SUNDAY TIMES, June 15, 1947
MAGIC MEDAL WAS 'APPORTED' FROM
ROME CATACOMBS TO SYDNEY
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By a "Sunday Times" Reporter
Carefully preserved in a Johannesburg safe deposit vault is a medal which dates back to the time of the old Roman emperor Tiberius, and yesterday I was told the almost incredible story of its acquisition.
The owner is Dr. Murdo MacDonald-Bayne, of Dunvegan Chambers, Johannesburg. In his 70th year, the doctor looks like a man half his age, and yesterday, in his consulting rooms, he unfolded an almost unbelievable story, all of which, he vouches, is true.
"Many years ago," he said, "a visitor appeared to me in the night and directed me to Tibet, there to study under the Great Masters. I spent many years with them, learning the principles of their teaching.
"One day they told me that the Yogi were endeavouring to bring to me a medal, one of the oldest in the world. They told me that it would be brought to me wherever I was.
"In 1943 I was in Sydney and I was directed to approach a Mr. Bailey, one of the greatest 'apport' mediums in the world. It was in a room of the Mayfair Hotel that the phenomenon took place, and in the presence of the medium and a Dr. Whitcombe and Yogi Ramagatta I heard a voice telling me about the medal.
"Shortly afterwards this medal was thrown on to the bed where I was sitting, and I was told to retain it exactly as it is, to make it known to other parts of the world."
Dr. Bayne said that the medal was made of "potin" -- a mixture of silver and tin. It was one that had been struck by the first converts to Christ, and the penalty for wearing it was to be thrown to the lions.
On one side is the effigy of Christ, and on the other old Hebrew writing, which has since been translated by Dr. Edward Lawrensen as "The Messiah has resigned. He came in Peace. He was made the Light of Man and He liveth."
Only one Extant
Dr. Bayne said the medal is probably the only one of its kind extant, all the others having been destroyed because of the consequences of their discovery.
He claims that the medal came from the catacombs of Rome, and it bears the original earth of its centuries-old repository, deep in the soil.
One word in the interview was not clear -- "apport medium." What was that, the doctor was asked?
He said to "apport" a thing meant to dematerialise it, and cause it to appear somewhere else. He took up a crystal vase of sweetpeas to demonstrate and said, "If I apport this vase, I cause it to dematerialise here, and to appear, at the speed of lightning, say in London, where I materialise it again.
"It is thus that the medal was apported to be by Mr. Bailey -- directly from the catacombs in Rome, to that hotel room in Sydney."
Dr. Bayne smiled at his interviewer's incredulity.
"Apporting is a common affair among the Masters in Tibet," he said. "I have sat down and eaten an entire dinner in the Himalayas, a dinner of which every course had been apported from somewhere else in the world."
The old medal is but one of the strange curios which Dr. Bayne keeps in his safe. Others are a shekel, which he claims dates back to the time of Joseph, and a coin of the time of Ptolemy Philadelphius. It is his intention to exhibit his strange collection, every item of which is a museum piece, and for which, he says, he has already been offered fantastic prices.
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