Aloha, Gang!
This one’s for the ufological crowd. You know how you always hear about strange lights zipping around volcanic eruptions? And you’re supposed to be impressed with this UFO activity because to someone out there, a lot of someones out there, it means aliens are hanging out in lava or something. But then it’s probably fireballs and plasmas. Earth lights or earthquake lights. No, it’s people living in the center Earth. No, it’s aliens again.
And the beat goes on.
Whelp, when you actually live on an erupting volcano in Hawaii, a funny thing happens. When fireballs pop out, they may or may not do so meaningfully–but everyone knows they’re fireballs. There are no UFOs here, but there is the goddess Pele dancing in her fire. Incontrovertibly. I’ve see photo after photo on local facebook groups and they are impressive. It’s not like you have to squint to see her. She’s there. She’s obvious.
And the thing is, everyone knows that her image is composed of smoke and light and/or lava and distance. The optical illusion is real. So is Pele. She is here.
It’s not like we’re randomly seeing what we want to see. There are no other illusions going on in these photos like you find in clouds–or in photos of unidentified lights, for that matter. Pele’s form is an illusion and she is not.
Sound familiar?
Anyway, here’s one that has not made the rounds. It was taken by a friend of a friend living in Puna. The photographer gave me permission to post this. My friend, who sent it to me, did so with no commentary because he knew I’d see her, How could I not? She’s dancing right here, right above us, on the miracle that is Mauna Loa….
