On Macrobes

Over the course of several prior posts I have noted encounters with what appear to be supernatural beings. An entire article, Contact, dealt heavily with this topic, noting the similarities between encounters with clowns, UFOs, mythological beings, and visions seen in entheogen induced states. In The Nine I recounted how a group based around Dr. Andrija Puharich (which included high society types such Arthur Young, as well as members of the Forbes and Astor families, among others) became convinced that they were channeling the Great Ennead. The Great Ennead, the gods of ancient Egypt, in turn claimed to be an advanced alien species looking to guide the spiritual development of humanity, or something along those lines. Finally, I recounted the supernatural encounters of members of Project Grill Flame, the US Army's remote viewing program, in a more recent piece.

At this point I would like to delve more into what exactly these beings are. In the process the cart will be put before the horse somewhat in that I will not attempt to explain heavily how these being's coexist with us upon the Earth while largely avoiding detection. This is, of course, an important topic but at present I still have more research I wish to do before writing at length on it. For the time being, I present my readers with the occult view of reality:

"...there was fabricated a secret theological system in which God was considered as the Grand Man and, conversely, man as the little god. Continuing this analogy, the universe was regarded as a man and, conversely, man as a miniature universe. The greater universe was termed the Macrocosm -the Great World or Body -and the Divine Life or spiritual entity controlling its functions was called the Macroprosophus. Man's body, or the individual human universe, was termed the Microcosm, and the Divine Life or spiritual entity controlling its functions was called the Microprosophus. The pagan Mysteries were primarily concerned with instructing neophytes in the true relationship existing between the Microcosmic man and those of the Macrocosmic Man constituted the most prized possession of the early initiates.
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P Hall, pgs. 222-223)

In other words, the 'Microcosm' is the physical realm that we human beings inhabit. The 'Macrocosm' is the hidden realm inhabited by supernatural beings. As an interesting side note, I must present the physicist David Bohm's views on the nature of reality and the plausibility of this occult perception of it:

"One of Bohm's most startling assertions is that the tangible reality of our everyday lives is really a kind of illusion, like a holographic image. Underlying it is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all objects and appearances of our physical world in much the same way that a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram. Bohm calls this deeper level of reality the implicate (which means 'enfolded') order, and he refers to our own level of existence as the explicate, or unfolded, order.

"He uses these terms because he sees the manifestation of all forms in the universe as the result of countless enfoldings and unfoldings between these two orders. For example, Bohm believes an electron is not one thing but a totality or ensemble enfolded throughout the whole of space. When an instrument detects the presence of a single electron it is simply because one aspect of the electron's ensemble has unfolded, similar to the way an ink drop unfolds out of the glycerine, at that particular location. When an electron appears to be moving it is due to a continuous series of such unfoldments and enfoldments.

"Put another way, electrons and all other particles are no more substantive or permanent than the form a geyser of water takes as it gushes out of a fountain. They are sustained by a constant influx from the implicate order, and when a particle appears to be destroyed, it is not lost. It has merely enfolded back into the deeper order from which it sprang. A piece of holographic film and the image it generates are also an example of an implicate and explicate order. The film is an implicate order because the image encoded in its interference patterns is a hidden totality enfolded throughout the whole. The hologram projected from the film is an explicate order because it represents the unfolded and perceptible version of the image."
(The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot, pgs. 46-47) 

Here we see the Macrocosm and Microcosm recast as the 'implicate' and 'explicate' orders, respectively, yet the principles remain remarkably similar. We can also find overlap between the concept of the Macrocosm/implicate order and what shamanistic beliefs often referred to as the 'Otherworld'; or, as researcher Patrick Harpur dubs it, the 'daimonic reality':

"The Otherworld is always imagined as beginning at the edge of our known world. It can be the wilderness outside the city walls or the unexplored regions at the edge of maps, labeled 'Here be dragons.' It can begin at the brink of the ocean -or at the golden gate. As the boundaries of the Unknown are pushed back, the world largely mapped, the Otherworld is located in outer space. Early aliens claimed to come from Venus, Mars, or the Moon; later, when these planets seemed more local, less remote, they claimed to come from distant star systems such as Zeta Reticuli or the Pleiades.

"Religion sets the boundary of the Unknown at the limits of human life. In traditional cultures, the other world beyond life, after death, is immanent -another reality contained within this one. In Christianity, it is transcendent, a separate reality removed from Earth. Scientism recognizes no Otherworld, but... daimonic reality has a way of subverting it. Thus scientism constructs its own literal versions of a transcendent and an immanent Otherworld. The former appears in the weird models of the universe articulated by astronomers and cosmologists; the latter appears in the speculations of nuclear physicists.

"It is worth lingering a moment over the Otherworld of the nuclear physicists, if only because their discipline is widely held to be the doyen of sciences. They, above all, seek to establish the 'facts' of matter. I would maintain, however, that their subatomic realm is merely another variant of daimonic reality. Everything that is predicated of it could, for instance, be applied with equal justice to the land of Fairy. Both worlds invert the cozy Newtonian world we inhabit: laws of time, space, or causality and, of course, matter are ignored. (Once past the 'event horizon' of a black hole, say astrophysicists, time slows to a standstill; or, once inside the black hole, it 'runs backwards.') Subatomic physics introduce extra dimensions -'string theory' allows for ten, I think: our four, plus six more, compacted very tightly. Multi-dimensionality is a staple of science fiction and ufology.

"The 'daimons' of subatomic 'inner space' are called particles, although strictly speaking they aren't -electrons, for example, are both particles waves at the same time. They are paradoxical, both there and not-there, like fairies. Like UFOs they cannot be measured exactly: we can calculate their speed, or their position, but not both. This, roughly, is what Werner Heisenberg called the Uncertainty Principle, and it applies to all daimonic phenomena. We cannot know subatomic particles in themselves; we can only identify them via their daimonic traces. Like minute Yetis, they used to leave tracks in vats of detergent placed at the bottom of mines;nowadays they are more likely to leave their spoor on computer screens linked to particle accelerators."
(Daimonic Reality, pgs. 172-173) 

And this provides me with a fine lead into the concept of 'daimons.' These beings have been called various things over the years, but for the purposes of this blog they are dubbed 'Macrobes.'

The word Macrobe is generally associated with the work of Michael Tsarion, though it is much older. Tsarion claims the word was originally coined by the Elizabethan mage John Dee to describe the beings he encountered during his Enochian working. This is quite possible as I have yet to see anything that contradicts this account. Regardless, occultists had developed the Micro/Macro view of the world by at least the 19th century, though a hidden realm had been acknowledged since the beginning of time.

"Humanity has always been attended by invisible beings. Guides, guardian spirits and 'helpers' populate tribal lore and scriptural texts, they reappear as guardian angels in the Christian tradition, they form the basis of modern Spiritualism and channeling, and they vie for attention in spiritism of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Latin America. Throughout recorded history, an abundance of writing -ranging from the fervently religious to the studiously anthropological -testify to an oft-encountered sense of presence.

"Embracing all races and creeds, the non-physical guardians is generally endowed with a common aim: to protect its wards and to promote personal growth by encouraging adherence to the highest ideals. The names assigned to these spirits are as diverse as the cultures in which they appear: the Romans called them genii; the Greeks, daimones, the Zoroastrians, fravashis; the Mongols, Dzol-Dzajagatsi; the natives of New Guinea, tapum, to name but a few.

"Even before history was recorded, shamans worldwide were invoking guardian spirits for the purposes of healing and protection. The means of invocation have taken many forms, from sleep deprivation and the ingestion of hallucinogens to enforced seclusion and acoustic stimulation, usually involving extended exposure to loud and persistent drumming."
(The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts, Joe Fisher, pg. 82)

Medieval occultist divided macrobes into different classes:

"According to medieval occultists, all invisible beings can be divided into four classes: the angels, the gods of the ancients; the devils or demons, the fallen angels; the souls of the dead; and the elemental spirits, which correspond to Kirk's Secret Commonwealth. In the fourth group are the gnomes, who inhabit the earth and correspond to mine-haunting fairies, goblins, pixies, korrigans, leprechauns, and the domovoys of Russian legends, and the sylphs, who inhabit the air. These subdivisions are obviously arbitrary, and Paracelsus himself would admit it is extremely difficult to provide definitions for those various classes. The bodies of the Elementals are 'of an elastic semi-material essence, etherial enough so as not to be detected by the physical sight, and they may change their forms according to certain laws.'"
(Dimensions, Jacques Vallee, pg. 90)

Daimons and elementals are considered to be similar beings in occult literature. 33rd degree Freemason and occultist extraordinaire Manly P Hall notes in his epic Secret Teachings of All Ages that "The Greeks gave the name daemon to some of these elementals, especially those of the higher order, and worshiped them" (pg. 330).

Even Dr. Samuel Sagan, in his clinical work at the Clairvision School of Australia, observed similar entities in clients he treated:

"...fragments, the astral bits that break off from the shattered astral bodies of the dead. We studied a few particular types of fragments -those left following a miscarriage, a termination, or a delivery, or after the natural 'death' of a twin in the womb..

"Fragments are not the only type of entities, but they are by far the most common. However, they can sometimes be confused because, even though they come from human beings, they do not necessarily look human."
(Entity Possession, pg. 102)

Personally, I am very skeptical of 'ghosts', based on both real life experiences as well as occult interpretations.

"Many a magician has lost his life as the result of opening a way whereby submundane creatures could become active participants in his affair. When Eliphas Levi invoked the spirit of Apollonius of Tyana, what did he hope to accomplish? Is the gratification of curiosity a motive sufficient to warrant the devotion of an entire lifetime to a dangerous and unprofitable pursuit? If the living Apollonius refused to divulge his secrets to the profane, is there any probability that after death he would disclose them to the curious-minded? Levi himself did not dare assert that the specter which appeared to him was actually the great philosopher, for Levi realized only too well the proclivity of elementals to impersonate those who have passed on. The majority of modern mediumistic apparitions are but elemental creatures masquerading through bodies composed of thought substance supplied by the very persons desiring to behold these wraiths of decarnate beings."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P Hall, pg. 317)

Sagan's concept of fragments, derived from his own observations and Eastern teachings, is more plauisible. What appear as 'ghosts' are not the spirits of the dead per se, but a fragment of the spirit. While insisting that most entity encounters are these fragments, he still acknowledges elementals:

"Elementals are nonphysical little beings that stand behind earth, water, air, or fire, or behind flowers, trees, or other plants. They can be related to the various spirits of nature of which can be found in nearly all the mythologies and folklores of the planet...

"Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan records on entities all mention the possibility of elemental spirits of nature behaving like entities at times and creating various health or mental disorders. If we analyze the symptoms reported by this client, we can see that they correspond to qualities the ancient medical lores (both eastern and western) used to relate to the earth elemental: heaviness, lethargy, inertia, feeling cold and craving for the Sun's warmth and so forth. The 'little people' are one of the ways elemental beings can be perceived. The elemental beings behind the elements have the reputation of being hard to see, for they are tricky and like to hide."
(Entity Possession, Samuel Sagan, pgs. 105-106)

The legendary Swiss psychologist Carl Jung also embraced the concept of 'daimons' in his theories of archetypes, of which I've written more on here. For our purposes, here are some of Jung's views on daimons as they relate to archetypes:

"In his earlier work Jung would have called the personal daimons complexes -those parts of his patients' unconscious psyches which, having as we find in cases of 'multiple personality disorder.' These psychic fragments are like personalities in their own right, with their own voices. The aim of psychotherapy was (broadly) to trace the cause of splitting off in the patient's history and bring it to consciousness so that the fragment or complex might be reintegrated and so cease to make itself heard through undesirable symptoms. Strickly speaking, we do not have complexes -they have us. We are powerless in the grip of obesessions, compulsions, fixations, aversions, and so on.

"But even as the complexes are unraveled they reveal contents which do not belong to personal history -contents which point downward, as it were, to the impersonal world of the archetype. Here we find daimons in whose grip we are equally powerless, no longer in the neurotic sense, but in the sense of being impelled by destiny, by a god.

"In addition, Jung recognized that it is the nature of the ego -the sense of 'I-ness' -to deceive us into believing that we are single unified personalities. But in reality the psyche is composed of many different personalities, each which claims its own, which the ego is driven to ignore, subordinate, or annihilate. Jung therefore wwanted to shift the center of the personality away from the ego and towards the self, which he conceived as a complexio oppositorum, a complex of opposites where our different and opposing personalities could be harmoniously accommodated, allowed to co-inhere as a kind of paradoxical multiplicity-in-unity.

"Jung granted the relative autonomy of the complexes by calling them the 'littlke people.' He saw that they related to the archetypes as the daimons related to, and flowed into, the gods. The relaionship is not static but dynamic: it forms archetypal patterns -narrative actions which we call myth."
(Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur, pgs. 45-46)

But being recast as a psychological complex is not the only thing the modern world has done to the macrobes. Another role they're speculated to play is the lead in the whole UFO phenomenon which has become a ligament modern myth. For years researchers such as John Keel and Jacques Vallee have pointed out the similarities between UFO encounters and those of the Middle Ages with elementals and in antiquity with daimons. I've written more on these links, as well as the relationship between mythology and UFOs to entheogens, here. Harpur notes on the growing modern myth of aliens:

"In one sense, the problem of the grays is not especially pressing. Only in the USA, it seems, have encounters with them risen to the surface and begun to be noticed by the instruments of official culture such as the press, the academic world, the Churches, and so forth. This testimony to the considerable groundswell of interest they have aroused in popular, unofficial culture. Books about them, unconsidered by 'serious' or literary people, have sold not merely in the thousands, but in millions. A 1991 survey of 6,000 American adults concluded that as many as 3.7 million abductions by grays may have taken place... it revealed that daimonic experiences are -as anyone who bothers to ask around knows -extremely common. Moreover, whatever the case may be as regards the number or actuality of abductions, they constitute a grassroots belief, a modern constellation in the collective unconscious, a stirring of our universal Imagination, which may justly be called a contemporary myth.

"I have no doubt that the grays will fade away as the imaginative configurations which contain them becomes exhausted... But the grays will reappear in different shapes, while new variants of their myth will be woven out of old threads. For daimons exist, and will continue to exist. Like the fairies, they retain the same shape as long as they are attached to a relatively unchanging landscape and to a relatively unchanging culture. But this does not make them any less mysterious. So, too, it is not possible to explain the grays; but we are entitled to ask whether a changig landscape and culture has anything to do with the form in which they have chosen to appear -to ask, that is, 'Why grays? Why now?'"
(Daimonic Reality, pgs. 267-268)

It's a good question, one Harpur largely avoids answering. I myself largely believe the rise of the modern UFO movement combined with the decline of the 'fairy-faith' has more to do with a changing world view. In antiquity and the Middle Ages the West was dominated by a religious world view. In the modern era our world view has progressively been usurped by science. Thusly our myths reflect a changing of the guard -now daimons appear to us as 'nuts and bolts' flying saucers that can theoretically be explained by Newtonian science if one doesn't go to deeply into the phenomena. This could also explain why, in non-Western countries, UFO contactees are as likely to see dwarves as grays in those spaceships. The ability to shape shift in relation to the observer's perspective would also be consistent with quantum physics:

"Perhaps most astonishing of all is that there is compelling evidence that the only time quanta manifest as particles is when we are looking at them. For instance, when an electron isn't being looked at, experimental findings suggest that it is always a wave...

"Bohr pointed out that if subatomic particles only come into existence in the presence of an observer, then it is meaningless to speak of a particle's properties and characteristics as existing before they are observed. This was disturbing to many physicists, for much of science was based on discovering the properties of phenomena."
(The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot, pgs. 34-35)

And that, I think, is enough on Macrobes and the other side for one installment. In a future post I shall go into more detail on interactions with these beings and the fallout that can occur.

Happy Sementivae?





January 24th marked the beginning of the ancient Roman festival of Sementivae, I think. Thus far this festival has proved to be remarkably difficult to find solid information on. Many of the usual sources I use for mythology such as Frazer or Campbell have no explicative mention of the festival. The closest I found in my copy of The Golden Bough is this:

"The Sicilians celebrated the festival of Demeter at the beginning of the sowing, and the festival of Persephone at the harvest. This proves that they associated, if they did not identify, the Mother Goddess with the seed-corn and the Daughter Goddess with the ripe ears."
(James Frazer, pg. 409) 

Online searches seemingly generate nothing but the same Wikipedia entry:

"It was a type of feriae conceptivae [or conceptae]. These free days were held every year, but not on certain or fixed days, the time being every year appointed by the magistrates or priests (quotannis a magistratibus vel sacerdotibus concipiuntur,^[1]

"It was held in honor of Ceres (the goddess of agriculture) and Tellus (Mother Earth). The initial half of the event was a festival in honor of Tellus which ran from January 24 through January 26. The festival honoring Ceres occurred one week later, starting February 2. The Sementina dies were kept in seed-time at Rome for the purpose of praying for a good crop; it lasted only for one day, which was fixed by the pontiffs.^[2] At the same time the Paganalia were observed in the country."

Wikipedia is of course not the world's most reliable source of information, and given that the article gives fixed dates for the festival after declaring that there  were no such fixed dates, one most reasonably take it with a grain of salt.

Still, given the events that have transpired over this past week, I can't shake the feeling that this festival is important to their understanding. You see Demeter and Ceres are the same goddess and both have also been closely linked to the Egyptian goddess Isis. All three goddesses are also corn goddesses, hence Ceres' involvement in Sementivae, a festival in celebration of the sowing.

"Dionysus was not the only Greek deity whose tragic story and ritual appear to reflect the decay and revival of vegetation. In another form and with a different application the old tale reappears in the myth of Demeter and Persephone. Substantially their myth is identical with the Syrian one of Aprodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the Phrygian one of Cybele and Attis, and the Egyptian one of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek fable, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian counterparts, a goddess mourns the loss of a loved one, who personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in winter to revive in the spring..."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pg. 405)

Corn and Ceres are both very important within the ancient Mystery Schools and modern Freemasonry, as well as the founding of the United States. Historian David Ovason has argued compellingly that the architecture of Washington, D.C. was laid in such away to correspond to the movements of the constellation Virgo, named after another Greek goddess closely associated with the corn.

"This stellar Virgin had been the Mother Goddess of the pagan religions, the Isis of ancient Egypt. The image of Isis-Virgo holding  an ear of corn, on one of the Egyptian zodiacs at Denderah, is scarcely different in symbolic force from the more elaborate images of Virgo found on a thousand modern zodiacs. Even late-medieval images of Isis reflect the ancient tradition of the corn, for the goddess is depicted as 'the Great Mother of the Gods' with wheat ears sprouting from her crown, the Moon covering her private parts, and her entire body flecked with stars.

"The Symbolism of corn so proliferates in Washington, D.C., that we should pause to consider its importance. As we have seen already, in astrology the corn sheaf is a Virgoan symbol, as the prime star in the constellation Spica represents the corn or wheat in the hand of the goddess. This corn may be traced back to the ancient Mysteries of Ceres, and beyond, to the even earlier Egyptian Mysteries of Isis. Although seemingly divested of these atrological undertones, corn was held by the Masons as a particularly sacred symbol:

"The intelligent and worthy Mason cannot contemplate this simple symbol, the Ear of Corn, without lifting up his heart in thankful acknowledgement of the goodness of God, and of all the benefits bestowed by His hand."

(The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital, pgs. 154-155 David Ovason)

Ceres is obviously very important to both Masonry, and the occult workings behind the founding of the United States. As such, I find it highly significant that much social unrest has broken out both domestically and internationally as we pass through Sementivae, the Festival of Sowing. The Roman spring began officially on February 5th. As such, midwinter was perceived as a time of purification and fertility -of wiping the slate clean before the flowering of spring.

As such, we must carefully note what has been sown over the past week. Two major memes from this past year are already beginning to bear major fruit. One would be the events transpiring in North Africa, all seemingly sparked by an event that transpired on December 17th. The revolt began in Tunisia, but now events are spreading across North Africa. From MSNBC:

"Thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of Sanaa Thursday to demand a change of government, inspired by the unrest that has ousted Tunisia's leader and spread to Egypt this week.

"Reuters witnesses estimated that around 16,000 Yemenis demonstrated in four parts of Sanaa in the largest rally since a wave of protests rocked Yemen last week, and protesters vowed to escalate the unrest unless their demands were met."

More on the events transpiring in Egypt from the BBC:

"Nobel peace laureate and Egyptian opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei has arrived in Cairo as anti-government protests continue to spread.

"A Bedouin protester was shot dead in the Sinai region on Thursday, bringing this week's death toll to seven.

"There were also protests in the cities of Cairo, Suez and Ismailiya.

"The governing party says it is willing to listen to public grievances such as unemployment but has cracked down on protests, arresting up to 1,000 people.

"Speaking on his arrival in Cairo, Mr ElBaradei said he would join the protests.

"'I wish we did not have to go out on the streets to press the regime to act,' he said, according to Reuters news agency.

"The protests are expected to increase on Friday, when the weekend begins in Egypt and millions gather at mosques for prayers."

Needless to say, Egypt may be a bloody mess by tomorrow. As an interesting side note, the events in Tunisia were sparked by a self immolation that occurred on December 17th. December 17th is the date of the ancient Roman holiday of Saturnalia. Naturally it is dedicated to Saturn, the god of time and of the harvest/reaping. I find the overlap of the events in North Africa with festivals centered around reaping and sowing to be most interesting.

Domestically we see a continuation of the 'homegrown' terrorist meme. This one has gotten a lot of play since the Wikileaks flap began last year. It went on steroids with the Loughner shooting spree. Now MSNBC is championing another front in which the terror of civil unrest can be spread. So far it's being dubbed the 'War on Cops':

"A spate of shooting attacks on law enforcement officers has authorities concerned about a war on cops.

"In just 24 hours, at least 11 officers were shot. The shootings included Sunday attacks at traffic stops in Indiana and Oregon, a Detroit police station shooting that wounded four officers, and a shootout at a Port Orchard, Wash., Wal-Mart that injured two deputies. On Monday morning, two officers were shot dead and a U.S. Marshal was wounded by a gunman in St. Petersburg, Fla...

"With the Florida deaths, the nation is on track in 2011 to match the 162 police officers killed in the line of duty in 2010, said Steve Groeninger, spokesman for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that tracks police casualties. In January this year there have been 14 deaths, the same number as in January 2010, the fund posted on its web site."

MSNBC and likely other media outlets have been planting the memes over a 'War on Cops' since even before the Loughner shootings. Consider this piece from December 28th:

"These so-called cluster killings of more than one officer helped make 2010 a particularly dangerous year for law enforcement. Deaths in the line of duty jumped 37 percent to about 160 from 117 the year before, according to numbers as of Dec. 28 compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a nonprofit that tracks police deaths.

"There also was a spike in shooting deaths. Fifty-nine federal, state and local officers were killed by gunfire in 2010, a 20 percent jump from last year's figures when 49 were killed. And 73 officers died in traffic incidents, a rise from the 51 killed in 2009, according to the data."

However, this older article is at least a little more honest: It notes that 2010 wasn't even the most dangerous year for police in the past decade and that police fatalities were much higher in earlier eras. From the same article:

"Last year's toll of 117 officers killed was a 50-year low that encouraged police groups. But this year's total is more the norm than an anomaly: The number of police deaths has topped 160 five times since 2000, including 240 in 2001. The annual toll routinely topped 200 in the 1970s and before that in the 1920s."

It's also important to note that there are far more cops on the streets now than in either the 1920s or 1970s. Per capita cops are probably far safer in the first decade of the 21st century than they were during the 1970s despite recent upticks. This probably isn't an observation that many mainstream sources will be making, however. What is important is that you fear domestic terrorists shooting up the local Wal-Mart or Officer Bill as much as you do Arab terrorists spreading 'Islamofascism' in North Africa, or bombing Russian airports.

And thus, the sowing continues.

The Daimonic Land

Apocalypse Now is a film that has haunted me since the first time I viewed it as a young teenager. It has always been a film that has held profound significance for me at various times in my life irregardless of what head space I was in at the time. As the years have rolled along I continue to gain a new found admiration for the picture as I peel back the layers upon layers of symbolism.

It is an especially apt film for this blog, which largely deals with esoteric symbolism, of which Now is heavy in. Officially the film is based upon Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, yet it is as heavily inspired by T.S. Eliot, Jessie L Weston and James Frazer, as the film itself displays toward the end. The Conrad novel was also influenced by much of the same source material, especially Eliot.

At the core of Apocalypse Now is the myth of the Fisher King, a ruler who's health is tied to the conditions of the lands themselves. Many cultures share a variation on the Fisher King myth, which likely originated from Ireland via the Bran the Blessed myths. In Medieval Europe the Fisher King was adopted into the Arthurian cycle in which he became the keeper of the Holy Grail. With the aid of the Grail he lived an unnaturally long life, but had become wounded and ill. Because of this wound not only did the Fisher King become sick, but so to did the lands themselves, which became the Wasteland. Finally some of the Grail Knights, usually Perceval and/or Galahad, come to the King's aid. Over the course of this blog this illusion as well as several others will be discussed.

I should also note that I will primarily be dealing with the original, theatrical release of Apocalypse Now and not the Redux, director's cut version. While both have their merits, I've always preferred the original cut, which seems much more thematically tighter than the director's cut.

Anyway, our film begins with images of fiery destruction set to the sounds of the Doors song "The End." The Doors are an apt group to usher in a Vietnam movie as Jim Morrison's father, the Admiral George Stephen Morrison, was instrumental in escalating the Vietnam War. You see, it was Admiral Morrison that commanded US forces during the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident which led a Congressional resolution authorizing LBJ to engage in military actions in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war. One suspects that the irony of using "The End" as the main musical key in the film was not lost on director Francis Ford Coppola.

The Martin Sheen character of Captain Willard is Now's resident questing knight. When first we meet him he is preparing for his initiation into the Mysteries. Initiation often involved a spiritual death on the part of the candidate, followed by his rebirth as an illuminated being.

"The essence of initiation... is death and rebirth. In puberty rites, the childish self dies that the adult self may live, the shaman is dismembered and resurrected, dying to his old bodily perspective and rising again with a new daimonic perspective. Many tribal peoples sanction 'secret societies' whose purpose is to initiate adults into the mystery of death and rebirth via rites which are the same as, but less extreme in degree than shamanic initiations. This was the norm also in ancient Greece, where everyone who was anyone was initiated into the Mysteries which took place at Eleusis. The wisdom of Socrates and the philosophy of his pupil, Plato, cannot rightly be understood without taking into account their initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries...

"In his treatise On the Soul, Plutarch specifically compares initiation into the Mysteries with the experience of death. For the soul at the point of death, he tell us, 'has the same experience as those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.' At first one wanders to and fro in the dark; then one encounters terrors which induce 'shuddering, trembling, sweating, amazement,' until at last 'one is struck by a marvelous light' and received into 'pure regions and meadows, with voices and dances and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes."
(Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur, pg. 234-235)

Templar Knights were required to renounce their earthly possessions and swear a vow of poverty before entering the Order. And so to does Willard when first we meet in his hotel room in Saigon. In Willard's case, he renounces his old life back in the States:

"When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said 'yes' to a divorce. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle."

As Willard lays in a drunken stupor in Saigon he says goodbye to his old life once and for all. He's now ready to be reborn. An obvious visual cue for Willard's initiation into the Mysteries is the beer bottle that sits upon his nightstand, sporting a label consisting of nothing but the number 33.

Shortly after Willard hits bottom orders arrive that will send the good Captain on his quest to find the Fisher King, known as Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in the film. The mission is seemingly simple: Willard will precede up river with a Navy PBR crew to Kurtz's compound and assassinate the colonel. And it is here that the initiation begins in earnest, displaying its key features which are fear and terror. Now surmises these features simply as 'the horror', to site its most famous line. More on the terror and fear of 'the horror':

"Like initiates into the Mysteries... all shamans stress the terror of initiation, including even the encounters with their helping or tutelary spirits, who can appear fearsome. But, as an Australian shaman advised, power can be gained from the spirits as long as we are not intimidated into panicking. There is no indication, in other words, that fear and pain are bad or wrong, as modern secular ideologies and psychotherapies tend to suggest. Dreams are full of fear and pain. So are myths. So are religions."
(Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur, pg. 236)

The purpose of these daimonic beings in the Mystery tradition is most illuminating:

"Proclus tells us that 'in the most holy of mysteries, before the god appears, certain terrestrial [i.e. chthonic] daemons present themselves, and fights which disturb those who are to be initiated, tear them away from undefiled goods, and call forth their attention to matter.' The daimons here distract us from the higher symbolic purpose of initiation and redirect our attention back to the physical or, better, the literal world. Clearly these daimons are among Plutarch's terrors, for 'the gods exhort us not to look at these, till we are fortified by the powers which the mysteries confer. For thus they speak: it is not proper for you to behold them till your body is initiated.'"
(ibid, pg. 235)

In Now seemingly human characters fulfill the purpose of Greek daimons. Some may object to this reading, but it is my opinion that Coppola clearly intended a archetypal nature to many of the supporting characters in the film. For instance, in a sequence only appearing in the director's cut a surviving group of French colonists appear at a long forgotten plantation, yet Coppola has referred to them as 'ghosts.'

Another such figure that clearly seems to be archetypal and daimonic in nature is that of the beloved Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall). Kilgore, a cavalry officers that turned in his stead in for a helicopter, is a continuation of the knight theme. He's also a Trickster figure, which Coppola seems to slyly allude to early on by associating him with a deck of cards known as 'Death Cards.'

While there are some reported instances of US troops leaving the actual 'death card', the Ace of Spades, at battle sites, I have found no evidence for full decks being employed a la Kilgore. Further, the practice of leaving the Ace of Spades seemed rather rare to begin with. Yet playing cards themselves are heavy in esoteric significance for the likely originally derived from the Tarot:

"Opinions of authorities differ widely concerning the origin of playing cards, the purpose for which they were intended, and the time of their introduction into Europe. In his Researches into the History of Playing Cards, Samuel Weller Singer advances the opinion that cards reached Southern Europe from India by way of Arabia. It is probable that the Tarot cards were part of the magical and philosophical lore secured by the Knights Templars from the Saracens or one of the mystical sects then flourishing in Syria. Returning to Europe, the Templars, to avoid persecution, concealed the arcane meaning of the symbols by introducing the leaves of their magical book ostensibly as a device for amusement and gambling."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 409)

Again we see the Knight motif. I would also imagine that Kilgore's death card decks lack a Joker as the Colonel himself, as a Trickster figure, has already filled that role.

"The zero card -Le Mat, the Fool -has been likened to the material universe, like the mortal body of man, is but a garment, a motley costume, well likened to cap and bells. Beneath the garments of the fool is the divine substance, however, of which the jester is but a shadow; this world is a Mardi Gras -a pageantry of divine sparks masked in the garb of fools. Was not this zero card (the Fool) placed in the Tarot deck to deceive all who could not pierce the veil of Illusion?"
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 413)

Kilgore certainly inspires a Mardi Gras-style atmosphere. He is also a truly terrifying figure -He essentially massacres an entire Vietnamese village so that he can go surfing. Yet he displays moments of strange compassion, such as rescuing a Vietnamese baby, in a scene that was cut form the theatrical version. He is a distraction to Willard, bringing him back to the material reality of Vietnam after a period of introspection on the boat. Daimons often distract us with the material so that we miss the spiritual. Yet Kilgore is also immensely helpful to Willard and company. Aside from aiding their ship get up river, he drives home the sheer insanity of Willard's mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz. As Willard dryly notes in his voice-over narration:

"If that's how Kilgore fought the war, I began to wonder what they really had against Kurtz. It wasn't just insanity and murder; there was enough of that to go around for everyone."

Thus, while Kilgore may be a kind of post-modern knight, he is seemingly of the Elven variety and his aid proves to be invaluable as Willard completes his initiation.

But it is not just Willard that ultimately braves initiation, but the Navy PBR crew that follows him as well. They do not fair well, with every member except the seemingly most unlikely, a spaced out surfer from California named Lance B Johnson (Sam Bottoms), dying during the course of the film. But then, Lance is the only member of the crew, aside from Willard, that braves the Otherworld before descending upon Kurtz's compound.

During a sequence at the anarchistic Do Long bridge, the last Army outpost on the river, Lance drops LSD and then accompanies Willard along the bridge in the midst of a battle.

The movie itself adopts much psychedelic imagery throughout, but it is in this sequence that the film most openly displays entheogens and the altered states they produce as a part of the initiation process. For more on the links between entheogens and the other side, check here.

Lance emerges from his trip even more distant and spaced out than before, yet he effortlessly survives the insanity that soon consumes the rest of his crew mates. In a way Lance's LSD trip is comparable to Willard's dark night(s) of the soul in his Saigon hotel room before his mission arrived. Both experiences provided either man with a sense of purification that put them in the proper head space for the ordeal ahead.

After the sequence at the Do Long bridge, the world around Willard and company seems to race rapidly back in time. In the Redux version of Apocalypse it was here that Willard encountered the French colonists and their wraith-like plantation from a bygone era. In both versions the boat is attacked by natives armed with no more than bows and spears shortly before arriving at Kurtz's compound, implying that they've regressed to pre-colonial times.

If the natives are pre-colonial times, then Kurtz's compound is the Dawn of Civilization. It is here that the former Special Forces colonel has established himself as a priest-king over some kind of neo-Sumerian city-state complete with ample displays of human sacrifice.

Kurtz is especially found decapitation, a ritualized form of death heavy in esoteric significance. For more information on the occult meaning of decapitation, check here and here.

During his numerous conversations with Willard, Kurtz notes that there's nothing that he detests more than lies. His compound reflects this belief. Every illusion of civilization had been stripped bear. In Kurtz's domain, society functions at its most primitive, primal level.

And yet, the land has grown sick. This is instrumental in the myths of the Fisher King, and the much older traditions tying the vitality of the ruler to the lands. It is at the heart of the Killing of the Divine King ritual.

"...a series of divine kings on whose life the fertility of men, of cattle, and of vegetation is believed to depend, and who are put to death, whether in single combat or otherwise, in order that their divine spirit may be transmitted to their successors in full vigour, uncontaminated by the weakness and decay of sickness of old age, because any such degeneration on the part of the king would, in the opinion of his worshippers, entail a corresponding degeneration on mankind, on cattle, and on crops."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pg. 237)

Throughout Apocalypse Now Coppola draws attention to the sickness of the land. The most striking are images of ancient Buddhist shrines contrasted with the crass consumerism and militarism of the US invasion.

Kurtz's severed-head littered temple is a microcosm of this sickness. And it falls upon Willard, as the crusading knight, to bring healing to the lands. In the priceless voice-over narration, the Captain acknowledges as much:

"Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway."

As Willard hacks Kurtz to ribbons with a machete, Coppola inserts cuts of natives outside Kurtz' quarters sacrificing a cow in like fashion. It's a fine contrast, symbolizing the transition from human to animal sacrifices in the evolution of religion. When Willard emerges from Kurtz's chambers as the new King of the Wood, nobody disputes the claim.

The only quest remaining is if Kurtz'd blood would be enough to heal the lands. Given the sights Willard saw coming up river during his initiation, one can't help but conclude that the thirst for blood will be unquenchable.

17 Over Tunisia

I was in the midst of reading Loren Coleman's excellent recap of the self-immolations surrounding the Tunisian protests when a striking instance of synchronicity appeared to me.

But, to briefly recap the situation in Tunisia: A little over a month ago a 26 year old named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia in protest over the government.

Shortly thereafter nation wide protests broke out which eventually led to the collapse of the regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. At present protests are still occurring over the new regime. Self immolations are also still occurring:

"An Egyptian man who set himself on fire today in front of the parliament building in Cairo was the latest in a wave of self-immolations in North Africa since a Tunisian man's fiery suicide sparked a revolution last month.

"At least five other copycat burnings, which appear to be in protest of economic conditions, have been reported in four Algerian towns and in the capital of Mauritania in the past five days.

"Some experts on North African politics say the toppling of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the first Arab leader in generations to be brought down by public fury, has inspired and emboldened activists in the region."

While I'm certainly not ready to hail the events in Tunisia as a harbinger of things to come, the date on which the initial self immolation occurred is quite significant: December 17th. Regular readers already know I am quite obsessed with this date and the number 17 in general. A recap of this obsession can be read here.

To briefly recap: December 17th was the traditional start date of the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. This holiday, one of the main in ancient Rome, is typically associated with drunken merrymaking. However James Frazer in his classic The Golden Bough speculated that Saturnalia may have had more sinister origins. He found accounts that in many of the Roman provinces Saturnalia was typically celebrated by executing a prisoner on the 17th of December that had been playing the part of 'King Saturn' for the past month.

Mohamed Bouazizi not only set himself on fire on December 17th, but he died 17 days later.

A further synch between the Saturnalia festival and the current protests in North Africa is the rather bloody history ancient Rome and the Tunisian city-state of Carthage shared. By the third century BC Rome and Carthage were in mortal combat for control of the Mediterranean. This led to a series of massive wars, especially the second one, known as the Punic Wars. It here that we find the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal who nearly conquered Rome during the Second Punic War.

Rome eventually triumphed and burned Carthage to the ground. In some accounts they even throw salt upon the ruins so that nothing would grow there. Eventually the Romans were forced to rebuild Carthage, which became the centerpiece of their Empire in North Africa. It would remain as such until the late seventh century AD when the Muslims finally drove out the Byzantine forces and once again razed Carthage. Presently the Tunisia capital city of Tunis sits upons the former site of Carthage.

And now we have the spectacle of Tunisia once again falling into chaos following events that transpired on one of the main Roman holidays.

MK Culture

I'm losing my edge.

A week has gone by and I'm still struggling to put fingers to keys concerning one of the most bizarre shooting sprees in this nation's recent history. Given the type of topics this blog normally deals with this is surely a fitting topic, one that may actually provide whatever readers we have with some insight on a current event rather than more obscure historical details.

But alas, I can't shake a certain unease whenever I consider the plight of one Jared Lee Loughner. Perhaps its just the name, but I feel as though I'm being laughed at even as I dive head long into this absurdity.

So, where to begin? Synchronicity oozes from every orifice of this incident, so the beginning isn't nearly as important as addressing as many of the details as possible. I will surely miss some as this event seems to reinvent itself daily, but I shall try.

For starters, the shooting occurred in Tucson, AZ. Tucson resides along the 32 north latitude. Many of the holy sites of the ancient Mideast and Mediterranean were built between between 31 N and 39 N latitude. In the United States countless bizarre Native America sites have been found along these latitudes as well. In Freemasonry the 32nd degree, known as the Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, is the second highest behind only the honorary 33rd. Much tragedy has happened in this nation, as well as the world, along the 33rd north latitude. More on the 33rd can be read here. 32 reversed is 23, which also plays into Robert Anton Wilson's whole  '17 23 phenomenon.' More on this topic can be read here.

The city of Tucson has its own bizarre history, especially in regards to a series of artifacts unearthed nearby. Fortean researcher William Grimstad notes:

"At a place called Nine Mile Waterhole (6.5 mi. NW of Tucson on Silverbell Rd.) Charles E. Manier found a large lead cross while knocking about one day in 1924. The cross was buried in an embankment where the roadway had been cut through. Nearby were five large cylindrical brick ruins, of unknown age and reminiscent of the five 'beehive' kilns at the Silver Bell Mine near Florence, Arizona. A further coincidence is the Silverbell name of the road running through this bluff on the west side of the Santa Cruz River. It was here that 30 of the most peculiar archaeological objects ever found in North America were dug up.

"The first, cross-shaped item had two halves bound together with rivets. When separated, they were found to be covered with dense lines of inscriptions, primarily in Latin but of an oddly confused style and with a smattering of Hebrew characters. There were also numerous religious and mystical symbols, among them the square and compass and other emblems of Freemasonry. One cross has nothing but a line drawing of what can only be a dinosaur. In fact, most of the objects are of a decidedly bizarre character, with much more of the flavor of certain arcane cults of the Near East than of any sort of mainstream Roman culture.

"This is particularly true of one of the lead crosses, which has a long snake coiled around it, an arrow-point top, and a number of engraved Hebrew letters and indecipherable symbols. That such an artifact would have been made by ordinary Romans seems highly doubtful. Of course, in another sense this sheer uncouthness is a strong point in favor of authenticity: The unusual combination of Hebraic-Latin-esoteric elements hardly seems like one that would occur to the teen-aged boy of Mexican-Catholic culture who some archaeologists claim was the 'forger' and deep-burier of the artifacts."
(Weird America, pg. 13)

The victims of the shooting spree totaled six. In Pythagorean mathematics the six, or hexad, represented the creation of the world. The hexad was sacred to Orpheus as well as the Fate, Lachesis, and the Muse, Thalia. The hexad was also the symbol of marriage.

"Among the Greeks, harmony and the soul were considered to be similar in nature, because all souls are harmonic. The hexad is also the symbol of marriage, because it is formed by the union of two triangles, one masculine and the other feminine. Among the keywords given to the hexad are: time, for it is the measure of duration; panacea, because health is equilibrium, and the hexad is a balance number; the world, because the world, like the hexad, is often seen to consist of contraries by harmony; omnisufficient, because its parts are sufficient for totality (3+2+1=6); unwearied, because it contains the elements of immortality.
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P Hall, pg. 219)

Probably the most tragic victim of the shooting spree was Christina Taylor Green, a nine year old who was born on 9/11/01, and died in the eleventh year of the 21st century hours before the ninth day of the new year. Loughner himself was 22 at the time of the shooting, double 11.

Christina also has in her name a Christ, a Green, and a Taylor, which is close to Tyler. In Masonic jargon a Tyler is someone appointed to guard the lodges. The Egyptian god Osiris, who shared characteristics with Christ, was also referred to as the Green Man.

The most famous almost victim is obviously Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the first Jewish Representative from the state of Arizona. This is an especially odd synchronicity when considering the bizarre artifacts that were unearthed near Tucson that possibly bore Hebrew letters. Loughner himself has been accused of both rampant anti-Semetism (one of his favorite books was allegedly Mein Kampf) as well as being of Jewish decent himself. There's even an Internet rumor that the Loughner family attended the same synagogue as the Giffords.

One of the strangest aspects of Loughner is the skull shrine found in his backyard:

"A sinister shrine reveals a chilling occult dimension in the mind of the deranged gunman accused of shooting a member of Congress and 19 others.

"Hidden within a camouflage tent behind Jared Lee Loughner's home sits an alarming altar with a skull sitting atop a pot filled with shriveled oranges.

"A row of ceremonial candles and a bag of potting soil lay nearby, photos reveal.

"Experts on Sunday said the elements are featured in the ceremonies of a number of occult groups."

Skull cults are in fact among the earliest and most primitive forms of religion.

"We have already viewed the earliest unmistakable archaeological evidence of man's religious thought, in the burials and bear sanctuaries of Homo neanderthalensis. We now add, to complete the picture, the observation that a number of the Neanderthal skulls found at Krapina and Ehringsdorf provide evidence also of his ritual cannibalism. They had been opened in a certain interesting way. Furthermore, every one of the unearthed skulls of Neanderthal's Javanese contemporary Solo Man (Ngangdong Man), had also been opened. And finally, when skulls opened by the modern headhunters of Borneo for the purpose of lapping up the brains are compared with those of Solo and Neanderthal -the skull having served, handily, as the bowls for their own contents -they are found to have been opened in precisely the same way."
(The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell, pg. 373)

"...a particular stress is given in these secret men's societies to a skull cult that is often associated with the headhunt. Ritual cannibalism and pederasty are commonly practiced, and there is a highly elaborated use made of symbolic drums and mask."
(ibid, pg. 321)

Finally I would like to point out Loughner's striking appearance at the time of his arrest in which his head was entirely shaved of hair. He looked remarkably like a series of mysterious reoccurring characters on the TV series Fringe referred to as 'Observers.' These Observers dress like Men in Black and seem to fulfil a similar mythology on the series. 'Real life' men in black are often described as dark skinned or 'foreign' yet the series retained the bizarre behavior often associated with the MIB. Further, both real life Men in Black as well as the Fringe Observers seem to fulfil the role of the Trickster. This is also a role Loughner may be quite apt for.

Readers of this blog are certainly aware that I am a believer in MK-Ultra, and the so called 'Manchurian Canidate' premise. Some of these views are outlined in this piece. By all accounts Jared Lee Loughner fits the profile of an MK victim to a T -the bizarre and unstable behavior leading up to the shooting that was largely ignored by authority figures, his library collection, a criminal history, possible links to Gifford, etc. He even initially sported the three word name in the press, ala Mark David Chapman, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, etc. 

Yet nothing so far seems to stand out as firm ties to MK programming. For instance, in the case of the bizarre murder involving actor Michael Breas, which I chronicled here, there was at least a tie to an occult organization. I've yet to see firm documentation of this for Loughner. His backyard rituals, which seem rather amateurish, appear to be something he devised on his own, likely with the aid of the Internet.

Loughner tried to join the Army, but was rejected. He had a criminal background, but didn't seem to have experienced much exposure to the legal system -he wasn't incarcerated or institutionalized, but was subjected to a diversion program. The diversion program is seemingly the only institution I can see of where he may have been programmed, but it doesn't seem like a likely candidate.

Yet the signs are all there.

So I must wonder, is there something else at work? As this blog has addressed before, much of the CIA and DoD mind control experiments had precedence before in alchemy, the occult, the Mystery Schools, etc. Historian Peter Levenda notes:

"All of these techniques -hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, acts of terrorism, disinformation -share an ontological purpose: to manipulate perceptions, to re-create reality... As the men of the OSS, CIA, and military intelligence developed from armchair scholars and academics that most of them were before the war years into soldiers fighting the Cold War on fronts all over the world, they became -in a very real sense -magicians... the CIA mind control projects themselves represented an assault on consciousness and reality that has not been seen in history since the age of the philosopher-kings and their court alchemists."
(Sinister Forces, pg. 144)

The great difference (at least publicly) between today's CIA man and yesterday's magician is the view of the paranormal. Contrary to popular belief a true magician employed all of the tools of an intelligence officer -entheogens, hypnosis, terrorism, disinformation, spying, etc. But he also firmly believed in the supernatural as part of his bag of tricks. And the beings that sought out the great magicians of yore were certainly Tricksters indeed. For this reason Hermes is the patron of the Mystery Schools.

"Like Coyote, Raven, and Hare -those North American Indian clowns-cum-culture-heroes -Hermes is a Trickster. It is as difficult for us to countenance Trickster as it is daimons: our monotheism, whether of Christianity or Science, has excluded them. So Hermes is forced to operate from the Underworld, to shadow Christianity in esoteric, 'occult' Gnostic and Hermetic philosophies. As his Latin counterpart, Mercurius, he is the soul of alchemy. He returns to torment scientism with paranormal phenomena and maddening anomalies -all daimons are tricksters, as the fairies are; all are in the pay of Hermes-Mercurius. He unsettles our lives with all manner of impish tricks and pixilations; the more we ignore him, the more he bedevils us, until his tricks begin to look sinister. He becomes, in fact, the Devil."
(Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur, pg. 166-167)

While Loughner may not have had any contact with actual intelligence spooks his history of psychedelic drug use makes it extremely likely that he contacted the Trickster or the like at some point in recent years. For more on the links between entheogens, UFOs, elementals, MIBs, etc, check here.

This article is not the place to discuss whether these beings exist, what thy are, or where they come from. In fact, there's not much else I can add to this piece, except an observation. That is concerning the remarkable effectiveness of this 'MK-Culture' that has transformed our reality so much over the past 60 years. For these types of incidents to have occurred in the past they would have required actual programming. But now the programming has gone mainstream. For instance, both drug use and childhood sexual trauma were used even amongst the secret societies of tribal cultures as part of the initiation rites. Now the common American teen experiences these kinds of rites as part of the stereotypical high school experience without any of the spiritual or philosophical training tribal societies, the Mystery Schools, and the like, provided.

Thus they are totally at the mercy of the Trickster.