The Doorway to Infinity

The prolific Raj Sisodia presents a video tone poem inspired by the motto of The Secret Sun, "The Dreaming Mind is the Doorway to Infinity." Featuring Gillalien Anderson as Demeter.

The Exegesis: The P Word

Modern discourse has produced a Bizarro lexicon, in which words that once had meaning either take on new meanings that have little to do with their original intent, or in fact have no real meaning at all.

I think most of you know what I'm talking about here. And nowhere is this more apparent in what book publishers call the New Age market, a catch-all phrase which itself has been bleached of its original meaning. It can refer to anything from self-help gurus to alternative history to Spiritualism to the more speculative corners of conspiracy theory (think Icke, David).

So whereas my original exposure to the New Age subculture (which I discussed recently) had more to do with the occult, in only a few short years it'd come to represent people who were trying to construct a movement with no real historical roots of any significance, with no doctrines or scripture, basically with nothing but a lexicon of terms that they had stripped of any meaning at all. Words like 'spirit', 'energy', 'consciousness', 'shaman', 'metaphysics', 'light', 'evolution'.

I'd visit these meetings and see predominantly bored middle-aged to elderly women (and maybe a smattering of their even more bored husbands) toss these words back and forth as if they were passcodes, as if the words themselves had some magical power to bring them somewhere, though where exactly was never made clear.

One of these get-togethers was at the big, bad, scary Lucis Trust, the subject of countless pant-pisser conspiracy theories. It was so cripplingly dull-- literally filled with stereotypical spinsters in tennis shoes, half-listening (a couple were actually knitting beforehand) to two of the dullest speakers in human history-- that I fled during the coffee break. It was an educational experience in that it taught me how inherently ridiculous and face-punchingly ignorant a good 99% of the Snakehandler conspiracy stuff out there is.

But the culprit here isn't the victims of the New Age scam-- these people are usually good-hearted, well-meaning seekers-- it's the vapid commercial culture that produces imitation religion, from the Lucis Trust to the Megachurch. It's no mystery that neopaganism became so alluring to so many New Agers, however the problem is that the same rot quickly set in. The consumer culture fungus.


Paganism in the ancient world was primarily based in fertility, in about doing whatever it took to appease the gods to ensure a bountiful harvest. That was literally a matter of life and death. With the rise of organized agriculture and surplus economies came the Mystery cults and the philosophical religions, in which humanity put its mind to more abstract questions. I don't know how compelling fertility can be in the Monsanto era, but I'd obviously be the last guy to question the enduring power of those ancient archetypes.

All of this brings me to the P word, maybe skipping over some steps in between because this is a blog and not Time Magazine, and breaking rules is my way of staying fresh. So Jung bla bla, Synchronicity bla bla, symbolism bla bla-- you know the drill. But the P word; what is the P word, you may ask?

It's yet another word that consumer culture has stripped of meaning, a word that describes waters I've swum in my entire life but still remains radioactive to me since hucksters often use it when they want the rubes to think they're saying something when in fact they're saying nothing at all.


You know, "Paranormal."

"Paranormal" used to mean something; in Operation Trojan Horse and Messengers of Deception, the Keel/Vallee description of "paranormal" has a definite and specific meaning and a definite and specific source. Both authors argue that UFOs are an "ultraterrestrial" phenomenon that has been with us a very long time, and uses a telepathy-based technology so advanced as to be essentially magic to interact with humanity, using a series of disguises and deceptions for reasons we can only guess at.


I speculated on such a phenomenon long before I read either book, back when Jeremy Vaeni had me on his podcast back in 2008. He didn't seem to like the idea much but after hearing a presentation on abduction phenomena at my first Esalen trip I got the feeling that it was a kind of psychic theater that was being implanted in the mind by some kind of electronic means.

Of course, a lot of theorists have speculated that this was all MK Ultra and the like, conveniently ignoring the fact that abduction phenomena goes back millennia. And despite what the CIA and DARPA might want you to believe, there's still no compelling evidence that they have anything like what Serge Monast was convinced was already ready to be rolled out with the mythical Project Blue Beam some 15 or so years ago. But I digress...

Paranormal simply means "beside what is normal." That can mean a whole host of things, and include pretty much everything we talk about on this blog. It can mean psi, the occult, the netherworld, ghosts and related phenomena, hallucinogens and shamanic experience- basically anything outside the 9-t0-5 grind.

But my fear-- and this is based in my own associations with the term-- is that the word has been appropriated by the kind of nonsensical Reality (sic) TV you see on SyFy: brainless mannequins running around in "haunted houses" with night vision goggles on, huffing and puffing for 40 minutes until they all get together and trade notes about what a waste of time it all was (well, that's how I sum it up, at least).


But my negative association with the term isn't limited to that kind of Kali Yuga entertainment- it's also used by alleged UFO researchers who can't be arsed to do anything but the most superficial casework, so they throw around fashionable buzzwords like "paranormal" or "trickster" simply because they heard someone else use them somewhere, maybe.

Or maybe because they don't want to violate their audience's normality bias, so the New Agey buzzwords become a more comforting alternative. Because if you listen carefully, they end up reducing it all to nothing-- not even hallucination. So nothing is what it all adds up to.

In the modern "paranormal" marketplace, the Beast must constantly be fed so any kind of perspective or discernment is chucked out the window; Roswell or Socorro is treated the same as some Randibois playing with their balloons. Pretty soon it's all just static and chatter, and then the game becomes the "debunker" game (just like every TV show message board eventually focuses on the "10 worst episodes" and so on), especially since none of these Art Bell wannabes are equipped to deal with anything truly paranormal in the first place.

They may have liked a couple UFO or paranormal movies in some vague fashion and decided to blog about it with their typical American sense of unearned entitlement. But they never stopped to think that their perfectly normal brains and perfectly ordinary worldviews were completely ill-suited for the paranormal in the first place.

I feel extremely protective of people who have had genuine paranormal experiences, because I realize that many of them are often traumatized by them. And the last thing they need are a bunch of douchebags making a mockery of a facet of life most people already dismiss.

So you can see why I'm suspicious of these kinds of wordgames. I've been around long enough to see the unending process of appropriation destroy the very idea of a counterculture, a process I still haven't figured out how to remedy. I saw it happen with Hardcore starting as early as 1982 and repeat endlessly ever since. I suppose a return to a true initiatic Mystery cult type of system is the only solution. Which in turn runs the risk of degrading into a run of the mill secret society, but that's life.

One of the main reasons that I don't talk about the paranormal here, however, is that what we understand to be paranormal is usually anecdotal and almost impossible to prove. Talking about the stuff we discuss here and on the FB is hard enough with the Skeptics' constantly moving goalpost. And that's when I can put it all up there, with links and everything.

Even so, one of the most interesting experiences I had in the history of this blog actually started on Facebook, when I came home to report a very strange sighting I had minutes after I (well, my dog and I) actually had it. I first described it as a "ghost" sighting, though I later read a nearly identical story in a Jenny Randles book on alien contact.

That inspired a huge thread on my FB wall which led to the post itself (where I was obviously having even more trouble with the P word than now). As I reported in that piece I'd find out the next morning after seeing this strange, white figure that there'd been a serious hit and run accident at the end of the street and the police had put up an electronic sign calling for witnesses to come forward.

Unfortunately I was never able to find out what happened to the victim, but given the overall weirdness of this area (after all, Aleister Crowley's ashes are buried nearby), seeing weird apparitions hardly rates as paranormal.

Mothman, with whom I have several documented connections

But I couldn't prove I had this sighting, which still really bothers me. Painful life experience has led me to distrust memory, so I'm always looking for compelling evidence to support my arguments (hence, sticking to deal with synchronizing established facts). So I tend to keep discussions of what some might call paranormal experiences confined to personal discussions with friends.

Strangely enough, I don't extend this bias to other people's stories-- I'll give anecdotal evidence the benefit of the doubt, especially if it rings true on a subconscious level or can be corroborated through running the symbols. The classic 50s contact/abduction stories (Jenny Randles again) are a great example of this; most of them are unprovable but resonate with me on a profoundly deep level that I can often relive them as I'm reading about them.

Which is a kind of paranormal experience in and of itself, don't you think?

You Don't Need Their Permission Anymore, Part 2

"Truth" is a political construction. At the end of the day, what people accept as truth will depend on their politics, which will depend on their identity, or their perception of such.

There are those who will never question the official version of the JFK assassination, 9/11, the Apollo moon landings, Gulf War Syndrome, UFOs or any other topic you can name. No matter how compelling your evidence, no matter how shoddy or makeshift the official version of events. Certain people-- maybe most people-- simply won't go there.

Which is not to say that alternative views are necessarily correct; there's a whole host of alternative views I find every bit as shoddy and weak as arguments you might hear on Fox News or read in The New York Times. I may end up agreeing with the so-called "Skeptics" on certain issues more often than not, though that's usually a function of their tendency to shoot at strawmen to soften their audiences up for thornier and more troublesome targets. That's a technique straight out of stage magic, by the way: the art of intentional deception which most skeptics rely upon to manipulate mainstream audiences and the media gatekeepers who are the shills in the "Skeptic" shellgame.

But I'm not here to sell you used views from the mainstream or alternative media; I'm here to encourage you to find your own truth. The mainstream and the alternative media have failed equally in my view, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating of the shit that the world is force-fed every day. Everyone sees a political system that is engineered to serve only the rich and the powerful; everyone realizes that the rest of us are being left to fend for ourselves.

Running for CEO of Amerocon®, Incorporated

Everyone realizes that the free market system (so-called) exists only to serve the executive class; that the "hidden hand" of the so-called free market is actually the funny handshake of collusion, price fixing and monopoly capitalism. We're not here to argue any of that. What I'm here to tell you is that in this environment there is no longer any reason to worry about the opinions or beliefs of a professional class and knowledge-based elite that doesn't care about you at all.

The New York Times and Fox News and the rest of the corporate media have been caught lying and covering up the misdeeds of the rich and powerful so many times that they have no credibility outside the professional class whose interests they serve.

Similarly, the scientific establishment is not some Olympian overclass of aloof, disinterested monk-scholars, they are all bought-and-paid-for vassals of the corporate state. The so-called "peer review system" is doomed from the start when not a single scientist will ever dare to step outside the bounds of orthodoxy for fear of ending their careers literally overnight.

By the same token, any serious observer of the quote-unquote "alternative" media sees how much of it is simply an extension of the gun-show/survivalist wing of the American religious right, and how much of it exists to sell you gold and silver of dubious provenance and equally questionable vitamin elixirs and "survival" kits.

It's the same exact technique as the mainstream media; "scare and sell." Ramp up the anxiety with constant bad news stories to soften up the rubes to buy the palliative products of the sponsors. The only difference are the products; most so-called alt-news sources simply cut and paste the same stories you see in the mainstream media nowadays.

In the end, you are on your own. The people out there trying to influence your thinking just want your money, after all is said and done.

So take this unique opportunity to throw off the shackles of other people's expectations and pursue your own calling. Pursue it not with "skepticism" (an invitation to self-sabotage and reductionism) but with rigor and discernment. Question your methods and your conclusions but have faith in your instincts and keep your goals in your sights at all times. But at the same time be prepared for new goals to arise. Always be ready to be surprised. Surprise is the very currency of Synchronicity and esotericism.

You might have heard terms like "confirmation bias" or phrases like "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Who's to say what "extraordinary evidence" entails? This is all just bullshit; it's about skeptics moving the goalposts until they get their required result. Even if they don't, they just declare victory and disappear. Without fail.

Randi, up to his old tricks

If you want to use the skeptics to keep yourself honest, go for it. But if not, that's fine too. Either way, never make the mistake of looking at them as anything but a kind of hive-mind paradigm. Always remember how screwed up these guys usually are (a fact which will burned into your brain if you ever spend any time among them) and if you like, do some digging on the dark underbelly of the movement. That in particular can be quite liberating.

Always demand evidence, but never dismiss evidence simply because it may not fit into someone else's reality paradigm. Be honest with yourself and your results, not to please some socially inept malcontent who spends all of his time attacking people on the Internet, but because those honest results may take you somewhere you never expected, somewhere new and wondrous.

You might notice I'm not endorsing or recommending any particular modality or discipline. That's up to you. I would recommend that you do the requisite research and make sure that people you respect take your pursuit seriously, but I think most of my readers don't need to be reminded of that. What you might need is some encouragement, and some help with understanding that one of the great advantages of living in a world in which you've been cut loose is that you no longer have to live up to someone else's expectations.



But there's one other thing I'd recommend: a dose of warrior spirit. Too many people interested in alternative pursuits are too reticent to fight for what they believe. I'm not talking about the poseurs and the phonies, who are always obnoxious, I'm talking about the scholars, the students, the seekers. There are people who want to take everything that's important to you away from you, just for a cheap thrill. Just for a momentary ego boost. Are you going to let them?

I'm not talking about going out and picking fights, I'm talking about being unshakable. About having the confidence in your work that comes with work-- very long, very hard hours of work. Having the confidence in work based in a tradition; that you aren't reinventing the wheel but are building on those who've come before you.

When I took martial arts I could always tell who the most dangerous students were-- they were the ones who were the calmest, the most centered, the most steadfast. The bluffers and the blusterers-- the ones who acted like the idiots you see on the Internet-- were the ones who didn't do the work, who didn't know the art. It was the quiet ones who'd take your breath away when they'd go up to spar.

As with the martial arts, the Hermetic arts have been around a lot longer than all of the fads and the innovations. And esotericism has captured the attention of some of the greatest minds in history while the reductionist, materialist point of view continues to contract, continues to create a culture in a state of constant collapse and leads to a class of corporate vassals working in tedious specialties so soul-destroying they immerse themselves in esoterica the same way Republicans immerse themselves in gay sex-- by attacking and denigrating that which they are most drawn to, because of the guilt and the gaping void left by their empty worldviews.

You don't need their permission. You need only your own, which is a lot easier said than done. But we've seen where reductionism and materialism and hyper-specialization has led us; it's led us to a dead, cold, empty world.

You have centuries-- millennia-- of esoteric thought and practice on your side. They have Bill Nye and James Randi, the Amazing Atheist and a host of other freaks, sickos and malcontents on theirs. They also have a lot of cowards and poseurs, who don't have the balls to navigate the stormy seas of true esotericism and become "born-again skeptics" too. To hell with all of them.

Work, study, question, develop your warrior spirit and your killer instincts. Be honest, be steadfast, be unmovable. Authoritarian Religion has failed, Corporate Science wants to turn you into a robot. There is definitely a better way.

You Don't Need Their Permission Anymore, Part 1

The final collapse of American popular culture-
Nicki Minaj at the Grammy Awards

I hadn't time to fully process Whitney Houston's death when I first posted on it. I knew it marked a major turning point in my own life and in that of the nation, but I wasn't quite sure why. I'm still working on it, but the event seems to grow in my mind.

First, the obvious: Whitney's death came on the eve of the Grammy Awards, which is in no way a mere coincidence. I've my own feelings on this conjunction, other people their own as well. But following on the heels of Madonna's Pax Romana imperialist ritual at the Super Bowl and Nicki Minaj's equally grotesque tribute to The Exorcist (a film and novel that I've come to see as the apologia of a psychotic priest after the rape, torture and murder of an adolescent child of indeterminate gender) on Sunday, how can we escape the departure of a performer who didn't need the vulgar distractions of pseudo-occult ritual to hypnotize the entire world?

Equally despicable and depressing were the flurry of tweets from the media-brainwashed ditz-brigades of America, gleefully declaring they'd "let Chris Brown beat me any time." The fact that Brown is not only still a star but a bigger star than ever tells you pretty much all you need to know about where we stand in the 21st Century, with all of our technology and social media bullshit.

But the message is clear-- spectacle and manufactured outrage are what will be sold now. True talent is too hard to package, too hard to control. With the battery of electronic effects these singers are drenched in now, they don't really need to know how to sing at all anymore. Just ask Madonna.

And so the death of Whitney Houston-- the greatest singer of her generation-- acts as the milestone for this dark, cold new age.

Whitney in happier times, Robyn Crawford on right

The exact truth behind Whitney's relationship with Robyn Crawford still seems to be radioactive, with the press only covering claims made by British gay militant Peter Tatchell (reduced to recycling made-up quotes attributed to Jaz Coleman back in the 80s before Whitney died) that Whitney's sham marriage to Bobby Brown was the beginning of her long, ugly downfall. For her part, Crawford wrote a heart-rending open letter that detailed her history with Whitney without addressing the exact nature of their relationship.

But the public record is crystal clear- Whitney started going off the rails when she married Brown and went off the deep end when Crawford departed her life in 2000. How ironic that professions of bisexuality --real or (mostly) imagined-- are essentially a prerequisite for today's new pop stars like Nicki Minaj.

Happy now? Persephone in the Underworld

But that's only part of the story. Whitney's other problem was that she wasn't "real." She was too perfect, too beautiful, too talented, too flawless. In the militant late 80s, she was known as "Whitey Houston." She was seen as music for export, the "Prom Queen of Soul," not street, not credible. Many saw her marriage to Brown not only as a way to establish her straight credentials, but to establish her black credentials. I don't think anyone ever realized how far it would go.

I tuned it all out. My interest in Whitney Houston had less to do with her music or career and more to do with a specific moment in time. But I always recognized her incredible gifts and believed- and I still believe-- in redemption. I still believe in the power of the work to overcome the kind of struggles Whitney Houston faced, that brought her so low.

I believed until the very end that one day she would walk away from other people's expectations and retake control of her life and rediscover the gifts that stunned the world in the 80s.

I believed in Act Three.

Demeter Rising: the elemental Tina Turner

I saw Tina Turner- who I cite as an avatar of Demeter in The Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll-- as an example for Whitney, who I saw as Persephone (with Brown as a particularly malevolent Hades and cocaine as the pomegranate seeds). Tina Turner became too "white" for the militants in the late 60s, as hard as that is to believe. So rather than submit to the passing fads of the day, she stuck to what she knew and what she felt.

After leaving the abusive Ike, Tina relocated to Europe (where she remains a superstar of the first order) and later reconquered America with one of the most amazing storybook comebacks in pop history. But there would be no escape for Whitney-- what the world saw and fell in love with was some kind of woundedness, a vulnerability, despite the hardass bitch image she projected on reality TV.

Persephone, in other words.

But Tina Turner made her comeback in another America, another world. Not the America of the shattered attention span and cheap cynicism. Not the America where "transgression" is embarrassingly mainstream. Not the America in which an Internet connection is like a Harvard PhD; it instantly confers on its owner ultimate authority. An America in which everyone becomes an authority simply by claiming to be so and then petulantly demands that their authority be recognized. An America that demands the world be its mirror.

Tina Turner's America that wasn't that much different, mind you, but it was still an America in which certain things still mattered; talent, experience, paid dues, authenticity, knowledge. Not to everyone, mind you, but to the right people. Tina paid her dues and paid them hard, and people responded to that. That kind of thing used to matter. Not anymore.

The last weekend-- a symbolic rebirth on the Saco River, 1984

Whitney Houston appeared in my life as an anomaly. My response to her was visceral, probably hormonal, and was based in the fact that she had one of the most powerful voices I have ever heard and was astonishingly beautiful to boot. In a parade of instantly forgettable music video-- which was inescapable in the mid-80s, it was playing everywhere you went-- she stood out. But as I said before there was this signal. I realize now it wasn't necessarily coming from her, though I now realize she was certainly part of it.

But this was a time when I was kicking furiously at the doors of consciousness and discovering that Synchronicity wasn't just a disappointingly commercial album from The Police. It was a unsettlingly interactive force that seemed to correspond with all of the weirdness of my early life (which some people would call "paranormal" but I never did back then) and tied into all of the mind-expanding and mystical totems I was exploring at the time.

It's funny that Whitney Houston-- the mainstreamiest of the mainstream-- was the anomaly in all of this insanity. But she was mezzo like my mom and looked like an idealized version of my high school girlfriend (who I met at a Clash concert, of all places), so a mixture of the two was certain to be potent in my new life. This would all come back when Whitney died two days after I posted on Max Ernst, who kicked my ass and kicked it hard at the same exact point in time.

Two other things happened to me, in the midst of all that ferment; I discovered the occult (the Paranormal) and conspiracy (the Parapolitical). The first wandered into a den of iniquity my friends and I were renting at the foot of the New Jersey Skylands in the form of a Deadhead, who was an esoteric dilettante in the very best possible way. To him all of the various magical modalities were equally valid, equally interchangeable. It was all one big magickal candy store.

He'd introduce me to a host of new concepts and street-level magi, hiding in the margins of the Jersey hinterlands. He'd even attempt to initiate me as a warlock in the woods (I'm still stunned how he built a full-tilt stone altar literally overnight) in the next town over from where Whitney Houston lived for 20 years, though I must say my reaction was more bemusement and anticlimax than transcendence.

Conspiracy would come in the form of another friend who did way too much acid in high school but chose to listen to The Residents and Captain Beefheart than The Dead. He was also a Subgenii and almost terminally paranoid, but in an extremely cheerful way (he'd regale you with stories of how the government would one day just stop sending food and fuel to suburbs like Ledgewood and make it sound like a two priests and a rabbi joke). He was a hell of a storyteller and could decode the hidden agenda behind every news story. His methodology was contagious and stuck for life.

A lot of other people in our circle thought these two were just vaguely amusing weirdos, but I recognized that these were guys who spent all their time thinking. And their pharmaceutical adventures taught them new ways to think and maybe even turned on new synapses to think with.

I wouldn't quite realize it, but I subconsciously recognized that most other people didn't know how to think, and didn't want to. Even those people in the media or politics or the academy. They simply learned thought-replacement techniques, something you'll see everywhere if you know how to look for them.

But where I sit I see a situation in which everyone who's supposed to be responsible, who's supposed to minding the store, has not only failed us all and failed us all badly but is essentially out there masturbating in public, so to speak. Who are any of them to tell me how to think about the Paranormal or the Parapolitical?

If you look you'll find that those who do not truly know how to think are those who are the most eager to discourage others to truly think. If you stop and think about it, you'll see how these people have perfected this nearly-simian technique of having you beg for their permission to think a certain way. That they have perfected these apelike signals to discourage independent thought, thinking outside of their tiny little boxes.

It's by no means limited to those in quote-unquote authority. Just as often, it's these ridiculous assclowns who set themselves up as authority, without having any accomplishments or credentials. Without having done anything authoritative, in other words.

It's time to knock these motherfuckers off their pedestals and knock them off hard.

TO BE CONTINUED

Fallen to Earth, Again (UPDATED)

This morning it seems so perfect, so fitting. In Archonic America, where devolution is the ultimate virtue and everything that once made Americans proud and unique must first be defiled and then destroyed, it seems inevitable that Whitney Houston is taken off the boards.

I remember being completely hypnotized by Whitney's videos back in 1985. I had zero interest in that kind of music but I had immense interest in her. I was so smitten that I started telling my friends that she was some kind of signal, some kind of harbinger of some new, X-Men-like race that would emerge from the ashes of humanity. That she was singing these frothy pop songs to reach as many people as possible and trip this switch in their brains and kick off the New Age.

Whitney's decline was tragic but her rise was breathtaking, a moment that caught everyone's attention, whether they cared for her brand of slick R&B or not. That wasn't the point.

The point was that everyone stopped for a moment to bask in her lean, graceful beauty, her infectious, megawatt smile and her stunning vocal range that made you stop and listen, no matter what your musical taste.

In ancient times, emperors would build temples to her all across the world, and roses would be thrown at her feet wherever she walked. Even the humblest cobbler or beggar would think that surely this was a goddess come down to Earth; Hathor, Aphrodite, Inanna.

Whitney descends the spiral staircase in "Greatest Love of All" video

But this is the modern world, where even a goddess is reduced to a commodity. I'm not sure exactly what brought Whitney Houston back down to earth, but I'm sure the unrelenting pressure of superstardom had a lot to do with it, when your every move is scripted, recorded, and critiqued. And in America we put these people up on pedestals, shine the light of interrogation on them and then eat them alive when they flinch.

In that world, you are faced with an itinerary that creates a need for the stimulants that the sharks swimming around you are all too happy to provide. The rise of the superstar paralleled the rise of cocaine culture and the crushing schedules of in-demand stars like Houston made the lure of the leaf all that more inviting.

Whitney as Isis, in The Bodyguard

The flipside of stardom is how it all becomes a grinding monotony, how the business always takes the art away from you and how an artist ends up having to support a large and often parasitical corporation; people whose livelihoods rely on keeping the machine running, whether the muse has flown or not. It's an ugly, ugly business. "Evil" might not be too strong a word. And the drugs often become the artist's only escape from the devils.

And there's another narrative at work here, something spoken in whispers (or louder, later) for many years. I had heard from people on the New York music scene even before Whitney became a superstar that she was not straight, that she'd often be seen walking arm in arm in the Village with a woman who'd later work as her assistant. Whether she was gay or bisexual seemed to be a favorite subject of debate and she later married singer Bobby Brown, an act which seem to seriously dim her luster.

But given the toxic homophobia that's become nearly a religion in some quarters since the rise of Hip Hop, I think the pressures of staying in the closet could be yet another millstone that brought this goddess crashing down to the shitpile the rest of us slog through. In the 21st Century, a person's sexuality shouldn't even be an issue, but it is.* And it will continue to be as long as the harsh realities of the post-industrial economy leave a constant need to find untermenschen to feel superior to.



I wish I could leave you with some benediction here, some happy ending. But I don't see one. I see a woman who embodied the very best of us --in such a fashion as to perhaps be not of us-- dragged down below us and then destroyed. I see The Man Who Fell To Earth play out in real time before our eyes once again. Karen Carpenter redux.

I see yet another point put up on the Archons' scoreboard. I see an artist who people across the world could all agree was something special taken away from us. The only hope is that the work will live on, and that that signal continues to be broadcast until enough receivers get switched on.

PS: I should add that Whitney Houston came to my attention at the same point time I started obsessing on Max Ernst, who we discussed in the previous post (my tastes have always been pretty eclectic). A strange and kind of disturbing sync for me.

UPDATE: The Jackals feast on the Lioness' bones.

It was business as usual less than three hours after the sudden death of pop icon Whitney Houston at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Saturday, as hundreds of high-profile celebrities worked the room at the annual Clive Davis Grammy party.

But in a suite just four floors above, police were conducting an investigation into the death of the Grammy-winning singer. While Houston’s body remained in the room, her teen daughter stood outside fighting with authorities to see the body. This while a "crime lab" van stood out among the black limousines and SUVs escorting celebrities to and from the event.

In light of the stark contrast between the tragedy of her death and the celebration at the star-studded soiree, for those in attendance at the party, the backlash is burgeoning.

Kim Kardashian (whose ex-boyfriend Ray J was Houston's on and off again beau, and reportedly in the hotel trying to gain access to the room) was photographed smiling alongside the likes of Jane Fonda and Britney Spears, while Diana Ross and Barry Gordy hammed it up for the cameras. Stars like Ne-Yo, Kelly Rowland, Sir Richard Branson, Mary J. Blige and Jon Voight also attended.

I mean, it's perfect. The System destroyed a goddess and then partied atop her corpse. Take a good, long look at American culture, people. The cancer has subsumed the host. Research credit to SSFB member Chris Parker.

UPDATE: Paul Weston wrote: "Can't help feeling that this event is so near in time to the Madonna Superbowl "ceremony" that we are being invited to intuit a greater unity. FFS, if you had a dream that began with Isis Cleopatra Madonna on her throne and ended with Whitney dead underwater you'd know it was screaming meaning that needed to be understood but this actually happened. Come on Chris! Go for it!"

To which I responded: "Being invited is precisely the reason not to go for it." Where does it end up, after all? With Nikki Minaj's ridiculous performance and brainwashed dimwits tweeting that they'd "let Chris Brown beat them any day." And the meaning that I feel needs to be understood has already been spelled out in this piece.


*Yet another interesting lesson from the ancient world, ancient priestesses- who became the divas of their time in their roles as temple singers- were often forbidden to marry or to "know men." The Vestals were the most well-known of these, the direct parallel to modern nuns, but there are also the priestesses of Bast, well-known for their musical performances.

The priestesses of Inanna- goddess of music and dance- are another. Given the highly charged eroticism of their rites it's safe to assume these women were not celibate, even if forbidden to "know men." None of this impacted the role these women played in society or the adulation they received. Hard to imagine in these times when, as with religion, sexuality has become politics by proxy.

In the ancient world, gifts such as Whitney's would act as a signal that she was not meant for the kitchen and the nursery but to serve the people by using her talent to bring them closer to the gods. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the divas of the ancient world were predominantly lesbian.