It's (Mermaid) Apocalypse Now!

We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.  

- HP Lovecraft, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"

The Gaslighting Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Was this a wedding or a gaslighting on a scale heretofore unseen? Yeah, I realize these events are usually ubiquitous and tinfoil-chewingly irritating, but I don't know. There's something off about this one.

Apocalypse 2Night: X-Files or Exophiles?

Resurrect a species, you say. Like what, for example? Oh, like maybe something a bit lanky, perhaps? 

Secret Star Trek: Infinite Bellicosity in Infinite Conflagrations

I really don't know where to start.

I watched the two-part opener of the new Star Trek series and I'm still wondering if I didn't hallucinate it all. 

Orion Krause and the Psychotronic Weapons Underground

ROCKPORT — Orion Krause appeared to have a bright future. 

 

Secret Star Trek: The Nine & Trek's True Creators

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek to air, 'The Man Trap'. Not one of the more memorable episodes of the series, it still remains a cultural landmark, the launching point of a sci-fi franchise that continues to this day.

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.

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. 

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.

The Secret Sun Year in Review: 2014 Edition

I started blogging again after a ten-month break with the piece "These are Gnostic Times." This was a confession as much as an article, and I do try to make everything I post here read as much like a proper article as much as possible.

Secret Star Trek: Levels Above Human

PART ONE / PART TWO / PART THREE 

PART FOUR / PART FIVE / PART SIX 

PART SEVEN / PART EIGHT

If Star Trek is indeed inextricably linked to the human potential movement and a bizarre flying saucer cult, why is that so? What is the purpose of programming these strange themes into what is one of the most successful sci-fi franchises of our time?

Secret Star Trek: Playground of the Elementals

Back row: Should've been played by Jasika Nicole,
James van der Kirk, Sylar. Front: Englebert Cabbagepatch

That the team that brought us Fringe also brought us the revised Star Trek is no accident. In fact it was inevitable. Fringe took huge chunks of storyline from The X-Files but it also drew inspiration from a bizarre period in American history when Cold War budgets were financing fringe scientists at Stanford Research Institute, Xerox PARC and other locales in north-central California. 

Secret Star Trek: Meet Your New Gods

Just as we learned that something very much like the Council of Nine predates Andrija Puharich's contact with them, so may the presence of the Nine inside Trek prefigure Gene Roddenberry's involvement with Lab-9 in 1975. 

Secret Star Trek: "It Partook of the Occult."

It all started with such a trifling thing; the teaser in the new Star Trek into Darkness film has our heroes saving a primitive race on the planet Nibiru and by doing so creating a cargo cult.

This is exactly the kind of scenario we see when symbolism is injected into a fictional narrative intentionally and consciously; it draws attention to itself, awkwardly.*

Secret Star Trek: "Not Entirely Real"

"Somewhere out there," [Gene] starts off, his eyes widening as he continues, "there's this massive ... entity, this abstract, unknown life force that seems mechanical in nature, although it actually possesses its own highly advanced consciousness. It's a force thousands of times greater than anything intergalactic civilization has ever witnessed. It could be God, it could be Satan, and it's heading toward earth." -- Star Trek Movie Memories

Secret Star Trek: California Dreaming

You've probably heard (or seen) that the teaser for the new Dawson's Trek movie has James van der Kirk trying to save the primitive people of "Nibiru," whose planet is about to be destroyed by a supervolcano.

Secret Star Trek: The Oldest, Deadliest Myth

 

You might think being a geek should prime you for the Transhumanism Revolution, but in reality it should also prime you against it. 

For every Six Million Dollar Man there's a race of Cybermen or Borg or take your pick. William Gibson's Sprawl novels presented Transhuman modification as a ubiquitous consumer product, but what part of "dystopian" do you not understand? 

Project Blue Beam Exposed!

Anyone who spends anytime looking into the UFO phenomena has probably seen the words "Project Blue Beam" - often misspelled - show up when any aerial anomalies are being discussed online. 

The Secret War Against the New Age: Introduction

To most people, the New Age is a joke. The picture you usually get in the media is that the New Age is a conglomeration of hucksters and charlatans peddling mystical claptrap to bored, eccentric housewives.  

Secret Star Trek: A Really Bad 21st Century

One of the many alien "Gods" from Star Trek

 Summer is the time when my brain goes into standby mode. Actually, that's not true, it's actually the time when I delve back into a particular pop culture obsession and follow different themes in and out of paranormal lore and history.