Hello, i am Apollo Darkside and this is my testimony of paranormal, mystical and religious experiences i had since i stumbled upon the Archive. In the following testimony i will detail the timeline of those experiences and i will also provide analysis over what are the possible rational explanations of the phenomena i encountered. Chances are that what happened to me is just a combination of very low probabilities that got woven together in an even more unlikely probability. This is the first time anyone sees this name, mainly because my ISP is blocked by the chan4, for who knows why. If you have advice on how to solve that or you just want to talk to me, write me at apollo-darkside@protonmail.com.
Dao of Chance
Everything in life is ruled by a combination of luck/chance and our agency over that luck/chance. We can't overestimate just how powerful probabilities are. We can meet the love of our life based on luck and see that love die due to bad luck. Our desire to understand how this combination of luck, probabilities and free will work, has been under study from all the cultures of the world since the most ancient of times. If there is a book that embodies this endless search for understanding the hidden workings of the world, it is the Chinese/Daoist/Confucianist text, the I Ching, the Book of Changes. This book has found continuous uninterrupted study and usage from the Chinese society since very early in its inception. What does the I Ching, in a nutshell, teach?
It teaches the user how changes in the Dao/Universe and our actions in the universe, work and function by utilizing a divination system. That gives a result based on a both simple and extremely complex arrangement of the basic energies of the universe, in the form of a combination of 6 lines, based on the Yin-Yang, that bifurcate into 64 possible answers that supposedly hold all the answers for us to thrive and work in harmony with the universe.
Do you now see why probabilities matter? If we can have mastery on how Change, the Dao/Universe and the probabilities work, we turn into a Sage. A Sage can make even the worst case scenario positive if that sage has a deep understanding on how the world works. That is why people all over the world have been so eager to discover things in the first place, knowledge is power.
This story is a series of probabilities that left me, a person who just didn't believe on any religion or gods and likes analytical, scientific and logical reasoning, changed forever.
I am the kind of person that needs evidence that satisfies my logical reasoning to believe something. I used to be an atheist, an atheist, my parents were too and my grandfathers too. I also don't drink and i neither do drugs, another detail that will become significant later is that i don't shake the goose for self pleasure.
Before i start with the story i will give some important definitions that will help understand everything else, all related to probabilities. To understand these definitions we will use the assassination attempt of Donald Trump on the 13th of July 2024. Yes, you read that right.
Meaningful Coincidence: These are the once in a lifetime coincidences. For example, that time you traveled to another country and met someone you know in your home country. Or when you bumped heads in the street with a famous actor you like. In Donald Trump's case, the Meaningful Coincidence was that he turned his head at the right time and avoided the bullet. Unlike a normal and mundane coincidence, for one reason or another, they are meaningful to the person who experiences that coincidence.
Synchronicity: A Synchronicity is a very concrete pseudo-scientific concept and phenomena in quantum physics, metaphysics or psychology that was researched by psychologist Carl Gustav Jung with the assistance of the quantum physics pioneer Wolfgang Pauli and directly inspired in the I Ching. This phenomenon is the simultaneous occurrence of an internal psychological action (thought, vision, imagination, meditation, etc.) with an unrelated physical and external (to the person) action at the same time. This simultaneous nature and the presence of the person allow those two unrelated events to be connected to each other.
An example is how French writer Émile Deschamps, meanwhile he was eating plum pudding with his friends, recalled a man, Monsieur de Fontgibu. He was related to a previous situation he had while eating plum pudding. He then said that the only thing missing to make this meaningful was Fontgibu. At the same time, like he was magically invoked by Émile's words, a now senile Fontgibu entered the restaurant Émile was in by accident.
Going back to our Donald Trump example. In his account of the events, he expressed that in his speech, he thought and decided to point to an outdated chart. He then turned his head, started pointing to the chart (coincidentally the chart was on the same direction as the shooter, so his head changed shape on the sniper's scope) and started talking about what he just had thought about, only to get shot at. In this case we have an internal psychological action, and an unrelated external action that lined up in time perfectly to save Donald's life.
Trump was unaware of the shooter and in his own words: "If I hadn't pointed at that chart and turned my head to look at it, that bullet would have hit me right in the head."
Miracle: A miracle is a Meaningful Coincidence or Synchronicity so extraordinary that the only reasonable or most likely explanation is the divine intervention of some kind of Kami/God.
One of the most famous mythological examples is how Moses, in conjunction with the Kami Yahweh, parted the Red Sea to both escape from the Egyptians and set up a trap by letting the sea drown them. There are more recorded cases of both miracles and kami appearing to people in a variety of different religions. We can find something close to direct divine intervention in the Third Man Factor Phenomena. In very particular and stressful situations, we can find ourselves accompanied by an external presence akin to a guardian angel, that helps us survive in the most extreme situations, often in near death experiences.
In Donald Trump's case, considering just how close the bullet was to hitting his head, we could argue that a Kami/God intervened by altering the bullet's path. I really doubt it was a miracle, but to the people present it truly was like a miracle, seeing the assassination of the candidate and him falling down, only to see him to rise. Now that you learned the terms, the importance of chance and probability and just how our perception of things can modify an event from a Meaningful Coincidence to a Miracle, we are ready.
Dao of Discovery
I was doing some Touhou related research when a friend of mine sent me an odd looking but interesting site, the Archive. The site caught my attention and i read all of it. I had a mixture of "what is this crazy psychotic incel guy saying about the indie game being related to aliens?" and of "most of this makes sense". I found the site meaningful because it researched the religious inspirations behind Touhou. A practical way this site helped me was in figuring out what was the ritual that Alice performs in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red. It also gave more value to Touhou by looking at all the cultural research ZUN made to create the characters. One example is just how much secret meaning there is in Okina Matara's design.
What made my red flags go off was that the site had direct links to image board archives of real people, including the webmaster, possibly telling about real experiences of doing all kinds of crazy. The kind of stuff that makes you go "yeah these lunatics are one step away from recreating Terry Davis' madness."
The Archive gave me an impression of something that Sumireko Usami would write in one of her occult frenzies, with the only tangible result being to gain some likes on Instagram and people going "oh wow your CGI to make the mandalas is very good" or in this case going "haha that was a funny schizo read".
I sent an email to Emissary, giving my feedback on the site. Basically going "this is a bit crazy, but it was that day's entertainment". I then wrote about the first Meaningful Coincidence. My Father went out at the same time there was an event for a significant Christian statue, without knowing the event was taking place. I told Emissary that my Father managed to see the strength of faith in person, as it made the people involved in the event significantly happy.
Then, things started happening to me.
Dao of Revelations
My first synchronicity happened to me. As i was writing in the email that "the power of faith is real", my music player on shuffle changed to the track Native Faith. In retrospective and with the knowledge i have today, i can say that this first synchronicity ended up being quite more significant than what i remembered. It is important that i mention that i am running the local music player Audacious and that i have around 4.600 songs. I doubt Audacious is using pseudorandom number generation and considering the software's high quality, it is likely it uses my laptop's physical built-in internal RNG and i am also using Linux, so the randomization shouldn't get screwed by any kind of the usual bullshitty Microsoft moves.
The email chain followed and i said "My current point of view is waiting until something unexplainable or very spiritual happens to me as a signal to continue reading about spiritual topics, as i know that it can get powerful and i respect the power these kinds of topics have." Oh boy... As a fellow would say, "Mystery of all mysteries! The door to the hidden." Lao Tzu One unrelated funny fact, to keep the reading snappy, as a test, Emissary saved one of the archived conversations in the image boards as a PDF and it ended up being around 70 pages long! I pray that whoever dares to print that has a big wallet...
I got my second synchronicity and quite a notorious one due to all the small coincidences that ended up related to the experience. Hell, you could even call it divine intervention. That day, i started reading the imageboards. I did something bold and decided to test if all of this really was something else. I declared to kami i didn't knew anything about, "if these people are not crazy, give me a sign. I will give you 24 hours starting from tomorrow, something exceptional, but not creepy has to happen".
All of that material related to quantum physics and Yukari-sama in the imageboards, specifically a comment about Yukari-sama being a "God of the Gaps" caught my interest in revisiting a quantum physics YouTube channel that i enjoy watching. I got out my trustworthy YouTube Downloader program and i found a playlist that had most of his videos specific to quantum physics and i left it downloading in the background, then i continued reading. Unexpectedly, my Video Downloader gave out an error message. It couldn't download the video titled "Teleportation and the Tunnel Effect". The video's description says "Electrons are able to cross barriers as if they were teleporting... But does that really happen? Or is it the result of something deeper...?"
Then, the instant the clock changed to 12:00, as the paranormal timer i set started ticking down, my power went out. It went out on the whole town. It went out as i was watching that video, the host said "they leave you with this sensation that they ignored the barrier and they teleported to the other side of it". and then the power went out. I got so stressed out (i even started shaking a bit) by what happened that i saved up everything i had open and went straight to bed. Then of course i had another coincidence, that night i suffered from night emission, probably due to the stress, unless..?
Dao of Lunacy
In the day there was a full moon, a Meaningful Coincidence happened to me at night. I woke up at 3:55 am and after going to the bathroom i decided to take a peek out the balcony to try and see the full moon. I got bad luck and the moon was out of sight. However i did notice something. The sky was particularly clear, i could see lots of stars and even some constellations. This was the first time in my life i got the chance to be in a place with low light pollution. Nearing the zenith, i spotted something that to my untrained eyes looked like The Big Dipper (a constellation that is very significant in Chinese history and is very related to Okina-sama). I noted the time down and went back to sleep, happy i saw one of the most important constellations.
However, i got fooled. What i spotted was neither The Big Dipper or The Small Dipper (Ursa Minor). It was the constellation Lepus! Lepus is the constellation of the rabbit, a rabbit that is often depicted as being hunted by Orion and his two dog constellations (Canis Major, Minor). The mistake i made can be explained by the similar shape both Ursa Minor and Lepus share.
Is it casual that i wanted to spot the full moon but instead what i saw was Lepus, the other rabbit present in the sky? Another event related to this came to me in the form of a dream, in another Meaningful Coincidence. I dreamed about Reisen-san close to the date of the full moon. The dream was not very significant, a chameleon panicked and in that panic it drowned out of nowhere, dropping into the floor. Then, it transformed into Reisen-san... Poor lady... In the time between Dao of Revelations and Dao of Lunacy i had other music player related coincidences, at the time of writing this, it has become something normal that happens to me.
Dao of Intuition
A few weeks after Dao of Lunacy i moved to a new house. I was left at a crossroads of what to do with spirituality, specially after reading Part 4: Starting the Practice Mode and seeing all the practical ways to apply it to improve on one's health. At the time i was reflecting upon that, i found an old rusted key between the rubble of the back yard. I literally found a key, the key.
A few hours later at night, just before going to bed, the thought of meditating rose up again in my mind. As i was looking around at the dark and still unfamiliar room i noticed something. I saw a strange vertical shadow a few meters from me. It most likely was just my chair, but something felt very weird about that shadow and i got a bit unnerved. I had an intuition that i needed to shine the flashlight i keep near my bed to that shadow. I followed my intuition and i even said "No! Not now!".
Well, something extra did happen. I heard panicked animalistic footsteps in the roof, seems like there was a Meaningful Coincidence of the neighbour's cat being above my roof and getting startled by my movement. After that, the creepy shadow was still there, but it no longer looked creepy.
Dao of Illusions
Once again at night and once again before i went to bed. The night sky was clear. My bedroom has access to two windows, the closest one to my bed, on my left, points to the South. The other window, at the other side of the room, points to the North. I felt uneasy, i couldn't fall asleep. In between my fighting to fall asleep, i looked outside to the northern window and i could clearly see a constellation. This time, the one i spotted was either Lynx or Draco. Constellation identities aside, it felt significant. After all, the constellation was just on the north! The following day i researched into what was the constellation i spotted. I saw a very clear series of stars that formed a serpent-like structure, something that would fit either Draco or Lynx.
What i found is that either the Ursa Minor or Major was just south and out of sight, if the angle was somehow better i would have spotted one of the Dippers. The illusions didn't stop and one actually lined up with the end of October, therefore the end of Halloween and the start of November.
Once more, i was in my bed, looking up to my South window, before i fell asleep. There was something peculiar in the sky, i could see very faint dark blue lights shine in and out of the sky. When i tried to focus my eyes on a specific light, it would banish before my eyes could reach it.
I thought it was just some optical illusion, so i turned around to enter a comfortable position to sleep, when i saw it. I saw a light blue, pulsating sphere (very close in appearance to a star) move! This sphere was very high in the sky. It appeared in sight going straight to the South, then it did a very unnatural U-Turn, way too smooth for any kind of sky phenomena and it went back into the North. I didn't see it appear again from the North window and i didn't see any other UFO since that night. Is it just another Meaningful Coincidence that the appearance of that UFO looked nearly identical to Nue's unidentified, pulsating sphere appearance?
Dao of the Kami
This Dao is by far the most impressive one, as i think i played part in a miracle. I need to give context, in the later months of 2024 there was a massive drought going on, all of the fields and mountains were colored brown. Water scarcity was about to start, a few more days and rationing would have been needed. To make things worse, a very massive wildfire was happening near to my location, to the point the air quality was getting to dangerous levels. At that time, i started reading Wild and Horned Hermit. In that manga, around the start, Kanako-sama makes an appearance. There was something else in that appearance, it felt as if Kanako-sama was talking directly to me.
It felt compelling enough and the situation felt dire enough, that night i decided to do an improvised prayer to Kanako-sama, asking for rains. Both in Touhou's lore and in real life (if the connection that Kanako Yasaka is really related to Takeminakata, the god enshrined in the very real Suwa Grand Shrine), Kanako Yasaka/Takeminakata is worshipped as a god of weather, water and agriculture.
Let me provide more context. I do not see weather forecasts, but at the time i was very certain that there would be no rains in sight for at least another two weeks, the sky had no clouds at all. The atmosphere's status created a cycle that made drought more and more likely, as it was severe enough to stop the water cycle from creating rains.
Oh my surprise. The very next day, as i was in the middle of my sleep, i heard a familiar sound. I looked up to my window and i saw rain. It rained for around 20 minutes and the next days there were more and more rains. If we didn't have rains, that wildfire would have directly threatened the town and the local forest would have been completely decimated. Another Meaningful Coincidence or divine intervention?
Dao of Relativity
In this text we explored just how relative things truly are and we have grasped the importance of perspective. Two different people can see the same thing and have a completely different interpretation of reality. Those two interpretations are both completely valid. To me, this impressive combination of Meaningful Coincidences, Synchronicities and Miracles, in direct relation to a series of religious, pesudo-scientific and completely scientific phenomena is not casual. What these experiences truly mean in the end, i am not sure. I could be crazy, the next messiah or both.
However, how crazy am i? Those who are really insane are the ones who don't know it as they lack sanity. I dared to stare at the abyss demanding answers. The abyss stared back, slapped me in the face and then thankfully provided guidance and helpful answers and experiences to my questions.
This Archive is worthwhile reading, as it attempts to give some kind of answers to what happened to me and others. We should be able to figure something out by looking at the common facts and the research made by others.
There is only one thing i want you to do, reader. Keep your mind open and your body healthy. Remember the time we thought that the Earth was the center of the Solar System? Or how the Daoists attempted to use the toxic Mercury to achieve immortality? There is a good reason why a ton of mechanisms of physics have the "Theory Of" at the start. Our understanding of reality is a work in constant progress and we are our worst enemy and best ally at driving this understanding further.
These massive walls of text can serve as both entertainment or world shattering discoveries. The importance of a good read is that you get something out of it, therefore we need to have the maturity and freedom to discuss these things. Now, if this endeavor will end up bridging together fiction, religion and science, or maybe it could be related to some kind of extraterrestrial/dimensional intelligence or maybe it will end up forgotten in a decade, we don't know.
The facts remain. There is something hidden out there, it clearly communicated to me, Emissary and others. Now, will you interpret the facts as coincidences, as the discovery of a new form of gods, as records of alien intelligence or just a new case of mass hysteria? Our duty is to find answers.
Lately, a lot more people are ignorantly throwing out things like "It's magic" or "It's a youkai". Such a sad state of affairs. Dolls in Pseudo Paradise.
