Suffer the Children II

Child abuse is institutionalized in our society, as it is in much of the West. Our leaders actively try to screw up as many kids as possible by hook or by crook, either through official channels (eg the school system) or the unspeakable (ritual abuse). There are many reasons for this policy, but the simplest is chaos. Children in this country that do not have strong parental guidance do not always grow up to become the most civil adults. This in turn creates problems that only the TPTB can solve.

Charles Manson is a fine example of this. His first strike was to be born to a poor, unwed mother that did not want him. As a result he spent much of his childhood being passed back and forth amongst various relations that had about as much interest in him as his mother... That is, when he wasn't in some type of reform school, which likely had a profound influence on his life. He was sodomized for the first time at such an institution when he was 12 years old, after all.

The following article is certainly a fine testament to the peculiar fashion that children are now raised in the 21st century:

"These days, the medicine cabinet is truly a family affair. More than a quarter of U.S. kids and teens are taking a medication on a chronic basis, according to Medco Health Solutions Inc., the biggest U.S. pharmacy-benefit manager with around 65 million members. Nearly 7% are on two or more such drugs, based on the company's database figures for 2009.

"Doctors and parents warn that prescribing medications to children can be problematic. There is limited research available about many drugs' effects in kids. And health-care providers and families need to be vigilant to assess the medicines' impact, both intended and not. Although the effects of some medications, like cholesterol-lowering statins, have been extensively researched in adults, the consequences of using such drugs for the bulk of a patient's lifespan are little understood...

"Researchers attribute the wide usage in part to doctors and parents becoming more aware of drugs as an option for kids. Unhealthy diets and lack of exercise among children, which lead to too much weight gain and obesity, also fuel the use of some treatments, such as those for hypertension. And some conditions are likely caught and treated earlier as screening and diagnosis efforts improve...

"Parents and doctors also say nondrug alternatives should be explored where possible. Tom Wells, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences who sees patients at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock, frequently pushes diet and exercise changes before drugs for hypertensive kids. 'Obesity is really the biggest cause I see for high blood pressure in adolescents,' he says. But only about 10% of families adhere to his diet and exercise recommendations, he says.

Another major justification for the doping of the youth is AD/HD, which is typically treated by drugs such as Ridalin and Adderall, which also happen to be amphetamines:

"Ritalin and Adderall are amphetamines - brain stimulants that physicians very frequently prescribe to treat Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). ADD and AD/HD are common behavioral disorders affecting attention span, impulse control, and self-discipline, and in the case of AD/HD, hyperactivity...

"Ritalin and Adderall are closely related to illegal "street" drugs, including dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine, or "dexies"), methamphetamine ("crystal meth") and cocaine."

To recap: A country that incarcerates more people than any other nation on Earth (and likely in human history), in no small part because of the 'War on Drugs', hands out over a million doses of a crystal meth-like drug to its own children on a daily basis. Well, I guess if the doctors (and the pharmaceutical industry) says it's okay....

This is really a coup for the Cryptocracy. A generation of children raised on prescription meds, which Dr. Ronald W Dworkin has dubbed 'Artificial Happiness', will have profound social implications in our future:

"Inducing Artificial Happiness in children, and on a mass scale, has far greater social repercussions. A whole species of humanity stands ready to emerge in which Artificial Happiness has blunted psychological development during a crucial period of life -childhood. As children, these people are given Artificial Happiness to drive off feelings of sadness. Avoiding sadness becomes a habit for them. When the next downturn in life occurs, the Artificial Happiness experience is repeated. These Happy Children go on for months, even years, standing before the same life dilemmas and not moving a step toward their solution, stifling the growth of their consciences through repeated bouts of stupefaction. They become Happy Adults and then Happy Seniors, using the same method throughout their lives to deal with unhappiness. What emerges is an entire life cycle based on Artificial Happiness."
(Artificial Happiness, Ronald Dworkin, pg. 262)

Dworkin is referring to antidepressants, but the same observations could be made about virtually any other type of drug that is prescribed to children. Consider the rise in obesity -This has become a national crisis at all levels and the only response is to try to medicate it away. Somehow, I don't think that's going to get people eating healthier or exercising more. And unfortunately, this 'cure' is going to continue to be administered at an ever younger age.

Between the pills and the Disney porn, future generations will likely have a much different view of what childhood consists of than prior generations. In fact, it could charitably be said that childhood as it was previously known is being all but phased out.

Mind's Eye Part II

Yes I know the secrets of the iron and mind

They're trinity acts, a mineral fire

Yes I know the secrets of the circuitry mind

It's a flaming wonder telepath

-"Flaming Telepaths," Blue Oyster Cult

Remote viewing is one of those topics that's difficult for certain types of conspiracists because of its supernatural nature and the rather extensive evidence of its existence accumulated by reputable scientists in world renowned labs. Given the types of characters one encounters in the remote viewing field one can't help but feel as if they're being led down a path of disinformation that will inevitably make their research sound ridiculous. Yet the occult and its various aspects pop up time and time again when researching the Cryptocracy and with the occult comes the mystical. Things would be so much easier if the mystical aspects could simply be dismissed as a smokescreen, yet the massive sums of money the US intelligence community alone has invested in various fringe topics makes this explanation unlikely. Anyone that's read Jacques Vallee's accounts of various state-sanctioned UFO hoaxes will know that an effective hoax can be accomplished for far, far less money that was spent on remote viewing, or any number of other fringe topics programs such as Phoenix and MK-ULTRA tackled.

So, if we cannot dismiss remote viewing as a hoax, then we must consider its effectiveness as to understand why the Cryptocracy became so interested with it in the second half of the 20th century. Researcher Michael Talbot states of the SRI remote viewing program:

"In their remote viewing experiments at Stanford Research Institute, Puthoff and Targ found that, in addition to being able to psychically describe remote locations that experimenters were visiting in the present, test subjects could also describe locations experimenters would be visiting in the future, before the locations had even been decided upon...

"Puthoff and Targ's precognitive remote-viewing findings have been duplicated by numerous laboratories around the world, including Jahn and Dunne's research facility at Princeton. Indeed, in 334 formal trials Jahn and Dunne found that volunteers were able to come up with accurate precognitive information 62 percent of the time."
(The Holographic Universe, pgs. 205-206)

Personally I find the 62% more startling that the ability to see the future. This would imply that a majority of humanity would have some kind of psychic ability, which was exactly the conclusion that SRI researchers came to after a time. The ability was latent in all of us and in theory anyone could be taught it, but certain individuals possessed far greater psychic ability than the average person.

"The SRI researchers were somewhat evangelical on the subject of remote viewing; they believed that remote-viewing ability was like musical ability: everyone had it to some degree...

"...running medical, neurological, and psychological profiles of their remote viewers, looking for attributes that stood out. So far, about all they had found was that artistic talent, visual-spatial intelligence, and creativity all tended to be associated with high remote-viewing scores."
(Remote Viewing, Jim Schnabel, pgs. 14-15)

A person's susceptibility to hypnosis has also historically been a strong indication of strong psychic abilities:

"Dabblers in hypnosis quickly discovered that people who were very good at 'prenatural' skills like clairvoyants, psychokinesis, and even a kind of shamanic healing ability. Many of the talented 'somnambules' and 'clairvoyantes' were as celebrated as today's big-name psychics. By the 1840s hypnosis-related psi abilities were so common that they had become a sort of parlor trick."
(Remote Viewing, Jim Schnabel, pg. 143)

Many of the remote viewers recruited into Grill Flame were idea hypnotic subjects. As an interesting side note, the CIA heavily invested in hypnosis as part of their MK-ULTRA program in an attempt to create the perfect assassin, or 'Manchurian Candidate.':

"While hypnosis sounds tame by comparison, it actually had great potential as an intelligence weapon when wielded by the right hand and on the right subject. Much of what has been written on the applicability of hypnosis to a Manchurian Candidate scenario is fundamentally flawed: many investigators claim that since a hypnotized subject will not do anything to which he or she morally objects, hypnosis is therefore useless. They ignore the obvious implication that fully twenty percent of the human population is capable of 'going under' without too much difficulty, and that many of these potential subjects would not find murder, rape, theft, deceit, etc., morally objectionable, particularly if the command was given by a recognized authority figure.
(Sinister Forces, Peter Levenda, pg. 318)

Many people firmly believe that a hypnotized subject could in no way be persuaded to kill or harm another human being if they find it morally objective, yet the CIA conducted experiments on this belief under the direction of Morse Allen in the 1950s and found the opposite to be true. But I digress.

Anyway, the remote viewers had some truly remarkable success under Grill Flame. Much has already been written on this topic across the Internet, so I shall only give one example of the practical applications of remote viewing in the field. One of the most celebrated success of remote viewing, which managed to draw the praises of then-President Jimmy Carter, was the recovery of a highly classified Soviet plane in Zaire (now the Congo) in the late 1970s which the CIA was led to via coordinates given to them from an SRI remote-viewer:

"... eventually Graff's office was able to match Fran Bryan's sketch to a specific spot along a particular river. The coordinates of the spot were quickly cabled to the station chief in Zaire...

"Shortly thereafter, the CIA's team found the main intact section of the downed plane. It was in the river Graff's office had indicated, within three miles of the given coordinates.

"...Turner mentioned the role the psychics had played. Carter didn't seem to mind at all. He knew about the SRI program from National Security Council staffer Jack Stewart, and Congressman Charlie Rose. He seemed to approve of the idea."
(Remote Viewing, Jim Schnabel, pgs. 218-219)

An obvious question becomes, if remote viewing was as real and common as various researchers would have us believe, then why was it not more widely used? After all, it was much cheaper to have an individual lay in a darkened room and attempt to locate a crashed airplane via his mind's eye rather than, say, launching a satellite for the same purposes.

Well, remote viewing data was notoriously unreliable. At times it could appear remarkably accurate, and at other times be totally off. Researchers began to chalk this discrepancy up to the mental baggage of the remote viewers themselves than their actual ability. Apparently the biggest challenge to a remote viewer when spying an object, place, person, etc., is blocking out the 'noise' of their own minds so that the signal can come through. As such, SRI considered remote viewing as a kind of subliminal perception:

"Subliminal perception was so called because it described perception that took place below ('sub-') the 'limen,' the lower threshold of consciousness. All mental activities -the remembering of a face, the tasting of chocolate, the hearing of distant thunder, the fearing of tomorrow -had to have a certain strength and duration to rise above the liminal threshold and produce conscious perception...

"... SRI began to notice now that remote-viewing data resembled the kinds of data generated by test subjects who had been exposed to subliminal stimuli. They did freehand, autonomous sketches that they often were unable to label accurately. They reported very rough sense perceptions and emotions such as 'red' or 'makes me sa.' They gave out error-prone high-level descriptions... as their minds desperatley tried to amke analtical sense of the subliminally faint stimulus.

"... remote viewing was largely a form of subliminal perception. How psi information came into the brain in the first place wastill unknown, but it seemed to come in tenuously, in fragments, as if the remote viewer were continually being transported to his target, alighting there for the briefiest of moments, and then being hauled back again. It began to seem that the remote-viewing faculty was like any other sensory faculty -taste, smell, touch, sight, hearing -only much, much weaker, unable in ordinary circumstances to make it across the liminal threshold. This implied that, short of some revolution in our understanding of the mind and our ability to manipulate it, remote-viewing perception would always be extremely noise-prone for most people. There was really no way to get rid of the noise; one could only try to recognize it and seperate it from the signal."

(Remote Viewing, Jim Schnab, pg. 239-240)

The previous statement also provides a compelling explanation for how the bulk of humanity could have latent psychic ability, yet be totally unaware. Many of us probably experience some type of psychic phenomenon within our psyche regularly, yet cannot distinguish between it and our own unconsciousness. It's only when we experience a sensation such as deja vu, the feeling that an event has already happened before, that we're ever so briefly aware that something entered our consciousness from without. This is consistent with Jung's theory of the collective unconsciousness, which holds that our deeper unconsciousness is universal and something that all humans share. I've written on this topic before, which can be viewed here.

And now that I've given a brief overview of the remote viewing phenomenon, I'd like to delve into the truly bizarre incidents and synchronicities, some of which tie into themes that are already running through this blog.

The first aspect I would like to tackle is the location of the two main compartments of Grill Flame, one at SRI in California, the other at Fort Meade in Maryland.

We'll start with the later. Fort Meade is located near what I believe is a 'window area' that encompasses parts of Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, and virtually all of West Virginia. I've written of the odd happenings in this region before here, but to briefly recap: Strange happenings, rituals, and structures have found their way here since before the arrival of Europeans: The area around southern Ohio and northern West Virginia is littered with Indian mounds and bizarre religious structures. In the modern era numerous suspect government facilities such as Sugar Grove (an NSA communications facility in West Virginia which Pat Price remote viewed famously in the 1970s), Langley (the Virginia home of the CIA), Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (home of the infamous Hangar 18 were legend has it the Roswell wreckage was brought), etc., have been built all around this region. Some of the nation's most notorious serial killers such as Charles Manson, Henry Lee Lucas, and Bobby Joe Long, were born in this area (SRI's home in California is also an appealing area for serial killers as well, a contrast I discussed in the second half of a Charles Manson article). For years this region has experienced countless instances of Fortean events from the Mothman, to UFOs sightings, and even phantom clippers.

Needless to say, this region of the country has a long history of attracting the bizarre. The Fort Meade remote viewers would be no different. In an isolated area of Virginia, within the Blue Ridge Parkway, is a place known as the Monroe Institute which would go on to serve a major role in the training of the Fort Meade remote viewers. The Monroe Institute is yet another one of these human potential centers, this one specializing in out-of-body experiences through a technique known as 'Hemi-Synch', which used extreme sound frequencies to alter human brainwaves. Monroe was discovered by 'Skip' Atwater, the longtime leader of the Fort Meade RV unit. He immediately became a big fan after experiencing a sensation of levitation after his first session at Monroe. Soon other military personnel were being sent there.

"Atwater became a regular visitor to the institute, as did Joe McMoneagle, and Colonel John Alexander, and even Major General Stubblebine. They began sharing Hemi-Synch tapes with others at INSCOM or in Grill Flame, to help them cool down before remote-viewing sessions, or to cure insomnia or jet lag."
(Remote Viewers, Jim Schnabel, pg. 296)

Eventually all Fort Meade remote viewers were required to attend the Monroe Institute as a part of their training. Several of them opted to stay, buying land in Blue Ridge near the Institute after retiring from the military.

Now we move onto SRI, which has attracted more than it's fair share of questionable characters over the years. The Stanford Research Institute of course has a cozy relationship with the military-industrial complex, having been a major recipient of DARPA largess for years. In the late in 1960s it employed the notorious intelligence asset and LSD guru Captain Al 'Trips' Hubbard as a 'security officer.'

"Hubbard accepted the offer of a $100 per day consultant's fee, and from then on he was officially employed as a security officer for SRI. 'His services to us,' explained Harmon, 'consisted in gathering various sorts of data regarding student unrest, drug abuse, drug use at school and universities, causes and nature of radical activities, and similar matters, some of a classified nature.'"
(Acid Dreams, Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, pgs. 198-199)

The Captain was of course perfect for this job as he had been instrumental in spreading LSD through the universities in the 1950s and early 1960s. More on this topic can be read here.

After the beginning of the SRI remote viewing program the institute attracted Nine disciple Andrija Puharich and his medium, Uri Geller, who would become one of the most famous test subjects of SRI. More on that below.

First, I want to address one of the oddest synchs I've come across while researching the SRI. This one occurred at the nearby Stanford University, which SRI was founded by, and affiliated with, until 1971.

"On October 12, 1974, the birthday of Aleister Crowley, student Arliss Perry was brutally murdered and left on display in the Stanford Memorial Church on the campus of Stanford University, nestled in the shadows of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Perry was left lying on her back, with her head toward the altar and her legs spread wide. She was nude from the waist down and an altar candle protruded from her vagina; another altar candle was wedged between her exposed breasts. Her jeans had been neatly arranged in an inverted V-shape and placed across her splayed legs, forming the Masonic symbol of the compass and the square. Five years earlier, the very same symbol had been left carved into the stomach of Manson victim Leno LaBianca, as the 'W' in the word 'War.' The prime suspect in the still-unsolved murder of Perry is a man named Bill Mentzer, who knew Charles Manson and at least one of his victims: Abigail Folger. In fact, Mentzer reportedly had lunch with Folger just a few days before her death. He later was connected to David 'Son of Sam' Berkowitz as well and still later was convicted of the Cotton Club murder of aspiring film producer Roy Radin."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 136-137)

Incidentally this horrendous murder took place around the same time Uri Geller was conducting his infamous experiments with the nearby Livermore National Laboratory, which more will be written of below. I'll just point out that shortly before and after the SRI remote viewer experiments were begun (a period stretching from 1967 to 1973) Northern California, especially the area around Santa Cruz, was experiencing a rash of serial murders.

"To briefly recap, no fewer than six serial killers/mass murderers -Charles Manson, Stanley Baker, Edmund Kemper, Herbert Mullin, John Lindley Frazier, and the Zodiak -were all spawned from the Santa Cruz/San Francisco metropolitan area in a span of just over four years, at a time when 'serial killers' were a rare enough phenomenon that they hadn't yet acquired a name."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pg. 136)

I'm not sure what to make of these synchs entirely. But if the theories of researchers such as McGowan are true and these 'serial murders' were a domestic extension of the CIA's Vietnam era Phoenix Program, then SRI as a major defense researcher would likely be involved in the program in some capacity. Perhaps brutally murdering a woman on the campus of SRI's original patron in the midst of some of its most bizarre remote viewing experiments was some kind of statement... Though I have no idea of what it may be.

Nevertheless, I find it interesting that there is an overlap between these two seemingly separate, and unrelated events, especially when one considers the Macrobes. One thing virtually all remote viewers seem to agree upon is that strange things are drawn to you when in that mental state.

"Dames and some of the others often talked about the phenomenology of the Matrix, the strange things that happen there. They liked to say, for instance, that remote viewing was like switching on a beacon within the Matrix. It attracted strange things, the way a porch light attracts bugs on a hot summer night. They all knew the story of what happened to Gene Kincaid, one afternoon back in 1987. Kincaid had been in one of the RV rooms, running Angela Dellafiora against a target... She was going through her routine, murmuring impressions from down in her zone, when suddenly Kincaid looked up and saw his dead father, standing there in the RV room, looking at him."
(Remote Viewers, Jim Schnabel, pg. 354)

'Aliens' were another target several remote viewers became obsessed with:

"Remote viewers themselves seemed just as captivated by the subject. And when they targeted UFOs in their remote viewing, strange things could happen. One of the strangest things was that they almost never failed to detect the UFO."
(ibid, PG. 356)

Indeed, their accuracy seemed to increase the stranger the target.

"This area of remote-viewing phenomenology would always remain confusing, but at least in some cases, the characteristics of a target that made it 'RV-friendly' were obvious: If a target had some religious or supernatural or paranormal significance, or was otherwise tinged with strangeness, remote viewers seemed to home in on it relatively rapidly."
(ibid, pg. 357)

Nothing, however, can top the Livermore incidents as far as paranormal events go in terms of remote viewing. The Livermore experiments concerned Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller, who at the time claimed to be channeling the Grand Ennead, nine gods from ancient Egypt who were in fact extraterrestrials. I have already chronicled the story of the Nine, which can be read in detail here.

In late 1974 Livermore National Laboratory became interested in testing Geller's famed psychic ability, as well as the whole remote viewing phenomenon in general. The results were nothing short of extraordinary. Not the actual experiments with Geller mind you, which were generally underwhelming, but what happened as a result of these experiments.

"One day in the lab, several embers of the Livermore group  were monitoring  Geller during a metal-bending session. They recorded him with audiotape, filmed him with videotape, and photographed him with a variety of still cameras, including one that was sensitive to thermal infrared radiation.

"After the  experiment they developed  all the film and saw something strange. The infrared camera had captured what seemed o be diffuse patches of radiation on the upper part of one of he laboratory walls. It was as if someone had briefly shone two large heat sources, either from inside the lab or outside pointing in. The patches grew in intensity for few frames, then over the  next few frames diminished to nothing.

"The Livermore Group were understandably puzzled over this, but it was only the beginning of the strangeness that would soon consume them. When they checked the audiotape they had made during the experiment, they found amid everything else a distinctive, metallic-sounding voice, unheard during the actual experiment but now clearly audible, if mostly unintelligible...

"In the days and weeks that followed, they began to feel that they were collectively possessed by some kind of tormenting, teasing, hallucination-inducing spirit. They all would be in a laboratory together, setting up some experiment, or one of the fellows and his wife and children would be at home, just sitting around, when suddenly there in the middle of the room would be a weird, hovering, almost comically stereotypical image of a flying saucer. It was always about eight inches across, in a gray, fuzzy monochrome, as if it were some kind of hologram...

"On the other hand, the flying saucer wasn't the only form the Livermore visions took. There were sometimes animals -fantastic animals from the ecstatic lore of shamans -such as the large raven-like birds that were seen traipsing through the yards of several members of the group...

"Then there was the very strange business of the metallic voice on the audiotape. Among the few intelligible words it pronounced were two or three Kennett recognized as the code name of a very closely held government project...

"The situation at Livermore eventually resolved itself, after Russo complained about a telephone call from the strange metallic voice. The voice demanded that the Livermore group cease its research activities with Geller. The group did, and within a month, the bizarre apparitions faded away.

"One of the last apparitions sprang itself upon a Livermore physicist named Don Curtis and his wife. They were sitting in their living room one evening, soberly, uneventfully, not talking about Geller or the paranormal when suddenly there was this...arm... hovering holographically in the middle of the room.

"The arm was clothed as if it belonged to a man wearing a plain grey suit. There was no bloody stump where it should have connected with a shoulder. It merely faded into clear space. But at the end of the arm where a hand should have been, there was no hand, only a hook. The hooked arm twisted around a few seconds in front of Curtis and his wife, and then disappeared."
(Remote Viewing, Jim Schnabel, pgs. 164-168)

Later several researchers working on the Livermore project related the arm story to Kennett, the CIA man, in a hotel room. Just as they were finishing up an account of the arm the men were startled by a loud knocking on the hotel door. Kennett got up to answer. On the other side he found an old man in a plain grey suit who apologized, stating he had the wrong room. As the old man walked away Kennett noted he was missing an arm.

There's one final synch I want to note. That's the unusually high fatality rate amongst remote viewers. In a prior article I wrote that addressed Rick Strassman's DMT research in part I noted that many test subjects, as well as others associated with experiments, seemed to experience an unusually high rate of health problems, or other tragedies, after being exposed to a higher state of consciousness. The same seems to be true of the remote viewers:

"...many of them had seemed to die before their time. Had they been living too far out on the shamanic edge of things? Did the act of remote viewing, or even being near a remote viewer, produce some kind of hazardous effect on the human nervous system, or immune system?.. There were Pat Price and Jackie Keith, who both died of heart attacks. (Alex Thomas would later die of a heart attack too.) Rob Cowart and Hartleigh Trent had developed serious cases of cancer; Cowart had been severely disabled and Trent had died. Cancer was currently gnawing at Jim Salyer and Hella Hammid, neither of whom would live through the decade. Even the lab secretary at SRI, young and attractive Martha Thompson, was about to die from melanoma."
(Remote Viewers, Jim Schnabel, pg. 325)

A more solid synch with the Strassman DMT experiments is cancer. Several of Strassman's test subjects developed cancer while experimenting with DMT, as did Strassman's then wife while he was conducting the experiments. At this point I will also remind the readers of the mysterious British WWII-era proto-remote viewer 'Anne' who we met in Part I of this series and who also suffered from disabling health problems.

It would seem that these altered states are not without their risks.

That Old Yule Time Spirit

Around this time of year there's often a lot of complaint that the 'true' meaning of Christmas has been lost. Those familiar with the the traditions of the Mystery Schools will certainly agree, but not for reasons that the layman may think. On the origins of Christmas:

"Indeed, it is admitted by the most learned and candid writers of all parties that the day of our Lord's birth cannot be determined, and that within the Christian Church no such festival as Christmas was ever heard of till the third century, and that not till the fourth century was far advanced did it gain observance. How, then, did the Roman Church fix on December the 25th as Christmas-day? Why, thus: Long before the fourth century, and long before the Christian era itself, a festival was celebrated among the heathen, at that precise time of the year, in honour of the birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven; and it may fairly be presumed that, in order to conciliate  the heathen, and to swell the number of nominal adherents of Christianity, the same festival was adopted by the Roman Church, giving it only the name of Christ."
(The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop. pg. 93)

"Certain it is that the winter solstice, which the ancients erroneously assigned to the twenty-fifth of December, was celebrated in antiquity as the Birthday of the Sun, and that festal lights or fires were kindled on this joyous occasion, Our Christmas festival is nothing but a continuation under a Christian name of this old solar festivity; for the ecclesiastical authorities saw fit, about the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century, arbitrarily to transfer the nativity of Christ from the sixth day of January to the twenty-fifth of December, for the purpose of diverting to their Lord the worship which the heathen had hitherto paid on that day to the sun.

"In modern Christendom the ancient fire-festival of the winter solstice appears to survive, or to have survived down to recent years, in the old custom of the Yule log, clog, or block, as it was variously called in England... That the Yule log was only the winter counterpart of the Midsummer bonfire, kindled within doors instead of in the open air on account of the cold and inclement weather of the season... But while the two solstices celebrations were both festivals of fire, the necessity or desirability of holding the winter celebration within doors lent it the character of a private or domestic festivity, which contrasts strongly with the publicity of the summer celebration, at which the people gathered on some open space or conspicuous height, kindled a huge bonfire in common, and danced and mad merry round it together."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pg. 736-737)

While the winter solstice was primarily an indoor affair in Europe, some regions did celebrate it via an elevated (and presumably very cold) outdoor festival:

"The festival of the twenty-fifth of December, which we call Christmas, was observed by the Druids on that day by lighting great fires on the tops of hills. The festival on the twelfth day afterwards, which we call old Christmas Day.

"And even now there are certain rites performed under the sacred mistletoe on Christmas Day which certainly have little to do with Christianity."
(The Veil of Isis, William Winwood Reade, pg. 98)

Mistletoe and 'old Christmas Day' (January 6th) are especially interesting when considering the origins of Christmas. As to the former, it was a sacred to the Druids (specifically the kind that grew on oaks), and was consumed in certain religious rites as well as for medicinal purposes. This has led some to speculate that mistletoe was consumed in part to produce hallucinations. Much debate rages as to whether mistletoe could be used as an entheogen, and if so, if the Druids did in fact use it in such a fashion:

"As to whether the symptoms include visionary experience, the reports are mixed. The mistletoe is a semi-parasitic plant inasmuch as it does photosynthesize, but it extracts and sequestors fluid and chemicals from its host. Hence, mistletoe grown on different hosts will contain differing elements, which in certain instances are visionary... It shares with the mushroom the tradition that they both are planted by the celestial lightning bolt; and its branches glowing a similar golden color in the winter when fly-agaric is not fruiting would make it a suitable symbolic surrogate...

"Although mistletoe grows commonly on various trees, such as apple, poplar, and willow, it was only the much rarer form found on the oak that the Druids considered sacred... and it was from the oak that the priests derived their name. Clad in white, they climbed the tree and harvested the mistletoe with a golden sickle, while others below received it in a white cloak, never allowing it to touch the ground. It was present at all their religious rituals, and they did eat it, sometimes making a potion from it. They were experienced herbalists, and may have had procedures for extracting the desired chemicals. The mistletoe was called the 'cure all' or panacea in their own language, probably not for its medicinal properties, but because of its role in shamanic healing. (The doctor took the drug, and not the patient.)

"It was fed as well to the victims for their rites of human sacrifice. The body of a Druid prince has been uncovered (the 'Lindow Man'), preserved in a peat bog for 2000 years; he had been ritually slaughtered; his body deposited in the bog, which was considered to be an entrance to the underworld; and the contents of his stomach reveal that he had been given the pollen of mistletoe to eat."
(The Apples of Apollo, Carl Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples, Clark Heinrich, pgs. 19-20)

Mistletoe as a hallucinogen may tie in with the 'magnetic' properties the occult prescribes it:

"The Druids were priests and physicians, curing by magnetism and charging amylets with their fluidic influence. Their universal remedies were mistletoe and serpents' eggs, because these substances attract the astral light in a special manner. The solemnity with which mistletoe was cut down drew upon this plant the popular confidence and rendered it powerfully magnetic... The progress of magnetism will some day reveal to us the absorbing properties of mistletoe. We shall then understand the secret of those spongy growths which drew the unused virtues of plants and become surcharged with tinctures and savors. Mushrooms, truffles, gall on trees and the different kinds of mistletoe will be employed with understanding by medical science, which will be new because it is old..."
(The History of Magic, Eliphas Levi, quoted in The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P Hall, pg. 43)

The possibility that the mistletoe was either used as hallucinogen, or as a symbolic substitute for one, is especially interesting when considering some of the more southern traditions surrounding December 25th and January 6th derived from ancient Greece. It was during this time the mythological beings known as Kallikantzari, gremlin-like creatures often associated with werewolves, were said to roam:

"The almost universal concept of the wolfman would directly connect the Kallikantzari to the Indo-European nexus that in Greece reveals itself in one of the earliest manifestations of Apollo. Even more intriguing, and less linguistically roundabout, would be the derivation of the word Kallikantzaros from a corruption of the purely Greek Lykanthropos, a term with impeccable Greek heritage which can be traced directly back to ancient Greece: the werewolf or wolfman whose appearance we would expect during the winter solstice.

"The Kallikantzari are essentially gremlins, little people with the legs of an ass (horse) or a goat. They are overall hairy and dark skinned; generally they are benign, but like leprechauns and other diminutive beings, can be sly and devious. While not exactly evil, they have several rapine qualities: they love to dance (to ecstasy) and are extremely sexual. If given the opportunity, they will carry off human women to their caves during the twelve days they are allowed to emerge from the bowels of the earth: the days between Christmas (December 25th) and Epiphany (January 6th)."
(The Apples of Apollo, Carl Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples, Clark Heinrich, pgs. 38-39)

The dating is especially interesting for January 6th was the original date of Christmas before being moved twelve days back to the 25th of December. 12 is of course the number of months as well the signs of the Zodiac so presumably this period would be symbolic of the sun's yearly course after its 'rebirth' on the 25th.

The excesses of the Kallikantzari during their leave reminds me of the ancient festivals of Saturnalia and those dedicated to Bacchus that were characterized by their license. It has been widely speculated that the Mysteries of Bacchus included the ingestion of entheogens, likely mushrooms, or possibly some form of ergot.

The werewolf, a shapeshifter to whom the Kallikantzari are associated with, has also been linked to entheogen use. Some have speculated that the werewolf myths of antiquity and Medieval Europe emerged from the accidental ingest of hallucinogenic substances and the visions that followed. I suspect that they have an origin in the Mysteries. It was not uncommon for the priests of the Mystery Schools to attire themselves in elaborate costumes depicting themselves as animals or mythological beasts. A lion or leopard skin was often used by Egyptian priests for instance. Shamans the world over have similar customs.

Certainly a wolfskin would not have been out of the question, especially in Europe where the wolf played a larger role in mythology, e.g. the Fenrir, a monstrous wolf that consumed Odin.

Then there's the symbolic aspects of the werewolf as man allowing his animal instincts to rise to the surface. Intoxication can bring on this transformation -Bacchus, the god of wine, is often depicted as being followed around by half-man/half-animal beings such as centaurs and satyrs for this reason.

Is the werewolf, then, symbolic of man in the grip of an entheogen? Is the transformation a shifting of the human spirit into that of the animal, rather than a physical one? Could the werewolf have become associated with the full moon and a scheduled transformation because this is when entheogens were used as part of a religious ceremony?

What then are we to make of the period from the winter solstice of December 25th till January 6th? Is it possible that the myth of the Kallikantzari and the association of mistletoe with Christmas stretch back to a time when entheogens were ingested ceremonially on these dates, or for the entire 12 day period?

If so, it would surely put the 'true' meaning of Christmas in a whole new light...

WTF, WTF?

The laughs just keep coming:

"The CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks.

"Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F.

"The irreverence is perhaps understandable for an agency that has been relatively unscathed by WikiLeaks. Only a handful of CIA files have surfaced on the WikiLeaks Web site, and records from other agencies posted online reveal remarkably little about CIA employees or operations."

It's unsurprising that 'remarakbly little' information on the Company was leaked as the CIA, or a like organization with close ties to it (e.g. Mossad), was likely behind the leak. I already wrote more on this topic here, so I won't delve into now. I'll just say that if there is an actual study conducted by this panel, it will be to gauge the effectiveness of the disinformation leaked to the public.

Then there's the name of this panel... As, apparently, no one in the CIA was aware that the letters WTF are a common abbreviation for 'what the fuck.'

This kind of unbridled arrogance can only mean one of two things... Either the Cryptocracy has completely lost its collective mind, or it truly believes the American public is to far gone to be of any threat whatsoever to it. They're certainly having a good laugh over it either way.

After wondering around a few retailers yesterday in the midst of the holiday season, I would have to concur with the later.

UPDATE:

More holiday spirit:

"Mesquite police early Thursday used pepper spray to control an unruly crowd of sneaker shoppers.

"The incident happened at Towne East Mall, where dozens of people had lined up top buy Nike's new Air Jordan 11 Retro, which went on sale at 6 a.m.

Sisters Laurie and Lorraine Martinez, who said they had been in line since 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, described the scene as frightening and chaotic."

"The women said the trouble began when people in line began pushing forward.

" 'At 4:30 the people at the back of line decided to bum rush and run to the doors … As much as we tried to tell people to move, they wouldn't. So [police] started macing,' Laurie Martinez said.

"She also said some people in the crowd were able to force open a door to the shoe store and get inside, although the sisters were not able to enter."

A Red Moon Rising

"...Briefly, the tale of a young woman who at night was visited by a lover whom she never saw. But one night, determining to learn his identity, she blackened her hands in the coals of the fire before he came and, embracing him, left the imprint on his back. In the morning she saw the marks of her own palms on her brother and, screaming with horror, ran away. She is the sun, he the moon. And he has been pursuing his sister ever since. One can see the hand marks on his back, and when he catches her there is an eclipse. This myth was known to the North American Indians, as well as to the northern Asian tribes, and may indeed be of an immense age."
(The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell, pgs. 393-394)

Campbell further states that most early cultures featured this incestuous relationship applied to the sun and moon, sometimes in reverse. In Egyptian mythology, Isis is the moon goddess while her brother and husband, Osiris is the sun.

More remarkable was the dread and obsession ancient man had for the eclipse. To the later, several remarkable monolithic structures were built toward the observance of the lunar cycles -most famously Stonehenge, which would have taken many years and remarkable amount of labour to simply construct. As to the former:

"No plausible explanation has ever been put forward for the quite remarkable interest which prehistoric men showed in acquiring advance warning of an approaching eclipse. But if their science had any meaning at all, they must have had a purpose in directing so much of their effort towards this end. From the evidence of old beliefs and legends it appears that an eclipse is traditionally an event to be feared, against whose effects certain precautions should be taken. It is in conceivable that the ancient astronomers with their highly advanced observational science and cosmology could have been ignorant of the circumstances in which eclipses occur, and these familiar and predictable events could hardly have produced merely unreasoned or superstitious terror in those who understand their exact nature and cause. Yet the prehistoric dread of eclipses has survived in many parts of the world up to the present day. There must have been some good reason why, 4000 years ago, people were nervous of eclipses and took extreme care to gain warning of their approach."
(The New View Over Atlantis, John Michell, pgs. 87-88)

Michell is a believer that the ancients had constructed 'power plants' that could harness the energy currents that flow along ley lines -a kind of prehistoric take on Nikolas Tesla's concept of free energy. I wrote briefly on that topic here. I will not delve further into in this piece as I think Bill Cooper had a far more rational explanation for the prehistoric priesthood's obsession with eclipses: Social control. Many of my readers are probably familiar with Cooper's Mystery Babylon work, but in brief for those who aren't: Ancient priesthoods, by accurately predicting an eclipse to primitive peoples, were able to convince them of their magical powers and so forth -eg, the eclipse happened because of a spell the priest cast, and will be lifted by a counter spell in due time, after certain concessions had been made.  Cooper believed that the eclipse depicted in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey was symbolic of this method. For those wishing to here more of Cooper's theories on this topic, listen to his "The Dawn of Man" radio broadcast, which can be found here.

One can only imagine what the ancient priests would have done with last night's bloody eclipse. I observed much of it, shortly before dozing off a little after four. Florida last night was the perfect environment for the show -high 40s, clear skies, neighbors mercifully asleep. I bundled up and headed out with my Ipod -I used two of Robyn Hitchcock's remarkable acoustic albums, Eye and I Often Dream of Trains, to provide the soundtrack to the main event. It was quite a show but unfortunately I didn't have a good camera at hand so no images will be forthcoming. I hope whatever readers this blog has were able to take the time (and brave the environment) to catch a glimpse of this event.

As many of my readers are probably aware, this eclipse also happened to coincide with the Winter Solstice, the first time such an event in several hundred years:

"This eclipse is notable because it takes place just hours before the December solstice, which marks the beginning of northern winter and southern summer. The last Dec. 21 total lunar eclipse occurred in the year 1638. (Number-crunchers quibbled for a while over whether that one counted as a solstice eclipse, due to shifts between the Julian and Gregorian calendar, but the current consensus is that it does indeed count. The next winter solstice eclipse is due in 2094.)"

There's even been some Internet speculation that 2010 is the true 'end' of the Mayan calender rather than 2012. The Vigilant Citizen forum has a good round up of some of theories being put forth:

"On December 21st 2010, the Solstice occurs on the same day as a Total Lunar Eclipse which takes place (astrologically) within 2 degrees of the Galactic Centre. That's a pretty big coincidence considering that an alignment with this area is central to the 2012 'belief'. Furthermore the total phase of the eclipse will last for the mystical number of 72 minutes. It will be visible over the America's and particularly the west coast of America, Central America and South America - home to the Maya.

"No spectacular alignments in December 2012, It is most definitely two years off. I don't know about global doom, but at the Tropic of Cancer that runs through the town of Todo Santos in Baja California, the moon will be at zenith (straight up) during total eclipse. This is a once in a thousand year event."

I do not follow much of the 2012 stuff, but I'm immediately sceptical of this article as I believe the total phase of the eclipse lasted 78 minutes rather than 72...

Regardless, I've felt nervous the past couple of days. The Cryptocracy loves to instigate different programs on dates with occult significance and a winter solstice preceded by a blood moon would certainly seem like an apt occasion. I was especially concerned about the war games being conducted by South Korea on Monday, but mercifully we don't seem to be headed for another war as yet.

One thing that does stand out is the FCC vote concerning 'net neutrality':

"For the first time in history of telecommunications law the FCC has given its stamp of approval to online discrimination.

"Instead of a rule to protect Internet users' freedom to choose, the Commission has opened the door for broadband payola - letting phone and cable companies charge steep tolls to favor the content and services of a select group of corporate partners, relegating everyone else to the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.

"Instead of protecting openness on wireless Internet devices like the iPhone and Droid, the Commission has exempted the mobile Internet from Net Neutrality protections. This move enshrines Verizon and AT&T as gatekeepers to the expanding world of mobile Internet access, allowing them to favor their own applications while blocking, degrading or de-prioritizing others.

"Instead of re-establishing the FCC's authority to act as a consumer watchdog over the Internet, it places the agency's authority on a shaky and indefensible legal footing -- giving ultimate control over the Internet to a small handful of carriers."

I'm not ready to hit the panic button just yet, but this could very well be the first step in a total corporate coup of the Internet, which is seemingly being attacked on all sides at the moment. The faux 'cyber-war' that erupted over the whole Wikileaks flap has already got the UN angling to regulate the Internet at an international level:

"Together with word this week that the Federal Communications Commission will be voting on net neutrality rules comes news that the United Nations is mulling new efforts that could shape Internet regulation.

" 'At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would attempt to create global standards for policing the Internet - specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks,' wrote IT News."

So, its worth keeping an eye on the FCC decision, especially in relation to the timing. People always expect spectacular events such as 9/11 when trying to site evidence of the Cryptocracy's occult obsession, yet seemingly minor events can just as easily set an unstoppable chain of events in motion. For instance, the 'minor' explosion that happened on a oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico this past 4/20.

In 1554, when there was also an eclipse overlapping with the Winter Solstice, Lady Jane Grey was beheaded, the future Queen Elizabeth was imprisoned in, and Bloody Mary assumed the throne in England. In and of themselves these were not huge events (as far as the modern history of England is concerned) but they were instrumental in shaping the Elizabethan era which would have an enormous influence on the destiny of the world. The symbolism of decapitation is especially interesting, as I've written of before.

Will 12/21/2010 measure up? Only the Cryptocracy knows, but it's best to keep your eyes peeled for the remainder of the day and keep track of the events that have transpired of late.

UPDATE

It looks like the eclipse may have been 72 minutes after all. I keep seeing conflicting data, but the general consensus seems to be about 2:40 AM EST till 3:53 AM. This makes things all the more interesting as 72 is a number stepped in heavy occult significance. Check the comments for more information on this topic.