Latin American High Weirdness: The Cults Part I

Since the end of the second World War Latin America has become something of a playground for the Cryptocracy. Cults, medical experiments, UFOs, drugs, Nazi war criminals, and the like have been in abundance in this region of the world in an especially bizarre fashion for over a half century. The isolation of many parts of Latin America coupled with its close proximity to the United States are a big reason for this. I also suspect that its potent mixture of religious practices make it an especially fertile region for PSYOPs.

The 'New World', being in relative isolation from the Old, maintained some very ancient religions practices up to the time of the arrival of the Spanish. Even then ancient native American rituals, such as those involving entheogens, continued to be practiced amongst isolated tribes up to modern times. Into this stew was then added African folk traditions courtesy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in addition to Catholic mysticism and European occultism. Some nations are even more diverse -Brazil features the largest Japanese population outside of Japan, for instance. Naturally, their religious practices followed.

It was into this stew that the sorcerers of the US intelligence community and their allies in Europe (including former Nazis) boldly entered in the wake of World War II. For instance, our old friend Andrija Puharich, when he wasn't busy developing chemical and ELF weapons for the US Military or contacting the Nine for some very artistocratical families, managed to make several pilgrimages to Latin America in the 1950s and 60s. During the first, in 1956, Puharich was accompanied by the Dutch psychic Peter Hurkos and the enigmatic inventor, paranormal enthusiast, and possible US intelligence asset Arthur Young (much more on Puharich and Young can be found here and here). Hurkos described the visit as an archaeological project but many believe that these men were in fact searching for the mushroom cults that had inspired some R. Gordon Wasson's theories on the role of the magic mushroom in religion. Puharich himself would go on to author a book on the magic mushroom called The Sacred Mushroom a few years later.

In 1962 Puharich was back in Latin America, this time Brazil, investigating the claims of the 'psychic surgeon' Arigo. Also in Brazil in 1962 was the notorious Nazi war criminal Joseph 'the Angel of Death' Mengele, the 'medical doctor' of Auschwitz, living in a farm house 93 miles from Sao Paulo. There were many other Nazis living in South America at the time, as it was one of the main destinations of the infamous ratlines. Mengele had been living in Argentina previously, near Adolf Eichmann, until the former Holocaust organizer was arrested in 1960. Other Nazis were much more fortunate, such as Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyon', who was able to establish himself in Bolivia as a US intelligence asset, a Lt. Col in the Bolivian Intelligence apparatus, gun runner, and eventual drug lord.

Mengele

Barbie

Even a branch of the notorious UMMO hoax would pop up in Argentina in the late 1970s, operating out of a facility specializing in cancer cures brought about by a 'highly sophisticated electronic equipment.' Curiously, researchers such as Jacques Vallee have argued that the UMMO hoax, which was mainly perpetuated in Spain and France, was based upon a short story called "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by the legendary Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, which was written around 1940. Regardless, the legacy of UFOs in South America is certainly the most bizarre I've encountered in modern accounts. For a sample of this high strangeness, check out this old post I wrote on entheogens.

While all of this was going on another curiosity began to appear in certain spots in Latin America beginning in the early 1960s: Self-sustaining communities, usually comprised of Americans or Europeans, often described as 'Utopian' or 'Agricultural' experiments, with bizarre 'religious' agendas. What's more, many of these communities had a knack for appearing in countries that were considered essential in the Cold War struggle between the USA and the USSR.

By the far the most famous of these communities was Jonestown of Guyana, South America. I shall delve much more deeply into Jonestown in a little bit, but would like to mention a few other such communities that never gained the notoriety of Jonestown for lack of 'revoltionary suicide,' as the media hailed it. One such community was Hilltown, also of Guyana, and closely linked to Jonestown. Guyana was a country, in part due to its close proximity to Brazil, that would become a key piece of the CIA's Cold War agenda in South America.

"It was then that British Guiana saw the first stirrings for independence. A Marxist dentist, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, an East Indian educated in America, founded the People's Progressive party, which quickly assumed power under colonial rule. Jagan was assisted in the drive by a brilliant British-educated Afro-Guyanese barrister named Linden Forbes Burnham. Within several years, however, Burnham broke with Jagan to form his won party, the People's National Congress.

"With the Cold War and the Cuban revolution to the north, the United States was absolutely determined not to let another 'domino' fall in the Caribbean. So it entered the power struggle in obscure Guiana. Burnham had a more opportunistic side than the more doctrinaire Jagan, whose pro-Soviet sympathies were no secret. When the Central Intelligence Agency injected $1 million into labor unions to finance street disturbances, enough internal instability was created that Forbes Burnham toppled Jagan in 1964.

"Two years later, Burnham announced independence, and two years after that, in 1968, his party swept the elections. Burnham became prime minister. On February 23, 1970, the country became known as the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. To the surprise of the CIA, Burnham moved his country on a socialist path, flirting with Castro, the Soviets, the East Germans, and North Koreans, and nationalizing most of the country's resources, including sugar, rice and bauxite, of which it is the world's fourth largest producer..."
(Raven, Tim Reiterman, pgs. 272-273)

Journalist Reiterman, in his biography of Jim Jones, attempts to portray Guyana prime minister Forbes Burnham as someone who betrayed the CIA. This may well have been the case, but Burnham would go on to forge strange alliances with American 'holy men' on dubious missions that would become essential to his regime staying in power. Of course one of these 'holy men' was Jones, the other one David Hill, founder of the after mentioned Hilltown community. Of this fellow, Reiterman writes:

"...One was Rabbi Edward Washington [an allias used by Hill -Recluse], an ex-convict from Cleveland, Ohio, who managed to persuade several hundred Afro-Guyanese that blacks were the original Jews. His House of Israel became a political enforcement arm of the Burnham regime. The organization broadcast a weekly radio show on the governemnt-owned radio station in Georgetown, a sure sign of official favor. Another group that would get a weekly radio show was Peoples Temple."
(ibid, pg. 273)

Ah, but there was so much more to the good Rabbi Washington/Hill.

"Inside Guyana itself, approximately 25 miles to the south of Mathew's Bridge, is a community called Hilltown, named after religious leader Rabbi Hill. Hill has used the names Abraham Israel and Rabbi Emmanuel Washington. Hilltown, set up about the same time as Jonestown, followed the departure of David Hill, who was known in Cleveland, a fugitive of the US. courts. Hill rules with an 'iron fist' over some 8,000 Black people from Guyana and America who believe they are the Lost Tribe of Israel and the real Hebrews of Biblical prophecy. Used as strong-arm troops, and 'internal mercenaries' to insure Burnham's election, as were Jonestown members, the Hilltown people were allowed to clear the Jonestown site of shoes and unused weapons, both in short supply in Guyana. Hill says his followers would gladly kill themselves at his command but he would survive, since, unlike Jones, he is 'in control.'
(Secret and Suppressed, John Judge, pgs. 141-142)

Hill, on the right

The House of Israel eventually fell out of favor in Guyana, but not before over a decade of terror was inflicted on the nation:

"During the 1970s and 1980s, a religious group known as the House of Israel became an informal part of the PNC's security apparatus and engaged in actions such as strikebreaking, progovernment demonstrations, political intimidation, and murder. The House of Israel was led by an ardent PNC supporter, David Hill, locally known as Rabbi Washington. Hill was an American fugitive wanted for blackmail, larceny, and tax evasion. Despite its name, the House of Israel was neither Israeli nor Jewish-oriented. It was, instead, a black supremacist cult claiming that Afro-Guyanese were the original Hebrews. Cult adherents further believed that modern-day Jews were, in fact, descendants of other non-Jewish biblical peoples and were in Israel illegally. Serving as a paramilitary force for the PNC, the House of Israel had 8,000 members, including a 300-member guard force known as the 'royal cadets.'

"A 1979 incident illustrates the House of Israel's close relationship with the Burnham administration. A member of the cult, Bilal Ato, murdered a reporter working for an opposition newspaper on July 14, 1979. The reporter had been taking photographs of an antigovernment demonstration when he was stabbed to death. Although the entire incident was filmed by other journalists, the government took three years to bring the case to trial. A former state prosecutor defended Ato. The judge reduced Ato's charge to manslaughter and sentenced him to eight years in prison.

"Later in 1979, as well as during the early and mid-1980s, the government used the House of Israel to break strikes and to disrupt public meetings of any group that the government felt might oppose its policies. Observers claimed that House of Israel members were accompanied by police and sometimes wore police uniforms during these incidents. In 1985 House of Israel members allegedly prevented delegates from entering the annual general meeting of the Guyana Council of Churches in Georgetown. 

"When President Hugh Desmond Hoyte took power in 1985, the House of Israel fell out of government favor. In July 1986, Rabbi Washington and other key House of Israel leaders were arrested and charged with murder. Washington pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a fifteen-year sentence."

Allende

Clearly the House of Israel was instrumental in sustaining the Burnham regime. In Chile, a similar Utopian community would be called in service under the notorious Pinochet regime after the first democratically elected Marxist president of Latin America, Salvador Allende, was removed and assassinated during a military coup in the early 1970s. This community, which would become a close alley of the Pinochet regime, was known as Colonia Dignidad. Like Jonestown, it was described as an an agricultural experiment and headed by a controversial minister.

"Paul Schafer was one of the founders of the Colony of Righteousness and was, and is, its only leader. Schafer jumped bail in Germany in 1961 on charges of child sexual abuse, but that did not stop him from taking a group of families with him when he fled to Chile, arriving there in 1962 at the age of forty with around sixty 'blonde, blue-eyed settlers'... including some children who were brought there under false pretenses, taken from their families back in Germany. His flock came from the town of Siegburg, across the Rhine from Bonn, where Schafer claimed to be a psychologist, and where he ran a youth home where the sexual-abuse charges originated. Schafer, also the leader of a Baptist sect (a sect which evidently condones sexual intercourse between adults and children among other peculiarities), bought an old ranch called El Lavadero about 250 miles south of Santiago in the Parral region and quickly converted it into a self-sufficient, model community known as Colonia Dignidad, the 'Colony of Righteousness' or 'Dignity Colony.'

"The population of the Colony eventually grew to about 350, composed of 250 adults and 100 children. According to reports in the Chilean and German press, the sexes are rigorously separated and sexual intercourse is forbidden (except, one gathers, at the discretion of Schafer). And, since sex is prohibited, the only way the Colony has been able to increase its population has been by 'importing' children from Germany. German authorities have been investigating charges that from thirty to forty children reported missing from Bonn and Cologne areas have wound up at the Colony. Thus, charges of both child abuse and international child abduction have been leveled at this remote cult community by eyewitnesses, escapees, and responsible members of the West German and Chilean governments. The parallels between Colonia Dignidad and the stories told by 'satanic cult survivors' however, are even stronger.

"Spanish is not spoken: instead, only German, and, oddly, English are used. Old-fashioned, 1940s-era clothing is worn and fourteen-hour workdays are the norm. No television, radio, or newspapers are allowed in the Colony. There is, however, a shortwave unit on the premises which is used to communicate with an office the Colony maintains in Santiago...

"The Colony established a free clinic on its premises: free, that is, on specific days of the week to members of the local population. They also have their own factory for processing meat, power plant... and their own airfield. By 1985, they had even opened their own roadside restaurant on the Pan American Highway.

"Accounts of the size of the Colony vary from news report to news report. Everything from 12,000 acres to 37,000 acres has been offered, and accounts of its operations also include  mine, a lumber mill, and a gravel factory. The author believes it is safe to say that the Colony has grown considerably over the years and that estimates of a 37,000-acre settlement might not be far from the mark, considering the other purposes to which the Colony was put both during and after the Allende regime."
(Unholy Alliance, Peter Levenda, pgs. 313-314)

the Colony

Even before the military coup that toppled the Allende regime, strange allegations were surfacing concerning the Colony (aside from child abductions and sexual abuse, of course).

"...in 1966, the first of many accusations against Schafer and the Colony surfaced when Wolfgang Muller escaped the 'watchdogs, electronic alarms and six-foot barbed wire fences to describe life inside the Colony. Muller -who had been brought over from Germany as a member of the original Sieburg group when he was sixteen -claimed that he had been forced into slave labor at the Colony, was beaten, and had been sexually abused by Schafer in Germany when he was twelve years old. One of Muller's more interesting claims -especially in light of later events -is his insistence that Schafer had given him 'memory-altering drugs' when Muller attempted to rebel or to reveal the details of his abuse at Schafer's hands. He also complained of electroshock treatments being administered by camp doctors (shades of Barbie at Montluc Prison). After his escape, he wound up at the West German embassy in Santiago and now lives in that country under an assumed name, still afraid for his life."
(ibid, pg. 315)

Schafer

Child abuse, memory altering drugs, electroshock treatments -it was into this fertile environment some of the Pincochet regime's more unfortunate political prisoners found themselves. The primary liaison between Colonia Dignidad and the Pincochet regime was an American CIA agent named Michael Townley who also served as a member of the Chilean secret police in addition to helping plan the military coup that ousted Allende.

"By the spring of 1973, however, rumors of an impending military coup were rampant in the capital. Among the conspirators creating discord both in the city and in the countryside was a young American, Michael Vernon Townley. Townley was a member of Patria y Libertad and an associate of other right-wing terror groups. A right-wing fanatic himself who carried out assignments for a variety of masters, Townley also contributed to the development of the interrogation program at Colonia Dignidad.

"Working directly for, and reporting to, the generals, Townley was given the rank of major in the Chilean Army and together with Colonel Pedro Espinosa and the Chilean Secret Police (DINA), liaised with Patria y Libertad to create a climate of terror in the country conductive to a military coup...

"With the coup, however, the Colony got a chance to put its electroshock and narcotics 'therapies' to the test. Townley and DINA agents had the run of the Colony, both at Parral and at the Colony office in Santiago. While DINA maintained contact with its agents all over the world through the Colony's radio link, Townley helped design the specially equipped interrogation cells. These were tiny, soundproofed rooms built underground where 'poltical prisoners' were taken not only for actual; interrogation of a political or military nature, but also for the purpose of developing new methods of torture.

"At first, each prisoner was questioned closely to obtain sufficient information concerning his or her personality in order to develop an appropriate torture and interrogation scheme. This individualized approach is already well known to the intelligence professionals the author has come into contact over the years. The ostensible goal is to enable the interrogator to so finely tune the torture procedure that the victim surrenders his or her will more completely, more expeditiously. In practice, however, and with such a 'scientifically' adjusted scheme of programmed sadism, there is tremendous room for an interrogator who is so inclined to subject the victim to unimaginable suffering over a long and sustained period of time. That this is what, in fact, took place at the Colony is beyond doubt..."
(ibid, pgs. 317-320)

Townley

According to a UN report Levenda sites, detainees of the Colony had their heads covered with leather hoods, and were then taken to these underground cells were they were subjected to a bombardment of electronic equipment including loudspeakers and microphones in addition to electric shocks. The Colony's interrogation techniques have shades of both Gitmo and 1984 in addition to the CIA's own experiments in its various MK-ULTRA projects.

Gitmo

Over course, it won't come as a surprise to learn that Paul Schafer was a former Nazi who maintained ties with some of the more notorious war criminals in hiding in South America. Josef Mengele it widely believed to have been a guest of the Colony, for instance. Certainly his 'expertise' and first-hand experience in 'enhanaced' interrogation methods would have been much appreciated there. Mengele and Michael Townley would have surely had some interesting conversations.

Paul Schafer was finally forced out of Chile in 1997 as charges of child molestation were finally brought against him. In 2005 he was arrested in Argentina and extradited to Chile where he was given a 20 year prison sentence. Shortly after Schafer's arrest, the Colony was raided which led to the discovery of a massive cache of weapons that included machine guns, rocket launchers and even a tank. As of 2005 the Colony had been taken over by Chilean officials.

While its certainly lovely that Schafer and the Colony were finally brought down, researchers have asserted that Colonia Dignidad was but one such camp in South America. Another rumored campsite supposedly existed at Pisagua, Chile. It is now acknowledged that there was some kind of prison camp at this location. The similarities between Colonia Dignidad and Hilltown are also striking. Both communities, which featured fanatical followers from foreign countries driven by doctrines of racial superiority, were incorporated into the security apparatuses of the two nations they became involved in. The major differences seem to be that Hilltown, with over 8000 residents, was more of an overt paramilitary force while Colonia Dignidad was geared more toward 'intelligence' work.

And that brings us to Jonestown. Is it possible that Jonestown was always intended as a site not unlike Colonia Dignidad? As unlikely as this may sound to some, there are several remarkable similarities to Jonestown and Colonia Dignidad, as we shall soon see. Further, there are equally curious US intelligence ties to both sites.

All this shall be examined in the next installment.

Nine and Eleven

Nine and eleven are important numbers. Many fascinating occult attributes are applied to them, especially nine:

"The Psuedo-Dionysius the Areopagite classifies angels in nine choirs, or three triads -perfection of perfection, order in order and unity in unity. 

"Each world -Heaven, Earth and Hell -is symbolized by the ternary figure of a triangle. Nine is the totality of the three worlds.. 

"Nine universal principles are also to be found in the teachings of the oldest school of Indian philosophy, the Vaisheshika. Orphic initiation would similarly seem to have accepted three triads of principles, 'the first comprising Night, Sky, and Time; the second, Air, Light and the Stars; and the third, Sun, Moon, and Nature, these nine principles making up nine symbolic aspects of the Universe. Paramendines stated that the number nine related to absolutes.' The nine Muses stood for the sum of human knowledge as represented by the sciences and the arts. Liturgically a novena stands for 'something fulfilled, a complete time-span.' Zoroastrianism, too, had its novenas: they recur in the Zend Avesta where many rituals of purification comprise the triple repetition of a triad of ceremony. Thus the shrouds of the dead should be washed nine times, three times with urine, three times with earth and three times with water. Such three times threefold repetition recurs in many rituals of magic and sorcery.

"Since three is the number of innovation, its square stands for universality. It is significant that, in so many folktales drawn from all over the world, the supernumerary, infinity, is expressed by such repetitions of the number nine as the 999,999 Fravashis who, the Ancient Iranians believed, watched over the semen of Zoroaster, from which all prophets were to spring. The Ouroboros, the serpent which bites its own tail and the image  of the return of the manifold to the one and hence of primeval and of final Oneness, is related graphically to the way the number nine is denoted in many alphabets such as the Tibetan, Persian, Egyptian hieratic, Armenian and so on. The mystical meaning of nine relates it, too, to what the Sufis term haqq, the final stage of the Way, bliss leading to fana, the annihilation of the individual in the rediscovery of the whole, or... 'the loss of personality in universal love.' Indian tradition defines more clearly the redemptive meaning of the symbol nine through nine successive incarnations of Vishnu who, each time, offered his life for the salvation of mankind. Similarly, according to the Gospels, Jesus was crucified at the third hour; his death agonies began at the sixth hour (dusk), and he died at the ninth hour. Claude de Sant-Martin considered that in nine 'the physical body and all its properties were annihilated.' Allendy concludes that Freemasons have made it 'the eternal number of immortality, nine masters discovering the grave and body of Hiram.'"
(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pgs. 702-704)

The nine master Masons who discovered the body of Hiram Abiff

Of nine, the 33rd degree Freemason Manly P. Hall writes:

"The ennead -9- was the first square of an odd number (3x3). It was associated with failure and shortcoming, because it fell short of the perfect number 10 by one. It was called the number of man, because of the nine months of his embryonic life. Among its keywords are ocean and horizon, because to the ancients these were boundless. The ennead is the limitless number because there is nothing beyond it but the infinite 10. It was called boundary and limitation, because it gathered all numbers within itself. It was called the sphere of the air, because it surrounded the number as air surrounds earth...

"The 9 was looked upon as evil, because it was an inverted 6. According to the Eleusinian Mysteries, it was the number of the spheres through which the consciousness passed on its way to birth. Because of its close resemblance to the spermatozoon, the 9 has been associated with germinal life."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, pg. 220)

Aleister Crowley also believed nine to be an evil number, stating:

"9. Most Evil, because of its stability. AVB, witchcraft, the false moon of the sorceress."
(Gematria, pg. 43)

Crowley on the Sgt. Pepper album cover; the Beatles (Lennon specifically) would go on to write a song called "Revolution 9" for the White Album

Crowley was much more impressed by the number eleven.

"11. The great magical number, as uniting the antitheses of 5 and 6 etc. AVD the magic force itself."
(ibid)

Eleven has even more going for it that being the number of magic.

"Ten symbolizes a complete cycle and by adding to its fullness, eleven is the sign of excess, extravagance and exaggeration, in whatever category you like, promiscuity, violence, biased judgement. The number heralds potential conflict. Its ambivalence resides in the fact that the excess which it signifies may either mark the beginning of a renewal or the collapse and breakdown of the number ten, a fault in the universe. It is this later sense that made St. Augustine say that 'the number eleven is the blazon of sin.' Its disturbing activities may be compared with the unbalancing and overenlargement of one of the pillars of this universe (the number ten), a definition of disorder, disease and sin.

"Generally speaking, the number is that of 'individual initiative, but of an initiative exercised without relation to cosmic harmony, and therefore more often than not of a malign character.' Eleven is, therefore, the symbol of internal conflict, 'of discord, rebellion, aberration, law-breaking... human sin... and of the revolt of the angels..."

"The number eleven, which would seem to have been one of the keys of the Divine Comedy, also derives its symbolism from being the sum of the numbers five and six, these being the microcosm and the macrocosm, or Heaven and Earth. In China, eleven was the number which 'in its totality (ch'eng) comprised the way of Heaven and Earth. It was the number of the Tao."
(Dictionary of Symbolism, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pg. 349)

Both numbers are associated with Heaven and Earth (in addition to Hell, in the case of nine) as well as magic. There are nine choirs of angels, while the number 11 symbolizes the rebellion of the angels. Eleven is the number of the Tao, while there are 81 chapters (9x9) in the Tao Te Ching, the foundational text of Taoism. In African tradition, there is an especially interesting connection between the numbers nine and eleven.

"In African esoteric tradition, this number is especially holy, to the extent that some would regard it as one of the principal keys to Black occultism. It is linked to the mysteries of fertility. Women have eleven body-openings: men only nine."
(ibid, pgs. 348-349)

The numbers nine and eleven are especially important to me, as I imagine they are to many in my generation. I am in my late 20s and came of age when 9/11 occurred, so it will always stand as a defining moment in my life in much the same way I imagine the Kennedy assassination resonates with Baby Boomers. Ten years down the road, the America I find myself living in feels dramatically different from the one I grew up in, even if superficially the changes seem subtle.

Recluse spent the 9/11 ten year anniversary in the midst of a 13 hour drive heading up to West Virginia to visit my family. During the long hours behind the wheel and the down time at home there was ample opportunity to reflect on the state of modern America. The trip itself and news upon returning home added to what was an especially surreal experience for me.

Its no secret of course that things are getting a little crazy from coast to coast. The headlines leading up to that faithful day were positively surreal, even. Most disturbing were the rash of spree shootings leading up to 9/11 -in New York state, Carson City, NV in the infamous 'IHOP shootings', and along the West Virginia/Kentucky/Pennsylvania border. Florida even witnessed a so-called 'vampire' attack:

"A self-proclaimed vampire attacked an elderly wheelchair-bound man outside a Florida Hooters Restaurant just before midnight on Thursday, leaving him bloodied and in need of stitches, police said. 

"Milton Ellis, 69, had fallen asleep on the porch of the deserted Hooters in St. Petersburg when he woke up to find Josephine Rebecca Smith, 22, on top of him, he told police.
Smith told Ellis she was a vampire and then proceeded to bite him, tearing off chunks of his face and a part of his lip, St. Petersburg police spokesman Mike Puetz said, according to The St. Petersburg Times.  

"'After he fell asleep on the ground, he claims that she attacked him, started yelling that she was a vampire, that she was going to eat him and started biting him by his face and body,' Puetz said.

"Blood dripping from bite marks on his neck and face, Ellis managed to scramble back into his motorized wheelchair and reach a nearby Shell gas station, where he called police."

a Florida vampire

The old man had a criminal record as well. I'd go out on a limb and speculate that Ellis and the vampire broad had some kind of drug connection working before the assault. This is rather fitting, considering another milestone that was announced shortly before 9/11 concerning drugs:

"The number of Americans using illegal drugs has continued to rise, reaching 22.6 million, or 8.9 percent of the population, in 2010, a new government survey shows...

"In addition, young adults appear to be the group showing the greatest increase in drug use. 'The group that seems to be standing out among everybody is the 18- to 25-year-olds,' Delany said. "These are the people who are going to college, starting in the workforce and starting families."

"Illicit drug use among this group has gone from 19.6 percent in 2008 to 21.5 percent in 2010, a significant increase, Delany said."

The article attempts to put much of the blame for rising drug use on marijuana, but it tosses out this little tidbit:

"The illicit use of prescription painkillers has also been increasing, with most (55 percent) getting these drugs from a friend or relative. Only 4.4 percent of those using these drugs got them from a drug dealer, and less than 1 percent purchased them over the Internet, the report found."

Florida, with its vampires and all, is under going a permanent transformation via prescription med abuse. I've written more on this topic before here.

My old home town is a fine testament to the new America. Its small town America to the core, with one main strip dominated by small businesses. Immediately outside the town are a few factories followed by miles upon miles of farms. In many ways its changed little since 1900. But in the past decade a Wal Mart store was opened on the outskirts of the town and progressively downtown has dried up. Empty office space is now the most common feature of downtown. In recent years the factories have been shut down while the farms are slipping into foreclosure like a series of dominoes.

Other curious things are happening on the outskirts of town. An armory is present with a rather large amount of military vehicles plainly visible. Further, a defense contractor has opened up a 'training center' for potential mercenaries... er, private contractors working out one of the Empire's spheres of influence. This massive compound is marked by numerous shooting ranges, sedans complete with tinted windows and D.C. plates, and junk vehicles littered with bullet holes. I had hoped to swag a few pictures of this site, but the weather was poor for most of the trip.

The return trip featured encounters with a pack of transgender kids in Jonesville, North Carolina, and a speeding ticket outside of Charlotte. At a rest area just outside of Charlotte I encountered another truth seeker in the dead of night: Rest Stop Steve, who seemingly holds court there on the weekend nights. Conspiracy theories, cops, and transgenderism -Welcome to North Carolina, indeed.

I love rest stops

Upon returning home I phoned up Manos, who had been collecting my mail for me while I was away. His interesting times continue: He informed me that two kids had been knifed badly by a biker gang in the parking lot of our local watering hole while I was away. One kid, who was stabbed directly in the chest, barely survived. What's more, a house in a gated community in our yuppie-infested burg had a Molotov cocktail tossed into the front yard one night, nearly causing a large scale fire.

In the decade since 9/11 a fortune has spent enforcing an empire internationally and a police state domestically. Americans are encouraged to wave the flag and watch football as they are informed that they live in the richest and safest country on Earth. Yet all around the signs of decay are ever present: genetically altered food, shuttered businesses, rampant crime and drug abuse even in the midst of legions of police officers, military personnel, surveillance cameras and unmanned drones. Truly the double mind is working on over drive.

Earlier in this piece I alluded to the fact that the numbers nine and eleven are strongly associated with magic. Previously I've written on the actual nature of magic and I concluded that at its most simplest, magical workings deal with the manipulation of reality and perception. And more often than not, this manipulation is induced via physical, real world techniques rather than the Other Side.

I submit then that 9/11 was, if nothing else, a magical working -It has literally torn at the fabric of our reality as no other event has in recent memory. It is as if once the American populace accepted the official view of that day's events it became impossible to turn back, and they have continued to believe every lie spewed by the Cryptocracy ever since. As our civil liberties and coin are swindled away in the name of imaginary enemies we are told to go shopping.

And even worse, that's actually what we do. If there is sorcery in this world, then truly this must be it.

On Kennedy and UFOs

A colleague of mine has posted a fabulous piece on the connections to the Kennedy assassination and UFO PSYOPs:

"I’d like to point out before we go on that: no, CTKA is not turning into some Fortean organisation. I’m just going to speak a few home truths to some of the more imaginative types out there concerning something very sacred to ufologists. How, since 1947 the CIA rather than starving you from accessing them, have actually force fed you with it. 

"Like the vast majority of JFK researchers, I am not an ufologist. I don’t pretend to speak for anyone in this area either. Nevertheless, I don’t believe a fake UFO invasion will be used to unite the world under a one-world government. That fake invasion (that the likes of Alex Jones and other conspiracy magnets bleat on about) and that one world corporation have already happened. Because if the mainstream media is prepared to present balanced discussions about UFOs and whether God exists, then surely a balanced discussion covering cosmically irrelevant issues like the potential for a planned murder of a head of state, and a few others aspiring to benefit all humanity, wouldn’t even be a trifle, or even an afterthought at that."

The full article can be found here -I urge all my readers to check it out.

The Jason Mysteries Part II

The epic of the Argo incorporates numerous elements of other legendary tales of the ancient world. In part one of this series we saw the immense importance the name Jason has to the Cryptocracy, in both past and present. Now we shall break down some of the key concepts of the ancient myth in an attempt to answer the question of why. One of the most obvious elements is the 'voyaging hero' concept, an archetype that appears time and again. The most well know is of course the Biblical patriarch Noah. An earlier version was the Sumerian deluge hero Utnapishtim. The Greeks had their own version of Noah, known as Deucalion. Another voyaging hero Jason closely resembles is the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh, of which more will be written on later. There is also a direct connection between the Greek Noah, Deucalion, and the Argo.

"The Greek are of Deukalion came to rest after the Flood at Dodona, from where the Argo received its guiding timber. The ark and the Argo apparently were related in other ways too."
(The Sirius Mystery, Robert Temple, pg. 135)

Gilgamesh

Noah

The final challenge for the Golden Fleece at Colchis is filled with highly symbolic imagery. Here a man and woman (Jason and Medea) confront a dragon that guards the Golden Fleece, which hangs from a tree. Obviously this bears striking similarities to the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve, and the serpent and the apple from the Tree of Knowledge present at the Fall of Man.

Finally there is Jason's return to Thessaly where Medea convinces Pelias' daughters to dismember his body so that he can be reborn younger. In this case I am reminded of the myths surrounding Osiris and Isis. Osiris is murdered by his brother Set, who later dismembers Osiris' body into 14 pieces. Eventually Isis is able to collect all of the pieces of her dead brother/husband except for the penis, and then revives him from the dead.

"... when Isis had found the corpse of her husband Osiris, she and her sister Nephthys sat down beside it and uttered a lament which in after ages became the type of all Egyptian lamentations for the dead...

"The lamentations of the two sisters were not in vain. In pity for her sorrow the sun-god Ra sent down from heaven the jackal-headed god Anubis, who, with the aid of Isis and Nephthys, of Thoth and Horus, pieced together the broken body of the murdered god, swathed it in linen bandages, and observed all the other rites which the Egyptians were wont to perform over the bodies of the departed. The Isis fanned the cold clay with her wings: Osiris revived, and thenceforth reigned as king over the dead in the other world."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pg. 371)

Osiris

The episode in the Argo epic is a kind of reverse of the Osiris/Isis myths as the section from Colchis reverses the Fall of Man legend. Osiris and Isis were of course hugely important to the religion of the ancient Egyptians, being the chief deities of the Egyptian Mystery schools. All of this overlap has led some scholars such as Robert Temple to surmise that various elements of the Argo epic are very old.

"In Sumer the 'fifty great gods' called the Anunnaki were anonymous as individuals, and only ever spoken of as 'the fifty great gods' with the emphasis on their number. They were literally restricted to the level of being a numerological cipher. They are continually invoked and are of importance -but they never did anything but sit on their thrones and 'be fifty.'

"In the early Sumerian tale of their epic hero Gilgamesh, we find him accompanied in his adventures by fifty heroes, reminiscent of the fifty Argonauts who accompanied Jason. 'His teeth are the teeth of a dragon', we are told -reminiscent of Jason sowing the dragon's teeth. And Gilgamesh also puts his teeth to the ground (that much we can gather, but the passage is obscure and he may really be sowing teeth). Each of his fifty heroic companions carries a specially felled tree for the journey -and the only reasonable purpose to go around carrying a tree seems to be that these trees were used as oars, especially as there is an association with a boat. This again is like the Argonauts. We thus seem to have found a Near Eastern tale from which the tale of the Argonauts was derived two thousand years or so later by the Greeks.

"Gilgamesh somehow derives strength from putting his teeth to the ground. In the Greek tale, Jason sows the teeth and they spring up as strong soldiers -another parallel...

"All the Greek Argonauts were related to one another and more or less anonymous as individuals -reminiscent of the earlier Sumerian 'fifty heroes' accompanying Gilgamesh and also the 'fifty great gods' known as Anunnaki.

"The 'fifty great gods' of Sumer, the Anunnaki, are invariably seated. Sacred oarsmen or Argonauts are all, of course, invariably seated while they are rowing. 'The fifty who sit' and 'the fifty who sit and row' seem to be a motif."
(The Sirius Mystery, pgs. 134-135)

Anunnaki

In addition to referencing elements of the Deluge, the Fall of Man, Gilgamesh, and the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris, Temple suggest an even more esoteric secret behind the Argo epic. In his now legendary The Sirius Mystery Temple asserts that amphibious extraterrestrial beings from (or near) the star Sirius visited Earth several thousand years and that traces of their visit were preserved in various myths and esoteric teachings. The prior sentence will of course cause many 'right-thinking' individuals to dismiss Temple out of hand. But the man does have a degree in Oriental studies and Sanskrit from the University of Pennsylvania in addition to being a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Much of his other work, especially his studies on ancient China, are highly respected within academia. While I'm skeptical of Temple's extraterrestrial hypothesis, his speculation on ancient myths is mostly first rate.

The appearance of the number 50, for instance, in both the myths of the Anunnaki, Gilgamesh, and the Argonauts, is a reference to the time it takes Sirius B to orbit around Sirius A. The reappearance of a ship and epic voyage in so many myths is a reference to the aliens traveling to Earth in a spacecraft. Continual references to teeth are an allusion to how the Sirius ETs (who are amphibians in Temple's theory) communicate with each other, a la dolphins.

"The fact that the Dogon stress the pointed teeth of the Nommos, together with all the ancient tooth traditions this seems to support the view that the Nommos have teeth with special properties, probably sonar-receivers like the dolphins', and quite possibly with a bizarre anatomical aspect such as those of the dugongs. If a tooth is like a radio and not just something with which you chomp, then it is understandable that it would take on a special significance and be referred to in myth and legend."
(ibid, pg. 307-8)

Well, some of his speculations are first rate, anyway. One of the most compelling is his 'oracle octaves' hypothesis, which plays into ancient traditions of ley lines, alleged energy grids that run across the Earth. The concept of ley lines appear the world over in various traditions.

"In several other parts of the world, lines linking holy centres are not only mythological paths down which the gods representing the various heavenly bodies pass at regular seasons, but have further quality known only to native magicians. American Indians, particularly the Hopi of the Southwest, appear to use them as cables of mental communication. In China they are known as lung-mei, the paths of the dragon, and run between astronomical mounds and high mountains...

"The peculiar legend of unseen tracks running straight across country aroused the interest of J.D. Evans Wentz, who in the early part of the century travelled widely among the Celts of Britain and France, collecting fairy stories and other relics of the old mythology. In several parts of Ireland he heard about fairy paths. These paths, sometimes visible as old roads, sometimes preserved only in local memory, were said to be routes of seasonal processions. On a certain day the fairies passed through the land, and anyone who stood in their way might be struck dead or be taken off, never to return...

"The Chinese believed that lung-mei extended all over the world, and this belief is everywhere supported by the evidence of local tradition. In Australia and North America the dragon lines are creation paths, haunted by gods and by the great primeval serpent, the ancestral guardian of all living things. In Ireland they are roads of fairies."
(The New View Over Atlantis, John Michell, pgs. 37-8)

ley lines

Before returning to Temple's 'oracle octaves' theory, I'd like to draw the reader's attention to a few sections of the prior quote. For one, note that ley lines have commonly been associated with dragons or serpents in various cultures across the globe -There are even European traditions that associate them with dragons in addition to fairies. In the Argo epic Jason must overcome either a dragon or a serpent to achieve the Golden Fleece. That the Hopi and some other Southwestern Native Americans consider these paths to be for mental communication is also significant, as I shall address later. For more information on leys, check out a prior blog I wrote on this topic here.

Anyway, back to Temple's 'oracle octaves.' The oracles Temple is referring to are oracle centers, such as the legendary Delphi, that were spread across the ancient world. These oracle centers were great holy places, whose alignment may have been intentional.

"These centres in the Middle East seem at a casual glance to be dotted around apparently at random. However, there is actually a pattern in their distribution which we will find bears some relation to our subject, and which indicates a highly advanced science of geography and related disciplines in the ancient world. Examination of the oracle centres will be seen to have a connection with the ship Argo and will help us to fill in some of the missing background to the entire system of the ancient religious mysteries. The oracle centres were the main places where religion was practiced in the ancient world."
(The Sirius Mystery, Robert Temple, pg. 161)

Here we find yet another connection between the various Sirius myths and the Argo, in this case specifically the constellation. And the connection is no minor one, as Temple essentially argues that these oracle centers dedicated to Sirius were laid according to the project of the constellation Argo upon the Earth.

"The other Arabian star named 'Weight' was in the constellation Argo. But we see the Argo was associated with Sirius, as was the first star named 'Weight' which was in the Great Dog constellation and a visible companion of Sirius.

"If an Argo is projected on the globe with its helm near the ancient Egyptian city Canopus on the coast of the Mediterranean (the star Canopus forms the helm of the Argo in the sky) and with its prow at Dodona (from where the oak came which was placed in the Argo's prow), if we hold the stern firmly on Canopus but swing the ship eastwards at the top, so that the prow points towards Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark was supposed to have landed, we find that the arc thus described is a right-angle of 90º.

"Instead of Canopus we must really use the neighbouring site of the now entirely vanished city of Behdet, which was the capital of pre-dynastic Egypt prior to the foundation of Memphis.

"Dodona is exactly 8º of latitude north of Behdet. Delphi is exactly 7º north of Behdet. Delos (another important early oracle centre, vanished by classical Greek times) is exactly 6º north of Behdet. Behdet was the Greenwich of the ancient world prior to 3200 BC and was used as a geodetic headquarters.

"Associated with near-by Mount Ararat as a mystery-centre was the now little-known site of Metsamor. Mt Ararat is 8º north of Behdet and on the same parallel as Dodona.

"A site on Kythera is known to have connections with early dynastic Egypt as a religious centre and is about 5º north of Behdet. The island of Thera may, however, have been an oracle centre. It was destroyed by a famous volcanic eruption in Minoan times.

"All these sites were revealed as a pattern now termed a 'geodetic octave' by the projection on the globe of the Argo, which is connected with Sirius. Sirius was not only the element of the most sacred traditions of the Dogon and the ancient Egyptians, but apparently of the entire civilized and cosmopolitan Mediterranean world prior at least to 3000 BC and probably well before 3200 BC."
(ibid, pg. 201)

Jason was also clearly a major element, given the strong link between the Argo epic and Sirius, which was at the heart of the religion of ancient Egypt and many of the Mystery school spread across the Mediterranean. In addition to the Argo epic incorporating some of the major religious traditions of the ancient world, the constellation named after it may have influenced the location of several of the major religious centers of that era. This also plays into the traditions of ley lines which appear the world over. Serpents and/or dragons play a crucial role in the traditions of both ley lines and the Argo.

Another possible link between Jason and Sirius are the letters in the Jason name itself. Earlier I noted that one of the explanations (denied by the group) for the adoption of JASON for the name of the scientific research group was to allude to months in which the group met, which was between July and November. The months July, August, and possibly September are extremely important to the various Sirius traditions as these are the commonly excepted dates for the Dog Days, the principal holiday for Sirius, and one of the main observations of the ancient world. The month of November is when the star Sirius becomes most visible in the Northern hemisphere. Of the five months referenced in the JASON acronym, October is the only one I have yet to uncover a link to Sirius. Thus, the name Jason may be an allusion to the chief months associated with Sirius.

Even the first Friday the 13th film seems to allude to the Jason/Sirius connection. Annie, the film's first victim after the opening sequence, encounters a dog at a gas station while hiking toward Camp Crystal Lake. Naturally dogs are sacred to the Dog Star, and the inclusion of the dog sequence seems pointless outside the Sirius context. Later she is dropped off at three-way crossroads, which were sacred to the goddess Hecate. Temple argues that Hecate (who was often depicted with 50 hell hounds at her side) was closely linked to Sirius.

"The name of the Greek goddess Hekate (Hecate) literally means 'one hundred'. She was involved with the Argo tale and specifically identified by Robert Graves with Isis, and in other ways linked to Sirius as an 'underworld version'. Since both Sirius B and Sirius C may share a fifty-year orbit around Sirius A, we can possibly understand the 'twice-fifty years' as an esoteric reference to that."
(ibid, pg. 159)

Curiously, Hecate's appearance in the Argonautica occurs when Jason offers a sacrifice to her at a cemetery in Colchis at the urging of Medea. This will be important later, but for now back to Friday the 13th. Even the name of the film itself may be such a reference. As noted previously, the date Friday the 13th is closely linked to the Knights Templar, whom Temple believed were in possession of some of the ancient Sirius traditions. Clearly, the link between Jason and Sirius is one that appears time and again in the zeitgeist of the times, what ever they may be.

Now that the connections to Sirius are out of the way, there is one final aspect of the Jason mystery that I would like to address: Namely, its connection to drugs. This connection is overt in the figure of Medea, the sorceress who helps Jason complete his tasks in Colchis on condition that he marry her. Virtually all of Medea's help revolves around the use of 'potions' and 'herbs' that she concocts for Jason. Initially she anoints Jason with a magical oil that helps him yoke fire-breathing oxes. Later she gives Jason a narcotic herb that puts the great serpent/dragon that guards the Golden Fleece to sleep. Eventually she convinces Pelias' daughters that she resurrects a dismembered sheep with a drugged brew.

Researchers Carl Ruck, Blaise Staples, and Clark Heinrich argue in their The Apples of Apollo that the entire Argo myth is a metaphor for entheogens.

"In the case of Jason, the Golden Fleece was ultimately Amanita muscaria. In such a quest, the hero is a shaman whose identity... becomes consubstantial with the drug of his shamanism so that many of his characteristics have ethnobotanical referents and some of the events are not only his experience, but that of the entheogen itself, that is his analogue. Hence, Jason was trained as a shaman and displayed symbolic features such as his single, muddy foot, his non-birth, and his name as a drug man. Amongst those who sailed with him on the quest were the Dioskouroi and their cousins, the Moliones, whose identities also are ethnobotanical, as Pillar, St. Elmo's Fire, Cap, Lotus, and hermaphroditic Sphere. Similarly, the Fleece has metaphoric characteristics of the quested entheogen, such as the Golden Apple, the fleecy Hide, the Shield, the tiny Man, the Egg, the Serpent, the horned Bull, the Bird, and the Ball of Eros. To initiate him for his heroic ordeal of consubstantiality, Medea anoints him wit the herb of Prometheus, whose theft of Fire was ultimately that of Vision and the sacred plant. The theme of the Fleece persisted in alchemical occult knowledge, becoming ostensibly the parchment on which was written the secret formula of chrysopoeia, although it, too, recalls the ethnobotanical original."
(The Apples of Apollo, Ruck, Staples & Heinrich, pg. 87)

the Golden Fleece?

Ruck, Staples, and Heinrich offer a most interesting explanation of Jason's name.

"Jason is the Latin name for the leader of the band of heroes known as the Argonauts in Greek myth who sailed in the ship Argo on the famous expedition to the eastern shore of the Black Sea to fetch back the Golden Fleece; in his own language, Jason's name was written as Iason. This was not his original name. His parents had called him Diomedes, a good name meaning that he was lord in the tradition of the god Zeus. But to protect the child from his enemies when he was born, his mother had pretended that he had died, and she sent him secretly up onto Mount Pelion, above the town of Iolchos in Thessaly, to be raised by the centaur Cheiron. It was he who named him Iason, which means 'drug man' or doctor, because he taught the child all he knew about botanical pharmacology. Iason wasn't the only young hero to receive this tutelage on Mount Pelion: Achilleus (Latin Achilles), the hero of the Iliad, was educated there, as was Aktaion (Latin Actaeon), and Herakles (Hercules), and Aristaios, and Asklepios, the patron of medicine, and his own two sons, Podaleirios and Machaon, and even Iason's son by Medea, Medeios. The god Dionysos himself was said to have learned his sacred rites from the good centaur. Since this education also involved the 'intoxicating' art of archery, for which arrows poisoned with botanic drugs were employed, the list of Cheiron's ethnopharmacological disciples could be expanded, according to an ancient scholar, to include the hunter Kephalos (the beloved of the Dawn who accidentally killed his jealous wife), Melanion (who racved with Atalanta), the wise old Nestor, the Theban seer Amphiaraos, Achilleus's father Peleus, and Aias's (Latin Ajax's) father Telamon, Atalanta's brother Meleagros (who died in the Calydonian Boar Hunt), Theseus (the Athenian hero), and his son Hippolytos, Palamedes (the enemy of Odysseus at Troy), and Odysseus himself, Menestheus (the vice-regent of Athens while Theseus was absent in the underworld), Diomedes (the one with the carnivorous mares that were the labors of Herakles), the Dioskouroi or twin sons of Zeus: Kastor and Polydeukes, Antilochos (the eldest son of Nestor and best friend of Achilleus and Patroklos), and even Aineias (Latin Aeneas), who would be the hero pf Virgil's epic. There were probably more, but that is all he could find -and remember, this was before the age of the computer search."
(ibid, pgs. 89-91)

Cheiron, the shaman centaur and his pupil Iason, the drug man

Earlier I noted that Temple believed many, if not all, of the ancient heroes described as Argonauts were later additions added for their 'box office' draw. Jason is the only Argonaut mentioned by name in the earliest references to the Argo. It seems likely Temple is correct in arguing that the ancient heroes described as Argonauts were later additions, but they seemingly were added for more than their box office appeal. As the prior sections note, many of the heroic Argonauts such as Hercules and Orpheus were also associated with entheogens and shamanism. Rather than being added for their box office draw, they were added to reinforce the entheogenic symbolism.

Of course, with sections like the duel with the dragon/serpent that guards the Golden Fleece in Colchis, not much reinforcement is needed. The interpretation by Ruck, Staples, Heinrich in this section is quite striking.

"The serpent is, of course, consubstantial with the mushroom, itself. Its 'poison,' via its effects, reputation, and taboos, is what guards the fleece. You eat it, but it 'eats' you back, swallowing you into its world and vomiting you back out, just as you may vomit it back out...

"In these traditions, Iason won the Fleece by descending into Death at the Cosmic Axis of the Tree of the Fleece, and returning. In Apollonius's telling, Medea and Iason entered the Garden together, where the Fleece hung from the branches of an oak tree, and in color, it was 'like a cloud growing red with the fiery rays of the rising sun.' Others placed it in the mouth of the Serpent who guarded it, or spread it on a rock around which coils the Serpent. And Medea enchanted the monster itself to sleep, singing and sprinkling it with drugged potion (or kykeon, like the drink of the Eleusinian Mystery), aspersing it with a branch of freshly cut juniper."
(ibid, pgs. 103-104)

the serpent eating Jason

Needless to say, Ruck, Staples, and Heinrich have a much more plausible explanation of the whole dragon's teeth episode than Temple as well.

"But to return to Iason's heroic task: as he plowed the furrows with the 'bellowing or mooing' bulls, roaring with the thunder of quaking earth and the bluster of winds, and as he plants the teeth, behind him sprouted suddenly like mushrooms the crop of hostile men, the 'Sown Men' or Spartoi, as they were called at Thebes (and probably Sparta), here the Kaulomyketes, whom he 'mowed' down, some when they were still just emerging, others, fully above the ground, until he employed the same ruse that had worked with Kadmos, a stone thrown in their midst, so that they would turn upon each other in the fighting. And when it was over, the harvest was done; and safely, for he had been anointed with the chrism that protected him, initiating the shaman as consubstantial with the earth-born creatures that were his entheogen."
(ibid, pg. 101)

the 'crop' of dragon's teeth...

... or the crop of dragon's teeth?

Temple freely acknowledges that he is not interested in 'drug culture' early in The Sirius Mystery, yet he cannot help but mention the close links between drug use and the oracle centers in his oracle octaves theory. Consider this description of how the seer at Delphi achieved her 'messages' from the god Apollo:

"...the mantic bowl into which the priestess... will gaze as she goes into trance. A female attendant stands with a jug of water to refill the bowl as it becomes necessary. The bowl was filled with a hot steaming liquid containing powerful decoctions of narcotic herbs such as henbane, thorn apple and black and white hellebore, which helped induce a prophetic frenzy in the self-hypnotized priestess. The terrible smell was explained away to the public as 'fumes from the rotting corpse of the monster Python', supposedly oozing up through a chasm under the temple (although modern excavators have proved that there was no chasm)."
(The Sirius Mystery, pg. 172)

The oracle at Delphi is the only one I have found where there is concrete evidence of ritualistic drug use. However, if the various oracle centers of antiquity were all linked as Temple suggests, it seems reasonable that similar rites would have been used at all of them. The Jason mysteries seemingly allude to this. Here again a serpent, in this case Python, is associated with drugs just as the serpent/dragon guarding the Golden Fleece was.

Now, remember back to earlier in this piece where I noted the similarities between Temple's concept of 'oracle octaves' and ley lines. I also remarked that ley lines have often been associated with dragons or serpents the world over -In China they were known as 'dragon paths' while in South America they were haunted by the cosmic serpent. Further, the Hopi had a tradition that the ley lines could be used as cables of mental communication.

cosmic serpents

If Temple's theory of 'oracle octaves' is correct, and that the ancient oracle centers were built upon specific lines of latitude, then seemingly this tradition was also present in the ancient Near East for these oracle centers claimed that their priests were in direct contact with various gods. And at least at Delphi, this contact was induced by drugs. This type of 'mental communication' would easily constitute a psychic voyage, which would provide a seemingly more plausible explanation for the recurrence of ships and epic voyages in mythology that Temple's spaceship interpretation.

And so we come full circle dear reader. I became fascinated by the Jason mysteries due to an obscure hand gesture made in The Simpsons Movie which the Honourable DJ Hives and/or Nemesis described as the 'signal of a Jason.' This led me back to William Cooper who described both the JASON group (which exists beyond a doubt) and the JASON Society as among the highest grades of the Cryptocracy. From there, I began to note the remarkable persistence of Jason in pop culture from the modern Friday the 13th films all the way back to the ancient Argo epic. Upon examining this legend, I found it ripe with all manor of symbolism -hints of the Fall of Man, the Deluge, and the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris, in addition to traces of Sirius and drug cults.

What does it all mean? Is the myth of Jason, as Cooper suggested, simply symbolic of the quest toward illumination? Does it hint at something more profound, such as telepathic contact with nonhuman beings (or perhaps super advanced human beings in the furthest regions of space, as DJ Hives/Nemesis' interpretation of 2001: A Space Odyssey concludes) through the use of ley lines and ritualistic drug use? Or is it simply a veiled account of ancient PSYOPS in which the Cryptocracy used drugs and rituals of terror to induce religious experiences (which could explain why key elements of various world religions are incorporated into the Argo)?

Clearly, only Jason knows for sure.