Philip K. Dick was not delusional. He was not psychotic, nor was he paranoid schizophrenic. He was simply foreseeing events and receiving information no one had any context for back then.
Luckily, we do now.
I hope you'll join us for a good, old-fashioned Secret Sun Institute deep dive on the topic of occult detectives in the media and so-called "real life." It's going down this Saturday night (Sep. 14th) at 9 PM Eastern and will cover a number of films, books, comics and TV shows on the theme. Edutainment of the most enjoyable variety, mark my words.
In fact, SSI livestreams are always a blast and a great opportunity to meet and chat with like-minded seekers. Like the saying goes, "come for the scholarship, stay for the fellowship."
click on the Moon for details
You can click on that Moon there for more information on the livestream and a veritable motherlode of media dealing with the kinds of topics you're looking for.
BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM...
Like I said, PKD was not insane. Sure, he had some issues (and who doesn't?) and certainly experienced amphetamine psychosis back when he was popping pills all the livelong day. I'd go far as to say he probably was dealing with temporal lobe epilepsy. But he wasn't crazy.
The heartbreak of it is he may well have gotten the answers he sought had he held on just a few more years. Many of his prophecies would start to be fulfilled just days after his death in March 1982, and I am willing to bet he'd have figured that out before anyone.
By that I mean that the rebirth of the Cumaean Sibyl was central to his prophecies and his famous mystical experiences. And having pored through his writings, I can say without a single second's hesitation that the beloved Sibyl we look at on this blog is in fact the same Sibyl he was expecting.
So let's look at twenty proofs of this fact...
1. THE GOLD FISH
The linchpin of the entire 2/3/74 experience - PKD's mystical awakening - is the gold ichthys the delivery girl from the drug store had been wearing when she delivered a prescription for Darvon on February 20, 1974.
This directly aligns with the constellation of Dorade - or "Gold Fish" - that Supernova1987A was spotted in almost exactly 13 years later.
We also see the gold fish on a chain in the shockingly-prophetic "Pearly Dewdrops' Drop" video, a song which prophesied the supernova exactly three years before it was first seen (and four days after the tenth anniversary of PKD's gold fish revelation).
2. STRAWBERRY FIELDS FRASEVER
The other linchpin was the messages PKD received about his son's hernia during 2/3/74, which he received while listening to "Strawberry Fields Forever."
PKD predicted that the Godhead - or vox dei - would invade a hostile world through the lowest forms of pop culture, what he called the "Trash Stratum."
“The Godhead may have foreseen the consequences of its moment of self-awareness (the uttering of the word or self-map) and put into action the salvific response: to penetrate the lowest, farthest level — what I call the trash stratum, which is debased — and thereby reverse the falling, splitting and sinking.” - PKD
And guess what happened three years back?
That's right: "The Voice of God" was heard speaking to us through "Tales of the Trash Stratum."
To us and to alien birds, apparently. In their native language.
4. ENTERING A COMMERCIAL ZONE
PKD believed that God had been, "pushed to the periphery of trashy TV commercials."
He also claimed that, "If God manifested himself to us, he would do so as a product advertised on TV."
Prophecy fulfilled several times, notably in 1995.
PKD thought The Man Who Fell to Earth was disorenting? Can you imagine if he saw that ad? Criminy.
5. VOX DEI IN A CAN
PKD wrote that the Voice of God would be packaged in a spray bottle in Ubik:
“And this lowly trash, bottom penetration is exactly how I portray it in Ubik! On match folders; in tawdry commercials—therein lie the divine messages.
Entry from the "provinces"—Galilee—now takes the form of entry from trash in the gutter on up—a trashy novel which contains trash (the chapter-opening commercials) is the triumphant return of the rightful king.
Ubik is trash containing an even lower order of trash: the Ubik commercials — but which are in fact vox dei.”
- The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
In 2018, Massive Attack literally had the "Voice of God" encoded in DNA and packaged in a spray paint can. 200-proof Philip K. Dick move there.
Another prophecy fulfilled.
Weirdly, PKD fell in with the SoCal hardcore punk crowd in 1980, perhaps inspired by his muse's flirtation with punk and New Wave imagery that same year.
The Sibyl had joined up with the Cocteau Twins around that same time, though she ducked out to parts unknown for six months before rejoining the band in the summer of 1980.
SLASH: Are you anti organized religion?
DICK: Yes. Technically, I’m Episcopalian, but I don’t ever go. I’m interested in them because they’re a barrio church and they do lot of civil service work … technically I’m a religious anarchist.
SLASH: Is this Orange County?
DICK: Very Definitely … I bet that’s good beer. The Germs are breaking up, huh? The cat’s laughing at me … But Darby Crash is going to start his own band.
SLASH: Yeah, how’d you know?
DICK: I know … I know this stuff. Did I do that right? I sure like the Plugz. Now the beach bands like the Circle Jerks …
Unlike Linda, the Sibyl was a bonafide punkette/street urchin from day one, with leather miniskirts, fishnet stockings, homemade tattoos, chickenbone jewelry - the whole nine yards.
She and partner Robin Guthrie used to follow around The Birthday Party (then called "the most violent band in Britain," which is saying a lot given the scene at the time) on tour, which ultimately led to their deal with 4AD Records.
And the Twins's early music was decisively on the "punk" end of the postpunk spectrum.
7. THE SIBYL AND THE TWINS
PKD's vision of the reborn Cumean Sibyl as recounted in "The Eye of the Sibyl" had her talking to what sounded very much like Cabeiri (AKA Dactyls, AKA the Great Gods of Samothrace etc etc) through a phone while the Twin aliens enclosed themselves in a dome filled with electronic equipment.
The real hero of VALIS is Brent Mini, PKD's thinly-veiled take on Brian Eno. PKD was obsessed with Eno's ambient music - especially the Discreet Music LP - which he called "synchronicity music."
Eno crossed paths with the Sibyl on at least two occasions, both when 4AD records wanted him to produce the Twins' 1984 and 1988 LPs, Treasure and Blue Bell Knoll.
7. THE SIBYL AND THE TWINS
PKD's vision of the reborn Cumean Sibyl as recounted in "The Eye of the Sibyl" had her talking to what sounded very much like Cabeiri (AKA Dactyls, AKA the Great Gods of Samothrace etc etc) through a phone while the Twin aliens enclosed themselves in a dome filled with electronic equipment.
In typical dream logic, PKD seems to have been describing the Sibyl and her Twins.
The Cabeiri et al were often associated with the Korybantes/Kouretes et al, who were the ancient proto-metal bands that brought the noise to mystery cult gatherings took their names from.
Moreover, PKDs description of the Sibyl and her Twin companions sounds like a dream of a singer recording in an isolation booth while the Twins are closed off in their studio's control room.
Prophecies are waking dreams.
8. SYNCHRONICITY MUSIC
The real hero of VALIS is Brent Mini, PKD's thinly-veiled take on Brian Eno. PKD was obsessed with Eno's ambient music - especially the Discreet Music LP - which he called "synchronicity music."
Eno crossed paths with the Sibyl on at least two occasions, both when 4AD records wanted him to produce the Twins' 1984 and 1988 LPs, Treasure and Blue Bell Knoll.
The Twins did work with frequent Eno collaborator Harold Budd on the 1986 LP, The Moon and the Melodies, which was recently reissued. Robin Guthrie would go on to make a number of "synchronicity music" type records with Harold Budd until the latter's death.
The Twins first met Budd after they requested permission to cover "Not Yet Remembered," from Budd and Eno's Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror LP. Tragically, their version was never released.
Linda Ronstadt was PKD's big obsession/demi-goddess.
The Twins first met Budd after they requested permission to cover "Not Yet Remembered," from Budd and Eno's Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror LP. Tragically, their version was never released.
9. THE PROPHESIED COMING
PKD's Exegesis is bursting with passages that show that he was anticipating the emergence of the Sibyl, an occurrance he tragically didn't live to see. But this passage reads like any one of scores of old reviews of the Sibyl's sacred warbling:
“The dance. Sound of bells, the beautiful woman: Diana. Queen of the Fairies. Opposed to the harsh grim masculine kings — and the iron empire-prison.
“And I heard her singing, as Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, and singing Monteverdi.
“And originally she appeared to me as Aphrodite and the Sibyl. I have the feeling she may be the spirit of my religion. My psychopomp who will finally escort me across the sifting bridge (again) to the other side.”
- Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis
"I heard her singing, as Linda Ronstadt (Rock), Olivia Newton-John (Pop), and singing Monteverdi (Opera)" is as good a description of the Sibyl's music as anyone could ask for.
Particularly someone who died six years before a song like "Carolyn's Fingers" was even released.
10. MONKEE BUSINESS
Linda Ronstadt was PKD's big obsession/demi-goddess.
We've talked a lot about Michael Nesmith of The Monkees in the past, so let's remember he was the author of Linda Ronstadt's big breakthrough, "Different Drum" with The Stone Poneys.
11. THE FOX AND THE SHEPHERD BOY
It was Mike Nesmith who arranged to have his drinking buddy Tim Buckley appear on the final episode of The Monkees in 1968, premiering "Song to the Siren," which would cement Elizabeth's legend and unleash a torrent of fresh mythology and living information on an unsuspecting world.
In other words, both the Sibyl and PKDs fictional prototype of her ultimately owe their big breakthroughs to Mike Nesmith and The Monkees.
12. LINDA FOX = LIZ FRASER
Proto-Sibyl Linda Ronstadt (whom PKD called "Linda Fox") also recorded a number of Tim Buckley songs, and in fact had a very close musical partnership with the "Song to the Siren" composer:
Linda Ronstadt gamely moved forward and, effectively a solo artist already, started taking control of her career. She gathered more sophisticated material for the new album, including three songs by Tim Buckley that would become standout cuts on that album.
"Tim used to live in a house that I lived in too, and we both used to move in and out... that is, we stayed there alternately. It was the house he wrote about in 'Morning Glory', which I call 'The Hobo'. That was the 'fleeting house.'"
And of course, Tim Buckley's son would have a romantic and musical relation with the Sibyl some years later.
This one is so completely insane that it can't explained by anything else but straight-up clairvoyance on PKDs part.
13. SCOTCH AND HE WAS SHOWED HER
It's from an odd and rather out-of-place conversation about whiskey labels and boxes between PKD's Linda Ronstadt analog and a Peter Asher (Ronstadt's producer) analog in The Divine Invasion:
In amazement, Linda Fox exclaimed, "Don't tell me you know about Laphroaig Scotch? I thought I was the only person in the world who drinks Laphroaig!"At the exact same time that was written, the Sibyl was... well, just read this:
"It's been made in the traditional copper stills for over two hundred and fifty years," Herb Asher said. "It requires two distillations and the skill of an expert stillman."
"Yes; that's what it says on the package." She began to laugh. "You got that off the package, Herb."
“(In 1980) Elizabeth was employed at a (Scots) whiskey distillery, where she labeled bottles and put them in boxes. ‘You have to understand, the choices were very limited,’ she says.”
-- Celestial Punks
14. MADRIGAL ABOUT YOU
“He took a look at the log. Fox was doing a concert that ran two hours. Linda Fox, he thought. You and your synthesis of old-time rock, modern-day streng and the lute music of John Dowland. Jesus, he thought; if I don't transcribe the relay of your live concert every domer on the planet will come storming in here and kill me.”
-- PKD, The Divine InvasionBut guess what?
What PKD was describing in that and other passages also describes this...
Madrigals recorded with a mix of traditional and electronic instruments EXACTLY describes Victorialand, released less than four years after the Sibyl was yowling over the early Cocteau Twins' postpunk hammering.
More:
More:
"And, at the peak of it all, the Dowland songs. The beauty of the universe lay not in the stars figured into it but in the music generated by human minds, human voices, human hands.
Vibrolutes mixed on an intricate board by experts, and the voice of Fox. He thought, I know what I must have to keep on going. My job is my delight: I transcribe this and I broadcast it and they pay me.
"This is the Fox," Linda Fox said. -- PKD, The Divine Invasion
In addition to Victorialand, the Sibyl and former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett went full-tilt, straight-no-chaser John Dowland on the 2022 Sun's Signature EP with "Make Lovely the Day," an homage to the rising sun.
And again from The Divine Invasion:
Meanwhile, he listened with eyes shut to the Fox.
Weep you no more, sad fountains;
What need you flow so fast?
Look how the snowy mountains
Heaven's sun doth gently waste.
But my sun's heavenly eyes
View not your weeping
That now lies sleeping ...
This was the best song the Fox had ever sung, from the Third and Last Booke of lute songs of John Dowland who had lived at the time of Shakespeare and whose music the Fox had remastered for the world of today.”
-- PKD, The Divine Invasion
Is this still even a question?
15. THE MOTH
From the ending of The Divine Invasion:
“Somberly, he and Linda gazed at it as it lay broken everywhere, vast and lovely and destroyed. In pieces, like damaged light.
"This is how he was once," Linda said. "Originally. Before he fell. This was his original shape. We called him the Moth. The Moth that fell slowly, over thousands of years, intersecting the Earth, like a geometrical shape descending stage by stage until nothing remained of its shape."
The Sibyl sang several harrowing songs about moths and butterflies during what I like to call her "howly period." This particular one tells you terrible secrets.
16. "SEND LUCIFER TO HELL"
From the end of The Divine Invasion, when Linda Fox helps Emmanuel defeat Belial, AKA Lucifer.
From the end of The Divine Invasion, when Linda Fox helps Emmanuel defeat Belial, AKA Lucifer.
Herb Asher said, "He was very beautiful."
"He was the morning star," Linda said. "The brightest star in the heavens. And now nothing remains of him but this."
"How he has fallen," Herb Asher said.
"And everything else with him," she said.Linda Fox celebrated the occasion by singing some more Dowland music.
And the last verses of the last song on the last Cocteau Twins studio album read as follows:
Love and heart polish itself
I slip my heels, but slide you in
So send Lucifer to Hell
Yay-ah, Yay-ah
In case you were wondering, "Seekers Who Are Lovers" is a tune about how much the Sibyl enjoyed the intimate company of her doomed Shepherd Boy, the son of Linda Ronstadt's roommate/touring partner/Shepherd Boy.
I'd be willing to bet big dollars that Ronstadt and her own Buckley also shared some intimate company at some point.
18. THE TWIN, REBORN
There's no way of proving it (yet), but I'd also be willing to bet good money that the Sibyl is - among other avatars - a reincarnation of PKD's Lost Twin:
“But my search in this world, in all worlds, is for my (twin) sister, my female counterpart whom I have lost—been separated from. Still, she exists, and finally I will be reunited with her. She is very close to me as the AI voice, the singing woman (psychopomp) and the Sibyl. And, ultimately, as holy wisdom herself (Sophia).” -- Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis
Remember the Sibyl sang the part of Sofia in The Millennium Dome Show.
19. SHE'S SINGING TO THE SIRENS AGAIN
19. SHE'S SINGING TO THE SIRENS AGAIN
As anyone who reads The Secret Sun regularly realizes, the Sibyl's career moves are almost always accompanied by major events and disasters. The fact that Russia invaded Ukraine mere hours after the Sibyl announced the Sun's Signature EP is just one of a mind-shredding avalanche of similar syncs.
I'm fairly confident that Massive Attack videographer Adam Curtis (Hypernormalization, Century of the Self) knows who and what the Sibyl is, and subsequently explicitly presents her as an oracle and "keening woman" onstage.
The Sibyl is touring with Massive now and has introduced a revamped version of "Song to the Siren" to the setlist.
Curtis's video collages speak for themselves.
Some of you may remember that her "Song to the Siren" was first released during an incrediblely tense and dangerous time of the Cold War, as a number of events brought the US and USSR to the brink of hot war.
So we shouldn't be surprised that it's all come full circle as the Sibyl sings once again to the Siren.
20. SYNCHRONICITY SETTLES IT
I've been all over this topic on the Fraseblogs as of late, having presented on the PKD/Sibyl synergy at the AstroGnosis Conference and currently being immersed in very deep dives on PKDs work and biography.
As you can see, I posted on the connections on Monday.
Guess what happened two days later?
This one's a bit of a head-scratcher, though: she's not mad that Trump used one of her songs in a rally (he didn't) but rather that he rented a Tucson venue named in her honor for an election rally. Whatever. Politics is all theater.
Sadly, Linda has been stricken with a Parkinson's-like disorder, which has forced her into retirement. I wish her the best with her struggles, may she experience peace and healing.
Unlike, that is, a certain nameless someone who's allegedly been faking having Parkinson's in order to keep police attention on his behavior in the 1970s at bay. Behavior having to do with wee little lassies, you might say.
One wee little lassie in particular, I might add.
Of course, the alleged "Parkinson's" diagnosis conveniently arose during the whole Yewtree kerfuffle back during the days following Jimmy Savile's return to Hell.
Boundless gratitude to Brothers Noah and Brandon.
POSTSCRIPT: Speaking of the Ninja of Twinja, he points out yet another tasty sync...
Nancy HackettNancy Hackett and Philip K. Dick were married for 5 years. They dated for 1 year after getting together in 1965 and married on 6th Jul 1966. 5 years later they divorced in 1972.Steve HackettFormer Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett performed with Elizabeth at the 2012 Meltdown Festival, and his guitar work is featured on the 2022 Sun's Signature EP.
