Friday, December 24, 2010
Christmas pit bulls
Apparently I wasn't the only one who got the idea to dress their pit bull up in a Christmas sweater.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Occult Origins of the Counterculture
Here is an article I've been working on for awhile that hopefully will prove to be of interest. Chapters 2 and possibly 3, along with the interviews I promised, will be posted as soon as time allows....
For as long as people have been organized under a centralized government, the personal lives of citizens have been molded by the dictates of political, economic and religious elites. In the past, the most common pattern has been for the priestly class to manipulate family structures into emulating the hierarchical values of the state. In recent years, these same measures of social control are still in place, although now the oligarchs of Western nations have also utilized scientific authorities to perpetuate a materialistic, consumption-fueled dystopia that polarizes localized communities in part through the lure of innuendo-laden corporate marketing campaigns. Contrary to the story told by major media outlets, a significant portion of the modern cultural revolution was set into place by social scientists who received grants to engineer human consciousness through media experiments, as well as other forms of behavioral conditioning.
The cultural upheaval of the 60s, preceded by many centuries of similar liberation movements scattered across the globe, has been recognized for its emphasis on values such as social justice, civil rights and ecological sustainability, all of which are important and necessary goals. However, there is a shadow side to its origins that has not been fully explored except by social conservatives with authoritarian agendas of their own. Close study of the history of countercultural agitation reveals its potential to contribute to the atomization of social structures, a process which could easily result in the dissolution of effective resistance against the far-reaching dictates of global governance. Yet social movements of the variety typified by 60s counterculture also contain the seeds for fundamental changes the likes of which could lessen the catastrophic effects of neoliberal globalization, a potential that may only be realized through acknowledgement of the shortcomings of contemporary cultural and political revolutions.
In Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, Ioan Coulianu traces the origins of modern state propaganda models to techniques utilized by Renaissance occultists, who saw sexual desire as the universal common denominator capable of subliminally inducing mass hypnosis via the collective mind of entire nations. Coulianu credited the Rosicrucian Giordano Bruno for the development of proto-crowd control techniques that would later surface in the sphere of social sciences as public relations, market research, disinformation and espionage. Bruno believed that society could always be divided into its essential components, manipulator and manipulated, and it was the role of the occultist, who would later become the scientist, to enchain the spirit of the common people through the window of their imagination, more commonly recognized as the libido. Bruno envisioned these chains as “phantasms” capable of affecting and influencing human consciousness and, by extension, social behavior. The ultimate purpose of Bruno's phantasms was to replace the external coercion of the state with internal compulsion, thus creating a self-regulating system of government.
One respresentation of Bruno's vision of covert totalitarianism is Alduous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World, which describes a society where the controlling oligarchy encourages indiscriminate , depersonalized sexuality in combination with government-subsidized psychotropic drug use, in order so that the greater bulk of citizens would come to embrace their loss of freedom voluntarily. Here, doctors utilize synthetic hormones to mass produce humans in laboratories, with the intended consequence of creating a new race of superior beings to rule over their genetic inferiors. Since the book was published, Huxley's prediction of a medical standardization of the body has come closer to fruition. Within the medical industry, applications of Nazi human experimentation methods have been further explored by research and development companies, particularly in the areas of psychiatry and reproductive technology. At the philosophical core of this technological and psycho-spiritual augmentation is the religious ideology of Gnostic transhumanism, a belief system that states as its goal the transcendence of human biology through merging the body with advanced technologies. Gnostic transhumanism is itself a direct offshoot of the mystical aim of ancient mystery schools, some of which had devised systems both political and metaphysical that literally sought to transform society's elite into gods.
Many of these schools were composed of genuine mystics who worked to provide a framework for enlightenment, a method to reach the divine through acts of charity and service to others. Simultaneously, there were those within these schools for whom spiritual mastery was not a practice for managing the negative qualities of the self, but instead a means by which to control the populace and create a class of subjugated people. It is necessary here to provide some minimal background on the history of Western occultism, as its traditions have been synthesized into the myths and symbols of occult fraternities that have an inordinate impact on international politics. Words like mysticism and occultism can be quite nebulous and multi-faceted in their definitions, so for the purpose of simplicity, use of the phrase “mystery school” will indicate any institution dealing with the unseen realms, even extending to organized religion. As these are the histories of empires based on the practice of parasitizing the labor and psyche of their citizens, the details are at times quite difficult to absorb. Thankfully that aspect of the occult priesthood has been balanced by organizations that strive towards the creation of autonomous communities based around principles of social justice, while not limiting the process of enlightenment to a chosen few.
The occult theocracies of Mesopotamia were the first centralized institutions to design tactics of mass social manipulation through ecstatic celebration. Although some well-intentioned neo-pagan authors have attempted to formulate visions of Mesopotamian empires as havens for individual rights, particularly the rights of women, the principles of the Babylonian law code tell quite a different story. The unfortunate reality of these formative empires is that their ruling classes devised a prototype for the modern totalitarian state through near total control of social behavior. For example, Babylonian law states that a woman who was convicted of adultery would be stoned to death, a practice that continues in many Islamic countries to this day. Babylonian midwives who failed to adequately nurse children were punished with dismemberment. Yet the religious ritual that united the majority of Mesopotamian cultures was a sex rite symbolizing the sacred marriage of the king with a fertility goddess, variously represented as Inanna, Astarte and Ishtar, among others names. The Greek historian Herodotus claimed that all Babylonian women were bound by law to sexually perform for strangers. Far from being an unrestrained expression of sexuality, sacred marriage rituals were strictly regulated and designed to reinforce the authority of the king over his citizens. The philosophy underlying Mesopotamian fertility rites was the divine right of kings, a concept that would later justify the establishment of feudal aristocracies throughout Medieval Europe.
Like the Mesopotamian empires, Ancient Egypt was a theocracy supported by the subjugation of the lower classes whose agricultural labor enabled the comfortable lifestyle of the priests. Egyptians did not consider sex to be a taboo subject, as their mythology contained stories of adultery, masturbation, incest and same sex relationships. For the royal family, incest was seen as a holy act because it perpetuated the bloodline of the gods. One of the most vicious traditions that originated in Ancient Egypt was genital cutting, a ritual that was carried out as a devotional sacrifice to the Gods. In the present era, female genital mutilation is a pervasive problem that has caused chronic health problems in countless women, even leading to fetal death during childbirth due to blockage of the birth canal. The male version of genital cutting, circumcision, is the cultural standard for most Western countries where male babies are routinely mutilated by doctors. Circumcision was exported from Egypt during the exodus of the Hebrews into Israel, along with the monotheism practiced by the hermaphroditic Pharaoh Akhenatan.
The Hebrew patriarchs devised the foundation of Abrahamic religions when they wrote the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch, which is nearly identical in content to the Old Testament. The Pentateuch explicitly outlines how God commands genocide, slavery and the mass rape of children as a way of solidifying Hebrew supremacy in Israel. In Numbers 31:17-18 God tells the Israelite soldiers “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” In ancient Israel the arranged marriage of child brides was seen as a way to ensure paternity as well as the continuity of the Abrahamic bloodlines. Under Mosaic law, the code of behavior attributed to Moses, women were assigned inferior positions and ordered to obey their husbands. In Deuteronomy 22:23-24, God commands that any man who takes a wife and discovers that she is not a virgin should return her to the house of her father where she will be stoned to death by the men of the city. In Deuteronomy 22:13-21 God says that if a man rapes a virgin he must pay her father 50 shekels of silver and then marry her.
The role of women was not much better in the Greek and Roman city states that directly preceded Christianity. There, women were valued solely for their ability to produce male warriors for the state and “true love” was the exclusive dominion of same sex relationships between men. Both cultures idealized a vision of violent masculinity that was enacted by adult men coercing boys and forcing slaves into a passive role in order to condition them into accepting virtues of dominance and unchecked aggression. These values were then absorbed by the young soldiers who would apply what they learned in the subjugation of foreign peoples. Since women held comparatively lesser worth in the expansion of empire, female babies were often left on hilltops to die of exposure. Running counter to the autocratic ideals of Rome were the Dionysian mystery cults, a decentralized religion that involved the induction of trance through music, spirit possession and intoxicants. The cults provided a gathering place for social dissidents such including slaves, women and foreigners who were afforded positions of respect atypical of their role in greater Roman and Greek society. The mystery cults of Dionysus have been interpreted as an affirmation and mastery over humanity's primal nature which could then be reintegrated into civilized life.
Although Dionysus was later absorbed into the Olympic pantheon, historians have come to a general consensus that the mystery cults were an indigenous tradition predating Greek civilization. The cults may have also been linked to the Dionysian artificers, an esoteric sect that incorporated aspects of sacred geometry into the construction of public buildings, which could then be used to feed impoverished people. Roman authorities outlawed the mystery cults, whose non-hierarchical structure they saw as a threat to the political status quo. The cult's central role in resistance against Roman tyranny was made apparent when the wife of Spartacus, who led a slave revolt against the Republic, was announced to have been a cult initiate who considered her husband to be an incarnation of Dionysus. As a final strategy, the Roman oligarchs decided to infiltrate the cults, which were then reformulated into a hierarchical structure and assimilated into the Roman state as the Bacchanalia. It may have been during this latter incarnation of the cult's evolution that stories of ritual violence, including murder, made their way to the floors of the Roman Senate.
Another decentralized religion that rose in opposition to the Roman aristocracy was the earliest phase of Christianity. The militant pacifism of Jesus existed in striking contrast to both the imperialistic virtues of Rome and the genocidal mandates of Jehovah. These ideas should not be interpreted as a passive acquiescence to injustice but instead as an act of moral force, whereby those who had been compelled to obedience through a societal paradigm which recognized strength as the only law took on a new role by leading and transforming the nature of their communities. Some of the first Christians were female priests who led congregations in private homes, a practice that directly opposed the values of Roman society which saw women as primarily breeding stock. In Mathew 5:9, Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Taken from the the context of a time period defined by war, slavery and gross social injustice, this statement is profoundly transgressive in a sense that is difficult to appreciate coming from the perspective of a modern person living in a democratic society. Where "survival of the fittest" is the law, women and children will necessarily take on a subordinate role sheerly by virtue of their lesser physical strength alone. This principle also applies to indigenous communities which obviously have not had the military strength to defend themselves against centralized nation states even when unavoidably necessary attempts at self defense have been made. Unfortunately the philosophy of the early Christians that "the meek will inherit the earth" was later horribly corrupted as the Roman Catholic Church went on to murder and enslave countless numbers of indigenous communities while enshrining social inequity as the mandate of God himself.
There has been endless academic debate about whether Jesus was a truly historical figure or a representation of the teachings of a much larger number of priests and mystics. Scholars are in unanimous agreement that the Gospels were written during the time of Gnosticism, another decentralized spiritual movement that believed the God of the Old Testament to be a malevolent being who created our world as a fallen universe separated from the Divine. Many Gnostic texts, especially the Gospel of Thomas, emphasize the idea that the light of Christ is accessible to everyone without the intervention of a priestly hierarchy, including polytheists and other supposed heretics. Religious worship frequently took place in private homes instead of churches. Gnostic beliefs regarding human sexuality varied greatly, from those of the Ophites, who invoked the serpent of Genesis as a symbol of forbidden knowledge through orgiastic celebrations, to dualistic views about the ultimate incompatibility of spirit and the body. Dualism was later embraced by the Roman Catholic Church, which also outlawed the ordination of female priests while branding Gnosticism a punishable heresy.
The establishment of Christianity as the central faith of Rome can be seen as a way to commodify divergent forms of spirituality that had the potential to undermine the powers of the state. In order to achieve religious centralization, the clergy appropriated elements of polytheistic iconography and essentially preserved the hierarchical cults of antiquity through the Church. Evidence for the influence of pagan religions on Catholicism is displayed in the architecture of Gothic cathedrals whose rose windows, supposedly representative of the Virgin Mary, are actually an ancient symbol for the Egyptian Isis, wife of the solar deity Osiris. The mythology of Isis is permeated with stories of miraculous pregnancies and she is also traditionally depicted wearing a cloak of stars, the same as the Virgin Mary. Osiris was one of many solar deities whose mythology represented the cyclical path of the sun as it symbolically died during the winter solstice and was born anew as a young child. Ancient pagans saw the sun gods as a personification of the life-giving force and their resurrection was often celebrated during the spring solstice through sex rites intended to ensure agricultural bounty.
Gothic cathedrals were built by early guilds of stone masons, who utilized their knowledge of sacred geometry to construct the churches in the image of the human body. The spires, obelisks and steeples represent pagan phallic worship with the church domes and entrances mirroring the receptive female. The rays of the sun, as they penetrate the rose windows, symbolize the moment of conception. Roses were also a symbol of the worship of Venus, a Roman goddess associated with love and fertility. The Greek virgin goddess Astraea was an additional inspiration for the Virgin Mary. Astraea's festivals were celebrated during August, the same time as the Catholic feast of the Assumption, signifying the day when the Virgin Mary went to heaven. The phallic reverence of the Roman empire is preserved in St. Peter' Square at the Vatican, where an obelisk was placed after being shipped from Egypt by the Roman emperor Caligula. Stories of solar deities like Dionysus were suppressed by the Church and later reconfigured into the mythology of Christ. Dionysus, whose birthday was celebrated during the winter solstice, was invoked during festivals where his body was symbolically eaten as bread. The Persian god Mithra, also born of a virgin, was known to have performed exorcisms and cured the sick. The Phyrgian deity Attis, born of the virgin Nana, died and was resurrected with his flesh symbolically consumed as bread by worshipers. All of the various solar deities were combined in the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was celebrated during the winter solstice.
Orthodox Christianity basically outlawed goddess worship while demoting female deities to the status of a mortal human whose role was primarily reproductive. Yet aspects of the Gnostic veneration for feminine archetypes reemerged several centuries later in a heretical Christian sect called the Cathars. The Cathars rejected Catholic deference to hierarchy while preaching that all men and women were equal. They believed that hell was reincarnation in the material world which had been created by the fallen god Jehovah. The Cathars were also devoted to universalism, a system of faith founded on the idea that all religions offer a pathway to heaven, the ultimate destination of all souls. The inner core of the Cathars were celibate, although this practice was not compulsory for all members. The sect preached that non-procreative sex was less morally problematic than the procreative variety, a teaching that led to them being labeled as sodomites in opposition to the biblical mandate of “be fruitful and multiply”. Catholic doctrine maintains that procreation is the primary purpose of marriage while minimizing the potential for marriage and sexuality to create a spiritually transcendent experience. These ethical questions about procreation must be analyzed from the context of the Medieval time period, during which one in five women died during child birth and approximately half of all newborns never lived past their first year. Many contemporary historians have discovered through the Malleus Malifecarum (Hammer of Evildoers) as well as other medieval documents, that herbal practitioners, particularly midwives, were a special focus of the Inquisition.
Medieval herbalists were likely familiar with the plant commonly known as Queen Anne's Lace, an emmenagogue (menstrual promoter) that has been used for centuries to prevent implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterine lining. Several different modern herbalists have conducted studies concluding that Queen Anne's Lace prevents pregnancy at a rate very close to 100% without the toxic side effects of synthetic estrogens. This effect closely mimics natural physiological processes, since up to 50% of pregnancies end in very often symptomless miscarriage. When Queen Anne's Lace is taken, the fertilized egg typically leaves the body within several days after conception, eliminating the waiting period necessary for clinical abortions. The plant works by thinning the uterine lining, which could also allow for a greater success rate when early abortions are needed, along with less discomfort during the process. Some of the many complications of pregnancy invariably include an increase in heart rate, blood volume and blood pressure, so a woman who has preexisting health problems in these areas will be under a much greater risk for maternal death and health complications.
There are many situations, even factoring in medical advances of recent decades, where the scientific record has shown that continuing a pregnancy would endanger the life of the mother, a problem highlighted by the maternal death rate in El Salvador, a shockingly high 1 in 350, where abortions are banned with no exception for the health of the mother. During medieval times, when women's access to effective, sanitary health care was minimal at best, the suppression of vitally useful information about herbal contraception undoubtedly led to an exponentially greater number of maternal deaths. When this information is taken into consideration, it stands to reason that Catholic dogma promoting procreation as a moral necessity was not only deeply unethical, it was also genocidal. Catholic intolerance of divergent viewpoints continued into the Albigensian Crusade, when the Cathar stronghold of Languedoc was invaded on orders of Pope Eugene III. Many thousands of Cathars were slaughtered even though their only provocation against the church had been strictly philosophical. The Church's predilection for genocide extended well into the 16th century with the Spanish Inquisition, an event that can be interpreted as a continuation of polytheistic blood sacrifice rituals. Another sect that has received much attention from both historians and the media is the Knights Templar, an organization that was in many ways the polar opposite of the Cathars. While the Cathars lived in voluntary poverty and tolerated other religions, the Templars amassed enormous fortunes and pillaged Muslim-controlled territories. A disproportionate amount of the media spotlight directed at the Templars concerns allegations of the fraternity engaging in violent sex rites where demonic idols were anointed with the fat of unbaptized babies. Most historians maintain that these accusations are inventions of the Church and as a result the Templars have come to be romanticized as martyrs of Christian persecution. In truth, the fraternity's inception was funded entirely by the Church and their extensive properties became the storehouses for Roman Catholic finances. The lurid details of ritualized orgies have since obscured the political ramifications of Templar banking, which was so widespread as to effectively set a precedent for the present day financial conglomerate. The Templars were organized in ways nearly identical to a modern corporation, even possessing a legal exemption to the Christian prohibition against money lending. In time, the Templars became so powerful that they accumulated numerous castles and estates while managing much, if not most, of Europe's capital through the fledgling system of fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is a practice that allows banks to loan astronomical sums based on a tiny fraction of tangible assets. This new system enabled small networks of bankers to collectively engineer economic collapses by calling in all debts at the same time, thus drastically reducing the amount of currency in circulation. Today, engineered collapses are coordinated by inside traders who declare bankruptcy after transferring the funds of their customers to offshore accounts that function as tax havens. Financial practices engineered by the Templars made it possible for Church authorities and feudal landowners to amass wealth in a way that had not been possible in previous eras. So the fraternity did a great deal to increase already vast disparities in wealth and social status, directly leading to a dramatic reduction in living standards for the majority of Europe's population.
The historical record indicates a strong possibility that, after the Templars were officially disbanded on orders of King Philip, many of their members went underground and resurfaced in other esoteric fraternities throughout Europe, such as the Knights Hospitallers, The Order of the Garter, the Knights of Malta and the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucians were an anonymous brotherhood who claimed to be devoted to reviving the arts and sciences of classical civilizations. The fraternity's impact on the cultural ethos of their time period was so significant that the award-winning scholar Frances Yates argued that both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment originated in Rosicrucian philosophy. While undoubtedly many within the organization were genuinely working for the stated Rosicrucian goals of providing free education and health care, other, more influential members maneuvered to create an elite brotherhood to rule over the commoners.
The Rosicrucian occultist John Dee, consultant and astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I, even coined the term “British Empire” while using his expertise in navigation to train European explorers who would go on to colonize and enslave Native Americans, among other “uncivilized” peoples. The Confesio Fraternitas is one of two doctrines widely regarded to have been written by founding members of the Rosicrucians and it contains the following quote, perfectly summarizing the contempt with which the author, and in all probability many other highly-placed members within the sect, regarded the common people: “A thousand times the unworthy may clamour, a thousand times may present themselves, yet God hath commanded our ears that they should hear none of them, and hath so compassed us about with His clouds that unto us, His servants, no violence can be done.”
Some of the most blatant examples of Rosicrucian-inspired occult symbolism can be found in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth. In the Rainbow Portrait, she is portrayed draped in a cloak decorated with dozens of eyes and ears, a statement that seems to imply the nearly metaphysical supremacy of Elizabethan England. This analysis becomes quite sensible in light of the fact that her court was the wellspring of the Secret Service, with Dee playing a prominent role in its genesis. The portrait is named after a rainbow that Elizabeth clutches in her right hand, an image that a variety of world cultures have interpreted as the mystic’s bridge between earth and the celestial realm. Additionally, Hinduism assigns a chakra to every color of the rainbow, possibly indicating an intellectual or spiritual influence of Dee's, who was known to dabble in the yogic tradition. This hypothesis is further reinforced by the coiled snake on Elizabeth’s cloak, since the serpent has traditionally been viewed as an allusion to the path of illumination through the rising of the kundalini force.
The court of the Medicis is considered by many researchers, including Yates, to have been a converging point for Rosicrucians, and the family itself is rumored to have contained grand masters of the esoteric Priory of Sion fraternity. The Medicis commissioned countless works of art containing occult themes, including Bronzino’s Allegory of Venus, a painting adorned with fertility symbols such as roses, a snakeskin and a beehive. The Allegory of Venus is one of many paintings of the Renaissance that can be seen as a reenactment of Roman bacchanalia. Of the Bacchanalia, Roman historian Thomas Madden writes “…there was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was committed by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim.” Viewed in this context, the golden apple of Venus most likely represents a fall from Christian standards of purity, even though, since the Medicis were well-connected socialites, they must have known that the supposed moral crimes of commoners paled in comparison to the debauchery of the papacy. The dove in the lower left hand corner has also been associated with the Egyptian goddess Semiramis and then with Isis at a later point. The mask in the lower right hand corner also points towards the painting being a depiction of a mascherate (masque), a masked ball that combines poetry and musical performance. The mascherate had been perfected and performed by Lorenzo de Medici, who wrote the majority of the poetry for the masques which happened in his lifetime. It is abundantly clear that Lorenzo modeled these occasions after Roman bacchanalia, since he decorated the theater in which the masques took place with not only a replication of Roman triumphal cars and arches, but also their trophies, sculptures and ornamentation. Usage of the masks within the mascherate was another appropriation of polytheistic cultures, since the mask has a long history of being worn during pagan ceremonies in order to achieve a dissociative state through dance and chanting. The spirits of animals were even believed to possess the wearers as they danced. Masks have also been used in conjunction with masonic initiation ceremonies where the initiate is masked before undergoing a symbolic death and rebirth.
It is notable that Machiavelli once remarked that the masques were merely a way for autocratic rulers to quell dissent among the populace. A nearly identical concept in the Roman world would have been the distraction of the masses by bread and circuses, which were made available to all citizens in order to prevent rioting. The Roman bacchanalia have historically been associated with political crimes and conspiracies, suggesting that the debaucherous activities contained within were at least in part a ruse by which political elites could elicit the secrets of those who they wished to direct into a desired course of action. Present day incarnations of this pattern can be seen in the Cremation of Care ceremonies at the elite Bohemian Grove, where a wooden effigy is ritually burned in front of a a circle of chanting revelers wearing white robes. On the surface, the Grove is a summer camp for the nation’s elite, with a guest roster that has listed Bush Sr. and Jr., Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Predictably, the site has been linked to personal scandals ranging from crossdressing to child prostitution and murder.
The presence of ritualized androgyny at the Grove may be yet another occult influence since, for the Rosicrucians, androgyny was a way to reach the divine through the unification of polar opposites in harmonious perfection. Rosicrucian ideas about the transformative nature of androgyny may very well have originated with the accounts of European colonists, since literally hundreds of indigenous cultures throughout North and South America have placed gender deviant tribal members in a shamanistic role within their respective cultures. Yet mystical androgyny took shape in a very different way in the highly codified world of European high society, being used more for increasing and maintaining social divisions instead of promoting cultural unity as had typically been the case with indigenous cultures. An alchemical text from the 17th century, Philosophia Reformata, contains a drawing of a crowned man and woman turned towards one another in bed, alongside two soaring ravens and two images of the sun. The description says that the royal brother and sister are purified by fire, after which they are “united” and cleansed of corruption by the dew of heaven. A subsequent drawing depicts the siblings emerging from a grave as a hermaphrodite underneath the storm of a rain cloud. It may be that the text's not-so-subtle reference to incest is an acknowledgement of the European resurrection of Egyptian traditions perpetuating the divine bloodlines of the royal family through intermarriage.
According to a countless number of inside sources, nearly all the campers at the Bohemian Grove belong to occult fraternities descended from the Templars and Rosicrucians. The camp's name itself is likely derived from the occult history of the kingdom Bohemia, which, particularly during the reign of Frederick V was regarded as a center for Rosicrucian activities and research. It is probable that the cyclical nature of the personal scandals of political elites are attributable not only to the banalities of human nature, but also to the covert machinations of occult fraternities, where ill-favored initiates are ousted from the cult either by taking the blame for activities of the group or, more ominously, by getting “disappeared”. It is known that the first four sonnets of Lorenzo de Medici’s Comento were dedicated to a woman named Simonetta, who appears in the masque as Venus. This fact is significant because Simonetta died at the age of 23 on April 26, in the brief window of energetic potency that occult practitioners believe surrounds the pagan holiday of Beltane. Exactly two years later to the day, Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano was assassinated by the papacy, begging the question of whether their deaths were yet another facet of the revived Bacchanalia. Part 2
For as long as people have been organized under a centralized government, the personal lives of citizens have been molded by the dictates of political, economic and religious elites. In the past, the most common pattern has been for the priestly class to manipulate family structures into emulating the hierarchical values of the state. In recent years, these same measures of social control are still in place, although now the oligarchs of Western nations have also utilized scientific authorities to perpetuate a materialistic, consumption-fueled dystopia that polarizes localized communities in part through the lure of innuendo-laden corporate marketing campaigns. Contrary to the story told by major media outlets, a significant portion of the modern cultural revolution was set into place by social scientists who received grants to engineer human consciousness through media experiments, as well as other forms of behavioral conditioning.
The cultural upheaval of the 60s, preceded by many centuries of similar liberation movements scattered across the globe, has been recognized for its emphasis on values such as social justice, civil rights and ecological sustainability, all of which are important and necessary goals. However, there is a shadow side to its origins that has not been fully explored except by social conservatives with authoritarian agendas of their own. Close study of the history of countercultural agitation reveals its potential to contribute to the atomization of social structures, a process which could easily result in the dissolution of effective resistance against the far-reaching dictates of global governance. Yet social movements of the variety typified by 60s counterculture also contain the seeds for fundamental changes the likes of which could lessen the catastrophic effects of neoliberal globalization, a potential that may only be realized through acknowledgement of the shortcomings of contemporary cultural and political revolutions.
In Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, Ioan Coulianu traces the origins of modern state propaganda models to techniques utilized by Renaissance occultists, who saw sexual desire as the universal common denominator capable of subliminally inducing mass hypnosis via the collective mind of entire nations. Coulianu credited the Rosicrucian Giordano Bruno for the development of proto-crowd control techniques that would later surface in the sphere of social sciences as public relations, market research, disinformation and espionage. Bruno believed that society could always be divided into its essential components, manipulator and manipulated, and it was the role of the occultist, who would later become the scientist, to enchain the spirit of the common people through the window of their imagination, more commonly recognized as the libido. Bruno envisioned these chains as “phantasms” capable of affecting and influencing human consciousness and, by extension, social behavior. The ultimate purpose of Bruno's phantasms was to replace the external coercion of the state with internal compulsion, thus creating a self-regulating system of government.
One respresentation of Bruno's vision of covert totalitarianism is Alduous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World, which describes a society where the controlling oligarchy encourages indiscriminate , depersonalized sexuality in combination with government-subsidized psychotropic drug use, in order so that the greater bulk of citizens would come to embrace their loss of freedom voluntarily. Here, doctors utilize synthetic hormones to mass produce humans in laboratories, with the intended consequence of creating a new race of superior beings to rule over their genetic inferiors. Since the book was published, Huxley's prediction of a medical standardization of the body has come closer to fruition. Within the medical industry, applications of Nazi human experimentation methods have been further explored by research and development companies, particularly in the areas of psychiatry and reproductive technology. At the philosophical core of this technological and psycho-spiritual augmentation is the religious ideology of Gnostic transhumanism, a belief system that states as its goal the transcendence of human biology through merging the body with advanced technologies. Gnostic transhumanism is itself a direct offshoot of the mystical aim of ancient mystery schools, some of which had devised systems both political and metaphysical that literally sought to transform society's elite into gods.
Many of these schools were composed of genuine mystics who worked to provide a framework for enlightenment, a method to reach the divine through acts of charity and service to others. Simultaneously, there were those within these schools for whom spiritual mastery was not a practice for managing the negative qualities of the self, but instead a means by which to control the populace and create a class of subjugated people. It is necessary here to provide some minimal background on the history of Western occultism, as its traditions have been synthesized into the myths and symbols of occult fraternities that have an inordinate impact on international politics. Words like mysticism and occultism can be quite nebulous and multi-faceted in their definitions, so for the purpose of simplicity, use of the phrase “mystery school” will indicate any institution dealing with the unseen realms, even extending to organized religion. As these are the histories of empires based on the practice of parasitizing the labor and psyche of their citizens, the details are at times quite difficult to absorb. Thankfully that aspect of the occult priesthood has been balanced by organizations that strive towards the creation of autonomous communities based around principles of social justice, while not limiting the process of enlightenment to a chosen few.
The occult theocracies of Mesopotamia were the first centralized institutions to design tactics of mass social manipulation through ecstatic celebration. Although some well-intentioned neo-pagan authors have attempted to formulate visions of Mesopotamian empires as havens for individual rights, particularly the rights of women, the principles of the Babylonian law code tell quite a different story. The unfortunate reality of these formative empires is that their ruling classes devised a prototype for the modern totalitarian state through near total control of social behavior. For example, Babylonian law states that a woman who was convicted of adultery would be stoned to death, a practice that continues in many Islamic countries to this day. Babylonian midwives who failed to adequately nurse children were punished with dismemberment. Yet the religious ritual that united the majority of Mesopotamian cultures was a sex rite symbolizing the sacred marriage of the king with a fertility goddess, variously represented as Inanna, Astarte and Ishtar, among others names. The Greek historian Herodotus claimed that all Babylonian women were bound by law to sexually perform for strangers. Far from being an unrestrained expression of sexuality, sacred marriage rituals were strictly regulated and designed to reinforce the authority of the king over his citizens. The philosophy underlying Mesopotamian fertility rites was the divine right of kings, a concept that would later justify the establishment of feudal aristocracies throughout Medieval Europe.
Like the Mesopotamian empires, Ancient Egypt was a theocracy supported by the subjugation of the lower classes whose agricultural labor enabled the comfortable lifestyle of the priests. Egyptians did not consider sex to be a taboo subject, as their mythology contained stories of adultery, masturbation, incest and same sex relationships. For the royal family, incest was seen as a holy act because it perpetuated the bloodline of the gods. One of the most vicious traditions that originated in Ancient Egypt was genital cutting, a ritual that was carried out as a devotional sacrifice to the Gods. In the present era, female genital mutilation is a pervasive problem that has caused chronic health problems in countless women, even leading to fetal death during childbirth due to blockage of the birth canal. The male version of genital cutting, circumcision, is the cultural standard for most Western countries where male babies are routinely mutilated by doctors. Circumcision was exported from Egypt during the exodus of the Hebrews into Israel, along with the monotheism practiced by the hermaphroditic Pharaoh Akhenatan.
The Hebrew patriarchs devised the foundation of Abrahamic religions when they wrote the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch, which is nearly identical in content to the Old Testament. The Pentateuch explicitly outlines how God commands genocide, slavery and the mass rape of children as a way of solidifying Hebrew supremacy in Israel. In Numbers 31:17-18 God tells the Israelite soldiers “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” In ancient Israel the arranged marriage of child brides was seen as a way to ensure paternity as well as the continuity of the Abrahamic bloodlines. Under Mosaic law, the code of behavior attributed to Moses, women were assigned inferior positions and ordered to obey their husbands. In Deuteronomy 22:23-24, God commands that any man who takes a wife and discovers that she is not a virgin should return her to the house of her father where she will be stoned to death by the men of the city. In Deuteronomy 22:13-21 God says that if a man rapes a virgin he must pay her father 50 shekels of silver and then marry her.
The role of women was not much better in the Greek and Roman city states that directly preceded Christianity. There, women were valued solely for their ability to produce male warriors for the state and “true love” was the exclusive dominion of same sex relationships between men. Both cultures idealized a vision of violent masculinity that was enacted by adult men coercing boys and forcing slaves into a passive role in order to condition them into accepting virtues of dominance and unchecked aggression. These values were then absorbed by the young soldiers who would apply what they learned in the subjugation of foreign peoples. Since women held comparatively lesser worth in the expansion of empire, female babies were often left on hilltops to die of exposure. Running counter to the autocratic ideals of Rome were the Dionysian mystery cults, a decentralized religion that involved the induction of trance through music, spirit possession and intoxicants. The cults provided a gathering place for social dissidents such including slaves, women and foreigners who were afforded positions of respect atypical of their role in greater Roman and Greek society. The mystery cults of Dionysus have been interpreted as an affirmation and mastery over humanity's primal nature which could then be reintegrated into civilized life.
Although Dionysus was later absorbed into the Olympic pantheon, historians have come to a general consensus that the mystery cults were an indigenous tradition predating Greek civilization. The cults may have also been linked to the Dionysian artificers, an esoteric sect that incorporated aspects of sacred geometry into the construction of public buildings, which could then be used to feed impoverished people. Roman authorities outlawed the mystery cults, whose non-hierarchical structure they saw as a threat to the political status quo. The cult's central role in resistance against Roman tyranny was made apparent when the wife of Spartacus, who led a slave revolt against the Republic, was announced to have been a cult initiate who considered her husband to be an incarnation of Dionysus. As a final strategy, the Roman oligarchs decided to infiltrate the cults, which were then reformulated into a hierarchical structure and assimilated into the Roman state as the Bacchanalia. It may have been during this latter incarnation of the cult's evolution that stories of ritual violence, including murder, made their way to the floors of the Roman Senate.
Another decentralized religion that rose in opposition to the Roman aristocracy was the earliest phase of Christianity. The militant pacifism of Jesus existed in striking contrast to both the imperialistic virtues of Rome and the genocidal mandates of Jehovah. These ideas should not be interpreted as a passive acquiescence to injustice but instead as an act of moral force, whereby those who had been compelled to obedience through a societal paradigm which recognized strength as the only law took on a new role by leading and transforming the nature of their communities. Some of the first Christians were female priests who led congregations in private homes, a practice that directly opposed the values of Roman society which saw women as primarily breeding stock. In Mathew 5:9, Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Taken from the the context of a time period defined by war, slavery and gross social injustice, this statement is profoundly transgressive in a sense that is difficult to appreciate coming from the perspective of a modern person living in a democratic society. Where "survival of the fittest" is the law, women and children will necessarily take on a subordinate role sheerly by virtue of their lesser physical strength alone. This principle also applies to indigenous communities which obviously have not had the military strength to defend themselves against centralized nation states even when unavoidably necessary attempts at self defense have been made. Unfortunately the philosophy of the early Christians that "the meek will inherit the earth" was later horribly corrupted as the Roman Catholic Church went on to murder and enslave countless numbers of indigenous communities while enshrining social inequity as the mandate of God himself.
There has been endless academic debate about whether Jesus was a truly historical figure or a representation of the teachings of a much larger number of priests and mystics. Scholars are in unanimous agreement that the Gospels were written during the time of Gnosticism, another decentralized spiritual movement that believed the God of the Old Testament to be a malevolent being who created our world as a fallen universe separated from the Divine. Many Gnostic texts, especially the Gospel of Thomas, emphasize the idea that the light of Christ is accessible to everyone without the intervention of a priestly hierarchy, including polytheists and other supposed heretics. Religious worship frequently took place in private homes instead of churches. Gnostic beliefs regarding human sexuality varied greatly, from those of the Ophites, who invoked the serpent of Genesis as a symbol of forbidden knowledge through orgiastic celebrations, to dualistic views about the ultimate incompatibility of spirit and the body. Dualism was later embraced by the Roman Catholic Church, which also outlawed the ordination of female priests while branding Gnosticism a punishable heresy.
The establishment of Christianity as the central faith of Rome can be seen as a way to commodify divergent forms of spirituality that had the potential to undermine the powers of the state. In order to achieve religious centralization, the clergy appropriated elements of polytheistic iconography and essentially preserved the hierarchical cults of antiquity through the Church. Evidence for the influence of pagan religions on Catholicism is displayed in the architecture of Gothic cathedrals whose rose windows, supposedly representative of the Virgin Mary, are actually an ancient symbol for the Egyptian Isis, wife of the solar deity Osiris. The mythology of Isis is permeated with stories of miraculous pregnancies and she is also traditionally depicted wearing a cloak of stars, the same as the Virgin Mary. Osiris was one of many solar deities whose mythology represented the cyclical path of the sun as it symbolically died during the winter solstice and was born anew as a young child. Ancient pagans saw the sun gods as a personification of the life-giving force and their resurrection was often celebrated during the spring solstice through sex rites intended to ensure agricultural bounty.
Gothic cathedrals were built by early guilds of stone masons, who utilized their knowledge of sacred geometry to construct the churches in the image of the human body. The spires, obelisks and steeples represent pagan phallic worship with the church domes and entrances mirroring the receptive female. The rays of the sun, as they penetrate the rose windows, symbolize the moment of conception. Roses were also a symbol of the worship of Venus, a Roman goddess associated with love and fertility. The Greek virgin goddess Astraea was an additional inspiration for the Virgin Mary. Astraea's festivals were celebrated during August, the same time as the Catholic feast of the Assumption, signifying the day when the Virgin Mary went to heaven. The phallic reverence of the Roman empire is preserved in St. Peter' Square at the Vatican, where an obelisk was placed after being shipped from Egypt by the Roman emperor Caligula. Stories of solar deities like Dionysus were suppressed by the Church and later reconfigured into the mythology of Christ. Dionysus, whose birthday was celebrated during the winter solstice, was invoked during festivals where his body was symbolically eaten as bread. The Persian god Mithra, also born of a virgin, was known to have performed exorcisms and cured the sick. The Phyrgian deity Attis, born of the virgin Nana, died and was resurrected with his flesh symbolically consumed as bread by worshipers. All of the various solar deities were combined in the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was celebrated during the winter solstice.
Orthodox Christianity basically outlawed goddess worship while demoting female deities to the status of a mortal human whose role was primarily reproductive. Yet aspects of the Gnostic veneration for feminine archetypes reemerged several centuries later in a heretical Christian sect called the Cathars. The Cathars rejected Catholic deference to hierarchy while preaching that all men and women were equal. They believed that hell was reincarnation in the material world which had been created by the fallen god Jehovah. The Cathars were also devoted to universalism, a system of faith founded on the idea that all religions offer a pathway to heaven, the ultimate destination of all souls. The inner core of the Cathars were celibate, although this practice was not compulsory for all members. The sect preached that non-procreative sex was less morally problematic than the procreative variety, a teaching that led to them being labeled as sodomites in opposition to the biblical mandate of “be fruitful and multiply”. Catholic doctrine maintains that procreation is the primary purpose of marriage while minimizing the potential for marriage and sexuality to create a spiritually transcendent experience. These ethical questions about procreation must be analyzed from the context of the Medieval time period, during which one in five women died during child birth and approximately half of all newborns never lived past their first year. Many contemporary historians have discovered through the Malleus Malifecarum (Hammer of Evildoers) as well as other medieval documents, that herbal practitioners, particularly midwives, were a special focus of the Inquisition.
Medieval herbalists were likely familiar with the plant commonly known as Queen Anne's Lace, an emmenagogue (menstrual promoter) that has been used for centuries to prevent implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterine lining. Several different modern herbalists have conducted studies concluding that Queen Anne's Lace prevents pregnancy at a rate very close to 100% without the toxic side effects of synthetic estrogens. This effect closely mimics natural physiological processes, since up to 50% of pregnancies end in very often symptomless miscarriage. When Queen Anne's Lace is taken, the fertilized egg typically leaves the body within several days after conception, eliminating the waiting period necessary for clinical abortions. The plant works by thinning the uterine lining, which could also allow for a greater success rate when early abortions are needed, along with less discomfort during the process. Some of the many complications of pregnancy invariably include an increase in heart rate, blood volume and blood pressure, so a woman who has preexisting health problems in these areas will be under a much greater risk for maternal death and health complications.
There are many situations, even factoring in medical advances of recent decades, where the scientific record has shown that continuing a pregnancy would endanger the life of the mother, a problem highlighted by the maternal death rate in El Salvador, a shockingly high 1 in 350, where abortions are banned with no exception for the health of the mother. During medieval times, when women's access to effective, sanitary health care was minimal at best, the suppression of vitally useful information about herbal contraception undoubtedly led to an exponentially greater number of maternal deaths. When this information is taken into consideration, it stands to reason that Catholic dogma promoting procreation as a moral necessity was not only deeply unethical, it was also genocidal. Catholic intolerance of divergent viewpoints continued into the Albigensian Crusade, when the Cathar stronghold of Languedoc was invaded on orders of Pope Eugene III. Many thousands of Cathars were slaughtered even though their only provocation against the church had been strictly philosophical. The Church's predilection for genocide extended well into the 16th century with the Spanish Inquisition, an event that can be interpreted as a continuation of polytheistic blood sacrifice rituals. Another sect that has received much attention from both historians and the media is the Knights Templar, an organization that was in many ways the polar opposite of the Cathars. While the Cathars lived in voluntary poverty and tolerated other religions, the Templars amassed enormous fortunes and pillaged Muslim-controlled territories. A disproportionate amount of the media spotlight directed at the Templars concerns allegations of the fraternity engaging in violent sex rites where demonic idols were anointed with the fat of unbaptized babies. Most historians maintain that these accusations are inventions of the Church and as a result the Templars have come to be romanticized as martyrs of Christian persecution. In truth, the fraternity's inception was funded entirely by the Church and their extensive properties became the storehouses for Roman Catholic finances. The lurid details of ritualized orgies have since obscured the political ramifications of Templar banking, which was so widespread as to effectively set a precedent for the present day financial conglomerate. The Templars were organized in ways nearly identical to a modern corporation, even possessing a legal exemption to the Christian prohibition against money lending. In time, the Templars became so powerful that they accumulated numerous castles and estates while managing much, if not most, of Europe's capital through the fledgling system of fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is a practice that allows banks to loan astronomical sums based on a tiny fraction of tangible assets. This new system enabled small networks of bankers to collectively engineer economic collapses by calling in all debts at the same time, thus drastically reducing the amount of currency in circulation. Today, engineered collapses are coordinated by inside traders who declare bankruptcy after transferring the funds of their customers to offshore accounts that function as tax havens. Financial practices engineered by the Templars made it possible for Church authorities and feudal landowners to amass wealth in a way that had not been possible in previous eras. So the fraternity did a great deal to increase already vast disparities in wealth and social status, directly leading to a dramatic reduction in living standards for the majority of Europe's population.
The historical record indicates a strong possibility that, after the Templars were officially disbanded on orders of King Philip, many of their members went underground and resurfaced in other esoteric fraternities throughout Europe, such as the Knights Hospitallers, The Order of the Garter, the Knights of Malta and the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucians were an anonymous brotherhood who claimed to be devoted to reviving the arts and sciences of classical civilizations. The fraternity's impact on the cultural ethos of their time period was so significant that the award-winning scholar Frances Yates argued that both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment originated in Rosicrucian philosophy. While undoubtedly many within the organization were genuinely working for the stated Rosicrucian goals of providing free education and health care, other, more influential members maneuvered to create an elite brotherhood to rule over the commoners.
The Rosicrucian occultist John Dee, consultant and astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I, even coined the term “British Empire” while using his expertise in navigation to train European explorers who would go on to colonize and enslave Native Americans, among other “uncivilized” peoples. The Confesio Fraternitas is one of two doctrines widely regarded to have been written by founding members of the Rosicrucians and it contains the following quote, perfectly summarizing the contempt with which the author, and in all probability many other highly-placed members within the sect, regarded the common people: “A thousand times the unworthy may clamour, a thousand times may present themselves, yet God hath commanded our ears that they should hear none of them, and hath so compassed us about with His clouds that unto us, His servants, no violence can be done.”
Some of the most blatant examples of Rosicrucian-inspired occult symbolism can be found in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth. In the Rainbow Portrait, she is portrayed draped in a cloak decorated with dozens of eyes and ears, a statement that seems to imply the nearly metaphysical supremacy of Elizabethan England. This analysis becomes quite sensible in light of the fact that her court was the wellspring of the Secret Service, with Dee playing a prominent role in its genesis. The portrait is named after a rainbow that Elizabeth clutches in her right hand, an image that a variety of world cultures have interpreted as the mystic’s bridge between earth and the celestial realm. Additionally, Hinduism assigns a chakra to every color of the rainbow, possibly indicating an intellectual or spiritual influence of Dee's, who was known to dabble in the yogic tradition. This hypothesis is further reinforced by the coiled snake on Elizabeth’s cloak, since the serpent has traditionally been viewed as an allusion to the path of illumination through the rising of the kundalini force.
The court of the Medicis is considered by many researchers, including Yates, to have been a converging point for Rosicrucians, and the family itself is rumored to have contained grand masters of the esoteric Priory of Sion fraternity. The Medicis commissioned countless works of art containing occult themes, including Bronzino’s Allegory of Venus, a painting adorned with fertility symbols such as roses, a snakeskin and a beehive. The Allegory of Venus is one of many paintings of the Renaissance that can be seen as a reenactment of Roman bacchanalia. Of the Bacchanalia, Roman historian Thomas Madden writes “…there was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was committed by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim.” Viewed in this context, the golden apple of Venus most likely represents a fall from Christian standards of purity, even though, since the Medicis were well-connected socialites, they must have known that the supposed moral crimes of commoners paled in comparison to the debauchery of the papacy. The dove in the lower left hand corner has also been associated with the Egyptian goddess Semiramis and then with Isis at a later point. The mask in the lower right hand corner also points towards the painting being a depiction of a mascherate (masque), a masked ball that combines poetry and musical performance. The mascherate had been perfected and performed by Lorenzo de Medici, who wrote the majority of the poetry for the masques which happened in his lifetime. It is abundantly clear that Lorenzo modeled these occasions after Roman bacchanalia, since he decorated the theater in which the masques took place with not only a replication of Roman triumphal cars and arches, but also their trophies, sculptures and ornamentation. Usage of the masks within the mascherate was another appropriation of polytheistic cultures, since the mask has a long history of being worn during pagan ceremonies in order to achieve a dissociative state through dance and chanting. The spirits of animals were even believed to possess the wearers as they danced. Masks have also been used in conjunction with masonic initiation ceremonies where the initiate is masked before undergoing a symbolic death and rebirth.
It is notable that Machiavelli once remarked that the masques were merely a way for autocratic rulers to quell dissent among the populace. A nearly identical concept in the Roman world would have been the distraction of the masses by bread and circuses, which were made available to all citizens in order to prevent rioting. The Roman bacchanalia have historically been associated with political crimes and conspiracies, suggesting that the debaucherous activities contained within were at least in part a ruse by which political elites could elicit the secrets of those who they wished to direct into a desired course of action. Present day incarnations of this pattern can be seen in the Cremation of Care ceremonies at the elite Bohemian Grove, where a wooden effigy is ritually burned in front of a a circle of chanting revelers wearing white robes. On the surface, the Grove is a summer camp for the nation’s elite, with a guest roster that has listed Bush Sr. and Jr., Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Predictably, the site has been linked to personal scandals ranging from crossdressing to child prostitution and murder.
The presence of ritualized androgyny at the Grove may be yet another occult influence since, for the Rosicrucians, androgyny was a way to reach the divine through the unification of polar opposites in harmonious perfection. Rosicrucian ideas about the transformative nature of androgyny may very well have originated with the accounts of European colonists, since literally hundreds of indigenous cultures throughout North and South America have placed gender deviant tribal members in a shamanistic role within their respective cultures. Yet mystical androgyny took shape in a very different way in the highly codified world of European high society, being used more for increasing and maintaining social divisions instead of promoting cultural unity as had typically been the case with indigenous cultures. An alchemical text from the 17th century, Philosophia Reformata, contains a drawing of a crowned man and woman turned towards one another in bed, alongside two soaring ravens and two images of the sun. The description says that the royal brother and sister are purified by fire, after which they are “united” and cleansed of corruption by the dew of heaven. A subsequent drawing depicts the siblings emerging from a grave as a hermaphrodite underneath the storm of a rain cloud. It may be that the text's not-so-subtle reference to incest is an acknowledgement of the European resurrection of Egyptian traditions perpetuating the divine bloodlines of the royal family through intermarriage.
According to a countless number of inside sources, nearly all the campers at the Bohemian Grove belong to occult fraternities descended from the Templars and Rosicrucians. The camp's name itself is likely derived from the occult history of the kingdom Bohemia, which, particularly during the reign of Frederick V was regarded as a center for Rosicrucian activities and research. It is probable that the cyclical nature of the personal scandals of political elites are attributable not only to the banalities of human nature, but also to the covert machinations of occult fraternities, where ill-favored initiates are ousted from the cult either by taking the blame for activities of the group or, more ominously, by getting “disappeared”. It is known that the first four sonnets of Lorenzo de Medici’s Comento were dedicated to a woman named Simonetta, who appears in the masque as Venus. This fact is significant because Simonetta died at the age of 23 on April 26, in the brief window of energetic potency that occult practitioners believe surrounds the pagan holiday of Beltane. Exactly two years later to the day, Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano was assassinated by the papacy, begging the question of whether their deaths were yet another facet of the revived Bacchanalia. Part 2
Monday, December 13, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Judge orders CIA to produce data on MK Ultra experiments
I'm a bit late on this article but thought it was worth posting because projects like these so rarely end up in the public eye. The small number of people involved in the lawsuit are only a drop in the bucket but one can at least hope that this case will set a precedent. If the American public had any clue that their own government has been regularly performing dangerous, illegal experiments on countless US citizens, including children, then there's a chance that the already dwindling support for the bloated war machine could dry up in a heartbeat.
Apparently Wikileaks is threatening to release documents about MK Ultra along with all the irresponsible, counterproductive info like blueprints for nuclear weapons and the like. That particular document seems to be removed from the site so I see no harm in discussing it since the leak reveals what may very well be state propaganda, especially considering Assange's outright dismissal of the 9/11 truth movement. What I don't understand about the whole drama is that the supposed advantage of open source networks is decentralization, including the ability for mass networks of people to subvert hierarchical paradigms, yet instead it's being used to pander to someone's obvious megalomania, a mistake that could easily lead to internet censorship and other draconian measures.
I sense something very off about the situation because usually people with credible information don't end up in the papers. But instead it's garnering front page news, bringing far more attention to the site than if nothing had been done in the first place. There's a great article at Global Research regarding how many of the cables simply reiterate what has already been stated in the mainstream media about the supposed dangers of Iran, meaning that wikileaks may be a tool of the neocons. Regardless of all this, I hope that ethical people within the organization can get it together and start making some critical decisions about what documents to release, MK Ultra records being a good starting point for that. Because anyone who doesn't have their head buried in the sand knows that the project did not end in 1975.
CIA Must Disclose Data on Human Experiments
(CN) - A federal magistrate judge in San Francisco ordered the CIA to produce specific records and testimony about the human experiments the government allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975.
Three veterans groups and six individual veterans sued the CIA and other government agencies, claiming they used about 7,800 soldiers as human guinea pigs to research biological, chemical and psychological weapons.
The experiments, many of which took place at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick in Maryland, allegedly exposed test subjects to chemicals, drugs and electronic implants. Though the soldiers volunteered, they never gave informed consent, because the government didn't fully disclose the risks, the veterans claimed. They were also required to sign an oath of secrecy, according to the complaint.
The veterans filed three sets of document requests to find out who was tested, what substances they were given, and how it affected them. Between October and April, the government produced about 15,000 pages of heavily redacted records, most of which related to the named plaintiffs only.
The CIA argued that much of the information requested was protected under the Privacy Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
U.S. Magistrate Judge James Larson acknowledged that some of the requests were too broad and ordered the veterans to be more specific and to reduce the total number of requests.
For example, Larson said the plaintiffs' definition of "test program" is "overbroad," as it not only named experimental programs like "Bluebird," "Artichoke" and "MKUltra," but also included "any other program of experimentation involving human testing of any substance, including but not limited to 'MATERIAL TESTING PROGRAM EA 1729.'"
He ordered the veterans to provide a list of specific test programs and test substances.
But once the plaintiffs narrow their requests, Larson said, they are entitled to most of the information. Each government agency must respond individually to each request, he said, and if an agency denies any request, it must explain -- in sufficient detail -- why the records are purportedly privileged.
The CIA has already claimed that some documents are protected under the state-secrets privilege, but Larson said the agency needs to be more specific. He asked for a "supplemental declaration explaining with heightened specificity" why the documents are considered state secrets. Because these documents might contain sensitive information, the judge allowed the CIA to file the declaration under seal.
Larson rejected the government's bid to limit the scope of discovery, saying doing so "removes the remaining hurdle" for the CIA to respond to the veterans' sets of requests.
"Defendants should respond in earnest to Plaintiffs' discovery requests, regardless of any ongoing or prior searches, investigations, or litigation," Larson wrote. He said the government can't limit disclosure to information about the six individual plaintiffs.
The CIA insisted discovery was unwarranted in its case, because it never funded or conducted drug research on military personnel.
Larson wasn't convinced.
"[T]his court rejects the conclusion that the CIA necessarily lacks a nexus to Plaintiffs' claims, and orders the CIA to respond in earnest" to the veterans' requests, "particularly because defendants have presented evidence that would appear to cast doubt on that conclusion," he wrote.
The government also tried to avoid deposition, claiming too much time had passed since the alleged experiments, and any witnesses familiar with the projects likely no longer work for the government. The CIA further argued, unsuccessfully, that the court should stay discovery until the Department of Defense completes its investigation of the experiments.
Larson reminded the CIA that it "cannot use the DoD investigation as an excuse to avoid discovery responsibilities."
He then addressed which topics are fair game for deposition, saying the government must produce witnesses to testify about the following: communication between the VA and test subjects on their health care claims; a 1963 CIA Inspector General report on an experiment called MKUltra, and the basis for each redaction on that report; the scope and conduct of document searches; the doses and effects of substances administered to test subjects; any contract or research proposals concerning the experiments; a confidential Army memo about the use of volunteers in research; all government-led human experiments from 1975 to date, but only those that involve specific drugs; and whether the government secretly administered MKUltra materials to "the patrons of prostitutes" in safe houses in New York and San Francisco, as the veterans claimed.
Judge Larson ruled for the CIA on other issues, however, saying the agency's not required to testify about test subjects who withdrew their consent or refused to participate; devices allegedly implanted into certain test subjects; the alleged use of patients at VA hospitals as guinea pigs in chemical and biological weapons experiments; or the drug research studies conducted by Dr. Paul Hoch, who was purportedly funded by the government and caused the death of a patient named Harold Blauer.
Though Larson declined to sanction the government, as the veterans sought, he warned that he would impose sanctions for any "future unjustifiable discovery recalcitrance."
Named plaintiffs are the Vietnam Veterans of America, Swords to Plowshare, the Veterans Rights Organization, Bruce Price, Franklin D. Rochelle, Larry Meirow, Eric P. Muth, David C. Dufrane and Wray C. Forrest.
Apparently Wikileaks is threatening to release documents about MK Ultra along with all the irresponsible, counterproductive info like blueprints for nuclear weapons and the like. That particular document seems to be removed from the site so I see no harm in discussing it since the leak reveals what may very well be state propaganda, especially considering Assange's outright dismissal of the 9/11 truth movement. What I don't understand about the whole drama is that the supposed advantage of open source networks is decentralization, including the ability for mass networks of people to subvert hierarchical paradigms, yet instead it's being used to pander to someone's obvious megalomania, a mistake that could easily lead to internet censorship and other draconian measures.
I sense something very off about the situation because usually people with credible information don't end up in the papers. But instead it's garnering front page news, bringing far more attention to the site than if nothing had been done in the first place. There's a great article at Global Research regarding how many of the cables simply reiterate what has already been stated in the mainstream media about the supposed dangers of Iran, meaning that wikileaks may be a tool of the neocons. Regardless of all this, I hope that ethical people within the organization can get it together and start making some critical decisions about what documents to release, MK Ultra records being a good starting point for that. Because anyone who doesn't have their head buried in the sand knows that the project did not end in 1975.
CIA Must Disclose Data on Human Experiments
(CN) - A federal magistrate judge in San Francisco ordered the CIA to produce specific records and testimony about the human experiments the government allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975.
Three veterans groups and six individual veterans sued the CIA and other government agencies, claiming they used about 7,800 soldiers as human guinea pigs to research biological, chemical and psychological weapons.
The experiments, many of which took place at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick in Maryland, allegedly exposed test subjects to chemicals, drugs and electronic implants. Though the soldiers volunteered, they never gave informed consent, because the government didn't fully disclose the risks, the veterans claimed. They were also required to sign an oath of secrecy, according to the complaint.
The veterans filed three sets of document requests to find out who was tested, what substances they were given, and how it affected them. Between October and April, the government produced about 15,000 pages of heavily redacted records, most of which related to the named plaintiffs only.
The CIA argued that much of the information requested was protected under the Privacy Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
U.S. Magistrate Judge James Larson acknowledged that some of the requests were too broad and ordered the veterans to be more specific and to reduce the total number of requests.
For example, Larson said the plaintiffs' definition of "test program" is "overbroad," as it not only named experimental programs like "Bluebird," "Artichoke" and "MKUltra," but also included "any other program of experimentation involving human testing of any substance, including but not limited to 'MATERIAL TESTING PROGRAM EA 1729.'"
He ordered the veterans to provide a list of specific test programs and test substances.
But once the plaintiffs narrow their requests, Larson said, they are entitled to most of the information. Each government agency must respond individually to each request, he said, and if an agency denies any request, it must explain -- in sufficient detail -- why the records are purportedly privileged.
The CIA has already claimed that some documents are protected under the state-secrets privilege, but Larson said the agency needs to be more specific. He asked for a "supplemental declaration explaining with heightened specificity" why the documents are considered state secrets. Because these documents might contain sensitive information, the judge allowed the CIA to file the declaration under seal.
Larson rejected the government's bid to limit the scope of discovery, saying doing so "removes the remaining hurdle" for the CIA to respond to the veterans' sets of requests.
"Defendants should respond in earnest to Plaintiffs' discovery requests, regardless of any ongoing or prior searches, investigations, or litigation," Larson wrote. He said the government can't limit disclosure to information about the six individual plaintiffs.
The CIA insisted discovery was unwarranted in its case, because it never funded or conducted drug research on military personnel.
Larson wasn't convinced.
"[T]his court rejects the conclusion that the CIA necessarily lacks a nexus to Plaintiffs' claims, and orders the CIA to respond in earnest" to the veterans' requests, "particularly because defendants have presented evidence that would appear to cast doubt on that conclusion," he wrote.
The government also tried to avoid deposition, claiming too much time had passed since the alleged experiments, and any witnesses familiar with the projects likely no longer work for the government. The CIA further argued, unsuccessfully, that the court should stay discovery until the Department of Defense completes its investigation of the experiments.
Larson reminded the CIA that it "cannot use the DoD investigation as an excuse to avoid discovery responsibilities."
He then addressed which topics are fair game for deposition, saying the government must produce witnesses to testify about the following: communication between the VA and test subjects on their health care claims; a 1963 CIA Inspector General report on an experiment called MKUltra, and the basis for each redaction on that report; the scope and conduct of document searches; the doses and effects of substances administered to test subjects; any contract or research proposals concerning the experiments; a confidential Army memo about the use of volunteers in research; all government-led human experiments from 1975 to date, but only those that involve specific drugs; and whether the government secretly administered MKUltra materials to "the patrons of prostitutes" in safe houses in New York and San Francisco, as the veterans claimed.
Judge Larson ruled for the CIA on other issues, however, saying the agency's not required to testify about test subjects who withdrew their consent or refused to participate; devices allegedly implanted into certain test subjects; the alleged use of patients at VA hospitals as guinea pigs in chemical and biological weapons experiments; or the drug research studies conducted by Dr. Paul Hoch, who was purportedly funded by the government and caused the death of a patient named Harold Blauer.
Though Larson declined to sanction the government, as the veterans sought, he warned that he would impose sanctions for any "future unjustifiable discovery recalcitrance."
Named plaintiffs are the Vietnam Veterans of America, Swords to Plowshare, the Veterans Rights Organization, Bruce Price, Franklin D. Rochelle, Larry Meirow, Eric P. Muth, David C. Dufrane and Wray C. Forrest.
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