Lee Perry and the Collective Alien Consciousness

There was a time in my life when I lived Dub morning, noon and night. I'm talking the old school Dub mainly, but also a lot of the work that people like Adrian Sherwood and Jack Dangers were putting out there as well. I was indiscriminate when it came to the classic stuff though- I just needed that sound in my head. It may be an acquired taste, but once it gets under your skin it can easily become an obsession.


Anyhow, Lee Perry is the man who created the form, for the most part. He's also, well, watch the video. Fascinating how Dub not only sprang from this man's brain, but also seems to have a collective effect on certain other brains- as he (sort of) refers to in this commercial. Just another piece in the alien puzzle, that seems to be insinuating itself into the global consciousness we are building in the Synchrosphere.

Dub played a crucial role in Neuromancer, which ties into this idea of the electronic Loa - the old gods using new technology to reanimate themselves as evolutionary wetware, just as Gibson described in the still-prescient Count Zero.

Even here- note that after identifying himself as an alien, Perry invoked Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury...

Check out Dub Radio to infect your own brain....

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. VI: Transmission

The Heavenly Mushroom inseminates the Terrestrial Yoni

[UPDATED 11:00 AM EST] When you study mythology and symbolism in depth, you constantly run up against the problem of transmission- how are symbols and myths transmitted across time and geographic barriers? It was this very problem that inspired Carl Jung to devise the theory of the Collective Unconscious- a kind of universal database which holds all of these symbols, which we access through psychic means.

This theory has never been popular in academic circles, and perhaps Jung didn't have access to the data he needed to better argue it. But increasingly we are seeing fascinating evidence bolstering Jung's intuition- the only problem is that pursuing this evidence takes you completely out of the reductionist, deterministic mindset so dominant in academic circles.

And thank God for that...

PHALLUS SOLARIS

A 17th Century coin depicting the solar phallus in a flying disk

Strangely enough, Jung's inspiration for the Collective Unconscious theory came from a schizophrenic patient who was experiencing hallucinations that a tube or phallus burst forth from the center of the Sun. Jung had been studying the Mithraic liturgy, recognized this icon from it and was struck by the synchronicity. Ever since critics have been trying to poke holes in this story, but as we recently saw here, the Mithraic liturgy has extremely powerful and compelling parallels to hallucinogenic ritual and to alien abduction lore, parallels that cannot be dismissed or explained away through cultural contamination.

Despite what Jung's critics may claim, experienced psychonauts would take the solar phallus hallucination for granted these days. We have a large and fairly consistent corpus of reports of shamanic visions from all over the world, which Jung did not have in his day. But for many reasons too numerous to discuss here, that corpus is a minefield, completely out of the realm of acceptable discussion.

UFOs OVER CALVARY

One thing both scientific and religious fundamentalists find common ground in the controversy over apparent UFOs in Medieval and ancient art. One of the big skeptic groups consulted with a Medieval art scholar to "debunk" theories that certain images of Jesus depict UFOs, floating around in the background.

One of the images he focused on was the Visoki Decani Crucifixion, found in a monastery in the former Yugoslavia."

...this Crucifixion also follows the common iconographic model of the Middle Ages. The “Deposition from the Cross” of Benedetto Antelami, in the Dome of Parma in particular resembles the Crucifixion of Visoki Decani:.

On the edges of the composition, in the same position as in the fresco of Visoki Decani, the Sun and the Moon are represented as human witnesses to the Crucifixion just as they are in the previous painting. In both art works the figures who represent the Sun and the Moon look towards the Cross that is located in the center of the composition.

OK, sounds reasonable, right? Not really...

Yes, the Sun and the Moon icon are in their places in other Crucifixions, but they are absolutely nothing like the depictions of the celestial bodies in the Visoki Decani example, which pictures two full figures enclosed in what very much look like sci-fi spacecraft. I would argue that the artists who created that image could well have tapped into the same precognitive aspect of consciousness that Jack Kirby did, and had seen visions of Mercury-era space capsules.

Or it could also be based on visionary experience of alien craft, if not eyewitness accounts. UFOs have been recorded as long as we've had writing- there's a book coming out in the near future from a prominent researcher that catalogs thousands of UFO reports, all throughout history, compiled from primary sources. That will change the discussion on the topic, I guarantee you. If it isn't supressed, that is.

Back to the Crucifixion- the supposedly-eminent Medieval scholar completely ignores the fact that this crucifixion iconography is lifted from a common icon of Mithras, like so much religious symbolism we take for granted today.

THE ORIGINAL UFO CULT

Here it is the model for the Medieval/Byzantine crucifixion icon- the common Mithraic Tauroctony. We see the Sun and Moon in their places, the Solar sacrifice marking the passage of the Zodiacal Age (Taurus to Ares, in this instance), and the two witness to the sacrifice.

The UFOs of the Crucifxion image and the Solar phallus hallucination of Jung's patient both directly tie to the Mithraic liturgy, which as we saw opens with a recipe for a kykeon-like potion. And what would you expect to experience once you partook of that bitter potion?

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.

Exactly as Jung described in his account of the schizophrenic.

HELIOS HORUS

Now, the transmission for the Mithras-Christian symbolism is a little less mystical- it's the Emperor Constantine himself. Constantine is the man who took hundreds of competing doctrines and texts and hammered them into what is practiced the world over today. But long after his conversion, Constantine was minting coins with Mithras Sol on the reverse. Bart Ehrman has explained the apparent contradiction- Constantine believed the god of the Bible was Sol.

And when you begin to look at the original inspiration behind these dying-rising archetypes, you realize he may well have been on the right track. And the potential for a new revelation in that possibility is nothing less than earth-shaking.

Mithras as Harpocrates

But even hoary old Mithras was drawn on an earlier tradition- the Mysteries of the Egyptian Trinity. The astronomical alignments of the Tauroctony appear in the Pyramid Texts, thousands of years before Mithras entered the city walls of Rome.

Thou hast come that thou mayest command in the regions of Horus;
(thou hast come) that thou mayest command in the regions of Set;
that thou mayest speak in the regions of Osiris.
May the king make an offering: Thy son is upon thy throne...
thou goest in sandals; thou slaughterest an ox;

Pyramid Text, utterance 224

A servant (holy person) who belongs to the Ennead (pelican) is fallen in water.
Serpent, turn over that Rï‘ may see thee.
To say: The head of the great black bull was cut off.
Hpn.w-serpent, this is said to thee. ...-scorpion, this is said to thee

Pyramid Text, utterance 227

This kind of transmission has always been with us. But what about when it leaves the mythic realm and enters our own?

THE MIRACLE OF THE SUN

Isis and Mary or Mary and Isis?

The connection between these ancient Mysteries, modern religions and UFOs continues to this day. In early 20th Century Portuhal, a phenomeonon that Jacques Vallee described as a classic UFO sighting was recorded as the "Miracle of the Sun." Here are a handful of eyewitness accounts:

"Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people."

"…The silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy grey light, was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds… The light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands… "

"The sun's disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible."

Fascinating. But certainly consistent with the ancient traditions, in which gods and UFOs seem to keep very close company...

PHILA(E)DELPHIA, AGAIN

This image comes to us from a 1900 edition of Egyptian Religion by Wallis Budge, published long before ET or Close Encounters, and is a tracing of an ancient bas relief from where?

Why, Philae, of course!

Here we see Isis traveling across the sky, following a path of stars to the Moon. And what do we see following close behind her? We see Osiris and Harpocrates in a flying disk, sitting in positions not unlike the Visoki Decani Crucifixion. Several questions are raised:

• What is the chain of transmission here, from this ancient image to an Alexandrin liturgy to a Medieval tableau?

• Why would the Sun and Moon be seen as vehicles that the gods sat within, as we read in the Mithraic liturgy? Where would that idea possibly come from?

One answer is that between Philae and Visoki Decani we have the Mithraic liturgy, that presents us with a sun disk with doors, exhaust, a beam of light, ramps and several gods casually going about their business within it.

The absolutely-essential documentary The Pharmacratic Inquisition helps explain this chain of transmission, in part. We see a long and consistent chain through visionary experience and Astrotheology. But as compelling as all of this is, it's still only part of the puzzle.

There's still a very strong reluctance among some scholars to connect the dots between Astrotheology and Astro-naut Theology, between AAT and DMT. Even in alternative scholarship, there is a still a very strong territorial instinct, as well as a reluctance to not be too challenging to prevailing orthodoxies - at least not publicly. And yet all of these subjects offer tantalizing links to one another, connections which could very well revolutionize human history and human consciousness...

We see these connections put into a fictional context in The X-Files (and following Carter and Spotnitz's lead, the recent Indiana Jones film and the new Transformers movie). But how compelling do the connections have to be before we start to tie all of these loose strands together in the real world? And where will all of it take us, in the end?

It's so strange- a couple years ago I wasn't looking for any of this. I was working in a completely linear and deterministic paradigm. But I made a decision to follow the evidence, and not my preconceptions of where that evidence was supposed to lead. It's how I discovered the lingering footsteps of the Shemsu Hor, and how the Sirius and 17 memes caught my attention as well, among many others. And in many ways, the question of transmission has been at the heart of it all. And from those questions a whole universe of possibility has opened up in front of me.

The Secret Sun is not about either's and or's- it's about and's. We've had amazing work done in all of these new disciplines- alternative history, Entheogenic research, UFOology, depth psychology- but no single discipline has yet been able to break through and really set the world on its ear. I think that the breakthrough will come only when all of it starts to work together...


Stay tuned, in the John Murdoch sense...

PS: Don't forget to watch UFOs in the Bible!

The Exegesis: The People's Evolutionary Army

I know we're all supposed to be politically-correct and be down on posthumanism, but from where I sit that's just more provincial, Fundamentalist brainwash. Our evolution will be messy to be certain, but for people like myself who deal with chronic pain or other serious health problems, convincing us of the perfection of the "creator's plan" is nothing short of a slap in the face, to say the very least. I'd trade this model in for a new and better one without much hesitation.

There's infinite room for improvement in the human condition and it's time we radically embrace that. Otherwise we cede our evolution to the most inhumane elements in our society, who, unfortunately, are very well-represented in the high-tech field (never mind the venture capital sphere). As it is, we are continuing to surrender our future to the worst de-evolutionary forces, who are gaining power everywhere; all of the varying Fundamentalisms who would destroy this world to fulfill their narcissistic delusions.

Certainly a radical, self-directed form of evolution is at the center of the Superhero mythos as well as the best science fiction. And my contribution to the discussion would be that electronics and genetic engineering are just part of the equation, and that the radical exploration of consciousness must be a part of the process as well.

Similarly, the Enlightenment model of the domination of nature is not a viable model for the future- some understanding of harmonizing our technology to this biosphere must be a part of this process. We have thousands of years of experience to draw upon- and I think that psychonauts have a lot to contribute to this process, as well as integrative environmentalists and enlightened practitioners of spiritual disciplines.

I'm tired of the nonsense being spoonfed to us by the media- the stupid, boring arguments we're supposed to have with each other over marginal issues. I'm tired of all of the false dichotomies of fundamentalism-versus-mindless hedonism that the corporate media wants us to subscribe to. I'm tired of a joyless, inhumane model of evolution, a robotic Borgworld vision of the future that any sane person would shrink from.

I'm tired of the pundits and talking heads who force us to accept this false science vs. spirit dichotomy, those clashing fundamentalisms. I'm tired of seeing people who should be making arguments for a better future being brow-beaten by prefabricated "attitudes" dreamed up in corporate thinktanks and fed to us through the mindless media. Most of all, I'm tired of people who don't subscribe to these false dichotomies being ignored in the public square. This is no accident.

All of these great myths that we discuss mean absolutely nothing if they are not battle-cries for an Evolutionary Army. Religion should not be about faith or belief - it should be about extraordinary knowledge and extraordinary experience. It should be about putting that knowledge and experience into action. It should be about embracing a radical transformation of the human condition, no matter how many obstacles stand in the way.

Think of all the great visionaries of the past 100 years- Jules Verne, Nietzsche, Nicola Tesla, Carl Jung, Alan Turing, Jack Kirby, Philip K. Dick, Stanley Kubrick, Albert Hoffman, Buckminster Fuller - they must rolling in their graves. We have these amazing, unprecedented communication tools at our disposal and tens of millions of people simply use them to watch cellphone videos of a dog licking its balls. Not good enough.

None of it is. The only place you see people talking about the future is in science fiction and comic books and video games. Certainly not in the corporate news media. That has to change.


It may well come time that those who want to evolve will by necessity be forced to separate from those who want to drag this world back to the Dark Ages. But before that happens a rational and humane argument can - and must - be made for self-directed, radical evolution. This is not a simple matter of electronics or genetics, but an all-encompassing, holistic approach to solving our problems and expanding our consciousness.


We need all hands on deck for this, otherwise you can kiss your grandchildren's future goodbye. The way it stands, they'll be lucky if they live in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

The first step in this process is constructing a culture- which simply means a communal discussion- that is not based on the old paradigms. That doesn't fall into the same old traps put out by the think-tanks and their mouthpieces in the media. That doesn't pay any attention to totalitarian superstitions and their witch doctors - no matter how cleverly they package themselves- and isn't shy to call bullshit on their shills when they come sniffing around.

I think Synchromysticism can play a very important role in this culture, because it is straining towards a new understanding of causality. As can a deeper understanding of our new mythologies and the very powerful impulses behind them, even if the self-appointed guardians of those myths don't approve.

Forgive the rant, but sometimes you just need to say what needs to be said. We now return to our regularly scheduled program...

"Mr. President, You Look Like King Tut" (UPDATED)

So many strands coming together here- Barackobamun as the avatar of restoration, compared to King Tut by none other than Zahi Hawass himself. This is no surprise to attentive readers of this blog, but it's still quite remarkable to see that CNN is now pushing this meme.

And here again, we see the whole Muslim dodge misdirecting us away from the true story, while the secret hides in plain sight. But the secret itself is so hard to wrap your head around, isn't it? Even now, I have a hard time processing it all.

I can't quite say what this all is leading to. But it definitely won't be boring, I can tell you that.

UPDATE: Here's some information on the Tomb of Qar, where Barackobamun was anointed and raised. Here's Manly P. Hall on the use of the pyramids for initiation ceremonies.

UPDATE II: I hope you guys made note of the timecode on that story.

UPDATE III: Check out the original story in which Obama, Tut and UFOs converged in Phila(e)delphia during a Bruce Springsteen concert for the President. After playing the Inauguration and the Super Bowl, Springsteen's next big gig is headlining Glastonbury, drawing the appropriate Arthurian memes into the mix. Some scholars believe that Arthur was an adaptation of Osiris, who may have also lent his name to the Norse gods as well.


UPDATE IV: Eleleth points out CNN's Tut pasteup job- I'm still partial to my version.

Must See TV: UFOs in the Bible

Wrapping up an exciting week with an oldie but goodie. Enjoy!

For further reading, check out "Jacob Wrestles the Angels."

Stairway to Sirius: Barackobamun Tours Giza (UPDATES)

During his stay in Cairo, Egypt, where he gave his longest and arguably most anticipated speech yet, President Obama indulged in some tourism, visiting the Great Pyramids of Giza, which he labeled "awe-inspiring". Obama described the tour as the best off the record (OTR) experience of his presidency so far -- even trumping the burger run to Five Guys with NBC's Brian Williams last week. "Five Guys was good, this was better," Obama said, according to MSNBC News- HuffPost

I think this may be a good time to re-read the Stairway to Sirius series again, and the Very Sirius Election series as well. Maybe this post too.


Star of the day goes to Mark Trueblood. Good work, my brother.

UPDATE: Ha! The Five Guys Obama referred to at Giza is on New Jersey Ave! Click here for context...

UPDATE: Another 17 photo gallery for the "Tutankhamon of the World." This time on Talking Points Memo. Previous 17 photo Barackobamun galleries here.

Man, this hilarity is certainly brightening up the relentless gloom around here...

UPDATE II: Keeping the Manhattanhenge business in mind, there are 17 more days until the Summer Solstice...

UPDATE III: Obama touches down at 7:17 AM and begins speech at 11:11 AM. Pinch me.


UPDATE IV: Oh, please tell me this is all a joke:

Serving as Mr. Obama’s guide in Giza was Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. He led the way in and around the pyramids and the Sphinx, including a visit to the Tomb of Qar, who Hawass described as a well-known priest, scholar and judge in ancient Egypt. On the wall were hieroglyphs of Qar, primitive images engraved in the stone. He was a thin man man with big ears.

“That looks like me!” exclaimed President Obama. “Look at those ears.”

Actually, the graven image bore more of a resemblance to Mr. Spock of “Star Trek” fame. Wasn’t there an episode where the crew of the Enterprise went back in time to the Egypt of the Pharoahs? If there wasn’t, there should have been. That might have explained a hieroglyph of Spock on the wall of an ancient tomb. Maybe President Obama went back in time. That’d be a good scenario for a pitch meeting in Hollywood.

UPDATE V: Do you think I should sue those "New Tut" guys for copyright infringement?

UPDATE VI: I just thought I'd walk-in and mention that Star Trek:Deep Space Nine had 173 episodes.

The (Secret) Sunrise: A Picture Story

This is how we do it- each image clicks to a link providing further information pertaining to the overall narrative. What is this story all about? You decide.

Gate of the Gods opens on The Solar Seminar

The Iraq War was launched to gain access to an ancient portal to another world? Babylon was built to glorify a "Stargate" through which humans and alien gods were able to meet? Saddam found ancient texts which offered important clues on how to reconstruct the Gate of the Gods?

Aww, come on. This is all crazy talk, right? Maybe not.

In the winter of 1975, Jack "King" Kirby unleashed two strange yarns on an unsuspecting world. One had a dictator launch an illegal war in defiance of international law. He was then pulled out of his bunker and brought to justice, charged with crimes of genocide and possession of weapons of mass destruction.


Two months after that story hit the newsstands, a strange story of a UFO encounter in the desert and a Stargate in the sky was published. Is there a connection to these two stories?

Kirby often stated that he merely projected the visions inside his head onto paper. So why would the ancient Babylonian god Marduk make an appearance in this sci-fi potboiler? What were the links between energy beings, interdimensional portals, globalist wars and ancient pagan gods?

The Solar Seminar collects the Mindbomb series, which explored these very questions, in a new, giant-sized article. I presented an abbreviated version of some of this material at Esalen, so I thought this would be a good time to revisit this series and see if you psychonauts have any fresh insights on a series that appeared in the very early days of this blog.


Click here to read "Mindbomb: The Dreaming Mind and the Gate of the Gods."

Star Trek: The ReGenesis of Gus Grissom

“I grew up on Star Trek. I believe in the final frontier.”- Barackobamun

Just about this time last year I was looking at the strange semiotic links between Star Trek and a young, up and coming politician who had just secured the Democratic nomination for President. Earlier this year I also looked at the new President's near-ritualistic symbolic connections to a dead astronaut, whom some see as a martyr in the struggle for the soul of the US space program (which was largely the pet project of a strange collection of Nazis and Freemasons at the time).

So here we are in June '09- the new Star Trek film is a blockbuster at the box office and the new President is seen as a near-messiah figure by a significant proportion of the world's population. His opposition is in shambles and he seems poised on remaking the American economy in his image (and he made his first visit as President to NYC during a rare solar alignment).

So, I thought I'd just take a look at an earlier Star Trek film, which also had some very interesting references to that martyred astronaut, as well as to the symbolic Ur-narrative that seems to becoming more and more central to our culture these days (like in the new Star Trek, for instance).

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock opens with the death of Spock during the battle with Khan (from Star Trek II), the time-traveling supersoldier who ruled the Earth following the Eugenics Wars. Spock dies aboard a spacecraft, as did Gus Grissom.

We then see Spock's coffin torpedoed to the surface of the Genesis Planet, which was terraformed using radical technology develop by Kirk's son, David Marcus (played by the late Merritt Buttrick, who also played "Johnny Slash" opposite Sarah Jessica Parker on the 80s cringefest Square Pegs- Buttrick died 3/17/89 from AIDS complications.).

We also see a new Starfleet Commander, played by Robert Hooks. This being post-Lab9 Trek, the Starfleet Commander is essentially the de facto leader of the Federation as well. Interesting conjunction with all of the Gus Grissom symbolism we're about to be hammered with.

Here, the Commander forbids the crew to discuss their "knowledge of Genesis." Interesting.

Well, who's flying off to gain further "knowledge" of "Genesis?" Why, none other than the USS Grissom! The Grissom's registry is NCC-638, and a quick bit of addition there should help clarify its purpose in the story.

Marcus and Lt. Saavik (played by Scientologist Kirstie Alley in Star Trek II) detect signs of life on "Genesis" and beam down from the Grissom to investigate. There they find the reborn Spock, reborn with the technomagic of Marcus' Genesis Project. While on the planet, the Grissom is destroyed. However, Saavik refers to the Grissom without the article, as we hear several times throughout the story. Throughout the various Star Treks, ship names are almost always preceded by "the."

Really interesting.

I love these kinds of juxtapositions- is our dying/rising astronaut Spock a stand-in for someone else here?

Here the Klingons interogate the Grissom's survivors about the Genesis project, which we discover is a failure, fashioned by an imperfect creator who would see himself as a god. Anyone with a passing familiarity with Gnosticism should be hearing bells and whistles going off...

"The lowest emanation was an evil god (the demiurge) who created the material world as a prison for the divine sparks that dwell in human bodies. The Gnostics identified this evil creator with the God of the Old Testament, and saw the Adam/Eve and the ministry of Jesus as attempts to liberate humanity from his dominion, by imparting divine secret wisdom. Gnostics like Christians take an allegorical view of the Old Testament."

"Overview of Gnosticism" by Lewis Loflin

What's that, you say? Pure conjecture? Oh, you're probably right. But get a load of what Saavik blurts out a moment later...

...she has no knowledge. Ahh, but she has; Marcus, the creator of Genesis, told her all about it. As his Garden of Eden goes up in flames, Marcus sacrifices himself to save Spock and Saavik, our Vulcan Adam and Eve. Remember that some Gnostic sects taught that the Serpent was actually Christ, sent by the Monad to grant Adam and Eve the gnosis and free them from the Demiurge and the Archons.

How tragically fascinating then that the actor who portrayed Marcus died on the day of Osiris' death, given the similarities between Osiris and Christ (further uncovered in DM Murdock's new book).

After some obligatory fisticuffs between Bill Shatner and Christopher Lloyd (who would launch his own sci-fi franchise the next year), the Enterprise is destroyed and a Klingon Bird of Prey is hijacked and flown to Vulcan. Interesting red glow coming from the ship's stern there.

Then it's some heavy Vulcan ritual hoodoo in order to transfer Spock's katra from "the son of David" back to Spock. I wonder: is the katra anything like the Egyptian ka?

Maybe Spock's ritual cloak might hold a clue...

Hmmm, kind of reminds me of the ceremonial shafts in the Great Pyramid, through which the ka of the Pharaoh would be sent to Orion to spend eternity with Osiris, the lord of the afterlife and judge of the dead.

And what do you get with the ascension of the soul of Osiris to the afterlife? Why, the rising of Harpocrates, god of the dawn....

Speaking of which, this was Harve Bennett's post-Star Trek series, Time Trax ( Harve is heavily into the time travel concept, obviously). The portal there reminds me a bit of the Tardis, but that giant Eye is something else altogether...

Coindentally enough, Bennett was born on August 17th. His last project to date was Invasion America, an animated mini-series co-produced with Steven Spielberg. From the wiki:

.... humanoid aliens from the planet Tyrus begin to initiate their plans for making contact with Earth. Cale-Oosha, the ruler of Tyrus, looks into his uncle's project with Earth.

However, his uncle, The Dragit, claims that their dying planet ought to invade Earth and take hold of its resources. Cale refuses, and a civil war breaks out. Cale and Rafe, his bodyguard, trainer, and trusted friend, escape to Earth, disguising themselves as humans. Cale meets Rita Carter, a human woman; he falls in love with her, and they marry.

After a long time of running from the Dragit's forces on Earth, Cale returns to Tyrus to help strengthen his loyalist forces, the Ooshati, leaving Rita and their young son, David, under Rafe's protection. In the present day, when the Dragit finally finds the family, he is determined to kill them, and David Carter's teenage life is thrown into a devastating adventure of stopping the Dragit, losing and gaining friends, and finding out just who he is.

"Finding out just who you are" is the whole point of Gnosticism, and finding out you are actually an alien hybrid like David Carter is the whole point of Astro-Gnosticism. Fascinating to see some of those old Delta Cycle memes in this series. Interesting guy, that Harve Bennett...

Coincidentally, the voice actor playing Massachusetts-born Carter ("nine-point-nine, nine-point-nine") made a recent appearance on The Secret Sun...

PS For more on the deep Gnostic roots of Star Trek, click here.

Twilight of the (Teen) Idols

When I look for the number 17, I'm usually doing so in a particular context. I'm looking for the number to tie into an overarching narrative, linking to themes of restoration. Osiris died on the 17th, and Horus represented the restoration of his father's rightful throne. Horus himself was the last god to rule Egypt, so in my eyes he represents the restoration of that order of things.

However, the more you study all of the these things, the deeper and more complex the narrative becomes. I've not seen any compelling evidence that this number is being used deliberately- in fact, its resonance seems almost entirely unconscious. But it keeps popping up, particularly in popcult contexts. The first Harry Potter and Narnia novels- themselves both restoration narratives- had 17 chapters. And the latest literary sensation among the tween set- Stephanie Meyer's Twilight novels- opens with a quote from the Bible, namely Gene-Isis 2:17:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.*

Whatever the intent, the quote certainly charges this whole series with a transgressive buzz.

But the 17 meme certainly doesn't end there. The movie starts off on the 33rd parallel in Phoenix, which sits right at the bottom of Interstate 17...

The main character, Isabella ("Isis the Beautiful") moves to rainy Forks, WA because her mother and her baseball player stepfather are going to Jacksonville, FL. What highway runs through that burg?

US 17.

Edward the Friendly Vampire introduces himself to Sophie at 00:17:07, reminding us that 17 is the 7th prime number...

Given that its author is a practicing Mormon who cooked up this whole cashcow from a dream, Twilight seems especially ripe for Synchromystic picking. But it was Victoria Nelson's lecture on modern vampire literature that brought this series to my attention. This is a classic case of the evolution of the concept of the Other, from object of fear to object of desire, both sexual and aspirational. Watch this trailer- this isn't your grandmother's vampire story...




No, these aren't even like Anne Rice's revisionist frou-frou vampires, these are superheroes, flat-out and straight-up. They're superheroes who are every bit as exotic and threatening as The X-Men. There are good vampires (the "vegetarians," who don't drink human blood) and the bad ones, who are almost identical to The Hand in the Elektra movie or The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in the X-Men films. Bella even thinks Edward is a superhero at first.

As in the similarly-memed Underworld films, these vampires co-exist with werewolves. Here we see the polarity in the New Other- the refined and cultured contrasting with the earthy and earnest (the werewolves are all Native Americans, just to sweeten the pot). Both are feminine fantasy visions of idealized men, and vampire mythology seems to be resonating more powerfully with girls these days, which may explain why the excellent Blade: The Series flopped on Spike, that sweaty jockstrap of a cable network.

A lot of wags have noted the Mormon abstinence subtext in Twilight, but the stories are also 100% wish-fulfillment in other ways. The vampire fantasy addresses the top anxieties of modern women - aging, abandonment and bad relationships. Edward is handsome, powerful and brilliant and his family is cultured and close-knit. He offers Bella eternal life and companionship, and will wait until they are married to consumate this vampire love. It's the ultimate one-sided tradeoff, the kind most women would give their souls for. Which, of course, is what Bella does.

Twilight goes to extreme lengths to rewrite vampire mythology. The vampires can operate in daytime, but avoid the Sun not because it will fry them- they avoid it because it makes their buff, hard bodies glow like diamonds. So here we see a nice Solar signifier, characteristic of superheroes.

Tying into the alien identity and future human memes, the vampires have psychic abilities. Edward can read minds, and one of the girls is a remote viewer. The depiction of her powers is straight out of the Ingo Swann playbook.

Whether through intent or osmosis, Meyer is drawing from sources that run pretty far afield of anything the Mormon high council might approve. I can't speak for the novels, but this film is highly sexually charged, easily earning its PG-13 rating. It was this scene concerning Edward's eyes (always a giveaway of Otherness) that reminded me of David Bowie's feature film debut in Nic Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, a transgressive pedigree if ever there was one.

Bowie's real-world Otherness has not gone unnoticed by his associates and intimates. The man operated at a level of sheer activity in the 1970s that was unimaginable on the face of it, never mind his incredible batting average, quality-wise. But it was a role from the 80s- not his peak years in anyone's estimation- that ties straight into the Twilight universe...

Bowie played a Goth vampire in Tony Scott's feature debut The Hunger, itself influenced by Jess Franco's 70s camp classic Vampyros Lesbos. But, given its outwardly transgressive text, The Hunger is probably less erotically charged than Twilight (yes, even with that scene).

For all its verve and style, The Hunger still subscribes to the view of Other drawn from monotheism, where transgressing traditional moral boundaries or human potential must be punished with a painful death. It's arguable whether Mormonism is in fact monotheistic, but if nothing else its history lends a more sympathetic view of Other as an existential concept (see Battlestar Galatica for further elucidation).

But of course, The Hunger brings us right back to the ultimate concept of Other- the extraterrestrial. The original novel was written by Whitley Strieber, multiple abductee/contactee. In a sequel, Strieber explains that his vampires are in fact alien astronauts stranded on earth, who parasitically feed on humans while helping also steer their evolution.

Since 17 ultimately links us to Egypt, it's no surprise that Bella's initiation to the vampire universe begins there. It shouldn't be asurprise for another reason- Mormonism itself is riddled with a kind of Egyptophilia.


We see the Egyptian link in The Hunger film, in a flashback scene showing Miriam sucking on some poor slave's jugular. And not really having much fun of it, either, I might add. So aside from all the hot g/g play, The Hunger offers up the double whammy of the Bible's libel against Egypt, as well as the metaphorical condemnation of transgressive sexual practices (of which the vampirism is simply a metaphor).

Tony Scott later developed an anthology series based on The Hunger, which was first hosted by Terence Stamp (speaking of Elektra) and then by Bowie himself. Scott repeatedly refers to Bowie as alien and other-worldly in his commentary track for the The Hunger film, an image Bowie cultivated throughout the 70s (and even well into the 80s). Bowie was also no stranger to Egyptian-derived occultism or transgressive sexual practices himself, so his association with The Hunger franchise- and vampirism- was something of a fait accompli.

Strangely enough the first season of the series had an episode titled "Room 17." The 17th episode of the second seaon of The Hunger was called "Sacred Fire," and touched upon the alien vampire memes that Strieber later elaborated on. From the DVD episode description:

Luann is a kind and generous woman who volunteers to help the homeless find food and shelter but when she meets Nick, who lives on the street, he warns her that there are street people who are aliens in disguise, intent on killing humans.

So as conservative as Stephanie Meyer's faith may be, her novels are anything but. In text, subtext and pedigree, Twilight is very much part of the new continuum, in which Evolution is the New Revolution, in which Otherness is something to be deeply desired, not shunned. No surprise that the 17 memes lurk beneath the surface. Because that Otherness is the restoration. It's this present mess that is actually the deviation.

There's a sub-program in our neural software that seems to have been activated, and is leading the next generations to a very different reality-consensus than the audiences of Bela Lugosi's- or even Gary Oldman's- Dracula would be familiar with. That- in the end- may be what Synchromysticism is really all about.

McKenna 'n' Me

You know you're not in Kansas anymore when you find yourself nodding in agreement- or at least a deep understanding - with a Terence McKenna talk on UFOs. Maybe it was the psychological effect of standing in the same room at Esalen where McKenna unleashed many of his theories and finding myself arriving at the same destination from a completely different origin point, but I feel as if some aspect of McKenna's lingering essence has decided to park itself in my consciousness.

McKenna's work has always puzzled me. Maybe it's because I was such a Timothy Leary acolyte when McKenna burst onto the scene, and I immediately tagged him as a whiny wannabe (my, how times have changed). Maybe because I much preferred Casteneda's immersive novelizing to McKenna's breathless intellectualizations, or was so immersed in the Cyberpunk thing that Psychedelia seemed old hat. And certainly part of it is that I've always been so unimpressed with McKenna's own wannabes.

But despite my middle-aged preference for objective data (such as it is) over subjective intuition, Terry and I seem to be operating in the same conceptual frequency these days. I got a kick out of hearing the shout-outs to Jacques Vallee, given that I was chilling with the master (well, chewing his ears off with my endless babble) not a week ago.

This vid has numerous shout-outs to Jung, as well as the kind of goddess archetypes I've been exploring in my ongoing X-Files X-Egesis. And oddly enough, what all of this leaves me with is a burning desire to return not to psychedelic exploration necessarily, but to my dreamwork, which I've definitely let slide while navigating the endless tributaries of the Memestream (there's also been a cherubim with a flaming sword parked at the gates of my subconscious for the past several years but that's a whole other story).

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...