Tag: Sirius

Fighting Monsters: Culture at Liberty Center in Butler County that is healthy and wise

The recent Lunar New Year celebration at Liberty Center in Liberty Township, Ohio, brought back a flood of memories for me. On February 28, 2026, the mall complex—always a wonderful development just north of the I-275 loop—hosted a vibrant Lunar Festival organized by the Alliance of Chinese Culture & Arts. The event featured classic dragon and lion dances, Chinese music, Asian drums, acrobatics, Taiji demonstrations, and more, filling the space with energy and drawing crowds from the local community in Butler County. It was a positive, constructive way to launch the next phase of the year, embracing Eastern cultural traditions in a modern American setting. The performances were well-coordinated, tasteful, and joyful, with vendors offering dumplings and other treats amid the festivities, and watching the dragon soar and the lions prance reminded me of my own early experiences with these rituals.

As a teenager in the mid-1980s—around 1984, 1985, and 1986—I had one of my first real jobs at Emperor’s Wok, a highly decorated Chinese restaurant on Chester Road in Sharonville, Ohio. It was one of the most elaborate spots in Cincinnati at the time, with intricate interiors dedicated to Chinese culture. Everyone went there for authentic food in an immersive environment. The owners and family were wonderful; I got to know the cooks and the performers who handled the dragon dances. My role included customer service—dressing sharply in a bowtie to hustle tips in a classic, high-energy setting—but during Chinese New Year, it became something more adventurous. They kept the dragon costume and props in a closet year-round, and I was tasked with climbing onto the roof and the magnificent awning where cars pulled up for drop-offs. The restaurant had a grand entrance, and the parking lot would fill with spectators as the traditional dragon dance unfolded.

The dance lasted about half an hour, complete with booming drums, crashing cymbals, and the performers underneath the long, colorful dragon puppet. My job was to feed strings of thousands of firecrackers off the awning, setting them off in bursts that exploded above the dragon’s head as it twisted and leaped below. The noise, smoke, and flashes created an electric atmosphere, scaring away bad spirits in the tradition while entertaining the crowd. Firecrackers were key—loud explosions to drive off evil—and the whole thing felt proactive: humans creating their own spectacle to combat terror. Seeing similar elements at Liberty Center in 2026 brought it all rushing back: the coordination, the percussion, the acrobatics, and the sense of community triumph over unseen threats.

These dances aren’t just entertainment; they’re deeply rooted in Chinese mythology and serve a spiritual purpose. The lion dance, prominent in southern China, is often associated with the legend of the Nian (or Nian beast), a ferocious monster that terrorized villages on New Year’s Eve. Descriptions vary—some say it resembled a flat-faced lion with a horn, others a massive creature larger than an elephant with sharp teeth—but the core story is consistent. The Nian feared loud noises, bright lights, and the color red. Villagers discovered this and used firecrackers, fireworks, red decorations, lanterns, and couplets on doors to repel it. Over time, these customs evolved into annual traditions: red envelopes for luck, staying up late, and performances to ensure protection and prosperity. The lion dance mimics this defense, with performers in vibrant, red-heavy costumes embodying strength and courage. The dragon dance, dating back to the Han Dynasty or earlier, honors the dragon as a symbol of power, wisdom, benevolence, good fortune, and control over rain and water—essential for agriculture and abundance.

A key figure in many lion dances is the Laughing Buddha, or Big Head Buddha (Dai Tou Fat), often portrayed as a jolly, potbellied character in a mask, waving a fan. This isn’t the historical Buddha of Buddhism but a folk figure inspired by Budai (or Hotei), the “Laughing Buddha” known for joy, prosperity, and contentment. In the dance, he provides comic relief, teasing and guiding the lions—sometimes playfully chasing them or interacting with the crowd—while coordinating to the music. His presence adds lightness: amid the fierce combat against evil, there’s laughter, pranks, and confidence. The potbelly symbolizes a full, prosperous life, laughing in the face of danger. It’s a brilliant touch—turning fear into joy, showing human ingenuity in overcoming darkness through humor and skill. The martial arts elements, acrobatics, and kung fu displays highlight dexterity and strength, reinforcing that humans can triumph over lurking monsters.

This reverence for the spirit world extends across Eastern cultures. In Japan, Shinto temples feature similar beliefs in kami (spirits), with rituals to balance the seen and unseen. Korea and other regions share roots in warding off malevolent forces through noise, color, and performance. The thin veil between the physical and spiritual worlds means monsters or evil spirits—rambunctious and ever-present—must be managed proactively. Red wards off negativity; mirrors on costumes reflect evil back; drums and gongs create an overwhelming sound to dispel it. It’s optimistic: approach the unknown with boldness, abundance, and good fortune, much like fortune cookies that always deliver positive messages.

These patterns aren’t unique to the East. Globally, cultures confront “monsters” or paranormal threats through ritual. North American Indigenous traditions often involve drums, yelling, colorful regalia, and dances to connect with or control spirit visions—sometimes blurred by hallucinogenic plants in shamanic practices, creating colorful, terrifying projections that demand management for societal harmony. The use of red, loud percussion, and aggressive displays taps into the idea of warding off evil, much like firecrackers or mirrors. In Christianity, demons are pushed out through prayer, exorcism, or faith in divine protection. Everywhere, humans develop mechanisms to live with terror—whether invisible forces, cryptids, or existential fears.

This brings me to the Mothman legend from Point Pleasant, West Virginia (close to Ohio roots). Sightings in 1966-1967 described a large, winged humanoid with glowing red eyes, often near the TNT area (a former munitions site). It became tied to the tragic Silver Bridge collapse in December 1967, killing 46 people, turning Mothman into a harbinger of doom. Some link it to Native American lore, such as thunderbirds or curses (e.g., Chief Cornstalk’s), or even misidentified birds, such as sandhill cranes. But the archetype persists: a monster emerging seasonally or in crisis, attacking or foretelling harm. Around Christmas or New Year periods, it echoes the Nian—seasonal terror tied to transitions. Both involve communities responding: firecrackers and dances for Nian, vigilance and folklore for Mothman.

Expanding further, many speculate on shared origins for such creatures. Ancient astronaut theories suggest amphibious or serpentine beings from places like Sirius (as in Dogon African traditions of Nommo from Sirius B) influenced global myths. Chinese dragons—long, serpentine, benevolent yet powerful—might reflect memories of advanced visitors or natural phenomena, migrating from regions like the Indus Valley over the Himalayas into East Asia. From the Near East westward, dragons became adversarial (e.g., biblical serpents or European fire-breathers), but in the East, they’re auspicious. Amphibious gods (e.g., Babylonian Oannes or Dagon) appear in Sumerian and other lore, possibly tied to seafaring or aquatic extraterrestrials who seeded civilization. The persistence of monster myths—winged humanoids, serpents, beasts—suggests a universal human concern with the “other”: unseen threats in the dark, whether paranormal, spiritual, or existential.

Yet cultures don’t just fear; they innovate. Eastern approaches—optimistic, proactive, laughing at danger—offer lessons. The Laughing Buddha prances confidently amid monsters, embodying joy despite peril. Drums attack the spirit world aggressively, red banners proclaim victory, and firecrackers create human-made chaos to counter it. This mindset—embracing abundance, prosperity, and humor—helps build constructive societies. Liberty Center’s event wonderfully blended this ancient wisdom with modern community life, reminding us that engaging with other cultures enriches our own without duplicating rituals wholesale. We have strengths in the West, but learning to face “monsters”—whether literal cryptids, personal demons, or global uncertainties—builds resilience.

My time at Emperor’s Wok taught me early about cultural depth beyond surface festivity. Friendships with the family performers, the thrill of the rooftop explosions, the cultural immersion—all shaped how I view the world. Watching the 2026 festival, I saw echoes of those days: positive energy pushing back darkness, joy in the face of the unknown. It’s a healthy reverence for survival, a reminder that humans thrive by confronting fears creatively. Watch out for the monsters—they’re everywhere—but find ways to laugh, drum, and dance them away.

For further reading and research:

•  Wikipedia entries on “Nian,” “Lion dance,” “Dragon dance,” and “Mothman” provide solid overviews with sources.

•  Britannica’s article on the Chinese New Year details legends and traditions.

•  Books like The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel explore the Point Pleasant events.

•  Robert K.G. Temple’s The Sirius Mystery discusses Dogon-Sirius connections (though controversial).

•  Academic sources on shamanism and global folklore, such as studies on Indigenous North American rituals or comparative mythology.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Big Government Using Big UFO Fears to Hold Power: Why Astrology was invented by a high civilization in the distant past

I deal with a lot of subjects and over time, for anybody who cares to investigate, I have a good track record of identifying a problem and proposing solutions that hold up, even when they may seem outlandish at the time.  But there is a reason I have been talking about aliens and UFO phenomenon more lately, I saw a pattern from the government with Covid that was the final straw for me.  For a long time, a very long time, I have considered that government largely creates anxiety over UFO visitations for their own benefit, to make the argument that we need a “big government” to deal with a “big alien conspiracy.”  Without a big and powerful military, then we would be vulnerable to aliens, and out of that fear that we must waste lots of money on super-secret programs, put up with intrusions on our constitution, and accept that government must always grow and that if they weren’t accountable to us, then it was for our own good.  And once that door was opened, as it was with Roswell in New Mexico in 1947, then putting accountability back into the box was impossible.  Once the government saw how people could be controlled and how violations of their constitutional rights could be conducted under “national emergencies” then the playbook for all that followed regarding government conspiracies was unleashed, abused, and we saw that playbook played across the world over the recent cases of election fraud and Covid pandemic creations that for me was the final straw.  A lot of people don’t know better, but because of the kind of life I live, I do.  So, I’ll go ahead and say it, our governments are far more dangerous than the species of various visitors who have been coming to earth for tens of thousands of years, likely millions.  And the reason the government wants to keep everything super-secret is because of their insatiable, very fallible desire for power by controlling information. 

Another contributor to this being on my mind more lately than in previous years is that in my community of Butler County Ohio, Pyramid Hill is getting ready to open the Fortified Hill complex in January of 2023 which I consider to be one of the great mysteries of the world.  Actually, I don’t think its much of a mystery to the way I think, but it’s one of those really strange things on par with Gobelki Tepe, the Pyramids of Giza, and of course the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio which is related to this very ancient earthwork in Butler County.  The Fortified Hill complex is around 250 feet tall and is a carved hill into the shape of a boar, representing the constellation Aries during a very specific time of processional movement from Taurus into Aries and specifying the constellation Pleiades 5000 years ago.  So, let’s fast forward through all the stuff everyone is struggling with now, just to catch everyone up, there is plenty of proof that there were advanced civilizations in North America and elsewhere around the world during and before the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years ago.  We are just now figuring out some of this very advanced math.  Obviously, the zodiac was invented before the Sumerians claimed credit, by many thousands of years.  And obviously, Pythagoras from Greek society inherited his knowledge of mathematics because the Egyptians and the high culture of North America were already incorporating Pi into their man-built structures.  To make a long story short, there is evidence for instance at Gobelki Tepe in Turkey on Pillar 43 that the alignment with the constellation Scorpio would point the sun with that structure to the center of the Milky Way, to the bulge at the center of our galaxy that likely houses a black hole of immense size.  How would primitive people know about that?  There’s no way they could.  And there is a tribe in Africa near the Eye of Africa, which is a site associated with Atlantis, the Dogon tribe that knew before any astronomers did about the specifics of the Sirius star system, that it not only was a binary system with an A and a B sun but also that there was a Sirius C there as well.  And they knew about specific planet densities and all kinds of details nobody would know unless they had been there.  And the Dogon tribe are hunters and gathers and very primitive.  In addition to that, I just saw a UFO the other day, and I’ve seen them before.  They come and go all the time so I’m quite convinced that there have been travelers from other places around the galaxy coming to earth in either the form of a type 1 civilization or a Type 2 or 3.  Studying governments, things are usually hidden in plain sight because chaos often clouds our bandwidth.  We are often purposely directed to the chaotic stories of popular media so that we don’t see what is really going on.  It’s a military trick that the CIA figured out a long time ago, and the Russians mastered effectively during the Cold War.  And now all the pinheads of government know how to keep mass society distracted, and they use it to protect their means of power.  But these facts are abundant to anybody with a mind to see them.

So, to put my own spin on the various mysteries that nobody has yet figured out, the purpose of all these astrological alignments among a highly advanced culture all over the world in the very distant past, I think there is a very logical method behind it all.  Many have speculated, because they don’t want to deal with the controversy that the messages were intended by aliens for the use of aliens, but as messages of warning to our present age.  Someday we might figure it all out and learn something from these distant intelligences.  Well, since I live in mound country, and have been studying these things all my life, I think I’m in a pretty good position to add something to the mystery as to what all these mound structures really mean, such as the Fortified Hill in Butler County, or Serpent Mound, or the Newark or Portsmouth complexes.  Or Poverty Point down in Louisiana.  What are they?  What is Stonehenge and Avebury for that matter in England?  What does any of it mean?  Well, based on my studies and personal experience, I think astrology was invented by these people as a marker in time.  While traveling through space, time is relative, it’s not the same on earth as it would be on say a planet in the Sirius star system or some other place.  And the mounds are markers left by these visitors so they would know where they were in space and time while traveling, much the way we leave markers on the side of the highway to know where we are.  I have thought about this while traveling around the world, if you have ever left Chicago at 2 PM and landed in Japan 13 hours later, a long day of sunlight and having your clock suddenly be half a day ahead can be quite disorienting.  It takes time to adjust, and you need references to calibrate.  I think that is why there were so many markers left on the ground all over the world that specifically align to the processional travel of the earth and its sun through the 25,920 years of processional cycles so that it would be easy to align those symbols to a place in the sky and know roughly within 2000 years or so where in time a visitor would be.  And yes, I think it’s that simple. 

So knowing all that, and hearing recently that the Pentagon was denying that there is any credible evidence that there is alien life interacting with the earth, or that they exist at all is a gross insult to our intelligence, and I’m not going to put up with it.  The denial is simply a power move so that big governments can continue to use big fear to keep control of the population they wish to mediate.  It’s the same old sources of corruption that we’ve always had as a human race, whether it be kings, religious figures, or in this case some pin-headed government.  They use fear to keep people from the truth, and the truth is, they are far more dangerous than the aliens.  We are just scratching the surface with all this contact with life outside of earth, and it starts by asking the question of how a high civilization started before and during the Ice Age, to begin with.  How and why was astronomy, and specifically astrology being used well before we gave credit to any human inventors of it?  And what we end up with is the knowledge that if these interactions were destructive, like a War of the World scenario, we wouldn’t be here today.  Instead, it’s likely that we are them, and they are us.  We have mutual interests in each other’s persistent existence.  And the government is in the way of that relationship, not protecting us from them.  The evidence points to the fact that they were here long before government as we know them today.  Government has just been in the way and it’s time for us all to mature and face the facts.  And until we realize that, we will continue to support the big government for protection that is essentially the wolf dressed up in grandmother’s nightclothes.  The threat isn’t out there in space.  It’s in our government and a Pentagon that would knowingly lie to us, just as they did with the origins of Covid and the results of the 2020 election.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

A UFO Over My House: The Secret Society Hung League and the ancient religion of astrology and intersteller time travel

Well, of course, I believe in UFOs. There are way too many of them that occur too often not to notice them and to take note of our government’s reaction to them or the response of other countries. I’ve seen them before; I can tell many stories, especially when my daughters were growing up when we experienced paranormal activity, largely because we went looking for things, and unexplained events occurred. I tend to think of “unexplained” as needing more science. When you don’t have science to explain something, we call it paranormal because it exists outside of “normal.” And the governments of the world rule from within the safe confines of what is “normal.” But these are also the same governments who have lied to us about the reasons for getting into the Gulf Wars, who made Covid and unleashed it from China, then tried to force all people to take medicine from their political donors and lied to us about how to treat the virus because they wanted people to get sick with it so that they could control us. These are also the same people who have been telling us that there wasn’t any election fraud, even though we know by now that there was lots of it. So if the government says there aren’t UFOs, or they attempt to say they aren’t in contact with an alien species trading technology for peace, or something else, I don’t believe them. I have seen enough to know that there is something to the whole UFO discussion and that there is far more of it going on than anyone wants to admit. Most people, if taken out of a social setting, will acknowledge that they have experienced paranormal activity of some kind, but because of the social ostracization that comes with admitting it in public, just another form of control that governments use against people, taught to us in those dirty, rotten public schools, that is how these mysterious things stay hidden from the public. Isolating people from talking about their experiences helps keep secrets, secrets. 

I have two daughters, and over the years, hanging around me, they have had their fair share of paranormal experiences. Often we check these out as a family to prove they aren’t real. But too often, there has been something to the reports, and we end up with more questions than answers. One of my daughters has developed a keen eye for UFOs over the years, and she sees them quite a lot. They are often hidden in plain sight because people don’t tend to look up; if they do, UFOs are hard to see. UFOs are hidden in the procedure for airline pilots and military members. They exist outside our process controls for maintaining a pilot’s license. So the reports are often ignored or not mentioned for fear of sounding like a lunatic. But if you look up, anything above 1000 feet, even the big airliners, it’s hard to see. With that said, I wasn’t surprised the other day when my daughter came over to my house with fresh video she had taken from her front porch of a UFO right over my home. The craft was moving too fast to be a small plane and too low to be a big airliner, even coming in for an approach into Dayton or Cincinnati, which we see all the time. This was different; it was fast, and in the 4-second video, it can be seen moving behind a cloud before blending into the sky to disappear. The video was short because it took a moment to see it, pull out her camera, then zoom in on it to get enough of an image. And that’s how these things usually go. The video ended up a little fuzzy because she had to zoom in on it to get it to appear on camera. This was a pretty good one, but she sees lots of UFOs in her life because she has learned to look at things in ways that maybe other people have trained themselves to expect as “normal.” She, nor I, expect normal. I would say that we expect unique things to be hidden behind the expectation of normal, which is why many people don’t see these things. 

As I looked at her video and went outside to look at the spot over my home where the UFO had been, I thought about the various secret societies and their initiation rituals, such as those passed down from the Knight’s Templars into the modern Masons, and in this case specifically the ultra-secret Hung League in China. Because China has been in the news a lot lately over Covid lockdown protests, I always attribute planned crises, such as political positions to these secret societies and consider how much they are behind it. And when it comes to UFOs, it’s the initiation rituals that many of these secret societies have that give away their great interest in the stars and the life forms that come from them. As I’ve said before, many Indians, especially in America, when you get into their belief systems, believe that the earth was populated by Star People from the binary star system Sirius who settled ten planets, earth being just one of them. Hey, if the Indians say to worship the earth, liberals are ready to shut down our society over climate change. But if they say there are Star People who have settled earth and come back often to maintain our life here, they call it “crazy.” Yet, that’s what is said about travel from Sirius and other star systems. When you see the various motives behind secret societies toward astrology and processional interest in the constellations over time, it’s clear that knowledge is power, and the point of the secret societies is to keep that knowledge a secret so they can have power over people in general—the oldest motive in the world. Below is part of an initiation ritual into the Hang League that is typical of these secret societies, and you’d be surprised who is in them and why. I would say that the efforts behind politics make these kinds of beliefs normal:

The Hung League, considered by many the oldest religion of the Chinese, well before Confucius ever came along; these are questions of an initiate. And, of course, in the answer are the coded messages that let the secret society know that the initiate can behold the concepts of astrology. 

Q.           What did you see on your walk?

A.           I saw two pots with red bamboo.

Q.           Do you know how many plants there were?

A.           In one pot were 36, and in the other 72 plants, together 108.

Q.           Did you take home some of them for your use?

A.           Yes, I took home 108 plants.

Q.           How can you prove that?

A.           I can prove it by a verse.

Q.           How does this verse run?

A.           The red bamboo from Canto is rare in the world. In the groves are 36 and 72.

               Who in the world knows the meaning of this?

               When we have set to work, we will know the secret. 

The number 12 is the number of constellations in the zodiac. 30 is the number of degrees allocated along the ecliptic to each zodiacal constellation. 72 is the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a processional shift of one degree along the ecliptic. 360 is the total number of degrees in the ecliptic. 72 X 30 = 2160, the number of years required for the sun to complete a passage of 30 degrees along the ecliptic, to pass entirely through any one of the 12 zodiacal constellations. 2160 X 12 = 25,920, which is the number of years in one complete precessional cycle or Great Year and the total number of years required to bring about the great return. You can also get to the number 25,920, which is the number of the Great Year from a Zodilocal perspective with 360 X 72.

I tend to think of astrology as the science of mapping time as it occurs on earth so that interstellar travelers will always have a reference for where they are relative to where they came from. We think of astrology as the horoscope we read in the paper, online, or in the Farmer’s Almanac, where star power influences us based on when we were born and during whatever period of time during the Great Year, which followers of astrology known as 25,920 years of processional time that our sun moves through all the houses of the zodiac. For instance, during the time of Moses and the Biblical Exodus, we were in the time of Aries, and goats were the offerings to God that were part of the appeasement process. By the time Jesus came along, it was the age of Pisces, the fish that people identifying as Christians put on the back of their cars. It takes 2,160 years to get from one age to another; the next one on earth is the age of Aquarius, etc. But to what effect does all this math matter? Well, if you travel from star system to star system, you have to know what time it is. So each planet will have its unique position relative to other celestial bodies, and any computer calculating space and time will have to understand that relationship. It looks like over time, people living on earth and interacting with these characters from Sirius or wherever else have associated astrology not as a clock for telling time but with its own religion, and that religion is at the center of most of our secret societies. As I’ve said before, Washington D.C. is loaded with a deep commitment to star alignments and the zodiac because it was built by Mason’s deeply committed to this stuff. 

So part of keeping that power over people occurring is the maintenance of secret societies and their true motives. Whenever I see a UFO, like the one in the video over my house, or hear about them, I think of this religion of astrology and the secret of government interaction with interplanetary influences. I don’t think of such concealed truths as scary; it’s just science and the quest to get more science to understand what’s happening in the world. But when members of those secret societies tell you that there is nothing to see, that’s when I say to look harder. And when the things they tell you aren’t real are flying right over your house, and you can see it, well then you know they are lying for many reasons that are important to them. But the truth looks to be far beyond most of their understandings. For them, such knowledge is power over their human competitors for knowledge. But for society in general, the truth is far outside our accepted reality, and to understand it, you must first be willing to look up and say, “hey, it’s a UFO.” And I’ve seen enough over a long period of time to see the connections between government, power, lies, and mass manipulation to maintain that power.

Meanwhile, there are many visitors to earth, and most are just doing their thing. And astrology looks to be their means of programming whatever travel computers they use to figure out where they are and what time it is at home because time moves at different rates depending on where you are in space and how that space is bent by gravity and other quantum forces. And much to the detriment of the secret societies, their secrets aren’t such secrets anymore.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business