Back From The Edge of the World, 2009 edition

Front row: Christopher Partridge, Jeff Kripal and Michael Murphy
Second row: George Stephanopolous, Ed May, Dulce Murphy,
Dean Radin, Victoria Nelson, Mason Gamble, Erik Davis.
Third row: Doug Moench, Paul Selig, Mitch Horowitz, Larry Sutin,
CK, Collin Eyre and Scott Jones.

Well, Time flies and Time crawls. But sometimes you enter a state in which Time flows in such a manner that it seems to expand and contract in an entirely different and yet totally satisfactory fashion. That happens when your mind is so completely engaged morning, noon and night that each moment seems to be pregnant with significance, and therefore worth experiencing.

This has been my obsession for several years now, when I first began to notice the days and weeks beginning to whiz by. I realized that the best way to moderate that flow was through interesting work, an increasing rarity in this day and age.

And so it was for the second annual conference on the Supernatural, Supernormal and Popular Culture at the Esalen Center for Theory and Research, created and moderated by the brilliant Jeff Kripal of Rice University. I wrote about last year's conference here and here but that was simply a dry run for this year's blowout. This year's conference was also a lot more stressful for me in some ways since I not only presented a revised version of "The Synchromysticism of Jack Kirby" for the group, but also a public talk called "Saucers, Psychics and Psilocybin: The Mythologies of The X-Files" and finally a filmed interview for Jeff's upcoming documentary dealing with all of these topics.

So, as you can see from the class photo, this was a focused, high-powered collection of brains sorting through all of these issues. Jeff outdid himself in assembling thinkers who are directly engaged with the whole process of extraordinary knowledge and extraordinary experience playing itself out through ordinary popular culture.

I'm hoping we see at least some transcripts of this conference go up on the CTR site, because if you're reading this blog, I guarantee that you would have been fascinated by every single presentation. And throughout the week were more fascinating conversations than you could possibly keep up with. Just on the ride from the airport, even: I rode down with Larry Sutin, Philip K Dick's biographer and his wife Mab, Chris Partridge, who teaches religion at the University of Lancaster, and Collin Eyre, a Bodhisattva-in-training who's working towards his degree at the Center for Integral Studies (and really made the entire experience run like clockwork).


I was more than a bit nervous about the event, to be honest- last year there was a very strange energy over Big Sur (and I'm not using that terminology lightly), which I wasn't the only one who noticed. Combine that with a kind of cognitive dissonance arising from hearing serious, credentialed people discussing paranormal phenomena as a matter of fact, and it quite frankly freaked me out when the wildfires started.

Was this all a premonition? I don't know, but processing all of this - along with some other strange syncs that relate to Esalen - forced me into a rethink of what I'm trying to do here last summer (for instance, I decided to kick an almost 20-year addiction to Conspiratainment, which I realized was distorting my perceptions and weakening my ability to see past all of the intentional disinformation presented as hidden truths out there).

But I think that all resulted in a more focused blog, which I feel paid off when the Memestream got pummeled with all of the alien/Sirius memes that Barackobamun pulled in his wake during the election. Revelation is not always an ecstatic process. In fact, I'd argue it usually isn't- and did so in my Kirby presentation (note: I covered a lot of material in my Kirby presentation that I haven't covered here, so keep an eye on that in the weeks to come). So, despite that very high weirdness- and those dreadful Route 1 hairpin twists and turns (that even Dramamine couldn't conquer) I was resolved to make this symposium a transformative one.


SO, ANYWAY...

So on Sunday, it was all wine and cheese and conversation and orientation by Jeff and Michael Murphy. Jacques Vallee was only there for a couple of days, so I went out of my way to corner him and pick his brains about the purpose of fake flaps (like the recent one in NJ) and chew his ears off about the Mithraic Liturgy, which he hadn't heard about. Poor Jacques.

Anyhow, there were way too many fascinating conversations about religion, politics, media, conspiracy, occultism, Psi, superheroes, supersoliders, psychedelics and all the rest of it to possibly recount here, so let me just run through the schedule and touch on some of the main topics covered.

OK, so Sunday night Jeff and Michael covered the basic goals of the meeting. Michael has 50 years of experience of moderating some of the brightest minds of our time, so I think everyone realized that they had to bring their A game. After that, the gabbing went on in several different circles, with this ongoing financial apocalypse never far from everyone's mind.

Mitch Horowitz- editor-in-chief of Tarcher Penquin- kicked it all over discussing his upcoming book Occult America, in which he traces the roots of Rosicrucian-inspired groups in Europe, how they arose during the Reformation and how many of them traveled (fled, more accurately) to America. Mitch also discussed Freemasonry as being an Establishment appropriation of these free-thinker/occult philosophies.

Christopher Partridge is the author of a two-volume set entitled The Re-Enchantment of the West, in which he did a lot of field study with new religious movements in the UK like chaos magick, Druidry, neopaganism, UFO cults and Rastafarianism. He had some fascinating insights on the process of spiritual evolution using pop culture as a medium, which he analyzes from several viewpoints- his academic work, his history in the punk and post-punk scenes in Manchester and his Quaker faith.


Jacques Vallee did two presentations: one covering his history in and methodology of serious UFO research. He discussed his field experience, most remarkably a wave of nasty close encounters in Brazil (commonly known as the Colares flap) that the government did a thorough job of covering up. After dinner, Jacques changed gears and presented on the symbolism and history of stained glass, delving into his experience with the master craftsmen repairing the windows at Chartres. As with Doug Rushkoff, Jacques exploded commonly held myths about the Middle Ages and showed that there was a period of Enlightenment in the 11th and 12th Centuries that produced these masterpieces along with mystic visionaries like Hildegarde and Meister Eckhart.

Tuesday morning Jeff Kripal presented on the mystical experiences of comics legend Barry Windsor Smith. These included some very powerful precognitive visions that were discussed at length in Smith's Opus volumes. Interestingly enough, Smith did not talk about his UFO encounter in those books. I guess there some taboos are still too touchy to break- most especially in comics fandom, which prefers its paranormal experiences to stay trapped on the page, thank you.

After Jeff, Larry Sutin talked about his PKD books (all of which every regular reader of this blog should own) and his experience transcribing Dick's massive Exegesis. Larry went into great detail talking Dick's troubled life prior to the 2/3/74 revelation and how that experience transformed his life. Larry also wrote the definitive biography on Aleister Crowley, which is another must-read.

Well, last year we had Russell Targ and Jacques Vallee talking about Grill Flame, this year we had Ed May talking about Project Star Gate. This was a fascinating presentation (in all seriousness, all of the presentations were fascinating) since Ed came loaded for bear with all of the stats on the results of the project in a very crisp PowerPoint presentation. He was also candid about the limitations of remote viewing as an intelligence tool. The week was filled with synchronicities - my own presentation on Kirby was Stargate-oriented in a different context. Ed showed that the data for RV was rock-solid and that he himself was approaching the work from a specifically reductionist POV.

The evening's presentation was from Paul Selig, an Ivy League graduate and playwright who approaches psychic phenomena from a diametrically different approach- Paul works as a "clairaudiant" and did a channeling for the group. We we asked to close our eyes during the reading, and I had some pretty intense imagery floating in my mind's eye- geometric patterns and images of the surrounding landscape sort of meshing into a very consistent kind of interior slideshow, nothing like the chaos that usually floats around behind my eyelids. More on that later.

So Wednesday had comics legend Doug Moench talking about synchronicities surrounding his writing- some of which were pretty harrowing (Synchronicity was very much the subtext of the week). Doug is one of my childhood heroes, having written Master of Kung Fu, Planet of the Apes and Moon Knight, as well as the modern classics Big Book of Conspiracies and Big Book of the Unexplained (both very much worth tracking down). Doug also wrote some issies of the recent X-Files comic, so all sorts of connections going on there. Doug is also the unholy lovechild of Ben Grimm and Robert Anton Wilson and brought a wonderful curmudgeonly air to the proceedings.

Then some bloated, sweaty idiot named Chris Knowles got up and started ranting about Jack Kirby and UFOs and Stargates and ancient astronauts and clairvoyance. Luckily the paramedics came and brought him straight to the nuthouse before he hurt himself or others.*


Dean Radin followed with an amazing presentation on the quantum mechanics of Time. Having a "for-rent" sign where my left brain should be I didn't really follow the specific details, but was completely riveted nonetheless. Dean is an absolute master of public speaking (and PowerPoint) and you can't help but be drawn into his world even if you don't have a scientific bone in your body. Contrary to what the Randiites might wish, there is serious science being done on the frontiers of the powers of the mind, and Dean is at the forefront of this. Consensus opinion on Psi can be confronted, but only if you're prepared with the data.

And boy, it's a really good thing that I spend so much time preparing for all of this. It's one thing to write about these topics, it's another to do a podcast on them and it's a whole different universe when presenting your crazy ideas to a roomful of professionals with credentials up the wazoo. You'd better make sure you've done the math.

It's then another reality paradigm entirely to do so in a roomful of those same professionals and a bunch of other people who have no concept of what we've been discussing the past week. Especially when that room is a legendary venue where many of your personal heroes have presented their own ideas to the world. And, oh yeah, it's being videotaped for posterity. So that was my Wednesday night. How was yours?

Needless to say, I nearly choked worse than the '86 Sox. But I'd spent so much time going over all of this material that some obscure module of my brain kicked in and presented a reasonably cogent version of the material that many of you are familiar with from this blog. I guess this is the same principle you get in sports or military training- your first time out, you're going to choke. So you need to drill yourself in order that muscle memory gets through your baptism of fire.

The funny thing is that I thought I was dying out there, but everyone told me it was really interesting, so there you go. I wasn't entirely happy with my presentation- I was offering too many answers and not enough questions. Which is really a function of trying not to wilt in front of forty people.

I was thrown off my stride (such as it was) at one point- Paul's chair inexplicably exploded when he leaned back. Those of you skeptical about mediumship (and I usually count myself in that group) will be interested to know that the episode I was discussing at that moment was one I had had a precognitive dream about, that then unleashed a chain of synchronicities that I wrote about in detail on this very site.

Surely not a pleasant experience for Paul, but in my own reality these kinds of meaningful, message-laded moments usually aren't. Usually the most meaningful turning points in my life have been extremely unpleasant.


Happily, Erik Davis nailed my amorphous thoughts the next day in his presentation on Aleister Crowley and their ultimate influence on Led Zeppelin. The sheer mystique of Led Zeppelin- particularly in the 70s- arose from their refusal to answer any of the questions about the enigmatic symbols and messages in their records (even that retarded "backwards-masking" controversy). Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz are the same way- they will never make a definitive answer about the mysteries of The X-Files (and certainly not about all the fascinating mythic parallels). The genius of that is that it keeps the conversation going, and allows the viewer to create her own reality with their framework. Erik also gets extra-cool bonus points for kicking it off with some righteous Ditko Doctor Strange panels and for clips from the 1926 Crowley-inspired film, The Magician (anyone have a copy of it out there?).

Victoria Nelson rounded out the presentations with her amazing dissection of the growing body of juvenile vampire fiction. Point by point, she graphed the history of vampire lore, it's entry into the pop culture realm, it's collision with gothic romance leading to the early Dracula films and then all the way up to the polymorphous vampires of the Anne Rice novels to this strange mutation of vampire mythology into a weird subset of superhero lore. Like so much else, Victoria's talk opened me up to a whole new sphere of memes to explore. Juvenile fiction is increasingly female-oriented, and I think it's important to understand these ideas that fly under male-oriented media.

The schedule then finished up with a panel discussion of filming the paranormal. Jeff's project was discussed by he and Scott, and a film adaptation of Michael's classic novel Golf in the Kingdom was discussed with George Stephanopolous (no, but actually he's his cousin), Michael and actor Mason Gamble (who made his debut as Dennis the Menace and has also appeared in films like Gattaca and Rushmore). Pretty amazing cast in that film: Malcolm McDowell, Joanne Whalley, Julian Sands and Frances Fisher, among others.

Then after that we all sat down for an amazing seafood dinner, whipped up by wunderkind chef Tony and his small crew (the food at Esalen is insanely delicious). Cool experience to sit with that surreal view of the Pacific (which for some reason I don't quite understand seems to rise above the horizon line).

The next day my stomach and I were again harrassed by Route 1 and I stayed overnight in SF, which was bitterly cold, believe it or not. I met up with an old friend and we briefly walked the Haight, which was a grimly appropriate statement on the present condition of the counterculture. Half of the stores were closed (on a Friday night), and an icy Pacific wind menaced all of the homeless hippies huddling in doorways. I saw the Haight as the significantly downscale, un-hip cousin to Phila(e)delphia's South Street. Quite a comedown for the birthplace of the 60s counterculture. Which, in an oblique way, brings me to my next point.

Since its inception Esalen has acted as a sort of clearinghouse for various countercultural movements and ideas. There's a meme going on out there that countercultures are all artificial creations of various agencies. This is classic disinformation, probably meant to discourage countercultural growth, given the sources for this trope (or the fact that we never hear these accusations thrown at the corporate Evangelical movement). Countercultures - real ones, at least- are almost always the result of a small circle of misfits who coalesce around certain memes. It's only once they've established themselves that corporations - or even less savory interests - will often infiltrate or sometimes co-opt these movements.


As a type of open forum for all comers, Esalen had attracted some controversy for various ideas or systems that have been discussed there in the past (which Jeff details quite nicely in his book on Esalen) as well as some attention by certain interests not otherwise given to psychonautics. That's not what is going on now, though. I'd recommend anyone with questions- or even suspicions- about Esalen check it out for yourself. It's probably one of the Top 5 most beautiful places on the planet, the food is great and you can get yourself a nice massage or chat with some amiable hippies in the baths. The programs are almost entirely oriented to somatic modalities- meditation, massage, drumming circles and the like. In fact, the only scary thing about Esalen is the drive there.

What I left there thinking about were new spaces, based primarily - if not entirely- on Western traditions and contemporary culture. I was very much into Buddhist traditions (particularly Zen, specifically Alan Watts' work) when I was younger, but I find myself more and more fixated on more cerebral and more culture-appropriate modalities. Where my New Age and Eastern investigations ultimately led me was straight to Jung, who also dabbled in oriental systems but was primarily centered in the West.

And in my mind, West does not exclusively mean European, either. In fact, it even includes Japanese cultural memes, particularly the Gnostic memes we see in manga, anime and other pop culture which is in fact the result of a kind of exchange between Japan and the West. Same goes for Hong Kong cinema, or Senegalese hip-hop and any number of other cultural adaptations. In fact what I am talking about is very much based around this internationalizing of Western culture and what that means to esotericism itself.

The Secret Sun is a bit of a mixed bag to be sure, but the source code is Jungian. Which is to say that this blog is ultimately (and paradoxically) about a shared kind of individuation.

I know that Alex Grey is opening a new space in upstate New York, and I certainly hope that not only does he succeed, but that he inspires other spaces as well. I truly believe the locus of spirituality and esotericism is moving back to the West, and I think it's our responsibility to help that process along. Eastern modalities can be powerful and profoundly meaningful, but they can often degenerate to either a touchy-feely vacuousness or a kind of authoritarian submission to gurus who almost invariably abuse that power.

We've been taught that the West has no mystical tradition of any real value, and that - as Jeff pointed out - the revelation is always "outside." I suggest that the exact opposite is in fact true, and that it's time for a distinctly Western tradition to assert itself. This was what I found so electrifying about magazines like Gnosis and Dagobert's Revenge. I think what might have been revelatory to past generations has become routinized and more than a little arid, and that the danger of Western visionaries can ignite a worldwide awakening. But in order for it to happen there needs not only to be vision and discipline, but an over-arching infrastructure to help it flower.

I think that Synchromysticism is a wonderful tool towards a new kind of Reality Hacking, but it can't be left at that. However, it will be through these collective dreamworlds of pop culture that new dialectics will result. Which is why it's also important to keep a critical eye on those dreams, and provide people with the tools to separate the transcendent memes from the cultural conditioning techniques, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater as we see too much of these days.

I hope some of you will think about all of this.



Anyhow, that's where it stands Memorial Day weekend 2009. Infinite gratitude to Michael Murphy, Jeff Kripal and Collin Eyre.



*Well, that probably did happen in an alternate reality, but in this one the Kirby rant went off without incident. I'll be reposting my Mindbomb series on the Seminar this week, to bring everyone up to speed before continuing with fresh research on Jack's odd abilities.

Classic Sun: Stuart Gordon's Dagon

Note: I'm out of town this week and can't get a lot of computer time in so I thought I'd repost some articles from the very early days of the blog (we all know that "classic" is a polite term for "rerun"). This is one of my favorites- a review of the 2002 film adaptation of "Shadow Over Innsmouth" titled Dagon. Lovecraft was an OG Astrognostic, so this piece ties into some of the streams we've been looking at and will continue to explore in the future.


Stuart Gordon, a veteran of 60's experimental theater, first burst onto the screen with his extremely loose adaptation of HP Lovecraft's short story, "Herbert West, Re-Animator". Re-Animator, as the film was called, was a salacious and bloody black comedy that proved to be a surprise hit in the gore-hungry 80's movie scene. Gordon followed Re-Animator up with an even more unfaithful Lovecraft adaptation, From Beyond. As the mid-80's horror craze waned, Gordon seemed to fade with it. He stayed busy, but little he produced seemed to garner much attention (outside of his work on Honey I Shrunk the Kids, that is).

So to his more casual fans it was a shock when Gordon re-emerged with a new Lovecraft film in 2003 called Dagon. Based primarily on the short story "Shadow Over Innsmouth" (although it incorporates a few elements from the tale it takes it name from), Dagon follows the path of Paul Marsh, a yuppie internet millionaire vacationing with friends on a sailboat off of the coast of Spain. A sudden storm whips up smashing the boat against a reef, forcing Paul and his girlfriend Barbara to seek help in the fishing village they were anchored near. Paul and Barbara discover that the townspeople of Imboca ( a pun on Innsmouth) are not your usual Spaniards but an taciturn and fish-belly colored lot who loath having strangers in their midst. Perhaps the boat had drifted to the coast of England in the night.

Inevitably, Paul and Barbara are separated and Paul discovers to his horror that the denizens of Imboca are barely human. Returning to the sinking boat he finds that his two English pals have been taken by the sea and he returns to Imboca to find Barbara missing as well. Then he checks into the dodgiest hotel in filmic history. Almost immediately he is set upon by the monstrous townspeople (in this case they are various sea-creature/human hybrids) and pursued through the rain-besotted and generally water-logged town. He encounters an old drunk (played by the incomprehensible Francisco Ribal) who tells the story (blessfully accompanied by reenactments) of how Imboca had faced financial ruin when the fish catches began to thin. Then a young firebrand stormed into a local church and told the residents that if they changed allegiance from their impotent Christian god to the almighty god of the sea Dagon, they would be blessed with not only all the fish their boats could carry, but huge bounties of gold from the ocean floor as well. Desperate, the townspeople agree and slit the throats of the dissenters (the local priest, the drunk's father) and soon Imboca was flush with fishes and riches. The only catch is that soon everyone was sprouting gills, tentacles, fins, unblinking eyes...

In the extended chase through the vile village (did you know that according to psychologists, the most common nightmare is about being chased? ), Paul runs into the gorgeous Uxia, a mysterious bed-ridden girl who has haunted his dreams. It's love at first unblinking sight, only problem being that Uxia is bed ridden on account of the 8 foot tentacles attached to her hips. Then its back to the chase until Paul and the old drunk find themselves strung up for some fileting. Then in a lovely bit of cinematic poetry the old drunk's face is torn from his head as he gurgles in protest. Paul escapes and guts the gutters and descends to an underground lair where he is once again reunited with Barbara, who unfortunately is hanging over an open pit awaiting some hot interspecies sex between her and the town's redoubtable squid god, Dagon. And oh yeah, the lovely Uxia- the apparent mistress of ceremonies- is carving our Barbara's skin with a golden ceremonial blade. Paul makes a vain attempt to rescue Barbara, but she's fish-food. Paul then finds out that he and Uxia are not only siblings, but are each other's fiance. Then she takes him to meet her parents, well her father and he comes to meet him, not the other way around. Anyhow, Uxia shows Paul the handy new gills he's spouting on his torso and Paul reacts by dousing himself with kerosene and lighting himself up. Uxia grabs the big dummy, tosses him down the well and hops in after him. Underwater, Paul discovers that not only can he breathe, but his charred flesh is melting away and revealing his new look. He and Uxia then swim off to live happily ever after and the final line of Innsmouth fades into view- "and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever. "

An uncommon type of happy ending, to be sure, but Dagon is not your usual horror movie. It is a symbolic parable of personal transformation. Water, which permeates every single frame of the film, symbolizes the Unconscious Mind, the emotions, and sexual desire. In one regard, Dagon can be seen as a parable of male adolescence. In the opening scene, Paul is on a boat with his girlfriend, who is not seen unclothed here and with whom he resists making love. Up on deck he is in the company of the older, English couple who own the boat. Paul later wears a Miskatonic University sweatshirt, that being the mythological college based in New England. This collision of symbols (old and new England) identifies the older couple as Paul's parents and the chaste nature of Paul and Barbara's bed-sharing identifies them as siblings.

Paul's entry into Imboca symbolizes an adolescent leaving his family and experience the challenges of the world on his own. Uxia represents the transformative power of romantic love and the sacrifice ceremony with the vaginal well in the catacomb symbolizes sexual love taking the young man away from his role in the family. Barbara's loss represents the family being torn away from sexual awakened young man. Paul meeting his squid-faced true father and his spouting of gills symbolizes the final ascension into manhood with all its terrors and responsiblities. Paul and Uxia's final descent into the well and into the ocean represents the idealized view of marriage when two adolescents are transformed into adults and share the riches of sex, the emotions and the unconscious.

There is an occult level of symbology at play here as well. The ocean represents the deep and abiding ancient Mysteries and the fish people represent those who are transformed and alienated forever from the mass of humanity. At first, Paul sees them as monsters coming to destroy him, when in reality they are initiates coming to take him to his true destiny. When, in an early scene, Barbara throws Paul's laptop into the ocean she is showing him that his true business is in the world of Mystery and not in the ordinary world of numbers and sums. Barbara too is transformed by her experience in the mysteries but cannot tolerate the experience. She represents the exoteric world of everyday life and she cannot follow Paul to his new life. Uxia, as his occult bridesmaid, is his sister because all those who pursue the mysteries are underneath it all, the same.

AstroGnostic: Hoagland on the Shemsu Hor

Interesting stuff. As always, take away questions not answers.

Egypt, Egypt Everywhere: Night @ Museum II

David D brought up this film in a recent comment, which I had been studiously avoiding. It's still a rental- at best, and a RedBox rental at that- but check out this synopsis:

When the Museum of Natural History is closed for upgrades and renovations, the museum pieces are moved into federal storage at the famous Washington Museums... With a forwarded resume, Larry (Ben Stiller) becomes another caretaker at the Smithsonian, where Kahmunrah, an evil Pharaoh will come to life with the reestablishing of a tablet as a magical force in the museum bringing the old exhibits (Such as Theodore Roosevelt and Dexter) and new exhibits (like General Custer and Al Capone) back to life, and in conflict with each other. Larry enlists the help of Amelia Earhart, who he develops a romantic interest in, and together they try to put everything back in order.

Falls in love with Amelia Earhart, eh? Interesting. By the way, Amy Adams plays the androgynous aviator.



Some of you might recognize the plot to this film borrows from the basic premise of the old Mummies Alive cartoon, which ran briefly on kiddie TV from somewhere in the mid 90s or so. That in turn borrowed heavily from the Golden Age Hawkman, which in turn borrows from Bram Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars.

Speaking of all these reincarnated spirits, loved the bit on Sacagaewa in the trailer. Reminded me of the early days of this blog, when I looked at the interesting similarities between the golden dollar and Aleister Crowley's novel, which inspired Jack Parsons to perform the Babalon Working.


And hey- when did the Smithsonian change their logo to this? Looks like they too are hopping on the Solar Logos logo bandwagon. I hear all the kids are doing it...

Fringewatch: Alien Dreaming edition

Did you watch the season finale of Fringe? If not, you can do so here. The show took its time getting its act together, but seems to have constructed a fairly compelling mythology. It's always good to see smart sci-fi on network TV, but there's still something a bit distancing about it to me. Which is a bit ironic since it all centers on my old stomping grounds 42º 71º, and takes scads of bits from my all-time favorite TV show and one of my favorite novels (my grandfather and uncle were Harvard men, to boot).

But it could be that the writers are putting all of the pieces in place this season and will start to deliver in the next. If so, that's a pretty bold strategy considering that viewers- and network execs - seem to have the attention span of a 14 year-old Mountain Dew junkie these days.


I'm especially interested in Bosto-centric sync winks. I got a kick out of seeing homeboy Nimoy in the house, since his mother and my grandmother were friends. I'm hoping they'll set an ep in my old hometown next season, especially since it's the former home to the General Dynamics shipyard. I mean, how a show like this could resist using a town called "Braintree" as a setting is beyond me. As you can see above, it obviously hasn't escaped their notice...

Cheers to Soundless Steve for the heads-up.

Dawson's Trek

Well, I almost hate to say it, but this Onion video pretty much nails my reaction to the new Star Trek. I thought it was great fun - a highly entertaining and extremely well-produced thrill ride. Visually, this may be the best space opera to date. All the creatives involved seem to be die-hard fans trying to bring the concept back to basics and make it appealing for today's audiences.

But therein lies the rub, as some obscure Trek villain might say.

Hollywood seems to think that "today's audiences" have been dumbed down to the point that the only characters that are allowed to speak anything resembling proper English are either bad guys or androids. As much fun as the story is to this film, the kind of jokey, ironic fan-speak that you hear on the various Stargate or Joss Whedon franchises took me out of the story time and again.

Why does this matter? Well, the kinds of young, ultra-achieving military types we're supposed to believe these characters are simply wouldn't speak and behave the way these characters do, because these characters relate to one another like fans at a cosplay con. I realize you don't want them to be so earnest they're impossible to relate to, but I really needed to feel there were some stakes involved here. As exciting as this film looks, there is no trace of the gravity of the original series. The villain was especially casual. I can see wanting to escape that portentious villain cliche, but hearing something to the effect of "Hi Christopher, I'm Nero" didn't fill me with dread.

The cast looked like Dawson's Creek in space for the most part, most especially James Tiberius van der Kirk. The fact is that outside of Quinto as Spock and Pegg as Scottie, you could've gotten anyone to play these roles, simply because the amazing infrastructure Abrams and crew create around them is so idiot-proof. Millions of folks are going to see this movie and have a wonderful, good old-fashioned night at the movies, but I'm willing to be that no one's life is going to be changed by it.

The funny thing is that I've seen people bash Nemesis time and again writing about this new film, but in fact the new Trek grabs a boatload of ideas from the last TNG film. We have Romulans, a doomsday weapon, a planned attack on Earth, two incarnations of Trek icons encountering one another, a lost crewman on a desolate, dangerous planet, a captain held hostage and probably a ton of other bits I'm forgetting at the moment.

So this is Trek for the masses - or today's masses. I'm OK with that. To be honest, Voyager and Enterprise nearly extinguished my enthusiasm for the franchise. But the signals I'm getting from my tinfoil hat are telling me that maybe there's a reason to rejigger the concept for all of the Justin's and Courtney's out in the food courts of Anytown, USA. Here's what I wrote about the Trek weltanschuang a year ago:

Under the smiley veneer of humanism, politically correct pandering and New Deal-vintage liberalism, the Federation certainly feels like a socialist military dictatorship. At the core of the Federation and at the core of Starfleet is the presence of a expansionist philosophy (the Federation must grow to survive) and a Masonic, heirarchal world view. And these stories are all told exculsively from the point of view of elite military officers on spaceships armed with world-destroying arsenals.

Let's just say that the Trekkers you see milling around a Creation con might be perfectly nice folks, but probably not the targets of any potential social engineering messages embedded in big budget sci-fi. But certainly the high school jocks and preps attracted to this new age Trek might be. Of course, this is all just blue sky here, but there a few themes in this film that caught my attention:

• As in previous Treks, the message is clear- civilians are either trouble-makers or just plain trouble.
• Young people who can't fit into society need to be militarized, like Kirk and Spock.
  
• The best place for ambitious young people to make their mark is in the military.
• Even individuals in their 30s or so who can't cut it out there should try enlisting, like McCoy.
• Exactly as in Dark Knight, we see that the world (or the galaxy, in this case) is filled with psychotics whose mission in life is pure, mindless destruction. Only complete militarization can save us.
  

Now, don't get me wrong- this kind of thing has been part of sci-fi since Doc Smith's heyday. Sometimes you just have to accept the in-universe logic of these things. On the other hand, I was struck that Starfleet's vibe in this new Trek is more Starship Troopers than ever before, right down to the 30s vintage dress uniforms. If you were looking to get the youth pumped up for the militarization of space- or society, for that matter - this is a very good start. It will be interesting if any particular interests try to capitalize on the film's sucess for any kind of agenda in the months to come.


In the meantime, go see Star Trek and get yourself a big old bucket of popcorn. You'll probably have a blast. If you need me, I'll be up watching some old-school Quatermass with the missus.

Alien Dreaming, pt. V: The Mithraic Liturgy

The first four posts in this series can be read here

In this post, we will look at excerpts from the Mithraic Liturgy of the Paris Codex. This liturgy was part of a body of ancient Egyptian Hermetic writings compiled in the early 300s CE. The liturgy is filled with tons of uppercase glossolalia, which I've omitted. I also have included only the section of the liturgy believed to be the genuine Mithraic component- apparently there are some additional verses and spells tacked on follow the invocation.

There is some controversy as to whether the liturgy represents "orthodox" Mithraism, or some Hermetic variant thereof. But it certainly does present a pretty powerful personal experience typical of the Mystery tradition. Experience is the unique component that separates the Mysteries from other cults. And for some time, modern scholars have speculated that entheogenic compounds were the actual sacraments of these cults.

This is just a shot across the bow with this topic, but it might shed new light on the ancient Mysteries for some of you. As with the Gnostics, there is so much ridiculous nonsense floating around out there about the Mysteries, most of it written by biased individuals who have never read the actual history of these movements, never mind their texts.

If you read the text of the liturgy carefully, some very interesting themes might catch your eye. I've been agonzing over this post for some weeks now, but I thought the best way to present it was to let the ancient Mithraists speak for themselves. We can get into interpretation later.

I've also added some images from our modern mysteries to break up the monotony.

Be gracious to me, O Providence and Psyche, as I write these mysteries handed down for gain but for instruction; and for an only child I request immortality, O initiates of this our power...

...furthermore, it is necessary for you, O daughter, to take the juices of herbs and spices, which will to you at the end of my holy treatise which the great god Helios Mithras ordered to be revealed to me by his archangel, so that I alone may ascend into heaven as an inquirer and behold the universe.

"First - origin of my origin, first beginning of my beginning, spirit of spirit, the first of the spirit in me, fire given by god to my mixture of the mixtures in me, the first of the fire in me, water of water, the first of the water in me, earthy substance, the first of the earthy substance in me..."

I, sanctified through holy consecrations!-- while there subsists within me, holy, for a short time, my human soul-might, which I will again receive after the present bitter and relentless necessity which is pressing down upon me...

...It is impossible for me, born mortal, to rise with the golden brightnesses of the immortal brilliance ...Draw in breath from the rays, drawing up three times as much as you can, and you will see yourself being lifted up and ascending to the height, so that you seem to be in mid-air.

You will hear nothing either of man or of any other living thing, nor in that hour will you see anything of mortal affairs on earth, but rather you will see all immortal things.

For in that day and hour you will see the divine order of the skies: the presiding gods rising into heaven, and others setting.

Now the course of the visible gods will appear through the disk of god, my father...

...and in similar fashion the so-called "pipe," the origin of the ministering wind. For you will see it hanging from the sun's disk like a pipe.

You will see the outflow of this object toward the regions westward, boundless as an east wind, if it be assigned to the regions of the East--and the other similarly, toward its own regions.

And you will see the gods staring intently at you and rushing at you. So at once put your right finger on your mouth and say: "Silence! Silence! Silence! Symbol of the living, incorruptible god!

Then you will see the gods looking graciously upon you and no longer rushing at you, but rather going about in their own order of affairs.

So when you see that the world above is clear and circling, and that none of the gods or angels is threatening you, expect to hear a great crash of thunder, so as to shock you. Then say again: "Silence! Silence! (the prayer) I am a star, wandering about with you, and shining forth out of the deep...

Immediately after you have said these things the sun's disk will be expanded. And after you have said the second prayer, where there is "Silence! Silence!" and the accompanying words, make a hissing sound twice and a popping sound twice, and immediately you will see many five- pronged stars coming forth from the disk and filling all the air. Then say again: "Silence! Silence!"

"And when the disk is open, you will see the fireless circle, and the fiery doors shut tight."

Say all these things with fire and spirit, until completing the first utterance; then, similarly, begin the second, until you complete the seven immortal gods of the world. When you have said these things, you will hear thundering and shaking in the surrounding realm; and you will likewise feel yourself being agitated. Then say again: "Silence!"

Then open your eyes and you will see the doors open and the world of the gods which is within the doors, so that from the pleasure and joy of the sight your spirit runs ahead and ascends. So stand still and at once draw breath from the divine into yourself, while you look intently.

When you have said this, the rays will turn toward you; look at the center of them. For when you have done this, you will see a youthful god, beautiful in appearance, with fiery hair, and in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak, and wearing a fiery crown. At once greet him with the fire-greeting:

"Hail, O Lord, Great Power, Great Might, King, Greatest of gods, Helios, the Lord of heaven and earth, God of gods: mighty is your breath; mighty is your strength, O Lord. If it be your will, announce me to the supreme god, the one who has begotten and made you.

He will come to the celestial pole, and you will see him walking as if on a road. Look intently and make a long bellowing sound, like a horn, releasing all your breath and straining your sides; and kiss the amulets and say, first toward the right: "Protect me, PROSYMERI!"

After saying this, you will see the doors thrown open, and seven virgins coming from deep within, dressed in linen garments, and with the faces of asps. They are called the Fates of heaven, and wield golden wands. When you see them, greet them in this manner:

"Hail, O seven Fates of heaven, O noble and good virgins, O sacred ones and companions of MINIMIRROPHOR, O most holy guardians of the four pillars!

There also come forth another seven gods, who have the faces of black bulls, in linen loin-cloths, and in possession of seven golden diadems. They are the so-called Pole-Lords of heaven, whom you must greet in the same manner, each of them with his own name:

"Hail, O guardians of the pivot, O sacred and brave youths, who turn at one command the revolving axis of the vault of heaven, who send out thunder and lightning and jolts of earthquakes and thunderbolts against the nations of impious people, but to me, who am pious and god-fearing, you send health and soundness of body, and acuteness of hearing and seeing, and calmness in the present good hours of this day, O my Lords and powerfully ruling Gods!"

Now when they take their place, here and there, in order, look in the air and you will see lightning-bolts going down, and lights flashing , and the earth shaking...

...and a god descending, a god immensely great, having a bright appearance youthful, golden-haired, with a white tunic and a golden crown and trousers, and holding in his right hand a golden shoulder of a young bull: this is the Bear which moves and turns heaven around, moving upward and downward in accordance with the hour.


Then you will see lightning-bolts leaping from his eyes and stars from his body.


And at once produce a long bellowing sound, straining your belly, that you may excite the five senses: bellow long until the conclusion, and again kiss the amulets... And gaze upon the god while bellowing long; and greet him in this manner:

"Hail, O Lord, O Master of the water!
Hail, O Founder of the earth!
Hail, O Ruler of the wind!
O Bright Lightener...

So, here we have a two thousand year-old prayer from one of the ancient world's most powerful cults, which talks about a flying disk with doors that open and close, and is filled with "gods" who take people up into the heavens.

I think it's safe to say they didn't get these ideas from Buck Rogers or 50's sci-fi movies.

Mysteries within Mysteries, to be sure...

AstroGnostic: The Quatermass Conclusion

This is episode 1 of the 1979 series The Quatermass Conclusion (released full-length as simply Quatermass), and I can't seem to find the other parts online quite yet. But there's enough to chew on as Quatermass discovers a UFO cult in the British countryside that's being manipulated for sinister purposes.

I'm stunned- again- by Kneale's meticulous attention to detail, keen understanding of human behavior, and most of all- his prescience. This episode alone not only prefigures The X-Files, but 80s sci-fi films like Streets of Fire, The Road Warrior and Conan the Barbarian as well.

In many ways, this film also prefigures the Heaven's Gate cult: the end of this episode will give you chills. I bought the full-length DVD and will definitely review it in full detail here.

From imdb:

After the mysterious destruction of the new space station, young people find themselves drawn to a stone circle in England, and other locations around Earth. They believe they'll be taken to a better place by a higher power. Only Professor Quatermass realizes that the young people are being tricked by an alien power, who wants to "harvest" humanity. It's up to Quatermass to find a way to stop the deadly plans of the aliens.

More:

Civilisation is crumbling. Through the decay, Professor Quatermass searches for his missing granddaughter. Meanwhile an awesomely powerful beam of light is striking from space, each time apparantly transporting crowds of young people to another planet. But Quatermass and a young astromoner, Kapp, suspect a much more grisly purpose.

From the Google link:

Predictably rejected by an increasingly patronising BBC, this was one of the last thought-provoking dramas to be broadcast in Britain before Thatcher and her friends' clampdown on creative thought. John Mills stars as the eponymous Professor in 1979's Quatermass, the fourth, final and best of the celebrated television science fiction serials.

I might add that this series came out right around the same time as Jacques Vallee's Messengers of Deception...

Tying in Heaven's Gate to the alien/entheogen links we've been looking at, I recommend you take a look at Timothy Leary's 1973 tract Starseed, in which he waxes poetic about the Comet Kahoutek in ways not entirely dissimilar to Marshall Applewhite's prophecies of Hale-Bopp.


And- wait for it- The X-Files combined the cult suicide and drug guru memes in "Via Negativa," which centered on the Third Eye and psychic psychedelia. That episode co-starred Grant Heslov, director of the upcoming Men Who Stare at Goats, a sure-to-be instant Secret Sun classic about the Army's psychic war program, starring George Clooney and Robert "Oannes Anubis" Patrick.

Stairway to Sirius: Djoser, Tut and surfing the wake

OK, so you go to the Step Pyramid of Djoser to learn more about King Tut? Huh? The two were separated by 13 centuries. What do the two have to do with one another, other than that they were both Egyptian? Well, maybe not much on the exoteric level, but perhaps a bit more on the esoteric, symbolic level. Remember we had that "photo op" with the AF1BU buzzing around lower Manhattan?

Well, I wonder if maybe there is a deeper connection between the WFC and Djoser's necropolis after all, aside from the step pyramids at both sites, that is. There's certainly a connection between our new president and the Amun-lovin' pharaoh from days gone by.

Things have been relatively quiet on the Sirius front lately, maybe while all of the pieces are put into place to split up the country and sell it off to China and Europe, but I wouldn't bet that we've heard the last of the kinds of extremely high weirdness we looked at during the election.




I love how Zahi keeps saying that Djoser "was the first one on this earth" to do this or that. As opposed to his predecessors not on this earth? We're also reminded that Zahi went to college in Phila(e)delphia, which shouldn't surprise us. Though I don't remember; was that on the Edgar Cayce Foundation's dime or was that someone else?

The question must be raised: Does any of it have anything to do with any of us, really? Well, probably not intentionally. But with all of this symbolic and psychic energy being stirred up it's bound to have unseen after-effects. All of you psyche-surfers out there might find the wake from their space/ships makes one hell of a curl for your own journeys to alien shores...

Mulholland Dr. and the 17 Enigma

Maybe the simplest description I can offer of Synchromysticism is "the bleed-over of dream logic into consensus reality." The keys to this process are myth, symbol and co-incidence.

If symbol and myth is indeed the lingua franca of some higher function of consciousness, it could well be that manipulating that consciousness could certainly re-structure our reality paradigm. I'm saying not only our perception of reality, but even the causal order of that paradigm.

However, by investing yourself in this process you often find yourself living in a world governed not by reductionism and determinism, but by a real-time variant of dream logic. Not always a pleasant place to be, believe me.

Dream logic is David Lynch's lifeblood. Although some reviewers have dismissed Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire as jumbled navel-gazing, there are very simple keys in these films that unlock the mysteries. Even before I discovered these clues I felt the films made perfect sense, even if I couldn't quite nail it down. Knowing now what these films are about (at least what many people interpret them as, Lynch never makes any definitive statements on the films' meaning) doesn't demystify them for me, it does the exact opposite. With a friggin' unholy vengeance.

The film (released 10/12/01) gets its name from the famous Los Angeles street, which in turn is named in honor of William Mulholland, the LA water baron. Mulholland inspired Roman Polanski's 1974 film Chinatown, which starred Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston (who played the Mulholland character) and was based on a Robert Towne (Parallax View, Firm, Mission Impossible) screenplay. Mulholland's birthdate? 9/11/1855.

The film pretends to be a standard mystery: a would-be starlet named Betty (played by Naomi Watts) arrives in Hollywood to house-sit for her aunt, only to find a beautiful and mysterious brunette named Rita (played by Laura Harring) who is suffering from amnesia. Throughout the film there are disconnected subplots- a man who dreams of a demon living in a restaurant parking lot, a film director with the Kabbalist-sounding name Adam Kesher (meaning "connection," played by Justin Theroux) threatened by a crime boss, and an idiotic hitman who is looking for Rita. Sprinkled throughout are some old school Hollywood icons- Chad Everett, Lee Grant, Robert Forster, Ann Miller. Michael J Anderson (Twin Peaks, Carnivale, X-Files) also makes an enigmatic appearance.

Rita is looking for clues to her own identity, which leads her to an apartment of a woman who has committed suicide. Halfway through the film, Rita vanishes and a totally different story begins. Watts now plays a failed actress scorned by her glamorous but sadistic bisexual lover Camilla (played by Harring), who humiliates Diane by taking her to a party celebrating her engagement to Adam Kesher.

That's all I'll say for now. Let's run the number...

The apartment of the suicide is- yes, you guessed it - 17.


View Larger Map

Watts' characters are from Deep River, Ontario which lies smack dab on which route?

"Rita" takes the name from a Rita Hayworth poster. Hayworth's birthdate? The 17th.


Now here's where it starts to get interesting- when we first meet Betty, she's wearing a bright red cardigan. When Camilla dumps Diane, she's wearing a flaming scarlet dress. This color identification repeats itself throughout the film.

"Scarlet" and "17" take us to back to Jack Parson's old obsession- the Scarlet Woman, the Whore of Babylon from Revelation 17...

Is Lynch, the maverick artist, condemning the bitch goddess of Hollywood (like Rome, a city of hills) as the Whore of Babylon? That would be the obvious answer, but we don't see any further connections, obvious ones at least. That kind of mythologizing isn't really Lynch's style, and Camilla - the whore - merrily runs off with her Adam while jilted Diane lies dead in number 17. A detail-obsessive like Lynch wouldn't leave those loose ends dangling (though there a couple interesting scenes that might be interpreted as Diane riding a scarlet beast). We have to consider that this is bleed-over from the powerful subconscious contents Lynch is playing with.

And then we have this weird conjunction- Watts pregnant with Liev Schreiber, who played the Gregory Peck character in The Omen remake (released 6/6/06, which is Hollywood's idea of clever symbolism). Interesting connection back to Mulholland Drive, since The Omen is essentially a take-off on Rosemary's Baby, directed by Chinatown director Polanski.

Note that Watts' crown chakra is blocking CBS' Eye of Horus- we'll see that again in a bit.

If Hollywood is Lynch's Babylon (more likely it's his saṃsāra), it's interesting to note that Parsons' Scarlet Woman, Marjorie Cameron, played the Whore of Babylon in Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (which was re-released in 1966 with the subtitle, "The Sacred Mushroom Edition"). Anger later penned the Hollywood Babylon books.

In this light, the name "Diane" takes on added resonance connecting back to Parsons and his crowd.

What's a 17 without a 33? Laura Harring has a birthday on March 3. Watts would later play a Hollywood icon herself, the lover of the mighty Kong. Here she is atop 33rd Street in Masonic Manhattan in the King Kong movie poster. A strange reversal of scale takes place in the climax of Mulholland Dr., when Diane watches in horror as two tiny versions of the elderly couple she meets on her arrival in Hollywood crawl under the door at #17.

Remembering that William Mulholland's birthday was 9/11, we shouldn't forget the previous remake of King Kong, from 1976.

Minor details take on resonance- Robert Towne's adorable daughter, Ka-Hathor-Ein, plays Adam's assistant Cynthia (another moon goddess name). The actress' birthday is on the 17th, too.

Kesher's wife Lorraine dumps him for a pool cleaner, played by none other than Mr. Montana himself. Gene, pool...hmmm.

And speaking of genes and mushrooms, the hitman is played by Mark Pellegrino, who guest-starred in the X-Files episode "Hungry," which immediately followed the FieldTrip/Biogenesis/Sixth Extinction blowout (and was actually filmed between them).

Token XF geekery: "Hungry" was written by Hancock co-writer Vince Gilligan.



Then there's this classic Lynch scene- Adam Kesher's confrontation with the enforcer known as the Cowboy, played with inhuman intensity by Monty Montgomery, a non-actor who's the founder of this organization....



When I first began looking seriously into symbol and Synchronicity, I took a very deterministic view towards it. But as the evidence and the connections multiplied, I realized that I was holding onto a comforting fantasy rather than surrender myself to a process I could not understand, and thereby never hope to control.

Which is all just another way of saying that I think David Lynch might have a tighter grip on the true nature of reality than the rest of us do.

I'll let the Cowboy have the last word...

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. IV

In that Kirby 2001/mushroom/star travel story, the astronauts are transformed into light for the journey through the furthest reaches of space. Which is fascinating to me, since that concept is at the core of the X-Files Mythology's cosmology- the transformation of souls into energy:

From Sein Und Zeit:

Kathy Lee Tencate: "She was trying to tell you."
Mulder: "Tell me what?"
Kathy Lee Tencate: "She'd seen them."
Mulder: "Who?"
Kathy Lee Tencate: "The walk-ins. Old souls looking for new homes. Your sister's among them."
Mulder: "You can see them?"
Kathy Lee Tencate: "Yes. But sometimes it's very difficult because they live in the starlight."

Tencate- I love that. With Mulder playing the role of Demeter and Samantha his Persephone, who might Ten-Cate be?

From Closure:

Mulder: "These walk-ins — you say they come and take the children. Why?"

Harold Piller: "In almost every case the parents had a precognitive image of their child, dead. Horrible visions. I believe what this is, is the work of good spirits. Foretelling their fates. The fate the child was about to meet. A particularly violent fate that wasn't meant to be... which is why the spirits intervene transforming matter into pure energy. Starlight. But it's not what happened here."

see Robert Bauval's site for further elaboration

Which is triply fascinating, since this concept of soul travel comes straight outta Egypt- the Akhu of the Pharaoh which becomes starlight and travels the heavens with Isis and Osiris:

Conceived of sky, born of dusk.
Sky conceived you and Orion,
Dusk gave birth to you and Orion.
Who lives lives by the gods' command,
You shall live!
You shall rise with Orion in the eastern sky,
You shall set with Orion in the western sky,
Your third is Sothis, pure of thrones,
She is your guide on sky's good paths,
In the Field of Rushes.

This concept is also passed down to us in the tradition of the Astral Body, which was taught by people as diverse as Gurdjieff, Rudolph Steiner, Jung and Casteneda, though in a different context.

And in that great AAT propaganda film that no one will recognize as such, Dave Bowman's last words before taking his own cross-cosmos journey (ending with his reincarnation as the Star Child) was "My God, it's full of stars."

Sync Log: Alien Dreaming edition

What incredible timing- I had read about this, but had no idea how explicit it was until seeing this new Transformers trailer. You X-Files fans out there are probably gob-smacked as well. The artefacts, the symbols, the psychic powers.

Sam Witwicky: "I just had a full-blown mental meltdown in the middle of my class."

Diana: "He called me. I found him in a university stairwell. He could barely speak. He said I was the only one who'd believe him-- about an artifact."

Again- Shia LaBoeuf (birthday 6/11) appeared in the X-Files episode produced just prior to "The Sixth Extinction."

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. III

So many strands of inquiry have been coming together...


Like Chris Carter, Jack Kirby intuitively linked visionary experience to alien contact. In his astro-Gnostic opus in Devil Dinosaur, contact with interventionist aliens is preceded by a hallucinatory vision of a great beast swallowing the Moon, and of a great reptile whose body is made of pure energy and giant eyes flying in the sky.

There's also this eerie foreshadowing of the Stargate sequence in 2001:A Space Odyssey, drawn in 1958, but not published until after production had begun on the film. Contact with an alien artifact on the Moon transforms human astronauts into pure energy and takes them for the trip of their lives. Note the mushroom aliens in the bottom left panel.

When Kirby drew the comic adaptation of 2001, he subtitled this story, "The Ultimate Trip."


Way back in the dark ages of 2007, I looked at my first Kirby Komik, the immortal Kamandi #30. Quite a place to start, with this symbolically-charged Stargate image. I'm sure there were other stories at the time imagining inter-dimensional portals, but no one did it quite like Jack.

I suppose this is a good time to mention that Art Spiegelman called Kirby "an idiot savant obsessed with orgasm."


And, of course, that Kamandi story was entitled "UFO: The Wildest Trip Ever."



How appropriate then that The X-Files used the Kirby Kreation named "The Silver Surfer" to identify the young Gibson Praise as the missing link between humans and our ancient alien progenitors- the "young Karnak" who held the "secrets to the pyramids" and was "the key to everything in the X-Files" until Mulder had his own alien transformation into the psychedelic Osiris.

And it was all centered in the brain, the skull, the crown chakra. The veneration of John, Baphomet, Leto Atreides, and the "one who was lost," all pointing us to the (alien?) biocomputer residing in us all.

Are these are just random scraps from pop culture, or are they breadcrumbs forming a subconscious trail to a greater revelation?

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. II

In the first installment of this series- which I had not intended to be a series- we looked at the book and film Altered States, and its references to the work of John C Lilly. The premise of Altered States dealt with a Harvard professor who believed that genetic memory was stored in our DNA, a theory that's gaining wider acceptance these days.

I was reminded of this when re-reading parts of Picknett and Prince's The Stargate Conspiracy, particularly the afterword where the authors speculate on the connection of the ancient gods to shamanic experience, particularly that involving entheogens. Stargate is not up to par with their other work - the "conspiracy" is entirely circumstantial and speculative, and their critique of AAT and alt-history is numbingly parochial (and a bit petty) - but it tied into my own research on the historical connections of the ancient mystery cults to psychedelic compounds.*

Squint and tell me what that looks like.

I'm certainly not the first to note that ancient encounters with gods or spirit beings have a lot in common with modern alien encounters. There are two opposing camps in dealing with encounter experiences- one has it that these were literal encounters with nuts-and-bolts aliens and another that this was a type of visionary experience possibly connecting to some kind of non-physical entities. There is, however, a third option.

Which is this- psychoactive compounds may trip something some kind of neural programming in our DNA that connects us to these long-gone alien entities. Who were responsible not only for engineering human intelligence (such as it is), but also creating this parallel program in which we are somehow able to access these genetic memories (or perhaps even some psychic connection to distant entities) through some unknowable, alien, psychic wetware.†

Perhaps AAT and psychedelic research are not mutually exclusive at all. Perhaps in fact they are intimately co-dependent. Look at the Stargate sequence in 2001, look at Jack Kirby's AAT (and prophetic) visions. Maybe the way to actually access the gods is through a totally new concept of our consciousness. Maybe they are in there waiting for us, as so many esoteric systems have taught.

It is my feeling that we need to go beyond entheogens even, since we obviously have not reached the core of this mystery. Possibly some hybrid technology, including electronics working in conjunction with psychoactive compounds. Like in Altered States.

All of this connects back to my eternal obsession on The X-Files' "Biogenesis/Sixth Extinction" storyline (continued in "Provenance/Providence"), which we'll be seeing retconned into the Transformers universe next month. That storyline in turn has powerful symbolic connections to the Egyptian mystery traditions, which I've written about in great detail.

Although AAT first crept into The X-Files in "The End," it wouldn't really become explicit until the end of the sixth season. But it wasn't until just the other day that it hit me like a ton of bricks- The "Biogenesis" AAT storyline was immediately proceeded by "Field Trip," a brilliant episode written by Hancock co-author Vince Gilligan in which Mulder and Scully are trapped within a giant fungal organism that uses a hallucinogenic compound like LSD to induce visions in its victims while it consumes them.

The genius of the episode is that the organism repeatedly allows the agents to believe they've escaped, with the fantasy becoming more and more convincing with each repetition. But Mulder and Scully are always able see through the illusion, until you're left at the end wondering if in fact they did escape in the end:

Mulder: Look at me. I'm here.

Scully: How did you get here?

Mulder: Aliens brought me back here.

Scully: From North Carolina direct to your apartment door? Mulder, you don't remember getting here, do you? Neither do I.

Mulder: It doesn't change what happened.

Scully: Mulder, why did you knock? This is your apartment. And you don't seem the least bit surprised to find me here. And what about the Schiffs? I mean, if they're alive, as you say, then... then where are they? Where'd they go? Mulder, five minutes ago... this room was filled with people attending your wake.

Mulder: Well, what can I say, Scully? I'm here. I'm real.

Scully: Mulder, this is not reality. This is a hallucination. It has to be. And either I am having it, or you are having it or we are having it together.

Mulder: Brought on by what?

Scully: Something that we found in that field, Mulder, because that's where it began. Wild mushroom. Wild mushrooms, Mulder. They were growing there. I stepped on one, and it gave off spores. Several varieties of... of mushrooms are known for their hallucinogenic properties. If... if we inhaled it...

Mulder: Whatever happened to the most logical explanation?

Scully: This is it, Mulder. What if we're still there? If we're still in that cave in North Carolina — that we're not here in this apartment right now?

Mulder: Whoa, Scully.

Scully: No, Mulder, bear with me. I think this is making sense. I think that Angela and Wallace Schiff were digested by that substance that I found all over that field. That they were dissolved and then expelled up out of the ground. What if that substance and this hallucinogen are — are from one and the same organism?

Mulder: A giant mushroom?

simulated reality...

So have they finally escaped the mushroom when the wheels come off of their reality conception in the following AAT storyline? Or were their brains blown open enough that it attracted the aliens' attention? Did they notice Mulder and Scully noticing them, in other words?

Navajo medicine man Albert Hosteen was a central figure
in Biogenesis/Sixth Extinction
Chris Carter once took part in a Navajo peyote ritual

The genius of it all is that the third chapter "Amor Fati" likewise plays with your head, presenting three separate realities: Mulder's Last Temptation of Christ fantasy in which he and Diana are married and raise a family, apparent consensus reality in which Scully is confronted with the astral projection of a Navajo shaman, and a third dream-reality in which Mulder encounters his future son William on a beach, building a life-size replica of the God-ship out of sand.º

So here we go- as in 2001, as in Indiana Jones, as in Jack Kirby's work - psychic and/or psychedelic visions precede or accompany humanity's encounter with their alien foster parents/genetic engineers.

Pop culture piffle, you say? Perhaps, but just two more pieces of the puzzle of the intimate connection of the frontiers of human consciousness to our very mysterious origins. A puzzle that I believe we need to be a lot more urgent in solving, considering how the wheels seem to be coming off our current paradigms at an alarming rate.

The African Godship took human form as a tribal shaman in "The Sixth Extinction." Use of mushrooms in ritual was known in the Ivory Coast, where the story took place. I'm sure Chris Carter knew this when he wrote the story.

NOTES

† Perhaps- as Graham Hancock says - there are other means than hallucinogens to access these entities, perhaps through sensory deprivation tanks, extreme physical pain techniques that some cultures have practiced, or in my own case, high fever. All of these methods seem to be only partially effective- we need to develop more dependable methods to access these mysterious parts of our brain if we're going to realize this potential.

* Or more modern variants- Stargate takes a jaundiced look at Andrija Puharich, who introduced Middle America to the thrills of magic mushrooms on One Step Beyond in the early 60s.

º Of course, you'll never get a straight answer from Chris Carter or Frank Spotnitz that that's what we're seeing, but take my word for it- in Provenance and Providence we see William psychically controlling another God-ship.

Stairway to Sirius: AF1BU photo op, or...?

From HuffPost:

A government exercise involving low-flying planes has created a panic in New York City. Two fighter jets escorted a low-flying Boeing 747 over lower Manhattan on Monday as part of a federal government photo opportunity.

The plane is a backup for Air Force One and the Department of Transport "coordinated the flight with FAA and we made the notifications to the city so they were aware that the flight would take place between 10 and 10:30 this morning."

Huh. Note the accompanying beauty shot of the Stairway to Sirius:



Hmmm.

Alchemy and The Fifth Element on The Solar Seminar

Luc Besson's The Fifth Element- decadent sci-fi or Alchemical ritual drama? Go read the latest eyeball-buster on The Solar Seminar and decide for yourself...