Messages from the Other Side

I don't believe in certain aspects of the paranormal because I find the various books or TV shows on the topic so wonderfully convincing. I do so because people I trust have told me about their own experiences with powerful and unusual phenomena. 

Memory Expansion

Lately I've been experimenting with a bit of active imagination before my hypnogogia sessions. There are some dreams (well, nightmares) from my childhood I'm trying to get a deeper perspective on using various visualization techniques. I've been phenomenally unsuccessful.

Beyond Synchronicity: Prophetic Dreaming

Dreaming and prophecy (or psi, if you prefer) used to walk hand in hand. Ancient religious texts- The Bible certainly among them- are filled with prophets who spoke (or listened) to the gods in their dreams. 

Veteran of the Synchro Wars

There's a certain school of thought (let's call them School #1) that is willing to entertain the paranormal - psi, poltergeists, UFOs and so on - but does so in the context of a kind of unconventional interpersonal psychology. 

Childhood's End and the Theater of Apocalypse

SyFy is finally getting around to adapting Arthur C. Clarke's classic, Childhood's End. It's one of those books that feels as if you've seen it adapted, probably because it's been hijacked so completely by other writers.

Memories, Dreams, Remote Viewings

"Mixed blessing" is a term I have some trouble with. In my experience all blessings are mixed, in that they come with a price tag attached. It's the ebb and flow of the Universe.

You may not see it right off, but eventually you will. Call it Karma, call it Kismet, call it a kick in the eye, but nothing really comes for free in this world.

De-Science the $h!t Out of It

I had a dream Thursday night of attending a holiday meal at my childhood bestie Tom's house. It was at a huge table that seemed to snake throughout the house. I was at the far end, talking to his two nephews who (in the dream) were playing for the New York Giants. They were attending the dinner party in full game gear (I'd just watched Silver Linings Playbook).  

That next day Tom, who I hadn't spoken with for several weeks (or months, time has been getting away from me lately), called me.  

The Skies Aren't Right

It seems like yesterday. 

Nine years and change ago I was relatively symptom-free. I was that way for several months and thought I was out of the woods with a problem (CMPwFM) that was on-and-off since I was in high school (it was diagnosed then as "growing pains," if you can believe that). 

FADE OUT: On Hollywood's Visionaries

There are certain things you try to find comfort in on this hideous world, one of which is that once in a while a unique vision shines through the sludge of sameness and finds a niche in the entertainment world. 

It gives you a ray of hope, that maybe the Orwellian nightmare we are living in might one day relent.

Mars and the Great Stagnation

By now a lot of you may have heard that the director of the new space recruitment film The Martian* was told of the "discovery" of liquid ice on the Red Planet while he was in preproduction for the film. 

The New X-Files Trailer is TOTALLY METAL

The trailer here doesn't show much, but what it does show seems to lock in with a leaked report on the first episode of the new series (titled "My Struggle").

Entrainment Watch®: Speaking of Trial Balloons....

A recent, apparently-hoaxed story had it that the American Psychiatric Association- last seen trying to surreptitiously normalize pedophilia- was trying to declare religious belief a disease. The question I have is is that a hoax story or a trial balloon. 

Religion is Now a "Mental Illness?"

Well, it had to happen: religious belief is now declared a mental illness. 

Which conveniently renders 9/10ths of the world's population as potential invalids who can be legally dispensed with according to any doctor's whims:

Transhumanism Jumps the Shark

Let's just get this out on the table now - Transhumanism is still a pipe dream. 

It doesn't matter how much H+ propaganda you see in the movies or on TV or in sci-fi novels or comic books, it simply doesn't exist as a practical science.

NASA'S NEW HORusZONeS: The Other Shoe Dropping?

Back in July I posted this bit of speculation on the New Horizons mission:

For my part I can't help but wonder if the Pluto dog and pony show isn't a distraction. 

 This is nothing but the vaguest hunch but I can't help but wonder if this is just a fly-by for the media and the real target of this mission lies in the space beyond.  

Does Anyone Remember the Future?

I've begun watching Extant, the CBS Halle Berry vehicle on Amazon Prime. Like The Whispers, it's another of Steven Spielberg's attempts to conquer TV (television was in fact Spielberg's first love, not movies), and also like The Whispers, yet another example of his alien obsession.

His obsession seems to have gotten a lot more sophisticated since War of the Worlds, and seems to deal more with forces that seem more akin to Poltergeist than E.T.. It's not the greatest science fiction I've ever seen, though it's keeping my attention far more effectively than most TV shows seem to be able to these days. And it is a fairly typical example of what's going on in the genre. 

X-Files Lite, Part II: Season Seven

Season Seven found The X-Files Ship taking on water. The general consensus was that this was the venerable warhorse's final lap. The long, difficult hours were taking their toll and both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson wanted out. 

Shootin' at Satellites, or That Other Star Wars Sequel

I've been writing about the militarization of space since the very earliest days of these blogs, wondering at one point if in fact there wasn't a secret war taking place over our heads already. 

Witchcraft Revives, Again

You live long enough and you see the same patterns emerge, over and over again. A generation comes of age, falls under the spell of Rationalism but then leaves school and gravitates towards thought contagions that horrify the professors and teachers they once tried so hard to emulate.

NASA's Dog Day Space-Cartoon

NAZCA NASA's been having quite a summer.

You've probably been following the controversy over the massive lights on the dwarf planet Ceres (named after the mother goddess of Rome who was identified with Isis and Demeter) and the subsequent shenanigans we've come to expect from everyone's favorite labyrinthine comedy troupe.

"We manipulate his path so that he stumbles over certain books."

When you begin to see the Universe as a living entity and not a barren void, you come to understand the subtle patterns in life. What's more, you begin to move in time with them to a certain extent. 

The Strange New Certainty about Aliens

Maybe "Half-Billion miles from Earth" 

wasn't an error after all...

A lot of you probably saw this story, coming on the heels of a story circulating in April that scientists were "certain" of finding evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations by 2025.

Now no less a luminary than Stephen Hawking (hawks again...) has been recruited for a new Super-SETI, one that promises results with all the gusto of a Silicon Valley startup...

Pluto's Republic: The New Horus-Zone Mission

NASA's latest ritual working mission is rife with the dominant theme of our times, Death.

Death is everywhere these days, and the threat of all kinds of wars, civil and otherwise, is looming over our heads every day. It only makes sense that the ritualists at NASA would choose to pay homage to Death,  though perhaps for reasons we may not anticipate. This tribute to King Hell may have another, occulted reason behind it.

The Present ≠ The Future

You may have seen this story recently:

Barnes & Noble Inc. BKS, +0.22%   announced Wednesday that it is doubling the size of its sections for graphic novels and manga (Japanese comics) in all its U.S. stores. 

The move reflects customer demand for the genres and illustrates the company’s push toward bringing more customers into stores, rather than buying online from its own site and rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +2.10% 

Tempest in a Psyop?: The "Roswell Slides" Redux

UFOlogy isn't dead. On the contrary it appears to be stuck in an never-ending adolescence. I don't know exactly why but there's something about the subject that makes middle-aged adults act like 13 year-olds, and the subculture is endlessly locked in the digital equivalent of a schoolyard brawl.

...Now Asteroids, Space Anomalies

aka "Jack Parsons' Labs"- note 11

(FILE UNDER "X-FILES REALITY WATCH") 

Apocalyptic themes are increasingly dominating the media stream these days. I became aware of this story via a Joseph Farrell video update, and it tied quite nicely into a story I've been watching.

Today is "Asteroid Day," a newly-minted holiday to go with the recently made-of-whole-cloth "fireball season". Now we hear that NASA is planning yet another quasi-military operation in orbit, this being an asteroid hunting mission.

Mister Global's Grave

Yazidi men being trained to resist ISIS goons

When I wrote the previous piece on the possibility of a coming upheaval, I was processing a lot of information. In many ways the crisis that religious minorities in Syria and Iraq are facing was a major influence on the piece. 

There are communities that have lived in the Levant and Mesopotamia since before the time of Christ and now face ethnic cleansing and genocide. It seemed to be a bellwether of a major change in the world, a canary in the coalmine.

The Upheaval Dialogues: 2012 Reconsidered

Before my trip to New Hampshire I was working on a post arguing that the 2012 prophecies were not incorrect but simply premature. That 2012 seemed to mark a turning point of a sort, a distinct change in the worldwide weather, if you will. You can point to to 2012 and see a number of trends that have metastasized since then, in the geopolitical situation, but also in our politics, in the economy, in social relations. 

A lot of this is cynical manipulation, a reaction to the legitimate threat once posed by the Occupy movement. We're seeing a lot of gamesmanship at work, a lot of people being given the rope with which to hang themselves. That will become more apparent by this time next year. Politics at every level is all smoke and mirrors today- believe nothing you see.

But there's something much deeper at work. We're seeing mass die-offs of wildlife, particularly that of sealife, all over the world. Most troubling are the mass die-offs of bees, animals that our food supply is so dependent on. Whether through carbon emissions or through geoengineering, we're also seeing dangerous levels of pollen on the increase and the attendant increase in respiratory illness.

And there have been attendant signs in the sky- the Sun seems to have gone quiet, perhaps presaging a long and difficult period of solar inactivity, one that could presage a mini-ice age. After years of mocking "believers," scientists are once again recognizing that there are two giants beyond Pluto (one may be a brown dwarf)*. 

What effect they might have on our planet is debatable (some claim they are the source of all the invaders we've come to worry so much about; asteroids, meteors, etc), there's no shortage of "Nibiru" scare mongers on the Internet preaching apocalypse one minute, then selling "survival" trinkets and gimcracks in order to stave off your doom the next.

We've also seen strange signs on the earth- a rise in earthquake and volcanic activity (a major volcano could block out the Sun for many parts of the world, causing famine), an increase in gigantic sinkholes (massive hollowing out of the surface layer of the earth) and in the Pacific, violent typhoons. Hurricane season in the Atlantic has been relatively quiet since 2012's Superstorm, but that might be the literal calm before the storm.

And of course, there is the endless drumbeat of war. There is the endless slaughter and massive displacement in the Middle East (with ancient Gnostic sects such as the Druze, Yazidi and Alawites targeted for genocide by Jihadists) and the growing tension in Eastern Europe. There's also the uptick in terrorism in Europe (Charlie Hebdo, the attack in France today), although intolerable is not even a speck of the carnage people elsewhere in the world suffer on a daily basis, especially as struggles between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims escalate to global proportions. Syria, Yemen, Pakistan...the list of sectarian carnage is mind-numbing.

Toothless NATO protectorates like Sweden are easy targets for the Sino-Russian ascendancy, which is why the US is moving heavy artillery in the area. But the state of constant war is such that drone pilots are reporting record levels of stress and burn-out. 

Poltical and social tensions have increased in this country, though in comparison to what's going on in the rest of the world it seems like a footnote (certainly the endless political bickering on the 'Net does). On a personal level, I'm seeing so many people I care about under serious stress. It's as if the entire solar system is in convulsions, from the macrocosm to the microcosm.

As many of us warned about, the corporate Christianity of the 80s and 90s has sparked an enormous backlash, with many young people walking away from religion (and pretty much everything else) entirely. Church leaders are now realizing the error of their shotgun wedding to partisan politics, even as Christianity rises in ways once unimagined in Africa, Russia and China. 

But the collapse of religious faith especially among vulnerable working class populations has left a huge void, one which pandemic drug abuse is filling. 

A deep and abiding nihilism has gripped the entire world-- not just the West-- and all of the chaos and upheaval we are seeing now is a symptom of that. 

What is going to heal that?

Science is increasingly proving itself to be corrupt and compromised. Transhumanism (now just a fading dream, despite some of the hysteria you still see) won't fill the void, virtual reality (which never has and probably never will live up to its hype) won't fill the void, forcing the world in a Borghive will just make magnify the problem, just as the Internet can turn a quiet, Type B "nice guy" or "nice girl" into a raging, misanthropic troll.

So was 2012 the turning point? The beginning of a period of upheaval? Hollywood sells us the myth of overnight apocalypse ("The Day After Tomorrow") but history teaches us that periods of upheaval are slow in getting started, so much so that they are hardly recognized as such until it's too late.

History also teaches us that chaos has its own genius and often turns on the men who seek to unleash it for their own benefit. We're not seeing true chaos on a worldwide scale yet, but the beast is straining at its leash, that's for certain.

And you can also bet the farm that we'll see what Jacques Vallee calls the "Control System" awake from its slumber. It already has, though that too has largely gone unnoticed. But not for much longer.

You will live in interesting times...

UPDATE: Speaking of which, are you watching what's going on in the Chinese Stock Market?

UPDATE: The weaponization of space is proceeding apace, ostensibly to counter threats from China and Russia. There are strange linguistic undertones in the press release, however....






*The reason I don't pay any attention to astronomers' bold claims of distant solar systems is that they have no friggin' idea what's floating around in ours. Or they do and are lying about it. Either way.

Our Strange Skies: 'Tis a Magic Place

Well, of course it all began with a UFO sighting. 

There was an old saying, "When your neighbor loses his job, it's a recession. When you lose your job, it's a depression." So when your son has a high-quality UFO sighting, it's a 'flap', then when you and other family members have one a couple weeks later, I guess it's a 'wave'. 

Virtual Reality: The Scam that Keeps Scamming

Yeah, that looks comfortable.

Note: Oculus Rift is having a press conference today 6/11 @ 1 PM EST. (see update)

Jack Parsons, Jack Kirby & the Babalon Working, All in Color for a Dime

There's been little news on the project as of late but last year we heard that Ridley Scott was developing a miniseries based on the life of Jack Parsons, the co-founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratories and inventor of solid rocket fuel.

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? 

Invisible and Silent, Synching Overhead

Well, it's been an interesting week here. 

I've been very busy which is why I've been out of the loop the past few days. But as per usual, I've also had the usual backlog of posts in the queue that I can't seem to get any traction on. It's not a question of inspiration, the majority of posts on this blog were half-formed ideas that sat stewing for some time until I could get a handle on them. It's just the writing process.

When Futurism Fails

If you're on Facebook or Twitter you've probably noticed an uptick in messianic science headlines, which seem to imply we're finally on the verge of Jetsons reality. 

AI, VR, DNA editing, moon bases, asteroid mining, flying cars and all the rest are finally waiting in the wings, getting ready to change all of our lives.

Tomorrow Never Comes

Deja vu all over again

Things are feeling...strange. I've written about the strange resurgence of the Flat Earth Theory, a revival that seems more vigorous than anyone could have predicted. I heard someone theorize that movements like that were an outgrowth of reality television, a raging misnomer that has led everyone to question the reality of everything they see.

And since everything everyone sees now is on a screen of some sort it all feels fake, varying degrees of Honey Boo Boo Chile. Everything is a sideshow, everything is CGI.

Materialism and the Human Habitrail

Some of you may be familiar with John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report.  I believe there's some crossover in readership though his audience is considerably larger than mine. 

Greer writes mainly about environmental issues and peak oil and for the past few years has become a bit of a Cassandra, predicting the collapse of modern civilization.

DISINuFO: Technocrats and Trojan Horses

Some of you might have heard by now of the so-called "Roswell Slides", the latest controversy concerning the alleged "flying saucer crash" of July 1947. 

In this case a couple slides were found of bodies in glass cases, and the holders of the photographs believe they are of the bodies of dead aliens long rumored about, said to have been transferred from Roswell Army Air Field to Wright Field, now known as Wright Patterson AFB.

Don't Write the Church Off Quite Yet...

This was a grim week here at Secret Sun Central- a friend of my sons died in an accident and we attended his wake Thursday and my sons attended his funeral yesterday. He was one of the first friends my younger son made in this neighborhood. 

"Just Around the Corner"

Everyone is a skeptic and a believer, when you get right down to it. Everyone has their own set of beliefs and their own set of hopes and dreams. Everyone has had disappointments and experiences that teach them to be wary and untrusting. 

Flat-Earthers, Fringe Science and the Power of Unreason

Gordon sent me a link to a Channel Four page (for those of you who don't know, C4 is the highbrow channel in Britain that brought you the pseudo-conspiratorial drama Utopia. A comedian- it's always a comedian- is doing a show on British UFOlogists that is set to air tonight in the UK. 

Cults of One

In his latest post, Gordon quotes George Hansen and the relationship between the Paranormal and Religion. Let me just say that I read Hansen's book and enjoyed it but the whole "Trickster" thing gives me a headache, since it all too easily becomes a RAW-type way to say nothing and sound like you're saying something unbearably profound. 

Walk-Ins Welcome: Kevin Spacey and K-PAX

 

K-PAX showed up on Netflix recently, not long after I wrote about the film in the context of Walk-In narratives. As written by journeyman screenwriter Charles Leavitt (Seventh Son, Blood Diamond), the film is what can best be called a secularization of the novel, a disenchantment of the novel's paranormal appeal, in keeping with the slow, creeping spiritual death that has its talons wrapped around Western society. 

Unidentified Flying Architecture

Some of you are probably familiar with the curious Wat Phra Dhammakaya Buddist temple in Thailand, which has become famous for its unique design. It's really stunning to see the tens of thousands of worshippers praying around what most people would immediately recognize as a replica of a flying saucer. 

But it's part of a global trend in architectural design, a trend that includes some of the most significant organizations in the world. 

Secret Star Trek: Wrinkles in Time (and Space)

There's been a marked change in my own country in the past 15 years, probably in yours too. It's been reflected in popular culture, which for the most part has grown small, cramped and dyspeptic, even if takes on the illusion of hugeness.

Secret Star Trek: "Demons of Air and Darkness"

It might be tempting to mock the Heaven's Gate and Solar Temple's ambitions to soul-travel to the stars without their bodies, despite the fact that such beliefs go back in human history many thousands of years. 

Stargates and Solar Temples: Silenced Knights

Joseph DiMambro and The Solar Temple

Most of you have a pretty good working knowledge of the Heaven's Gate cult by now if you've been following the blog over the past couple of weeks.

Stargates and Solar Temples: Return of the Djedi

NASA has released a new poster for its 45th ISS mission, featuring the crew dressed as Jedi Knights. This isn't all that unusual; previous missions have used The Matrix, The Right Stuff and of course Star Trek to try to interest a jaded public in the low earth orbit science lab excursions, especially tough now that Christopher Nolan has upped the ante again with his wormhole-surfing epic Interstellar.

It's Coming Back Around Again

As I've mentioned before, I'm continually amazed by how many themes and issues I covered (read: "obsessed over") over the lifespan of this blog are re-emerging just as I reactivated it. 

Mystery Babylon the Kate and the Valhalla Working

Last week on The Secret Sun I looked at the news that The X-Files was returning to TV and tried to unpack the recent revelations that the 1997 Heaven's Gate cult suicides may well have been inspired by an episode of that series, the Mytharc mindbomb, "Red Museum." 

Saucers, Snitches and Secret Space Programs

You can tell the Cold War is back for real when the US starts funneling money into exotic space weaponry. Not to mention the fact that Russian warplanes are buzzing Europe and China is openly discussing its plans to drive the US out of Asia, claiming the Pacific Ocean as its Mare Nostrum. 

Heaven's Goat

UPDATE SUPER BOWL SUNDAY 1953 EST

Did I just dream Jeff Bridges had a Super Bowl Ad?

"The Luminous Hyper-World That Shimmers Beyond The Great Nocturnal Barrier."

It's a continuing source of amazement how many of the themes I followed on the blog over the years have re-entered the newsstream since I began blogging again, especially so in the past month. 

Telling Tales Out of School: Wavelength Revisited

In June of 2013 I wrote about Wavelength, a very strange and disturbing low-budget sci-fi feature, written and directed by China Syndrome screenwriter and longtime political activist Mike Gray and financed by Maurice Rosenfeld, the pioneer of the class-action lawsuit.

Comics Are Magick: Intruders in the Skies

As you get older, it's all too easy to get lost in routine, to anesthetize yourself with ritual and television. It's why creative work is so often the province of the young. 

It's also why David Lynch is such a firebrand for Transcendental Meditation; he knows how easy it is to lose that spark and how hard you have to work to keep hold of it.