The Exegesis: Be Brave

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand. --W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

In the 19th Century, Christendom was rocked to its foundations by the stunning breakthroughs in science and technology, largely financed and enabled by the deep pockets of the plunderous Imperial Age (Darwin-loving liberals always tend to overlook how deeply invested he and his compadres were in the blood-thirsty ruling elite of the British Empire).

The once-placid and serene order of the Universe was called into question, and no longer could respectable middle-class intellectuals claim to believe in biblical inerrancy, or geocentrism or any number of comforting beliefs that had given meaning and certainty to Western peoples' lives since Constantine.

I've detailed how a small vanguard turned to occultism and mysticism to negotiate these treacherous new waters in Our Gods Wear Spandex and elsewhere, but for the greater mass of people there was a two-pronged approach.

The middle classes tended to ignore all the pointy -headed tumult going on in the universities and carry on as before. This position became increasingly untenable with the rise of the mass electronic media. But you also had-- for lack of better terms-- a liberal reaction and a reactionary reaction.

The liberals embraced the new advances in science and politics and argued that the basic moral teachings of the Bible were intact, that these stories were never meant to be taken literally but were in fact allegories and parables. They'd point to the Gospels to bolster this argument. At first this was a bold move- a radical reinterpretation of the historical faith.

But over time this approach gave way to a kind of lame hair-splitting and evasiveness, a wishy-washiness and conflict-avoidance that came to characterize the so-called Mainline Protestant denominations.

And of course, you also had the Fundamentalists. The militantly literalist interpretation of Scripture was usually the province of backwoods Bible bangers, semi-literate Holiness rabble-rousers who acted as entertainers as much as pastors.

But the director of the oil monopoly Unocal decided backwoods literalism-- with its reflexive worship of authority and hatred of anything remotely Socialist-- might be good for business, so he secretly published a 12-volume set of tracts that literally launched the Fundamentalist movement in America, appropriately called The Fundamentals. The rest is a very sad and sordid history.

So you had one contingent that lost its nerve and another that lost its mind.

I saw that post-Darwin split play out in real time. I didn't realize it at the time. When I was a kid I took it for granted that pews would be filled every Sunday. But I didn't realize it was because we had a rock star preacher and a kickass youth program.

In 1980 our pastor left to accept a post at a bigger church in Boston and the bishop sent in a more typical product of the seminaries; a milquetoast little bureaucrat who brought in all the latest hairsplitting innovations that the Rockefeller-funded World Council of Churches were cooking up. Almost immediately attendance plummeted and the youth group was down to a handful. It was over.

And so it goes with liberal Protestantism in general; it's circling the drain.



I'm sure you had a similar situation at the end of the Pagan Age. The Roman Emperors throwing Christians to the lions (actual periods of persecution were usually brief and sporadic and paled into inconsequence compared to the carnage committed by the Church, but still occurred) did so not out of some cynical calculation-- they did so because they were genuinely offended by what they saw as the Christians' impiety.

Plenty of other cults-- Isis, the Syrian Goddess, Bacchus-- got as bad, if not worse, in earlier times. And the conservatives of the time were squarely behind the persecutions.

On the other side you had a host of philosophic cults who could argue against the reality of everything, except the alms they would so very philosophically coax out of your wallet. Many of these cults may have had more interesting ideas but like Protestant reformers of the late 19th Century, many of them were almost predisposed against fighting their own corners with any conviction.

The same could be said of the (extinct) Liberal Establishment of the 1960s-- they were so concerned with seeing every side of an issue they never bothered to argue their own. Of course, things are a lot different-- and obviously more polarized-- today.

The same patterns continue, outside of politics and religion. Often people who are the most interesting thinkers never get around to learning how to argue their positions, and are often raised in environments where fighting your corner is seen as déclassé. But that's just a one way ticket to suicide, particularly in this environment.

And so we have an environment where simple-minded loudmouths like Glenn Beck, James Randi and Alex Jones-- all three of whom and more like them are cut from the same exact cloth-- command the attention of millions while interesting and creative thinkers are ignored.

The true avatars of Reductionism

And this is exactly why America is falling apart to shit, with the rest of the world not far behind. The media is engineered to make superstars of the loudest, most hectoring, most simplistic messengers, and the educational system is creating a permanent audience for them. The only hope is that the machine will break down so spectacularly that it will create a innate sense of revulsion in people for decades to come.

Now, one thing we're also seeing is the rise of a new, engineered geekdom. The old geekdom was more interesting and creative and I'm pretty certain that this simulacrum will self-destruct because it seems unable to sustain itself with new ideas (the rise of organized skepdickism in fandom is another surefire death-knell for creativity). Nearly everything viable is an artifact of the old geekdom.

And one of the interesting aspects of the old geekdom is that it's where old subcultures went to un-die. So at Dragon*Con you could see neopagans cheek by jowl with goths, punks, cyberpunks, and on and on-- it's like an old Sears catalog of discarded youth cultures, kept forever undead in a geek context.

And so it is in a parallel fashion with whatever corner of the culture we're occupying here.

There's a dead, useless and obsolete kind of meme that is still hanging around. This old notion really needs to be shot in the forehead and sent to the glue factory, and that's this old Mainline Protestant hairsplitting tendency, this tendency to argue against your own (or worse, your friend's) position in some pointless quest for objectivity.

You see, I don't see it as mature and unbiased, I see it as self-defeating, myopic and to be perfectly blunt; cowardly.


It's also rather egotistical, in that the hairsplitter sets himself up as the arbiter, the ultimate judge deciding whether an idea or a story is valid. Of course, as with the old liberals, normality bias is always upheld in the end. Which only makes me wonder if the judge has any real insight on the Mysteries at all, or is simply a tourist.

Those with true experience seldom judge; they might not buy into everything they hear (they seldom do, actually), but neither do they decide they have to intervene on our behalf and reassure us that consensus reality rules unchallenged. I've met enough of these people to know the difference.

I've been around long enough to see how the judges eventually evolve into born-again skeptics. Almost always. I'm always surprised how shallow and literal their understanding of the Mysteries reveals itself to be. And that simply shows me that all the hairsplitting and all the "let's not get too carried away now" was nothing but chickenshit cowardice all along, a fear of finding themselves in over their heads, discussing something they have no understanding of or experience with.


Any kind of movement or subculture that gives people a reason to get up in the morning is about passion, it's about intensity. It's about fighting to get your point of view across. It's about wanting to replace someone else's ideas with yours, come hell or high water. In this day and age if you aren't passionate and committed about what you are trying to tell people, you won't even be ignored. You won't even get that far.

You either believe in the mysteries-- in synchronicity, in parapsychology, the paranormal and the rest of it-- or you don't. You're either passionate about pursuing alternate modes of thinking and consciousness or you're not. Period. There's plenty of room for argument and for debate that borders on near blood-letting-- in fact, that's half the fun of it. But I have I no time for the hairsplitters anymore. I know how that song ends.

This is a process that every person needs to undergo for themselves; it's been that way for thousands of years. But If people are constantly struggling to agree on the vaguest baselines-- or dealing with closet skepdicks who hang around only to sow dissension and distrust-- then nothing can ever be accomplished and everyone will just retreat their sanctums like a bunch of bitter old alchemists. And believe me, none of those guys died happy.



No matter how depressing and discouraging things may seem now, that does not mean they will remain so. History is nonlinear, and the fact that the current modalities are so intimately identified with the misery and fear people feel today lays the groundwork for their own extinction. Most of all, this know-nothing, knee-jerk, reductionist denialism that passes for educated enlightenment.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want my personal philosophy to be identified with the world as it stands in 2012. And that philosophy will, mark my words.

There are other forces at work in this world. If there's one message you've gotten from reading this blog, that should be it. If not, you haven't read enough. I've lived the things I write about. I've used Synchronicity and the rest of it again and again in my life in a very practical way, and I'm always astounded by the results when I tally them up.

So I say this to you all: Be brave.

Make a commitment to a path of inquiry and stick to it. Have the courage of your convictions. Accept that you'll have to accept evidence in lieu of proof and interesting questions instead of simple answers. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time, most of all your own.

The Doorway to Infinity

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

The Exegesis: The P Word

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


You know, "Paranormal."

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mothman, with whom I have several documented connections

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

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

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

You Don't Need Their Permission Anymore, Part 2

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

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

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

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

Running for CEO of Amerocon®, Incorporated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randi, up to his old tricks

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Don't Need Their Permission Anymore, Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whitney in happier times, Robyn Crawford on right

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

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

Happy now? Persephone in the Underworld

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

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

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

I believed in Act Three.

Demeter Rising: the elemental Tina Turner

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

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

Persephone, in other words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO BE CONTINUED

Fallen to Earth, Again (UPDATED)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whitney as Isis, in The Bodyguard

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

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

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



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

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

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

UPDATE: The Jackals feast on the Lioness' bones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Of This Men Shall Know Nothing

Max Ernst, The Twentieth Century, 1955

Every 10 years or so a new wave of enthusiasts gets all excited about UFOs. It's often preceded or accompanied by a hit movie or TV show, which in turn inspires a clutch of imitators. That brings outs out a new wave of UFOlogists, and rekindles interest in the works of elder statesmen in the field. The topic gets a lot of play in the media, there are a lot of sightings and rumors of sightings and all kinds of expectations arise and all sorts of prophecies are made.

The problem is that the UFOs themselves never seem to care much. The flaps die down. Sometimes there are major hoaxes or accusations of hoaxes and nothing ever seems to go anywhere. Then all of the new, young UFOlogists turn around and declare UFOlogy 'dead' and competition breaks out to see who be the most militant born-again debunker or have the most dramatic skeptical conversion epiphany.

Max Ernst, Two Foolish Virgins, 1947

The problem is that UFOlogy still remains an "ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) or bust" proposition, with all of the attendant messianic/rapture displacement grafted on thereto. The aliens are coming to save us from ourselves, just you wait. The religious aspect of this changes form from boom to bust to boom to bust, but the impulse is roughly the same.

While I certainly think it's possible---even probable-- that ETs have sent probes here and possibly manned (or more likely, robotic) missions here throughout the past what we call the UFO phenomenon is way, way too familiar and intimate with us to be anything truly alien.

Max Ernst, The Dark Gods, 1959

My ETH enthusiasm peaked first with the series premiere of The X-Files and then again with the release of the first X-Files film. After that I found myself looking at all the usual data and finding myself at the all of the usual dead-ends. It took some time to sort out but I later found that UFOs minus the ETH (namely, the Elusive Companion Hypothesis) worked quite well when I plugged them into all of the obsessions I plunged myself after dealing with those impasses; Synchronicity, High Weirdness, deep symbology, and so on.

In fact, the ECH was the missing puzzle piece that kept eluding me when dealing with those topics.

I also soon discovered that the ECH was lurking in the shadows of nearly every single obsession-- and often every mystery or conundrum-- in my life without me ever realizing it. I discover fresh examples of this all of the time and share them with you here.

Max Ernst, The Eye of Silence, 1943

The latest is Max Ernst (1891-1976), the great German Dadaist-Surrealist whom I like to call the "Punk Rock Picasso." My obsession with Ernst began in my late teens and was deep, immediate and entirely instinctual. Something about his work spoke to me on a profoundly personal level.

Max Ernst, The Angel of Hearth and Home, 1937

Much of his work is filled with humor and energy, but much of it also depicts a world in chaos, a world in which meaning is forever inverted and negotiable. A world in which menace and violence is either implicit or explicit, but somehow always absurd. But more importantly, his work is a riot of hidden meaning, double meaning, meaninglessness, or beyond meaning. Strange and frightening yet strangely familiar characters insinuate themselves from hidden corners. Landscapes and creatures that can only be described as "alien."

In other words, it's the work of a man who was intimately familiar with the secret world.

It was only much, much later that I found out that Ernst was an Alchemist and was believed by his fellow surrealists to be a genuine magician. From the 2001 book, Max Ernst and Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth By M. E. Warlick

Alchemical philosophy offers many symbolic parallels to surrealist thought...Ernst played a significant role because of the knowledge of Freudian theory that he brought to the surrealist group early in its development, and because of his contributions to the sexualized nature of surrealist art. Throughout his career, Ernst fused male and female imagery into cohesive hybrids, similar to that most pervasive symbol of perfection, the alchemical Androgyne. Analyzing these aspects of his work reveals the pervasive alchemical symbolism it contains...

The construction of Max Ernst as the magician of the surrealist movement began early in his career.

By the 1930s, André Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, René Crevel, and Hans Arp all described Ernst as possessing magical powers of transformation. In (his autobiographical writings), Ernst clarified his indebtedness to hermetic traditions, citing alchemy as a model for his working processes and claiming Cologne's occult past as his artistic heritage.

Chemical Nuptials, 1947

His first hermetic images appeared during the Cologne Dada period...his interests in psychology, alchemy, and other occult phenomena paralleled similar explorations among the early surrealists. Their search for psychic automatism, visits to clairvoyants, group séances, and walking tours of the alchemical haunts of Paris are described as a backdrop for the evolution of Ernst's art throughout the 1920s and 1930s...In "Au delà de la peinture," he described alchemy as the perfect metaphor for his working processes."

Unfortunately, "Alchemy" has become one of those buzzwords that poseurs throw around when they want to sound like they're edgy and profound. As a concept it's become defanged all too often, stripped of its inherent insanity. But we don't fall for that kind of thing here. We look at the aspect of Alchemy that some want to run away from-- the Elusive Companion aspect of it.

As Jacques Vallee puts it in Passport to Magonia:

Throughout medieval times, a major current of thought distinct from official religion existed, culminating in the works of the alchemists and hermetics. Among such groups were to be found some of the early modern scientists and men remarkable for the strength of their independent thinking and for their
adventurous life, such as Paracelsus. The nature of the beings who mysteriously appeared, dressed in shiny garments or covered with dark hair, and with whom communication was so hard to establish intrigued these men intensely.

And again, as Robert Anton Wilson explained these kinds of contacts in depth in the first volume of Cosmic Trigger, quoting Timothy Leary:

Interstellar ESP may have been going on for all our history, Tim (Leary) went on, but we just haven't understood. Our nervous systems have translated their messages into terms we could understand.

The "angels" who spoke to Dr. Dee, the Elizabethan scientist-magician, were extraterrestrials, but Dee couldn't comprehend them in those terms and considered them "messengers from God." The same is true of many other shamans and mystics.

And as I added before:

Indeed, these contacts-- whether actual or aspirational --lie at the heart of Alchemical enterprise. All of the great masters were primarily concerned with contact with --and harnessing the power of-- "angels."

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, Sedona, Arizona 1947

Max Ernst left his native Cologne for Paris but left for America during the Nazi takeover. Ernst eventually settled in Sedona, Arizona, where he lived with his second wife, the painter Dorothea Tanning. Ernst's work became considerably more playful and almost cartoonish during this time, but the Arizona landscape obviously had a profound influence on his work, as did the art and culture of the Hopi Indians.

Maybe other parts of the Sedona landscape did as well. Sedona is known as an energy vortex location, as well as UFO hotspot. So I got to thinking- did Ernst ever paint any UFOs?

You tell me.

Aside from this stunning piece (The Almost Late Romanticism, 1960) typical Ernstian foliage with what looks like a classic glowing cigar-shaped UFO, Ernst's work is littered with tantalizingly explicit references to touchstones in the high weirdness canon. Along with the endless parade of alien beings dancing through alien landscapes under alien suns.

Yet Ernst isn't painting science fiction here-- his alternate reality is blithe, perfectly matter of fact. You take it or leave it. He's not trying to sell you on its reality. He's spent far too much time there to waste time with that.

Plus, he doesn't really care what you think about his reality, in the end. Alchemists never do.

This Sedona era piece (Tribute to Yves Tanguy, 1955) pictures the red rock mesas, along with what looks for all the world like the Millennium Falcon, or at least its prototype. Take it or leave it. It's all the same to Ernst.

Then there's this little green man (Old Man River, 1953), who sits among the deserts where the Anasazi once roamed, with a curiously familiar elongated skull. Yet at the same time, that strange bubble around him is oddly reminiscent of the Star Child from 2001.


But Ernst's flirtations with High Strangeness- or any kind of strangeness for that matter-- didn't start in Sedona. There's this collage, from his classic 1929 collage-based graphic novel The Hundred Headless Woman. The numinous power of it is like a punch in the gut and more powerful than any photograph. And strangely, more validating. Ernst's unconscious testimony trumps any photo, which after all, can be hoaxed.

And this, which almost seems to depict a classic abduction scenario over an industrial city.


Or this ziggurat-shaped flying saucer. Remember all of this is almost 20 years before Kenneth Arnold and Roswell.

From the same book, we see a version of Ernst's alter ego, "Loplop, Bird Superior," looking for all the world like the Mothman. He's even drawn to the streetlights, like a moth.

From 1934's A Week of Kindness we see a kidnapping (read: abduction) committed by man with the head of an Easter Island Maoi pasted over him. Now that we're finding that some of the Maoi have entire bodies buried beneath the soil, the Ancient Aliens boys must be champing at the bit to get a camera crew down there.

Of course, Ernst was working in the context of Alchemy and magic and not UFOlogy, but that's exactly my point. Strangeness seems to be the expressway to what is really going on behind UFOs, and what has been going on for a very, very, very long time.

Arthur C. Clarke is widely quoted for his maxim that any science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. And god knows there's way too much mindless chatter about magic out there. Even so, maybe our magic is their science after all.

But every time I look at UFO photos and read about recent sightings or abductions I get trapped in the letters and the pixels like I'm encased in amber. When I start to look at UFOs through the prism of Synchronicity, Symbol and Strangeness, it all opens like a flower and thousands of puzzle pieces start falling into place like a Tetris game played by an invisible hand.

And then things start to happen. In this consensus space-time. Lots of things. Lots of really strange, sometimes impossible things.

But that's a whole other discussion. And maybe you need to find that out for yourself anyway.

UPDATE: Confirming the very foundational thesis of The Secret Sun, the Fortean Times explains how UFOs were the catalyst behind the Sixties counterculture in England, and how Ernst's ziggurat UFO played a talismanic role in that revolution.

UPDATE: Loren Coleman explains in a story on the death of Ernst's onetime lover Leonora Carrington how Ernst may have summoned a Mothman-like entity to Cornwall.

The Owlman story began when paranormal researcher Tony “Doc” Shiels was approached by a man, Don Melling, who had been visiting the area on holiday from Lancaster. Melling said that on April 17, 1976, his two daughters, 12-year-old June and her 9-year-old sister, Vicky, were walking through the woods near Mawnan church when they saw a large winged creature hovering above the church tower. The girls were frightened and immediately ran to tell their father.

Shiels has suggested himself that surrealism may hold the key. Sixteen days before the first recorded sighting of the Owlman the surrealist artist Max Ernst died (April Fool's Day, 1976- CK). In 1937 Ernst had visited the area with friends (apparently including Carrington according to photographs from that time) and performed rituals to invoke the appearance of all sorts of mysterious creatures. One of these may have been Nightjarman, half bird, half human.

Kirby's Cauldron (Updated w/ Extra Kirby Prophecy)

From Raj Sisodia. Enjoy.

A new group has been excavating the Maoi at Easter Island and it turns out that some of them are not just heads and busts but actually have entire bodies buried beneath the ground. Explaining away the logistics behind this massive undertaking has gotten that much harder for the increasingly tedious orthodox history crowd.


And who was there first? Jack Kirby, of course. In 1959.

The Mother of All Modern Rituals

You can keep your Mandonna EgyptoRoman war is peace rally. Nothing will ever be as over the top -- or as revealing-- as the opening of the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai in 2008.

Take some time to watch these videos. It will change the way you look at the world, and more importantly, look at all of the struggles to control the Persian Gulf. All about oil?

No, I don't think so.



Now remember, the fireworks display was meant to be seen from space. In fact, it made very little sense to anyone on the ground. How about that?

Madonna NeFiLim 2012 (UPDATED 2/7)

Here's the halftime show if you haven't seen it yet. I've been down this road so many times and all of this imagery is so embedded into the culture, I don't think I can say much I haven't said a million times before.

Our Lady of Sirius

But here again we're seeing ancient ritual motifs taken not from the "Mystery Schools" (sic) as some historical illiterates might have you believe, but from their opposites; the elite cults of state, with their pomp and circumstance and their regimentation and militarism. This is straight out of the Temples of Jupiter and Juno on Vatican Hill, and the meaning, message and desired outcome behind it is exactly the same. "World Peace," indeed. More like "Pax Romana."

Never mind Madonna's runaway narcissism, identifying herself with all of these symbols: is she the "High Goddess of Pop" now?



Conquered people always dance suggestively for their new masters during the high holy days, going back thousands of years. Well, the women do. The conquered men kill each other off in the arenas.

The Black Sun

I've been doing some research on who "Vigilant Citizen™" is-- or rather are-- whose interests they represent and who they in fact work for and I'm nursing this crazy, nutty thought like maybe they were hired on as consultants for this grotesque display. Zany, right? Well, given what I'm learning-- never mind all of the Fortune 500 companies that bankroll their various sites with advertising-- maybe not so zany. Notice their sites have been rather quiet lately.

Winged Sundisk

I've taken some screenshots for when the vid gets yanked.

Notes: This was a replay of the 2008 New York Nefilim- New England Patriarchs game with yet another 17 in the score. The area code of Lucas Oil Stadium? 317. I kid you not.

In case you were puzzled by the admixture of Roman militarism and Egyptian religion, don't be-- that's as old as the seven hills. It just shows whoever designed this display knew all about Roman Egyptomania. Which probably proves it wasn't the Vigilant Citizen™ cabal after all.

UPDATE: Here's a photo gallery on The Daily Mail if you haven't the patience to sit through 15 minutes of woefully inept lipsynching and puzzlingly doubletracked live vocals. Yes, it's exactly what you'd expect it to be.

UPDATE: Knowles' Law has it that whenever a controversy erupts over symbols in the media it's meant to distract from a deeper symbolic narrative. Like, oh, androgynous EgyptoRoman militarism:

Middle finger 'malfunction' mars Super Bowl halftime show

Rapper M.I.A. provided a middle finger salute to network cameras Sunday night during the 12-minute extravaganza, when she joined Madonna during a performance of the latter's new single, "Give Me All Your Luvin'."

The apologies from the NFL and the broadcaster, NBC, came quickly -- they blamed each other.

UPDATE: Ikea and Activision join Time Warner, Visa, McDonald's, Ford, Chrysler, Dunkin' Donuts, Sears, MetLife and many, many others as proud sponsors of the Vigilant Citizen™ family of websites.

UPDATE 2/7: Was the Montreal-based music industry internet viral marketing agency that many have said is the real force behind corporate-sponsored conspiratainment site Vigilant Citizen™ involved in the Madonna halftime special after all? The producers of record are Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil and Moment Factory. I've traced Vigilant Citizen's™ servers to Sherbrooke, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal. That's one hell of a coincidence.

Anyone with information on this, please let me know.