Reptoid Conspiracy

We were driving south in the darkness toward Salt Lake City for a night of music and revelry when we heard the wail of sirens and witnessed terrified Utah residents fleeing from their homes in a bewildered panic. It was as if the bomb had dropped or the President was assassinated. Struck-dumb and wandering in a kind of confused haze, people all over the SLC landscape were converging in the street and jabbering incoherently. It was something about ‘illegal aliens and citizenship’. “It’s nothing.” I mumbled to my Pusciferian comrade. “They’re talking about rights for aliens.”

“Rights for aliens!” some middle aged ferret-looking woman screeched into my ear. “They’re here to take over!” She wailed. “Nonsense.” I said in an attempt to quell the berserker rage that was about to spill out into the street. She looked at me and I instinctively knew that she’d just lost all hope in a rational universe. Some terrible nightmare had just manifested and was stumbling around like a newly surfaced zombie or infant golem. I was heart-broken but not about to miss my date in the city so slowly I made to creep off while she was preoccupied being crazy. I remembered that Fenster once remarked that “the pathology of conspiracy theory is not imposed from without; it develops from within, when populist demagoguery makes the paranoid style relevant and attractive for an anxious group”.[1] And this lady certainly was anxious. I finally gave up and followed her into the living room of her dilapidated little apartment. A child in a diaper sat on the floor playing with an overflowing ash-tray and said she was “picking out the good ones for mommy”. A tiny balding dog was up on the kitchen sink and lapping droplets of water that seeped from the faucet. And on the couch were two jowl-faced spinsters that vaguely reminded me of the Old Hag or Crone of folklore. They slowly grinned their piecemeal jack O’ lantern smiles and turned back to watching their 1970s era tellie. Now as you know, I’m prone to paranoia. I certainly believe in the power of conspiracy to unravel even the most stoic of individuals. Political paranoia is even more likely to have me talking like a crazy person. Rogin once stated that in “political paranoia there are no accidents. Everything bad that happens is part of a plot of hidden orders and secret powers exercised on the innocent and unsuspecting.”[2] But nothing, I mean nothing was to prepare me for the inherent shock I was about to receive….

Conspiracy theory in modern times has enjoyed such a surge in popularity that it’s now an art-form. Since the assassination of JFK, the growing fears of a New World Order, and the serious distrust of World Governments, modern conspiracy has become an organic entity. Similar to the local squid monster, there are tentacles that pollute all areas of popular culture. Not even the local preachers are immune. People now distrust the clergy as much, maybe more so, than their political leaders. The question is why? What is it about conspiracy theory that attracts a multitude of followers. Studies have shown that the ‘condition’ of society is a likely candidate for an upswing in conspiratorial thinking. As society gets fed up with their leaders running the country like used car-salesmen, dissent becomes a common factor and leads to paranoia. As Veronique Campion-Vincent eloquently remarked, “Conspiracy theories can be considered a folk science or folk history, as a subculture of intellectual dissent, aiming, as do academic treatises, to provide meaningful and accurate explanations of the world’s condition.”[3] The conspiracy showcases what is wrong. Its itinerant agenda is to traverse political, social, and religious milieus and bring these various aspects of society under a common threat. In so doing, the conspiracy theory can effect all walks of life.

I was pondering the ridiculousness of supernatural flights of fancy when I glanced over to our hostess and watched her bullyingly backhand the dog off the kitchen counter. A loud yelp as a I cringed at the dingbat grinning that toothless smile. “Jesus God.” I muttered. “It’s like an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’.” “You bet it is!” The stalwart woman screamed. By this time, the entire block was full of people waving their hands excitedly and jabbering aloud about what was on the News. I stood dumb-struck and said something like, “It’s not rational. It’s absolutely absurd”, when old crony jumped up off the couch like she’d just received a sudden electric jolt and hissed, “You get, you filthy Communist! We don’t need any of your alien-loving in this house!” I backed away slowly as to not instigate some fit of elderly rage and turned back to the hostess who was now dipping into the ashtray with diaper-girl in search of an un-smoked butt. “You know, I get it.” I mused. “The logic of the conspiracy theory. Step four: Conspiracies sometimes do happen. Within the evil agent that has the means and motivation to form a conspiracy, sometimes there is the capacity for a big event. But I doubt Jim Marrs or Stanton Friedman saw this coming!” She stared up at me glossy-eyed and clearly confused. “Never mind that.” I said. “I’m late, I gotta go.” It was at this point that crony blocked the door and whispered. “It’s not safe…they’ll be everywhere now. They’ll want to stay and ask to be citizens.” She said weepily. I didn’t doubt that but I felt a pang of remorse for Obama. What a thing to experience while live on national television. I couldn’t blame him for his high-pitched terrified scream when it happened. The whole country is gonna back him on this one. And nobody will ever see the Bush dynasty as anything but foul and twisted. I mean, when George Bush Sr. and his awkward son stepped up to the Presidential podium and ripped off their human masks to an unprepared public, they’re lucky the Secret Service didn’t blaze away immediately. As it was, the punishing tackle that sent Bush Jr. flying like a Reptilian rag-doll into the press nearly escalated into a riot. The Bushs snarled and backed away into a corner as every reporter in the room fired off multiple shots of the Reptilian aliens that once were in command of the most powerful country in the Free World.

Looking back, I don’t think anybody is really surprised that the Humanoid Reptilian Alien Hypothesis turned out to be true. Icke had been spouting crazily for years that “to maintain their position of world domination down through the centuries, the Aryan lizards have created a secret society known as the Freemasons or Illuminati.”[4] And I was always a bit weary of the Bush administration. They seemed either diabolically clever or plum dumb. But now with the Reptilians securing their place into human culture, it makes me wonder just what Pike and Weishaupt were really up to. And just how many of our conspiracies and fairy-tales are actually true. Perhaps we should reevaluate all forms of folklore in order to ascertain the likelihood that all narratives of this form are based on reality. This country can’t afford many more shocks of this kind. We’ve got a real monster here and it’s gonna take time to see where all the cards now lay.    

---

E [1] Fenster, Mark. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Univ. of Minnesota Press. 2008. pp. 50

[2] Rogin, M.P. Body and Soul Murder: JFK. In Media Spectacles. Ed. M. Garber, J. Matlock, R. Walkowitz. 1993. Routledge. New York. Pp. 14

[3] Campion-Vincent, Veronique. From Evil Others to Evil Elites: A dominant Pattern in Conspiracy Theories Today. In Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend. Ed. G. Fine, V. Campion-Vincent, C. Heath. 2005 Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick.

[4] Lewis, Tyson and Kahn, Richard. The Reptoid Hypothesis: Utopian and Dystopian Representational Motifs in David Icke’s Alien Conspiracy Theory. Utopian Studies 16.1 2005. pp.45-74

Rational Liminality and the UFO abduction experience.

 Hello everybody! Been busy getting ready to defend MS Folklore thesis but wanted to post a taste of what I'll be discussing and including in issue 2 of MagusMagazine. Give it a read.......

            In 1973, nineteen year old Calvin Parker and forty two year old Charles

            Hickson, both of Gauter, Mississippi were fishing in the Pascagoula river

            when they heard a buzzing noise behind them. Both turned and were terrified to

            see a ten-foot wide, eight-foot- high, glowing egg-shaped object with blue lights

            at its front hovering just above the ground about forty feet from the riverbank. As

            the men, frozen with fright, watched, a door appeared in the object, and three

            strange Beings floated just above the river toward them.

            The beings had legs but did not use them. They were about five feet tall, had

            bullet-shaped heads without necks, slits for mouths; and where their noses or ears

            should be, they had thin, conical objects sticking out, like carrots from a

            snowman’s head. They had no eyes, gray, wrinkled skin, round feet, and clawlike

            hands. Two of the Beings seized Hickson; when the third grabbed Parker, the

            teenager fainted with fright. Hickson claimed that when the Beings placed their

            hands under his arms, his body became numb, and that then they floated him into

            a brightly lit room in the UFO’s interior, where he was subjected to a medical

            examination with an eyelike device which, like Hickson himself, was floating in

            midair. At the end of the examination, the Beings simply left Hickson floating,

            paralyzed but for his eyes, and went to examine Parker, who, Hickson believed,

            was in another room. Twenty minutes after Hickson had first observed the UFO,

            he was floated back outside and released. He found Parker weeping and praying

            on the ground near him. Moments later, the object rose straight up and shot out of

            sight.  (Bryan 1995: 115)

            This supernatural abduction narrative is called the Pascagoula incident and is one

 of the most famous accounts of supposed extraterrestrial interaction with human beings.

 Known as a close encounter of the fourth kind, the abduction narrative is ripe with

 terrifying accounts of regular people being accosted by otherworldly Beings that subject

 their captives to torturous ordeals. According to UFO mythos, a close encounter of the

 first kind involves a UFO sighting that is reported at close range. The second type of

 encounter is when there is physical evidence of the UFO. Some of this trace evidence

 might include burned vegetation, frightened animals, and loss of electricity. An encounter

 of the third kind is characterized by ‘contact’ with an extraterrestrial Being. But the

 fourth is clearly the most disturbing because it involves an actual abduction. These

 stories of supernatural abduction have a clear structure and  fit into consistent themes.

 Typically, the episode begins with an initial capture, which is followed by a sort of

 medical examination and otherworldy journey. In many cases, interaction with the Being

 produces a theophany in the abductee. The sequence usually culminates with the return of

 the victim, but the aftermath of the ordeal lingers sometimes for years after the event.

           My own interest in UFO narratives stems largely from my fascination with the

 esoteric and arcane.  From as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a profound interest in

 all things occult and/or mysterious. In terms of the UFO abduction, I’ve always found it

 fascinating how somebody could experience something largely indefinable and have their

 world-view changed forever. I often wonder what it is about anomalous experiences that

 have the potential to spark a life-changing shift in a person’s ethos or societal niche. Also,

 popular culture has had an influence on why UFO narratives hold my interest. Television

 programs such as the X-Files and Roswell were popular when I was in high school and I

 think that their story-lines, coupled with the fact that I was at an impressionable age,

 instilled a fascination with the UFO in me. To this day, I try to draw correlations

 between the occult and UFO narratives. So as something as mysterious to me now as it

 was when I was younger, these stories of the unknown spark my imagination and inspire

 me to delve deeper into their structural nuances.

         Of all the imaginings the human mind can produce, those of the supernatural may

 hold the most proclivity for individual expression. As part of our unusual psyche, ideas of

 the paranormal or supernatural manifest in a variety of ways. Throughout human history, 

 ideas of otherwordly or inherently inhuman beings have been used to explain pervasive

 or otherwise frightening occurrences. The supernatural abduction, whether by witches,

 ghosts, or goblins, is a common staple in all civilizations and is a structural part of a

 community’s social organization.  According to Jodi Dean, “abduction stories describe

 the interventions of non-human folk in human lives. They are stories of border crossings,

 of everyday transgressions of the boundaries demarcating the limits of that define reality”

 (Dean 1998:163). The idea of abductions by fairies, for example, is a type of assault

 narrative. As described in Western European folklore, a changeling was the offspring of a

 fairy or some other supernatural entity that was put in place of a normal human child.

 People believed that the abductee could only be returned if the changeling was made to

 laugh.

          Nowadays, UFO abductions are perhaps the most popular supernatural assault

 tradition to saturate popular media. Due to the plethora of science fiction movies and

television programs, the appropriateness of the UFO abduction as material for academic

study can easily be questioned. Many academic disciplines dismiss the UFO narrative as

 pure science fiction.  Nevertheless, Thomas Bullard is correct when he states that “the

 question before us is not whether UFOs are folklore. They certainly are, and just as

 certainly resemble other folklore in forms and function. The coherency of abduction

 reports stands out as the most unequivocal piece of evidence that folklore scholarship

 contributes to the UFO mystery” (Bullard 1981: 48). In fact, Bullard himself conducted a

 study of 270 abduction cases and concluded that the narratives hold structural similarities

 regardless of who the abductee was or who the researcher was (Jacobs 2000). Drawing on

 Bullard’s notion that UFO abductions are folklore, in this paper I suggest that UFO

 abduction narratives can be interpreted productively by using Arnold van Gennep’s rites

of passage. I will be utilizing what I have come to call ‘rational liminality’ to show that

after the abduction sequence, an ultimate reincorporation into society is achieved by the

 abductees’ rational acceptance of his/her liminal experiences that occurred during the

 initial event.

        Arnold van Gennep was instrumental in recognizing and discussing the rites of

passage that accompany specific life stages. A French anthropologist and folklorist, van
Gennep coined the idea of rites of passage and used this schema to address various

 transitory events in a person’s life. He identified three distinct steps that make up a

 typical rite of passage. The first involves a separation from society. This separation is

 followed by a complex set of events that are liminal in nature. The term liminal refers to

 an in-between state. Something on a threshold or ethereal, the liminal is an intermediate

 phase of the event. After the separation and liminal experiences, a period of

 consummation or reincorporation into society occurs. Van Gennep utilized these three

 gradated steps to explain everything from puberty rites to secret society membership.

 In order to thoroughly examine the rites of passage apparent in UFO

 abduction narratives, I draw on various abduction  accounts....

TYPES OF VAMPIRES

Generally speaking, I would say that “vampires” can be divided into two main categories:
a) Human
b) Non-human
In popular parlance, we would call the humans “real vampires”, and the non-human’s “true vampires”. These are not MY terms, BTW. In no way should my usage of such terms indicate that I believe in such things as “reality” or “truth”, but I digress…
The term “real vampires” GENERALLY refers to one of two groups (or to both following groups):
a) “sanguinarians”, and
b) “psychic vampires”.
“Psychic” vampires are those who claim to feed on other people’s ” psychic energy”. Whatever…
“Sanguinarian vampires” are people (humans) who drink blood (because they think it’s cool, or admire either “true” or fictional vampires, or suffer from severe mental illness). A TINY fraction of sanguinarian vampires are cannibals, serial killers, or both.
Personally, I would add a THIRD subsection to the category of “real” (human) “vampires”, and that would be the “psychological vampire”.
The “psychological vampire” wouldn’t necessarily pretend to LOOK like a vampire, try to steal other people’s “energy”, or drink blood indirectly (through something other than fangs). A “psychological vampire” would simply adopt the MINDSET of a vampire. For example: they wouldn’t particularly care about “human affairs”. In other words… they wouldn’t really be concerned with whether or not humans are protesting Wall Street (unless, maybe that represented some sort of self-serving opportunity).
FINALLY, this brings us to the category of “true” (non-human) Vampires. I think the capital ‘v’ is appropriate. These are what are also known as “Supernatural Vampires”. These are the folks who can sprout fangs (they don’t need to shave their teeth) and suck the blood from your jugular until your body is bloodless. These are the folks who are “fairly immortal/invincible” (and tend to heal at an amazing rate)… the folks who can snap your neck in a nanosecond with one hand, or slice your throat open with a page from the Bible, or punch a hole through your rib-cage and rip out your heart (literally)… who can fly, levitate, transform into wolves and bats, etc. THESE GUYS are known as “supernatural” or “true” Vampires. They are the beasts of legend, and the stuff of romance. We fear them, EVEN THOUGH, we don’t believe in them (unless of course… YOU happen to know better).

The pagan goddess and her full-moon gala

The  goddess and the “Full-moon” ceremony

They say that postmodern ideas of religion have no need for anachronistic or archaic pagan debris left by the wayside of complex religious institutions. These old rituals died long ago and good riddance. Nowadays, organized religion has tried to run over any alternative like a rotten piece of road kill. We’re talking about so-called legitimate organizations of the sacred that are overwrought with pedophile priests, crazed assertions of a one true faith, and greedy evangelicals that live the highlife of hookers, heroin, and hedonism. It’s a rockstar status and nobody seems to mind that these spiritual charlatans are conducting the heavenly orchestra. Have we learned nothing from Swaggart and Baker? Good god! These salesmen don’t even try to be pious. And most now equate the Ten Commandments with the ten venereal diseases that rack their holy-poisoned bodies. “Thou shalt not pick up hepatitis from the Whore of Babylon on Lexington and 2^nd street.” “Thou shalt not covet the church leader’s wife until that harlot gets treated for gonorrhea and my rash goes away.” And yet we fork over millions in a feeble attempt to make Jesus happy. And why? Why my brethren do we buy our way into paradise when it can be found in any number of ways?

I recently attended a pagan ‘full-moon ceremony’ held at a local university. Since I’d had no real experience with pagan ideology, there were no preconceived notions on my part. I didn’t fear being cannibalized or chased with pitch forks. Actually a little raw fear may have intensified the experience. After all, I was warned of the pure, unadulterated evil of the pagan persuasion. I came to expect wild, crazed dancing and Bacchic fits. I was fully prepared to be terrified by a torch-lit procession of anthropomorphic lunatics chanting in unison and dragging the carcass of some poor pet-owner's dog in their wake. I even brought my pepper-spray just in case I had to douse somebody and make a run for it. Oh, I was warned. “There gonna be taking over and burning some effigy of Jesus.” One correspondent remarked. Another witness just hid in the bushes adjacent to the ritual and mumbled Christian counter-curses to ward off the pagan idolatry. “They should burn!” He seethed. “They should all burn in hell!” We can expect this kind of reaction as the pagan movement gears up for an all-out assault on the local political scene. Rumor has it that a neo-shaman and traveling warlock plans to usurp power from the conservative Christian hegemony that characterizes North Utah. “We’re afraid to leave our homes at night.” One local remarked, “The goddamn pagans have set up shop in the canyon and [sic] doing who-knows-what in the hills up there. I heard they eat babies and worship a goat.” The police department has been inundated with calls about maniacal howling, a Witches Sabbath, and a secret meeting place deep in the National Forest where pagans perform filthy rites and speak in tongues. The zeal of the local community in castigating this pagan tribe has reached fever pitch with the coming of the full-moon. A demonstration in the middle of town was checkered with signs that read, ‘Save our babies, punish the pagans!’ and ‘The only good pagan is a dead pagan!’ As I approached the small clearing where the pagans had gathered, I must admit to a feeling of trepidation. I could still hear the hissing of that freak in the bushes and the night seemed electric and ready to deliver something awful and unexpected.

As we stood in a horse-shoe pattern and read aloud the introductory prayer, I didn’t notice anything overtly heretical. We weren’t forced to trample a cross, lick anybody’s ass, or worship of bodiless head. Seemed pretty tame. Even by my standards and I was fully prepared for some hideous blasphemy. Or at least some screeching of the faithful sort. What I found was basically coherent and actually quite beautiful. Amid the nervous mumbling of the uninitiated, the comfort of those used to buying this brand of holy-roller, and strange screaming coming from somewhere not far away, the experience felt legitimate. I could tell by the care taken with the altar and the honesty of those participating that the mechanisms used to negotiate belief was apparent in the pagan experience. And although in the back of my mind, I really wanted some terrible goddess to show up, I didn’t know if all the players present could handle such a vicious jolt of the sacred. An appearance of Persephone to somebody not really equipped to handle the shock could lead to a sleepless night of anxiety or such a severe case of righteous bewilderment that being afraid of the dark just wouldn’t seem to cover it. How do you tell your Sunday preacher that a great and powerful goddess likes to straddle your chest at night and whisper beautiful sweet-nothings in your ear? That it arouses you and her scent still lingers long after she rejoins the underworld. What do you say to that? Well, be that as it may, the pagan experience was a kind of soft beauty. There was a calming lucidity that led to gentle smiles and warm caresses. And towards the end, in that stillness and the slight rustle of trees, there was a breeze and within it, the breath of a smiling and satisfied goddess.    

Tarot, panic, and the coming apocalypse

 I’m not a superstitious person. Not really. I don’t carry a rabbit’s foot or have any absurd fear of ladders, black cats, or stepping on a crack in the sidewalk. These things seem meaningless to me. Anomalies that make no real difference in a sane, or at least, reasonable world. In fact, even the thought of seven years of bad luck for something as trivial as breaking a mirror seems a punishment so cruelly disproportionate that whoever made up that ridiculous law should be drawn and quartered. Or at least spat on repeatedly.

It’s a strange world. There are those who read the morning newspaper and erupt with a giddy child-like glee when they discover the weekly horoscope. To many, that modern oracle and distant relative of the priestesses of Delphi has the answers. And if the stars don’t know, then nobody knows. “What will my love life hold this week?” “Should I help that poor soul in Zimbabwe claim his million dollar inheritance through the Bank of Africa?” “How come people laugh and point when I enter the room?” These esoteric quandaries and life-changing affirmations are equally fascinating and all seem to be connected in some conspiratorial way to my own personal tarot card reader. A woman of the highest repute, this tigress has single-handedly influenced more of my personal decisions than anything or anyone else. I was once dumb-founded and stricken to a point of senseless awe at a gem of wisdom she dropped into my lap concerning highly complex symbolic correspondences, hieroglyphic language, and the role of the Department of Motor Vehicles in the coming apocalypse. It was medieval, senseless, and honestly demeaning. And I’m not the only one that has been profoundly affected by this tarot reader. It has been said that her fortune abilities directly foretold Obama’s political victory, every hurricane and earthquake this season, and something nefariously called ‘The coming of the Bees’. Although she has refused to elaborate on what ‘The Bees’ actually entail, just the thought of a swarm of bloodthirsty, crazed, and ravenously hungry bees has driven the entire town of Wellsville Utah in a panic induced frenzy. One resident locked himself into an airtight bomb shelter and refused even food or water. Another remarked that it’s “the Mormon Jesus come to whip us for our non-belief!” Whatever the reasoning behind this plague of revolting locusts, remember what is recorded in the Good Book:

 ¹³ So Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the LORD made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning the wind had brought the locusts; ¹⁴ they invaded all Egypt and settled down in every area of the country in great numbers. Never before had there been such a plague of locusts, nor will there ever be again. ¹⁵ They covered all the ground until it was black. They devoured all that was left after the hail—everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt.

Beware my brethren in agony! If it can happen once, what’s to say that a wild cloud of buzzing fury won’t drop out of the sky again? Could it be pre-ordained? A portent of our near future? It’s a strange strange world my brethren! We must rise up! I say rise up and see the face of darkness as it descends! We must prepare ourselves with weapons, food rations, and as much bug spray as can be carried in a small backpack. These are trying times and for this reason, I have hired my tarot reader to cast a three-card spread of what the near future holds. I’m not a superstitious person but I refuse to be the only sucker running blindly and screaming for help when that final earthquake rolls into town and signals the coming of a hive of irritated harpies. I’m gonna need company. When I’ve reached the safe house as instructed by my reader’s concise coordinates, I’ll have more information. Till then, I can only say that safety is found in numbers. Trudge on and be brave. ……..(to be continued)  

READING I.

The one thing I feel the need to point out before doing your reading is that I, as a tarot reader, do NOT in any way predict death, or the fate of anything to any degree. This is because humans have the ability to change their own destiny based on every day occurrences and their actions/reactions. So when you asked me to do a reading on ‘the fate of Magus Magazine’, I immediately reworded your question to something more tangible, and to what I really thought you were looking forward to knowing.

“How will Preston’s magazine, Magus, fare during these trying times?”

I say “trying times” because many people and businesses seem to be suffering many issues at this time, whether it be economically, spiritually, religiously or by other means.

After coming up with your question, I than concentrated on your concern while shuffling my deck, and placing your cards before me, from left to right. These are the results I came up with for you…

                                                                  

Card 01 – The Beginning - 7 of Disks (reversed)

The 7 of Disks reversed shows that you have put forth much planning and effort on your part, and that now perhaps things have come to a stall/standstill. You may be feeling as if they are not going at the exact pace you would like, and some insecurities are starting to set in, making you wonder if you have made the right decisions or if you should simply pack it in. This self-imposed worry and anxiety will not serve you, and will cause you to deviate from your path therefor disallowing you to work to your highest potential. Try to breath. Let your frustrations go. Know at this point that you have done all that you can to get the ball rolling, so to speak, and that now is the time to sit back and analyze. Look towards the reason behind your decision to start your project in the first place, reflect on the processes up to this point and what you have accomplished, or where you could have made some better choices, and make plans for your next steps ahead. This will help you to be grateful for all the benefits you have reaped so far, whether they be material or that the work itself has helped you to grow in other areas of self. Be patient. Once the ball gets rolling once more, and it inevitably will, you’ll find that things might pick up and move at the pace that you have been longing for all along.

Card 02 – The Middle – 2 of Disks

The twos in tarot often speak of partnerships of some kind. In the Disks, they often speak of financial partnerships. This is not always the case though, and not necessarily what I am seeing here, considering the card declared before it, and the one after. Rather, what I see is a need for focus on a dualities, or inconsistencies. (ex: money/health, love/work, spirituality/materialism, etc.) This card is all about change, and tells you that change is coming in some form or fashion whether you are ready for it or not, and that with change balance can be tipped. The question now is, can you maintain a balance? When upright, this card states that you need to balance your situation by bringing a little more spirituality, fun or enlightenment into the more material aspects of your endevours. Whereas reversed, it would be the opposite, and would state that you need to be more practical rather than frivolous. In order to bring more balance here, it seems that rather than focusing on the financial aspects, you need to relax, delve into your research, be open to some hands on experience (if that sort of thing works for you)… write out not only your findings that your research has brought forth, but your own personal experiences through the process as well. Mix it up, and you’ll maintain that much needed balance that will bring forth rewards more fulfilling that you could possibly imagine, within and without.

Card 03 – The End – 8 of Disks

This card shows that after putting forth extensive periods of hard work or labor, your diligence is finally starting to reap the rewards that you set after. Things will be going well. Your pride will show, and rightfully so. Just don’t let that pride take over to the point of arrogance. Be mindful of your rewards! Waste no, want not. Put some away for a rainy day, but certainly don’t hoard, or on the contrary, don’t be so generous that you put out more than you can maintain. If you choose to continue on with the project, there will always be the need to remain open, find more information and to keep the spark alive to continue to venture forth into new territories, to keep your constituents coming back for more. Keep an open and inquisitive mind, plant new seeds and the benefits will continue to grow. If, however, you choose to walk away, it will be of your own accord, and on a good note. Not because things went in disarray.

 Blessings,

 Onyx Tigress

Ravings of the feeble - A look at conspiracy and its place in Occult folklore

I recently talked with a poor unfortunate who has been hacked and watched by the government for a number of years. The same old fears. Freedoms of the people trampled on by the Beast 666, Government cronies, and rabid watchdog intelligence agencies latching onto the grief of poverty in an abuse of power. The Kennedy assassination? Secret funding of terrorist Jihad? These things meant nothing to this man. They are as meaningless and terrifying as the Thelemic Pentagram ritual to an evangelical minister.

This man skulks around in a world overwrought with the Shiva eye of Hal that stares down and relays to the buggers of Big Brother his every move. For him, the sudden ‘flipping the bird’ of his prosthetic arm while driving is not only unsettling but profoundly creepy. Is there a reason that his prosthetic arm will shoot the middle finger at random moments and at random people? Did they deserve that affrontal assault? Had they wronged him in some subtle way that only his prosthetic appendage can discern? Sadly no. This poor soul somberly and with voice cracking, told me that his arm is “connected to his cable box, which in turn is monitored by the powers that be.” A weepy occasion. The same scourge of technological prowess that provided his prosthetic also serves as an electronic leash to be manipulated at a whim by anybody with a rotten sense of humor. When I asked what should happen to right these terrible injustices, he screamed in a tone of righteous craziness, “I’m waiting for the lord to clean up this mess!” And there you have it. Jesus vs. technology. The sandal-wearing leper curing heavyweight of the Christian religion is set to deliver such an ass-kicking on the scientific method that we should prepare to hunt and gather with dull spears and communicate in garbled grunts.

And isn’t that the argument of every conspiracy theorist that babbles insanely about the horrors of technology while on their laptop or talking on their phone? Fer Christsakes,  Kaczynski is a blathering idiot. How could somebody who earned advanced degrees and taught at Berkeley suddenly wake up and find himself living like a wino and building bombs in a 5x5 shed in the Montana wilderness? Making wrong turns just doesn’t seem to cover it.

Yet that’s not to say that I don’t welcome conspiracy theory in all its various forms. There is something surprisingly lucid about discordant theories that address all walks of life. At the very least, conspiracy theory requires a prerequisite to ‘think’ and kicks the imagination out of the mundane. There is something to be said about theories that suggest German occultist Rudolph Hess sat across from an Allied working Aleister Crowley and was interrogated while being fed “Mexican brain poison” ie. Mescalin to keep him just enough crazy and terrified to give away the inner workings of the Nazi agenda. Or that revelatory gem that dropped just recently that involves Jackie Kennedy’s personal opinion that Lyndon B. Johnson had a hand in the assassination of JFK.

Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal. The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him. She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023418/Jackie-O-tapes-reveal-JFKs-affairs-believed-death.html#ixzz1V4P30J87

If that doesn’t make modern conspiracy theorists jump up, start rambling incoherently, and run about with arms flailing, it’s time to check them into the ‘I believe everything everybody tell me’ resort for the elderly and misshapen. There is certainly a place for the conspiracy in occult-lore but a proverbial line in the sand must be drawn. After all, only a degenerate would find conspiracy in absolutely everything. But who knows? Maybe they’re all out to get you. And maybe you’re just weird enough to deserve it. Whether we take conspiracy theory with a grain of salt or shrug it off as the ravings of the feeble, the fact remains that it deserves a place in folklore study.   

Epic laws of the occult.

It amazes me how journalists who have no real background or contextual knowledge in the occult choose to write slaphappy articles about occult material. In the old days, if somebody sought to disparage an esoteric group, they were fully aware of the potential for a strong push off a short bridge or a meeting with a rock hurled at fast-ball speed. It was a break neck business. Secrecy was more guarded than the abandoned hangars at Area 51 and with as much force. There’s the line, cross it at your own peril. In the times of the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece, a blabbermouth could likely end up with a mouthful of blood or worse if he disrespected the secrets of initiation. And still to this day, there are those who tread on supernatural ground completely oblivious to the ten foot demon looming behind them with razor-sharp fangs, an ugly disposition, and the propensity to incur real psychological harm just for the sport of it.

On August 2, 2011, reporter Zen Gardner wrote an article about the “11 occult secrets now in the open.” Although the piece was written in a semi-candid style, there was a treacherous undercurrent of maliciousness that seeped out of its pores. Indeed, I felt as though I needed a good shower after reading this sordid piece of fear mongering and inaccuracy. Good old Zen seems to triumphantly assert that he has seen through the veil of occult secrecy and it’s a place of ‘hidden agendas’, clandestine operations, and smug nastiness. Capitalizing on the rumor-panics of the past, the author seeks to undermine occult processes by perpetuating an ‘in the know’ attitude; when in fact, the dirty dingbat probably has no experience with the occult at all. Here’s a summation of his uncovered secrets.

1)      Paradigm shift- We’re entering a vibrational shift over a period of time.

2)      2012 – Many environmental changes.

3)      Emergence of illuminati and occult-based world.

4)      Control of world by freemasons and corporate world.

5)      Zionist agenda.

6)      Vatican assassins.

7)      Human/extraterrestrial – intervention theory.

8)      Religion makes a move to subjugate the masses.

9)      Prevalence of mental-conditioning machine.

10)  Mind control.

11)  The occult fears mainstream world culture.

Even I’m perplexed at the sheer lunacy of some of these assertions. Mind control, a mental-conditioning machine, and Vatican assassins? This author is more paranoid than  Dali lost at Disneyland with a head full of hashish and no map out of toon town. A horrific absurdity. When in fact, the occult is arguably an entity with minimal secrets. In what I call the five epic laws of occult folklore, the arts and sciences of this genre follow distinct patterning and methodology. These laws can be judiciously described as: 1) The law of correspondences 2) The law of contrasts 3) The law of hierarchy 4) The rite of revealing 5) The dying god motif.

The law of correspondences gives form to the magic and mystery of occultic folklore. Participants engage in a highly sophisticated and complex set of symbolic correspondences utilized to glean subtle insights into the cognitive processes of the psyche. It is a method of self-perfection and its goal theophanic realization. Some of these correspondences include pictorial, numerical, and liturgical archetypes used as foundations for belief and disseminated through the teacher/pupil formula.

In the law of contrast, polarity becomes a key concept in understanding the meaning of the narratives. Working with the use of reversals, contrast becomes a way of defining a constituent unit through the association with its opposite. For example, this is the idea behind the Judaic Sephiroth and Qliphoth. According to Judaic mysticism, ten Sephiroth or emanations make up the ‘Tree of Life’. These stages of consciousness represent esoteric growth in the practitioner. Conversely, each Sephiroth also has a Qliphoth or ‘shell’ that acts as an opposite or adversary to its counterpart. Whereas a Sephiroth has a corresponding angel, the Qliphoth has a corresponding demon and so on. There are a plethora of contrasting principles in occult folklore. And most times they are reconciled by a third autonomous entity or principle.

Occult folklore also makes use of the law of hierarchy as a way to define the various steps that elucidate esoteric knowledge. The hierarchy usually begins with a probationary period in which the initiate is not yet a member of the lodge but undergoes a temporary period of purification. In Freemasonry, this time period is called the Entered Apprentice stage. It is a phase of preparation and the duty is to awaken latent powers within. The symbol of this step is one of youth. Its tarot attribution would be The Fool. An initiate beginning the esoteric journey yet full of promise and inherent power. According to Manly Hall, the “Entered Apprentice must realize that his body is the living temple of the living god and treat it accordingly; for when he abuses or mistreats it he breaks the sacred obligations which he must assume before he can ever hope to understand the true mysteries of the craft” (47). During this time period, the fledgling is encouraged proper diet, exercise, and mental preparation. The hierarchal structure accelerates higher and more advanced degrees as the pupil continues his study and ritual.

The law of revealing makes use of an unveiling to instill insights into sacred. Often times, there is a sudden shock that accompanies this unveiling. It is also a way to pass on esoteric knowledge by accentuating the secrecy of initiation. The neophyte is literally in the dark before the secret is passed to him. The law of revealing is a rite. It makes use of ritualism and symbol to emphasize the numinous qualities of the supernatural. Nowhere is the rite of revealing more prevalent than in the mysteries of ancient Eleusis. The mystae, or first-time initiates were blindfolded and made to wander through the dark. Like the goddess Persephone, the initiates themselves suffered the terror of being in the underworld. Michael Cosmopoulos states that, “the Epoptae (advanced initiates) who are waiting outside the Telesterion could see her (Persephone) together with her mother, emerging from the cave precinct where she arose from the underworld. The light that came from within the Telesterion came, I imagine, from the torches that were suddenly lit by the hundreds perhaps thousands of these Epoptae standing on the steps that line the walls of the Telesterion. It was at this moment that the neophytes entered and beheld the image of the reunited goddesses” (2003: 67). The sense of shock that accompanied this revealing was an integral part of the Eleusinian mystery. It both exhibited a sense of awe and imparted an important esoteric teaching.

The dying god motif is nothing new to students of religion and mysticism. From Osiris to Jesus to Hiram Abiff, the idea of dying and being reborn is an essential aspect of occult folklore. We see this in the ritualization of ancient Egypt. Initiates first went through a purification ceremony in which water was used to ready them for their ultimate becoming. When nighttime came, the initiate was dressed in a linen robe never previously worn and led him to the remotest part of the sanctuary or penetralia. The next part of the ceremony is important because it deals with the neophyte going through his symbolic death. By dying to this former life, the man was reborn as a god. According to Robert Turcan, this moment occurred “in the middle of the sanctuary, a platform was set up which the new initiate mounted. When the curtains were drawn, he was revealed ‘like a statue’, crowned with palm-leaves and armed with a torch, for the admiration of the faithful who filed slowly past his feet” (1997: 72). Here we see the rite of revealing leading into the dying god motif. The neophyte was revealed as a statue or more accurately, as a god to his fellow brethren.

When the occult chickens come home to roost, it becomes apparent that though there is secrecy as part of the occult, in no way does that secrecy imply some ‘nefarious agenda’ on the part of the practitioners. However, there are epic laws that govern the ritual and symbol of the occult. These laws largely stem from the past but remain legitimate in modern times. If uninformed journalists want to stick their nose in occult business they are certainly welcome to do so but shouldn’t be surprised when occultists flog them like a mule. So what? It wouldn’t be the first time somebody has received a vicious beat-down for wandering into uncharted depths. In this day and age, we can’t be too careful. The tide is coming in fast.