Psychic, Occult and Mystical Definitions

Letter: U

Another mysterious primate, this time from Malawi, Africa (formerly Nyasaland). The Ufiti, which in the local language means 'ghost of the supernatural', is also known as Fireti. Reports of "black, shaggy monsters" seen in the forest region of Nkata Bay, Lake Nyasa, and of more than 30 mysterious tree-top structures (speculated to be lairs built by these creatures) discovered in the same area by Chief Ranger Oliver Cary and some of his game rangers, made headlines on the February 14, 1960 edition of The Sunday Mail in Zomba, Nyasaland (today's Malawi). The creatures were described as being between 4 and 5 feet tall, black with long hair, a colorless posterior, a baboon-like face, having no tail and a broad chest. After several sightings and expeditions, a specimen of the creature was finally captured in 1964. It was then discovered that it was a curious new species of chimpanzee with gorilla like-features, which end up being sent to the Chester Zoo, in central England. The case of the Ufiti really makes the point that it is possible, indeed very likely, that some of the reports of mysterious primates around the world may be the sightings of yet unknown but real creatures, just in the threshold of being discovered by science or to become extinct.

Ufiti

UFO

An unidentified flying object; a flying object whose nature is unknown; especially those considered to have extraterrestrial origins. Although for centuries man had been seeing strange sights in the skies, it was during the late 1940s and early 1950s that public interest in UFOs became something like an international mania. So much so that in 1953 the United States Government set up a Scientific Advisory Panel on the subject, which rather to its own surprise found that none of its members "were loath to accept that this earth might be visited by extraterrestrial intelligent beings of some sort" although they did not find evidence that any "flying saucers" so far sighted were in fact connected with space travel. Several million people all over the world believe that they have seen inexplicable shapes or lights in the sky; and a great number of them believe that these are spaceships controlled by intelligent beings from outside the solar system — probably even outside the galaxy. The hundreds of sightings or alleged sightings of UFOs cover an enormous range of experience from coolly observed, simple phenomena reported by people who have no interest in the supernatural, to accounts by those who claim they have been captured by spacemen descending from space-capsules. Women have claimed to have been impregnated by spacemen; men have told of being forced to have intercourse with spacewomen, or of having sperm samples extracted by strange devices.

Divination by observation of urine, either by its color, by its taste, by its flow patterns, or by the patterns formed when it hits the ground or in a swirling bowl.

Urimancy

Unicorn

A legendary animal generally depicted as having the head and body of a horse, the hind legs of a stag, the tail of a lion, and having a long tapering horn growing from the middle of its forehead. Born of misunderstood travelers' tales, nurtured by the error of biblical translators and adopted by the alchemists, the legend of the unicorn who combines male and female in one beast is rich in the symbolism of opposites. According to legend, only a virgin holding a mirror was able to tame a unicorn, and with dust filed from its horn a potion against deadly drugs could be produced. They were a pure white, cloven-hoofed, blue-eyed, horse-like beast with a single spiraled horn in its forehead, about a foot and a half in length, its base being pure white, the upper part sharp and red.

The name given by occultists to various anointing oils used in ceremonial magic; the act of anointing as part of a religious, ceremonial, or healing ritual.

Unctions