teacher who arrived from the sky. Watch at 8:18
to go and sit at the feet of the elders of these traditions because by some miracle
Paul Wallis, Indigenous memory and cosmic help
Surviving elders are, for him, the reason these traditions still deserve a hearing. Watch at 24:01
traditional healer when you enter their room would perceive you as entering with a cloud of company
Paul Wallis, Indigenous memory and cosmic help
A healer, in the account he is passing on, sees a person arrive with unseen companions. Watch at 30:02
his information has come from interdimensional contact and altered states of consciousness
Paul Wallis, Indigenous memory and cosmic help
He reads Plato as someone who drew part of his knowledge from contact and altered awareness. Watch at 44:09
Video by The 5th Kind. Watch on YouTube.