Mirage Men (2013)

I started watching this film on YouTube and gave up after 20 minutes: it’s such a sad story what the American military did to disinform this one man.

Paul Bennewitz (September 30,1927 – June 22, 2003)

What makes a person believe a falsehood so much that it causes them to become paranoid?

All the online sites list Paul Bennewitz’ birth date as September 29, 1927. Not one of them shows where he was born, except ancestry.com. That’s where I got the ‘corrected’ date, and place. The time is rectified to show a Pluto event at about age 52. Then the obvious conjunctions to a Sagittarius Ascendant reveal themselves: the Moon @ 28° Scorpio and Saturn @ 3° Sagittarius. Then a Yod points at Jupiter (@ 27° Pisces and conjunct Uranus @ 1° Aries) made up of inconjuncts with Mercury (@ 26° Libra) and Neptune (@ 28° Leo).

Mercury Inconjunct Jupiter

You like to think big, and you have great ambitions, but you don’t always make sure that your thinking is clear or careful. When you make any kind of plan, be careful. Don’t try to take on more than you can handle and make sure not to overlook details, for that could hurt what you are trying to do. Careful planning will help you develop disciplined habits in other areas as well.

On the other hand, if you do learn careful mental habits, you can have creative ability with this aspect, because you are able to see and understand all the elements of a situation. You take a broad and far-seeing view of a situation, which is unusual for someone your age. Most of the time you are willing to let other people think what they choose, as long as they leave your ideas alone. However, you may be inclined to preach about morality, because you enjoy being right and letting others know that they do not live up to your “high” standards. But sometimes you fake it; you aren’t as “good” as you pretend to be. Be careful, for you could be known as a hypocrite. It’s fine to set high standards and live up to them, but do not pretend to be better than you are. And let others decide on their own moral standards.

Jupiter Inconjunct Neptune

You are an idealist with very vivid dreams about how you want your life to be, and at certain times in your life you will follow those dreams with all your energy. But sometimes these idealistic dreams will let you down, because you are not concerned enough with what is real and possible. Learning to handle the real world is a very important part of your development, because it is the only way you can avoid becoming bitter and disillusioned when your more impractical ideas have led you into disappointment.

By itself, this aspect does not guarantee that you will have such problems, but if it is reinforced by other, similar aspects in your chart, you should be careful of a tendency toward escapism. It is always easier to create an ideal reality within your mind than in the world, but the world is where you must work. Escapism can include using drugs or alcohol or following strange and delusive religious beliefs. As you get older, you may fall into the trap of guru worship and deny your own vitality.

Your idealism can be the source of much creative imagination, leading to profound insights and realizations, but only if you remain connected with the actual day-to-day universe in which the rest of the human race lives.

Conclusion

So, the answer to the unspoken question is: the military didn’t delude the man, he deluded himself, but when they tried to get him to stop his UFO crusade, he dug his heels in and went further than they intended. See? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing…

How (and Why) Did Paul Bennewitz Die?

The classic case, well-known to conspiracy aficionados, is Paul Bennewitz, a successful electronics entrepreneur in New Mexico. In 1979, Bennewitz started seeing strange lights in the sky, and picking up weird transmissions on his amateur equipment. The fact that he lived just across the road from Kirtland air force base should have set alarm bells ringing, but Bennewitz was convinced these phenomena were of extraterrestrial origin. Being a good patriot, he contacted the Air Force, who realised that, far from eavesdropping on ET, Bennewitz was inadvertently eavesdropping on them. Instead of making him stop, though, Doty and other officers told Bennewitz they were interested in his findings. That encouraged Bennewitz to dig deeper. Within a few years, he was interpreting alien languages, spotting crashed alien craft in the hills from his plane (he was an amateur pilot), and sounding the alert for a full-scale invasion. All the time, the investigators were surveilling him surveilling them. They gave Bennewitz computer software that “interpreted” the signals, and even dumped fake props for him to discover. The mania took over Bennewitz’s life. In 1988, his family checked him into a psychiatric facility.

The Guardian review of Mirage Men

In an astrological sense, Bennewitz suffered a sudden death: Mars and Uranus are (almost) exactly conjunct in his death chart: that’s a lightning strike, to my understanding. Notice that they are opposite his natal Neptune. The ‘fatal’ Pluto @ 18° Sagittarius is 4° of his natal South Node. His ‘fatal’ South Node is conjunct his natal Moon/Saturn/Ascendant @ 28° Scorpio. His ‘fatal’ Sun is conjunct his ‘fatal’ Saturn, both inconjunct his natal Saturn/Ascendant in the early degrees of Sagittarius. His ‘fatal’ Ascendant @ 17° Virgo is conjunct his natal Midheaven.

This is a man who was tired of been cooped up in a mental institution and decided to leave this world: he just wanted to be free. (And some of his planetary positions are familiar to me.)

He was at his Bennewitz end!