When the lights went down at St. Paul's Methodist Church on Monday night and the deep-space music began, the audience fell into a hush and a speaker appeared at the podium.

"Welcome into the presence of the Blue Orb," Julie Ryder, a Helena resident, told the nearly 100 people in attendance.

Ryder, a registered nurse and an "intuitive healer," introduced Gary Hovda, an interior designer who has been studying the Blue Orb ever since it appeared in a photo taken at a Fairy and Human Relations Conference in Washington last year.

Expecting a much smaller crowd, Hovda, of Washington state, skipped the small talk and began discussing what he called his "silent visitation." He said he had never seen an orb, let alone a giant blue one, until he attended last year's conference.

There, he said, the mood was light and cheerful. That's when the orbs appeared. He showed pictures of people surrounded by the spheres of cascading light, and several members of the audience emitted "wows" of vocal pleasure and surprise.

"The orbs were enjoying us," Hovda said. "I started sensing something I haven't felt in a long time. It was just a 'cool' that went right through us. Then the magic started. I just started dancing with energy."

Hovda then showed the picture of the now famous Blue Orb.

"This is why we're here tonight," he said. "This is what has affected our lives so much."

Since that day in the Washington hills, Hovda said he has spent much of his time wondering where he had seen the Blue Orb before. He began researching the shape and came up with various conclusions.

"My field is in interior design," Hovda said. "I work with form. I work with space. I feel space. So I wondered, where has this shown up in history?"

Hovda compared art and architecture to the Blue Orb, often superimposing the sphere over images of the Oval Office, the Pope's coronation crown, and Michelangelo's famous painting, "The Last Supper," to show the sphere's harmonious relationship to such items.

Placing the shape over Stonehenge, he suggested that the ellipse of the stones matched that of the orb. The stone altar, he said, aligned perfectly with the mysterious image caught inside the orb.

Hovda also compared the orb to other famous landmarks, like St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, where the tomb of Jesus, he said, aligned with the altar in Stonehenge.

The music playing throughout the sanctuary was rhythmic, as if inspired by deep space and cascading light. Many sat in the audience shaking their heads as if to say, yes, yes indeed.

Hovda continued his comparisons, suggesting that the Blue Orb inspired landmarks like the Capitoline Hill in Rome, the Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and the Roman Coliseum, where, he said, the center was in perfect proportion to the orb.

"I looked at the orb and decided that I have to reduce it to geometry to understand it," Hovda said.

Ryder said she had seen the same Blue Orb. Her own story, which ran in February, prompted dozens of e-mails and phone calls from around the world.

"Is it possible to get a picture of the orb?" wrote one person from Spain. "It would help a lot parents who lost a child to believe in the afterlife."

One Washington, D.C., resident wrote, "I think cameras now can see more than we do, since we don't see UV or infrared. I see images, and especially faces, in rocks everywhere. I call them my Anima Mundi."

Others were more cryptic in their response, including one woman who claimed to be psychic and telepathic.

She wrote, "In my blood veins, on my left arm, on the inside, is written JM77. What do (the) orbs indicate that this might be?"

Hovda welcomed e-mails. He can be reached at silentvisitation@aol.com.

Reporter Martin Kidston can be reached at 447-4086, or at mkidston@helenair.com.