Sunday, May 24, 2015

Bodysurfing the Apocalypse

Still from San Andreas, a movie about "The Big One"

Have you spent any time in the ocean? Have you spent any time dealing with the powerful, often invisible forces of currents, undertow, waves and the other irresistible forces of nature in the waters? 


If you do so as a child, you learn a very powerful lesson about the world and your place in it; you are one fragile, vulnerable creature facing overwhelming forces that are often imperceptible, and all the more powerful for being so.

In school, we learn dangerous myths about social heroes and movements. Only later do the curious realize nearly all of these movements and heroes were puppets dancing on invisible strings, and that the illusion of heroism and individualism they represented were just carefully-crafted public relations propaganda. The tide is not so easily turned.

We're at a strange point in time when fear and mistrust are epidemic. We sense larger currents but can't quite see them through the endless blizzard of noise and distraction thrown up in everyone's faces. But you'd have to be asleep not to hear the wardrums on the distant horizon. Whether through incompetence or design, the NATO powers seem hellbent on cementing the Sino-Russian alliance and provocations seem to be occurring on a daily basis now. China slyly warns it's just a matter of time before America's aggression in the Pacific triggers an "unfortunate accident."

The Middle East is on the verge of total chaos as the Oil Wars continue apace. Saudi Arabia was willing to do enormous economic damage to the world's oil producing powers (Venezuela is on the verge of social collapse) to regain its primacy as the leading oil exporter, but that victory may turn out to be pyrrhic, if its clients in Iraq follow the traditional model and turn on their paymasters.

There's a lot more to be said about all of this and more. If this were a political blog I'd do so. I've been toying with the idea of starting an adjunct blog to comment on the global political situation. For now I'll refer you to this absolute must-read series over at Rune Soup. You can start with the latest installment and work backwards.

But while it's always important to stay aware I'm also not here to sell you illusions about "turning back the tide." I'd rather teach you how to swim. Or surf.


There are two sides to all of this escalating apocalypticism. And the side we'd do well to concentrate on is the unveiling afoot, since that is in fact the definition of the word (as most of you probably now). It should be remembered that the Gnostics were the great Apocalypticians of their era, as well as the great UFOlogists of their time.

I hope at this point in time you realize the two are inseparable. And I hope we've entirely dispensed with all of the Hollywood mythology about our elusive companions

As I wrote last year, the media's little "Death of UFOs" orgy was a certain signal that the issue would heat up again in 2015 and so it has. So much so that it's popped up in my own backyard, with no small amount of synchronistic/Kabbalistic resonance, I might add.

Then there is this epidemic of strange noises heard all over the world for the past several years. Several theories have been floated about them, none of them particularly convincing or compelling. 

As you'd expect, the least convincing (and teeth-grindingly offensive) theories are the ones floated by scientists, who act as if it's all perfectly natural, just like the recently invented "fireball season", that was conjured up out of pixie dust to explain all the heaps of slag falling from the sky at speeds a fraction of those of meteorites and so on.



As you'd expect we're also seeing Queen of Heaven apparitions, this time in beleaguered Christian communities in Iraq. These apparitions have a long and illustrious history in times of crisis, going back to the Punic Wars. The most famous of these is the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Portugal in 1917 (the year of the Russian Revolution and while the Great War still raged), but there was also a remarkable apparition at Zeitoun, Egypt during the tumult of the late 60s as well. 

Aleister Crowley, arguably the 20th Century's first rock star, talked about currents in an occult context, the 93 current and all that. It's a concept that I think needs to be explored more deeply, outside of a Crowleyean context. We are seeing the convergence of a number of historical currents at present, but I'm not entirely sure that the men who are orchestrating so much behind the scenes are the masters of the universe we're supposed to believe. 

Currents have their own logic and find their own path. You can build dams and seawalls but there's always that black swan event, a practical inevitability. You can see the ruins of any number of great empires as evidence of that.

I can say without reservation that you can expect High Weirdness (and let's restore the "High" to its original perch as opposed to run of the mill weirdness) to rush back in with the tide. During the Cold War, the relatively serene flow of information (three networks, a relatively limited number of major newspapers and magazines) was able to control it, but today it's going to make its presence known in a way that only normality bias and ridicule will be able to diminish. 

Rather than some oddball pursuit, High Weirdness is going to intrude into our lives and demand a reaction. For most, that'll be denial or disbelief. But for you it will create subtle, powerful currents that can be used for your own purposes, if you're smart. It may often appear like those undertow warnings- an invisible power that swimmers often ignore or scoff at, because it can't be seen. But if you ever fought against an undertow, you take it seriously. And so it goes with the Weird.

I recently read some trolls on one of the BAD (born again debunker) UFO blogs crowing about how we don't hear about the kinds of close encounters we did in the Cold War era, and how that was proof it was all a big delusion, oh what fools we were. Of course the real story is that these encounters are usually no longer reported, and certainly not circulated by the mainstream media. 

But I think a lot of the activity we saw in that period- and I include poltergeist, psychic and other activity as well- was an inevitable byproduct of the now-forgotten existential fears of the Nuclear Age, as well as a possible running message that other forces were at work in the world. Crisis often manifests strange powers. As those existential fears return, as do the existential threats, I think we will see a new wave of High Weirdness, along with a new information-suppression effort about it that we're seeing already.

Either way, I'd say it's time to get those surfboards out of the shed and give them a good waxing. I'm seeing some swells curl on the horizon....