…was an ancestor of mine, apparently. And now I’ve recently discovered she was quite a prolific occult author and surrealist painter. And I was just talking about creating a Tarot deck–not for public consumption, of course, but to help me memorize the Tree of Life and its correspondences to the Tarot, the planets, and the archetypal keys of all hidden knowledge.
Particularly noteworthy is Colquhoun’s mention of an oral tradition regarding sexuality within the original HOGD as well as in the Alpha et Omega. Colquhoun also mentions that, in her opinion, the sexual aspects should appear in the highest grades of any occult fraternity, including the projected Third Order of the original Golden Dawn, as is presently the case in the Third Order of Mathers’ Alpha et Omega.
Colquhoun further discusses actual rituals pertaining to sexual polarity performed by early members of the Golden Dawn. In particular, she discusses at length the unpublished “Lilith” ritual of A.E. Waite that she found at the Warburg Institute. Finally, Colquhoun also discusses issues pertaining to Golden Dawn ritual and tantra groups regarding sexual polarity and the role of women in both tantra groups as well as in the original Golden Dawn.
I am no fan of tyranny, but I do think the elections in Iran are the harbingers of a coming destabilization project meant to “save the Iranians” the way we “saved” Iraqis:
Even the American left-wing has endorsed the U.S. government’s propaganda. Writing in The Nation, Robert Dreyfus’s presents the hysterical views of one Iranian dissident as if they are the definitive truth about “the illegitimate election,” terming it “a coup d’etat.”
What is the source of the information for the U.S. media and the American puppet states?
Nothing but the assertions of the defeated candidate, the one America prefers.
However, there is hard evidence to the contrary. An independent, objective poll was conducted in Iran by American pollsters prior to the election. The pollsters, Ken Ballen of the nonprofit Center for Public Opinion and Patrick Doherty of the nonprofit New America Foundation, describe their poll results in the June 15 Washington Post. The polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and was conducted in Farsi “by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award.”*
The poll results, the only real information we have at this time, indicate that the election results reflect the will of the Iranian voters. Among the extremely interesting information revealed by the poll is the following:
“Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin — greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.
Auspicious, considering Obama’s Middle East talk on June 4, which is the impetus for the majority of this post.
Spare change, loose change, but none we really believe in.
The symbolic act is one which incorporates the literal while evoking the metaphysical. Symbols arguably are more effective, efficient, and can produce longer-lasting control mechanisms than most physical actions. They pervade our advertising, media, and corporate loyalties; they irrefutably control our belief systems, religious and political. I believe Barack Obama is one of our most symbolic presidents yet. As Middle East historian Mark Levine says, “the West, and the US in particular, has a habit of taking symbols too seriously.” Levine is addressing the open-handed goalpost speech and promises made to the Middle East in the early part of Obama’s administration. While it is arguable that merely changing our symbolic vocabulary towards Islamic countries has a strong effect on popular support, it is also reminiscent of a rhetoric echoed by Bzrezinski of all countries facing hegemonic domination:
A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD’s in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the “decisive ideological struggle” of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America’s involvement in World War II.
It is this construction of a new , untouchable narrative that worries me. A narrative of uncorrupted, audacious, and nearly impenetrable “Hope” has established not only a new definition of the empathetic hero, but a new heroic paradigm that, if confronted, will garner exponentially more support from the population than that of a tyrannical fearmonger. The narrative of a turning point, a real “Good Guy” in the driver’s seat, is pervasive; the passivity that previously dulled the so-called “movements” in the past has now been co-opted, branded, and repackaged. And we swallow. And with good reason; Obama and is a genius with words, and words are symbolic resonances at the core of human experience.
I propose we do a side-by-side comparison of his June 4, 2009 Cairo speech to the Muslim world, and his June 4, 2008 speech at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, for a closer inspection of the symbolic resonance. Interesting that the dates are exactly one year apart.
Stylistically, the two follow a similar tactical rhetoric:
June 08:
I first became familiar with the story of Israel when I was 11 years old. I learned of the long journey and steady determination of the Jewish people to preserve their identity through faith, family and culture. Year after year, century after century, Jews carried on their traditions, and their dream of a homeland, in the face of impossible odds.
June 09:
Part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I am a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.
June 09:
So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America. And I believe that America holds within her the truth that regardless of race, religion, or station in life, all of us share common aspirations – to live in peace and security; to get an education and to work with dignity; to love our families, our communities, and our God. These things we share. This is the hope of all humanity
June 08:
Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation. But that only makes diplomacy more important. If we must use military force, we are more likely to succeed, and will have far greater support at home and abroad, if we have exhausted our diplomatic efforts.
June 09:
This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared.
June 08:
Not when there are still voices that deny the Holocaust. Not when there are terrorist groups and political leaders committed to Israel’s destruction. Not when there are maps across the Middle East that don’t even acknowledge Israel’s existence, and government-funded textbooks filled with hatred toward Jews. Not when there are rockets raining down on Sderot, and Israeli children have to take a deep breath and summon uncommon courage every time they board a bus or walk to school.
June 09:
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
June 08:
That is the change we need in our foreign policy. Change that restores American power and influence. Change accompanied by a pledge that I will make known to allies and adversaries alike: that America maintains an unwavering friendship with Israel, and an unshakeable commitment to its security.
June 09:
I know that for many, the face of globalization is contradictory. The Internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and changing communities. In all nations – including my own – this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we will lose of control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities – those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith.
“An egg of wondrous size is said to have fallen from heaven into the river Euphrates. The fishes rolled it to the bank, where the doves having settled upon it, and hatched it, out came Venus, who afterwards was called the Syrian Goddess-that is, Astarte. Hence, the egg became one of the symbols of Astarte or Easter.” (The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop, page 109, quoting Hyginus’ Fabulae pp. 148, 149) The Sacred Egg of Heliopolis looks like nothing so much as a minaret, and the crescent at its peak like nothing so much as a representation of the crescent Venus. (link)
I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to be a fly on the wall when that thing landed. Not the last egg-shaped UFO descent, either:
TEXAS UFO PACES COUPLES’ CAR,
WOODLANDS — On October 26, 2000, with rows of lights on the underside of each leg traveling silently and at fantastic speed. It is a clear, cold night and I was outside with my telescope facing ESE at Orion. I looked up from the telescope when at about my 11:00 position I spotted a V-shaped formation of circular diffuse white lights on the underside of a ‘solid’ V-shaped ‘fuselage’ which was transparent (could see star field behind it) and shimmered like a mirage. From 4 to 6 closely spaced lights down each leg of V and 1 at point. Their diameter was nearly the width of each leg. They pulsed slowly at one-second intervals and simultaneously, and shimmered in sync with rest of craft. At first sight, it was at least as big as both fists held at arms length. Estimate altitude at between 2000 and 5000 feet. Traveled straight and level SSE at what must have been thousands of miles per hour and was completely silent. Fantastic, dizzying speed. Within view for approx. 5 seconds. At last sight it was about the width of my pinkie at arms length.
SAN ANTONIO — On October 30, 2000, two witnesses noticed a twinkling star with blue and red flashing lights at 11:30 PM. One witness reports that her ex husband grabbed the binoculars, looks and says, “Damn these binoculars work good, there’s blue and red flashing lights coming from it.” I looked and saw a round shaped white light with flashing blue light on the left side of the object and red on the other. It looked like a slowly moving satellite or star. I looked back about three minutes later, but the flashing lights were gone. Now there was only a single red light sitting on top of the object! Shocking and exciting to see! I looked again several minutes later, no red or blue lights at all and the shape of the white light had changed entirely. For one it was not horizontal anymore, it was more vertical and now it was shaped like a long hot-dog and pointed on an incline towards the heavens! It was moving into space slowly. I think it was a satellite, but my ex husband says satellites don’t have lights on them or change shape. Thanks to NUFORC http://www.UFOcenter.com
SAN ANTONIO — On Friday night, October 27, 2000, Awais M. reports, “My girlfriend was driving to San Antonio to pick me up when this unidentified object flew towards her car. At first the thing might have looked like a plane, but after closer inspection, it seemed otherwise, and she could not decipher or identify the object.” “The unidentified object hovered and it came very near her car. It seemed like it was targeting her for several seconds. She wanted a closer look at it, but driving made things difficult. She also saw a white light and red flashes along the side.” “While we were coming back to Corpus Christi, she saw it again and pointed the object out to me.” He described the UFO as “stagnant and hovering perfectly. The object seemed to follow us back to Corpus, and before heading to my house I saw it up high.” “The next day, I saw it again and wondered what the origin was. So I called the naval station (U.S. Navy base in Corpus Christi.) and not surprisingly, they had no idea what it was.” Thanks to UFO Roundup Joe Trainor Editor. 11/2/00
And of course, looking at those dates, I remember three very strange nights of halloween in my hometown of Sunnyvale, Texas, in the year 2000. On October 30, I dreamed for the first time of a secret society called the Invisible College and of being in a desert surrounded by children, looking for it. The next night, October 31, I went out into the woods beyond our house and worked an Opening ritual to the other world. I specifically used a Gaelic Druidic traditional opening, memorized for the occasion. The moon was full, and I meditated on it for a long time. In deep meditation, something appeared infront of me. It was small with a shifting shadowy appearance, thin and humanoid. It told me to think of it as Pan. It looked at me with deep, large, black eyes, and I asked to be taken with it to the other world. It then reached out its tiny hand, and pulled out a large white light from the center of my chest. It inspected it closely, and said, “Not until your heart is pure,” before shoving it back inside my body and then disappearing. This all happened while I was in a trance, but what shot me out of the trance was a large flash of light from the forest. I actually physically saw the white light, as it was so bright that I came out of meditation. That night, I slept for only an hour, and had another vivid dream that I’ll write about at a later time.
I’m not quite sure where all this is going, just that I need to collect it, all in once place.
“He divided the monstrous shape and created marvels (from it). He sliced her in half like a fish for drying: half of her he put up to roof the sky, Drew a bolt across and made a guard hold it. Her waters he arranged so that they could not escape.”
According to Kramer (1956), Tablet IV of The Epic of Creation described Marduk’s treatment of Tiamat’s corpse.(link)
I started thinking about why I love to travel. It’s not easy to pick up and go somewhere new and adapt and learn the customs and still try and maintain your own way of life while simultaneously opening your head to other interpretations of conscious reality. But there is something that happens when you get to feel the energy of a specific place. It sticks with you longer than any photograph or souvenir, if you’re sensitive to it.
I first read about Rosslyn Chapel in 1999, when I was sixteen, in The Highlander, a magazine for people with Scottish ancestry. The article didn’t do much more than point out the pre-Columbus corn and cactus symbolism alongside Greenmen and the enigmatic Apprentice’s Pillar. It was a relatively shallow article. At that time, my mind had already decided that Christianity was pretty much a stolen pagan sun worshiping cult, but I just felt there was something weird at Rosslyn, and knew I had to go there. When I went to Scotland in 2004, I snuck away to Rosslyn and descended into the “secret” ritual chamber below…you know, the one where they keep Jesus’s blood or something (thank you Dan Brown. Right, cause the Holy Grail is treasure, a cup, or even an heir. Yes, Jesus had heirs, but the question you should be asking is whose heir was Jesus?)
This was my experience:
As I walked down the 13 steps into the chamber, I felt myself become extremely lightheaded, as tho I’d just knocked about five shots of good Scotch back. I leaned up against the wall to steady myself. The pit felt like death, the crypt where the body is kept, resting next to the Knight Templar carved out of stone. On the wall there were several carvings that made my head spin further; they were not the modern works of graffiti artists, but carved into the wet concrete when the St. Claires built the chapel to begin with. Not surprisingly, we see another Orion/Sirius connection:
On a wall of Rosslyn Chapel’s underground crypt, the oldest and holiest structure in the building, is what’s been called a “working Masonic drawing.” It is shaped more like an obelisk than a pyramid, and yet it sang a siren song to me. The central line of the drawing passes through three pyramids—as viewed from above.
From my experience, it all comes down to energy. Being a musician, I tend to make metaphors to music because it is the easiest association for me. Music is energy, and in a sense, placing sacred sites along a path of energy is like creating a fretboard for a song you want to hear over and over and over again. Awesome if the song is bringing joy and enlightenment to all who hear it, but not so much if the song says “You are under control by us, submit and do not question.”
What if the Masonic “G” is a key in which these songs are played? What if we tune our ears to B flat, the hum of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, instead? What does that do to our heads? What does this do to our minds, our bodies? I know from experience that stone structures strategically located can make you feel completely…out of your skull. To what ends?
In conclusion, my love of traveling has to do with tracking this vibrational energy that has been tapped so loudly by so many occult societies throughout time. The more I see, the more I feel that the truths I’ve unearthed over the years are stranger than I ever thought. Also, thank you to The Atlantean Conspiracy for this insightful article on the ley line connection.
Found this excellent site, The Spiritual Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, while looking for good links on Sufism. The more I study, the more I learn that within each of the major world religions exists a purer, truer set of teachings that deal with the creation of the soul and attuning yourself to the deepest voice in your heart, that one that tells you that something is very wrong with the world, but that love is real, and that guides you when you’re lost.
It exists in all forms of mysticism, and in all great works of literature. Just tuning into the Sufi channel, personally. I particularly love what Khan has to say about Music:
Many in the world take music as a source of amusement, a pastime, and to many music is an art and a musician an entertainer. Yet no one has lived in this world and has thought and felt, who has not considered music as the most sacred of all arts, for the fact is that what the art of painting cannot clearly suggest, poetry explains in words; but that which even a poet finds difficult to express in poetry is expressed in music. By this I do not only say that music is superior to art and poetry, but in point of fact music excels religion; for music raises the soul of man even higher than the so-called external forms of religion.
From the chorus of “Instrument,” one of the first songs I received after arriving in Jeddah:
Raise me up, I’m your instrument
Unstrung and warped, I’m a testament
to the Source beyond the firmament
that keeps my heart alive
When we gather to express our inalienble right to peaceably assemble, we do so because we want no more than a free and sustainable planet where peace and compassion are truly the highest standards in which to hold all human endeavors. We are here to make a statement to the whole of our society: that these standards are noble and worthy of great devotion. A growing number of humans on this planet desires to live in a highly evolved, conscious, and peaceful world. By being here today, we cast off the doubt that such a world is possible. These doubts have remained in all cultures for millennia–yet today, we stand in open defiance of them. This is a remarkable thing. Do not let anyone persuade you otherwise. The idea that we embrace the philosophies and actions of peace is nothing short of the greatest hopes and dreams of all our ancestors.
So I ask that in your actions, choose to embrace each moment as an opportunity to become a fully conscious member of the world of peace we are creating. I ask that you remember: Peace happens when you think beyond yourself and your ego and extend your heart to those around you–your sisters and brothers in the Peace Movement as well as those in opposition. Only through putting ourselves in the position of another do we learn the greatest truths: That NO ONE deserves our hatred or violence.
All hostility, all sense of otherness, and all belief that we are separate entities at all is a direct result of ignoring the innate, adaptive, and very natural human tendency towards love & compassion. Adapting these tendencies in our daily lives teaches us not to be afraid of ourselves and others, because we can control the outcome of any situation by putting ouselves in the place of another with a mindset of peace.
All we are are saying is what’s been said for thousands of years by people our history books and religions generally regarded as blindly optimistic, insane, or Divine: Love those who you see as different from yourself.
Our numbers are now at critical mass, and this message is accepted by too man to be dismissed. By challenging and focusing all our actions, and especially, reactions, to reflect such blindly optimistic, insane, and Divine advice as, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we liberate not only our minds, but give permission by example for others to liberate their minds in our presence.
Freedom is a tender fruit whose seeds are spread and sweetness multiplied when we invite another to bite from our side of the apple. This is the standard to which we should hold all our actions.
As with most things, I try and keep a record of syncronicity and such, and being as that I co-created them, I think I’ve got a right to the intellectual property of the story of my life, weird and boring as it sometimes is. Here’s a recent example:
About 2 months ago, I started a simple song on guitar after I woke from a dream with this line in my head: “Look now, there’s a tower in the water…” The dream involved a large tower standing 60 feet or so in the air, which I climbed with three friends. We were eventually shooed off by black helicopters. It was oddly vivid, that dark tower standing stark against a gorgeous blue sky laced with clouds, not unlike the illustrations in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower III: The Wastelands (named, like this blog, for the T.S. Eliot poem) which admittedly was an obsession of mine in high school. Needless to say, I felt a little weird upon waking.
I’ll post the song soon. But the interesting intersection in this meandering road of an essay is this article that I found today, courtesy of the Daily Grail (thank you Twitch) on the mystery of the Irish towers with doorways that open 4 meters above ground:
No surprise therefore that there has been widespread speculation about the round towers, with several writers pushing their date back to pre-Christian times. For historian H. O’Brien, they were even built by the Tuatha de Danann, the People of the goddess Danu, an Irish race of gods, who originally lived on “the islands in the west”, from where they invaded and conquered Ireland.
Tuatha de Danann legends oft mirror the legends of the giants, the Nephilim, the Annunaki, and the Viracochas: all high magicians, godlike in their powers, with the ability to manipulate time and space, all who supposedly left behind great works of architecture. Whether there’s any validity to that is up to you to research and decide for yourself. I personally prefer to breathe and work deeply the mystery. Because it’s just more fun that way.
But if indeed part of a forgotten tradition, or a lost knowledge, nothing beats practical experimentation. Farmer John Quackenboss of Virginia decided to construct a round tower; in 1986, he erected five 6′ high terracotta pipes of 12” diameter filled with basalt gravel, covering an area of 1000 acres. He capped the pipes with a cone of concrete, made with basalt gravel and coated in crushed basalt, bringing the total height to two metres – nowhere near the height of the average round tower. After six weeks, his farm enjoyed increased crop yields, despite drought conditions. He reported that the area covered by the towers had higher rainfall, but less moisture evaporation.
And with that, I leave you with lyrics. Dream well, dream deeply, dream of the Tower which connects all things, may it lead you to other worlds than these.
I watched In the Valley of Elah last night, and at first I was skeptical that it was going to be good. It seemed like a typical murder mystery: soldier comes home from Iraq, goes AWOL, they find his body cut up and burned, and think it’s linked to drugs. You know, because they don’t drug test in Iraq and those Mexican gangs selling Meth just pray on returning soldiers. Which does happen. But what really happened was WAY more fucked up. WAY more. Can I stress how WAY MORE FUCKED UP what really happened was than a soldier who’s got a drug problem, tries to score on his first weekend back, and ends up getting fucked over and brutally murdered by a dealer? Yeah, that’s fucked up. But the plot reveals no stereotypical Hollywood ending. So if you haven’t seen the movie, watch it. Because when it’s all said and done, and you’re shivering in your blanket, eyes wide and tears brimming, there’s a moment when it all sinks in: it really happened.
Let me make this clear: I believe it’s important to defend yourself. Sometimes that means killing people. If anyone ever tried to hurt my dog, or my niece, or one of my friends, or my parents, and I was physically there and could physically stop it, even if it meant killing them with whatever tools available, if they weren’t going to stop, I’d kill them. I’ve killed a water moccasin with a hoe because he was nesting next to my horse and almost struck my mom. I felt bad, because he was just doing what any old snake would do, but it was necessary. Killing him made me feel sick to my stomach. It was just a snake, you say. Well, it was life. It was blood and flesh and fangs bared. Death is a part of life, though, and sometimes life needs death to continue. I’m a relatively strict vegetarian, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to lay my head on the tracks while my rights or the rights of those I love are railroaded over.
What I’m opposed to is violent, spiritual, tortured death. It happens when you’re raped. It happens when you’re tortured. It happens to factory-farmed animals in a slaughterhouse. It happens when “preemptive war” becomes synonymous with “Patriotism.” It happens when you come home from a cesspool of atrocity and can’t deal with the shallow materialistic hologram of reality that is American culture, and you blow your own brains out. It happens when you’re a 21 year old boy given a gun and told to shoot brown people, and then told it’s okay to laugh, it’s how you deal. And it happens so frequently and with such fervor in war that I have no doubt that there is some cyclical need, not by all people, but by the few who manipulate the many, to keep the heart of a blood thirsty god pumping by gorging itself on a feast of human suffering. It’s a cult of death, people. Plain and simple, dark and furious.
So that’s where I stand. It’s a lonely little place that’s got a few supporters, but our numbers are growing. When people talk about the casualties of this war, and how there are so few in comparison to every other war we’ve had (none of which, by the way, have been formally declared since World War II), I just want to scream. It doesn’t matter if it’s one person or thousands. I don’t think people realize the effects of torture, either. It doesn’t just affect the person being tortured. It’s the torturer who has to keep on living with her or himself, and it’s the taxpayers on the other side of the ocean who go to sleep every night with nary a thought that their money is funding systematic soul-killing.
That’s it. That’s where I stand. I don’t want a child to grow up in this world. I want to change it. And it’s cold over here, but it’s getting warmer.
