Adam Parfrey

Alike for those who for today prepare, And those that after a tomorrow stare, A Muezzín from the Tower of Darkness cries “Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There.”

—Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám

Preface to the Second Edition

Just a few short ticks to the third millennium and the hoi polloi have settled into their homely predestined epiphanies. A cold, dead, fish-eyed kind of love, wailing the demise of pre-humanoid embryo, exhorting the restriction and extinction of life—our lives as well as their own. It is, after all, the Convenient solution. The mapped-out end-of-the-world Xtian drill.

Apocalypse ups the ante. Easier to lose one’s trail in the hubbub. An opportunity to put an end to the nightmare of abundance before the teeming masses jealously strip away all trace of biodiversity. It’s Gaia going rope-a-dope with the imperium of overpopulation, capital and stupidity. One of the teeming masses writes me, “When I hear the word nature, I reach for my Lysol.”

The reader of Apocalypse Culture will soon begin to notice a preponderance of material from individuals who have the audacity to consider themselves their own best authority, in repudiation or ignorance of the orthodoxy factories of Church, University or State. The constructions of these folk researchers may often seem wildly amiss, laughable, disreputable, but are more revealing cultural barometers than the acculturated pabulum of compromised and corrupt professionals.

The original edition of Apocalypse Culture had the kind of initial order that was easily bested by short-run University Press monographs on Edmund Spenser. A buyer for a major book chain yelled at my distributor’s sales manager for actually suggesting she stock such an abomination. For the first six months or so, writers could not place reviews of Apocalypse Culture anywhere; editors were wary of “that book.” Without publicity and only limited shelf space, Apocalypse Culture somehow began to sell, and in its way affected things. I heard of it busting up a couple marriages, one partner drawing the line over “that book.” Reviews began to appear, subjecting the book to vitriolic attack or abject praise. The standard-bearers of culture who refused to acknowledge the book’s presence a couple months ago began to refer to the “notorious Apocalypse Culture.” Even a couple authors included in the anthology, who had originally praised the collection, wrote letters of protest, perceiving a discernably “dangerous” slant. Fortunately, there were other kinds of letters:

The recent acquisition and digestation of A. Parfrey’s compilation ... has given me new hope. It recalls the ancient role of the printed word: conveying knowledge that is primary (i.e., to read it is to undergo involuntary expansion and transformation...). It’s become fairly apparent that the vast majority of published matter is a deliberate and continual hollowing of the individual and collective mind; ‘happy endings,’ rigid rationales for ‘cultural norms’ and an obsessive emphasis on victory of ‘Light’ over dark have taken their toll in increasing taboos against death, sexuality and intellect....—C. H., Blue Point, NY.

J. G. Ballard, who from the start recognized our dire position, jinxes the thrall of apocalypse culture by beating it at its own game: “I believe that the catastrophe story, whoever may tell it, represents a constructive and positive act by the imagination rather than a negative one, an attempt to confront the terrifying void of a patently meaningless universe by challenging it at its own game, to remake zero by provoking it in every conceivable way.”

It was my recurring childhood game to believe that I could avert disaster (car crashes, atomic bombs, etc.) by imagining the calamity while holding my breath. It is entirely possible that Apocalypse Culture is the outgrowth of this kind of puerile superstition. It is instructive, then, to note that nothing in Apocalypse Culture is a fiction; reality has taken on such a dire and phantasmagoric cast that fictionalizing has become superfluous. The essay form has superseded the novel as the vehicle that best suggests the prevailing apocalyptic gestalt, and as the talisman that is most able to repel the onset of paralyzing dread.

The Expanded and Revised Edition of Apocalypse Culture became necessary after the the first edition sold through its third printing. Even though there was material enough for an Apocalypse Culture II, I thought the better of such a volume because: 1) More than a few articles from the first edition seemed to me such a pure expression of our particular fix that I couldn’t do without them; and 2) Placing a Roman numeral after a title like Apocalypse Culture would be like the ham actor doing extra leg kicks and death rattles after he’s run through with a retractable sword. How do you grind a sequel out of the End of the World?

Apocalypse Culture is now divided into two sections. “Apocalypse Theologies” surveys the thanatoxic symptoms. “The Invisible War” pieces together the psychopolitical consequences of the sub rosa convergences behind apocalypse culture.

For the present version, certain pieces from the first edition were revised or incorporated into articles of greater breadth; approximately 18 new essays have been added while a dozen articles that appeared in the first edition have been deleted. The additions and revisions are drastic enough, I hope, not to disappoint readers who have already purchased the original edition.

—Adam Parfrey
October 1990
Los Angeles

Preface

APOCALYPSE THEOLOGIES

Latter-Day Lycanthropy

Battling for the Feral Soul of Man

Adam Parfrey

The Unrepentant Necrophile

An Interview with Karen Greenlee

Jim Morton

Infernal Texts

Frank Talk from a Psychopath

Adam Parfrey

G.G. Allin: Portrait of the Enemy

Adam Parfrey

Aesthetic Terrorism

Adam Parfrey

Interview with Peter Sotos of _Pure_

Paul Lemos

Schizophrenic Responses to a Mad World:

Love, Lithium, and the Loot of Lima

James Anubis Van Cleve

Art in the Dark

Thomas McEvilley

Instructions for the Kali-Yuga

Hakim Bey

Surgeons and Gluttons in the House of Flesh

Notes on the Hidden Unity between the Additive and Subtractive Festishes

Tim O’Neill

Cut it Off

A Case for Self-Castration

Adam Parfrey

Body Play

Fakir Musafar

Fakir Musafar Interview

Kristine Ambrosia and Joseph Lanza

The Case Against Art

John Zerzan

Man A Machine

David Paul

Let’s Do Justice for Our Comrade P-38

Red Brigades

Long Live Death!

Abraxas Foundation

The Muslim Program

Elijah Muhummad

Mel Lyman: God’s Own Story

Laura Whitcomb & John Aes-Nihil

The Process: A Personal Reminiscence

R. N. Taylor

Sorcerer of Apocalypse

An Introduction to John Whiteside Parsons

Michael Staley

THE INVISIBLE WAR

The Invisible War

Anton Szandor LaVey

The Cereal Box Conspiracy
Against the Developing Mind

Michelle Handelman and Monte Cazazza

Society for the Eradication of Television Fact Sheet

From the Mark of the Beast
to the Black Messiah Phenomenon:

The Chronicles of Ron J. Steele,

Investigative Reporter and Prophetic Author

Adam Parfrey

Satori & Pornography

Canonization Through Degradation

Christian Shapiro

Eugenics: The Orphaned Science

Adam Parfrey

How to Kill

Are Afrikan People Subjects

of a Genocidal Plot?

Harry Allen

Agriculture

Demon Engine of Civilization

John Zerzan

Nature as Slave:

Satanic Technology and the West

Oswald Spengler, Jim Brandon

Every Science is a Mutilated Octopus

Charles Fort

Who Killed Wilhelm Reich?

Jim Martin

Who Rules Over Earth?

The Archetype of the World Ruler

and the Work of Universal Regeneration

Tim O’Neill

The Christian Right, Zionism,
and the Coming of the Penteholocaust

Gregory Krupey

A History of Vengeance and
Assassination in Secret Societies

Tim O’Neill

The Call to Chaos

From Adam to Atom

By Way of the Jornada del Muerto

James Shelby Downard

Meditations on the Atom and Time

An Attempt to Define the Imagery

of War and Death in the Late Twentieth Century

Dennis Stillings

Contacts

Coup de Grâce

Apocalypse Theologies

Latter-Day Lycanthropy: Battling for the Soul of Feral Man

Adam Parfrey

If we now consider the wolf in particular, that insatiably murderous beast of prey, especially dangerous at night and in winter, he would appear to be the natural symbol of night, of winter, and of death ... But the wolf is not only the most blood-thirsty, he is also the swiftest and lustiest of our larger quadrupeds. This hardiness, his fierce boldness, his cruel lust for fight and blood, together with his hunger for the the flesh of corpses which makes him a night visitor of battlefields, make the wolf the companion of the God of Battles.

—W. Hertz, Der Werwolf

One day a wolf’s head comes up from the bush & I looked him in the eye—strange, he thought, why? About 10 or 15 minutes later other humans come & he hides in his den & they passed by & were gone. Two weeks pass & the wolf’s head showed up again, looked him in the eye & was gone—he knew then—the wolf knew he was hiding from the same humans that they hide from & a little bond came between the wolf and the human. A new kind of respect for the wolf came to the man. The wolf is smarter than human fools could dream of. They are people too....

—Charles Manson, January, 1987

Imprisoned during much of World War II in Buchenwald, the scholar Robert Eisler saw the beast in civilized man and had nothing but time to meditate upon it. His postwar study, Man Into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism and Lycanthropy (1948, Spring Books: London), surveys the bloody trails of mythology and history, anticipating the apocalyptic “bitter end which may be as near as many of us fear.” In the book’s conclusion, Eisler drops the impartial tones of scholarship to beseech our faith in the Book of Genesis: “If there was never a Fall, there can never have been and there can never be a redemption in the future. If, however, there was a most definite Fall, if ‘human nature’ was originally not lupine but that of a peaceful, frugivorous, non-fighting and not even jealous animal ... then there is hope of changing our social organization....”

Conquering—or, rather, controlling—the beast in man is the raison d’etre of Christianity and its decadent flower, capitalism. The capitalist priestcraft of modern Psychiatry, working in tandem with the State bureaucracy, regulates and polices the new Restriction and gelding of desire. Damned desire = unhappiness. Unhappiness = motivation for buying “things”. Psychiatrists become the final legal arbiters, muddying the justice system with the grey areas of intentionality, mental state, etc. Newspaper editorials commonly mistake this re-ordering of the justice system as a liberalizing force, quickly forgetting that psychiatric control is the foundation of any modern totalitarian society. Psychiatric dogma—echoed continuously by omniscient, “understanding” voices in self-help books, on radio and television talk shows—must convince the public to practice continual suppression and hormonal restraint—with any “slipups” indicative of something terribly wrong with them.

Emotional numbing, mass addictions, low self-esteem, depression, apathy, anomie, stress—all the modern illnesses are symptoms of the absurd and tragic struggle to bridle instinct. Guilt is engendered by the imperfect ability of humans to suppress the inner rage of the repressed id.

With the advent of the novel, and later, the cinema, instinct is lived within the retina and mind rather than with the flesh. The passive, voyeuristic siphoning of instinct is known clinically as perversion. Conditioned to live their lives vicariously, perverts are easily jaded, and prone to far greater cruelties than the orgastically sane and “violent” feral men. It’s remarked during the guided tour at the San Diego Zoo, that the wolverine is nature’s most ferocious and violent animal, but seems only the pettiest punk next to passive, God-fearing homo sapiens. Robert Eisler mistakes the neurotic bloodletting of a modern economic war as a failure to tether men tightly enough to the Judeo-Christian ideal. Eisler hadn’t the necessary perspective to see that the unimaginable cruelty of World War II was the result of winding man’s instinct so tightly that it sprung.

Oswald Spengler declared in The Decline of the West, “World peace ... involves the private renunciation of war on the part of the immense majority, but along with this it involves an unavowed readiness to submit to being the booty of others who do not renounce it.” The modern militia will go to extremes to renunciate hostile or warlike intent. The Secretary of War changes his title to the Secretary of Defense. The oft-repeated, phrase, “for the preservation of peace,” becomes a mantra for modern man, and his aggressions are most often stated in passive ways. Even if these avowals of peace are merely chalked up as P.R., it’s indisputable that the majority of moderns believe in it. Wars are no longer fought by citizens for the State, they are fought against the citizens by the State.

The enemy of civilization, to Spengler, is world-weariness, a loss of the animating spirit of the (in the Jungian sense) daimon. Judeo-Christianity severed the bond with the Earth-spirits to engage in the Talmudic hair-splitting of God-as-legislator. Old habits died hard, though, and Nature remains a bewitching force even if the will of Faustian men attempt improvements on Her. The call of the wolf, as explained by the salacious priest-historian Montague Summers (The Werewolf), was strong enough for many to fear in earnest the werewolf and shape-changer even as scientific rationalism eclipsed Christianity.

For over a century, Mr. Hyde, Dracula, the Werewolf and all the other lupine monsters fascinated readers with their feral mirror reflections. More recent folklore, as popularized by newspapers and television, publicize the killer or assassin as the “lone wolf.” Street gangs are characterized as traveling in “wolf packs.” The Little Red Riding Hood tale was effectively portrayed in a recent movie titled The Company of Wolves, in which lycanthropic sexuality is portrayed as subverting social conscience. Hard on the heels of womanizing Gary Hart’s resignation from the 1988 presidential race, columnist George F. Will writes:

Hart’s problem can be called the Wolf factor. Fred Barnes of the New Republic reports that Hart recently wrote an autobiographical essay in which he claimed that age four in Kansas he ... “came almost face to face with a large gray wolf,” and that recently in Colorado he “tracked a timber wolf 100 yards from our door.” The Audubon Society says that wolves have been virtually extinct in the West since 1930.

The Werewolf Corps, organized by Joseph Goebbels at the bitter end of WWII, formed to inflict individual acts of terror in order to disrupt or subvert Allied occupation. Teenagers, housewives, violent felons and mental patients were loosed in emulation of Wotan and his wolf-companions on “wild night” hunts. Much feared, the Werewolf Corps has been itself the model for many contemporary terror organizations such as the Turkish Gray Wolves, who freed Agca to take a potshot at Pope John Paul II. It has been suggested by conspiracy researcher E. Edwin Austin in The Conspiracy Tracker that certain notorious mass murder cases evince similarities to Werewolf Corps modus operandi, combining slayings of government representatives with apparent cult rituals.

When Christians and other self-appointed moralists preach against the wolf, they are propagandizing against pagan mystic states of ecstatic illumination, which often goes hand-in-hand with reversion to animal-like violence. Notes O.T.O. leader Kenneth Grant in Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God: The Kundalini (tantric euphemism for the “Fire Snake” of sexual enlightenment found in the spine) can be “stirred and sometimes fully awakened ... by ... violence carried to the pitch of frenzy, either masochistic or the reverse. This unseals primal atavisms, the resurgence of which leads directly to the most ancient (i.e., the original) state of consciousness which, being pure, is cosmic, unlimited.”

Anton LaVey, founder of the the Church of Satan, wrote a how-to essay titled, “How to Become a Werewolf; The Fundamentals of Lycanthropic Metamorphosis; Their Principles and Their Application.” Despite the big commercial success of his Satanic Bible, LaVey was unable to find a publisher for The Devil’s Notebook, which included his “Werewolf” article. Distressed editors called LaVey to argue that publishing the werewolf piece would create a “bloodbath.” (It has been published in an appendix to The Secret Life of a Satanist biography, Feral House, 1990, to no evident casualties so far.) LaVey’s article suggests specific procedures in which participants supercharge an area with their sensations and expectations in order that they may revert to an animal sensitivity to their emotions and environment. Ironically, LaVey insists this exercise is not for the vulgar. “One who has only risen to the curbstone dares not return to the gutter. Only the higher man can metamorphose, as his ego will allow him to go all the way. He knows he is circumspect and cultured the greater part of his life. So a transition to animalism can be entertained without compunction.”

Lycanthropic rites have been revived in Austin Osman Spare’s “Resurgent Atavism” sorceries, Crowley’s Cult of the Beast and Michael Bertiaux’s Cult of the Black Snake. Bertiaux’s Mystere Lycanthropique involves the assumption of the form of the wolf or some other predatory animal on the astral plane. Adepts of the Black Snake cult explain the reason for this transformation in terms of a need for regaining periodically the contents of the subconsciousness lost or suppressed during man’s transition from the animal kingdom to the world of humans. “I wrenched DOG backwards to find GOD; now GOD barks” wrote Aleister Crowley in The Book of Lies, no doubt a quintuple allusion, of which I can find only four: the first pertains to the worship of Sirius, the dog star, so prominent in occult eschatology; secondly to the mystical power of reversing roles of dominance/submission in sado-masochistic sex; third, to the seeking of dishonor and the crawling through the abyss to break through to illumination; fourth, to the importance of the dorsal position of the female in sex-magickal rites. Kenneth Grant, quoting Bertiaux in Outside the Circles of Time, infers that lycanthropic transformation is perhaps the only way by which, paradoxically, the magician may apocalyptically escape this doomed universe into “the next system of worlds.”

Dagon [the God of the Deep, symbolic of lunar blood] will come again, as will mighty sorceries ... for the mighty beasts of the deep have been unleashed and they have gone about their pathway of destruction, and far worse than expected ... Hold to the powers I have given you, for only by lycanthropic transformation, by being and first becoming a monster shall the magician escape.

Such lycanthropic transformation evidently guided the Viking Berserkers, who wore wolf-skins, spoke in wolf-language and earned a reputation as the most fearsome warriors who ever lived. The Berserkers could reputedly practice mind control, rendering their enemies helpless with fear, and running wild in battle without protection of shield or armor.

It has been established that those rare feral children could endure wild extremes in weather and diet that would instantly kill a modern, civilized child. Approximately a dozen cases of children raised by wolves have been recorded in this century. Reverend J.A.L. Singh, the Christian Bengali foster father of the wolf-children Kamala and Amala, whom he discovered in a wolf den outside of Midnapore, published a diary of observations of his most unusual wards in a 1941 book titled Wolf-Children and Feral Man. Singh’s description of their appearance is haunting:

The Change of Appearance: High Jawbones

They had prominent differences in feature from ordinary children. The formation of jawbones was raised and high. When they moved their jaws in chewing, the upper and lower jawbones appeared to part and close visibly, unlike human jaws.

Teeth

The formation of teeth was close-set and uneven with very fine sharp edges. The four teeth in line with they eyes, i.e., the canines, were longer and more pointed than is common in humans ... The color of the mouth inside was blood-red, not naturally found among men.

Sitting or Standing

They could sit on the ground squatting down or in any other posture, but could not stand up at all. Their knee joints ... were big, raised and heavy, covered with hard corns from walking on all fours.

Eyes

At night when you saw the glare, you could not see anything round about them but the two blue powerful lights, not even the possessor of the eyes. You saw only two blue lights sending forth rays in the dark, making every other thing invisible beyond the focus curvature.

Sense of Smell

They had a powerful instinct and could smell meat or anything from a great distance like animals. On the fifteenth of September, 1922, Kamala smelled meat from a distance of seventy yards and ran quickly to the kitchen veranda where meat was being dressed.

Kamala the Wolf Girl

All captured wolf-children have died in captivity. Reverend Singh reports that his charges, Kamala and Amala, died at the age of ten and four respectively, of “broken hearts.” In his book, The Wolf-Children (Penguin, 1977), Charles MacLean reports that wolf-child Amala died on the day that Mahatma Gandhi first visited their hometown of Midnapore. The wolf-child expired while the Bengali children blew conch-shells to celebrate the arrival of the famed pacifist. Metaphysical coincidence? Kamala’s voracious craving for meat presented itself in a rapturous gobbling, for which her foster father, Padre Singh, severely reprimanded her. The wolf child was not to empty her plate before the finish of grace. The Judeo-Christian mechanism of corrupting innocence in order to induce guilt was rationalized by Reverend Singh as method to stimulate moral awareness, for, writes MacLean, “there were signs in Kamala’s case that her fear of punishment might eventually lead to feeling sympathy for others.” (This “sympathy for others,” it turns out, was only a fear for her own personal punishment.)

In 1985 came the news report that another Indian wolf child died in a foster family for his inability to adjust to Christian values. The civilities of modern man evidently murders the beast inside him—not to mention his connection to fellow beasts. Still, it remains important for denizens of the Naugahyde lounge-chair to dream of their connections to nature. Tarzan, Doctor Doolittle, Gentle Ben, Mr. Ed, Born Free, Wild Kingdom, Grizzly Adams, The Day of the Dolphin and National Geographic specials warm the heart with sentimental tales of man’s empathic communication with his fellow creatures, while an estimated one-third to one-half of the earth’s animal life have been killed and rendered extinct by despoliation of the environment. Earth First! is one of the few organizations to try to reintroduce the wolf back into the face of America, where it is virtually annihilated, with the exception of some small sections of the Great Lakes region.

Our self-annihilating divorce with nature has motivated some contemporary oracular mediums to establish links with discarnate entities and archetypes from the distant past to heal the neurotic present which blindly ignores its roots in lieu of egomaniacal notions of total self-creation. Explorations of “inner space” remain, however, solitary journeys, and the strange worlds discovered in trance or seizure are extremely difficult to relate to the earthbound Westerner.

Kristine Ambrosia “called up the wolf” in a few semi-public lycanthropic seizures. “Amping up” through pounding, repetitive invocations on tympani precedes the possession, which occurs in a series of sudden jerks. Soon the wolf has fully “taken over,” and Ambrosia, on all fours, houls woundedly, clawing at the concrete prison of a derelict concrete beer vat, into which she has lowered herself for the performance. Physical change during the seizure is palpable: a seeming elongation of the back and jaw, much the same as Reverend Singh’s wolf children. A student of Transpersonal Psychology, Ambrosia’s belief in the reality of symbolic archetypes informs her view that the wolf is a central force in man’s unconscious behavior. “If you examine a good percentage of people who go through individuation and experience a mental breakdown,” she says, “one of the personalities that exists is the wolf.”

One person who experienced a clinical breakdown and identifies himself as Anubis, the jackal-headed Prince of Egypt, is the 75-year-old schizophrenic author of Love, Lithium and the Loot of Lima (excerpted elsewhere in this book). This inspired manuscript, a prolific ejaculation of aphorisms, kabbalistically links names and dates read in books and overheard on television as dire portents of personal and political conspiracy. The obsessively sexual text echoes Crowley’s trance-inspired Book of the Law in such phrases as: “Lust not love is God. Lust is God for the new social order.” The concept—so close to Crowley’s (and Masonic) notion of the “New Aeon”—should stimulate some thought on inspirational occult texts. Is “crossing the abyss” (a euphemism for the occult crisis of eradicating the ego) akin to offering up one’s power of reason? If so, how different is this from the “leap of faith” that distinguishes Christian from agnostic? Or, as Salvador Dali remarked, “The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.”

Perhaps it is not so far-fetched to speculate that the resurgence of the wolf-archetype is in some measure psychic preparation for the millennial calamities that are thought to lie ahead. Teutonic mythology, which best expresses the outward conquering of time and space which has been the legacy of Western man, tell us that the end of all things would be at hand when the greatest of wolves would swallow the sun. The ensuing period would be a terrible darkness, about which Lord Byron wrote the following verse in his poem, Darkness:

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light ...
A fearful hope was all the World contain’d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howled....
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again:—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sat sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom, ... and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters.

The Unrepentant Necrophile: An Interview With Karen Greenlee

Jim Morton

Karen Greenlee is a necrophiliac. Five years ago she made national headlines when she drove off in a hearse and wasn’t heard from for two days. Instead of delivering the body to the cemetery she decided to spend some time alone with the corpse. Eventually, the police found her in the next county, overdosed on codeine Tylenol. She was charged with illegally driving a hearse and interfering with a burial (there is no law in California against necrophilia). In the casket with the body Karen left a four-and-a-half page letter confessing to amorous episodes with between twenty to forty dead men. The letter was filled with remorse over her sexual desires: “Why do I do it? Why? Why? Fear of love, relationships. No romance ever hurt like this ... It’s the pits. I’m a morgue rat. This is my rathole, perhaps my grave.”

The letter proved to be her downfall. For stealing the body and the hearse, she got eleven days in jail, a $255 fine, and was placed on two years probation with medical treatment recommended. Meanwhile, the mother of the dead man sued, claiming the incident scarred her psyche. She asked for $1 million, but settled for $117,000 in general and punitive damages.

The press had a field day, the lawyers got rich, and Karen lost her career and source of sexual satisfaction. Karen is now more comfortable with her sexuality. “When I wrote that letter I was still listening to society. Everyone said necrophilia was wrong, so I must be doing something wrong. But the more people tried to convince me I was crazy, the more sure of my desires I became.”

The following interview was held in Karen’s apartment, a small studio filled with books, necrophilic drawings and satanic adornments.

Back during the trial, from what I read in the newspapers, it seemed like you got very little support.

No, none whatsoever. The newspapers were the worst. To this day I hate reporters. One of them even compared me to Richard Trenton Chase, “The Vampire Killer!” What support there was was like family obligations. One of my brothers refused to have anything to do with me. He said, “I just want to remember her as she was.” He came up to me later and apologized, but he still isn’t comfortable around me. My other brother was more supportive, but even he had to ask, “How’d you do it?”

Before the trial I had a boyfriend who found out about it. He got mad and slapped me around. He said I wasn’t even a woman and I could go fuck my dead bodies. I was surprised. He knew! Apparently a lot of people knew and I don’t know how they knew.

With guys, they always felt I went for bodies because I was hard up, and if I went to bed with them then that would change me and they would be the one who would give me such satisfaction I wouldn’t need those old corpses anymore. I’ve run into that a lot. Sometimes I had guys come on to me for just that reason.

The question I am most often asked is, “How does she do it?”

Yes, that’s the question! People ask questions like that—even people who seem pretty cool, seem to have open minds—then when you tell them, they say, “That’s very interesting,” then don’t want to have much to do with me. I don’t mind telling people how I do it. It doesn’t matter to me, but anyone adept sexually shouldn’t have to ask. People have this misconception that there has to be penetration for sexual gratification, which is bull! The most sensitive part of a woman is the front area anyway and that is what needs to be stimulated.

Besides, there are different aspects of sexual expression: touchy-feely, 69, even holding hands. That body is just laying there, but it has what it takes to make me happy. The cold, the aura of death, the smell of death, the funereal surroundings, it all contributes.

The smell of death?

Sure, I find the odor of death very erotic. There are death odors and there are death odors. Now you get your body that’s been floating in the bay for two weeks, or a burn victim, that doesn’t attract me much, but a freshly embalmed corpse is something else.

There is also this attraction to blood. When you’re on top of a body it tends to purge blood out of its mouth, while you’re making passionate love ... You’d have to be there, I guess.

Of course, with all the AIDS going around ...

That’s the one reason I haven’t tried anything lately. I’m sure I’d have found a way to get into one of these funeral homes by now, but the group I find attractive—young men in their twenties—are the ones who are dying of AIDS.

Did you usually attend the funerals of your corpse-lovers?

Yeah. It was convenient working in the funeral homes. I’d get to drive out to the cemetery with the family. I’d get to mourn right along with the family at the loss of that loved one. Except I was groaning in a little different tone! People can’t really tell if you’re grief-stricken or passion-stricken. I’ve had members of the families put their arms around me and say, “We’re so glad you could come!” Then you have to spin this big old yarn, “Yeah, I knew him in school....” If the guy didn’t have a girlfriend in life they think you were ... “Oh, she’s the one!”

You weren’t in Sacramento at the time of the trial, were you?

No, I was working in a funeral home in another city and going to school at the same time. It’s weird, but the day I got a telegram about the trial telling me to get in touch with my attorney, I went in to the funeral home and was fired for things I had done at that funeral home. Somebody, I guess, got wise to me. I know I wasn’t seen, but I think somebody just figured it out. Of course, they didn’t know anything about Sacramento yet. They found out later! The same day, within five hours of each other, two totally different things caught up with me.

I worked in that funeral home for almost a year. That’s where I did a lot of my extracurricular activities. I had keys so I’d slip back in after hours and spend all night in there. A guy lived at the funeral home in an apartment downstairs. He drank so he was usually passed out. He had a .357 magnum under his pillow.

The guy that court case was about—

John Mercure?

Yeah. I understand he was moved out of the cemetery after the trial.

That happened at the time I was breaking into this funeral home. There was a side room, one of the arrangement areas, where they always have their case folders out. I read there was an exhumation order for John Mercure. Then I read something in the paper about it. His mother wanted the body exhumed, said she wouldn’t bury her cat there. On the day he was supposed to be exhumed I snuck out into a field across from where he was buried. I sat out in the field and watched them dig up the body and give him to this other mortician. They shipped him back to Michigan.

When did you first become aware of your necrophilia?

It’s something I’ve been attracted to all my life. I used to hold funeral services for my pets when they died. Had a little pet graveyard. I lived in a small town and the fireman’s barbeque was next door to the funeral home. To go to the bathroom you had to use the facilities in the funeral home. I’d find any excuse I could to go to the bathroom, then I’d take side trips and wander around the mortuary.

Drawing by Karen Greenlee

It didn’t scare you like the other kids?

No, I loved it! I was real curious. I’d wander around the halls....

Do you miss working in funeral homes?

Yes, terribly! Even if I wasn’t a necrophile, I like mortuary work. I enjoy embalming and everything. Except for obese people. The bodies I hated working on most were obese people. ‘Specially if they’d been autopsied. Their guts would slide out on the floor and shit ... and all this melty fat. Yeeeech!

You said something previously about “The Vampire Killer,” Richard Trenton Chase. He was from Sacramento, wasn’t he?

Yeah, the second funeral home I worked for—I wasn’t working there at the time—got the bodies of Chase’s victims, a man and woman and their child, so I got to hear the gory details of what the bodies looked like. They were really butchered. They were disembowelled with shit stuffed in their mouths. Chase started by killing animals and drinking their blood and when he wasn’t satisfied with that he graduated to people. He killed this couple, then kidnapped their child, killed it and later threw it in a trash can. The mortician who embalmed the bodies said he hardly ever got queasy about anything, but he got sick when he saw those bodies!

What’s the weirdest case you ever encountered?

Hmmm ... There was one kid who fell out of a car while his mother was making a turn and she managed to run over his head. Another kid choked to death on a cigarette wrapper. One guy committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a pellet rifle. He had to shoot himself several times and it took him a while to die, but he finally succeeded. There was another guy I worked on. He was a transvestite who somehow strangled himself with his nylons. I don’t think it was intentional, I think he was trying to achieve heightened orgasm through strangulation and he ended up hanging himself. He wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake.

How about the most unusual funeral?

One time this bunch of religious fanatics held a funeral for one of their members. They didn’t want her embalmed, they just wanted her dressed and in the casket. We usually didn’t do that, but we decided to be nice and put her up in the stateroom. We were standing outside of that stateroom and we heard someone saying, “Rise in the name of Jesus!” They were praying and slapping the body. They were talking in tongues. That was weird!

There seems to be a strong camaraderie between morticians. Almost like a secret society.

Very much so. Morticians are very tight with each other because most people won’t have anything to do with them. I used to find if I went to a party I’d always be introduced like, “This is Karen and she’s a mortician.” But they don’t say, “Here’s Karen—she’s a secretary,” or “she’s a veterinary assistant.” A lot of people are under the misconception that morticians are very straight, very somber. If they ever went back into the prep room and heard all the jokes that are cracked it would blow that theory right out the window.

Did any of those morticians ever testify for or against you at the trial?

One funeral director testified on behalf of funeral practices. He was asked how often necrophilia occurs. He said, “It’s almost unheard of in this profession.”

That’s a major lie!

Yes, definitely ... necrophilia is more prevalent than most people imagine. Funeral homes just don’t report it. There was one place that I broke into, and I know that they knew something was wrong. They actually caught me in the act and let me get away.

At another place I was working, this guy came up to me and said, “Someone’s been messin’ with the body. It looks like they were trying to fuck the body!” I said, “Oh my goodness! Really?” I think they figured it out later. I know they know now.

One mortician I worked with used to like to take a trocar [a large hollow needle used to suction fluids from corpses] and push it up inside any male cadaver’s dick. He’d say, “Oh look, the corpse has got a boner.” This guy was really weird. He looked like Larry of the Three Stooges. I think he had some necrophilic tendencies. He’d get real upset if there weren’t any female bodies to work on. He’d start pacing. I caught him one time in the prep room. He said he was just taking a pee in the hopper at the end of the table. He was just pulling up his pants when I walked in. I said, “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

You say you were caught in the act of necrophilia once?

Yeah. I had tried to kill myself and was living in a halfway house a couple blocks up from this funeral home. I decided to go to the mausoleum and try and kill myself again. The mausoleum had a door connecting it to the mortuary. I was sitting in there, real depressed, when, just for the hell of it, I decided to try running my driver’s license along the edge of the door and click! the door popped open. I couldn’t believe it, so I tried it again and the door popped open again! I went into the prep room and there happened to be a body in there. I had me some fun, did my thing and forgot all about killing myself. I told the folks at the halfway house that I stayed the night with friends. I went in there several times. Sometimes there were absolutely no bodies, so I turned around and snuck back out. I usually went in the back door.

About a week later I snuck back into the funeral home. I was on the prep table having a good old time, when all of a sudden I felt like there was somebody nearby. Next thing, I heard people walking down the hallway. I quietly jumped off the table and threw the sheet back over the body. My clothes were in quite a state of disarray, and I had blood on me and everything else—it had been an autopsy case. There was a casket with the lid open in the side casket-room, so I ran and hid behind it. The casket was on a church-truck so they couldn’t see me, but they could see my legs. It was a man and a woman. They were standing there saying, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” One of them said to the other, “You go get the gun and call the cops and I’ll stay down here.” I knew I only had one chance then, so I busted out and ran. I knew the layout of the place, so I just ran down the hall and out of the place and out of the cemetery.

At the time I still had a friend who worked at the funeral home. He said, “Somebody broke into the funeral home. They know it was you.” They put in an alarm after that. I think they called the police, but there were never any charges. I’m sure they didn’t want the publicity.

That was the last time I got very close, except for I’ve broken into a few tombs.

Have you seen any changes in people’s attitudes towards necrophilia?

Yeah, when I came out here I noticed it. It’s almost a fad! They’re not really necrophiles, but pseudo-necrophiles. Like a death cult! But there are probably a lot of people who would do it if they had the opportunity.

Perhaps there is this vast network of necrophiles, who, for lack of a forum, will never know of each other’s existence.

Well, there’s Leilah [Wendell’s] group [American Association of Necrophilic Research and Enlightenment]. They try and get some information out about it.

It must be frustrating when people say, “we have to cure you,” or, “you’ve got to be more like us.”

It is. For a while I found myself thinking, “Yeah, this isn’t normal. Why can’t I be like other people. Why doesn’t the same pair of shoes fit me just right?” I went through all that personal hell and finally I accepted myself and realized that’s just me. That’s my nature and I might as well enjoy it. I’m miserable when I try to be something I’m not. And too, a lot of these people who are putting me down have hang-ups worse than I have, or they do things that might be considered questionable by their peers. I had a gay friend who, when he found out I was a necrophile, said, “You can go to hell for that.” After 1979, when I was put on probation, part of the probation requirement was that I seek therapy. I had a really nice social worker. She was cool. Very non-judgmental. The more I talked to these people, the more I realized necrophilia makes sense for me. The reason I was having a problem with it was because I couldn’t accept myself. I was still trying to live my life by other people’s standards. To accept it was peace. These people who are always trying to change me only helped me get myself more in touch with my feelings. I used to go from the therapist’s office to the funeral home. It didn’t work, folks!

Infernal Texts

Something As It Really Is

Mel Lyman

I am going to burn down the world
I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone
I am going to turn ideals to shit
I am going to shove hope up your ass
I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble
And then I am going to burn the rubble
And then I am going to scatter the ashes
And then maybe someone will be able to see
Something as it really is

Full Stop for an Infernal Planet

Louis Wolfson

If you consider that around three thousand years ago our poor planet was infected with only fifty million copies (while, certainly, a single specimen would already have been too many) of the unfortunate human species; if you imagine having had at that time a pile of good H-bombs at your disposal and having used them to crumble the crust of this damned planet Earth and possibly to convert it into a second chain of asteroids, a first large ring of such little celestial bodies being located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter; and if you consider then what a litany of unspeakable horrors which still continue and are synonymous with humanity would not have occurred ...!! What philosopher would have dreamed, thirty-five years ago, of thus attacking the so sick matter which we all are? What philanthropist? What man of good will?

But now we absolutely must not miss the chance—and to have such a chance is too good to be true—finally to bring to an end at last this infamous litany of abominations that we all are (collectively and individually); and I mean by that, obviously, in a complete atomic-nuclear way! The tragedy, the true catastrophe—is that humanity continues ... while the divine benediction would be qualified as thermonuclear or some equivalent thereof. Not to be of this opinion is to be selfish, criminal, monstrous, if not stark mad.

The Importance of Killing

Dan Burros

Man is a killing organism! He must kill to survive! He must kill to advance! Let us show them who is the natural elite! Who is the world’s greatest killer! White Man! Unsheath your terrible sword! Slay your enemies! Kill! Kill! Kill!

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful

Edmund Burke

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear; for fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever is terrible, therefore, with regard to sight, is sublime, too.

The Lightning and the Sun

Savitri Devi

This is the age in which our triumphant Democrats and our hopeful Communists boast of “slow but steady progress through science and education.” Thanks very much for such “progress!” The very sight of it is enough to confirm us in our belief in the immemorial cyclic theory of history, illustrated by the myths of all ancient, natural religions (including that one from which the Jews—and, through them, their disciples, the Christians—borrowed the symbolical story of the Garden of Eden; Perfection at the beginning of Time.) It impresses upon us the fact that human history, far from being a steady ascension towards the better, is an increasingly hopeless process of bastardization, emasculation and demoralisation of mankind; an inexorable “fall.” It rouses in us the yearning to see the end—the final crash that will push into oblivion both those worthless “isms” that are the product of decay of thought and of character, and the no less worthless religions of equality which have slowly prepared the ground for them; the coming of Kalki, the divine Destroyer of evil; the dawn of a new Cycle opening, as all time-cycles ever did, with a “Golden Age.”

Never mind how bloody the final crash may be! Never mind what old treasures may perish for ever in the redeeming conflagration! The sooner it comes the better. We are waiting for it—and for the following glory—confident in the divinely established cyclic Law that governs all manifestations of existence in Time: the law of Eternal Return. We are waiting for it, and for the subsequent triumph of the Truth persecuted today; for the triumph under whatever name, of the only faith in harmony with the everlasting laws of being; of the only modern “ism” which is anything but “modern,” being just the latest expression of principles as old as the Sun; the triumph of all those men who, throughout the centuries and today, have never lost the vision of the everlasting Order, decreed by the Sun, and who have fought in a selfless spirit to impress that vision upon others. We are waiting for the glorious restoration, this time, on a worldwide scale, of the New Order, projection in time, in the next, as in every recurring “Golden Age,” of the everlasting Order of the Cosmos.

The End of the World

Boyd Rice

The end of the world doesn’t come suddenly and without warning. To imagine it does is to be fooled by popular misconception and thus fail to recognize the larger picture. The end of the world is an ongoing process. It starts slowly, imperceptibly, and blossoms unnoticed in our very midst, until it has engulfed all that there is and none is free from its grasp.

All that humankind thinks is great and mighty is but a disease upon life and must be made to perish if life is to continue. That which modern man has worshiped as being grand and noble is but an affliction. All that has given the appearance of granting freedom to mankind, has in fact ordained its enslavement, impairing and crippling from within while outwardly bearing the banner of liberty. The body of humanity has been poisoned, and even as it strives for new horizons and constant advancement, rigor mortis has preceded the approach of death and the lives of men are dragged into the grave along with it.

Seek now those motions that sow for humanity the seeds of death as they harvest for you the bounty of life.

Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword

John Whiteside Parsons

And man, self-castrated and self-frustrated, flees down the corridors of nightmares, pursued by monstrous machines, overwhelmed by satanic powers, haunted by vague guilts and terrors all created of his own imagination. He escapes into absurdity, drowns his spirit in pretence, worships tin gods of success. Then, shamed by his pretenses and frustrated by his self-denial, he frenziedly projects his horror on imagined enemies, seeks release in scapegoats and false issues, and propitiates anthropoid gods, the blackened and shattered eidolons of his spirit, with sacrifices of blood.

Humanity is the Devil

Robert de Grimston

Humanity is mean and corrupt, a liar blinded by its own deception, yet cunning within the confines of its ignorance. And humanity is weak, and yet strong in its weakness, for humanity by its cunning can suck the strength from the truly strong and bring them down with it. And humanity breeds death, the death of the soul, and gives life to the torturous conflicts of the mind in which the soul has trapped itself. And humanity sustains whomever will maintain the corruption and decay which are its life blood. And humanity destroys all that promises to bring the spirit of purity and oust corruption. And humanity charms with a sweet facade which hides a treacherous heart. And humanity talks of love, and leaves the scars of hatred in its wake. And humanity cries peace, and brings war. And humanity speaks of glory and a magnificent destiny, and leads deeper into death and degradation. And humanity is brimful of promises and so-called good intentions, yet behind it is a trail of abject failure and betrayal. And humanity is afraid for it and is steeped in evil.

And as with all things, by its fruit shall we know humanity. And humanity’s fruits are foul, bruised and bitter, and rotten to the core. And humanity’s home is the earth, and the earth is Hell.

Now there is nothing more evil in the universe than man.

His world is Hell, and he himself is the Devil.

The American Success Story

P.T. Barnum

If my puffing was more persistent, my advertising more audacious, my posters more glaring, my picture more exaggerated, my flags more patriotic and my transparencies more brilliant than they would have been under the management of my neighbors, it was not because I had less scruple than they, but more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for such promises.

Frank Talk From a Psychopath

Adam Parfrey

Eaters of feces and mucous, pederasts, diaper wetters, fatties, skinnies, dwarfs, dyslexics, amputees ... name any fetish, hobby, deformity, disability, predisposition, and there exists a special interest group to advance its aims and counsel its constituents. It comes as little surprise, then, that in 1990 America mass murderers should have their own advocate.

“I’m not into serial killing, I’m into mass murder,” keens the loud, emphatic Brooklyner into the phone. Frank is a self-confessed and self-promoting effing piebald fruitcake. He’s got a couple hundred fans of his collage-and-rant fanzine (variously named Livin’ in a Powder Keg and Givin’ Off Sparks and Singin’ Dose Anti Psychotic Blues) that fixates on the few major elements of Frank’s life: murder, misfortune, child abuse and women’s feet.

“What are you interested in, Frank?”

“Well, there’s women’s feet and there’s killing people.” (You can feel the spittle coming through the phone.) “But not killing people one at a time, sniping style. I want to go off just one big time. I got it all planned out. There’s no way I couldn’t just get 21.”

Twenty-one, in psychopathic murderer parlance, is the magic number recorded by Big James Huberty on July 18, 1984, when he offed aficianados of deep fat fry at a McDonalds in San Ysidro, California, near the Mexican border. Huberty was presumably upset at the employees’ incompetence over the milkshake machine. As of this writing, Huberty holds the record for the most people killed in a day, deliberately, with a gun. Not to be confused, of course, with higher numbers racked up by serial killers such as Henry Lee Lucas and the Green River Killer, whose totals, it is assumed, overshadow Huberty’s. Frank is, however, a bit contemptuous of serial killers—not high profile or cathartic enough for his personal liking.

Though Frank refuses to reveal his last name or release a picture (the better, I suppose, to be caught by surprise at his big blow), he does let on that he fashions himself after the California Highway Patrol or the beloved celluloid psycho, Travis Bickle: “I wear those mirrored sunglasses and look down on people.” But unlike Bickle, he won’t be caught dead killing just a handful. In his article, “Handy Hints for Messier Massacres: A Guide to Maximizing the Mass Murder Kill Count” in Singin’ Dose Anti-Psychotic Blues, issue #6, Frank helpfully reveals “the basic checklist of the ingredients needed for a successful massacre.” Frank claims this article piqued the interest of the FBI.

Writes Frank, “Since a gunman can easily fire 100–150 rounds accurately in a five minute span, it is fairly obvious that one can never have too much ammunition on hand. Anyone who undertakes a massacre with less than 500 rounds is limiting himself. Personally, I would take 1,000 rounds. Yes, it will be heavy, especially if you carry it all on your person. But hey, nobody ever said that massacres were easy. If you want easy, then commit suicide. Successful massacres take dedication, effort, planning and determination.”

One might forgive Frank for his quantitative fixation when he suggests police stations aren’t particularly good for maximal body counts. To this end, Frank recommends schoolyards (a la Patrick Purdy) or a big party in which the gunman invites his friends and relatives. “In many cases he [the psychopath] will know with near certainty that none of these people carry guns, thus virtually no risk of return fire.”

Frank’s not reticent to discuss who originally inspired his noxious enthusiasms. As a child Frank was emotionally and physically abused by both his father and mother. Mommy gave Frank baths until the age of 13 ... traumatic baths. “She made me sit still with the shampoo going into my eyes. Now I’m blind in one eye.”

Daddy was even worse. “My father made me suck his cock almost every day. My mom knew about it and she didn’t do nothing. I can’t drink any white liquids now. They make me throw up. What I remember more than the taste of my father’s come is the overwhelming feeling of helplessness, of being controlled and humiliated by this man who was supposed to love me as a father. I remember how I would always close my eyes as the cock was in my mouth and he would start hitting me in the back and yelling, ‘Open your eyes, you cocksucker!’ He would make me say that I wanted to suck his cock before he put it in my mouth....

“I personally feel that in most cases one thought is flashing through the killer’s mind over and over as the bullets fly out of his weapon and into human flesh. That thought is ‘why?’ He feels not one single shred of pity or remorse. He is simply recalling his own dead soul as he murders the people.”

Frank is a dead soul, one with so much antipathy that at the age of 15 he tried to murder his father with a switchblade. He spent nine months at Creedmore Psychiatric Hospital in New York, where he was pumped up with Haldol, Coxitane, Trilafon and Thorazine. Frank has sworn off chemical straitjackets for five years now.

Heloise, eat your heart out From Singin’ Dose Anti-Psychotic Blues #6

“No, I do not think that my anger could be worked out by anything other than mass murder, but the majority of victims of abuse do not feel homicidal, rather, they feel suicidal. I’m not a typical victim. I may be crazy, but I’ve always been egotistical and aggressive, thus I was able to turn my anger outward with thoughts of revenge and murder. The majority of child abuse victims turn their anger inwards and become depressed, suicidal, anorexic, compulsive eaters, drug abusers. I have never felt this way. I love myself and my body, and am only obsessed with killing and hurting other people. I consider myself lucky to be psychotic, rather than suicidal or depressed.”

Frank’s magazine is an open-ended advertisement for homicidal hemorrhaging, rather than the quiet result of self-inflicted murder. Indeed, Frank has learned to socialize through his publications: “I find it truly pleasurable to be able to share my reality, to express my psychopathic thoughts and ideas to other people, and to have them agree with me and my psycho viewpoint. In addition, I can create a link with other people for the purpose of increasing psychopathic knowledge and ability. I won’t go into specifics, but I have acquired several items of a ‘restricted’ nature through my contacts in the mail. Also, when I go on a killing binge and get arrested, I will have a ready network of fellow psychopaths who will be able to send me books or money or other types of support to make my stay in prison or the mental asylum more enjoyable.”

This psychopath is kind enough to give people a few years head start cuz, as Frank sez, he’ll only be able to “control my rage for possibly three years or so. In all likelihood, I should explode between the ages of 26–28.” Those are the years 1993–1995. Remember, you heard it here first. The name’s Frank, and he’s raring to out-gun Jimmy Huberty.

As for the rest of us: “Just be grateful and thankful that you don’t actually have my brain for a lifetime like I do. All of you can just put down my magazine, throw it in the garbage, or stuff it on a shelf and go back to your own realities. I can’t do that. It never goes away. It’s here for every minute of every day of every year until the day I die.”

G.G. Allin: Portrait of the Enemy

Adam Parfrey

Pod People aspire to a manicured destiny—soft, serene, controlled, filtering any information that does not impinge on their their prefab gestalt. Their retreat from reality is tempered with enough minor but manageable worries and decisions to negotiate boredom and furnish the mirage of individual mastery. These narcoleptics find sublimity in a jar of mayonnaise. As a consequence of the atrophy of the survival instinct, the Pod People can only breed monsters.

The disenfranchised offspring, along with an entire ageless class of human discards, know only that they are doomed. They are drawn to spikes and pentagrams, gasoline, guitars screaming like whips, MIDI-programmed Thanatos, with sufficient amplitude to occupy that hollow space where the consciousness once resided. These Dionysians obliterate themselves by removing filters, ultimately becoming insensate with sensation. This mode of behavior originates in the superstitious belief that transcendence is acquired in the precise ratio by which reason is destroyed.

G. G. Allin carves crude tattoos deep into his skin with a penknife. He bills himself as the “sickest, most decadent rocker of all time,” a boast he intends to back up by committing suicide on stage (while taking-out a few of his fans for good measure), just as soon as he’s let out of prison on the charge that he burned and sliced-up a groupie. Allin claims that his 18-month sentence reflects nothing more than the Pod People’s distaste for his Dionysiac lifestyle, that the cut-up groupie “knew what she was getting into.” In court, the groupie said, “Mr. Allin cut my skin in a manner very savage and rough. Cutting my breasts, he told me it was like painting a picture. I was completely resigned that my fate could well be death.”

The primitive, gutteral yelpings of vicious, life-denying lyrics exist as a rhythm track for the impulsive theater that wells up from G. G.’s poisoned innards. G. G. shits on the stage, laps it up, spits it out on the crowd, hitting rock journalists in the face with a taste of their own medicine. G. G. masturbates onstage, taunting the girls in his audience to “come up and suck my cock.” Tanked up on alcohol, G.G. uses the microphone as a weapon on his face, knocking out his front teeth. G. G. beats the shit out of a girl who has the temerity to stick her fingers up his ass.

G. G. Allin isn’t as much a rock and roll act as a vaunted practitioner of the peculiarly American game of chicken. There is a poignancy in Allin’s Romantic belief in the redemptive nature of the rock and roll dream, while so many others view it as a career, a way of buying into the Pod People fantasy.

“The stage is a battlefield,” says G.G., ”and even if I went across their line, I was still on my own turf. I’ll just take off on the fucking audience. I’m not there to please the cocksuckers. I just don’t give a shit. The audience is the enemy. The don’t want to know, they just want to see.” G.G. inflicts on his audience an awareness of the darkness they pretend to revere, even if it should kill them.

In jail, G.G. pours out a constant stream of poetry and prose poems, all of them sounding like murder notes scratched out by a English-as-a-Second-Language student with a case of rabies. It’s the transmission of intensity rather than sense which counts. (See “Self Absorbed,” reproduced here with all of G.G.’s misspellings, neologisms, and puzzling grammatical constructions.)

Most stage acts attempt to inject a sensibility of aliveness to what is essentially planned-out well in advance. There is only a mimesis of unpredictability. G.G. attempts to make it new each time. His method: “I take in account my life and my mind spins, and the shit pretty much just comes out. It’s not something I plan.”

Of course, there are only so many ways a scum-rocker like G.G. Allin can top himself, and death is the natural apogee to his particular brand of confrontation. “I don’t want to be just another junkie dying with a needle hanging from my arm. I want to feel the excitement of the bullet blowing my head off. I don’t want to miss the thrill of it. Why not die and feel it? Feel the pain and the danger?”

In a postscript to a recent letter, G.G. writes, “I’m just awaiting a parole, my revenge, and a bloody highway. It won’t be a pretty sight.”

Aesthetic Terrorism

Adam Parfrey

aes • thet • ics / also aes • thet • ic / A branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty.

ter • ror • ism / the systematic use of terror esp as a means of coercion.

Terrorism can be advanced through art only if art threatens action. For such a phenomenon as Aesthetic Terrorism to occur, aesthetic pursuit must become symbolic not of its own decadently solipsistic pleasures (exemplified in the madness of des Esseintes in Huysmans’ Against Nature), but of action taken beyond the pale of art world confines.

“Terrorism in art is called the avant-garde,” quipped Alberto Moravia in his essay “The Aesthetics of Terrorism.” If this was once the case, it is no longer. Most avant-garde art is viewed and created today as simply an enfolding reaction to its own history. This disingenuous game-playing guarantees that the avant-garde can no longer stimulate or even provoke. Dada and Futurist actions, which attempted to lead art out of the classroom and museum and into the streets, are simply appropriated by postmodernist facsimiles which capture the letter but little of the original essence. It hardly matters anyway. Avant-garde art has evolved into nothing more than a cultural benchwarmer, corporate tax write-off and public relations smokescreen. Art which openly espouses anti-corporate ideology is embraced as long as it hews to arbitrary standards invented by those taste-making and fortune-telling hirelings, the art critics. What could be wrong, after all, with a business world that allows people to say what they want (because it doesn’t matter)?

Aesthetic Terrorism is a term more realistically applied to the faceless regime of consumer culture than the avant-garde. The onslaught of Muzak, ad jingles, billboards, top 40 tunes, commercials, corporate logos, etc., all fit the terrorist dynamic of intrusion and coercion. One almost forgets that aesthetics once implied a consensual relationship between the creators and appreciators of art. How often is it that one hears someone admitting a fondness for a media product “in spite” of himself? How many times have you heard a slogan or rancid tune ring in your ears like a brain-eating mantra? When consumer terror’s avant-garde correlative, Pop Art, became indistinguishable from the object of its supposed social satire, it erased from big business its pejorative taint. Many of today’s avant-garde stars have emerged from or entered the business world, some enormously successful in the arcane number-juggling of speculation and commodities scams. Even freeloading on the state and private foundations is fair game only for those whose bureaucratic aptitude is matched by their shameless ass-kissing. It is not surprising that most grant recipients excel in little more than lawyeristic logorrhea and ingrained artistic timidity.

Critic-centered postmodernism spawned the phrase-art hybrid of Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer in which an advertising-style slogan is combined with an implied message or visual cue (usually swiped from some old magazine). Their posture is a hip cynicism which is supposed to subvert the “thrall” of the advertising command. Kruger and Holzer play the market like skillful double-agents, boosting themselves into the public eye through clever steals from Madison Avenue behaviorist techniques yet simultaneously troweling on crypto-Marxist jive to secure the perks of critical and academic currency. Their self-promotions worked when they were at the sidelines of the establishment. But now the social commentary grows increasingly hollow. Currently being groomed for jet-setting prominence by Soho millionairess Mary Boone, Kruger’s contribution to the Whitney Biennial in 1987, for which she was paid a handsome sum, featured nothing more than a Jewish princess joke, “I Shop Therefore I Am.” Winking at and wagging the tail of establishment hierarchy is part of that I-rib-you-gently-you-pay-me-off confidence game artists have been playing since the Renaissance courts. These contemporary court artists, like many of past centuries, smugly pretend to spit in the eye of the exploiters while allowing themselves to be pampered, de-loused—and when they aren’t looking—de-clawed.

There are, of course, those artists, usually fresh out of university, who are unaccomplished at filling out grant forms, and therefore consider themselves “subversives.” The majority of these art and rock magazine-styled rebels are playing out rebellion psychodramas to package and merchandize to consumerist sycophants. This strategy is (forgive the term) the simulacra of terrorism: the content seizes in the frozen attitudinizing of pose and goes no further.

We must look to the true outsiders and not the would-be insiders for an artist truly capable of effective counter-terror against the insidious mantras of consumerist brainwash. Terror means a threat, and the outsider’s version of Aesthetic Terrorism belongs to those performances or arrangements of words and pictures that unleash the reactionary impulses of police and bourgeois artist/critic alike. The kind of art that evokes this wrath, fear and condemnation rejoices in its pagan spirit of schadenfreude which controverts the humanist piety of “enlightened victim.” Anti-social sadism rarely receives patronage, however. Outside the corrupting realm of societal handouts, the Aesthetic Terrorist—much as this definition may grate on him—is the last bastion of aesthetic purity.

Operation Sun Devil is the name for a government action against computer wizards and assorted sharpies and super-smarts who were resourceful enough to figure out how to hack into the electronic files of Ma Bell. Those who know, claim the Sun Devil gambit as a terrified overreaction against intelligence by the plodding and stupid bureaucracy. John Perry Barlow (Whole Earth Review, Fall 1990) describes a typical Sun Devil action against a teenage hacker:

[A] father in New York [...] opened the door at 6:00 a.m. and found a shotgun at his nose. A dozen agents entered. While one of them kept the man’s wife in a choke-hold, the rest made ready to shoot and entered the bedroom of their sleeping 14-year-old. Before leaving, they confiscated every piece of electronic equipment, including all the telephones.

Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure are unheeded by the government agents who claim nerd computer hackers are terrorists and have “the ability to access and review the files of hospital patients. Furthermore, they could have added, deleted, or altered vital patient information, possibly causing life-threatening situations.” Megacorporate interests have staked claim to the entirety of cyberspace, and they are not about to tolerate the presence of digital interlopers. This may scare off some, but other pirates like the mysterious Legion of Doom and NuPrometheus league (who illegally circulated highly protected Macintosh computer source code) will rise to the challenge now that they have been provided a clearly delineated enemy to innovation, the individual, and personal freedom.

It may come as a surprise to learn that a few artists are now producing work which finds itself classified as a thought crime, punishable by expulsion into a Siberia of non-distribution, and in some cases by litigation and imprisonment. Pure magazine, from Chicago, a xeroxed vehicle which extols child torture, murder, and extreme misogyny, tweaked too many civic-minded noses, and its editor, Peter Sotos, was tailed for nine months and underwent a lengthy trial process in which he was finally convicted for posession of child pornography (one magazine—Incest IV). Sotos’ case was the first successfully prosecuted new Illinois state law, enacted under the influence of the Meese Commission Report on pornography, an example of First Amendment revisionism par excellence.

Sotos’ case takes a disquieting turn when one considers that prison is in the offing for the simple possession of controversial material. No doubt this pernicious legal precedent will swing open the doors to future round-ups of so-called “aesthetic terrorists” Now that Russians has seemed to liberalize its informational policies, the USA is doing its best to emulate the thought control policies of the KGB. Any thoughtful American individual understands that a major slice of informational diet is not being provided them by the major media conglomerates. Whether the proliferation of piffle is by conspiracy of State or by design of the oligarchic market matters little. But, undeniably, an American Samizdat has come into its own over the past several years in which “undiscussable,” “crazy,” “hateful,” “dangerous” topics are discussed by individuals or small, autonomous groups that are not compromised or swayed by institutional priorities. Are “offensive” interests the political crime of future?

Apparently so. Since the previous sentences were printed in the 1987 edition of Apocalypse Culture, musicians have been arrested for obscene lyrics, anarchist ragamuffins have been collared for burning the flag; parents have been arrested for photographing their toddlers in the buff; painter and performer Joe Coleman was arrested in Boston for operating an “infernal machine” and in New York for killing a rat; museum curators were threatened with arrest for hanging homoerotic photos; G. G. Allin was jailed for some consensual sado-masochism with a girlfriend; the FBI have been “monitoring” certain groups who practice unorthodox sexuality; and on and on. Even the book you are now reading came under widely publicized attack in Harper and Row’s Painted Black, in which author Carl A. Raschke advocates the revocation of First Amendment rights from those who spread “cultural terrorism,” presumably including the editor of that pernicious Illuminist thought-bomb, Apocalypse Culture.

It has become increasingly obvious that the aesthetic terrorist hobgoblins are nothing more than symbolic scapegoats to divert attention away from the real issues. For Americans, fear is not another form of awareness, it’s just another form of gossip. As Charles Manson has stated, true subversive terror can only be actualized by turning off the tv sets. Until then, aesthetic terrorism will be orchestrated by those already in command against insubstantial or non-existent villains.

And in the future, while the dumb show of bohemianism plays itself out in the cookie cutter shape of the politically correct martyr/victim, aesthetic terrorists will not involve themselves in the dubious rewards of celebrity. The best of them will work alone, already a part of the enemy camp, and in a chameleon-like style master the fifth-column algorithms to subvert the ancien régime. We won’t know them by name but their compensation will be to affect the outcome of the planet. Until then, there’s a lot of work to be done.

Interview With Peter Sotos of pure

What drives you to create such painstakingly graphic exposés on cruel, perverse human behavior?

I’m a great fan of extreme sexual violence and sadism and so spend a lot of time researching and enjoying those people who share my tastes. Often the information I come across is marred by moralism or watered down by “good taste.” I gather information and materials from many different sources and then place it in a much more honest and sexually satisfying light. Pure is a product of my tastes.

Certainly, if you are personally involved with crime you could never divulge it, although I would like to know if you are a participant or a passive viewer and admirer.

My sexual tastes stem from a full philosophy and weltanschauung and, I assure you, there are myriad ways and opportunities to enjoy their pleasures without getting my hands ostentatiously dirty. There is nothing passive about my tastes.

What draws you to personalities who have indulged in acts of extreme sadism and why have you spent such time and energy to publicly declare your interest and approval of those who break taboos?

I’m attracted to real individuals who have succeeded in wrenching the most enjoyment out of their lives. Individuals who have reached pinnacles of power and pleasure.

By publishing Pure, I, in a small way, recoup momentarily some of the energy I spend on my personal pleasures. Also, I’m able to make myself available to a greater wealth of the material that I enjoy. Some subscribers have been most helpful in opening up areas of previously denied access.

What is admirable of the rampant killer, and butcher?

I don’t find everyone who kills, beats or rapes someone admirable. I’m interested and respectful of those who view and understand their instincts completely and correctly and then go about satisfying them. My tastes run very similar to those of Ian Brady and I enjoy his work because it is 100% honest and self-concerned. He fucked and tortured little Lesley Downey every way imaginable before smashing her tiny skull in half. I find fuckups like Charles Manson and Ed Gein terribly boring and laughable because they had no idea of what they really wanted. They may have been responding to similar instincts shared with Brady but that’s where the similarities end. It’s analogous to fine music—anyone can bash an instrument and make noise but it takes a skilled, intelligent and insightful individual to make music.

What inspired your interests in graphic violence and what is and was alluring about the subject?

I’ve always followed a rigorous route of self-examination and individuation. It was easy to see a general dissatisfaction with normally accepted sexual modes and I soon discerned it was the only interesting thing in the act. It’s obvious really. Ian Brady, Ted Bundy, Sutcliffe, Kurten—all of them did exactly what all men would like to do, it’s just that too many men are insecure and scared, they would rather be coddled.

Do parents, friends, employers know of Pure? How do they react?

I don’t feel any need to proselytize or pontificate and I have many acquaintances and associates who need not know of my interests. I can get a lot more done that way.

Have you had problems with women’s groups, organizations, authorities, customs?

Customs have been a real problem. The magazine has been seized by English Customs Officers as obscene and resulted in the subscriber’s house being raided by Vice Police looking for “similar material.” Also Aquilifer Sodality, one of our better and more extreme distributors has had some problems in this area.

We’ve gotten some ridiculous threats but none of any substance. [This interview evidently took place before Sotos’ arrest.] Advertising is a problem as well. Even S & M magazines have refused us as have most of the supposed freethinking rags.

You performed with Whitehouse. What were the origins of your meetings and what aspects of their work do you enjoy? Do you still enjoy their work?

I’ve been corresponding with the Come Organisation for quite a while now and regard both William Bennett and Kevin Tomkins with a great deal of respect. Often, I find when I’m writing an article I’ll use a Whitehouse lyric line or song title—we seem to share quite a few tastes. Whitehouse captures a lot of the strength, energy and lust that I feel is inherent in sexual violence and extreme sadism. Yes, I do still enjoy their work—Great White Death is an absolute classic lp.

What other music and art, film; etc., has inspired you and what makes this material worthy of attention?

My favorite films are two dog fuck loops by Bob Wolf and Chuck Trayner and starring Linda Lovelace; Dog Fucker and Dog-A-Rama. Chuck’s genius and power over Linda is clearly in evidence. Linda, down on all fours, actually chases the dog around on the floor and then spends a great deal of time sucking and licking the dog’s hairy red balls in Dog Fucker.

Art seems to be a good job for confused people—I’m not too interested in them actually. Although I do like Hermann Nitsch’s work, but for reasons other than his ridiculous theories of course. I find most of the people I respect and admire and who inspire me are just people who set excellent examples by getting on with their lives. Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and Streicher are another breed of genius who inspire me greatly. Sade certainly.

Discuss the response Pure has received, where it is most requested/sold and what types of individuals do you see as being attracted to Pure.

The response has been very favorable and growing, I’m glad to say, rapidly. The magazine does very well in Europe and seems to have found its largest audience among those involved with or interested in violent electronic music. This is largely due to the fact that most of the distributors who handle Pure are mainly music services.

Unfortunately, I do get some mail from dolts that drool on about subversion, genital piercing, Crowley and other childish games but they’re in the minority and thankfully, drop off rather quickly. The people that stay interested are, for the most part, intelligent and very diligent in their pursuit of pleasure. I also get letters from people with heavy porn tastes and want something a bit stronger.

Many would claim you hate women, hate humanity, hate homosexuality—perhaps you can address these ideas.

I do not hate many things—few things annoy me that much. Females are dogs whose only worth is as pawns for my pleasure. Almost exclusively, this involves physical violence. Homos are a bit more attractive than women when they’re on top but disgusting when they’re on bottom. That sort of submissiveness stinks of femaleness. Also, I dislike phony sadism such as that practiced by leatherboys, but I appreciate their promiscuity. Real power and real violence can only be enjoyed when it is imposed and forced upon people with brutal, unending consequences.

I enjoy life a great deal and, in fact, dislike misanthropes. I also find people who classify themselves as humanitarians very enjoyable indeed. Often their tears and wails and pain over molested children and slaughtered co-eds can be very exciting.

(The preceding interview was conducted by Paul Lemos.)

Fig. 21. Drawing of a schizophrenic illustrating the concept that men are like machines driven by electrical forces (after Tramer).

Schizophrenic Responses to a Mad World

Schizophrenic writing is not infrequently possessed of genius since it emerges from a dialogue between inner soul and outer surroundings unmediated by the burden of “correct” societal conduct. In the world of advertising and mass media, the post-hypnotic magic of the suggestive ad slogan or the metabolic programming of muzak blurs the distinction between the perceived and the perceiver. Vide the recent Citibank slogan: “We’re thinking what you’re thinking.” The schizophrenic takes this sort of programming seriously enough to believe that he is being spoken to as an individual and might even reverse the syllogism to read, “I’m thinking what Citibank is thinking.” Collected here are some recent examples of authentic schizophrenic writings. James Van Cleve’s Love, Lithium, and the Loot of Lima is a monumental 700-page work of kabbalist-cryptic numerology combined with theories of advanced particle physics and a strange obsession with television personalities, Christ, the Marquis de Sade, and mass murderers such as Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate. Van Cleve is in his late 70’s and is still institutionalized in a home in upstate New York. The following two pieces are actual pieces of mail received by a news station in New York City. They are reproduced in their original form.

Love, Lithium, and the Loot of Lima

James (Anubis) Van Cleve

LC=LEISURE CLASS
LC=LOWER CLASSES
LC=LOAD OF COME
LC=LAME CHRIST
LC=LITTLE CHILD
LC=LOW CUNT
LC=LAP CUNT
LC=LAW AND CHEMISTRY (SOCIALISTS ADVICE — DO NOT TEACH)
LC=LOCATE CLITORIS (FEMALE)
IN THE SENSE OF PARLIAMENTARY LAW MALE MASTURBATION IS A MOTION THAT MUST BE SECONDED BY INTIMATE SEX CONTACT WITH OTHERS OCCASIONALLY TO PUT IT TO A VOTE FOR SUPPORT AND VITAL SUCCESS FOR THE MASTURBATOR. IF THERE IS NO OCCASIONAL INTIMATE SEX CONTACT WITH OTHERS THE ML MASTURBATION LAW IS VIOLATED AND SOLO EJACULATION FALLS OFF IN RETALIATION, PROBABLY. WITH POSSIBLE POPULAR PROMOTION OF EXHIBITIONISTIC MASTURBATION WITH OR WITHOUT RENEWED SOLO EJACULATION. THE MALE MASTURBATOR REMAINING MARRIED TO THE PEOPLE, HOWEVER, EVEN IF CRIPPLED BY OLD AGE AND MS MAGNETIC STRAIGHTJACKETING.
MS=MAIMED SAVANT
ML=MARRIAGE LICENSE
ML=MASTURBATION LAW
MS=MARQUIS DE SADE
SM=SACHER MASOCH
SM=SEX WITH NO MONEY
MS=MONEY WITH NO SEX
SM=STRIKING MASTURBATOR

I am studying the crucifixion of Christ the Cop by God the Copulation. C.F. Cum for Caril Fugate/Cynthia Lubesnik Lust Murder with a LM License to Marry. Christ the Cop is a Civilian Cop and needs a Press Card Marriage to Protect Him or Her from the Crucifixion by God the Copulation in Lust Murdering License Marriage. But this Card must be accompanied by a million dollars paid by Check (In Political Chess) to Prevent the Crucifixion Since He or She is Married to the People.

A GREEN ISLE IN THE SEA, LOVE,
A FOUNTAIN AND A SHRINE.
AND ALL MY NIGHTLY TRANCES
ARE WHERE THY GREY EYE GLEAMS
IN WHAT ETHEREAL DANCES,
BY WHAT ETHEREAL STREAMS.
The Relatively Innocent Bystander=RIB=ADAM’S RIB

The Jews use manic depressive psychophilosophy and associated Demential Praecox—Paranoid Type for their pleasure not telling the People. EO=Essential Onanism. Tea for Teacher Spring Sacrifice for Spilling Seed/Mammalian. White Whale of Womanhood at work with the gift of a wristwatch.

DP=DIRTY PICTURES
DP=DEMENTIA PRAECOX
IT’S A FREE COUNTRY BUT WHERE IS THE FREE CUNT?

The cause of war is individual and collective maladjustment of men and women in social space. Release from Magnetic Straitjacket Seclusion by Gravity, Restriction, Vacuum, Constant Observation. They are free-showing me how cunt crushes communism.

NOSE OBSTRUCTION
NEVER LICENSED MARRIAGE
ECONOMIC PLAN AND WAVES
MARQUIS OF CLEVES
THIGH INJURY
LIFE WITHOUT PRIOR TRIAL
APPOINTED MASSIANIC HEAD OF STATE USA
EVANGELICAL SAVANT AND EVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIST
I NEED A GUN
DON’T WRITE ANY MORE LETTERS
DON’T EJACULATE
SAVE YOUR SIGNATURE AND YOU SAVE ALL
I FUCK LIKE A NIGGER AND THINK LIKE A JEW
THE SPIRIT OF THE PORNOGRAPHIC PICTURE
I AM BEING RAPED BY RADIO
JIM NABORS NOT ONE OF MY NEIGHBORS
DP=DUEL WITH PRESIDENT
DP=DUAL PERSONALITY
DP=DEAD PHAROAH

Society appears to be largely composed of extremists and habitual criminals not normal human animals subjects or citizens of respectable states.

SEX IS THE GRAVITATIONAL BONDING AGENT IN SOCIAL SPACE WORKING AGAINST MAGNETIC ELECTROCUTION AND HANGING WITH THE POINT OF NO RETURN AND LIFE IMPRISONMENT. THE POINT OF NO RETURN IS MAGNETIC ELECTROCUTION AND HANGING ONLY BUFFERED BY LIFE IMPRISONMENT.
PRES. JAMES E. CARTER AS A THEATRICALLY PROMOTED PLAY ACTOR ON A SHAKESPEAREAN STAGE OF LIFE AS ENZYMATIC ACTIVITY PLANNING TO BE MADE KING OF FRANCE IN A WORLD WHOREHOUSE COUNTER REVOLUTION.
JESUS CHRIST IS JUNIOR CUNT. CHRIST THE FILIBUSTER. ASK FOR RELEASE FROM CHRIST THE CRIMINAL FUCK.

This magnetic phenomenon [Van Cleve is referring to his theory of “Cyclical Asymmetry”], not only to be viewed as the predisposing cause of war, may be considered likewise to qualify as a predisposing influence in the cause of cancer, an explanation of the “galactic hiss” noted by astronomers in extraterrestrial radio reception, the source of the “voices” complained of by patients in mental institutions and certainly the “magnetic straitjacket” painfully endured by all ordinary patients in such confinement, as well as many other distressing conditions and infirmities.

Shylocke (John Locke, M.D.) the Jew quotes Rene Descartes these days.

Rene Descartes should have added to his claim that all men are mad

That all women are whores fucking whores

Rockefeller Institute

66 St. or SEX TEA SEX STREET & ROUTE SEX TEA SEX
CHRIST IS AN IDEALIST, A ROMANTIC PYROMANIAC AND AN EXHIBITIONIST.
IF WE WERE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, GERMAN OR OTHERWISE, NOW MORE HEAVILY POPULATED, WE COULD CONSIDER HAVING SOME FUN. BUT THE COP ON THE CORNER AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT WITH THAT BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS IS STILL THERE AS INDEED HE IS IN HELL. SO WE MUST TRY AND BE REASONABLE WHEN WE CONSIDER DOING THINGS.
THE ASSOCIATION FOR IMPROVING THE CONDITION OF THE FOLLOWERS OF LUCIFER AND ANTICHRIST AND THE SOCIETY FOR LUCKY LAMBS.

The fuck is a friendly thing not a deadly weapon intended to put the atomic bomb out of business. Even a filthy fuck is a friendly fuck but the fuck with the foot is not friendly.

FF equals 66 equals Fuhrer’s Face Fuck My Fist Finger Fuck. FFF equals 18 equals age of consent. Find, Fuck and Forget. Point Counter Point.—A. Huxley.

THE MARQUIS DE SADE WAS NEVER A MISER OR A MOTHERFUCKER. HE DIED IN A LUNATIC ASYLUM.

Dear Friends:

There has been a radio communication breach of security between the Department of Justice and the television networks. In the Spring of 1979, the Department of Justice allegedly “bugged” my home and transmitted (audio only) to NBC Television Studios in New York City. I was regularly monitored in my own home by news reporters presenting the “Today” Show. Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw were the hosts at the time. One day, Tom Brokaw changed from the “Today” Show presentation to the “NBC Nightly News”. Bryant Gumbel became the new host on the “Today” Show. It was at this time that I directed Bryant Gumbel to blink his eyes. Bryant Gumbel had so much trouble with his eyes blinking that it was uncontrollable. I am sure millions of people witnessed this occurance.

On October 31^st, 1984, I met Robert Bazell, the Science Editor for NBC Television, New York. Robert Bazell was reporting on the “Baby Fae” heart recipient case at Loma Linda University. After waiting outside the designated press conference room about five minutes, Robert Bazell came walking out. I quickly introduced myself, “Robert Bazell, I am Phillip Jones!” Robert Bazell said, “Phillip Jones, you could cause me to lose my job!” Robert Bazell definitely knew who I was, even though I had never met him before, or had ever sent him any of my letters.

To this day, no California Senator or Congressman has ever responded to any of my letters, even though I have distributed thousand of letters. Numerous Congressmen and Senators from other states have responded.

My story has not been publicized at all, so far. Whose fault is this? Is the news media wrong? Is the Congress to blame? I am not so sure the news media is to blame. No matter which news reporter you decide to watch in the evenings, whether it is Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings or Dan Rather, you are sure to see they blink their eyes intentionally.

One time, down in New Orleans, a local news station did a report on a man who thought he could talk to the monkeys at a local zoo. The report turned out to be absurd. It is difficult to believe that the Federal Government has the power to deny the press their freedoms.

I expect all of you to respond. You are welcome to respond in person if you want. I recommend you respond in person, because the breach involves Top Secret Security.

50 Aktion (1975) by Hermann Nitsch (inset)

Art in the Dark

Thomas McEvilley

The development of the conceptual and performance genres changed the rules of art till it became virtually unrecognizable to those who had thought that it was theirs. The art activity flowed into the darkness beyond its traditional boundaries and explored areas that were previously as unmapped and mysterious as the other side of the moon. In recent years a tendency has been underway to close the book on those investigations, to contract again around the commodifiable aesthetic object, and to forget the sometimes frightening visions of the other side. Yet if one opens the book—and it will not go away—the strange record is still there, like the fragmentary journals of explorers in new lands, filled with apparently unanswerable questions.

When Piero Manzoni, in 1959, canned his shit and put it on sale in an art gallery for its weight in gold; when Chris Burden had himself shot in the arm and crucified to the roof of a Volkswagen (in 1971 and 1974 respectively); when two American performance artists, in separate events, fucked human corpses—how did such activities come to be called art? In fact the case at hand is not unique. Similar movements have occurred occasionally in cultural history when the necessary conditions were in place. Perhaps the most striking parallel is the development, in the Cynic school of Greek philosophy, of a style of “performance philosophy” that parallels the gestures of performance art in many respects. If this material is approached with sympathy and with a broad enough cultural perspective it will reveal its inner seriousness and meaning.

One of the necessary conditions for activities of this type is the willingness to manipulate linguistic categories at will. This willingness arises from a nominalist view of language which holds that words lack fixed ontological essences that are their meanings; meanings, rather, are seen to be created by convention alone, arbitrary, and hence manipulable. Ferdinand de Saussure pointed toward this with his perception of the arbitrariness of the link between signifier and signified. Even more, Ludwig Wittgenstein, by dissolving fixed meaning into the free-for-all of usage, demonstrated a culture’s ability to alter its language games by rotations and reshapings of the semantic field. By manipulating semantic categories, by dissolving their boundaries selectively and allowing the contents of one to flow into another, shifts in cultural focus can be forced through language’s control of affection and attitude. In the extreme instance, a certain category can be declared universal, coextensive with experience, its boundaries being utterly dissolved until its content melts into awareness itself. This universalization of a single category has at different times taken place in the areas of religion, philosophy, and, in our time, art.

A second necessary condition is a culture that is hurtling through shifts in awareness so rapidly that, like the tragic hero in Sophocles just before the fall, it becomes giddy with prospects of new accomplishments hardly describable in known terms. At such moments the boundaries of things seem outworn; the contents flow into and around one another dizzyingly. In a realm that, like art some twenty-five years ago, feels its inherited boundaries to be antiquated and ineffective, a sudden overflow in all directions can occur.

The tool by which this universalization of the art category was effected is a form of appropriation. In the last few years appropriation has been practiced with certain limits; the art category as a whole is left intact, though inner divisions such as those between stylistic periods are breached. The model of Francis Picabia is relevant here. But twenty-five years ago appropriation worked on the more universalizing model of Duchamp. In this case, the artist turns an eye upon preexisting entitities with apparent destinies outside the art context, and, by that turning of the eye, appropriates them into the art realm, making them the property of art. This involves a presupposition that art is not a set of objects but an attitude toward objects, or a cognitive stance (as Oscar Wilde suggested, not a thing, but a way.) If one were to adopt such a stance to all of life, foregrounding the value of attention rather than issues of personal gain and loss, one would presumably have rendered life a seamlessly appreciative experience. Art then functions like a kind of universal awareness practice, not unlike the mindfulness of southern Buddhism or the “Attention!” of Zen. Clearly there is a residue of Romantic pantheistic mysticism here, with a hidden ethical request. But there is also a purely linguistic dimension to the procedure, bound up with the nominalist attitude. If words (such as “art”) lack rigid essences, if they are, rather, empty variables that can be converted to different uses, then usage is the only ground of meaning in language. To be this or that is simply to be called this or that. To be art is to be called art, by the people who supposedly are in charge of the word—artists, critics, curators, art historians, and so on. There is no appeal from the foundation of usage, no higher court on the issue. If something (anything) is presented as art by an artist and contextualized as art within the system then it is art, and there is nothing anybody can do about it.

Conversely, the defenders of the traditional boundaries of the realm will be forced to reify language. They will continue to insist that certain things are, by essence, art, and certain other things, by essence, are not art. But in an intellectual milieu dominated by linguistic philosophy and structural linguistics, the procedure of appropriation by designation, based on the authority of usage and the willingness to manipulate it, has for a while been rather widely accepted. During this time the artist has had a new option: to choose to manipulate language and context, which in turn manipulate mental focus by rearrangement of the category network within which our experience is organized.

The process of universalizing the art context goes back at least as far as Duchamp’s showing of Readymades. Dada and Surrealism, of course, had their input. But the tendency came to maturity in the middle to late 50s, when Alain Robbe-Grillet, for example, insisted that if art is going to be anything it has to be everything. At about the same time Yves Klein, extending the tradition of French dandyism, said, “Life, life itself ... is the absolute art.” Similarly, in America, Allan Kaprow suggested that “the line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps as indistinct, as possible.” Duchamp had appropriated by signature, as Klein did when, in about 1947, he signed the sky. Later Klein would designate anything as art by painting it with his patented International Klein Blue. Manzoni sometimes designated preexisting objects as art by signing them, and at other times by placing them on a sculpture base. In 1967 Dennis Oppenheim produced his “Sitemarkers,” ceremonial stakes used to mark off areas of the world as art.

These procedures were sometimes employed in conscious parody of the theological concept of creation by the word. In 1960 Klein, imitating divine fiat, appropriated the entire universe into his Theatre of the Void, as his piece for the Festival d’Art d’Avant-garde, in Paris. In the next year he painted a topographical globe International Klein Blue, thereby appropriating the earth into his portfolio; soon Manzoni, responding, placed the earth upon his Sculpture Base (Socle du monde, 1961), wresting it from Klein’s portfolio into his own. Of course there is a difference between fiat and appropriation. The purely linguistic procedure of forcefully expanding the usage boundaries of word does not create a wholly new reality, but shifts focus on an existing one. Any action that takes place in the appropriation zone is necessarily real as itself—yet semantically a kind of shadow-real. Insofar as the act’s prior category is remembered, it remains what it was, just as a loan-word may retain a trace of its prior meaning—only it is reflected, as it were, into a new semantic category. Thus the process of universal appropriation has certain internal or logical limits; it is based on the assumption that a part can contain the whole, that art, for example, can contain life. But the only way that a part can contain its whole is by reflection, as a mirror may reflect a whole room, or by implication, as a map of a city implies the surrounding nation. The appropriation process, in other words, may rearrange the entire universe at the level of a shadow or reflection, and this is its great power. At the same time, as with the gems strung together in the Net of Indra, only the shadowy life of a reflection is really at issue, and this is its great limit.

The infinite regress implicit in such a procedure was illustrated when, in 1962, Ben Vautier signed Klein’s death and, in 1963, Manzoni’s, thereby appropriating both those appropriations of the universe. The idea of signing a human being or a human life was in fact the central issue. In 1961 Manzoni exhibited a nude model on his sculpture base and signed her as his work. Later he issued his “Certificates of Authenticity,” which declared that the owner, having been signed by Manzoni, was now permanently an artwork. But it was Klein who most clearly defined the central issue, saying, “The painter only has to create one masterpiece, himself, constantly.” The idea that the artist is the work became a basic theme of the period in question. Ben acted it out, not long after the signing of Klein’s death, by exhibiting himself as a living moving sculpture. Soon Gilbert & George did the same thing. As early as 1959 James Lee Bryars had exhibited himself, seated alone in the center of an otherwise empty room. Such gestures are fraught with strange interplays of artistic and religious forms, as the pedestal has always been a variant of the altar.

It was in part the Abstract Expressionist emphasis on the direct expression of the artist’s unique personality that prepared the way for the claim that the artist’s person was in fact the art. Through the survival in the art realm of the Romantic idea of the specially inspired individual, it was possible, though in a sort of bracketed parody, to confer on an artist the status of a royal or sacred being who is on exhibit to other humans.

The underlying question (and an insoluble knot in philosophy) is that of the relation between substance and attribute; specifically, how does one tell the agent from the activity? Certain Indian texts, exploring imagistically the relation between god and the world, ask how one can tell the dancer from the dance. In the visual arts the question has always seemed easier, since the painter or sculptor or photographer has traditionally made an object outside him- or herself. But univeralizing appropriation had dissolved such a conception, and in performance art, as in the dance, the agent and activity often seem inseparable. In the last twenty years various performance artists (James Lee Bryars, Chris Burden, Linda Montano, and others) carried this category shift or semantic rotation to its limit by moving into galleries and living there for extended periods as performances. In this situation even the minutest details of everyday life are temporarily distanced and made strange—made art, that is—by the imposition on them of a new category overlay that alters the cognitive focus of both the performer and the beholder. Something parallel, though with fewer possibilities for irony, occurs when novices in ashrams are advised to regard their experiences, at every moment of the day, as sacred and special.

That these creations by designation are linguistic, involving a willed change in the use of the word “art,” does not altogether rob them of mystery and effectiveness. It should be emphasized that category shift by forced designation is the basis of many magical procedures. In the Roman Catholic mass, for example, certain well-known objects—bread and wine—are ritually designated as certain other objects—flesh and blood—which, in the manifest sense of everyday experience, they clearly are not; and the initiate who accepts the semantic rotation shifts his or her affection and sensibility accordingly. Art has often been thought of as exercising a sort of magic; around 1960, some artists adopted an actual magical procedure—basically a linguistic form of what Sir James Frazer called “sympathetic magic.” At that moment art entered an ambiguous realm from which it has not yet definitively emerged. For the magical rite is already an appropriation of a piece of reality into a sheltered or bracketed zone of contemplation; when it is reapportioned into the realm of art, a double distancing occurs. Furthermore, the universalization of any category, or the complete submission of its ontology to the process of metaphor, blurs or even erases its individual identity. To be everything is not to be anything in particular. In regard to the universal set, the Law of Identity has no function. The semantical coextensiveness of art and life means either that art has disappeared into life, melting into it everywhere like a new spark of indwelling meaning, or (and this departs at once into theistic metaphor) that life has dissolved into art. In short it means ultimately that the terms have become meaningless in relation to one another, since language operates not by sameness but by difference, and two sets with the same contents are the same set.

The art of appropriation then, is a kind of shadowy recreation of the universe by drawing it, piece by piece, into the brackets of artistic contemplation. Artists engaged in this pursuit have concentrated on the appropriation of religious forms, of philosophical forms, of political forms, of popular forms, and more recently, of art historical styles. These enterprises have met different fates. The appropriation of religious contents has been the most unpopular, even taboo, while that based on philosophy, even linguistic philosophy, for a while acquired marketable chic. In this discrimination the Apollonian (to use Nietzsche’s dichotomy) surfaced over the hidden depth of the Dionysian. Apollo represents the ego and its appararent clarity of identity; Dionysus, the unconscious, in which all things flow into and through one another. In the Apollonian light each thing is seen clear and separate, as itself; in the Dionysian dark all things merge into a flowing and molten invisibility. That our culture, in the age of science, should favor the Apollonian, is not surprising. The value of light is beyond question; but where there is no darkness there can be no illumination. Rejection of the Dionysian does not serve the purpose of clear and total seeing.

Universal appropriation has an exacting task if it is to be practiced with sufficient range of feeling not to trivialize life. The levity, the sense of the will to entertain, that prevailed when Ben or Gilbert & George displayed themselves as sculptures was balanced by the sometimes horrifying ordeal through which the appropriation of religious forms unfolded. It was necessary to descend from the pedestal, with its Apollonian apotheosis of the ego, into the Dionysian night of the unconscious, and to bring into the light the logic of its darkness.

In Vienna in the early 1960s, Hermann Nitsch began presenting a series of performances that, in 1965, he would consolidate as the OM, or Orgies Mysteries, Theatre. His work was a focused exercise to bring the performance genre to its darkest spaces, its most difficult test, at once. In OM presentations the performers tear apart and disembowel a lamb or bull, cover themselves and the environment with the blood and gore, pour the entrails and blood over one another, and so on. These events last up to three hours (though Nitsch is planning one that will last for six days and nights). They have occasionally been shut down by the police. They have occurred in art galleries and have been reported in art magazines and books.

The OM Theatre performances open into dizzyingly distant antiquities of human experience. In form they are esentially revivals of the Dionysian ritual called the sparagmos, or dismemberment, in which the initiates, in an altered state produced by alcohol, drugs, and wild dancing, tore apart and ate raw a goat that represented the god Dionysus, the god of all thrusting and wet and hot things in nature. It was, in other words, a communion rite in which the partaker abandoned his or her individual identity to enter the ego-darkened paths of the unconscious and emerged, having eaten and incorporated the god, redesignated as divine. In such rites ordinary humanity ritually appropriates the aura of godhood, through the ecstatic ability to feel the Law of Identity and its contrary at the same time.

Euripides, an ancient forerunner of the Viennese artists, featured this subject in several works. Like Nitsch, he did so partly because this was the subject matter hardest for his culture, as for ours, to assimilate in the light of day. In the Bacchae especially he presents the dismemberment as a terrifying instrument of simultaneous self-abandonment and self-discovery. The Apollonian tragic hero, Pentheus, like our whole rationalist culture, thought his boundaries were secure, his terrain clearly mapped, his identity established. Rejecting the Dionysian rite, which represents the violent tearing apart of all categories, he became its victim. Disguising himself as a Maenad, or female worshipper of Dionysus, he attempted to observe the ritual, but was himself mistaken for the sacrificial victim, torn apart, and eaten raw. In short, his ego-boundaries were violently breached, the sense of his identity exploded into fragments that were then ground down into the primal substrate of Dionysian darkness which both underlies and overrides civilization’s attempts to elevate the conscious object above nature.

Nitsch writes of his work in consciously Dionysian terms as celebrating a “drunken, all-encompassing rejoicing,” a “drunken ecstasy of life,” a “liberated joy of strong existence without barriers,” “a liturgy of exultation, of ecstatic, orgiastic, boundless joy, of drugged rapture ...” He has created, in fact, a purely classical theory for it, based on Freudian and Jungian reinterpretations of ancient religious forms, on Aristotle’s doctrine of catharsis, and on the ritual of the scapegoat as the wellspring of purification for the community.

Another stage of the OM ritual finds a young male standing or lying naked beneath a slain carcass marked with religious symbols and allowing the blood and guts to flow over his naked body. Again an ancient source has been appropriated. In the initiation rite called the taurobolium, the aspirant was placed naked in a pit over which, atop a lattice of branches, a bull, representing the god, was slain and disemboweled. When the initiate emerged covered with the bull’s blood and entrails, he was hailed as the reborn god emerging from the earth womb.

These works demonstrate the category shift involved in the appropriation process. In part this shift from the zone of religion to that of art represents the residual influence of Romanticism: the artist is seen as a kind of extramural initiation priest, a healer or guide who points the alientated soul back toward the depths of the psyche where it resonates to the rhythms of nature. In addition, it is the neutrality of the unbounded category that allows the transference to occur. Religious structures in our society allow no setting open enough or free enough to equate with that of ancient Greek religion, which was conspicuously nonexclusionary; the art realm in the age of boundary dissolution and the overflow did offer such a free or open zone. Günter Brus, another Viennese performer, has claimed that placing such contents within the art realm allows “free access to the action”—a free access that the category of religion, with its weight of institutionalized beliefs, does not allow. The assumption, in other words, is that in the age of the overflow the art context is a neutral and open context which has no proper and essential contents of its own. Art, then, is an open variable which, when applied to any culturally bound thing, will liberate it to direct experience. That this was the age of psychedelic drugs, and that psychedelic drugs were widely presumed to do the same thing, is not unimportant. As the tradition advanced along the path to the underworld, it was increasingly influenced by psychopharmacology with its sense of the eternally receding boundaries of experience.

Soon after Nitsch’s first performances in Vienna, Carolee Schneemann presented a series of now-classic pieces also based on the appropriation of ritual activities from ancient and primitive sources. The general shape of these works arose, as among ancient shamans and magicians, from a variety of sources, including dream material and experiences with psychedelic drugs. Like Nitsch’s works, Schneemann’s are based both on depth psychology and on the appropriation of contents from the neolithic stratum of religious history, especially the religious genre of the fertility rite.

In Meat Joy (Paris, 1964) nearly naked men and women interacted, in a rather frenzied, Dionysian way, with one another and with hunks of raw meat and carcasses of fish and chickens. They smeared themselves with blood, imprinted their bodies on paper, tore chickens apart, threw chunks of raw meat and torn fowl about, slapped one another with them, kissed and rolled about “to exhaustion,” and so on. The sparagmatic dismemberment and the suggestion of the suspension of mating taboos both evoke Maenadism and the Dionysian cult. The wild freedom advocated by this ancient cult, as well as its suggestions of rebirth, seemed appropriate expressions of the unchecked newness that faced the art world as its boundaries dissolved and opened on all sides into unexpected vistas, where traditional media, torn apart and digested, were reborn in unaccountable new forms. The Dionysian subversion of ego in the cause of general fertility has become another persistent theme of appropriation performance. Barbara Smith has performed what she calls a Tantric ritual, that included sexual intercourse, in a gallery setting as an artwork.

In general, performance works involving the appropriation of religious forms have fallen into two groups: those that select from the neolithic sensibility of fertility and blood sacrifice, and those that select from the paleolithic sensibility of shamanic magic and ordeal; often the two strains mix. Both may be seen as expressions of the desire, so widespread in the 60s and early 70s, to reconstitute within Modem civilization something like an ancient or primitive sensibility of oneness with nature.

Though the erotic content of the works based on the themes of fertility has been received with some shock, it is the work based on the shamanic ordeal that the art audience has found most difficult and repellent. Clearly that is part of the intention of the work, and in fact a part of its proper content. But it is important to make clear that these artists have an earnest desire to communicate, rather than simply shock. Seen in an adequate context, their work is not aggression but expression.

In 1965 Nitsch formed the Wiener Aktionismus group in conjunction with Otto Mühl, Günter Brus, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Much of their work focused on the motifs of self-mutilation and self-sacrifice that were implicit, though not foregrounded, both in Klein’s career and in the OM Theatre performances. Brus, during his performing period (1964–1970), would appear in the performance space dressed in a woman’s black stockings, brassiere, and garter belt, slash himself with scissors till he ran with blood, and perform various acts ordinarily taboo in public settings, such as shitting, eating his own shit, vomiting, and so on. Schwarzkogler’s pieces presented young males as mutilated sacrificial victims, often wounded in the genitals, lying fetally contracted and partially mummy-wrapped as if comatose, in the midst of paraphernalia of violent death such as bullet cartridges and electrical wires. Not only the individual elements of these works, but their patterns of combination—specifically the combination of female imitation self-injury, and the seeking of dishonor through the performance of taboo acts—find striking homologies in shamanic activities. The same motifs reappeared, not necessarily with direct influence from the Viennese, in the works of several American performance artists who have stretched audiences’ sympathies beyond the breaking point.

Paul McCarthy, a major exponent of the art of the taboo gesture, first heard the calling not from the Viennese but from Klein. As a student at the University of Utah in 1968, he leapt from a second story window in emulation of Klein’s Leap into the Void. By about 1974 his work had found its own distinctive form, developing into a modernized shamanic style so difficult for audiences to bear that the pieces were usually published only as video tapes. These performances, like Schneemann’s, were often developed from dream material, indicating their intimate relation both with shamanic magic and with depth psychology. Like Brus, McCarthy has sometimes appeared dressed as a woman, and has worked, like Schwarzkogler, with the themes of self-mutilation and castration; some pieces have acted out the basic female imitation of feigning menstruation and parturition (magical pantomimes that are common in primitive initiation rites). In others, McCarthy has cut his hands and mixed the blood with food and water in bowls, clearly echoing various sacramental rites from the Dionysian to the Christian. In still others that, like Nitsch’s, have sometimes been shut down by the police, he has acted out the seeking of dishonor as an exploration of the Dionysian-Freudian depths of psychobiological life. In Sailor’s Meat, a videotape from 1975, for example, he appeared in a room in a wino hotel wearing black lace panties smeared with blood and a blonde female wig and lay on the bed fucking piles of raw meat and ground hamburger with his cock painted red and a hot dog shoved up his ass. As Old Man in My Doctor, 1978, he slit a rubber mask over his head to form a vagina-slanted opening on it and from the vagina gave birth to a ketchup-covered doll. The piece was a conscious remaking of the myth of the birth of Athena from the cleft brainpan of Zeus, a myth that reverts to the age when male priests and their divinities sought to incorporate the female principle and its powers. In Baby Boy, 1982, McCarthy gave birth to a doll from between his ketchup-covered male thighs as he lay on his back with his feet in the air like a woman in missionary-style sexual intercourse. In these and other works self-mutilation, female imitation, and the performance of taboo acts are combined in a structure roughly parallel to that of Brus’ work, though with a greater range of expressiveness.

Similar materials recur in the work of Kim Jones. In a performance in Chicago in 1981, Jones appeared naked except for a mask made of a woman’s pantyhose, covered himself with mud (as both African and Australian shamans do when performing), and lay naked on the fire escape in the cold to accumulate energy (a shamanic practice known worldwide but most famous from Tibet). Returning to the performance space, he produced a mayonnaise jar filled with his own shit, smeared himself with it, embraced members of the audience while covered in it, and finally burned sticks and green plants till the smoke drove the remaining audience from the gallery. In another piece, Jones cut himself with a razor blade twenty-seven times in a pattern suggesting the body’s circulatory system, then pressed himself against the gallery wall for a self-portrait.

Understandably, to audiences habituated to the traditional boundaries of art, to audiences for whom easel painting was still the quintessential art activity, these performances were offensive and even insulting. Of course, the point of such works when they first appeared was in part their seeming to be radically, even horrifyingly, out of context. But for twenty years they have been part of the art scene, if somewhat peripherally, legitimized by art world context and critical designation again and again. In order to understand the wellsprings of such works, in order to approach them with a degree of sympathy and clarity, it is necessary to frame them somewhat in cultural history, where in fact they have a clear context.

Many of the artists discussed here feel that shamanic material and primitive initiation rites are the most relevant cultural parallels to their work. But most of them feel that the tone of their work arose first, often under Freudian and Jungian influence, and was later confirmed and further shaped by some study of shamanic literature. The question of origins, then—whether from shamanic literature, or from the Jungian collective unconscious, or from the Freudian timeless repository of infantile memory, or from all these sources—though it is worthwhile to state, cannot be answered. In any case it is important in terms of any theory of the function of art that these artists have introduced into the art realm materials found elsewhere only in the psychiatric records of disturbed children and in the shamanic thread of the history of religion.

In societies where the shamanic profession is intact, shamans have been perhaps the most fully rounded and powerful cultural figures in history. The poets, mythographers, visual artists, musicians, medical doctors, psychotherapists, scientists, sorcerers, undertakers, psychopomps, and priests of their tribal groups, they have been one-person cultural establishments. They have also been independent, uncontrollable, and eccentric power figures whose careers have often originated in psychotic episodes—what anthropologists call the “sickness vocation.” As a result, when societies increase their demands for internal order, the old shamanic role, with its unassimilable combination of power and freedom, is broken up into more manageable specialty professions; in our society, the doctor, the poet, the artist, and so on, have each inherited one scrap from the original shaman’s robe. Beginning with the Romantic period an attempt was made to reconstitute something like the fullness of the shamanic role within the art realm; poets especially were apt to attribute both healing and transcendentalizing powers to the art experience. This project has been acted out in the last twenty years by those artists whose work appropriates its materials from the early history of religion.

Perhaps the most shocking element in the various performance works mentioned here is the practice of self-injury and self-mutilation. This has, however, been a standard feature of shamanic performances and primitive initiation rites around the world. Siberian shamans cut themselves while in ecstatic states brought on by drugs, alcohol, drumming and dancing. Tibetan shamans are supposedly able to slit their bellies and exhibit their entrails. Related practices are found in the performance art under discussion. Chris Burden crawled through broken glass with his hands behind his back (Through the Night Softly, 1973). Dennis Oppenheim did a piece in which for half an hour rocks were thrown at him (Rocked Circle/Fear, 1971). Linda Montano inserted acupuncture needles around her eyes (Mitchell’s Death, 1978). The Australian performance artist Stelarc, reproducing a feat of Ajivika ascetics in India, has had himself suspended in various positions in the air by means of fishhooks embedded into his flesh. The number of instances could easily be multiplied.

The element of female imitation, found in the works of Brus, McCarthy, Jones, and others, is also a standard shamanic and initiatory motif, involving sympathetic magic. Male shamans and priests around the world, as well as tribal boys at their puberty initiations, adopt female dress to incorporate the female and her powers. In lineages as far apart as North Asian and Amerindian, shamans have worn women’s clothing and ritually married other men. Akkadian priests of Ishtar dressed like their goddess, as did Ramakrishna in nineteenth-century India. A Sanskrit religious text instructs the devotee to “discard the male (purusa) in thee and become a woman (prakriti).” Various tribal rites involve the ritual miming, by men, of female menstruation and parturition, as in the works of McCarthy. Freudian and Jungian theories of the bisexuality of the psyche and the need to realize it are relevant both to archaic and to modern exercises of this sort.

Female imitation and self-mutilation combine in certain practices of ritual surgery found in primitive cultures around the world, though most explicit in Australia. In Central Australian initiation rites, for example, a vulvalike opening is cut into the urethral surface of the penis, symbolically incorporating the female principle into the male body. Bruno Bettelheim has observed this motif in the fantasies of disturbed children. Brus, in a performance, once cut a vulvalike slit in his groin, holding it open with hooks fastened in his flesh. Ritual surgery to create an androgynous appearance is common in archaic religious practice generally, as an attempt to combine male and female magical powers into one center. The emphasis on the mutilation of the male genitals in much of the Viennese work is relevant here. In classical antiquity the priests of Cybele castrated themselves totally (both penises and testicles) in their initiation, to become more like their goddess; thereafter they dressed like women and were called “females.” In subsequent ecstatic performances they would cut themselves in the midst of frenzied dancing and offer the blood to the goddess.

The public performance of taboo acts is also an ancient religious custom with roots in shamanism and primitive magic. Both art and religion, through the bracketing of their activities in the half-light of ritual appropriationism, provide zones where deliberate inversions of social custom can transpire; acts repressed in the public morality may surface there, simultaneously set loose for their power to balance and complete the sense of life, and held safely in check by the shadow reality of the arena they occur in.

A little-known Sanskrit book called the Pasupata Sutras formulates this practice in detail, under the heading of the Seeking of Dishonor. The practitioner is enjoined to court contempt and abuse from his fellow humans by behavior deliberately contrived as the most inappropriate and offensive for the situation, whatever it may be. In shamanic contexts such practices had demonstrated the shaman’s special status beyond convention, his ability to breach at will either metaphysical or ethical boundaries. In yogic terms the goal of the practice was the effacement of ego by the normalization of types of experience usually destructive to the self-image. The shaman, the yogic seeker of dishonor, and the ritual scapegoat figure all offered themselves as targets for calamity, to draw it away from the communities they served. They were the individuals who went out on the razor’s edge and, protected in part by the brackets of religious performance, publicly breached the taboo of the times. Today the exhibitionistic breaching of age and gender taboos, as well as other forays into the darkness of the disallowed within the brackets of the art performance, replicates this ancient custom, sometimes with the same cathartic intention. As the shoals of history break and flow and reassemble, to break and flow again, these and other primitive practices have resurfaced, in something like their original combination, in an altogether different context.

Telephone Pole (1978) by Kim Jones as Mud Man

The preparation of his or her own body as a magico-sculptural object, for example, is a regular and essential part of the shaman’s performance. An Australian shaman may cover his body with mud (symbol of recent arrival from the netherworld) and decorate it with patterns of bird down fastened on with his own blood; an African shaman may wear human bones, skulls, and so forth, and may surgically alter his or her body in various ways; a Central Asian shaman may appear in a skeleton suit with mirrors on it. Frequently the shaman’s body is tattooed or scarified or painted with magical symbols. Similarly, Schneemann has presented herself as a “body collage” decorated with symbols from ancient fertility religions. In a mixture of archaic and Christian materials, Linda Montano in The Screaming Nun, 1975, “dressed as a nun, danced, screamed, and heard confessions at Embarcadero Plaza [in San Francisco].” Other pieces by Montano have involved dancing blindfolded in a trance, drumming for six hours a day for six days, shape-changing and identity-changing, self-injury (with acupuncture needles), and astral travel events. Mary Beth Edelson’s “Public Rituals” have involved the marking of her naked body with symbols from ancient goddess cults, the equation of her body with the earth, and the declaration of the end of patriarchy (Your Five Thousand Years Are Up, 1977). Kim Jones, as Mud Man, or Bill Harding emerging covered with mud from a hole in the ground in the middle of a circle of fire, are reconstituting before our eyes images from the elementary stratum of religious forms.

A motif that is absolutely central to shamanism, and that often also involves body decoration, is the attempt to incorporate the power of an animal species by imitation of it. Shamans in general adopt the identities of power animals, act out their movements, and duplicate their sounds. The claim to understand animal languages and to adopt an animal mind-set is basic to their mediation between culture and nature. Echoes of the practice are, of course, common in the annals of performance art. In Joseph Beuys’ conversation with the dead rabbit, the knowledge of an animal language combines with a belief in the shamanic abilities to communicate with the dead. In Chicken Dance, 1972, Montano, attired in a chicken costume, appeared unannounced at various locations in San Francisco and danced wildly through the streets like a shaman possessed by the spirit and moved by the motions of her animal ally. Terry Fox slept on a gallery floor connected with two dead fish by string attached to his hair and teeth, attempting, like a shaman inviting his animal ally to communicate through a dream, to dream himself into the piscine mind in Pisces, 1971.

In such behavior a style of decision-making is involved that has much in common with the peculiar arbitrariness and rigor of religious vows in general, and with one called the Beast Vow in particular. Among the Pasupatas of India (the same who formalized the Seeking of Dishonor), the male practitioner commonly took the bull vow. (The bull is the most common shamanic animal by far.) He would spend a good part of each day bellowing like a bull and in general trying to transform his consciousness into that of a bull. Such behavior was usually vowed for a specific length of time, most frequently either for a year or for the rest of one’s life. A person who took the frog vow would move for a year only by squatting and hopping; the snake vower would slither. Such vows are very precise and demanding. The novice, for example, may pick a certain cow and vow to imitate its every action. During the time of the vow the novice follows the cow everywhere: when the cow eats, the novice eats; when the cow sleeps, the novice sleeps; when the cow moos, the novice moos—and so on. (In ancient Mesopotamia cow-vowers were known as “grazers.”) By such actions the paleolithic shaman attempts to effect ecology by infiltrating an animal species which can then be manipulated. The yogic practicioner hopes to escape from his or her own intentional horizon by entering into that of another species.

These activities are echoed in performance pieces in various ways. Bill Gordh, as Dead Dog, spent two years learning how to bark with a sense of expressiveness. James Lee Bryars wore a pink silk tail everywhere he went for six months. Vito Acconic, in his Following Piece, 1969, would pick a passerby at random on the street and follow him or her till it was no longer possible to do so.

What I am especially concerned to point out in activities like this is a quality of decision-making that involves apparent aimlessness along with fine focus and rigor of execution. This is a mode of willing which is absolutely creative in the sense that it assumes that it is reasonable to do anything at all with life; all options are open and none is more meaningful or meaningless than any other. A Jain monk in India may vow to sit for a year and then follow that by standing up for a year—a practice attested to in the Atharva Veda (about 1000–800 B.C.) and still done today. In performance art the subgenre known as Endurance Art is similar in style, though the scale is much reduced.

In 1965 Beuys alternately stood and knelt on a small wooden platform for twenty-four hours during which he performed various symbolic gestures in immobile positions. In 1971 Burden, a major explorer of the Ordeal or Endurance genre, spent five days and nights fetally enclosed in a tiny metal locker (two feet by two feet by three feet). In 1974 he combined the immobility vow with the keynote theme of the artist’s person by sitting on an upright chair on a sculpture pedestal until, forty-eight hours later, he fell off from exhaustion. (Sculpture in Three Parts). In White Light/White Heat, 1975, he spent twenty-two days alone and invisible to the public on a high shelf-like platform in a gallery, neither eating nor speaking nor seeing, nor seen by, another human being.

The first thing to notice about these artists is that no one is making them do it and usually no one is paying them to do it. The second is the absolute rigor with which, in the classic performance pieces, these very unpragmatic activities are carried out. This peculiar quality of decision-making has become a basic element of performance poetics. To a degree (which I do not wish to exaggerate) it underscores the relationship between this type of activity and the religious vocation. A good deal of performance art, in fact, might be called “Vow Art,” as might a good deal of religious practice. (Kafka’s term “hunger artist” is not unrelated.)

Enthusiasms of this type have passed through cultures before, but usually in the provinces of religion or, more occasionally, philosophy. What is remarkable about our time is that it is happening in the realm of art, and being performed, often, by graduates of art schools rather than seminaries. In our time religion and philosophy have been more successful (or intransigent) than art in defending their traditional boundaries and prevent universal overflow with its harrowing responsibilities and consequences.

A classic source on the subject of Ordeal Art is a book called the Path of Purification by Buddhaghosa, a fifth century A.D. Ceylonese Buddhist. It includes an intricately categorized compendium of behavioral vows designed to undermine the conditions response systems that govern ordinary life. Among the most common are the vows of homelessness—the vow, for example, to live out of doors for a year. This vow was acted out in New York recently by Tehching Hsieh, who stayed out of doors in Manhattan recently for a year as a work of art. Hsieh (who also has leapt from the second story of a building in emulation of Klein’s leap) has specialized, in fact, in year-long vows acted out with great rigor. For one year he punched in hourly on a time clock in his studio, a device not unlike some used by forest yogis in India to restrict their physical movements and thus their intentional horizons. The performance piece of this type done on the largest scale was Hsieh’s year of isolation in a cell built in his Soho studio, a year in which he neither left the cell nor spoke nor read. Even the scale of this piece, however, does not approach that of similar vows in traditional religious settings. Himalayan yogis as recently as a generation ago were apt to spend seven years in a light-tight cave, while Simeon Stylites, an early Christian ascetic in the Syrian desert, lived for the last thirty-seven years of his life on a small platform on top of a pole.

The reduced scale of such vows in the art context reflects the difference in motivation between the religious ascetic and the performance artist. Religious vows are undertaken for pragmatic purposes. The shaman seeking the ability to fly, the yogi seeking the effacement of ego, the monk seeking salvation and eternal bliss, are all working within intricately formulated belief systems in pursuit of clearly defined and massively significant rewards. Less is at stake for the performance artist than for the pious believer; yet still something is at stake. An act that lacks any intention whatever is a contradiction in terms. For some artists (for example, Burden) work of this type functions as a personal initiation or catharsis, as well as an investigation of the limits of one’s will; others (including Nitsch) are convinced that their performance work is cathartic for the audience as well and in that sense serves a social and therapeutic purpose. Rachel Rosenthal describes her performance work as “sucking diseases from society.”

But in most work of this type attention is directed toward the exercise of will as an object of contemplation in itself. Appropriation art in general (and Vow Art in particular) is based on an aesthetic of choosing and willing rather than conceiving and making. Personal sensibility is active in the selection of the area of the universe to be appropriated, and in the specific, often highly individual character of the vow undertaken; the rigor with which the vow is maintained is, then, like a crafts devotion to the perfection of form. Beyond this, the performance is often based on a suspension of judgment about whether or not the act has any value in itself, and a concentration on the purity of the doing. This activity posits as an ideal (though never of course perfectly attaining it) the purity of doing something with no pragmatic motivation. Like the Buddhist paradox of desiring not to desire, it requires a motivation to perform feats of motivelessness. It shares something of Arnold Toynbee’s opinion that the highest cultures are the least pragmatic.

In this mode of decision and execution the conspicuously free exercise of will is framed as a kind of absolute. Displays of this type are attempts to break up the standard weave of everyday motivations and create openings in it through which new options may make their way to the light. These options are necessarily undefined, since no surrounding belief system is in place (or acknowledged). The radicality of work in this genre can be appraised precisely by how far it has allowed the boundaries of the art category to dissolve. Many works of the last twenty-five years have reached to the limits of life itself. Such activities have necessarily involved artists in areas where usually the psychoanalyst or anthropologist presides. The early explorations discussed here required the explicit demonstration of several daring strategies that had to be brought clearly into the light. Extreme actions seemed justified or even required, by the cultural moment. But the moment changes, and the mind becomes desensitized to such direct demonstrations after their first shock of brilliant simplicity. When an artist in 1987 announces that his or her entire life is designated as performance, the unadorned gesture cannot expect to be met with the enthusiastic interest with which its prototypes were greeted a generation ago.

Instructions for the Kali-Yuga

Hakim Bey

The Kali Yuga still has 200,000 or so years to play—good news for advocates & avatars of CHAOS, bad news for Brahmins, Yahwists, bureaucrat-gods & their runningdogs.

I knew Darjeeling hid something for me soon as I heard the name—dorje linge—Thunderbolt City. In 1969 I arrived just before the monsoons. Old British hill station, summer HDQ for Govt. of Bengal—streets in the form of winding wood staircases, the Mall with a View of Sikkim & Mt Katchenjunga—Tibetan temples & refugees—beautiful yellow-porcelain people called Lepchas (the real abo’s)—Hindus, Moslems, Nepalese & Bhutanese Buddhists, & decaying Brits who lost their way home in ’47, still running musty banks and tea-shoppes.

Met Ganesh Baba, fat whitebearded saddhu with overly-impeccable Oxford accent—never saw anyone smoke so much ganja, chillam after chillamful, then we’d wander the streets while he played ball with shrieking kids or picked fights in the bazaar, chasing after terrified clerks with his umbrella, then roaring with laughter.

He introduced me to Sri Kamanaransan Biswas, a tiny wispy middleaged Bengali government clerk in a shabby suit, who offered to teach me Tantra. Mr Biswas lived in a rickety bungalow perched on a steep pine-tree misty hillside, where I visited him daily with pints of cheap brandy for puja & tippling—he encouraged me to smoke while we talked, since ganja too is sacred to Kali.

Mr Biswas in his wild youth was a member of the Bengali Terrorist Party, which included both Kali worshippers & heretic Moslem mystics as well as anarchists & extreme leftists. Ganesh Baba seemed to approve of this secret past, as if it were a sign of Mr Biswas’ hidden tantrika strength, despite his outward seedy mild appearance.

We discussed my readings in Sir John Woodruffe (“Arthur Avalon”) each afternoon, I walked there thru cold summer fogs, Tibetan spirit-traps flapping in the soaked breeze loomed out of the mist & cedars. We practiced the Tara-mantra, Tara-mudra (or Yoni-mudra), studied the Tara-yantra diagram for magical purposes. Once we visited a temple to the Hindu Mars (like ours, both planet & war-god) where he bought a finger-ring made from an iron horseshoe nail & gave it to me. More brandy & ganja.

Tara: one of the forms of Kali, very similar in attributes: dwarfish, naked, four-armed with weapons, dancing on dead Shiva, necklace of skulls or severed heads, tongue dripping blood, skin a deep blue-gray the precise color of monsoon clouds. Every day more rain—mudslides blocking roads. My Border Area Permit expires. Mr Biswas & I descend the slick wet Himalayas by jeep & train down to his ancestral city, Siliguri, in the flat Bengali plains where the Ganges fingers into a sodden viridescent delta.

We visit his wife in the hospital. Last year a flood drowned Siliguri killing tens of thousands. Cholera broke out, the city’s a wreck, algae-stained & ruined, the hospital’s halls still caked with slime, blood, vomit, the liquids of death. She sits silent on her bed glaring unblinking at hideous fates. Dark side of the goddess. He gives me a colored lithograph of Tara which miraculously floated above the water & was saved.

That night we attend some ceremony at the local Kali-temple, a modest half-ruined little rural roadside shrine—torchlight the only illumination—chanting & drums with strange almost-African syncopation, totally unclassical, primordial & yet insanely complex. We drink, we smoke.

Alone in the cemetary, next to a half-burnt corpse, I’m initiated into Tara Tantra. Next day, feverish & spaced-out, I say farewell & set out for Assam, to the great temple of Shakti’s yoni in Gauhati, just in time for the annual festival. Assam is forbidden territory & I have no permit. Midnight in Gauhati I sneak off the train, back down the tracks thru rain & mud up to my knees and total darkness, blunder at last into the city & find a bug-ridden hotel. Sick as a dog by this time. No sleep.

In the morning, bus up to the temple on a nearby mountain. Huge towers, pululating deities, courtyards, outbuildings—hundreds of thousands of pilgrims—weird saddhus down from their ice-caves squatting on tiger skins & chanting. Sheep & doves are being slaughtered by the thousands, a real hecatomb—(not another white saheb in sight)—gutters running inch-deep in blood—curve-bladed Kali-swords chop chop chop, dead heads plocking onto the slippery cobblestones.

When Shiva chopped Shakti into 53 pieces & scattered them over the whole Ganges basin, her cunt fell here. Some friendly priests speak English & help me find the cave where the yoni’s on display. By this time I know I’m seriously sick, but determined to finish the ritual. A herd of pilgrims (all at least one head shorter than me) literally engulfs me like an undertow-wave at the beach, & hurls me suspended down suffocating winding troglodyte stairs into claustrophobic-womb-cave where I swirl nauseated & hallucinating toward a shapeless cone meteorite smeared in centuries of ghee and ochre. The herd parts for me, allows me to throw a garland of jasmine over the yoni.

A week later in Kathmandu I enter the German Missionary Hospital (for a month) with hepatitis. A small price to pay for all that knowledge—the liver of some retired colonel from a Kipling story!—but I know her, I know Kali. Yes absolutely the archetype of all that horror, yet for those who know, she becomes the generous mother. Later in a cave in the jungle above Rishikish I meditated on Tara for several days (with mantra, yantra, mudra, incense & flowers) & returned to the serenity of Darjeeling, its beneficent visions.

Her Age must contain horrors, for most of us cannot understand her or reach beyond the necklace of skulls to the garland of jasmine, knowing in what sense they are the same. To go thru CHAOS, to ride it like a tiger, to embrace it (even sexually) & absorb some of its shakti, its life-juice—this is the Faith of Kali Yuga. Creative nihilism. For those who follow it she promises enlightenment & even wealth, a share of her temporal power.

The sexuality & violence serve as metaphors in a poem which acts directly on consciousness through the Image-ination—or else in the correct circumstances they can be openly deployed & enjoyed, imbued with a sense of the holiness of every thing from ecstasy & wine to garbage & corpses.

Those who ignore her or see her outside themselves risk destruction. Those who worship her as ishta-devata or divine self, taste her Age of Iron as if it were gold, knowing the alchemy of her presence.

The Oracle of the Hypogeum (Malta, 3000 B.C)

Surgeons and Gluttons in the House of Flesh

Notes on the Hidden Unity between the Additive and Subtractive Fetishes

Tim O’Neill

My deepest, oldest and darkest fantasies ... of binding and being bound to operating tables ... underground laboratories painted grey ... cold concrete ... medical carts, harsh lights and lasers in the darkness and green moistness ... faceless entities behind surgical masks and gowns ... feeding and being fed ... as a slender young creature, becoming slowly fatter and fatter ... to the point of the belly exploding like a nova ... bulging rolls of flesh, rising like dough in taut black rubber ... the School of Night and voluptuous extremes ... the alien mysteries of the steaming gateway between the legs ... existing between worlds, buried in mounds of platonic sphericity ... lust, gluttony and domination ... the three great drives of glory which burn in the pit of the belly like a great inner Sun ... too powerful to be contained by mere gravity of flesh, even 1000 pounds of it ... the final paradox ... release from the mountain of fat into the pure lands of Light ... squirming voluptuously out of the gravity well into the Light of Goddess ... so pleasing to Her that She must caress the Child with the burning rays of Kundalini and the Great Memory of the Demiurgos and His Prison that we call Earth ...

—from “The Disciples of Flesh,” (1983, revised 1990)

If flesh feels inherently good, then more flesh must feel that much better! This simple idea emerges out of kind of folk-wisdom that stretches back to the Paleolithic era. A similar cultural predisposition toward the opposite extreme of thinness certainly pervades post-Industrial culture. The two extremes are inextricably linked by a core fascination with ther power of food ... a fixation which ranges back past the era of human evolution to the roots of mentality in the higher primates, in which eating becomes the key sexual drive.

The force-feeder controls the victim bound by the magnitude of their own flesh, the surgeon or anorectic controls the subject’s bodily integrity. The consumptive fetish, as we might call the two combined back into their root, is the primordial source of all sado-masochistic behavioral patterns, since food and flesh are the most primary instruments of control, of life and death themselves.

It is necessary to sink back into the depths of the human past, to uncover the unifying elements of control which unite the additive and subtractive. As a primary clue, we may note that either state, manifested to its extreme, includes the necessity of raising powerfully altered states of awareness (see “Opiates, Brainwashing, and Fasting”) based on overstimulation and understimulation of the senses. These altered states may be sorted according to maximal “gravity” (for the fat fetish) and maximal “levity” (for the thin fetish).

Five to ten thousand years ago, the worship of the great obese Goddess of crop fertility and abundant supply was still in its heyday, as evidenced in the strikingly fat “Venus” figurines found at Willendorf, Austria, Dolni Vêstonice in Czschoslovakia, Laussel, in France, and hundreds of other sites ranging from Spain to the Steppes of Russia and Central Asia.

The one European site which stands out as clearly suggesting the possibility of a well-organized Neolithic cult whose idol was a force-fed and fattened oracular priestess, is found on the island of Malta, just south of Sicily. A complement of several large temples, constructed out of huge, megalithic slabs create a series of artificial “underground” grottoes or caves. The temples are constructed in curving forms that echo the rounded contours of the abundant Goddess. Found in the burial excavations on one of the temple sites were several impressive statuettes of massively obese women, reclining on low couches with their eyes closed, as if dreaming or listening to an inner voice. Jean McMann’s Riddles of the Stone Age: Rock Carvings of Ancient Europe, suggests a confirmation for the idea that over-consumption of food was actually used to create the “gravitic” mediumship that parallels the “levitational” ekstasis of the under-consumer...

Further, in the National Museum of Valetta (in Malta) one can see ... a wonderful ‘Sleeping Lady’ discovered in the main chamber of Hypogeum (a word meaning ‘under the earth’) ... Tiny yet monumental, she reclines as though she were a goddess receiving a dream. There has been some guesswork about the possibility of a “dream cult” connected with the structures. Perhaps, like a vestal virgin, or better, a queen bee, this goddess in human form was fed on titbits and delicacies, lived in the temple and dreamed rich dreams for the priests to interpret. (Riddles of the Stone Age.)

By being fed to bursting, the priestess actually embodied the ideal of the obese Goddess, whose favor insured rich crops. The control of feast or famine resided in the very flesh of the ritually fattened priestess. By stuffing these women constantly, there were also kept in a perpetual state of dream-trance which made them the perfect oracles as well as the embodiments of the Goddess. Their huge bodies became laboratories for neurochemically altered frames of awareness, as well as pleasure palaces of the Goddess.

Aleister Crowley perfectly describes this ritual fattening into a “gravitic” mediumship in his novel Moonchild. In service to the Lunar Goddess, Crowley’s character, Lisa, gradually fattens into the archetypically obese sibylline figure:

It was part of the general theory of the operation thus to keep her concealed and recumbent for the greater part of the day ... with soft singing and music or with the recital of slow voluptuous poetry, her natural disinclination to sleep was overcome and she began to enjoy the delicious laziness of her existence, and to sleep the clock round without turning in her bed. She lived almost entirely upon milk and cream, and cheese soft-curdled, with little crescent cakes made of rye with white of egg and cane sugar; as for meat, venison, as sacred to the huntress Artemis, was her only dish. But certain shellfish were permitted, and all soft and succulent vegetables and fruits ...

She put on flesh rapidly; the fierce, active impetuous girl of October, with taut muscles and dark-flushed mobile face, had become pale, heavy, languid and indifferent to events, all before the beginning of February, and it was early in this month that she was encouraged by her first waking vision of the Moon ...

... for she had become extremely fat; her skin was of a white and heavy pallor; her eyes were almost closed by their perpetual droop. Her habit of life had become infinitely sensuous and languid; when she rose from recumbancy she lolled rather than walked; her lassitude was such that she hardly cared to feed herself; yet she managed to consume five or six times a normal dietary. She seemed utterly attracted to the Moon. She held out her body to it like an offering...

She was more languid than ever before; that night, it seemed to her as if her body were altogether too heavy for her; she had the feeling, so well-known to opium smokers, which they call ‘clové à terre.’ It is as if the body clung desperately to the earth, by its own weight, and yet in the same way as a tired child nestles to its mother’s breast....

It may be that it is the counterpart of the freedom of the soul of which it is the herald and companion ... and gradually, as comes also to the smoker of opium, the process of bodily repose became complete; the earth was one with the earth, and no longer troubled or trammeled her truer self ... She had become acutely conscious that she was not the body that lay supine in the cradle, with the Moon gleaming upon its bloodless countenance....

Crowley captures the essence of the obese/mediumistic priestess, bound and controlled by the sheer volume of her own flesh, into harmony with Earth and Sky. Dr. Douglas Baker, in his Esoteric Anatomy notes a direct link between the hypothalmus, high Serotonin levels and obesity in those subjects who have a sudden awakening of the mediumistic ability. The traditional association of fat women and mediumship (probably derived from the more than ample form of Madame Blavatsky, 19^th century founder of the Theosophical movement) reaches back to the very roots of human culture. Joseph Caezza, in his article “Fat Holy Men” establishes a clear link between sanctity and obesity, based upon somatic/aetheric aspects of the belly as a storage device for subtle energies. Likewise, the “Tarbfeis” or ritual gorging of the Druid priests upon the blood and flesh of the sacred white bull was intended to create a state of divine exaltation and oracular sleep.

On the opposite side of the coin, the subtractive side, Crowley also mentions the surgical/cannibal aspect in Moonchild, occuring during a powerful and disturbingly erotic vision encountered during Lisa’s period of lunar “captivity.”

Actual phantoms took shape for her, some seductive, some menacing, but even the most hideous and cruel symbols had a fierce fascination for her. There was a stag-beetle, with flaming eyes, a creature as big as an elephant, with claws in constant motion, that threatened her continually. Horribly as this frightened her, she gloated on it; pictured its sudden plunge with those ghastly mandibles upon her flanks. Her own fatness was a source of curious perverse pleasure for her; one of her favorite reveries was to imagine herself the centre of a group of cannibals, watch them chop off great lumps from her body and sear them in the pot, or roast them on a spear, hissing and dripping blood and grease, upon the fire. In some insane or atavistic confusion of mind, this dream was always recognized as being a dream of love.

Clearly, the removal of flesh in this example operates within the context of the fat fetish. If we consider that the addition of flesh via food physically binds one to gravitic mediumship in a perpetual oracular dream state, then the subtraction of flesh, whether by starvation or surgery, must serve to release the Spirit in a rush of levitational ascesis. One binds to earth, the other to sky. Here, we find the archetypal mythos of the marriage of heaven and earth, thin and fat, the conjunctio oppositorum of Alchemy; the wedding of all opposites.

Within this perspective, we can begin to understand the more extreme aspects of the subtractive fetish as the ascetic/erotic mirror of the fleshly mediumship. We can then see an inkling of sense in the concept that one might consciously part with their own flesh and blood for the sake of a sexual or erotic ecstasy. The range of subtractive activities moves from the largely symbolic practices as piercing, scarification and tattooing, all of which have distinct mind-altering ritual and decorative aspects, to much more extreme forms, such as self-starvation, anorexia, the various forms of cosmetic surgery (especially liposuction!), fetishistic surgery, and what we might even term “folk” surgery.

In the subtractive fetish, dread of surgery transforms into a sexual stimulant in its own right. The psychological roots of this fascination goes back to the Neolithic era, which gave birth to the rise of ritual fattening cultus. Surgical rites of passage quite literally remove the soul in a state of ekstasis (literally, “out of oneself”) or levitation, through an actual hole in the body. Folk surgery, with its strong shamanic overtones, dates back tens of thousands of years. Clear evidence of trepanation operations (the cutting of a hole in the skull to espose the brain) has been found in early Neolithic skeletal remains. This early surgery was perhaps at first employed to shamanically remove possessing spirits from the head. As late as the first few decades of our century, Tibetan Buddhist priests were still performing amazing trepanning operations, during which they drilled a hole between and above the eyebrows, and inserted a long, sharp, wooden needle directly into the pituitary gland to stimulate the development of second sight.[1]

Fakir Musafar[2] has done much to research and even to act upon this ancient fascination with the surgical and subtractive. His novel, Prince of Pain[3], explores radical surgical alterations of the body and its concomitant erotic/altered states of awareness in the context of a hidden society whose members are bound and controlled by physiological, mental and spiritual domination, as well as by their own peculiar fleshly conditions ... very much in the spirit of our central thesis. Gnosticism posits the concept of flesh as a prison, or binding of the soul. In subtractive fetishes, the removal of flesh becomes akin to the opening of prison doors.

At the extremes of the subtractive, rumors persist of secret surgical clinics in Mexico, where operations of any kind can be had at the right price. Whether or not such underground surgery actually exists, the fantasy of it is strong and pervasive, as much so as the rumors of extreme cases of force-feeding and obesification. A regular column in the tabloid-style Fetish Times is entitled “Amateur Surgeon,” written especially for those who thrill to the ultimate asceticism of amputation and surgery. Fantasies of beautiful women driven by lust to get severe cosmetic surgeries performed, are the staple fare of these types of fetishists. While you wouldn’t ordinarily believe that this intensely neurotic fixation has too many devotees, there are enough to give rise to the publication of a magazine called Amputee Times. (Offended amputees have petitioned the publisher to change the title of his magazine to something on the order of Physically Challenged.) One pornographic actress, Long Jean Silver, has carved quite a career out of her amputated foot. While this peculiar descent into the atavistic and Neolithic mentality might seem a phenomenon restricted to the dark underworld of fetishism, it has also invaded the world of “high” art.

The strange legend of John Fare resurfaces every few years, much like the rumor of Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s supposed self-castration (he actually jumped out of a window to his death). According to the myth, Fare was a wealthy and perhaps psychotic artist who, out of ennui, hit upon the ultimate bit of body art. He supposedly contacted a cybernetics and robotics expert who helped him construct a programmable operating table with randomizing auto surgery. At various performances throughout Europe and Canada, Fare was supposed to have had numerous body parts lopped off and replaced with bizarre plastic decorations. The legend goes, that between 1964 and 1968, Fare was lobotomized, and lost one thumb, two fingers, eight toes, one eye, both testicles, his right hand and several random patches of his skin. According to another version, he had only six amputations, his last one being his head. Tickets were sold for each performance and the various body parts were carefully preserved in alcohol. It is a story which no one has every successfully corroborated, but its perennial fascination demonstrates, beyond our natural morbidity and ghoulishness as a species, the hold of these atavisms upon even relatively sophisticated minds.[4]

As bizarre and unreliable the John Fare story is, there is a well-documented and undeniable example of auto-surgery. In 1962, Dr. Bart Huges, a Dutch doctor of sorts, came to believe that human ecstasy and happiness were directly related to the volume of blood present in the brain. He felt that the natural happiness of infants and children was simply due to the fact that the bones of their skulls had not yet grown together and fused, as they have in adults. After publishing his theories, and a visit to a Dutch lunatic asylum, Dr. Huges finally found a willing disciple in the person of Joey Mellon, a young British man who was caught up in the extreme aspects of the psychedelic movement in London in the early 1960s. Joey, after three painful and usuccessful attempts to drill and hole into the crown of his own skull, finally succeeded in fulfilling Dr. Huges’ program, an auto-trepanation that exposed his brain to the open air. His book about his experience, Bore Hole, is a much sought-after collector’s item, but for those strong of heart and stomach, a film of Joey’s girlfriend, Amanda Fielding, performing the same operation upon herself, does exist. It is entitled Heartbeat in the Brain and, even though it is presented in a poetic spirit, does have a reputation for causing most of its audiences to faint dead away.[5]

Buddhists stimulating second sight

Cut It Off: A Case for Self-Castration

Adam Parfrey

Shortly after we tunnel out of our mother’s constricted cunt, we’re wheeled into another stainless steel chamber where scalpels, forceps and other instruments of torture lie. Blankly the nurses and doctors look down upon us, attach a steel clamp to our unanesthetized babydick, and slice the casing off our sausage. The sanitary procedures and professional mien of the circumcisors (or the moyle, their yiddish designation) makes one almost forget that this ritualistic form of decorative surgery dates back to the ancient Hebrews.

Australian Aborigines visit another form of genital mutilation upon the pre-pubescent, slicing open the urethra from the glans to the scrotum on the underside of the penis (taking care not to slice open the corpus cavernosum, with all its erectile tissue). The result is what Australians humorously call the “whistle cock,” referring to its whiffling leakage of sperm and urine. Like Americans, who regard the uncut as backwoods rednecks, the Aborigine only accord full social status to those who have undergone subincision. Circumcision and subincision rites are the legacy of patriarchal culture, a form of psychic castration, and a warning to the young cocks that the venerable old farts still wield the all-powerful knife.

Strangely, an entire new cult of “modern primitives” among the bohemian demimonde are offering up their cocks for modification on a totally voluntary basis. Postmodern penises seem positively naked without ornate tattoos, and a stud, ring or chain piercing the glans and the urethra. It’s all too common to see a Guns ‘N Roses or Psychick Youth type comparing their genital jewelry at the local nightclub. One red-blooded broad confessed to me mat she nearly lost her cookies at the sight of a would-be swain yanking a hardware-laden pud out of his dungarees. “You mean you wanna stick that thing in me, ring and all?” she shrieked. She needn’t have worried. The Hollywood hairboy’s show-and-tell was merely a prelude to an evening of narcotized nodding.

Beyond its singular genius for becoming an instrument of fatality, a blood-engorging AIDS syringe, the penis has now become a political liability. Feminist pundits are vocal in their conviction that possession of a penis is in itself an overtly fascist act. Fucking is seen as an act of violation against women. “The thrusting is persistent invasion. She is opened up, split down the center. She is occupied—physically, internally, in her privacy.” (Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse.) September 1989’s East Coast Lesbians’ Festival stood its ground against a politically backward sister who toted along a 16-month-old baby boy, male appendage and all. Soon, the woman’s cabin at the feminist retreat was plastered with signs reading, “Baby Prick Go Home,” “Don’t Feed Males, Don’t Breed Males.” A forthright festival organizer reported that lesbians who become pregnant should have abortions if tests indicate that the fetus is male. “Boys are born with pricks and male privilege. These attributes do not mysteriously appear at a certain age,” declared lesbian Elizabeth Braeuman. Dworkin reminds us that “new reproductive technologies have changed and will continue to change the nature of the world. Intercourse is not necessary to existence anymore.”

Symbols of the castrated penis, the tie and bow-tie, are the mandatory accoutrements of diplomatic wardrobe. Brute strength is no longer necessary to fight wars—all is needed is the digital ability to flip toggle-switches and push buttons. Phallic monuments to commemorate war dead are a thing of the past. The Vietnam Memorial in Washington D. C., designed by an Asian woman, is a subterranean surface reminiscent of a vulva and vaginal wall.

The patriarchal era is coming to an end. Wars, bigotry, hierarchical mentalities will be squashed under the massive stone haunches of the steatopygous Goddess, who has returned to empower humanity after hiding in European caves as “fat Venus” totems for thousands of years.

Modern scientists, like H. Greilsheimer and J. E. Groves of The Archives of General Psychology, in their 1979 article on “Male Self-mutilation,” will maintain that genital self-desecration occurs most frequently in psychotic men and as a “component of transsexualism.” But most post-op transsexuals, experts agree, enjoy their penis-free existence, and the so-called “psychotic men” are glad they took the blade to their offending organ.

Take the 44-year-old white merchant seaman admitted to Bellevue after castrating himself by cutting out his testicles with a razor blade. Dr. Aaron H. Esman‘s “A Case of Self-Castration” (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1954), seeks to undermine the sanity of his patient with the antiseptic and dissecting language of the scientist. Six months before the seaman (read: semen) emasculated himself, he stated: “I want to be loved ... I want to be more like a girl. I want to have my penis and scrotum cut off, have my testicles pushed up into my abdomen — I’ve done that myself; then get some injections to make my mammaries grow. Please, doctor, won’t you help me to be like a girl ... I want to wear my pretty dresses with lace fringes ... I bought a maid’s uniform at Macy’s and want to be a servant woman for some sophisticated, older artist woman. I’ll scrub floors for her — do anything ... I want to be more of a child, not just a girl ... Why doesn’t anyone love me? They can call me cunt-lapper, but that’s my business. I’ve never done anything wrong, like playing around with little girls or married women. They’ve all been older women ... If I can’t become a little girl, the only thing left for me is to commit suicide, but I’m afraid to do anything like that.”

Directly following the seaman’s gelding, his doctor reports that his patient had become alert, cheerful and “quite intact” Six months later, the doctor communicated with his patient via letters and a telephone call, “both attesting to the patient’s good adjustment.” As difficult as it was to admit it, Dr. Esman was forced to concede that his patient’s castration proved to be the proper tonic.

S. Lennon, the author of a report on “Genital Self-Mutilation in Acute Mania” for the Medical Journal of Australia, suggests that even in the early 1960s, the practice was “not as rare as the paucity of published communications on the subject would suggest.” In one case, Dr. Lennon reports that a “chronic schizophrenic, aged 28 years, amputated his penis about half an inch from the level of the perineum.” Among his other crimes, Lennon’s young patient exhibited “feelings of inadequacy ... and continual preoccupation with subjects of a philosophical and mystical nature. He had been ruminating for some time on the theme of homosexuality, became apprehensive of becoming homosexual and advanced this as the motivation for his action.”

Another of the Lennon’s patients was “an intelligent and well-educated man, aged 42 years, who amputated his penis with a razor blade practically at the level of the perineum.” This well-adjusted fellow, called “manic” by his doctor for his friendly and outgoing behavior, harbored most interesting reasons for whacking off his willie:

On going through some old papers and correspondence, he came across a note from his mother.... The gist of this note related to his brother’s recent change of address. The street to which his brother had moved bore a rather odd-sounding name, and the patient’s mother, in a post-script to her note, had written: “This may look funny, but it isn’t.” The patient remembered dwelling for some time on the word “funny,” at first toying with the idea, and eventually becoming convinced that it would be “funny” to cut off his penis. He then sat down, tied a rubber band as a ligature around the base of his penis and sawed through it with a razor blade. He remembered clearly the details of the operation, and described it as being very painful, but his mood at the time was happy and cheerful. He did not go to breakfast that morning, but jumped into his car, threw his penis on the floor and drove off towards his place of work, feeling so exuberant that he burst into song.

The Castration Motif: Patient has symbolized himself as a penis, the glans of which has been severed.

We wonder what that song might be.

Dr. Lennon goes on to mention that the patient “was interested in and proficient at a number of outdoor games, was a good mixer, popular with his fellows, intelligent and successful at his studies...” But “marital disharmony” persisted with his wife over his sexual demands. But the patient demonstrated a chivalrous attitude toward his penis, and by extension, his wife: “I knew my divorce was coming up and I would have no further use for it.” Dr. Lennon was perceptive enough to note the patient’s “lack of remorse engendered and the almost self-satisfied complacency attained, which suggests that the patient by this action had in some way arrived at a satisfactory solution to an unconscious conflict.”

Leon M. Beilin, writing in The Journal of Urology (October 1953) reports of several other providential outcomes to self-removal of the testes and/or penis. One elderly patient stated that the “reason for self-emasculation was that his wife had refused to have intercourse with him.” After this act, Dr. Beilin reports the “patient is in good health, well-behaved and oriented, and apparently shows no regret for his act nor resentment toward his wife.”

Another of Beilin’s patients, aged 23, was inspired to amputate his testicles after helping his father that morning castrate some pigs. Says Beilin: “The physician who administered first-aid noted that the patient was quite calm and appeared to be in a state of inward exaltation.” Dr. Beilin describes the penile amputees as “voiding freely in the upright position, though the stream is splashing and the aim is poor.”

Many cultures, Roman, Babylonian, and now our own, have glorified the Divine Hermaphrodite. Surgical hermaphroditism, known today as transsexualism, is so common that it has become ubiquitous in certain geographical areas. Where most American trannies are created through elaborate and expensive operations, their brethren in India, named the Hijarah, have a less expensive solution. According to J. B. Mukherjee’s March 1980 article in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, “demasculinization was carried out by the adult Hijarahs at secret ceremonies where the penis and scrotum of the victim were removed by a clean sweep with a knife.” A local quack would quickly provide bandages soaked in burnt cowdung and camphor dust to control loss of blood and infection.

The low-caste Hijarahs make their livings as prostitutes. Mukherjee: “All the Hijarahs ... examined showed all signs of habitual passive agents, including funnel-shaped anus, loose anal sphincter, scarred mucosa, etc.” The Hijarahs dress and act like women, and early eunuchization can create significant breast development. “In the case of Rijohi Hijirah, the breasts were plump, hemispherical, well developed and glandular like those of a young girl of 16–18 years.” To fool the unsuspecting, Hijirahs would lift their skirts and flash their gash: “The ... scars over the public region ... would very much look like gemale genitalia, and on cursory glance from a distance this can be mistaken as such very easily.”

Dr. Mukherjee confesses to fiddling with their “female genitalia-like appearance.” “The position of the urethra inside the scars was physically examined by the examining finger. The stump or root of the penis left after amputation was felt and measured in each case. The stump, incidentally, showed some stiffness following little local massaging, indicating the remains of erectile tissue. Some mucoid secretion could be seen over the urethral meatus following said stimulation for a prolonged period.” The G-spot, perhaps?

If Andrea Dworkin is right, science has rendered the services of the penis obsolete. A few squares may cling to the penis in the same way a well-paid freak will jealously guard his vestigial growth. But in time the rest of us will come to realize that only a silly flap of skin hangs between us and true happiness.

Body Play

Fakir Musafar

It started in earnest the night I lashed myself against the coal bin wall. I was seventeen then. I’d fasted for two days—reduced myself to an emaciated robot by dancing for hours with ninety-five pounds of logging chain wrapped around my legs, arms and torso. I was seeking an experience, a happening, that no other human being I knew had ever had. Even if it meant death.

It was two a.m. I stood with my back against the cold wooden wall and laced ropes between fence staples driven at three-inch intervals. I pulled the ropes deep into my legs from the ankles, up to my numb, belted, ant-like waist. Tied them tight. I felt helpless, glued against the wall. And I liked the feeling!

When my chest, arms and head were also quite helpless, I just waited in the darkness not knowing what to expect. I was resolved to stay that way until something happened. My body ached for relief, for sleep—but it could not slip away because of the tight discomforting ropes.

Soon, a pleasant, warm kind of numbness crept up my legs and arms. They dissolved into nothingness. But when the numbness also began to work up my spine into the breathing center, I panicked. I fought for breath. It was like drowning. Waves of terror passed through the parts of me that were still “alive.” A massive effort to free my arms and thus end my nightmare only resulted in a feeble creak from the restraining ropes.

I was trapped, unable to get myself loose—self-sentenced to whatever came next. Something deep inside suddenly shifted to a feeling of indifference. I gave up fighting. I was just a watcher now, unaware of breathing or any other direct physical sensation. Only my head still seemed to exist.

Next, a vibration, an oscillation, developed. It got stronger and stronger. It was not unpleasant in the beginning, but soon felt like my robot body was suspended on the end of a long cable hanging deep inside a huge chasm. A Giant, over whom I had no control, was swinging the cable from wall-to-wall—smashing me to pieces! The “smashing” went faster and more violent with each swing.

At an insane crescendo of this uncontrollable “smashing” there was a faint “click” sound deep inside my head. Then absolute stillness with a slight humming in the background. I was floating in a pool of warm, sticky glue, uncaring.

I didn’t know where I was. But I was alive, disembodied, with no fear, no pain, no discomfort. I was hyper-alert and feeling good, satisfied just like the moment following sexual climax.

I became aware that I could see. Dimly, and in a different sort of way than before. I concentrated this fuzzy vision. I was looking at me! Or rather, at my still-lashed-against-the-wall body.

The part of me that thinks and feels and sees and hears and answers to a name was ten feet from the wall. What was I looking at? Was it me? Or was it “me-the-looker?” This paradox struck me with explosive force. Yet in this state nothing was serious. I found it all downright funny.

I explored my new reality for some time. Peculiarly, there was a feeling in this state of no time! I knew I could go forward or backward in time as easily as I normally walk from one room to another. I studied the lifeless lump on the wall for some time. In a way, it was beautiful, and I had feelings of great love for it. It had always been so obedient to my wishes. Moving where and when I wanted it to ... going on even when it was tired or in pain.

Then my attention moved away from that body. I stayed in the present where things to explore were endless. I found that I was still in a vague sort of body, but it was definitely not physical. I walked, then lifted up slightly and floated around the cellar. I found I could walk right through a concrete wall into the earth outside.

Or I could just think “light” and I would float up through the beams, floors and roof to hover about the trees. It was real! It was magnificent! I watched a cat scamper across the vacant lot beside the house. I could see people moving inside houses many blocks away.

The first rays of dawn pierced the cellar window. I slowly drifted back to the coal bin wall. Without much remembrance, I somehow found my way back to the shell still lashed there. It freed itself.

That beautiful experience colored my whole existence. From that day on I wanted everyone to have that kind of liberation. I felt free to express life through my body. It was now my media, my own personal “living canvas,” “living clay.” It belonged to me to use. And that is just what I have done for the past thirty years. I learned use of the body. It is mine, and yours, to play with! I wrote a poem after the experience. It said:

Poke your finger into Red,
Feel the feeling through.
And when the feeling is no more,
Feel no-feeling too!

Clamps (1964)

Fakir Musafar Interview

Kristine Ambrosia & Joseph Lanza

I’d like to begin by asking you how you started this, how long your form has been evolving, what you are ultimately looking for and how far you think you’ve gotten....

I guess I had my first indications that I was different from other people and that I had something inside me I needed to express when I was about four or five years old. I was always an oddball kid. I got a lot of attention but always felt like a stranger. I didn’t fit. This manifested itself in strange abilities. I would go into trance states. Adults would make kids sit still; so I would get into the habit of staring at people. I would stare at adults, their heads would get smaller and they’d fade way off into the distance. Their voices would be really dim. Then, slowly they’d come back again, speaking an entirely different language, be of a different race, maybe a different sex, an entirely different person. I saw the same being but in a different way than they were in the physical reality of the room. Very often, especially under the pressure of social situations, I automatically would go into a cataleptic state. It scared the hell out of me. When I felt this coming on, I’d flee and go to a quiet place. I had a natural knack of escaping the tedium of social events.

At first, I would express this as fantasy. I’d play with little kids, and in the neighborhood I lived in there were mostly little girls. All these girls would hang around; I was an absolute bastard dictator, would tell them exactly what to do and they would do it.

Was it sexual?

No, not in this case. This was pre-pubescent. I was a little lord and master. Could not figure out why until later. I used to do plays. We’d have a little garage in the back of my house. These plays would be odd, erotic and loaded with sado-masochism. I used to have other fantasies. One of my greatest times was Saturday. I was compelled to go to a Lutheran religious instruction school. I would put up with that tedium ... By the way, I was brought up in an Indian reservation. Coming back from Saturday school, I’d have all these wild adventures, in all these different parts of the world. There used to be a tinsmith’s shop and I’d pick up this scrap, daggers, swords, I would be putting them into other people and have the compulsion to stick the dagger into myself. Sharp objects were always a big feature of my fantasies. I would always make little initiation rites in my plays. I would initiate my little cousins, make them walk barefoot on very sharp gravel. They’d have to hold a very heavy stick in their hands and I would hit it with a larger stick until it broke ... I was about eight or nine years old ... Then I’d like to asphyxiate people. I’d use dust bombs, especially in my dusty garage where I had the most superior dust in the world, it seemed. Sometimes, unexpectedly, these would drop on people by little strings from the ceiling.

When did you start being aware of your own pain? ...

First I felt the obsession and compulsion to do certain things that just weren’t done. I had no background, no contact with any books that would tell me how to do this. At a very early age, this was Indian country, I got very strong at psychomatrizing a place ... go out and find an Indian mound, touch it or sit on it and sit there for hours and almost live the life of whoever had been put there, feel everything they’d felt. Also I had this urge to do a sun dance, to attach a cord to a piercing in my body, pull against it until the skin broke. When I was about fourteen, I actually did that for the first time, and seemed to know exactly what I was doing.

I would go to an Indian spot, to what was called the James River ... I’d draw a magic symbol around a cottonwood tree, draw a magic circle. I found I was impugned against puncturing myself. First, I’d challenge myself with a pin, push it against my skin and it went in and it didn’t feel too bad.... It was just self-control. At this point it had no sexual context whatever ... just something I was compelled to do. Later I began to work out ways of making use of the sexual feeling. If you could do that you’d eventually transcend the sex. Now, sadomasochism has the most advanced and most backward people. You can go into an altered state with the sexual thing. When it results in orgasm, you never discover there’s a higher ecstasy beyond ecstasy. Without the sex you’d never get there, but you have to go through, backward to the unconscious, the feeling body, the liquid body, the kinoacha ... eroticism is the best possible way to reach God, to go into another world. Without sexual arousal it would be impossible for us to escape the human condition. But if we get stuck there, then it gets to be a limitation. If you push it to the ultimate, deny a physical orgasm, you are making constructive use of sexual energy.

There is a dry orgasm technique in India that uses a Suka block. You get a guy very erect, keep him that way constantly day and night for a month or two. He is incredibly gorged and swollen and he looks sick. He may be two inches in diameter and twelve inches long. When all the swelling is gone the cock is permanently twice as big as he was before. It is a narrow wooden block that you massage over the cock, you can’t orgasm with it, it pinches too tight. If you have orgasm, it is dry. There are all kinds of techniques. Central American and South American Indians have certain males and in India certain sadhus that do this. They’ll take the young boys and put a little weight on their cock, keep them that way for even months; the whole thing gets lengthened and finally gets numb, the nerves get overstretched and it loses the capability of becoming erect. The net result of this is that they become highly sexual with no physical way of orgasming. They are capable of going up to much higher levels of ecstasy and prolonging it.

All there is in life is sensation and lack of sensation; as long as you are in a body, there are only these two states. The tendency in Western culture is to keep people in an eggshell where you are not exposed to anything that gives you sensation and when you are it is very minor, controlled. The whole thrust of Western civilization is to decrease sensation. When they have a little bit of sensation, they think it’s a lot. But other cultures have developed ways of deliberately cultivating the feelings and prolonged sensations.

Do you consider “masochist” a negative term? Is it valid?

To me it’s a positive term but it’s looked upon with negativity, by our culture. It’s misleading in some ways. There are two sides to this thing: in this culture there is a negative masochism. You can tell who is in that role usually by the terms they apply to themselves. There are three different terms, there is S & M, B & D, and D & S. In S & M, the people come down to something physical, a power exchange expressed in something physical. You actually tie someone up, use chains, whips. There is something physical involved. B & D is almost always heterosexual turf. It’s a nebulous area, some get physical, some not. But there is an awful lot of mental taunting and torment. Then you get into dominance and submission and this group of people are almost entirely emotional, into verbal abuse, humiliation. Whereas you get into heavy practitioners of S & M and there is little humiliation involved. It may be all just physical. What I deal in is really none of these, but to the people in S & M it may look like what they are doing. But mine is a religious practice that belongs to other cultures. And I just happen to be practicing it in a culture that doesn’t know it exists and has no definition of it at all. But a lot of people let it catch their fancy as an art form. What I do I call “body play” because you are using the body to get to another state.

What is the distinction between sadism and masochism? Some say the distinction is very nebulous. Is there an important difference?

No distinction at all. It’s the same general feeling. There are those who get hooked into one role. For instance, in my novel Prince of Pain nobody is a sadist until they are allowed a heavy, long-term run as a masochist. Most dominants, in the professional realm, have had some period when they were slaves or masochists. I don’t think it’s possible for a person to be a good master or sadist until they’ve been a masochist. But it goes beyond S & M. When a top starts doing things beyond the wants and pleasures of their bottom, they are not sadists anymore. This is brutality, cruelty. S & M is consensual. What I do is entirely consensual. What appears to be the sadist at the top, the conductor of the ceremony, he is not the conductor, he really plays a minor role. The star of the show is whoever is going through the ordeal.

14 Inch Waist Belt (1952)

Clothes Pins Fans (1950)

Have you ever read Sacher-Masoch’s Venus In Furs? He talks about the contractual relationship. He is running the show, the masochist, dictating the scenario.

This is true. I would play out scenes from Prince of Pain. It got to be one hell of a burden. After twenty-four hours with my so-called slave, I was an absolute victim of the whims of the slave. I had a hard time reversing this. I had to get very tough. In the kind of training I do, I like this all to be voluntary. I work with people who use the physical body to transcend physical life. We are living in the lowest state of consciousness you could possibly live in, especially in Western culture. The “me” generation, living at the lowest state when all the concentration on externals, where there is no sensation of anything in that body except the body. Totally lost. I think we are in the midst of a revolution. A quiet and individual revolution.

I go down to Gauntlet Enterprises, which I never thought would amount to anything—how could six people earn a living making tit-rings? Much to our surprise, it looks like we could have a franchise in major cities making millions of dollars a year in this business. The demand is there. There is a lot that people want today. The needs are not being met. The varnish of civilization has covered over what could be the means of meeting people’s needs and wants; urgent, basic feelings they have. This varnish is going to crack. It’s in the process of cracking. The fact that we are in the business of piercing people’s bodies and putting in heavy-duty rings and they are getting pleasure from it and don’t know what it’s about, is an indication. About eight or nine years ago, an eccentric millionaire, using a pseudonym—Doug Molloy—gathered together about seven or eight people from all over the U.S., a couple out of the country, who were bonkers about body piercings. We all had self-made piercings on our genitals, nipples ... I had some of the most bizarre ones. We never thought there was anyone else in the world like ourselves. But this guy got us all together many times as a group in L.A. Lo and behold we discovered this was not an individual quirk but a universal. Everyone seems to have some feelings for this. We all discovered ways of making the best piercings ... Jim Ward happened to be a craftsmen jeweler at the time, so he got appointed to make the stuff. We wondered what would make the best piercings: what would you put in a tongue, a cheek? That’s how Gauntlet was born. A few years later, we got a magazine on the subject and got good reactions. A lot of people were interested. Finally, a nice little shop in L.A. It got way out of hand. People coming and going, buying jewelry, getting pierced. Never thought this would happen. A crack in the varnish.

Do you think it may just be a fad, though? Sometimes you can’t separate a casual Marin County craze from ...

No, this has been going on and getting bigger. People hear about us from all over the world. France, Germany. Come down from San Francisco, Vancouver. Where would a girl get her clitoris pierced with a ring in it?

What about the religious and social significance of masochism? People might wonder, “isn’t this destroying individualism?” Isn’t this taking away our personalities and making us part of some mass?

Bullshit. It’s the opposite. It is an expression of individual needs. There are no two people getting pierced, tattooed, getting their body modified alike. They are the gutty ones and in the forefront of the new wave. These are the people who will lead us in the next hundred years. As I see it, finally there is being a reconciliation here. A way out of the middle ages and European culture and a fusion of science and magic. It’s all happening right now and it is happening here. There is no more exciting time to live than right now. This urge, what it comes down to is, “What is the body?” In Western culture, people are so body-conscious they don’t know they are just living in it. The only time you can start to figure that out is when you start piercing, tattooing, playing with it, modifying it. That is the only time you can start finding out who you are. That short instant when the needle is going through your flesh, you may have a realization of who you are. The needle is going through my body, but it’s not going through me—so it doesn’t hurt.

We’ve mystified our bodies ...

We are at the lowest state of consciousness there is. Even animals have a higher state of consciousness than most of these people running around in three-piece suits.

Is it a matter of reminding ourselves of mortality?

The point is, the idea of mortality and immortality is all messed up, and is very unreal. It all started with St. Paul and the perversion of the teachings of Christ. Jesus, like all the other enlightened ones to come along, showed people how to live, to transcend what they were in. Buddha, Lao Tze. But soon they always gathered around them a lot of people, there were a few close ones who knew what they were doing. But soon people have their interpretations and start worshipping the personality. They are off the track, they never discover anything. There are so-called primitive people who are very advanced. Because they have a different technology than we have does not mean they are not ahead of us in many ways. The American Indians ... I am an Indian, I stepped into this body, this is the second time for me, when I consciously walked into a body. I’ve been around a long time. I did not reincarnate. Not go off into a limbo state and back into a blank slate condition. I came back with all the memories and experiences I had before. That’s why I was a weird kid. I was a foreigner in an alien culture, I had the morals of another culture and had to learn to adjust without going into the pokey or the loony bin. I think I’ve done relatively well.

Chest Daggers (1980)

I was reading beforehand about Stellarc. I don’t really know how much you two have an affinity with each other.

I would like to meet him but he won’t meet me. He does not like to meet anyone else who does this. I think he thinks it’s stealing his thunder. I think he’s like those first two people we gathered together who had body piercings, thinking he’s exclusive and won’t enter the club. This is an art and he’s doing something different.

He emphasizes the fact that this is an artistic experience, and as soon as I read that I thought, “this is very bourgeois.” He is making this a middle-class diversion for people to go out of their boudoirs and watch and talk about....

I think he’s kidding himself. I wrote a review on his book for Piercing Fans International magazine. I admire what he’s doing. He has a tremendous amount of guts, but I think his civilization varnish has not been scrubbed enough. He feels very guilty about what he does and is trying to rationalize. As I understand it, he does it rather clandestinely, doesn’t announce it. He does have some mystically-aligned observers. He is capable of enduring things longer than he does. He picked up the idea of hanging by fleshhooks by seeing in books or magazines hookhangers in Ceylon. They were doing it for mystic and religious purposes, he claims not to. When you are hung up by as many hooks as he is, it is possible to hang that way all day, only he does it for one and a half minutes, thirty minutes ... very short periods. If he hung for a longer length of time, he’d have a mystical experience. I can’t help to think that he may have had one or been on the border and it scared the hell out of him. So he limits the length and calls it art.

Stellarc says the body is obsolete. Our cortical structure isn’t able to handle the technology we’ve created. We can’t really absorb it all. His solution is to modify our body though technological means, artificial hands ...

That’s his rationalization. It’s bullshit.

It bothers me because he’s putting a lot of faith in Western technology where people have been doing this for thousands of years ...

Why not have faith in Western technology? On the other hand, he’s discovered something else. What he’s dabbling in is magic technology. Hookhanging by the Ceylonese Hindus, ancient Dravidians, is something else again. Or the American Indian sundance or O-Kee-Pah ceremony. Where I think Stellarc is missing the point is that this is a point where we will merge. We don’t have to worry about going off our rocker. We are merging science and technology. You listen to the babblings of the best physicists we have today, they are getting to the point where they sound like the alchemists used to. We’ve gotten to the point where we can synthesize magic, technology and science. Science technology is based upon identification of the body, so everything you do has to be done through externals. If you want to move a mountain you first have to invent a steam engine, then a power shovel and you have to make them in a factory. The Indian way of moving a mountain through magic technology was to sit there and become a very high guru, shaman, you look at the mountain, see it somewhere else, and one day it’s in that other place. Both move mountains. In the new era, with the merger, we’ll find out that some technologies work better for some jobs and some for others. Science may invent air conditioning but may not provide for deep urges people have to modify their body.

You don’t agree with Stellarc then that we can plant electrodes and certain types of transistors in our body to better what we already have? Do we more or less already have it in our body or are we too limited?

We have the capability in our body or through the body. I look at myself now as a “dweller” in a body.

Suspension (1964)

The Case Against Art

John Zerzan

Art is always about “something hidden.” But does it help us connect with that hidden something? I think it moves us away from it.

During the first million or so years as reflective beings humans seem to have created no art. As Jameson put it, art had no place in that “unfallen social reality” because there was no need for it. Though tools were fashioned with an astonishing economy of effort and perfection of form, the old cliche about the aesthetic impulse as one of the irreducible components of the human mind is invalid.

The oldest enduring works of art are hand-prints, produced by pressure or blown pigment—a dramatic token of direct impress on nature. Later in the Upper Paleolithic era, about 30,000 years ago, commenced the rather sudden appearance of the cave art associated with names like Altamira and Lascaux. These images of animals possess an often breathtaking vibrancy and naturalism, though current sculpture, such as the widely-found “Venus” statuettes of women, was quite stylized. Perhaps this indicates that domestication of people was to precede domestication of nature. Significantly, the “sympathetic magic” or hunting theory of earliest art is now waning in light of evidence that nature was bountiful rather than threatening.

The veritable explosion of art at this time bespeaks an anxiety not felt before: in Worringer’s words, “creation in order to subdue the torment of perception.” Here is the appearance of the symbolic, as a moment of discontent. It was a social anxiety; people felt something precious slipping away. The rapid development of ritual or ceremony parallels the birth of art, and we are reminded of the earliest ritual re-enactments of the moment of “the beginning,” the primordial paradise of the timeless present. Pictorial representation roused the belief in controlling loss, the belief in coercion itself.

In the earliest evidence of symbolic division, as with the half-human, half-beast stone faces at El Juyo, the world is divided into opposing forces, by which binary distinction the contrast of culture and nature begins and a productionist, hierarchical society is perhaps already prefigured.

The perceptual order itself, as a unity, starts to break down in reflection of an increasingly complex social order. A hierarchy of senses, with the visual steadily more separate from the others and seeking its completion in artificial images such as cave paintings, moves to replace the full simultaneity of sensual gratification. Levi-Strauss discovered, to his amazement, a tribal people that had been able to see Venus in daytime; but not only were our faculties once so very acute, they were also not ordered and separate. Part of training sight to appreciate the objects of culture was the accompanying repression of immediacy in an intellectual sense: reality was removed in favor of merely aesthetic experience. Art anaesthetizes the sense organs and removes the natural world from their purview. This reproduces culture, which can never compensate for the disability.

Not surprisingly, the first signs of a departure from those egalitarian principles that characterized hunter-gatherer life show up now. The shamanistic origin of visual art and music has been often remarked, the point here being that the artist-shaman was first the specialist. It seems likely that the ideas of surplus and commodity appeared with the shaman, whose orchestration of symbolic activity portended further alienation and stratification.

Art, like language, is a system of symbolic exchange that introduces exchange itself. It is also a necessary device for holding together a community based on the first symptoms of unequal life. Tolstoy’s statement that “art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling,” elucidates art’s contribution to social cohesion at the dawn of culture. Socializing rituals required art; art works originated in the service of ritual; the ritual production of art and the artistic production of ritual are the same. “Music,” wrote Seu-ma-tsen, “is what unifies.”

As the need for solidarity accelerated, so did the need for ceremony; art also played a role in its mnemonic function. Art, with myth closely following, served as the semblance of real memory. In the recesses of the caves, earliest indoctrination proceeded via the paintings and other symbols, intended to inscribe rules in depersonalized, collective memory. Nietzsche saw the training of memory, especially the memory of obligations, as the beginning of civilized morality. Once the symbolic process of art developed it dominated memory as well as perception, putting its stamp on all mental functions. Cultural memory meant that one person’s actions could be compared with those of another, including portrayed ancestors, and future behavior anticipated and controlled. Memories became externalized, akin to property but not even the property of the subject.

Art turns the subject into object, into symbol. The shaman’s role was to objectify reality; this happened to outer nature and to subjectivity alike because alienated life demanded it. Art provided the medium of conceptual transformation by which the individual was separated from nature and dominated, at the deepest level, socially. Art’s ability to symbolize and direct human emotion accomplished both ends. What we were led to accept as necessity, in order to keep ourselves oriented in nature and society, was at base the invention of the symbolic world, the Fall of Man.

The world must be mediated by art (and human communication by language, and being by time) due to division of labor, as seen in the nature of ritual. The real object, in its particularity, does not appear in ritual; instead, an abstract one is used, so that the terms of ceremonial expression are open to substitution. The conventions needed in division of labor, with its standardization and loss of the unique, are those of ritual, of symbolization. The process is at base identical, based on equivalence. Production of goods, as the hunter-gatherer mode is gradually liquidated in favor of agriculture (historical production) and religion (full symbolic production), is also ritual production.

The agent, again, is the shaman-artist, en-route to priesthood, leader by reason of mastering his own immediate desires via the symbol. All that is spontaneous, organic and instinctive is to be neutered by art and myth.

Recently the painter Eric Fischl presented at the Whitney Museum a couple in the act of sexual intercourse. A video camera recorded their actions and projected them on a tv monitor before the two. The man’s eyes were riveted to the image on the screen, which was clearly more exciting that the act itself. The evocative cave pictures, volatile in the dramatic, lamp-lit depths, began the transfer exemplified in Fischl’s tableau, in which even the most primal acts can become secondary to their representation. Conditioned self-distancing from real existence has been a goal of art from the beginning. Similarly, the category of audience, of supervised consumption, is nothing new, as art has striven to make life itself an object of contemplation.

As the Paleolithic Age gave way to the Neolithic arrival of agriculture and civilization—production, private property, written language, government and religion—culture could be seen more fully as spiritual decline via division of labor, though global specialization and a mechanistic technology did not prevail until the late Iron Age.

The vivid representation of late hunter-gatherer art was replaced by a formalistic, geometrical style, reducing pictures of animals and humans to symbolic shapes. This narrow stylization reveals the artist shutting himself off from the wealth of empirical reality and creating the symbolic universe. The aridity of linear precision is one of the hallmarks of this turning point, calling to mind the Yoruba, who associate line with civilization: “This country has become civilized,” literally means, in Yoruba, “this earth has lines upon its face.” The inflexible forms of truly alienated society are everywhere apparent; Gordon Childe, for example, referring to this spirit, points out that the pots of a Neolithic village are all alike. Relatedly, warfare in the form of combat scenes makes its first appearance in art.

The work of art was in no sense autonomous at this time; it served society in a direct sense, an instrument of the needs of the new collectivity. There had been no worship-cults during the Paleolithic, but now religion held sway, and it is worth remembering that for thousands of years art’s function will be to depict the gods. Meanwhile, what Glück stressed about African tribal architecture was true in all other cultures as well: sacred buildings came to life on the model of those of the secular ruler. And though not even the first signed works show up before the late Greek period, it is not inappropriate to turn here to art’s realization, some of its general features.

Art not only creates the symbols of and for a society, it is a basic part of the symbolic matrix of estranged social life. Oscar Wilde said that art does not imitate life, but vice versa; which is to say that life follows symbolism, not forgetting that it is (deformed) life that produces symbolism. Every art form, according to T.S. Eliot, is “an attack upon the inarticulate.” Upon the unsymbolized, he should have said.

Both painter and poet have always wanted to reach the silence behind and within art and language, leaving the question of whether the individual, in adopting these modes of expression didn’t settle for far too little. Though Bergson tried to approach the goal of thought without symbols, such a breakthrough seems impossible outside our active undoing of all the layers of alienation. In the extremity of revolutionary situations, immediate communication has bloomed, if briefly.

The primary function of art is to objectify feeling, by which one’s own motivations and identity are transformed into symbol and metaphor. All art, as symbolization, is rooted in the creation of substitutes, surrogates for something else; by its very nature therefore, it is a falsification. Under the guise of “enriching the quality of human experience,” we accept vicarious, symbolic descriptions of how we should feel, trained to need such public images of sentiment that ritual art and myth provide for our psychic security.

Life in civilization is lived almost wholly in a medium of symbols. Not only scientific or technological activity but aesthetic activity consists largely of symbol processing. The laws of aesthetic form are canons of symbolization, often expressed quite unspiritually. It is widely averred, for example, that a limited number of mathematical figures account for the efficacy of art. There is Cezanne’s famous dictum to “treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere and the cone,” and Kandinsky’s judgment that “the impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle produces an effect no less powerful than the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo.” The sense of a symbol, as Charles Pierce concluded, is its translation into another symbol, thus an endless reproduction, with the real always displaced.

Though art is not fundamentally concerned with beauty, its inability to rival nature sensuously has evoked many unfavorable comparisons. “Moonlight is sculpture,” wrote Hawthorne; Shelley praised the “unpremeditated art” of the skylark; Verlaine pronounced the sea more beautiful than all the cathedrals. And so on, with sunsets, snowflakes, flowers, etc., beyond the symbolic products of art. Jean Arp, in fact, termed “the most perfect picture” nothing more than “a warty, threadbare approximation, a dry porridge.”

Why then would one respond positively to art? As compensation and palliative, because our relationship to nature and life is so deficient and disallows an authentic one. As Motherlant put it, “One gives to one’s art what one has not been capable of giving to one’s existence.” It is true for artist and audience alike; art, like religion, arises from unsatisfied desire.

Art should be considered a religious activity and category also in the sense of Nietzsche’s aphorism, “We have Art in order not to perish of Truth.” Its consolation explains the widespread preference for metaphor over a direct relationship to the genuine article. If pleasure were somehow released from every restraint, the result would be the antithesis of art. In a dominated life freedom does not exist outside art, however, and so even a tiny, deformed fraction of the riches of being is welcomed. “I create in order not to cry,” revealed Klee.

This separate realm of contrived life is both impotent and in complicity with the actual nightmare that prevails. In its institutionalized separation it corresponds to religion and ideology in general, where its elements are not, and cannot be, actualized; the work of art is a selection of possibilities unrealized except in symbolic terms. Arising from the sense of loss referred to above, it conforms to religion not only by reason of its confinement to an ideal sphere and its absence of any dissenting consequences, but it can hence be no more than thoroughly neutralized critique at best.

Frequently compared to play, art and culture—like religion—have more often worked as generators of guilt and oppression. Perhaps the ludic function of art, as well as its common claim to transcendance, should be estimated as one might reassess the meaning of Versailles: by contemplating the misery of the workers who perished draining its marshes.

Clive Bell pointed to the intention of art to transport us from the plane of daily struggle “to a world of aesthetic exaltation,” paralleling the aim of religion. Malraux offered another tribute to the conservative office of art when he wrote that, without art works civilization would crumble “within fifty years” ... becoming “enslaved to instincts and to elementary dreams.”

Hegel determined that art and religion also have “this in common, namely, having entirely universal matters as content.” This feature of generality, of meaning without concrete reference, serves to introduce the notion that ambiguity is a distinctive sign of art.

Usually depicted positively, as a revelation of truth free of the contingencies of time and place, the impossibility of such a formulation only illuminates another moment of falseness about art. Kierkegaard found the defining trait of the aesthetic outlook to be its hospitable reconciliation of all points of view and its evasion of choice. This can be seen in the perpetual compromise that at once valorizes art only to repudiate its intent and content with, “Well, after all, it is only art.”

Today culture is commodity and art perhaps the star commodity. The situation is understood inadequately as the product of a centralized culture industry, à la Horkheimer and Adorno. We witness, rather, a mass diffusion of culture dependent on participation for its strength, not forgetting that the critique must be of culture itself, not of its alleged control.

Daily life has become aestheticized by a saturation of images and music, largely through the electronic media, the representation of representation. Image and sound, in their ever-presence, have become a void, ever more absent of meaning for the individual. Meanwhile, the distance between artist and spectator has diminished, a narrowing that only highlights the absolute distance between aesthetic experience and what is real. This perfectly duplicates the spectacle at large: separate and manipulating, perpetual aesthetic experience and a demonstration of political power.

Reacting against the increasing mechanization of life, avant-garde movements have not, however, resisted the spectacular nature of art any more than orthodox tendencies have. In fact, one could argue that Aestheticism, or “art for art’s sake,” is more radical than an attempt to engage alienation with its own devices. The late nineteenth-century art pour l’art development was a self-reflective rejection of the world, as opposed to the avant-garde effort to somehow organize life around art. A valid moment of doubt lies behind Aestheticism, the realization that division of labor has diminished experience and turned art into just another specialization: art shed its illusory ambitions and became its own content.

The avant-garde has generally staked out wider claims, projecting a leading role denied it by modern capitalism. It is best understood as a social institution peculiar to technological society that so strongly prizes novelty; it is predicated on the progressivist notion that reality must be constantly updated. But avant-garde culture cannot compete with the modern world’s capacity to shock and transgress (and not just symbolically). Its demise is another datum that the myth of progress is itself bankrupt.

The artist Congo, whose paintings sell for thousands of dollars

Dada was one of the last two major avant-garde movements, its negative image greatly enhanced by the sense of general historical collapse radiated by World War 1. Its partisans claimed, at times, to be against all “isms,” including the idea of art. But painting cannot negate painting, nor can sculpture invalidate sculpture, keeping in mind that all symbolic culture is the co-opting of perception, expression and communication. In fact, Dada was a quest for new artistic modes, its attack on the rigidities and irrelevancies of bourgeois art a factor in the advance of art; Hans Richter’s memoirs referred to “the regeneration of visual art that Dada had begun.” If World War I almost killed art, the Dadaists reformed it.

Surrealism is the last school to assert the political mission of art. Before trailing off into Trotskyism and/or art-world fame, the Surrealists upheld chance and the primitive as ways to unlock “the Marvelous” which society imprisons in the unconscious. The false judgment that would have re-introduced art into everyday life and thereby transfigured it certainly misunderstood the relationship of art to repressive society. The real barrier is not between art and social reality, which are one, but between desire and the existing world. The Surrealists’ aim of inventing a new symbolism and mythology upheld those categories and mistrusted unmediated sensuality. Concerning the latter, Breton held that “enjoyment is a science; the exercise of the senses demands a personal initiation and therefore you need art.”

Modernist abstraction resumed the trend begun by Aestheticism, in that it expressed the convinction that only by a drastic restriction of its field of vision could art survive. With the least stain of embellishment possible in formal language, art became increasingly self-referential, in its search for a “purity” that was hostile to narrative. Guaranteed not to represent anything, modern painting is consciously nothing more than a flat surface with paint on it.

But the strategy of trying to empty art of symbolic value, the insistence on the work of art as an object in its own right in a world of objects, proved a virtually self-annihilating method. This “radical physicality,” based on aversion to authority though it was, never amounted to more, in its objectness, than simple commodity status. The sterile grids of Mondrian and the repeated all-black squares of Reinhardt echo this acquiescence no less than hideous twentieth-century architecture in general. Modernist self-liquidation was parodied by Rauschenberg’s 1953 Erased Drawing, exhibited after his month-long erasure of a de Kooning drawing. The very concept of art, Duchamp’s showing of a urinal in a 1917 exhibition notwithstanding, became an open question in the 50s and has grown steadily undefinable since.

Pop Art demonstrated that the boundaries between art and mass media (e.g. ads and comics) are dissolving. Its perfunctory and mass-produced look is that of the whole society and the detached, blank quality of a Warhol and his products sum it up. Banal, morally weightless, depersonalized images, cynically manipulated by a fashion-conscious marketing strategem: the nothingness of modern art and its world revealed.

The proliferation of art styles and approaches in the 60s—conceptual, minimalist, performance, etc.—and the accelerated obsolescence of most art brought the “postmodern” era, a displacement of the formal “purism” of modernism by an eclectic mix from past stylistic achievements. This is basically a tired, spiritless recycling of used-up fragments, announcing that the development of art is at an end. Against the global devaluing of the symbolic, moreover, it is incapable of generating new symbols and scarcely even makes an effort to do so.

Occasional critics, like Thomas Lawson, bemoan art’s current inability “to stimulate the growth of really troubling doubt,” little noticing that a quite noticeable movement of doubt threatens to throw over art itself. Such “critics” cannot grasp that art must remain alienation and as such must be superseded, that art is disappearing because the immemorial separation between nature and art is a death sentence for the world that must be voided.

Deconstruction, for its part, announced the project of decoding Literature and indeed the “texts,” or systems of signification, throughout all culture. But this attempt to reveal supposedly hidden ideology is stymied by its refusal to consider origins or historical causation, an aversion it inherited from structuralism/poststructuralism. Derrida, deconstruction’s seminal figure, deals with language as solipsism, consigned to self-interpretation; he engages not in critical activity but in writing about writing. Rather than a de-constructing of impacted reality, this approach is merely a self-contained academicism, in which Literature, like modern painting before it, never departs from concern with its own surface.

Meanwhile, since Piero Manzoni canned his own feces and sold them in a gallery and Chris Burden had himself shot in the arm and crucified to a Volkswagen, we see in art ever more fitting parables of its end, such as the self-portraits drawn by Anastasi—with his eyes closed. “Serious” music is long dead and popular music deteriorates; poetry nears collapse and retreats from view; drama, which moved from the Absurd to Silence, is dying; and the novel is eclipsed by non-fiction as the only way to write seriously.

In a jaded, enervated age, when it seems to speak is to say less, art is certainly less. Baudelaire was obliged to claim a poet’s dignity in a society which had no more dignity to hand out. A century and more later how in-escapable is the truth of that condition and how much more threadbare is the consolation or station of “timeless” art.

Adorno began his last book thus: “Today it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes without saying, much less without thinking. Everything about art has become problematic: its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist.” But Aesthetic Theory affirms art, just as Marcuse’s last work did, testifying to despair and to the difficulty of assailing the hermeticially sealed ideology of culture. And although other “radicals,” such as Habermas, counsel that the desire to abolish symbolic mediation is irrational, it is becoming clearer that when we really experiment with our hearts and hands the sphere of art is shown to be pitiable. In the transfiguration we must enact the symbolic will be left behind and art refused in favor of the real. Play, creativity, self-expression and authentic experience will recommence at that moment.

“That’s my Christ. It does everything I tell it to do.”

Man a Machine{1}

David Paul

When driving a car, one’s nervous system becomes linked with the vehicle in a very basic way. If the driver decides to brake, the body performs a complex sequence of maneuvers with the brake, accelerator and steering wheel, all acting as sense-extensions. The vehicle becomes body-like and responds in body-like fashion to the driver’s thoughts. If the driver decides to accelerate, the brain signals the foot which responds by signaling the accelerator, which responds by increasing fuel flow, which enacts a series of events that causes the vehicle to increase speed. In a sense, the car is the driver’s body and is directly controlled by the driver’s brain and central nervous system.

The driver “feels” other objects external to the vehicle and judges distances from the car in a manner crudely analogous to the operations involved in judging one’s environment from the physical body. The difference is that the signal flow from the brain to the auto is indirect and is impeded by the physical separation of the operator’s appendages from the appropriate control mechanisms. A little over a decade ago, there was talk of an experimental automobile braking system which was to be engaged by simply lifting an eyebrow, cutting in half the reaction time of a conventional brake system and reducing physical effort and mechanical work. As we design increasingly subtle mechanisms responsive to heat, pressure, and biological signals, we appear to be approaching a time when “willing” a machine into action will be relatively common. The separate steps between thought and realization of a desired goal begin to blur and finally disappear. Signal flow between organic and mechanical units linked in a system gradually becomes continuous and unbroken.

This trend toward continuous communications has resulted in the transfer of the machine operator’s work from “... the level of muscular activity to the level of perception, memory and thought—to internal mental processes.”[6] MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) noted that the Industrial Revolution concerned the machine primarily as an alternative to human muscle. According to Lewis Mumford in The Pentagon of Power, “Man’s biological emergence during the last two million years has, indeed, accelerated; and it has done so mainly in one direction, in the enlargement of the nervous system, under an increasingly unified cerebral direction.” Machines make the body expendable. If machines have accomplished nothing else, they’ve reduced the human self to the brain and central nervous system.

The history of simple tools is a chronology of extension and articulation of human functions. Tools, originally conceived about two million years ago as crude adjuncts of the body to increase its power and efficacy, are passive participants in accomplishing work.

“A machine is merely a supplemental limb; this is the be-all and end-all of machinery.” (Butler, Erewhon.) Tools connected in series produce machines. Machinery has gone a step beyond the tool in that it is capable of varying degrees of automatism (self-regulated activity without human participation), contingent behavior (decision making) and reaction to sensory stimulus through artificial organs. Mechanical history involves not only extension but replacement of human activity. Mumford has actually called the machine “... a sort of minor organism, designed to perform a single set of functions.” You might say that extension of the limb evolved into extensions of the brain.

Technology improves itself in a Darwinian way, as seen in the electronic marketplace, where unfit” contraptions become extinct every year. As technology absorbs more and more human work, the line separating biology and mechanics gradually becomes less distinct. Though we are still toolmakers and our “logic engines” are still tools in the general sense of the word, the context has changed. No one living at the time of Hero of Alexandria[7] had any idea that the five machines he defined would have produced offspring capable of instantaneous logarithmic calculation or incorporated into the body as working parts. By World War II, machines were exhibiting behavior originally thought to be characteristic of primitive life. Early guided missiles were designed with the idea of goal-seeking and scanning in mind, which “had combined as the essential mechanical conception of a working model that would behave very much like a simple animal” (Grey Walter, The Living Brain).

Occupying the gray area between biology and technology is cybernetic theory. The word’s root is Greek for “steersman” and André Ampère used the word in 1834 to mean “science of control” or “the branch of politics which is concerned with the means of government.” Norbert Wiener used the term to refer to “the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine” concerned especially with mathematical analysis of information flow between biological, electronic and mechanical systems, and maintenance of order in those systems.

The complexity of predicting trajectories of quickly moving targets during World War II sparked Wiener and Julian Bigelow’s development of cybernetics. Constantly changing information about the target’s direction and speed necessitated feedback devices which would allow a gun to regulate its own movements. Interestingly enough, human operators in Wiener’s automatic gun (which was never built) were given equal status with electro-mechanical components in the feedback loop.

Information gleaned from the project concerning feedback and servo-mechanisms led Wiener and associates to devise a model of the central nervous system that “explained some of its most characteristic activities as circular processes, emerging from the nervous system into the muscles, and re-entering the nervous system through the sense organs” (McCorduck, Machines Who Think).

“The connecting link was electronics, and the almost mystical fit between mathematic logic and the behavior of electronic circuits. The thrust of the new information sciences was to precisely define and measure information in mathematic terms; to add information to the list of fundamental definitions basic to science—matter, energy, electric charge and the like” (Hanson, The New Alchemists).

“It has long been clear to me,” says Wiener in Cybernetics, “that the modern ultra-rapid computing machine was in principle an ideal central nervous system to an apparatus for automatic control; and that its input and output need not be in the form of numbers or diagrams but might very well be, respectively, the readings of artificial sense organs, such as photoelectric cells or thermometers, and the performances of motors or solenoids.”

Information transfer is fundamental to discussing the current state of technology. Automata need only instructions to accomplish given tasks. The link with the machine is mental. Machine language carries out our work. Language, according to Wiener, “is not exclusively an attribute of living beings but one which they may share to a certain degree with the machines man has contracted.”

“Cybernetics recorded the switch from one dominant model, or set of explanations for phenomena, to another. Energy—the notion central to Newtonian mechanics—was now replaced by information. The ideas of information theory, such as coding, storage, noise, and so on, provided a better explanation for a whole host of events, from the behavior of electronic circuits to the behavior of a replicating cell” (McCorduck, Machines Who Think).

Electrical powering of machinery allowed a dialogue between organic and mechanized systems. Galvani’s discovery of electrical nervous stimulation in animal muscles around 1790 was the starting point of electrophysiology (apparently an inspiration to Mary Shelley). In 1875, electric brain currents were discovered and in 1924, Hans Berger devised a method of recording electrical activity from the surface of the scalp, later to become known as electro-encephalography, central to biofeedback.

All living tissue is sensitive to electric current and generates small voltages. Our nervous system’s activity is accompanied by electrical potentials and can be controlled externally by electricity, providing a means of direct communication between human and machine systems, the common thread of biofeedback and prosthetic research.

Technical history, then, involves extension and replacement of human functions in more than just a metaphorical sense. Wiener, again, was the first to suggest using myoelectric currents (produced by contracting muscle fiber) to control the motions of prosthetic limbs. He believed that signals from the brain to the muscle fiber in the stump of the limb could be tapped by electrodes. Small motors in the prosthesis could amplify the current to control the limb’s movements. The “Boston Elbow” and “Utah Arm” are motor-driven prostheses that follow this procedure almost exactly, using electrodes that attach to the shoulder muscle or lay implanted in the arm socket. Through biofeedback the amputee learns to control the device somewhat like a normal limb.

The following is extracted from a paper explaining the design and construction of a microcomputer-controlled manipulator: “For an amputee to obtain motions when they are desired, he or she must give the microcomputer needed information. This information can come in the form of myoelectric signals picked up on the surface of the amputee’s skin. These signals occur when the brain sends a signal to the muscle and the muscle tissues expand or contract to produce the requested motion. When a part of the body is amputated, many times the amputee continues to have a mental image of the missing part, a phenomenon known as the phantom limb syndrome. Mentally, the amputee can continue to move this phantom limb. Therefore, the brain continues to send signals to the remaining muscles and these muscles continue to try to produce the desired motion.”[8]

Grey Walter experimented with the E-wave, or expectancy wave, which is a voltage that “arises in the brain about one second before a voluntary action, which can be either a motor act (such as pushing a button) or simply an action with respect to making a firm decision about something” (Rorvick, As Man Becomes Machine). The E-wave, like any electric signal from any source, can also be used to operate electrically controlled devices. Slow progress has finally resulted in a recent announcement that a researcher at Johns Hopkins University has learned to predict the arm movements of a monkey by analysis of its brain waves. These techniques, developed twenty years ago, are rather basic, but they’re a first step in allowing machinery to be mentally or neurally controlled like alternate body parts. The opposite of thought-activated machinery is electrical brain stimulation which sinks electrodes into the brain and applies minor voltages. Just as thoughts and mental impulses produce electrical activity, most motor functions and emotions can be triggered or influenced by electrically stimulating the brain. “When a patient is conscious during a brain operation, the surgeon can give electrical stimulation in the motor strip and produce definite movements; here a twisting of the foot, there an arm movement, at a third point a clamping of the jaw” (Calder, The Mind of Man).

Electrical brain stimulation provides researchers with a means of mapping and controlling brain functions, including stimulating dormant sections (as in stroke victims) to produce useful body operation. Sequential computer control of serial stimulus has apparently been successful in producing “lifelike” movement in laboratory animals suffering paralysis. Stimulating the cortex directly to replace missing sensory input is another application. “Brindley and Lewin have described the case of a fifty-two-year-old woman, totally blind after suffering bilateral glaucoma, in whom an array of eighty small receiving coils were implanted subcutaneously above the skull, terminating in eighty platinum electrodes encased in a sheet of silicone rubber placed in direct contact with the visual cortex of the right occipital lobe.... With this type of transdermal stimulation, a visual sensation was perceived by the patient in the left half of her visual field ... and simultaneous excitation of several electrodes evoked the perception of predictable simple visual patterns” (Delgado, Physical Control of the Mind). Electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve has produced auditory sensations. Appropriately placed electrodes can alter blood pressure, sleep, motor functions, the sensation of pain and even hostile behavior.

The following account illustrates one of the many possibilities opened up by the advent of these techniques: “... the ability to detect radiation has been bestowed on a group of experimental cats, each of which is wired into a portable, miniature geiger counter that telemeters electrical impulses directly to the feline brain via implanted electrodes. The square-wave electrical impulses are similar to normal nervous impulses. They are transmitted to a portion of the brain that is associated with fear reactions, causing the cats to shy away from radioactive sources” (Rorvik, As Man Becomes Machine). According to José Delgado, “It is reasonable to speculate that in the near future the stimoreceiver [instruments for radio transmission and reception of electrical messages to and from the brain] may provide the essential link from man to computer to man, with a reciprocal feedback between neurons and instruments which represents a new orientation for the medical control of neurophysiological functions. For example, it is conceivable that the localized abnormal activity which announces the imminence of an epileptic attack could be picked up by implanted electrodes, telemetered to a distant instrument room, tape-recorded, and analyzed by a computer capable of recognizing abnormal electrical patterns. Identification of the specific electrical disturbance could trigger the emission of radio signals to activate the patient’s stimoreceiver and apply an electrical stimulation to a determined inhibitory area of the brain, thus blocking the onset of the convulsive episode” (Delgado, Physical Control of the Mind).

“By the turn of the century, every major organ except the brain and central nervous system will have artificial replacements,” says Dr. William Dobelle, whose Institute for Artificial Organs in New York is working on replacements for the pancreas, heart, ear and eye (“Building the Bionic Man,” Newsweek, July 12, 1982). The concept of total prosthesis seems plausible, if this is true. Creating an artificial human brain, however, is a little more difficult. Some say it will never happen. Since the first Artificial Intelligence experiments, attempts to mimic complex human neural activity with the crudities of current electronic hardware have been plagued with challenging problems.

Breakthroughs in this line of research might take place through electro-biological engineering or hybridization of computer architecture with molecular engineering. Naval Research Laboratories, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other investors like Sharp and Sanyo-Denki are funding research into what is known as the Molecular Electronic Device (MED) or “biochip.” There are several designs for these organic microprocessors, but the essential idea is to use protein molecules or synthetic organic molecules as computing elements to store information or act as switches with the application of voltage. Signal flow in this case would be by sodium or calcium ions. Others feel that artificial proteins can be constructed to carry signals by electron flow. Still another idea is to “metalize” dead neuronal tissue to produce processing devices. “The ultimate scenario,” says geneticist Kevin Ulmer, of Genex Corporation, “is to develop a complete genetic code for the computer that would function as a virus does, but instead of producing more virus, it would assemble a fully operational computer inside a cell” (“Biochip Revolution,” Omni, December, 1981).

The very notion that computer chips could be “grown” or that living and inert matter could be fused together on a molecular level promises surprises ahead for those with orthodox notions of mind and body. As machines become more and more responsive to human internal experiences (from the desire to move a limb or even rage or sexual pleasure), we’ll probably reach a stage at which every subtle nuance of imagination and consciousness can be realized, stored and displayed through machinery. And at some point in the future it will be possible to “will” events to occur.

New twists in the evolution of the brain might be brought about through our own manipulation of the elements of biological science. If we seriously consider Spengler’s suggestion that the hand and tool must have come into existence together, then it follows that the tool’s transformation into an “organism” capable of monitoring and responding to our biological functions transforms us as well.

Collectivization of breasts in a Moscow nursery

Let’s Do Justice for Our Comrade P-38

Red Brigades

There was a great need for this, considering the confusion reigning among the zealous directors of the disinformation newspapers. Lately, on several occasions, we have heard talk of a phantom “38 special.” Well, this weapon no longer exists. It is the product of the perverse imagination of journalists who confuse the trademark of a particular weapon (the Walther 38, the number 38 referring to the year of manufacture) with the 38 special, which is not a particular weapon or model, but a caliber, and, moreover, not a caliber used in semi-automatic pistols (like the Walther), but in revolvers.

Let us clarify the difference between revolvers, semi-automatic pistols, and automatic weapons:

The revolver is comprised of a fixed barrel, mounted on a mechanism, and a revolving cylinder which has different breeches for the cartridges.

Automatic weapons (machine guns) are those whose firing, when one keeps one’s finger pressed on the lock, is only interrupted when there are no more cartridges.

For semi-automatic weapons, the cartridges, in an automatic loader, fire one after the other.

We should clarify one point: while in semi-automatic pistols the ejection of the shell occurs at the moment one fires, in revolvers the shell remains in the cylinder.

This is the reason that the discovery of shells from 38-special cartridges fired by assassin extremists, as we often have the opportunity to read about, seems to us completely impossible.

It must be added that if revolvers that can be loaded with 38-special cartridges are on sale in gun stores, and thus offered for the use of the Movement, as in Rome or Bologna, the same is not true of pistols like the Walther P-38, which is loaded only with 7.65 and 9 mm automatic cartridges, since the sale of these weapons is prohibited in Italy; they are only found on the international markets. It is enough to say that pistols are certainly unobtainable for the modern proletariat bands, which, unfortunately, have not yet achieved enough mobility to permit them to cross the borders and roam through the capitols of Europe.

If, in autonomous demonstrations, the “comrade P-38” is mentioned, it is certainly not because we are hiding P-38’s under our coats; but we must observe that there is a symbolic aspect to this, the admission that today it is necessary and just to carry arms. What is obvious is that those who consider arming themselves in view of close prospects do not envision equipping themselves with a 6.35 Bernadelli.

During the last war, the P-38 was the best perfected and most modern handgun (the introduction of the double-action mechanism was significant in this regard). That’s where it gets its prestige. It performed satisfactorily on all fronts and the Afrika Korps was the only one to complain of some jamming because of the sand: with this in mind, they slightly increased the space between the stock, the hammer, and the barrel. The safety mechanism proved exceptionally solid.

The German Army adopted the P-38, perfected by Waffenfabrik Carl Walther, as the standard issue pistol beginning in 1938 (hence the pistol’s name, 1938=P-38). They decided to use the Walther at the same time as the P.08 (better known as the Luger), then to replace the Luger with the P-38, because the latter was a weapon better adapted to mass production and less likely to break down in combat.

The manufacture of the P-38 began again after the war, and today this weapon still represents the best mechanical system among double-action pistols, with a cylinder which can even take high-power cartridges.

Thanks to the double-action firing mechanism, when the lock is deactivated, the gun is cocked while it is still in rest position, which enables the cartridge to be brought into the barrel with precision as soon as the hammer is pulled back; the first shot can thus be fired with the greatest speed, exactly as in a revolver. For further explanations, we advise journalists and all interested parties to address themselves to the Chief of Security Services Emilio Santillo, who has a reputation as an expert in the field and as an infallible marksman: beyond clarification of a general nature, he can explain the operation of the Colt Python .357 caliber Magnum, which he always carries on him.

(Translated by Richard Gardner)

Long Live Death!

The Abraxas Foundation

Fire will come, and judge, and condemn all things.

Leave rest and quiet to the dead, where they belong.

Whatever we see when awake is death; when asleep, dreams.

—Heraclitus

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

—Jonathan Swift

The body of a dead enemy always smells good.

—Charles IX

Oh Death was never an enemy of ours! We laughed at him, and we laughed with him, old chum. No soldier’s paid to kick against his powers. We laughed, knowing that better men would come, and greater wars; when each proud fighter brags He wars on Death—for lives; not men—for flags.

—Owen

I sought my death, and found it in the womb; I looked for life, and saw it was a shade; I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb; And now I die, and now I am but made; The glass is full, and now the glass is run: And now I live, and now my life is done.

—Chidiock Tichborne

The most appropriate type of daily life for me was a day by day world destruction. Peace was the most difficult and abnormal state to live in.... No moment is so dazzling as when everyday imaginings concerning death and danger and world destruction are transformed into duty.

—Yukio Mishima

Magnanimity perishes during long periods of peace and, in its stead, there develop cynicism, apathy, weariness, and, at most, spiteful raillery ... Honor, humaneness, self-sacrifice are still being respected, valued, and rated highly immediately after war, but the longer peace lasts—the dimmer, the more withered, the more torpid all these beautiful magnanimous things grow, while wealth and the spirit of acquisition take possession of everything. At length, there is nothing left but hypocrisy—hypocrisy of honor, of self-sacrifice, of duty, so that these will still be respected, despite all the cynicism, but merely in boastful phrases and as a matter of form. There will be no genuine honor, and nothing but formulas will be left. Formulas of honor mean the death of honor.

—Feodor Dostoevsky

Live, because truth is living. Die, because death is immortal. Order your battle anew. We are the equals of Time. This is the war’s beginning.

If this be the hour of battle and harvest, here are the sickles, here are the weapons. Let us fight and reap. Let us die and gather in. We will no longer share our bread with the brute beast.

March on! Now as then, in wood and mountain and plain, or river and lake and sea, let man daily invent his glory and his death. There is no more sleep. There is no more truce. There is no more respite. March on! Towards the world’s battle.

—Gabriele D’Annunzio

Our logic is at fault if we ignore the fact that right is founded on brute force and even today needs violence to maintain it.

—Sigmund Freud

War is the common condition. Strife is just ice, and all things come to pass through the compulsion of strife.

War is kind and father of all. Some he has shown forth as gods, and others as men. Some he has made slaves, and others free.

The best of men sacrifice all for one thing, overflowing fame among mortals. But most men only stuff themselves like cattle.

God and men honor those slain in battle

Greater dooms win greater destinies.

Souls slain in war are purer than those that perish with disease. They arise into wakefulness and become guardians of the living and dead.

—Heraclitus

Cattle die, kinsmen die, and I too shall die. The only thing I know that doesn’t die is the fame of dead men’s deeds.

—Robert Jay Mathews

We don’t acknowledge the brotherhood of people, only blood brotherhood. We want the freedom, not of herds, but of duty. We hate the propaganda of equality. Struggle is the father of all things. Equality is death....

—Rudolf von Sebottendorff

This dream of absolute, universal equality is amazing, terrifying, and inhuman. And the moment it captures people’s minds, the result is mountains of corpses and rivers of blood....

—Vladimir Bukovsky

Laughing, let us perish. Amid laughter face our doom.

—Richard Wagner

I believe the World War, so far as concerns, not individuals, but the entire race of man, is good... The World War has redeemed mankind from the fat and gross materialism of generations of peace, and caught mankind up in a blaze of the spirit... Civilization at the present time is going through a Pentecostal cleansing that can result only in good for mankind.

—Jack London

I know, each demon leaveth us, if but the fitting blood is made to flow.

—from the Richard Strauss opera Elektra

Death and destruction are necessary to the health of the world, and therefore as natural, and lovable, as birth and life. Only priests and born cowards moan and weep over dying. Brave men face it with approving nonchalance.

—Ragnar Redbeard

Come lovely and soothing death, undulate around the world. Serenely Arriving! Arriving! In the day, in the night; to all, to each. Sooner or later, delicate Death.

—Walt Whitman

‘Tis a battle for bread, for love, and for breath, ‘Tis a race for life to the jaws of death.

—P. Luftig

Death endeth all for every man, For every ‘son of thunder’: Then be a Lion in the path; and don’t be trampled under.

—Anonymous

This circling planet-ball is no navel-contemplating Nirvana, but rather a vast whirling star-lit Valhalla, where victorious battlers quaff the foaming hearts-blood of their smashed up adversaries, from the scooped out skull goblets of the slain in neverending war.

—Ragnar Redbeard

Yearning love’s scorching desire, burn bright in my breast, urge me to deeds and death.

—Richard Wagner

The Muslim Program

What the Muslims Believe

1. WE BELIEVE in the One God Whose proper Name is Allah.

2. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Qur-an and in the Scriptures of all the Prophets of God.

3. WE BELIEVE in the truth of the Bible but we believe that it has been tampered with and must be reinterpreted so that mankind will not be snared by the falsehoods that have added to it.

4. WE BELIEVE in Allah’s Prophets and the Scriptures they brought to the people.

5. WE BELIEVE in the resurrection of the dead—not in the physical resurrection—but in mental resurrection. We believe that the so-called Negroes are most in need of mental resurrection: therefore, they will be resurrected first.

Furthermore, we believe we are the people of God’s choice, as it has been written, that God would choose the rejected and the despised. We can find no other persons fitting this description in these last days more than the so-called Negroes in America. We believe in the resurrection of the righteous.

6. WE BELIEVE in the judgment; we believe this first judgment will take place as God revealed, in America...

7. WE BELIEVE this is the time in history for the separation of the so-called Negroes and the so-called white Americans. We believe the black man should be freed in name as well as in fact. By this we mean that he should be freed from the names imposed upon him by his former slave masters. Names which identified him as being the slave master’s slave. We believe that if we are free indeed, we should go in our own people’s names—the black peoples of the earth.

8. WE BELIEVE in justice for all, whether in God or not; we believe as others, that we are due equal justice as human beings. We believe in equality—as a nation—of equals. We do not believe that we are equal with out slave masters in the status of “freed slaves.”

We recognize and respect American citizens as independent peoples and we respect their laws which govern this nation.

9. WE BELIEVE that the offer of integration is hypocritical and is made by those who are trying to deceive the black peoples into believing that their 400-year-old enemies of freedom, justice and equality are, all of a sudden, their “friends.” Furthermore, we believe that such deception is intended to prevent black people from realizing that the time in history has arrived for the separation from the whites of this nation.

If the white people are truthful about their professed friendship toward the so-called Negro, they can prove it by dividing up American with their slaves.

We do not believe that America will ever be able to furnish enough jobs for her own millions of unemployed, in addition to jobs for the 20,000,000 black people as well.

10. WE BELIEVE that we who declared ourselves to be righteous Muslims, should not participate in wars which take the lives of humans. We do not believe this nation should force us to take part in such wars, for we have nothing to gain from it unless America agrees to give us the necessary territory wherein we may have something to fight for.

11. WE BELIEVE our women should be respected and protected as the women of other nationalities are respected and protected.

12. WE BELIEVE that Allah (God) appeared in the Person of Master W. Fard Muhammad, July, 1930; the long-awaited “Messiah” of the Christians and the “Mahdi” of the Muslims.

We believe further and lastly that Allah is God and besides HIM there is no God and He will bring about a universal government of peace wherein we all can live in peace together.

What the Muslims Want

1. We want freedom. We want a full and complete freedom.

2. We want justice. Equal justice under the law. We want justice applied equally to all, regardless of creed or class or color.

3. We want equality of opportunity. We want equal membership in society with the best in civilized society.

4. We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves, to be allowed to establish a spearate state or territory of their own—either on this continent or elsewhere. We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to provide such land and that the area must be fertile and minerally rich. We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to maintain and supply our needs in this separate territory for the next 20–25 years—until we are able to produce and supply our own needs.

Since we cannot get along with them in peace and equality, after giving them 400 years of our sweat and blood and receiving in return some of the worst treatment human beings have ever experienced, we believe that our contributions to this land and the suffering forced upon us by white America, justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own.

5. We want freedom for all Believers of Islam now held in federal prisons. We want freedom for all black men and women now under death sentence in innumerable prisons in the North as well as the South.

We want every black man and woman to have the freedom to accept or reject being separated fom the slave master’s children and establish a land of their own.

We know that the above plan for the solution of their black and white conflict is the best and only answer to the problem between two people.

6. We want an immediate end to the police brutality and mob attacks against the so-called Negro thoughout the United States.

We believe that the Federal government should intercede to see that black men and women tried in white courts receive justice in accordance with the laws of the land—or allow us to build a new nation for ourselves, dedicated to justice, freedom and liberty.

7. As long as we are not allowed to establish a state or territory of our own, we demand not only equal justice under the laws of the United States, but equal employment opportunities—NOW!

We do not believe that after 400 years of free or nearly free labor, sweat and blood, which has helped America become rich and powerful, that so many thousands of black people should have to subsist on relief, charity or live in poor houses.

8. We want the government of the United States to exempt our people from ALL taxation as long as we are deprived of equal justice under the laws of the land.

9. We want equal education—but separate schools up for 16 for boys and 18 for girls on the condition that the girls be sent to women’s colleges and universities. We want all black children educated, taught and trained by their own teachers.

Under such a schooling system we believe we will make a better nation of people. The United States government should provide, free, all necessary textbooks and equipment, schools and college buildings. The Muslim teachers shall be left free to teach and train their people in the way of righteousness, decency and self-respect.

10. We believe that intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited. We want the religion of Islam taught without hinderance or suppression.

From The Fall of America by Elijah Muhammad, 1973

Mel Lyman: God’s Own Story

Laura Whitcomb
Material Compiled by John Aes-Nihil

Overpopulated and over-proselytized, the Victorian tenements which housed the love generation’s oscillating anthills began to erode as quickly as the illusion did.

The pavements echoed with love’s demise. The discarded remains of “youthquake” were now street-smart hustlers. Those left behind that summer’s exodus could only anesthetizing themselves from the impending San Francisco cold and especially, the confusion at hand.

The whitewashing euphoria of acid left behind faces that were convoluted, void of expression. All that remained was paranoia, phobia and frustration. Hate would become the last turned-on revelation. A locally distributed paper, Avatar, published under the inscription, “TO ALL WHO WOULD KNOW”:

The Oracle continues to recruit for this summer’s Human Shit In. Kids are starving on the street. Minds and bodies are being mained as we watch a scale model of Vietnam.

Now someone had to have an answer. The remnants of those evaporated souls awaited remedy by a savior. That autumn, saviors appeard to supply the demand: pimps, pushers, scientologists, yang, yin, zen. Scruffy, penny-dreadful Jesuses. The Process Church of the Final Judgment. The Two. The Order of Melchezidek. Charlie’s Angels, who claimed, “In love there is no wrong.” Anyone who posed an answer to a perennial question was God-for-a-day.

Avatar’s “To All Who Would Know” column introduced its founder and doyen, Mel Lyman. “I am the truth and I speak the truth,” proclaimed Mel. “In all humility I tell you that I am the greatest man in the world and it does not trouble me in the least. I am going to attack everything you believe in, everything you cling to. I am going to shed light on your dark truths.”

The column proceded to attack the fundamental belief of the Aquarian Age, that of Universal Love: “Love doesn’t exist only in rare fleeting moments.”

Love is something you BECOME after there is no more YOU ... through complete sacrifice of the personality ... giving up everything you want for yourself. All these weaklings who cling to God for support are just putting off their own crucifixions. And you must die to be reborn.

In this manner Mel Lyman presciently put his imprimatur on the apocalytic mindfuck, regeneration for the price of self-sacrifice. Manson called it “losing the ego” or “cease to exist.” Baptists translate it as being reborn. Either way, breaking oneself down to be built up again wasn’t hard for the lost souls of Hate and Ashburied. They were already broken.

Mel, one of the early scene-stealers at Tim Leary’s Newton center, had collected a following of footlose beatniks and passersby who where engrosed by his demiurgic simplicity. It was here that Bruce Conner had given him the idea to be a modern day self-proclaiming God. Mel readily took on the role, and to a degree, had convinced himself.

He began playing harmonica for Jim Kweskin’s Jug band, and secured himself as a living leged at the Newport Folk Festival when he deliberated a 30-minute solo performance of “Rock of Ages.” This stadium-clearing exhibition was, explained Mel, a request from God Himself.

God had collected around him a Family, and recruited more as he proposed his idea for a communal housing site in the middle of Boston’s black ghetto, Roxbury. The site as called Fort Hill. Mel, as most gods do, served as head of household.

Mel began to seduce the nation’s underground press with his ordinariness. There was something strange though remarkably apt about the guy next door making a galactic claim. When a subscriber to Avatar wrote in professing his adamant faith in the mission of Mel, the reply would be:

Wouldn’t be so hard for you to take, imagine how I feel. Betcha never thought it would happen like this did ya? No turning water to wine and raising the dead this trip, just gonna tell it like it is.

Mel’s prosaic jargon would be dismissed by the vulgar as dull. Those who had their minds blown and expanded would find the prose all-encompassing.

Mel Ritual:
Disciple: But What Am I
Master: You Are A Question
Disciple: Then What Are You
Master: I Am An Answer

Mel’s answers emanated from the deathbeat of cheesy Americana. Mel’s scatalogic obsessions, homophobic unease, and worminess in his love affairs made this man quite the perfect garden variety God in a materialist world turned upside-down. Mel’s art was to share a piece of everyone’s inner torment and isolation. His personal became their universal.

He began to loathe hippiedom, of whose foundation he was part of. “You’re all too full of dope and pride to know what’s good for you anymore. Tim Leary’s backing out on the generation he turned on. Your slogans are empty.”

Mel passing through Los Angeles wrote: “I’m sapped. This city drains me and has no way of restoring my depths. Modern-day Sodom, the epitome of decadence.”

His obsession with the components and mobilization of fecal material was expressed from a Bowery loft in late October of 1964:

It seems a little inconsiderate on the part of our Creator that we were designed as to have to provide for anal clearance in such a beastly fashion. It would be so much more convenient if he had provided a separate receptacle somewhere within the seemingly useless vast buttock area and joining the lower colon by means of a trap door whereby all turds, attempting to pass over and await their disposal somewhere in closer proximity to the blessed orifice, would slip helplessly into, and there await their grand “bombs away” en masse at the simple press of an appropriately concealed button, thereby leaving the lower intestinal tract free at all times to allow passageway of whatever wanted to pass away, but alas it is not so and thus do I annoyingly always find myself obligated to keep the passageway clear through my own determined efforts. And thus did I incur the wound I previously intended to relate. I applied just a little too much in excess of the normal safety margin of proper pressure endeavoring to squeeze out the last little brown drop and ‘rip.’ I believe I’ve ruptured my lower intestinal lining, possibly even to the point of initiating the protrusion of the delicate lining out through the outer walls of the natural cavity and good heavens, if this be so I may even at thist very moment be internally filling up with shit!

Lyman’s response to a young man’s fear of his own homosexuality was addressed to the boy who called himself “King Fag”: “Fag feelings are like this. They do not come from the true person. They are not a part of the center felt subject which feels itself as ‘I,’”

No one was entirely sure where Mel Lyman had come from. But one thing was certain: he was more worldly than he seemed. Mel would explain he was not of this world. His purpose was explained in one of his two books, Autobiography of a World Savior. He was ordained by his superiors to carry out a mission on planet earth. It was “necessary to put forth a special effort to redeem the planet as it had grown so accustomed to existing at this lower vibration.”

He was transported to Earth where a body was being prepared for Mel to “inhabit.” Finding humans a “vulgar sort,” Mel’s childhood was spent travelling back and forth between our world and the milky way “playing interplanetary hooky.”

Then his superiors ordered him to stay put until his task was achieved. In 1972, Rolling Stone magazine published a two-part front cover series on this missionary. The article was entitled “Mel Lyman and the Holy Siege of America.” Rolling Stone’s publishing arm brought out the book Mindfuckers, further exposing Mel as a vicious dictator whose aim was total control of the American underground. Writer David Felton accused Mel of trying to take over radio stations by force, and wreaking similar tactics on publishing firms, magazines, and newspapers.

Mindfuckers and the Rolling Stone articles raked the muck over a comment made by Jim Kweskin: “The only difference between us [Lyman Family] and the Manson Family is that we don’t go around preaching peace and love and we haven’t killed anyone, yet.” Kweskin’s apparently humorous comment betrayed a preoccupation with the Manson clan. Charlie’s picture hung in the Fort Hill study room and for some time Squeaky Fromme visited and even stayed for short lengths of time at the Lyman Los Angeles home. For a brief time, Charlie and Mel corresponded with each other.

Mel and Charlie’s doctrines for spiritual betterment mirrored one another, even though disguised under the allegory of Cain and Abel. Both Families were prepared to carry out violent and coercive maneuvers to get their leaders’ word out.

The Lyman Family implemented an armed defense as heated arguments arose with Fort Hill’s neighboring black ghetto, and Manson was, of course, imprisoned partially on the grounds that he was attempting to catalyze a race war.

The true Manson/Lyman parallel was revealed in their gnostic pairing of good and evil. Everyone was God and the Devil, for together Satan and Christ inhabit everyone. Like Christ and Satan, Mel and Charlie were both metaphorically crucified and sent to hell.

Mel once said, “Anything that isn’t created out of the depths of loneliness is not a creation, only a production, and has no soul to sustain it.” A letter to the editor in the May, 1969 Avatar:

Dear Mel,

I am surprised to find myself so relieved and delighted that you have declared yourself Christ—though I knew it was coming I did not realize how much I needed it. When you declared yourself World Savior, that makes me realize how much you have opened yourself to me, and committed yourself to my salvation.

Three years later Mel disappeared. The Lyman family shut their doors and denied their existence to the prying, inquiring world. They would later claim their leader was dead, though a body or death certificate was never certifiably produced. God was dead, and that was all that mattered.

Most people who claim to be waiting for the second coming are actually perverts who are just waiting for a chance to get on the second crucifixion. Some of them are already bargaining for the television rights lest they get caught with their pants down by an unknown contender making a surprise bid for the number one spot. What they fail to realize is that the twentieth-century savior is going to outfox them all by, yes, he’s going to crucify himself, thus getting a jump on his competitors. Not only that, but his loyal followers will be standing there beside him, not just gawking or taking notes, but yes, sports lovers, actually crucifying themselves right along with their leader. And they stand, eyes wild. It’s hard to see because the light is getting so bright, but it seems that each one of these men and women is armed with a golden hammer and a handful of plutonium spikes. They’re standing in a circle around a tower, on the breast of a hill in the midst of a slum, and they’re actually nailing themselves to the ground, fellow Americans, and some of them are nailing each other to the ground—let’s have a slow motion replay of that last bit of action—wonderful—and now it appears that these people are actually driving these spikes in rhythm and singing some sort of spiritual or worksong!—word just in from our computers indicates that the language they’re singing in has never been spoken on Earth before—perhaps that’s why they’re singing it instead—ha ha—and ladies and gentlemen, the modern messiah has just announced that as soon as he’s sure these spikes have been driven deeply enough, he and his disciples will rise, that’s right, folks, they’re going to ascend into the heavens, and since they’re so, well, attached to the earth, they’re going to drag it along behind them! Wow! Sounds like they’ve got their work cut out for them, eh? Lucky you can just sit in your arm-chair and wait for it to come on tv! They seem to be nearly ready for the Big Drag now ... hard to tell what’s actually happening from down here, though, what with all the blood and thunder and fire and screaming—maybe I’ll just step up the hill here a bit, and get a closer look ... might be a little risky, but it’s my job to get the truth, before it gets me. I’m going to try to interview this young lady here, to get the feminine angle, but first, a word from our sponsor:

FRIENDS, HAVE YOU REREAD YOUR AVATARS?

The Process: A Personal Reminiscence

R. N. Taylor

They appeared as though out of nowhere, or so it must have seemed to the countless pedestrians who came across the black-clad missionaries hawking their books and pamphlets on the streets of major U.S. cities.

They were members of The Process, Church of the Final Judgment. Their message was one of Apocalyptic prophecy infused with an odd theology of Christian/Satanic reconciliation. Of their origins, intentions and activities, there has been much dispute and allegation. One thing, however, remains certain: The Process has left an indelible watermark upon the post-psychedelic era, and have become a part of that era’s urban folklore.

Satan’s Power by William Sims Bainbridge (University of California Press, 1978) characterized The Process as a cult that never quite got off the ground and which experienced a major theological and organizational schism in the mid-70s, after which the organization rather pathetically faded into oblivion. Ed Sanders’ The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion alludes to the existence of a sort of modern Thuggee or Satanic underground, in which he claims The Process to have been a central organizing factor. A court decision in Chicago forbade the publisher to delete any mention of the group in future editions of The Family. The Process lost their case against the British publisher.

Human sacrifices, dragon-festooned portable crematoria, cannibalism and other snuff-cult activities were among the charges in Sanders’ book, along with supposed direct links to the Manson Family. Vincent Bugliosi, prosecuting attorney in the Tate-LaBianca trials, offers similar innuendo in his bestselling Helter-Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders. Neither Bugliosi or Sanders presents any hard evidence for the Process/Manson link, save for the fact that Manson wrote a letter which appeared in the “Death” issue of The Process magazine. Manson joined such other notables as Malcolm Muggeridge, Marianne Faithful and Salvador Dali as participants in the Process magazine. Several members of The Process visited Manson in prison; their purpose for the visit has not yet been made clear. Other tenuous Manson-Process links are based upon the close proximity to a Process house to a Family residence in the Haight-Ashbury region. Manson also coyly remarked to Bugliosi that he and Robert DeGrimston (co-founder and prophet of The Process) were “one and the same.”

Rumors of dark goings-on within The Process came to full fruition in Maury Terry’s phantasmagoric The Ultimate Evil: An Investigation of America’s Most Dangerous Satanic Cult, With New Evidence Linking Charles Manson and Son of Sam. Based upon the hearsay of anonymous witnesses and other undocumented allegations, Terry attempts to link murders, drug dealers, Satanists, child pornographers and members of the entertainment industry as part of a widespread Satanic underground. An entire chapter of The Ultimate Evil is devoted to The Process. After regurgitating well-known facts of its founders’ backgrounds and genesis of the group, we are taken into the realm of conspiracy theory based upon the alarming intimations of unnamed informants. Terry suggests that The Process is part of a vast cryptocracy of serial murderers who have links with the police and judicial establishment, thereby evading responsibility for their cultic crimes.

And like the other previously mentioned tomes, Terry flaunts the usual disclaimers ... that The Process or its founders are not personally accused of these crimes—but leaving the overall impression that they are guilty nonetheless, yet freeing the authors or publishers from lawsuits for libel or defamation of character.

Unlike these authors (with the exception of Bainbridge), I spent time with The Process and spoke with a number of its leaders. I also attended “chant sessions,” “midnight meditations,” and other activities conducted by the Chicago chapter. In addition, I performed at The Process coffee house in Chicago and provided artwork to The Process magazine.

Certainly, much of my attraction to The Process lay in my grail quest out of the morose atmosphere that soulless technology and bureaucracy had imposed upon our lives. Ecology had not yet become the catch slogan of yuppie materialists, yahoo politicians and quarterly stockholder reports. We felt constricted under the thumb of a debased age in which advertising slogans supplanted poetry, contractual agreements replaced love, and televangelism masqueraded as spirituality. Unlike the alien and decadent garb of the Guru cults from the East, The Process had a distinctly Western, neo-Gothic exterior: Neatly-trimmed shoulder-length hair and equally neat beards, all set-off by tailored magician’s capes with matching black uniforms.

My earliest memories of The Process are associated with bitter sub-zero nights, accompanied by a group of friends as we hurried down deserted back streets on Chicago’s North side, a section of the city where some of the last remaining cobblestones had not yet been covered with asphalt. The glitter of stars could still be seen in the night sky as the mercury vapor lamps had not yet been installed there.

Process headquarters was a four-story Victorian house that also doubled as living quarters for the majordomos of the Chicago chapter. We entered that bitter chill Winter night past the yellow exterior porch lights and encountered several young men in black uniforms with black caps who stood talking to a small group of people in conventional clothes. A tall thin man with a neat fringe of beard greeted us cheerfully with the salutation, “As It Is.” I rejoindered, “So Be It.” I asked him about the coffee house some other Processians told me about, and he directed us toward a back room, where we would find a staircase leading to the coffee house in the basement. We descended the narrow, curving stairs to a room in the basement where some music emanated from.

“As It Is,” hailed an attractive, petite woman with an upper-class British accent. “So Be It,” we replied. She seated us at a table and gave us menus. We ordered tea and listened to the recorded folk music of John Renbourn and Pentangle. It seemed the perfect accompaniment to the setting. The coffee house was low ceilinged, with curtains hanging on the ground-level windows. Second-hand tables, chairs and benches comprised the sparse decor. A candle burned in the center of each table.

Several days earlier I had run into a pretty young woman with an English accent dressed in Process garb on Wabash Avenue in Downtown Chicago. She handed me a leaflet listing the group’s activities and invited us to the group’s coffee house. Later that day I stopped by at a psychedelic head shop where I was hawking my poster art. One of the workers was familiar with the Process and showed me the Fear issue. The colors and graphics were very eye-catching and impressively put-together, and I pored over its contents.

At the coffee house we experienced no hard-sell proselytizing, in fact we were all a bit disappointed until it was announced that the “Sabbath assembly” was to begin in several minutes on the top floor of the house. Anticipating the adventure of it, we climbed the narrow stairs to the unfinished attic of the building, the roof-beams and wooden rafters rising sharply to the roof’s steep peak. A couple dozen people were already seated in a semi-circle on floor cushions. At the center of the circle was a low round table upon which a black and red altar cloth hung down to the floor in neat folds. In front of the windows hung a black curtain with a red Goat of Mendes in its center. To its left was a large gong. To one side of the altar was a steel container of water, to the other side a steel container with a burning pyre.

Standing in front of the goat’s head symbol was a man wearing a tabard, a ceremonial device such as a Catholic or Anglican priest might wear. In the center of the tabard was a symbol of a sort of omega confirmation. We were to learn later that this man was called the Sacrifist. At the entrance of the room stood another man dressed in an ankle-length black robe underneath a tabard. On the center of it was the Process Symbol of Four P’s, which formed a swastika-like device. This celebrant was known as the Evangelist. The Sacrifist carried a red-leather bound book at his side and the Evangelist a similar one of black.

Slowly our eyes adjusted to the light of white and red candles. After a moment of hushed silence, the two began a chant:

Contact reaching to the stars
Through the spirit of the Christ;
Knowledge of the universe,
He is the way of life.

Sacrifist: ”The Final Reckoning.”
Evangelist: “An End a New Beginning.”
Sacrifist: “Christ and Satan joined!”
Evangelist: “The Lamb and the Goat.”
Together: “Pure Love, descended from the Pinnacle of Heaven, united with Pure Hatred raised from the Depths of Hell.”
Sacrifist: “Repayment of the Debt.”
Evangelist: “Fulfillment of the Promise.”
Sacrifist: “All Conflicts are Resolved.”
Evangelist: “An End and a New Beginning.”
Sacrifist: “The End of Hell and the Beginning of Heaven.”
Evangelist: “The End of Darkness and the Beginning of Light.”
Sacrifist: “The End of War and the Beginning of Peace.”
Evangelist: “The End of Hatred and the Beginning of Love.”
Sacrifist: “The End is Now. The Beginning is Yet to Come.”

After the pronouncements, we read a series of positive and up-tempo hymns from books that had been passed around. Another Processian got up and read Process material concerning the Gods Jehovah, Lucifer, Satan and Christ, and their respective roles in the universe. Another Processian strummed a guitar in accompaniment. At the conclusion, the Sacrifist rung the gong. The Evangelist began reciting and was followed by more group singing. The gong sounded again and the Sacrifist spoke: “All those Initiates who wish to rededicate their lives in the service of Christ and the three great Gods of the universe, come forward now and kneel before me.”

A woman got up from the circle and knelt before the Sacrifist, and the Sacrifist continued: “In the name of the Lord Christ, and in the name of the Lord Satan, I accept you as an initiate of The Process, Church of the Final Judgment. As It Is.”

The kneeling initiate countered: “So Be It.”

My friends and I discussed our experience at Process headquarters could only agree that it was pleasant, but we had not yet drawn any hard conclusions. In the following months I noticed the presence of biker-types at the coffee house, who seem to be employed as bodyguards for the headquarters. Little of a theological nature was discussed at the coffee house, and occasionally a Processian would play guitar and sing Process-inspired songs, much of it beautifully melodic.

In the Spring the Victorian headquarters on Demming Place was set aside as living quarters for full-time members and and was thereafter closed to the general public. Public activities were moved to a newly-acquired loft above a store in Chicago’s Old Town District on North Wells Street. Old Town, like Greenwich Village and Haight-Ashbury, was the countercultural headquarters. The new location gave a more prosperous and organized profile to the group. A large portrait of Robert DeGrimston hung prominently in the main room. With long blond tresses and neatly-outlined beard he looked down from the wall with piercing blue eyes. He was generally referred to as The Teacher.

And Teacher he was; most of the writings that the group used and promoted were creations of DeGrimston. But DeGrimston and his wife Mary Ann were usually not to be found; members I spoke with said that he and the Inner Founders of the group lived separately from the rest. But on rare occasions he appeared, usually unannounced. In the three years I frequented Process headquarters in Chicago never did I meet DeGrimston. It was said that he did not give interviews to writers or newspeople.

All this, of course, added to his mystique. It was difficult to read anything into his Christ-like photo, but read his books I did. They were all professionally done, and unlike anything else I had seen at the time. Somehow I scraped together enough money to purchase some of the basic texts. The first book I read was The Gods and Their People by DeGrimston, oblong in shape. The title was printed boldly in gold on enameled white shiny boards. The Process swastika motif was printed large in gold on the back cover. Inside the front cover was the Process adage that appeared repeatedly in most of their publications and rituals:

Christ said: love thine enemy. Christ’s enemy was Satan and Satan’s enemy was Christ. Through love enmity is destroyed. Through love Saint and Sinner destroy the enmity between them. Through love Christ and Satan have destroyed their enmity and come together for the End. Christ to Judge, Satan to execute Judgment.

On the opposing page was DeGrimston, gazing toward a distant point in a revisionary attitude. The book was not all that much different from Jung’s theories of the archetypes. The book began:

Consciously or unconsciously, apathetically, half-heartedly, enthusiastically or fanatically, under countless other names by which we know them, and under innumerable disguises and descriptions, men have followed the three Great Gods of the Universe ever since the Creation. Each one according to his nature.

For the three Gods represent three basic human patterns of reality. Within the framework of each pattern there are countless variations and permutations, widely-varying grades of suppression and intensity. Yet each one represents a fundamental problem, a deep-rooted driving force, a pressure of instincts and desires, terrors and revulsions.

All three of them exist to some extent in every one of us. But each of us leans more heavily towards one of them, whilst the pressures of the other two provide the presence of conflict and uncertainty.

DeGrimston’s theme ends with the plea that only through Christ can we reconcile our differences. The Gods and Their People is written in a succinct and forceful style, a polemic of declarative sentences and rational progressions of thought. One got the impression that these words had welled-up from a deeper source than the intellect. DeGrimston’s next book, Exit, a compilation of epistles written between December 1968 and April 1970, was an eight inch square book meant for Processians only. Exit started where The Gods and Their People left off, first dealing with “The Universal Law” of the Golden Rule and a concept of Karma. The following chapter, “The Cycle of Ignorance,” deals with mankind’s blind ambition and graspings for the never-attainable, and proposes a sort of “Be-Here-Now-in-the-Present-Tense-Since-Regret-Over-the-Past-and-Desires-Imposed-Upon-the-Future-are-the-Cause-of-Agony-and-Dissatisfaction.” Other chapters are devoted to the questions of altruism and selflessness, interpersonal relationships, and truth and reality.

In its style, DeGrimston’s writings seem closest to those of Frank Lloyd Wright in his little-known book Mobocracy. In its quality of measured progression of thought and lucid expositions on the nature of the Soul and its relationship to the Gods (complete with diagrams), one is also reminded of Yeats’ A Vision. The aforementioned theological/philosophical tomes pale by comparison with DeGrimston’s The Gods on War and Humanity is the Devil. In these one can detect the disappointed Romantic looking at a humanity which has fallen so far from its true calling that it has become doomed by its arrogance and ignorance. Here, DeGrimston becomes the voice of the prophet-as-accuser.

Bainbridge claims that these writings were never accepted by Processians on more than a figurative or metaphorical level. But those pointing an accusatory finger at The Process as some sort of Satanic-Internationale, have quoted repeatedly from these and several similar texts.

My own feelings regarding DeGrimston’s writings were ambivalent. Their multiple-God system seemed to parallel my own Pantheistic beliefs, but I was not even remotely drawn to the inherent Jesus idolatry. Processian Social Darwinism elicited my sympathy, and their inherent apocalypticism mirrored my own forebodings of the near future. Were they the last National Socialists who would pass through the Flames of the End-Time, as foretold by Savitri Devi in The Lightning and the Sun? Could they be the Vanguard of the Second Religiosity of the West as foretold by Oswald Spengler, or were they the Western version of the Thuggee, just one more element in our continuing descent into decadence?

Around the time I began to ask these questions, Ed Sanders published The Family. Sanders claimed that The Process were pro-Hitler and Fascist in nature. It was true that they used a variation of the Swastika for their symbol. Their Social Darwinism was not so far afield from Nazi philosophy. They wore black uniforms and groomed themselves as an elite order. And a book they issued, Man’s Greatest Crime, was more hard-hittting and graphic than any anti-vivsectionist literature that I had ever seen. Didn’t the Nazis, whose Green Party advocate Walther Darré also champion the rights of the animal kingdom and nature?

On the other hand, The Process operated a soup kitchen for the homeless and hungry. And they never mentioned politics or economics in any conversations I had with them. A number of members I met among the American recruits were Jewish. Sanders’ accusations and my own speculations raced across my mind, but I could never see any concrete evidence to confirm anything one way or the other.

In the meantime, I formed a folk group named Changes, and we played at the Wells Street Process coffee house. Our first session was interrupted by an announcement for the “Midnight Meditation.” Hymnals were passed out, and group singing ensued. Father Barnabas, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the other 40 participants, began to strum and chant on his acoustic guitar—something to the effect of “Da Da Da Da,” with the rest of the group echoing his chant. Wasn’t this the chant Sanders had claimed Manson used to program others with subliminal messages? We were asked to close our eyes and meditate on something like Peace or Love or Fulfillment or whatever. After the Meditation came to a close, we played for another hour and a half in the coffee house.

Father Barnabas had a good voice for ballad and his folk-style guitar playing was reminiscent of Ian Anderson. One song in particular was quite beautiful in its lyrics and melody. It was about the God Lucifer. Father Matthew and I asked Father Barnabas to show us the chords to the song and give us the lyrics, and to the request his face contorted in anger and said “No!” We were taken aback by his anger, and never again had any personal contact with him.

One day a Processian whose name I don’t remember began to tell me how much he enjoyed our music, and then in a sort of off-the-wall manner, began to speak on other matters:

“You know, a lot of people say The Process is a Fascist organization. It’s actually half-true. It was founded by the German Democractic Party, a neo-Nazi group in Germany as a front to raise money over here in the States. But since that time it’s grown more or less independent of the German group. I know a number of American Nazis and fascists who won’t have anything to do with The Process. They say they don’t want to be a part of a group that’s run by Europeans.

“When I was over in Europe, Interpol approached me and offered to pay me to spy on The Process. But I turned them down. They approached me a second time when I was at The Process headquarters in Toronto, but I told them I couldn’t do anything like that.”

The fellow went on to mention that he was of white Russian extraction, that his father escaped after the Revolution, and had lived for many years in Mexico. He mentioned that his brother had been busted for possession of drugs, and that he had to leave to bail him out of jail. I listened to all of this with little comment. Later that evening, Father Matthew sided-up to me and asked whether if I would do artwork for them. My illustration of a dragon showed up in the Death Issue of the Process Magazine.

At closing time, after my folk group Changes was finishing up a set, Father Matthew told us, “You guys are welcome to stay, we have a little private party after closing we call an ‘Aesop,’ we sort of get loose and have a good time.” My partner, who had reservations about the group from the start, said he wanted to start heading home. I begged off as well. Father Matthew looked a bit crestfallen, but made no attempt to change our minds. Matthew asked us if we were interested in going out with the Processians to the main mental health facility in the area. Neither of my partners in Changes wanted to go.

I gathered that the Processians provided entertainment to the inmates at Cook County Jail and Reed Mental Health Facility. I had no idea whether these visitations were intended as a charitable activity or for recruiting purposes. But over the years The Process seemed to attract some pretty strange characters. One woman member had been convicted of pouring blood on the draft tables at an Army Induction Center. This same woman subsequently became a leading personality in the emerging pagan movement in Chicago. She also operated a prostitution ring in the East Rogers Park area of Chicago’s North Side. In the Spring of 1980 a former Process member, Yvonne Kleinfelder, was found guilty of murdering her live-in mate, John Comer, and received a 25-year prison sentence. Comer was tied to a chair for six days after Kleinfelder emptied a foot-high lobster pot of boiling water on him. Prior to her murderous deed, Kleinfelder proclaimed herself a born-again Christian.

Robert de Grimston, leader of The Process

After a nine-month sojourn in New Mexico, I returned to Process headquarters to attend a Midnight Meditation. Father Barnabas had been transferred to New Orleans. Mother Mercedes was now in New York. Father Matthew was still in Chicago, but his wife and children had been moved someplace else.

It was not long after when the Schism occurred. DeGrimston had been “purged,” and his estranged wife Mary Anne had re-organized the group into the “Foundation Church of the Millennium.” Gone were the old symbols. Gone too were the black outfits and cowled heads; gone were the old books and magazines. The new symbol was a six-pointed Star of David with two F’s—one upside-down, the other upright. The new Wells Street coffee house was on the first floor at street level. Whatever mystique the Process had previously projected, the new group seemed only a bland shadow.

I ran into Father Matthew one day across the street from J’s Place (the J stood for Jehovah, the only surviving God from the old pantheon which the Foundation Church still believed in). He borrowed a cigarette from me and we stood at the curb talking ... apparently he was being transferred to Miami. When I asked about what happened to the old group, he looked down, shook his head and said, “It’s really just too complex to go into.” Later I was to learn that Matthew changed his name to Father Nathan and was leading the Miami group. They gave the appearance of being involved in community and charitable work.

By 1974 the Foundation Church place in Chicago folded. Robert DeGrimston, meanwhile, attempted to lead his remaining loyal retinue, but later faded out of sight

[Editor’s Note: Robert DeGrimston Moore now lives near a large American urban center, and can be found in the white pages of the phone book. An urbane, diffident, private man, DeGrimston decried the sensationalized histories of The Process as “unbearable,” and lambasted Bainbridge’s account, too, as a “pack of lies.” The fact that DeGrimston was so easily reached by phone immediately rendered as nonsense Maury Terry’s (and others) accusations of DeGrimston as a shadowy and unreachable ritual murder team captain.]

Sorcerer of Apocalypse

An Introduction to John Whiteside Parsons

Michael Staley

John Whiteside Parsons was born on 2 October 1914 in Los Angeles, California. His mother and father separated while he was quite young, and Parsons said later that this left him with “... a hatred of authority and a spirit of revolution,” as well as an Oedipal attachment to his mother. He felt withdrawn and isolated as a child, and was bullied by other children. This gave him, he thought, “... the requisite contempt for the crowd and for the group mores...” Parsons was born into a rich family, and sometime in his youth there was what he referred to as a loss of family fortune. This loss must only have been a temporary one, though—perhaps caused by the break-up of the family—since in the 1940s he inherited from his father a large, Victorian-style mansion in the well-to-do area of Pasadena. During adolescence, Parsons developed an interest in science, especially physics and chemistry, and in fact he went on to develop a career as a brilliant scientist in the fields of explosives and rocket-fuel technology. His achievements as a scientist were such that the Americans named a lunar crater after him when they came to claim that territory for their own. Appropriately enough, Crater Parsons is on the dark side of the moon.

Parsons made contact with Aleister Crowley’s magickal Lodges, the O.T.O. and the A.A. in December 1938, while visiting Agapé Lodge of the O.T.O. in California. He was taken along by one of his fellow scientists. At that time Agapé Lodge used to give weekly performances of the Gnostic Catholic Mass, seeing this as both a sacrament and a recruiting front. Agapé Lodge was by then a moderately thriving and expanding concern, having been founded in the mid-1920s by Wilfred T. Smith, an expatriate Englishman. Smith had many years earlier been an associate of Charles Stansfeld Jones (Frater Achad) in Vancouver, Canada. Crowley seems to have had, at least to being with, a high regard for Smith, and expected great things of him. Over the years, however, he grew increasingly disillusioned. Crowley felt that the O.T.O. should have flowered in California, given imaginative leadership. Smith was simply not capable of delivering, he though, and perhaps even deliberately impeded things. By the time that Parsons joined the Lodge in 1939, together with his wife, Helen, relations between Smith and Crowley were already in terminal decline, and Crowley was casting around for someone else to take over leadership of the Lodge. One of the items in the Yorke collection at the Warburg Institute is a collection of over 200 letters exchanged between Crowley and Smith, in which the steady decline in their relationship is starkly illustrated.

At this time, the Lodge was firmly in the grip of Smith and his mistress, Regina Kahl. They were very authoritarian, and ruled things with the proverbial rod of iron. At the weekly performances of the Mass, Smith was the Priest and Regina Kahl the Priestess. The Parsons were initiated into the O.T.O. in 1939 and like many entrants of the time they took up membership of the A.A. as well. Jack Parsons took as his motto “Thelema Obtentum Procedero Amoris Nuptiae,” an interestingly hybrid phrase which conveys the intention of attaining Thelema through the nuptials of love; the initials transliterated into Hebrew give his Magical Number, 210. He seems to have made quite an impression on his fellow members. Jane Wolfe, who had spent some time with Crowley at Cefalu, was an active member of the Lodge at the time. The following entry is from her Magical Record during December 1940:

Unknown to me, John Whiteside Parsons, a newcomer, began astral travels. This knowledge decided Regina to undertake similar work. All of which I learned after making my own decision. So the time must be propitious.

Incidentally, I take Jack Parsons to be the child who “shall behold them all” (the mysteries hidden therein. ALI, 54–5).

26 years of age, 6’2”, vital, potentially bisexual at the very least, University of the State of California and Cal. Tech., now engaged in Cal Tech chemical laboratories developing “bigger and better” explosives for Uncle Sam. Travels under sealed orders from the government. Writes poetry—“sensuous only,” he says. Lover of music, which he seems to know thoroughly. I seem him as the real successor of Therion. Passionate; and has made the vilest analyses result in a species of exaltation after the event. Has had mystical experiences which gave him a sense of equality all round, although he is hierarchal in feeling and in the established order.

Jack Parsons seems to have had something of a reverential attitude towards Smith, perhaps seeing him as some sort of father figure—the relationship between them seems to have had that sort of ambiguity. In later years, he described how he felt an alternative attraction and repulsion where Smith was concerned; and Smith, whatever his limitations and faults, was evidently a charismatic man. Parsons evidently made a strong impression on Smith. In a letter to Crowley during March 1941, Smith wrote:

... I think I have at long last a really excellent man, John Parsons. And starting next Tuesday he begins a course of talks with a view to enlarging our scope. He has an excellent mind and much better intellect than myself—O yes, I know it would not necessarily have to be very good to be better than mine...

John Parsons is going to be valuable. I feel sure we are going to move ahead in spite of Max Schneider’s continual efforts to discredit me. He still exhibits your letters as proof that I am a number one son of a bitch. I thought you were going to write to tell him to clamp down...

The last sentence of this quotation throws light on an important factor in the affairs of Agapé Lodge—the turmoil and personal friction that was a constant emotional backdrop, and which seems finally to have invalidated all their efforts. The Lodge was constantly riven by personal feuding and upheaval, and Crowley’s influence over the course of events seems in reality to have been marginal. The nucleus of Agapé Lodge was some sort of forerunner of a hippie commune. Apart from anything else, Smith appears to have regarded the women members of the Lodge as constituting his personal harem, and of course this added to the friction. Crowley was in correspondence with many of the members at this time, and seems to some extent to have encouraged people to tell tales on each other.

In his attempt to assert authority over the Lodge generally, and Smith in particular, Crowley was frustrated by the loyalty—despite all the bitchiness—to Smith and Kahl. On the face of it, he should have been able to exert his authority easily enough. Karl Germer, his trusted right-hand man, was in New York; while his colleague from the Cefalu days—Jane Wolfe—was a member of the Lodge. Jane Wolfe was the same age as Crowley, but was weak and indecisive. Despite the glamour that time and mystery now lend the Agapé Lodge of the 1930s and 1940s, the reality seems to have been a mess.

Although Crowley grew increasingly despairing of and impatient with Smith, and saw all too clearly the need to replace him as head of Agapé Lodge, the problem for Crowley—quite apart from how to get rid of Smith—was with whom to replace him. In the course of a letter to Crowley of March 1942, Jane Wolfe made her recommendations:

Incidentally, I believe Jack Parsons—who is devoted to Wilfred—to be the coming leader, with Wilfred in advisory capacity. I hope you two get together some day, although your present activities in England seem to have postponed the date of your coming to us. Jack, by the way, comes in through some inner experiences, but mostly, perhaps, though the world of science. That is, he was “sold on the Book of the Law” because it foretold Einstein, Heisenberg—whose work is not permitted in Russia—the quantum field folks, whose work is along the “factor infinite and unknown” lines, etc. You two would have a whale of a lot of things to talk over. He and Helen are lock, stock and barrel for the Order.

By 1943, Crowley appears to have decided that some definite course of action was necessary to get rid of Smith, and that his continued presence in the Lodge was harmful. In a letter of May 1943, to a member called Roy Leffingwell, he wrote:

I think that Smith is quite hopeless. I am quite satisfied with what you say about his reaction to your family. It is all very well, but Smith has apparently nothing else in his mind. He appears to be using the Order as a happy hunting ground for “affairs.” You say the same thing, and I have no doubt that it is quite correct. I think we must get rid of him once and for all; and this will include the Parsons, unless they dissociate themselves immediately from him, without reservations.

At this time Helen Parsons was having an affair with Smith, and also supplanting Regina Kahl as Priestess in the public performances of the Gnostic Mass. Jack Parsons retained his strong feelings of loyalty towards Smith, although perhaps a little confused by events. Crowley, determined to get rid of Smith, viewed with concern the extent to which Parsons—of which he seems to have held a high opinion—was under the spell of Smith. While having a high regard for Parsons, Crowley was also keenly aware of his faults, which he hoped Parsons would outgrow in the course of time and experience. In view of subsequent events in the life of Parsons, these perceptions are interesting and important. Once again, they can best be conveyed by extracts from several letters that Crowley wrote. In a letter of July 1943 to Max Schneider, we read:

As to Jack: I think he is perfectly alright at the bottom of everything; but he is very young, and he has at present nothing like the strength to deal with matters within his jurisdiction objectively.

In the course of a letter to Jane Wolfe, in December 1943, Crowley made the following assessment:

Jack is the Objective (Smith is out, an affaire classée: anybody who communicates with him in any way is out also; and that is that, and the best plan is to sponge the whole slate clean, and get to work to build up Thelema on sound principles. And no more of this brothel-building; let’s use marble, not rotten old boards!). Jack’s trouble is his weakness, and his romantic side—the poet—is at present a hindrance. He gets a kick from some magazine trash, or an “occult” novel (if only he knew how they were concocted!) and dashes off in wild pursuit. He must learn that the sparkle of champagne is based on sound wine; pumping carbonic acid into urine is not the same thing.

I wish to God I had him for six months—even three, with a hustle—to train in Will, in discipline. He must understand that fine and fiery flashes of Spirit come from the organization of Matter, from the drilling of every function of every bodily organ until it has become so regular as to be automatic, and carried on by itself deep down in the Unconscious. It is the steadiness of one’s Heart that enables one to endure the rapture of great passion; one doesn’t want the vital functions to be excitable.

In February 1944 he wrote in somewhat similar spirit to Mr. And Mrs. Burlinghame, who were Lodge members:

...I am very glad indeed of your offer to co-operate practically in any way possible. I have left Jack Parsons in charge; he is quite all right in essence, but very young and easily swayed by passing influences. I shall look to you to help in keeping him up to the mark.

And more expansively, in the course of a letter to Jack Parsons himself in March 1946:

I am particularly interested in what you have written to me about the Elemental, because for some little while past I have been endeavoring to intervene personally on your behalf. I would however have you recall Levi’s aphorism “the love of the Magus for such beings is insensate, and may destroy him.”

It seems to me that there is a danger of your sensitiveness upsetting your balance. Any experience that comes your way you have a tendency to over-estimate. The first fine careless rapture wears off in a month or so, and some other experience comes along and carries you off on its back. Meanwhile you have neglected and bewildered those who are dependent on you, either from above or from below.

I will ask you to bear in mind that you have one fulcrum for all your levers, and that is your original oath to devote yourself to raising mankind. All experiences, all efforts, must be referred to this; as long as it remains unshaken you cannot go far wrong, for by its own stability it will bring you back from any tendency to excess.

At the same time, you being as sensitive as you are, it behoves you to be more on your guard than would be the case with the majority of people.

Resolved though Crowley was to get rid of Smith, it was a long and difficult manoeuvre, and had to be approached piecemeal at first. Many of the Lodge members remained loyal to Smith, and were reluctant to see him go. Smith was only too happy to hang on, in the hope that what he saw as “popular opinion” would persuade Crowley to retain him after all. Throughout all this, Smith seemed unable to understand the depths of Crowley’s hostility towards him; his letters to Crowley during this period carry the tone—whether implicitly or explicitly—of some wretch having to bear the gratuitous beatings of his master. Some sort of dual authority apparently operated between Smith and Parsons for a while, to the reluctance of Parsons, himself still very much a Smith loyalist. Eventually, Crowley seems to have hit upon a novel way to remove Smith: he declared that Smith was the avatar of some god, and should go away on a Magical Retirement until he had realized his true identity. To this end, Crowley wrote a document of instruction for Smith to follow, Liber 132. Smith made an attempt at this Operation, but had no joy at all in plumbing the depths of his divinity. It seems doubtful if Crowley intended him to; I have seen a letter from Crowley to an American correspondent at the time, in which Crowley came as close as he could to admitting the Machiavellian thrust of the whole affair.

The way was now clear for Crowley to appoint Parsons as head of Agapé Lodge. If he had hoped that the Lodge would be more stable without Smith in charge, however, he was wrong. Smith continued to live there for some time after, despite all attempts by Crowley and Germer to declare him a leper, contract with whom would warrant immediate expulsion. Parsons remained unhappy at what he considered to be the unjust treatment of Smith. In late 1943 he wrote to Crowley attacking him on this point, and offering his resignation. Crowley’s esteem of Parsons may be gauged from the fact that he declined to accept his resignation, and asked Parsons to reconsider. Parsons agreed to remain as head of the Lodge.

Parsons had by this time inherited a large, Victorian-style mansion from his father, in a well-to-do area of Pasadena. He needed to rent out some rooms in order to make ends meet, and he scandalized the neighborhood by ensuring that only bohemians and eccentrics were taken on. By the summer of 1943, Helen had a child by Smith, and a divorce from Jack was in the air. Parsons took up with Helen’s younger sister, Sara Northrup, known as Betty. The time was one of turmoil for the Parsons. In a later document, Analysis by a Master of the Temple, Parsons alludes to this period, and himself in the detached third person:

Betty served to effect a transference from Helen at a critical period. Had this not occurred, your repressed homosexual component could have caused a serious disorder. Your passion for Betty also gave you the magical force needed at the time, and the act of adultery tinged with incest seemed as your magical confirmation in the Law of Thelema.

We get a further glimpse of Parsons’ uncertainty in the course of a letter from Jane Wolfe to Crowley early in 1945:

Last evening, when Jack brought me these various papers for me to post to you, I saw, for the first time, the small boy, or child. This is it that is bewildered, does not quite know when to take hold in this matter, or where, and is completely bowled over by the ruthlessness of Smith—Smith, who has a master hand when it comes to dealing with this boy.

Parsons was also beginning to be seen in something of a sinister light. In the course of a letter to Karl Germer, Jane Wolfe wrote about a strange atmosphere that was manifesting. The following comes from the end of 1945:

There is something strange going on, quite apart from Smith. There is always Betty, remember, who hates Smith. But our own Jack is enamored with Witchcraft, the houmfort, voodoo. From the start he always wanted to evoke something—no matter what, I am inclined to think, as long as he got a result.

According to Meeka yesterday, he has had a result—an elemental he doesn’t know what do with. From that statement of hers, it must bother him—somewhat at least.

Phyllis Seckler, from whose account this passage of Jane Wolfe’s has been drawn, adds her own memories to this:

Meeka also reported to Jane that another two persons always had to do a lot of banishing in the house. They were sensitive and knew that there was something alien and inimical was there. When I had been there during the summer of 1944, I also knew there were troublesome spirits about, especially on the third floor. It got I couldn’t stand being up there, and a friend of mine couldn’t even climb the stairs that far, as the hair on the back of her neck began to prickle and she got thoroughly frightened.

Into this maelstrom came a fateful contact. In August 1945 Parsons met L. Ron Hubbard, the future founder of Scientology, who at that time was known as little more than a rather eccentric writer of pulp stories. At the time he first met Parsons he was a naval officer on leave, and Parsons invited him to stay at his house for the remainder of his leave. They had a lot in common. Parsons was very interested in science fiction. Hubbard, for his part, was interested in psychism and magic. Anyone who has read the critical biography of Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller, will understand Hubbard to be a charming and charismatic confidence trickster. Parsons seems to have been just one more exploitable victim. There is a certain parallel with Parsons’ relationship with Smith, as Hubbard and Betty started a passionate affair. In spite of this (or perhaps because of this), Parsons’ admiration of Hubbard remained unabated. In a letter to Crowley in late 1945 he wrote:

Although he [Hubbard] has no formal training in Magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduce that he is in direct contact with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel... He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met, and is in complete accord with our own principles... I think I have made a great gain, and as Betty and I are the best of friends there is little loss. I cared for her rather deeply, but I have no desire to control her emotions, and I can, I hope, control my own. I need a magical partner. I have many experiments in mind...

The “magical partner” is a reference to Hubbard—not to a shakti or Scarlet Woman, as might at first be supposed. In January, 1946, Parsons devised an Operation to, as he put it, “...obtain the assistance of an elemental mate.” The core of this Working consisted of the utilization of the Enochian Tablet of Air, or rather a specific angle of it. This was to be the focus of VIII° sexual magick, with the purpose of giving substance to the elemental summons. Parsons continued with this for 11 days, evoking twice daily. He noted various psychic phenomena during this period, but felt discouraged by the apparent failure of the Operation. However, success followed several days later. In his own words:

The feeling of tension and unease continued for four days. Then, on January 18 at sunset, while the Scribe and I were on the Mojave Desert, the feeling of tension suddenly stopped. I turned to him and said “it is done,” in absolute certainty that the Operation was accomplished. I returned home, and found a young woman answering the requirements waiting for me. She is describable as an air of fire type with bronze red hair, fiery and subtle, determined and obstinate, sincere and perverse, with extraordinary personality, talent and intelligence.

During the period of January 19 to February 27 I invoked the Goddess BABALON with the aid of magical partner (Ron Hubbard), as was proper to one of my grade.

The young woman referred to was Marjorie Cameron. The more romantic amongst us will perhaps be disappointed to learn that she seems to have existed prior to Parsons’ elemental summons. She and Parsons married in October 1946, and the certificate gives her age as 24, her birthplace as Iowa, and her profession as artist. At one time she had served in the U.S. Navy. At the time of this Working she was on a visit from New York, where her mother lived, and she returned there after the Babalon Working for a while.

At the end of February 1946, Hubbard went away for a few days. Parsons went back to the Mojave Desert and invoked Babalon. He gives no further details of this, unfortunately. All he does say is that during this invocation, “... the presence of the Goddess came upon me, and I was commanded to write the following communication....” This communication, which purports to be the words of Babalon, consists of 77 short verses. Whether it was direct voice, trance, or inspired writing, he does not say. The answer probably lies in his Magical Record for this period, but as far as I know it has not survived.

This communication of 77 verses he entitled Liber 49. He does not explain the title, but no doubt considered such explanation unnecessary, since 49 is a number sacred to Babalon. Chapter 49 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies is a panegyric to Babalon. The connection is evident in The Vision and the Voice, in which Babalon is a strong and alluring current, and indeed the core of the series of visions. In the account of the 27^th Aethyr the symbol of Babalon is given as a blood-red Rose of 49 Petals, red with the blood of the saints, who have squeezed every last drop into the Cup of Babalon. Parsons spent the rest of his life devoted to Babalon—some would say that he became obsessed by Her.

Liber 49 contains instructions for the earthing of this Babalon current in the form of an avatar, daughter or manifestation of Babalon, who was to appear amongst us. It would seem that Parsons was expecting a full-blown incarnation, and not simply the incarnation of a force.

In a yet-to-be-published essay, Parsons discusses the break-up of patriarchy in the dawn of the twentieth century, and the beginnings of a new age—the age of Horus. The nature of this is seen as disruptive, bringing confusion and terror. Parsons instances the two terrible world wars, the atomic bomb and an increase in epicene and homosexual tendencies:

But the great event of the aeon, which will bring with it the possibility of redemption to the whole of the Western world, has not yet been made manifest. We, who contain the knowledge of this event among Ourselves until the time is right, and who were in fact the instruments of its gestation, give these present indications.

The Aeon of Horus is the nature of the child. To perceive this, we must conceive of the nature of a child without the veil of sentimentality—beyond good and evil, perfectly gentle, perfectly ruthless, containing all possibilities within the limits of heredity, and highly susceptible to training and environment. But the nature of Horus is also the nature of force—blind, terrible, unlimited force. That is why the West stands in imminent danger of annihilation. That is why the West also stands in the possibility of the most rapid and tremendous evolution that the world has ever known. The balance must be love and understanding, or else all else fails.

A few days after receiving Liber 49, Parsons put in hand the ritual preparations as indicated in the text. Again, in his own words:

On March 1 and 2, 1946, I prepared the altar and equipment in accordance with the instructions in Liber 49. The Scribe, Ron Hubbard, had been away about a week, and knew nothing of my invocation of BABALON, which I had kept entirely secret. One the night of March 2 he returned, and described a vision he had had that evening, of a savage and beautiful woman riding naked on a great cat-like beast. He was impressed with the urgent necessity of giving me some message or communication. We prepared magically for this communication, constructing a temple at the altar with the analysis of the key word. He was robed in white, carrying a lamp; and I in black, hooded, with the cup and dagger. At his suggestion we played Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead as background music, and set an automatic recorder to transcribe audible occurrences. At approximately 8 pm he began to dictate, I transcribing directly as I received.

Hubbard’s vision sounds like he’d seen a copy of The Book of Thoth, Atu XI, Lust, showing the Whore astride the Beast. There would have been at least one copy of Crowley’s The Book of Thoth around Parsons’ place. Interestingly, in spite of Hubbard being referred to as “the Scribe,” it was Hubbard who was giving utterance to “astral communications,” and Parsons writing them down. As far as the Babalon Working is concerned, Hubbard is the joker in the pack, a factor infinite and unknown. His entire career, both before and after his involvement with Parsons, reveals him as a confidence man par excellence. Hubbard’s effortless swindling of Parsons out of thousands of dollars, demonstrates that Parsons was a readily taken in as anyone.

The Workings arising from Liber 49 continued for several nights, and they contained instructions for further rituals, intended to facilitate the earthing of Babalon. Some of these communications are of a fierce, intense beauty, as these few excerpts will illustrate:

She is flame of life, power of darkness, she destroys with a glance, she may take thy soul. She feeds upon the death of men.

The first ritual. Tomorrow the second ritual. Consecrate all force and being in Our Lady BABALON. Light a single flame on Her altar, saying: Flame is Our Lady, flame is Her hair, I am flame.

Display thyself to Our Lady; dedicate thy organs to Her, dedicate they heart to Her, dedicate thy mind to Her, dedicate thy soul to Her, for She shall absorb thee, and thou shalt become living flame before She incarnates. For it shall be through you alone, and no one else can help in this endeavor.

Some of the communications received in the course of the Babalon Working have forceful sexual expression, bordering on the rapacious. Consider:

Thou as a man and as a god hast strewn upon the earth and in the heavens many loves. These recall; concentrate, concentrate each woman thou hast raped. Remember her, think upon her, move her into BABALON, each, one by one, until the flame of lust is high...

After the Babalon Working had been concluded, all that Parsons could do was watch and wait. He had been told that the Operation had succeeded, that conception had occurred, and that in due course the avatar or Daughter of Babalon would come to him, bearing a secret sign that Parsons alone would recognize, and which would prove her authenticity. Hubbard, though, had more mundane considerations on his mind, and several weeks later he and Betty absconded with many thousand dollars of Parsons’ money, as an investment fund (Allied Enterprises) set up by Parsons, Betty and Hubbard, and into which Parsons was persuaded to sink most of his savings. Parsons eventually managed to track them down, recovering but a fraction of his money after taking legal action. Parsons had no further contact with either Hubbard or Betty following the suit.

Parsons was beset with other problems. Preoccupied with the Babalon Working, he had neglected his duties at the Agapé Lodge. This was the final straw for many of his peers, who had considered him something of a prima donna. The members of the Lodge never seemed to have much compunction in telling tales on each other to Crowley, and he received reports from several different sources on this latest escapade of Jack Parsons. From these reports, Crowley concluded that Parsons’ flaws had finally overcome his promise, and that Parsons was a gullible fool beyond redemption. He was further infuriated by Parsons’ intimations that, in the interests of secrecy, he could not provide a full account of what had transpired during the Babalon Working. Parsons was suspended from his position as head of the Lodge, and departed soon after.

It is difficult to know in great detail what did go on at this time. I have seen a letter which Crowley wrote in January 1946—some weeks prior to the Babalon Working—in which he names someone other than Parsons as Grand Master of the Agapé Lodge. I have also seen a reference to Parsons being called to account, at a special Lodge meeting, over certain things with which his colleagues were unhappy—such as coming up with a text which purported to be the fourth chapter of The Book of the Law, an act of heresy for which he was lucky not to be burnt at the stake. It is certain that Parsons departed the O.T.O. at around this time, though he continued to regard himself as a member of the A.A.. He remained on friendly terms with many of his colleagues, and he continued to correspond with Germer until his death.

Not so with Crowley, however. Crowley must have been bitterly disappointed with Parsons. He had had a high regard for his abilities, as well as a keen awareness of faults such as impulsiveness and recklessness—faults which, as Crowley now saw it, had led to an inevitable downfall. Two short letter extracts to Louis T. Culling show this disappointment. In the course of a letter dated October 1946, he wrote:

About J.W.P.—all that I can say is that I am sorry—I feel sure that he had fine ideas, but he was led astray firstly by Smith, then he was robbed of his last penny by a confidence man named Hubbard.

His last words are in the course of a letter dated December 1946:

I have no further interest in Jack and his adventures; he is just a weak-minded fool, and must go to the devil in his own way. Requiescat in pace.

The activities of Parsons during the next few years are not at all clear. I have only been able to catch glimpses through letters and the like. In 1948, Parsons lost his security clearance to perform classified government defense work, and for a man of his profession this was the virtual withdrawal of his livelihood. This action was stated to be “because of his membership in a religious cult ... believed to advocate sexual perversion ... organized at subject’s home ... which had been reported subversive.” Parsons commented later that he was suspended on charges of belonging to the O.T.O. and circulating Liber Oz. Parsons defended himself in closed court, and the charges were dropped. In the meantime, Marjorie Cameron left him. In Analysis by a Master of the Temple, Parsons refers to this rift in third person:

Candy appeared in answer to your call, in order to wean you from wet-nursing. She has demonstrated the nature of woman to you in such unequivocal terms that you should have no further room for illusion on the subject.

The suspension and inquisition was my opportunity—one of the final chains in the link. At this time you were enabled to prepare your thesis, formulate your Will, and take the Oath of the Abyss, thus making it possible (although only partially) to manifest. The exit of Candy prepares for the final stage of your initial preparation.

“Candy” is short for Candida, or the Magical Name of Marjorie Cameron. There was a reunion in late 1949 or early 1950, and they resumed living together as man and wife.

As mentioned earlier, Parsons still considered himself a member of the A.A. In December 1948 he took the Oath of a Magister Templi, and the name Belarion, Antichrist. This oath was taken in the presence of Wilfred T. Smith, with whom he had evidently retained some sort of relationship. In 1949 he issued The Book of the Antichrist. This is a short text, and in it he relates how he was stripped of everything that he had and was, and then rededicated to Babalon. This was, he considered, a recharging of the current generated by the Babalon Working. He also pledged that the work of The Beast 666 would be fulfilled, and he seems to have seen that work as being, at least in part, a subversion of Christian ethics. He further prophesied that within seven years Babalon would manifest, so bringing his work to fruition.

In September 1950 his employment at Hughes Aircraft Corporation was terminated. He was found to be in possession of a number of classified documents—several of them, as it happens, co-wrote by him, dating from his days at Cal Tech. A lengthy investigation by the State Attorney and FBI followed. Parsons, it emerged, was hopeful of finding employment in Israel. To this end, he was seeking to persuade them of the case for building a jet-propulsion factory complex, and had been using the documents for background information. It was eventually concluded that there were insufficient grounds for prosecution, since many of the documents should have by then been declassified. However, there were repercussions. The Appeals Board, who had reinstated his security clearance in March 1949, informed him that in their view he no longer had the requisite honesty and integrity; clearance was withdrawn again in January 1952.

From some incomplete essays that survive from this period, it seems that Parsons was working towards building up some sort of teaching Order with a Thelemic core, but relating to paganism and witchcraft. By profession he was now building his own chemicals practice. He had sold the main part of his property, the mansion, for purposes of redevelopment, and occupied the coach house. The garage was converted into a laboratory, equipped with chemicals and equipment. There was a plan to move to Mexico for a while, both to pursue mystical and magical research and to further his chemicals practice. He and Cameron had actually vacated the coach house, and Parsons spent his days moving furniture and chemicals into a trailer. On the afternoon of 17 June 1952, he dropped a container of fulminate of mercury, a highly unstable explosive. The resulting explosion was powerful and devastating, destroying most of the coach house. Horrifically enough, Parsons was still conscious by the time rescuers got to him. He died an hour later, in hospital.

Controversy has reigned over Parsons’ death. Many regard it as unlikely that a scientist of his experience could so mishandle a powerful explosive. During those last days he wrote what was probably his last letter, to Karl Germer. It is bizarre, and merits quoting in full since it casts light on his frame of mind at the time:

No doubt you will be delighted to hear from an adept who has undertaken the operation of his H.G.A. in accord with our traditions.

The operation began auspiciously with a chromatic display of psychosomatic symptoms, and progressed rapidly to acute psychosis. The operator has alternated satisfactorily between manic hysteria and depressing melancholy stupor on approximately 40 cycles, and satisfactory progress has been maintained in social ostracism, economic collapses and mental disassociation.

These statements are mentioned not in any vainglorious spirit of conceit, but rather that they may serve as comfort and inspiration to other apsirants on the Path.

Now I’m off to the wilds of Mexico for a period, also in pursuit of the elusive H.G.A. before winding up in the guard (room) finally via the booby hotels, the graveyard, or —? If the final, you can tell all the little practicuses that I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

No one. Once called 210.

The manner of Parsons’ death brings to mind the association of Babalon with flame. The passage “...for She shall absorb thee, and thou shalt become living flame before She incarnates...” is particularly haunting. In some of his letters written in the years after The Babalon Working, Parsons seemed to be expecting a violent death, and he almost certainly had this and similar passages in mind.

Darkhouse

Alva Rogers

[Science fiction writer and illustrator Alva Rogers was witness to the dramatic imbroglios at Parsons’ Pasadena mansion. At the time, Rogers was amorously involved with a young girl artist who resided there. In his visits, Rogers became acquainted with Ron Hubbard, and John and Betty Parsons. The affair between Hubbard and Betty Parsons seemed, to Rogers, to charge the house with unbearable tension. The following is an excerpt from his short memoir of Parsons.]

The final, desperate act on Jack’s part to reverse events and salvage something of the past from the ruin that stared him in the face occurred in the still, early hours of a bleak morning in December. Our room was just across the hall from Jack’s apartment, the largest in the house, which also doubled as the temple, or whatever, of the O.T.O. We were brought out of a sound sleep by some weird and disturbing noises seemingly coming from Jack’s room which sounded for all the world as though someone were dying or at the very least were deathly ill. We went out into the hall to investigate the source of the noises and found that they came from Jack’s partially open door. Perhaps we should have turned around and gone back to bed at this point, but we didn’t. The noise—which, by this time, we could tell was a sort of chant—drew us inexorably to the door which we pushed open a little further in order to better see what was going on. What we saw I’ll never forget, although I find it hard to describe in any detail. The room was decorated in a manner typical to an occultist’s lair, with all the symbols and appurtenances essential to the proper practice of black magic. It was dimly lit and smoky from a pungent incense; Jack was draped in a black robe and stood with his back to us, his arms outstretched, in the center of a pentagram before some sort of an altar affair on which several indistinguishable items stood. His voice—which was actually not very loud—rose and fell in a rhythmic chant of gibberish which was delivered with such passionate intensity that its meaning was frighteningly obvious. After this brief and uninvited glimpse into the blackest and most secret center of a tortured man’s soul, we quietly withdrew and returned to our room where we spent the balance of the night discussing in whispers what we had just witnessed.

The Invisible War

Anton Szandor LaVey

We are engulfed in war. Not simply a war fought with guns and bombs “somewhere out there.” The skirmishes take place in the region of one’s own mind. The less one is aware of the invisible war, the more receptive one is to its ongoing process of demoralization, for the insensate human is vulnerable, malleable, weak, and ripe for control.

Invisible warfare allows its victims to wallow in their sense of choice and freedom while actually feeling weak and ineffectual. I’ve outlined a few pertinent facets of these weapons, for Comparisons of their intended effect on one’s own environment, body and emotions. Avenues for infection are everywhere. “Bombs” are falling on our doorsteps every day. Supermarket tabloids, radio, tv—all these are catechisms of demoralization.

1) Weather Control — Unusually protracted weather conditions with little or no change (especially long periods of sunshine) provide ample opportunity for the incubation of viral and bacterial agents. An added advantage is that sunny, warm weather encourages people to get together in groups, going to games, the beach, the park. These masses of humanity create a mental wavelength which depletes creative energy and deadens the environment, contributing to the main objective of overall demoralization.

2) Viral and Bacterial Agents — It’s foolish to believe that research in bacteriological warfare ended with the invention of the nuclear bomb. Many diseases are now being traced back to invincible, ever-modifying viruses. The cause of everything from AIDS to ARC to the much-discussed “Yuppie Disease” (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) seems to be isolated to a breakdown of the body’s immune system triggered by a viral infection. If “bombardments” were being manipulated so as not to arouse suspicion, attacks could be made on areas of the body already susceptible, causing “flare-ups” of already diagnosed diseases. “Spot” or arthritic-type pains could be induced in unlikely parts of the body. Irregularities in mucous membranes could cause cold-like symptoms that never quite develop into full-fledged colds, chronic yeast infections, symptoms of internal parasites (bloating and swelling), fluid retention, or a feeling of “pressure” in the head. Of course, few would feel bad enough to be incapacitated, just ill enough to wonder what was that matter.

3) Ultrasonic Targeting or Saturation (White Noise) — I’ve done extensive experimentation with various sound frequencies, on both ends of the spectrum, and discovered what can be done, especially using the technology of microchips and synthesizers. Ultrasonic sound jams volitional thought, immobilizes the individual, induces mental confusion and increases suggestibility. White noise can be carried by radio and tv-audio signals, and enhanced by frenetic musical (MTV, etc.) or frenetic spoken delivery. We become used to the “chipmunk” sound always going in the background, establishing a norm of hyper-pacing and overstimulation of the senses. Without an electronic device chattering away, things seem unnaturally quiet, so, under the guise of seeking information and being entertained, we become addicted to the “presence” of tv, radio, or stereo as guiding and stabilizing influences.

4) Subsonic Targeting or Saturation (Black Sound) — On the opposite end of the sound spectrum, subsonics can be used to drive people together during conducive periods (holidays, weekends, or special events). Besides the depletion resulting from large numbers of people clustering together, black sound creates anxiety, hyperactive behavior, agitation, and increased stress. Subsonic sound can also be employed to create earthquakes.

5) Microwave Radiation — Not leaking from microwave ovens, but received through undetectable (or overlooked) receivers, from satellite or earth-bound transmitters. No giant receiving dishes are necessary. Natural or man-made configurations can be utilized or constructed that are conducive to reception (areas between hills, valleys between skyscrapers, sports arenas, etc.). Symptoms: respiratory ailments, circulatory problems, mucous membrane and kidney dysfunction, excessive thirst, mental retardation, memory loss, forgetfulness.

6) Food and Beverage Dispersal — Outlets where large numbers of people are exposed to the mass-produced provisions are suspect. Chemicals in widely consumed foodstuffs or drinks are an obvious arena for unseen chemical additives. (And those who actually fry or dispense the foods never need know exactly what is being dispersed.) Fast food and restaurant chains receive pre-mixed, pre-packaged supplies, as do supermarkets and other retail outlets. To “fuel up” at these outlets is to perhaps induce and sustain lassitude, and foster mental incapacity and insensitivity. Those not yet conditioned by exposure to these chemicals can experience MSG-type symptoms (excessive thirst, hot flashes, wired yet tired feelings, metallic taste, etc.).

7) Psychological Smokescreens — Screening and misdirection are employed to divert attention from the agents of the invisible enumerated above. Some of the more obvious misdirections are: threat of nuclear attack, political “causes,” scandal and campaign hysteria, concern over “real” or conventional warfare, contrived revolts and shooting wars in far-away areas of the world, fear of contamination of water supplies by parties unknown (ensuring increased sales of chemical-laden beverages), poisoning or experiments by the CIA or other convenient groups, fear of the Appointed Enemy, i.e., Christian-defined “Satanic” influences, UFOs, neo-Nazis (until they’re absorbed to make room for a new, common enemy). These are all widely discussed and heatedly protested topics, and therefore effective as diversions.

8) The Extended Weekend — There have been occasional three-day weekends before, but never like this. Long weekends are necessary to allow spending and recreational time while maintaining the illusion of productivity. Three and four day weekends allow plenty of opportunity for “relaxation” (i.e., intensive television viewing and other indoctrinational devices) and keep everyone happy. At this rate, we may yet see six day weekends.

9) Urban Warfare — Beyond the smokescreens, there are other psychological elements involved in the present war. By allowing heavy drug use to increase, and an underground network of sales and distribution to exist, people can be kept malleable and satisfied, while the drugs induce mental retardation. Drug skirmishes, rampant in urban sectors, thin the population. Another effective warfare agent is the individual annihilator—a person so frustrated with the injustices of the “justice system” or by the petty tyranny of contemporary life that he grabs an armful of guns and starts shooting into the nearest crowd. The serial killer—a contemporary phenomenon—cannot be overlooked. These incidents are often labeled “Satanic” or “cult” crimes, and will increase as a method of population reduction.

These are the major weapons in use today. Inasmuch as neurological responses affect the entire physical organism, it must be emphasized that physical malaise or disease may originate in demoralization created and sustained by any warfare agent. Becoming aware of these agents can minimize unnecessary demoralization in those who wish to preserve their instinct for survival.

Genesse love/hates her pre-packaged P-Orridge
Photo: Michelle Handelman

The Cereal Box Conspiracy Against the Developing Mind

Michelle Handelman and Monte Cazazza

The biggest conspiracy of all, which few even dare to acknowledge, is that we are victims of our birth. Thanks to the often accidental result of a cojoining of simpletons we are yanked unasked into this noxious land of pretense. We are doomed to fit into someone else’s plan until we become cunning enough to find a way out. By the time we figure out where we stand, it’s too late to leave, and even suicide has become a felony.

The second biggest conspiracy comes into play soon after birth — the weaning and shaping of new lives into the Consumerist Reality, which is what the behavioral science of marketing children’s cereals is all about. Leaving the supermarket without a box of Breakfast With Barbie is not a crime. But your kids will make you think it is if you don’t purchase at least a couple of the latest holographic polychromatic “free prize inside” Nintendo Cereal Systems.

It’s not just the mood-elevating refined sugared product they are selling. (You could make a good case for food manufacturer’s collusion with the AMA, ADA and FDA, supplying a ready quantity of sugar-addicted children with juvenile diabetes and dental carries.) With children’s break-fast cereal, the product is only nominally different from brand to brand, and then primarily in its food coloring. No, the food product is only a Trojan horse into the hearts and minds of the the little Billys and Debbies.

Food manufacturers are training children to gorge themselves on style, on pop culture. The corporate mascots and icons of the past can no longer serve contemporary corporate lebensraum. Children are to have a tv show, a top movie, a record album, a video game, and a toy doll to accompany their eating experience. Kids are to have breakfast with the same “friend” who appears on the back of their tee-shirts and as toys in their sandbox and as characters on endlessly re-run television shows. This “friendship” is purposefully imaginary rather than tactile. The images are seductive, but are not tangible, creating angst in the young children, who gorge themselves with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cereal in order to fill the absence inside them.

Advertising works on two premises: 1. Convincing us to buy what we don’t need. 2. Convincing us to buy back what we already have. Advertising spreads its economic hegemony through the tried and true religious principles of fear and guilt. Advertising intervenes between people and their needs, separates them from direct fulfillment and urges its victims to believe that satisfaction can only be obtained through the symbolic magic or grace of its commodity. Foodstuffs that are advertised are usually processed—meaning more expensive, less naturally appealing, less nourishing, and often harmful. Children’s cereals rate high in all four of these iniquities.

Cereal boxes are designed to hold young ones in thrall as they progress through the normal transitory stages of orality and anality. The symbol of consumption—the open mouth—is found on nearly every box. More subliminally, symbols of the act of excretion are found on such products as Cookie Crisps, Corn Pops, and the aptly named Cocoa Pebbles. Cookie Crisp gives us a lipsmacking bandit with a tongue sticking out of a stretching mouth. Cocoa Pebbles is even less subtle. Barney and Fred are placed on opposite sides of a large bowl containing the chocolate cocoa pebbles. The first perversion comes with the concept of Barney and Fred engaging in a menage-a-trois in oral consumption of Pebbles (the name of Fred’s daughter). The clincher is in the giant cereal bowl before them with a hole bored out in the center with the aid of Barney’s “drill.” From that sphincterish hole, large brown blobs are shitted out.

The cover of Corn Pops, formerly Sugar Pops, also boasts the prevalent hole with flying feces, with the O in Pops jettisoning large yellow-brown blobs to all corners of the box. The predominant color of Cookie Crisp and Cocoa Pebbles is brown, while Corn Pops accompanies its brown with urine-yellow stains.

Breakfast with Barbie appeals to the precocious libido of pre-teen girls and boys. The pink motif of the box is targeted for girls and, perhaps, sissy boys rebelling from their puppy dog tail stereotype. But the image of a scantily-clad Barbie showing lots of plastic flesh might be just the perfect breakfast companion for the developing heterosexual boy. The result of this may be to confuse a young boy’s sexual orientation. This may be welcomed by food manufacturers, for market surveys have found gay men to be more avid shoppers than their hetero counterparts. For the girls, the pink design of Breakfast with Barbie cereal box suggests nothing more than pre-pubescent female genitalia. To this end, an optical illusion that appears on the Breakfast with Barbie box panders to the primal fears of a young girl’s sexual self-discovery. In between Barbie’s legs an undefinable form emerges very pink and very erect. Is it a giant clitoris? A tongue? Daddy’s penis? Further investigation reveals the form as Barbie’s pink sunglasses, which she rests upon her knee.

Exclusivity, which has played such a big part in status advertising for the last 70 years, has only just recently been applied to the children’s marketplace. Frosted Flakes, Cheerios, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all offer a “limited edition” box with a hologram on the front. This may be the most dangerous form of advertising of all, since it foments such anti-social and competitive values as wealth and status. The collision of children’s games with consumerist doctrine carries the developing mind further afield from the childhood dreamstate, so necessary to the formation of a whole and healthy personality.

Derek Wong, left, and Sean Clark, both 3, are avid Ninja Turtle fans. They’re surrounded by a year’s worth of Derek’s Turtle toy collection.

Paramount in the invasion of economic hegemony into childhood imagination is the cynical revamping of fairy tales in the use of the “Magical Agent” to convince children of the merits of sugar cereals. Lucky Charms’ friendly Irish midget is a pied piper who keeps children in line with the promise of sweet confections, controverting parental dicta not to accept candy from strangers.

Ghostbusters and its spinoffs make good use of the unspoken secrets and mysteries that comprise the religious experience of childhood through its ridicule of adult oppressors. The prize inside Ghostbusters glows in the dark, glows secretly to children beyond the consciousness of adulthood. Corn Pops offers a prize “Ghost Detector” inside its box. The “Ghost Detector” is a psychic geiger counter, a thin piece of heat-sensitive glow-in-the-dark plastic which curls up in one’s hand indicating the presence of a “ghost.” Batman cereal (the bat itself has long been associated with darker practitioners of the occult) offers a glow-in-the-dark “bat disc flyer” in exchange for a coupon. The hologram, itself a form of Techno-magic, is an offer available from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cereal in the form of a Holographic tee-shirt from another dimension. And Nintendo Cereal System offers the child an opportunity to buy the secret “power” either on cassette or in a magazine. Presumably, this empowers the child to go beyond the limits of parental authority. PMRC would do well to look at these marketing ploys as the earliest link in the breakdown of the family unit.

The masters of commerce have let children of America know that they are what they eat. A kid can be Batman or Barbie or Mr. T. or even the voracious Pac-Man. Can Satan Crispies be far off? (We’ve heard of a plan afoot by one of the three big cereal manufacturers to begin test marketing Jesus Flakes in several predominantly Catholic South American countries and Mexico.)

Society for the Eradication of Televison Fact Sheet

1. The average child has watched more than 200,000 commericals by the time he graduates from high school.

2. Advertisers spend over a half-billion dollars each year to tell children to buy expensive toys and unhealthy food.

3. Each year the average viewer sees 18,000 commercials.

4. In a typical American household a television set is on for seven hours and two minutes a day.

5. By the time a young person finishes high school, he will have spent more time watching television than sitting in a classroom.

6. 99.5% of American homes have a television set.

7. 250,000 Americans wrote to Marcus Welby, M.D. a few years ago asking for medical advice.

8. An American will have spent nine years of his life in front of a television by the age of sixty-five.

9. A Detroit paper offered $500 to 120 families to turn off their sets for a month. Ninety-three of the families turned the offer down.

10. Children show classic withdrawal symptoms normally associated with drugs when their families agree to kick the TV habit.

11. By the age of fourteen, a devoted viewer will have witnessed 11,000 television murders.

12. There is an average of eighteen violent acts per hour on children’s weekend programs, and pre-school children show “unwarranted aggressive behavior” after heavy television viewing. (National Institute of Mental Health)

13. When asked to choose between their fathers and their television sets, more than half the young people in a survey chose television.

Letters to the Editor

Every metropolitan newspaper, every magazine of decent circulation, receives a large share of mail that is instantly despatched to the trash after, perhaps, a few snorts of disgust. After all, what is a self-respecting publication to do with mail from those who know that the assassin of John F. Kennedy lives in the apartment next door, folks convinced that the CIA have implanted electronic mechanisms in their cavity fillings, loop-heads with definitive solutions to the world’s ills, homegrown conspiracy theorists whose arguments with relatives or neighbors have taken on cosmological proportions. Kook mail.

A capitalist society, whose spark plug is psychic seduction (salesmanship) employing all the latest marketing (brainwashing) techniques. has no business attaching the epithet of “kook” to theories, stories or proposals that do not adopt the prevailing purblind attitudes. Publishers, take heed: hiding the mountains of “kook” mail from the Op-Ed page and Letters to the Editor does nothing to stave off the increasing magnitude of mental disease and insufficiency bred by a system that designed to make mental castrates of its subjects.

SEEDS OF ARMAGEDDON IS NOW BEEN SOWN
LET’S NIP IT WHILE IT’S IN THE BUD.

RECENTLY DURING THE PAST TWO WEEKS I SAT PATIENTLY AT MY RADIO LISTENING TO THIS AND THAT, VIEWED THE PICTURES PUBLISHED IN THE NEWSPAPERS. THE INSULTING SLINGERING CLINCHED FISTS OF BEGGARS AND A WEEK EARLIER ANOTHER INTRUDER-BOTH SEEKING FUNDS AND SUPPORT. ONE BEGGAR EVEN USED THE CLENCHED FIST SLOGAN WHILE VISITING THE PRESIDENT. RULERS OF THE PAST SUCH AS QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ESSEX WOULD HAVE SAID TO THE FIST SLINGERS Y-YOU SMALL TIME RIFT RAFF ARE SEEKING FUNDS, ARE YOU NOT, AND HAVE THE NERVE TO SLING YOUR RUSTY FISTS IN MY PRESENCE. SINCE YOU HAVE NO BETTER SENSE THAN TO TRY TO MAKE ME APPEAR TO THE WORLD AS A FOOL BY YOUR USE OF BRUTE FORCE TO GET WHAT YOU WANT, I’LL TEACH YOU JUST WHAT BRUTE FORCE IS. YOU HAVEN’T GOT A POT TO PISS IN. I AM THE RULER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. GET OUT HERE AND QUICK THROUGH THAT DOOR THERE. THEN THE QUEEN YELLED OUT HA PETERI MAKE SURE THAT THE HATCHET BLADE IS A SHARP ONE. AND THE BEGGARS NEVER LEFT SCOTLAND YARD ALIVE. BUT THE VIRGIN QUEEN NEVER PLOTTED AGAINST HER RULE DID SHE? TODAYS SO-CALLED RULERS PUT UP WITH SUCH NONESENSE BECAUSE THEY THEMSELVES ARE PLOTTING SO IT SEEMS TO CREATE A HOLOCAUST AGAINST BLACKS AND OTHER POOR PEOPLE BUT THIS TIME, THEY WILL REAP THE WAR OR ARMAGEDOEN BUT BEFORE THIS HAPPENS GORBACHEV WILL VISIBLY BECOME THE RULER OF THE WORLD WHILE THE THE USA REDUCES HERSELF TO THE STATUS OF A BOY SCOUT NATION. A CASE IN POINT IS THE RECENT FLAIRUP IN LIBERIA WHEREBY USA SHIPS WERE SAID TO HAVE BEEN POSTED NEAR THE LIBERIAN BORDER TO RESCUE FOREIGN CITIZENS INCLUDING THOSE OF THE USSR. IS THIS NOT IN REALITY A CASE OF BOY SCOUTING? LOOKOUT, LOOKOUT THE TRUE HUMAN RATS ARE DESTROYING AMERICA. HUMPTY-DUMPTY AND JACK-O’LANTERN IS FALLING DOWN, RAP, RAP AND MORE CRAP. I SEE THE USA A CRAWLING NATION OF DISORDER AND BLOOD FINANCED WITH USA MONEY OF COURSE. TIME WILL TELL. I SAY. ASK THE BEGGARS FOR A RETURN OF THE MONEY AND STOP THE CHECKS.

AMERICA

DONALD TRUMP, A MAN OF PURPOSE AND ACCOMPLISHMENT, HAS DONE MUCH GOOD FOR THE NATION. EVEN THOUGH HE ALLOWED HIMSELF TO BECOME EMBROILED IN TODAYS LOOSENESS TO A GREAT DEGREE, WE FEEL THAT MUCH OF THIS CAN BE OVERLOOKED NOW THAT HIS ORDEAL HAS BEEN SERIOUSLY FELT. WE ALSO FEEL THAT FAR GREATER THINGS AWAITS HIM AND WE ASK MR. TRUMP TO ALLOW US LITTLE PEOPLE TO JOIN HIM IN HELPING TO GET HIM BACK ON HIS FEET AND THIS TIME KEEP HIM THERE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE GOOD WILL, PEACE AND TRANQUILITY FOR ALL PEOPLE. 1, RAY GRABTREE HAS COMPOSED A SYMPHONIC POEM IN HONOR OF DONALD TRUMP AND WILL STRIVE TO GET HEADS OF EVERY STATE TO GET THEIR HOUSES AND PERSONS TO JOIN THE TRUMP FUND AND RALLIES AND CONCERTS WE HOPE TO PRESENT IN THE NEAR FUTURE ALL CHEQUES MUST BE MADE OUT TO DONALD TRUMP AND IN RETURN WE HOPE MR. TRUMP WILL ALLOW US ONE OF HIS HALLS TO DO OUR SHOWS IN. YOU’LL BE HEARING FROM US ABOUT COMING TO N.Y. TO APPEAR ON THE SHOWS AS WELL ATTEND AND OFFER YOUR GOOD WELL SERVICE TO THIS GRAND CAUSE. DONALD TRUMP OR GORBACHEV.

RAY CRABTREE
THE WRITER

POST ALL MAIL TO: P.O. BOX 111, TIMES SQUARE STATION, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10108

LET’S ACT NOW, WRITE TO US, POST PHOTOS, AND INFORMATION
ALONG WITH A SELF ADDRESSED ENVELOPE.

THE PHILOSOPHY KING HAS SPOKEN

From the Mark of the Beast to the Black Messiah Phenomenon:

The Chronicles of Ron J. Steele,
Investigative Reporter and Prophetic Author

Adam Parfrey

In 1974, Ron J. Steele met the Son of Perdition in downtown Walla Walla, Washington. He was a black man, dressed all in white, with two white gloves (shades of Michael Jackson?). “An inner voice told me this fellow was the Son of Perdition. He then approached, saying to me telepathically, ‘You can look at me. I am not the anti-Christ.’” Steele was warned by God not to look at this evil entity’s face, for if he did, his name would have been expunged from the Book of Life.

Since this terrifying occasion, Steele has been traveling the country disseminating research into what the non-religious call the “Big Brother” syndrome—lies, disinformation, and deceptions which are setting the stage for a mass yoking to the false Messiah. As early as 1974, Steele discovered plans to initiate a new colored currency which was being developed under the pretext of stopping organized crime. After exposing the plan in his community college newspaper, Steele was visited by U.S. Treasury Agents who grilled him on his knowledge of the subject, charging that he was part of an alleged plot to assassinate President Nixon. The affair was soon forgotten, but twelve years later, in 1986, network news announced that the new money was on its way.

This U.S. government plot to destroy the “underground economy” will involve registering each citizen’s every purchase on a master computer. This emergent system is a multi-pronged plan of government monitoring the decisions and movements of its citizenry. The Universal Product Code (UPC) was an early and important part of that plan, and its swift and universal acceptance by the public is cause for concern, Steele contends. He takes special notice of the numbered code below the bars and lines of the UPC code: they are the numbers 666.

At the time the UPC code was being rushed into existence, Public Service announcements inundated us with the virtues of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT), which promised to lead us into the promised land of a “checkless, cashless society.” The ostensible virtue of this plan would be greater “convenience.” In the late 1970s, the Federal Reserve released a film on EFT which featured a businessman magically teleporting an astonished couple around bank vaults and check verification centers like Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Past. The hapless couple, wide-eyed, exclaim, “Gee, Electronic Fund Transfer will really make my life convenient!”

The EFT plan would ultimately lead to getting rid of credit/identification cards (too “inconvenient” and “risky”) in lieu of subcutaneous indentification number implants. In 1975, Steele printed a series of articles on the developing technology of laser tattooing, which has been used ever since in the tagging of cattle. This ties into, as Steele reminds us, the “Mark of the Beast” prophecy as foretold in the Book of Revelation, in which no one can buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast. In 1978, Steele self-published an exhaustive, fact-filled book on the subject titled The Mark Is Ready—Are You?

Steele was the first to leak to the news media about the existence of a “hand-scan” machine, which was later implemented in a test with 3,000 army recruits at Ft. Benjamin, and will presumably be established before long in the American marketplace. The hand-scan machine will read the number tattooed into the consumer’s hand (seemingly invisible but readable to laser scanners), and will then feed the consumer’s bill into the legendary “SWIFT” computer in Brussels, Belgium. The amount will be automatically debited from the consumer’s account. Steele paints the demonic scenario of those lacking the hand tattoo as not being allowed to purchase food, or anything else.

The internationalist flavor of the Belgian computer is allied with what Steele says is part of the “We Are the World” syndrome: a softening up of people’s minds by New Age charlatans and demonists’ manipulation of people’s altruistic emotions. The “World Instant of Cooperation,” “Hands Across America,” “Live Aid” and “World Peace Meditation” are among the recent major events of the “secular humanist” religion which, according to Steele, will usher in worship of the false Messiah. In a number of full page advertisements taken out in major international newspapers in the early 1980s, a Londoner named Benjamin Creme announced that “THE CHRIST IS NOW HERE.” Creme identifies Christ as a “Lord Maitreya” who will speak to everyone “telepathically.” Creme’s advertisement announces that Lord Maitreya’s “presence guarantees there will be no third World War.”

Steele believes that the Big Brother-style monetary and “criminal tracking” systems will usher in the final soul-killing regime of the anti-Christ, who will demand people’s souls in return for the privilege of surviving under the omniscient system of a demonic mafia. Steele’s research has unveiled, long before recent news reports, an experimental transponder system which is touted as relieving the overcrowding of prisons by making criminals prisoners of their own home. This technology has been further developed to track cars on all roads. More fine-tuning will make it possible for a master computer to track all people’s movements at all times.

The black Christ as painted by Devon Cunningham of Detroit

Ron Steele is concerned that the vast majority of the population will not have to be coerced into Satan worship, but may do so gladly. Agents of the Sinister Plot will perpetrate a kind of Orwellian double-think, and lead unknowing victims onto the Death Path. The most powerful of these agents are mixed up in the film, television and music industries, due to the enormous psychic influence they wield.

“There is a power,” warns Steele, “that is given to certain people to do things that is not of God Almighty. Many people, for example, believe Michael Jackson is the second Christ. People firewalk to his song, ‘Beat It,’ and the firewalkers exclaim, ‘the power is in the music.’ Now let’s take a look at Captain EO. [A new attraction at Disneyland, a special 3-D musical made by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.] ‘Captain’ means someone in charge and ‘EO’ means ‘light.’ So Michael Jackson plays Captain of the Light, and that is exactly what Lucifer was—Lucifer was known as the light bearer. As Captain EO, he has fire coming out of his fingertips, and he changes the world from bad to good, which is what the Messiah is supposed to do.

“I do believe Satan is going to appear as a black entity. Satan has a chosen people, and I believe it is the black race. Understand that I don’t mean this in terms of prejudice to black people. Jesus was no respecter of people. But Satan is going to use the black race to deceive the rest of the world. So many people are starting to embrace the black movement. They are number one today in practically every field in entertainment. So many people can relate to the Apartheid thing, the catalyst of which is hate. And Jews can relate to hatred, and homosexuals can relate to hatred.

“The Islamic people are waiting for a Messiah to come by the name of St. Isa, which is nothing more than the Arabic name for Jesus Christ. They will tell you St. Isa is a black man. One sect of Japanese Buddhists are waiting for St. Fudo, a black Messiah. In the Philippines you’ve got the black Nazarene, and the Jesuits are mixed up in it too. Ignatius Loyola surrendered his life to the black virgin of Montserrat. Wherever the Conquistadors went, they took with them the black Christ, and so most of South America embraces the black Madonna as being the queen of heaven, which the bible says is an abomination, a false religion.

“In Michael Jackson’s song, ‘We Are the World,’ there are things which are very sinister. He said that God has shown us how to cast rocks into bread. Well he never said that. That was Satan’s first temptation to Jesus when Jesus was out in the desert for forty days, fasting. The deception is there, and you really have to look hard to see it.

“The white state of Israel along with the CIA airlifted Ethiopian Falashas into Israel. They were accepted there as one of the tribes of Israel. So it’s possible the Jews, white Jews, could accept the black Messiah. The Islamic people accept this. The Pope can bring a lot of people into this belief due to the black Madonna.

“The album voted number one in this country was Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the movie of it made with the Bee Gees, you have Billy Preston playing this black Messiah. In the movie you have him resurrecting a white girl from the dead, just like Michael Jackson did with fire coming out of his fingertips.

“When the black entity who calls himself the Messiah rises up in power, everybody will be able to relate to him. He will make peace and stop all the terrorism and solve everybody’s problems, and people are going to get sucked right into it.”

The solution, according to Steele, is not to become part of the one-world Mark of the Beast system and never, when the time comes, lay eyes on the False Messiah. Steele is currently writing a book on the False Black Messiah Phenomenon, as he calls it.

Michael Jackson inside his Sechrist (see Christ) hyperbaric oxygen chamber which he bought for $125,000 with the hope that It will keep him in a state of eternal youth

Satori & Pornography

Canonization Through Degradation

Christian Shapiro

Beauty isn’t everything, at least not in pornography. Among X-rated starlets, the besmirchment is the main thing. I know. I supplement my income by judging the relative arousal value of hardcore sex videos. My evaluations have appeared in a dozen stroke mags, under two dozen bylines.

Way back when, while I was still reviewing cock operas under my real name, each new tape was a titillating opportunity to freeze frame and fixate upon some dream-butt fantasy face. Perhaps some day, some way, such a siren of sultry pulchritude might cast upon me the look of glaze-eyed satiation lavished upon the club-dick mutant whose mule member she improbably invaginated with her throat, cunt and anus. About ten tapes down the line, however, my review technique had refined itself to a constant blur of fast-forward scan, at which speed I continue to audit jizz-product today.

A girl needs no special education to break into boff movies; in fact, some degree of blinding ignorance is practically a requirement. Good family background is far less important to the aspiring harlot starlet than are abusive primary relationships, a disrupted home dynamic and a history of sexual coercion prior to sensual maturity. Perhaps some women have entered the scum arena with a semblance of self-esteem, but most step into the slime pit in one more desperate attempt at validation as a worthwhile human being. And to make a lot of free money, too. Doing something she enjoys anyway, in a glamour industry. If she’s truly bad, she will garner a Best Actress Award from the Adult Film Association or the X-Rated Critics Organization. All she needs are two valid photo IDs stating that she is over 18 years of age, and a willingness to be soiled on-camera.

An aficionado of human form, who sees the blue-screen of semen-sheened writhing as a naked-grace melding of sweat, emotions and soul, will have a hard time copping to the facts. He—for, invariably he is a he—may wish to consider his viewing of all that humping and pumping and inevitable wet-shots as nothing less than an appreciation of applied aesthetics. “Some men find God in nature,” he may reason, “while I place the Divinity in a different type of grand canyon.”

Perhaps he’s fooling himself, or his leery girlfriend, but he’s not fooling me.

“I know you’ve got to make a living,” grants my concerned, would-be mother-in-law, referring to the literally thousands of spermy videos I have reviewed over the years at 40 bucks a pop, “but hasn’t it warped you?”

“Fuck yes,” exclaims my fiancée, “of course it’s warped him.”

And it would warp you too.

The porno talent pool is fed with a steady stream of fresh, belly-flopping, open-mouthed, salmon-lipped naiads battling against a current of thrust and cum. The discriminating scum viewer has the option of proxy-mauling a new nymph every Monday, tiring of her by Thursday, and trading her in for a change-of-pace piece over the weekend. But the ferreting-out of comely entrees is the mark of an amateur sleaze fan. The professional has considerations other than cutie-pie concupiscence. A jizz-pundit colleague and I have had enough of pretty faces. We hardly even notice them. We are too busy looking for something worse than what we saw last week.

Sneers a fellow smut-reviewer (a Jewish/Catholic hybrid, just like the XXX industry as a whole), “That Chessie Moore is a total, fucking lard sow. I saw her in a tape last night taking a double anal, and she had room for another fucking fire hydrant up there.”

“Shit,” I reply with professional deference, “I’ve got to see that. Ever since Kassi Nova sucked a dick straight out of her shithole, I haven’t been able to get excited about anything. I keep seeing that mocha-froth wad-shake dripping down her lips.”

Our only interest in viewing explicit materials is to see some disgrace that we have yet to witness. A man sucking his own dick, a woman bathed in the squalid shower of a half-dozen spurting pricks, a slave licking gravel from his mistress’ shoe, the Filipina whore plying her trade upon a large American canine: all of these are good for a momentary diversion, but then we must move on, searching for the next golden moment.

It’s best to keep looking, rather than pausing to consider what all this gratuitous filth means. The bodies bobbing in bursts of sewer semen actually belong to real human beings. If the theologians are correct, and our bodies are only the ephemeral vessels of our eternal souls, then is not the sullied body a porous thing, allowing seepage of cruel rot from temporary skin to the permanent life force inside? The undying essence within is perhaps purified by the cock-launched vitriol from without, entering the afterlife stripped of worldly lusts, of pride and arrogance. Then again, the soul might be corroded to the point of damnation everlasting.

Why get so serious? I ask myself, as Blake Palmer pulls his wedge of cheese dick from Debi Diamond’s distended anal rings and quickly fills her sluggishly clamping sphincters with his wriggling mouth lizard. After all, this is all in fun!

Pornography has no more sexual appeal than a Price Waterhouse annual report. It’s no longer about eroticism; it’s about humiliation. Unable to find sufficiently degraded specimens in the demimonde of smut, the sick-thrill seeker moves on to harder stuff: daytime TV. He turns on the pin-head topical panels, the tabloid news, the gauntlet of denigrating game shows. He sees slavering prostration of self as more than a national pastime; it is the new American godhead. We have reached a better future through sound bites of transcendent humiliation.

Soon wearied of broadcast abasement, the videophile slips a fuck tape back into his VCR. A nubile blonde writhes upon he rod of a middle-aged putz with a thinning scalp. Her eyes gleam up from beneath his paunch, her tongue reaching out to caress his droopy testicle sac as he spits in his palm and cranks his coke dick until a meager filament of genetic slop ekes out like a pus calzone onto the grimacing ginch’s gritted teeth.

The viewer sits with his shrivel dick in hand, anointed by his own squalid bodily unctions, every bit so blessed by the sacrament of sleaze as is the saintly slit onscreen.

Copy of the bronze medallion given by the American
Eugenics Society to winners of first prize in Fitter
Families Contests now regular features of a
number of State Fairs.

Eugenics: The Orphaned Science

Adam Parfrey

It is generally imagined that eugenics was a quack science that began with Mein Kampf and ended with the experiments of Dr. Mengele. This is not the case. “Family planning” and “genetic engineering” are the current euphemistic equivalents, and as we will see, euphemism is very often a means of killing you softly, with a new song.

Eugenics is the practical application of genetic theory to strengthen the genetic material of the human species (positive eugenics) or eliminate genetic dross (negative eugenics). At the turn of the century, eugenics was sold as a moral imperative. To housewives and mothers at that time, eugenics meant health-consciousness applied in a positivist science-directed manner. To social scientists, eugenics was a way to increase the quality of humanity similar to that of breeding more resilient strains of cattle. The presumed results would be auspicious: a steady increase in man’s intelligence and a decrease in crime and birth defects. Many American states took up the eugenic cudgel, passing sterilization laws for the physically unfit. By the end of the 1920s many thousands of mental defectives and violent criminals had undergone compulsary sterilization—a scientifically and legislatively sanctioned foray into the realm of preventive sociology.

By the mid-1930s, however, eugenics more and more became a synonym for racism and pseudo-science. Hostilities with Germany were increasing, and Nazi racial policy was vulnerable to Allied propaganda since Americans and British alike were threatened by intimations of Teutonic racial superiority. Great quantities of anti-Nazi tracts and books appeared, pillorying the myth of the Aryan superman. It is ironic to note, however, that the German Population Courts were merely emulating American eugenic policy. As early as 1930, Hitler reveals to economic advisor Wagener, “I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.” [Otto Wagener, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, 1985, Yale University Press.]

Eugenics=race hatred became an equation hard to shake in a country of Hun-haters. Yet in the 1920s, mainstream eugenicists were quick to distance themselves from those who, like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, promoted de Gobineau-derived theories of Nordic racial superiority. “An ounce of eugenics is worth a pound of race prejudice,” wrote Professor Frank Hankins in Evolution in Modern Thought, attempting to salvage eugenic science by merging it with American melting-pot sloganeering. Hankins and fellow scientists failed to keep the flame alive. By 1940, funding for research and legal sterilizations slowed to a halt, and the eugenic ideal of a nation full of geniuses and free of imbeciles became just a fading memory.

In the repudiation of applied genetics, however, a tyranny of a very different nature arose. Grigori Lysenko’s announcement in the late 1930s that there is no such thing as an inherited trait, that all traits are environmentally determined, paved the way for the reordering of the Russian spirit in the likeness of Joseph Stalin. Rejecting theories of inheritance made it easier for Soviet rulers to expect unswerving allegiance to heavy innoculations of communist dogma. Aldous Huxley and other science fiction writers painted pictures of eugenic/technological nightmares, of gleaming post-partum assembly lines complete with stainless steel nipples. (Later in his life, Huxley found an “unregulated” breeding process a far greater nightmare.) In the U.S., an environmentally-based theory of intelligence created the legal basis for lawsuits of race bias against institutions utilizing the I.Q. test and the SAT in which asian-Americans and whites score much higher than hispanics and blacks. Equalitarianism found its answer in Equal Opportunity programs, and not in a science which spoke about genetic advantages and disadvantages. There is no more frightening picture to the civil libertarian than the vision of a State drunk on the scripture of Social Darwinism.

After WWII, in the wake of widespread anti-Nazi sentiment, UNESCO-underwritten scientists such as the anthropologist Ashley Montagu flooded the bookstores, colleges and academies with books such as Man’s Most Dangerous Myth, a debunking expose about “fascism of the gonads.” More recently, the anti-eugenicist torch has been passed to journalist-scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould (The Mismeasure of Man), Allen Chase (The Legacy of Malthus) and Daniel Kevles (In the Name of Eugenics). Their tomes rebuke, in the tradition of American and British anti-Nazi propaganda, the moral premises—and scientific verities—of eugenics. Concludes Kevles in his book, “... the more masterful the genetic sciences have become, the more they have corroded the authority of moral custom in medical and reproductive behavior.”

UNESCO’s muddled role vis à vis eugenics—now for, now against—is worth contemplating since it describes throwing the birth process in one direction or the other for solely political purposes. G. Brock Chisholm, a former director of the World Health Organization, articulated UNESCO’s apparent aim: “What people everywhere must do is practice birth control and miscegenation in order to create one race in one world under one government.” [U.S.A. magazine, August 12, 1955] A statement such as Chisholm’s demonstrates that a version of eugenics more in line with humanist ideals is exonerated under the rubric of sexual freedom and racial equality while the early eugenicists’ aims of intellectual and moral improvement of the species continue to be damned as diabolic.

This survey will excerpt, in chronological order, leading scientists, philosophers, politicians, and journalists advocating eugenic control.

Old Testament

Numbers 12:1

And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.

Plato

The Republic

“And I suppose, when young men prove themselves good and true in war or anywhere else, honors must be given them, and prizes, and particularly more generous freedom of intercourse with women; at the same time, this will be a good excuse for letting as many children as possible be begotten by such men.”

“That is right.”

“Then the officials who are set over these will receive the children as they are born; they may be men or women or both, for offices are common, of course, to both women and men.”

“Yes.”

“The children of the good, then they will take, I think, into the fold, and hand them over to certain nurses who will live in some place apart in the city; those of the inferior sort, and any one of the others who may be born defective, they will put away as is proper in some mysterious, unknown place.”

Thomas Malthus

An Essay on the Principle of Population, or, A View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness; with an Inquiry into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils Which it Occasions (1798)

A mob, which is generally the growth of a redundant population goaded by resentment for real sufferings, but totally ignorant of the quarter from which they originate, is of all monsters the most fatal to freedom. It fosters a prevailing tyranny and engenders one where it was not; and though in its dreadful fits of resentment it appears occasionally to devour its unsightly offspring; yet no sooner is the horrid deed committed, than, however unwilling it may be to propagate such a breed, it immediately groans with a new birth.

Of the tendency of mobs to produce tyranny we may not, perhaps, be long without an example in this country ... If political discontents were blended with cries of hunger, and a revolution were to take place by the instrumentality of a mob clamoring for want of food, the consequences would be unceasing carnage, a bloody career of which nothing but the establishment of some complete despotism could arrest.

Count Arthur De Gobineau

The Inequality of the Races (1853)

The word degenerate, when applied to a people means (as it ought to mean) that the people has no longer the same intrinsic value as it had before, because it has no longer the same blood in its veins, continual adulterations having gradually affected the quality of that blood. In other words, though the nation bears the same name given by its founders, the name no longer connotes the same race; in fact, the man of a decadent time, the degenerate man properly so called, is a different being, from the racial point of view, from the heroes of the great ages.

Sir Francis Galton

Hereditary Talent and Character (1865)

Our human civilized stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals, whether wild or domestic.

... If a twentieth part of the cost and pains were spent in measures for the improvement of the human race that is spent on the improvement of the breed of horses and cattle, what a galaxy of genius might we not create.

Charles Darwin

The Descent of Man (1871)

We now know, through the admirable labors of Mr. Galton, that genius ... tends to be inherited.

Alfred Russell Wallace

Quoted in Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty (c. 1872)

In one of my latest conversations with Darwin, he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive.

Herbert Spencer

Principles of Sociology (1881)

Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing up of miseries for future generations. There is no greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles.

Dr. Alexander Graham Bell

From The Journal of Heredity (1898)

At the present time considerable alarm has been expressed at the apparently growing disinclination of American women to bear children, and a cry has been raised against what people call race suicide.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Foundations of the 19^th Century (1899)

... Are the so-called (and rightly so-called) “noble” animal races, the draught-horses of Limousin, the American trotter, the Irish hunter, the absolutely reliable sporting dogs, produced by chance and promiscuity? Do we get them by giving the animals equality of rights, by throwing the same food to them and whipping them with the same whip? No, they are produced by artificial selection and strict maintenance of the purity of the race. Horses and especially dogs give us every chance of observing that the intellectual gifts go hand in hand with the physical; this is specially true of the moral qualities: a mongrel is frequently very clever, but never reliable; morally he is always a weed. Continual promiscuity between two pre-eminent animal races leads without exception to the destruction of the pre-eminent characteristics of both. Why would the human race form an exception?

Havelock Ellis

The Task of Social Hygiene (1914)

The eugenic ideal which is now developing is not an artifical product, but the reasoned manifestation of a natural instinct, which has often been far more severely strained by the arbitrary prohibitions of the past than it is ever likely to be by any eugenic ideals of the future. The new ideal will be absorbed into the conscience of the community, whether or not like a new kind of religion, and will instinctively and impulsively influence the impulses of men and women. It will do all this the more surely since, unlike the taboos of savage societies, the eugenic ideal will lead men and women to reject as partners only the men and women who are naturally unfit—the diseased, the abnormal, the weaklings—and conscience will thus be on the side of impulse.

Madison Grant

The Passing of the Great Race (1915)

True aristocracy is governed by the wisest and best, always a small minority in any population. Human society is like a serpent dragging its long body on the ground, but with the head always thrust a little in advance and a little elevated above the earth. The serpent’s tail, in human society represented by the antisocial forces, was in the past dragged by sheer force along the path of progress. Such has been the organization of mankind from the beginning, and such it still is in older communities than ours. What progress humanity can make under the control of universal suffrage, or the rule of the average, may find a further analogy in the habits of certain snakes which wiggle sideways and disregard the head with its brain and eyes. Such serpents, however, are not noted for their ability to make rapid progress.

Paul Popenoe & Roswell Hill Johnson

Applied Eugenics (1918)

... One does not overlook the fact that religion has at times sacrificed both personal and eugenic values. Cases of flagellation and religious celibacy come to mind as two spectacular instances. Since progress toward eugenic ideals is hampered by the present inadequate motivation toward eugenic conduct, the eugenicist looks with eager hope to religion for possible aid. Yet, unfortunately, it is necessary to admit that to date religion has contributed, along with some slight eugenic motivation, a large mixture of dysgenic motivation.... If, on the average, the religious celibates were inferior, there would be no net eugenic loss, but this is not the case, especially with many celibate males who are held to high scholastic standards.

H.a. Schultz

Race or Mongrel? (1918)

The degeneracy there [in Peru] is even greater and has been more rapid than in the other South American countries, and the case is the infusion of Chinese blood into the veins of the white-negro-Indian compound. There are scarcely any Indo-Europeans of pure blood in Peru, for with the exception of pure Indians in the interior the population consists of mestizos, Zambos, mulattoes, terceroons, quadroons, octaroons, cholos, musties, fusties and dusties; crosses between Spaniards and Indians, Spaniards and negroes, Spaniards and yellows; crosses between these people and the cholos, musties and dusties; crosses between mongrels of one kind and mongrels of other kinds. All kinds of cross breeds infest the land. The result is incredible rottenness.

Albert Edward Wiggam

The Next Age of Man (1924)

We can well ask the question, are we winning the human race? When, after searching the records of ten thousand years, we can identify only one hundred and twenty-five thousand who have exhibited “special skill, enterprise or strength.” This would constitute only one person out of every quarter of a million. Certainly, we can scarcely pride ourselves that the human race has as yet won the immense stakes of health, intelligence and energy—the three basic sources from which all genius springs—if only about one person in each quarter of a million has possessed these qualities in a truly notable degree.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf (1925)

Those who are physically and mentally unhealthy and unfit must not perpetuate their sufferings in the bodies of their children. Through educational means the State must teach individuals that illness is not a disgrace but a misfortune for which people are to be pitied, yet at the same time that it is a crime and a disgrace to make this affliction the worse by passing it on to innocent creatures out of a merely egotistic yearning.

And the State must also teach that it is the manifestation of a really noble nature and that it is a humanitarian act worthy of all admiration if an innocent sufferer from hereditary disease refrains from having a child of his own but bestows his love and affection on some unknown child whose state of health is a guarantee that it will become a robust member of a powerful community.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

Buck vs. Bell Decision (1925)

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices [sterilization], often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

States Approving Sterilization Legislation

(1907–1931)

Indiana, Washington, California, Connecticut, Nevada, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Alabama, Montana, Delaware, Virginia, Idaho, Utah, Minnesota, Maine, Mississippi, West Virginia, Arizona, Vermont, Oklahoma.

Countries Approving Sterilization Legislation

(1907–1931)

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, United States, Estonia, Free City of Danzig, Switzerland, England, Bermuda, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany.

Bertrand Russell

From a Speech (1930)

The most intelligent individuals on the average breed least, and do not breed enough to keep their numbers constant. Unless new incentives are discovered to induce them to breed they will soon not be sufficiently numerous to supply the intelligence needed for maintaining a highly technical and elaborate system. Further, we must expect, at any rate, for the next hundred years, that each generation will be congenitally stupider than its predecessor, and we shall gradually become incapable of wielding the science we already have.

Rudolf Frerks

Germany Population Policy (1938)

Opponents of the German laws for promoting the hereditary health of the nation have asked: “Who has given you the right to destroy life and to interfere with the operation of Nature’s laws through which life is created?” No, we do not destroy life. We only prevent the propagation of further lives which will be afflicted by disease and will of themselves be unfit to fulfill the demands which life makes on every individual. On the other hand is it not much more true to say that they sin against the laws of Nature who not only pamper and encourage afflicted lives but even allow these lives to be further propagated and multiplied?

Lothrop Stoddard

Into the Darkness (1940)

There were other cases that day [at the Nazi Eugenics court], all conducted in the same painstaking, methodical fashion. I came away convinced that the law was being administered with strict regard for its provisions and that, if anything, judgments were almost too restrained. On the evidence of that one visit, at least, the Sterilization Law is weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way.

A.f. Tregold

A Text-Book of Mental Deficiency (1946)

Another suggestion has been made of a quite contrary kind [to laissez-faire eugenic policy]—namely, that the State should put an end to the existence of defective and inefficient members within it. Probably most persons will agree that it would be better were there no defectives, and this suggestion is a logical one.... In my opinion it would be an economical and humane procedure were their existence painlessly terminated, and I have no doubt, from personal experience, that this would be welcomed by a very large proportion of parents.

Aldous Huxley

Brave New World Revisited (1958)

In this second half of the twentieth century we do nothing systematic about our breeding; but in our random and unregulated way we are not only overpopulating our planet, we are also, it would seem, making sure that these greater numbers shall be of biologically poorer quality.

Paul Ehrlich

The Population Bomb (1968)

I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time. I came to understand it emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi a couple years ago. My wife and daughter and I were returning to our hotel in an ancient taxi. The seats were hopping with fleas. As we crawled through the city, we entered a crowded slum area. The temperature was well over 100, and the air was a haze of dust and smoke. The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing and screaming. People thrusting their hands, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people.

Edward O. Wilson

Sociobiology (1975)

... Mankind has never stopped evolving, but in a sense his populations are drifting. The effects over a period of a few generations could change the identity of the socioeconomic optima. In particular, the rate of gene flow around the world has risen to dramatic levels and is accelerating, and the mean coefficients of relationship within local communities are correspondingly diminishing. The result could be an eventual lessening of altruistic behavior through the maladaption and loss of group-selected genes.

Arthur Jensen

Quoted in Discover (October, 1985)

There’s no doubt that you could breed for intelligence in humans the way you breed for milk in cows or eggs in chickens. If you were to raise the average I.Q. just one standard deviation, you wouldn’t recognize things. Magazines, newspapers, books, and television would have to become more sophisticated. Schools would have to teach differently.

“HALF U.S. COUPLES CAN’T HAVE BABIES”

The New York Times (February 11, 1986)

Nearly half of all [white] couples of childbearing age in the United States are physically unable to have children, as Americans increasingly choose sterilization to limit their new families, according to Government statistics.

“CONCERN IN ISRAEL OVER IMMIGRATION”

The New York Times (May 21, 1986)

... Prof. Roberto Bacchi, head of the Hebrew University statistics department, told the Cabinet that today’s 9.5 million Jews living outside of Israel would shrink to about 8 million by the year 2000 if current demographic trends in assimilation, intermarriage and low birth rates continues.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres said the answer is that every Jewish family in Israel should have four children. On Sunday the Cabinet approved in principle the allocation of as much as $20 million to help 6,000 infertile Israeli couples to have children.

“MAJOR PERSONALITY STUDY FINDS THAT TRAITS ARE INHERITED”

The New York Times (December 1, 1986)

The genetic makeup of a child is a stronger influence on personality than child rearing, according to the first study to examine identical twins reared in different families. The findings shatter a widespread belief among experts and laymen alike in the primacy of family influence and are sure to engender fierce debate.

“NEW ANIMAL FORMS WILL BE PATENTED”

The New York Times (April 17, 1987)

The Federal Government, in a decision with broad moral and ethical implications, said today that it was clearing the way for inventors to patent new forms of animal life created through gene splicing.

The policy specifically bars the patenting of new genetic characteristics in humans. But one official of the United States Patent and Trademark Office acknowledged that the decision could eventually lead to commercial protection of human traits.

“The decision says higher life forms will be considered and it could be extrapolated to human beings,” said Charles E. Van Horn, director of organic chemistry and biotechnology in the patent office.“

THE TYPE OF HUMANS WE MAY EXPECT WITHIN A FEW CENTURIES

How to Kill: Are Afrikan People Subjects of a Genocidal Plot?

Harry Allen

[Editor’s Note: Harry Allen, “media assassin” for the rap group Public Enemy, was asked to respond to a Jack White Time magazine article titled “Genocide Mumbo Jumbo” that pooh-poohed the resurgent grassroots belief in an establishment scheme to thin the non-white population. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” Harry Allen’s colloquy with Jack White and Asiba Tupahache, author of Taking Another Look, confronts the unthinkable spectre of genocide, and its possible application in contemporary American culture. Ms. Tupahache and Mr. White were interviewed separately.]

White people also face a very real problem. How dangerous can a minority of thirty-five million be? In [Europe], it was difficult to kill six million Jews, and they were docile and nonviolent. In America it would be difficult to kill thirty-five million Black people without also destroying America.

—Albert Cleage, Black Christian Nationalism

What is you profession?

Jack White: I’m an editor at Time.

Asiba Tupahache: (Laughs) I’m a teacher.

And how many years have you been doing this?

White: I’ve worked here for 18 years

Tupahache: I’ve been willing to acknowledge it since 1973.

Where were you born?

White: Why do we have to go into all of this background? I mean, do you have some questions? Let’s just get on with the questions, okay?

Tupahache: Long Island, New York.

What was your education?

Tupahache: Well, outside of life and all of it’s experiences...through institutions, it was Howard University, undergrad, post-graduate work at Adelphi University, University of Minnesota ... and there’s one more I can’t think of right now.

How old are you?

Tupahache: Thirty-nine.

How did the idea for the work [about racial genocide] come about?

White: A number of people had done articles about this. There was a Washington Post story at that time, one that appeared in the now-defunct publication 7 Days, in which they seemed to be saying that this was going around — it’s something that’s been in the Black community for a long time. But those particular pieces, which seemed to be suggesting that there was a resurgence of this kind of thinking going on, were the immediate cause of our looking into it.

Tupahache: Seeing an “Inky” Warner Bros. cartoon caricature on television. I was just amazed that the cartoon was still being shown, and just how easy it was for that to be shown, and no one objected. No one seemed to think anything was wrong. I started making photographs, taking pictures, shooting off the television—Flintstones cartoons, shooting ads out of magazines, billboards and everything. Just feeling like there was something I was going to do with it, just to tell everybody how wrong it was and how abnormal it was to pretend, or at least not know that anything was wrong, when it really was a very hurtful thing. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I knew I was gonna do something, and I just started collecting stuff, and it turned into boxes.

What kind of research did you do before writing?

White: In this instance, we had two basic things: We had a correspondent here, Priscilla Payton, who conducted a large number of interviews with well-informed Black leaders and others around the country, and also I made some phone calls to some people I know who I think are well-informed on issues facing the Black community.

Tupahache: Mostly self-inspection. Inward. My own stuff. Going through my own background of continued oppression in a dysfunctional family situation. And looking at it as it extended from my immediate situation to the existence that I was enduring as an extinct person in a society, and what kind of society would require extinctions of people that were not extinct. And it came from putting all that together.

I think the turning point was when some land markers were going to declare on of our ancestral areas Long Island’s first Black national landmark. It kind of flipped my brain inside out, trying to deal with the panic and outrage of my relatives, while at the same time trying to understand and cope with deaf, dumb, and blindness of a public, who I thought wanted to know the truth, but who, in fact, only wanted to know what they wanted to hear. 1977, right after Roots was televised, and everybody was slave wild. And it was bicentennial time, and nobody wanted to hear about this obscure idea of a people called Matinecoc getting in the way of their slavery revelry and their Bicentennial Minutes.

What type of reactions has the work received?

White: Uh, a lot of angry reactions from what I presume are Black readers, who felt that there was in fact a plot of some sort to exterminate Blacks through the use of drugs and other ways. I think that’s the overwhelming reaction in the letters that came into the magazine.

Tupahache: Very positive reactions, for those who have seen it. And I guess that’s probably what really overwhelmed me the most. The first week I sold a hundred copies of it, after a radio discussion on a show called Night Talk. I didn’t really understand the impact that it made on people, but it did [make one]. And just the process of sending them out to people, then finding it had been understood and useful was kind of a transition right there, because I had spent all the time gathering the evidence, figuring it out, writing it all out, and then sending it out. Saying goodbye to it.

Which part of the work has received the most criticism? What criticism did it receive?

White: They were generally objecting to the whole piece.

Allen: Did you get any reaction that was praising the work?

White: No, and I didn’t expect to. Normally the people that agree with you, we don’t tend to hear from them as often as we do from the people who are taking exception to something.

Tupahache: Probably it’s mostly technical. Any criticism at all came in the form of questions to be clarified—not really criticism to the point of straight-out disagreement—but things that needed to be clarified.

I’d like to throw out some words to you and have you tell me what they mean to you. The first word is “race.”

White: Oh, come on! This is silly. You got some questions to ask me? I mean, I’m not interested in having an attitudinal study of me done, at all. I’ll talk about the article but this kind of stuff ... I don’t wanna get into it.... My work speaks for itself.

Tupahache: Race is an invention. It is a method of control to obliterate certain people’s reference for land and to impose a reference of domination.

Define “racism.”

Tupahache: Racism is the act of imposing the manifestation of race. You behave in that mental system.

Define “holocaust.”

Tupahache: I think I like the way Terence DePres put it: “A bureaucratic application of death.”

Define “white supremacy.”

Tupahache: That is the product of domination. That is the definition of American domination...actually, global domination, but more locally, American domination. You have to have a reason. You steal something, you do something wrong, you have to take something over that normally would not have come into your possession under moral or normal circumstances. There have to be inventions to keep the whole thing going, and white supremacy, as a mythical idea, has to be something that is put over by force, since we really know there is no such thing as superior beings.

Define “conspiracy.”

Tupahache: A plan. A method. Sometimes conscious, sometimes not.

Define “genocide.”

Tupahache: Genocide is a murder of a kind.

Is there genocide going on anywhere in the world?

White: There are many places in the world where campaigns verging on, if not actually meeting, that standard are going on. I can think of recent incidents. There was, for example, in Nicaragua, the campaign against the Miskito Indians, which — I haven’t been there but — based on the reports which came out it appeared that it was an ethnically based campaign to wipe out that population. Some of what has happened in Brazil to the Amazon tribes, I think probably verges on genocide, if it’s not actually that. Again I haven’t been there, but based on that.... I do know first hand that in Africa there are a number of cases of tribal conflict that have verged on, if not actually crossed over into, genocide. So, yeah, it exists, for sure, even now. I think what happened to the Kurds verges on and probably crosses into genocidal campaigns. Sure. It goes on. But what’s happening to Black Americans doesn’t fit into that category, at least not in my belief.

Tupahache: Sure.

White: How do you know?

Tupahache: Well, because I believe what I see, I believe what I hear, and I believe what I feel. You know, it’s funny: ‘Cause when I was talking to an administrative official who was looking through Further Examination, and he picked something out, and he asked, (sharply) “How do you know that’s true?” One of the statements I made in there was something to the effect that, the abuser will accuse the powerless victim of what they themselves are guilty. And he said, “How do you know this?” I said, “Because I believe my own experience. I have not one statistic, and I don’t give a damn if I never do. But I believe that because I felt it, and I know it happened.” The biggest impact that the whole experience has had on me is that no one will ever tell me, for me, what I feel, or what I see, or what I think, again.

What conditions in a society or group make genocide possible or probable?

White: First of all, you have to have a group which is committed to wiping out another ethnic group on the basis of ethnicity. And secondly, they have to have the power to do that. And again, I don’t think in this country, I don’t think either of those conditions pertains. I don’t believe that the United States government is attempting to wipe out Black Americans, and secondly, I doubt seriously that they have the power to do that, even if they did have that intention. The Armed Forces have far too many minorities in them, for example, for that sort of thing to be carried out. Our police forces have that. There’s no evidence that it’s taking place in this society at all.

Tupahache: There has to be a system. I mean, in that bureaucratic application of death, there has to be...a purpose, which is a takeover. I mean, why else would it be necessary to kill out some other people? A rationalization of that purpose—“They’re red devils, the sin & scum of the Earth! We’re chosen by God to kill ‘em all off!” And there has to be a way to carry that out. And since nobody volunteers to be killed off, there has to be some deceit, and other kinds of low-life, immoral methods to trick and exploit and just violate situations, so that genocide can take place.

And genocide does always necessarily have to be mortal, in terms of physical death. I mean, a lot of my people believe they’re extinct, and they’re breathing oxygen, going to work, eating, sleeping, and having children, and telling them they’re extinct.

Could genocide take place in a democracy?

White: Sure! Why not?

Allen: What would a democracy require of a genocidal process, if it were to undertake one?

White: A majority vote.

Allen: So genocide is compatible with democracy?

White: Well, I think it’s probably unlikely. But sure, why not? I mean, probably not in the United States, but you’re asking in principle, right? In theory? Sure, I think it’s possible. I think that’s why in societies like this one we have constitutional protections: To protect minorities, because I think it’s always possible. I mean, the mass hysteria that attended the rise of Nazism in Germany could conceivably take rise in any society in the world, if you had sufficient friction, and the right ethnic group, and the right sort of numbers involved. Again, I say, I don’t think that pertains to the United States, but it’s conceivable it could occur somewhere else, and probably has. I don’t know that it has but it probably has.

Tupahache: Oh, please! No, not in a real democracy, it couldn’t. And that gut reaction was because that word is thrown around so loosely in this situation, where democracy is clearly absent.

Allen: Are democracy and genocide incompatible?

Tupahache: Oh, absolutely. It’s just scientifically impossible.

Allen: Okay. Now, your reaction to the word “democracy.”

Tupahache: Oh. Well, I mean, what it is is people speaking. A system of people, where there cannot be any voicelessness. You have an interaction of interdependent peers. Democracy is not possible with genocide, because genocide is extreme repression-oppression and elimination-obliteration. And democracy is interaction of interdependent peers that are able to articulate, not only to others, but to themselves. They are aware. They have language. They have access to self-empowering skills, and ideas, and entities. And most important to that is a sense of selfhood. Not invented manifestations of oppression, like racializing.

My people call themselves “Indians.” I mean, that obliterates any reference to land or nationhood. The only kind of reference you have is to a reservation. You’re a product. And in so accepting that label, one accepts processes of “Indianisms.” What is an Indian? Something that can be measured by blood quantums, like a dog. Or other qualifications that nobody else has to be imposed with, which thereby results in a lot of apologies; defending one’s self against accusations that were never supposed to be there in the first place. We don’t think of ourselves in terms of nationhood and relatives. We are dehumanized into other definitions that make us think that we’re not people.

What roles can victims of a genocidal process play in facilitating that genocide?

White: Not fighting back! Not recognizing what’s happening to them, not fighting back. But again, in the United States, I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I think what’s going on here is largely a process of scapegoating, in which people find it much more easy to ... project these kind of, what I think are, fantasies onto a structure that they’ve been opposed to—and for good reason—that they’re skeptical of, that they’re suspicious of, and fearful of, and when they’ve got a hell of a problem of their own, is to insist that someone is doing this to them. I don’t think that’s happening, but I think it’s a natural human instinct: To scapegoat when you’ve got an insoluble problem and you feel strongly that somebody has malign intentions for you.

Tupahache: Oh, by, first of all, accepting the fact, or being unaware of the fact that they have a selfhood, outside of the genocidal process, so that they will not volunteer to be killed anymore, spiritually or physically. They can help in the genocidal process by denial — by denying that there is a genocidal process. And being compulsive, which results in addictions of any type.

I’d like to read you a quote, and get you’re reaction to it: “White people also face a very real problem. How dangerous can a minority of thirty-five million be? In [Europe], it was difficult to kill six million Jews, and they were docile and nonviolent. In America it would be difficult to kill thirty-five million Black people without also destroying America.” What is your reaction to this statement?

White: Yeah, I agree with that statement. I think it would be next to impossible to exterminate Black Americans, not simply because they would not go down supinely, but also because they’d have many allies. It just doesn’t click.

Tupahache: Of course. It’s true. You can’t think that you’re killing off anybody without, of course considering that you’re being killed too. I mean, just in the process of trying to figure out what is “a Black person” on the way to the gas chamber, you’re gonna have a pretty hell of a time sometimes with your paper-bag test. It isn’t always gonna work, first of all. And we just don’t always know who is who and who does not have that one drop of quote-unquote, “Black blood,” which is the most ridiculous idea that could of come out of this whole thing; one of many. And in such a driven act, if anybody were to try to do such a thing, it would result in such madness that it would be impossible to think anybody could get away with such a thing without destroying themselves.

Would you describe the treatment of Afrikans in South Afrika genocidal?

White: No. It’s oppressive. There’s no attempt being made to exterminate them. And when you’re talking about genocide, what you’re talking about is trying to kill people. I mean, we have all manner of loose and, I think, sloppy definitions of the word going around. Speaking and talking [about] “cultural genocide,” for example. Well, cultural genocide is a concept that makes some sense, but it’s a sloppy use of the word. Genocide is an attempted, actual extermination of people. And I don’t think that is occurring in South Africa. I think there’s racial oppression on the harshest sort of scale, but I don’t think that’s the same thing as genocide. I don’t think what’s happening there is the same sort of thing that happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany, for example. It’s two different kinds of oppression — in one case, fatal, and in the other case, merely oppressive and enforced through violence. “Oppressive and enforced through violence” is not necessarily genocide. Two different things.

Tupahache: Oh sure it is. Anytime you have a seizure of land by people who would not come in that position under moral or normal circumstances, you have to have genocide. What are you gonna do with those people? If I snatch your wallet from you, and I go to lie about it, and I want you to keep bringing me your wallet, I have to do something to destroy your sense of who you were.

I’m gonna refer to DePres’s book again, the title of which is The Survivor: An Anatomy of the Death Camps, where he refers to the accusation and the confession: Where the Nazis would beat the prisoners, or harass them, or browbeat them so badly into confessing to something they didn’t do, and one survivor had described that “to confess to them, was to say to them, and to yourself, that you never were who you had been.” And to get you to confess or to submit to my system of surrendering your wallet, you have to do some mental rearranging, in order to agree to do that. To cope with doing that. To making that seem all right with you.

So whenever there is an issue of seized land, that is what is going to go hand-in-hand with it. Just like, scientifically, genocide cannot go hand-in-hand with democracy, genocide goes hand-in-hand with seizure of land. where they have no selfhood, because everybody’s identity depends on the domination of another, and where that power is traded off, back and forth, interchangeably.

Why are so many people now giving credit to such an idea, that of genocide?

White: Same thing as I put in the article. I think because of the ravages of crack, the high homicide rate among Black youth, the high infant mortality rate of Black infants, the shorter life expectancy of Black men in particular, higher rates of cancer and certain other diseases that take place in the Black community, the marketing of cigarettes in the Black community, the prevalence of liquor stores in the Black community — all those things, I think, tend to give people the idea that there is a racist conspiracy to exterminate them.

Tupahache: Well, you have an environment of extreme terror. People are responding in terms of genocidal acts of aggression against them, because of how brutal things are and can be. And also, as DePres has said in his book, that a lot of people refused to believe that a lot of people refused to believe it was going on in Nazi Germany too.

And it was just that people who, quote, “live decently,” unquote, don’t want to think that there is anything going on around them that could mean a guilt on their part, or an examination of their lives, or a questioning of their own motives or failure to do something about it. But that has its opposite reaction: For all of that denial, you also have that very same panic and fear. Not that the fears of the people are unfounded, when I talk about panic, but from the absolute fright of what’s going on — which is so obvious to them, but is totally deniable and invisible to others who seem to willfully not want to address it or change it.

There’s another form of absolute terror! When you totally rearrange what’s going on around you into “Mumbo Jumbo,” or to trivialize it, to the point of contempt, is another form of denial. To say it isn’t true, to trivialize.

Allen: What do you think of this statement? (I read from Jack White’s piece.) “It is a long way from believing some whites would like to exterminate Blacks to believing they are capable of doing so. Conspiracy theories insult Blacks by suggesting that they are hapless victims, powerless to resist a racist scheme. They imply that the African-Americans who have become mayors and police chiefs in dozens of cities are either willing participants in the plot or inept dupes.”

Tupahache: I think that he’s not aware of oppression, and he needs to do what I tell everybody to do, and that’s to focus on oppression. He can read any literature or take any course in abuse and he will see it differently.

Allen: How would you see that differently, knowing and understanding oppression?

Tupahache: Because it’s not a matter of somebody being stupid. You see, that’s one of the tricks about abuse victims in a dysfunctional family situation, is that you’re told is because what happened you’re stupid. You’re dumb and it’s your fault. Either that, or you wanted it that way, and you caused your own aggression. See, it’s none of the above.

When you’re talking about a behavioral system, then you’re talking about a dysfunctional situation, like a family or a society. When you’re looking at the behavior reference, the ongoing process, then you know it’s not a matter of villains and heroes, but a sickness, and people can do things compulsively. You can tell certain people that the Surgeon General warns against cigarette smoking, it’s hazardous to their health, and they’ll agree with you! They can have their throat cut out, and they’re smokin’ through the hole in their throat. It has nothing to do with intellectualizing, or an intellectual understanding, or a willful act to destroy yourself, as much as it is the addiction and the compulsion from a dependency disorder.

How might “benign neglect” work in a genocidal process?

White: To my mind, genocidal process and benign neglect are not compatible with each other. Genocide is a deliberate attempt to do these things. To wipe someone out. It’s not something that occurs as a side effect of some other policy. It’s something you decide to do.

That’s where I disagree with the people that claim that there’s genocide taking place. I mean, not to mention the fact that the Black population is not decreasing. It’s growing. Under these very same circumstances [tape unintelligible] a genocidal policy and then if you actually have more people at the end of it than you do when you start or the beginning, that’s not genocide. In order for us to conclude there’s genocide, we have to see some number reduction, at a large scale, and we don’t see that.

Allen: Are populations of Black males, in all age groups, on the increase as well?

White: I don’t know. I really don’t know what the answer to that question is. I know that the overall Black population is increasing, and I believe that the fastest population growth tends to be at the lower end of the socioeconomic schedule within the Black community. I don’t know that for a fact, though I think it is.

Tupahache: Very well, that’s how it work! It works efficiently. I can brutalize you without touching you, without hitting you. I can just not speak to you. I can be...cold where you might need approval, or you might need nurturing. I can just not nurture you. I can not interact with you. I can set up situations so that you never self-actualize; you can never imagine or create visions about yourself, ‘cause there is no such thing as a “you.” And at the same time I can clothe you.... It’s funny. This is reminding me of the conversation with my daughter. I was explaining to her the importance of having a strong mind, and being able to understand what her strengths are, and the power that she has, so that she can always make her own definitions and her own decisions. I was telling her that there are some women who agree to be “little princesses,” and there are certain individuals looking for princesses to pamper. And for those people there are the princesses very willing to volunteer to be the princess. But, in the trade-off, she can’t think too much on her own. She has to be a decoration. She has to be ornamental. She can’t have any thoughts. She can’t self-actualize. So in that trade-off, there is a genocidal process, or there is an obliterating process to both human beings. So the benign neglect concept works very well. In fact, it’s operational in the mechanics of genocide, because that is the type of thing that will bring people to feel ultimate despair, and that means, “I have nothing left to lose,” which means I can kill myself, or if I have nothing left to lose, I can stand at the top of this building and shoot this AK-47 into that schoolyard full of kids.

The US incarcerates people of Afrikan descent at a rate second only to South Afrika. What do you think are the most significant aspects of that fact?

White: I think that Black people commit a lot of crimes! (Laughs) I really do! I think there’s an awful lot of crime. And I think that a lot of people who make this claim, if they would actually make this claim, if they would actually investigate, on a case-by-case basis, the people who are behind bars — if you accept the notion that it’s right to put people in jail for committing certain crimes, let’s assume that everybody agrees on that first — then, most of the people that are in jail belong there, I’m afraid. Now you can turn the argument around and say, “Now a lot of white folk who belong in jail are not there,” and I wouldn’t disagree with that. I think that there is some selective enforcement that goes on, quite a bit of it. I that the police are much more prone to arrest Blacks. I think that the criminal justice system, for a whole variety of reasons, is much more likely to convict Blacks in these crimes. They don’t have access to the same quality of lawyers, same kind of finances that help in a legal defense strategy and so forth.

But even having said that, I think probably the vast majority of people who are in jail belong in jail, if you start with the notion that it’s right to put people in jail for certain crimes. If you don’t believe that, then you got a different discussion. I think there’s a whole body of sociological theory that demonstrates that people who are poor and who are oppressed tend to commit more crimes, and I think we’re certainly poor and I think we’re certainly oppressed, and I don’t see anything in the slightest bit puzzling about that.

Allen: But in reaction to it being second only to South Africa? What is the significance of it being second to South Africa, only?

White: Well, I think you got two situations here. You got a lot of people in South Africa for political reasons, and the power in South Africa has a somewhat different imperative here. Here you have a situation in which you have a Black minority and a huge white majority which is fearful of Blacks for a variety of reasons, some justified, some not....

Do I think it’s politically motivated? Probably, to some extent. Do I think it’s the same as South Africa? No, I don’t. It may have been, prior to the 1940s. The similarities were much much closer that they are now. Things have really diverged since the Civil Rights movement. It really has changed....

And this is the other thing that annoys me about these kind of comparisons; they tend to make it appear that Black folk, through the Civil Rights movement, through their challenge to racism in this country didn’t accomplish anything! And I don’t believe that’s true! I think it was a revolution in this country that occurred at that time, and it’s a revolution that needs to continue, needs to proceed, needs to be consolidated. But to suggest that things are just what they were before that got started is nonsense. And not only is it nonsense, it’s an insult to our forbearers. I mean people have some very short fucking memories, you know? They must be a lot younger even than I am to believe that that’s the case.

Tupahache: White domination. White domination always means that browner people are always gonna be accused, guilty or not, they’re always going to be volatile, regardless of the most atrocious, savage act on the part of those we consider in the dominant identity, i.e., “white man.” They can commit the most atrocious acts, and it can be forgotten very easily, or the accusation does not go to or other so-called white men. But the very opposite, on whom they depend for their supremacy...they feed like vampires off of the imposed inferiority of so-called Black men.

Allen: I think that’s what I was getting at when I asked what would happen if all the Black people disappeared.

Tupahache: Maybe the question could have been asked, “Well, then suppose all of the browner human beings refused to be “Black,” or refused to accept the imposition of being labeled “Black?” That means they stop behaving as “Black,” and they’ll start behaving as land-based human beings. Then you’re gonna have a heart attack. You’re gonna have all kinds of heart failure and heart attack and panic and everything on the part of these very dependent identity products called “white people,” because they depend very heavily on the manifestations of other people’s false identities.

What types of facts do people who oppose your view on genocide tend to overlook?

White: Well, let’s take drugs for example. All right. Yeah, there is a conspiracy to sell drugs in the Black community, and to who ever else will buy them, I might add. It’s a conspiracy made up largely of criminals, sometimes involving it for very callous reasons, sometimes involving high officials of government—occasionally it does that—it’s a vicious, brutal game.

But if you spend all your time trying to point fingers at the government, saying “The government is responsible for all of this,” what you do is you tend to overlook things that Blacks can do themselves, for themselves, to protect themselves from all of this. And the number one thing is, don’t use drugs! If you really think drugs are a genocidal conspiracy, don’t use ‘em!

I mean, Bill Raspberry [...] said, “If you really thought white people are trying to force you to use these things—you don’t like white people, and you don’t want ‘em to do it—fork them! Tell ‘em to go to hell! Don’t use ‘em.” It’s that simple.

Allen: It doesn’t seem the people, though, who are saying that genocide is taking place via drugs are drug users.

White: So what? I mean, what’s that got to do with it? Look, let’s fight back! If that’s really the case, let’s fight back! It’s too easy. It’s too easy. You know, you got all these Black mayors and police chiefs around the United States. Are all of them involved in this? Are none of us intelligent enough, who are in those positions, to investigate and find the evidence of this conspiracy, if it exists? Do you understand what I’m getting at? Are we so inadequate as scholars and investigators that if we went into this we couldn’t find it? Don’t you think we would? Don’t you think we have tried to get to the bottom of it? I haven’t seen a Black police chief anywhere come up and say, “I have discovered that these drugs are coming in through a white conspiracy whose idea it is to exterminate or hold down Black folk.” I’ve never seen that. Moreover, how do you explain the high, high, high number of Blacks involved in selling the shit, and increasingly, in distributing it and in importation. How do you think if a Black police chief would be received if he came out and made that statement that you just made? If he had some evidence, he’d be taken seriously! I mean, why wouldn’t he? Take people seriously all the time when they have evidence. But nobody has. The only thing you’ve heard is a lot of, “Well it’s got to be this way,” from people, then a lot of cockamamie ideas, like the one from this woman, this Frances Welsing. A lot of cockamamie, hare-brained, kind of bullshit theories that she’s been floating around for years, and that nobody, including other Black scholars, take seriously!

You shouldn’t make charges that you can’t back up, especially if they have the detrimental effect of shifting people’s attention way from the things that they oughtta be focusing on. Now, that’s basically what all this is about.

Allen: Another question: What do you think is the significance of the Tuskegee Experiment?

White: That verged on genocide. I put that in the story, because I can make the genocide case better than most of the adherents of genocide can. I can cite things that most of them aren’t even aware of and don’t know, at least based on what they say about it in public.

That damn thing, that experiment verged on genocide. And the treatment of the American Indians verged on genocide, if it did not actually constitute genocide. I mean, sure, white people are capable of genocidal thinking. There’s no doubt about it.

Allen: Do you say, it “verged” on genocide?

White: Well, it was symptomatic of genocidal thinking. It wasn’t a large enough scale experiment to constitute genocide. I forget what the numbers were, something like 300 people? Well you’re talking about 18 or 20 million Blacks in this country. How this experiment on 300 people amounts to genocide against 18 million? I don’t think it does. But callous, as an example of genocidal thinking? Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s why I put it in the story.

Tupahache: The fact that this is what this country was founded on. They believe the lie that this was an inevitable thing that was meant to happen. God sent them here. This was their inherited fate and fortune. And that, as the Town of North Hempstead put it in their history book, “the disappearance of the Indian was as inevitable as the obsolescence of the spinning wheel.” And that’s what they believe: that it was meant to happen. All kinds of delusions to cover up the murder and the theft, and how they had to lie to themselves and about themselves and everybody else, ever since.

Allen: (I read from Jack White’s piece.) “Given the flimsiness of the evidence, why do such theories flourish? One. reason is that the war against drugs has been so ineffectual. Another is that U.S. history is replete with episodes that help make even fanciful theories seem plausible: just consider what happened to the Native Americans.”

Tupahache: (She laughs) It sounds like he’s tryin’ to say that, “The reason the folly is somewhat believable is because of what has happened already, but don’t believe it, really, because it’s just folly and theory and paranoia.” Or that it doesn’t have anything to do with it, but it absolutely does, because everybody has based their identity, even the most newest arrival of so-called Americans has to base their identity or how they’re going to see themselves as Americans, based on just that, whether they realize it or not.

Allen: What do you think is the significance of the Tuskegee experiment?

Tupahache: With the syphilis?

Allen: Right.

Tupahache: That it was able to take place.

Is racism becoming more sophisticated?

White: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s becomes more sophisticated all the time. Well, I don’t know that it’s becoming more sophisticated. Let me put it slightly differently: Is it still as ingrained as it was? Yes. Does the racist resort to new techniques? Absolutely. All the time. You think you’ve overcome something, and you find you have to go back and fight that battle all over again. It’s very resilient, it’s a permanent feature of American life, and it’s dangerous.

Allen: Why is it permanent?

White: It’s been here as long as Blacks have been here, hasn’t it? There’s no sign that it’s going away, is there? No, I don’t see any indication that it’s any less. Seems to have enjoyed a resurgence during the Reagan years. Shit. I mean George Bush got elected mostly by running a racist presidential campaign.

Allen: With more sophisticated measures, could genocide be possible or probable in the future?

White: I don’t think genocide is possible in America, for the reasons I stated earlier. I think we’re to ingrained in the society for that to occur.

Allen: So, there’s not a “genocidal will,” if you will?

White: No, I don’t believe there is a genocidal will. I mean, there are people in America who would just as soon kill all the niggers, OK? But, are they in power? No. Do they have the power to carry that out? No, not at all. It’s two different matters. It’s two different questions. Of course there are people that would like to kill us all. There are Blacks who’d like to kill all the white people, too. I occasionally find myself among them. But I don’t call that genocide, ‘cause I don’t have the power to carry it out even if, after thinking it over, I didn’t mind it.

Tupahache: It’s evolving. It’s like, if you look at succeeding generations of the dysfunctional family, if evolves. It changes and evolves. It changes and evolves. Sometimes it’s not so evident in one generation, but it’ll come out in another. For example, one person thinks they don’t drink at all, that they’re not a behavioral alcoholic. But their kids might grow up to do that, because the interaction has been alcoholism or addiction all the time. And I wouldn’t say that it is becoming more sophisticated, because in a lot of ways it is becoming graphically unsophisticated. Brutal. Crass.

Agriculture: Demon Engine of Civilization

John Zerzan

Agriculture, the indispensable basis of civilization, was originally encountered as time, language, number and art emerged. As the materialization of alienation, agriculture is the triumph of estrangement and the definite divide between culture and nature and humans from each other.

Agriculture is the birth of production, complete and with its essential features and deformation of life and consciousness. The land itself becomes an instrument of production and the planet’s species its objects. Wild or tame, weeds or crops speak of that duality that cripples the soul of our being, ushering in, relatively quickly, the despotism, war and impoverishment of high civilization over the great length of that earlier oneness with nature. The forced march of civilization, which Adorno recognized in the “assumption of an irrational catastrophe at the beginning of history,” which Freud felt as “something imposed on a resisting majority,” of which Stanley Diamond found only “conscripts not volunteers,” was dictated by agriculture. And Mircea Eliade was correct to assess its coming as having “provoked upheavals and spiritual breakdowns” whose magnitude the modern mind cannot imagine.

“To level off, to standardize the human landscape, to efface its irregularities and banish its surprises,” these words of E. M. Cioran apply perfectly to the logic of agriculture, the end of life as mainly sensuous activity, the embodiment and generator of separated life. Artificiality and work have steadily increased since its inception as culture: in domesticating animals and plants man necessarily domesticated himself.

Historical time, like agriculture, is not inherent in social reality but an imposition on it. The dimension of time or history is a function of repression, whose foundation is production or agriculture. Hunter-gatherer life was anti-time in its simultaneous and spontaneous openness; farming life generates a sense of time by its successive-task narrowness, its directed routine. As the variety of Paleolithic living gave way to the literal enclosure of agriculture, time assumed power and came to take on the character of an enclosed space. Formalized temporal reference points — ceremonies with fixed dates, the naming of days, etc. — are crucial to the ordering of the world of production; as a schedule of production; the calendar is integral in civilization. Conversely, not only would industrial society be impossible without time schedules, the end of agriculture (basis of all production) would be the end of historical time.

Representation begins with language, a means of reining in desire. By displacing autonomous images with verbal symbols, life is reduced and brought under strict control; all direct, unmediated experience is subsumed by that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language. Language cuts up and organizes reality, as Benjamin Whorf put it, and this segmentation of nature, an aspect of grammar, sets the stage for agriculture. Julian Jaynes, in fact, concluded that the new linguistic mentality led very directly to agriculture. Unquestionably, the crystallization of language into writing, called forth mainly by the need for record-keeping of agricultural transactions, is the signal that civilization has begun.

In the non-commodified, egalitarian hunter-gatherer ethos, the basis of which (as has so often been remarked) was sharing, number was not wanted. There was no ground for the urge to quantify, no reason to divide what was whole. Not until the domestication of animals and plants did this cultural concept fully emerge. Two of number’s seminal figures testify clearly to its alliance with separateness and property: Pythagoras, center of a highly influential religious cult of number, and Euclid, father of mathematics and science, whose geometry originated to measure fields for reasons of ownership, taxation and slave labor. One of civilization’s early forms, chiefdomship, entails a linear rank order in which each member is assigned an exact numerical place. Soon, following the anti-natural linearity of plow culture, the inflexible 90-degree gridiron plan of even earliest cities appeared. Their insistent regularity constitutes in itself a repressive ideology. Culture, now numberized, becomes more firmly bounded and lifeless.

Art, too, in its relationship to agriculture, highlights both institutions. It begins as a means to interpret and subdue reality, to rationalize nature, and conforms to the great turning point which is agriculture in its basic features. The pre-Neolithic cave paintings, for example, are vivid and bold, a dynamic exaltation of animal grace and freedom. The Neolithic art of farmers and pastoralists, however, stiffens into stylized forms; Franz Borkenau typified its pottery as a “narrow, timid botching of materials and forms.” With agriculture, art lost its variety and became standardized into geometrical designs that tended to degenerate into dull, repetitive patterns, a perfect reflection of standardized, confined, rule-patterned life. And where there had been no representation in Paleolithic art of men killing men, an obsession with depicting confrontation between people advanced with the Neolithic period, scenes of battles becoming common.

Agriculture and Symbolization

Time, language, number, art and all the rest of culture, which predates and leads to agriculture, rests on symbolization. Just as autonomy preceded domestication and self-domestication, the rational and the social precede the symbolic.

Food production, it is eternally and gratefully acknowledged, “permitted the cultural potentiality of the human species to develop.” But what is this tendency toward the symbolic, toward the elaboration and imposition of arbitrary forms? It is a growing capacity for objectification, by which what is living becomes reified, thing-like. Symbols are more than the basic units of culture; they are screening devices to distance us from our experiences. They classify and reduce, “to do away with,” in Leakey and Lewin’s remarkable phrase, “the otherwise almost intolerable burden of relating one experience to another.”

Thus culture is governed by the imperative of reforming and subordinating nature. The artificial environment which is agriculture accomplished this pivotal mediation, with the symbolism of objects manipulated in the construction of relations of dominance. For it is not only external nature that is subjugated: the face-to-face quality of pre-agricultural life itself severely limited domination, while culture extends and legitimates it.

It is likely that already during the Paleolithic era certain forms or names were attached to objects or ideas, in a symbolizing manner but in a shifting, impermanent, perhaps playful sense. The will to sameness and security found in agriculture means that symbols became as static and constant as farming life. Regularization, rule patterning, and technological differentiation, under the sign of division of labor, interact to ground and advance symbolization. Agriculture completes the symbolic shift and the virus of alienation has overcome authentic, free life. It is the victory of cultural control; as anthropologist Marshall Sahlins puts it, “The amount of work per capita increases with the evolution of culture and the amount of leisure per capita decreases.”

Today, the few surviving hunter-gatherers occupy the least “economically interesting” areas of the world, where agriculture has not penetrated, such as the snows of the Inuit (“Eskimos”) or desert of the Australian aborigines. And yet the refusal of farming drudgery, even in adverse settings, bear its own rewards. The Hazda of Tanzania, Filipino Tasaday, !Kung of Botswana, or the Kahlahari Desert !Kung San (“Bushmen”)—who were seen by Richard Lee as easily surviving a serious, several years’ drought while neighboring farmers starved—also testify to Hole and Flannery’s summary that “No group on earth has more leisure time than hunters and gatherers, who spend it primarily on games, conversation and relaxing.” Service rightly attributed this condition to “the very simplicity of the technology and lack of control over the environment” of such groups. And yet simple Paleolithic methods were, in their own way, “advanced.” Consider a basic cooking technique like steaming foods by heating stones in a covered pit; this is immemorially older than any pottery, kettles or baskets (in fact, is anti-container in its non-surplus, no-exchange orientation) and is the most nutritionally sound way to cook, far healthier than boiling food in water, for example. Or consider the fashioning of such stone tools as the long and exceptionally thin “laurel leaf” knives, delicately chipped but strong, which modern industrial techniques cannot duplicate.

The hunting and gathering lifestyle represents the most successful and enduring adaptation ever achieved by humankind. In occasional pre-agriculture phenomena like the intensive collection of food or the systematic hunting of a single species can be seen signs of impending breakdown of a pleasurable mode that remained so static for so long precisely because it was pleasurable. The “penury and day-long grind” of agriculture, in Clark’s words, is the vehicle of culture, “rational” only in its perpetual disequilibrium and its logical progression toward ever-greater destruction, as will be outlined below.

Although the term hunter-gatherer should be reversed (and has been by not a few current anthropologists) because it is recognized that gathering constitutes by far the larger survival component, the nature of hunting provides salient contrast to domestication. The relationship of the hunter to the hunted animal, which is sovereign, free and even considered equal, is obviously qualitatively different from that of the farmer or herdsman to the enslaved chattels over which he rules absolutely.

Religion Emerges to Legitimize Culture

Evidence of the urge to impose order or subjugate is found in the coercive rites and uncleanness taboos of incipient religion. The eventual subduing of the world that is agriculture has at least some of its basis where ambiguous behavior is ruled out, purity and defilement defined and enforced.

Lévi-Strauss defined religion as the anthropomorphism of nature; earlier spirituality was participatory with nature, not imposing cultural values or traits upon it. The sacred means that which is separated, and ritual and formalization, increasingly removed from the ongoing activities of daily life and in the control of such specialists as shamans and priests, are closely linked with hierarchy and institutionalized power. Religion emerges to ground and legitimize culture, by means of a “higher” order of reality; it is especially required, in this function of maintaining the solidarity of society, by the unnatural demands of agriculture.

In the Neolithic village of Catal Hüytük in Turkish Anatolia, one of every three rooms were used for ritual purposes. Plowing and sowing can be seen as ritual renunciations, according to Bukert, a form of systematic repression accompanied by a sacrificial element. Speaking of sacrifice, which is the killing of domesticated animals (or even humans) for ritual purposes, it is pervasive in agricultural societies and found only there.

Some of the major Neolithic religions often attempted a symbolic healing of the agricultural rupture with nature through the mythology of the earth mother, which needless to say does nothing to restore the lost unity. Fertility myths are also central: the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek Persephone, Baal of the Canaanites, and the New Testament Jesus, gods whose death and resurrection testify to the perseverance of the soil, not to mention the human soul. The first temples signified the rise of cosmologies based on a model of the universe as an arena of domestication or barnyard, which in turn serves to justify the suppression of human autonomy. Whereas precivilized society was, as Redfield put it, “held together by largely undeclared but continually realized ethical conceptions,” religion developed as a way of creating citizens, placing the moral order under public management.

Domestication involved the initiation of production, vastly increased divisions of labor, and the completed foundations of social stratification. This amounted to an epochal mutation both in the character of human existence and its development, clouding the latter with ever more violence and work. Contrary to the myth of hunter-gatherers as violent and aggressive, by the way, recent evidence shows that existing non-farmers, such as the Mbuti (“pygmies”) studied by Turnbull, apparently do what killing they do without any aggressive spirit, even with a sort of regret. Warfare and the formation of every civilization or state, on the other hand, are inseparably linked.

Primal peoples did not fight over areas in which separate groups might converge in their gathering and hunting. At least “territorial” struggles are not part of the ethnographic literature and they would seem even less likely to have occurred in pre-history when resources were greater and contact with civilization non-existent.

Indeed, these peoples had no conception of private property, and Rousseau’s figurative judgment, that divided society was founded by the man who first sowed a piece of ground, saying “This land is mine,” and found others to believe him, is essentially valid. “Mine and thine, the seeds of all mischief, have no place with them,” reads Pietro’s 1511 account of the natives encountered on the second voyage of Columbus. Centuries later, surviving Native Americans asked, “Sell the Earth? Why not sell the air, the clouds, the great sea?” Agriculture creates and elevates possessions; consider the longing root of belongings, as if they ever make up for the loss.

Sedentary and Servile Existence

Work, as a distinct category of life, likewise did not exist until agriculture. The human capacity of being shackled to crops and herds, devolved rather quickly. Food production overcame the common absence or paucity or ritual and hierarchy in society and introduced civilized activities like the forced labor of temple-building. Here is the real “Cartesian split” between inner and outer reality, the separation whereby nature became merely something to be “worked.” On this capacity for a sedentary and servile existence rests the entire superstructure of civilization with its increasing weight of repression.

Male violence toward women originated with agriculture, which transmuted women into beasts of burden and breeders of children. Before farming, the egalitarianism of foraging life “applied as fully to women as to men,” judged Eleanor Leacock, owing to the autonomy of tasks and the fact that decisions were made by those who carried them out. In the absence of production and with no drudge work suitable for child labor such as weeding, women were not consigned to onerous chores or the constant supply of babies.

Along with the curse of perpetual work, via agriculture, in the expulsion from Eden, God told woman, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and that desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Similarly, the first known codified laws, those of the Sumerian king, Ur-Namu, prescribed death to any woman satisfying desires outside of marriage. Thus Whyte referred to the ground women “lost relative to men when humans first abandoned a simple hunting and gathering way of life,” and Simone de Beauvoir saw in the cultural equation of plow and phallus a fitting symbol of the oppression of women.

As wild animals are converted into sluggish meat-making machines, the concept of becoming “cultivated” is a virtue enforced on people, meaning the weeding out of freedom from one’s nature, in the service of domestication and exploitation. As Rice points out, in Sumer, the first civilization, the earliest cities had factories with their characteristic high organization and refraction of skills. Civilization from this point exacts human labor and the mass production of food, buildings, war and authority.

To the Greeks, work was a curse and nothing else. The name for it—ponos—has the same root as the Latin poena, sorrow. The famous Old Testament curse on agriculture as the expulsion from Paradise (Genesis 3:17–18) reminds us of the origin of work. As Mumford put it, “Conformity, repetition, patience, were the keys to this [Neolithic] culture ... the patient capacity for work.” In this monotony and passivity of tending and waiting is born, according to Paul Shepard, the peasant’s “deep, latent resentments, crude mixtures of rectitude and heaviness, and absence of humor.” One might also add a stoic insensitivity and lack of imagination inseparable from religious faith, sullenness, and suspicion among traits widely attributed to the domesticated life of farming.

Although food production by its nature includes a latent readiness for political domination, and although civilizing culture was from the beginning its own propaganda machine, the changeover involved a monumental struggle. Fredy Perlman’s Against His-Story, Against Leviathan! is unrivaled on this, vastly enriching Toynbee’s attention to the “internal” and “external proletariats,” discontents within and without civilization. Nonetheless, along the axis from digging stick farming to plow agriculture to fully differentiated irrigation systems, an almost total genocide of gatherers and hunters was necessarily effected.

The formation and storage of surpluses are part of the domesticating will to control and make static, an aspect of the tendency to symbolize. A bulwark against the flow of nature, surplus takes the forms of herd animals and granaries. Stored grain was the earliest medium of equivalence, the oldest form of capital. Only with the appearance of wealth in the shape of storable grains do the gradations of labor and social classes proceed. While there were certainly wild grains before all this (and wild wheat, by the way, is 24% protein compared to 12% for domesticated wheat) the bias of culture makes every difference. Civilization and its cities rested as much on granaries as on symbolization.

The Origins of Agriculture

The mystery of agriculture’s origin seems even more impenetrable in light of the recent reversal of long-standing notions that the previous era was one of hostility to nature and an absence of leisure. “One could no longer assume,” wrote Orme, “that early man domesticated plants and animals to escape drudgery and starvation. If anything, the contrary appeared true, and the advent of farming saw the end to innocence.” For a long time, the question was “why wasn’t agriculture adopted much earlier in human evolution?” More recently, we know that agriculture, in Cohen’s words, “is not easier than hunting and gathering and does not provide a higher quality, more palatable, or more secure food base.” Thus the consensus question now is, “why was it adopted at all?”

Many theories have been advanced, none convincingly. Childe and others argue that population increase pushed human societies into more intimate contact with other species, leading to domestication and the need to produce in order to feed the additional people. But it has been shown rather conclusively that population increase did not precede agriculture but was caused by it. “I don’t see any evidence anywhere in the world,” concluded Flannery, “that suggests that population pressure was responsible for the beginning of agriculture.” Another theory has it that major climatic changes occurred at the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,000 years ago, which upset the old hunter-gatherer life-world and led directly to the cultivation of certain surviving staples. Recent dating methods have helped demolish this approach; no such climatic shift happened that could have forced the new mode into existence. Besides, there are scores of examples of agriculture being adopted—or refused—in every type of climate. Another major hypotheses is that agriculture was introduced via chance discovery or invention as if it had never occurred to the species before a certain moment that, for example, food grows from sprouted seeds. It seems Paleolithic humanity had a virtually inexhaustible knowledge of flora and fauna for many tens of thousands of years before the cultivation of plants began, which renders this theory especially weak.

Agreement with Carl Sauer’s summation that, “Agriculture did not originate from a growing or chronic shortage of food” is sufficient, in fact, to dismiss virtually all originary theories that have been advanced. A remaining idea, presented by Hahn, Isaac and others, holds that food production began at base as a religious activity. This hypothesis comes closest to plausibility.

Sheep and goats, the first animals to be domesticated, are known to have been widely used in religious ceremonies, and to have been raised in enclosed meadows for sacrificial purposes. Before they were domesticated, moreover, sheep had no wool suitable for textile purposes. The main use of the hen in Southeastern Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean—the earliest centers of civilization—”seems to have been,” according to Darby, “sacrificial or divinatory rather than alimentary.” Sauer adds that the egg laying and meat producing qualities” of tamed fowl “are rather late consequences of their domestication.” Wild cattle were fierce and dangerous; neither the docility of oxen nor the modified meat texture of such castrates could have been foreseen. Cattle were not milked until centuries after their initial captivity, and representations indicate that their first known harnessing was to wagons in religious processions.

Plants, next to be controlled, exhibit similar backgrounds so far as it is known. Consider the New World examples of squash and pumpkin, used originally as ceremonial rattles. Johannessen discussed the religious and mystical motives connected with the domestication of maize, Mexico’s most important crop and center of its native Neolithic religion. Likewise, Anderson investigated the selection and development of distinctive types of various cultivated plants because of their magical significance. The shamans, I should add, were well-placed in positions of power to introduce agriculture via the taming and planting involved in ritual and religion, sketchily referred to above.

Though the religious explanation of the origins of agriculture has been somewhat overlooked, it brings us, in my opinion, to the very doorstep of the real explanation of the birth of production: that non-rational, cultural force of alienation which spread, in the forms of time, language, number and art, to ultimately colonize material and psychic life in agriculture. “Religion” is too narrow a conceptualization of this infection and its growth. Domination is too weighty, too all-encompassing, to have been solely conveyed by the pathology that is religion.

But the cultural values of control and uniformity that are part of religion are certainly part of agriculture, and from the beginning. Noting that strains of corn cross-pollinate very easily, Anderson studied the very primitive agriculturalists of Assam, the Naga tribe, and their variety of corn that exhibited no differences from plant to plant. True to culture, showing that it is complete from the beginning of production, the Naga kept their varieties so pure “only by a fanatical adherence to ideal type.” This exemplifies the marriage of culture and production in domestication, and its inevitable progeny, repression and work.

The scrupulous tending of strains of plants finds its parallel in the domesticating of animals, which also defies natural selection and reestablishes the controllable organic world at a debased, artificial level. Like plants, animals are mere things to be manipulated; a cow, for instance, is seen as a kind of machine for converting grass into milk. Transmuted from a state of freedom to that of helpless parasites, these animals become completely dependent on man for survival. In domestic mammals, as a rule, the size of the brain becomes relatively smaller as specimens are produced that devote more energy to growth and less to activity. Placid, infantilized, typified perhaps by the sheep, most domesticated of herd animals; the remarkable intelligence of wild sheep is completely lost in their tamed counterparts. The social relationships among domestic animals are reduced to the crudest essentials. Non-reproductive parts of the life cycle are minimized, courtship is curtailed, and the animal’s very capacity to recognize its own species is impaired.

Farming also created the potential for rapid environmental destruction and the new dominion over nature soon began to turn the green mantle that covered the birthplaces of civilization into barren and lifeless areas. “Vast regions have changed their aspect completely,” estimates Zeuner, “always to the quasi-drier condition, since the beginnings of the Neolithic.” Deserts now occupy most of the areas where the high civilizations once flourished, and there is much historical evidence that these early formations inevitably ruined their environments.

Throughout the Mediterranean Basin and in the adjoining Near East and Asia, agriculture turned lush and hospitable lands into depleted, dry and rocky terrain. In Critias, Plato described Attica as “a skeleton wasted by disease,” referring to the deforestation of Greece and contrasting it to its earlier richness. Grazing by goats and sheep, the first domesticated ruminants, was a major factor in the denuding of Greece, Lebanon, and North Africa, and the desertification of the Roman and Mesopotamian empires.

Humans Were Long Lived

Another, more immediate aspect of agriculture, brought to light increasingly in recent years, involved the physical well-being of its subjects. Lee and Devore’s researchers show that “the diet of gathering peoples was far better than that of cultivators, that starvation is rare, that their health status was generally superior, and that there is a lower incidence of chronic disease.” Conversely, Farb summarized, “Production provides an inferior diet based on a limited number of foods, is much less reliable because of blights and the vagaries of weather, and is much more costly in terms of human labor expended.”

The new field of paleopathology has reached even more emphatic conclusions, stressing, as does Angel, the “sharp decline in growth and nutrition” caused by the changeover from food gathering to food production. Earlier conclusions about life span have also been revised. Although eyewitness Spanish accounts of the 16^th century tell of Florida Indian fathers seeing their fifth generation before passing away, it was long believed that primitive people died in their 30’s and 40’s. Robson, Boyden and others have dispelled the confusion of longevity with life expectancy and discovered that current hunter-gatherers, barring injury and severe infection, often outlive their civilized contemporaries. During the industrial age fairly recently did life span lengthen for the species, and it is now widely recognized that in Paleolithic times humans were long-lived, once certain risks were passed. DeVries is correct in his judgment that duration of life dropped sharply upon contact with civilization.

“Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise of farming, measles and bubonic plague the appearance of large cities,” wrote Jared Diamond. Malaria, probably the single greatest killer of humanity, and nearly all other infectious diseases are the heritage of agriculture. Nutritional and degenerative diseases in general appear with the reign of domestication and culture. Cancer, coronary thrombosis, anemia, dental carries, and mental disorders are but a few of the hallmarks of agriculture; previously women gave birth with no difficulty and little or no pain.

People were far more alive in all their senses. !Kung San, reported R.H. Post, have heard a single-engined plane while it was still 70 miles away, and many of them can see four moons of Jupiter with the naked eye. The summary judgment of Harris and Ross, as to “an overall decline in the quality—and probably in the length—of human life among farmers as compared with earlier hunter-gatherer groups,” is understated.

One of the most persistent and universal ideas is that there was once a Golden Age of innocence before history began. Hesiod, for instance, referred to the “life-sustaining soil, which yielded its copious fruits unbribed by toil.” Eden was clearly the home of hunter-gatherers and the yearning expressed by the historical images of paradise must have been that of disillusioned tillers of the soil for a lost life of freedom and relative ease.

A history of civilization shows the increasing displacement of nature from human experience, characterized in part by a narrowing of food choices. According to Rooney, prehistoric peoples found sustenance in over 1500 species of wild plants, whereas, “All civilizations,” Wenke reminds us, “have been based on the cultivation of one or more of just six plant species: wheat, barley, millet, rice, maize, and potatoes.”

It is a striking truth that over the centuries “the number of different edible foods which are actually eaten,” Pyke points out, “has steadily dwindled.” The world’s population now depends for most of its subsistence on only about 20 genera of plants while their natural strains are replaced by artificial hybrids and the genetic pool of these plants becomes far less varied.

The diversity of food tends to disappear or flatten out as the proportion of manufactured foods increases. Today the very same articles of diet are distributed worldwide so that an Inuit Eskimo and an African native may soon be eating powdered milk manufactured in Wisconsin or frozen fish sticks from a single factory in Sweden. A few big multinationals such as Unilever, the world’s biggest food production company, preside over a highly integrated service system in which the object is not to nourish or even to feed, but to force an ever-increasing consumption of fabricated, processed products upon the world.

When Descartes enunciated the principle that the fullest exploitation of matter to any use is the whole duty of man, our separation from nature was virtually complete and the stage was set for the Industrial Revolution. Three hundred and fifty years later this spirit lingers in the person of Jean Vorst, Curator of France’s Museum of Natural History, who pronounces that our species, “because of intellect,” can no longer re-cross a certain threshold of civilization and once again become part of a natural habitat. He further states, expressing perfectly the original and persevering imperialism of agriculture, “As the earth in its primitive state is not adopted to our expansion, man must shackle it to fulfill human destiny.”

The early factories literally mimicked the agricultural model, indicating again that at base all mass production is farming. The natural world is to be broken and forced to work. One thinks of the mid-American prairies where settlers had to yoke six oxen to a plow in order to cut through the soil for the first time. Or from a scene from the 1870s in The Octopus by Frank Norris, in which gang-plows were driven like “a great column of field artillery” across the San Joaquin Valley, cutting 175 furrows at once.

Organic is Mechanized

Today the organic, what is left of it, is fully mechanized under the aegis of a few petrochemical corporations. Their artificial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and near-monopoly of the world’s seed stock define a total environment that integrates food production from planting to consumption. Although Lévi-Strauss is right that “Civilization manufactures monoculture like sugar beet,” only since World War II has a completely synthetic orientation begun to dominate.

Agriculture itself takes more organic matter out of the soil that it puts back, and soil erosion is basic to the monoculture of annuals. Regarding the latter, some are promoted with devastating results to the land; along with cotton and soybeans, corn, which in its present domesticated state is totally dependent on agriculture for its existence, is especially bad. J. Russell Smith called it “the killer of continents ... and one of the worst enemies of the human future.” The erosions cost of one bushel of Iowa corn is two bushels of topsoil, highlighting the more general large-scale industrial destruction of farmland. The continuous tillage of huge monoculture, with massive use of chemicals and no application of manure or humus, obviously raised soil deterioration and solid loss to much higher levels.

The dominant agricultural mode has it that soil needs massive infusions of chemicals, supervised by technicians whose overriding goal is to maximize production. Artificial fertilizers and all the rest from this outlook eliminate the need for the complex life of the soil and indeed convert it into a mere instrument of production. The promise of technology is total control, a completely contrived environment that simply supersedes the natural balance of the biosphere.

But more and more energy is expended to purchase great monocultural yields that are beginning to decline, never mind the toxic contamination of the soil, groundwater and food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that cropland erosion is occurring in this country at a rate of two billion tons of soil a year. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that over one third of topsoil is already gone forever. The ecological imbalance caused by monocropping and synthetic fertilizers causes enormous increases in pests and crop diseases; since World War II, crop loss due to insects has actually doubled. Technology responds, of course, with spiraling application of more synthetic fertilizers, and weed and pest killers, accelerating the crime against nature.

Another post-war phenomenon was the Green Revolution, billed as the salvation of the impoverished Third World by American capital and technology. But rather than feeding the hungry, the Green Revolution drove millions of poor people from farmlands in Asia, Latin America and Africa as victims of the program that fosters large corporate farms. It amounted to an enormous technological colonization creating dependency on capital-intensive agribusiness, destroying older agrarian communalism, requiring massive fossil fuel consumption and assaulting nature on an unprecedented scale.

Desertification, or loss of soil due to agriculture, has been steadily increasing. Each year, a total area equivalent to more than two Belgiums is being converted to desert worldwide. The fate of the world’s tropical rainforests is a factor in the acceleration of this dessication: half of them have been erased in the past 30 years. In Botswana, the last wilderness region of Africa has disappeared like much of the Amazon jungle and almost half of the rainforests of Central America, primarily to raise cattle for the hamburger markets in the US and Europe. The few areas safe from deforestation are where agriculture doesn’t want to go; the destruction of the land is proceeding in the US over a greater land area than was encompassed by the original 13 colonies, just as it is at the heart of the severe Africa famine of the mid-’80s and the extinction of one species of wild animal and plant after another.

Returning to animals, one is reminded of the words of Genesis in which God said to Noah, “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands are they delivered.” When newly discovered territory was first visited by the advance guard of production, as a wide descriptive literature shows, the wild mammals and birds showed no fear whatsoever of the explorers. The agriculturalized mentality, however, so aptly foretold in the biblical passage, projects an exaggerated belief in the fierceness of wild creatures, which follows from progressive estrangement and loss of contact with the animal world plus the need to maintain dominance over it.

The fate of domestic animals is defined by the fact that agricultural technologists continually look to factories as models of how to refine their own production systems. Nature is banished from these systems as, increasingly, farm animals are kept largely immobile throughout their deformed lives, maintained in high-density, wholly artificial environments. Billions of chickens, pigs and veal calves, for example, no longer even see the light of day much less roam the fields—fields growing silent as more and more pastures are plowed up to grow feed for these hideously confined beings.

The high-tech chickens, whose beak-ends have been clipped off to reduce death due to stress-caused fighting, often exists four or even five to a 13 inch by 18 inch cage and are periodically deprived of food and water for up to ten days to regulate their egg-laying cycles. Pigs live on concrete floors with no bedding; foot-rot, tail-biting and cannibalism are endemic because of physical conditions and stress. Sows nurse their piglets separated by metal grates, mother and offspring barred from natural contact. Veal calves are often raised in total darkness, chained to stalls so narrow as to disallow turning around or other normal postural adjustment. These animals are generally under regimens of constant medication due to the tortures involved and their heightened susceptibility to diseases: automated animal production relies upon hormones and antibiotics. Such systematic cruelty, not to mention the kind of food that results, brings to mind the fact that captivity itself and every form of enslavement has agriculture as its progenitor or model.

Project of Subduing Nature

Food has been one of our most direct contacts with the natural environment, but we are rendered increasingly dependent on a technological production system in which finally even our senses have become redundant; taste, once vital for judging a food’s value or safety, is no longer experienced, but rather certified by a label. Overall, the healthfulness of what we consume declines and land once cultivated for food now produces coffee, tobacco, grains for alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs creating the context for famine. Even non-processed foods like fruits and vegetables are now grown to be tasteless and uniform because the demands of handling, transport and storage, not nutrition or pleasure, are the highest considerations.

Total war borrowed from agriculture to defoliate millions of acres in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, but the plundering of the biosphere proceeds even more lethally in its daily, global forms. Food as a function of production has also failed miserably on the most obvious level: half of the world, as everyone knows, suffers from malnourishment ranging to starvation itself.

Meanwhile, the “diseases of civilization,” as discussed by Eaton and Konner in the January 31, 1985 New England Journal of Medicine and contrasted with the healthful pre-farming diets, underline the joyless, sickly world of chronic maladjustment we inhabit as prey of the manufacturers of medicine, cosmetics, and fabricated food. Domestication reaches new heights of the pathological in genetic food engineering, with new types of animals in the offing as well as contrived microorganisms and plants. Logically, humanity itself will also become a domesticate of this order as the world of production processes us as much as it degrades and deforms every other natural system.

The project of subduing nature, begun and carried through by agriculture, has assumed gigantic proportions. The “success” of civilization’s progress, a success earlier humanity never wanted, tastes more and more like ashes. James Serpell summed it up this way: “In short we appear to have reached the end of the line. We cannot expand; we seem unable to intensify production without wreaking further havoc, and the planet is fast becoming a wasteland.” Lee and Devore noted how fast all of this has come to pass and how, to interplanetary archaeologists of the future,” the probable fate of civilization would look: “... a very long and stable period of small-scale hunting and gathering was followed by an apparently instantaneous efflorescence of technology ... leading rapidly to extinction. ‘Stratigraphically’ the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous.”

Physiologist Jared Diamond termed the initiation of agriculture “a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.” Agriculture has been and remains a “catastrophe” at all levels, the one which underpins the entire material and spiritual culture of alienation now destroying us. Liberation is impossible without its dissolution.

Nature as Slave: Satanic Technology and the West

Man and Technics

Oswald Spengler

Man, evidently, was tired of merely having plants and animals and slaves to serve him, and robbing nature’s treasures of metal and stone, wood and yarn, of managing her water in canals and wells, of breaking her resistances with ships and roads, bridges and tunnels and dams. Now he meant not merely to plunder her of her materials, but to enslave and harness her very forces so as to multiply his own strength. This monstrous and unparalleled idea is as old as the Faustian Culture itself. Already in the tenth century we meet with technical constructions of a wholly new sort. Already the steam engine, the steamship, and the air machine are in the thoughts of Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. And many a monk busied himself in his cell with the idea of Perpetual Motion.

This last idea never thereafter let go its hold on us, for success would mean the final victory over “God or Nature” (Deus sive Natura), a small world of one’s own creation moving like the great world, by virtue of its own forces and obeying the hand of man alone. To build a world oneself, to be oneself God—that is the Faustian inventor’s dream, and from it has sprung all our designing and re-designing of machines to approximate as nearly as possible the unattainable limit of perpetual motion. The booty-idea of the beast of prey is thought out to its logical end. Not this or complete with its secret of force, is dragged away as spoil to be built into our Culture. But he who was not himself possessed by this will to power over all nature would necessarily feel that this was devilish, and in fact men have always regarded machines as the invention of the devil—with Roger Bacon begins the long line of scientists who suffer as magicians and heretics.

The Rebirth of Pan

Jim Brandon

Scientific Movement was Launched by Mystics

Mircea Eliade, a highly perceptive observer who, as a sociologist, is by no means hostile to the scientific position, writes in his The Two and the One

The explanation of the world by a series of reductions has an aim in view: to rid the world of extramundane values. It is a systematic banalization of the world undertaken for the purpose of conquering and mastering it.

If this astonishing conquest itch were limited to intellectual postures, it would be one thing. But of course the contemporary mining and polluting of the industrialized lands bring forward far more concrete realities.

Our Faustian pact with Mephistophelian “sci-tech” goes back a long way. It is an insufficiently realized fact that the contemporary scientific attitude was first nurtured in the bosoms of mystical societies of seventeenth-century England, as the contemporary British scholar Frances Yates has pointed out in a number of valuable studies. Long before this, the pioneering philosopher of the specifically modern cast of organized inquiry, Francis Bacon, had called in his “Fable of Proteus” for a virtually sadistic approach to the natural world:

If any skillful minister of nature shall apply force to nature, and by design torture and vex it in order to its annihilation, it on the contrary, being brought to this necessity, changes and transforms itself into a strange variety of shapes and appearances; for nothing but the power of the Creator can annihilate it or truly destroy it ... And that method of torturing or detaining will prove the most effective and expeditious which makes use of manacles and fetters; i.e. lays hold and works upon matter in the extremist degree.

An amazing attitude, and one quickly discernible in every aspect of modern life. But suppose that nature, or at least the earth as a whole, may not be entirely inert. Can we assume that it would be completely in accord with many of the things we are doing on it and in it?

Twilight of the Evening Lands

Oswald Spengler

... Suppose that, in future generations, the most gifted minds were to find their soul’s health more important than all the powers of this world; suppose that, under the influence of the metaphysic and mysticism that is taking the place of Rationalism today, the very elite of intellect that is now concerned with the machine comes to be overpowered by a growing sense of its Satanism (it is the step from Roger Bacon to Bernard of Clairvaux)—then nothing can hinder the end of this grand drama that has been a play of intellects, with hands as mere auxiliaries.

Every Science is a Mutilated Octopus

Charles Fort

One measures a circle beginning anywhere.

I cannot say that truth is stranger than fiction, because I have never had acquaintance with either.

There is a continuity in all things that make classifications fictions. But all human knowledge depends upon arrangements. Then all books—scientific, theological, philosophical—are only literary.

In the explanation of coincidence there is much of laziness, and helplessness, and response to an instinctive fear that a scientific dogma will be endangered.

Almost all people of all eras are hypnotics. Their beliefs are induced beliefs. The proper authorities saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and people behaved properly.

I think we’re all bugs and mice, and are only different expressions of an all-inclusive cheese.

The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open.

If nothing can be positively distinguished from anything else, there can be no positive logic, which is attempted positive distinguishment.

I believe nothing. I have shut myself away from all the rocks and wisdoms of ages, and from the so-called great teachers of all time, and perhaps because of that isolation I am given to bizarre hospitalities. I shut the front door upon Christ and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and periwinkles ...

As I see myself, I represent a modernization of the old-fashioned atheist, who so sweepingly denied everything that seemed to interfere with his disbeliefs.

Every scientist who has played a part in any developing science has, as can be shown, if he’s dead long enough, by comparing his views with more modern views, deceived himself ... To what degree did Haeckel doctor illustrations in his book to make a theory work out right?

The vagueness of everything—and the merging of all things into everything else, so that stories that we, or some of us, have been taking, as “absolutely proved,” turned out to be only history, or merely science.

Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts. To a believer, the effect of the contemplation of a science is of being in the presence of the good, the true, and the beautiful. But what he is awed by is mutilation. To our crippled intellects, only the maimed is what we call understandable, because the unclipped ramifies into all other things. According to my aesthetics, what is meant by beautiful is symmetrical deformation.

(quotes collected by Joseph Lanz and Michael A. Hoffman II)

Who Killed Wilhelm Reich?

Jim Martin

What, in the final analysis, brought the wrath of the U. S. government down upon Wilhelm Reich, M.D.? Was he murdered, and if so, how?

Space does not allow a full discussion of Reich’s biography, but those interested won’t find a better place to start than with Myron Sharaf’s Fury on Earth. There were many dangerous aspects to Reich’s work, from advocating children’s sexual rights, or his thorough analysis of the patriarchal family in fascism and its roots in the emotional character structures of everyday people, and even his invention of the orgone accumulator[9]. In my view, Wilhelm Reich was imprisoned because he stumbled onto frightening facts about nuclear radiation during the early 1950s, a critical point in that newly developed industry.

Simply put, Reich found that there is no shielding possible against the biological effects of nuclear radiation. On January 5, 1951, in what was called the Oranur Experiment, Reich placed a minute sample (1 milligram) of a radium inside a powerful orgone accumulator. Reich’s shocking report, which can be found in the now out-of-print Selected Writings, details how radiation sickness is a function of the organism’s response to the invasive insult, and not a direct result of the radiation poisoning itself. Thus different people may be more susceptible to very minute doses[10], while others may feel no noticeable effects; each person’s reaction is different according to their own emotional and biological structure.

Few natural scientists have offered the range of practical and concrete discoveries on the scale that Reich did. He invented the psychoanalytic technique in distinction from Freud’s discovery of psychoanalysis per se. In his twenties, he organized the first technical seminar in Freud’s Viennese Psychoanalytic Society. Surprisingly, no such course which dealt specifically with the treatment of patients had been offered, and while the popular culture was soon to realize the validity of Freud’s analysis, the treatment foundered on a vague toolkit: word association, hypnotic regression, and dream analysis. Thus Reich trained most of the young analysts who came to America in droves after the Anschluss. Even today, only two broad analytic approaches attract patients in any significant number: “body-work” therapies based on Reich’s Character Analysis, and Jung’s heirs of the Archetype[11]. Had Reich packaged his Character Analysis in the manner of contemporary therapeutics (such as Lowen’s Bioenergetics™, Primal Scream™, Radix™ and Rolfing™, to name only a few) he would have been an extremely wealthy man at age thirty.

It will be recalled that there was little understanding of the biological effects of radiation in the 1950s. Many people remember that soldiers were sent directly into test sites shortly after the dust cleared from nuclear explosions. They wore no protection and were merely dusted off afterwards. At this writing (January, 1994) the U.S. Department of Energy has released many documents about the true nature of America’s nuclear heritage. Dept. Secretary Hazel O’Leary has offered full disclosure about the years of chronic abuse of an unwitting population of human guinea pigs by the scientific establishment and the military. So far, reports have focused to the more insane injection of human beings with plutonium without informed consent. Less has been reported about the facts that first came out: that throughout the 1940s and 1950s the military dropped radioactive dust over vast areas of the Western States. To put this into perspective, the military essentially turned each of us into a huge cohort of experimental subjects in an on-going test of the biological effects of radiation poisoning. President Clinton has distanced himself from Dept. of Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, who authorized the release of new information, characterizing her forthcoming posture as “very emotional.”

There is little public understanding today of the true nature of Reich’s research. However, the military, as of 1948, was fully comprised of his findings. Indeed, the AEC provided Reich with the radium samples he used in the Oranur Experiment.

When Reich first discovered the specifically biological energy he called orgone, he waited before publishing until he verified the phenomena under a variety of experimental protocols. One such experiment, “TOT”, measured the temperature difference between an orgone box (constructed with alternating layers of metal and wood which create an enclosed field of concentrated orgone), and a similarly constructed box that lacked the metal lining, but had the same capacity for insulation. An orgone box is generally warmer than the outside temperature, and the temperature difference decreases as the atmosphere contracts before a storm.

Albert Einstein found the question intriguing enough to invite Reich to his home to demonstrate the effect. Reich had written him a cautious letter in the hopes that this “Father of the Atom Bomb” would recognize that the experiments proved an exception the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the law of entropy, which requires that equal volumes tend to equalize in temperature.

Reich traveled to Princeton with several devices with which to demonstrate the orgone energy. He described his long session with Einstein as a meeting of minds. Einstein observed the phenomena, and said, “If this is true, it would be a bombshell for Physics.” Einstein met once again with Reich and then suddenly dropped the matter. Einstein’s biographers have painted this meeting in a ridiculous light, saying it was an example of Einstein’s eccentricity. Perhaps, but their exchange of letters, which Reich published later, belies this assumption.[12]

This is important to remember: whatever the validity of Reich’s conclusions, the phenomena he observed, which alone stand in stark contrast to any high school physics text, was in fact real, corroborated and sustained against objections.

But at that very moment, venom was stirred up by Michael Straight’s[13] The New Republic, under the editorship of pro-Stalinist presidential candidate Henry Wallace[14]. A reporter interviewed Reich under false pretenses and finally wrote about Reich’s “sex-cult”. This brought the crisis to a head. The FDA launched a multi-million dollar investigation of the orgone accumulator, declared it a fraud, and set about bringing criminal proceedings against Reich. Reich’s FBI files reveal a blistering blizzard of letters directed towards getting rid of Reich from doctors in the AMA, ministers of Christian youth crusades, and one from the Atomic Energy Commission advising the FDA what “a thorn in the side” Reich had been.

Reich never sold more than 500 copies a year of any one of his self-published books while he was alive. That an obscure, new line of research posed such a threat to the medical establishment is on its face inconceivable. Reich had first made contact with the Atomic Energy Commission on April 30, 1948 to discuss unusually high Geiger counter readings in connection with his orgonomic research. It would still be three years before Reich embarked on the Oranur Project, a controlled experiment dealing directly with the biological effects of radiation poisoning. In between, Reich kept the AEC completely informed of his research via meetings, letters and phone calls, as he grew closer and closer to an essential national security issue (i.e., keeping the public in the dark about the real danger associated with radioactivity), while simply trying to figure out why he was getting such unusually high readings on his Geiger counters.

In re-reading his original documentation, I was impressed with Reich’s ability to distinguish between observed facts, corroborated by others; new theories drawn from and supported by these facts; and finally speculation based upon insufficient evidence. Of utmost importance in his research method was an awareness of the attitude of the observer, basic trust in one’s own perceptions and observations. Although he alerted them when his Geiger counters told him something was amiss, he did not trust the response offered by the AEC: don’t worry, everything is fine. In this as in other matters he seems to have been virtually alone.

Reich’s intent for the Oranur Experiment was to investigate the treatment of radiation sickness with the orgone accumulator. For years, he had success in treating terminal “lost-cause” cancer patients with the medical device although he never claimed having found a cure, as the FDA would charge. Since it was well known that radiation sickness could lead to leukemia, Reich planned to investigate the matter at his laboratory in Rangeley, Maine.

As Oranur research progressed, it was decided to test the effect of orgone-charged radium on lab mice in comparison to untreated radium. In preparation for this, a sample of radium was placed in a 20-layer accumulator. After five hours, Reich subjectively noticed a change in the atmosphere, which he described as heavy and oppressive. This subjective change was verified when Geiger counters in the room went off-scale. Workers in the area suffered all the classic symptoms of radiation poisoning. They had discovered the Oranur Effect.

When the radium sample was removed from the accumulator, it was placed in a steel-and-concrete safe away from living quarters. Yet the noxious effects, as well as abnormally high Geiger readings persisted in the accumulator and the room in which it was situated. It was as if the atmospheric orgone had “run amok,” as Reich put it, concluding that the placement of the radium inside the accumulator had set off an atmospheric chain-reaction which persisted long after it had been removed. The next morning, the mice were dying even though they were in an adjacent room, and Reich awoke with a full-body tan in the dead of a Maine winter.

Reich would subsequently state that “it is the organismic OR [orgone] energy within living bodies which continues to react to the NR [nuclear radiation] material for months and even years.” In checking background counts around the safe in which the orgone-charged radium had been disposed, he discovered a more disturbing phenomena: that the steel and concrete enclosure itself comprised an orgone accumulator and that the Oranur effect was still evident. It’s hard to discount Reich’s documentation of all this, given the complete records and corroboration of his coworkers. He found a persistent, overcharged atmosphere continuing long after the experiment had been concluded. The New York Times (2/3/51) reported that there were unusually high background radiation levels recorded from Rochester, New York to Canada during the last week of January.

There was a bright side. Both the experimental mice that had survived and the workers involved with the project exhibited full recovery and more — they were far better able to withstand the effects of radiation in subsequent work. Reich had found what he was looking for. There were positive indications that Reich had found a method of immunizing against the effects of radiation.

By then the FDA was mounting its case against Reich, aimed first at silencing him on the question of orgone energy. He had been ordered by the FDA and federal courts to cease distribution of the orgone accumulator. When an assistant, Dr. Michael Silvert, transported the devices across state lines, he and Reich were charged with the violation of the court injunction. Unbelievably, the 59 year-old scientist, researcher, and teacher was sentenced to two years in prison and, as with many people his age, this proved to be a death sentence.

Although they are sporadic and brief, documents revealed in a recent FOIA release of Reich’s prison files[15] indicate many details about the tragic final months before Reich died in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Federal Penitentiary on Sunday, November 3^rd, 1957.

Prison officials derided Reich’s marital status (his wife at the time, Aurora Karrer, was “common law”) and his views on compulsory sexual morality. “Since the defendant does not believe in marriage as an institution, he has never developed any strong home ties. Where he lives is mostly a matter of convenience to the defendant and if he has any sentimental attachments they are not connected with the home as an institution.”

Upon sentence recommendations, Reich was ordered to undergo psychiatric counseling. Among these psychiatrists, there was a general agreement that Reich suffered from “paranoid schizophrenia”. They felt constrained to say that this assumption was “not based on personal observation.”[16] “Reich gave no concrete evidence of being mentally incompetent.” Yet they warned, “It is felt that Reich could easily have a frank break with reality, and become psychotic, particularly if the stresses and environmental pressures become overwhelming.” And, “In his discussions he unraveled a rather intricate and somewhat logical system of persecutory trends, particularly regarding the Rockefeller[17] Foundation ‘which made me a tool of its socio-economic interpersonal relations’.”

Reich’s jailers didn’t seem to have a clue about their famous charge, as evidenced by a copy of True magazine’s exposé called “The Marvelous Sex Box” filed dutifully in Reich’s background papers. Reich’s parole officer commented that he had an “unusually keen interest in getting an early release.” (Having stewed in federal prisons — filled with such people — I must ask what the officer meant by “unusually keen?”) The parole officer, Frank Walker, Jr., reported that “Reich went on to state that he was the victim of an international conspiracy and that is why he was sent here... that his situation was unique and different because the fate of the planet was involved.” Reich’s appeals for early release were denied.

Reich and those around him had developed an elaborate conspiracy theory involving leftists, government officials, Stalinist spies, and social moralists. He called them the Emotional Plague, signifying the contagious nature of the affliction. His late-period screeds against Communists have been cited by many as evidence of Reich’s instability. Given what we know today, that Michael Straight — owner of the magazine which instigated the media assassination — was a self-admitted Communist cell member who had served as a conduit between the State Department the Soviet Union, Reich may have actually underestimated the situation[18].

Thus he was suspicious when two volumes of specially-prepared defense briefs, called “Vol IV and V of the Suppressed and Secret Evidence” were sent to him in prison with “different colored binding and handwriting that is familiar to me but which I cannot identify” on one of the covers. Reich believed that someone had tampered with private legal briefs.

Reich openly suspected that a conspiracy of “Hoodlums In Government” had been behind the decade-long, multi-million dollar prosecution. Indeed, his own personal lawyer, Peter Mills, turned up on the prosecution team, and much of the evidence[19] provided by the FDA failed to take into account Reich’s experimental protocol.

Jail must have been pure hell for Reich, an unwilling martyr who had never crossed paths with the law before and who was already well isolated before his sentence. In an effort to find someone inside who could hear him out, he began speaking with the prison chaplains. He introduced himself as the author of a book called The Murder of Christ and began with saying, “Due to my discovery of the cosmic orgone energy and its social implications, I am in deep trouble, emotionally and socially.” Reich was reaching out to the only officials in the prison who dealt with emotional life, to unburden himself of an unbearable weight.

To Reverend Silber, Protestant minister, Reich wrote in a handwritten “Inmate Request to Staff Member”: “It was clear from the very beginning that prayer, and now lyrics, were subverted by such use of stupidities and evasions on our part, especially by the staid reluctance to talk bluntly & take the bull by the horns. The bull is really no more than a few slimy tapeworms eating away at our emotional guts. It is high time to start giving social power to the established functions of Love, Work & Learning as bastions against the tapeworms. (signed) Wilhelm Reich, Sept. 14, 1957.”

After Reich’s death, Mrs. Aurora Reich requested information about a packet of unsent letters that Reich wanted published after his death. “You may one day read that (not sent) letter [...blank line: erased...] large publishing house my “Silent Observer” or “Creation”: The 3^rd Volume of The History of Orgonomy. This volume is nearly completely conceived and constructed.” This reference, found in Reich’s letter to Mrs. Reich dated Sept. 16^th, 1957, apparently refers to the mysterious book Reich mentioned having written while in jail. This manuscript has never turned up. If it exists, it would complete a trilogy with The Oranur Experiment and Contact With Space. Reich sent it to the Department of Education, to be forwarded to Mrs. Reich, where she worked.

Mrs. Reich’s lawyer wrote to the Warden at Lewisburg in an effort to obtain the missing manuscript, as well as to report that on her last visit, Reich mentioned “that he had asked for aspirin and had been given two pink pills instead.... I wondered whether you would permit us access to the prison hospital and dispensary record concerning the decedent.” In the margins of the letter in the records, the Warden penciled in: “NO.”

The autopsy revealed damage to the heart (Reich had previously suffered a heart attack but was in good health when sent to prison). However, the stomach contents were not analyzed, because of “lack of facilities to do so.” In any event, Reich’s immediate family, in this case, his daughter Eva Reich, M.D., had not even requested an autopsy, believing, as she stated to the coroner, that her father “had died of a broken heart.” The prison, in fact, ordered the autopsy.

Conspiracy theories abound as to the nature of Reich’s death, and today Eva believes that he was murdered. Reich died only two weeks from his parole date. The official cause of death was a heart attack, and the autopsy showed enough formaldehyde in Reich’s system to interfere with testing for other compounds. In the final analysis, the real tragedy in Reich’s life and death was the silence and obscurity that greeted his important discoveries. As replication after replication of Reich’s experimental findings pile in today[20], there is still a conspiracy of silence around the facts. Those who know, don’t say.

Who Rules Over Earth?

The Archetype of the World Ruler
and the Work of Universal Regeneration

Tim O’Neill

I know I hung on the windswept tree,
Swung there for nine long nights
Wounded by my own blade
Bloodied for Odin
Myself an offering to myself,
Bound to the Tree
That no man knows
Whither the roots of it run ...
— Odin, in “The Speech of the High One” from the Old Norse Poetic Edda c. 1200 A.D.

Lord Odin’s speech opens windows upon incredible vistas of archetypal splendor, reaching from heaven to earth, from night to day, from moon to sun. It expresses the soul of an archetype known throughout the ages as that of the Rex et Regina Mundi (Latin, Rex et Regina means “King and Queen,” Mundi=world). At the heart of the archetype lies the consciousness that guides the course of life and evolution on our planet. It is neither human, nor non-human, dark nor light ... a genderless pan-sexual being that exists in the distant realm of causal geometries and planet-wide aetheric architronics.

The story of this mysterious Ruler of Earth appears in folk-wisdom and even children’s games (“King of the Mountain”). It spans eons and cultures, influencing Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu and Buddhist alike. Ancient Egypt, Babylon, China and India all had their own legends of the Monarch, and the archetype is even more ancient, and probably reaches back to the dawn of human consciousness. If Geoffrey Ashe[21] is correct, the source archetype was first consciously enunciated by Central Asian Shamans of the Late Palelithic and Early Neolithic eras (c. 15,000 B.C.) active in the plateaus of the Altai Mountains. Northern and Central Asia is still a hotbed of belief in the reality of the Monarch, whose invisible “government” guides and guards the course of evolution on Earth.

The sense that the Ruler manifests secretly and invisibly naturally invokes an aura of the ultimate conspiracy with metaphysical ramifications, ranging from the deepest physical planes to the most subtly aetheric. Conspiracy theorists, pressed long enough, will admit that the ultimate source of power that fuels their pet conspiracy is either extraterrestrial or demonic. The reason for this odd consortium is the sheer scale of planet-wide and centuries-spanning conspiracy. Such a vast enterprise simply couldn’t be the undertaking of human agency. Human beings are mere puppets in these conspiracy theories, the dupes of vast, inhuman forces. The King of the World, as we shall see, encompasses those inhuman options along with every other conceivable possibility. It unites the angelic, demonic, earthly and the extraterrestrial in a blaze of metaphysical glory, and then moves beyond even those realms into a land of pure geometric consciousness, where entire universes are planned and manifested.

In modern times, the Monarch of the World archetype has manifested in Tibet, Northern Europe, Russia, Siberia and most of the countries once occupied by the Celts, Ayrans, Indo-Europeans, Norse, and other Central-Asian Homelanders. Besides these ethno-cultural units, it is also found along religious axes, in Gnosticism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manicheanism, Esoteric Christianity, Theosophy and even in the more occultic elements of National Socialism, which attempted to force the Monarch’s evolutionary program into a disastrously early manifestation. Madame Blavatsky details the evolutionary program of the Ruler in The Secret Doctrine.[22]

There is also a longstanding and curious geographical disposition in this archetype toward the North and the axis of Earth, the Axis Mundi. Many of the legends of the Monarch have manifested by mediumistic, shamanic and clairvoyant means, through the agency of the famous “third eye,” the “Ajna” or “Command” chakra of the Tantra (“chakra” is the Sanskrit word for “wheel” and denotes a subtle energy center capable of receiving messages from the Inner Planes). Through these oracular means, the Legend has strong and vivacious roots which seem to have spread southward, down from the core experience of the Northern sages of ice and snow. In some dim past, these oracles and shamans saw and heard something in the far North, but what was it?

The mythic Monarch is pictured as an androgyne, represented as a set of twins, or a creature with one male side and one female side, the alchemic “Rebis” or hermaphrodite. The divine twin that comprise the Monarch are usually opposed to each other as light and dark. Very often, one will be distinctly demonic, the other angelic. From the metaphysical standpoint, this makes wonderful sense, since the Ruler’s domain extends from the highest and subtlest metaphysical realms, down to the very blackness and cold of hell, with Earth existing as an intermediary realm, partaking of both heights and depths.

There is a curious passage in the Pistis Sophia, a Gnostic work of the 2^nd Century, A.D., in which the Virgin Mary is visited and confounded by a peculiar phantom likeness of the child Jesus. In a memorable image, the living Jesus merges with his phantom twin in a blaze of ecstatic union. The identity of this phantom Jesus is not difficult to ascertain, since we know from old Gnostic tracts that the Christos (a metaphysical force embodied in the form of Jesus) is the diametrical twin of none other than Lord Shaitan himself. This belief traces back to the Persian-Zoroastrian mythos of the battling twin of Dark and Light (Ahriman and Ahura Mazda). Dualist philosophies, such as the Gnostic, Manichean and Zoroastrian, tend to mythologize their weltanshauung into images of twin brothers, identical in appearance, yet exactly opposite in inner nature. The metaphysic opposition of nature reveals the underpinning of the “Royal” mythos.

Almost all occultist and esotericist systems propound a doctrine of “emanations.” In emanationism, all aetheric and physical realities emanate from a single, invisible, intangible, inscrutable source. In many systems of cosmogony or “universe creation,” the primal source—or fountainhead—mysteriously emanates the Twins, who manifest the first principle of creation, that of separation and opposition. This is the causal scission which splits the Primal Unity into a distinct and separate level of being, the first plane of existnece, the Causal Plane. In the next step of cosmogenic process, the original Twins give birth to a trinity of principles, which, in turn, creates the Astral, Aetheric, or Intermediary World.

In turn, the Intermediary emanates the Physical Plane, with its four principles or elements. The One gives rise to the Two, which gives rise to the Three, which propagates the Four ... a geometry of creation preserved in the famous Pythagorean Tetraktys.

Thus, the Mystery of the Twins represents the Causal Mystery of the Pairs of Opposites ... ice and fire, gravity and levity, darkness and light ... all of the possible sets of opposing principles which define the hidden structure of our manifest Universe. No single member of the duality can exist without its partner. Where there is apparent duality, there is, in reality, a hidden unity between the opposites, an echo or memory of their origin in the Primal Unity.

This concept allows us to step behind the polemical screen of the Christian/Satanist controversy, to arrive at an understanding of the true core of the Monarch. Dante represents Satan in Inferno as a vast, dark, winged being, frozen in perpetual ice at the core of the Earth. The association of Lord Satan with freezing, staticity, devolution and gravity is very much in line with the traditional concept of Shaitan (Hebrew for “The Deceiver” or “The Adversary”). The association of Satan with fire is, ironically, a much later development and probably the result of the mindset of the era which burned heretics and witches. Satan’s opposing Twin, the Christos (Greek for “Annointed One”) is traditionally the fiery, solar, evolutionary, levitational principle. The Twin can be seen as both “Satan” and “Christos”: neither force is inherently “good” or “evil,” but each can be deadly in excess. The operation of the Universe requires these two great streams, one evolving, one devolving, in order for any advancement in consciousness to occur.

The construct known as “Sin,” then, can simply be defined as any activity which tends to freeze one into evolutionary paralysis or suspension. Good and evil, sin and virtue, Shaitan and Christos all aid the evolutionary current, since they all derive from and return to the primordial unity of the Monarch in the dance of time.

Certain fraternities of adepts who manifest themselves both in the metaphysical realm and on the visible Earth, attempt to aid evolution in its slow and plodding work of perfection. These adepts call themselves “Servitors” of the “Generalissimo,” as the late Manley Palmer Hall calls the Monarch in his Secret Teachings of All Ages. These adepti aid the Ruler of the Earth in the “Great Task” or “Magnum Opus,” the regeneration and perfection of all life forms over the entire globe.

The power of the Monarch is vast, yet not absolute, and is often represented as insane, wounded, imprisoned, aged, outcast or castrated. The Ruler’s power is shared with its subjects on the basis of their free will. The One is not as susceptible to failure as we are, though one Demiurgos in the history of the earth has failed and has been replaced with another!

The Monarch serves as chief Guardian of the gateway to non-earthly hierarchies—the Lunar, Solar, Planetary, and Interstellar. These gateways are concentrated in the Kabbalistic “sphere” of Daath, the mysterious Sephira which appears only rarely on traditional Tree of Life charts. The “Great Old Ones,” “Ancient Ones” or “Gods Before Time” found in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Charles Fort and Richard Shaver, all refer to those most ancient “creator gods” who left Earth millions of years ago to explore the vastness of space. The Monarch is one of these vast beings left behind to monitor the evolution of consciousness on Earth.

This concept leads to a key secret concerning the Monarch’s shepherding of the Earth’s Anima Mundi, or World-Soul. The One’s chief task is to heal, regenerate and perfect the Anima Mundi, since all individual life forms are part of its network (the “Gaia” concept is particularly apt in this regard). Surprisingly, we are the only ones who can make that giant task possible. Healing cannot be achieved without our full and conscious cooperation.

Certain geographic locales on the Earth naturally align themselves with the Royal “current.” These traditionally reside in the frozen wastes of the Far North, where a warm, fiery, Springtime land is surrounded by a ring of snow and ice (see “Pathworking Hyperborea,” Gnosis magazine, issue #9). The North Pole or World Axis is the presumed location of the Ruler of the World, hence its peculiar association with the myth of Santa Claus. Santa Claus was actually the 4^th Century Saint Nicholas of Turkey, a delegate to the Council of Constantine. As the bringer of gifts to small children, he is associated with Ho-Tei, the fat Boddhisattva figure of Chinese and Japanese legend who brings donuts and enlightenment to children. Both figures represent the bountiful beneficence of the One.

The World Axis, site of the Monarch’s throne, is marked by the World Tree (see Odin’s speech at the beginning of this article), or World Mountain. The One resides in a four-square city at the summit or crown, with its hierarchies of Saints, Angels and Sages. The Dark Hierarchy resides at the root of the World Tree, or in caves at the base of the Mountain, and communicates with the Summit sub rosa. The City, or Civitas, is twelve-gated, to reflect the zodiacal hierarchy. The archetypal Fountain of Life and Memory resides in a Temple or Cathedral at the exact core of the city. The Holy Grail, be it chalice, dish, gateway or stone, forms the heart of the fountain. The Ruler’s throne has received much attention in the tradition of “Merkabah” Jewish mysticism. The throne is also related to Ezekiel’s chariot. This city of the Monarch has been associated with the “lost” cities of Shamballah, Agharti, Shangri-La, and is recognized in the West as the New Jerusalem, Avalon, or Hyperborea. Mount Meru, Mount Kailasa, Monsegur, Olympus, and many other legendary and real mountains are said to be the dwelling place of the Monarch. The Aurora Borealis is said to be the Ruler’s play of light along the Northern Axis Mundi.

The traditional symbols of the Monarch are instantly recognizable as the Eye in the Triangle, the Orb, and, especially, the double-headed Imperial Eagle, which represents the “twinning” aspect. The double-headed eagle with sword, surmounting the globe, is the emblem of the 32^nd degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. The United States, a country founded upon Masonic and Illuminist ideals, carries Royal emblems on its Great Seal, and is depicted in full on the one dollar bill. Paul Foster Case’s The Great Seal contains the essential details of this symbolism and its Masonic basis. The Great Seal reveals crucial aspects of the inner workings of the Monarch’s government. The Masonic brotherhood, guardians of the Great Seal, are one of the most important programmers of the Great Invisible Government.

The original designers of the Seal of the United States were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Franklin was a well-known Mason, Past Grand Master of Pennsylvania Lodges and Master of the Lodge of the Nine Muses in Paris. Jefferson was quite familiar with the various aspects of esotericism, and the astrological arts in particular. There were four widely differing designs for the Seal before it was cut into a die in 1782. The official interpretation of the most clearly Masonic elements of the Seal—the Eye and the Pyramid on the reverse side, was adopted by the Continental Congress on June 20, 1782. It is deceptively simple: “The Pyramid signifies strength and duration: the eye over it and the Motto allude to the many signal interpretations of Providence in favor of the American Cause.” There is no open reference to Masonic matters. The reference to “Providence” can be taken as a subtle allusion to the “Great Architect of the Universe,” the Masonic term for the Ruler.

The role of Freemasonry in the genesis of the United States has been overemphasized by conspiratologists and underemphasized by historians. A more objective interepretation might see the influence of Freemasonry as only one competitor in the heady atmosphere of late 18^th century Enlightenment philosophies. It is important to determine which branches of Masonry were active at the time of foundation of the American republic, for it is a common error to consider Freemasonry as an international monolith. American and British Masons tend toward Christianity and conservatism, while Continental Masons veer toward atheism and liberalism. Furthermore, French, German and Italian Masons all follow distinct national “Orients,” which tend not to agree with one another. Beyond national differences, there exist a host of individual and competing rites ... Blue Lodge or “Craft” Masonry, Scottish Rite, Royal Arch, Egyptian Rite, Rite of Heredom, Rite of Memphis and Mizraim, Templarist Masonry, Rose-Croix Masonry, and literally hundreds of other, even more specialized bodies.

For our interests, Illuminst Masonry is the key. This is the type of Freemasonry infiltrated and illuminized by such bodies as Adam Weishaupt’s famous Bavarian Brethren. Like Freemasonry, Illuminism is no monolithic entity. There were the Alumbrados of Spain, the Gottesfreunde of Germany, the Martinists in France, the Fideli d’Amour, the Courts of Love, and hundreds of small groups of illuminated mystics covering the face of Europe over a period stretching from the 11^th century to the late 18^th century. (Illuminism exists to this day, yet the late 18^th century saw the end of one particular tradition and the influx of new forces.)

The most famous of the 18^th century Illuminists was the misunderstood Bavarian Brethren under the leadership of Adam Weishaupt. Illuminism, apart from its political and social aims, is a mystical phenomenon that transcends national and cultural borders. The illuminative experience is essentially the confrontation of self with the Monarch, and a transcendance of awareness to even higher planes. At the highest levels of illuminist experience that can still be discused within the limits of linguistic capacity, every living thing is perceived as a “monad,” in the metaphysical/mathematical sense which Leibniz implied in his famous Monadology, one of the most important of all Illuminist texts. Shimmering “points” of conscious lightlessness, spacelessness, timelessness focus themselves into a vast diamond-faceted non-Euclidean Globe, the Orb of the Monarch!

Surprisingly, this abstract vision has direct political implications. One of the most curious phrases in the U.S. Constitution, the famous “... and all men created equal ...” clause, only begins to make sense in light of this vision. It is only at the level, where all Monads are equal in the Single Eye of the Monarch, that this phrase holds true. The political doctrines of Illuminism, the blueprints for the government of the Ruler, tend toward Universalism, Theocraticism and Republicanism, in the original Platonic sense. The “New Secular Order” of the Seal is a pure, theocratic republic. Direct rule by the Monarch implies no necessity for chuch, state, or even family structure. In a culture where virtually everyone is mystically realized, human government would be a mere redundancy. In many ways, this is also the ideal of the “New Age” movement. The perfectibility of mankind and the recapturing of the true nature of Earth as the Garden of Eden is the cornerstone of the Monarch’s Temple of Wisdom.

Other Servitors of the One tend to operate under striking and curious names: Secret Chiefs, Superiors Inconnu, Inivsible Empire, Invisible Collegium, Great White Brotherhood (referring to light rather than race), Templars, Hashashin, Sufic orders, Hierarchies of Darkness, S.S., Ahnenerbe, Erisians and Chaotics, Black Rosicrucians, Shaivites, Wanderers of the Abyss, Desert Brethren, White Rosicrucians, Brothers of the Golden Cross and Ruby Rose, Hermeticists of various traditions, Böhmeans, followers of Elijah, Elias and Melchizidek, Bodeans, Utopians, Kabbalists, Gnostics, Cosmopolitans, Noble Travellers, Wearers of the Silver Sandals, Brethren of Abeignus, the Sacred Mountain, Und So Weiter.

Among the panoply of names that have attached themselves to the One over the course of centuries: Prestor John, Brons, the wounded Fisher King, Shaitan and Christos, Friedrich Barbarossa, the Sleeping Emperor, Apollo and Bacchus, Amphion and Zethos, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, Janus, Arthur-Rex, Odin, and Osiris. Masons term the Ruler the Great Architect of the Universe (GAOTU), a name which preserves the sense of “Ruler” as “measurer” or designer. In the orient, the Monarch appears as Maitreya, the Coming Buddha, or Shiva, Lord of the Mountain Yogis. The Gnostics would favor Jehovah, the Insane Demiurgos, while the absolute aspect is termed Ialdaboath. Curiously, the One is often represented by secondary figures in the pantheon, a reflection of its status as the local guardian of a single planet.

A portrait in the rough, fragmentary and piecemeal, has begun to emerge. But the only way that one can attain any personal meaning of the Monarch is through oracular “pathworking” (guided meditational journeys through the Inner Realms), where the probationer can meet the Monarch, face-to-face. The key to pathworking is the use of active and well-informed imagination in a relaxed (but never fully “tranced”) state of altered awareness.[23][24] Like the Central Asian Shamans of old, we too can learn to journey North to the great Mons Majorum Invisiblis (The Great Invisible Mountain) as the 17^th century mystic, Thomas Vaughan referred to it in his Lumen de Lumine (Light of Lights).[25] Passing through seven archetypal beings along the way, we will finally reach the summit of our quest, the bedside of the Monarch. Most often It will appear as an aged but royal being, laying on a bed with an open and bleeding wound. Interestingly, the Monarch usually appears behind a filmy veil. Behind this pathetic image lies a vast metaphysical energy and consciousness with interstellar dimensions ... one who watches, whose government is built upon anamnesis and ekstasis. This is a tradition wrapped in paradox, yet it is the very paradox of the World which confronts us here. The wonderfully amusing aspect of all this is that, eventually, all conscious lifeforms will be inevitably led to the bedside of the Monarch. What they see there and experience there will be different in every single case, yet all will see the same thing. In that paradox lies the beginning of wisdom.

Bibliography

The Lord of the World, Rene Guénon, Coombe Springs Press: Moorcote, 1983.

NOS: Book of Resurrection, Miguel Serrano, Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1984.

Shambala, Nicholas Roerich, Nicholas Roerich Museum: New York, 1985.

The Great Seal of the United States, edited by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C., 20520.

The Great Seal of the United States: Its History, Symbolism and Message for the New Age, Paul Foster Case, Builders of the Adytum: Los Angeles, 1976.

The Cult of the All-Seeing Eye, Robert Keith Spenser, Christian Book Club of America, PO Box 638, Hawthorne, CA, 90250.

The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, Paul Foster Case, Samuel Weiser, Inc.: York Beach, 1985.

The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries (2 vols.), Charles William Heckethorn, University Books: New Hyde Park, 1966.

Lord of the Four Quarters: Myths of the Royal Father, John Weir Perry, Collier Books: New York, 1966.

The Destiny of a King, Georges Dumézil, Chicago University Press: Chicago, 1973.

Mitra-Varuna, Georges Dumézil, Zone Books: New York, 1988.

(Special thanks for assistance on this article goes to my wife, Julie Day-O’Neill, for her insight, research and editing.)

The Christian Right, Zionism, and the Coming of the Penteholocaust

Gregory Krupey

Jesus was not a pacifist. He was not a sissy. — Rev. Jerry Falwell.

If you think that censoring books, records, and movies, outlawing abortion and non-procreative sexuality are the worst that the politicians and preachers of the Christian Right have in store for you, think again. Seeing themselves as outnumbered by the wicked forces of “godless secular humanism,” Christian fundamentalists and dispensationalists are convinced that the Last Days prior to the Apocalypse—the final earth-shattering war that will precede the Second Coming of Christ—are here now. Impatient for heaven, they would speed up the process whereby their Savior will return for them in glory. To this end, they are exerting and manipulating their considerable influence in both the U.S. and Israeli governments, in order that they bring about the conditions favorable to biblical fulfillment of Armageddon.

Could anything sound more insane? Is it actually possible that these no-necked bible-thumpers want to trigger the nuclear destruction of Earth and all life upon it? Why would people who so self-righteously pride themselves on their goodness revel in the thought of mass death on such an incredible scale? And can they possibly succeed?

There’ll be no peace until Jesus comes. Any preaching of peace prior to his return is heresy; it’s against the word of God; it’s anti-Christ. — televangelist James Robison, who delivered the opening prayer at the 1984 Republican convention at the invitation of Ronald Reagan.

Before delving into the current apocalyptic machinations of the Christian Right, it is necessary to understand the history of this baleful theology. In 1855, during the Crimean War between Great Britain and Russia, a Scots preacher, John Cumming, identified the Czar of Russia as “God, prince of Magog,” the prophesied invader of Israel during the Last Days according to Ezekiel 38–39. Cumming was probably more inspired by British chauvinism than by theology, as there was then no state of Israel, and the Russian czars were almost pathologically Christian monarchs.

Later in the 19^th century, an Irishman named John Nelson Darby developed the doctrine that the biblical God holds two distinct plans for two different groups of his Chosen: one for His Earthly Kingdom, Israel, another for His Heavenly Kingdom, the Christian church. The two will only converge in the End Times when a New Heaven and a New Earth are created out of the wreckage of the old. Darby toured America with this message, influencing many fundamentalists, including James H. Brookes, pastor of two Presbyterian churches in St. Louis. Brookes became the teacher of Cyrus Scofield, compiler of the Scofield Reference Bible, the most widely circulated and influential commentary bible in history, selling many millions of copies. Scofield inserted explanatory notes into his bible which interpreted many passages as prophecies of then current events.

Scofield’s annotations led to confusion between the original writings and Scofield’s own commentaries. “The significance of the Scofield bible cannot be overestimated,” one biblical commentator states.

History, Scofield claimed, is divided into seven distinct time periods that he called “Dispensations.” In each Dispensation, the biblical deity tests the obedience of humanity to his revelations and dispenses justice, rewards or punishments, accordingly. The seventh and final Dispensation will witness the return of Christ. Scofield saw no hope for the world until the Earth and most of humanity would be destroyed in “the great, final world catastrophe,” the battle of Armageddon, as foretold by John in the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. However, the “saved” Christians of the “True Church,” those who were born-again, would be spared the horrors of the seven years of carnage leading up to Armageddon (called the Tribulations) by the “Rapture,” a literal airlift of the Elect, while still alive, into Heaven. The idea of the Rapture caused much controversy upon its introduction. To this day there are sects which reject the very idea, and dispensationalists themselves are divided into three camps according to when they believe the Rapture will occur: before, during, or after the Tribulations. The first, needless to say, is the most popular, but many muscular or macho Christians on the survivalist fringe prefer the second or even the third theory.

In 1917, the success of the the Bolshevik Revolution and the institution of the officially atheist Soviet state revived the dormant “Gog-Magog” identification with Russia. Convinced that the Soviet Union was the earthly manifestation of Satan’s power, the dispensationalist-fundamentalists forged an alliance with reactionary politicians and businessmen that continues to this day.

It was in the 1940s that two events occurred which convinced most dispensationalists that the Last Days were indeed here. One was the founding of the modern Zionist state of Israel. A central tenet of Dispensationalism was that the Chosen People’s return to their homeland was necessary before the process leading to the Millennium could begin. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war cemented this conviction with the capture of Jerusalem by the Israeli army. The second prophecy fulfillment happened even earlier in 1945 with the invention and detonation of the atomic bomb, which seemed to correspond with the account in Revelation of the destruction of the Earth by a great fire, a massive, all-consuming holocaust.

Jerry, I sometimes believe that we’re heading very fast for Armageddon right now. — Ronald Reagan to Falwell.

The most successful popularizer of “nuclear Dispensationalism” or “Armageddon theology” is Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, which sold an estimated 18 million copies in the 1970s, second only to the bible itself. A latter-day Scofield, Lindsey describes the coming holocaust in this and other books by postulating a joint Arab-Soviet attack on Israel as the fulfillment of Ezekiel. Before this army of 200 million (!) is destroyed by nuclear fire in the valley of Har-Meggido (Armageddon), about 50 miles north of Tel Aviv, it will manage to kill one-third of Earth’s population. According to Lindsey, Jesus himself who will destroy the invaders, having returned to earth to take command of the defenses of Jerusalem as the military Messiah that the Jews originally expected.

As Grace Halsell relates the story in her book, Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War:

Jesus, Lindsey writes, will “lay waste” to the earth and scorch its inhabitants. When the “great war” reaches such a pitch that almost everyone has been killed, there comes the “great moment”—Jesus saves humankind from total extinction by preserving a faithful remnant. In this hour those Jews who have not been slaughtered will convert to Christianity.

Only 144,000 Jews will remain alive after the battle of Armageddon, Lindsey says. And they all—every man, woman and child—will bow down to Jesus. As converted Christians, all the adults will at once begin preaching the gospel of Christ. “Imagine!” exults Lindsey, “They will be like 144,000 Jewish Billy Grahams turned loose at once!”

Now that would truly be hell on earth! But who are they going to preach to? It is symptomatic of the evangelical Christian mind that even with the entire planet turned into a spent match head, they can’t conceive of anything more important to do than preach the evangel, the “good news.” Imagine! Most of the human race murdered so that some Jews would get down on their knees and admit their ancestors of 2000 some years ago were wrong! Could Hitler have been a worse enemy? Could the devil himself be any more fiendish than this “Prince of Peace?”

The massive popularity of Lindsey’s books was the herald of something strange and ominous brewing in the American psyche, something previously underestimated or dismissed, the emergence of reactionary evangelism as an organized political movement. In the 1970s, with the growth of the electronic church and the direct mail services of conservative lobbying groups, the Christian Right emerged as a serious force after the Watergate debacle. In 1976, a Gallup poll showed that 34% of Americans 18 and over claimed to have had a “born-again” experience. This accounted for nearly one-third of the electorate, about 50 million adult Americans, 43 million of them fundamentalists. Eighty-three percent of those polled agreed that the bible was either the inspired or inerrant word of God. Thirty-eight percent claimed it to be the literal word of God.

Two months after that poll, Jimmy Carter, a self-described “born again” Christian, was elected President. Although Carter is usually regarded as a liberal democrat, he was the first to introduce the notion of “morality in government” and a rededication to “traditional family values” as campaign rhetoric. But Carter’s failure to push into law the sacred cows of fundamentalist dogma alienated his erstwhile allies, who lost little time in seeking a candidate more to their liking. This candidate was also a born-again Christian, a former Sunday school teacher, a former state governor, and a Hal Lindsey fan. Ronald Reagan, the darling of the Republic Right.

The men most responsible for engineering the rendezvous between Reagan and the religious right were a cabal of professional fundraisers and PR flaks: Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan, Howard Phillips, and Ed McAteer. Between them, they had founded, chaired, or advised such lobbying groups as: Conservative Caucus, Religious Roundtable, National Conservative Political Action Committee, Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Christian Voice, Young Americans for Freedom, and the now infamous Moral Majority. The term “Moral Majority” was coined by either Weyrich or Phillips (it’s disputed) in 1979 when they met with Falwell through McAteer, then director of the Christian Freedom Foundation, which was financed by Pew (Sunoco) and DeVos (Amway) money. Weyrich, PAC-man and co-founder of many of the aforementioned groups as well as the Coors and Scaiffe financed Heritage Foundation, and Phillips, a founding member of YAF and a cog in Nixon’s administration, had been impressed with Falwell’s performance in helping Anita Bryan defeat the Dade County Gay Rights bill in 1977.

Falwell first made news when he denounced Martin Luther King in a 1965 sermon. But it was his 1976 “I Love America” rallies conducted from every state capital and his 1977 “Clean up America” campaigns that brought him to the attention of the Gauleiters of the emerging Right. He discussed theology and nuclear war with Reagan in the candidate’s limousine. The Christian Right took quite a bit of credit for Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980. Right-wing clergy soon became common fixtures around the White House, with Reagan consulting with them on all major issues.

In fact, Reagan would not see ministers who were not of the right. Although he was actually the least popular of all televangelists, Falwell was the most influential. In 1983, Reagan allowed Falwell to attend National Security briefings on US plans for nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Reagan also approved Hal Lindsey to lecture on nuclear war to Pentagon strategists. Reagan filled his cabinet and other posts with fundamentalists and pentecostals as well as conservative Catholics. Reagan set into motion a program which even the pious Carter never attempted: to turn a secular society into a theocracy.

Meanwhile, Jerry Falwell had developed contacts at high levels in Israel. The good reverend began spending his time becoming the most influential non-Jewish lobbyist for the Zionist state and its increasingly expansionist policies. As congressional observer Allan Kellum told Grace Halsell, “The New Christian Right is the rising star of the Republican party. And Israel is reaping political benefits within the White House from its alliance with it.”

Israel is the only stable democracy we can rely on as a spot where Armageddon could come.—Ronald Reagan, 1980.

In 1983, journalist Grace Halsell visited Israel as part of a Falwell-sponsored “Holy Land Tour.” Hailing from a Texan fundamentalist background and still a believing Christian, she took the tour to ascertain to what extent Falwell’s Armageddon theology figured in the thinking of his followers. She found that it held a prominent place. Most of those on the tour to whom she spoke were not merely expecting it in their lifetime, they were eagerly anticipating it. None expressed any fear or despair at the idea of a divinely induced nuclear war because they were certain that they themselves were guaranteed survival and immortality. These people viewed the modern state of Israel as the revivification of the theocratic kingdoms of the Old Testament, and they reveled in the glory of its military exploits.

As the tour proceeded by bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Israeli guide told the group that, among other things, Palestinians (who he referred to as Arabs because, echoing official Israeli policy, there are no Palestinians) preferred to live in poverty, that the Arabs had constantly spurned Israeli attempts at friendship, and that “these Muslims are all terrorists.” He diplomatically neglected to mention whether or not Christian Palestinians were also terrorists. The tour bus stopped at Nazareth only long enough to let the passengers use the restrooms. Halsell suspected that the tourists were being deliberately kept from talking with any Palestinians or Christians living in Israel. The tour finally caught up with Falwell at a Jerusalem hotel where they heard Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens boasts of Israel’s then recent victory in the Lebanese invasion.

Ms. Halsell realized that Falwell’s “Holy Land Tours” were not religious pilgrimages but pro-Israeli propaganda tours. Falwell himself has been very well rewarded by the Israelis for his services to the Zionist cause. A forest in Israel has been named after him, he has taken many free trips to Israel, and has received a personal jet plane from the Israeli government (which, considering the massive amount of US aid to Israel, was paid for by American taxpayers). In 1980, Falwell became the only gentile to receive the Jabotinsky medal. Vladimir Jabotinsky was the Zionist leader who advocated a ruthless war of extermination against the Palestinians in order to insure a trans-Jordanian Israeli empire. This doctrine was instituted by his successors, including his protege, Menachem Begin.

One of Falwell’s greatest coups was helping to turn his friend, ally, and financial patron, Jesse Helms, from a militant anti-Zionist into a militant pro-Zionist almost overnight.

In Israel, Falwell visited illegal settlements on the West Bank where he had his photograph taken with a recently transplanted American-Jewish settler. In 1983, Falwell convened a meeting in Annapolis to proclaim support for Israel’s Lebanese incursion, and among the attendees were Reagan administration members James Watt and Richard Allen, Jewish leaders like Yehuda Hellman, New Right ideologues Viguerie, Phillips, and Weyrich, and former president Richard Nixon. That year, Falwell told a Texas newspaper that Israel was entitled by “biblical mandate,” by the covenant between Yahweh and Abraham, to parts of what is now Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan, and all of Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait. Of course, neither Falwell nor the Israelis expect to get this land by peaceful means. “Peaceful intentions,” the good reverend has said, “are acts of stupidity.”

Zionism is mysticism. Zionism will wither away if you cut it from its mystical-messianic roots. Zionism is a movement that does not think in rational terms... but in terms of divine commandments. What matters only is God’s promise to Abraham as recorded in the Book of Genesis.— Rabbi Moshe Levinger, one of the terrorists who attempted to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque.

We should not forget that the supreme purpose of the ingathering of exiles and the establishment of our state is the building of the temple. The temple is the very top of the pyramid.— Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Hachoven Aviner.

In the old walled city of Jerusalem, atop Mount Moriah, sits the third holiest shrine of Islam: Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, comprised of the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, which harbors a massive boulder from which the prophet Mohammed is believed to have ascended to heaven. Part of the Sanctuary grounds sit atop a 200 foot high, 1600 foot long wall believed by many Jews to be remnants of either the first Jewish temple (built by Solomon and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE) or the second temple (destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE). This is the Western or “Wailing Wall.” It is central to both Jewish Millenarianism and Christian Dispensationalism that the Messiah cannot come (or come again) until the Temple of Jerusalem is rebuilt on the very site where it once stood. And according to many Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, that very site is on Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount, where the Noble Sanctuary of Haram al-Sharif now inconveniently stands.

Despite the fact that many archeologists dispute the Temple Mount as the site of the original temple, and despite the belief of some fundamentalists that an earthquake or some other “act of God” will be the agent responsible for removing Holy Mount from heathen hands, there are those fanatics who, being aware that the Muslims are not in the market for a new Holy shrine, human intervention in the form of terrorism is the only viable solution to this urban renewal problem.

From 1967 to 1988, more than 100 attacks on the Noble Sanctuary by bands of Israeli fanatics, most of them rabbinical students led by armed rabbis, have occurred. In 1984, members of the terrorist group Gush Emunim (“Bloc of the Faithful”) which included many army officers and others with friends in high places, attempted to blow up the Dome of the Rock. The attack was aborted by the early arrest of the conspirators after three Palestinians mayors were wounded, two seriously, in the wake of car bomb assassination attempts by the same group as a prelude to the assault on Temple Mount. Apparently, this all occurred with the connivance of Shin Bet (the Israeli FBI), which failed to intervene, according to Gush terrorists at their trial, because the Gush Emunim had the covert support of high-level military and government officials. The commission headed by Yehuda Karp, deputy attorney general of Israel, determined that the Jewish vigilantes had acted with the tacit support of police and army in their attacks on the Palestinians. Karp resigned from the commission after the Begin government suppressed the report.

Despite this, 18 members of the Gush conspiracy were sentenced to prison, with sentences ranging from four months to life. Calls for mercy and parole began soon after the sentencing, with Shamir leading the pack. The Gush terrorists received the acclaim of many Israelis (including the judge who sentenced them) and were popularly regarded as heroes. Defense funds poured in from America, from Jews and fundamentalist Christians alike. Wealthy American Jews continue to subsidize the Gush Emunim as well as Meir Kahane’s Kach Party. One of the Gush’s chief financial angels is Mexican arms merchant Marcus Katz, who has made his biggest killings in weapons sales to Iran and various Central American nations. One of Kahane’s principal backers, both for his Kach part and his US-based Jewish Defense League, is Hagen-Dazs ice cream magnate Ruben Mattus.

The primary fundamentalist Christian financial supporter of Israeli terrorism is the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, headed by the self-styled “new Nehemiah” (Nehemiah was governor or Jerusalem after the return from Babylonian captivity) Terry Reisenhoover, an Oklahoma oil and land speculator. Some of the lands he has “speculated” on, with his Israeli partner Shony Braun, are those formerly belonging to West Bank Palestinians. As secretary to the JTF, Reisenhoover appointed Stanley Goldfoot, once implicated in the 1946 bombing of the Jerusalem King David Hotel which killed 100 occupationist British forces. Goldfoot’s outstanding attribute as a holy man in Terry Reisenhoover’s eyes is this: “Goldfoot is a very solid, legitimate terrorist.” Reisenhoover has sponsored Goldfoot on many fund-raising pilgrimages to the USA, where he often forgets to mention that a Moslem mosque sits on the real estate upon which he plans to rebuild the Temple, the third and most important goal of the Revisionist (far right) Zionists, of which the Stern Gang was the militant activist wing.

It is the goal of the Jerusalem Temple Foundation to raise 100 million dollars annually to help finance this project (as well as to finance a yeshiva where students for the soon-to-be-revived Temple priesthood are learning the proper method of animal sacrifice). In 1983, the JTF provided the funds to pay the defense lawyers of the Gush terrorists. Another source for financing Zionist terrorism is the International Christian Embassy, which was founded by fundamentalists who are working overtime to place their government’s embassies in Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv. ICE is allegedly bankrolled by South Africa, one of Israel’s staunchest allies and trading partners.

Most fundamentalist Christians are involved in the Temple Mount scheme because they believe the rebuilding of the Temple to be the central event in the process leading to Apocalypse. While the Christians are praying for worldwide nuclear destruction, the powerful militant right-wing in Israel is convinced that they can win a Holy war if they provoke the jihad with the Arab world.

We have, first of all, to come to the conclusion that the right-wing reactionaries are the natural allies of Zionism, not the liberals. — Jacques Torczyner, American sector of the World Zionist Organization.

Jews can live with all the domestic priorities of the Christian right on which liberal Jews differ so radically because none of these concerns is as important as Israel. — Nathan Perlmutter, Anti-Defamation League of the B’Nai B’rith.

Along with much of the rest of the country, American Jews took a turn to the right in 1980, helping to elect that staunch friend of Israel, Ronald Reagan. Among the intelligentsia and religious leaders, dissatisfaction with the liberal Protestant churches which made up the National Council of Churches, increased, as the NCC espoused sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Feeling abandoned by their former allies, some Jewish community leaders sought the patronage of the waxing evangelic right, where anti-Semitic attitudes have traditionally resided. Fearing a rise in anti-Semitism in the growing public disapproval of Israeli expansionism and sympathy for the Palestinians, some Jewish leaders theorized that any possible wave of anti-Semitism could be headed off by recruiting the leaders of those most likely to express anti-Semitic beliefs into active and uncritical supporters of Israel, a position that dispensationalism already inclined them towards.

“We need all the friends we have to support Israel ... let’s praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” said Nathan Perlmutter of the ADL. Irving Kristol declared that Jews should abandon Liberalism, and take their allies wherever they could find them. “American Jews should join the ultra-right,” Kristol proclaimed, concluding that they should back winners, not losers. What Israel gained from this strange alliance, according to Grace Halsell, was money, more land, and grassroots Christian support. Since Israel already receives four billion dollars a year in U.S. aid, how much more money could it possibly need? A lot more, apparently, as groups like Bobbi Hromas’ American Christian Trust and Mike Evans’ JerUSAlem DC indicate. Hromas, wife of an executive with TRW, maintains a mansion with built-in soundproof, open 24-hours chapel directly across the street from the Israeli embassy in Washington, where wealthy fundamentalists, many of them high-ranking government officials, pray for the “redemption”: (i.e., appropriation) of the land from the Euphrates to the Nile and pay for the privilege. (Among ACT patrons are former Dallas Cowboys owner Clint Murchison and former Cowboys coach Tom Landry.) The money raised goes to Israelis involved in grabbing Palestinian land by any means necessary, from force to fraud.

Mike Evans, on the other hand, is a a born-again convert, whose organization’s primary goal is to get the U.S. and other governments to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby recognizing the Israeli claim that the city sacred to three religions and populated primarily by Arabs, is exclusively Jewish property. Working the fundamentalist circuit, Evans has been as blunt as any Zionist on this matter. “It will cost you the lives of your sons and fathers if you do not recognize Jerusalem as Jewish property. God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel,” he told a Texas congregation attended by Halsell. Evans has had the previously unheard-of honor (for a Christian) of having an orthodox rabbi lay his hands atop his head and pray for him, and of being the only Christian minister to appear on Israeli tv. (It is illegal in Israel to proselytize for any religion other than Judaism.) Evans initiated a drive to put one million signatures on a petition for the the United Nations to recognized Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel.

These are only two of the more obvious pro-Zionist Christian right

These are only two of the more obvious pro-Zionist Christian right groups. Others include the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, which proclaims that, “to be Christian is to be Jewish,” and that a Christian’s first duty is to the “land of Israel.” The organization ran full-page ads in the Washington Post and The New York Times praising the Lebanese invasion. The group is linked with International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, and numbered W.A. Criswell, Jim Bakker, and Pat Robertson among its members. Other such organizations include The National Christian Congress (a different NCC), and offshoot of NCLCI, was primarily formed to oppose the sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia; Christians United for American Security; TAV Evangelical Ministries; American Coalition for Traditional Values headed by Tim and Beverly LaHaye; and the infamous Christian Voice.

I think I could walk right through a nuclear strike and not even smell of smoke if God’s got a plan for my life .. I believe there’ll be enough of us left to rally the church to preach the revival around the world.— Rev. James Robison.

The question that must now be asked is this: Ronald Reagan, who brought many fundamentalists into power with him, is no longer president, and George Bush, while actively courting the fundamentalists vote and claiming to be born-again, is obviously not one of them. In the aftermath of the downfall of the Bakkers and Swaggart, and the defeats suffered by Falwell and Robertson, some would have you believe that the fundamentalist threat is not only passe, but that it never really existed. In the media’s current vocabulary, “Moral Majority” is almost a nostalgic term.

But that is not the case. If anything, Christian right agenda has actually seeped into the mainstream. Its theocratic attitudes are stronger than ever, and on the offensive, with manufactured panics over drugs, child molestation and Satanic cults distracting nearly everyone. All this is no accident. Pat Robertson did not lose the Presidency, he actually re-jiggered the Republic platform. Grudgingly throwing his support to Bush (as Falwell had willingly done), Robertson wasted no time in aiming his sights at the grassroots level, with local, county, and state positions becoming the new targets for fundamentalist takeover. The religious right’s new strategy is to become shy of its religious identifications. (Example: Citizens for Excellence in Education, a secular enough sounding group, is dedicated to “putting God back in the schools.”) Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation, has a three year plan to unite right wing groups with fundamentalists. These people are patient and disciplined, and are in it for the long haul. They have not given up on the idea of a Christian Reconstruction of America, with the attendant policing of its views.

Alarmingly, fundamentalism has infiltrated into police departments and the military. According to Conway and Siegelman in their book, Holy Terror, an anonymous “Captain X” revealed that “The fundamentalist segment of the Armed Services was developing into a separate subculture within the military community.” Captain X “emphasizes that the fundamentalist subculture in the military seemed to be stronger in leadership positions that at the enlisted men’s level.”

It is an ancient belief of black magic that manifesting the presence of the deity required sacrifice of human victims. It was also believed that the life energy of the victims would increase the potency and longevity of the sorcerer. A mass sacrifice might even confer enough life energy to make the sorcerer immortal. Could this be the real reason among the inner circles of the Christian Right, that the Penteholocaust, the sacrificial burning of earth, will invoke Christ the Vampire and render His disciples immortal?

A History of Vengeance and Assassination in Secret Societies

Tim O’Neill

That secret societies exist is a historical and anthropological fact. The difficulty is in obtaining valid, objective information on even the more public groups, such as the Freemasons. Conspiracy hunters busily amass piles of suggestive data to lend weight to charges of subversion and nefarious vengeance, but these often Byzantine plots are built upon shaky documentation and pure inference that could only convince’ other conspiracy buffs involved in a closed world of newspaper clippings, faulty syllogisms and talk-show emotionalism.

The conspiracy theorists tend to cluster in several different schools. Heresy hunters along religious lines are detailed in my “The Christian Theory of Occult Conspiracy” in Apocalypse Culture, first edition, 1987. A large secular school centers around Gary Allen’s Bircherite None Dare Call it Conspiracy, which lays out a globe-spanning cabal of bankers and commies, involving such groups as the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers and the Rockefellers. This school, parodied by Robert Anton Wilson in his Illuminatus series, holds relatively little interest in the more occultly-inclined secret societies.

The best known school of conspiratology derives from John Robison’s 1798 tome Proofs of a Conspiracy. This work is the root source of most the occult/political conspiracy theories, which attempt to implicate Masons, Rosicrucians, Templars and Illuminati in the sinister attempt to destroy Western civilization in favor of a Gnostic-Theocratic “One-World” rule. In Gnosticism, the major competitor with Christianity during the 2^nd to 4^th centuries of the Roman Empire, all living beings are perceived as “monads” ... pure points of light and consciousness that exist beyond time and space. The Constitution of the United States was a Gnostic effort to participate in the upheaval against aging European political regimes and reshape the American order along Masonic/Illuminist lines. The “all men created equal” clause of the Constitution was not to be taken literally, but spiritually—a “monadal” understanding of human consciousness.

Gnostic/occult political upheavals of the past few centuries is rooted in Continental Grand Orient Freemasonry (in contrast to the staunchly conservative British and American Freemasonry). Its Strict Observance and Templar-revival forms are focal points for the vengeful tradition of Freemasonry. The Bavarian Illuminati, under the leadership of Adam Weishaupt, joined in this revolutionary fervor, attempting to translate metaphysical into political realities. Occultist Universalism, Anti-Imperialism, Libertarianism, Secularism and Anti-Clericalism all find their roots in these forms of secret societies.

It’s no surprise that Karl Marx was a member of the Illuminist “League of Just Men” prior to enunciating his economic and political theories. The course of French, Italian and Sicilian Grand Orient Masonry during the period of the great European revolutions, from 1789 to 1848, demonstrates a gnosticizing tendency that we can only term “antinomian”—a desire to replace centralized and absolutist Christian Monarchies with the principle of individual determination within the universal Theocracy, or rule of the Divine Principle, the rise of the power of the Monad over that of the Pope or King.

In Proofs of Conspiracy, Robison lays out his belief that the Bavarian Illuminati had infiltrated Continental Freemasonry with the express intent of fomenting revolution and rebellion against Church and State. The truth of his accusations are mitigated by the fact that social forces were ripe for change. Even before the Gnostic program was underway, the Jesuit Order was formed to police those who were using the Reformation as a cover against the Christian power structure. In forming the Jesuit order, the Papacy conceded that conservative Christianity could resort to mind-manipulation, secrecy, intrigue and assassination as well as any other group. As the Jesuits circulated through the royal courts of Europe and designed their schools for the indoctrination of children, the Gnostics were moving on different levels. Speculative Freemasonry and the British Royal Society were both founded in the early 18^th century to claim its roots to antiquity and to create a rational, secular, scientific culture as far removed from Christian dogmas as was practicable at the time.

The famous discovery of papers detailing Weishaupt’s program for the Bavarian Illuminati, back in the 18^th century, and Captain William Morgan’s murder fanned the flames of anti-Masonic hysteria during the mid-1800s. (It was assumed that Masons had kidnapped and murdered Morgan because he threatened to publish Masonic secrets.) The stunning onset of the Bolshevik revolution unleashed another flare of anti-Masonism and anti-Jewish sentiments.

The modern post-Robison school of conspiratology was founded by British writers Nesta Webster, Lady Queensborough and “Inquire Within,” in the 1920s and 1930s, lately followed by Christian-oriented conspiratologists Salem Kirban, Robert Keith Spenser, Gerald B. Winrod, Constance Cumbey, and Tim LaHaye.

A close study of secret socities will reveal that a majority were formed for reasons of self-protection, a means of insulating those who subscribed to unorthodox religious, sexual, and even artistic attitudes. Robison was on the money, though, in his remarks about some secret societies having been formed on both political and subversive platforms. The Bavarian Illuminati and the National Socialist Party are two familiar examples of groups who began life with an essentially mystical outlook, and who later chose to put those insights into Realpolitik. Such groups should be distinguished from those whose entire purpose was political, nationalist or subversive, such as the Italian Carbonari, or “charcoal burners.” The mystical-political or pure political groups should be carefully distinguished from the purely mystical or magical groups as the Illuminati of Avignon or the Martinists, whose focus and means remained otherworldly. Such groups tend to “render unto Caesar” while following personal mystical beliefs in the course of daily life.

Among those secret socities whose aims are political, there is an astonishing history of vengeance, assassination, mind-control, terrorism and Machiavellianism of the most profound sort. The Hashashins, who dominated through terrorism, added the word “assassin” to our vocabulary.

The 7^th century split in the world of Islam, a fight between the “orthodox” Sunnis and the “heterodox” Shiaites, created a global blood feud. The minority Shiaites, fearing violent reprisals from the majority, hit upon the solution to the undermining of their opponents through a system of strict secrecy and devious accumulation of political and spiritual influence. The famous “Lodge of Cairo” or “Abode of Wisdom” functioned outwardly as a university, but really served as a cover for Shiaite political interests. Students at the “university” were gradully led through nine initiatory levels of teaching, ranging from orthodoxy to extreme radicalism. It is interesting to note that this system of nine-degree gradualism is still preserved in many Masonic and Rosicrucian groups in the United States and Europe, although few preserve the radicalism of the original teaching. Alternating confusion and reassurance was the mind-manipulating technique of the Abode of Wisdom, and such techniques echo modern mind-manipulation controls.

The Lodge of Cairo System initiated a large body of Shiaite fanatics by the mid-11^th century, and they infiltrated throughout the heart of Sunni Islam, the Caliphate of Baghdad. the Lodge controlled the Caliphate until the expansion of the Turkish Dynasties brought about an end to the power of the Cairo System through sheer force of arms. In 1123 the University closed, but its lessons were taken to heart by a radical Ismaili Shiaite by the name of Hassan-I-Sabbah. Following a bitter personal and political failure, he wandered toward the mountains of Persia and eventually reached Alamout, an impregnable mountain fortress. Within the stronghold, he began the huge task of slowly subverting and manipulating his way into a position of ultimate power within the ranks of Islam, and even beyond the seas.

Hassan began his work by taking young men from the surrounding countryside and indelibly impressing their minds with a surprisingly simple method of mind control. He would feed the young and impressionable peasants copious amounts of hashish, and had them led blindfolded into a garden he had constructed in a remote and well-guarded ravine at the foot of the mountain of Alamout. When their blindfolds were removed, the drugged peasants were confronted with an intoxicating vision of running brooks, exotic plants and animals, and shapely houris, or dancing girls. Hassan himself then announced to the initiate that this was the paradise promised in the Koran if the initiate would follow him unto death. Some modern historians have begun to cast doubt upon the actual existence of the fabled “garden” of Hassan, yet the traditional account may just as well serve as a metaphor for his real use of Hashish and the nine-degree gradualism of the Lodge of Cairo to initiate recruits into his service.

Hassan’s strategic masterstroke was to plant his followers in positions of trust at royal courts around the Mediterranean, Middle East and Europe. At the least expected moment, often years after being planted, royalty would be murdered in a knife attack, followed by revelation of Hassan’s power and the suicide of the assassin. Hassan soon had many of the world’s monarchs reduced to a state of constant paranoia. It wasn’t until the 13^th century and the military might of Mongol invaders that the secret Assassin network came to ruin.

Historians have speculated that the Assassins and the Knights Templar entered into several shady political, economic and “cultural” exchanges that helped import the Lodge of Cairo system into the West, where it became grafted onto many of the indigenous secret societies and mystery-guilds. The morphological similarity between Rosicrucianism (which was supposed to have been imported to the West from Arabia), Speculative Freemasonry, Illuminism, and all of the other societies who trace their lineages back to the Templars, is striking. It should also be remembered that Hassan’s system also functioned as a means of spiritual initiation into the mystical experience of Sufism. Much like the current dynasty of Iran, Hassan’s hoped to create a Sufic Theocracy with himself as the chief Imam.

The 13^th century European society, Vehmgericht, or “Holy Vehm” of Westphalia, were almost certainly influenced by Hassan’s Assassins. The word “Vehm” is thought to be derived from the Arabic word Fehm, or “Wise.” “Wise” illuminized mystics have applied their Gnosis to the lawless conditions of middle Europe during the 13^th Century in quite an extradinary manner.

Once having decided that a criminal had broached one of its “Christian” laws (the Vehm had its own peculiar system of jurisprudence), all the male inhabitants of the victim’s village would be summoned together upon an open heath. Not to attend this meeting was itself punishable by death. The judges and executioners were hooded, and the accused had no opportunity to defend themselves, but to simply listen to the verdict. The most minor of infractions was punishable by breaking of the legs. Those accused of capital crimes had the choice of dying slowly in a torture chamber (the Vehm invented the notorious spiked casket), or could elect to be declared Vogelfrie (literally, “free as a bird”). The latter method had the accused given a head start at freedom, but could be hunted down like a dog by an member of the Vehm. Very few ever escaped the huge network of Vehm influence, and many simply turned themselves in to escape the terror. The Vehm were so powerful by the 15^th century that they could order the Holy Roman Emperor to appear as a common criminal in one of their courts. The Vehm was rumored to exist as late as the 19^th century, and reputedly provided a historical model for the S.S. “Werewolves.”

The hypothetical Assassin-Templar link is often laid at the root of modern Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Having reached a position of great financial, political and spiritual influence throughout Europe, the Templars naturally became a target for the Pope and Emperor alike. The sudden repression of the Templars by agents of Philip the Fair, took Europe by surprise. Imprisoned, and awaiting death at the stake, Jacques DeMolay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was supposed to have founded four secret lodges at the outskirts of Europe, away from the influence of Church and State. One of the lodges was supposedly formed at Edinburgh, hence the term “Scottish Rite.” The purpose of these lodges was to carry out the vengeance of the Templars against the Bourbon monarchy and the Papacy. According to later Masonic doctrine, the Templars believed in the ascendancy of liberty, equality and fraternity, as preached in secret for a universal, illuminated theocracy on the model of Plato’s Republic. The Assassin edge of Templarist beliefs comes into play with the famous anecdote of the beheading of the Bourbon Monarch, Louis XVI, during the French Revolution. Supposedly, someone in the crowd surrounding the guillotine shouted, “Thou art avenged, Jacques DeMolay!” just as the blade fell against the king’s neck.

Eighteenth century Freemasons certainly took the Templar legend to heart. Several of the Scottish Rite degrees are directed toward creating historical links with earlier groups such as the Rosicrucians and the Templars. The Templar degrees are grouped together as “Black Lodge,” “Encampment,” and, tellingly, the “Lodge of Vengeance.” In a ritual which includes the symbolic stabbing of two skulls representing the Bourbon monarchy and the Papacy, the initiate is led through a history of vengeance stretching back to the Middle Ages. The initiations are conducted in rooms draped in black velvet and, unlike other Scottish Rite degrees, black gloves replace the customary white. The grades of the dagger, known as the Elect of fifteen, the Master Elect of Nine (shades of the Lodge of Cairo?), the Chevalier Elect, and the Chevalier Kadosh, are all represented with black drapings and the presence of the assassin’s dagger. Grand Orient Masonry in France and Italy, which operates its own version of the Scottish Rite, is openly atheistic, anti-Christian and tends toward both extremes of the political spectrum. The current drama of the “Propaganda Due” (P. 2) Masonic Lodge, and its infiltration into the Italian government, the Vatican, and even the mafia, demonstrates that the radical Masonry of the French Revolution and the Carbonari is still very much alive. It is widely believed that such radical lodges are the source capital for many of the terrorist groups that haunt Europe. In this light, the inception of modern assassination technique can be seen as a legacy brought into Europe as early as the Middle Ages, inherited from the Hashashin system.

It is now clear that at least one elite unit within the S.S. (Schutz Staffel, or “protective echelon,” Hitler’s personal bodyguard unit and special police) was highly influenced by the Vehm tradition. When it became clear to the higher officers of the S.S. at the end of WWII that Germany was going to have to fight a guerilla war in order to survive, a tightly knit and group of expert assassins was organized to take out key Allied personnel. This was the famous Unternehmung Werwolf, which was directly and self-consciously modeled upon the Vehmgericht in order to add the older luster of terror to its already formidable strength. It turned out that the Werewolves could only accomplish one major assassination before the end of the war, that of the Mayor of occupied Aachen. Still, the allure of their name and legend was such that Allied High Command was misled into assuming that the Bavarian Alps were swarming with thousands of guerrila fighters and assassins, an assumption which materially affected Allied strategy at the time.

The history of modern terrorism, intelligence and counter-insurgency has been deeply influenced by this long and complex history of vengeance and assassination, which reaches back to a single disaffected Ismaili Shiaite with the intelligence and cunning to plan a means to terrorize, control and dominate the entire world ... Hassan-I-Sabbah!

Bibliography

Proofs of a Conspiracy, John Robison, Western Islands Publishing: Boston, 1967 (original edition, 1798).

A History of Secret Societies, Arkon Daraul, Pocket Books: New York, 1969.

The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries, G.W. Heckethorn, University Books: New Hyde Park, 1967.

Secret Societies, Norman Mackenzie, Crescent Books: New York, 1967.

Revised Knight Templarism, Revised, Anonymous, Ezra A. Cook Publisher: Chicago, 1947.

Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike, Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, Ancient and Accepted Rite of Scottish Freemasonry: Charleston, 1871.

A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, Arthur Edward Waite, Weathervane Books: New York, 1970.

Hitler’s Werewolves, Charles Whiting, Playboy paperbacks: New York, 1980.

The Occult and the Third Reich, Jean-Michel Angebert, McGraw-Hill: New York, 1975.

Secrets of the S.S., Glen Infield, Stein and Day: Briar Cliff, 1982.

The Occult Roots of Nazism, Nicholas Goodricke-Clarke, Aquarian Press: Northamptonshire, 1985.

The Templars: Knights of God, Edward Burman, Crucible Books/Aquarian Press: Northamptonshire, 1986.

The Assassins: Holy Killers of Islam, Edward Burman, Crucible Books/Aquarian Press: Northamptonshire, 1987.

The Murdered Magicians, Peter Partner, Crucible Books/Aquarian Press: Northamptonshire, 1987.

The Call to Chaos

From Adam to Atom by Way of the Jornada del Muerto

James Shelby Downard

I. Mystagogy

The United States, which long has been called a melting pot, should more descriptively be called a witches’ cauldron wherein the “Hierarchy of the Grand Architect of the Universe” arranges for ritualistic crimes and psychopolitical psychodramas to be performed in accordance with a Master plan.

The ritual crimes are principally oriented to sex and death, in the cultists’ homage to their zany notions of the “universal spirit” that created the world, and also as a rite of passage employed to catapult the human race into the much-trumpeted “New Age” (known as the Novus Ordo Seclorum to the Freemasons who devised this country and its currency). Grand Architect of the Universe (GAOTU) is cult lingo for the aforementioned “universal spirit,” the “creator of all.”

Important in the hierarchy of these New Age rites are the Call to Chaos and the Killing of the King ceremonials. Both embody the use of the scapegoat.

The concept of transference to a scapegoat is the most important among the superstitious manipulations just behind the scenes of the New Age sham-scam. The death of human scapegoats (Gr. pharmakos) is a symbolic catharsis of a supposed type of pollution which are described as the perverse or negative phase of the two basic life-forces, the Yetzer ha-Ra and Yetzer ha-Tov.

This theological dualism holds that there are two antagonistic forces (male and female) which became one. Though the Yetzer ha-Tov influence is deemed to be “good” and the Yetzer ha-Ra is said to be “bad,” there exist no absolutes or value judgments in Scottish Rite Masonry, whose dogma contends that “equilibrium is the harmony that results from the analogy of contraries.” When the balance of the opposed influences becomes upset, they are equalized by transference rituals and sex-death rites which uses human scapegoats.

The existence of The Hierarchy’s Secret Combination that wields and Invisible government, was possibly first made known in the United States by the Mormon church many years ago when the group avowedly opposed Freemasonry, but nothing much came of these disclosures made over the years by a few well-informed and brave people.

The Secret Combination is dominated to a great extent by Freemasonry, which is also termed Speculative Masonry, and progenitor of a number of variant organizations, such as Scottish Rite Masonry, York Rite, Grand Orient, and others. These organizations are similar up to a point. The first three degrees of initiatory ceremony are essentially the same, and all the “brethren” are thought to be bound by a so-called Mystic Tie.

The Mystic Tie is a mysterious influence that is said by Masons “to link men of all religions and of the most discordant opinions, uniting them into a brotherhood.” This tie wends its way around many societies, secret and otherwise, clubs, labor unions, churches, armed forces, police forces, and government bureaus. Even the familiar necktie is a cryptic offshoot of this same Brethren of the Mystic Tie. So—zap! You may be a Mason, even if you don’t know it.

Masons describe their influence as “a sacred and inviolable bond that gives an altar to men of all religions.” That altar, stained with semen and blood, is the repository for Masonic fertility and death and resurrection rituals, just as in the old mystery religions.

You won’t find the occult sciences of Freemasonry in any college catalogs, though its concepts permeated the adepts of the Royal Society, who presided over the birth of formal science in 17^th century England. The elite style of inquiry and praxis called the Science of Symbolism is preserved deep within the heart of Freemasonry even today. But, quick as an imagined wink of the old All-Seeing Eye, this “Symbol Sci” can become blackest sorcery, as we will see.

When Science became involved with sorcery and symbolism, the three made for a mystical ménage-à-trois. The linking of cosmic male (yesod) and female (malkuth) is the magic principle behind the the Kaballah, the major metaphysical tradition behind the “great work” of alchemy. In alchemy, the universal power that permeates everything is composed of two opposite principles, that are by way of a cosmic marriage made one. The result of this quasi-sexual encounter, matter (prima materia) was created, and it in turn manifested a vital force (vis vita).

From this matter and energy, Adam Kadmon (Hebrew for primordial Adam, or first man) emerged, embodying the cosmic masculine and feminine powers. Adam K. was an androgyne, a bi-guy or AC/DC type who, according to the myth, was unhappy with his bisexual makeup, and so threw out the female part and thus became all male in preparation for creation of the universe. As they say, a hard man is good to find. Next, according to the myth, the powers (sefiroth) by which God is alleged to manifest Himself (or Herself) on earth, shone from his eyes, breaking the bottle (pressure vessel) designed to receive the mighty light whammy of the sefiroth. So Adam, the reformed faggot, is held to be the head honcho of creation, and the Golem of God.

Such antique anthropomorphism can be modernized somewhat. The idea of a universe composed of competing masculine and feminine powers, can be explained in electrical terms. As a result of the union between the polar male (positive, protonic) and female (negative, electronic), primordial matter (hydrogen atoms, maybe?) was produced.

The separation of the male and female components of primordial matter can perhaps be thought of as a divorce, and a return of the two to their pre-creational, chaos-inhabiting single state. The infinitesimal quantity of primordial matter is called an atom. The formula of the parity between primordial matter and primordial energy is written can be written in the Einsteinian equation E=mc2. (Just a new label on an old bottle, seems to me.)

Well now: the GAOTU gang, on that fine summer day in 1945, with the help of their scientific sorcerer’s apprentices, fissionated atoms and thus broke up the sacred marriage at the basis of creation and in so doing violated their own Supreme Law of the Universe, upsetting the equilibrium applecart of the cosmos.

II. Alchemy

Alchemy has a very important place in Masonic dogma. Sex magic is very much a component of that belief, albeit with certain changes in terminology. For example, the object of the masculine and feminine powers of the universe is symbolized by the nagari, an androgynous dragon which figured prominently in alchemical transmutation efforts. Surprisingly, some alchemists, in their attempted metallic conversions, were actually trying to divorce the cosmic she and he, but without knowing what they were doing or recognizing the inherent danger. It remained for the scientechnic adepts of the current era to finally accomplish the dire task.

In his Ordinal of Alchemy, Thomas Norton, an important 15^th century alchemist of Bristol, England, writes:

The Alchemical Hermaphrodite

This art must ever secret be,
The cause where of is this, as ye may see:
If one evil man had thereof all his will,
All Christian peace he might easily spill,
And with his pride he might pull down
Rightful kings and princes of renown.

This is all very reminiscent of the Masonic precept:

There is in nature one most potent force, by means whereof a single man, who could possess himself of it, and would know how to direct it, could revolutionize and change the face of the world.

During the Renaissance, from the 14^th through 16^th centuries, people known as Humanists discovered arcane truths in the Greek and Roman myths and mystery religions, as well as in the occult sciences of astrology, hermeticism, and kabbalism. Convinced that the key to all these enigmas lay in Egyptian hieroglyphs not yet translated, the Humanists began a long-running effort to reconcile the ancient faiths with Christianity to create a “Universal religion” that would sell worldwide.

The fundamental concept of this universal religion was the postulate that all forms of existence emanate from the same universal power and they all consequently seek a mystical reunion with that power. Alongside went the magical or theurgic Masonic belief that enlightened persons (Illuminati) can communicate with the Powerhouse and by so doing, gain control of the hidden forces of nature. (It may be meaningful that certain Freemasons once called themselves Illuminati, and the name was so used on their macaronic Latin diplomas to signify such a wired-in hotshot.) This wasn’t going to be any free lunch, of course: there was to be a priesthood or bureaucracy involved and the priests were to have all the esoteric theurgic goodies, the amount in accordance with the individual’s degree.

Nowadays, we have folks calling themselves “secular humanists” who appear to be retreading universal religion in New Age format. That endeavor has major backing from the secret sector, and other individuals manipulated by the GAOTU mafia. They haven’t let the secret out yet, though: that the New Age was not entered as planned and that tomorrow might even have been canceled.

You see, according to an age-old prophecy, “cosmic fire,” or ekpurosis in the original Greek, is gonna nix all tomorrows. The forecast was made by Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.), the “weeping philosopher,” and boy, wouldn’t he have a crying jag nowadays!

However, even if tomorrow does come, with most mortals having been brought together and made one, without individuality in their togetherness, they’ll function as parts of cybernetic mind-control system. Others, whose wills haven’t been completely reamed out, will be confined and regulated in work places with digitalized biotelemetry implants.

Sacre bleu! If such a fantastically hideous situation is the alternative, wouldn’t the Cosmic Fire option be preferable, so we could at least go out in a blaze of glory? One wonders.

Consider that the secret society which became the nucleus of the Office of Strategic Services — Central Intelligence Agency octopus was making biotelemetry implants in unsuspecting people as early as 1933. After the operations, the victims were kept drugged for a time and then were brainwashed. (OSS-CIA is written that way because when the former became the latter, they changed the name but not the facts.) I believe the implants were at first activated by touching the skin with a device similar to an electronic prod, but which actually was a symbolical phallus.

The early implants were made to stimulate the pudendal nerve, when triggered, so that the sexually excited and amnesiac-drugged victims could be used in the sex circuses of the OSS-CIA secret order. Those victims were not infrequently operated on while anesthetized by morphine and scopolamine, which produce analgesia and amnesia (twilight sleep, to esotericists). They too were brainwashed after healing. This evil program, supposedly for the sake of national security, was oriented to the Cult of GAOTU.

The practice of Masonry, which revolves entirely around the “science” of Symbolism, involves signs, emblems, words and their origins, meanings and manipulation. It is largely an outgrowth of gematria, the kabbalistic numeration of Hebrew letters and the supposed magical meanings of those turkey tracks. Gematria is considered applicable to other languages, and indeed may have originated with the Greeks.

Montague Summers points out in Witchcraft and Black Magic:

It is mere waste of time and hairsplitting to attempt to draw minute and caviling distinctions, to chop up words and quibble and subdivide, to argue that technically and etymologically a sorcerer differs from a witch, a witch from a necromancer, a necromancer from a Satanist. In actual fact and practice all these names are correlative; in use synonymous.

Of paramount importance in all of this thaumaturgy is the mystical toponomy of the geography of witchcraft. The “Land of Enchantment” (New Mexico), for instance, is a maze of such loaded names, words, signs, and symbols attached to certain key places in an esoteric but logical order. That isn’t confusing to those who know the Science of Symbolism and can adroitly make their way through the labyrinth. For example, there is the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of the Dead Man), which runs north to south, and El Camino del Diablo (Devil’s Highway) running east to west. They meet just north of the site of the first atomic bomb blast.

The Jornada del Muerto may be likened to the “peregrination” or long journey of the alchemists, and that voyage links up with the all-important Killing of the King procedure of alchemy. New Mexico’s Jornada begins at El Paso, Texas, although its original starting point was at Teotihuacan, Mexico, according to an old book in the Mexico City library.

I believe, however, the literary reference designated another Jornada del Muerto which was supposed to lead from a sacrificial altar at the Teotihuacan temple site to the land of the Bat God, a major deity in Mex mythology that may be roughly equated with the Devil.

The America Jornada, begins, however, in an unlikely spot: a rundown old neighborhood of El Paso called Kern Place, near Krazy Cat Mountain. Peter Kern was a turn-of-the-century Mason given to consorting with greaser brujos (witches) of various types but especially those involved in necromancy.

There came a time when Kern started dressing in white robes and he went to Alaska after the gold rush and started preaching to the Indians there. He eventually took a groups of them back to El Paso and, along with some Mexican “Toltecs,” Kern built a huge ceremonial gate at the entrance to his Kern Place housing development.

The structure was a nightmare of esoteric symbolism, which apparently was supposed to represent the “Gate with a Thousand Doors,” otherwise known as the Gate of Death. The Angel of Death is said to be Lord of the Gates;. there was much to interest this angel at Kern’s gate, positioned at the head of the Journey of Death.

III. Trinity

A few miles up the Jornada del Muerto, in Mesilla, New Mexico, there is the Masonic lodge Jornada no. 70. It was 70 days during which a corpse had to remain, soaking in natron (native soda) in one of the houses of death of ancient Egypt, in order to become a proper mummy. Natron is found along the Jornada del Muerto, and particularly around the Trinity Site, where, just as in the Trona area near California’s Death Valley, the mineral is said to have resulted from evaporation of prehistoric inland seas. (Trona, of course, is an anagram of natron.)

Kern Gate on the Jornada del Muerto

Trinity is the name of the spot where the world’s first atomic device was exploded, on July 16, 1945. Conventionally, the process is known as nuclear fission, a splitting of plutonium or uranium atoms to liberate vast energy; but that’s too mechanistic and limited an explanation, especially in view of the total picture of world hanky-panky and crypto-ritualism we’ve been able to assemble since then.

We’re taking a different tack and looking upon the event as a bust-up of the Sacred Marriage (hieros gamos to the Greeks) of twin cosmic reality principles that formed primordial matter, a divorce that liberates primordial energy—much like the rolling pins, dishes and profanity flying out the door behind a fleeing hubby in more conventional marital blowouts.

Well, I ask you: what more symbolical place could have been found for such a transaction than this Jornada, with all of its link-ups to the alchemical long journey and king-killing rites? Icing the cake is that Devils Highway (U.S. 380), which clips the northwest corner of White Sands Missile Range, some 40 miles from Trinity. Moreover, the town of Hondo is one th Devils Highway and it would be well to note that jinn are reputed to hang out in hondos. Some Japanese believe that a fox jinni stays in a hondo in a temple in Japan, much of the time. It’s an amazingly small world, isn’t it?

The jinn are big in Mohammed’s Koran, and readily identifiable as tellurian spirits, which are said to have been created by the same events that produced Adam Kadmon, for they too were born of Chaos, although some allege that all of the jinn were in the bottle that was broken by the might light (sefiroth) shining from Adam’s eyes. They thus were released from the bottle and so are said to be eternal pals of old Adam.

It generally is contended by kabbalists that the jinn make their home with Adam K., which is sensible for, being incorporeal, they take up no room to speak of, and I am sure that as many as want to can sit on the head of a pin, should that ever become necessary.

Adam Kadmon’s cosmic history, then, has much to do with bottles, and so has that of the jinn. In fact, there are so many stories that hinge on some jinni being in a bottle that it might be said that bottles are an occupational hazard of the jinn. You can’t believe much of anything about those old jinn stories, though, doggone it—about as much as one can believe that a mighty light (sefiroth) shone from Adam’s eyes and busted the bottle that has such an important place in Kabbalah cosmogony. Quite frankly, I am inclined to suspect that, if he did break that blasted bottle, it was because he got his Yesod caught in the neck and had to crack it to get it back out. Little boys sometimes have the same trouble with pop bottles, so some things never change, I guess.

In April 1945, a gigantic steel bottle said to have weighed more than 440,000 pounds and to have been 25 feet long by 12 feet in diameter, arrived on the railroad siding at a town called Belen in Tierra del Encanto (Land of Enchantment—New Mexico).

After the bottle stayed in Belen for about two months, it was taken on the railroad to Pope, which is nearer the Trinity Site, and then was loaded on to a special 64-wheel trailer by way of what is called by project historians a “Becket Hitch,” and then was towed by four powerful tractors to Trinity. (A good question would be: did the workers take holy communion at Pope, or maybe at Trinity?)

Incidentally, Thomas Becket (1118–1170), an archbishop of Canterbury, became an opponent of the then king and began defending special privileges of Catholic priests in England. He was assassinated in the Canterbury cathedral and his death is often alleged to have been a peculiar one, possibly even ritualistic, and hence loosely associated with a king-killing scenario.

Scientists explained that the Trinity bottle was a “pressure vessel” designed to contain a partial chain reaction of the atomic device in the event that nuclear fission of Uranium 235 was not sufficient to produce a true atomic explosion. For reasons never convincingly explained, the Trinity bottle was never so used during the actual blast which took place 800 feet away at Ground Zero atop a 100 foot steel tower.

We are given to understand, then, that despite a vast commitment of time and expense, fantastically expensive custom fabrication in an Ohio steel mill, arduous transportation to Tierra del Encanto over a circuitous rail route that had tracks strong enough to carry it, and, finally, laborious inch-by-inch removal to the Trinity Site and suspension above ground from a gigantic block and tackle, the bottle was “left idle,” as the official Los Alamos laboratory history laconically puts it.

In April 1946, bombs were finally detonated inside the huge bottle, and holes were said to have been blown in its ends. In 1947, the bottle was buried. In 1951, it was disinterred, “tested,” and reburied. The curious, one might say mystical, history of the giant bottle, came to an end when it was finally uncovered in the late 50s, dusted off, and put on display, minus its rounded ends, at the Trinity Site.

One of the major components of the Kaballah is an explanation of how the universe was created. Apparently there was a pulling back (Zimzum) by God of his divine substance (Ein Sof) from a little area where our world now stands, like an immensely corpulent man sucking in his gut in order to get his pants on. God then directed a ray of light into this vacant space, rather like our lardbucket letting fly a stream of urine, and this formed the first man, Adam Kadmon, whom we’ve already met.

Adam, as we know, had the peculiar habit of projecting light rays from his forehead and eyes, of ten differing types relating to the ten spheres or sefiroth that were to make up all created things. These lights fell into vessels, perhaps like chamberpots in the form of our fatso, but so powerful were Adam’s headlights that:

The vessels assigned to the upper three sefiroth managed to contain the light that flowed into them, but the light struck the six sefiroth from Hesed to Yesod all at once and so was too strong to be held by the individual vessels; one after another they broke, the pieces scattering and falling... Nothing, neither the lights nor the vessels, remained in its proper place, and this development—called after a phrase borrowed from the Idrot of the Zohar, “the death of the primordial kings”—was nothing less than a cosmic catastrophe...

The Big Bottle near Pope

Disinterred Piece of the Bottle Called “Jumbo”
(US Army Photo)

... in the words of crackerjack kabbalist Gershom Scholem, writing in the Encyclopedia Judaica.

This sort of confabulation maunders on through thousands of cobwebby pages in hundreds of old kabbalistic tomes, and we’ll spare ourselves further details with one observation, or rather, question: “But vas you dere, Charley?”, so often asked by the skeptic in the old Baron Munchausen radio show.

In attempting to account for the atomic gang’s bizarre doings with Jumbo, we must look into this sort of symbolism, precisely because the inner circles in these Masonic States of America are so addicted to the whacko stuff, as can be seen on any dollar bill.

Possible scenario: the blasting of the Mason jar with the nearby A-bomb flash, the nearest manmade thing to the primordial light of the sefiroth, followed by its later dismantling, may have been a dramatic re-enactment of the original kabbalist creation myth. Freemasonry is chock-full of such theatrical instant-replay exercises. (The tie-in of the “death of the primordial kings” in Scholem’s last sentence will have to await our discussion of another mighty psychodrama pulled off by the cryptocracy at a different Trinity Site 18 years later.)

Another possibility in understanding the big jug derives from the arena of alchemy, where mysterious doings with bottles are depicted in so many old engravings. These generally are believed to center on the creation of a magical mannikin or homunculus, thought to have superhuman magical powers, and usually described as forming inside a bottle or vessel of some kind. Jewish mysticism posits a similar Frankensteinian monstrosity called the Golem, and this would be a suggestive link with alchemical lore.

While much of Masonic lore is composed of hermetic, alchemical and Jewish elements, much of Jewish mysticism is of Egyptian, Babylonian and gnostic origin. The interrelations of such esoterica are easily recognized and their hidden meanings are not really enigmatic after you have become acquainted with the inner doctrines of Masonry, alchemy and the kabbalah. For example, the ritualistic breaking of bottles is intensely magical. The rabbis’ bottle-breaking (shevirah) routine pertains to Hebrew cosmogony and the primordial Adam, symbolically shattering the jug that was the instrument of creation, designed to receive the might light of the cosmic masculine-feminine principles (sefiroth), which shone from Adam Kadmon’s eyes. However, when the light did shine, it did not contain the feminine principle, according to the myth, so the bottle was broken because of the imbalance. Consequently, the jinn that were in the bottle with Adam were released, resulting in the earth being “demonized,” at least if we can believe Mohammed in his Koran.

The shevirah rite is also associated with the croaking of the primordial Kings of Edom (Genesis 36) because of another imbalance of the masculine and feminine principles.

Rabbi mystics also perform a ritual called Tikkun to restore the busted sefiroth bottle and get the “powers of evil” back inside. In an October 1987 television news broadcast, reporting on Soviet-American arms talks, the principal topics were missiles and nuclear warheads. In his summary the commentator remarked, “They are trying to return the nuclear jinni to its bottle.”

Alas—it can’t be done. It’s too late! Too late! Too late! The damn bottle has been cracked up for keeps.

IV. Synergism

Alchemical jargon and grimoires make for a mystical hazy-maze of signs, symbols and words which have been subject to bewilderingly different interpretations and interpolations and consequently are almost indecipherable today. Most self-respecting scholarly types won’t touch it, meaning that they implicitly reject the whole thing as meaningless. Dr. Gustav Jung was not quite that obtuse but nevertheless spun his wheels trying to analyze alchemy, or more precisely, its surviving books and documents, strictly from the vantage point of “subconscious” psychologizing. His assumption seemed to be that all of those puffers had nothing better to do over many centuries than to sketch out puzzling diagrams and cryptic writings for the puzzlement of psychoanalysts.

In the alchemical amalgam there are virgins who aren’t really virgins (the GAOTU can apparently restore lost maidenheads), bottles, baths, scapegoats, marriages, unicorns, dragons, bisexual unions, serpents, Ethiopians, crosses, crucifixions, deaths, resurrections, you name it; and in the maze too there is a monstrous thing somewhere near the heart of it, which when perceived should have been left alone.

Alchemy synergizes concepts of the ancient Egyptian religion, along with Jewish and Jewish-oriented “Christian” mysticism,. The king-killing aspect of this rigamarole is symbolized by a serpent crucified on a tau cross, the serpent representing the cosmic male-female union. The unified masculine and feminine powers in contention is symbolized by a two-headed androgyne. Their separation is effected by the death of the tau cross serpent. Some have identified the snake as the cosmic reptile known as Uroboros, which was given to putting its tail in its mouth in the way its folkloric descendants, called hoopsnakes, supposedly do. So there we are: the crucified serpent symbolizes the king in the alchemical Killing of the King rite.

But wait, we’re not out of the woods yet. The crucified snake, or king, also symbolizes a deity who is the son of the king. After the Killing of the King, which betokens the break-up of the Sacred Marriage and destruction of primordial matter, the primordial power (cosmic fire or ekpurosis) must be saved, and for that to be done the son must first be devoured by the King (father, prima materia, first matter). No one one knows what might happen if the son devoured the father, though that does seem rather a big oversight.

Nevertheless, the protohyle (prima materia, first matter) of the alchemists does seem quite similar to the universal spirit or world spirit of Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.) and the Pythagoreans. It appears that those Pythagoreans and kabbalists, alchemists, what have you, never really determined which came first, the son or the father, or which was which, for that matter.

The whole thing is very much like trying to settle which came first, Nekek Ur (the Chaos Goose or Great Cackler) the Cosmic Egg (Suht). In ancient Egyptian religion, everything began in chaos, after which order was established, an egg emerged, and the Chaos Goose hatched it. So—which came first, and which is which? It does keep you guessing.

That egg and goose yarn is just a part of one version of the first act of creation in ancient Egyptian cosmogony. Another is that the egg is the sun and from it emerged the god Ra (the sun god) who, once again, embodied primeval male and female powers of generation, from which all forms of existence emanated.

Ra was said to have come to earth in a tripartite form, embodying the deities Osiris, Isis, Horus, in a pyramid called the Benben Stone. This was kept in a temple at Anu (Heliopolis) for ages.

In the Egyptian religion, the Osiris-Isis-Horus trinity was symbolized by a right-angled triangle. Osiris, the male principle, was the base; Isis, the female, was the perpendicular, and Horus, their son, or product of male and female principles, was the hypotenuse. Pythagoras, during his stay in Egypt, scouted out the mystic-geometric secret of right triangles, to which his name is still attached: the sum of the squares of the two shorter sides is equal to the square of the longest side (hypotenuse). The fertility geometry of the right triangle formula is expressed by the idea that the product of Osiris and Isis is horus. That formula and the right triangle have a large place in the third degree of Freemasonry.

The Kabbalistic/alchemical/Masonic cosmogony, posits that order as well as supernatural beings are born in Chaos, along with it the reciprocal idea that some day everything will return to Chaos. Some, like Heraclitus the weeper, even contended that the Return would be by way of cosmic fire. Surely it must be clear by now that when you destroy primordial matter (or prima materia, atoms, what you will), you get back primordial energy, or cosmic fire, for which thermonuclear energy seems a close enough approximation.

The term synergism denotes an interaction between the universal spirit and the human mind or will, which are alleged by all good Masons to cooperate. The universal spirit reputedly reacts like a transponder dispensing good and bad things when actuated by symbolic supplications and rituals.

While the Masonic semantic maze is bewildering to those who must rely entirely on dictionaries and other guidebooks, it’s no problem to those with knowledge of “S.O.S.”—and I don’t mean something unmentionable on a shingle, but the Science of Symbolism. An illustration: in the Land of Enchantment, on the Jornada del Muerto’s Trinity Site, there is a small pyramid. The area around it is fenced and called Ground Zero.

So what? you might say. Well, there’s a hamburger stand called Ground Zero at the Pentagon, and I consider the term to be highly appropriate for both Pentagon and Trinity sites. Zero is a symbol of naught, nothing, nonexistence, zip, the big bagel. Zero also is the numeral assigned to the Fool card of the Tarot, and it here signifies termination, like card 13, the Death card. That certainly would be the net effect, for those on the receiving end of any of the Doomsday devices first tested at Trinity and still today deployed by the Pentagonians.

The pyramid at Trinity Ground Zero might esoterically be considered symbolical of the Benben pyramid of Heliopolis, in which Ra of Egyptian trinity came to earth; but just between you and me and the gatepost of the Ground Zero fence, I don’t believe that that pyramid will restore a bit of order to the confusion resulting from the atomic divorce of the Sacred Marriage.

As for the Pentagon’s zero point: a pentagon is defined as a plane five-sided figure with five inner angles. More interestingly, “It is the third figure from the exterior in the camp of the Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret, or 32^nd degree of the Scottish Rite,” according to Scottish Rite sources. So, the Pentagon clearly carries with it a secret symbolical overload, and isn’t it interesting that the same man who oversaw design and construction of that odd-shaped building, Army engineer Leslie R. Groves, next took command of the entire Manhattan Project which was to build the bomb and test site at Trinity. Whether General Groves was a member of the Sojourners (career military) or another Masonic lodge hasn’t been revealed to the profane.

With the universal power being principally oriented to fertility and death, it’s clear how important sexual and sacrificial rites are to these zanies. Ancient Phrygian priests wore caps during their sacrificial rites, of a type now called Phrygian Caps, and damned if such goofy lids—which look a bit like the old U.S. Army “c—t caps” of World War II—aren’t still worn by some of our petty-boobois Babbitt buffoons who identify with those priests of a zillion years ago. The Phrygian Cap is said to be a sign of the “enlightened” (Illuminati) and it is also—would you believe—a symbol of circumcision.

Sex magic rites can involve circumcisions and castration all the way to outright orgies. They are traceable to belief in that AC/DC universal spirit. There is a twenty dollar word for this notion: such a creature is called an androgyne or hermaphrodite. There is an actual medical abnormality of this type, of course, and I can still remember the “morphidites” that used to be shown in dirty tents at the old county fairs across Middle America. The one I saw looked like an overweight woman with a fake beard and what seemed like part of a chicken drumstick poking out of her groin above the female sex. It’s hard to believe that such pathetic specimens are revered by the so-Illuminated poobahs even today, but they are, so help me Jayzus.

Saturnalian orgies, were and are performed with some representation of a deity, as in certain of the sex-circuses arranged by a secret society of the GAOTU orientation that became the OSS, and later the CIA. A woman I call the Great Whore performed in those rites some years ago, representing such deities as Artemis (Diana or Hecate), Aphrodite Porne (Dirty Venus), Bastet, Selket, and the White Goddess described by Robert Graves in his famous book. I do believe that these sex circuses were part of a greater Call to Chaos working, but as yet I’ve seen no sign that a clear call ever got through to the GAOTU Big Daddy, which, just possibly, didn’t like her style.

That Chaos Callgirl was what some spooks call a “double agent”; but that is not a fully descriptive term for a true four-way gal. She was a bisexual, a nymphomaniac and a witch of a type known as a carnal magnet (magnes carneus). She was put into a state of magnetic estruse, to perform perverted acts with all comers, in rites intended to conjure up a theurgic influence of occult forces of elemental nature.

Theurgic Masonry is a system of magic practiced by those who seek to communicate with and influence supernatural beings. The mental state of those who believe they do so communicate is in spitting distance of Illuminism as defined in Dorland’s Medical Dictionary: “A state marked by delusions of communication with supernatural beings.”

There are supposed to be different ways to communicate with super-naturals, but since ancient times, sex rites have been a major method to attain such purposes. Theurgic Masonry is a systematic religion that resembles la cecchia religione (the old religion, witchcraft) as well as Oriental Tantrism.

Chaos-related doings (Saturnalias) are burlesqued in Carnival observances in Italy, France, Spain, and other Catholic lands. Saturnalia vestiges are seen in the famed Mardi Gras, where there is even a Lord of Misrule who presides for a time when the carnival license to deviate from decent moral conduct is declared.

Some might object that such shindigs are all in fun anyway, and refuse to recognize any darker motives at work. Who cares if some of the carryings-on are rooted in ancient superstitions, and so what if the King of Carnival presides as a thinly-disguised Saturnalia tyrant? Unhappily, there is no lack of evidence that drunkenness, confusion, disorder and lust have been fomented as a prophylaxis for cosmic Chaos. Far worse, the ringmasters also have arranged for ritualistic murders of certain highly specialized victims, for sex and death are the Alpha and Omega of their voodoo.

V. KingKill

The third degree of “Blue” (basic) Freemasonry, and more particularly the ninth degree of Scottish Rite work, embody symbolical assassination and death ritual; but in GAOTU operations they go in for the real McCoy: heavy snuff stuff. In the Hiram Abif allegory of the third degree ritual, Hiram, alleged architect of the ancient Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, is assassinated by “three unworthy craftsmen,” Jubela, Jubelo, Jubelum. The assassins are tracked to the cave Benakar by three “Elus” (elected ones), who pursued the assassins to punish them.

Offhand, on the basis of that lore, you would not be surprised to read that, in standard Masonic sources, that caverns represent “the darkness of ignorance and crime, impenetrable to the light of truth.” But don’t be too sure: the cavern also can be a symbol of the grave in which the light of truth originates. That’s right: a a grave is a place to look for light and truth. Surely everyone knows that.

Caves have more than one meaning, like medieval palimpsest parchments, as does almost everything in Science of Symbolism circles, including even ritual assassinations. Consider the notorious abduction and murder of Captain William Morgan, a so-called Cowan, or outsider, who dared to reveal hush-hush Masonic matters, and of whom the only thing left is a memorial statue in Batavia, New York.

Ritual assassination can be for punishment of the victim and warning to others, as in Morgan’s case, or for more recondite reasons, as in the grandaddy of them all, the formidable and horrific Killing of the King.

The most recent such sacred immolation of a “King” (not exactly Charlemagne but the best available at the time) took place November 22, 1963, at the Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Ponder now the bang! bang! bang! at Dealey and the following aspects of the very unique demise of one John F. Kennedy, the United States’ first and only Roman Catholic president.

A building at the corner of Dealey Plaza was the home and trading post in the early 1800s of John Neely Bryan, who, as worshipful master, symbolized King Solomon in that humble log cabin lodge. That building is long gone now and in its place stands an open city square marked off by four unusual stone arcades at the corners.

Before President Kennedy came to the Dealey crypto-temple, he was traveling a sort of Jornada del Muerto of his own. On November 21 he visited the Tempelhaus site, the Rice Hotel, esoterically known by Texas insiders as Temple Houston. The Rice was on the site of the first capital of the Republic of Texas, a place strongly associated with Masonry, since a lodge allegedly met in the Capitol Hotel, or in the state capital, which occupied the same site.

Sam Houston, the “big drunk of the Cherokees,” lived in the Capitol Hotel for a time, as did his son, Temple. “Remember the Alamo!” is a shibboleth learned almost in the cradle by all good Texans, but the real facts of that engagement and its aftermath aren’t so glowing (as admitted by one Roger Conger, in Texas Grand Lodge magazine, April 1956).

After the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, the captured Mex generalissimo, Santa Anna, “met Houston with a hand clasp reputed to have been that of a Mason...” and “filled the air with Masonic distress signs, and well he might have, as many Texans demanded his life without formalities...” But Sam had other fish to fry, sending Santa Anna “to a place of safety under a guard which included five Masons, and later was freed...” No Nuremberg trial here, despite the Mexican’s culpability for the atrocities at the Alamo and at Goliad, where hundreds of Texans had been executed.

Robert L. Duncan, in his biography of another great Mason, Gen. Albert Pike, recounts stranger things of Houston, such as the occasion, in 1827, when he peeled off all his duds and threw them in a fire “as a sacrifice to Bacchus.”

By far the most sinister individual to come out of the Texas woodwork, however, was the mysterious “Colonel” Edward Mandell House—another Houstonian—who went on to become the wirepullers’ controller of President Wilson and whose pedigree for clandestine manipulating of our history before, during, and after World War I must be read to be half-believed.

The sacrificial “King” killing at Dealey Plaza was a symbolic re-enactment of the murder of Hiram Abif, traditional architect of the original Temple of Solomon, by the “three assassins” or unworthy craftsmen whom we’ve already encountered at the Cave Benakar. Fantastically enough, “three hoboes” were arrested at Dealey Plaza immediately after the big bang, and suspiciously close to the famed Grassy Knoll and railroad yard, which is where most advanced assassination researchers place thee actual firing squad who blew Kennedy’s brains out.

A famous news photo shows the bedraggled threesome being marched along by Dallas police. Some researchers have had interesting things to say about that photo: first, that one of the three resembles the enigmatic E. Howard Hunt, then a high CIA honcho, and second, that one of the “hoboes” appears to be wearing an earphone, as if for a two-way radio. Naturally, superspook Hunt denies categorically any involvement in the Dealey affair, and in fact the three hoboes, whoever they were, somehow got sprung loose immediately by the Dallas Police Department, and then promptly disappeared from the stage of history.

What are of interest to us, however, would be the purely emblematic aspects. The hoboes are playing the symbolic roles of Jubelo, Jubela, Jubelam. Lee Harvey Oswald, of course, is the officially approved triggerman. His name, and its diminutive of Oz, means “divine power,” such as GAOTU represents.

Three pillars are said to be supports of Masonry and the lodge. Those columns are called:

Dabar — Wisdom

Oz — Strength

Gomer — Beauty

Hot diggety D-O-G! But one question: could this be the reason why a dog was depicted on certain old Masonic diplomas? Who knows, but if they had portrayed Sirius, the Dogstar, on their sheepskins, it would have been more to the point, for it was Sirius that reputedly led the three Elus to the cave to round up those ancient hoboes.

The name Kennedy (in Gaelic, Cennaideach) is said to mean “ugly head,” which might just also connote “wounded head,” mightn’t it? Kennedy’s head was blown away near an oak tree in Dealey Plaza, and the Kennedy plant badge back in Eire is an oak. More of what Dr. Jung liked to call synchronicities, no doubt. But now here is where the guiding hand moves far beyond compulsive coincidences and into the realm of truly awesome emblematic metaphor.

Dealey Plaza is in an area that once overlooked and often was flooded by the Trinity River, and hence it occupies—yes, a Trinity Site. That other Trinity, on the Jornada del Muerto, was where primordial matter was first destroyed, with cosmic fire resulting, for an instant, anyway. This Trinity angle, then, clearly has a thaumaturgic semantic tie of some kind that is particularly compelling, in view of the private Jornada that Kennedy had traveled prior to his immolation.

Meditations on the Atom and Time

AN ATTEMPT TO DEFINE THE IMAGERY OF WAR
AND DEATH IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Dennis Stillings

Then the Heart of Heaven
Blew mist into their eyes,
Which clouded their sight
As when a mirror is breathed upon.
Their eyes were covered and they could see only
What was close, only
That was clear to them.
— Popul Vuh

In Peter H. Wyden’s Day One, which describes the peculiar environment that produced the Faustian weapon, the Bomb seems to have a life of its own. It is a kind of invisible Frankensteinian jinn that tricks the scientists into pulling out the cork in its bottle. Robert Wilson, one of the early scientist recruits to Los Alamos, recalls that: “Our life was directed to do one thing, it was as though we had been programmed to do that.” This “programming” apparently contained a hypnotic suggestion not to inquire too closely about just those aspects of the Bomb that were the nastiest. Little was known about the radiation effects of the Bomb were expected to be negligible compared with the blast effects. Consistent with the pervasive modern contempt for all things Invisible, the gross effects of the atomic blast were emphasized, while the deadlier invisible aspects 1 of the Bomb were regarded with a “lack of respect.”

It was possible, according to calculations, that the explosion of the Bomb (always referred to at Los Alamos as “The Gadget”) could ignite the nitrogen in the earth’s atmosphere, thereby burning up the world. The chances of this occurring were calculated at three in a million. “It seemed a reasonable risk to go ahead.”

Who were the people through whom the Bomb brought itself into being?

Playfulness, not aggressive urges, led [Dr. Leo Szilard] to visualize an atomic chain reaction ... “I [Szilard] assume that I became a scientist because in some ways I remained a child.” Like an uncontrollable youngster, he enjoyed playing with fire, and a small one would not do. Szilard loved to be unpredictable and rarely gave advance notice of his appearance. Until 1951, when he married his long-time Berlin friend Gertrud Weiss ... Szilard lived out of suitcases and never kept an apartment or a car. He owned almost nothing but his clothes” (pp. 21ff.).

Szilard appears as the true genius of the Bomb. His personality is typical of the puer aeternus, the “eternal youth” who has, among other interesting traits, a strong resistance to being burdened with worldly considerations. The classic puer plays with the world, but is not of the world.[26] Such persons are close to the playful inner core of nature and to those operations in life referred to by the alchemists as ludus puerorum—child’s play. That the puer personality may have a direct connection to atomic conflagration and the end of the world may be found in imagery presented by C. G. Jung:

The Puer Aeternus is simply the personification of the infantile side of our character.... [This] little boy ought to be brought up, educated, perhaps spanked.... In mythology, the figure of the [Puer Aeternus] has an almost divine creative character.... In Faust he has three forms: Boy-guide, Homunculus, Euphorion. They were all destroyed by fire.... Fire puts an end to everything, even and end to the world.[27]

It is of interest that the name of the first atomic bomb was “Little Boy” and that the Japanese, unaware of this designation, referred to the Hiroshima weapon as “the original child bomb.”[28] Edward C. Whitmont has pointed out the relationship between violence and birth imagery and how this imagery relates to the Nuclear Age in his book Return of the Goddess.[29] In addition to drawing our attention to the birth-child-violence imagery of the Bomb, Whitmont notes that the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that delivered the weapon to Hiroshima, named the aircraft after his mother.

Missing limbs form a motif within the story of the Bomb. Edward Teller was injured in a streetcar accident in Budapest, and had an artificial left foot as a result. This fact may well have inspired the handicap of Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie. A widespread notion is that the Devil has one cloven hoof and limps, earning him the designation “Old Halt-foot.” Teller has, for many, certainly played the Devil in the history of nuclear weapons, being the major promoter and developer of the hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer’s mother was born without a right hand and always wore gloves.[30] The motif of “handlessness,” or cutting off of the hands of the mother or father, occurs in folklore and in alchemy where it signifies the torment of both the alchemist himself and of the prima materia (the original matter = mater (Lat.) = mother). This torment is also depicted as the splitting of an egg, which also represents the prima materia.[31]

Oppenheimer is portrayed by Wyden as “bodyguard” to the Bomb, his adeptness at turning aside of any questions regarding the project is more than a little suggestive of Captain Ahab’s control over the crew of the Pequod. Considering this aspect as well as some of the other more cosmic images of Moby Dick, one might wonder if Melville’s work—considered by Jung to be the “great American novel”—is not prefigurative of the American fate to pursue and “capture” this great natural force of destruction. One might well expect such a mighty horror as the Bomb to create anticipatory images in fiction and mythology long before its complete physical realization. Robert Jungk reports the following:

In connection with the choice of this locality [Eniwetok] for the first test of the hydrogen bomb the American author and painter Gilbert Wilson noted a strange coincidence. While he was reading Moby Dick it struck him that “only a century after Herman Melville wrote his great book our own American atomic engineers unwittingly selected almost the very spot in the broad Pacific, some thousand miles south-east off the coast of Japan, where the fictional Pequod [...] was rammed and sunk by the White Whale.... Melville had Ahab describe the whale with an image remarkably similar to the conventional symbol of the atom used by artists, “O trebly hooped and welded hip of power!”[32]

It is of interest that Jean Tatlock, his former mistress, not long after Oppenheimer broke off their continuing relationship to devote himself entirely to the project, swallowed sleeping pills and plunged her head into a full bathtub. Oppie’s daughter committed suicide in 1977 (pp. 114–115).

Teller seemed to be the most conscious of what development of the Bomb meant, as well as the implications. In a letter to Szilard he made the following statement:

... I have no hope of clearing my conscience.... The things we are working on are so terrible that no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls.... Our only hope is getting the facts of our results before the people. This might help to convince everybody that the next war would be fatal. For this purpose actual combat use might even be the best thing.[33]

In a somewhat tardy reflection on similar matters, Oppenheimer put it thus: “In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”[34]

The Bomb as God

Try this as an intellectual exercise and thought experiment: How would God prove His existence or deliver a message of incontestable authority in the face of modern scientific skepticism? What could the extraordinary proof be for such an extraordinary event? We have built scientistic walls a mile high and a hundred feet thick to keep out, a priori, any contact with matters of the spirit. Signs in the physical world are called “anomalous phenomena,” and (if their actual occurrence is not denied) it is assumed that a “natural” explanation for such things will be found—which is merely begging the question. If God were to prove His existence, or even give us a short message, what means would He have for doing it? How could He get our attention? Let me suggest some possibilities.

God gave us the atomic tinker-toy set, we built “the gadget,” and lo! the “gadget” took on a life of its own. God manifested his will in the only way that impresses us anymore: in the operations of matter as expressed in physics and technology. Wyden’s book gives us the kind of information that makes it possible to take a look at the religious dimensions of thermonuclear symbolism: Secretary of War Stimson did not regard the Bomb merely as a new weapon, “but as a revolutionary change in the relations of man to the Universe.” It would become “a Frankensteinian [monster] which would eat us up.” those working on the Bomb apparently could not do so without making religious references to nearly every aspect of the weapon’s development and use. Trinity,[35] the code name used for the initial test at Alamogordo, was derived, by Oppenheimer, from Number XIV of the Holy Sonnets by John Donne.

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seek to mend,
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,
Labor to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely’I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am bethroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce mee, ‘untie, or breake that knot again,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

The allusion to this poem in the Trinity code name is most significant. In the poem, Donne asks God to tear him from the clutches of the Devil. The themes of Ahab and Faust—the latter wanting to know what “held the world together at its core”—are transferred from the realm of mere literature to concrete manifestation in the material world through Oppenheimer.

The Trinity test was scheduled for 4 am, Monday, July 16, 1945, near Alamorgordo, New Mexico, on the bleak desert plain known as the Jornado del Muerta—the Journey of Death. On Sunday the 15^th, toward mid-afternoon, thunder was heard. Wind and rain collapsed tents in the base camp, ten miles from ground zero. By 7 pm, mist had enveloped the test tower, and storms were reported heading for it. Rumors were circulating about the possibility of the Bomb setting the atmosphere on fire. At 2:30 am the storm reached ground zero and knocked out the principal searchlight, leaving the test area in pitch darkness. The synchronistic symbolic aspects of all this are hard to miss. An ancient reader of signs and portents would have cancelled the whole operation on the basis of such transparently foreboding events. These discouraging phenomena that immediately preceded the first nuclear test make plain, in symbolic fashion, that a manifestation of forces outside the control of the ruling principles of consciousness (the principal searchlight) is taking place. (It is of interest that Jahweh, or Yah, a god of mountains and deserts, was early identified by Aramaic and Hebrew sources with the Sumerian Adad, the rain and thunder god.[36]) It also appears as thought a conflict within the godhead were manifesting. On the one hand, the Bomb and its uncanny success indicate the support of the god, while on the other hand it is as though another aspect of the divine nature were sabotaging its own goals. The admittedly zombie-like activity of those involved in producing the Bomb betokens the domination of unconscious forces, with a consequent abaissement du niveau mental (lowering or weakening of consciousness) on the part of the human participants. Oppenheimer himself evinced this state quite clearly. The test was rescheduled for 5:30 am. Oppenheimer waited for the hour of the Trinity test, his face “white and lifeless,” thinking, “I must remain conscious.”

At the time of the explosion, 5:29:45 am., July 16, 1945, William L. Laurence of the New York Times, prone on his belly, thought of the Lord’s command, “Let there be light!”; Isidor Rabi feared that the intense light would burn “forever.” With clear perception of the case, General Farrell exclaimed, “the long-hairs have let it get away from them!” Miles away, a blind woman saw the nuclear light. Kisitiakowsky, another of the Los Alamos self-admitted “science-slaves,” remarked, “I am sure that at the end of the world, in the last millisecond of the earth’s existence, the last human will see what we saw.” Thus the Bomb imagery encompasses the light of the beginning and the fire of the end of the world. This “Death Light”[37] represented one aspect of the Bomb phenomena “where theoretical calculations had been off by a big factor. Much more light was produced than had been anticipated.”[38]

The Bomb is Alpha and Omega. It is, as Winston Churchill remarked, “the second coming in wrath.” More than mere human agency seemed to infuse the technology of the Bomb: it was considered miraculous that something with the extraordinary technical complexity of the first nuclear device should have worked exactly right on the very first try. Oppenheimer, whose very soul was tuned to the essential meaning of the godlike weapon, came forth with a line from the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds!” Even this line, occurring in the 32^nd quatrain of Chapter 12 of the Bhagavad Gita, occurs among a series of poetic images that could well be applied to describing a nuclear detonation. Vishnu, the Hindu characterization of the “Higher Self” and the manner in which the Supreme Being manifests to the human race, especially in times of emergency, is addressed.

Of a thousand suns in the sky If suddenly should burst forth The light, it would be like Unto the light of that exalted one.

With diadem, club, and disc,[39] A mass of radiance, glowing on all sides, I see Thee, hard to look at, on every side With the glory of flaming fire and sun, immeasurable.

Without beginning, middle, or end of infinite power, Of infinite arms, whose eyes are the moon and sun, I see Thee, whose face is flaming fire, Burning this whole universe with Thy radiance.

Devouring them Thou lickest up voraciously on all sides All the worlds with Thy flaming jaws; Filling with radiance the whole universe, They terrible splendors burn, O Vishnu!

Vishnu: I am [Death], cause of destruction of the worlds, matured And set out to gather in the worlds here.[40]

On hearing of the success of the Trinity test, Truman remarked, “It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era after Noah and his fabulous Ark.”

The code name for Tinian, the island from which the nuclear strike against Japan would be launched, was “Papacy.”[41] At the first Tinian briefing, the projector went haywire and shredded the film of the Trinity test.

The Bomb as Jahweh

The Bomb as “the second coming in wrath,” i.e., the return of Christ to judge the world as told in Revelations, points to a return of Jahweh as well. It is characteristic of Jahweh to be wrathful. Since God the Father (Jahweh) and Christ are one theologically, symbolic manifestations incorporating aspects of both divine figures may be expected. Jahweh manifests as a cloud and a pillar of fire. (Exodus 13:21–22, 14–24; Numbers 14:14; Nehemiah 9:12).[42] The references to divine fires that burn “forever,” that burn cities, that are “unquenchable” are too numerous to cite. Yah, the god of wind and lightning, rides in a chariot drawn by two dragons.[43] (It is of interest to note that one little game that was played by the scientists in the early days of nuclear fiddling involved bringing two subcritical masses of uranium-235 into close proximity by using a device called the “Dragon.” This device and procedure, called the Dragon Experiment, was used to determine the “point of criticality” for various reacting masses. Richard Feynmann said this was “like tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.”[44])

From a description in Day One of the condition of the Bomb’s victims:

Their faces were wholly burned, their eyesockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks.

From Zechariah 14:12:

And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.

This notion of a future Judgment Day with the horrible features described above was elaborated in the 18^th century by the theologian Fredrich Christoph Oetinger.[45] According to his conception, this plague will be the result of the withdrawal of electricity from living matter. (In Oetinger, for the first time, electrical forces come into association with Judgment Day; one suspects that Oetinger would have developed some very interesting imagery about nuclear radiation.) According to Oetinger, this withdrawal of the “primordial light” from the damned will give rise to the picture described in Isaiah 66:24:

And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched: and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

And in Ezekiel 29:9, 11–12:

... I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate ... No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years.... And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years....

Similar imagery appeared in the aftermath of Hiroshima. the bombed-out area was not expected to be habitable for many years. This turned out not to be true. Furthermore, the ground and the seeds in it were stimulated in such a way by the Bomb that an uncannily lush growth of every sort of plant occurred there within a few weeks.[46]

If Jahweh/God/Jesus has returned to judge and punish, why is it that so many innocent people have perished in the horrors of the 20^th century? I contend that this is an extension of the notion of holocaust, which, let us not forget, means mass sacrifice.[47] That such an event should be focused on “God’s Chosen People” in Hitler’s Germany needs theological and symbological study. What might it mean to have the singular privilege of being one of the Chosen? The Christian myth—the terrors of which we are experiencing now in the concrete realms of politics and technology—includes sacrifice of the lamb, and we now are all the Lamb, the flock of sheep. According to Jung:

The god of our time is Christ, and his symbol is the lamb, he was the sacrificed lamb. So if people were to be sacrificed in his honor, they should be sacrificed as sheep. Now that sheep are exceedingly gregarious is even proverbial, so that great crowds should be slaughtered, like herds of sheep, [this] would be the appropriate sacrifice. In what easy way could such sheep sacrifices be performed in reality? By war. We have excellent machinery for that purpose, in a few seconds several thousand people could be killed. So the collected slaughter, the slaughter of the sheep, can be done technically quite easily by war. War is the sacrificial knife by which that can be accomplished. Now the sacrificial knife [read: Bomb] does nothing by itself, a hand guides the knife, so if war is the sacrificial knife, who then is the priest? You can say Wotan, or ... a god of war. The state is merely the modern pretense, a shield, a make-believe, a concept. In reality the ancient war-god holds the sacrificial knife, for it is in war that the sheep are sacrificed. [During the Nazi period, German youths regularly sacrificed sheep at the time of the solstice.] The Christian herd of sheep is now without a shepherd.... So instead of a personal divine being, we now have the dark gods of the state; in other words, the dark gods of the collective unconscious. It is the old assembly of the gods [the Old Ones[48]] that begins to operate again because no other principle is on top.... The old instincts begin to rage again. That is not only the problem of Germany.... The essential truth comes back to us; whatever has been in a metaphysical heaven is now falling upon us, and so it comes about that the mystery of Christ’s sacrificial death, which has been celebrated untold millions of times by the masses, is now coming as a psychological experience to everybody. Then the lamb sacrifice is assimilated in us, we are being the lambs, and the lambs that are meant for sacrifice. We become gregarious as if we were sheep, and there will surely be a sacrifice.[49]

Carthage was notorious for its “Molochs”—mass incinerations of children—a practice derived, so it seems, from the Hebrews. Moloch is a corruption of the name Melech, a king of the Hebrews and one of the gods of the Ammonites. They sacrificed their children to him to obtain good harvests.

We bunch up in systems-dependent cities where the single blow of the Bomb can be most analogous to the traditional quick, accurate cut of the sacrificial knife. The movement of the population from the country to the city in this century has been no accident. According to Zola, the big cities are holocaustes de l’humanité.

In the early 19^th century, Heinrich Heine, confining his remarks to the German people, put it this way:

Christianity has occasionally calmed the brutal German lust for battle, but it cannot destroy that savage ecstasy.... When once that restraining talisman, the Cross, is broken ... the old stone gods will leap to life among forgotten ruins, and Thor will crash down his mighty hammer on the Gothic cathedrals.[50]

The War in Heaven

Resurrection of Gnosticism: The Return of the Ufos.

In 1946, Winston Churchill gives his “Iron Curtain” speech. The pilotless rocket missile is constructed by Fairley Aviation Comapny. Atomic bomb tests begin at Bikini. In 1947, the sound barrier is broken by the Bell X15 rocket plane. In the same period, the modern age of Flying Saucers begins. In 1949, the U.S.S.R. tests its first atomic bomb. Between 1946 and 1949, the full basic technology of nuclear weapons and the technical means of delivering them become established, if not yet fully developed. The world is divided between the two superpowers, and the rule of the war gods is firmly established. We have returned to a world in which the pre-Christian blood sacrifice gods rule. But, as I have indicated in this paper, we are replaying the Judeo-Christian myth in a “fast-forward” mode. What has been done once can be done again much faster. Having once conquered the pagan gods, Jehovah returns to conquer them again. With this return come sets of imagery in the political and technological realms that are parallel to the biblical process. The heralds of Jehovah are the Unidentifed Flying Objects, with their own intense light, heat and radiation.[51] The literature on the relationship of Jehovah and biblical stories to UFOs is vast and quite cranky. Most such writings suffer from naive concretization, i.e., it is put forward that definite “entities” and their “spacecraft” are involved. What this body of literature says is not often very important from a rational, scientific point of view. That it exists is important, for that in itself is symbolic, and these often apocalyptic writings frequently contain valuable imagery for analysis.

One of the ancient Gnostic doctrines[52] takes the position that the creator-god of the Old Testament was really a sort of demon. The high, all-good God could not have created the world or there would be no evil in it. Since there is evil, a demiurge, a lower “god,” did the actual creating. Seeing that evil was already in the world, the high God sent His Son to correct the situation. Since the Jews worshipped the demiurge (Jehovah), they would naturally be under marching orders from the demiurge to destroy the Son of Man, who was about to interfere with the world as the demiurge created it. These very images are reappearing in the modern UFO theologies. In these theologies, one sect represents the belief that saucers from the Pleiades are messengers from the “higher ET god,” other messengers are from “Hoovah”[53] (Jehovah, the demiurge), and make their appeal to those poor souls as yet unacquainted with the superiority of the Good Pleiadean ET. A neo-Gnostic UFO anti-Semitic movement based on these ancient notions exists right now, and I have talked to people who expressed such beliefs.

Jehovah has been connected with the UFOs and cattle mutilations of the 1970s.[54] Whether the mutilations of the cattle and even household pets are paranormal, due to ET activity, or the result of natural causes is of no real concern to us here. The fact is that these events are being mythologized around very familiar theses. Jehovah is appearing in pop-symbology and, in harmony with his nature, he is perceived as taking his due in animal sacrifices. If these mutilations and killings are being done by human agents, this certainly does not affect the symbolic meaning and the resultant mythopoeia. This grotesque imagery, however, may contain positive aspects. God is substituting a ram for Isaac. The time of mass sacrifice of humans by world wars may not be past. Santeria[55] is spreading, and the number of other cult rituals involving animal sacrifice also seems to be increasing. Such practices were also a part of the pagan revival among Nazi youth, so this behavior could as well be considered ominous. In this historico-religious rerun, ancient Jehovah is moving to confront the even more ancient gods of war. The “God of Love” is hard to uncover in this imagery. The time for such sentimentalities is either over or will only again be appropriate in the distant future. Right now such notions are difficult to maintain, if not actually harmful and delusive. Perhaps one might think of a God of “Toughlove.” The intertwining, overlapping, persistently confusing images of God, the gods, Jehovah, and Christ in this essay point to the meaning of the ancient saying, “No one against God, but God.” Human consciousness may well be the one factor in the universe that can go far toward resolving this seemingly eternal round of conflict in the Godhead.[56]

In periods of great historical transition, when one ruling principle strives to supplant another, the image of the War in Heaven emerges. A battle is waged above the earth in which the contending forces within the divine essence battle it out for dominion over the time-bound world. The War in Heaven is commemorated on earth by our unruly behavior at the New Year.[57] In earlier times, a period of ritual chaos occurred after the end of a king’s reign, after which a new order was established. We are now in a cosmic period of interregnum symbolized by the much-discussed transition from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. A new ruling principle is trying to establish itself. Until this is done, we may expect a great deal of dangerous chaos, both political and social. The new gods must destroy or subjugate the old before they can take over.[58]

The War in Heaven by Albrecht Dürer

Since we are in an age when these very myths are manifesting in matter, it follows that we will develop a technological analogue to this cosmic strife—Star Wars technology.[59] As this technology is realized, the corresponding battle of cosmic principles will reach its climax and a new order will emerge. It is this archetypal background that gives such certainty to the U.S. President that this technology will bring peace; it will not, but it is our own “sign in the heavens” relating to the Second Coming. Having declared that there are no gods, we have become the gods ourselves and have correspondingly merged our thoughts and energies with the dynamisms of the Beyond. What they do in realms of spirit, we do in the realm of matter, like the distal pens of a pantograph writing here in matter what is written there in spirit.

The Apocatastsis

We are living during the time of a great apocatastasis, the Greek term for the return of all things that have been lost and the revelation of all things at the end of time.[60] The number of extraordinary “accidental” archeological discoveries in recent years attests to this.[61] It is as if the earth itself “groaneth and travaileth”[62] to bring forth the buried and forgotten past. The successes of psychic archeology[63] reflect the harnessing of the human psyche to the task of unfolding the apocatastasis.[64] Our mad emphasis on development and distribution of image and sound recording devices and our nostalgic collecting of things from the past are all part of this time-phenomenon.[65] Our extraordinary accomplishments in technology have enabled us to generate special effects (in movies) and real technical configurations that have become closer and closer to direct representations of deep psychic processes.[66] With our extraordinary ability to manipulate matter, we are nearly in technological lockstep with movements of the spirit. What previous centuries recorded in literature and art, we model in both form and action the very substance of the world, and withal, not stopping at the boundary between the organic and the inorganic, the psychic and the hylic. The tightening spiral dance that is thus created is rapidly closing in on a mystical marriage of spirit and matter, the outcome of which may well include the transformation of physical reality and a direct confrontation with the divine. The apocatastasis includes the reiteration of earlier states of the psyche and the images that accompanied those states. Everything returns for a cosmic inventory, the census is being taken, and the whole world awaits the New Birth. In this high-speed replay of past states, the last images of Christianity remain to be manifested. At the current rate at which these ancient images are being replayed, the manifestation of these images cannot be far off and will involve, one may expect, a supreme collective sacrifice, the collective equivalent of the sacrifice of “God’s own son.” What could this be? Nietzsche, who embodied and suffered precisely those images of which we are speaking, suggested the following:

... perhaps the day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for those things, will exclaim of its own free will, “we break the sword,” and will smash its entire military establishment down to the lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed when one had been best-armed, out of a height of feeling—that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind.[67]

For this reason, it should not be supposed that the range of effects characteristic of thermonuclear war is limited only to thermonuclear war proper. What we are focused on today is merely the technological representations—the hardware of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems and the mechanics of nuclear destruction. We do not see the essence of the Nuclear Age as an all-pervading condition of existence. If, as I believe, nuclear weapons are merely an externalized, concrete expression in matter of a condition that permeates the very fabric of the human psyche (and not only the human), one may expect events and conditions to manifest that are symbolically equivalent to nuclear war—whether or not actual nuclear war takes place. And it certainly looks like this is what is going on; we have massive destruction of the land surface and animal species worldwide, both occurring naturally and through the agency of man, we have widely distributed natural and manmade explosions and nuclear disasters, and we are witnessing the emergence and dominance of diseases not dissimilar in symptomatology to the secondary effects of acute radiation exposure—including the epidemic rate of cancer incidence and AIDS.

The connection between AIDS and nuclear war is made by David S. Greer, M.D., and Lawrence S. Rifkin of Brown University in their paper, “The Immunological Impact of Nuclear Warfare.”[68] This paper takes the causal view, however, while I believe that one must also look at the synchronistic aspects. In his essay, “The Start of a Plague Mentality” (Time, Sept., 23, 1985), Lance Morrow calls AIDS the “young friend” of the Bomb. AIDS has been compared to the Waldsterben, the mysterious dying of the forests in Europe. In Greek mythology, Zeus (who is identified in Semitic literature with Jahweh) had a boyfriend named Ganymede; upon Ganymede’s death, Zeus put him into the sky as the constellation Aquarius. Homosexuality was culturally acceptable in the time of the Greeks. Christianity suppressed it. Homosexuals may, in consequence, be symbolic (and real!) “civilian casualties” of the “War in Heaven.”

Further analogies might be made in the area of social behavior and in the individual psyche. From such events as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, innumerable chemical accidents, and worldwide terrorism, one wonders if the bottom line on it all is not the equivalent of what would have been considered a major, perhaps even a world war, a few decades ago. Whether we use nuclear weapons or not, does the image behind the Bomb create a kind of dispersed nuclear war equivalent?[69] Is there some special meaning in this new situation? Is a lesson being broken up into its component parts so that a step-by-step understanding of the operations of violence and evil may become possible, even for pacifists? Or is nature, by manipulation of the highly vulnerable human psyche, and by other mechanisms, realizing the imagery of nuclear destruction in the world while avoiding the precipitation of nuclear war itself, which would destroy both man and nature in an irrevocable way?

There is already evidence that nature is subtly altering the direction in which we relieve ourselves of our aggressive instincts. Current researches are being directed toward “psychic warfare,” using psychoactive radio frequencies, advanced mind-control techniques, and even parapsychology as weapons. The battlefield may thus become the mind, and not the planet.[70]

The Bomb as Symbol of the Self

The Self, as defined by Jung, is a “borderline concept expressing the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche.” The Self is also a transcendental, metaphysical concept to which a great deal of Eastern philosophical speculation is devoted. Vishnu, for instance, is the Higher Self relating to the person of Arjuna in the conflict occurring in the Bhagavad Gita. The Self is the center of the personality from which the fate of the ego is organized. The Self is often represented as a circle, “wheel,” or mandala. This mandala imagery and the dynamics of the Self are represented in the technical construction of the Bomb. The plutonium in the Bomb is formed into a highly polished sphere surrounded by explosives. Detonation of these explosives causes the sphere to “implode” into its own center, generating a critical mass. This is followed by the colossal fireball of the nuclear explosion. The Self is “smaller than small, greater than great”—as is the atom—and contains the idea of God as the coincidentia oppositorum, the union of opposites.[71] It is the “child” and the “senex” (the “Old One”), the “child bomb” and “Jahweh.” It is the heat and light of the sun and the cold and darkness of nuclear winter—and the Underworld (plutonium). It is sterile death, and springlike life.[72]

With the greening of springtime [in Hiroshima] came hope for the end of hunger. Food seemed to sprout from every inch of open space. Wheat was growing across the street from City Hall. Around the ruin of the A-bomb dome—the former Industrial Promotion Hall—tomatoes, cabbages and potatoes were thriving (Wyden, p. 331).

Imagery of the Self as Vishnu arises in Wyden’s account:

The “hypocenter” was in the courtyard of [the Shima] hospital. It was ground zero, the hub of the nuclear death wheel ... the focus of Hiroshima’s new universe.... Everyone could learn at least one new English word: “hypocenter,” the place from which all life and death was measured. (p. 254.)

Pax Atomica

At the close of his remarkable book, Peter Wyden notes that friends of his remarked, “We’ve had forty years of nuclear peace. We must have been doing something right all this time.” To this, Wyden replies, “Wrong. Anyone able to bring a measure of objectivity to the realities laid out in these pages can surely agree that we’re here today less by design than by the grace of luck. Sheer dumb luck” (p. 367).

“Sheer dumb luck” explains nothing, of course. We have not had nuclear war simply because it is so terrifying a prospect that we avoid almost any kind of major confrontation at all costs. Since World War II there have been a dozen—perhaps three dozen—incidents that 50 or 75 years ago would have been considered serious enough to justify launching full-scale reprisals. Even our more recent major hostile actions, Korea and Vietnam, were carried out in a state of collective doubt amounting to semi-paralysis. No, our “sheer dumb luck” would have run out long ago, if that was all there was to it. Like Zeus in Aesop’s fable of the stork and the frogs, the universe has answered our prayers for a “king,” a “charismatic leader” who will prevent any more world wars. The king is the Bomb. It provides a worldwide order centering around itself and it exacts a vast tribute in gold. Is it even possible that our attempts to rid ourselves of this harsh king mask an underlying motivation to return to the days of exuberant and devil-may-care conventional warfare? That we chafe under the strictures of the nuclear threat? A conundrum for pacifists ...

Time and again in Eastern literature, in certain “New Age” writings, and in the analysis of dreams, one is admonished to accept what is attacking or threatening. If a tiger charges you, it is to be seen as a threatening aspect of some neglected part of your own personality. Acceptance of that part will transform it into a harmless, if not actually helpful, new thing, and a profound change in the personality will take place. I am not talking about acceptance of the particular example of deadly and monstrously expensive nuclear technology, encased in steel, and mounted in missile warheads, but rather about the meaning expressed by such things and the feelings that are evoked.

In the closing years of this century we are being given the opportunity, under the aegis of the pax atomica, to examine in some detail our naive notions of good and evil, of peace and violence, and of life and death. Sentimental notions of peace and love simply will not do. Man is, and forever will be, a microscopic zoo containing snakes and eagles, lions and lambs, fish and frogs. It may be all right for lambs to eat grass, but for a lion—a proper one—grass will not do. Human consciousness is now being presented with new symbols and new meanings. We have not come to terms with the inner animal; therefore, its countenance has become quite fearful, like a charging tiger. This time around we are not confronted with a “babe wrapped in swaddling clothes,” which is easy enough to accept, but with a “rough beast, its hour come ‘round at last,” that slouched to Alamogordo to be born.

Contacts

ABRAXAS FOUNDATION (Long Live Death!) can be reached at: P.O. Box 300081, Denver, CO, 80203.

KRISTINE AMBROSIA’s mail will be forwarded from Feral House, P.O. Box 861893, Los Angeles, CA, 90086–1893.

HARRY ALLEN (How to Kill: Are Afrikan People the Subjects of a Genocidal Plot?) requests that readers write him on the subject of genocide, particularly in light of his article, in as clear, concise and honest a manner as possible, and sending these responses with name, address, and phone number to: Harry Allen, GPO Box 7718G, New York, NY 10116–4632. All replies will become property of Harry Allen.

G.G. ALLIN is in the pokey, try your luck c/o P.O. Box 704, Oak Lawn, IL, 60454.

HAKIM BEY (Instructions for the Kali-Yuga) will mull over mail sent to: P.O. Box 568, Brooklyn, NY, 11211.

MONTE CAZAZZA & MICHELLE HANDELMAN (The Cereal Box Conspiracy Against the Developing Mind) melt in your mind, not in your hand at: M & M Productions, P.O. Box 170415, San Francisco, CA, 94117.

JAMES SHELBY DOWNARD (The Call to Chaos) c/o Feral House, P.O. Box 861893, Los Angeles, CA, 90086–1893.

FRANK (Psychopath) will personally come to your residence to hack off your head if you use the name “Frank” on your mail to him. Call him Full Force Productions instead. Full Force, 453 Bay Ridge Ave., Suite 614, Brooklyn, NY, 11220.

GREGORY KRUPEY (The Christian Right, Zionism, and the Coming of the Penteholocaust) c/o Feral House, PO Box 861893, Los Angeles, CA, 90086–1893.

ANTON LaVEY (The Invisible War): c/o The Church of Satan, P.O. Box 210082, San Francisco, CA, 94121.

JOSEPH LANZA (Fakir Musafar Interview) has crammed himself into tiny P.O. Box 114, New York, NY, 10113–0114.

THOMAS McEVILLEY (Art in the Dark) c/o Artforum, 65 Bleecker St., New York, NY, 10012.

JIM MORTON (The Unrepentant Necrophile): 109 Minna #583, San Francisco, CA, 94105.

FAKIR MUSAFAR (Body Play) c/o Gauntlet, 8720 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90069.

TIM O’NEILL (Surgeons & Gluttons; Who Rules Over Earth; A History of Vengeance and Assassination in Secret Societies) c/o Museum, Suite 1, 2404 California, San Francisco, CA, 94115.

ADAM PARFREY c/o Feral House, P.O. Box 861893, Los Angeles, CA, 90086–1893.

DAVID PAUL (Man A Machine) can be reached through Feral House.

BOYD RICE c/o Abraxas Foundation, P.O. Box 30081, Denver, CO, 80203.

CHRISTIAN SHAPIRO (Satori & Pornography) is the pen name of Allan MacDonell, P. O. Box 361084, Los Angeles, CA, 90036–1084.

MICHAEL STALEY (Sorcerer of Apocalypse: An Introduction to John Whiteside Parsons) edits a publication named Starfire, BCM Starfire, London WC1N 3XX, England.

RON J. STEELE (Black Messiah Phenomenon) runs Project Research. His newsletter is is available, $10 for 12 issues, from: Project Research, P.O. Box 187, Dept. C., College Place, WA, 99324.

JOHN ZERZAN (The Case Against Art; Agriculture: Demon Engine of Civilization): 410 Adams, Eugene, OR, 97402.

JOHN AES-NIHIL (Mel Lyman) operates the Archives of Aesthetic Nihilism. Send $5 for a catalog to: Box 93982, Hollywood, CA, 90093.

(If you send mail to Feral House for the purpose of forwarding mail to an author, provide a S.A.S.E. for that purpose.)

Joe Coleman, whose epic acrylic adorns this book cover, is the rarest of the rare—a painter whose obsessive technique is fully up to the task of expressing a disturbing and true vision of personal apocalypse.

Criminals, freaks, debased character actors, schizophrenics—all are part of Coleman’s family ... absolute outsiders tormented and delighted by their degradation and abysmal disenfranchisement. Excursions into the edge of madness exacts a heavy toll, and an expiation of demons must occur before Coleman can regain psychic equilibrium. Like Goya’s painting of Saturn devouring his children, Coleman transforms into Professor Momboozoo, and geeks sacrificial mice amidst tumorous explosions obliterating biologic and psychic cancers.

These performances, which have earned Coleman the wrath of city fathers from Los Angeles to Boston (where a 17^th century statute forbidding the use of an “infernal machine” was excavated for his prosecution), is the force which holds Coleman in check from even more extreme forms of wrath, fear and terror.

The definitive text containing Coleman’s paintings, drawings, performances, collections, and philosophy is forthcoming from Feral House in Spring, 1991. This large format book is to be titled Cosmic Retribution: The Infernal Art of Joe Coleman, and it will contain 32 pages of color reproductions, over 100 pages of black and white work, documentation of performances, interviews conducted by Adam Parfrey, and photos from Coleman’s collection of inhuman oddities.

CHICKEN LITTLE WAS RIGHT

Figure 88. The last living caucasoid inserted large warheads into his anus and with the trapeze-like contraption could achieve orgasm at the apogee of his self-obliteration. Cause of death: ennui.

How does tyranny arise? That it comes out of democracy is fairly clear.
Does the change take place in the same sort of way as the change from oligarchy to democracy? Oligarchy was established by men with a certain aim in life: the good they sought was wealth, and it was the insatiable appetite for money-making to the neglect of everything else that proved its undoing. Is democracy likewise ruined by greed for what it conceives to be the supreme good?—Plato, The Republic

Doom

The Society for Secular Armageddonism

1645 Hyde Street #6
San Francisco, CA 94109

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

DOOM, the Society for Secular Armageddonism, is an organization founded upon a fundamental belief: the earth is on the brink of a monumental catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, a catastrophe that promises to wreak havoc upon the entire planet. In short, the end of the world is at hand.

This conviction is based not on religious prophecy, but on observance of a multitude of critical world threats, including nuclear proliferation, chemical/biological weapons, terrorism, ozone depletion, global warming, deforestation, acid rain, massive species loss, ocean and air pollution, exploding population, global complacency and many more. We believe the magnitude and number of these threats represent a movement toward a secular apocalypse that has gained such momentum it can no longer be stopped. The situation is hopeless.

In the face of this coming cataclysm, the Society feels that the only viable remaining option is immediate emergency action, across the board, against all global threats. Such action is imperative if there is to be any chance of delaying the inevitable, of staving off, however temporarily, our imminent doom.

To contribute to public awareness, to resist the rush into the Abyss, to act now against the Spectres of Doom — to these aims we commit ourselves.

[Back Cover]

[1] Esoteric Anatomy by Dr. Douglas Baker contains this story. It was printed in England as part of Dr. Baker’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” series. No publishing data was given inside.

[2] See the interview with Fakir by Joseph Lanza and Kristine Ambrosia in Apocalypse Culture, both first and revised editions, also Fakir’s article, “Body Play,” in the same book.

[3] Fakir’s novel Prince of Pain remains unpublished.

[4] The John Fare leged is recounted in a booklet on Coil, the British musical group. It is available from: Mick Gaffney, 20 Everton Drive, Honeypot Lane, Stanmore, Middlesex HA7 1ED, England.

[5] Auto-trepanation is covered in John Michell’s Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions, Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1984. This article also appears in M.D. magazine, April 1984.

[6] Cole, M. & S., “Three Giants of Soviet Psychology.” Interview with Alexei Nikolaevitch Leontiev in Psychology Today, March, 1971.

[7] Greek engineer whose credits include building a holy water slot machine and automated religious shows featuring moving statues of gods.

[8] Beeson, W., “A Microcomputer Controlled Manipulator for Biomedical Applications,” Bioengineering: Proceedings of the Eight Northeast Conference, Pergamon Press, 1980.

[9] For a full discussion of current experimental evidence concerning the operation of the orgone accumulator and its beneficial use in healing see The Orgone Accumulator Handbook, by James DeMeo, PhD., Natural Energy Works, POB 864, El Cerrito, CA 95430

[10] A former worker at the San Onofre Power Plant sues over a rare form of leukemia 1/94. Since she had never never been exposed to levels of radiation deemed “unsafe” by the Department of Energy, and having a cancer which has been positively linked to radioactive exposure, the issue the court must decide is whether any level of exposure can be deemed “safe.”

[11] Unlike Jung, however, Reich did not retire to a Swiss retreat to spend his leisure years in dalliance with the Nazis. Most Jungians dismiss charges of Jung’s anti-Semitism, but that isn’t the point. His engagement with the occult and mystical speculation fit well with Nazi ideology. As the saying goes, some of his best friends were Jews. But even a recent book written by a number of Jungian analysts — many of them Jewish — fails to dispel the historical judgment against Jung (see Maidenbaum & Martin, Lingering Shadows; Jungians, Freudians, and Anti-Semitism, Shambala, Boston, 1991). Jung, in association with Herman Göring’s “psychotherapist” nephew, Matthias Heinrich Göring, edited the German Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie. While Jung’s supporters allow for his “habits of mind” and “shortcomings,” the fact remains that Jung participated in the Nazi adventure from 1933 until 1939, while the Nazis burned Reich’s books in 1933. Even Robert Bly cannot account for those six years.

[12] Reich, W., The Einstein Affair. Orgone Institute Press, Maine, 1953.

[13] Michael Straight was an heir to a Payne-Whitney fortune and became associated with Anthony Blunt’s Soviet spy ring while still an undergraduate at Oxford. It was not until long after Reich’s death that Straight admitted in his autobiography, After Long Silence, that he had passed State Department documents to a Soviet handler in the 1940s.

[14] Carroll Quigley’s discussion of The New Republic’s relationship with Wallace lends much credence to Reich’s “conspiracy theories”. See Tragedy & Hope, (MacMillan, 1966), p. 938. Michael Kinsley’s role on CNN’s Crossfire reveals that the NR still serves its original function: to provide a tame and convenient foil for corporate ideology.

[15] My thanks to Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press for obtaining these documents.

[16] Documents dating from early FBI assessments of Reich as a national security risk contained Otto Fenichel’s privately spoken slander. It was repeated in the prison’s subsequent “diagnosis.”

[17] Nelson Rockefeller paid for a “feasibility study” for The New Republic. From the Rockefeller Archives.

[18] Another intriguing connection with the Soviets: one of Einstein’s assistants, possibly the one that he mentioned as having convinced him to break off the correspondence with Reich, later would return to Poland.

From The New York Times, March 17, 1950:

SCIENTIST’S LEAVE STUDIES

Einstein Ex-Associate Seeks to Teach Again in Poland

Ottawa, March 16 — Opposition leader George Drew in the House of Commons this afternoon raised the question of the propriety of permitting Dr. Leopold Infeld, a former associate of Dr. Albert Einstein and at present a teacher of mathematics at the University of Toronto, to return to Warsaw to organize certain educational programs in cooperation with the Communist Government of Poland.

Mr. Drew said that Mr. Infeld, who had been given hospitality as a refugee in Canada and the United States, had gained considerable knowledge of the latest discoveries in the atomic field.

He had several times stated that he would return to Europe if and when a “progressive government was established in Polent,” and he returned there last summer and taught in the Universities of Warsaw and Cracow, Mr. Drew said. Now, Mr. Drew added, he had applied for a sabbatical year during which he would receive half pay from Toronto University in order to permit him to work at educational organization under the Polish Government.

[19] Today, the FDA has responds to FOIA requests for this evidence by declaring it no longer resides in their files.

[20] To cite a few:

Müschenich, S. & Gebauer, R. : “Die (Psycho-) Physiologischen Wirkungen des Reich’schen Orgonakkumulators auf den Menschlischen Organismus” [The (Psycho) Physiological Effects of the Reich Orgone Accumulator on the Human Organism] University of Marburg, Germany, Department of Psychology, Dissertation 1986.

Kolokolstev, S. : “An Accumulator Of Subtle Energy”. Aura-Z, Moscow, 1993. 2:85–87.

DeMeo, James: “OROP Israel 1991–1992: A Cloudbusting Experiment to Restore Wintertime Rains to Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean During an Extended Period of Drought”. El Cerrito, 1994, Pulse of the Planet, 4:92–98.

[21] The most detailed book yet on the tradition of the Ruler of the World and the esoteric traditions associated with it is Geoffrey Ashe’s The Ancient Wisdom, Abacus Books: London, 1979.

[22] The clear relationship between Theosophy, Arianosophy and Nazism is detailed in The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Aquarian Press: Northamptonshire, 1987.

[23] Plate CCI in Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Philosophical Research Society: Los Angeles, 1962.

[24] For more details on the pathworking process, see Highways of the Mind: The Art and History of Pathworking by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, Aquarian Press: Northamptonshire, 1987.

[25] See The Works of Thomas Vaughn, edited by Arthur Edward Waite, University Books: New Hyde Park, 1968.

[26] In more recent times the effects of the equally invisible EMP (electromagnetic pulse) generated by nuclear detonations have been noted and appreciated.

[27] For a study of the puer aeternus and a discussion of its role in certain aspects of the 20^th century political and social events, see Marie-Louise von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus (New York: Spring Publications, 1970), passim.

[28] C.G. Jung, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminars in Analytical Psychology Given by Dr. C.G. Jung ... November 1928 — June 1929, 3^rd ed. (Zurich, 1958), vol. 1, p. 129.

[29] Hersey, Hiroshima, p. 82.

[30] New York: Crossroad, 1982: especially chap. 2, “Desire, Violence and Aggression.”

[31] Dan Kurzman, Day of the Bomb: Countdown to Hiroshima (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), p. 151.

[32] See Jung, Alchemical Studies, Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), “The Motif of Torture,” and pp. 82ff. See also “The Handless Maiden” (Grimm’s Fairy Tales) in which the pure maiden loses her hands to the machinations of the Devil. This idea occurs in Moby Dick where Ahab loses his leg to the whale (Moby Dick is symbolic of the demonic element in the world, the deus absconditus, the dark and hidden god).

[33] Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958). See also Wyden’s chapter “Dealing with the Doubts” and Stillings’ “The Quantum Whale,” Artifex 5, 3 (June, 1986): 12.

[34] Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 697.

[35] “Physics in the Contemporary World,” lecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nov. 25, 1947.

[36] Tritium, an important component of the first thermonuclear device, exploded at Eniwetok in 1952, is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen with a mass three times that of ordinary hydrogen—an apt representation of three-in-oneness.

Jung relates the Divine Trinity to the microphysics of the creation and destruction of matter in his essay, “A Psychological Approach to the Trinity” (Psychology and Religion: West and East, CW 11 [Princeton University Press, 1958], p. 187.)

[37] Louis Herbert Gray, ed., Mythology of All Races, vol. V, Semitic (Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1931), p. 43.

[38] See Mike Perlman’s study of the symbolism of the nuclear light in his paper, “Phaethon’s Vision of Enlightenment: The ‘Success’ of the Nuclear Bomb” (Evelyn McConeghey and James McConnell, eds., Nuclear Reactions [Albuquerque, N.M.: Image Seminars, 1984]).

[39] LASL [Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories], Los Alamos 1943–1945: The Beginning of an Era. LASL-79-78. Reprint (May 1984).

[40] It is noteworthy that the objects here mentioned are of the same shapes as UFOs, which are characterized by heat, intolerably bright light, fire, and radiation effects.

[41] The Bhagavad Gita, trans. and interp. Franklin Edgerton (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964).

[42] The tradition of religious, alchemical/tranformative associations for nuclear test sites is carried on for the first test of a thermonuclear device (Eniwetok, 1952). This device was installed on the tiny island of Elugalab (gods are born in lowly, remote places) in a protective shed whose shape was very reminiscent to those present of the Kaaba, the building which houses the sacred stone of the Moslems at Mecca (Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, p. 303).

[43] “Army searchlights were laid on to follow by simple triangulation the ball of fire by night and the mushroom cloud by day with an optical finder” (Leona Marshall Libby, The Uranium People [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979], p. 220). Compare the above naively written statement with Exodus 13:21: “And all the time the Lord went before them, by day a pillar of cloud to guide them on their journey, by night a pillar of fire to give them light, so they could travel night and day.”

[44] Mythology of All Races, vol. V, p. 43.

[45] Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, p. 611. In their article, “The Strange Death of Louis Slotin” (Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1954, p. 25), Stewart Alsop and Ralph Lapp are fascinated by this image of “tickling or twisting the dragon’s tail,” and repeat it several times. Slotin died trying the experiment. No one knows exactly what went wrong. For a description of the “Dragon” and “twisting the dragon’s tail” see Rhodes, pp. 610–11, and Libby, Uranium People, pp. 201ff. The mythology of a cosmic dragon that is aroused by nuclear forces is the theme of several science fiction movies, especially the Godzilla films. This mythology is also developed in Thomas E. Bearden’s book Excalibur Briefing (San Francisco: Strawberry Hill, 1988) which discusses the giant sleeping dragon “Zarg.” John A. Wheeler referred to the subatomic particle as like a “great smoky dragon” that cannot be localized in space or time (Science Digest 94, 7 [July 1986]: p. 11). Melville said of Moby Dick (whale = dragon in mythological tradition) that he “was ubiquitous; ... he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same time” (see Stillings, “The Quantum Whale,” p. 12).

[46] Ernst Benz, Theologie der Elektricität (Mainz: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaft und der Literatur, 1970), soon to be published in English translation by Pickwick Press.

[47] Hersey, Hiroshima, pp. 91–92.

[48] “Holocaust: a burnt sacrifice; a sacrificial offering the whole of which is consumed by fire. 2. Hence, a complete or through sacrifice or destruction, esp. by fire, as of large numbers of human beings.”

“Sacrifice: 1. (2) A whole offering, entirely devoted to the god, the holocaust, or whole burnt offering being the ordinary form.” (Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2^nd ed.).

[49] In the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, the Old Ones are extraterrestrial creatures that invaded earth tens of thousands of years ago. In subsequent horror fiction, these “Old Ones” have been portrayed as ultradimensional beings striving to re-enter the earth plane to enslave and destroy humans.

[50] C.G. Jung, Psychological Analysis of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes on the Seminar Given by Prof. Dr. C. G. Jung ... Autumn 1938 — Winter 1939 (Zurich, n.d.), Vol. 10, pp. 164–167.

[51] Quoted in Albert H.Z. Carr, Juggernaut: The Path of Dictatorship (New York: Viking Press, 1939), p. 463.

[52] For a superb example, complete with appropriate religious symbolism, see the account of the so-called Cash-Landrum close encounter in Brenda Butler, Do Street, and Jenny Randies’ Sky Crash: A Cosmic Conspiracy (Suffolk: Neville Spearman, 1984), pp. 217–222.

[53] Francis Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity (New York: University Books, 1964), pp. 89, 210–212.

[54] For an account of the “Hoovah” entities, see Andrija Puharich, Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1974), and Greta Woodrew, On a Slide of Light: A Glimpse of Tomorrow (New York: Macmillan, 1981). For information on the Pleiadean ETs, see W.C. Stevens, UFO Contact from the Pleiades: A Preliminary Investigation Report (1983).

[55] Reports of the mysterious mutilation of cattle still come in. The total number of cases has been claimed to be over 10,000. A newsletter with the remarkable title Stigmata continues to monitor these cases. Whatever the cause of these mutilations—and UFOs are considered by many to be the primary cause—it is irrelevant to the argument put forward here. We are dealing with beliefs as psychic facts. For a study of the mythic and folkloric aspects of the cattle mutilations, see Stillings’ “Mythopoeia on a Few Short Anomalies,” Artifex 6 4/5 (August/October 1987): 1.

[56] The Santeria cult, of Caribbean and South American origin, has come into conflict with the ASPCA in this country because of their ritual sacrifice of chickens.

[57] For a theological discussion of these ideas and images, see Jim Garrison, The Darkness of God: Theology After Hiroshima (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), passim.

[58] Paul Jordan-Smith, “War in Heaven,” Parabola 7, 4 (October 1982): 69.

[59] Interregnum—the period of time between two periods of rule. In some cultures, no laws are in effect during such periods.

[60] The archetype of the War in Heaven has recently revealed itself in fantastic astronomical speculations. For these bizarre theories on the cosmological effects of ET wars, see the National Enquirer UFO Report (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), pp. 96–100.

[61] Originally a doctrine of the Ophite sect of the Gnostics, the idea of the apocatastasis, the return or restoration of all things to God, was developed further by Origen (c. 185–254 A.D.). The scriptural sources include Matt. 10:26: “There is nothing covered up that will not be uncovered, nothing hidden that will not be made known.” I Cor. 4:5: “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will ... bring to light the hidden things of darkness.” Luke 12:2: “For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known.” Matt. 17:11: “... Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.” Acts 3:20–21: “And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things ... For a discussion of further manifestations of the archetype of the apocatastasis in our times, see Stillings, “Images of High Numinosity in Current Popular Culture,” Artifex 6, 2 (April 1987): 1.

[62] One thinks immediately of the discoveries of the Qumran scrolls, Philip of Macedon’s tomb, and the Shaanxi find, to name but a few. The popular movie Raiders of the Lost Ark gained no small amount of appeal from its essentially apocatastasis theme.

[63] To see the immediate association between these archetypal ideas, the reader is referred to the two works of Jeffrey Goodman, Psychic Archeology: Time Machine to the Past (New York: Berkley Books, 1980), and We are the Earthquake Generation (New York: Berkley Books, 1979), “the controversial bestseller that predicts a 20-year ‘Season of the Catastrophes’ beginning with Mount St. Helens.” The recent fascination with catastrophic earthquake scenarios (California sliding into the ocean, etc.) arises from the palingenesis of the ideas we are discussing. Whether they actually happen is irrelevant.

Another aspect of the apocatastatic constellation is the apocalyptic “revelation of all things at the end of time.” Just as other religious notions, such as the War in Heaven, are imbedded in technology, this “revelation of all things” is embedded in the earth-exploratory devices used in LandSat and the deep-sea “Alvin.”

[64] According to our general argument here, psychic archeology is not a process we have “decided” to use. It is a connivance on the part of the Spiritus Mundi to enlist our unconscious assistance in realizing the apocatastasis. Psychic archeology will be successful because the archetype supports it and insinuates its program into our psyches.

[65] Nuclear physics is apocatastatic in its essence. Victor White, O.D. (God and the Unconscious [New York: Meridian Books, 1961], p. 33) uses apocastatic terms when he says of the Bomb and the man that “Human hubris had reversed the creation-story of Genesis not merely on paper but in fact; man’s own ingenuity had begun to reduce matter back into force, cosmos to chaos.”

[66] See Tom Shales, “The Re Decade,” Esquire 105, 3 (March 1986).

[67] Jung: “The movies are far more efficient than the theatre; they are less restricted, they are able to produce amazing symbols to show the collective unconscious, since their methods of presentation are so unlimited” (Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminars in Analytical Psychology ... [Nov. 1928 — June 1929], 3^rd ed. [Zurich, 1958], vol. 1).

[68] The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: The First Complete and Authorized English Translation, ed., Dr. Oscar Levy, vol. 7, Human All-too-human, p. 2 (Edinburgh/London: T.N. Foulis, 1911), pp. 336–338.

[69] In Fredric Solomon and Robert Q. Marston, eds., The Medical Implications of Nuclear War (Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986), pp. 317–328.

[70] See Bird Krueger on D.E.A.D. (Distributed Equivalent Atomic Destruction), “Bird’s Corner” (letter to the editor), Artifex 4, 6 (December 1985): 13. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal reports the fact that 20^th century totalitarian governments have killed more people than all 20^th century wars combined. “This number already approximates the number that might be killed in a nuclear war” (Wall Street Journal, July 7, 1986).

[71] For an introduction to some of the newer aspects of psychic warfare, see Eldon A. Byrd, “Implications of Nonlinear Interactions in Biological Systems,” ARCHAEUS 1, 1 (Winter 1983): 1–6; Omni 7, 5 (February 1985): 40; Martin Ebon, Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983); and Ron McRae, Mind Wars: the True Story of Secret Government Research into the Military Potential of Psychic Weapons (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984).

[72] See Gerhard Adler, Psychology and the Atom Bomb, Guild Lecture no. 43, The Guild of Pastoral Psychology Lectures (London: H.H. Greaves Ltd. Delivered April 1946; repr. November 1964). Repr. in Psychological Perspectives 16, 1 (Spring 1985): 13–28.

(Special thanks are extended to Gail Duke, managing editor of Archaeus Project publications, for locating many key quotes and images used in this paper. Through her familiarity with much of the current literature on the Bomb, she has been able to correct a number of errors of fact and supply important supportive details.)

{1} The title Man a Machine is taken from Julien Offray De La Mettrie’s book of the same title, first published in 1748. La Mettrie was a physician who had seen military service, and put forth the view that the human body can be seen as simply a complex machine. This view was partly inspired by a “vision” La Mettrie experienced during a feverish attack of cholera on the battlefield in 1742.

Revised and Expanded Edition, Feral House. <feralhouse.com/apocalypse-culture> & <archive.org/details/ApocalypseCulture1987>

This is a very strange book that brings together essays by primitivists and interviews of sex offenders.
Ted Kaczynski’s first non-anonymously published book “Technological Slavery” was first well distributed by the editor of this book, Adam Parfrey.
Footnote 3 was missing before the paragraph beginning with “A portrait in the rough, fragmentary”, of the chapter called ‘Who Rules Over Earth?’, so it was simply added next to footnote 4.
Content Warning: Gore, necrophelia, etc. I’m not reading this shit myself, I’m mainly archiving it so that if someone quotes this text, others can verify the quote’s accuracy.

ISBN 9780922915057