The Secret Sun: Stranger Things: Blowback

"We’re sort of pulling from everything."

Stranger Things co-creator Matt Duffer
....................................

I'm into my Stranger Things rewatch now. And with the story already told and digested in my mind I find myself, more than anything else, focusing on the patchwork of influences it borrows from.

It's amazing how deftly they weave the various lifts and "tributes" into the whole, but at the same time it can also be distracting for someone who was consuming all that material in its first blush. I still think it's great TV, but it's not a revelation.

As far as esoteric symbolism in a conventional sense, I'm not seeing anything I find particularly convincing or compelling. One of the reasons I don't do too much of that kind of analysis anymore is that it got a bit stale, a bit rote, particularly as writers began consciously working really silly, really obvious symbols in (rather clumsily, I might add) simply to get a rise out of people on the Internet.

I'm much more interested in when the symbols arise from the collective unconscious and manifest that way, which you hardly ever see anymore. I originally came into this game via Jung's Man and His Symbols, and where Jung's theories resonated with me is the public sphere. It's in the media where transpersonal psychology really clicks, in the stories we tell each other.

But that gets harder to do now that the cat's out of the bag with the symbol racket. And it feels like a lot of the symbol-spotting has cycled out of the zeitgeist anyway.

And with a show like Stranger Things, which recycles so heavily, you often find yourself dealing with a second-hand set of signals, which can all get a little garbled. It can also start to get a bit flat. So I look, but don't strain myself.

The Montauk links are undeniable- the series was originally titled Montauk and was set there- but it's hard to say what of the actual Montauk mythos (what you can decipher of it- Moon's books are very tough sledding, to say the least) actually appears in the story- meaning what is specific to it- with the notable exception of the space-time rift (and the year of which, notably).

What we really have instead are themes taken from other sci-fi movies and shows, with a light smattering of leftover conspiranoid bits dashed over for seasoning. What we're seeing here is actually a particularly expensive and sophisticated kind of fan-fiction.

I was doing a lot of dreamwork in November of 1983 (I was taking a psych class in HS at the time), leading to the bizarre nightmare of the faceless cop I mentioned in the previous post.

I was also taking driving lessons, and my teacher used to like to cruise down to Moon Island in Quincy Bay, just a matter of feet away from the island that Werner Von Braun and his Peenemünde crew landed under the aegis of Operation Paperclip.

Our Gordon calls the Boston metro area the nerve center of MK Ultra, a link that's probably obvious to Fringe watchers. Or to fringe-watchers.

Speaking of 1983, quarries were a major story in the Boston metro area that year when some kids got themselves killed jumping the Quincy quarry behind Mr. Tux off Route 3. They eventually drained it to keep young daredevils from jumping the 60 or so feet into the fetid water. And then filled it with dirt from the "Big Dig."

Oddly enough, I was discussing all this with a friend just days before Stranger Things went live on Netflix. As I said, I was a bit stunned to see it and The Clash pop up in the show.

I was also talking comics with the late Seth Bishop in the lunchroom on occasion in 1983, three years before he was murdered by his sister Amy. If you're looking for a real-life 'Eleven', meaning a real-life prodigy who's a strong candidate for a kid that MK Ultra maniacs got their hooks into, re-read those posts on Amy Bishop.

Amy's behavior the night of Seth's murder would seem outlandish in a Quentin Tarantino movie and the cover-up is pure X-Files. Or pure Stranger Things, if you prefer.

Articles are being written citing all of the influences parading around in Stranger Things, though still no mention of Wavelength.

I suppose very few people have seen this film (shot in 1981 but released in 1983) but there you have your underground government lab, your powerful telekinetic/telepathic kids (bald, no less) and your two male and female leads breaking into said underground lair.

The MK Ultra references are less obvious in Wavelength but nonetheless evident and apparent. Mike Gray was a producer for ABC News before making the movie and it was ABC News that spilled the beans on Sidney Gottlieb's house of horrors back in 1979 (back when network news heads weren't quite so subservient to the government). I don't think it's simple coincidence that Gray has ringers for Gottlieb and Ewan Cameron appear as scientists in his film.

There's also the strange space-time conjunction that had Cherie Currie in the lead female role in Wavelength and Dakota Fanning- who'd play a very Eleven-like character in Steven Spielberg's Taken- playing Cherie Currie in the biopic of The Runaways.

Fanning would also star in the highly Secret Sun-resonant War of the Worlds, which sparked off a syncstorm of epic proportions after Katy Perry's Ishtar act at the Super Bowl.

THE DEEP STATE

Now there's a sync some may have overlooked, since it isn't exactly obvious, or perhaps even relevant to a lot of people. And that's the fact that Stranger Things premiered on Netflix the same day as the aborted coup in Turkey.

A lot of people thought this might have been itself a dramatic production of sorts, staged by the Erdogan government (false flag actions are always a possibility when dealing with the deep state in Turkey) but it's starting to look like more and more it was in fact a plot by outside elements.

There was coup talk in the air last year, in fact. The Turks are growing increasingly explicit in blaming the West -- and specifically the US -- for the coup, and there's talk that Erdogan was personally tipped off by Vladimir Putin.

If it were staged, one might expect Erdogan to play the forgiving patriarch but he's lashing out like a man who actually sees mortal enemies everywhere he looks. And golly, have you happened to notice how there seems to be a major terrorist event in Europe every day now? What a coincidence.

So, what does any of this have to do with Stranger Things, aside from the weird timing of events?

Well, Stranger Things is essentially a parable of blowback. Underneath all of the fanboyisms, it's essentially about power-lusting government madmen unleashing forces they couldn't control and creating havoc and disaster on unsuspecting ordinary folk.

And the West's dalliance with terrorists and strongmen like Erdogan (who very much looks like he was next on the Obama/Clinton "regime change" list, just in time for the US elections) is playing out like a horrible, real-life parallel to that.

I should also note that the town in Stranger Things is based on Silent Hill, the fictional titular Pennsylvania town of the video game/manga/movie franchise. The Turkish Imam behind the Gulenite movement, on whom the coup is increasingly blamed, is living in exile in Pennsylvania.

Odd sync, there.

This Imam is largely believed to be in bed with the CIA and has donated millions to US political causes and candidates, including over a million dollars to the Clinton Global Initiative racket. And now Pennsylvania is looking like it might be the key to a potential Trump victory this November.

Odder still, most of the action in the first episode of Stranger Things takes place on November 7, 1983, the cover date of the Time Magazine article on the terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

This was significant because it marked the first time modern planners put American boots on the ground in the Middle East. The Marines were there in an effort to keep the peace after Israel's disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, but their presence was obviously not appreciated by some of the locals.

July 15 is also an important day in the calendar of grievance not our own. It was the day the last Emir of Granada was crowned, before the Muslims were expelled from Spain under the Reconquista. What connection this may have to the events in Turkey on that day is still unclear. But Turkey seems central to this calendar.

DEEPER STILL

If you want to get really esoteric with your historical connections, make note that November 6 (the night the action actually begins in the series) was the day Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus was crowned Caesar in the Roman capital of Byzantium, known today as Istanbul.

That was the Roman name of the Emperor Julian, better known as "Julian the Apostate", the man who tried to restore the old pagan religion and undo the efforts to Christianize the Empire made by the Flavian Dynasty.

Julian was crowned by his cousin Constantius the Second, who adhered to the Christian heresy known as Arianism.

Why is any of this significant?

Well, the efforts to undo Julian's reforms would lead to the authoritarian Theodosian decrees, which would establish a precedent that would eventually create a lot of resentment and hostility against the coupling of state and Church power, resentment that would ultimately lead to the rise of Islam in the east.º

Blowback, to coin a phrase.

How different history may have been had Julian - who foolishly couldn't resist the lure of battle - had not been assassinated. The list of suspects reads something out of a JFK message board.

And Arianism is believed by many scholars to be a major influence in the development of Islam, so much so that early observers of the new faith thought it was in fact a revival of Arianism.

ALL IN

A Facebook group member asked me if I believed that Stranger Things was onto something here, that the black magicians of MK Ultra were in fact trying to contact NHEs, or non-human entities.

And the answer is yes, I've always believed that and I've always believed that the mind control aspect of the program was a cover, a way to justify the funding allocations to Congress. These were not stupid people. It would only take a couple sessions to realize LSD was um, problematic as a mind control drug.

I don't think this is conjecture on my part- look no further than the career of Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller and their "Space Kids".

When you read of the horrific experiments performed by Ewan Cameron you see an incredibly inefficient means of mind control, at least anything past the retail level. No, I believe that Cameron was desperately trying to rewire human consciousness itself, and was concentrating on the most mutable subjects at hand (for the most part), children. They were after something a lot more dangerous than simple mind control.

The comic repeatedly mentioned in the first episode of

Stranger Things has a cult mind control subplot

Mind-control techniques have been known and widely practiced for a very, very long time. Cults are experts at them. The media and propaganda ministers are constantly manipulating the public mind, using methods time-tested and true.

No, I think MK Ultra had far more esoteric - and siniste r- goals in mind.

Bruce Rux wrote in Architects of the Underworld that MK Ultra actually began when so-called "alien abductee" reports began to circulate in intelligence circles, particularly reports coming in from Europe, reports that the public today forget were classified for the better part of two decades.

You don't need to believe in the phenomenon to understand that there was one, and that mind-control was a constant feature in reports on it and that there was concern in high places about it. And Ultra and its precursors were all closely linked to Operation Paperclip, which may be why Russell Targ called Gottlieb "America's Joseph Mengele."

Was it all the work of leftover Nazis messing around in postwar Europe? Very possible. But that doesn't mean they were acting on their own. Elements within the SS were known to knock on some very strange doors. Who knows who answered?

I'd say the true nature of the program was revealed when the masks came off in this country and Ultra gave way to Project Often, in which the weaponization of the occult came out in the open.

According to author Gordon Thomas' 2007 book, Secrets and Lies, the CIA's Operation Often was also initiated by the chief of the CIA's Technical Services Branch, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to "explore the world of black magic" and "harness the forces of darkness and challenge the concept that the inner reaches of the mind are beyond reach".

As part of Operation Often, Dr. Gottlieb and other CIA employees visited with and recruited fortune-tellers, palm-readers, clairvoyants, astrologers, mediums, psychics, specialists in demonology, witches and wizards, Satanists, other occult practitioners, and more.

What I believe you were seeing with Often was simply an acknowledgement of what the game was really about, and with changes in the culture at large there was no longer any need to hide behind a euphemistic cover.

And we can tie back another of the central themes of Stranger Things, remote viewers unleashing forces that were both unknowable and uncontrollable, to another longtime Secret Sun fixation.

I'm referring to that weird account of blowback when an attempt to contact NHEs resulted in the deaths of three psychics. This account first surfaced in the conspiracy underground in 1991, but I believe it was in fact part of Wavelength's real-life inspiration.

Does this have anything to do with what's going on today? Well, in an age of mass-media ritualism, what do you think?

All hell seems to be breaking loose these days. There are wars taking place among powerful players we can only get fleeting glimpses of, but we are going to suffer the blowback of nonetheless.

Turkey is just one example where these clandestine struggles break out into the open. I believe the incessant terrorism Europe is dealing with is another. This Wikileaks imbroglio shows that the Globalists have powerful enemies who are just starting to bare their fangs.

So the timing of Stranger Things and the coup is all too appropriate.

I also can't help but be reminded of how the kind of American small towns we see in Stranger Things are currently under siege from drugs, economic warfare and other machinations of the Deep State.

Maybe that should be addressed in the next series.