RAW "Prometheus Rising" Lecture

ROBERT ANTON WILSON, PROMETHEUS RISING LECTURE, CASSETTE TAPE SIDE A

ROBERT ANTON WILSON, PROMETHEUS RISING LECTURE, CASSETTE TAPE SIDE B

We're not in Milton Keynes anymore, Toto....

"All perception is a gamble" --Edmund Husserl

"Alchemist: We began in a fairytale and we came to life, but... is this life reality? No. It is a film. Zoom back camera. We are images, dreams, photographs. We must not stay here. Prisoners! We shall break the illusion. Goodbye to the Holy Mountain. Real life awaits us." --taken from Alejandro Jodorowski's "The Holy Mountain"

I noticed this post over at Dedroidify a couple of days ago, concerning photos of Harry Potter actress Emma Watson with "Be Emma" written in biro on her chest. This has caused some "mind-control" watchers to speculate that Watson "is" under some sort of control.

Dedroidify links to another site, called PseudOccult Media, which documents all sorts of media-types, particularly actors and fashion designers, photographers and models who have fallen under the "MK" (mind-kontrol, I'm guessing - after the infamous CIA program, MK-ULTRA) spell. The idea 'is' that the 'super-rich' and the "Illuminati" are finding these fame-hungry, abused souls and elevating them to 'star-status' to push the Illuminoid/rich cabal agenda. Mosbunall of them "are" groomed for slavery from a very young age, so the theory goes.

Benjamin Singleton, the bloke who runs the "PseudOccult Media" blog, goes through various TV shows and photo shoots, pointing out all of the symbols. A checkerboard floor has to do with masonic rituals, leopard/tiger print clothing and shoes 'are' the symbols of a sex-kitten slave, owls represent the worship of Molech, black/white patterns are suggestive of 'duality', having one eye obscured in a photo symbolises the "all-seeing eye", butterflies 'are' supposed to be Project Monarch. There's also plenty of numerology and letter symbolism thrown in for good measure. You have to know how to read the code, I guess. To me, some of these blogs almost seem like "Heat" magazine for paranoids. The bloggers seem sincere enough, though and they do go a long way to explain what they perceive as signals from the 'New World Order'.

Me, I dunno - mosbunall of it appears to be a "Thinker Thinks, Prover Proves" situation. If you're convinced that Britney Spears "is" mind-controlled, you'll find ample evidence to back up your suspicions. Likewise for fashionista photog David LaChapelle or Katy Perry. Then again, maybe they really 'are' under some sort of MK-ULTRA control techniques--I don't want to completely dismiss any of the bloggers as freakballs and nutjobs. I'm not sure if they're accomplishing their missions, either - if it's to make crap films and records, then I guess it's a resounding success. All facetiousness aside, I'm not really bothered if Lindsay Lohan spends her weekends at Area 51, making tin statues of Molech while dancing on a checkerboard floor..or if Disney's latest teen 'MK' opus makes trillions. I don't buy any (or intentionally listen to) Madonna or Miley Cyrus records. I don't really follow what fashions the "Pinks" (in Sub-Genius parlance) are into, or what their musical or film tastes would be. This may make me a 'blinkered' and 'sleeping' critter, according to these blogs. I agree that Disney product seems abhorrent, being as it 'is', a mega-corporation with profit-making as it's ultimate bottom-line, but I try not to contribute directly to it's income (some CDs I purchase may be linked to it somehow).

I find these theories, at least for me, raise more questions than they answer. If I were part of the "real" Illuminati - would I make these masonic & symbolic 'clues' quite easy to spot, for someone who's looking for them? Or maybe I'd do that to deliberately throw any potential sleuths off of my trail, while saving the real code only for the 'inner circle'. Also, why infiltrate the fashion industry? Most of the Pinks can't afford the haute couture clothes. I personally don't look at any fashion magazines and a cursory look at my wardrobe will bear out any doubts as to my fondness for avoiding the latest trends. I guess the shadowy ones have a fondness for teenage Western girls' cash...maybe they did some market research. I suppose it's just one more branch of the media to control. Why mind-control yokels like Cyrus and Spears? Are they more susceptible than intelligent writers and musicians? Pop tarts seem to have a limited shelf-life..why not someone who'll be around for awhile (maybe that explains Madonna)? To paraphrase R.A.W., if this "is" the power-elite - they seem to be a bunch of fuck-ups to me.

So it appears I'm safe from this insidious programming attempt.......oh no...they got Alison Goldfrapp too? Damn! I've got a few of her records. I may have to get rid of my Electric Light Orchestra Eldorado album also--I forgot to mention that The Wizard Of Oz "is" a huge mind-control touch-stone, according to the conspiracy theorists. Sheesh..even The Simpsons? I have to wonder if there's some sort of counter-conspiracy going on. I mean, I wonder what agenda the people that wrote that "W.O.Oz" site have? Another thing R.A.W. said was that he doesn't believe there's one over-arching conspiracy - but several going at once, looking to undermine each other. There does seem to be a bit of a right-wing X-tian slant to some of these sites and blogs--all this anti-Masonic/Bilderberger/royal family stuff and concern over the welfare of children in an almost patronising tone. Hmmm...that does lead into the murky depths of Mask/Anti-Mask and Chapel Perilous. If the concern over these 'celebs' allegedly being mind-controlled is genuine, why not alert them? It all looks to be very voyeuristic to me--just waiting for the fresh news story or photo shoot or music video to pick over the symbols and colours.

I'm not convinced by any of the above 'evidence', but it does seem to be an interesting reality-tunnel to explore for a few days. Overall, though, I'm keeping my sense of agnosticism keen--after all, it's all just maya, illusion..isn't it?

Black Magick and Curses

I don't seem to have re-read much of Bob's since he died. Of course, he had pointed students off in all directions (apart from his own work) so many of us found ourselves becoming Joyceans and researchers of Ezra, and suchlike.

Anyway, I started browsing through Email to the Universe last night. When it came out I rushed through it, feeling (like many completists) that much of it was familiar material - perhaps a compilation from his publishers because he had not completed the promised Tale of the Tribe - which we had all anticipated so much, before he fell ill. Actually, I love the haiku in that book (which you may also find elsewhere).

One chapter that grabbed me last night, however, was called

Black Magick and Curses
SECRETS OF YE DARK ARTE CALL'D DUCDAME

and I immediately remembered that Bob had set it as a text on his Quantum Psychology course. I wanted to find it online for you to read, but feel sad to say that I can only see it posted at the American Buddha site, which I cannot recommend. Apart from their awful taste in colours, their peculiar attitude to copyright, and their downright disrepectful treatment of their Buddhist teacher (oh, do yer own research!) I just get a bad vibe from the site. But I digress.

I could post the complete text myself (I have it in the book, anyway, and also as the original course material) but I don't want to upset the RAW estate. I might pass it to the official RAWilson Fans site, who seem to have established a right to compile RAW material as a research resource.

Or you could just go buy the book! Fellow researchers could always email me for a copy - for personal use only.

The essay itself seems to me a fine example of Bob's amusing, thought-provoking, challenging style. It rapidly ranges through General Semantics, NLP (the meta-model of precise language and verifiability, and the Milton model of ambiguity and projection), magick, placebos and curses, and a whole host of other fascinating subjects - lucidly and tantalizingly and briefly.

It seems like compressed and dense material that rewards a bit of unpacking, and further research.

I'll come back later (gotta clean the pond and walk the dog) and maybe offer some quotes at least... Here's a teaser:

In other words, the distinction between "magick" and "communication" exists only in our traditional ways of thinking. The uncanny Egyptians attributed both inventions to a single deity, Thoth, god of speech and other illusions.

In the existential world -- in the sensory-sensual continuum -- Thoth still reigns and language still has magick. All communication contains sorcery and/or hypnosis, because humans use howls, snarls, yaps, purrs, gargles, gurgles etc. -- noises of many sorts -- to create a neuro-semantic "grid" projected upon all incidents and events. We generally call these grids languages.

We literally "see" incidents and events only as they register upon that grid.

If I use certain words that cause you to have certain predictible neuro-somatic reactions, I have cast a spell upon you. I have enchanted you. I may even have cursed you.

[Sure you want to know more about this?]


And it ends:


Whosoever speaks in any tongue gives birth to blessings and curses.

& if the uncanny Egyptians made Thoth the father of both language and magick, the canny Greeks made Hermes, their version of Thoth, the god of both language and fraud.

h+ Magazine

R.U Sirius sent out links in all directions pointing to the new Spring - magazine. It covers a lot of new terra i personally find very addictive/attractive. And so i wanted to forward the meme h+.

IS THE FUTURE CANCELLED?

"About h+ Magazine
h+ covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing — and will change — human beings in fundamental ways. We will be following developments in areas like NBIC (nano-bio-info-cog), longevity, performance enhancement and self-modification, Virtual Reality, "The Singularity," and other areas that both promise and threaten to radically alter our lives and our view of the world and ourselves.
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/

I been Holy Modalled, I been Quetzlcoatl'd

14 Bahman - Year 1387

I wanted to like this book a lot, I really did. I enjoyed Pinchbeck's first book, Breaking Open The Head, aside from the couple of tedious Burning Man chapters. It seemed to be an honest exploration of psychedelic states of being by a confused, if well-meaning, Manhattan literary party-boy.

I was excited when I first heard that "2012" was being published. I thought it would be a fresh perspective on the whole "end-of-the-Mayan-calendar"/"herald-of-a-new-age" scenario that was first brought to my attention by Terence McKenna and his TimeWave Zero theory. It seemed as if Pinchbeck were stepping up to the plate and was going to pick up where McKenna left off, after McKenna's passing in 2000.

I skimmed some reviews of "2012 - The Return Of Quetzlcoatl" (as the first edition was called)...and many were middling. Undaunted, I thought it was just the cynical contingent of the mainstream press. I checked some reviews over at GoodReads and it seemed to be the same. Hmmm.... Now I realise that anything with "prophecy" in the title (as stated in the edition I have) has the fundamentalist materialists and dogmatic rationalists reaching for their revolvers, but I thought there would be a lot more praise for the book. I decided to finally give it a go.

In "2012", Pinchbeck has devoted his energies to studying the prophecy that a new age will emerge in December 2012, which the Mayan calendar shows as the end of the world, or just the end of the current age, depending on your view. He jets off to Oregon to hang out with Jose Arguelles, who's created a new calendar based on the original Mayan dates. He visits England several times, specifically the Glastonbury area, to study the crop circle phenomenon. Mexico becomes a destination, so Dan can view the Mayan architecture. He goes to Burning Man again (urgh!), but this time the festival isn't so groovy, man--and finally he journeys to the Amazon rain forest, to learn about Santo Daime, a local religion which grafts the disparate strains of old tribal customs and Romish Catholicism into a peculiar ritual. The participants swallow cupfuls of ayahuasca, then sing and do a two-step dance for up to 6 hours.

All the while, he's having relationship problems with his 'partner'. She's never given a name, she's just his partner--though she is described as 'beautiful and svelte' (Pinchbeck wants you to know he's no chubby-chaser). The couple have a child together, which seems ill-advised, as he relates that their union was a bit unstable from the outset. These bits were really where Pinchbeck lost me. In an afterword to the paperback edition, he states how he included all this personal detail to 'invoke a deep enough response in readers that if might incite a shift in perspective'. Erm..that didn't happen for me, mate. It just seemed a bit voyeuristic to me, his tendency to let his audience in on his somewhat private soap-opera, involving his 'partner', another woman he meets at a psychedelic retreat in Hawaii, whom he insists on referring to as "first priestess" (she doesn't have a name either, apparently) and his little girl (again, no name). One chapter is devoted to the partner's father, for no other apparent reason than to compare him to Pinchbeck's own father. He also can't seem to stop exploiting his connection to the Beats (his mother dated Jack Kerouac at the height of his fame), as if that somehow lends him some extra credibility.

In spite of the more frustrating aspects of Pinchbeck's narrative, I did enjoy parts of the book. I really liked the crop circle bits, though I've never really given much thought to the phenomenon, putting down most (if not all) of the designs down to hoaxers. I found myself looking up the various formations Pinchbeck discusses to get a better idea of what he is describing. He didn't convince me with his various theories, but I did think that maybe hoaxers weren't responsible for all of the circles. Some of the Arguelles chapters had interesting segments - but then Pinchbeck inserts some caustic New Yawk intellectual screed, completely dismissing Aleister Crowley, but he buys most of Arguelles' Mayan reincarnation schtick. His visit to the Hopi reservation seems a bit of an anti-climax, but the words of the tribal chief almost redeem the plodding structure of the chapter. The book ends with an eco-warrior message about humanity's destruction of the environment and a possible redemption in the next 6 years (well, it's down to 3 now). Pinchbeck doesn't seem concerned that all of his jetting about might've added to all that pollution....'cos it was like, for the book, man.

So, for all that, you get a somewhat middling book about 2012 and what may happen. For me, it seems a bit of a wasted opportunity--too much about the author, not enough about the actual phenomenon. When he's not talking about his own foibles, he's borrowing ideas from McKenna, Arguelles, Robert Anton Wilson, crop circle devotees and a host of others. It seems that maybe Pinchbeck started believing his own press and yeah, that Rolling Stone article didn't really help things. It appears that he wants to join the psychedelic pantheon and have his name amongst the greats (Wilson, Leary, Huxley, McKenna, Kesey, etc.)--but I just don't know if he makes the cut. Going by "2012", I think he's got a ways to go.

(Cross-posted at Blog Is Not A Four-Letter Word)