The Sand is Stained with the Blood of the Gods.

I don't know if John Lilly's version of the omniscient Orbital Machine Intelligence (OMI) which he named ECCO (for "Earth Coincidence Control Office") is as true or as real than any other OMI fever-dream.

Catching Up with Nick Redfern, Reluctant UFOlogist

 

The most-read post in the history of this blog-- at least since Blogger began making stats available in May of 2009-- was a blockbuster interview with Nick Redfern, who this writer sees as the top UFO researcher of our times.

Astronaut Theology: Things That Should Not Be Known

The "Moon as Alien Base" meme might not be the most popular meme out there, but it's one of the most persistent. 

Apes, Aliens and Artificial Intelligence

Hidden Experience host Mike Clelland! recently found himself channeling The Secret Sun. I (along with many others) was so deeply impressed with the results that I asked Mike if I could repost it here. After several passes and revisions, Mike passed along the code and I'm republishing here for The Secret Sun Nation.

Esteban Maroto: The Erotic and the Esoteric

In many ways, Our Gods Wear Spandex was about being a young and impressionable fanboy at a time when esotericism was common as crummy printing and cheesy advertising in comics. 

The 17th Gus Grissom Post

When I first began digging into the Gus Grissom enigma I was driven by a hunch, more than anything. I was poking around Barack Obama's biography after the election and kept stumbling on links to the dead astronaut while cross-referencing dates and places that were important to the Obama campaign. 

Fringe and the Hard Sci-Fi Paradox

This season I had only one wish for Fringe; I wanted it to give as much of that 90s/Vancouver X-Files vibe as it could possibly manage. The X-Files leaving Vancouver was as much as a shock to my fanboy worldview as The Clash going pop for London Calling was.

There is Supernature

Jeff Kripal is doing yeoman's work in getting the mystical geek gospel out to the mainstream. Hot on the heels of Authors of the Impossible (which we discussed here and here), Jeff has a new book out called Mutants and Mystics in which he explores the superhero meme and its spiderweb of mystical and magical reverberations.

My Ultimate Halloween Movie: Quatermass and the Pit

 

The lights are finally back on at Secret Sun Central after the recent Nor'Easter. I've seen some wild storms in my day, but nothing that left the trail of destruction this storm did. 

The Path of Tension of the Dreaming Mind

A new member at the Secret Sun FB group recently asked what all of the excitement was about. He scanned the page but couldn't get a lock on it. I told him the following:

The Secret Sun is kind of like the Internet Island of Misfit Toys. It's for all the people who can't pretend they haven't peeked under the reality curtain once or twice. It's for people who don't fit into all of the thought-replacement modalities out there.

The Re-Enchantment Dialogues: The Power of Story

A new member at the Secret Sun FB group recently asked what all of the excitement was about. He scanned the page but couldn't get a lock on it. I told him the following:

The Secret Sun is kind of like the Internet Island of Misfit Toys. It's for all the people who can't pretend they haven't peeked under the reality curtain once or twice. It's for people who don't fit into all of the thought-replacement modalities out there.

On the Earth, but Not of this Earth

"In the world, not of it" is a sturdy Christian mantra that seems to have been derived from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Roman Church but is in fact a very Gnostic idea. 

Believing that the world was a counterfeit creation built to enslave the souls of living beings in base matter, the Gnostics were known to go to extreme lengths to separate themselves from it. 

The Magical Art of Being Alone

This is a great analysis of Hollywood's

creative bankruptcy- go read it after you read this

It's been a difficult year for me in many regards, but at the same time a very magical one. I'm beginning to think that's the way it works. The horoscope said something about Saturn in one house and Jupiter in another (or something), which I think roughly describes the way things are going.

 

That Other F-Word

There are so many words in the English language that trigger deep feelings of nausea in me, but perhaps none so much as the F-word. Yes, every time I hear the word "faith" -- or worse, "people of faith " -- I feel involuntary spasms at the back of my throat, the room starts to spin, and images of rotting tuna sandwiches fill my eyes. 

That's the Spirit (but not Religious)

"Spiritual but not religious" is a phrase that's become increasingly common these days. What exactly the phrase means depends on who lays claim to it. For some it means they still believe in church teachings but prefer to sleep in on Sunday. For others (more than the former category, probably) it means a belief in angels, reincarnation, and a host of quasi-Christian/New Age syntheses.

AstroGnostic: The Man Who Fell to Earth

At the height of his first wave of success in the 1970s David Bowie signed to star in Nic Roeg's adaption of the seminal 60s sci-fi novel, The Man Who Fell to Earth. I'm not sure what I think about the movie itself, but it seems to be an unacknowledged landmark in the ongoing AstroGnostic revelation. As well as a film rife with signifiers that resonate much more strongly than what Roeg put onscreen.

Idiocracy is Here and Now

You know, liberal, conservative, moderate? I don't care. It all comes out in the wash, just as long as the lights stay on and the toilets still work. The real threat to this country is not fascism or socialism or even terrorism, it's stupidity, which is bipartisan and ecumenical.

 

Brains, the Final Frontier

I've thought for years that conscious attention is only a tiny fraction of our consciousness. Turns out I may be right. Check out this article on the decision making process.

Fishing in the stream of consciousness, researchers now can detect our intentions and predict our choices before we are aware of them ourselves. The brain, they have found, appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision -- an eternity at the speed of thought. Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice. "We think our decisions are conscious," said neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, who is pioneering this research. "But these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't rule out free will, but it does make it implausible."

The Secret Commonwealth of Elusive Companions

We see the world through an extremely limited band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The same goes for our hearing. We consciously process a remarkably tiny proportion of the limited sensory input we receive. 

We are only able to measure that which can perceive. And we still don't understand exactly how or why we process anything, other than to facilitate our survival on a purely reptilian level. 

Nightmares in Camelot, Part 3: Aliens and Alchemists

The pilot episode of The Outer Limits "The Galaxy Being" (originally titled "Please Stand By") stands along side Star Trek's pilot "The Cage" and the pilot for The X-Files as a definitive statement of intent as well as an indelible blueprint for what was to come.

Slave to the Gods Redux

Well, the day job has been the day, night and weekend job lately which is why posting has been light. But at the same time hours spent at the computer makes me a captive audience for all kinds of inputting- audiobooks, podcasts, movies and various video ephemera, as well as all kinds of Victoria narrations and bedstand reading.

Secret Sun Picture Parade: Big Head Odd

Every picture tells a story worth a thousand words. Or something. Welcome to the original Picture Parade- accept no substitutes. Hints, clues and double meanings galore. Get out your secret (or Secret Sun) decoder rings....

Nightmares in Camelot, Part 1: The Outer Limits

In my previous post I'd mentioned how the prospect of doing The Outer Limits justice was too much for me at the moment, given my current responsibilities. However, I also realize that some of you might not be familiar with the series or the esoteric topics I was going to examine it in the light of.

The Hidden Experience of the Secret Sun

Impact caused a "seismic event," but left no trace of evidence

Mike Clelland and I had two marathon gabfests this past weekend on the Signal and the ECH. One of which went over a cliff of sidebars and the other one was a keeper. Mike put it up on the Hidden Experience blog, which I hope all of you have bookmarked. 

Thor: Fit for the King

 

  A typically-tardy, completely-biased review... 

 Every sci-fi and superhero movie of the past 30 years has at least a little Jack Kirby blood pumping in its veins (and most have a lot), as well as most action movies post-Die Hard. The same goes for most video games as well.

 

Ockham, the Occult and the Ultraterrestrials

Ockham's Razor is one of those famous dictums that people use in arguments and often do so incorrectly. 

The whole story of it is pretty tangled and is better explained elsewhere, but for our purposes let's stick to the common distillation of it, being that the simplest answer to a problem is usually the correct one.

Jack Kirby, Stanley Kubrick and the SynchroSpace Odyssey

The first installment of this series dealt with the plasticity of memory, centered on the fact that my most vivid memories from my childhood were either nightmares or hallucinations, many of which had strands of commonality with abduction experiences.

Stanley Kubrick and the Reality Stargate

Gnostic scholar Jay Weidner has been making the rounds with a new film series called Kubrick's Odyssey. It's Weidner's contention that Stanley Kubrick was enlisted to help manufacture film and photography for a simulation of an Apollo 11 mission for public consumption, which would keep the real mission secret.

 

Our Elusive Companions: Reality Is as Reality Does

What is truly amazing to me is that even though there are strands of commonality between these ultra-vivid nightmares/memories of mine and abduction phenomena, there's no narrative commonality.

In Case You Haven't Heard...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama announced tonight that the United States has killed Osama bin Laden and has custody of his body.

Obama said bin Laden, 54, was killed in a firefight by American forces outside a mansion in Islamabad, Pakistan today. No Americans were killed in the raid, Obama said.

Saucers and Secrets in the Sunset: Season Nine of The X-Files

I have a strange fetish for the ends of things - pop culture things, that is. I call it the "LA Woman Phenomenon." For some reason it seems as if creative endeavors define themselves as they close up shop.

AstroGnostic: Revelations of the Matrix

The Matrix has any number of pop culture antecedents, but the most significant and by far the most well-known of them as far as the basic plot is concerned is 'The Cage' (aka 'The Menagerie'), the original Star Trek pilot that was reworked as a two-part episode during the original series' first season. 

We have three nearly-omnipotent figures with the power to alter a person's (specifically, an abductee's) perception of the physical world and do so while their subjects are imprisoned.

Slouching Towards Atlantis

Sometimes history converges in a way to kick our understanding of the world into a new plateau. Oftentimes it's not recognized until much later, but those with their ears low to the ground usually see it before others.

Christopher Nolan's Memento: The Mirror-Matrix

 

There’s a metatextual sequel to The Matrix that isn't recognized as such. The film in question features two of that blockbuster’s lead characters in prominent and analogous roles, and it tells much the same type of story that The Matrix does. 

Only in reverse.

 

The Matrix: Agents/Angels/Archons/Aliens

These days it’s easy to forget what an astonishing feat of craftsmanship the first Matrix film is, given how it over-exposed and over-discussed it was. 

The technical, thematic and visual force The Matrix packed has yet to be equaled, especially by its own utterly forgettable sequels. The film is so complete, that any sequel seems redundant (just like the first Star Wars).

Dark City: The Ante-Matrix (and the Anti-Matrix)

Although only one of the films would break through to the mass consciousness, starting in 1998 the high priests of Hollywood would weave a triptych of films that on a mundane level seemed unrelated, but on an esoteric level tell the same story.

The Pink Star of the Sea

As I said on William Henry's show in December (and here as well) we need to be on the lookout for water symbolism this year, as well as mermaid/mermen and other symbols associated with Sirius in esoteric lore. The recent Serious Mysteries posts explored these memes in depth, particularly as they relate to James Cameron, who is obviously very deeply obsessed with both aliens and the oceans (and Gus Grissom, strangely enough).

And She's Buying the Stairway to Sirius

Note the Pleiades (aka the Subaru) surrounding the Moon

The second hour of my Stairway to Sirius talk with Thomas Malone is up here on BlogTalk Radio now. In it, we puzzle over the paradoxes of Symbology and what it can and cannot tell us. If you missed it, the first hour is here.

 

thought_experiment_001:the_apple

Back sometime in halcyon days of the 1990s (you know, back when everyone had "jobs" and "money") comics superstar Grant Morrison was staring down the dreaded cancellation barrel on his opus The Invisibles, the comic he claimed Tibetan aliens were channeling through him (more or less). 

Stairway to Sirius: Bonus Picture Parade

Before the Super Bowl last night I had a conversation with Thomas Malone of the Grok the Talk podcast. The topic is the Stairway to Sirius, but we covered a whole host of topics before we even got to it such as the Secret Sun itself, King Tut, Synchronicity, 17, symbolism, the Roman roots of American ritual politics, secret societies, shadow projection and scapegoating and on and on and on. 

This is just part one- we're going to reconvene on Thursday.

The Star Wars Symbol Cycle: A Long Time Ago

Isis became a slave during her search for Osiris

Return of the Jedi is generally seen as the least of the three original films. A lot of this has to do with the Ewoks, the feral teddy bears that are featured heavily throughout the film.

 

Star Wars Symbol Cycle: Empire, or the Hanged Man

Note prominent Solar Cross looming over the action

On the surface of it, The Empire Strikes Back is a old-time pulp adventure story and as such is the favorite of many Star Wars fans. The interesting thing about the film is how the story itself-- a middle piece with no dramatic resolution or climax-- is overshadowed by a stirring spiritual homily delivered by a badly-animated puppet (of all things).

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: The Source of the Force

We've talked about the spiritual sources of the Force before, and I've touched upon Jack Kirby's influence as well, but I thought it deserves a much closer look. 

Sync Log: Raptor's Trust

I mentioned the other day how Synchronicity has been a dominant force in my life lately. Here's a good example: A couple weeks ago I finally got a good picture of the hawk that lives in my backyard.

The Star Wars Symbol Cycle: Son of the Suns

The Star Wars story-cycle is one of the most popular of our modern myths, but also one of the most garbled. For the original trilogy, George Lucas consciously drew upon mythic and religious elements (ransacking every myth, fairy tale, scifi story and comic book he could get his hands on, especially Jack Kirby's New Gods), but not always coherently. 

Star Wars Symbol Cycle: Gary Kurtz, the Force Behind the Force

 

At their best, movies once offered us gnosis of a kind that the ancients could only write their weird apocalypses about.

It's part of a larger phenomenon- the most enthusiastic adopters of any new communication technology are people selling either religion or sex. Both offer an escape from the grinding boredom of life.

The Star Wars Symbol Cycle: The Irresistable Force

In 100 years everyone will have forgotten the prequels and the sequels and the spinoffs and focus solely on the original Star Wars movie. Why? Because there's nothing said in anything that came after that wasn't said best in the first film. 

A Synchromystic on UFOMystic

There's a brand spanking new interview up with yours truly on UFOMystic. 

The theme is the sadly shrinking common ground between sci-fi fandom and the Weirdness communities, and a review of some of the most powerful collisions between the two (PKD, Quatermass, etc.). Read on...

Friday Frightfest: They Came from Outer Space & Blood from the Mummy's Tomb

I live for the moments when memes converge in the most unlikely places and then step outside the boundaries of their ostensible origin points. They Came from Beyond Space provided one of those moments; it's a very low budget British sci-fi quickie from the 60s, the kind of junk that usually doesn't even scan with most people. But I can attest that you'll find strange symbolism pop up in these films like mushrooms in the New Jersey rain. 

Stairway to Sirius: Dogtown Blues

The Sirens, from last year's season finale

Exactly a year before the season premiere of Californication on Sunday, we looked at the extremely incongruous Sirius symbolism that was all over last season's finale. It was all part of an absolute orgy of Sirius and Merpeople symbols that was floating through the Memestream at the time.

 

The Year of Thinking Magically

The Vision of Hermes Trismegistus, 

Johfra Bosschart, 1985

The Mindscape of Alan Moore has insinuated itself into my own mindscape the past few days. It got me to thinking about magic, what it is and what it isn't, as well as magical thinking. 

The Obligatory 2010 in Review Post

Yeah, yeah, yeah- we've seen it all before...

Well, my 2010 kind of sucked. How about yours? It's safe to say 2010 kind of sucked all across the world unless you spent it on Wall Street or the City of London or any of the other bankster havens.

 I'd rehash some of the stories that we saw this year but it's all too depressing, plus there are a million other sites for that. Year in Review's don't have quite the resonance they once did in the pre-Internet Age, since the ubiquity of the media ensures that we all get sick of whatever the big issue of the day is well before the news cycle is over.