Introduction

Check out this brilliant new esoteric, political and cultural e-magazine ("cognoscenti" is an Italian word that means "those who know"), Maxwell G. Truethteller, editor...if you want to get the trueth!

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Greetings to you all. I am a writer focusing on esoteric subjects, including religion, philosophy, prophecy and the paranormal--mainstream literary fiction, particularly the modern "short story"--and current events analysis. In my fictional works I'm trying to illustrate important psychological, social and spiritual truths. Also, to create culture that is positive, up-lifting, humanizing and "high minded", I guess you could say--striking a sharp contrast to the decadent, sensationalist, nihilistic and "Existentialist", I guess you could call it, culture that tends to predominate in the modern age. In my esoteric articles I'm trying to impart to the public information and insights that I think are important and relevant, things people need to know. I'm keenly interested in politics and current events, which I think are important, also, so I talk about those often, and often try to relate and connect them to esoteric and spiritual realities. I'm firmly convinced that those two things, current events and spiritual realities, have an effect on each other, and that what goes on in today's social and political happenings, which at times may seem like a "circus", are anything but--they have ramifications that extend far beyond what may appear at first glance to be just "the here and now". Questions and comments at this magazine are welcome.

I was born in the US in 1962. Graduated from high school here in 1980, went to college and travelled alot in Europe throughout the '80's. In 1991 I started to find out about "otherworldly" things, which before that I'd assumed were just ancient myth and superstition, having been a convinced skeptic since childhood. The first big "chink" in my scientific-materialist worldview was the amazing phenomenon of Medjugorye in former Yugoslavia. I realized that there just couldn't be a scientific explanation for it all. I concluded that there must be some kind of non-material spiritual dimension in the universe, and that this dimension was just a normal, natural and concretely real part of that universe, but was made up of some kind of energy without matter (i.e., molecules and atoms), a living energy, different from the kinds of energy there were in the material world, such as light, heat and gravity. I decided that what is usually called the "supernatural" really is just a normal part of one universe, and there really wasn't anything peculiar or preposterous or irrational about it. It was just that modern scientific and materialist civilization had "lost touch" with it, lost any a priori awareness of it, which made it seem far-fetched, fanciful, difficult to believe--beyond the limits of credibility.

This began an extraordinary odyssey. The first thing I investigated was the Medjugorye phenomenon. I was surprised to find out that it was not the first such occurrence in the history of the Catholic Church. Other notable ones included: Fatima, Portugal, 1917--Garabandal, Spain, 1962--Zeitoun, Egypt in 1958 and Lourdes, France in 1856. The most astonishing to me was the Zeitoun, Egypt apparition case.

On the central plaza of the city of Zeitoun there is a large Coptic church. One day that year, '58, people noticed a strange light near the top of that church. This went on for about a week and the mayor, police chief and other city officials and many thousands of the people witnessed it, a radiant, luminescent figure of what appeared to be a woman in a white robe with a blue headcovering. Sometimes the woman appeared to be holding an infant. Another figure was seen, that of a young man holding a book. It is believed that this might have represented John the Evangelist, thus the book. The fact that tens of thousands of people all saw this apparition at the same time goes against the idea that it was just hallucination or an atmospheric anomaly.

I kept on in the early 1990's like a detective on a case. One clue would lead to another. Soon I was lost in a world of strange facts, startling reports and mysteries I never even knew existed. I read books on Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, books by prominent New Age authors, all kinds of things. It was a completely new and different world--the person I'd been before had just about ceased to exist.

So for years I studied, read, did research. There were many extraordinary books, at bookstores and libraries. One great one was Angels Dark and Light by Gary Kinnaman. This book said that some angels (I think "angels" are just spirits of high degree, beings which tend to be far beyond just ordinary human beings in intelligence, power and other qualities) are good and try to help you, while others "war for your soul". What might that mean, I wondered. Did "angels" actually exist, and were some of them of an inherently malicious nature? I read Michael H. Brown's books on Medjugorye and other similar Catholic phenomena. Brown is an excellent author and I think an important figure in this. He was from a secular background, to begin with, as I was. He became nationally known in the late 1970's when, as an investigative reporter, he did investigative work on a chemical company that had been polluting a suburban neighborhood (somewhere in the northeast United States, I think), which led to many cancer deaths. Then in the early '80's he went to Yugoslavia to report on the amazing events there, in the town of Medjugorye. At first skeptical, eventually he was won over and converted to Catholicism and became one of the foremost investigative authors on Catholic mysticism and paranormal events.

In 1992 I met a woman who had been part of the late 1960's counterculture movement and she told me some interesting things. She was into Eastern religion and mysticism--Buddhism and anything related to that (one thing she told me was to read a book called Autobiography of a Yogi, so I did. An interesting book, by Yogananda Paramahansa, an Indian yogi--i.e.,"spiritual master" --who travelled to the United States in 1920 "to bring Yoga to the West"). She told me about reincarnation and "past lives". She said that she had found out--I'm not sure how--about one of her own past lives, that she had lived in Ireland in the 19th century. The source, whatever it was, of this information had even given her name in that life. I was flabbergasted by all this. Things were turning out to be alot more than the "pie in the sky" and vague, far-fetched religio-spiritual "mumbo jumbo" I'd expected. Many things I'd regarded, til that time, as outlandish, improbable, preposterous and "kooky" were turning out to be true. There was solid evidence for them. I could hardly believe it. Before, I'd looked down on people who believed these kinds of things, took them seriously. But I was finding out that in many cases, I'd been wrong. I was humbled, confounded. "My apologies, folks--I was wrong."

This gives you an idea of that "odyssey" I began in 1991. I'm not an expert on this, the esoteric or paranormal, not an authority, I don't have a college degree in religion or anything like that, or any official sanction as a commentator on these kinds of things--I'm strictly a self-taught investigator, observer and commenter on these subjects. Also, I'm completely independent--I don't belong to any particular religious organization, this is my own project, exclusively. I'm an independent scholar and researcher, and writer. I decide things for myself, "call them as I see them", and try to be objective and fair to all parties, all points of view.

So, welcome to Cognoscenti e-magazine, in which I hope to inform and enlighten the reading public, make them part of the group of "those who know", which is what the Italian word "cognoscenti" means.

Mr. Maxwell G., "Max", Truethteller,

founder and editor