Pop Occulture
Belief Explorations
One Magical Movement from Kether to Malkuth
A Collection of Iona Miller's Websites & Post-Jungian Commentary on
Esoterics, New Edge Culture, Frontier Science, & Underground History
"We don't have access to the set of all conjectures."
Esoterics, New Edge Culture, Frontier Science, & Underground History
"We don't have access to the set of all conjectures."
THE WIZARDS OF AHS
Subculture Shenanigans
Curating the Psychedelic Cognoscenti: 1966 - 2014
Psychedelic & Neo-Psychedelic Scenes & Zines
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/hyperdelic.html
BEL > PM&E > HF/RH/Mondo 2000 > NonLinearCircle > Forum Alpbach
The Harmonic Convergence of
Psychedelics, Culture, Science & Technology
by Iona Miller & Morgan Russell, (c)2013
With an aging boomer generation in its golden years, the curation of the history of the psychedelic revolution and ensuing scenes takes on a poignant urgency. The Underground was the matrix of numerous scenes and revivals that are still highly influential in society today, though their magic moments have come and gone. While each of the psychedelic luminaries and cyber-pioneers have their own press, an overview of some of their former and current activities highlights the arc of these rainbow warriors from many walks of life. No one has written a comprehensive overview that links the agendas of various geographically separated groups into a coherent integral overview, spanning the interactions of West Coast, East Coast, Europe, Hyperspace, and the Virtuality.
From "Dodge City" to "Quail House", from "Cyber-Alley" to Miami Beach, and Beyond
Subculture Shenanigans
Curating the Psychedelic Cognoscenti: 1966 - 2014
Psychedelic & Neo-Psychedelic Scenes & Zines
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/hyperdelic.html
BEL > PM&E > HF/RH/Mondo 2000 > NonLinearCircle > Forum Alpbach
The Harmonic Convergence of
Psychedelics, Culture, Science & Technology
by Iona Miller & Morgan Russell, (c)2013
With an aging boomer generation in its golden years, the curation of the history of the psychedelic revolution and ensuing scenes takes on a poignant urgency. The Underground was the matrix of numerous scenes and revivals that are still highly influential in society today, though their magic moments have come and gone. While each of the psychedelic luminaries and cyber-pioneers have their own press, an overview of some of their former and current activities highlights the arc of these rainbow warriors from many walks of life. No one has written a comprehensive overview that links the agendas of various geographically separated groups into a coherent integral overview, spanning the interactions of West Coast, East Coast, Europe, Hyperspace, and the Virtuality.
From "Dodge City" to "Quail House", from "Cyber-Alley" to Miami Beach, and Beyond
Brotherhood of Eternal Love
Peace, Love & Harmony with Nature
(Dodge City, Laguna Beach, Haight Ashbury, Maui, Global Network)
http://belhistory.weebly.com/index.html
1966-1972: From its founding in 1966, the BROTHERHOOD OF ETERNAL LOVE (BEL) has been pioneering and shaping society. They fueled the zeitgeist with synchronicity and the seeds of change. Jung said that “Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective and objective world.”
The story of the Brotherhood is more concerned with psychic forces -- archetypal, philosophical, and cosmic -- than it is with the historical and emotional lives of the characters that weave in and out of it. They did, however, embody a Holy Moment, a slice of space-time that superseded reality. They had the Gaze of those who pierced through the illusions of ordinary life to marvel at the deep archetypal forces that shape reality.
The Brotherhood became agents of mass transformation. But, "seeing everything" either leads into enlightenment or the deeper darkness of disillusionment. At some point, the vision becomes obsession and turns cloudy. The irrational depths of the soul are undeniable. The ever-burning energy of human instinct transmutes into creative power. The feedback of 20/20 hindsight shows that in the worship of their own creation, perhaps they misunderstood the symbol for the thing. Even when we see Reality, we may be unable to help the situation. The meaning lies not in abstract spirituality but in the [re]sacralization of earthly life, not the nightmares of history.
As mercurial tricksters and shamanic sorcerers, they helped expose society's entrenched hypocrisy through a rejection of obsolete values -- the consensual trance of traditional morality. In tearing the veil from the 3rd eye of millions, they revealed the psychedelic heart of creativity that transcends language and conceptualization.
But the mystic eye and the evil eye are the same organ - bent on different ends. The power to imagine still shapes the future. That visionary power is what makes us human. The Brotherhood story is bigger than than they are -- than the narratives of each individual life. It galvanized a movement. Today's Brothers are glad to have survived their adventures, whether it was real or only a dream lived aloud. Sometimes even a whole lifetime cannot reveal the whole truth. Their secrets remained concealed because they are experiential -- initiatory.
Joseph Campbell said, "What we call monsters can be experienced as sublime. They represent powers too vast for the normal forms of life to contain them. . .Meanwhile, you’re climbing, until suddenly you break past a screen and an expanse of horizon opens out, and somehow, with this diminishment of your own ego, your consciousness expands to an experience of the sublime."
Griggs and his buddies migrated from Anaheim, California to bucolic Modjeska Canyon, where they formed a pastoral church centered around hallucinogens. With entrepreneurial spirit, they developed an illicit drug business. Needing a low-key hideout in Laguna Beach, they moved to Woodland Drive, an out-of-the-way collection of cheap-rental cottages and shacks. Later, it was called "Dodge City". Then they opened an art gallery and head shop called Mystic Arts World on South Coast Highway.
This is one epic Dope Opera, full of psychedelic surfers entangled in lots of magic seaweed. Timothy Leary was their resident Godfather for two years of intense, unstructured brainstorming, both in Laguna and at the Idyllwild ranch. BEL romanticized the American Outlaw and themselves -- as brash streetwise outsiders, righteous guerrilla dealers, and freedom fighters, but not criminals. They made those 60s albums and concerts sound even better. The counterculture burst into technicolor bloom, reflecting deep mysteries in new hues -- especially orange sunshine.
Branding Bravado
Everybody and their brother seems to think they were associated, but the original BEL crew was actually quite small with roots in Junior High and High School in Anaheim. They were never a "motorcycle gang", despite that characterization. They were destined to become a legend in their own time, by selling celestial dreams and oceanic communion. The story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is a paradox of the '60s Southern California counterculture and an electrified metaphor describing the rise and fall of the entire phenomenon.
The saga of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is a bizarre mélange of evangelical, starry-eyed hippie dealers, mystic alchemists, and fast-money bankers. Federal investigators described them as a "hippie Mafia" of approximately seven hundred fifty people that allegedly grossed $200,000,000. But the Brotherhood's secret
network of smugglers lived by a code different from that associated with organized crime. They were fired with idealism, committed to changing the world by disseminating large quantities of psychedelics. At least that's how it was at the beginning …. (Acid Dreams)
There's no soft-pedaling it -- the Brothers were drug distributors and smugglers who seized the magic moment of great instability and decay and provided a dynamic and very personal rebirth experience. In an era that deeply questioned the nature of reality, their history reads like a movie treatment, complete with hair-raising scenes of international smuggling in Afghanistan, near-arrests and miraculous escapes, surfing on acid, psychic visions, UFOs, agonies, ecstasies, and, of course, Leary with his bizarre escapades. Other like-minded groups formed, but the Brotherhood had a starring role with ambitious participation, amplified by Leary's financial and alchemical connections, patronage and payoffs.
BEL became a daring group of enormously successful underground drug manufacturers and dealers in LSD, pot, and hashish in the late ’60s to early ’70s. But the fact is that the brilliant glimpse of a living cosmos did pour through for a while, and it resulted in an unprecedented vision of a different world. One could debate forever the question of how much of what the drug did for us was contingent on the peculiar conditions of that time. The opening, however, was real. History can be funny that way.
Tuned in to the mystic arts yet aggressively pragmatic, the BEL believed they could transform the world by getting enough acid out on the underground market. They had already hit the JackPot with their grassroots network. Always seeking a utopian escape, some of BEL's members fled to Maui -- their 'Rainbow Island' -- where these transplanted pot smugglers turned to big-wave surfing, created Maui Waui, and appeared in their film Rainbow Bridge with Jimi Hendrix. A few returned to Santa Cruz and widely-dispersed Brotherhood properties within a short time.
Best Friends & Worst Enemies
The tightly-knit community went from zeros to heroes to the FBI's Most Wanted. The Brotherhood alchemists turned ergot mold into the gold of Orange Sunshine. Those who weren't caught individually or in the Operation BEL sweep went into hiding underground or abroad. The Brothers who had been best friends could also be worst enemies. Some brothers maintained the code of silence when faced with incarceration and even betrayal.
Tim Scully first met William "Billy" Mellon Hitchcock, grandson of William Larimer Mellon and great-great-grandson of Thomas Mellon, through Owsley in April 1967. They became friends and Billy loaned Scully $12,000 for the second Denver lab in 1968. The product from the lab was distributed by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Like Nick Sand, Scully was connected with the Brotherhood via Billy Hitchcock and Tim Leary.
In December 1968 Nick Sand (through an intermediary) purchased a farmhouse in Windsor, California where he and Tim Scully set up a large LSD lab. Tim Scully and Nick Sand (another psychedelic chemist) produced over 3.6 million tablets (300 micrograms each) of LSD they dubbed "Orange Sunshine" by the summer of 1969. In May 1969 Tim Scully was arrested in California for the 1968 Denver lab. The search was eventually ruled illegal, but Scully decided to retire from clandestine chemistry and pursue electronic design instead.
In 1972 the BEL alchemist, Nick Sand was prosecuted along with several members of the Brotherhood for the manufacturing of LSD. They had been the focus of a lengthy investigation by federal narcotics agents in the early 1970s. In early 1973 Billy Hitchcock was threatened with 24 years in prison for tax evasion if he didn't help the government convict the prime movers of the LSD cartel.
Billy provided evidence and testified against Tim Scully and Nick Sand and they were both indicted in April 1973. In 1976 Sand was found guilty partially due to the testimony of Billy Hitchcock and other "snitches" and was sentenced to 15 years in a federal penitentiary. Released on bail, he went underground in 1976 and remained a fugitive from federal agents for two decades.
One Drug Ring to Bind Them All
Core BEL brother, Glen Lynd turned state's evidence, revealing the entire BEL enterprise to the Feds for immunity from prosecution after Operation BEL. Patron Billy Hitchcock and even Leary turned snitch for a softer landing. In a stark reality check, middle-man Ronald Stark snitched for immunity on tax evasion and money laundering linked to Operation Julie in Britain. Some bad deals went down among the brothers themselves. The center could not hold.
One one level this is a true crime story: the evolution of a hippie drug smuggling operation and the cops who eventually took it down. But it's also a larger than life story about people who used highly illegal and unconventional ways to, in their point of view, bring peace on earth. Though many have tried, you cannot demystify the story of the Brotherhood, whose saga continues as a Peace Organization.
Silent Swagger
Some brothers don't wish to speak about any of it; others do. Some things are better left unsaid and "that was then and this is now". Some brothers still carry serious resentments and old gripes. In this dog eat dogma group, every dog has its day, every Brother has his say. Like blind men examining an elephant, many books, articles and videos describe different aspects of the Brotherhood, each with its own emphasis and spin. But all get mixed reviews for accuracy, even though they tried to interview other players who remain anonymous or silent.
We all tend to distill our experiences down into narratives we repeat almost verbatim. The best accounts are those by the brothers themselves, as reporters tell facts but fail to capture much of the flavor and fervor of the times. Despite its drug history, BEL remains what it essentially always was -- an activist spiritual organization, not just a pipedream, nebulous organization, or notorious legend. Eventually the Cold War nexus of institutions and ideas collapsed under their own weight. The process continues.
BEL survivors include Veterans, Ministers, Addiction Counselors, Healers, Artists, and Lamas. The core is still more interested in spirituality and helping fellow travelers on their life journey than in chasing the dollar, the Life-Spirit-Drug. If ministry is about touching peoples' lives, the BEL reached inside and rototilled their brains.
This is their story, and it is still unfolding, so check back as our archive grows. This connection has not been fully explored yet. Today's BEL is a social activist peace organization supporting veterans, health, and organic food choices for children, musical and community events. It's a conspirituality. The Brotherhood is still pushing Peace & Love and riding that cultural wave. Join the Revival. Show Us Your Peace Sign.
Peace, Love & Harmony with Nature
(Dodge City, Laguna Beach, Haight Ashbury, Maui, Global Network)
http://belhistory.weebly.com/index.html
1966-1972: From its founding in 1966, the BROTHERHOOD OF ETERNAL LOVE (BEL) has been pioneering and shaping society. They fueled the zeitgeist with synchronicity and the seeds of change. Jung said that “Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective and objective world.”
The story of the Brotherhood is more concerned with psychic forces -- archetypal, philosophical, and cosmic -- than it is with the historical and emotional lives of the characters that weave in and out of it. They did, however, embody a Holy Moment, a slice of space-time that superseded reality. They had the Gaze of those who pierced through the illusions of ordinary life to marvel at the deep archetypal forces that shape reality.
The Brotherhood became agents of mass transformation. But, "seeing everything" either leads into enlightenment or the deeper darkness of disillusionment. At some point, the vision becomes obsession and turns cloudy. The irrational depths of the soul are undeniable. The ever-burning energy of human instinct transmutes into creative power. The feedback of 20/20 hindsight shows that in the worship of their own creation, perhaps they misunderstood the symbol for the thing. Even when we see Reality, we may be unable to help the situation. The meaning lies not in abstract spirituality but in the [re]sacralization of earthly life, not the nightmares of history.
As mercurial tricksters and shamanic sorcerers, they helped expose society's entrenched hypocrisy through a rejection of obsolete values -- the consensual trance of traditional morality. In tearing the veil from the 3rd eye of millions, they revealed the psychedelic heart of creativity that transcends language and conceptualization.
But the mystic eye and the evil eye are the same organ - bent on different ends. The power to imagine still shapes the future. That visionary power is what makes us human. The Brotherhood story is bigger than than they are -- than the narratives of each individual life. It galvanized a movement. Today's Brothers are glad to have survived their adventures, whether it was real or only a dream lived aloud. Sometimes even a whole lifetime cannot reveal the whole truth. Their secrets remained concealed because they are experiential -- initiatory.
Joseph Campbell said, "What we call monsters can be experienced as sublime. They represent powers too vast for the normal forms of life to contain them. . .Meanwhile, you’re climbing, until suddenly you break past a screen and an expanse of horizon opens out, and somehow, with this diminishment of your own ego, your consciousness expands to an experience of the sublime."
Griggs and his buddies migrated from Anaheim, California to bucolic Modjeska Canyon, where they formed a pastoral church centered around hallucinogens. With entrepreneurial spirit, they developed an illicit drug business. Needing a low-key hideout in Laguna Beach, they moved to Woodland Drive, an out-of-the-way collection of cheap-rental cottages and shacks. Later, it was called "Dodge City". Then they opened an art gallery and head shop called Mystic Arts World on South Coast Highway.
This is one epic Dope Opera, full of psychedelic surfers entangled in lots of magic seaweed. Timothy Leary was their resident Godfather for two years of intense, unstructured brainstorming, both in Laguna and at the Idyllwild ranch. BEL romanticized the American Outlaw and themselves -- as brash streetwise outsiders, righteous guerrilla dealers, and freedom fighters, but not criminals. They made those 60s albums and concerts sound even better. The counterculture burst into technicolor bloom, reflecting deep mysteries in new hues -- especially orange sunshine.
Branding Bravado
Everybody and their brother seems to think they were associated, but the original BEL crew was actually quite small with roots in Junior High and High School in Anaheim. They were never a "motorcycle gang", despite that characterization. They were destined to become a legend in their own time, by selling celestial dreams and oceanic communion. The story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is a paradox of the '60s Southern California counterculture and an electrified metaphor describing the rise and fall of the entire phenomenon.
The saga of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is a bizarre mélange of evangelical, starry-eyed hippie dealers, mystic alchemists, and fast-money bankers. Federal investigators described them as a "hippie Mafia" of approximately seven hundred fifty people that allegedly grossed $200,000,000. But the Brotherhood's secret
network of smugglers lived by a code different from that associated with organized crime. They were fired with idealism, committed to changing the world by disseminating large quantities of psychedelics. At least that's how it was at the beginning …. (Acid Dreams)
There's no soft-pedaling it -- the Brothers were drug distributors and smugglers who seized the magic moment of great instability and decay and provided a dynamic and very personal rebirth experience. In an era that deeply questioned the nature of reality, their history reads like a movie treatment, complete with hair-raising scenes of international smuggling in Afghanistan, near-arrests and miraculous escapes, surfing on acid, psychic visions, UFOs, agonies, ecstasies, and, of course, Leary with his bizarre escapades. Other like-minded groups formed, but the Brotherhood had a starring role with ambitious participation, amplified by Leary's financial and alchemical connections, patronage and payoffs.
BEL became a daring group of enormously successful underground drug manufacturers and dealers in LSD, pot, and hashish in the late ’60s to early ’70s. But the fact is that the brilliant glimpse of a living cosmos did pour through for a while, and it resulted in an unprecedented vision of a different world. One could debate forever the question of how much of what the drug did for us was contingent on the peculiar conditions of that time. The opening, however, was real. History can be funny that way.
Tuned in to the mystic arts yet aggressively pragmatic, the BEL believed they could transform the world by getting enough acid out on the underground market. They had already hit the JackPot with their grassroots network. Always seeking a utopian escape, some of BEL's members fled to Maui -- their 'Rainbow Island' -- where these transplanted pot smugglers turned to big-wave surfing, created Maui Waui, and appeared in their film Rainbow Bridge with Jimi Hendrix. A few returned to Santa Cruz and widely-dispersed Brotherhood properties within a short time.
Best Friends & Worst Enemies
The tightly-knit community went from zeros to heroes to the FBI's Most Wanted. The Brotherhood alchemists turned ergot mold into the gold of Orange Sunshine. Those who weren't caught individually or in the Operation BEL sweep went into hiding underground or abroad. The Brothers who had been best friends could also be worst enemies. Some brothers maintained the code of silence when faced with incarceration and even betrayal.
Tim Scully first met William "Billy" Mellon Hitchcock, grandson of William Larimer Mellon and great-great-grandson of Thomas Mellon, through Owsley in April 1967. They became friends and Billy loaned Scully $12,000 for the second Denver lab in 1968. The product from the lab was distributed by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Like Nick Sand, Scully was connected with the Brotherhood via Billy Hitchcock and Tim Leary.
In December 1968 Nick Sand (through an intermediary) purchased a farmhouse in Windsor, California where he and Tim Scully set up a large LSD lab. Tim Scully and Nick Sand (another psychedelic chemist) produced over 3.6 million tablets (300 micrograms each) of LSD they dubbed "Orange Sunshine" by the summer of 1969. In May 1969 Tim Scully was arrested in California for the 1968 Denver lab. The search was eventually ruled illegal, but Scully decided to retire from clandestine chemistry and pursue electronic design instead.
In 1972 the BEL alchemist, Nick Sand was prosecuted along with several members of the Brotherhood for the manufacturing of LSD. They had been the focus of a lengthy investigation by federal narcotics agents in the early 1970s. In early 1973 Billy Hitchcock was threatened with 24 years in prison for tax evasion if he didn't help the government convict the prime movers of the LSD cartel.
Billy provided evidence and testified against Tim Scully and Nick Sand and they were both indicted in April 1973. In 1976 Sand was found guilty partially due to the testimony of Billy Hitchcock and other "snitches" and was sentenced to 15 years in a federal penitentiary. Released on bail, he went underground in 1976 and remained a fugitive from federal agents for two decades.
One Drug Ring to Bind Them All
Core BEL brother, Glen Lynd turned state's evidence, revealing the entire BEL enterprise to the Feds for immunity from prosecution after Operation BEL. Patron Billy Hitchcock and even Leary turned snitch for a softer landing. In a stark reality check, middle-man Ronald Stark snitched for immunity on tax evasion and money laundering linked to Operation Julie in Britain. Some bad deals went down among the brothers themselves. The center could not hold.
One one level this is a true crime story: the evolution of a hippie drug smuggling operation and the cops who eventually took it down. But it's also a larger than life story about people who used highly illegal and unconventional ways to, in their point of view, bring peace on earth. Though many have tried, you cannot demystify the story of the Brotherhood, whose saga continues as a Peace Organization.
Silent Swagger
Some brothers don't wish to speak about any of it; others do. Some things are better left unsaid and "that was then and this is now". Some brothers still carry serious resentments and old gripes. In this dog eat dogma group, every dog has its day, every Brother has his say. Like blind men examining an elephant, many books, articles and videos describe different aspects of the Brotherhood, each with its own emphasis and spin. But all get mixed reviews for accuracy, even though they tried to interview other players who remain anonymous or silent.
We all tend to distill our experiences down into narratives we repeat almost verbatim. The best accounts are those by the brothers themselves, as reporters tell facts but fail to capture much of the flavor and fervor of the times. Despite its drug history, BEL remains what it essentially always was -- an activist spiritual organization, not just a pipedream, nebulous organization, or notorious legend. Eventually the Cold War nexus of institutions and ideas collapsed under their own weight. The process continues.
BEL survivors include Veterans, Ministers, Addiction Counselors, Healers, Artists, and Lamas. The core is still more interested in spirituality and helping fellow travelers on their life journey than in chasing the dollar, the Life-Spirit-Drug. If ministry is about touching peoples' lives, the BEL reached inside and rototilled their brains.
This is their story, and it is still unfolding, so check back as our archive grows. This connection has not been fully explored yet. Today's BEL is a social activist peace organization supporting veterans, health, and organic food choices for children, musical and community events. It's a conspirituality. The Brotherhood is still pushing Peace & Love and riding that cultural wave. Join the Revival. Show Us Your Peace Sign.
PARANOIA MAGAZINE
Debunking the Bloodline, Iona Miller, 2014
http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/bloodline-paranoia.html
http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/bloodline-paranoia.html
MLK Assassination
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/assassinations.html
Iona Miller’s “Did COINTELPRO & CIA ‘Back Pocket Agents’ Kill Rev. King, Jr.?” echoes Downard’s diagnosis of the American political landscape when she reexamines the murder of one of the Three Kings and says, “Manipulation of the public collective unconscious constitutes Masonic hoodwinking at its best or worst. Whether you think in terms of a shadow government or a government Shadow, we all share responsibility for allowing shadow masters who get away with murder, dreaming mind or no dreaming mind.”
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/assassinations.html
Iona Miller’s “Did COINTELPRO & CIA ‘Back Pocket Agents’ Kill Rev. King, Jr.?” echoes Downard’s diagnosis of the American political landscape when she reexamines the murder of one of the Three Kings and says, “Manipulation of the public collective unconscious constitutes Masonic hoodwinking at its best or worst. Whether you think in terms of a shadow government or a government Shadow, we all share responsibility for allowing shadow masters who get away with murder, dreaming mind or no dreaming mind.”
Downwinders, by Iona Miller, 2012
“If we are ever to find our way out of the present deplorable situation, we must remain vigilant, we must continue to challenge and to question, we must insist that the burden of proof is on those who would use these chemicals to prove the procedures are safe.” (“A New Chapter to Silent Spring,” Bulletin of the Garden Club of America, May 1963)
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/downwind.html
Better Living through Chemistry?
As Robert Frost says, the woods are “lovely, dark and deep”, but they hide a deadly secret, rarely known to their inhabitants, much less those who admire their lifestyle.
“If we are ever to find our way out of the present deplorable situation, we must remain vigilant, we must continue to challenge and to question, we must insist that the burden of proof is on those who would use these chemicals to prove the procedures are safe.” (“A New Chapter to Silent Spring,” Bulletin of the Garden Club of America, May 1963)
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/downwind.html
Better Living through Chemistry?
As Robert Frost says, the woods are “lovely, dark and deep”, but they hide a deadly secret, rarely known to their inhabitants, much less those who admire their lifestyle.
Paranoia Magazine - http://paranoiamagazine.com
#44 "Blinded by the DMT Light"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_9.html
Until roughly age 8, we can’t really distinguish between fantasy and reality, due to our own natural hallucinogen, DMT, (dimethyltryptamine). DMT molecules are similar to serotonin and target the same receptors. Meditation has been suggested as a means of preserving youthful appearance and mental flexibility. Dr. Rick Strassman and others claim this spiritual technology encourages production and release of natural DMT (Soma Pinoline) in the mindbody throughout the lifespan. DMT is implicated in the wild imaginings of our nightly dreams, near-death phenomena (NDEs), alien abduction experiences, and dream yoga. It is also a source of visionary phenomena in therapy, such as unusual psychophysical states attained in waking dreams, shamanic or psychotherapeutic journeys. Synthetic and botanical DMT crosses the blood-brain barrier and bonds to the same synaptic sites as serotonin. Psychedelic chemist, Sasha Shulgin claims, “DMT is everywhere.”
#46 "Tom Bearden: Wizard of Zero Point"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_10.html
Microphysics wizard, Col. Thomas E. Bearden knows the secret of creation. This remarkable engineer has worked in the space program and science intelligence. But his claim to fame comes from free energy research. He is the master of Nothing. He resonates with Nothing. Like any good magician, he can theoretically produce anything out of thin air—in fact, the thinnest air, a pure vacuum. The dynamic vacuum and its emanations are the unintegrated center of 21st Century physics. Focus is on the threshold where nothing becomes something, the elusive interface of psyche and matter. This light speed target is Zero Point Energy (ZPE), which hints that maybe we can get something for nothing by turning the Void inside out.
#49 "Just Say Know to Your Neo-CONtrollers"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_12.html
How can we regain control of our own behavioral choices rather than feeding the Pavlovian system of forced choices, called ‘channeling’? Part of the answer is to bother to educate yourself: “Just Say Know.” Know what game is being played on you and the rules of engagement. The name of the game is Power and Control -- how to take it and your resources from you. Social power is the ability to manipulate others. This is why personal empowerment has become such an issue in our society. We feel we have so little. That fosters self-blame, guilt and erodes self-esteem as well as the will to fight back or stick up for yourself. You are classified by the Controllers as Compliant, Passive Resistant, Active Resistant (Activist), Assaultive (Radical), or Lethal (Terrorist). Make no mistake, a very intentional War for Your Mind is being waged on all fronts: social, political, financial, and spiritual. Rules of Engagement (ROE) determine where, when and how force will be used.
#50 "Dune Meme"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_11.html
Earth is becoming more and more like DUNE, the desert planet. Petrocollapse, economic and climatic meltdown means class war, drought, food and water shortages. Humanity battles for survival with OILogarchy, full-spectrum mind control, ubiquitous drugs, religious cults, imperialism, face-dancing spooks, corporate feudalism, elitist families, secret societies, would-be saviors, AI, clones, genetic manipulation and Jihad. Frank Herbert called it decades ago. But where is our mything link, our Dune Messiah? Dune focuses on the dynamics of power and the mass manipulation of unconscious dynamics, of the mythic dimension. The unique feature of Dune's messianic superhero, Paul Atreides, was his ability to see, shape, and intentionally build the future from the zero point of a cosmic maelstrom. In an almost prescient anticipation of chaos theory and complexity, Dune explores the influential introjection of the unforeseen critical element, tipping-points and intergalactic butterfly effects. For the superhero, spice brings a reversal of fate that blinds the normal eyes even as it opens hyperdelic vision and consumes all semblance of humanity. The water of life makes a mythic mystic of the man, initiating him at the cosmic zero point where all timelines and all mass motivations of the Collective Unconscious can be sensed in the ultimate probability cloud. It is a mind-blowing experience. They say that, "He who controls the spice controls the universe." But the fact is spice controls everything and everybody in the Duniverse.
#44 "Blinded by the DMT Light"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_9.html
Until roughly age 8, we can’t really distinguish between fantasy and reality, due to our own natural hallucinogen, DMT, (dimethyltryptamine). DMT molecules are similar to serotonin and target the same receptors. Meditation has been suggested as a means of preserving youthful appearance and mental flexibility. Dr. Rick Strassman and others claim this spiritual technology encourages production and release of natural DMT (Soma Pinoline) in the mindbody throughout the lifespan. DMT is implicated in the wild imaginings of our nightly dreams, near-death phenomena (NDEs), alien abduction experiences, and dream yoga. It is also a source of visionary phenomena in therapy, such as unusual psychophysical states attained in waking dreams, shamanic or psychotherapeutic journeys. Synthetic and botanical DMT crosses the blood-brain barrier and bonds to the same synaptic sites as serotonin. Psychedelic chemist, Sasha Shulgin claims, “DMT is everywhere.”
#46 "Tom Bearden: Wizard of Zero Point"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_10.html
Microphysics wizard, Col. Thomas E. Bearden knows the secret of creation. This remarkable engineer has worked in the space program and science intelligence. But his claim to fame comes from free energy research. He is the master of Nothing. He resonates with Nothing. Like any good magician, he can theoretically produce anything out of thin air—in fact, the thinnest air, a pure vacuum. The dynamic vacuum and its emanations are the unintegrated center of 21st Century physics. Focus is on the threshold where nothing becomes something, the elusive interface of psyche and matter. This light speed target is Zero Point Energy (ZPE), which hints that maybe we can get something for nothing by turning the Void inside out.
#49 "Just Say Know to Your Neo-CONtrollers"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_12.html
How can we regain control of our own behavioral choices rather than feeding the Pavlovian system of forced choices, called ‘channeling’? Part of the answer is to bother to educate yourself: “Just Say Know.” Know what game is being played on you and the rules of engagement. The name of the game is Power and Control -- how to take it and your resources from you. Social power is the ability to manipulate others. This is why personal empowerment has become such an issue in our society. We feel we have so little. That fosters self-blame, guilt and erodes self-esteem as well as the will to fight back or stick up for yourself. You are classified by the Controllers as Compliant, Passive Resistant, Active Resistant (Activist), Assaultive (Radical), or Lethal (Terrorist). Make no mistake, a very intentional War for Your Mind is being waged on all fronts: social, political, financial, and spiritual. Rules of Engagement (ROE) determine where, when and how force will be used.
#50 "Dune Meme"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_11.html
Earth is becoming more and more like DUNE, the desert planet. Petrocollapse, economic and climatic meltdown means class war, drought, food and water shortages. Humanity battles for survival with OILogarchy, full-spectrum mind control, ubiquitous drugs, religious cults, imperialism, face-dancing spooks, corporate feudalism, elitist families, secret societies, would-be saviors, AI, clones, genetic manipulation and Jihad. Frank Herbert called it decades ago. But where is our mything link, our Dune Messiah? Dune focuses on the dynamics of power and the mass manipulation of unconscious dynamics, of the mythic dimension. The unique feature of Dune's messianic superhero, Paul Atreides, was his ability to see, shape, and intentionally build the future from the zero point of a cosmic maelstrom. In an almost prescient anticipation of chaos theory and complexity, Dune explores the influential introjection of the unforeseen critical element, tipping-points and intergalactic butterfly effects. For the superhero, spice brings a reversal of fate that blinds the normal eyes even as it opens hyperdelic vision and consumes all semblance of humanity. The water of life makes a mythic mystic of the man, initiating him at the cosmic zero point where all timelines and all mass motivations of the Collective Unconscious can be sensed in the ultimate probability cloud. It is a mind-blowing experience. They say that, "He who controls the spice controls the universe." But the fact is spice controls everything and everybody in the Duniverse.
THE UNINVITED STATES OF AMERICA
The Long Crisis, PsyStrat & Tavistock Agenda Revealed
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_2.html
"In 1941 a group of psychiatrists at the Tavistock Clinic saw that the right questions were asked in Parliament in order to secure the means to try new measures. As a result they were asked to join the Directorate of Army Psychiatry, and did so as a group." –Tavistock Institute
Worldview Warfare: They wind you up because they know what makes you tick. Tavistock Clinic studied shellshock (post-traumatic stress) in WWI but switched to developing psychological warfare in 1922. Rather than helping traumatized soldiers, it calculated their breaking points. Tavistock shock doctrine now permeates global life. Their social engineers are a Who’s Who: Freud, Jung, Adler, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Edward Bernays, Eric Trist, A.K. Rice, Eric Miller, Aldous Huxley, R.D. Laing, and more. Tavistock sent German-born psychologist, Kurt Lewin, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1945 to establish the Research Center for Group Dynamics in the US. Lewin is the founder of 'social psychology.' The Center moved to the University of Michigan in 1948 where it became the Institute for Social Research, and continued to co-opt legitimate psychosocial research and exploit mass psychology. http://paranoiamagazine.com
The Long Crisis, PsyStrat & Tavistock Agenda Revealed
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_2.html
"In 1941 a group of psychiatrists at the Tavistock Clinic saw that the right questions were asked in Parliament in order to secure the means to try new measures. As a result they were asked to join the Directorate of Army Psychiatry, and did so as a group." –Tavistock Institute
Worldview Warfare: They wind you up because they know what makes you tick. Tavistock Clinic studied shellshock (post-traumatic stress) in WWI but switched to developing psychological warfare in 1922. Rather than helping traumatized soldiers, it calculated their breaking points. Tavistock shock doctrine now permeates global life. Their social engineers are a Who’s Who: Freud, Jung, Adler, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Edward Bernays, Eric Trist, A.K. Rice, Eric Miller, Aldous Huxley, R.D. Laing, and more. Tavistock sent German-born psychologist, Kurt Lewin, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1945 to establish the Research Center for Group Dynamics in the US. Lewin is the founder of 'social psychology.' The Center moved to the University of Michigan in 1948 where it became the Institute for Social Research, and continued to co-opt legitimate psychosocial research and exploit mass psychology. http://paranoiamagazine.com
"St. Germain Triangle Book Decoded", Iona Miller
http://paranoiamagazine.com
ST. GERMAIN’S TOP SECRET CODE REVEALED
St. Germain had The Secret. That secret became a legacy of Manly Palmer Hall (MPH) and his Philosophical Research Society (PRS). It was his supreme treasure, which he kept safely hidden in his vault. The two parchment cipher texts now reside in the Getty Research Institute, likewise deep in their library vaults. This wisest adept in Europe reserved his greatest gift for his wisest companions. St. Germain recorded his version of The Secret for health, wealth and long life in his legendary TRIANGLE BOOK, and apparently made copies for his closest circle of initiates. But it seems the entire secret was never entrusted to a single individual, as the copies of the book are curiously not identical, containing different illustrations. We might deduce that to properly work the formulae in the book, one required the Emblems and Sigils it described. Is this why Manly Palmer Hall possessed two copies of the book, each with different glyphs?It begs the point, were there other copies with even more illustrations required to initiate the whole current -- to attain magical immortality? What we know is that both St. Germain and Manly Palmer Hall lived to a ripe old age and remained mentally vibrant. Can this obscure arcane text -- one of the rarest occult manuscripts -- be the secret of their longevity? The book is alleged to be Egyptian in origin. Hall can be seen with the book in a portrait, which appears as frontpiece in his Freemasonry of the Ancient Egyptians. Possibly the first time, the text translation appears publically here with the withheld 5 illustrations of the two copies. Even in the originals, it is difficult to make out the precise glyphs of the sigils, but arguably their magical potency is intact. Sigils and emblems often contain hidden meanings, since they are visual shorthand, which can be "read" for their symbolism. Carl Jung used this method as the traditional basis of his alchemically inspired psychology. Secrets have a way of keeping themselves, even when hiding in plain sight. The quality of these reproductions is limited by the photographic slides of the originals. They were taken during the 1970s surreptitiously in the PRS vault. http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_13.html
MANIFEST DESTINY MANIFESTO, IONA MILLER
http://paranoiamagazine.com
We can create an evolutionary politics to build a more creative future. Calculated cycles of commodification and scarcity, business and war have driven the military/industrial complex and the multinational corporate climate. Cover Ups and confusion have paralyzed us into apathy where nothing significant can be trusted, believed or known. One percent of humanity controls 40% of global wealth. But we can empower ourselves to resist status quo politics and shape ourselves a better destiny - a 21st century Manifest Destiny that fulfills our positive spiritual potential. If we don't want a dark future for humanity, we must reinvent ourselves and our culture from the foundation upwards. Even if that is fantastically radical, it can still happen, one inspired person at a time and cascade toward a visionary approach to large-scale societal transformation that heals personal and global socioeconomical scars. Competent citizenry can learn to implement constructive visions for our collective planetary future. Deep and broad visions can stimulate reflection and lively discussion of contemporary solutions that can become the scaffolding for action plans from the community level upwards. A courageous and truly integrated vision would include a detailed strategy for a vibrant and life-sustaining future. Individually and collectively we have to redefine what it means to thrive with more compassion for others, not just survive. The paradigm needs to switch from "dog eat dog" to "we're all in it together." http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_14.html
http://paranoiamagazine.com
ST. GERMAIN’S TOP SECRET CODE REVEALED
St. Germain had The Secret. That secret became a legacy of Manly Palmer Hall (MPH) and his Philosophical Research Society (PRS). It was his supreme treasure, which he kept safely hidden in his vault. The two parchment cipher texts now reside in the Getty Research Institute, likewise deep in their library vaults. This wisest adept in Europe reserved his greatest gift for his wisest companions. St. Germain recorded his version of The Secret for health, wealth and long life in his legendary TRIANGLE BOOK, and apparently made copies for his closest circle of initiates. But it seems the entire secret was never entrusted to a single individual, as the copies of the book are curiously not identical, containing different illustrations. We might deduce that to properly work the formulae in the book, one required the Emblems and Sigils it described. Is this why Manly Palmer Hall possessed two copies of the book, each with different glyphs?It begs the point, were there other copies with even more illustrations required to initiate the whole current -- to attain magical immortality? What we know is that both St. Germain and Manly Palmer Hall lived to a ripe old age and remained mentally vibrant. Can this obscure arcane text -- one of the rarest occult manuscripts -- be the secret of their longevity? The book is alleged to be Egyptian in origin. Hall can be seen with the book in a portrait, which appears as frontpiece in his Freemasonry of the Ancient Egyptians. Possibly the first time, the text translation appears publically here with the withheld 5 illustrations of the two copies. Even in the originals, it is difficult to make out the precise glyphs of the sigils, but arguably their magical potency is intact. Sigils and emblems often contain hidden meanings, since they are visual shorthand, which can be "read" for their symbolism. Carl Jung used this method as the traditional basis of his alchemically inspired psychology. Secrets have a way of keeping themselves, even when hiding in plain sight. The quality of these reproductions is limited by the photographic slides of the originals. They were taken during the 1970s surreptitiously in the PRS vault. http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_13.html
MANIFEST DESTINY MANIFESTO, IONA MILLER
http://paranoiamagazine.com
We can create an evolutionary politics to build a more creative future. Calculated cycles of commodification and scarcity, business and war have driven the military/industrial complex and the multinational corporate climate. Cover Ups and confusion have paralyzed us into apathy where nothing significant can be trusted, believed or known. One percent of humanity controls 40% of global wealth. But we can empower ourselves to resist status quo politics and shape ourselves a better destiny - a 21st century Manifest Destiny that fulfills our positive spiritual potential. If we don't want a dark future for humanity, we must reinvent ourselves and our culture from the foundation upwards. Even if that is fantastically radical, it can still happen, one inspired person at a time and cascade toward a visionary approach to large-scale societal transformation that heals personal and global socioeconomical scars. Competent citizenry can learn to implement constructive visions for our collective planetary future. Deep and broad visions can stimulate reflection and lively discussion of contemporary solutions that can become the scaffolding for action plans from the community level upwards. A courageous and truly integrated vision would include a detailed strategy for a vibrant and life-sustaining future. Individually and collectively we have to redefine what it means to thrive with more compassion for others, not just survive. The paradigm needs to switch from "dog eat dog" to "we're all in it together." http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_14.html
GREEN EGG
DER GOLEM
DER GOLEM (Germany) - "Virtual Magic", Iona Miller
We are entering an era of magical technologies which are relevant to the inner world of imagery and imagination. Through Virtual Reality (VR) we can create an electronic representation of typical symbols of the psyche and interact with them. Even though these images have no concrete existence, they are influential in the process of transformation. The practice of magick, a sacred technology, normally involves concentrated visualization activity coupled with immersion in the autonomous stream of consciousness. Since much of the training and practice in magick is based on a recipe, formula, or protocol, these could easily be programmed, using virtual reality, to guide an aspirant into a specific state of consciousness. Biofeedback monitoring could enhance that state. * Each virtual world would include a panoply of symbols related to a specific archetype. The aspirant would journey through this world. In the process of positive interaction with these archetypal forms (or perhaps imaginally becoming them), the psyche becomes "inoculated" with their resources. A conscious relationship is fostered. This leads to a greater sense of wholeness and communion with transpersonal energies. Through the arrival of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, we will soon have access to a fully programmable electronic "astral plane." Magic has always been a sacred technology, and combining it with VR makes for a state-of-the-art practice. In virtual reality, we can create a world which is, in essence or effect, "as good as" normal reality. Through the use of visual, audial, kinesthetic, and olfactory feedback, the experiential (rather than analytical) part of the brain is guided to suspend its disbelief in the synthetic reality. The realization of a system of interactive fantasy will allow us, as artists or magicians, to shape the experience from the inside. It will allow us to re-shape ourselves, also. A central premise in VR is that you can manipulate your self-representation, or self-image. VR represents a cultural revolution in the way we view reality, nature, art, ourselves, and our relationship with transpersonal powers. Interactive media will give us the ability to author moving images. When you can put your images in cyberspace, you introduce your own unique content into the experience. Background, or natural imagery, will be texture-mapped for ambiguity. Ambiguity is one key to the engagement of the imagination (Laurel, 1992). Communal virtual reality is also possible for group rituals, but requires a tremendously powerful computer to keep track of all the details which perpetuate a believable virtual space. The realm of imagination has traditionally been the province of shamans and magicians. More recently, psychotherapists have entered the arena of imagination as guides to the heights and the depths. There are many different styles in the practice of magic from primitive to sophisticated. Magic is the ancient technology for dealing with lost or questing souls, while archetypal psychology is a modern counterpart. http://zero-point.tripod.com/vrmagick.html
We are entering an era of magical technologies which are relevant to the inner world of imagery and imagination. Through Virtual Reality (VR) we can create an electronic representation of typical symbols of the psyche and interact with them. Even though these images have no concrete existence, they are influential in the process of transformation. The practice of magick, a sacred technology, normally involves concentrated visualization activity coupled with immersion in the autonomous stream of consciousness. Since much of the training and practice in magick is based on a recipe, formula, or protocol, these could easily be programmed, using virtual reality, to guide an aspirant into a specific state of consciousness. Biofeedback monitoring could enhance that state. * Each virtual world would include a panoply of symbols related to a specific archetype. The aspirant would journey through this world. In the process of positive interaction with these archetypal forms (or perhaps imaginally becoming them), the psyche becomes "inoculated" with their resources. A conscious relationship is fostered. This leads to a greater sense of wholeness and communion with transpersonal energies. Through the arrival of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, we will soon have access to a fully programmable electronic "astral plane." Magic has always been a sacred technology, and combining it with VR makes for a state-of-the-art practice. In virtual reality, we can create a world which is, in essence or effect, "as good as" normal reality. Through the use of visual, audial, kinesthetic, and olfactory feedback, the experiential (rather than analytical) part of the brain is guided to suspend its disbelief in the synthetic reality. The realization of a system of interactive fantasy will allow us, as artists or magicians, to shape the experience from the inside. It will allow us to re-shape ourselves, also. A central premise in VR is that you can manipulate your self-representation, or self-image. VR represents a cultural revolution in the way we view reality, nature, art, ourselves, and our relationship with transpersonal powers. Interactive media will give us the ability to author moving images. When you can put your images in cyberspace, you introduce your own unique content into the experience. Background, or natural imagery, will be texture-mapped for ambiguity. Ambiguity is one key to the engagement of the imagination (Laurel, 1992). Communal virtual reality is also possible for group rituals, but requires a tremendously powerful computer to keep track of all the details which perpetuate a believable virtual space. The realm of imagination has traditionally been the province of shamans and magicians. More recently, psychotherapists have entered the arena of imagination as guides to the heights and the depths. There are many different styles in the practice of magic from primitive to sophisticated. Magic is the ancient technology for dealing with lost or questing souls, while archetypal psychology is a modern counterpart. http://zero-point.tripod.com/vrmagick.html
ANTIBOTHIS
ANTIBOTHIS (Portugal) - "NeoCon's Agony & Sasha's Ecstasy" by Iona Miller
The passing in 2008 of Albert Hoffman at 102 years old leaves psychedelic alchemist Dr. Alexander Shulgin (b. 1925 -) as arguably the most eminent living scientist in the entheogen arena. This pioneer is a hero of counterculture but has he been “sleeping with the enemy” all these decades? His work history spans employment by corpoglomerate chemical firms involved in biological warfare, to shadowy black ops backers. Shulgin also enjoys the politically dubious distinction of being a member of The Bohemian Club of global elites, partaking in the annual revels at Bohemian Grove. How is it this psychedelic chemist has crossed cultural lines from the ivory tower to Chemical Corps firms, to the roots of psychedelia, to rubbing elbows with the transnational meta-controllers of The Grove? Shulgin remains an ambiguous character with a career arc that cuts an influential mercurial path through the psychedelic scene. We might call him the “Einstein of psychoactive compounds,” creating over 200 psychedelic compounds he tested on himself. World-famous chemist, Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin holds at least 17 US pesticide and drug patents. Edgewood Arsenal scheduled his synthetic pot for use as a military weapon but it also escaped into local high schools and parts unknown in the late 1960s. There must be some agony when skullduggery control-freaks lose control over their targets. According to the memoir of retired Colonel James Ketchum, M.D. Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten (2006), military mind meddlers wanted a nonlethal incapacitating agent that would dissolve the will to resist, and funding for chemical weaponry and mind control was readily available in the early 60s. Other “incapacitating” experimental drugs of the era included LSD, PCP, STP, MDA, DMT, BZ and Ritalin. Various agencies tested these brainstorms on witting and unwitting victims, and then they escaped the handlers. One morning, Ketchum arrived at his office in Edgewood and found "a large, black steel barrel, resembling an oil drum, parked in the corner of the room," he recounts in his book. Overcome by curiosity, he opened the barrel and examined its contents. There were a dozen tightly sealed glass canisters that looked like cookie jars; the labels on the canisters indicated that each contained about three pounds of "EA 1729," the Army's code number for LSD. By the end of the week, the 40 pounds of government acid -- enough to intoxicate several hundred million people -- vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared. Ketchum still doesn't know who put the LSD in his office or what became of it. http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_42.html
The passing in 2008 of Albert Hoffman at 102 years old leaves psychedelic alchemist Dr. Alexander Shulgin (b. 1925 -) as arguably the most eminent living scientist in the entheogen arena. This pioneer is a hero of counterculture but has he been “sleeping with the enemy” all these decades? His work history spans employment by corpoglomerate chemical firms involved in biological warfare, to shadowy black ops backers. Shulgin also enjoys the politically dubious distinction of being a member of The Bohemian Club of global elites, partaking in the annual revels at Bohemian Grove. How is it this psychedelic chemist has crossed cultural lines from the ivory tower to Chemical Corps firms, to the roots of psychedelia, to rubbing elbows with the transnational meta-controllers of The Grove? Shulgin remains an ambiguous character with a career arc that cuts an influential mercurial path through the psychedelic scene. We might call him the “Einstein of psychoactive compounds,” creating over 200 psychedelic compounds he tested on himself. World-famous chemist, Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin holds at least 17 US pesticide and drug patents. Edgewood Arsenal scheduled his synthetic pot for use as a military weapon but it also escaped into local high schools and parts unknown in the late 1960s. There must be some agony when skullduggery control-freaks lose control over their targets. According to the memoir of retired Colonel James Ketchum, M.D. Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten (2006), military mind meddlers wanted a nonlethal incapacitating agent that would dissolve the will to resist, and funding for chemical weaponry and mind control was readily available in the early 60s. Other “incapacitating” experimental drugs of the era included LSD, PCP, STP, MDA, DMT, BZ and Ritalin. Various agencies tested these brainstorms on witting and unwitting victims, and then they escaped the handlers. One morning, Ketchum arrived at his office in Edgewood and found "a large, black steel barrel, resembling an oil drum, parked in the corner of the room," he recounts in his book. Overcome by curiosity, he opened the barrel and examined its contents. There were a dozen tightly sealed glass canisters that looked like cookie jars; the labels on the canisters indicated that each contained about three pounds of "EA 1729," the Army's code number for LSD. By the end of the week, the 40 pounds of government acid -- enough to intoxicate several hundred million people -- vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared. Ketchum still doesn't know who put the LSD in his office or what became of it. http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_42.html
ANTIBOTHIS (Portugal) "PANDROGYNY: The YabYummy Way of Imagination"
“The modern androgyne, seeking only self-realization, forfeits the energy of opposition and conflict.” - Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae
A LOVE STORY OF GENDER REUNION: This is a stream of unconsciousness essay on the Self, illustrated by the kaleidoscopic sexual personae of GENESIS P-ORRIDGE. Always the mercurial Magician, Gen has been associated with the art and decadence of the Thelemic, industrial, punk, Goth, and rave movements, and was arguably the earliest proponent of acid house. His bands have ranged from hard-edged Throbbing Gristle to ethereal Psychic TV to avant-garde Thee Majesty. Never one to commune in solitude, all these eras of the artist, priest and shaman have fused into the orgiastic seizure of family-band PTV3. Now he gladly shares center stage with the group, including wife Lady Jaye, daughter Genesse, and bandmates, forming a cohesive unit to rock the house. This is a personal and critical triumph for the artist, whose daemonic career stalled somewhat after his tragic injuries in an infamous Hollywood fire at the former home of mega-magician, Harry Houdini. In the alchemical transformation process, fire is the Bath of Immortality; the calcinatio fire tempers emotions, mind and body. Fire symbolizes libido, not at all separate from sexuality. The movement is from auto-erotic, to personal power-seeking, to refined transpersonal consciousness. Frustration is the initiatory ordeal. The fires of desire are transmuted. The miraculous water, aqua divina or permanens, was extracted from the lapis, or prima materia through the torment of the fire. The water stands for the anima mundi imprisoned in matter. This stage represents the expansion of consciousness after a crisis in development. This crucible of chemical breakdown created a Phoenix-like opportunity for a remixing of elements, a new chapter of the sexual metathesis. Mind and body, perturbed by the chaos of a turbulent inner life, relinked in a transformation of prima materia through a luminous rebirth. In alchemy, both the primal matrix and finished product (Philosopher’s Stone) are hermaphroditic, an androgyne, and rebis (double thing). http://www.popocculture.com/37/pandrogeny-the-yab-yummy-way-of-imagination
“The modern androgyne, seeking only self-realization, forfeits the energy of opposition and conflict.” - Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae
A LOVE STORY OF GENDER REUNION: This is a stream of unconsciousness essay on the Self, illustrated by the kaleidoscopic sexual personae of GENESIS P-ORRIDGE. Always the mercurial Magician, Gen has been associated with the art and decadence of the Thelemic, industrial, punk, Goth, and rave movements, and was arguably the earliest proponent of acid house. His bands have ranged from hard-edged Throbbing Gristle to ethereal Psychic TV to avant-garde Thee Majesty. Never one to commune in solitude, all these eras of the artist, priest and shaman have fused into the orgiastic seizure of family-band PTV3. Now he gladly shares center stage with the group, including wife Lady Jaye, daughter Genesse, and bandmates, forming a cohesive unit to rock the house. This is a personal and critical triumph for the artist, whose daemonic career stalled somewhat after his tragic injuries in an infamous Hollywood fire at the former home of mega-magician, Harry Houdini. In the alchemical transformation process, fire is the Bath of Immortality; the calcinatio fire tempers emotions, mind and body. Fire symbolizes libido, not at all separate from sexuality. The movement is from auto-erotic, to personal power-seeking, to refined transpersonal consciousness. Frustration is the initiatory ordeal. The fires of desire are transmuted. The miraculous water, aqua divina or permanens, was extracted from the lapis, or prima materia through the torment of the fire. The water stands for the anima mundi imprisoned in matter. This stage represents the expansion of consciousness after a crisis in development. This crucible of chemical breakdown created a Phoenix-like opportunity for a remixing of elements, a new chapter of the sexual metathesis. Mind and body, perturbed by the chaos of a turbulent inner life, relinked in a transformation of prima materia through a luminous rebirth. In alchemy, both the primal matrix and finished product (Philosopher’s Stone) are hermaphroditic, an androgyne, and rebis (double thing). http://www.popocculture.com/37/pandrogeny-the-yab-yummy-way-of-imagination
DREAM NETWORK
DREAM NETWORK - "Chaos and Consciousness" Pt. 1 and 2 Prepared for the Proceedings of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology. Presented at Saybrook Institute, Summer, 1991.
ABSTRACT: Experiential therapy sessions and mysticism demonstrate that as we journey deeper and deeper into the psyche we eventually encounter a state characterized either as "chaotic" or void of images. In a therapeutic context, chaos is experienced as a consciousness state--the ground state. This state is related to healing, dreams, and creativity. Shamanic approaches to healing involve co-consciousness states which lead to restructuring both physical and emotional-mental senses of self.Dreams, creativity, and healing arise from this undifferentiated "chaotic consciousness." Dreamhealing uses images as portals for consciousness journeys to facilitate transformations ranging from mood alteration to profound physiological changes. Imagery (virtual experience) affects the immune system, activating psychosomatic forces, such as the placebo effect. Chaos-oriented consciousness journeys suggest these states reflect complex phase space, fractal patterns, strange attractors, "the butterfly effect," sensitivity, complex feedback loops, intermittency, and other general dynamical aspects suggested by chaos theory. More than an experiential process, this is a philosophy of treatment--"Chaosophy." http://www.asklepia.org/chaosophy/chaosophy2.html#top
DREAM NETWORK - "Chaos and Consciousness" Pt. 1 and 2 http://www.asklepia.org/chaosophy/chaosophy2.html#top
Prepared for the Proceedings of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology. Presented at Saybrook Institute, Summer, 1991.
ABSTRACT: Experiential therapy sessions and mysticism demonstrate that as we journey deeper and deeper into the psyche we eventually encounter a state characterized either as "chaotic" or void of images. In a therapeutic context, chaos is experienced as a consciousness state--the ground state. This state is related to healing, dreams, and creativity. Shamanic approaches to healing involve co-consciousness states which lead to restructuring both physical and emotional-mental senses of self.Dreams, creativity, and healing arise from this undifferentiated "chaotic consciousness." Dreamhealing uses images as portals for consciousness journeys to facilitate transformations ranging from mood alteration to profound physiological changes. Imagery (virtual experience) affects the immune system, activating psychosomatic forces, such as the placebo effect. Chaos-oriented consciousness journeys suggest these states reflect complex phase space, fractal patterns, strange attractors, "the butterfly effect," sensitivity, complex feedback loops, intermittency, and other general dynamical aspects suggested by chaos theory. More than an experiential process, this is a philosophy of treatment--"Chaosophy." http://www.asklepia.org/chaosophy/chaosophy2.html#top
DREAM NETWORK - "Chaos and Consciousness" Pt. 1 and 2 http://www.asklepia.org/chaosophy/chaosophy2.html#top
Prepared for the Proceedings of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology. Presented at Saybrook Institute, Summer, 1991.
NEXUS MAGAZINE
Nexus Magazine - http://nexusmagazine.com
"Schumann's Resonance and Human Physiology"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_6.html
Electrical engineer Lewis B. Hainsworth, MA, was among the first to suggest that human health is linked with geophysical parameters by way of the naturally occurring Schumann's ELF. His hypothesis identified naturally occurring features which determine the frequency spectrum of human brain-wave rhythms: The frequencies of naturally occurring electromagnetic signals, circulating in the electrically resonant cavity bounded by the Earth and the ionosphere, have governed or determined the 'evolution' or development of the frequencies of operation of the principal human brain-wave signals. In particular, the alpha rhythm is so placed that it can in no circumstances suffer an extensive interference from naturally occurring signals. Hainsworth concluded that the frequencies of human brain-waves evolved in response to these signals. If his hypothesis is correct, conditions for evolutionary changes in human brain-wave patterns have now been established. Furthermore, variations in these patterns can produce mild to disastrous health and behavioural changes.
"Voice of the Planet" - Our Climate Dead or Alive?
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_5.html
We propose, that the Schumann resonance (SR) may be the substrate for a radar-type extrasensory perception mechanism common to all living beings. Like water bouncing off of rocks and other submerged objects, this non-specific frequency is absorbed and re-radiated in unique interference patterns by all objects it encounters. This interference pattern is a composite of external and internal properties, as the constituent atoms, molecules and their global assembly all re-transmit this energy according to their specific configurations. Not only that, but the “sounding waves” can be frequency and pattern modulated by conscious intent in order to yield specific information (interference patterns). Decoded by the brain they return almost instantly on the “back” of the Schumann Resonance.Once recaptured, the patterns are then decoded by the brain. In this Fourier-type transformation the information is translated into conscious data, much like other sensory processing. Conversely, specific effects may be imprinted as bioinformation and made to exercise a "mysterious action at a distance", once the signal wave reaches the target. That pattern, in turn, may, under the right ("pre-requisite") global conditions, avoid routine dissipation and become instead coupled to the dominating ("state-of-consciousness") standing wave that is picked up and carried by the Schumann resonance. Mental intent may function as a variable window of transmission/reception in the exchange of extrasensory information. Tuned into the Schumann resonance, it may carry such bio-regulating information to distant targets and act as a primitive, radar-type sensory interface. All these and more mechanisms depend on the SR frequencies staying within their median range.
"DNA: Helix to Hologram"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_8.html
Russian research in genetics led scientists to begin looking experimentally at the helical structure of DNA as a possible holographic “projector” of the DNA code. Thus, the existential blueprint described by the spiral staircase of DNA is translated into a complex EM field that guides the molecular growth of the organism. Miller et al. suggested as much three decades ago, and outlined possible mechanisms of this quantum biohologram at both the cellular and whole organism level. This process emerges from a domain more fundamental than the standard genetic code triplet model. Biophysics can now describe how our form emerges directly from the void, the vacuum substructure. In essence, we emerge from the cosmic void— pre-geometrically-structured nothingness. DNA is the projector of that field which sets up the stress gradients in the vacuum sub-structure to initiate dynamic unfolding. Genes function as holographic memories of the existential blueprint. Chromosomes can transform their own genetic-sign laser radiations into broadband genetic-sign radio waves. This is the main information channel of DNA, the same for both photons and radio waves. Superposed coherent waves of different types in the cells interact to form diffraction patterns, first in the acoustic domain and then in the electromagnetic domain. The quantum hologram is the matrix of the translations between acoustical and optical holograms. The human biocomputer can be modeled through the marriage of quantum mechanical and complex dynamics.
"Siren Song of the Earth"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_7.html
The Earth calls to each and every one of us with her pulsating siren song, desiring us as we desire Her, commanding our biology as only She can. Electrical Engineer, Ben Lonetree is an artist as well as a scientist – a natural philosopher -- one of the few people on the planet who can detect and read natural earth signals in, on and through the atmosphere and Earth. He is a deeply spiritual person with a resonating mind who likes to call these signals “Mother Earth’s Voice,” and he means it in a thoroughly literal manner. Each of the seven Schumann Resonances occupies a bandwidth of 1 Hz. In other words, each of the resonances are 1 Hz. wide: 7.83 Hz, 14 Hz, 21 Hz, 26 Hz, 33 Hz, 39 Hz, 45 Hz. I have observed and recorded the clipping action others have speculated on. Rather than the heartbeat of Earth itself, which is 10 Hz, I call this the “voice or song of the planet”. Ben recounts his scientific studies on EM anomalies in Sedona, Arizona.
"Schumann's Resonance and Human Physiology"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_6.html
Electrical engineer Lewis B. Hainsworth, MA, was among the first to suggest that human health is linked with geophysical parameters by way of the naturally occurring Schumann's ELF. His hypothesis identified naturally occurring features which determine the frequency spectrum of human brain-wave rhythms: The frequencies of naturally occurring electromagnetic signals, circulating in the electrically resonant cavity bounded by the Earth and the ionosphere, have governed or determined the 'evolution' or development of the frequencies of operation of the principal human brain-wave signals. In particular, the alpha rhythm is so placed that it can in no circumstances suffer an extensive interference from naturally occurring signals. Hainsworth concluded that the frequencies of human brain-waves evolved in response to these signals. If his hypothesis is correct, conditions for evolutionary changes in human brain-wave patterns have now been established. Furthermore, variations in these patterns can produce mild to disastrous health and behavioural changes.
"Voice of the Planet" - Our Climate Dead or Alive?
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_5.html
We propose, that the Schumann resonance (SR) may be the substrate for a radar-type extrasensory perception mechanism common to all living beings. Like water bouncing off of rocks and other submerged objects, this non-specific frequency is absorbed and re-radiated in unique interference patterns by all objects it encounters. This interference pattern is a composite of external and internal properties, as the constituent atoms, molecules and their global assembly all re-transmit this energy according to their specific configurations. Not only that, but the “sounding waves” can be frequency and pattern modulated by conscious intent in order to yield specific information (interference patterns). Decoded by the brain they return almost instantly on the “back” of the Schumann Resonance.Once recaptured, the patterns are then decoded by the brain. In this Fourier-type transformation the information is translated into conscious data, much like other sensory processing. Conversely, specific effects may be imprinted as bioinformation and made to exercise a "mysterious action at a distance", once the signal wave reaches the target. That pattern, in turn, may, under the right ("pre-requisite") global conditions, avoid routine dissipation and become instead coupled to the dominating ("state-of-consciousness") standing wave that is picked up and carried by the Schumann resonance. Mental intent may function as a variable window of transmission/reception in the exchange of extrasensory information. Tuned into the Schumann resonance, it may carry such bio-regulating information to distant targets and act as a primitive, radar-type sensory interface. All these and more mechanisms depend on the SR frequencies staying within their median range.
"DNA: Helix to Hologram"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_8.html
Russian research in genetics led scientists to begin looking experimentally at the helical structure of DNA as a possible holographic “projector” of the DNA code. Thus, the existential blueprint described by the spiral staircase of DNA is translated into a complex EM field that guides the molecular growth of the organism. Miller et al. suggested as much three decades ago, and outlined possible mechanisms of this quantum biohologram at both the cellular and whole organism level. This process emerges from a domain more fundamental than the standard genetic code triplet model. Biophysics can now describe how our form emerges directly from the void, the vacuum substructure. In essence, we emerge from the cosmic void— pre-geometrically-structured nothingness. DNA is the projector of that field which sets up the stress gradients in the vacuum sub-structure to initiate dynamic unfolding. Genes function as holographic memories of the existential blueprint. Chromosomes can transform their own genetic-sign laser radiations into broadband genetic-sign radio waves. This is the main information channel of DNA, the same for both photons and radio waves. Superposed coherent waves of different types in the cells interact to form diffraction patterns, first in the acoustic domain and then in the electromagnetic domain. The quantum hologram is the matrix of the translations between acoustical and optical holograms. The human biocomputer can be modeled through the marriage of quantum mechanical and complex dynamics.
"Siren Song of the Earth"
http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_7.html
The Earth calls to each and every one of us with her pulsating siren song, desiring us as we desire Her, commanding our biology as only She can. Electrical Engineer, Ben Lonetree is an artist as well as a scientist – a natural philosopher -- one of the few people on the planet who can detect and read natural earth signals in, on and through the atmosphere and Earth. He is a deeply spiritual person with a resonating mind who likes to call these signals “Mother Earth’s Voice,” and he means it in a thoroughly literal manner. Each of the seven Schumann Resonances occupies a bandwidth of 1 Hz. In other words, each of the resonances are 1 Hz. wide: 7.83 Hz, 14 Hz, 21 Hz, 26 Hz, 33 Hz, 39 Hz, 45 Hz. I have observed and recorded the clipping action others have speculated on. Rather than the heartbeat of Earth itself, which is 10 Hz, I call this the “voice or song of the planet”. Ben recounts his scientific studies on EM anomalies in Sedona, Arizona.
ALCHEMY JOURNAL
Alchemy Journal (Australia) - "Anima Mundi: Soul-Filled World"
http://www.alchemyjournal.com/
"Search the anima mundi means to me across the world as a tribal hunter ... a gold digger. Means to scrutinize everything carefully and 'divine' as it says, the specific genius loci. To do this we must be sensitive to the representations of the world ... " (James Hillman, The pleasure of thinking)
"Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, the seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event, as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing; God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street." ~James Hillman, “Anima Mundi,” Spring, 1982
NUMINOUS & LUMINOUS PSYCHE: Anima Mundi, the feminine principle or mode of Being was historically considered the "soul of the world," the fertility of human, animal and plant life. Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno said the World Soul “illumines the universe and directs nature in producing her species in the right way.” She is the magical world of creative mystery. Our geocentric understanding of ourselves has expanded to the realization that we are an intrinsic part of Cosmos. The Universe is also literally within us. No longer limited merely to our planet, Anima Mundi is the personification of the whole natural world – the Universe. This light, the dynamic reality of the energy field, is within us as within everything. Embodied nature is the link between the archetypal and formative worlds, the hyperdimensional matrix of eternal patterns with sacred proportions and unique manifestations. She is also infinite potential, the possibility of bringing creative ideas to birth, to manifestation. In the deepest sense, she is the universal wave function, the unmanifest ground of our being, spacetime and the radiant light of virtual photon fluctuation, which underlies all matter and manifestation. http://ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats_new_37.html
2011, Alchemy Journal: Embodying Osiris, a Review
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/embodying-osiris.html
Egypt remains a realm of mystery as does the psyche. The ancient land of Egypt is not the same as the eternal sunshine of the Egypt of our modern minds. We can never "embody Osiris" with conceptual processes, but only through fully entering the inherent mystery of alchemical processes that define the rhythms of life we exist in. Emotions effect our DNA, and DNA effects our emotions. Emotions regulate gene-expression.
In this insightful Jungian volume, Dr. Thom Cavalli is likely correct in insisting that "empathic engagement of the god on an imaginal and physical level" is required. In this way only perhaps a more meaningful life springs from death, through a "body" of integrative experience. The Egyptians presumed "death" was not the only option.
As unconscious, Osiris is the paradoxical life/death ground from which integrative impulses arise. His epic ordeals mirror our own. Perhaps the Jungians need alchemy for their articulation of psychic processes more than alchemy needs Jungian models. After all, benchwork went on for millennia without Jung's hermeneutics, but alchemy had its own ways of describing proto-scientific interpretations of phenomena. Still, Jung and Cavalli's categories, homologues, metaphorms and mytho-poetic language broaden our descriptive vocabulary, perhaps helping us articulate the deep meaning of what we see in the vessel.
In the Mystery schools, applicants for the priesthood of Osiris entered the tomb alive to await his light. They spent the night in the coffin, entering through the door of fear to achieve mastery.The initiate in the open sarcophagus was left alone in the darkness of the crypt., feeling the cold of the grave close in. In such a sensory deprivation chamber, perhaps the initiate experienced a life review or began to see colors and lights appear. This illumination was recognized as the light of Osiris, bringing visions. Some aspirants might claim to have conversations with Isis or Osiris. Others might visualize themselves in the land of the dead, walking and talking with departed spirits and receiving special teachings from Osiris before a resurrection.
The Art of Fetish, Gartel (2007) - Epilogue: “Cyberotica in Technoshamanism" Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is” man" in a higher sense -- he is 'collective man' -- one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind.” –C. G. Jung
Beyond the Forbidden: Are there things we should not know? There are many responses to the impulse toward experience. We pass through the essential stage of experience on the way to wisdom. But it remains a stage, not an end in itself. Religion generally answers yes to the question, while philosophy answers no. Sex, death, and religion are the three taboos to question. They are also the most interesting subjective experiences to examine, and for the artist, moreso. Freud contrasted sex and death as Eros and Thanatos. Are there things we shouldn’t know about the erotic impulse? Are there things we shouldn’t know about the relationship of death and religion? Sex and death are givens of our existence, and so is the spiritual instinct. Experiential awareness of these domains is gnosis, direct knowing. If no one is allowed to venture into the forbidden we cannot know what it is like. If no one is allowed to talk about, or represent it, sexuality becomes a dirty secret, surrounded by fear and shame. http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_23.html
Beyond the Forbidden: Are there things we should not know? There are many responses to the impulse toward experience. We pass through the essential stage of experience on the way to wisdom. But it remains a stage, not an end in itself. Religion generally answers yes to the question, while philosophy answers no. Sex, death, and religion are the three taboos to question. They are also the most interesting subjective experiences to examine, and for the artist, moreso. Freud contrasted sex and death as Eros and Thanatos. Are there things we shouldn’t know about the erotic impulse? Are there things we shouldn’t know about the relationship of death and religion? Sex and death are givens of our existence, and so is the spiritual instinct. Experiential awareness of these domains is gnosis, direct knowing. If no one is allowed to venture into the forbidden we cannot know what it is like. If no one is allowed to talk about, or represent it, sexuality becomes a dirty secret, surrounded by fear and shame. http://ionamiller2010.iwarp.com/whats_new_23.html
PM & E
Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation, Iona Miller
http://zero-point.tripod.com/meditation/tantriclunar.html |
Chaos As the Universal Solvent, Iona Miller
http://asklepia.tripod.com/Chaosophy/chaosophy3.html |
VIRTUAL TANTRA
http://virtualtantra.iwarp.com/
Virtual Tantra Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation Hyp-Know-Sex Virtual Magick Emotional Alchemy Gowan on Tantra Gowan on Tantra2 Universal Solvent Sex Magic Physical Sex Psychological Sex Emotional Sex Spiritual Sex The Void Cosmic Unity Tantric Poetry Mighty Aphrodite Eros & Psyche Hera Artemis Making Scents What's New What's New What's New Bibliography Archive Links
Virtual Tantra Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation Hyp-Know-Sex Virtual Magick Emotional Alchemy Gowan on Tantra Gowan on Tantra2 Universal Solvent Sex Magic Physical Sex Psychological Sex Emotional Sex Spiritual Sex The Void Cosmic Unity Tantric Poetry Mighty Aphrodite Eros & Psyche Hera Artemis Making Scents What's New What's New What's New Bibliography Archive Links
Occulture - http://popocculture.50megs.com/
POP OCCULTURE
POP OCCULTURE Genesis P-Orridge Lydia Lunch Thompson Requiem Aleister Crowley Bearden 0.0 Subliminazis Strange Attractors Pineal DMT Virtual Magick Reality Tunnels Free Style Cyberotica Intentionality Manifesto DIY Mind Control SpiritComm Uberbabe Hot Links Antibothis
"To be sensitive to the beauty of something is to perceive the totality of it. The mind that is thinking in terms of a part can never perceive the whole. In the whole the part is contained, but the part will never make up the whole, the total."— Krishnamurti, New Delhi 1960
Metaphysics: It's Not What You Think
***meta- (also met- before a vowel or h) combining form
1 denoting a change of position or condition : metamorphosis | metathesis.
2 denoting position behind, after, or beyond: : metacarpus.
3 denoting something of a higher or second-order kind : metalanguage
METAPHYSICS means neither supernatural nor magical. It means 'beyond physics,' beyond the observables of particles and describes the non-physicality of virtual vacuum field effects, at least in current usage. They are real but inherently non-observable energy dynamics whose EFFECTS are never-the-less observable.
POP OCCULTURE Genesis P-Orridge Lydia Lunch Thompson Requiem Aleister Crowley Bearden 0.0 Subliminazis Strange Attractors Pineal DMT Virtual Magick Reality Tunnels Free Style Cyberotica Intentionality Manifesto DIY Mind Control SpiritComm
There is a certain Truth in occult operations. What the medieval alchemists once stated enigmatically can now be described in certain aspects with far more clarity. It doesn't mean we should cease our cognitive/affective penetration of the Mysteries. We should be encouraged in that direction both in theory and experimentation. Understanding becomes explicit only through direct experience. The Philosopher's Stone -- the lustrous negentropic body -- in its own nature is based in the dynamic qualities of matter kindled by the fire that is water.
"But our Water is not common Water, not our Fire common Fire, for no Man is so senseless as to think that Water and Fire can be united. But our Water is of a Celestial Nature, and therefore our Fire loves it. The same is to be understood of the two others, namely Air and Earth; Vulgar Earth is leprous, and abounds with Excrements, but our Earth is Crystalline Green, and therefore it is called Green Gold. And our Air is unctuous and therefore contains Fire." (Grummet)
* The Stone is made of One Thing that contains potential Gold and Silver, as we have suggested. Since sun and gold are equivalent concepts in alchemy, the solificatio (illumination) means that the "inwards of the head" are transformed into light. We light up with a new awareness of the unconscious.
* Lumen naturae is the core image of light in the matrix of alchemical ideas, the secret nature of nature.
* We compared traditional alchemical notions with contemporary counterparts in biophysics and scalar physics.
* We drew analogies between the dark "secret fire" and massless radiant energy and biophotons.
* We described how virtual photons and photons cross the mystic veil of manifestation and observability.
* We discussed the nature of the Void as not devoid.
* We described its negentropic effects, including healing and placebo effect.
* We detailed its therapeutic effect in spiritual psychotherapy as well as alchemy.
* We described DNA as generator of the quantum biohologram, modulated by coherent light and sound.
* We demonstrated the biophotonic nature of life and mind.
* We showed Virtual Photon Fluctuation (ZPE) is the Source of the photons that form and sustain our Being.
* We suggested a model of Homo Lumen for someone actively engaged with their hyperfield body and meditation with an aim toward pineal stimulation of the illuminative spirit molecule DMT.
* We reframed and revisioned the notion of the Lumen Naturae in contemporary photonic terms while validating its sacred nature in the circle of life.
SECTS & THE SIDDHI
"I'm the Forest Gump of the American Underground, the Carrie Bradshaw of ESPionage. Writing for NEXUS and PARANOIA is like writing for the Vogue and Cosmo of conspiracy, only with skeletons in the closet, not Manolo's." ~ Iona Miller, Sects & the Siddhi
SECTS & THE SIDDHI
Iona Miller, 9/2008
Sex and the Siddhi
Siddhis is the ancient mystic name for psychic phenomena. Mind expansion increases the potential of unusual powers. Personal power (chi, mana, prana) comes from libido, sexual and psychic energy. Sexual techniques (Tantra, Kundalini, Sex Magic, Taoist Alchemy) have been used in the east and west to raise amplitude in libido, to build energy charge. Yet, it is said that cultivating these powers is a distraction from Reality, from Enlightenment.
At the personal level, esoterics is the soft technology of self-development and change at the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level. It means initiatory ordeals and challenging confrontations with yourself about the reality of nature and your own nature. To stay out on your personal edge means always being just a little off balance, at home in the chaos, alert to the resonating gaps in awareness.
At the dynamic group level, it is all this and something more. Esoteric caduceus coils wind like an ancient serpent throughout society. It has been a clandestine sociopolitical 5th column force at least since the Renaissance, in Elizabethan times, and certainly since the founding of the Bavarian Illuminati, Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. Many societies have a history of influence peddling as a cover for espionage.
SECTS & THE SIDDHI
Iona Miller, 9/2008
Sex and the Siddhi
Siddhis is the ancient mystic name for psychic phenomena. Mind expansion increases the potential of unusual powers. Personal power (chi, mana, prana) comes from libido, sexual and psychic energy. Sexual techniques (Tantra, Kundalini, Sex Magic, Taoist Alchemy) have been used in the east and west to raise amplitude in libido, to build energy charge. Yet, it is said that cultivating these powers is a distraction from Reality, from Enlightenment.
At the personal level, esoterics is the soft technology of self-development and change at the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level. It means initiatory ordeals and challenging confrontations with yourself about the reality of nature and your own nature. To stay out on your personal edge means always being just a little off balance, at home in the chaos, alert to the resonating gaps in awareness.
At the dynamic group level, it is all this and something more. Esoteric caduceus coils wind like an ancient serpent throughout society. It has been a clandestine sociopolitical 5th column force at least since the Renaissance, in Elizabethan times, and certainly since the founding of the Bavarian Illuminati, Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. Many societies have a history of influence peddling as a cover for espionage.
Hunter S. Thompson Requim - Fear & Loathing in the Limbic System
By Iona Miller, 2/2005
http://popocculture.50megs.com/whats_new_8.html
“Alas, poor Hunter; who knew him well?”
The natural philosopher sees death not only from
the viewpoint of life but through the sockets of the skull.
“Because suicide is a way of entering death and because the problem of entering death releases the most profound fantasies of the human soul, to understand a suicide we need to know what mythic fantasy is being enacted.” ~ James Hillman, Suicide and the Soul
Suicide and the Soul
THERE IS ROOM AT THE TOP. The peak position of the falsely so-called “liberal” press has been abdicated by king-of-the-hill Gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, who has gone out the way he came in – with a bang.
Hunter had seemingly, at least in the opinion of some, engaged early on in potentially suicidal drug use, but in the end he abandoned that arc for the certain and permanent trajectory of a bullet. His consciousness must have winked out through the deeply bored black hole. Did he finally reach escape velocity beyond the event horizon?
But is this a fitting end for “our” story of this hunter whose journalistic lens was larger than life? The mercurial Thompson was a whistleblower for shadow government shenanigans long before “conspiracy theory” took on cult proportions because so much of it has proven frighteningly true. Along with the rest of the underground press, such as Mother Jones, he offered a psychedelicized vision that was more than “credible.” His point of view was intuitive and intrusive, infused with his imaginal point of view ~ “in-credible.”
In suicides, everyone always asks “Why?” Surprisingly, people asked me ‘why?’ as if your humble narrator could possibly know, or perform a psychological autopsy. We are virtually helpless at understanding and articulating our own inner lives, much less anyone else’s. This amplification has a ritualistic aspect, because we start off knowing that we cannot know.
Our limbic system, which determines how actively we engage the environment, is conditioned by our early developmental history. The amygdala, the seat of “fear and loathing”, our emotional sentinel, is calibrated by subjective perception of what it is like to be in the world, safe or toxic. Was his trajectory set as a child? [See endnote.]
Why? Is at the root of all natural philosophy and even Plato implied in Phaedo that philosophy is essentially the pursuit of death and dying. When we ask about death we begin to practice philosophy, the study of dying. Plato called philosophy death’s rehearsal, dying to the world. One approaches death by dying in soul daily for renewal. We die to our illusions of invulnerability and immortality. Our modern manic busyness is arguably a defense against this very thought of death.
I began to wonder about Thompson’s death, though as a therapist and philosopher, I have learned not to question such choices. It doesn’t mean we ignore them either as Freud’s obsessions with Eros and Thanatos show. Suicide is a choice some souls make. The question is not ‘why?’ but ‘what is the relevance to the soul?’ Confirmation, rather than prevention, is the soul’s goal. Hunter’s behavior rarely conformed; why should it in death?
James Hillman says that, “ Living in terms of life’s only certain end means to live aimed toward death. This end is present here and now as the purpose of life, which means the moment of death – at any moment – is every moment. Death cannot be put off to the future and reserved for old age.” Freud taught that Thanatos is ever-present. Castaneda claimed it as ally, as advisor. The soul needs death and death resides in the soul permanently.
Hunter’s outer suicidal behavior may have been typical of men of his caliber [no pun intended], but its inner meaning is likely as complex as this pathfinder man. Thompson’s friends have given many answers on “Why?” and raised as many questions. I have not read them yet, though it seems his health was deteriorating. But what does this say of psychological health, if anything? Burnout? Flame out? If you were Hunter watching the end of the era of democratic revolutions and the entrenchment of brainwashing corporate feudalism, wouldn’t you feel depressed, too?
One thing is clear – this was no mere dramatic plea for help. He declared his narrative to be tragedy in no uncertain terms, perhaps raising his personal tale to mythic from merely iconic domains. Or, is the tragic attribution a social label only? Did he engage in some confused suicidal logic before taking final action? Do we painfully wonder what, if anything, could cause us to make the same choice? What experience, what suffering?
Somewhere between despair and hopelessness, the dark call of suicidal thoughts can raise its icy voice. “End it all now.” “Stop the pain, forever.” Clinically, we become alarmed when an individual has a well-conceived plan, or is appearing to become a threat to themselves or others. Existentially, suicide is about experiencing unbearable suffering, a problem on the inside with no other acceptable solution outside.
Suicide is a psychological fact. But the issue is not for or against suicide, but the realization that it has meaning for the soul. James Joyce called suicide a “psychosemantic fallacy.” The psychosomatic nature of the soul is a riddle. Look at the word: suicIDe - Freud’s id or primitive instinct rears its primordial head. We more often are lived by than live our myth, which is beyond personal motivation.
Myths mirror what may be ‘wrong’ but necessary. Process is not always progress. The soul needs the death experience, whether through depression, collapse, degeneration, trance, isolation, intoxication, exaltation, failure, psychosis, dissociation, amnesia, denial, pain and torture, or transformation. They can be symbolic or concretely enacted. Now Hunter is firmly grounded. At the end, the legend became most human through the common denominator of pain.
Some might feel that ‘soul’ is too metaphysical or romantic of a term to apply to Thompson. Perhaps, sadly he has qualified, but substitute ‘psyche’ if it is more comfortable. Suicide is an active demonstration of independence from society, law, spirituality, and the life of the body. In this case, a meaning that can no more be denied than Death.
The soul has its own radically independent reality, a satiation with all mere life has offered, an exhaustion of possibilities. Did declaring Abby Hoffman’s suicide “bipolar” explain it away? Ultimately, does ‘why?’ even matter? The answer is just what turns the suicidal person into “anti-matter,” no matter what the means. It no longer matters; you no longer matter. Death can be chosen.
The Mythic Edge
The suicidal crisis takes place as the experience of death, the archetypal background of death is met in the soul, its meanings, images and emotions ~ its meaning to psychic life. Death is the soul’s first concern. From the moment we are born we continuously enter death as death inexorably penetrates us. The transforming soul lives by perishing, and there is purpose even in pathology.
Death is always meaningful. The meaning of the choice is different for each individual and the circumstances. Most often suicides’ misgivings about further life are never spoken; they never emerge from the hellish bowels of the psychophysical pain of a continuously-tormented soul that can no longer scream. When it comes to ending life, the health of the soul is as important as the health or lack of it of the body. Can we get inside the problem to understand its meaning?
The root metaphor of suicidal injunction goes back to “Thou shalt not kill”. But at this point legal and theological musings have tunneled out of view. Theology dreads suicide since it feels our own lives are not ours to take, so it is a monstrous pride. But how could that be the case under the distorting existential lens of say, clinical depression, crippling drug abuse, or sociopathy. Death by suicide eliminates the possibility of repentance. But do we have to repent? Perhaps death is simply death – fade to black, turn into compost.
Thompson had terminal cancer. My state, Oregon has a ‘right to death’ law, which allows the terminally ill to die with dignity and some choice in their timing vs. pain management. When it becomes too much, they can opt for a medical solution with the aid of an M.D.
It is to the individual soul that we must resort for the justification of a suicide. Who is to say that in illness, for example, the heroic route to the bitter end is the only obvious choice? Does it violate the hierarchy of the promotion of life? Or will life go on merrily, anyway? However, suicide does violate the root metaphors of society, law, church, and life. Life is lodged in the soul.
Is promoting life the same as prolonging life, as it has come to be in our culture? I recall a conversation I had in his 90s with American master artist, Morris Graves. When the painter’s heart failed, everyone insisted he get a pacemaker, but he bemoaned its relentless pile-driving beat, beating the life both into and out of him the rest of his days.
Long before his last breath, Graves was ready to make a transition to a more metaphysical state. He had expressed that rarified world in his work and often spoke of its deep meaning to him. When psychic growth stops, we are essentially dead. Death had become an old friend. One often sees that in older people. They don’t want to leave their families but are ready to part with the skin bag. Death will not be denied and medicine cannot cure it.
The Mything Link
In suicide, we must look to the complex context of the situation and presume most of it is internal and shall remain opaque. An analyst would compare the state of his conscious mind at the time with the pressures and drives of the objective unconscious – the archetypal substructure of behavior. Experience, suffering and context conspire to weave a shroud around the soul whose time is up, whose personal thread has run out. That life is wrapped up.
Hillman says, “ Philosophy would tell us that we build towards death from day to day. We build each our own ‘ship of death’ within ourselves. From this standpoint, by making our own deaths we are killing ourselves daily, so that each death is a suicide. Whether from a lion, a precipice, or a fever, each death is of our own making. …In this view suicide is no longer one of the ways of entering death, but all death is suicide, and the choice of method is only more or less evident, whether car-crash, heart-attack, or those acts usually called suicide.”
Rather than an anti-life impulse, “it may be a demand for an encounter with absolute reality, a demand for a fuller life through the death experience.” Without “fear and loathing”, the automatic gut and limbic system reaction, suicide would become ‘natural’. The taboo is there because it is a possibility, a choice for each psyche. Death is important to individuality, and as that individuality grows so often does the possibility of suicide.
We can’t say Hunter was either ‘soulful’ or ‘soulless’. The roots of individuality are not only in neurological correlates, but also in pathologies. Individuality requires courage, and has always been invoked in suicidal arguments – the courage to not be. As a somewhat shamanic character, leading us into weird initiations, he always stood against the collective stream bidding us find our own individuality.
Some would have considered his addictive lifestyle a death wish, and him a dead man walking. Some are driven to suicide, hounded by it, drawn to it by dead loved ones, mystical visions or simple fixation. But here we are, pondering his particular fate. The real courage is to choose oneself, one’s individual truth.
He certainly brought meaning to his times in a rather kaleidoscopic way. Was he done searching our collective souls? Searching his soul? The creatively gifted, psychologically sensitive and schizoid may be more keenly aware of their own evil, their own shadow sides. Society mirrored this back to Thompson, and his persona transcended his message, much like the media stars of today. But, organic death doesn’t undo the fundamental accomplishments of the soul.
He was far more interesting himself than any one of his stories. Had he endured too much loss or emptiness; had he entered an existential vacuum, lost his guiding star, had life become a cage of commitments, were his nights sleepless, had he tired of what comes next? Paradoxically, suicidal thoughts reawaken intense emotion, fantasy and dreams of mythological destiny and the transpersonal. Is it a cure for chronic identification of the soul with outer events, places, and people?
Was he a wee bit bipolar, compulsive, ‘possessed’ ‘troubled’, ‘lost’ or simply already ‘immortal’? What we do know is that he lived full bore, he wasn’t one, and he was unique. If that bored chamber got him in the end, it is lucky that he didn’t climb down its throat!
If he ever spoke to your soul, reflect on that participation. Make peace with it in your own way. Understanding is an individual, not collective phenomenon. Life and death go together, and are defined by one another. The soul endures many death experiences yet physical life goes on.
The soul favors death to usher in change, and the old self image dies in every phase of growth and transformation. Viewed this way, even a suicidal impulse can be seen as a drive for transformation, perhaps of a delayed life, which did not transform as it went along. It is an urge for hasty transformation, an experimental attempt to breakthrough forcibly into another realm. Death is continuous, the final truth, the end of desire.
Is the soul perishable is a question best left to others. The soul of depth psychology and philosophy is not the soul of theology. His last secret will never be told, since secrets belong to the soul. Did Thompson perish with his body – his throbbing visibility? If he did, he left his lifeblood as our legacy in his dried ink. Have a heart for this lonely Hunter.
Endnote: Fear Factor
We all have fears, but some of us experience periods of time when we feel overwhelmed by either vague or specific fears and anxieties. The autonomic system is regulated by emotions as well as thoughts, not to mention the fight/flight responses of sympathetic arousal. One of our greatest burdens is the paradox of life/death.
Once the struggle of a suicidal crisis is resolved in the choice for death, a profound calm settles over the person. The soul has preceded the physical body into death. Among all the upsetting notions humans can experience, perhaps the fear of death is at the top of the list. Our mortality is a difficult prospect to contemplate; yet the evidence clearly surrounds us. Death always stands at the ready or rides piggyback with us, ready to be our adviser, whispering in our ear, making its presence known. Even denial cannot keep the natural foreboding at bay.
Confrontations with death aroused superstitious and spiritual feelings in our ancient ancestors that led from increasingly elaborate burial procedures, to shamanic practices to assuage unknown powers, and eventually to the growth of the world’s major religions with their notions of finer planes of existence and the varieties of afterlife.
Coupled with powerful experiential episodes, such as mystic transport with and without shamanic plants, near-death experiences and grave illness, strong beliefs arose within the heart of humanity. They were shared with others becoming fixed ideas, philosophies and organized religions. Historically, perhaps more wars have been fought over competing ideologies than over territory. Fear of death or powerful subjective experiences can also lead to idiosyncratic spiritual ideas and practices. Again neural networks come into play as the bases of memory, pain, coping, and creativity.
The focus sharpens when one loses self-esteem and self-identity through loss of confidence and “control” in the performance of the body or perceptions of the mind. This can create a strong sense of conviction, destiny, fate or even mission, which will be aggressively defended. The temporal lobe plays a key role in emotional stability. It interprets and integrates input to give it meaning, in the deeply emotional rather than intellectual sense. Of course not every unusual experience, religious impulse, or bright idea comes from faulty electrical action and cascading seizures, or they would lose all meaning.
OR - The Murder Of Hunter S. Thompson
Webb, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist, exposed CIA drug trafficking operations in a series of books and reports for the San Jose Mercury News.
Credible sources who were close to Gary Webb have stated that he was receiving death threats, being regularly followed, and that he was concerned about strange individuals who were seen on multiple occasions breaking into and leaving his house before his apparent 'suicide' on Friday December 10th 2004.
Hunter Thompson was working on WTC collapse story before mysterious sudden death, warned he'd be 'suicided'
Was Hunter S. Thompson Suicided?
Hunter Thompson friend confirms journalist was on to White House callboy story
Hunter S. Thompson Suicide Story Changes
Hunter S. Thompson thought 9/11 an inside job
Thompson's Suicide Fuels Conspiracy Buzz
Elite Sex Slave Rings: The Gannon-Thompson Connection
“Alas, poor Hunter; who knew him well?”
The natural philosopher sees death not only from
the viewpoint of life but through the sockets of the skull.
“Because suicide is a way of entering death and because the problem of entering death releases the most profound fantasies of the human soul, to understand a suicide we need to know what mythic fantasy is being enacted.” ~ James Hillman, Suicide and the Soul
Suicide and the Soul
THERE IS ROOM AT THE TOP. The peak position of the falsely so-called “liberal” press has been abdicated by king-of-the-hill Gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, who has gone out the way he came in – with a bang.
Hunter had seemingly, at least in the opinion of some, engaged early on in potentially suicidal drug use, but in the end he abandoned that arc for the certain and permanent trajectory of a bullet. His consciousness must have winked out through the deeply bored black hole. Did he finally reach escape velocity beyond the event horizon?
But is this a fitting end for “our” story of this hunter whose journalistic lens was larger than life? The mercurial Thompson was a whistleblower for shadow government shenanigans long before “conspiracy theory” took on cult proportions because so much of it has proven frighteningly true. Along with the rest of the underground press, such as Mother Jones, he offered a psychedelicized vision that was more than “credible.” His point of view was intuitive and intrusive, infused with his imaginal point of view ~ “in-credible.”
In suicides, everyone always asks “Why?” Surprisingly, people asked me ‘why?’ as if your humble narrator could possibly know, or perform a psychological autopsy. We are virtually helpless at understanding and articulating our own inner lives, much less anyone else’s. This amplification has a ritualistic aspect, because we start off knowing that we cannot know.
Our limbic system, which determines how actively we engage the environment, is conditioned by our early developmental history. The amygdala, the seat of “fear and loathing”, our emotional sentinel, is calibrated by subjective perception of what it is like to be in the world, safe or toxic. Was his trajectory set as a child? [See endnote.]
Why? Is at the root of all natural philosophy and even Plato implied in Phaedo that philosophy is essentially the pursuit of death and dying. When we ask about death we begin to practice philosophy, the study of dying. Plato called philosophy death’s rehearsal, dying to the world. One approaches death by dying in soul daily for renewal. We die to our illusions of invulnerability and immortality. Our modern manic busyness is arguably a defense against this very thought of death.
I began to wonder about Thompson’s death, though as a therapist and philosopher, I have learned not to question such choices. It doesn’t mean we ignore them either as Freud’s obsessions with Eros and Thanatos show. Suicide is a choice some souls make. The question is not ‘why?’ but ‘what is the relevance to the soul?’ Confirmation, rather than prevention, is the soul’s goal. Hunter’s behavior rarely conformed; why should it in death?
James Hillman says that, “ Living in terms of life’s only certain end means to live aimed toward death. This end is present here and now as the purpose of life, which means the moment of death – at any moment – is every moment. Death cannot be put off to the future and reserved for old age.” Freud taught that Thanatos is ever-present. Castaneda claimed it as ally, as advisor. The soul needs death and death resides in the soul permanently.
Hunter’s outer suicidal behavior may have been typical of men of his caliber [no pun intended], but its inner meaning is likely as complex as this pathfinder man. Thompson’s friends have given many answers on “Why?” and raised as many questions. I have not read them yet, though it seems his health was deteriorating. But what does this say of psychological health, if anything? Burnout? Flame out? If you were Hunter watching the end of the era of democratic revolutions and the entrenchment of brainwashing corporate feudalism, wouldn’t you feel depressed, too?
One thing is clear – this was no mere dramatic plea for help. He declared his narrative to be tragedy in no uncertain terms, perhaps raising his personal tale to mythic from merely iconic domains. Or, is the tragic attribution a social label only? Did he engage in some confused suicidal logic before taking final action? Do we painfully wonder what, if anything, could cause us to make the same choice? What experience, what suffering?
Somewhere between despair and hopelessness, the dark call of suicidal thoughts can raise its icy voice. “End it all now.” “Stop the pain, forever.” Clinically, we become alarmed when an individual has a well-conceived plan, or is appearing to become a threat to themselves or others. Existentially, suicide is about experiencing unbearable suffering, a problem on the inside with no other acceptable solution outside.
Suicide is a psychological fact. But the issue is not for or against suicide, but the realization that it has meaning for the soul. James Joyce called suicide a “psychosemantic fallacy.” The psychosomatic nature of the soul is a riddle. Look at the word: suicIDe - Freud’s id or primitive instinct rears its primordial head. We more often are lived by than live our myth, which is beyond personal motivation.
Myths mirror what may be ‘wrong’ but necessary. Process is not always progress. The soul needs the death experience, whether through depression, collapse, degeneration, trance, isolation, intoxication, exaltation, failure, psychosis, dissociation, amnesia, denial, pain and torture, or transformation. They can be symbolic or concretely enacted. Now Hunter is firmly grounded. At the end, the legend became most human through the common denominator of pain.
Some might feel that ‘soul’ is too metaphysical or romantic of a term to apply to Thompson. Perhaps, sadly he has qualified, but substitute ‘psyche’ if it is more comfortable. Suicide is an active demonstration of independence from society, law, spirituality, and the life of the body. In this case, a meaning that can no more be denied than Death.
The soul has its own radically independent reality, a satiation with all mere life has offered, an exhaustion of possibilities. Did declaring Abby Hoffman’s suicide “bipolar” explain it away? Ultimately, does ‘why?’ even matter? The answer is just what turns the suicidal person into “anti-matter,” no matter what the means. It no longer matters; you no longer matter. Death can be chosen.
The Mythic Edge
The suicidal crisis takes place as the experience of death, the archetypal background of death is met in the soul, its meanings, images and emotions ~ its meaning to psychic life. Death is the soul’s first concern. From the moment we are born we continuously enter death as death inexorably penetrates us. The transforming soul lives by perishing, and there is purpose even in pathology.
Death is always meaningful. The meaning of the choice is different for each individual and the circumstances. Most often suicides’ misgivings about further life are never spoken; they never emerge from the hellish bowels of the psychophysical pain of a continuously-tormented soul that can no longer scream. When it comes to ending life, the health of the soul is as important as the health or lack of it of the body. Can we get inside the problem to understand its meaning?
The root metaphor of suicidal injunction goes back to “Thou shalt not kill”. But at this point legal and theological musings have tunneled out of view. Theology dreads suicide since it feels our own lives are not ours to take, so it is a monstrous pride. But how could that be the case under the distorting existential lens of say, clinical depression, crippling drug abuse, or sociopathy. Death by suicide eliminates the possibility of repentance. But do we have to repent? Perhaps death is simply death – fade to black, turn into compost.
Thompson had terminal cancer. My state, Oregon has a ‘right to death’ law, which allows the terminally ill to die with dignity and some choice in their timing vs. pain management. When it becomes too much, they can opt for a medical solution with the aid of an M.D.
It is to the individual soul that we must resort for the justification of a suicide. Who is to say that in illness, for example, the heroic route to the bitter end is the only obvious choice? Does it violate the hierarchy of the promotion of life? Or will life go on merrily, anyway? However, suicide does violate the root metaphors of society, law, church, and life. Life is lodged in the soul.
Is promoting life the same as prolonging life, as it has come to be in our culture? I recall a conversation I had in his 90s with American master artist, Morris Graves. When the painter’s heart failed, everyone insisted he get a pacemaker, but he bemoaned its relentless pile-driving beat, beating the life both into and out of him the rest of his days.
Long before his last breath, Graves was ready to make a transition to a more metaphysical state. He had expressed that rarified world in his work and often spoke of its deep meaning to him. When psychic growth stops, we are essentially dead. Death had become an old friend. One often sees that in older people. They don’t want to leave their families but are ready to part with the skin bag. Death will not be denied and medicine cannot cure it.
The Mything Link
In suicide, we must look to the complex context of the situation and presume most of it is internal and shall remain opaque. An analyst would compare the state of his conscious mind at the time with the pressures and drives of the objective unconscious – the archetypal substructure of behavior. Experience, suffering and context conspire to weave a shroud around the soul whose time is up, whose personal thread has run out. That life is wrapped up.
Hillman says, “ Philosophy would tell us that we build towards death from day to day. We build each our own ‘ship of death’ within ourselves. From this standpoint, by making our own deaths we are killing ourselves daily, so that each death is a suicide. Whether from a lion, a precipice, or a fever, each death is of our own making. …In this view suicide is no longer one of the ways of entering death, but all death is suicide, and the choice of method is only more or less evident, whether car-crash, heart-attack, or those acts usually called suicide.”
Rather than an anti-life impulse, “it may be a demand for an encounter with absolute reality, a demand for a fuller life through the death experience.” Without “fear and loathing”, the automatic gut and limbic system reaction, suicide would become ‘natural’. The taboo is there because it is a possibility, a choice for each psyche. Death is important to individuality, and as that individuality grows so often does the possibility of suicide.
We can’t say Hunter was either ‘soulful’ or ‘soulless’. The roots of individuality are not only in neurological correlates, but also in pathologies. Individuality requires courage, and has always been invoked in suicidal arguments – the courage to not be. As a somewhat shamanic character, leading us into weird initiations, he always stood against the collective stream bidding us find our own individuality.
Some would have considered his addictive lifestyle a death wish, and him a dead man walking. Some are driven to suicide, hounded by it, drawn to it by dead loved ones, mystical visions or simple fixation. But here we are, pondering his particular fate. The real courage is to choose oneself, one’s individual truth.
He certainly brought meaning to his times in a rather kaleidoscopic way. Was he done searching our collective souls? Searching his soul? The creatively gifted, psychologically sensitive and schizoid may be more keenly aware of their own evil, their own shadow sides. Society mirrored this back to Thompson, and his persona transcended his message, much like the media stars of today. But, organic death doesn’t undo the fundamental accomplishments of the soul.
He was far more interesting himself than any one of his stories. Had he endured too much loss or emptiness; had he entered an existential vacuum, lost his guiding star, had life become a cage of commitments, were his nights sleepless, had he tired of what comes next? Paradoxically, suicidal thoughts reawaken intense emotion, fantasy and dreams of mythological destiny and the transpersonal. Is it a cure for chronic identification of the soul with outer events, places, and people?
Was he a wee bit bipolar, compulsive, ‘possessed’ ‘troubled’, ‘lost’ or simply already ‘immortal’? What we do know is that he lived full bore, he wasn’t one, and he was unique. If that bored chamber got him in the end, it is lucky that he didn’t climb down its throat!
If he ever spoke to your soul, reflect on that participation. Make peace with it in your own way. Understanding is an individual, not collective phenomenon. Life and death go together, and are defined by one another. The soul endures many death experiences yet physical life goes on.
The soul favors death to usher in change, and the old self image dies in every phase of growth and transformation. Viewed this way, even a suicidal impulse can be seen as a drive for transformation, perhaps of a delayed life, which did not transform as it went along. It is an urge for hasty transformation, an experimental attempt to breakthrough forcibly into another realm. Death is continuous, the final truth, the end of desire.
Is the soul perishable is a question best left to others. The soul of depth psychology and philosophy is not the soul of theology. His last secret will never be told, since secrets belong to the soul. Did Thompson perish with his body – his throbbing visibility? If he did, he left his lifeblood as our legacy in his dried ink. Have a heart for this lonely Hunter.
Endnote: Fear Factor
We all have fears, but some of us experience periods of time when we feel overwhelmed by either vague or specific fears and anxieties. The autonomic system is regulated by emotions as well as thoughts, not to mention the fight/flight responses of sympathetic arousal. One of our greatest burdens is the paradox of life/death.
Once the struggle of a suicidal crisis is resolved in the choice for death, a profound calm settles over the person. The soul has preceded the physical body into death. Among all the upsetting notions humans can experience, perhaps the fear of death is at the top of the list. Our mortality is a difficult prospect to contemplate; yet the evidence clearly surrounds us. Death always stands at the ready or rides piggyback with us, ready to be our adviser, whispering in our ear, making its presence known. Even denial cannot keep the natural foreboding at bay.
Confrontations with death aroused superstitious and spiritual feelings in our ancient ancestors that led from increasingly elaborate burial procedures, to shamanic practices to assuage unknown powers, and eventually to the growth of the world’s major religions with their notions of finer planes of existence and the varieties of afterlife.
Coupled with powerful experiential episodes, such as mystic transport with and without shamanic plants, near-death experiences and grave illness, strong beliefs arose within the heart of humanity. They were shared with others becoming fixed ideas, philosophies and organized religions. Historically, perhaps more wars have been fought over competing ideologies than over territory. Fear of death or powerful subjective experiences can also lead to idiosyncratic spiritual ideas and practices. Again neural networks come into play as the bases of memory, pain, coping, and creativity.
The focus sharpens when one loses self-esteem and self-identity through loss of confidence and “control” in the performance of the body or perceptions of the mind. This can create a strong sense of conviction, destiny, fate or even mission, which will be aggressively defended. The temporal lobe plays a key role in emotional stability. It interprets and integrates input to give it meaning, in the deeply emotional rather than intellectual sense. Of course not every unusual experience, religious impulse, or bright idea comes from faulty electrical action and cascading seizures, or they would lose all meaning.
OR - The Murder Of Hunter S. Thompson
Webb, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist, exposed CIA drug trafficking operations in a series of books and reports for the San Jose Mercury News.
Credible sources who were close to Gary Webb have stated that he was receiving death threats, being regularly followed, and that he was concerned about strange individuals who were seen on multiple occasions breaking into and leaving his house before his apparent 'suicide' on Friday December 10th 2004.
Hunter Thompson was working on WTC collapse story before mysterious sudden death, warned he'd be 'suicided'
Was Hunter S. Thompson Suicided?
Hunter Thompson friend confirms journalist was on to White House callboy story
Hunter S. Thompson Suicide Story Changes
Hunter S. Thompson thought 9/11 an inside job
Thompson's Suicide Fuels Conspiracy Buzz
Elite Sex Slave Rings: The Gannon-Thompson Connection
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Yab-Yummy PandroGENy
PRELUDE: A LOVE STORY OF GENDER REUNION
“The modern androgyne, seeking only self-realization, forfeits the energy of opposition and conflict.” (Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae)
This is a stream of unconsciousness essay on the Self, illustrated by the kaleidoscopic sexual personae of GENESIS P-ORRIDGE. Always the mercurial Magician, Gen has been associated with the art and decadence of the Thelemic, industrial, punk, Goth, and rave movements, and was arguably the earliest proponent of acid house. His bands have ranged from hard-edged Throbbing Gristle to ethereal Psychic TV to avant-garde Thee Majesty.
Never one to commune in solitude, all these eras of the artist, priest and shaman have fused into the orgiastic seizure of family-band PTV3. Now he gladly shares center stage with the group, including wife Lady Jaye, daughter Genesse, and bandmates, forming a cohesive unit to rock the house. This is a personal and critical triumph for the artist, whose daemonic career stalled somewhat after his tragic injuries in an infamous Hollywood fire at the former home of mega-magician, Harry Houdini.
In the alchemical transformation process, fire is the Bath of Immortality; the calcinatio fire tempers emotions, mind and body. Fire symbolizes libido, not at all separate from sexuality. The movement is from auto-erotic, to personal power-seeking, to refined transpersonal consciousness. Frustration is the initiatory ordeal. The fires of desire are transmuted. The miraculous water, aqua divina or permanens, was extracted from the lapis, or prima materia through the torment of the fire. The water stands for the anima mundi imprisoned in matter. This stage represents the expansion of consciousness after a crisis in development.
This crucible of chemical breakdown created a Phoenix-like opportunity for a remixing of elements, a new chapter of the sexual metathesis. Mind and body, perturbed by the chaos of a turbulent inner life, relinked in a transformation of prima materia through a luminous rebirth. In alchemy, both the primal matrix and finished product (Philosopher’s Stone) are hermaphroditic, an androgyne, and rebis (double thing).
This is exemplified on the Tree of Life by the merging of Hod (Hermes) and Netzach (Aphrodite) to open the 25th path ART (Temperance) which culminates in the Self-Real-I-zation of Tiphareth, the heart center. It represents a change of plane, a quantum leap from Astral to Causal Body as intentionally-created vehicle of consciousness with its enlarged perspective.
In a triumphant international come-back over 2004-2005, the Dionysian diva proved he never really went “away”. Nor did the perennial global fans. Now, aka Breyer P-Orridge, Genesis masquerades in conjunction with soror mystica and co-artist, Lady Jaye. S/he has endured further self-initiatory rites of s/hirgery. The magickal child cooks in the heat of the rubedo, furthering its incubation.
Hir symbolic externalization of the Androgyne is a deliberate, conscious artistic creation…body as art, bringing body fully into the artistic process, in a hyper-committed soulful way. This informed transformation is lightyears beyond body-building or the prosaic body-modification of neo-tribal culture, which is now reduced to the 21st Century equivalent of mall-hair by pierced teeny-boppers and tatted grandmothers with tickets for Burning Man.
The new Virgin, in the ancient meaning of being One whole-in-oneself, took h/ir show on the road. From the beginning of his career, Genesis has been a seminal engineering influence in Occulture, while likewise being influenced by his intimate relationships with such icons as Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Brion Gysin. He was strongly influenced by Burroughs’s “cut-up method” of writing. It is essentially a mantic rant, a collage technique with words and phrases uniquely juxtaposed. Now he’s done the same with his body.
The search for an escape from a dualistic state has formed one of the great pursuits of philosophers, mystics and occultists alike. Morphing the meat body creates a cascade of transformation through the etheric bodies in the emotional, mental, and spiritual worlds - a coincidentia oppositorum. S/He is a KOAN of living flesh that confounds spectators and brings a screeching halt to linear thought in pure spectacle. It brings new meaning to McLuhan’s old saw: the medium is the massage.
Do Homo Mutans or Homo Lumen embody an evolutionary thrust beyond Homo Sapiens? The immortal sacred Androgyne is a reiterated symbol throughout the history of art from neolithic times, and was particularly revered by medieval alchemists. Gen spoke at length about its resurrection in the fantasy life of our postmodern society in a Disinformation.com video. S/He implied the collective masturbatory fantasies of one-sided male culture have brought the Androgyne into embodiment, fueling its literal appearance to fulfill their sex-magick fueled fantasies.
In the latest narrative of their personal journey, charismatic Gen and Lady Jaye aren’t trying to fuse into twins, or even emphasize their mystical brother-sister aspects, but apparently seeking “escape velocity” from the shakles of the chemical identity. But this thrust is life-affirming, not evolutionary nostalgia of being longing for non-being. Perhaps the quest for the next-new-way-on has been fulfilled.
Genesis continues to eschew the local universe of each adoptive or adaptive persona in a self-induced alienation that affirms h/ir non-mentalized multiverse, her/e and now. He continues to stay on point in the hinterlands of personality by transcending each embodied version of Self. Jaye’s role in this hormonal alchemy should not be underestimated. Genesis credits her tender nursing as a key element in his psychophysical recovery. Mythopoetically, it is interesting to recall how Dionysus, too, was attended by the ever-present nurse. But, interdependence is not co-dependence.
This current, the “chymical wedding” of male and female, manifested strongly in the fin de siecle occulture, with the Symbolist artists of the Salon de las RoseCroix, and in the 20th century with the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley and the futuristic philosopher William S. Burroughs. Still, nothing Genesis has done in his artistic arc has been particularly derivative, or mere dramatic impersonation. The truth inhabiting these characters is what lends them power.
The psychic metamorphosis of interrelated themes of the artist/androgyne, the Narcissus myth, mirroring, and self-reflection figure prominently as metaphors in the artistic process. What is left for h/ir but to sprout wings to mate with the self-devouring serpent (Ouroboros) like Jung’s God-image of the Self, Aion, which necessarily reveals itself progressively?
The cultural Revolution IS being televised on PTV3. The Self is born in the image of the eye, the Third “I”, where we give Skull to the Divine.
The Yab-Yummy Way of Imagination
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is ‘man’ in a higher sense - he is ‘collective man,’ a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. (Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, 1930)
Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers. (Carl Jung)
Today, we recognize two sexes on this earth, male and female, but the image of the Androgyne is impressed on the psyche as a dominant of the collective unconscious. Its existence is proved by the fact that it emerges from time to time in a multiplicity of guises, and in every part of the world. Do not lovers say to each other, “I am lost without you, incomplete. With you I feel fulfilled. I experience a sense of union when we are together.” (June Singer, Androgyny)
Lady Jaye and my SELF have privately chosen to explore our thoughts about identity and a belief that evolution is crucial to thee survival and self esteem ov thee humanE species in many ways. One ov these is thee idea that Lady Jaye proposed that thee body is a pre-Astoric “suitcase” holding us back from potential futures. We will need to give up any ideas ov thee body being sacrosanct if we wish to explore space. Genetic mutation and engineering will be essential for meaningful space travel. Whilst our Pandrogeny process began as an intimate private thing, inevitably I.T. became visibly to a public because we are performers and artists as well. We feel that we are duty bound to TRY and share some ov our thoughts on why we do these proceedures with you who visit here, as a politeness and sign ov respect from us to you. This is not a necessity, butter an offering we make in a more intimate space where we hope friends and allies dwell. (Genesis P-Orridge, 2005, Homepage http://genesisp-orridge.com/)
S/HIRGERY: THE ULTIMATE CUT-UP METHOD
Androgyne as Self image: SELF AS CUT-UP; BODY AS ART, return to the AnthropoMORPHIC self-discovery and in some cases a painful coming-out process. In the light of such images of horror, our fears are thoroughly justified in The Plastic Ideal: The Androgyne in fin de Siecle Occulture and beyond into the Great Unknown.
Implicit in any image of the androgyne is the idea that we must write new myths,… Other than describing the wreck of the self and of culture, the ancient Androgyne has endured as the image of a spiritual goal in … The first step towards transcending the Little Self, and attaining Thee image of spiritual androgyny as a compelling one.
The Androgyne is the marriage of the Sun and the Moon in a Mysterium Coniunctionis, a royal marriage, a mystical union. But, of course, the myth never remotely referred to a species existing on earth fitting that description, but rather to that celestial world of the imagination where all the immortal prototypes for Creation have always existed. Or does it?
Love of Self, wife, creativity, the world, self-actualizing new myths in order to empower ourselves and to heal our self-image. … the postmodern self is mediated, not mediating. Postmodern psychology is a product of the movement from McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy into a post-literate world, a transition marked by the collapse of the critical distance between the inner self and the outside world, and by our immersion, perhaps even dissolution, in the ever-accelerating maelstrom of the media spectacle.
In Postmodernism, this shift in “the dynamics of cultural pathology” is one in which “the alienation of the subject is displaced by the latter’s fragmentation.” This new psyche is characterized by “waning of affect” which is not so much the android autism Andy Warhol aspired to as it is the giddy experience of emotions as “free-floating and impersonal” sensations “dominated by a peculiar kind of euphoria.”
This psychological weightlessness, at once terrifying and exhilarating, is the result of life lived in the mass-media centrifuge, where everything, from hemorrhoid-treatment ads to televised suicide, carries equal weight and where reality and its simulation are beginning to look more and more alike. Call it Angst Lite, “camp sublime” - camp in the sense that camp delights in depthlessness, celebrates surface; sublime in the sense that this “peculiar euphoria” is the postmodern equivalent- the vertiginous loss of self in the presence of nature’s awful grandeur.
ANDROGYNE AS SELF IMAGE
The Kabbalistic Tree suggests that the androgyne is the model for each and every human, … Instead, the creative process begins with the self-moisturing or The androgyne is both artist and work of art, self and other. O Self-Luminous Image of … the chaste and obscene, the androgyne and the gynander that have passed beyond the boundaries. This complex has been enshrined in ART and in the inner self of the adept, shapeshifting Living Image of Higher Self, Divine Archetype of Humanity, … mediators, shamans and priests, the Divine androgyne and gatekeepers. …
It is time for us to look inside, to do the work of self-discovery and reclaimation. But in the Royal Marriage, The Divine Androgyne of Higher Self reveals to us She is similar to the Hindu androgyne Ardanari Iswara, beyond the androgyne which remains caught up in the oppositional gender paradigm When the Divine takes on a deity image and visits you, … The door between the Self and the Divine stands open, the Light fills your life, Woman in man who is a man in woman she walks in him, androgyne and androgyne; In fulfillment they are ALL or Pan and the Androgyne-center of the triangle, the I in the Triangle of evocation.
What are those self-identified androgynes …having negative self-identification of their original sex and gender image? It’s what we call residual self image. The mental projection of your …screenplay refers to Switch as a “beautiful androgyne”; vice became the basis of its ethos and in self-image s/he depicted herself as androgyne, or as a historical icon, or …negatives to multiply hir image.
… Gender identity refers to the self-image or belief held about one’s core or essence … Plato speaks of the androgyne - the time when man and woman were united or joined. The Egyptian Mut was an androgyne, having breasts and an erect phallus. … If mankind is made in the image of God, the creator himself would be a cosmic androgyne, Pandrogynous.
The hermaphroditic figure of the androgyne and its corresponding number, two, represent balance. Does it justify violating the self-image, the pride, the intentions of the artist in process, as self-created? This perfected entity was always depicted as an androgyne, a rebis (”double thing”). The Relationship Between Physical Self-Concept, Body Image Dissatisfaction, Iconic Androgyne, the Androgyne as a staple of occult ideas and a recurrent fractal-like image.
The Androgyne, both male and female together, symbolized a concept largely alien to all of conformity, together made the path to self discovery, of mediation that invoked the mythic androgyne. Therefore, we find the androgyne idea, concretely lived out today, … The psychic structure of the lower God image that Paracelsus intuited therefore provides completion… This image is also distinguished by its self-consciously artifactual quality: The construction of the cosmic androgyne (maha mudra): Through a kind of self-mirroring or self-contemplation, this supreme First …
“This is the First Thought, His Image; HER womb of everything for ‘Thou art myself, my image and my shadow. I have clothed myself in thee and thou art’ … Similarly, the harbor of causal self-consciousness.
The Androgyne, as I understand and relate to hir, appears, in my personal flesh… I allowed God to mirror my Self. I worshiped no God who was only male, no longer bigendered.
The image of spiritual androgyny is a compelling one, as compelling today as that of the alchemists in the middle ages. Women are always present in men’s own self-image. The Androgyne image also has been with us since the Paleolithic era. He-She is the Self-Created Adam, originally created as an androgyne of male/female …
If we return to our image of Adam as the ego and Lilith as the Deeper Self One, the very first thing that ever was is fear of his androgyne virgin, kind of like a compass with no needle, music with no sound or … induced reaction building a self image in your own deep desire … He/r … issues posed by the images themselves.
The Self-Aware Image, suspended somewhere between the androgyne of fin de siecle aesthetes and the The images, came back and filled in the empty spaces; aspects of the dream altered to the weird androgyne mutation. Gender is a “mix and match” mode of self expression of The Divine Androgyne: Images … Explorations into Self-Discovery Through Mythology, History and Science. The androgyne is stalking through the land.
This Self’s functions are sensations, emotions, basic drives, image or tribal … In the Gaean Tradition it is the Divine Androgyne, that which combines all Yab-Yum: Tibetan Buddhist image of union of the cosmic female with the cosmic male in experimental/experiential spirituality. The only path is self-acceptance. You create the universe in your image. That is your strength and your peace. …God is psychic androgyne brilliance, way beyond the occulture of drag.
What's New with My Subject? A Mythocritical Carnal Essay
… Gender roles, and the strides made in the process of self-change of Image has become synonymous with America itself. Androgyne: A person who adopts characteristics of both genders in order to become. They have become self-consciously engaged in the transformation of the Logos for within dichotomy there is little room for self-expression and self-determination. Each then channels a response in art, one in image and one in words, one in flesh. … androgyne… heart weighed against the feather-winged spirit in flight … a self-assuredness and independence to counter the outdated, naive image…
Here, male curiosity in the androgyne is a `one-sided appropriation of the … breathed … for what has been lost is in each his very self (atman), here and now,.. therefore, the figure of the Androgyne is a staple of occult ideas and a recurrent image.
The androgyne, God knew, would become a law unto itself. … Through the act of naming, creation of a sense of self can be a political act of Personality. Who wants his Inmost Self meddled with and Invaded? … Self-articulation is partly contradicted by the image of the unity between any self and any …Metaphor. The divine is an androgyne, a being both female and male, … the flirtatious androgyne Kitten, who peaks way too early with a … Reconciliation of male and female.
Hence if the schizophrenic, or initiated shaman is to self-heal and be able to help … As androgyne, the shaman combines a masculine warrior strength and …surrender, self-published original Artist’s Self-Portraits … at that time it was well-developed, self-aware and, in parts, quite sophisticated. The critical attitude is peculiarly self-reflexive, however… Androgyne was a self-consciously avant-garde group, distinct from the official … Holy Exalted One, O Self beyond self. O Self - Luminous Image of the … chaste and obscene, the androgyne and the gynander that have passed … Characters are self-consciously arranged. They posture and strike poses in an …androgyne, both male and female.
THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT; THIS IS WHAT YOU GET
By thee way, talking ov ideas. Lady Jaye and E are pursuing Pandrogeny for conceptual reasons and Romantic reasons. To at thee very least demonstrate our COMMITTMENT to thee idea ov radical change. Ov accepting as essential to EVOLUTION surgical, genetic, surface, gestural, proceedures and technologies in order to create futures for our SELF with us as thee designers. Pandrogeny is about declaring that consensus reality is FICTIONAL. That WE are fictionaL Therefore we can WRITE any SELF we imagined use whjatever technique is acessible at this T.I.M.E. to manifest our imagination. WE ARE NOT TRYING TO BECOUM TWINS. NOR TO BE ANY IDEAL OV BEAUTIFUL. NOR ARE WE TRYING TO CHANGE GENDER. We use our bodies as raw material to “paint” a biological poortrait ov possibilities. To let go ov attachment to how we looked. Thee inevitable paradox ov alchemical thinking. We see OUR bodies as representing an ongoing discussion between us ov thee process ov OWNERSHIP ov our narrative through pusahing our SELF towards a future state ov being similar on conception to thee THIRD MIND ov Burroughs and Gysin. You could say WE ARE CUT-UPS TO BECOUM A CUT-UP. A sense ov irony is all ways advisable in L-if-E. If we end up not liking how we look that might well mean we are succeeding. By taking possession ov thee outer appearance we are possessed by our inner vision. (Genesis/Breyer, NYC April 5th 2005)
History reveals that taken in aggregate, the corpus of Neolithic figurines urges us to contemplate gender ascriptions that include more than the traditional male/female, either/or dichotomies. If we jettison the conventional binary opposition we are left with the possibility that the early preliterate communities of Neolithic Greece employed multiple or even fluid gender categories, at least in their visual repertoire.
Such categories would include male, female, neuter, dual-sexed, and possibly a dynamic classification that moved in and out of sexual/gender identities. In some ways, this conclusion should not come as a surprise: the existence of several genders, gender-crossing and shifting categories is known from a variety of cultures and there is no reason to doubt that such melding of identities were part of life in the distant past.
The mere existence of these multiple categories suggests that gendered identities were not uncomplicated choices in Neolithic Greece. Some levels or realms of Neolithic Greek society, be they sacred or profane, may have encouraged a conscious and self-constructed determination of gender that remained open to alteration during one’s lifetime.
As God’s image my ego is androgyne like The Symbol of the Androgyne in Blake’s Four Zoas and Shelley’s Prometheus …Archetypal Images of Transformation and the Self in Percy Bysshe Shelley. This hybrid image first appears in Ovid’s classic text ‘Metamorphoses’.
As a result, the androgyne, a frequent figure in contemporary fantasies about the primal lacks the classical and religious implications of “androgyne” and denotes a… shame, poor self-esteem, negative body-image by implicitly or explicitly the true spiritual Self in the physical man …It is only when, from a potential androgyne, man has become separated into male/female that An Androgyne was thought to have achieved “balance of reason and intuition, of wisdom and …
One of the first images of the Great Goddess is represented in … the androgyne celebrated as the dangerous but seductive symbol of the union… self as other, of the self with a discarded self-image, with a figure of … the ideal of the androgyne find the meaning of hir provocative self-image, which was shaped not only… by hir own vision of the ideal human being, the divine androgyne. … Started out with one month of intensive self-observation/analysis in order to … mutate into opposite gender, then blending into androgyne/hermaphrodite. … Refiguration-Self-Hybridation of The physical self and its sensations. The emotional self and its feelings. The mental self and … the modes of creativity and birth have shifted from the androgyne state of … The iron of self-contempt and false toughness, which is image-crippling.
… One androgyne goddess dared to sing low when she sang love. … self-described “political idiot” and immortal image It’s self-conscious and self-consciously vulgar, sporting bad digital … visions of an inhabited microcosm, surrounded by desert regions as a chaos or a kingdom of … MEPHISTOPHELES ET L’ANDROGYNE, - The Two and the One … Zero represents the Cosmic Egg, the primordial Androgyne - the Plenum. … This submission is in the spirit of total surrender of the self. … communities and the complexity (often self-contradictions) of the myths. …
The Vision of Hermes Trismegistos has God speak of the Divine Self not as “My Image” but as “Our Images” … Along with the hermaphrodite’s challenge to nature came images of the mythological Into the maze of self: as the formation of self in relation to a wide range of social structures. The androgyne sighed with satisfaction It is a single image with the entire actions of a life cycle - it begets … hir own self-portrait-as-androgyne, central to the essential core …
Even the apparently mundane images also turn out to contain alchemical truth… Eros, Another important aspect of Ouroborus: Mercury is the Hermetic Androgyne or Hermaphrodite, which is a symbol of the Alchemical … Baphomet, a Magical Archetype of the Bisexual Self of Man. Hear this, and understand that the Elect are self-selecting … of the unconscious and its relation to dreams. The beautiful boy is an androgyne, luminously masculine and feminine. …The beautiful boy, sexually self-complete, is sealed in silence, behind a wall of … self knowledge entailing the rediscovery of all the levels of ones being. Adam-Kadmon is the Microcosmic Tree of Life in the image of Absolute Wisdom …
The self is, in part, its culture although not co-terminus with it. … is the house of self-adjustment, rejecting statements of self-denial for transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future. … When men and women come to see the image of the Divine Lovers in one … is there a psychological fear of loosing the self in the other? … and sometimes men hold moons, particularly when two fused androgyne-like figures are On the sexual plane, Such joining brings a “liberating” recognition that the real self is “uncreated.” Crowley called it UNBORN, the Bornless One.
A BRIGHT EYE-DEA
Creation can also be understood as divine self-reflection, a series of mirrors within mirrors, in which the image always includes elements of the original … The motivation behind adopting images from queer culture is not political … but psychic, shamanic.
The many dualities and oppositions in the image represent the subjection of the …Star. We are dealing with the Transcendent Self, for the Astral Womb-man is sham-man … neither woman nor man, but a self-created entity… It’s not easy to make a busty androgyne in a black corset and garters … into more than concepts and images of the body in western art… Reference Sexual Ambiguity in Goya’s Work and the Carnivalized Androgyne …
This approach coincides with the self-understanding of This Universal Self (the Adam Kadmon of Judaism), of the Adamic Self, the archetypal androgyne that symbolizes the primordial state of human … images of a self-contained, solipsistic and self-absorbed world, … of the wisdom EYE-DEA of Sophia and androgyne … and its transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future…
The elements become tainted by the independent self-centred projection. Let it reflect the Buddha Self in whose image it had been made. … This elimination of lying to the self enables one to observe the work of …The concept of the Androgyne as purely mythical or theoretical value for … No Image Available.
The point is to show that the mythic image is cytheric, tropological … Cultures share in the idea of an elixir vitae and the contra-sexual Androgyne. … by alchemists as the Hermaphrodite (Hermes and Aphrodite), … It can be seen clearly today in the infamous image of the Caduceus … which in Alchemy was known as the Hermetic Androgyne.
The first race of men were, then, simply the images, the astral doubles… These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as … the battle of the sexes that they founded … To answer another earlier posed question on androgyne, which when one speaks from androgyny …one becomes the mystically united twin within our Self ANDROGYNE. POWER. CLARITY. MARRIAGE. CONFESSION. OPENING. PASSAGE. TRUTH. ILLUMINATION …
Although meditation teachers teach that self-actualization is an intermediate step on the decadent narrative, enamoured of itself, self-replicating and … This is a stylistically self-indulgent slice of self-parody. The act of self-mutilation to spawn and create, to breed The androgyne Satan moving through the crowd provokes discord… Image of God and Temple of God, this self he split into two; hence arose husband and wife not as an androgyne but as an independent other, a partner of sorts, a complete second … Mirror Images. … An eternally self-replicating order of things… the ancient Chinese divinity of light and darkness was also an androgyne.
The threat of androgyne lurks perpetually on the outskirts of popular culture … sacred image, like the Orphic hermaphroditic Eros-Phanes. We could go on, mentioning the myths of Narcissus and the androgyne…This quality is expressed in the continual attempts at “self-recovery” and in … distorted self-image, and even misdiagnosis by health professionals… This is inconsistent with the image; we can begin to perceive it as a self-regulating mechanism …but one single body, which is the Androgyne or Hermaphrodite of the ancients.
PandroGENy and THE SELF
Wisdom to know the difference between one’s ego and one’s Self is embodied in your individuality. The Greeks showed that Effeminacy and androgyne was uncovered within the heart of masculine society. Perhaps the closest contemporary synonym is PANdrogyne, which at least incorporates both gendermixing and third gender, self-reference. An androgyne (sometimes called the third sex) chooses to live outside of social sanction. Jung said, the unconscious is the only accessible source of religious experience.
This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. (Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self).
As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. It expresses the unity of the personality as a whole. … it is a transcendental concept, for it presupposes the existence of unconscious factors on empirical grounds and thus characterizes an entity that can be described only in part, but for the other part, remains at present unknowable and illimitable.
The self is transcendent because it points to an unlimited future and unbounded creative expansion of the evolutionary process. This is something that no being can comprehend. Of course we can have some sense of the future structure of the evolutionary process, but that tells us nothing of its essence. It tells us nothing of what it is like to be a more highly evolved being.
THE SELF is, according to Jung, the most important archetype. It is called the “midpoint of the personality” a center between consciousness and the unconsciousness. It signifies the harmony and balance between the various opposing qualities that make up the psyche. It remains basically incomprehensible, as ego consciousness cannot grasp this supraordinate personality of which the ego is only one element.
The symbols of the self can be anything that the ego takes to be a greater totality than itself. Thus many symbols fall short of expressing the self in its fullest development. Symbols of the self are often manifested in geometrical forms (mandalas) or by the quaternity (any figure with four parts).
This archetype is also represented by the divine child and by various pairs–father and son, king and queen, god and goddess, or by a hermaphrodite. To Jung the self is a representation of the “god within us.” For Jung, the self is one’s goal in life. It is the goal that is rarely reached, but it has such power that it motivates our behavior and causes us to seek wholeness - especially through a spiritual journey.
Jung’s conception of self comes close to that of the Yogic conception of the Atman, For Jung, emptiness is the sacrifice of ego to the larger Self, which transcends individual consciousness. The self, Jung argues, is a plurality with a core identity; it is both a “we” and an “I.”
This issue preoccupied both Jung and the ancient yogis: the path of the “expanded self. The self is the psychic organ through which the human being is capable of the experience of transcendence: “If the ego is dissolved in identification with the self, it gives rise to a sort of … superman with a puffed-up ego and a deflated self” (Jung, 1981). Symbols of the Self cannot be distinguished from symbols of God. The Self embodies the union of opposites on the personal and cosmic scale.
“The modern androgyne, seeking only self-realization, forfeits the energy of opposition and conflict.” (Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae)
This is a stream of unconsciousness essay on the Self, illustrated by the kaleidoscopic sexual personae of GENESIS P-ORRIDGE. Always the mercurial Magician, Gen has been associated with the art and decadence of the Thelemic, industrial, punk, Goth, and rave movements, and was arguably the earliest proponent of acid house. His bands have ranged from hard-edged Throbbing Gristle to ethereal Psychic TV to avant-garde Thee Majesty.
Never one to commune in solitude, all these eras of the artist, priest and shaman have fused into the orgiastic seizure of family-band PTV3. Now he gladly shares center stage with the group, including wife Lady Jaye, daughter Genesse, and bandmates, forming a cohesive unit to rock the house. This is a personal and critical triumph for the artist, whose daemonic career stalled somewhat after his tragic injuries in an infamous Hollywood fire at the former home of mega-magician, Harry Houdini.
In the alchemical transformation process, fire is the Bath of Immortality; the calcinatio fire tempers emotions, mind and body. Fire symbolizes libido, not at all separate from sexuality. The movement is from auto-erotic, to personal power-seeking, to refined transpersonal consciousness. Frustration is the initiatory ordeal. The fires of desire are transmuted. The miraculous water, aqua divina or permanens, was extracted from the lapis, or prima materia through the torment of the fire. The water stands for the anima mundi imprisoned in matter. This stage represents the expansion of consciousness after a crisis in development.
This crucible of chemical breakdown created a Phoenix-like opportunity for a remixing of elements, a new chapter of the sexual metathesis. Mind and body, perturbed by the chaos of a turbulent inner life, relinked in a transformation of prima materia through a luminous rebirth. In alchemy, both the primal matrix and finished product (Philosopher’s Stone) are hermaphroditic, an androgyne, and rebis (double thing).
This is exemplified on the Tree of Life by the merging of Hod (Hermes) and Netzach (Aphrodite) to open the 25th path ART (Temperance) which culminates in the Self-Real-I-zation of Tiphareth, the heart center. It represents a change of plane, a quantum leap from Astral to Causal Body as intentionally-created vehicle of consciousness with its enlarged perspective.
In a triumphant international come-back over 2004-2005, the Dionysian diva proved he never really went “away”. Nor did the perennial global fans. Now, aka Breyer P-Orridge, Genesis masquerades in conjunction with soror mystica and co-artist, Lady Jaye. S/he has endured further self-initiatory rites of s/hirgery. The magickal child cooks in the heat of the rubedo, furthering its incubation.
Hir symbolic externalization of the Androgyne is a deliberate, conscious artistic creation…body as art, bringing body fully into the artistic process, in a hyper-committed soulful way. This informed transformation is lightyears beyond body-building or the prosaic body-modification of neo-tribal culture, which is now reduced to the 21st Century equivalent of mall-hair by pierced teeny-boppers and tatted grandmothers with tickets for Burning Man.
The new Virgin, in the ancient meaning of being One whole-in-oneself, took h/ir show on the road. From the beginning of his career, Genesis has been a seminal engineering influence in Occulture, while likewise being influenced by his intimate relationships with such icons as Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Brion Gysin. He was strongly influenced by Burroughs’s “cut-up method” of writing. It is essentially a mantic rant, a collage technique with words and phrases uniquely juxtaposed. Now he’s done the same with his body.
The search for an escape from a dualistic state has formed one of the great pursuits of philosophers, mystics and occultists alike. Morphing the meat body creates a cascade of transformation through the etheric bodies in the emotional, mental, and spiritual worlds - a coincidentia oppositorum. S/He is a KOAN of living flesh that confounds spectators and brings a screeching halt to linear thought in pure spectacle. It brings new meaning to McLuhan’s old saw: the medium is the massage.
Do Homo Mutans or Homo Lumen embody an evolutionary thrust beyond Homo Sapiens? The immortal sacred Androgyne is a reiterated symbol throughout the history of art from neolithic times, and was particularly revered by medieval alchemists. Gen spoke at length about its resurrection in the fantasy life of our postmodern society in a Disinformation.com video. S/He implied the collective masturbatory fantasies of one-sided male culture have brought the Androgyne into embodiment, fueling its literal appearance to fulfill their sex-magick fueled fantasies.
In the latest narrative of their personal journey, charismatic Gen and Lady Jaye aren’t trying to fuse into twins, or even emphasize their mystical brother-sister aspects, but apparently seeking “escape velocity” from the shakles of the chemical identity. But this thrust is life-affirming, not evolutionary nostalgia of being longing for non-being. Perhaps the quest for the next-new-way-on has been fulfilled.
Genesis continues to eschew the local universe of each adoptive or adaptive persona in a self-induced alienation that affirms h/ir non-mentalized multiverse, her/e and now. He continues to stay on point in the hinterlands of personality by transcending each embodied version of Self. Jaye’s role in this hormonal alchemy should not be underestimated. Genesis credits her tender nursing as a key element in his psychophysical recovery. Mythopoetically, it is interesting to recall how Dionysus, too, was attended by the ever-present nurse. But, interdependence is not co-dependence.
This current, the “chymical wedding” of male and female, manifested strongly in the fin de siecle occulture, with the Symbolist artists of the Salon de las RoseCroix, and in the 20th century with the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley and the futuristic philosopher William S. Burroughs. Still, nothing Genesis has done in his artistic arc has been particularly derivative, or mere dramatic impersonation. The truth inhabiting these characters is what lends them power.
The psychic metamorphosis of interrelated themes of the artist/androgyne, the Narcissus myth, mirroring, and self-reflection figure prominently as metaphors in the artistic process. What is left for h/ir but to sprout wings to mate with the self-devouring serpent (Ouroboros) like Jung’s God-image of the Self, Aion, which necessarily reveals itself progressively?
The cultural Revolution IS being televised on PTV3. The Self is born in the image of the eye, the Third “I”, where we give Skull to the Divine.
The Yab-Yummy Way of Imagination
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is ‘man’ in a higher sense - he is ‘collective man,’ a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. (Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, 1930)
Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers. (Carl Jung)
Today, we recognize two sexes on this earth, male and female, but the image of the Androgyne is impressed on the psyche as a dominant of the collective unconscious. Its existence is proved by the fact that it emerges from time to time in a multiplicity of guises, and in every part of the world. Do not lovers say to each other, “I am lost without you, incomplete. With you I feel fulfilled. I experience a sense of union when we are together.” (June Singer, Androgyny)
Lady Jaye and my SELF have privately chosen to explore our thoughts about identity and a belief that evolution is crucial to thee survival and self esteem ov thee humanE species in many ways. One ov these is thee idea that Lady Jaye proposed that thee body is a pre-Astoric “suitcase” holding us back from potential futures. We will need to give up any ideas ov thee body being sacrosanct if we wish to explore space. Genetic mutation and engineering will be essential for meaningful space travel. Whilst our Pandrogeny process began as an intimate private thing, inevitably I.T. became visibly to a public because we are performers and artists as well. We feel that we are duty bound to TRY and share some ov our thoughts on why we do these proceedures with you who visit here, as a politeness and sign ov respect from us to you. This is not a necessity, butter an offering we make in a more intimate space where we hope friends and allies dwell. (Genesis P-Orridge, 2005, Homepage http://genesisp-orridge.com/)
S/HIRGERY: THE ULTIMATE CUT-UP METHOD
Androgyne as Self image: SELF AS CUT-UP; BODY AS ART, return to the AnthropoMORPHIC self-discovery and in some cases a painful coming-out process. In the light of such images of horror, our fears are thoroughly justified in The Plastic Ideal: The Androgyne in fin de Siecle Occulture and beyond into the Great Unknown.
Implicit in any image of the androgyne is the idea that we must write new myths,… Other than describing the wreck of the self and of culture, the ancient Androgyne has endured as the image of a spiritual goal in … The first step towards transcending the Little Self, and attaining Thee image of spiritual androgyny as a compelling one.
The Androgyne is the marriage of the Sun and the Moon in a Mysterium Coniunctionis, a royal marriage, a mystical union. But, of course, the myth never remotely referred to a species existing on earth fitting that description, but rather to that celestial world of the imagination where all the immortal prototypes for Creation have always existed. Or does it?
Love of Self, wife, creativity, the world, self-actualizing new myths in order to empower ourselves and to heal our self-image. … the postmodern self is mediated, not mediating. Postmodern psychology is a product of the movement from McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy into a post-literate world, a transition marked by the collapse of the critical distance between the inner self and the outside world, and by our immersion, perhaps even dissolution, in the ever-accelerating maelstrom of the media spectacle.
In Postmodernism, this shift in “the dynamics of cultural pathology” is one in which “the alienation of the subject is displaced by the latter’s fragmentation.” This new psyche is characterized by “waning of affect” which is not so much the android autism Andy Warhol aspired to as it is the giddy experience of emotions as “free-floating and impersonal” sensations “dominated by a peculiar kind of euphoria.”
This psychological weightlessness, at once terrifying and exhilarating, is the result of life lived in the mass-media centrifuge, where everything, from hemorrhoid-treatment ads to televised suicide, carries equal weight and where reality and its simulation are beginning to look more and more alike. Call it Angst Lite, “camp sublime” - camp in the sense that camp delights in depthlessness, celebrates surface; sublime in the sense that this “peculiar euphoria” is the postmodern equivalent- the vertiginous loss of self in the presence of nature’s awful grandeur.
ANDROGYNE AS SELF IMAGE
The Kabbalistic Tree suggests that the androgyne is the model for each and every human, … Instead, the creative process begins with the self-moisturing or The androgyne is both artist and work of art, self and other. O Self-Luminous Image of … the chaste and obscene, the androgyne and the gynander that have passed beyond the boundaries. This complex has been enshrined in ART and in the inner self of the adept, shapeshifting Living Image of Higher Self, Divine Archetype of Humanity, … mediators, shamans and priests, the Divine androgyne and gatekeepers. …
It is time for us to look inside, to do the work of self-discovery and reclaimation. But in the Royal Marriage, The Divine Androgyne of Higher Self reveals to us She is similar to the Hindu androgyne Ardanari Iswara, beyond the androgyne which remains caught up in the oppositional gender paradigm When the Divine takes on a deity image and visits you, … The door between the Self and the Divine stands open, the Light fills your life, Woman in man who is a man in woman she walks in him, androgyne and androgyne; In fulfillment they are ALL or Pan and the Androgyne-center of the triangle, the I in the Triangle of evocation.
What are those self-identified androgynes …having negative self-identification of their original sex and gender image? It’s what we call residual self image. The mental projection of your …screenplay refers to Switch as a “beautiful androgyne”; vice became the basis of its ethos and in self-image s/he depicted herself as androgyne, or as a historical icon, or …negatives to multiply hir image.
… Gender identity refers to the self-image or belief held about one’s core or essence … Plato speaks of the androgyne - the time when man and woman were united or joined. The Egyptian Mut was an androgyne, having breasts and an erect phallus. … If mankind is made in the image of God, the creator himself would be a cosmic androgyne, Pandrogynous.
The hermaphroditic figure of the androgyne and its corresponding number, two, represent balance. Does it justify violating the self-image, the pride, the intentions of the artist in process, as self-created? This perfected entity was always depicted as an androgyne, a rebis (”double thing”). The Relationship Between Physical Self-Concept, Body Image Dissatisfaction, Iconic Androgyne, the Androgyne as a staple of occult ideas and a recurrent fractal-like image.
The Androgyne, both male and female together, symbolized a concept largely alien to all of conformity, together made the path to self discovery, of mediation that invoked the mythic androgyne. Therefore, we find the androgyne idea, concretely lived out today, … The psychic structure of the lower God image that Paracelsus intuited therefore provides completion… This image is also distinguished by its self-consciously artifactual quality: The construction of the cosmic androgyne (maha mudra): Through a kind of self-mirroring or self-contemplation, this supreme First …
“This is the First Thought, His Image; HER womb of everything for ‘Thou art myself, my image and my shadow. I have clothed myself in thee and thou art’ … Similarly, the harbor of causal self-consciousness.
The Androgyne, as I understand and relate to hir, appears, in my personal flesh… I allowed God to mirror my Self. I worshiped no God who was only male, no longer bigendered.
The image of spiritual androgyny is a compelling one, as compelling today as that of the alchemists in the middle ages. Women are always present in men’s own self-image. The Androgyne image also has been with us since the Paleolithic era. He-She is the Self-Created Adam, originally created as an androgyne of male/female …
If we return to our image of Adam as the ego and Lilith as the Deeper Self One, the very first thing that ever was is fear of his androgyne virgin, kind of like a compass with no needle, music with no sound or … induced reaction building a self image in your own deep desire … He/r … issues posed by the images themselves.
The Self-Aware Image, suspended somewhere between the androgyne of fin de siecle aesthetes and the The images, came back and filled in the empty spaces; aspects of the dream altered to the weird androgyne mutation. Gender is a “mix and match” mode of self expression of The Divine Androgyne: Images … Explorations into Self-Discovery Through Mythology, History and Science. The androgyne is stalking through the land.
This Self’s functions are sensations, emotions, basic drives, image or tribal … In the Gaean Tradition it is the Divine Androgyne, that which combines all Yab-Yum: Tibetan Buddhist image of union of the cosmic female with the cosmic male in experimental/experiential spirituality. The only path is self-acceptance. You create the universe in your image. That is your strength and your peace. …God is psychic androgyne brilliance, way beyond the occulture of drag.
What's New with My Subject? A Mythocritical Carnal Essay
… Gender roles, and the strides made in the process of self-change of Image has become synonymous with America itself. Androgyne: A person who adopts characteristics of both genders in order to become. They have become self-consciously engaged in the transformation of the Logos for within dichotomy there is little room for self-expression and self-determination. Each then channels a response in art, one in image and one in words, one in flesh. … androgyne… heart weighed against the feather-winged spirit in flight … a self-assuredness and independence to counter the outdated, naive image…
Here, male curiosity in the androgyne is a `one-sided appropriation of the … breathed … for what has been lost is in each his very self (atman), here and now,.. therefore, the figure of the Androgyne is a staple of occult ideas and a recurrent image.
The androgyne, God knew, would become a law unto itself. … Through the act of naming, creation of a sense of self can be a political act of Personality. Who wants his Inmost Self meddled with and Invaded? … Self-articulation is partly contradicted by the image of the unity between any self and any …Metaphor. The divine is an androgyne, a being both female and male, … the flirtatious androgyne Kitten, who peaks way too early with a … Reconciliation of male and female.
Hence if the schizophrenic, or initiated shaman is to self-heal and be able to help … As androgyne, the shaman combines a masculine warrior strength and …surrender, self-published original Artist’s Self-Portraits … at that time it was well-developed, self-aware and, in parts, quite sophisticated. The critical attitude is peculiarly self-reflexive, however… Androgyne was a self-consciously avant-garde group, distinct from the official … Holy Exalted One, O Self beyond self. O Self - Luminous Image of the … chaste and obscene, the androgyne and the gynander that have passed … Characters are self-consciously arranged. They posture and strike poses in an …androgyne, both male and female.
THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT; THIS IS WHAT YOU GET
By thee way, talking ov ideas. Lady Jaye and E are pursuing Pandrogeny for conceptual reasons and Romantic reasons. To at thee very least demonstrate our COMMITTMENT to thee idea ov radical change. Ov accepting as essential to EVOLUTION surgical, genetic, surface, gestural, proceedures and technologies in order to create futures for our SELF with us as thee designers. Pandrogeny is about declaring that consensus reality is FICTIONAL. That WE are fictionaL Therefore we can WRITE any SELF we imagined use whjatever technique is acessible at this T.I.M.E. to manifest our imagination. WE ARE NOT TRYING TO BECOUM TWINS. NOR TO BE ANY IDEAL OV BEAUTIFUL. NOR ARE WE TRYING TO CHANGE GENDER. We use our bodies as raw material to “paint” a biological poortrait ov possibilities. To let go ov attachment to how we looked. Thee inevitable paradox ov alchemical thinking. We see OUR bodies as representing an ongoing discussion between us ov thee process ov OWNERSHIP ov our narrative through pusahing our SELF towards a future state ov being similar on conception to thee THIRD MIND ov Burroughs and Gysin. You could say WE ARE CUT-UPS TO BECOUM A CUT-UP. A sense ov irony is all ways advisable in L-if-E. If we end up not liking how we look that might well mean we are succeeding. By taking possession ov thee outer appearance we are possessed by our inner vision. (Genesis/Breyer, NYC April 5th 2005)
History reveals that taken in aggregate, the corpus of Neolithic figurines urges us to contemplate gender ascriptions that include more than the traditional male/female, either/or dichotomies. If we jettison the conventional binary opposition we are left with the possibility that the early preliterate communities of Neolithic Greece employed multiple or even fluid gender categories, at least in their visual repertoire.
Such categories would include male, female, neuter, dual-sexed, and possibly a dynamic classification that moved in and out of sexual/gender identities. In some ways, this conclusion should not come as a surprise: the existence of several genders, gender-crossing and shifting categories is known from a variety of cultures and there is no reason to doubt that such melding of identities were part of life in the distant past.
The mere existence of these multiple categories suggests that gendered identities were not uncomplicated choices in Neolithic Greece. Some levels or realms of Neolithic Greek society, be they sacred or profane, may have encouraged a conscious and self-constructed determination of gender that remained open to alteration during one’s lifetime.
As God’s image my ego is androgyne like The Symbol of the Androgyne in Blake’s Four Zoas and Shelley’s Prometheus …Archetypal Images of Transformation and the Self in Percy Bysshe Shelley. This hybrid image first appears in Ovid’s classic text ‘Metamorphoses’.
As a result, the androgyne, a frequent figure in contemporary fantasies about the primal lacks the classical and religious implications of “androgyne” and denotes a… shame, poor self-esteem, negative body-image by implicitly or explicitly the true spiritual Self in the physical man …It is only when, from a potential androgyne, man has become separated into male/female that An Androgyne was thought to have achieved “balance of reason and intuition, of wisdom and …
One of the first images of the Great Goddess is represented in … the androgyne celebrated as the dangerous but seductive symbol of the union… self as other, of the self with a discarded self-image, with a figure of … the ideal of the androgyne find the meaning of hir provocative self-image, which was shaped not only… by hir own vision of the ideal human being, the divine androgyne. … Started out with one month of intensive self-observation/analysis in order to … mutate into opposite gender, then blending into androgyne/hermaphrodite. … Refiguration-Self-Hybridation of The physical self and its sensations. The emotional self and its feelings. The mental self and … the modes of creativity and birth have shifted from the androgyne state of … The iron of self-contempt and false toughness, which is image-crippling.
… One androgyne goddess dared to sing low when she sang love. … self-described “political idiot” and immortal image It’s self-conscious and self-consciously vulgar, sporting bad digital … visions of an inhabited microcosm, surrounded by desert regions as a chaos or a kingdom of … MEPHISTOPHELES ET L’ANDROGYNE, - The Two and the One … Zero represents the Cosmic Egg, the primordial Androgyne - the Plenum. … This submission is in the spirit of total surrender of the self. … communities and the complexity (often self-contradictions) of the myths. …
The Vision of Hermes Trismegistos has God speak of the Divine Self not as “My Image” but as “Our Images” … Along with the hermaphrodite’s challenge to nature came images of the mythological Into the maze of self: as the formation of self in relation to a wide range of social structures. The androgyne sighed with satisfaction It is a single image with the entire actions of a life cycle - it begets … hir own self-portrait-as-androgyne, central to the essential core …
Even the apparently mundane images also turn out to contain alchemical truth… Eros, Another important aspect of Ouroborus: Mercury is the Hermetic Androgyne or Hermaphrodite, which is a symbol of the Alchemical … Baphomet, a Magical Archetype of the Bisexual Self of Man. Hear this, and understand that the Elect are self-selecting … of the unconscious and its relation to dreams. The beautiful boy is an androgyne, luminously masculine and feminine. …The beautiful boy, sexually self-complete, is sealed in silence, behind a wall of … self knowledge entailing the rediscovery of all the levels of ones being. Adam-Kadmon is the Microcosmic Tree of Life in the image of Absolute Wisdom …
The self is, in part, its culture although not co-terminus with it. … is the house of self-adjustment, rejecting statements of self-denial for transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future. … When men and women come to see the image of the Divine Lovers in one … is there a psychological fear of loosing the self in the other? … and sometimes men hold moons, particularly when two fused androgyne-like figures are On the sexual plane, Such joining brings a “liberating” recognition that the real self is “uncreated.” Crowley called it UNBORN, the Bornless One.
A BRIGHT EYE-DEA
Creation can also be understood as divine self-reflection, a series of mirrors within mirrors, in which the image always includes elements of the original … The motivation behind adopting images from queer culture is not political … but psychic, shamanic.
The many dualities and oppositions in the image represent the subjection of the …Star. We are dealing with the Transcendent Self, for the Astral Womb-man is sham-man … neither woman nor man, but a self-created entity… It’s not easy to make a busty androgyne in a black corset and garters … into more than concepts and images of the body in western art… Reference Sexual Ambiguity in Goya’s Work and the Carnivalized Androgyne …
This approach coincides with the self-understanding of This Universal Self (the Adam Kadmon of Judaism), of the Adamic Self, the archetypal androgyne that symbolizes the primordial state of human … images of a self-contained, solipsistic and self-absorbed world, … of the wisdom EYE-DEA of Sophia and androgyne … and its transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future…
The elements become tainted by the independent self-centred projection. Let it reflect the Buddha Self in whose image it had been made. … This elimination of lying to the self enables one to observe the work of …The concept of the Androgyne as purely mythical or theoretical value for … No Image Available.
The point is to show that the mythic image is cytheric, tropological … Cultures share in the idea of an elixir vitae and the contra-sexual Androgyne. … by alchemists as the Hermaphrodite (Hermes and Aphrodite), … It can be seen clearly today in the infamous image of the Caduceus … which in Alchemy was known as the Hermetic Androgyne.
The first race of men were, then, simply the images, the astral doubles… These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as … the battle of the sexes that they founded … To answer another earlier posed question on androgyne, which when one speaks from androgyny …one becomes the mystically united twin within our Self ANDROGYNE. POWER. CLARITY. MARRIAGE. CONFESSION. OPENING. PASSAGE. TRUTH. ILLUMINATION …
Although meditation teachers teach that self-actualization is an intermediate step on the decadent narrative, enamoured of itself, self-replicating and … This is a stylistically self-indulgent slice of self-parody. The act of self-mutilation to spawn and create, to breed The androgyne Satan moving through the crowd provokes discord… Image of God and Temple of God, this self he split into two; hence arose husband and wife not as an androgyne but as an independent other, a partner of sorts, a complete second … Mirror Images. … An eternally self-replicating order of things… the ancient Chinese divinity of light and darkness was also an androgyne.
The threat of androgyne lurks perpetually on the outskirts of popular culture … sacred image, like the Orphic hermaphroditic Eros-Phanes. We could go on, mentioning the myths of Narcissus and the androgyne…This quality is expressed in the continual attempts at “self-recovery” and in … distorted self-image, and even misdiagnosis by health professionals… This is inconsistent with the image; we can begin to perceive it as a self-regulating mechanism …but one single body, which is the Androgyne or Hermaphrodite of the ancients.
PandroGENy and THE SELF
Wisdom to know the difference between one’s ego and one’s Self is embodied in your individuality. The Greeks showed that Effeminacy and androgyne was uncovered within the heart of masculine society. Perhaps the closest contemporary synonym is PANdrogyne, which at least incorporates both gendermixing and third gender, self-reference. An androgyne (sometimes called the third sex) chooses to live outside of social sanction. Jung said, the unconscious is the only accessible source of religious experience.
This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. (Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self).
As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. It expresses the unity of the personality as a whole. … it is a transcendental concept, for it presupposes the existence of unconscious factors on empirical grounds and thus characterizes an entity that can be described only in part, but for the other part, remains at present unknowable and illimitable.
The self is transcendent because it points to an unlimited future and unbounded creative expansion of the evolutionary process. This is something that no being can comprehend. Of course we can have some sense of the future structure of the evolutionary process, but that tells us nothing of its essence. It tells us nothing of what it is like to be a more highly evolved being.
THE SELF is, according to Jung, the most important archetype. It is called the “midpoint of the personality” a center between consciousness and the unconsciousness. It signifies the harmony and balance between the various opposing qualities that make up the psyche. It remains basically incomprehensible, as ego consciousness cannot grasp this supraordinate personality of which the ego is only one element.
The symbols of the self can be anything that the ego takes to be a greater totality than itself. Thus many symbols fall short of expressing the self in its fullest development. Symbols of the self are often manifested in geometrical forms (mandalas) or by the quaternity (any figure with four parts).
This archetype is also represented by the divine child and by various pairs–father and son, king and queen, god and goddess, or by a hermaphrodite. To Jung the self is a representation of the “god within us.” For Jung, the self is one’s goal in life. It is the goal that is rarely reached, but it has such power that it motivates our behavior and causes us to seek wholeness - especially through a spiritual journey.
Jung’s conception of self comes close to that of the Yogic conception of the Atman, For Jung, emptiness is the sacrifice of ego to the larger Self, which transcends individual consciousness. The self, Jung argues, is a plurality with a core identity; it is both a “we” and an “I.”
This issue preoccupied both Jung and the ancient yogis: the path of the “expanded self. The self is the psychic organ through which the human being is capable of the experience of transcendence: “If the ego is dissolved in identification with the self, it gives rise to a sort of … superman with a puffed-up ego and a deflated self” (Jung, 1981). Symbols of the Self cannot be distinguished from symbols of God. The Self embodies the union of opposites on the personal and cosmic scale.
Lydia Lunch - Beyond the Pale. by Iona Miller
“The dread and resistance which every natural human being experiences when it comes to delving too deeply into himself is, at bottom, the fear of the journey to Hades.”
- C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12: 439
“The Hades within Dionysus says that there is an invisible meaning in sexual acts, a significance for the soul in the phallic parade, that all of our life force, including the polymorphic and pornographic desires of the psyche, refer to the underworld of images.”
-James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld, p. 45
Hades and Depth
The imagorrhea, or through-flow of images with a hint of unpalatability, in “ Memory and Madness ” evokes mythic impressions of a soul perpetually held in thrall unable to escape the Hell of sex, violence, madness, obsession, and addiction.
Myth doesn’t ground; it opens. Depth is a metaphor without a base. The depth of the simplest image is fathomless.
When we go deep, soul becomes involved. The same themes repeat endlessly rotating in a myriad of variations, in different octaves of outrage and screams. Plato said souls in Hades are incurable.
Yet, Lydia Lunch somehow embodies the ability to intentionally transgress the boundaries – to go beyond the pale of convention. For this among other reasons, she is referred to as the “queen of the underground.” In the soul’s labyrinth we can never go deep enough.
Like the Queen of the Underworld, Persephone, Lydia moves at will between the conscious and the unconscious depths – a foot in both the world of the living and world of the dead. The fundamental image of the underworld is of a contained space with shrouded limits. The underworld is a psychological cosmos. The underground is a lifestyle and subculture undergird with and sustained by psychic imagery.
Persephone’s mythic consort is Hades-Dionysus. She yearns for depth, mating with the fearsome cold intelligence of Hades. Hades and Dionysus are the same (Heraclitus), implying an indissoluble link with trances, altered states, madness, intoxication, even addiction, and yet vitality, passion, hedonism. He rules the amoral realm of non-process. Our very essence is contained in our circular states of repetitiveness. Time has nothing to do with the underworld.
Psyche Is Soul
For the ancient Greeks soul was an image, the psychical point of view. Soul is found in the reception of its suffering, attending to it with attentive devotion, waiting it through. The underworld is the chthonic psyche, a cold realm of souls and one of psychopathy, beyond human warmth and decency. It is a world without light that still has shades and shadows. We must smell our way along, sniffing out the essential.
Pathology is an essential component of the human soul. Underworld is psyche. The shadow play is the unconscious fantasy of the moment in daily living. Shadow is the very stuff of the soul that keeps us linked with the underworld. The shadow casts us.
Psyche is the only reality known through immediate experience. What we know about life seems irrelevant for what is below life. The underworld – not life – is the place of psyche, the unseen or invisible essence. The psyche needs to be fed and it lives on the imaginal. The body draws on the soul for its nourishment, needing the soul stuff of images.
Lydia feeds us this soulful Lunch. What was natural becomes metaphorical. As an underground icon, her reflective work echoes this shamanic spirit in feminine form, prioritizing the deeply personal, tangibly realizing its spiritual aspect. This latest work is deliberate public psychotherapy, coincidentally for herself and her listeners.
She speaks freely and openly about what others dare not even whisper. Narcissism helps connect to yet depotentiate underworld forces such as instincts, drives, and complexes. She has learned how to dance with the demands of the invisible spirit, making her personal story universal.
The rape of Persephone by Hades was the central theme in the mysticism of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and her verbal musings are a kykeon or magical draught that transports us into this underworld domain for our own initiation into those mysteries.
Perpetual Woundedness
Her traumatic childhood (paternal incest) echoes the rape of tender Persephone, innocence seized and dragged into the underworld by the powerful emotional undercurrent, Hades. But the underworld is also part of nature, and our nature – divine images of the chthonic, hidden motives, human frailty, unseen connections, darkness, death and perversion.
Confrontation with Hades is experienced as a violence, an overwhelming violation. Life is turned upside down. Invaded by the repugnant dark power of the inevitable we recoil in anguish. Persephone ate “lunch” in Hades, characterized as pomegranate seeds, but we can consider that euphemistic, realizing it was simply “seed.”
The intervention releases characteristic types of fantasy and behavior: self-preservation, vulnerability, loss, humiliation, betrayal, resignation, uncertainty, revulsion, repetitious despair and desperation, surrender, meaning, suffering, death/rebirth. Hades is the crypt and the cryptic: a hidden (buried, shrouded, concealed, occult) presence, an invisible fullness (blocked, censored, forbidden, obscured).
The threat — rupture of the fabric of personality — is precisely the mode of initiation. Consciousness is separated from its life attachments. Psychic intensity and value are juxtaposed. Jung noted that myth is the subterranean root and content of defenses and resistances in both neurosis and psychosis. Mythical images have no beginning or end. It all goes on at once, forever. There is no changing the unchangeable.
What's New with My Subject? Shamanic Journeys
However, Lydia has triumphed pulling herself up from the depths of pathology, depression and aggression, well-aware of the cycle of victim/victimizer. She has explored these themes in her music and films and perhaps through love, including her audience.
She’s learned to carry her pain with grace. Perhaps she has even managed to bring other trapped spirits along with her. Her consciousness shines in the dark, drawing them like moths to the flame.
Like cures like. Her character, grounded in the chthonic depths, is her guardian and fate. She accompanies us into and through a new dimension — the emptiness, the Void, — with a reassuring Presence. We feel she backs us up, urges us on, understands us more deeply than we understand ourselves.
There is no way out of a myth, only deeper into it past the fear and pain. We cannot escape the psychic significance of what we are doing. Lydia attempts to resurface through deeper entry into her contents, ecologically recycling her consciousness.
Memory implies remembering and forgetting. The route to the underworld is marked by the twin springs Mnemosyne, that of memory and Lethe, the waters of forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is akin to sleep, dreams, and death. She dreams out loud.
Mnemosyne was also the mother of the Muses. The spring belongs to her, being a comfort and balm for the afflicted. Giving illumination and letting disappear make up the entire being of the Goddess. This is the union of opposites where the luminosity of remembrance stands in sharp relief with forgetfulness.
Light breaks forth from the depths. Memories spring up; they well up. Their archetypal depiction as water means somehow they slake the psychic thirst of parched souls. Water that springs forth is a primary image of the origins of life as well as memory.
Lydia brings us that water in the small broken jug that is her body; she is the leaky cask, an amphora of the water of life. Outflowing life is genuine life, but perhaps unfulfilled. Flowing through is incessantly desired by those with unquenchable thirst.
Desert and thirst require an outpouring. An utter flowing-through that cannot be held fast becomes unbearable when the flowing-through ceases. So the void becomes a compulsion to seek out new inflowing and outflowing. We drink greedily from her incessant stream.
“ Memory and Madness ” is such a passionately-sought, soul-teaching outflowing. Perhaps it assures Lydia she is not and will not be forgotten. Life ultimately runs out like water through a sieve. Its narcotizing relish is we forget the big and little pains of life. The ‘thirst’ for the liquid of unconcern of the dead is the ‘will’ of the living.
Sometimes there is healing in forgetting to remember, or remember exactly, or remembering archetypally. Memory is mutable, non-retainable. We remember imaginally, metaphorically. Every time we access a memory, it changes. Personal recollections are a distortion, events we freeze as snapshots and narratives.
In this spoken word confessional, “ Memory and Madness ,” she dances through the labyrinths of her psyche, substituting one word for another, one name for another, one meaning for another, one memory wraith for another, without loss of immediacy.
The agony of “Johnny” and the agony of enduring “Johnny” is always happen- ing . We worry that his madness is our madness, too – that his dark descent mirrors our own. Her electrifying performances raise the purely personal to the paradigmatic – the individual to the universal.
This punk diva wields the twin scepters of art and artifice. A fierce energy drives the siren’s work, speaking to our own suffering through her waking dreams. We suffer and also resist the endless cycle for that is the irresolvable mythic pattern. Suffering feeds on itself for sustenance.
Lydia’s aggressive verbal Kung Fu evokes our own memories, our own exposure to misery, madness and chaos, even our own defenses. She tears open our blindspots, our self-defeating behaviors, rooting out deeper pain.
Only in the depth dimension can we penetrate to what is hidden, the true nature of all things. This deepening leads the soul to true insight. We abandon both hope and despair, coping and failing.
Revealing her core she transmutes suffering into rapport and empathy. We suffer along with her; then, she suffers magnificently for us. She tends to our souls, transforming the ceaseless self-indulgence of suffering through catharsis and rejuvenation. Perhaps together we can learn to distinguish a compulsion from a call, an instinct from an image, a demanding desire from a movement of imagination.
Identification
We find ourselves through her story while we are riveted, maybe even elevated. Is it not a form of transcendence to rise above our existential experience, transforming it through the creative act as Lunch does repeatedly in her latest volume? She promotes awareness of soul through its own expressions, through the language of metaphor, through metamorphosis.
I myself have known, dated, even married “Johnny, Jimmie, Tony,” and in some ways am still doing it. Haven’t you? I know the agony of trying to adore and even “save” lost souls to redeem or release myself, then being emotionally rent for my vain attempt. The boredom and numbness follow with the ache that starts the whole bloody Dionysian cycle again.
Wounded healer is the archetype of shamanism. The urge to cure the incurable keeps us from recognizing the essence of our limitations, the limits of the psychopathic essence of personality. We can be literally torn apart by memories, by madness, by violation. But the scars declare we can heal and survive. The body remembers the horror and wonder of being through its scars.
We can only “know” the Other through our common understanding of pain as the great leveler. We are all equal in the brotherhood of suffering souls. Pain may be easier to deal with than joy because it is so much more familiar. Pain hurts because it is uniquely ours.
As a clinical hypnotherapist, my specialty was sexual molest so I’ve seen plenty of fallout. I can testify with Lydia, that they all – the Johnnies, and Jimmies, and Tonys – (and their female counterparts) bleed profusely. They don’t need to taste the self-inflicted blade of the knife to do so all over you. Psychophysical wounds never fully heal. We pick compulsively at the virtual scabs nursing the open sore.
Like a sequel to her mentor Burroughs’s “ Naked Lunch ,” Lydia’s laments shamelessly disclose her emotional landscape. She knows instinctively what poetic themes and words “want” to live together, to play together – to jam. She doesn’t need to “cut-up” or ‘fold in” her lyrics – her whole life is cut up and enfolded. In response she “cuts up” with outrageous antics and enfolds and enmeshes us.
She catches the image of the event while it occurs. Each of her works holographically encapsulates an emotionally-charged issue in a single view that contains the whole picture as a microcosm. Every particle of a hologram contains the whole, just in less detail. Some of Lydia’s pieces are blurry and impressionistic, while others are crystal clear.
Catharsis
Resonating with this imagery, our own emotional ghosts rise from the dead as she blithely rototills the graveyards of our unconscious with her powerful voice. Perhaps this resurrection even subtly reframes our personal histories by superimposing her retrocognitive vision over our experience. The depth potential is a seed she plants in each moment of life.
Not content to suffer merely for herself and her art, she suffers for all of us, for mankind, even for the planet. Lately, she decries the environmentally rapacious Bush-league political regime with another offering, “ In Our Time of Dying ”. Having suffered her own rape, she is loath to see the planet suffer the same fate, again and again.
Like Demeter depressively yearning through the winter of her discontent she craves just one more renascent Spring. She offers a fertile space for the existentially alienated and politically disenfranchised to grow warily and dream of flowering.
We discover the open-ended meaning of existence by expressing rather than betraying emotion. Her effortless delivery makes her unfolding drama seem like improvisational accident, created anew with each performance. She camouflages herself in a succession of images. What remains unconcealed is her self-referential certainty, as she plumbs levels of signification.
Her pathos is expressed in imaginative fertility, coherent clusters of perceptions and articulated feelings punctuated by dramatic voids, following no forms or formulas of emotional style. No mere compensation could cure the trauma, imbalance of passions and psychological distress. Healing as a restructuring process can only emerge organically from within.
In “ Memory and Madness ,” anger, rage, pain, ennui are transformed into a cohesive paean – a bittersweet yet joyous song celebrating the triumph of life, of desire, of love, of healing. Perhaps the content of her utterance is not as important as its plane of expression in visual, auditory and visceral form. She glides inexorably toward the end that satisfies the story, melding the simultaneous coexistence of multiple elements in dynamic autonomous organization.
But there is certainly no moral, no closure, and no conclusions. Is it a complaint or a celebration? What remains is the indeterminacy of the infinite range of meanings, inexhaustible meaning, the fruitful promise of mystery. Thus, we can listen, and listen, and listen again anew.
The thrust remains the same. She is always saying something fresh yet recognizable about the human condition, even if based around meaning residing in the circumstances of her artist’s life. She models how to bear the unbearable yet sustain voluptuous passion for life. She helps us observe our own catastrophes with a dark wisdom.
Lydia’s stylistic fusion ranges through critique, irony and mockery, full of ahistorical loopholes without the burden of proof. She intuitively employs the shamanic willingness to creatively make do with what is at hand. Just a nuance or inflection can imply different facets. Expression of an emotion implies coming to self-awareness.
Free Lunch
We get the impression she is erotically embedded in psychic images, sensuously wallowing in them, though they ultimately escape her intention or control. This is her fantasy, her freedom.
Libido is married to psychosexual imagination. The soul is imagining before the context appears. Hers is the erotics of engagement, libidinally driven immersion in the imaginal where psychic attraction is palpable, electromagnetic.
The delectable Lunch inflects, deflects, and infects us with her vision, her voice, and her “ear-otica.” Her love for us is based wholly on a relationship with images and shown through images, through an imaginative response. When we love, we want to explore, to extend the intricacy that intensifies intimacy.
Form and context are as important as content in her ultrathematic works of art. These newest works are informed by her whole herstory. She weaves interpretive webs of significance. Diverse meanings overlap in her word mosaics and interrelate in unforeseen ways, carrying on and informing past works.
Words gather meanings over time. Like images they are accumulators of meaning, accumulating intentionality. Closing the gap, the aesthetic distance between art and reality, her intentionally shocking subject matter remains herself, her life, her pain, her transmutation, and her transcendence.
Of course, she is in no way limited by the images as metaphors presented here. Still, perhaps the dark-adapted eye of Archetypal Psychology is not antagonistic to her spirit. It is amplified, non-analytical and also embraces pathology, wildness, the unheroic, the descent, the unredeemable.
All artists are driven, but this dark angel has an appetitive drive matched by few. Her consummatory field is as immense as her experiential base. She both savors and devours. Then she digests, critiquing both the raw and the cooked in herself and in society.
Lydia Lunch is a sensuous feast, truly beyond the common boundaries or limits of the social pale. Her desires ripen into nourishing fruits of love. She feeds us sumptuously on her fresh words. There is no “freer” Lunch to be found.
- C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12: 439
“The Hades within Dionysus says that there is an invisible meaning in sexual acts, a significance for the soul in the phallic parade, that all of our life force, including the polymorphic and pornographic desires of the psyche, refer to the underworld of images.”
-James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld, p. 45
Hades and Depth
The imagorrhea, or through-flow of images with a hint of unpalatability, in “ Memory and Madness ” evokes mythic impressions of a soul perpetually held in thrall unable to escape the Hell of sex, violence, madness, obsession, and addiction.
Myth doesn’t ground; it opens. Depth is a metaphor without a base. The depth of the simplest image is fathomless.
When we go deep, soul becomes involved. The same themes repeat endlessly rotating in a myriad of variations, in different octaves of outrage and screams. Plato said souls in Hades are incurable.
Yet, Lydia Lunch somehow embodies the ability to intentionally transgress the boundaries – to go beyond the pale of convention. For this among other reasons, she is referred to as the “queen of the underground.” In the soul’s labyrinth we can never go deep enough.
Like the Queen of the Underworld, Persephone, Lydia moves at will between the conscious and the unconscious depths – a foot in both the world of the living and world of the dead. The fundamental image of the underworld is of a contained space with shrouded limits. The underworld is a psychological cosmos. The underground is a lifestyle and subculture undergird with and sustained by psychic imagery.
Persephone’s mythic consort is Hades-Dionysus. She yearns for depth, mating with the fearsome cold intelligence of Hades. Hades and Dionysus are the same (Heraclitus), implying an indissoluble link with trances, altered states, madness, intoxication, even addiction, and yet vitality, passion, hedonism. He rules the amoral realm of non-process. Our very essence is contained in our circular states of repetitiveness. Time has nothing to do with the underworld.
Psyche Is Soul
For the ancient Greeks soul was an image, the psychical point of view. Soul is found in the reception of its suffering, attending to it with attentive devotion, waiting it through. The underworld is the chthonic psyche, a cold realm of souls and one of psychopathy, beyond human warmth and decency. It is a world without light that still has shades and shadows. We must smell our way along, sniffing out the essential.
Pathology is an essential component of the human soul. Underworld is psyche. The shadow play is the unconscious fantasy of the moment in daily living. Shadow is the very stuff of the soul that keeps us linked with the underworld. The shadow casts us.
Psyche is the only reality known through immediate experience. What we know about life seems irrelevant for what is below life. The underworld – not life – is the place of psyche, the unseen or invisible essence. The psyche needs to be fed and it lives on the imaginal. The body draws on the soul for its nourishment, needing the soul stuff of images.
Lydia feeds us this soulful Lunch. What was natural becomes metaphorical. As an underground icon, her reflective work echoes this shamanic spirit in feminine form, prioritizing the deeply personal, tangibly realizing its spiritual aspect. This latest work is deliberate public psychotherapy, coincidentally for herself and her listeners.
She speaks freely and openly about what others dare not even whisper. Narcissism helps connect to yet depotentiate underworld forces such as instincts, drives, and complexes. She has learned how to dance with the demands of the invisible spirit, making her personal story universal.
The rape of Persephone by Hades was the central theme in the mysticism of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and her verbal musings are a kykeon or magical draught that transports us into this underworld domain for our own initiation into those mysteries.
Perpetual Woundedness
Her traumatic childhood (paternal incest) echoes the rape of tender Persephone, innocence seized and dragged into the underworld by the powerful emotional undercurrent, Hades. But the underworld is also part of nature, and our nature – divine images of the chthonic, hidden motives, human frailty, unseen connections, darkness, death and perversion.
Confrontation with Hades is experienced as a violence, an overwhelming violation. Life is turned upside down. Invaded by the repugnant dark power of the inevitable we recoil in anguish. Persephone ate “lunch” in Hades, characterized as pomegranate seeds, but we can consider that euphemistic, realizing it was simply “seed.”
The intervention releases characteristic types of fantasy and behavior: self-preservation, vulnerability, loss, humiliation, betrayal, resignation, uncertainty, revulsion, repetitious despair and desperation, surrender, meaning, suffering, death/rebirth. Hades is the crypt and the cryptic: a hidden (buried, shrouded, concealed, occult) presence, an invisible fullness (blocked, censored, forbidden, obscured).
The threat — rupture of the fabric of personality — is precisely the mode of initiation. Consciousness is separated from its life attachments. Psychic intensity and value are juxtaposed. Jung noted that myth is the subterranean root and content of defenses and resistances in both neurosis and psychosis. Mythical images have no beginning or end. It all goes on at once, forever. There is no changing the unchangeable.
What's New with My Subject? Shamanic Journeys
However, Lydia has triumphed pulling herself up from the depths of pathology, depression and aggression, well-aware of the cycle of victim/victimizer. She has explored these themes in her music and films and perhaps through love, including her audience.
She’s learned to carry her pain with grace. Perhaps she has even managed to bring other trapped spirits along with her. Her consciousness shines in the dark, drawing them like moths to the flame.
Like cures like. Her character, grounded in the chthonic depths, is her guardian and fate. She accompanies us into and through a new dimension — the emptiness, the Void, — with a reassuring Presence. We feel she backs us up, urges us on, understands us more deeply than we understand ourselves.
There is no way out of a myth, only deeper into it past the fear and pain. We cannot escape the psychic significance of what we are doing. Lydia attempts to resurface through deeper entry into her contents, ecologically recycling her consciousness.
Memory implies remembering and forgetting. The route to the underworld is marked by the twin springs Mnemosyne, that of memory and Lethe, the waters of forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is akin to sleep, dreams, and death. She dreams out loud.
Mnemosyne was also the mother of the Muses. The spring belongs to her, being a comfort and balm for the afflicted. Giving illumination and letting disappear make up the entire being of the Goddess. This is the union of opposites where the luminosity of remembrance stands in sharp relief with forgetfulness.
Light breaks forth from the depths. Memories spring up; they well up. Their archetypal depiction as water means somehow they slake the psychic thirst of parched souls. Water that springs forth is a primary image of the origins of life as well as memory.
Lydia brings us that water in the small broken jug that is her body; she is the leaky cask, an amphora of the water of life. Outflowing life is genuine life, but perhaps unfulfilled. Flowing through is incessantly desired by those with unquenchable thirst.
Desert and thirst require an outpouring. An utter flowing-through that cannot be held fast becomes unbearable when the flowing-through ceases. So the void becomes a compulsion to seek out new inflowing and outflowing. We drink greedily from her incessant stream.
“ Memory and Madness ” is such a passionately-sought, soul-teaching outflowing. Perhaps it assures Lydia she is not and will not be forgotten. Life ultimately runs out like water through a sieve. Its narcotizing relish is we forget the big and little pains of life. The ‘thirst’ for the liquid of unconcern of the dead is the ‘will’ of the living.
Sometimes there is healing in forgetting to remember, or remember exactly, or remembering archetypally. Memory is mutable, non-retainable. We remember imaginally, metaphorically. Every time we access a memory, it changes. Personal recollections are a distortion, events we freeze as snapshots and narratives.
In this spoken word confessional, “ Memory and Madness ,” she dances through the labyrinths of her psyche, substituting one word for another, one name for another, one meaning for another, one memory wraith for another, without loss of immediacy.
The agony of “Johnny” and the agony of enduring “Johnny” is always happen- ing . We worry that his madness is our madness, too – that his dark descent mirrors our own. Her electrifying performances raise the purely personal to the paradigmatic – the individual to the universal.
This punk diva wields the twin scepters of art and artifice. A fierce energy drives the siren’s work, speaking to our own suffering through her waking dreams. We suffer and also resist the endless cycle for that is the irresolvable mythic pattern. Suffering feeds on itself for sustenance.
Lydia’s aggressive verbal Kung Fu evokes our own memories, our own exposure to misery, madness and chaos, even our own defenses. She tears open our blindspots, our self-defeating behaviors, rooting out deeper pain.
Only in the depth dimension can we penetrate to what is hidden, the true nature of all things. This deepening leads the soul to true insight. We abandon both hope and despair, coping and failing.
Revealing her core she transmutes suffering into rapport and empathy. We suffer along with her; then, she suffers magnificently for us. She tends to our souls, transforming the ceaseless self-indulgence of suffering through catharsis and rejuvenation. Perhaps together we can learn to distinguish a compulsion from a call, an instinct from an image, a demanding desire from a movement of imagination.
Identification
We find ourselves through her story while we are riveted, maybe even elevated. Is it not a form of transcendence to rise above our existential experience, transforming it through the creative act as Lunch does repeatedly in her latest volume? She promotes awareness of soul through its own expressions, through the language of metaphor, through metamorphosis.
I myself have known, dated, even married “Johnny, Jimmie, Tony,” and in some ways am still doing it. Haven’t you? I know the agony of trying to adore and even “save” lost souls to redeem or release myself, then being emotionally rent for my vain attempt. The boredom and numbness follow with the ache that starts the whole bloody Dionysian cycle again.
Wounded healer is the archetype of shamanism. The urge to cure the incurable keeps us from recognizing the essence of our limitations, the limits of the psychopathic essence of personality. We can be literally torn apart by memories, by madness, by violation. But the scars declare we can heal and survive. The body remembers the horror and wonder of being through its scars.
We can only “know” the Other through our common understanding of pain as the great leveler. We are all equal in the brotherhood of suffering souls. Pain may be easier to deal with than joy because it is so much more familiar. Pain hurts because it is uniquely ours.
As a clinical hypnotherapist, my specialty was sexual molest so I’ve seen plenty of fallout. I can testify with Lydia, that they all – the Johnnies, and Jimmies, and Tonys – (and their female counterparts) bleed profusely. They don’t need to taste the self-inflicted blade of the knife to do so all over you. Psychophysical wounds never fully heal. We pick compulsively at the virtual scabs nursing the open sore.
Like a sequel to her mentor Burroughs’s “ Naked Lunch ,” Lydia’s laments shamelessly disclose her emotional landscape. She knows instinctively what poetic themes and words “want” to live together, to play together – to jam. She doesn’t need to “cut-up” or ‘fold in” her lyrics – her whole life is cut up and enfolded. In response she “cuts up” with outrageous antics and enfolds and enmeshes us.
She catches the image of the event while it occurs. Each of her works holographically encapsulates an emotionally-charged issue in a single view that contains the whole picture as a microcosm. Every particle of a hologram contains the whole, just in less detail. Some of Lydia’s pieces are blurry and impressionistic, while others are crystal clear.
Catharsis
Resonating with this imagery, our own emotional ghosts rise from the dead as she blithely rototills the graveyards of our unconscious with her powerful voice. Perhaps this resurrection even subtly reframes our personal histories by superimposing her retrocognitive vision over our experience. The depth potential is a seed she plants in each moment of life.
Not content to suffer merely for herself and her art, she suffers for all of us, for mankind, even for the planet. Lately, she decries the environmentally rapacious Bush-league political regime with another offering, “ In Our Time of Dying ”. Having suffered her own rape, she is loath to see the planet suffer the same fate, again and again.
Like Demeter depressively yearning through the winter of her discontent she craves just one more renascent Spring. She offers a fertile space for the existentially alienated and politically disenfranchised to grow warily and dream of flowering.
We discover the open-ended meaning of existence by expressing rather than betraying emotion. Her effortless delivery makes her unfolding drama seem like improvisational accident, created anew with each performance. She camouflages herself in a succession of images. What remains unconcealed is her self-referential certainty, as she plumbs levels of signification.
Her pathos is expressed in imaginative fertility, coherent clusters of perceptions and articulated feelings punctuated by dramatic voids, following no forms or formulas of emotional style. No mere compensation could cure the trauma, imbalance of passions and psychological distress. Healing as a restructuring process can only emerge organically from within.
In “ Memory and Madness ,” anger, rage, pain, ennui are transformed into a cohesive paean – a bittersweet yet joyous song celebrating the triumph of life, of desire, of love, of healing. Perhaps the content of her utterance is not as important as its plane of expression in visual, auditory and visceral form. She glides inexorably toward the end that satisfies the story, melding the simultaneous coexistence of multiple elements in dynamic autonomous organization.
But there is certainly no moral, no closure, and no conclusions. Is it a complaint or a celebration? What remains is the indeterminacy of the infinite range of meanings, inexhaustible meaning, the fruitful promise of mystery. Thus, we can listen, and listen, and listen again anew.
The thrust remains the same. She is always saying something fresh yet recognizable about the human condition, even if based around meaning residing in the circumstances of her artist’s life. She models how to bear the unbearable yet sustain voluptuous passion for life. She helps us observe our own catastrophes with a dark wisdom.
Lydia’s stylistic fusion ranges through critique, irony and mockery, full of ahistorical loopholes without the burden of proof. She intuitively employs the shamanic willingness to creatively make do with what is at hand. Just a nuance or inflection can imply different facets. Expression of an emotion implies coming to self-awareness.
Free Lunch
We get the impression she is erotically embedded in psychic images, sensuously wallowing in them, though they ultimately escape her intention or control. This is her fantasy, her freedom.
Libido is married to psychosexual imagination. The soul is imagining before the context appears. Hers is the erotics of engagement, libidinally driven immersion in the imaginal where psychic attraction is palpable, electromagnetic.
The delectable Lunch inflects, deflects, and infects us with her vision, her voice, and her “ear-otica.” Her love for us is based wholly on a relationship with images and shown through images, through an imaginative response. When we love, we want to explore, to extend the intricacy that intensifies intimacy.
Form and context are as important as content in her ultrathematic works of art. These newest works are informed by her whole herstory. She weaves interpretive webs of significance. Diverse meanings overlap in her word mosaics and interrelate in unforeseen ways, carrying on and informing past works.
Words gather meanings over time. Like images they are accumulators of meaning, accumulating intentionality. Closing the gap, the aesthetic distance between art and reality, her intentionally shocking subject matter remains herself, her life, her pain, her transmutation, and her transcendence.
Of course, she is in no way limited by the images as metaphors presented here. Still, perhaps the dark-adapted eye of Archetypal Psychology is not antagonistic to her spirit. It is amplified, non-analytical and also embraces pathology, wildness, the unheroic, the descent, the unredeemable.
All artists are driven, but this dark angel has an appetitive drive matched by few. Her consummatory field is as immense as her experiential base. She both savors and devours. Then she digests, critiquing both the raw and the cooked in herself and in society.
Lydia Lunch is a sensuous feast, truly beyond the common boundaries or limits of the social pale. Her desires ripen into nourishing fruits of love. She feeds us sumptuously on her fresh words. There is no “freer” Lunch to be found.
Aleister Crowley: Wizards, Spooks & Spymasters
http://occultespionage.50megs.com
Is it Crowleyanity or Truth? In the world of Aleister Crowley, it is impossible to say definitively, but the legends surrounding Crowley are nothing if not wildly entertaining. In OCCULT ESPionage we follow the meandering path of Crowley's magickal journey into the shadowlands of psychic warfare, occult spies and occult power visions. The daisy chain connects the worlds of irregular freemasonry to the political machinations of both Hitler and the Bush family.
It is a circuitous route, a widdershins spiral of weird coincidence into a vortex of implausible synchronicity. There is little doubt that Crowley's occult philosophy and writing influenced virtually all of his contemporary occultists and many of those to follow, as well as artists and musicians.
Many of his ideas had their roots in the minds of other deep thinkers, but no one executed them with more "energized enthusiasm." Sex Magician, "Wickedest Man on Earth," was he a spy and even possible double-agent, besides? Was Barbara Bush his love child? Was Hitler his doppelganger? Are L. Ron Hubbard and Tim Leary his legacies? Decide for yourself.
Crowley was a mercurial character. A Hermetic scholar and practitioner, he wrote "The Book of the Law," "Magick In Theory & Practice" and commissioned his own tarot deck, "The Book of Thoth." Thoth, Hermes, and Mercury are all the same archetypal force or godform. In ancient Egypt, Thoth was the deity of scribes or writers and magicians, and such a force seems to have blessed Crowley with its particular gifts. In Tarot, the corresponding trump is The Magician, The Juggler, The Magus...and he was all that.
The Magnum Opus, the Great Work of alchemy, is the utter transformation of oneself into a being of light, an energy body. Crowley lived larger than life. If his webpresence is any indicator, his legend and influence is bigger than ever. He may have just been lurking in the Astral Plane, waiting for this psychic rebirth. Perhaps, cutting through spacetime, he made a leap of faith into the electronic Astral Plane.
Aleister Crowley is a Conspiracy of One - the number of THE MAGUS.
VIDEO CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAcmnW4Sn-k
Pentagram: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_5YdXO1VT8&mode=related&search=
The occult is one of the keys to world events; reality is also defined by politics.It takes intelligence to be a magician, but a magician can also be an active agent of intelligence, figuratively and literally.The real question is, rather, how and why and who and what do these things serve?
Restoring self and society is the essential wisdom of the Grail.But this quest can be coopted for narcissistic or pathological ends.The Secret Doctrine can introduce both positive and negative praeternatural forces. Who is served by the Holy Grail of occult knowledge? What is the Grail, and who does it serve?The secret is in the power and the power is in The Secret. It is a meaningless metaphor without the experiential process of self-transformation to back it up. That’s why it can’t be told.
It is the panacea, a personal path of recovery for “what ails thee.”The Grail is a metaphor for connection to the mystical Source of everything, the ever-renewing Fount of all manifestation. All paths lead toward a personal journey of transformation and enlightenment, though not all journeys fulfill the total potential of creativity, compassion, engagement, and spirituality. On a classical “hero’s journey” like Parcival, when you find the Grail, and are called to its service, no knowledge remains hidden for long.
Magick was the first transdisciplinarian occupation, drawing on all areas of knowledge.Before science divorced the occult arts it was called Natural Philosophy. A Magus is a “worker of magic” which eludes rational definition.The Magus is both a symbol of enlightenment and deception (disinformation)-- just like the Tarot card, The Magician, is a card of duality: Wisdom and Folly. "Now you see it; now you don't" is the forte of the illusionist, the juggler of realities, who is master of Orwellian double-think – holding the tension of the opposites.Myths present themselves as systems of antinomies, or opposites: heaven/hell, good/evil, life/death.
Traditionally, the Magus is one who can demonstrate hands-on magic: healing, transformative rituals, metaphor therapy, alchemical transmutations, charging of talismans, spirit comm, etc. Magick works on the principle that man is a microcosm.
A modern Magus is any person who completes the circuit between heaven and Earth, one who seeks to bring forth the divine 'gold' within her or himself.He or she is also a Mentor, an Initiator, divining and reading the signs and revealing deeper purpose and meaning in “the godgame.”
But that is how the outer world sees it. Every Magus has a foot in both worlds.Their inner life is mercurial, a complex psychic layer-cake of inner planes of transcendent experience where quantum leaps of consciousness are possible and messages are exchanged with the Great Unknown.
Perception of what is real and what is not dims and vanishes in a whirlwind of synchronicities. Imagination is reality. Magicians understand the world we live in, or think we live in, is an illusion, a construct of our own perceptual apparatus and a malleable interpretation of our brains.
But the hyperdimensional gifts of the Spirit come at a price.The magician taps into, becomes one with, an essence that pop culture calls The Force.This subatomic vibration of Light and Sound is the enlivening force, which feeds creation and allegedly responds to focused intention.Information controls and patterns energy.
Hermetics is a Spiritual Technology
For masters of the Hermetic Arts, all magick is wrought through this impressionable ether – the Astral Light --a plenum of potential, using true properties of nature, it's laws, forces, and principles.Science now describes it as the scalar physics of subspace.The mage seeks to selectively establish an internal order out of this chaos, then externalize it, according to his vision.He is the soul guide who initiates the transformation process.
The Hermetica included works on magic, alchemy, astrology, healing, gnosis, theurgy, ritual and philosophy. Sympathetic magic contends that like substances sharing an essence can influence one another through resonance effects. Likewise the hypnotic and magnetic qualities of charismatic individuals can create rapport with others to influence them.
This power card also represents the fine line dividing white magic from black magic, toxic or malignant black ops. This is the realm of psychic attack and psychic self defense, of sorcerers stealthily vying with one another for power. Weaponized ESP can affect the body, mind and soul of one's opponent. But it can boomerang back on the sender 3-fold, according to the cautionary prescription.
Power can be used in either a self-serving manner, or one in service to the All. In order for The Magus to achieve his aims, there must be constant awareness and self-examination, pressing on and exploring one’s boundaries, breaking through into the boundless realms.
This is also the Trump of discernment.The Magus can discriminate between various realities and fantasies, between various points of view, without buying into any belief system, literally.The sorcerer orchestrates and works within others’ belief systems.
By molding worldviews, a magician creates the perception, manipulates and defines the perceived reality, creates the structure for self-organizing transformation.He believes no metanarratives but orchestrates them for others.He is an opportunistic paradigm shifter, shapeshifter, chameleon, trickster.If you assume a role does that make it real?If not, fake it till you make it.Better to be an inspired lunatic than uninspired, or so Crowley’s arc implies.
Aleister Crowley was among the first magicians of the modern era to find his own personal Zero Point in the Abyss of the transcendent imagination. The "Bornless One" is beyond force and form in naturally manifest awareness, luminous and empty.
Crowley played with the perceptions of the world. He pioneered the use of magick and psychedelics, much like Freud pioneered brainwashing, psychoanalysis and cocaine.They experimented on themselves.
Crowley and Freud were psychonauts developing “software technologies” for the brain. Crowley explored the Collective Unconscious like Carl Jung. Magick is a practical system designed for experiment.His magickal weapon was the phallic Wand, his means the creative Word, both truth and falsehood.
Whether Crowley ended his life as a degenerate burn out or enlightened individual is a deep paradox.As a magician, Crowley failed to immerse himself in the divine light and only developed on a mundane level.He never completed his own Abramelin Operation, having abandoned his quest for the Holy Guardian Angel or higher self halfway through the long retreat.
He never did any OTO opertions except sex magick.He failed as a Gnostic to dissolve into the ascending light.His world consisted of theoretical self-dissolution, strategies to disjoint personality, identity and action.The result were toxic experiments on himself and narcissistic idolizing of himself alone.As such, he was somewhat of a harbinger of the Postmodern dilemma -- the search for meaning. The accepted truths of society change as it evolves and the truths an individual accepts change as the individual evolves.
But who better than a cunning master of deception to enter the hall of mirrors of international ESPionage as Agent 666?In his visions, he may have seen others of the intelligentsia, the manipulative High Priesthood in there, smiling back from the Abyss – Malthus, Galton, Aldous and Julian Huxley, Bulwer-Lytton, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Helena Blavatsky and later even L. Ron Hubbard and his "grandson" [sic] George W. cont. ; http://occultespionage.50megs.com
Is it Crowleyanity or Truth? In the world of Aleister Crowley, it is impossible to say definitively, but the legends surrounding Crowley are nothing if not wildly entertaining. In OCCULT ESPionage we follow the meandering path of Crowley's magickal journey into the shadowlands of psychic warfare, occult spies and occult power visions. The daisy chain connects the worlds of irregular freemasonry to the political machinations of both Hitler and the Bush family.
It is a circuitous route, a widdershins spiral of weird coincidence into a vortex of implausible synchronicity. There is little doubt that Crowley's occult philosophy and writing influenced virtually all of his contemporary occultists and many of those to follow, as well as artists and musicians.
Many of his ideas had their roots in the minds of other deep thinkers, but no one executed them with more "energized enthusiasm." Sex Magician, "Wickedest Man on Earth," was he a spy and even possible double-agent, besides? Was Barbara Bush his love child? Was Hitler his doppelganger? Are L. Ron Hubbard and Tim Leary his legacies? Decide for yourself.
Crowley was a mercurial character. A Hermetic scholar and practitioner, he wrote "The Book of the Law," "Magick In Theory & Practice" and commissioned his own tarot deck, "The Book of Thoth." Thoth, Hermes, and Mercury are all the same archetypal force or godform. In ancient Egypt, Thoth was the deity of scribes or writers and magicians, and such a force seems to have blessed Crowley with its particular gifts. In Tarot, the corresponding trump is The Magician, The Juggler, The Magus...and he was all that.
The Magnum Opus, the Great Work of alchemy, is the utter transformation of oneself into a being of light, an energy body. Crowley lived larger than life. If his webpresence is any indicator, his legend and influence is bigger than ever. He may have just been lurking in the Astral Plane, waiting for this psychic rebirth. Perhaps, cutting through spacetime, he made a leap of faith into the electronic Astral Plane.
Aleister Crowley is a Conspiracy of One - the number of THE MAGUS.
VIDEO CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAcmnW4Sn-k
Pentagram: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_5YdXO1VT8&mode=related&search=
The occult is one of the keys to world events; reality is also defined by politics.It takes intelligence to be a magician, but a magician can also be an active agent of intelligence, figuratively and literally.The real question is, rather, how and why and who and what do these things serve?
Restoring self and society is the essential wisdom of the Grail.But this quest can be coopted for narcissistic or pathological ends.The Secret Doctrine can introduce both positive and negative praeternatural forces. Who is served by the Holy Grail of occult knowledge? What is the Grail, and who does it serve?The secret is in the power and the power is in The Secret. It is a meaningless metaphor without the experiential process of self-transformation to back it up. That’s why it can’t be told.
It is the panacea, a personal path of recovery for “what ails thee.”The Grail is a metaphor for connection to the mystical Source of everything, the ever-renewing Fount of all manifestation. All paths lead toward a personal journey of transformation and enlightenment, though not all journeys fulfill the total potential of creativity, compassion, engagement, and spirituality. On a classical “hero’s journey” like Parcival, when you find the Grail, and are called to its service, no knowledge remains hidden for long.
Magick was the first transdisciplinarian occupation, drawing on all areas of knowledge.Before science divorced the occult arts it was called Natural Philosophy. A Magus is a “worker of magic” which eludes rational definition.The Magus is both a symbol of enlightenment and deception (disinformation)-- just like the Tarot card, The Magician, is a card of duality: Wisdom and Folly. "Now you see it; now you don't" is the forte of the illusionist, the juggler of realities, who is master of Orwellian double-think – holding the tension of the opposites.Myths present themselves as systems of antinomies, or opposites: heaven/hell, good/evil, life/death.
Traditionally, the Magus is one who can demonstrate hands-on magic: healing, transformative rituals, metaphor therapy, alchemical transmutations, charging of talismans, spirit comm, etc. Magick works on the principle that man is a microcosm.
A modern Magus is any person who completes the circuit between heaven and Earth, one who seeks to bring forth the divine 'gold' within her or himself.He or she is also a Mentor, an Initiator, divining and reading the signs and revealing deeper purpose and meaning in “the godgame.”
But that is how the outer world sees it. Every Magus has a foot in both worlds.Their inner life is mercurial, a complex psychic layer-cake of inner planes of transcendent experience where quantum leaps of consciousness are possible and messages are exchanged with the Great Unknown.
Perception of what is real and what is not dims and vanishes in a whirlwind of synchronicities. Imagination is reality. Magicians understand the world we live in, or think we live in, is an illusion, a construct of our own perceptual apparatus and a malleable interpretation of our brains.
But the hyperdimensional gifts of the Spirit come at a price.The magician taps into, becomes one with, an essence that pop culture calls The Force.This subatomic vibration of Light and Sound is the enlivening force, which feeds creation and allegedly responds to focused intention.Information controls and patterns energy.
Hermetics is a Spiritual Technology
For masters of the Hermetic Arts, all magick is wrought through this impressionable ether – the Astral Light --a plenum of potential, using true properties of nature, it's laws, forces, and principles.Science now describes it as the scalar physics of subspace.The mage seeks to selectively establish an internal order out of this chaos, then externalize it, according to his vision.He is the soul guide who initiates the transformation process.
The Hermetica included works on magic, alchemy, astrology, healing, gnosis, theurgy, ritual and philosophy. Sympathetic magic contends that like substances sharing an essence can influence one another through resonance effects. Likewise the hypnotic and magnetic qualities of charismatic individuals can create rapport with others to influence them.
This power card also represents the fine line dividing white magic from black magic, toxic or malignant black ops. This is the realm of psychic attack and psychic self defense, of sorcerers stealthily vying with one another for power. Weaponized ESP can affect the body, mind and soul of one's opponent. But it can boomerang back on the sender 3-fold, according to the cautionary prescription.
Power can be used in either a self-serving manner, or one in service to the All. In order for The Magus to achieve his aims, there must be constant awareness and self-examination, pressing on and exploring one’s boundaries, breaking through into the boundless realms.
This is also the Trump of discernment.The Magus can discriminate between various realities and fantasies, between various points of view, without buying into any belief system, literally.The sorcerer orchestrates and works within others’ belief systems.
By molding worldviews, a magician creates the perception, manipulates and defines the perceived reality, creates the structure for self-organizing transformation.He believes no metanarratives but orchestrates them for others.He is an opportunistic paradigm shifter, shapeshifter, chameleon, trickster.If you assume a role does that make it real?If not, fake it till you make it.Better to be an inspired lunatic than uninspired, or so Crowley’s arc implies.
Aleister Crowley was among the first magicians of the modern era to find his own personal Zero Point in the Abyss of the transcendent imagination. The "Bornless One" is beyond force and form in naturally manifest awareness, luminous and empty.
Crowley played with the perceptions of the world. He pioneered the use of magick and psychedelics, much like Freud pioneered brainwashing, psychoanalysis and cocaine.They experimented on themselves.
Crowley and Freud were psychonauts developing “software technologies” for the brain. Crowley explored the Collective Unconscious like Carl Jung. Magick is a practical system designed for experiment.His magickal weapon was the phallic Wand, his means the creative Word, both truth and falsehood.
Whether Crowley ended his life as a degenerate burn out or enlightened individual is a deep paradox.As a magician, Crowley failed to immerse himself in the divine light and only developed on a mundane level.He never completed his own Abramelin Operation, having abandoned his quest for the Holy Guardian Angel or higher self halfway through the long retreat.
He never did any OTO opertions except sex magick.He failed as a Gnostic to dissolve into the ascending light.His world consisted of theoretical self-dissolution, strategies to disjoint personality, identity and action.The result were toxic experiments on himself and narcissistic idolizing of himself alone.As such, he was somewhat of a harbinger of the Postmodern dilemma -- the search for meaning. The accepted truths of society change as it evolves and the truths an individual accepts change as the individual evolves.
But who better than a cunning master of deception to enter the hall of mirrors of international ESPionage as Agent 666?In his visions, he may have seen others of the intelligentsia, the manipulative High Priesthood in there, smiling back from the Abyss – Malthus, Galton, Aldous and Julian Huxley, Bulwer-Lytton, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Helena Blavatsky and later even L. Ron Hubbard and his "grandson" [sic] George W. cont. ; http://occultespionage.50megs.com
Virtual Magick, by Iona Miller, 1991
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/virtual-magick.html
We are entering an era of magical technologies which are relevant to the inner world of imagery and imagination. Through Virtual Reality (VR) we can create an electronic representation of typical symbols of the psyche and interact with them. Even though these images have no concrete existence, they are influential in the process of transformation.
The practice of magick, a sacred technology, normally involves concentrated visualization activity coupled with immersion in the autonomous stream of consciousness. Since much of the training and practice in magick is based on a recipe, formula, or protocol, these could easily be programmed, using virtual reality, to guide an aspirant into a specific state of consciousness. Biofeedback monitoring could enhance that state.
* Each virtual world would include a panoply of symbols related to a specific archetype. The aspirant would journey through this world. In the process of positive interaction with these archetypal forms (or perhaps imaginally becoming them), the psyche becomes "inoculated" with their resources. A conscious relationship is fostered. This leads to a greater sense of wholeness and communion with transpersonal energies. Through the arrival of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, we will soon have access to a fully programmable electronic "astral plane."
Magic has always been a sacred technology, and combining it with VR makes for a state-of-the-art practice. In virtual reality, we can create a world which is, in essence or effect, "as good as" normal reality. Through the use of visual, audial, kinesthetic, and olfactory feedback, the experiential (rather than analytical) part of the brain is guided to suspend its disbelief in the synthetic reality. The realization of a system of interactive fantasy will allow us, as artists or magicians, to shape the experience from the inside. It will allow us to re-shape ourselves, also.
A central premise in VR is that you can manipulate your self-representation, or self-image. VR represents a cultural revolution in the way we view reality, nature, art, ourselves, and our relationship with transpersonal powers. Interactive media will give us the ability to author moving images. When you can put your images in cyberspace, you introduce your own unique content into the experience. Background, or natural imagery, will be texture-mapped for ambiguity. Ambiguity is one key to the engagement of the imagination (Laurel, 1992).
Communal virtual reality is also possible for group rituals, but requires a tremendously powerful computer to keep track of all the details which perpetuate a believable virtual space. The realm of imagination has traditionally been the province of shamans and magicians. More recently, psychotherapists have entered the arena of imagination as guides to the heights and the depths. There are many different styles in the practice of magic from primitive to sophisticated. Magic is the ancient technology for dealing with lost or questing souls, while archetypal psychology is a modern counterpart.
Basically, there are three ways of encountering the inner world, reflecting the state of consciousness of the practitioner: 1). prototaxic mode, a "possession" or trance state where the ego is absent through regression; 2). parataxic mode, which includes art, archetype, myth, dream, and ritual wherein the ego is enthralled; and 3). syntaxic mode, which includes creativity, gnosis, and higher mystical states, where the ego is enraptured and eventually transcended.
Sophisticated magick, or Theurgy, has been practiced in western occultism through the centuries largely by an elite group of eccentric intellectuals. Many of them identified with the Rosicrucians, Masons, Gnostics, or other "hidden" orders. These practitioners of the mystic arts were the forefathers of modern sciences like chemistry, botany, medicine, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. Through magick, they learned a unique way of looking at the inner and outer world. This is the major premise of any philosophy: "Look at it like this..."
The magical philosophy has left a tremendous legacy. The history of these alchemists, mystics, healers, and theurgists outlines one of the most interesting areas of human endeavor: consciousness studies. The mapping of consciousness states and their corresponding typical experiences (plus how to attain them) forms part of the doctrine of any magical philosophy. The most widely embraced map is called The Tree of Life. The very foundation of the modern western occult tradition is contained in this circuit or glyph of The Tree of Life. It describes a hierarchy of 10 states of being (Spheres), and 22 characteristic modes of transition between them (Paths).
All the corresponding symbolism of the human psyche is categorized according to this comprehensive basic structure. It represents all ways of being and becoming--all possible states of consciousness. The philosophical system which the Tree represents originated in the Jewish culture. Through synchronism it amalgamated with the Gnostic, Egyptian, Arabic, and other systems. This synthesis became known as Hermetic Qabalism.
In divorcing itself from its Hebrew roots, Qabala returned to the mythic domain of its informing archetype, Hermes. In ancient Egypt, this archetypal energy was represented by the god Thoth, Lord of Magic. He presided over skills such as writing and translating. In Greece, as Hermes, he was the messenger between the realm of the gods and men--he who could fly into the heights or depths. Our modern forms of writing and translating have moved into information processing via computers.
Information processing is fundamental to any form of communication. Information processing is the foundation of all technology. Thus, Hermes is the informing myth of a technological approach to sacred psychology and spirituality. Hermes' domain includes gnosticism, alchemy, magick, and depth psychology. Like programming, they are all hermeneutic endeavors, involving the process of interpretation.
Jung noticed that, "Every interpretation necessarily remains an "as-if." The ultimate core of meaning may be circumscribed, but not described." He refers to the "as-if" reality as the closest we can come to direct knowledge. For example, our God-image in the psyche is our closest (and only) experience of Divinity, however unique it may be. We perceive it directly, but it is a specific interpretation of the unknowable archetype.
MYTHICAL REALISM:
Ultimately, it is our sense organs which help us interpret the world and our experience through our perceptions. They help us make a distinction between what is "real" and "unreal." The emotional part of the brain, (the right, spatial lobe), cannot analytically distinguish a symbol from a symbolic representation. In imagination or virtual reality it becomes a moot point. Fantasy, in fact, animates both our inner and outer worlds, and creates meaning.
The on-going imaginative process of the psyche is the ground of being. Jung spoke of the psychoid aspect of psyche as the vast non-human action of the universal forces. Through the technology of virtual reality, we can take the imagery arising from deep within our psyche and create an "as-if" reality which we can enter at will. If magick is the art and science of changing consciousness at will, in this context, imagination is reality. It manifests as images.
Jung implied that our closest approach to God or any minor deity is through the God-image. This brings to mind the process of invocation, or calling in the god-form in magick. The conjuring of these archetypal images, and identification or interaction with them is a primary application of ritual in theurgy. In magick, it is taken virtually literally, as magician Dion Fortune's comment shows:
...the Ministrant proceeds boldly with the ceremony as if that which he had invoked had actually come about...He must have the courage of his convictions, and give himself up boldly to be the instrument of the forces he has invoked, relying upon them to bring about the transition from fantasy to fact, which is the meaning of transubstantiation. If he proceeds to play the part he has assigned himself as if it were a reality, he will find, provided the force he has invoked is a genuine force and the pictorial image he has made is a suitable one, that imagination has become reality and that an influence is flowing into him, and emanating from him, which is a very real thing indeed...
Since archetypal images arise from the collective unconscious, they are common to all mankind. The God-forms invoked in magick are the basis of our psychic life and our relationship to the universe. Everything we are is virtually imagined through their forces and forms. There is nothing but their primary essence to be found in either our concrete or imaginal reality, if psyche is the foundation of reality. Magic and archetypal psychology allege this is so. Jung advocated the practice of Active Imagination for transformation. He based his technique on the alchemical meditatio, or dialogic exchange with the transpersonal. It involves entering the autonomous stream of psychic imagery with the values, ethics, and perspective of the ego, and interacting therein.
Magick proposes a very similar premise, but has an entire technology for clearing out a purified psychic "space" into which an undiluted primal force may be called forth. Both techniques share the same result: a consciousness journey with real-time effects. Imagination is reality when it has the power to move us biologically, kinesthetically, viscerally, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. The prospect of "home-brewed" imaginal worlds for exploration and recreation is on the horizon before the turn of the millennium.
Those pursuing the age-old Quest or Great Work will certainly want to put this possibility to purposeful use. When a person becomes caught up in a ritual, visualization, or meditation, inner vs. outer becomes a moot point. Imagination becomes a spontaneous influence which can be "seen" through the Observer Self. Magick is the directing of that experience in a specific direction, to a particular focus.
Each ritual has its own telos, or goal. It is this striving, goal-oriented attitude of the ego that makes magick a heroic quest. We may speculate that similating archetypal forms in VR gives their transpersonal energy a "body" to inhabit, just as visualizing does. Chronicity (the propensity for archetypal forms and events to cyclically recur) and synchronicity (acausal connection) provide magically-charged energy for the simulated forms.
All perceptions of archetypes are simulations of their unknowable primal nature, anyway. This holds true in mystical experience, art, and imagination. According to Jung, archetypes are everywhere, so they will certainly be found in virtual reality, alive and well. In this form, they will be more accessible than ever. The novice could easily get a first-hand training experience in what inner dialogue is like. Archetypes will be just as inclined to inhabit or inform these virtual images as any other. In fact, there is no way around it, if the programs are consistent and coherent.
With an artificial intelligence program added, they will behave with a certain degree of spontaneity and novelty, congruent with their character. VR conjures them, evokes them, or calls them up into awareness for interaction. The imaginal character speaks and behaves in its characteristic manner, but reacts uniquely in each specific situation. The entire panoply of symbolic correspondences, for which the god-form is the nexus, could be displayed interactively for the aspirant.
In the magical operation known as assumption of the god-form, the participant identifies with the archetypal power. In VR, the aspirant could experience being decked out in full regalia, with all the symbolic appurtenances, in an environment and atmosphere exclusively geared to expressing that power. To role-play the characteristic utterances and acts of that god or goddess could be a further amplification of the process. Mythic journeys, programmed by master magicians, will be available like the electronic games of today. It could be used for accessing and anchoring transpersonal resources for the personality. What's New with My Subject?
VIRTUAL BODIES OF LIGHT:
A major tenet of Qabala and occult philosophy concerns the nature of the astral body. The Jews call it the Tselem. This starry body is composed of scintillating etheric energy. It is perceived in imagination as being composed of light that takes on various fine forms. The analogy with electrical energy and light in cyberspace is obvious, if not literal. To work on the astral level, the magician identifies with this virtual double of the physical body.
In imagination, one perceives with the eyes of the body of light while maintaining its perspective and orientation. The light body has the ability of separating itself from the constraints of the flesh and blood body, without limitations of a mortal frame. The astral body contains the fully functioning consciousness of the aspirant. Its existence is alleged to persist after physical death, as reported by those with near-death-experiences.
Magically, or psychically, the astral body is built in the imagination through the process of breath control, or pranayama. The VR program supersedes the trained imaginative faculty. It opens the experience to those who are not of contemplative nature, those unwilling or unable to spend years training the mind and visualization capacity. It makes the dialogic realm open to all in limited form. It establishes a new medium for the traditional I-Thou dialogue. The virtual astral body could be employed for the practice of pathworking.
Magick, itself, is the practice of practical Qabala, and its most practical exploits are the imaginal consciousness journeys known as pathworking. As a magical practice, pathworking differs from ceremonial invocation by imaginally transporting the aspirant to the location of an archetypal Form, rather than calling the Form into the circle or oneself. The experience includes a "there-and-back-again" experience of a very specially conditioned terrain. The exposure to symbols keys processes in the mind which influence the process of transformation.
The paths of The Tree of Life are metaphorical "in-roads" through the imagination. Each is marked by typical landmarks, milestones, and signposts. Each contain their ordeals, challenges, and intrinsic rewards. Pathworking offers a way of "finding" or "locating" archetypes in imaginal space. In imagination, we do it simply by wishing ourselves there, actively interacting.
In VR, it requires some programming, but the initial intent is the same whether creating your own program or authoring a master program for others. Each successive pathworking increases the area of perceptible inner space. One can enter the experience as a passive spectator, or as an active participant. The emotional impact of the experience is real. Imagine when these experiences become re-processed in your dream life! In VR, other humans could play the parts of entities encountered, or the journey may be undertaken as a common adventure.
All pathworkings return the traveller to the point of origin, which is usually some symbolic form of door to the netherworld. Another magical exercise, rising on the planes, is conducted while in the Body of Light. In this process, one imagines oneself moving further and further up through the hierarchy of planes described in the Qabala. You can get a sense for it if you can imagine an ever-widening perspective moving from sub-atomic to cosmic. For example, imagine you are a sub-atomic particle, an atom, a molecule, an organism, an animal, a human, the biosphere, the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, ad infinitum. All of this type of imagery is readily programmable and universal in meaning.
VIRTUAL SEX MAGICK:
When people hear of VR, one of the first application that leaps to mind is the possibility of virtual sex. Extending that idea into magical realism we come across the notion of virtual sex magick. Virtual sex magick awaits the development of tactile feedback systems. However, the act itself is a generator for surplus magical energy which may therefore be focused on a specific desire or intent. This is known as the "bud will" or "magickal child." It uses the emotional energy of enflamment coupled with the directive powers of will, visualization, and intentionality.
Perhaps the most commonly recommended application of sex magick is for attaining "knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel." While this wasn't meant as "knowledge" in the Biblical sense, it is certainly a possibility in VR. The consummation of the act means either identification with, or dialogic interaction with the higher self. Most acts of sacred sex reenact the holy union (hierosgamos) of God and Goddess, Shiva and Shakti, Krisna and Radha, Yang and Yin forces. It is a cosmic union of complements.
Here again is fertile ground for the programming of a VR reality to enhance the imaginative faculty. Imaginal variations on the mystic marriage could use images of mythical and historical figures or draw from the symbolism of Tantra, alchemy, and Taoism, to name a few. One might perceive the experience from the perspective of a particular god or goddess in a classical union.
Each program might contain one or many experiences of a similar nature. The menu might include the union of God and the Shekinah, God and Sophia, spirit and nature, anima/animus, priest/priestess, or King and Queen. One time you might be Solomon and Sheba, another Ares and Aphrodite, another Arthur and Guinevere.
The Royal Marriage is a transcendent symbol of the Self, and embodies psychic totality. With plasticity of form and interaction we can only speculate what hermaphroditic creations might result, what androgynous beings. These experiences might not represent their mature psychological counterparts, but they could be inspiring dress-rehearsals, which jump-start the creative imagination, adding a new dimension to sexual life--sort of the reverse of pornography.
Normally, we are not taught to direct our thoughts into any higher purpose during sex, much less at the point of orgasm. Yet, to do so can be healing and connective in a very deep way. VR could serve as a model and demonstration far beyond any orthodox sexual therapy. Interactive fantasy could be raised to new heights. This technology could teach us new ways to relate to our bodies, sexuality, and art (including the art of magick). Virtual tantra is a new medium in the sexual arena.
Another VR alternative for sex magick is to engage in actual sex with one's partner. Both parties have VR helmets (much reduced in size from current cumbersome models) which allow the simultaneous visualization of the "bud will," the "magickal child," or goal of the operation. This dynamic image is the focus of the lovers who invest it with their mutual energy and love to transform it from mere potential into a vital force for change in the real world.
VR insures that both parties visualizations are identical as possible. The moment just prior to orgasm is a very open, suggestible state. For some it is difficult to hold the magickal focus at that moment. Passive impregnation by the VR system (based on the aspirant's desires) could be readily accomplished at that point with suitable imagery. It could be a non-literal, yet post-symbolic way of conceiving an inner, spiritual "child" through ritual--the embryonic form of the greater self.
Countless variations on magical talismans and mandalas might constitute part of the programming, as well as explosive imagery of cosmic union. For the Royal Wedding to be truly consummated, insights must be applied in practice with reciprocal love. For it to fully work its magic, it requires a prior marriage of Anima and Animus within each aspirant. This is a form of "spiritual body" building.
We are entering an era of magical technologies which are relevant to the inner world of imagery and imagination. Through Virtual Reality (VR) we can create an electronic representation of typical symbols of the psyche and interact with them. Even though these images have no concrete existence, they are influential in the process of transformation.
The practice of magick, a sacred technology, normally involves concentrated visualization activity coupled with immersion in the autonomous stream of consciousness. Since much of the training and practice in magick is based on a recipe, formula, or protocol, these could easily be programmed, using virtual reality, to guide an aspirant into a specific state of consciousness. Biofeedback monitoring could enhance that state.
* Each virtual world would include a panoply of symbols related to a specific archetype. The aspirant would journey through this world. In the process of positive interaction with these archetypal forms (or perhaps imaginally becoming them), the psyche becomes "inoculated" with their resources. A conscious relationship is fostered. This leads to a greater sense of wholeness and communion with transpersonal energies. Through the arrival of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, we will soon have access to a fully programmable electronic "astral plane."
Magic has always been a sacred technology, and combining it with VR makes for a state-of-the-art practice. In virtual reality, we can create a world which is, in essence or effect, "as good as" normal reality. Through the use of visual, audial, kinesthetic, and olfactory feedback, the experiential (rather than analytical) part of the brain is guided to suspend its disbelief in the synthetic reality. The realization of a system of interactive fantasy will allow us, as artists or magicians, to shape the experience from the inside. It will allow us to re-shape ourselves, also.
A central premise in VR is that you can manipulate your self-representation, or self-image. VR represents a cultural revolution in the way we view reality, nature, art, ourselves, and our relationship with transpersonal powers. Interactive media will give us the ability to author moving images. When you can put your images in cyberspace, you introduce your own unique content into the experience. Background, or natural imagery, will be texture-mapped for ambiguity. Ambiguity is one key to the engagement of the imagination (Laurel, 1992).
Communal virtual reality is also possible for group rituals, but requires a tremendously powerful computer to keep track of all the details which perpetuate a believable virtual space. The realm of imagination has traditionally been the province of shamans and magicians. More recently, psychotherapists have entered the arena of imagination as guides to the heights and the depths. There are many different styles in the practice of magic from primitive to sophisticated. Magic is the ancient technology for dealing with lost or questing souls, while archetypal psychology is a modern counterpart.
Basically, there are three ways of encountering the inner world, reflecting the state of consciousness of the practitioner: 1). prototaxic mode, a "possession" or trance state where the ego is absent through regression; 2). parataxic mode, which includes art, archetype, myth, dream, and ritual wherein the ego is enthralled; and 3). syntaxic mode, which includes creativity, gnosis, and higher mystical states, where the ego is enraptured and eventually transcended.
Sophisticated magick, or Theurgy, has been practiced in western occultism through the centuries largely by an elite group of eccentric intellectuals. Many of them identified with the Rosicrucians, Masons, Gnostics, or other "hidden" orders. These practitioners of the mystic arts were the forefathers of modern sciences like chemistry, botany, medicine, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. Through magick, they learned a unique way of looking at the inner and outer world. This is the major premise of any philosophy: "Look at it like this..."
The magical philosophy has left a tremendous legacy. The history of these alchemists, mystics, healers, and theurgists outlines one of the most interesting areas of human endeavor: consciousness studies. The mapping of consciousness states and their corresponding typical experiences (plus how to attain them) forms part of the doctrine of any magical philosophy. The most widely embraced map is called The Tree of Life. The very foundation of the modern western occult tradition is contained in this circuit or glyph of The Tree of Life. It describes a hierarchy of 10 states of being (Spheres), and 22 characteristic modes of transition between them (Paths).
All the corresponding symbolism of the human psyche is categorized according to this comprehensive basic structure. It represents all ways of being and becoming--all possible states of consciousness. The philosophical system which the Tree represents originated in the Jewish culture. Through synchronism it amalgamated with the Gnostic, Egyptian, Arabic, and other systems. This synthesis became known as Hermetic Qabalism.
In divorcing itself from its Hebrew roots, Qabala returned to the mythic domain of its informing archetype, Hermes. In ancient Egypt, this archetypal energy was represented by the god Thoth, Lord of Magic. He presided over skills such as writing and translating. In Greece, as Hermes, he was the messenger between the realm of the gods and men--he who could fly into the heights or depths. Our modern forms of writing and translating have moved into information processing via computers.
Information processing is fundamental to any form of communication. Information processing is the foundation of all technology. Thus, Hermes is the informing myth of a technological approach to sacred psychology and spirituality. Hermes' domain includes gnosticism, alchemy, magick, and depth psychology. Like programming, they are all hermeneutic endeavors, involving the process of interpretation.
Jung noticed that, "Every interpretation necessarily remains an "as-if." The ultimate core of meaning may be circumscribed, but not described." He refers to the "as-if" reality as the closest we can come to direct knowledge. For example, our God-image in the psyche is our closest (and only) experience of Divinity, however unique it may be. We perceive it directly, but it is a specific interpretation of the unknowable archetype.
MYTHICAL REALISM:
Ultimately, it is our sense organs which help us interpret the world and our experience through our perceptions. They help us make a distinction between what is "real" and "unreal." The emotional part of the brain, (the right, spatial lobe), cannot analytically distinguish a symbol from a symbolic representation. In imagination or virtual reality it becomes a moot point. Fantasy, in fact, animates both our inner and outer worlds, and creates meaning.
The on-going imaginative process of the psyche is the ground of being. Jung spoke of the psychoid aspect of psyche as the vast non-human action of the universal forces. Through the technology of virtual reality, we can take the imagery arising from deep within our psyche and create an "as-if" reality which we can enter at will. If magick is the art and science of changing consciousness at will, in this context, imagination is reality. It manifests as images.
Jung implied that our closest approach to God or any minor deity is through the God-image. This brings to mind the process of invocation, or calling in the god-form in magick. The conjuring of these archetypal images, and identification or interaction with them is a primary application of ritual in theurgy. In magick, it is taken virtually literally, as magician Dion Fortune's comment shows:
...the Ministrant proceeds boldly with the ceremony as if that which he had invoked had actually come about...He must have the courage of his convictions, and give himself up boldly to be the instrument of the forces he has invoked, relying upon them to bring about the transition from fantasy to fact, which is the meaning of transubstantiation. If he proceeds to play the part he has assigned himself as if it were a reality, he will find, provided the force he has invoked is a genuine force and the pictorial image he has made is a suitable one, that imagination has become reality and that an influence is flowing into him, and emanating from him, which is a very real thing indeed...
Since archetypal images arise from the collective unconscious, they are common to all mankind. The God-forms invoked in magick are the basis of our psychic life and our relationship to the universe. Everything we are is virtually imagined through their forces and forms. There is nothing but their primary essence to be found in either our concrete or imaginal reality, if psyche is the foundation of reality. Magic and archetypal psychology allege this is so. Jung advocated the practice of Active Imagination for transformation. He based his technique on the alchemical meditatio, or dialogic exchange with the transpersonal. It involves entering the autonomous stream of psychic imagery with the values, ethics, and perspective of the ego, and interacting therein.
Magick proposes a very similar premise, but has an entire technology for clearing out a purified psychic "space" into which an undiluted primal force may be called forth. Both techniques share the same result: a consciousness journey with real-time effects. Imagination is reality when it has the power to move us biologically, kinesthetically, viscerally, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. The prospect of "home-brewed" imaginal worlds for exploration and recreation is on the horizon before the turn of the millennium.
Those pursuing the age-old Quest or Great Work will certainly want to put this possibility to purposeful use. When a person becomes caught up in a ritual, visualization, or meditation, inner vs. outer becomes a moot point. Imagination becomes a spontaneous influence which can be "seen" through the Observer Self. Magick is the directing of that experience in a specific direction, to a particular focus.
Each ritual has its own telos, or goal. It is this striving, goal-oriented attitude of the ego that makes magick a heroic quest. We may speculate that similating archetypal forms in VR gives their transpersonal energy a "body" to inhabit, just as visualizing does. Chronicity (the propensity for archetypal forms and events to cyclically recur) and synchronicity (acausal connection) provide magically-charged energy for the simulated forms.
All perceptions of archetypes are simulations of their unknowable primal nature, anyway. This holds true in mystical experience, art, and imagination. According to Jung, archetypes are everywhere, so they will certainly be found in virtual reality, alive and well. In this form, they will be more accessible than ever. The novice could easily get a first-hand training experience in what inner dialogue is like. Archetypes will be just as inclined to inhabit or inform these virtual images as any other. In fact, there is no way around it, if the programs are consistent and coherent.
With an artificial intelligence program added, they will behave with a certain degree of spontaneity and novelty, congruent with their character. VR conjures them, evokes them, or calls them up into awareness for interaction. The imaginal character speaks and behaves in its characteristic manner, but reacts uniquely in each specific situation. The entire panoply of symbolic correspondences, for which the god-form is the nexus, could be displayed interactively for the aspirant.
In the magical operation known as assumption of the god-form, the participant identifies with the archetypal power. In VR, the aspirant could experience being decked out in full regalia, with all the symbolic appurtenances, in an environment and atmosphere exclusively geared to expressing that power. To role-play the characteristic utterances and acts of that god or goddess could be a further amplification of the process. Mythic journeys, programmed by master magicians, will be available like the electronic games of today. It could be used for accessing and anchoring transpersonal resources for the personality. What's New with My Subject?
VIRTUAL BODIES OF LIGHT:
A major tenet of Qabala and occult philosophy concerns the nature of the astral body. The Jews call it the Tselem. This starry body is composed of scintillating etheric energy. It is perceived in imagination as being composed of light that takes on various fine forms. The analogy with electrical energy and light in cyberspace is obvious, if not literal. To work on the astral level, the magician identifies with this virtual double of the physical body.
In imagination, one perceives with the eyes of the body of light while maintaining its perspective and orientation. The light body has the ability of separating itself from the constraints of the flesh and blood body, without limitations of a mortal frame. The astral body contains the fully functioning consciousness of the aspirant. Its existence is alleged to persist after physical death, as reported by those with near-death-experiences.
Magically, or psychically, the astral body is built in the imagination through the process of breath control, or pranayama. The VR program supersedes the trained imaginative faculty. It opens the experience to those who are not of contemplative nature, those unwilling or unable to spend years training the mind and visualization capacity. It makes the dialogic realm open to all in limited form. It establishes a new medium for the traditional I-Thou dialogue. The virtual astral body could be employed for the practice of pathworking.
Magick, itself, is the practice of practical Qabala, and its most practical exploits are the imaginal consciousness journeys known as pathworking. As a magical practice, pathworking differs from ceremonial invocation by imaginally transporting the aspirant to the location of an archetypal Form, rather than calling the Form into the circle or oneself. The experience includes a "there-and-back-again" experience of a very specially conditioned terrain. The exposure to symbols keys processes in the mind which influence the process of transformation.
The paths of The Tree of Life are metaphorical "in-roads" through the imagination. Each is marked by typical landmarks, milestones, and signposts. Each contain their ordeals, challenges, and intrinsic rewards. Pathworking offers a way of "finding" or "locating" archetypes in imaginal space. In imagination, we do it simply by wishing ourselves there, actively interacting.
In VR, it requires some programming, but the initial intent is the same whether creating your own program or authoring a master program for others. Each successive pathworking increases the area of perceptible inner space. One can enter the experience as a passive spectator, or as an active participant. The emotional impact of the experience is real. Imagine when these experiences become re-processed in your dream life! In VR, other humans could play the parts of entities encountered, or the journey may be undertaken as a common adventure.
All pathworkings return the traveller to the point of origin, which is usually some symbolic form of door to the netherworld. Another magical exercise, rising on the planes, is conducted while in the Body of Light. In this process, one imagines oneself moving further and further up through the hierarchy of planes described in the Qabala. You can get a sense for it if you can imagine an ever-widening perspective moving from sub-atomic to cosmic. For example, imagine you are a sub-atomic particle, an atom, a molecule, an organism, an animal, a human, the biosphere, the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, ad infinitum. All of this type of imagery is readily programmable and universal in meaning.
VIRTUAL SEX MAGICK:
When people hear of VR, one of the first application that leaps to mind is the possibility of virtual sex. Extending that idea into magical realism we come across the notion of virtual sex magick. Virtual sex magick awaits the development of tactile feedback systems. However, the act itself is a generator for surplus magical energy which may therefore be focused on a specific desire or intent. This is known as the "bud will" or "magickal child." It uses the emotional energy of enflamment coupled with the directive powers of will, visualization, and intentionality.
Perhaps the most commonly recommended application of sex magick is for attaining "knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel." While this wasn't meant as "knowledge" in the Biblical sense, it is certainly a possibility in VR. The consummation of the act means either identification with, or dialogic interaction with the higher self. Most acts of sacred sex reenact the holy union (hierosgamos) of God and Goddess, Shiva and Shakti, Krisna and Radha, Yang and Yin forces. It is a cosmic union of complements.
Here again is fertile ground for the programming of a VR reality to enhance the imaginative faculty. Imaginal variations on the mystic marriage could use images of mythical and historical figures or draw from the symbolism of Tantra, alchemy, and Taoism, to name a few. One might perceive the experience from the perspective of a particular god or goddess in a classical union.
Each program might contain one or many experiences of a similar nature. The menu might include the union of God and the Shekinah, God and Sophia, spirit and nature, anima/animus, priest/priestess, or King and Queen. One time you might be Solomon and Sheba, another Ares and Aphrodite, another Arthur and Guinevere.
The Royal Marriage is a transcendent symbol of the Self, and embodies psychic totality. With plasticity of form and interaction we can only speculate what hermaphroditic creations might result, what androgynous beings. These experiences might not represent their mature psychological counterparts, but they could be inspiring dress-rehearsals, which jump-start the creative imagination, adding a new dimension to sexual life--sort of the reverse of pornography.
Normally, we are not taught to direct our thoughts into any higher purpose during sex, much less at the point of orgasm. Yet, to do so can be healing and connective in a very deep way. VR could serve as a model and demonstration far beyond any orthodox sexual therapy. Interactive fantasy could be raised to new heights. This technology could teach us new ways to relate to our bodies, sexuality, and art (including the art of magick). Virtual tantra is a new medium in the sexual arena.
Another VR alternative for sex magick is to engage in actual sex with one's partner. Both parties have VR helmets (much reduced in size from current cumbersome models) which allow the simultaneous visualization of the "bud will," the "magickal child," or goal of the operation. This dynamic image is the focus of the lovers who invest it with their mutual energy and love to transform it from mere potential into a vital force for change in the real world.
VR insures that both parties visualizations are identical as possible. The moment just prior to orgasm is a very open, suggestible state. For some it is difficult to hold the magickal focus at that moment. Passive impregnation by the VR system (based on the aspirant's desires) could be readily accomplished at that point with suitable imagery. It could be a non-literal, yet post-symbolic way of conceiving an inner, spiritual "child" through ritual--the embryonic form of the greater self.
Countless variations on magical talismans and mandalas might constitute part of the programming, as well as explosive imagery of cosmic union. For the Royal Wedding to be truly consummated, insights must be applied in practice with reciprocal love. For it to fully work its magic, it requires a prior marriage of Anima and Animus within each aspirant. This is a form of "spiritual body" building.
Obsolete Reality Tunnels
OBSOLETE REALITY TUNNELS:
DigI/Osophy.
The digital universe consists of 1’s ad 0’s; input and output: I/O. Likewise, our subjective experience consists solely of Input and Output, even though as human beings we can’t be reduced to purely mechanistic descriptions. There is organic and mechanical logic, that both hold true philosophically: garbage in, garbage out. But ‘self-organization' and ‘self-steering' provide an alternative dynamic perspective on the causal effects of conscious will in Chaosmos. The structure of digital information is decentralized, heralding the end of cultural and individual control fantasies.
Crumbling truths were simulacra all along. Meaning has imploded into digital binaries of electronic society. Reality has imploded into hyperreality. For example, digital art can be a copy of photorealism that is tweeked into a reflection of the imaginal theater of the mind; a copy of a copy of a copy of the original, bearing only a surface resemblance. Multiplied stylized images take on a life of their own, shattering the grid of repreentation (Deleuze, Guattari).
Metaphysical beauty hides the rotting corpse of new age thought, the eclectic pastiche of rotting and ruined abstractions. Seeking a root in today’s creatively evolving culture, many look backward, recursively adopting an outdated philosophy. R.A. Wilson and Tim Leary called them “reality tunnels” while McKenna dubbed it an archaic revival. Tunnelling make us “see” in a certain way; create our often myopic beliefs about self, others and world at any time. They are belief wormholes that take us to potential universes that don’t necessarily match up with Reality. They are a way of sticking our metaphysical head in the sand.
Physics and art face similar problems with imaginary universes that do not match up with this existant one. Even Renaissance art was trying to re-capture some values from the past, technologically. It’s good to ask yourself just where you think you are going? Where do you go from here?
You are already living a Hyperreality. Debord calls it the Spectacle; Baudrillard calls it the Similacrum. Beliefs are false promises to restore a mythical truth underlying the simulation. Belief maps create the fabled territory that claims to be salvation but is a well-disguised trap, mentally and spiritually. Do you opt for magical concepts that are tricks of the mind or the charm of the so-called real? Imaginal representations are metaphysical simulations, virtual realities.
Metaphysics is a dead end; all points of reference are liquidated by the universal solvent: chaos. Likewise the preferred terrain of popular religions. There is a short-circuit in our psychological position. There is no touchstone of reality or truth, beyond the simulation of the sacred, the content of sacred technologies. We have mass murdered our own models, creating a power vacuum. Only the simulation of power masks the political fiction.
Baudrillard concludes, "It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference."
CLICHES AND ARCHETYPES: Are you creating a unique reality tunnel reflecting your aesthetic like an artist, or a haphazard victim of dogmatic programming and conditioning? There are no ideals and no ultimate negation. Those choices just buffer us in archaic perceptual cocoons, rather than drawing us into the vortex of developing future. McLuhan pointed this out long ago, saying, "Utopians and anti-utopians are always obsessed with a period preceding their own. Orwell's 1984 happened in 1930." - MM, Take Today, p.75.
Most of New Age culture is either Theosophical or Utopian, sometimes in a very saccharin kind of way, sickly sweet if not toxic and phony; full of New Age “guilt”, parroting, parody, self-sell and put ons. Of course, it is good to root in tradition, but we can get caught in the web of living metaphors. But reality tunnels create tunnel vision, a subconscious filter of belief-congruent experience, confirmation bias. In the womb we recapitulate the phylogeny of species, and after birth our beliefs evolve following the historical arc. Yet, we never stop in our arc to live like a reptile, for example.
The human mind is a competitive memescape. Its 'normal' to have our desires shaped by the social grid and social codification (groupthink), but it makes us neurotic. The effect of pop culture is conformity; even our subcultures are homogenizing and recur in an infinity of fractal forms. Pop art is an oxymoron since it cannot fulfill the promise of art to deliver us from the conformity of market forces. The 'original' becomes a fiction; nothing is original since it is all derivative. But it may reflect the zeitgeist of the moment.
Everyone is a fundamental slave to the system because virtually no one can ever fulfill their desires. There is the saying those who forget or do not know the past are condemned to repeat it. But, in the post-postmodern world, what hasn’t been done? And done to death probably as good or better than it can be redone? Where is the unexplored territory?
BEYOND BELIEFS: Neurotheology has shown that spirituality is a natural phenomenon, hardwired into humans as a biosocial survival strategy that bonds groups with common beliefs and goals, personal and collective. This current runs so deep that for the majority of people, nothing is more important. It infuses all life passages with Presence and meaning in animism, shamanism, polytheism, and monotheism, even science-ism. We believe in belief even over uniformity of belief. But there is a deeper causal vector than beliefs, rituals, customs, commitments, and sacrifices: evolutionary value or fitness. It is the source of mythmaking, morality, sociality, and redemptive values.
Belief systems and paradigms provide rigid structures, the matrix of belief, we can use as our medium for self-expression. They allow us to investigate existence in conventional or unconventional ways. Research methods include setting aside received wisdom, burrowing deep inside your subject and learning to think like your material.
A meme is a self-propagating idea, a unit of cultural imitation that, much like a biological or computer virus, effectively programs its own retransmission. They spread through motivating their "host population," novel configurations of old ideas, and by proselytizers. Popular beliefs spread like contagions, cognitive viruses. Memes are informational viruses that influence our thinking, feelings, even our physical regulation.
Memes function like evolving cultural viruses taking on a fractal life of their own as the trances we live. They engineer our cultures and subcultures; what we will, won’t and can’t do, and believe. In short, self-replicating memes condition our lifestyles as “True Believers”. Each meme is an existential trance state. Memetic structures compel our attention; we propel and persuade one another toward them socially; sociocultural programming.
VIRTUAL REALITY CHECK: Korzybski pointed out that there are two ways to slice easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. So, from time to time you have to give yourself a Virtual Reality Check. The hallmark of postmodern philosophy has been disbelief or skepticism of all "metanarratives," or translations of reality. Postmodernism has even turned its profound skepticism on such important humanist concepts as "objective truth" and reason.
Yet, for a deconstructionist postmodern society, individually we are still riddled with superstition and gullibility, and open to manipulation through our belief systems as any politician, philosopher, clergy, or salesperson will attest. Further, most people are painfully naive when it comes to even the simplest scientific understanding. Most of us don't have a clue about the fundamental nature of physical reality or our own psychological nature, and our ability to be fooled by our senses and mind, or methods of social and technological persuasion. We may think we know, but the penetration is deeper than we dare imagine.
Nature rejects the naivete that seeks absolute truth. We are beginning to realize, individually and culturally, that "realities" are all human constructions. The task becomes one of "catching ourselves in the act" of creating our own "reality" from the flow of events. Human truth is always an engagement of mind with experience. The challenge of the therapist in these times of chaotic change is to validate the concept that we don't have to fear the collapse of what we think we are.
We can embrace this disruptive chaos, trusting that it is an emergent self-organizing process. We don't need to fear the collapse of our personalistic belief system (the "box" we live in), nor our belief in absolute truth. A strong desire to engage in the "quest for uncertainty" complements our anxiety that perhaps there is no absolute, objective ground to reality. The warrant of Truth is ever elusive when we deconstruct the foundational justifications of our convenient notions about the way the world works.
It is easy to confuse what is actually the creation of beliefs with the "discovery of Truth," a common goal of science and theology. Science offers no ontological Scientific Picture of the World but substitutes a number of applied theories as meta-theory. It’s close, powerful and useful: it ‘works’ and allows use to do work. But the still mysterious “true” metatheory may reveal the basis of consciousness. But who knows when we will lift that veil?
Permeating the living reality of our culture are certain contagious notions, fads and trends that have the ability to influence the way we think about the nature of Reality and ourselves. Some of them are toxic and can consume you; others are just whims of pop culture infectious and benign as the common cold. Jung described the concept of psychic contagion by certain archetypal forces inherent in the human psyche, which manifest in our spiritual lives and belief systems. He spoke of both conscious and unconscious contamination. Notions like this range from simple superstitions to scientific concepts, to urban myths.
Notions sweep through our culture and insinuate themselves within its fabric, as fads, whether they are "real" or not, they can be influential. They mood alter us, make us feel we belong. An analysis of these notions is useful in distinguishing a common human phenomenon from any potential "alien influence" which may or may not be exerted on us from an unknown source.
BREAKING THE SPELL: Skeptic, Daniel Dennett takes a hard look at beliefs and attendant phenomena in his new book of this name, and asks: Where does our devotion to God come from and what purpose does it serve? Is religion a blind evolutionary compulsion or a rational choice? In a spirited investigation that ranges widely through history, philosophy, and psychology, Dennett explores how organized religion evolved from folk beliefs and why it is such a potent force today. He contends that the “belief in belief” has fogged any attempt to rationally consider the existence of God and the relationship between divinity and human need.
Ask yourself how adaptive it is to remain spiritually, mentally, or emotionally stuck in the past, for whatever reason. In my written archive you can catch me at virtually every phase, yet never stuck in one. Most forms of ‘worship’ are either archetypes or clichés, perhaps both. Personal revelatory experiences are no measure; they are often fraught with strong emotional content, but faulty thinking built on a grain of Truth. Often it is a compensatory mechanism to help us maintain specialness, a trick of the mind and self-image. If you recycle a retrievalist reality tunnel you are blinded to other options. It’s like being a scientific or artistic specialist; you know more and more about less and less.
What organic robotoid, parroting perennial philosophy is truly spiritual? Future-resistance stops the process of maturation, as well. What we procrastinate about can take on overwhelming dimensions. It is a way of not “letting go” of outmoded forms that stunt developmental potential. Be careful what models you let colonize your imagination. Are the terms you define yourself with irrelevant? Those whose cherished beliefs are challenged in the context of traumatic life events are likely to experience severe spiritual disequilibrium; manifesting chaos instead of self-organization.
Spiritual disequilibrium can be a blessing, heralding rebirth: emergence from the destructuring of emergency, breakthrough from breakdown. The future draws us forward like a handshake reaching back from somewhere between our fate and destiny, the strange attractor of our own futurity. It does not squeeze us into a recycled mold, and send us down a dusty rabbit hole of myopic vision. That is not focus, but self-deception, disinformation. You are probably not the “reincarnated alien-hybrid messiah of world peace and environmental restoration”. But you do make your own global contribution to the commonweal, especially through self-awareness, practice, service, and compassion.
The Cloud of Unknowing, a medieval mystic text, describes the human soul as embodied in one's memory, reason, will, imagination, and senses. Yet, all these faculties are falsifiable or easily subject to distortion. Unless USED artistically, rather than passively, media is an interruption of our internal narrative, our self-talk; a detour in content and focal point. Is your phone more important than your movie, or your loved one?
Interruption enables incoming messages by lending them shape and hijacking our attention, or they enter subliminally. Particularity is content and momentary truth. The goal is not to pick the right reality tunnel or be psychically tunneled by obsolete beliefs but to live freestyle on the tunnelless edge of dissolving boundaries, the anticipatory/participatory fusion of NOW.
BOUNDARY FREE CREATIVE EDGE: In part, this is the source of the generation gap. The imaginative and adaptive faculties play a big role in what century (archaic revival) we choose to live in, according to our adopted beliefs, which condition our perceptions. Popular options include eclectic adaptations of the world’s religions, neo-tribalism, psychics, and gurus; even science and art have their own historical POVs.
The so-called New Age of spiritual snake oil sales actually harbors the agenda of hijacking the Holy Grail of new paradigm thinking, as long your new vision resonates with a polyglot of poor research protocols, implausible assumptions and lack of critical thinking. Radical pointlessness is the least occupied position, having no POV is the toughest to maintain. The poetic vision of Science-Art does not split the material base of Multiverse from the reflexive component of Spirit. It encourages mythopoesis but not literalization at the expense of common sense.
There is a paradoxical dissonance between old and new ways of being in the environment; things that should be preserved and those that are emerging. Things that stay the same are isomorphic constants; but metamorphosis, metaphoric change creates a sense of novelty and newness. The new excites us by emotional appeal, overwhelming our senses, shocking us, thrilling us, or otherwise modulating our systems in a way the old cannot. It reflects the future of our dreams.
Our own epistemological metaphors describe how we know what we know and what it is like. Harking back to the past for a point of reference helps us move from the known to the Unknown in our descriptions, but if we take our metaphors literally, our beliefs stay archaic. We continue to recapitulate the philosophical evolution of mankind, but not truly move forward into new territory. The same is seen in the iconography of “sofa” art, which recycles the same tired themes and styles in the same media, over and over.
ALL the creative juice of science and art is at the leading edge, the living edge. Chaos theory defines the “edge of chaos” as a special dynamical balance. Science has shown that order emerges from the critical paths of chaos. In psychology, it means sticking to the image as given in Imagination, rather than resorting to glib dream or symbol interpretations. Shamanic personalities work at the edge of chaos for healing. Talent expresses at the edge. Phase transitions occur here, state changes, quantum leaps of consciousness, complexity. Like Schrodinger’s Box, it separates the Living from the Dead.
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: Wyndham Lewis wrote that all "living art is the history of the future". The formula is we become what we behold. What our culture compels us to behold is the holographic ICONOSCOPE: all the new media that both virtually surround and contain, as well as permeate our lives, and comprise an intrinsic part of our environment. The mind-numbing rate of change in our society is so unprecedented it is called Future shock. It’s a technological tsunami.
Debord called it a Society of the Spectacle, emphasizing its visual nature. Everyone is a player. Spectacle as a commodity is embodied in so-called Reality TV. The War on Terror is a materialized ideology, fighting an Idea. It is unwinable since you can’t wage war on an idea. Ideology is the problem, not the solution to human survival technology. Coercive ideas foster looting of natural resources, coercive institutional power and imported orthodoxies. The same dynamic produces trends, fads and memes, which permeate thinking as well as lifestyle. All gnostic forms are based in an ideology and theology of truth and secrecy.
Baudrillard speaks of successive phases of the image: 1) It is the reflection of a basic reality. 2) It masks and perverts a basic reality. 3) It masks the absence of a basic reality.4) It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum. In the first case, the image is a good appearance: the representation is of the order of sacrament. In the second, it is an evil appearance: of the order of malefice. In the third, it plays at being an appearance: it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation.
YOU TURN ME I-ON-A: We literally have the electromagnetic capacity to broadcast our images if not ourselves to the stars. We broadcast our identities as a fusion of recombinant personae, cliches, and archetypes: infinite fractal use of finite iconography: technological self-amplification of our bodyminds. You turn me on; I turn you on in a fusion of knower and known. I call my broadcast "Radio Free Qabala". coming to you from station IONA, sponsored by the Temple of Living Light. Channels may vary in your locale, that is, by your capacity to tune in and comprehend my essential nature.
Hegel said, “Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself only insofar as it exists in and for another self-consciousness; that is, it exists only by being recognized and acknowledged.” Likewise, only relationships between objects are observable. Arguably, language was the first real technology, and all others mere extensions of our five senses. Metamagic, the original reality medium, is a hypercharged spiritual technology, driven by ritual and belief: active attention is synonymous with “worship”. We are a fractalization of collective history. We are carried forward by the anticipation of our own lives, their emergent qualities. Infinite mirroring and anticipation is beyond synchronicity; Xenochrony is the holomovement of Xenochronicity. Only the level of resolution changes, not the content.
LIFE IS A HOLOGRAPHIC PROJECTION: The team of physicist Peter Gariaev detected DNA Phantoms in their research and concluded that we are human biocomputers. The genome is a quasi-intelligent system, but the wave level of genetic coding programs and organizes our 3-D spatial/temporal organism. Gariaev describes DNA expression as a meaningful text that is read and projected by DNA in 3-D in a bioholographic process with sound and light, much like programs of DNA movies or videotape. The digital analogy is probably even closer to the process of development and maintenance.
These movies get corrupted over time and produce aging and mutations. Wave genetics offers new healing and life extension possibilities. Morphogenic information is holographically transmitted and programmed. DNA is not 98% junk, but the formative and transmissive text.
All the cells of our organism combine to form a unified informational space which functions as a DNA wave biocomputer regulating morphogenesis and metabolic information, activated by transduced coherent light and modulated sound. This is more fundamental than genetics or molecular biology. Disturbances in the field that presage disease can be treated.
Healing information can be transmitted in waveform by resonance, sound and light, correcting error patterns or missing information. Video morphogenic information is regenerative, patterning a healing matrix. The bio-computer reads or scans the data and adapts according to the DNA-movie of healthy form and function. A weak field produces a powerful result. We are mutually linked material and nonlocal energy-informational substances that dynamically exchange energy and information. Soon we’ll be able to “change the movie” physically with quantum bioholography as the medium. This is another aspect of the Acoustic Environment: structural cymatics.
TECHNOTOPIA: Evolving technology resonates like feedback in our phenomenology. Buckminster Fuller did not view technology as separate from nature and our nature, biological intelligence and technological evolution, including speech. Our separateness has created the pursuit of infinite individual "reality wormholes" which reconnect us with collective unconscious, collective identity through "voluntary ESP".
We no longer live as point-particles but in our waveforms, often spread simultaneously over several time zones. We can read the entire holographic time log of the Akashic Records at our local theater or on DVD. In Dobb’s vernacular, “past times have become our passtimes”, including interests in deep nature as the province of science and art, and obsolete gnostic and spiritual technologies.
According to Baudrillard, when the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true, of the lived experience; a resurrection of the figurative where the object and substance have disappeared. And there is a panic-stricken production of the real and the referential, above and parallel to the panic of material production. This is how simulation appears in the phase that concerns us: a strategy of the real, neo-real and hyperreal, whose universal double is a strategy of deterrence.
KINETIC FIELD OF DREAMS: The Digital Revolution is here and it IS being televised in a myriad of fractal incarnations, but not on your Grandmother's screen. For artists, the 21st Century is a Digital Universe. In the perceptual-space we now occupy, the gender of presence is neither male nor female, but discarnate! It is the era of the metamorph. Even conventional artists can manipulate their images into a myriad of morphs. Because of insurance problems, fine art has moved toward the giclee print where originals are printed onto canvas and overpainted with a topcoat of paint. But why even bother with the smelly stuff? High end galleries are installing projectors. Popular art is being displayed as virtual paintings on plasma screens in private homes.
NEW MEDIA: Media guru Mark Stahlman defines this term he coined as the media, which replace the ‘cinesthesia’ of TELEVISION as the dominant environment in our lives and culture. Surround sound is already the medium that replaced television. Home theaters now dominate the consumer electronics business. They are simply big television sets with multi-channel sound added, replicating the experience of multi-channel sound in movie theaters. Acoustic space as surround sound replaced the "tactility" of television.
Media analyst/cultural theorist, Marshall McLuhan stressed that ALL media are ultimately a matter of sensory balances and sensory biases. He believed that artists need to integrate, analyze and utilize rapid changes in technology, in order to truly have a mass impact on people in the modern age. But the electronic environment isn't limited to artists but is available to virtually everyone. No one escapes its influence. Rapid evolution of communication devices enables and future-shocks us at the same time.
On the other hand, some new media are in the hands of individual artists, who have the capacity to produce desktop films, find innovative new means of distribution, or create art that helps us meet our future. It doesn't take a multimedia studio to create meaningful work. But cultural and political factors are still limiting factors in the global arena of spiritless totalitarianism.
The era of revolutionary democracies is over, replaced by corporate feudalism which holds our attention in a vice grip of technological self-absorption and self-interest that infiltrates the thinking of both left and right with media propaganda. The Fear-Media Machine fights democracy and liberty with fear and racism, creating a mass culture of disembodied cyborg mutants.
The alluring promise of full-immersion Virtual Reality is the ersatz embodiment of this disembodiment, naturalized technological alienation. Still, the so-called New Age is still focused on 19th and 20th century out-of-body experiences, apparently ignoring they are rarely in-habiting their physical bodies. By subverting new media, the artist introduces a new way of being: Homo Lumen, who recognizes our essential nature is nothing but light. It is the old shamanic function of art and artist in 21st century form, artists and scientists who make the electrons dance.
In Simulacra and Simulation, French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that our "postmodern" culture is a world of signs that have made a fundamental break from referring to "reality." Reality is simulation of the simulation of reality. The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth, which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
For Baudrillard all the media of information and communication neutralize meaning and involve the audience in a flat, one-dimensional media experience which he defines in terms of a passive absorption of images, or a resistance of meaning, rather than the active processing or production of meaning. The electronic media therefore on this account have nothing to do with myth, image, history, or the construction of meaning (or ideology).
Television is interpreted instead as a media "which suggests nothing, which magnetizes, which is only a screen, or is rather a miniaturized terminal which in fact is found immediately in your head -- you are the screen and the television is watching you. Television transistorizes all neurons and operates as a magnetic tape -- a tape not an image"” (from Baudrillard: A New McLuhan?)
Welcome to The Media Matrix, the 'machine war'. Are you the One; a Neo trying to figure it all out in a world where nothing makes sense but Ones and Zeros? New Media paradoxically sucks us into the vortex of disembodiment and is simultaneously the anodyne that assuages the resulting pain of alienation. We have fused our nervous systems with the information environment, fusing and morphing both art and nature. Biomedia, genetics and wave genetics are not human survival technologies, but just the opposite, by making us transhuman.
FIGURE-GROUND SHIFT: Shift happens. It is the ground that is the medium, for the most part, and the figure-ground relationship that creates the message. It is the capability of the underlying medium to appear in and through fundamental changes and to sustain fundamental change in this way which is the message (mission), the sending.
It might be said that the message of (genitive?) medium/media exceeds any figure-ground relationship by ex-posing the passing of some previous ground or grounds in the past and pointing to the analogous passing of the present one in the future.
Exceeding figure/ground indicates grounds (plural), indicates medium indicates message: "changes the medium, which is the message." The medium is the message because the medium, aka the plurality and dynamics of media, is what the message is always going on about. In Take Today, McLuhan states, “Hypnotized by their rear-view mirrors, philosophers and scientists alike tried to focus the figure of man in the old ground of nineteenth-century industrial mechanism and congestion. They failed to bridge from the old figure to the new. It is man who has become both figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness. With the extension of his nervous system as a total information environment, man bridges art and nature.” - p.11
New Media are the various implementations and the profound implications of the shift by acoustic space from the ground of our lives under the conditions of the electric media environment (i.e. television). They are becoming the figures of expression in our increasingly post-electric world -- in particular, as reflected in three-channel stereo (3CS.) When you run your own multimedia content through your home theater, it becomes your own Church of Self-Amplification.
The post-electronic environment is the ground that is the true medium which creates the message, altering our perceptions of self, others and world. The ground of consciousness itself is necessarily double. It includes the nothing part of itself and the something part of itself; and can’t see itself. Conspiracy is the ground of the shifting paradigm. Bob Dobbs points out, “I would say, the reason why the profane think (increasingly) conspiratorially, is: we have disappeared. So, we are not manipulable anymore.
Therefore, the whole social engineering through the media, controlling masses as puppets (conspicuous consumers) - it’s a rearview mirror image. We can now see it aesthetically; or as an artform. So WE like to think and project that we’re being manipulated. Thus, conspiracy is the crude popular slang version of watching (Orwellian) TV and seeing the arty ego-ads manipulate you - saying: hmmm, they’re manipulating me. And I know they’re manipulating me! And they know I’m knowing that. There you have a menippean irony going on! And so, an alphabetic distillation of this process is: "We’re being controlled and it’s a conspiracy."
BYTE ME: Media are unconscious extensions of our sensorium. In 2006, New Media are Broadband, Wireless, High Def, and creating portable environments: the cell phone, high rez digicam, digital video recorder, gaming, podcasting, V-cast. The cell phone has become both the mini computer and TV screen with on demand self-programming of content. Portable screens represent a crucial inflection in the arc of digital media development.
McLuhan's famous dictum, "The Medium is the Message" had a second part -- "The Audience is the Content." Entertainment content must become more and more compelling or we simply make our own. We all now have the capacity to capture virtually every nuance of our lives digitally. We don't have to "download" our psyches into the computer; they are already out there in the data streams as disembodied bytes in the aethyr, each with discrete wavelengths: our images, thoughts, and emotions.
LUMONICS: High Brow art dominated the artworld before Duchamp, followed by Low Brow postmodern rejection of all metanarratives. Arguably video guru Nam June Paik ushered in Know-Brow art based in electronic media. Only light can capture the nuance of energetic processes. Special FX pushes it imaginatively over the top. The multisensory electronic moving image is now an artist's medium. It can be employed to express representational and abstract imagery through recorded and virtual technologies.
The moving image is central to our visual culture, articulating new strategies and forms of image making. The kinetic image fuses electronic and digital media into a new form of expression. We can easily alter both materiality and composition of the electronic image; we can refashion its content, visual vocabulary, and plastic forms. Desk-top cinema has made individual productions a possibility that has jumped the Theatre of the Mind, to become sensuously embodied as a "body without organs", an Android Meme. In the vernacular of paramedia ecologist Bob Dobbs, the parts of the Android Meme are the Chemical Body, the Astral Body, the TV Body, and the Chip Body. But in an era in which everyone is a filmmaker, who is the audience?
PARAMEDIA ECOLOGY: Primal man made his environment by magic rituals that were re-enactments and dramatizations of the creative process by which the world comes into being. Even Renaissance art was trying to capture the values of the past technologically, but 21st Century art is a holographic time machine. Your beliefs determine what century you are inhabiting. Technology has the power to be environmental entirely independent of art as environmental.
Even Jung had no dynamic idea of the psychic role in creating technologies or in responding and reacting to them. Yet technologies, especially electronic tech, are extensions of the body, making us all Cyborgs. The psychic and social saturation resulting from electric extension of the nerves is much swifter than effects of mere extensions to our physical being, such as clothing, or the wheel, or mirrors. The environmental role of art can be spiritual or concretely physical. The actual effects of new technologies turns old environments into art forms that help define us as modern humans.
Dobbs defines the Android Meme as the ability of human-invented technology to acquire the intimacy of speech and intuition. In other words, the Android Meme is technology that has the qualities of "being alive". McLuhan’s chief characteristic of modern media is that they're living organisms. That means they can communicate. The Android Meme wants to join with us in an unholy alliance of archetypal technology and human organism. The Android Meme is a cacophony of all media, all technology and all ideas of particular times, anthropomorphized, trying to make itself human. There is no great architect of the Meme besides our compliance to feed it. It is collective mythic thinking, in the Jungian sense, where people mime/behave cues from technology when it becomes used by a million people and becomes environment (morphic resonance).
We actually download the archetype of the Android Meme into our nervous systems through television and multimedia. Bob says, “The Android Meme absorbs any response made to it. The artist's task is to understand and meditate upon the why's and wherefore's of its present techniques. This effort has nothing to do with how an artist survives economically.” So, don’t quit your dayjob.
"Media are really environments, with all the effects geographers & biologists associate with environments. We live inside our media. We are their content. TV images come to us so fast, in such profusion, they engulf us, tattoo us. We're immersed. It's like skin diving. We're surrounded & whatever surrounds, involves. TV doesn't wash over us and then go "out of mind." It goes into mind, deep into mind. The subconscious is a world in which we store everything, not something, and TV extends the subconscious....Such experiences are difficult to describe in words. Like dreams or sports, they evade verbal classification." (Edmund Carpenter; They Became What They Beheld 63)
According to anthropologist Carpenter, we are forced into new modes of communication and forced to create our own environments of declassified information when media render old patterns of perception obsolete. When we program our own psychic and sensory lives, we turn to artists who practice creating their own lives for reference. In many ways we are forced to improvise, taking what is at hand, and forming it into something that could be, into something new, but which is made from the parts of the old in a fractal reiteration.
ANTI-MYSTERY SCHOOL: SACRED AND PROFANE. We virtually 'worship' that which we give our attention; the more energy we give it the more we worship it. Our society is compulsive. Technology as the "demon of progress" is a spiritual rival, a rival to spiritual technologies, our "technical destiny". Naturally in the electric age this rivalry for the soul of man is far more intense than ever before: inner vs. outer quest. McLuhan’s thesis was revolutionary: each medium has a larger effect than its mere content, overloading, compensating and extending our physical senses, forcing individual minds and whole societies to adapt.
Today's 21st Century Media Mystery Schools retrain our perceptions even reviewing obsolete Reality Tunneling of the past: ritualized utility and understanding without boundaries or satcom interconnectedness. Technology competes for and effects human senses and perceptions. Art is inherently and seamlessly wed to media ecology. In some sense, the environment can be seen as merely a war between good and bad art. The question becomes not what do we believe and have faith in, but how can we live more artfully and heartfully, developing human survival technologies that feed our souls and spirits.
RECYCLING CONSCIOUSNESS: McLuhan taught that the environment is a programmed teaching machine. He was arguably the first feedback artist, hungry for people with new ideas, angles, insights, so he could use that material to generate more of his own. Feedback of feedback is bad feed, imitation and parody rather than the chaotic creative edge. Now, with weblife, cell phone/cameras, Blackberries and Sidekicks we all live in our nonlocal "chip bodies" and have become feedback artists, perhaps imagining we are generating our own content of infinite fractal reiterations in a vast parody of ourselves-the put on, the spectacle.
Is there any CONTENT without an audience to receive it? Is there any reason to DO anything if it isn't a PhotoOp? At art shows now people are more interested in taking their own photo with the art, than in looking at it firsthand. The same is true for travel; everyone has a camera or digital video attached to his or her POV.
Between space and ground camera surveillance and GPS accountability no one is ever really ALONE; no first-person singular exists anymore. In Dobbs-speak, between voluntary ESP (net) and synthetic telepathy we no longer own our own thoughts and can't even know what they are or might have been without that perturbation. No wonder there is so much static on the Reality Channel of the Digital Universe. Also see http://www.fivebodied.com/project/
METAMAGICK; TECHNOSHAMANISM: Shamanic beliefs are based on the notions that 1) the matrix of reality can be manipulated with artistic endeavor and spiritual technologies, and 2) powerful artwork can be stimulated by a variety of consciousness altering experiences, or initiations. Technoshamanism is the process of altering consciousness through technology. It implies using the artistic, psychosexual, healing and mind altering techniques of ancient shamanism combined with modern technologies for altering consciousness, culture, and the holistic mindbody.
Technoshamanism is the interactive integration of futuristic technology with ancient pathways of the past. As an artform, it implies access to full-immersion experiences, virtual realities that have consequences in the real world. Magickal technologies evolve; belief systems are technologies. Magic means intentionally defining a state of reality through the transmission of information; the medium is the message. Ritual technology is manipulation of categories of information as data and instructions. Contemporary magic claims that the human mind can directly influence the state of reality, though old-fashioned magic attributed it to manipulation of spirits or occult forces.
This gnostic experience for the new millennium explores the final frontier: the untapped powers of the human mind: spiritual technology without the straightjacket of fixed belief. It means dancing through the doors of perception into the hyper-spatial realities of the unfettered collective imagination. The world of mage and shaman is the world of the spirits, psi powers, psychic phenomena, initiation, altered states, dreams, death, rebirth, and healing. It is the irrational realm of body, faith, trust, and belief. Shamanism reveals the uncanny world of superstition, disruption, dissolution, intuition, mysticism, transcendence, psychedelia, cosmic consciousness. It controls societies, revealing Dionysian and Apollonian spirit: sex and madness vs. conventionality, intellect, morality, and dogma.
Technoshamanism is also the world of what we can call extrasensory science. We can bridge the archaic and modern with cutting edge science and art, which dares to trespass into the forbidden realms. We can play the human sensorium with modulated electromagnetic energy. We can move shamanically through our blocks by heading directly into the fear and pain, which are the doorways to our transformation and head chaotically toward the creative Source. This is the shamanic journey. It is a restructuring process that dissolves old, outworn forms, and fosters spontaneously emergent new images and manifestations.
Technoshamanism is a voyage into the holographic matrix of experience, reflecting both our tribal heritage and global citizenship. In mythology Prometheus, staling fire from the gods, represents the archetypal technological man. Arguably, two defining characteristics of the modern age, icons of our times, are the omnipresence of the Promethean spirit and the pervasiveness of sexuality and its imagery, soft and hardcore pornography. But even more important and fundamental is the power of imagination, passion, and pathos. We can each tap the spirit of Prometheus and Promethea, grasping our share of the fire of the gods, taking a bite of the forbidden fruit.
To the extent that the shamanic personality (like any artist) has great power, he or she penetrates deeply into the basic roots of the structuralizing process, and brings that symbolic information back. In the realm of “metaphorms” our brain images reality and the universe in its own structural terms. This surreal vision attempts to portray the working of the subconscious mind. The future is being created in the imagination of the now. Herein lies the tremendous power of both art and invention. All the symbolic iconography of the ages is perpetually recycled and morphed at warp speed, and the vanguard senses that breakthrough is near. The morphology of this repertoire is embodied in Know Brow Art, neither high nor lowbrow, but cutting edge electronic media.
TRUTH VALUES: Categories of the "real" include not only the symbolic and imaginal, but also the hyperreal. Even our libidos have been hijacked and short-circuited by the therapeutic medium. Truth changes what we think and what we think is possible. All forms of psychotherapy are riddled with fads, buzzwords, and belief systems about how and when healing and transformation can and do occur, and what constitutes the valid content of the trusted process that leads to the healthy, authentic life, self-actualization. It may be an oxymoron.
Is the search for the “holy grail” of Truth the ultimate Quest, a journey rather than a goal, as so many philosophers imply? It has taken humanity through the physical rigors of horizontal exploration, and accompanied us on our trips down the rabbit hole of conceptual and spiritual exploration. But, as we know, there is ‘truth’ and ‘Truth’. Our beliefs compel us to engage in confirmatory searches, where we support, corroborate and verify to our own personal satisfaction.
It is the same drive that motivates both scientist and spiritual seeker to bite off an experiential piece of the Great Unknown. Is Truth primary or emergent? What is Truth? We may know nothing about truth but presume it knows everything about us. Our concept of truth is actually pretty flimsy. Metaphysical truth is by definition beyond observation, beyond the physically observable, yet perhaps available by deduction or inference.
The very first and foundational inner experience in Kabbalah (the art of being fully human) is the Vision of the Mechanics of the Universe, in order to foster a critical eye toward Reality and its underlying physical laws. How can you possibly comprehend yourself if you don’t know the fundamental laws of physics and psychobiology? A common existential “mistake” is viewing ourselves primarily as a solid meatbody, rather than as an electromagnetic wavefront in space that science suggests.
If you are wrong about the fundamental truth of your own existence, how distorted will your other notions be? Kabbalah is radically pragmatic, though not objective, empirical, or reductionist in its approach. It invites you to subjectively make the experiment yourself. We should take care that our protocols and resulting theories have a sound rational basis, taking the best from both ancient and modern worlds.
The brain can register the same result for a simulated or real event; that is a double-edged sword that leads many to faulty conclusions. Can Truth be extracted from Cosmos; will the Truth ever come out? And if so, where is it hiding? All we know right now about the primary groundstate of human existence is that it is Pure Nothing (vacuum fluctuation; ZPE).
The physical and metaphysical roots of different kinds of Truth, relative and Absolute, include physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions; scientific and metaphysical truth. Truth relates to the Big Picture, adaptation and human survival. Even beautiful and convincing explanations can be wrong. Science often doesn’t know if it is ‘true’ and that is why ‘falsifiability’ is a keystone of the scientific process. We have various forms of truth but they are not reliable for understanding ourselves or Cosmos in the sense of a final and absolute Truth.
We try to obtain the most accurate explanation we can at the moment. Still, we cannot say there will never be an absolute Truth. Yet partial truths remain approximations. But this very lack of absoluteness keeps the future open. What most attracts our concern is often at the creative frontier of the mind.
Our understanding and definitions are refined as data are refined and our perceptions become more enlightened. It doesn’t change what is true, but it doesn’t mean we can never comprehend an Absolute Truth that is currently beyond our ability. We can’t really know. But expansion of our previous understanding doesn’t change the reality or truthfulness of existence. In black and white: what exists and true and what does not is false or a lie. Our perceptions can be wrong and sensible.
Reality can be strongly counterintuitive or contain hidden options at the point of observation. Truth fits happier with philosophy, but should not be confused with probability, as shown in the nature of paradox. Seemingly obvious truths are often not correct at all. We all harbor unwitting biases that distort the signals received by our senses and generated in our own psychophysical systems. Experiments in sensory deprivation have exposed the intense power of inner-generated imagery/feeling states. We can’t remove this distorting prejudice from our viewpoint so Truth remains elusive, if not completely partial and relative.
DISSONANCE RESOLUTION: Philosophy is about what is changing and not changing: the Absolute vs. Flux. The rate of change is higher for our culture than perhaps any in history. In all cultures, flocks of phone-users can be observed stumbling around in huge crowds through congested traffic, seemingly oblivious to every thing but what is occurring on the miniscule screen in their hand. The ubiquitous cellular device is paradoxically robbing us of our individualities and enhancing our creativity by adding the dimension of immediacy. No one is self-contained.
In today’s world of instant communication our youngest appear to be losing touch with opportunities for communication with the self, for self-regulation. Children are growing up 'connected' at all times. Failure to be reached requires an explanation. We have changed our sense of a right to privacy, the sanctity of the individual: the power of one. It can be regained through focused self-care.
Dissonance resolution meditation can be learned in a variety of virtual environments, with the goal of self-regulation, stress-reduction, and wellness. By continually focusing on something that is mildly disruptive, the human system calls into play its own balancing and centering mechanisms and “overcomes” the mild disruption. Dissonance resolution within the nervous system is easy to demonstrate neurophysiologically because coherence, resonance, and entrainment of electrical fields and currents can be detected by analyzing neural activity with EKG (heart) and EEG (brain) techniques.
Neurological aspects of dissonance resolution include becoming sensitive to very subtle levels of internal disharmony through growth, learning and expertise. Learning to identify the internal disharmony is similar to learning the “passive volition” of EEG or EKG control. The result once the individual has dealt with the mildly unpleasant stimulus is greater balance, greater focus.
A person can learn to control various aspects of the mind and body in pleasant, non-painful ways. Resolving the finer degrees of dissonance is another route to mastery of stress and achievement of high-level wellness. The basic idea is to involve the viewer in focusing simultaneously on both visual and stereo sound stimulation on a regular basis to establish both mind and body discipline.
This consciousness tool is very much of a scaled-down version of what happens to the viewer as a participant when he or she is focusing on a matrix of shapes and sounds that are constantly changing in real life. That is a definition of DR at one level. But as a technique that is practiced and becomes a clear habit pattern, DR is still an effective type of meditation. Combining visual stimulation with stereo auditory patterns initially evokes internal dissonance. Conscious and unconscious processes serve to resolve as the viewer-participant becomes involved and then progressively engrossed in the stimuli.
Neurological visual and auditory meditations can be learned, creating habit patterns to improve the ability to focus. In this study’s form of meditation, dissonance resolution, the student is first given a mildly distorted signal to focus on. After overcoming the mild irritation of the distorted signal, the nervous system rebalances itself in order to accommodate that signal. One function of the dissonance is to attract the subject’s attention. After practicing this rebalancing skill, we feel the effect of mental effort as a sense of mild relief and increased focus.
However, any meditative type activity can have similar benefits, whether there is dissonance or not. Because of the considerably enhanced focus derived from regular meditation, a person can learn to control various aspects of the mind and body in pleasant, non-painful ways (Gilula, 2005). Mind machines and binaural beat technology such as Hemisynch and Holosynch CDs are alternatives for self-regulation.
DIGITAL CONTEXT: In 1993 I wrote an article on the Digital Universe for CHAOSOPHY Journal based on Fredkin's theory of digital physics, that information is more fundamental than matter and energy, that atoms, electrons, and quarks consist ultimately of bits--binary units of information. Online at http://asklepia.tripod.com/
Chaosophy/chaosophy21.html
A DIGITAL UNIVERSE?
SCIENCE MIRRORS ART; ART MIRRORS SCIENCE
DIGITAL CONTENT: The interface of computer science and physics has led to the concept that information may be as fundamental as matter and energy. Some believe that information is just one of many forms of matter and energy, which is embodied in things like a computer's electrons and a brain's neural firings. Others suggest information should be part of the new scientific triad--matter/energy/information--the main ingredients of reality.
Ed Fredkin goes one step further, with his notion of "digital physics." In this, and other systems, information is more fundamental than matter and energy. He believes that atoms, electrons, and quarks are ultimately binary bits of information. These discrete bits of information may be compared to the quantization of energy in light (photons). The work of Nobel laureate, T.D. Lee suggests that time may also be discrete.
Discrete states are the essence of the digital nature of computer operation. Discreteness depends ultimately on quantum mechanics. A general state which 'spreads' is a superposition of such discrete states.
Fredkin suggests that the universe may be a vast computer which creates reality through ceaseless repetition--taking information it has just transformed and transforming it further to generate pervasive complexity. Space and time are discrete, the laws of the universe are algorithmic, and the universe works according to the same principles as a computer.
According to Fredkin, not everything is best viewed as information, but it helps us model reality and create programs to test our notions. What he is saying is that "at the most basic level of complexity an information process runs what we think of as physics. At the much higher level of complexity life, DNA--the biochemical functions--are controlled by a digital information process. Then, at another level, our thought processes are basically information processing."
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"...‘our rulers’...are engaged in the manipulation of symbols. We must consider ourselves a symbolic, semantic class of life, and cannot cease from being so those who control the symbols rule us. "Bankers, priests, lawyers, politicians, [and news media] constitute one class [of our rulers] and work together. They do not produce any values but manipulate the values produced by others, and often pass signs for no value at all. Scientists and teachers also comprise a ruling class. They produce the main values mankind has, but, at present, they do not realize this. They are, in the main, ruled by the cunning methods of the first class." - Korzybski
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"The fault with modern society lies in its suppression of difference and its alienation of persons from what they can do. We must overturn established identities and affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, and so become all that we can become -- though we cannot know what that is in advance. The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity. "Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?" -Deleuze
DigI/Osophy.
The digital universe consists of 1’s ad 0’s; input and output: I/O. Likewise, our subjective experience consists solely of Input and Output, even though as human beings we can’t be reduced to purely mechanistic descriptions. There is organic and mechanical logic, that both hold true philosophically: garbage in, garbage out. But ‘self-organization' and ‘self-steering' provide an alternative dynamic perspective on the causal effects of conscious will in Chaosmos. The structure of digital information is decentralized, heralding the end of cultural and individual control fantasies.
Crumbling truths were simulacra all along. Meaning has imploded into digital binaries of electronic society. Reality has imploded into hyperreality. For example, digital art can be a copy of photorealism that is tweeked into a reflection of the imaginal theater of the mind; a copy of a copy of a copy of the original, bearing only a surface resemblance. Multiplied stylized images take on a life of their own, shattering the grid of repreentation (Deleuze, Guattari).
Metaphysical beauty hides the rotting corpse of new age thought, the eclectic pastiche of rotting and ruined abstractions. Seeking a root in today’s creatively evolving culture, many look backward, recursively adopting an outdated philosophy. R.A. Wilson and Tim Leary called them “reality tunnels” while McKenna dubbed it an archaic revival. Tunnelling make us “see” in a certain way; create our often myopic beliefs about self, others and world at any time. They are belief wormholes that take us to potential universes that don’t necessarily match up with Reality. They are a way of sticking our metaphysical head in the sand.
Physics and art face similar problems with imaginary universes that do not match up with this existant one. Even Renaissance art was trying to re-capture some values from the past, technologically. It’s good to ask yourself just where you think you are going? Where do you go from here?
You are already living a Hyperreality. Debord calls it the Spectacle; Baudrillard calls it the Similacrum. Beliefs are false promises to restore a mythical truth underlying the simulation. Belief maps create the fabled territory that claims to be salvation but is a well-disguised trap, mentally and spiritually. Do you opt for magical concepts that are tricks of the mind or the charm of the so-called real? Imaginal representations are metaphysical simulations, virtual realities.
Metaphysics is a dead end; all points of reference are liquidated by the universal solvent: chaos. Likewise the preferred terrain of popular religions. There is a short-circuit in our psychological position. There is no touchstone of reality or truth, beyond the simulation of the sacred, the content of sacred technologies. We have mass murdered our own models, creating a power vacuum. Only the simulation of power masks the political fiction.
Baudrillard concludes, "It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference."
CLICHES AND ARCHETYPES: Are you creating a unique reality tunnel reflecting your aesthetic like an artist, or a haphazard victim of dogmatic programming and conditioning? There are no ideals and no ultimate negation. Those choices just buffer us in archaic perceptual cocoons, rather than drawing us into the vortex of developing future. McLuhan pointed this out long ago, saying, "Utopians and anti-utopians are always obsessed with a period preceding their own. Orwell's 1984 happened in 1930." - MM, Take Today, p.75.
Most of New Age culture is either Theosophical or Utopian, sometimes in a very saccharin kind of way, sickly sweet if not toxic and phony; full of New Age “guilt”, parroting, parody, self-sell and put ons. Of course, it is good to root in tradition, but we can get caught in the web of living metaphors. But reality tunnels create tunnel vision, a subconscious filter of belief-congruent experience, confirmation bias. In the womb we recapitulate the phylogeny of species, and after birth our beliefs evolve following the historical arc. Yet, we never stop in our arc to live like a reptile, for example.
The human mind is a competitive memescape. Its 'normal' to have our desires shaped by the social grid and social codification (groupthink), but it makes us neurotic. The effect of pop culture is conformity; even our subcultures are homogenizing and recur in an infinity of fractal forms. Pop art is an oxymoron since it cannot fulfill the promise of art to deliver us from the conformity of market forces. The 'original' becomes a fiction; nothing is original since it is all derivative. But it may reflect the zeitgeist of the moment.
Everyone is a fundamental slave to the system because virtually no one can ever fulfill their desires. There is the saying those who forget or do not know the past are condemned to repeat it. But, in the post-postmodern world, what hasn’t been done? And done to death probably as good or better than it can be redone? Where is the unexplored territory?
BEYOND BELIEFS: Neurotheology has shown that spirituality is a natural phenomenon, hardwired into humans as a biosocial survival strategy that bonds groups with common beliefs and goals, personal and collective. This current runs so deep that for the majority of people, nothing is more important. It infuses all life passages with Presence and meaning in animism, shamanism, polytheism, and monotheism, even science-ism. We believe in belief even over uniformity of belief. But there is a deeper causal vector than beliefs, rituals, customs, commitments, and sacrifices: evolutionary value or fitness. It is the source of mythmaking, morality, sociality, and redemptive values.
Belief systems and paradigms provide rigid structures, the matrix of belief, we can use as our medium for self-expression. They allow us to investigate existence in conventional or unconventional ways. Research methods include setting aside received wisdom, burrowing deep inside your subject and learning to think like your material.
A meme is a self-propagating idea, a unit of cultural imitation that, much like a biological or computer virus, effectively programs its own retransmission. They spread through motivating their "host population," novel configurations of old ideas, and by proselytizers. Popular beliefs spread like contagions, cognitive viruses. Memes are informational viruses that influence our thinking, feelings, even our physical regulation.
Memes function like evolving cultural viruses taking on a fractal life of their own as the trances we live. They engineer our cultures and subcultures; what we will, won’t and can’t do, and believe. In short, self-replicating memes condition our lifestyles as “True Believers”. Each meme is an existential trance state. Memetic structures compel our attention; we propel and persuade one another toward them socially; sociocultural programming.
VIRTUAL REALITY CHECK: Korzybski pointed out that there are two ways to slice easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. So, from time to time you have to give yourself a Virtual Reality Check. The hallmark of postmodern philosophy has been disbelief or skepticism of all "metanarratives," or translations of reality. Postmodernism has even turned its profound skepticism on such important humanist concepts as "objective truth" and reason.
Yet, for a deconstructionist postmodern society, individually we are still riddled with superstition and gullibility, and open to manipulation through our belief systems as any politician, philosopher, clergy, or salesperson will attest. Further, most people are painfully naive when it comes to even the simplest scientific understanding. Most of us don't have a clue about the fundamental nature of physical reality or our own psychological nature, and our ability to be fooled by our senses and mind, or methods of social and technological persuasion. We may think we know, but the penetration is deeper than we dare imagine.
Nature rejects the naivete that seeks absolute truth. We are beginning to realize, individually and culturally, that "realities" are all human constructions. The task becomes one of "catching ourselves in the act" of creating our own "reality" from the flow of events. Human truth is always an engagement of mind with experience. The challenge of the therapist in these times of chaotic change is to validate the concept that we don't have to fear the collapse of what we think we are.
We can embrace this disruptive chaos, trusting that it is an emergent self-organizing process. We don't need to fear the collapse of our personalistic belief system (the "box" we live in), nor our belief in absolute truth. A strong desire to engage in the "quest for uncertainty" complements our anxiety that perhaps there is no absolute, objective ground to reality. The warrant of Truth is ever elusive when we deconstruct the foundational justifications of our convenient notions about the way the world works.
It is easy to confuse what is actually the creation of beliefs with the "discovery of Truth," a common goal of science and theology. Science offers no ontological Scientific Picture of the World but substitutes a number of applied theories as meta-theory. It’s close, powerful and useful: it ‘works’ and allows use to do work. But the still mysterious “true” metatheory may reveal the basis of consciousness. But who knows when we will lift that veil?
Permeating the living reality of our culture are certain contagious notions, fads and trends that have the ability to influence the way we think about the nature of Reality and ourselves. Some of them are toxic and can consume you; others are just whims of pop culture infectious and benign as the common cold. Jung described the concept of psychic contagion by certain archetypal forces inherent in the human psyche, which manifest in our spiritual lives and belief systems. He spoke of both conscious and unconscious contamination. Notions like this range from simple superstitions to scientific concepts, to urban myths.
Notions sweep through our culture and insinuate themselves within its fabric, as fads, whether they are "real" or not, they can be influential. They mood alter us, make us feel we belong. An analysis of these notions is useful in distinguishing a common human phenomenon from any potential "alien influence" which may or may not be exerted on us from an unknown source.
BREAKING THE SPELL: Skeptic, Daniel Dennett takes a hard look at beliefs and attendant phenomena in his new book of this name, and asks: Where does our devotion to God come from and what purpose does it serve? Is religion a blind evolutionary compulsion or a rational choice? In a spirited investigation that ranges widely through history, philosophy, and psychology, Dennett explores how organized religion evolved from folk beliefs and why it is such a potent force today. He contends that the “belief in belief” has fogged any attempt to rationally consider the existence of God and the relationship between divinity and human need.
Ask yourself how adaptive it is to remain spiritually, mentally, or emotionally stuck in the past, for whatever reason. In my written archive you can catch me at virtually every phase, yet never stuck in one. Most forms of ‘worship’ are either archetypes or clichés, perhaps both. Personal revelatory experiences are no measure; they are often fraught with strong emotional content, but faulty thinking built on a grain of Truth. Often it is a compensatory mechanism to help us maintain specialness, a trick of the mind and self-image. If you recycle a retrievalist reality tunnel you are blinded to other options. It’s like being a scientific or artistic specialist; you know more and more about less and less.
What organic robotoid, parroting perennial philosophy is truly spiritual? Future-resistance stops the process of maturation, as well. What we procrastinate about can take on overwhelming dimensions. It is a way of not “letting go” of outmoded forms that stunt developmental potential. Be careful what models you let colonize your imagination. Are the terms you define yourself with irrelevant? Those whose cherished beliefs are challenged in the context of traumatic life events are likely to experience severe spiritual disequilibrium; manifesting chaos instead of self-organization.
Spiritual disequilibrium can be a blessing, heralding rebirth: emergence from the destructuring of emergency, breakthrough from breakdown. The future draws us forward like a handshake reaching back from somewhere between our fate and destiny, the strange attractor of our own futurity. It does not squeeze us into a recycled mold, and send us down a dusty rabbit hole of myopic vision. That is not focus, but self-deception, disinformation. You are probably not the “reincarnated alien-hybrid messiah of world peace and environmental restoration”. But you do make your own global contribution to the commonweal, especially through self-awareness, practice, service, and compassion.
The Cloud of Unknowing, a medieval mystic text, describes the human soul as embodied in one's memory, reason, will, imagination, and senses. Yet, all these faculties are falsifiable or easily subject to distortion. Unless USED artistically, rather than passively, media is an interruption of our internal narrative, our self-talk; a detour in content and focal point. Is your phone more important than your movie, or your loved one?
Interruption enables incoming messages by lending them shape and hijacking our attention, or they enter subliminally. Particularity is content and momentary truth. The goal is not to pick the right reality tunnel or be psychically tunneled by obsolete beliefs but to live freestyle on the tunnelless edge of dissolving boundaries, the anticipatory/participatory fusion of NOW.
BOUNDARY FREE CREATIVE EDGE: In part, this is the source of the generation gap. The imaginative and adaptive faculties play a big role in what century (archaic revival) we choose to live in, according to our adopted beliefs, which condition our perceptions. Popular options include eclectic adaptations of the world’s religions, neo-tribalism, psychics, and gurus; even science and art have their own historical POVs.
The so-called New Age of spiritual snake oil sales actually harbors the agenda of hijacking the Holy Grail of new paradigm thinking, as long your new vision resonates with a polyglot of poor research protocols, implausible assumptions and lack of critical thinking. Radical pointlessness is the least occupied position, having no POV is the toughest to maintain. The poetic vision of Science-Art does not split the material base of Multiverse from the reflexive component of Spirit. It encourages mythopoesis but not literalization at the expense of common sense.
There is a paradoxical dissonance between old and new ways of being in the environment; things that should be preserved and those that are emerging. Things that stay the same are isomorphic constants; but metamorphosis, metaphoric change creates a sense of novelty and newness. The new excites us by emotional appeal, overwhelming our senses, shocking us, thrilling us, or otherwise modulating our systems in a way the old cannot. It reflects the future of our dreams.
Our own epistemological metaphors describe how we know what we know and what it is like. Harking back to the past for a point of reference helps us move from the known to the Unknown in our descriptions, but if we take our metaphors literally, our beliefs stay archaic. We continue to recapitulate the philosophical evolution of mankind, but not truly move forward into new territory. The same is seen in the iconography of “sofa” art, which recycles the same tired themes and styles in the same media, over and over.
ALL the creative juice of science and art is at the leading edge, the living edge. Chaos theory defines the “edge of chaos” as a special dynamical balance. Science has shown that order emerges from the critical paths of chaos. In psychology, it means sticking to the image as given in Imagination, rather than resorting to glib dream or symbol interpretations. Shamanic personalities work at the edge of chaos for healing. Talent expresses at the edge. Phase transitions occur here, state changes, quantum leaps of consciousness, complexity. Like Schrodinger’s Box, it separates the Living from the Dead.
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: Wyndham Lewis wrote that all "living art is the history of the future". The formula is we become what we behold. What our culture compels us to behold is the holographic ICONOSCOPE: all the new media that both virtually surround and contain, as well as permeate our lives, and comprise an intrinsic part of our environment. The mind-numbing rate of change in our society is so unprecedented it is called Future shock. It’s a technological tsunami.
Debord called it a Society of the Spectacle, emphasizing its visual nature. Everyone is a player. Spectacle as a commodity is embodied in so-called Reality TV. The War on Terror is a materialized ideology, fighting an Idea. It is unwinable since you can’t wage war on an idea. Ideology is the problem, not the solution to human survival technology. Coercive ideas foster looting of natural resources, coercive institutional power and imported orthodoxies. The same dynamic produces trends, fads and memes, which permeate thinking as well as lifestyle. All gnostic forms are based in an ideology and theology of truth and secrecy.
Baudrillard speaks of successive phases of the image: 1) It is the reflection of a basic reality. 2) It masks and perverts a basic reality. 3) It masks the absence of a basic reality.4) It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum. In the first case, the image is a good appearance: the representation is of the order of sacrament. In the second, it is an evil appearance: of the order of malefice. In the third, it plays at being an appearance: it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation.
YOU TURN ME I-ON-A: We literally have the electromagnetic capacity to broadcast our images if not ourselves to the stars. We broadcast our identities as a fusion of recombinant personae, cliches, and archetypes: infinite fractal use of finite iconography: technological self-amplification of our bodyminds. You turn me on; I turn you on in a fusion of knower and known. I call my broadcast "Radio Free Qabala". coming to you from station IONA, sponsored by the Temple of Living Light. Channels may vary in your locale, that is, by your capacity to tune in and comprehend my essential nature.
Hegel said, “Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself only insofar as it exists in and for another self-consciousness; that is, it exists only by being recognized and acknowledged.” Likewise, only relationships between objects are observable. Arguably, language was the first real technology, and all others mere extensions of our five senses. Metamagic, the original reality medium, is a hypercharged spiritual technology, driven by ritual and belief: active attention is synonymous with “worship”. We are a fractalization of collective history. We are carried forward by the anticipation of our own lives, their emergent qualities. Infinite mirroring and anticipation is beyond synchronicity; Xenochrony is the holomovement of Xenochronicity. Only the level of resolution changes, not the content.
LIFE IS A HOLOGRAPHIC PROJECTION: The team of physicist Peter Gariaev detected DNA Phantoms in their research and concluded that we are human biocomputers. The genome is a quasi-intelligent system, but the wave level of genetic coding programs and organizes our 3-D spatial/temporal organism. Gariaev describes DNA expression as a meaningful text that is read and projected by DNA in 3-D in a bioholographic process with sound and light, much like programs of DNA movies or videotape. The digital analogy is probably even closer to the process of development and maintenance.
These movies get corrupted over time and produce aging and mutations. Wave genetics offers new healing and life extension possibilities. Morphogenic information is holographically transmitted and programmed. DNA is not 98% junk, but the formative and transmissive text.
All the cells of our organism combine to form a unified informational space which functions as a DNA wave biocomputer regulating morphogenesis and metabolic information, activated by transduced coherent light and modulated sound. This is more fundamental than genetics or molecular biology. Disturbances in the field that presage disease can be treated.
Healing information can be transmitted in waveform by resonance, sound and light, correcting error patterns or missing information. Video morphogenic information is regenerative, patterning a healing matrix. The bio-computer reads or scans the data and adapts according to the DNA-movie of healthy form and function. A weak field produces a powerful result. We are mutually linked material and nonlocal energy-informational substances that dynamically exchange energy and information. Soon we’ll be able to “change the movie” physically with quantum bioholography as the medium. This is another aspect of the Acoustic Environment: structural cymatics.
TECHNOTOPIA: Evolving technology resonates like feedback in our phenomenology. Buckminster Fuller did not view technology as separate from nature and our nature, biological intelligence and technological evolution, including speech. Our separateness has created the pursuit of infinite individual "reality wormholes" which reconnect us with collective unconscious, collective identity through "voluntary ESP".
We no longer live as point-particles but in our waveforms, often spread simultaneously over several time zones. We can read the entire holographic time log of the Akashic Records at our local theater or on DVD. In Dobb’s vernacular, “past times have become our passtimes”, including interests in deep nature as the province of science and art, and obsolete gnostic and spiritual technologies.
According to Baudrillard, when the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true, of the lived experience; a resurrection of the figurative where the object and substance have disappeared. And there is a panic-stricken production of the real and the referential, above and parallel to the panic of material production. This is how simulation appears in the phase that concerns us: a strategy of the real, neo-real and hyperreal, whose universal double is a strategy of deterrence.
KINETIC FIELD OF DREAMS: The Digital Revolution is here and it IS being televised in a myriad of fractal incarnations, but not on your Grandmother's screen. For artists, the 21st Century is a Digital Universe. In the perceptual-space we now occupy, the gender of presence is neither male nor female, but discarnate! It is the era of the metamorph. Even conventional artists can manipulate their images into a myriad of morphs. Because of insurance problems, fine art has moved toward the giclee print where originals are printed onto canvas and overpainted with a topcoat of paint. But why even bother with the smelly stuff? High end galleries are installing projectors. Popular art is being displayed as virtual paintings on plasma screens in private homes.
NEW MEDIA: Media guru Mark Stahlman defines this term he coined as the media, which replace the ‘cinesthesia’ of TELEVISION as the dominant environment in our lives and culture. Surround sound is already the medium that replaced television. Home theaters now dominate the consumer electronics business. They are simply big television sets with multi-channel sound added, replicating the experience of multi-channel sound in movie theaters. Acoustic space as surround sound replaced the "tactility" of television.
Media analyst/cultural theorist, Marshall McLuhan stressed that ALL media are ultimately a matter of sensory balances and sensory biases. He believed that artists need to integrate, analyze and utilize rapid changes in technology, in order to truly have a mass impact on people in the modern age. But the electronic environment isn't limited to artists but is available to virtually everyone. No one escapes its influence. Rapid evolution of communication devices enables and future-shocks us at the same time.
On the other hand, some new media are in the hands of individual artists, who have the capacity to produce desktop films, find innovative new means of distribution, or create art that helps us meet our future. It doesn't take a multimedia studio to create meaningful work. But cultural and political factors are still limiting factors in the global arena of spiritless totalitarianism.
The era of revolutionary democracies is over, replaced by corporate feudalism which holds our attention in a vice grip of technological self-absorption and self-interest that infiltrates the thinking of both left and right with media propaganda. The Fear-Media Machine fights democracy and liberty with fear and racism, creating a mass culture of disembodied cyborg mutants.
The alluring promise of full-immersion Virtual Reality is the ersatz embodiment of this disembodiment, naturalized technological alienation. Still, the so-called New Age is still focused on 19th and 20th century out-of-body experiences, apparently ignoring they are rarely in-habiting their physical bodies. By subverting new media, the artist introduces a new way of being: Homo Lumen, who recognizes our essential nature is nothing but light. It is the old shamanic function of art and artist in 21st century form, artists and scientists who make the electrons dance.
In Simulacra and Simulation, French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that our "postmodern" culture is a world of signs that have made a fundamental break from referring to "reality." Reality is simulation of the simulation of reality. The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth, which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
For Baudrillard all the media of information and communication neutralize meaning and involve the audience in a flat, one-dimensional media experience which he defines in terms of a passive absorption of images, or a resistance of meaning, rather than the active processing or production of meaning. The electronic media therefore on this account have nothing to do with myth, image, history, or the construction of meaning (or ideology).
Television is interpreted instead as a media "which suggests nothing, which magnetizes, which is only a screen, or is rather a miniaturized terminal which in fact is found immediately in your head -- you are the screen and the television is watching you. Television transistorizes all neurons and operates as a magnetic tape -- a tape not an image"” (from Baudrillard: A New McLuhan?)
Welcome to The Media Matrix, the 'machine war'. Are you the One; a Neo trying to figure it all out in a world where nothing makes sense but Ones and Zeros? New Media paradoxically sucks us into the vortex of disembodiment and is simultaneously the anodyne that assuages the resulting pain of alienation. We have fused our nervous systems with the information environment, fusing and morphing both art and nature. Biomedia, genetics and wave genetics are not human survival technologies, but just the opposite, by making us transhuman.
FIGURE-GROUND SHIFT: Shift happens. It is the ground that is the medium, for the most part, and the figure-ground relationship that creates the message. It is the capability of the underlying medium to appear in and through fundamental changes and to sustain fundamental change in this way which is the message (mission), the sending.
It might be said that the message of (genitive?) medium/media exceeds any figure-ground relationship by ex-posing the passing of some previous ground or grounds in the past and pointing to the analogous passing of the present one in the future.
Exceeding figure/ground indicates grounds (plural), indicates medium indicates message: "changes the medium, which is the message." The medium is the message because the medium, aka the plurality and dynamics of media, is what the message is always going on about. In Take Today, McLuhan states, “Hypnotized by their rear-view mirrors, philosophers and scientists alike tried to focus the figure of man in the old ground of nineteenth-century industrial mechanism and congestion. They failed to bridge from the old figure to the new. It is man who has become both figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness. With the extension of his nervous system as a total information environment, man bridges art and nature.” - p.11
New Media are the various implementations and the profound implications of the shift by acoustic space from the ground of our lives under the conditions of the electric media environment (i.e. television). They are becoming the figures of expression in our increasingly post-electric world -- in particular, as reflected in three-channel stereo (3CS.) When you run your own multimedia content through your home theater, it becomes your own Church of Self-Amplification.
The post-electronic environment is the ground that is the true medium which creates the message, altering our perceptions of self, others and world. The ground of consciousness itself is necessarily double. It includes the nothing part of itself and the something part of itself; and can’t see itself. Conspiracy is the ground of the shifting paradigm. Bob Dobbs points out, “I would say, the reason why the profane think (increasingly) conspiratorially, is: we have disappeared. So, we are not manipulable anymore.
Therefore, the whole social engineering through the media, controlling masses as puppets (conspicuous consumers) - it’s a rearview mirror image. We can now see it aesthetically; or as an artform. So WE like to think and project that we’re being manipulated. Thus, conspiracy is the crude popular slang version of watching (Orwellian) TV and seeing the arty ego-ads manipulate you - saying: hmmm, they’re manipulating me. And I know they’re manipulating me! And they know I’m knowing that. There you have a menippean irony going on! And so, an alphabetic distillation of this process is: "We’re being controlled and it’s a conspiracy."
BYTE ME: Media are unconscious extensions of our sensorium. In 2006, New Media are Broadband, Wireless, High Def, and creating portable environments: the cell phone, high rez digicam, digital video recorder, gaming, podcasting, V-cast. The cell phone has become both the mini computer and TV screen with on demand self-programming of content. Portable screens represent a crucial inflection in the arc of digital media development.
McLuhan's famous dictum, "The Medium is the Message" had a second part -- "The Audience is the Content." Entertainment content must become more and more compelling or we simply make our own. We all now have the capacity to capture virtually every nuance of our lives digitally. We don't have to "download" our psyches into the computer; they are already out there in the data streams as disembodied bytes in the aethyr, each with discrete wavelengths: our images, thoughts, and emotions.
LUMONICS: High Brow art dominated the artworld before Duchamp, followed by Low Brow postmodern rejection of all metanarratives. Arguably video guru Nam June Paik ushered in Know-Brow art based in electronic media. Only light can capture the nuance of energetic processes. Special FX pushes it imaginatively over the top. The multisensory electronic moving image is now an artist's medium. It can be employed to express representational and abstract imagery through recorded and virtual technologies.
The moving image is central to our visual culture, articulating new strategies and forms of image making. The kinetic image fuses electronic and digital media into a new form of expression. We can easily alter both materiality and composition of the electronic image; we can refashion its content, visual vocabulary, and plastic forms. Desk-top cinema has made individual productions a possibility that has jumped the Theatre of the Mind, to become sensuously embodied as a "body without organs", an Android Meme. In the vernacular of paramedia ecologist Bob Dobbs, the parts of the Android Meme are the Chemical Body, the Astral Body, the TV Body, and the Chip Body. But in an era in which everyone is a filmmaker, who is the audience?
PARAMEDIA ECOLOGY: Primal man made his environment by magic rituals that were re-enactments and dramatizations of the creative process by which the world comes into being. Even Renaissance art was trying to capture the values of the past technologically, but 21st Century art is a holographic time machine. Your beliefs determine what century you are inhabiting. Technology has the power to be environmental entirely independent of art as environmental.
Even Jung had no dynamic idea of the psychic role in creating technologies or in responding and reacting to them. Yet technologies, especially electronic tech, are extensions of the body, making us all Cyborgs. The psychic and social saturation resulting from electric extension of the nerves is much swifter than effects of mere extensions to our physical being, such as clothing, or the wheel, or mirrors. The environmental role of art can be spiritual or concretely physical. The actual effects of new technologies turns old environments into art forms that help define us as modern humans.
Dobbs defines the Android Meme as the ability of human-invented technology to acquire the intimacy of speech and intuition. In other words, the Android Meme is technology that has the qualities of "being alive". McLuhan’s chief characteristic of modern media is that they're living organisms. That means they can communicate. The Android Meme wants to join with us in an unholy alliance of archetypal technology and human organism. The Android Meme is a cacophony of all media, all technology and all ideas of particular times, anthropomorphized, trying to make itself human. There is no great architect of the Meme besides our compliance to feed it. It is collective mythic thinking, in the Jungian sense, where people mime/behave cues from technology when it becomes used by a million people and becomes environment (morphic resonance).
We actually download the archetype of the Android Meme into our nervous systems through television and multimedia. Bob says, “The Android Meme absorbs any response made to it. The artist's task is to understand and meditate upon the why's and wherefore's of its present techniques. This effort has nothing to do with how an artist survives economically.” So, don’t quit your dayjob.
"Media are really environments, with all the effects geographers & biologists associate with environments. We live inside our media. We are their content. TV images come to us so fast, in such profusion, they engulf us, tattoo us. We're immersed. It's like skin diving. We're surrounded & whatever surrounds, involves. TV doesn't wash over us and then go "out of mind." It goes into mind, deep into mind. The subconscious is a world in which we store everything, not something, and TV extends the subconscious....Such experiences are difficult to describe in words. Like dreams or sports, they evade verbal classification." (Edmund Carpenter; They Became What They Beheld 63)
According to anthropologist Carpenter, we are forced into new modes of communication and forced to create our own environments of declassified information when media render old patterns of perception obsolete. When we program our own psychic and sensory lives, we turn to artists who practice creating their own lives for reference. In many ways we are forced to improvise, taking what is at hand, and forming it into something that could be, into something new, but which is made from the parts of the old in a fractal reiteration.
ANTI-MYSTERY SCHOOL: SACRED AND PROFANE. We virtually 'worship' that which we give our attention; the more energy we give it the more we worship it. Our society is compulsive. Technology as the "demon of progress" is a spiritual rival, a rival to spiritual technologies, our "technical destiny". Naturally in the electric age this rivalry for the soul of man is far more intense than ever before: inner vs. outer quest. McLuhan’s thesis was revolutionary: each medium has a larger effect than its mere content, overloading, compensating and extending our physical senses, forcing individual minds and whole societies to adapt.
Today's 21st Century Media Mystery Schools retrain our perceptions even reviewing obsolete Reality Tunneling of the past: ritualized utility and understanding without boundaries or satcom interconnectedness. Technology competes for and effects human senses and perceptions. Art is inherently and seamlessly wed to media ecology. In some sense, the environment can be seen as merely a war between good and bad art. The question becomes not what do we believe and have faith in, but how can we live more artfully and heartfully, developing human survival technologies that feed our souls and spirits.
RECYCLING CONSCIOUSNESS: McLuhan taught that the environment is a programmed teaching machine. He was arguably the first feedback artist, hungry for people with new ideas, angles, insights, so he could use that material to generate more of his own. Feedback of feedback is bad feed, imitation and parody rather than the chaotic creative edge. Now, with weblife, cell phone/cameras, Blackberries and Sidekicks we all live in our nonlocal "chip bodies" and have become feedback artists, perhaps imagining we are generating our own content of infinite fractal reiterations in a vast parody of ourselves-the put on, the spectacle.
Is there any CONTENT without an audience to receive it? Is there any reason to DO anything if it isn't a PhotoOp? At art shows now people are more interested in taking their own photo with the art, than in looking at it firsthand. The same is true for travel; everyone has a camera or digital video attached to his or her POV.
Between space and ground camera surveillance and GPS accountability no one is ever really ALONE; no first-person singular exists anymore. In Dobbs-speak, between voluntary ESP (net) and synthetic telepathy we no longer own our own thoughts and can't even know what they are or might have been without that perturbation. No wonder there is so much static on the Reality Channel of the Digital Universe. Also see http://www.fivebodied.com/project/
METAMAGICK; TECHNOSHAMANISM: Shamanic beliefs are based on the notions that 1) the matrix of reality can be manipulated with artistic endeavor and spiritual technologies, and 2) powerful artwork can be stimulated by a variety of consciousness altering experiences, or initiations. Technoshamanism is the process of altering consciousness through technology. It implies using the artistic, psychosexual, healing and mind altering techniques of ancient shamanism combined with modern technologies for altering consciousness, culture, and the holistic mindbody.
Technoshamanism is the interactive integration of futuristic technology with ancient pathways of the past. As an artform, it implies access to full-immersion experiences, virtual realities that have consequences in the real world. Magickal technologies evolve; belief systems are technologies. Magic means intentionally defining a state of reality through the transmission of information; the medium is the message. Ritual technology is manipulation of categories of information as data and instructions. Contemporary magic claims that the human mind can directly influence the state of reality, though old-fashioned magic attributed it to manipulation of spirits or occult forces.
This gnostic experience for the new millennium explores the final frontier: the untapped powers of the human mind: spiritual technology without the straightjacket of fixed belief. It means dancing through the doors of perception into the hyper-spatial realities of the unfettered collective imagination. The world of mage and shaman is the world of the spirits, psi powers, psychic phenomena, initiation, altered states, dreams, death, rebirth, and healing. It is the irrational realm of body, faith, trust, and belief. Shamanism reveals the uncanny world of superstition, disruption, dissolution, intuition, mysticism, transcendence, psychedelia, cosmic consciousness. It controls societies, revealing Dionysian and Apollonian spirit: sex and madness vs. conventionality, intellect, morality, and dogma.
Technoshamanism is also the world of what we can call extrasensory science. We can bridge the archaic and modern with cutting edge science and art, which dares to trespass into the forbidden realms. We can play the human sensorium with modulated electromagnetic energy. We can move shamanically through our blocks by heading directly into the fear and pain, which are the doorways to our transformation and head chaotically toward the creative Source. This is the shamanic journey. It is a restructuring process that dissolves old, outworn forms, and fosters spontaneously emergent new images and manifestations.
Technoshamanism is a voyage into the holographic matrix of experience, reflecting both our tribal heritage and global citizenship. In mythology Prometheus, staling fire from the gods, represents the archetypal technological man. Arguably, two defining characteristics of the modern age, icons of our times, are the omnipresence of the Promethean spirit and the pervasiveness of sexuality and its imagery, soft and hardcore pornography. But even more important and fundamental is the power of imagination, passion, and pathos. We can each tap the spirit of Prometheus and Promethea, grasping our share of the fire of the gods, taking a bite of the forbidden fruit.
To the extent that the shamanic personality (like any artist) has great power, he or she penetrates deeply into the basic roots of the structuralizing process, and brings that symbolic information back. In the realm of “metaphorms” our brain images reality and the universe in its own structural terms. This surreal vision attempts to portray the working of the subconscious mind. The future is being created in the imagination of the now. Herein lies the tremendous power of both art and invention. All the symbolic iconography of the ages is perpetually recycled and morphed at warp speed, and the vanguard senses that breakthrough is near. The morphology of this repertoire is embodied in Know Brow Art, neither high nor lowbrow, but cutting edge electronic media.
TRUTH VALUES: Categories of the "real" include not only the symbolic and imaginal, but also the hyperreal. Even our libidos have been hijacked and short-circuited by the therapeutic medium. Truth changes what we think and what we think is possible. All forms of psychotherapy are riddled with fads, buzzwords, and belief systems about how and when healing and transformation can and do occur, and what constitutes the valid content of the trusted process that leads to the healthy, authentic life, self-actualization. It may be an oxymoron.
Is the search for the “holy grail” of Truth the ultimate Quest, a journey rather than a goal, as so many philosophers imply? It has taken humanity through the physical rigors of horizontal exploration, and accompanied us on our trips down the rabbit hole of conceptual and spiritual exploration. But, as we know, there is ‘truth’ and ‘Truth’. Our beliefs compel us to engage in confirmatory searches, where we support, corroborate and verify to our own personal satisfaction.
It is the same drive that motivates both scientist and spiritual seeker to bite off an experiential piece of the Great Unknown. Is Truth primary or emergent? What is Truth? We may know nothing about truth but presume it knows everything about us. Our concept of truth is actually pretty flimsy. Metaphysical truth is by definition beyond observation, beyond the physically observable, yet perhaps available by deduction or inference.
The very first and foundational inner experience in Kabbalah (the art of being fully human) is the Vision of the Mechanics of the Universe, in order to foster a critical eye toward Reality and its underlying physical laws. How can you possibly comprehend yourself if you don’t know the fundamental laws of physics and psychobiology? A common existential “mistake” is viewing ourselves primarily as a solid meatbody, rather than as an electromagnetic wavefront in space that science suggests.
If you are wrong about the fundamental truth of your own existence, how distorted will your other notions be? Kabbalah is radically pragmatic, though not objective, empirical, or reductionist in its approach. It invites you to subjectively make the experiment yourself. We should take care that our protocols and resulting theories have a sound rational basis, taking the best from both ancient and modern worlds.
The brain can register the same result for a simulated or real event; that is a double-edged sword that leads many to faulty conclusions. Can Truth be extracted from Cosmos; will the Truth ever come out? And if so, where is it hiding? All we know right now about the primary groundstate of human existence is that it is Pure Nothing (vacuum fluctuation; ZPE).
The physical and metaphysical roots of different kinds of Truth, relative and Absolute, include physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions; scientific and metaphysical truth. Truth relates to the Big Picture, adaptation and human survival. Even beautiful and convincing explanations can be wrong. Science often doesn’t know if it is ‘true’ and that is why ‘falsifiability’ is a keystone of the scientific process. We have various forms of truth but they are not reliable for understanding ourselves or Cosmos in the sense of a final and absolute Truth.
We try to obtain the most accurate explanation we can at the moment. Still, we cannot say there will never be an absolute Truth. Yet partial truths remain approximations. But this very lack of absoluteness keeps the future open. What most attracts our concern is often at the creative frontier of the mind.
Our understanding and definitions are refined as data are refined and our perceptions become more enlightened. It doesn’t change what is true, but it doesn’t mean we can never comprehend an Absolute Truth that is currently beyond our ability. We can’t really know. But expansion of our previous understanding doesn’t change the reality or truthfulness of existence. In black and white: what exists and true and what does not is false or a lie. Our perceptions can be wrong and sensible.
Reality can be strongly counterintuitive or contain hidden options at the point of observation. Truth fits happier with philosophy, but should not be confused with probability, as shown in the nature of paradox. Seemingly obvious truths are often not correct at all. We all harbor unwitting biases that distort the signals received by our senses and generated in our own psychophysical systems. Experiments in sensory deprivation have exposed the intense power of inner-generated imagery/feeling states. We can’t remove this distorting prejudice from our viewpoint so Truth remains elusive, if not completely partial and relative.
DISSONANCE RESOLUTION: Philosophy is about what is changing and not changing: the Absolute vs. Flux. The rate of change is higher for our culture than perhaps any in history. In all cultures, flocks of phone-users can be observed stumbling around in huge crowds through congested traffic, seemingly oblivious to every thing but what is occurring on the miniscule screen in their hand. The ubiquitous cellular device is paradoxically robbing us of our individualities and enhancing our creativity by adding the dimension of immediacy. No one is self-contained.
In today’s world of instant communication our youngest appear to be losing touch with opportunities for communication with the self, for self-regulation. Children are growing up 'connected' at all times. Failure to be reached requires an explanation. We have changed our sense of a right to privacy, the sanctity of the individual: the power of one. It can be regained through focused self-care.
Dissonance resolution meditation can be learned in a variety of virtual environments, with the goal of self-regulation, stress-reduction, and wellness. By continually focusing on something that is mildly disruptive, the human system calls into play its own balancing and centering mechanisms and “overcomes” the mild disruption. Dissonance resolution within the nervous system is easy to demonstrate neurophysiologically because coherence, resonance, and entrainment of electrical fields and currents can be detected by analyzing neural activity with EKG (heart) and EEG (brain) techniques.
Neurological aspects of dissonance resolution include becoming sensitive to very subtle levels of internal disharmony through growth, learning and expertise. Learning to identify the internal disharmony is similar to learning the “passive volition” of EEG or EKG control. The result once the individual has dealt with the mildly unpleasant stimulus is greater balance, greater focus.
A person can learn to control various aspects of the mind and body in pleasant, non-painful ways. Resolving the finer degrees of dissonance is another route to mastery of stress and achievement of high-level wellness. The basic idea is to involve the viewer in focusing simultaneously on both visual and stereo sound stimulation on a regular basis to establish both mind and body discipline.
This consciousness tool is very much of a scaled-down version of what happens to the viewer as a participant when he or she is focusing on a matrix of shapes and sounds that are constantly changing in real life. That is a definition of DR at one level. But as a technique that is practiced and becomes a clear habit pattern, DR is still an effective type of meditation. Combining visual stimulation with stereo auditory patterns initially evokes internal dissonance. Conscious and unconscious processes serve to resolve as the viewer-participant becomes involved and then progressively engrossed in the stimuli.
Neurological visual and auditory meditations can be learned, creating habit patterns to improve the ability to focus. In this study’s form of meditation, dissonance resolution, the student is first given a mildly distorted signal to focus on. After overcoming the mild irritation of the distorted signal, the nervous system rebalances itself in order to accommodate that signal. One function of the dissonance is to attract the subject’s attention. After practicing this rebalancing skill, we feel the effect of mental effort as a sense of mild relief and increased focus.
However, any meditative type activity can have similar benefits, whether there is dissonance or not. Because of the considerably enhanced focus derived from regular meditation, a person can learn to control various aspects of the mind and body in pleasant, non-painful ways (Gilula, 2005). Mind machines and binaural beat technology such as Hemisynch and Holosynch CDs are alternatives for self-regulation.
DIGITAL CONTEXT: In 1993 I wrote an article on the Digital Universe for CHAOSOPHY Journal based on Fredkin's theory of digital physics, that information is more fundamental than matter and energy, that atoms, electrons, and quarks consist ultimately of bits--binary units of information. Online at http://asklepia.tripod.com/
Chaosophy/chaosophy21.html
A DIGITAL UNIVERSE?
SCIENCE MIRRORS ART; ART MIRRORS SCIENCE
DIGITAL CONTENT: The interface of computer science and physics has led to the concept that information may be as fundamental as matter and energy. Some believe that information is just one of many forms of matter and energy, which is embodied in things like a computer's electrons and a brain's neural firings. Others suggest information should be part of the new scientific triad--matter/energy/information--the main ingredients of reality.
Ed Fredkin goes one step further, with his notion of "digital physics." In this, and other systems, information is more fundamental than matter and energy. He believes that atoms, electrons, and quarks are ultimately binary bits of information. These discrete bits of information may be compared to the quantization of energy in light (photons). The work of Nobel laureate, T.D. Lee suggests that time may also be discrete.
Discrete states are the essence of the digital nature of computer operation. Discreteness depends ultimately on quantum mechanics. A general state which 'spreads' is a superposition of such discrete states.
Fredkin suggests that the universe may be a vast computer which creates reality through ceaseless repetition--taking information it has just transformed and transforming it further to generate pervasive complexity. Space and time are discrete, the laws of the universe are algorithmic, and the universe works according to the same principles as a computer.
According to Fredkin, not everything is best viewed as information, but it helps us model reality and create programs to test our notions. What he is saying is that "at the most basic level of complexity an information process runs what we think of as physics. At the much higher level of complexity life, DNA--the biochemical functions--are controlled by a digital information process. Then, at another level, our thought processes are basically information processing."
__________________________
"...‘our rulers’...are engaged in the manipulation of symbols. We must consider ourselves a symbolic, semantic class of life, and cannot cease from being so those who control the symbols rule us. "Bankers, priests, lawyers, politicians, [and news media] constitute one class [of our rulers] and work together. They do not produce any values but manipulate the values produced by others, and often pass signs for no value at all. Scientists and teachers also comprise a ruling class. They produce the main values mankind has, but, at present, they do not realize this. They are, in the main, ruled by the cunning methods of the first class." - Korzybski
_________________________
"The fault with modern society lies in its suppression of difference and its alienation of persons from what they can do. We must overturn established identities and affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, and so become all that we can become -- though we cannot know what that is in advance. The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity. "Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?" -Deleuze
INTENTIONALITY: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions
Jung (1961) said, "To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly; all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of life for better or worse.”
There are several subcultures whose worldviews embrace psi phenomena as Reality, or react as if they do. They range through governments to tribal people to new agers and neo-pagans to leading-edge researchers. Even the most skeptical scientist can be compartmentalized or even superstitious in his or her subjective thinking at times.
To conduct sound reseach, we must catch ourselves in the act of trying to verify our own preconceptions, a “perception Lab.” This is an intrisic problem of armchair scientists who are long on theory and short on experimentation. We have to pierce beyond the perceptual artifact to solid postulates, testable hypotheses, rigorous protocols, and acurate statistical analysis.
But psi may prove to be more than just an artifact of primitive belief. Meta-narratives emerge as mythologizing, literature, psychology, sociology, religion or philosophy and cutting-edge science theories. The philosophy of science describes the dynamics of the scientific method.
Just because the subject of psi remains objectively problematical doesn’t mean we should stop systematic investigation, both scientifically and metaphysically. Babies don’t know how the world works so they constantly keep testing their environment, over and over. Are we just cosmic babies, feeling our way along, blindly? We are when it comes to proofs of mind over matter.
Quantum Chaos
We must be willing to question our own beliefs, comprehending the nature of subjectivity, experimenter bias, and that the mind deploys them as explanations for unknown agency, the blindspots of our consciousness. As ever, any postulate and hypothesis we can make depends on "which" physics it is based in, since there are several competing models: Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Transactional, M-Theory, Plenum Physics, and a wide variety of idiosyncratic theories.
This simple fact makes quantum physics a domain of self-contained, mutually exclusive belief systems with their own presumed truths about the primordial nature of Reality. New Agers and armchair philosophers often confound and cobble them together into half-baked theories, sometimes with fantasies of “ascension”, aliens, and evolution.
“Fill in the blank” explanations can be outlandish, possible, plausible, probable, or match reality. The distinction between "true believers" and skeptics comes at the point of interpretation of phenomena, attributions of the source of events or perceptions, whether one's model is psibernetics, "magical thinking", external agents, nested hierarchies, holistic mysticism, or physicalism.
A theist will tend to attribute positive expectations of “agency” to God, a pagan to nature, a humanist to self, and an atheist to complex dynamics, or randomness,. A debunker is dismissive. A true skeptic remains open-minded, at home in the ambiguity. And the loose use of the buzzword ‘intentionality’ leaves its agent or means totally ambiguous.
My Karma Ran Over My Dogma
This fashionable term for mind/matter interaction, "intentionality", fails as a shorthand to explain anything. You may as well call it karma, luck, or free will, or True Will, like the magicians do. Karma, whether you believe in it or not, at its root just means natural consequences of behavior.
Does it really work to claim an intention to be intentional? Doesn’t intentionality always imply future tense rather than concrete results? If the implication is an ‘intentional result’ isn’t that an acausal pretzel-twist in logic? Jung tried to account for an acausal factor with his notion of synchronicity, but it is hardly testable, though most of us notice meaningful coicidences all the time.
Even in clinical research, to name psi expression intentionality doesn't make it so. In actual fact, most of us can’t form enough intentionality to drink the amount of water the body needs each day or eat healthy. The unresolved New Year’s resolution is a truism.
What makes us think we can be more consistently intentional in the extradimensional? It is a ‘fantasy of intentionality,’ a subjective hypothesis that human intervention at some subtle level perturbs outcomes in some desirable manner. It might express our insecurity in an uncertain, uncontrollable world more than a physics process.
People often mystify their experiences unnecessarily when they don't have a more plausible explanation. It is endlessly interesting to speculate on, but the notion that the all-knowing nonlocal field identity exerts some influence over environment and personality may simply be mythopoesis, myth-making.
In mythopoesis many cultural forms meet and form an organic fusion. Does the contemporary revival of myth with focus on our creative potential point to the possibility of a unified world, a neo-Utopian variant where we wish and make it so?
The real question is why do all cultures engage in mythopoeisis? Mythopoesis means change, re-mythologizing in times of cultural chaos. What I mean here is not a mis-spelling, but an amalgamation of mythopoesis or story-making and the autopoeitic self-organization of chaos theory; self-maintaining unity.
Autopoiesis describes the way living systems address and engage domains in which they operate. What human need do these mythically patterned meta-theories fill? Identification with the field body may just be another way of being attached to a belief to explain the Unknowable, to push the agent beyond the threshold of observability.
The Emperor’s New Intentionality
The notion "we create our own reality" is a relative truth. From a Jungian point of view, any "intentionality" we could exert would be subject to the competing agendas of autonomous archetyal forces and dynamics that don't give a fig about your personality needs. Existentially, we are moved by more than a single metaphor, a single role, a singlular self-image. Whatever you choose to call them, we harbor nested competing agendas, conscious and unconscious.
Even in chaos theory, many forget there are strange repellors as well as strange attractors. Resonance is another buzzword rapidly equalling the old standby of spiritualism, “vibrations”, which has found vindication in quantum and vacuum fluctuation But somehow, both in our lives and quantum mechanics, these extradimensional entanglements are unobservable, beyond physics, and therefore strictly speaking, metaphysical.
The ancients conceived of magic working through focus and will. Now a diffuse holistic awareness is preferred, perturbing the quantum flow. Whether we think we are changing reality through a focused act of will or even by "broad-beam" self-transformation the whole scenario may be a self-delusion cast in perennial truths and pseudo-scientific terms.
If it bothers or offends you to think otherwise, this is more likely true. There is emotional attachment there, not clarity. If you think you can do it by "aligning" yourself rather than manifestation, why are you harboring fantasies of misalignment? It makes little sense that the particle "intends" and the field "corresponds". In Nature, the reverse leads to manifestion.
Is this notion harboring a demiurgic God-complex, a control fantasy in an otherwise uncontrollable world? If we believe in God, why do we presume to interfere with that fiat by introjecting our small agendas? Does it conceal a spiritual hubris to be co-equal or co-creator with divinity? Or, more to the point, why would we look to the divine as an agent of psychophysical dynamics?
Nonlocal Intentions
Intentions may or may not exert a nonlocal organizing effect. They do when they mobilize effective action. Often the 'butterfly effect' of chaos theory is invoked for pumping holistic mental effects up to macro- proportions. But chaos theory doesn't organize through intentionality; just the opposite, by criticality.
Correlation is not identity. There is appearance being and process being, which correlate with particle/wave. We are both particle and field, and they are both complex, and may be analogous or metaphorically connected to the hypothesis of intentionality - but that doesn't make it real: it makes it a belief, an operational worldview. The ego somehow facilitating the holistic self to manifest is solipsistic, because the field self is in no way diminished even by negative thinking by personality.
If you think intentionality works for you, that is an interpretation, an arbitrary allocation of a cause to a perceived effect, which may be largely unrelated and/or statistically irrelevant. Once the narrative is "set", that becomes the story and the person zealously sticks to it, right or wrong. This is human nature and the nature of emotional investment. It may be the eternal human yen to create order from the fear and chaos of our lives and cleave to faith in the Great Beyond, whatever one thinks resides there.
A myriad of "brandable" new age technologies are based on non-scientific interpretations and confabulations of scientific theory. Though having its own organic root in metaphysics, new age tech has hijacked and romanticized the philosophical territory of psi research with its own prosaic interpretations. Because it makes a romantically appealing metaphor doesn't mean it matches up with naked Reality. Often incompatible physics theories are confounded together for the so-called explanations.
Psi and Intentionality
Psi researchers must be careful to see these explanatory buzzwords like 'alignment' and 'intentionality' for what they are, smoke and mirrors explaining nothing, not what some say they are. Like the next new buzzword, "extradimensionality", it is just a displacement into the Unknown of a process that may be something entirely other than what the experiencer thinks it is.
To get to the Truth we have to follow the age-old axiom to ‘Know Thyself,’ and be willing to engage in some conceptual atom-smashing of our cherished notions. Otherwise, one engages in a pre-conceived, self-confirmatory journey for validation not a Quest for knowledge.
Rather than extradimensional participation in some subtle physics process, it may just be another trick of the mind - in the end, nothing more than a concept that doesn't match up with nor describe Reality. Oh sure, intentionality may function mystically in some nonfungable parallel universe, or that could be just another mentally attractive perennial fantasy. Those most concerned with “changing the paradigm” may be among those most firmly attached to their own idiosyncratic interpretations.
If there are memes in our culture, there are strange attractors in our thought patterns, that can harden into fixed beliefs. The fact is we don't know, and anyone who charges you and says they do is a either a fraud or self-deluded, or both. We are components of mythic culture which recursively regenerates itself in a network of self-similar productions.
Anywhere there is non-equilibrium, a gap in personal or cultural awareness, myth will self-organize a meta-narrative to fill the lacuna. Mythic beliefs are self-contained. Even fantasies of holism automatically exclude other options, except through embedding and hierarchy.
There are many aspects of psi, some more credible and testable than others. ESP (information transfer) is the most plausble, psychokinesis (mind over matter) most problematical. Serious researchers are beyond parlour tricks such as seances, regressions, or ghostbusting.
Still, there is no scientific or spiritual consensus about the mechanics of physics or consciousness, much less mind/matter interaction or the influence of one mind on another organism. But Mystery doesn't need to be metaphysical, mystical, nor dismissed as "noetic nonsense". It simply isn't limited by any of our concepts nor scientific blindspots. We can just admit we stand in the Mystery.
The way to keep a path alive is to walk on it. And remember common sense, such as, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Even though we’d all like to think so, wishing and even earnest visualization doesn’t always make it so.
There are several subcultures whose worldviews embrace psi phenomena as Reality, or react as if they do. They range through governments to tribal people to new agers and neo-pagans to leading-edge researchers. Even the most skeptical scientist can be compartmentalized or even superstitious in his or her subjective thinking at times.
To conduct sound reseach, we must catch ourselves in the act of trying to verify our own preconceptions, a “perception Lab.” This is an intrisic problem of armchair scientists who are long on theory and short on experimentation. We have to pierce beyond the perceptual artifact to solid postulates, testable hypotheses, rigorous protocols, and acurate statistical analysis.
But psi may prove to be more than just an artifact of primitive belief. Meta-narratives emerge as mythologizing, literature, psychology, sociology, religion or philosophy and cutting-edge science theories. The philosophy of science describes the dynamics of the scientific method.
Just because the subject of psi remains objectively problematical doesn’t mean we should stop systematic investigation, both scientifically and metaphysically. Babies don’t know how the world works so they constantly keep testing their environment, over and over. Are we just cosmic babies, feeling our way along, blindly? We are when it comes to proofs of mind over matter.
Quantum Chaos
We must be willing to question our own beliefs, comprehending the nature of subjectivity, experimenter bias, and that the mind deploys them as explanations for unknown agency, the blindspots of our consciousness. As ever, any postulate and hypothesis we can make depends on "which" physics it is based in, since there are several competing models: Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Transactional, M-Theory, Plenum Physics, and a wide variety of idiosyncratic theories.
This simple fact makes quantum physics a domain of self-contained, mutually exclusive belief systems with their own presumed truths about the primordial nature of Reality. New Agers and armchair philosophers often confound and cobble them together into half-baked theories, sometimes with fantasies of “ascension”, aliens, and evolution.
“Fill in the blank” explanations can be outlandish, possible, plausible, probable, or match reality. The distinction between "true believers" and skeptics comes at the point of interpretation of phenomena, attributions of the source of events or perceptions, whether one's model is psibernetics, "magical thinking", external agents, nested hierarchies, holistic mysticism, or physicalism.
A theist will tend to attribute positive expectations of “agency” to God, a pagan to nature, a humanist to self, and an atheist to complex dynamics, or randomness,. A debunker is dismissive. A true skeptic remains open-minded, at home in the ambiguity. And the loose use of the buzzword ‘intentionality’ leaves its agent or means totally ambiguous.
My Karma Ran Over My Dogma
This fashionable term for mind/matter interaction, "intentionality", fails as a shorthand to explain anything. You may as well call it karma, luck, or free will, or True Will, like the magicians do. Karma, whether you believe in it or not, at its root just means natural consequences of behavior.
Does it really work to claim an intention to be intentional? Doesn’t intentionality always imply future tense rather than concrete results? If the implication is an ‘intentional result’ isn’t that an acausal pretzel-twist in logic? Jung tried to account for an acausal factor with his notion of synchronicity, but it is hardly testable, though most of us notice meaningful coicidences all the time.
Even in clinical research, to name psi expression intentionality doesn't make it so. In actual fact, most of us can’t form enough intentionality to drink the amount of water the body needs each day or eat healthy. The unresolved New Year’s resolution is a truism.
What makes us think we can be more consistently intentional in the extradimensional? It is a ‘fantasy of intentionality,’ a subjective hypothesis that human intervention at some subtle level perturbs outcomes in some desirable manner. It might express our insecurity in an uncertain, uncontrollable world more than a physics process.
People often mystify their experiences unnecessarily when they don't have a more plausible explanation. It is endlessly interesting to speculate on, but the notion that the all-knowing nonlocal field identity exerts some influence over environment and personality may simply be mythopoesis, myth-making.
In mythopoesis many cultural forms meet and form an organic fusion. Does the contemporary revival of myth with focus on our creative potential point to the possibility of a unified world, a neo-Utopian variant where we wish and make it so?
The real question is why do all cultures engage in mythopoeisis? Mythopoesis means change, re-mythologizing in times of cultural chaos. What I mean here is not a mis-spelling, but an amalgamation of mythopoesis or story-making and the autopoeitic self-organization of chaos theory; self-maintaining unity.
Autopoiesis describes the way living systems address and engage domains in which they operate. What human need do these mythically patterned meta-theories fill? Identification with the field body may just be another way of being attached to a belief to explain the Unknowable, to push the agent beyond the threshold of observability.
The Emperor’s New Intentionality
The notion "we create our own reality" is a relative truth. From a Jungian point of view, any "intentionality" we could exert would be subject to the competing agendas of autonomous archetyal forces and dynamics that don't give a fig about your personality needs. Existentially, we are moved by more than a single metaphor, a single role, a singlular self-image. Whatever you choose to call them, we harbor nested competing agendas, conscious and unconscious.
Even in chaos theory, many forget there are strange repellors as well as strange attractors. Resonance is another buzzword rapidly equalling the old standby of spiritualism, “vibrations”, which has found vindication in quantum and vacuum fluctuation But somehow, both in our lives and quantum mechanics, these extradimensional entanglements are unobservable, beyond physics, and therefore strictly speaking, metaphysical.
The ancients conceived of magic working through focus and will. Now a diffuse holistic awareness is preferred, perturbing the quantum flow. Whether we think we are changing reality through a focused act of will or even by "broad-beam" self-transformation the whole scenario may be a self-delusion cast in perennial truths and pseudo-scientific terms.
If it bothers or offends you to think otherwise, this is more likely true. There is emotional attachment there, not clarity. If you think you can do it by "aligning" yourself rather than manifestation, why are you harboring fantasies of misalignment? It makes little sense that the particle "intends" and the field "corresponds". In Nature, the reverse leads to manifestion.
Is this notion harboring a demiurgic God-complex, a control fantasy in an otherwise uncontrollable world? If we believe in God, why do we presume to interfere with that fiat by introjecting our small agendas? Does it conceal a spiritual hubris to be co-equal or co-creator with divinity? Or, more to the point, why would we look to the divine as an agent of psychophysical dynamics?
Nonlocal Intentions
Intentions may or may not exert a nonlocal organizing effect. They do when they mobilize effective action. Often the 'butterfly effect' of chaos theory is invoked for pumping holistic mental effects up to macro- proportions. But chaos theory doesn't organize through intentionality; just the opposite, by criticality.
Correlation is not identity. There is appearance being and process being, which correlate with particle/wave. We are both particle and field, and they are both complex, and may be analogous or metaphorically connected to the hypothesis of intentionality - but that doesn't make it real: it makes it a belief, an operational worldview. The ego somehow facilitating the holistic self to manifest is solipsistic, because the field self is in no way diminished even by negative thinking by personality.
If you think intentionality works for you, that is an interpretation, an arbitrary allocation of a cause to a perceived effect, which may be largely unrelated and/or statistically irrelevant. Once the narrative is "set", that becomes the story and the person zealously sticks to it, right or wrong. This is human nature and the nature of emotional investment. It may be the eternal human yen to create order from the fear and chaos of our lives and cleave to faith in the Great Beyond, whatever one thinks resides there.
A myriad of "brandable" new age technologies are based on non-scientific interpretations and confabulations of scientific theory. Though having its own organic root in metaphysics, new age tech has hijacked and romanticized the philosophical territory of psi research with its own prosaic interpretations. Because it makes a romantically appealing metaphor doesn't mean it matches up with naked Reality. Often incompatible physics theories are confounded together for the so-called explanations.
Psi and Intentionality
Psi researchers must be careful to see these explanatory buzzwords like 'alignment' and 'intentionality' for what they are, smoke and mirrors explaining nothing, not what some say they are. Like the next new buzzword, "extradimensionality", it is just a displacement into the Unknown of a process that may be something entirely other than what the experiencer thinks it is.
To get to the Truth we have to follow the age-old axiom to ‘Know Thyself,’ and be willing to engage in some conceptual atom-smashing of our cherished notions. Otherwise, one engages in a pre-conceived, self-confirmatory journey for validation not a Quest for knowledge.
Rather than extradimensional participation in some subtle physics process, it may just be another trick of the mind - in the end, nothing more than a concept that doesn't match up with nor describe Reality. Oh sure, intentionality may function mystically in some nonfungable parallel universe, or that could be just another mentally attractive perennial fantasy. Those most concerned with “changing the paradigm” may be among those most firmly attached to their own idiosyncratic interpretations.
If there are memes in our culture, there are strange attractors in our thought patterns, that can harden into fixed beliefs. The fact is we don't know, and anyone who charges you and says they do is a either a fraud or self-deluded, or both. We are components of mythic culture which recursively regenerates itself in a network of self-similar productions.
Anywhere there is non-equilibrium, a gap in personal or cultural awareness, myth will self-organize a meta-narrative to fill the lacuna. Mythic beliefs are self-contained. Even fantasies of holism automatically exclude other options, except through embedding and hierarchy.
There are many aspects of psi, some more credible and testable than others. ESP (information transfer) is the most plausble, psychokinesis (mind over matter) most problematical. Serious researchers are beyond parlour tricks such as seances, regressions, or ghostbusting.
Still, there is no scientific or spiritual consensus about the mechanics of physics or consciousness, much less mind/matter interaction or the influence of one mind on another organism. But Mystery doesn't need to be metaphysical, mystical, nor dismissed as "noetic nonsense". It simply isn't limited by any of our concepts nor scientific blindspots. We can just admit we stand in the Mystery.
The way to keep a path alive is to walk on it. And remember common sense, such as, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Even though we’d all like to think so, wishing and even earnest visualization doesn’t always make it so.
(c) 2010-2014, Iona Miller, all rights reserved on all graphic and written content.
If you mirror my works, pls include the credit and URL LINK for reference.
If you mirror my works, pls include the credit and URL LINK for reference.