Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Astronaut Theology: Transforming the World (UPDATED)



Let's recap: NASA is launching moon probes and alien hunters, Fox News is showing UFO footage released by the Mexican military. Europe has a space freighter ready to go. We haven't had any strange, fiery debris falling mysteriously from the sky recently, but it's only a matter of time until the next event, certainly. Moon bases are in the planning stages, and a new film called Moon is being released to familiarize audiences with that coming reality. Never mind the research being done on warp-drive technology at NASA.

What's happening on the ground? We have an ineffectual new President who seems to be in office purely for some strange ritual purpose the rest of us can only guess at. All across the world, economies are being battered and millions put out of work. It was only a mere ten years ago a permanent prosperity was being predicted.

We are looking at the possibility of a stunning revolution taking place in Persia, one of the world's oldest civilizations, presently caught in the deathgrip of a cabal of insane Theocrats. There's a continuing American occupation going on across the border, which may or may not have something to do with contacting unknown entities once present at the dawn of civilization.

The US defense budget is larger than every other country on Earth combined. It was in the US that computers and microchips and transistors and all of the rest of it appeared almost overnight after...well, after the Roswell incident, whatever that was. Who are we preparing to fight? The Chinese, who manufacture everything for our Wal-Marts? The Russians, whose space program we've essentially merged with? The Arabs, who have little else but oil to sell to the world and fifth-rate militaries? All of them are keeping our warfare economy afloat.

Nothing makes sense anymore, if you follow conventional wisdom. The world economy is in recession, but we're spending billions - maybe trillions - on space hardware (and extremely sophisticated electronics for consumer use). And when you really stop to think about it, we've no real evidence that the defense budget is actually preparing us for war with Russia or China.

Timothy Good- as well as others- have told us that the US was essentially at war with UFOs in the 40s and 50s. This was front page news all over the world: Roswell, the Battle of Los Angeles, the Invasion of Washington. Lucky for the government, an army of cranks came out of the woodwork telling ridiculous stories about anal probes and blonde-haired Aryan queens from Venus. Along with them were an even larger army of debunkers, using every psychological warfare gimmick in the book to harass and ridicule anyone who took a second look at some of the incidents that defied easy explanation.



The pace of technology is now quickening exponentially, almost as if someone was losing patience the doubling of it every 18 months. Now, don't forget that before Roswell you had a gradually but slowly increasing curve of technology following the Industrial Revolution. You had wireless radio and television in the 20s and 30s, and computers, first Babbage's Difference Engine and then ENIAC during the 40s. But these things were enormous and cumbersome and less powerful than the digital calculators you see embedded in ball point pens.

Before that, technology had been essentially static for thousands of years, at least since the Roman Era. The printing press was not the breakthrough it seemed- even before Chinese block printing, you had lithographic printing blocks in Sumer.



Strangely enough, when technology truly became the center of the human story in the 19th Century, a whole host of weirdos started talking about contact with alien tutors (most commonly known as the "Secret Chiefs"), who were guiding this process. Crazy, right? After all, most of the literature these people produced was a bunch of babble, cobbled together from various esoteric sources.

But at the same time, you have this strange collision of fringe beliefs and ultra-high technology. In other words, weird beliefs are a dime a dozen but when you start to see extraordinary results arise from them, it's worth paying attention. You have all of this bleeding into the media sphere, which we look at here all of the time. And recently we had the two political parties fighting over control of the Sirius glyph (Sirius being the center of the occult universe) and the winner being initiated as the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian king in the customary setting of a tomb on prime time news. Weirdos like us blow our stacks in shock while the rest of the world shrugs. Just like they shrug at the busy, busy skies overhead.



So what is this new world order all about? Regular readers know I only have questions. But I can't help thinking about this new Transformers movie, which presents this scenario of Earth being caught in the middle of an ancient grudge match between alien machine intelligences. We have this Sam character, coincidentally played by Shia LaBoeuf who just happened to appear in the X-Files episode produced just before the one that his new movie is ripping off. I hate to keep harping on that, but that simply cannot be coincidence as we understand it.

UPDATE: No, I don't think it is- I think my original theory that someone involved in the writing of that movie reads this blog might be a better explanation, especially given the Egyptian links between Transformers and The X-Files are my interpretation and not part of the surface narrative.

The giveaway may be that the Transformers film opens in 17,000 BC.


Some determinists desperately want to assign human agency to these kinds of coincidences, but the more they metastisize the harder that gets. And I'm willing to bet that a lot of you out there have cataloged your personal synchs to the point that you realize that there's no way some secret cabal are orchestrating them. At least not one that we can understand.

UPDATE II: As I wrote in a comments section, I hope regular readers of this blog will begin to start synching their own lives, so you can see the latticework of connection that defies external agency.

And it's at that point that things get interesting. I can only speak for myself, but I've always thought something is going on that we just can't grasp. I know all of the common theories, but I find them all light on evidence and long on vitriol. Maybe we're being prepared for something we can imagine but can't begin to grasp. And maybe that has to do with the unimaginably huge US defense budget, and those busy skies overhead.

UPDATE: Check out the Hidden Agendas for a massive video presentation by UFO researcher Robert Dean.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Secret Solstice (UPDATED!)



Oh reverse-engineered alien Technology, you are the blogger's friend. Saturday was not the Solstice, but don't tell our friends on the West Coast that. I would think the fact that the Solstice was on a Sunday would be irresistible, but it might also have terrified any remaining Sun worshippers of the officially-sanctioned variety in the environs out of their wits. As if the sight of tens of thousands of folks on the street dancing and carousing and carrying on in ways indistinguishable from ancient Solar cults would not. Note: if you look closely you can see a suspiciously Lovecraftian cephalopod there.



Speaking of ancient Solar cults, Gus Grissom made an inexplicable appearance in Santa Barbara...



Fremont's parade suffered in comparison to Santa Barbara's, since the feeble Washington sun is no match for its Californian cousin, not to mention all of the lithe, Pilates-addicted California girls. But they made up for the deficit with their elaborate, pseudo-Aztec costumery. As far as I know, there weren't any hearts ripped out of chests at the parade's end and offered up to the Sun to delay the Earth's final destruction.



Well, in place of that, we had the nudist bicyclists providing the horror...



Our English friends gathered around Stonehenge for their Solstice blowout, apparently a record turnout. I guess it helps when the head of your state church is himself a Druid. Not sure what connection congas have to ancient Celtic culture, but everyone looks suitably inebriated.

I was in Phila(e)delphia yesterday and saw posters for their own Solstice festival, but the idea still seems pretty isolated to hippie/boho enclaves. It's all good fun but I'm not sure I see these kinds of festivals piercing the Heartland. Too much of a hippie, weirdo tinge to it all. Americans still prefer their Sun worship rituals to be dressed in more familiar religious garb.

Which we'll look at in great detail here on the September Equinox....


UPDATE: Kozmikon Tommy points us to NAZCA NASA's "astronomy picture of the day"- The Solstice Sun rising over the Parthenon.


UPDATE II: Stargurl gives us this scoop- the theme of the Fremont parade was "Phoenix Rising," and "Also Sprach Zarathustra" was the musical overture. Check out her amazing post on Phoenix syncs here. Go to The Satellite for Phoenix-a-licious synchitude.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Jack Sarfatti on UFO propulsion physics



Renegade physicist Jack Sarfatti talks about a meeting he attended that took place under the aegis of a major defense contractor. The topic was UFO propulsion and the military's interest in same. According to Sarfatti, the technology behind UFOs is understood, but not yet in the application stage. Very interesting conversation here- this is a guy with a very serious resume who has never been shy about peeking under the skirt of the mundane reality consensus.





Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, pt. VII: Transformers



If you've been in a cave the past few weeks, you've probably missed the thousands of images of Megan Fox relentlessly posing at various premieres of the new Transformers movie. This film is obviously a very big deal for the wizards of Hollywood, even bigger than the new Star Trek movie. Why? It's based on a toy/cartoon line that is of importance solely to young males who encountered it at a very early age. What's the mass appeal here?


I'm way too old to have been bit by the Transformers bug, but I'm not too surprised to see it delving deep into the murky waters of our Collective Alien Dream. I remember seeing the toys it was based on in the early 80s at the old Million Year Picnic in Cambridge and the cartoon hit the airwaves right around the same time I began to get serious about my own inner explorations. So I do feel a connection to the franchise in a strange way.

And I've always been amused by the name, since it was also the title of the classic Lou Reed album that contained the tranny-chasing anthem, "Walk On the Wild Side." That album was produced by David Bowie, that eternal resonator of androgynous alien occult identity. In that light, I'm sure the meme of transformation this film is broadcasting into our collective consciousness will have deeper implications than the mere mechanical shape-shifting we see in the movie already.




But again, the film is lifting themes lock, stock and barrel from The X-Files as well. The whole idea of an alien artifact infecting our brains with a new language would not be lost on Bowie and Reed's hero, William S. Burroughs, but here I'm thinking more along the lines of Terence McKenna's theories on hallucinogenic fungi as an intentional conduit for alien communication and the "Stoned Ape" concept of human transformation that McKenna preached. Put it all together and it's clear that McKenna had put his own spin on AAT.

It's interesting that Shia LaBoeuf (fresh off his Indiana Jones AAT opus) begins his own alien dreaming when he goes to college (Princeton, in this case) since that's the time that many young people have their first encounter with hallucinogens. Likewise, we also see Mulder searching for the alien gnosis that "Doctor Sandoz" possessed at American University (it's at college that some young people also begin to manifest symptoms of schizophrenia, too).



Unlike Transformers II, the new fratboy-centric revision of Star Trek is essentially hostile to subtext, perhaps in reaction to the cumbersome esotericism the franchise had taken on. Deep Space Nine, for instance, is essentially the story of the Emissary of the Prophets transforming from man to god. The series is so laden with deeply subversive text (never mind subtext) I don't even know where to begin, but the mytharc also delved into the same themes of alien dreaming and alien identity that we'll be seeing the hermetically-seductive form of the newly-minted bisexual Megan Fox being utilized to put over into the adolescent group mind at the end of the month.

In "Rapture," Sisko encounters an Bajoran artifact that erases the last vestiges of skepticism left in his psyche. He gets a double dose of the alien gnosis, and as in Transformers and X-Files it not only leads to the revelation of alien identity but to the brink of brain damage as well. The revelation Sisko receives comes in the form of a lost city (that hoary favorite of occult fiction) that shows that the Prophets helped shape Bajoran civilization, just as the Godship in "Biogenesis" did for our own. AAT is everywhere in the Star Trek Universe, with our Federation friends sometimes playing the part of the Anunaki.

The funny thing is that when Sisko gets zapped it's clear that he's on an artificially-induced trip, and we see him alternating between a blissed-out state and a tumultous, psychic one. The impetus for this episode probably came from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which seems to have inspired McKenna's alien dreaming theories as well, with the Mushroom in place of the Monolith. But I'm fairly certain at this point in time that something else inspired Kubrick's vision, other than the somewhat dull Arthur C. Clarke story it's allegedly based on. Maybe not the same thing that inspired Jack Kirby's- we're talking something more in the Cary Grant sphere.





So watch these opening credits for A Man Called Hawk featuring the Emissary himself. Really fascinating symbolism here, about as subtle as a kick in the balls. Soak it in. And strangely enough, the Emissary teaches now at a New Jersey university (the Mason Gross School at Rutgers), though not the one we see in Transformers. But even so, a fascinating conjunction there.

I'll end this with a repeated confession- those symbols that Sam sees in Transformers trailer? I see ones very much like them - a lot - when I close my eyes. First they appear in linear fields and then they morph into circular patterns that rotate too quickly for me to write them down. It's been going on for a few years now. Why am I mentioning them again? Well, I'm listening to a Terence McKenna lecture presently in which he describes DMT elves whose speech is expressed visually.

I've never tried DMT, but I think I'm pretty familiar with those elves.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Star Trek: Charlie is 17



For a concept created by a self-confessed atheist, there are a hell of a lot of gods in
Star Trek.

I've been watching selected episodes of Deep Space Nine in a state of utter disbelief (the show is unvarnished religious drama of a very strange variety) but the very same themes we see in that show are abundant in the original series as well. As well as in TNG, as we looked at in great detail last year.

I've been watching a whole lot of Star Trek and am nowhere near putting it all together (the connections are too complex and enormous). But I am seeing patterns emerge that are remarkably consistent over the franchise's 43-year history. I have a copy of Brad Steiger's 1976 book Gods of Aquarius, that has a dual interviews with Roddenberry and none other than the author of The Sacred Mushroom, Andrija Puharich, taken while Roddenberry was working with Lab-9.

In it, Roddenberry referenced the two episodes, "Charlie X" (the second episode of the series, originally titled "Charlie is God") and "Where No Man Has Gone Before," (the second pilot) starring none other than 2001: A Space Odyssey's Gary Lockwood, as well as Sally Kellerman and the painfully gorgeous Andrea Dromm. Both episodes are about humans that acheive godhead through the agency of alien overlords.

Really fascinating stuff:

During his career, especially after Star Trek's cancellation, Roddenberry gave many lectures to supplement his income. Those speeches may be lost in time, but thankfully he also discussed UFO's and psychic phenomenon in a book called "Gods Of Aquarius" by Brad Steiger. In a chapter discussing the phenomenon of UFO's and developing psychic powers in children, here's what Roddenberry said:

"We wrote a couple of episodes about individuals who had such unique talents. As a matter of fact, our second pilot - and the one that sold the series - was on that subject when Gary Lockwood began to find out that he could, after having undergone a strange experience in space, accomplish things like moving a glass of water without touching it. And then he developed more and more power... It was too much power to put into the hands of an unprepared person."




"Being 17 is more than how many years you've lived, it's a whole other thing."

Truer words have never been spoken.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

John the Baptist in Space: Addendum


Cover dated May 24, 1963, which means it hit the stands on the 17th. Note the cruciform star next to Gordon Cooper's name and the cross formed by the numerals - John the Baptist, the Templar Messiah, crucified on the Celestial Cross. Cooper was also 33rd Degree.

Read the original "John the Baptist in Space" post here for context.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Must See TV: The Pharmacratic Inquisition



All right, let's do this- Gnostic Media's landmark documentary on the secret history of mythology and religion. Some of you may have seen it, but I recommend that those of you who have review some of the recent posts here on the Sun, particularly the Alien Dreaming series. Do I think this documentary holds all the answers? No, and those of you who follow this blog realize I'm not very interested in answers, only questions.

I see this as part of a very large and strange puzzle, and that puzzle is called human consciousness. This documentary will hit you with some heavy information on Astrotheology and Entheogenics, but in my view no discussion even of those subjects is truly complete without pondering the question of alien identity. And most certainly, symbolism and Synchronicity play a very prominent role in all of this as well.

So sit back and let it soak in. Use what you can for your own research, and, more importantly, in the creation of your own personal mythos. We all have a very long way to go before we reach the bottom of all of this, but I think we all owe these Gnostic Media cats a debt of gratitude for laying out what is often a confusing and deliberately obscure topic in such a lucid and compelling way.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Zowie Bowie hits the big screen, pt. 2

Duncan Jones io9 Moon Interview from io9 on Vimeo.

Cheers to Kris- Duncan Jones (formerly known as Zowie Bowie) seems intent on following in his father's alien footsteps. That's David Bowman Bowie, in case you were wondering.


Will you look at that...

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Speaking of Neuromancy...(UPDATED!!!)



...it's here.

Now go watch this again. Just for giggles and grins.

UPDATE: OK, let's backtrack. We have this technology that's straight out of the Sprawl Trilogy (or other, more unearthly sci-fi, perhaps), which "Neuromancy" refers to. It's called "Project Natal," meaning "Project Birth." The character here is Milo (who is actually an androgyne) and his/her dog Kate. First, let's do Milo. From wiki:

In Hebrew context, Milo is an abbreviation of the Hebrew name MI "who" KHA "like" IL "god", alias Michael meaning "who resembles God".
OK, "the project of the birth of he/she who is like god." Fair enough. Back to wiki:

Milo and Kate - a game in development by Lionhead Studios in which the player interacts with a young child (Milo or Milly, selected by the user at the start) and his/her dog Kate, using items and passing him virtual items from real life actions. In an interview after the demonstration, Lionhead founder Peter Molyneux confirmed that the demo was in fact the long running Project Dimitri. In the demonstration available at E3 2009, only Milo was available to interact with.

OK, Kate is a no-brainer for longtime Secret Sun readers. Kate is the diminutive of Katherine, which around here we interpret as Ka-Hathor-Ein- "to have the Ka (spirit) of Hathor." And the dog is Sirius, reminding us of the conjunctions between Hathor and Isis.


But who is the he/she that is like God? Adam Kadmon.

We find that Milo grew out of another project:
The Dimitri Project was the codename for a video game by Lionhead Studios that for many years had an unknown status, before surfacing in 2009 as the technology demo "Milo" for Microsoft's Project Natal.
The Dimitri Project! And where does that name come from?


Demeter.

And created by Lionhead Studios- all of you Jungians out there just spit your second cup of coffee at the screen. Who is the Lionhead?


Aion, companion of Mithras, brother of Harpocrates.

So, the birth of Milo/Milly who is like god and whose companion is Hathor-Isis, who grew out of Project Demeter who was created by Aion. These are not random bits culled from here and there in mythology, we're hitting the core archetypes here- the very apex of the Mystery pantheon.

Ancient mythology meets futuristic- almost alien- science, again. You can't keep them separated anymore these days, can you?

Now go look at that video again and feel the Secret Sun on your face.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

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....

Monday, June 08, 2009

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!

Saturday, June 06, 2009

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...

Friday, June 05, 2009

"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."

Thursday, June 04, 2009

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.























Tuesday, June 02, 2009

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."

Monday, June 01, 2009

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.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

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.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

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).

Sunday, May 24, 2009

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.