The Artefact

25.4.2023

Autor: D. Harald Alke

A standpoint, not a lexicon entry. A personal experiential account by D. Harald Alke. Background knowledge: the lexicon entry Reincarnation.

In April 1998 we began to rebuild the empty Braquet, which after 12 years of absence was in a miserable state. I was making preparations for the large energy-pyramid installation that was to be erected in 1999. During the summer holiday of 1998 I had visions for the first time that a little dwarf was threatening me. He reminded me of Rumpelstiltskin, as I had imagined him as a child – a shaggy, bearded dwarf. The dreams repeated themselves, above all when I had been on the meadow where we wanted to erect the 9-metre-high energy pyramid.

The threatening dwarf

Over the following three years such visions kept recurring. The gnarled fellow wanted to make me afraid – but why? At some point I managed, in one of these nightmares, to let myself fully engage with him. I dropped all resistance and went right into the feelings he was suggesting to me. In that moment the picture changed: it was not I who perceived fear, but he himself who was greatly afraid. He was actually powerless and was only trying to drive me and my friends from the farm.

A stranded extraterrestrial

In the following dreams I came closer to him and found that he wanted to hide something. The gnome had been stranded on Earth many thousands of years ago in a small spacecraft. On entering the atmosphere it had exploded; all that remained was the damaged core of his on-board computer, which struck like a bomb deep into the soft limestone. If my perceptions are correct, this extraterrestrial fragment is lodged at a depth of about 200 m. He belongs to no superior race, but to one that practises interstellar space travel – perhaps the mystical smiths of the Nordic sagas are descendants of such beings.

I managed to convey my true feelings to him: we would not dig for his on-board computer and would not remove his treasure. We wanted only to erect a monument – for his artefact still has a certain energy, and perhaps from it arose the ley line that has run through this stretch of land since time immemorial.

The pewter cast

The final images were so clear that in 2002 I shaped a replica of the artefact. I obtained pewter, made a mould from beeswax, cast it into a block of plaster, melted the wax out and thus cast my pewter impression. If I understand it correctly, the various arcs run into the compass directions and anchor themselves in time as well. My pewter cast is only a superficial representation, and yet it has a surprisingly strong effect: when we concentrate on it, we get a feeling of changes in space and time.

Obtaining the pewter was a story in itself. In the metal industry, 20 kg were to cost €10,000. I first relaxed – and it occurred to me that electrodes for large batteries are made of pewter. A few phone calls later I had 20 kg of pure pewter as scrap for €1,000. €9,000 saved.

He was able to let go

After I had made the pewter cast, there was contact with the dwarf once more. For thousands of years he had felt himself bound to the artefact – he had died in the accident, only his spirit whirred about and could not let go. To people of earlier ages he appeared as a demon or a sombre god; to me first as an evil wood-goblin, then as a fearful being. When I had recreated his artefact, he was appeased. He could finally let go, left his post and was ready to incarnate on Earth as a human being. Quite something: reincarnation therapy for an extraterrestrial.