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From Ingo Swann – to Kiss the Earth Goodbye

 The Sherman/Swann psychic probe of Mercury came as a challenge from a science editor of a well-known national magazine. This challenge rested firmly upon the fact that hardly anything was known about Mercury  ….

The Mercury extrasensory probe was held on the evening of March 11th,1974, simultaneously with Sherman beginning at 8:00 p.m. Central Standard time from his home in Mountain View, Arkansas, and Swann beginning at 9.00 pm Eastern Standard Time from his studio in New York.

This experiment was monitored and recorded by parapsychologist Janet Mitchell of the American Society for Psychical Research and research associate to Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at City College. The impressions were recorded, transcribed, notarised, and deposited by noon March 13 with various interested parties, including the Central Premonitions Registry in New York.  Here is what [we] found on [our] psychic probe:

Response No 1: As my mind centers on the planet Mercury, I get a sensing of great heat. Yet, strangely enough, I do not feel this heat to be coming from the Sun. On the contrary I feel that the powerful electromagnetic radiation from the Sun has set up a friction among the countless particles or molecules or elements composing the body of Mercury, and the resultant constant friction is the cause of the intense heat rising from the interior as well as the surface of Mercury.

I seem to see great rays or beams of energy streaming from the Sun and striking the planet. I follow these beams down to the surface and see that Mercury is bathed in their radiations, which change into light and heat as contact is made with it.  I perceive in my mind's eye what appears to be a jelly like quivering of the surface and there seem to be depths or craters from which exude whitish yellow and green vapors. They seem to stand in vacuum like space, as do layers of transparent white mist that extend some miles above the surface. The jagged, sometimes mountainous, landscape seems to be scarred and pockmarked.

As I let myself wonder about the dark side of Mercury, shielded as it is from direct contact with the Sun's magnetic rays, I am immediately conscious of extremely cold temperatures. I sense the existence of almost impenetrable, indescribable black rock formations of great altitude as well as great depth. Can they be almost solid iron? My dominant impressions are of awful, frigid abysses frozen in oceanless black and gray wastelands, seemingly metallic in nature.  It is a relief to me to feel that I have mentally encircled the dark side of Mercury and am emerging on its bright side into what would be blind varicolored brilliance to my sight.

I doubt if there is much of an atmosphere. If so it must be extremely rarefied. The surface of Mercury seems to glow in areas like a Dante's inferno, reflecting dazzling molten-red light as from a great blast furnace. This interplay of matter and energy in a highly volatile state is constantly replenishing itself through magnetic recharging in association with the Sun's magnetic field. The light side of Mercury presents a fiery spectacle.

I wish I had knowledge of chemistry and minerals so that I could interpret the immense interplay of interchanging particles and elements in constant motion, activated by the Sun's electromagnetic discharge. This explosive discharge varies with intensity in the ebb and flow of gigantic sunspots. I feel that all the elements to be found on Earth and our Moon are in a state of flux on Mercury but are not as solidified or broken down into water and oxygen and plant life, although there is a great contrast in the dark side of Mercury and the elements are more in formation there. And I seem to sense fantastic crystallized shapes of great rigidity.

Response 2: Do you suppose Mercury has what shall we call it?-a magnetosphere? Like a circular sphere of magnetism, of magnetic belts around it. Except with Mercury they are not a sphere but on the sun side of Mercury they are set close to the planet's surface and on the far side of the planet it is sort of pushed out into space. It must be the strength of the solar winds that do that. In other words on the night side of the planet the magnetosphere is pushed farther out into space by the solar winds, and on the sun side it is closer to the surface. It feels hot.

Everything seems very clear. Oh, I know why! There seems to be a thin atmosphere but it is not enough to…. It doesn't make a blue sky like Earth’s, so you can see blackness except where the sun is. Maybe it looks purple, I guess. There is not much haze.

As the planet turns, the sun creates waves of earth tides so that the surface has lots of cracks and fissures.

The gravity must be uneven, pulling more toward the Sun at all times.

I see some almost invisible clouds. And those are some sort of electrical storms. These clouds come and go very fast and they form on the day side of the planet, on the two peripheries of the day side, and trail into the night side. I see them as rainbows that seem to leap up. They arch. They are more like auroras, I guess.

It must have different gravities, depending upon which side you are on. It's beautiful - God, it's beautiful. The refraction of the Sun on those - I guess it would have to be an atmospheric type of situation with liquid molecules in it in combination with the fluctuating magnetosphere - it looks like oil on water in a way, that kind of color effect. I get the impression that there is a lot of meta l- copper I might say, but I am not sure.

There must be something like lichens, sort of a waterlike life that attaches itself to the rocks and goes through its life cycle that way. It seems a lovely little planet - no place for a human, though. There are differences in land masses, in a way mountainous but not too mountainous. Everything looks chewed down, I guess because of the land tides. I see land masses and channels that look water-washed.

I'd say that the planet is characterized by a sort of low-keyed electric magnetic splendor.