Israel’s groovy mystery
Ancient ritual object, gilded foot massager or German New Age gizmo?
Sometime last summer, a suspicious package was found by a maintenance worker inside a building at an unidentified Jerusalem cemetery that serves as an important archæological site yielding remains from the Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader periods. In accordance with security protocol, the maintenance worker alerted the police, who carried out a controlled explosion within the building to eliminate any possible threat from the package. The damage caused to the structure revealed a 19lb (8.6kg) object resembling a giant gilded rolling pin with eight grooves. Once it was deemed safe, police gave it to the robbery prevention unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Amir Ganor, the head of the unit, joked that he thought it had been left here by extraterrestrials. For six months, Ganor and his team tried to figure out what it was. They learned from a jeweller that it is coated in 24-carat gold, and from an X-ray that it is solid metal. The IAA was mystified: was it an ancient ritual object? (“Ritual object” is traditional archæological code for “Your guess is as good as ours”).
On 22 December, the IAA passed the puzzle over to “the wisdom of the masses” on Facebook. After hundreds of suggestions – including foot massager, cattle insemination instrument, huge honey dipper, dough-rolling implement, currency maker, meat tenderiser, and cultic object used in the Temple – the right answer was provided by an Italian man named Micah Barak. It is a gilded “Isis Beamer”, one of a range of “energetic protection” devices designed to ensure energy
4 harmony in “your home, [at] your PC workstation and when travelling.” Named after the Egyptian goddess of medicine, magic, and nature (rather than al-Baghdadi’s mad murderers), it is intended for use by naturopaths and healers. It “can create a protective field of the type generated by spirit energies or meditation”.
The Isis Beamer is sold online by the German firm Weber Bio-Energie-Syteme & UmweltTechnologien. Eckhard Weber, who claims to have created the Isis Beamer, said: “The pharaohs used to wear one half of an Isis Beamer as a crown, so to speak, and it enabled them to receive supreme inspiration. [..] The Isis Beamers are active around the clock. They can create a protective field of the type generated by spirit energies or meditation. However, such a field needs constant renewal. Before I had completed the first Isis Beamer and had it ready to wear as a pendant, I had meditated for a long time. After the Isis Orgone Beamer, I wanted to be able to offer a small portable device. The right inspiration arose from a crop circle motif. This was the shape I wanted to combine with the grooves. Then I added Sacred Geometry. Sacred Geometry describes what is behind physical existence. Crystals, metals and organic cells can all be derived from particular geometric bodies. Within physical existence, everything is based on just five bodies which are also called platonic bodies [..] I started out by distributing some prototypes of the Isis Beamer to various people, and the feedback I received was consistently positive. I would say that this happened because they deliver the results that their shape encourages us to expect. In addition, there is a seven-page test survey issued by the Hagalis Institute, which states that the Isis Beamer is able to provide a protective shield against the influence of emissions from mobile phones.”
“Orgone”, of course, was the name given by maverick alienist Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) to etheric energy (life energy, Odic Force, chi/qi, etc.), the subtle, universal energy of life that exists everywhere and in all things. Reich himself said it was the equivalent of God. The original orgone accumulators were large boxes in which the patient or subject would sit.
Weber’s company claims to have sold more than 50,000 Isis Beamers, which they began producing in the 1990s. The “Feng Shui devices” come in various sizes from 7.23cm (3in) long to 43.38cm (17in). Made of gold-plated brass, they range in price from £48 for the smaller, personal models, to a whopping £772 for use in “larger buildings exposed to a high dose of radiation”. Ideal for “industrial halls, administration buildings, schools, furniture stores etc,” this top-of-the-range model “may harmonize even extremely strong geopathic and electromagnetic radiation fields.”
So it’s a New Age gizmo, but one mystery remains: who left it at the cemetery, and why? “We hope that those responsible… will contact us and inform us why it was buried in an ancient structure and to whom of the dead they wished to give positive energy,” said Ganor. A spokesperson for Weber said that whoever left it “probably had the intention that the positive effects of the Beamer should contribute and support the peace process in Israel.” Well, hope springs eternal, innit?
Jerusalem Post online, 22 Dec; Times of Israel, Christian Science Monitor (online), D.Mail, 23 Dec 2015; phantomsandmonsters.com, 11 Jan 2016.
“The pharaohs used to wear one half of an Isis Beamer”