Gather round wayward Fools to listen to a Fool recount the Foolish ways. How long have you traveled? Not long enough! Let us discuss our misplaced ambitions and histories of folly before it is too late! Ha, who am I kidding? There is no severity here. We Fools are like air- abstract and empty. What is there to say about emptiness?….*cricket chirping*…..Vacuous and hence immeasurable; we are the paradox upon the precipice of existence- the gnosis of agnosis- before the first and after the last- zero.
The Fool is marked 0 in the trump series (0-XXI) of the tarot deck, and represents in the cosmic cycle- a primal individuated state which is unestablished beyond the immediacy of self hood. But the unconditioned nature of the Fool contains an essential wisdom Existence not yet obscured by attachments to power or knowledge, nothing hindering the primal experience of being, the Fool has the mad wisdom, the zen wisdom; a childlike nature which still holds the rose of original truth, consciousness, and bliss- guided by an unconscious knowing of Platonic love; veiled as sensual experience.
The Fool is on a quest for experience to fill the existential vacuum born from unconditioned self awareness. The world had been abandoned by the Fool (represented by the preceding card, XXI, “The World” when the trump series is viewed as a cyclical narrative) in order to become individuated from the established whole. The fool left the world in order to find self-hood in the world. Sounds paradoxical and perhaps even foolish, but that is the essential quality after all.
In French the card is titled Le Mat (from Itallian Matto), which means madman or beggar. The Fool is an outsider, intentionally or not, and is often depicted as wondering through nature wearing tattered clothing and carrying a simple staff with bundle attached. The fool would be typically seen away from civilization, likely on a hill somewhere reflecting on beauty. Incidentally, Paul McCartney was inspired to write the song “Fool on the Hill” by walks with his dog on Primrose Hill. Further, Alistair Taylor writes in the book Yesterday, that there was a mysterious incident on one of those walks involving a man who inexplicably appeared and disappeared near he and McCartney just after they were discussing the existence of God.
In many versions of the card, the Fool is shown on the brink of some peril and seemingly unaware of it. Most of the time it is a cliff edge, but occasionally it is a crocodile or some other dangerous animal. In these images there is always a dog accompanying the Fool, usually shown as if barking to alert the Fool of the danger . This is often interpreted as the Fools animal nature, but further it could be seen as a reference to Cynicism- as Diogenes the Cynic lived likewise outside of civilization and taught the simple virtues of being dog-like.
The Fool is associated with Spring, and the Pagan new years of April Fools (am I serious?). The Fool is deeply entrenched in the Dionysian undercurrents-. the fertility of the Green Man, the foolish innocence of Percival, the drunkenness of Bacchus; are but a few of the apparent mythic parallels, and all their exploits may serve to better understand the condition of the Fool. The wandering princess was “always the fool of the family”. but foolishness is holiness; and wholly blessed by nature.
Given the timeless quality of the Fool, one could wonder, is there ever a destination? In a sense, no. We all retain something of this quality, our original move into individuation- that eternal inner child. The destination for the Fool lies within. The destination was with the Fool the entire journey. It is the realization of the Fools own inner qualities (what is inside the bundle?) which brings about personal alchemical transformation- to become the alchemist, the magician; a juggler of the primeval elements of nature.
Why did it take so long to open the bundle? Had she forgotten what she took from world to world? That’s a Fool for ya! 😀 The point of this prolonged wandering was to prepare the Fool for the ultimate quest- to mount “The World” within. It is an alchemical process whereby the universe may be individuated, and then internalized, so as to explore the all/self of existence. No two journeys are alike, but the narrative arcs are self similar. Each is a fractal containing and being contained by the whole *roles eyes*. This germ of awareness is what drove the Fool mad with existence; but through temperance this madness is crafted into magical art forms. *fap fap * 😛
Through foolishness comes cunning. The Fool learns first to apply this craft as the Joker. Comic relief is a portal for transportation and transformation *yawn*. The art of entertaining through jest and satire can be the most revolutionary form of communicating ideas (so stop boring me already :D). The Joker card of standard playing card decks is synonymous with the Fool, but also alludes to the Fool’s future form as the Magician. Marked card I of the trump series, the Magician card is titled Le Bateleur (The Juggler) in the French version, and represents the refinement of magical will in the individual. (oh god, not more fapping!)
In some versions of the Magician card one can see the fool’s bundle in the foreground; its contents emptied out as objects which represent the four suits of the tarot, symbolic of the four elements- wands/fire, cups/water, swords/air, disk/earth. Sorcery is the ability to understand and use the forces of nature to achieve desired ends. In the Fools wanderings these forces had become experienced as governing principles. As Magician, the Fool transmutes this accumulation of personal experience through natural observation in order to understand causes and how to engineer effects. Special effects!
There is a strong Hermetic element to the Magican. Not only in the sense of the Magicians association with the Hermetic Sciences and alchemy, but also for the trickster element which Hermes embodies. If you will recall the first act which Hermes performed after being born. Baby Hermes slipped unnoticed from his sleeping mother and released Apollo’s cattle from their fencing as a practical joke, and what he did with those cattle further emphasizes his cunning. This sort of behavior is revealing of Hermes’ anarchic charms; like the Dionysian currents through which the Fool had traveled, the Hermetic is an ecstatic realm albeit more refined.
As the Magician; the Fool turns the pursuit for pleasure into sexual prowess- the weary journey into athletic skill- the need to beg into thief craft- the alienation from all civilization into travel between worlds- the comic relief into divine comedy! All that was born from primal desires and necessity is given to fruit as self mastery. In many depictions the Magician is wearing a hat, which forms an infinity symbol, or there is an infinity symbol above the head. The eternal knowledge which the Magician posses is indicated by the gesturing of the hands up and down (as above, so below). This is a a knowledge only apprehended through the direct experience of it. That is, one can only come to it through much Foolishness.
So, in the name of all Fools; go forth and be blinded by wondrous unknowing, for everything forgotten shall return in time; but be wary of cliff ledges and crocodiles by listening to your animal instincts; or don’t. Do what ever you want to; which is inevitably guided by forces beyond you, which makes this entire metaphor of a Fool’s journey rather redundant. Well, that’s not the point. It’s something else. It’s not about the information at all. It’s a series of triggering devices, but that is not the point. The point of it has something to do with underlying juxtaposition of living entities within a psychic landscape of signs. What is behind the signs? Where are we really? Do you see this?
It is a stage.
Step off it.
…….Welp, certainly hope those animal instincts kicked in for you there, because you know what? It isn’t the world that’s the stage. It is your mind. The staging that occurs, takes place in your mind as it was conditioned to do so. But those objects of mind were fashioned after the real world; that place which is not staged; where nature rules eternally. There are the real forces which first fashioned all that has been elaborated into abstraction. These forces are as much a part of mind as matter, and your objective now as a Magician is to unify this division.
So, in the name of all Fools deluded enough to think of themselves as Magicians, go forth and be one with the transformations of nature. You are a sorcerer now, and have the ability to do much, much much. I can’t really say what it is you can do, because I don’t know you personally; but I’m sure it’s going to be cool. If you’ve had the patience to read this far through this long winded exorcize then I can guarantee you have the perseverance to do anything you set your pretty little head to. Shit, you could even be the next version of your future self by the time you finish reading this sentence.
1723 is a significant indicator amongst the neoteric avant-garde. It is an obscure number, much to its effect- as all things “occult” (hidden) operate most effectively when they remain widely unknown. It’s like flying saucers- If you have them, and no one else even knows how they work; you can be obscured by confusion, disbelief, and misdirection. The gap in knowledge is the only thing that makes the flying saucer seem “alien”, and likewise the only thing that makes 1723 seem “occult”. Once you have your very own flying saucer, that aspect of life is entirely demystified.
Mysticism is a mist which creates a schism between self and understanding. Many people enjoy that mist, and even as it clears to them personally they continue to waft it into the eyes of others. Reason can cut through the mist and find those solid platonic objects which lay beyond. To traverse the realms of mysticism with full faculty of mind- as neoplatonism set out to synthesize Platonic Idealism with Aristotelian Logic (as above so below)- synchrologistics does not end at mere esoteric thesis.
The significance of 1723 to synchrologistics is:
17 is an auspicious number, and a portal number, the sum of the first four primes, containing the combined esoteric qualities of the preceding 11 and 13. The obliqueness of it’s use, as opposed to 11 and 13- places it deeper into the occult. Represented as an eight pointed star in ancient Sumerian symbolism- as one and seven is eight- 17 has a hidden symmetrical quality. Once at eight it’s only a hop skip and a jump to 64 (the central nexus for data exchange in our matrix of reality). This makes 17 a very useful number indeed. Perhaps now that we speak of it, it will be begin to show itself more. After all, the neoteric arts are the future of the occult.
23 is a number which denotes synchronicity, or acausal (without cause) interrelation. Because of its acausal nature it has been used in military code to indicate “chaos”- a factor which is uncontrolled. The 23rd hexagram of the I ching is associated with the downfall of unjust rule. Because of this matrix of ideas 23 is heavily associated with Discordianism. 2 and 3 are the first two prime numbers, and their sum, 5, the third. 23 interfaces the matrix of the human nervous system, represented through 5, with the chaos of the universe- to harmonize experience through found meaning (23×3=69).
As post-modern as the neoteric significance of 17 and 23 may seem, the significance of 1723 is even more so. Some have speculated that 1723 is reference to the year 1723- citing Vivaldi’s composition of “The Four Seasons” as resonant with the cycles of nature, or the foundational work of modern Freemasonry, “Anderson’s Constitutions”, as indicative of some Masonic conspiracy. If there is a conspiracy, in this case it is on them.
Others have taken the sum of 17 and 23, 40, to draw from the numerous mythic and legendary references to that number….40 days in the desert, 40 days and nights of the flood, Alibaba and the 40 thieves etc. All of these associations are fine, and as with all things esoteric, there is no definitive “right” answer. Signs are surrounded by shells of meaning, no single shell conclusively describes the sign.
Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocal connects virtual networks through Port 1723. Using this virtual reality as a metaphor for the interactions between minds- Port 1723 is the access point for information exchange between minds, lines secured through common language ques and signifiers. As Port 1723 is “hackable” through packet spoofing, the mind is ‘hackable” through similar use of language ques and semiotic devices. You will find that the hyperreality of the internet is like a self-similar fractal of the actual reality from which it is constructed as a mechanical metaphor.
To deconstruct the analogy of 1723 is to come to the bare bones of reality interfacing. Whatever meaning you may find in it, if any at all, is entirely subjective as your personal significance, given the data stream which is available to you. But beyond the data stream, beyond the mechanics- what do you really want out of it all? 1723 is a tool and your inner most self is that unseen hand which wields it
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special thanks to Frank Conrad for helping me with this article.
In my fiction I gave my life purpose a priori to life, and my life is the vehicle to that purpose. The fact is, I can’t really know that, but I can feel it, and knowing that I can not really know anything at all gives me the flexibility to work with feelings without need for convictions. Impressions are personal. Neither nature, nor nurture fully explain the complex construction of personal identity. Chasing causal relations only goes so far before an imaginative leap is required. And when one considers the non-causal interrelations that tie through personal identity, there seems to be a deeper than life narrative which is self constructed, yet consistent with external verification.
Astrology attempts to do this by imagining a system of meaning to events correlated with relation to astrological bodies. There is more than one astrological system, yet to those who subscribe to either, or even both- patterns can still be recognized to validate personal content. What is the process of pattern recognition within preconceived systems, and how can it be opened to interrelate all patterns unconstrained by any system?
Plotinus is quoted for asking skeptically, “are the stars causes?” For, the significance given to stars, and symbols in general is a product of the mind, not the symbol or star. And so Plotinus reasoned that, though the stars are not causes to the life of those born under them, they are effectively ensouled within the mind through the process of giving meaning. And so, we see many interpretations of the same stars and symbols, all holding the potential for meaning. One could reinvent meaning and find the same verification of it.
The same can be said about tarot, i ching, kabbalah, tea leaves, or any other method which ascribes personal meaning to patterns within a system. For the content to relate is always non-causal. The proof of this is in the mutual confirmation of meaning within conflicting definitions of belief. It works no matter how you slice it. Synchronicity describes all meaning found in this manner. It is about the closest to an objective science as you can get with such subjective materials, and comes as close to a breakdown of the subject/object barrier as quantum physics- which I know absolutely nothing about, so that is really just an assumption. So much is an assumption, which is sort of the point I’m getting at. 🙂
How this takes place is entirely dependent on the individual, on the accumulation of all that went into constructing their sense of self,-and how it relates to the collective world view or zeitgeist which they are a part of. In childhood we usually don’t think if the process of self development or world view construction. We tend to take information at face value until we are around long enough to discover its contradictions. Sometimes those contradiction turn out to be paradoxes and through this the mind can develop the ability to go beyond belief and use the relative fiction of meaning as a personal tool rather than a mental crutch.
Positivism, Empiricism, and Atheism may be very functioning systems, yet fail to escape the relativity they attempt to diminish by eschewing subjective qualities. What I find more valuable to working with things is perhaps deemed Existentialism, or even plain old Agnosticism. Despite popular belief, not knowing is really one of the most existentially soothing places to be. You can direct meaning how it feels to you, and avoid the cognitive dissonance which is inevitable with any belief system. Do I believe that? No, but it is how I feel about it. See?
I have always felt certain ways about things. As far back as I remember there were familiar themes to my feelings. These themes painted my internal world and I lived them out. The feeling of hesitancy to feeling is a feeling which inspires repression. The feelings of indifference or confusion are feelings which inspire dismissal or agitation. Thought process is motivated by feeling. I am feeling inquisitive about something so I research it. Action is motivated by feeling. I am feeling thirst so I drink some water (not bottled this time). Feelings can be repressed from thought or action, but foremost they are real. What does it mean? It means you have a mind and body of your own which responds uniquely to circumstances, and through interaction, paints a picture of who you are.
Some feelings change rapidly. Tastes change, and affections can fade. But there are some core feelings which seem to inform the particular feelings, and something about that core seems closest to an authentic personal identity as one could get. Out of that, all narrative is personally phrased. Personal motivation comes from the quality of internal feeling. Though we may feel resentful of a situation, we may also feel required to participate in it. Core feelings and secondary feelings are often in conflict, and so we all experience split motives at times.
Personally and collectively we are in conflict. This life is a chaotic and seemingly random collision of conflicting elements, but patterns arise, and conditions emerge which unify seemingly disparate meanings. We can all at least agree that existence is something to experience, but the details are so particular that it seems impossible to relate them all as mutually understood. This is not necessary problematic until it turns into a conflict- as all war is waged by the conflicting particulars over the shard absolutes. Essentially we are all the same, but specifically we are all unique- which makes us all the same again.
It is all a story, and we are the author written in as characters. As we approach the paradox of being the fiction writer and the written fiction something very strange occurs. I don’t want to say, because I don’t want to give it away in case you haven’t read to that point yet. Welp, I’ve already said too much and I should really get going to bed. Goodnight, sweetdreams, I love you.
Trauma is unavoidable in life. The act itself of being born is an experience of being ripped from a comfort and life support- to be dragged into a harsh realm of overwhelming sense stimulation which steadily molds the mind into an ego. As the sense of self develops, it becomes vulnerable to ever more elaborated forms of trauma. The fear of death is no longer attached only to the immediate sensation of dying, but also the associated mental phenomenon of personal identity. The ego could be seen as a shell formed from the trauma of separation from amniotic oneness, but the formation of the ego can be guided through intentional application of trauma.
When the sense of self is threatened early in life it can result in a higher malleability of ego. Tendencies to dissociate and enter into non-ordinary experiences increase in those who have undergone additional trauma. In some cultures those who experienced serious illness as children ,and came close to death, would often became the shamans, medicine men, and vision seers for their society. Ritual practices that used methods like sensory deprivation were developed to further enhance the dissociative powers of the individual. In these instances the person was considered a source for wisdom and guidance, someone who could pull away the exterior of the phenomenal world and see into inner realities. This would take the form of communication with gods, ancestor spirits, animal totems, or other figures depending on the cultural vocabulary.
All of the techniques of mysticism- drug inducement, sensory deprivation, sensory overload- are also the most pernicious techniques of tyrants. As much as natural traumatic circumstances can open an individual to non-ordinary states of awareness, and and ecstatic techniques used in a self directed manner- Trauma can also be intentionally induced, and the same techniques used against the individual to hijack their direction. Like anything, any technology can be used for creative or destructive purposes. Sex can be an experience of wholeness or an experience of rape and powerlessness at the hands of a malevolent other.
Sexual abuse is perhaps the most pertinent demonstration of intentionally induced trauma. Someone doesn’t accidentally get raped or molested. The experience of being violated in this way, especially as a young child, often results in repressions which manifest as various symptoms and tendencies throughout life- depending on the circumstances and the degree of repression. Where one person could adopt the defense of embracing open sexuality to reclaim a lost sense of personal control over sex, another person might withdraw entirely from sexual experiences as a way to avoid reliving the trauma which they knowingly or unknowingly repress.
Sexual abuse is something which has probably occurred for a long time, and at one point people must have noticed the tendencies of repression and its formation on identity. Techniques were devised to intentionally induce trauma in children and attempt to steer their identity formation entirely. To protect the sense of self, the ego withdraws in experiences of extreme trauma. When this is combined with drugs and hypnotic induction, the mind can be opened up by a facilitator and the personality be rewritten. Because of the repressive tendency it can be easy to insert conditioning without the conscious ego of the individual to apprehend what has occurred.
This sort of technique has been extensively explored by government, military, and private interests in the 20th century. Though its most extreme forms are perhaps too grueling for many people to even consider, especially if they are themselves repressing trauma, the theories which developed from this research into trauma induced mind control were formative to the development of modern popular culture, news, and entertainment. Many motifs of popular culture come directly out of psychological imprinting manuals, and many have been led to suspect that a great majority of popular entertainers have been victims of trauma induced mind control. Perhaps the tendency for the victim to become the abuser is demonstrated in the case of mind control victims becoming mind control agents. I shutter to think of the possibility that this chain of mind fuck has become entirely self directed through the process of being developed- that humanity is at war with a mental manipulation which has detached itself from human intention entirely. And when one projects this trend into a transhumanist future… it looks pretty fucking bleak.
When we pathologize the effects of living in a society sick with manipulative trauma, we collectively repress the trauma, and it becomes all encompassing. Trauma has become business as usual. Obedience is easily bought off through glittering distractions- glittering distractions which glaringly reenforce the trauma, while diverting attention away from it. We live in a state of terror. The war on terror is the war by terror, and entertainment primes the collective identity formation- progressively and steadily guiding through imprint. Where are the shamans, the medicine men, and the vision seers? Have they all been replaced by the spook, the handler, and the government funded remote viewer?
Brett Waste is a friend and colleague of mine who I’d like to include as a contributor to this journal. Brett and I have collaborated on past projects through the NSA (Nameless Syndicated Archives) and Discordia555– as these projects have involved synchronicity and hyperreal process, they will serve as continual reference to the development of synchrologistics. And so it is only appropriate that we introduce the man in his own words.
EC-Hi, Brett, welcome to my imaginary talk show.
BW- Great to be here. 🙂
EC- So, to start off, what’s the hair about?
BW- When I was younger and people gave me more trouble on the street in the regressive Eighties – I was often called a ‘Rooster’ from across the road by the occupants of speeding cars…there is a very good reason for this...In ‘Citizen Kane’ Kane (Hearst) makes shadow puppets of a cock rooster on the wall to entertain the young girlfriend with the sweet tooth he is seducing. Hence the shaman punk is a representative of the cock…this is only likely to get in the face of other males
EC- Yes, it elicits a primal response. Now, what is with the name “mohawk” anways? Was it a hair dress of the Mohican tribe or something?
BW- Technically the Mohicans of North East Canada did not have the Grecian plume (except for medicine men due to intertribal relationships) – the tribe that had the hairstyle were the Hurons which means in French-Canadian trapper slang “toilet-brush head”. This is because the hair cuts reminded the fur trappers of the European Boar which had a similar ridge of spiked hair and fur on its head that was used for toilet brushes in the Victorian era…A relative of mine was awarded Victorian military medals for taking part in the Battle of Red River against Huron forces in 1870.
EC- I see, so it would be more appropriate to call it a Huron then?
BW- Yes, so the more appropriate term would be the ‘Huron’, but we must remember this was not the tribal name of their own group – this would have been an Indian name loosely meaning ‘The People’….what the French Canadian trappers were doing was the equivalent of what yobs do today yelling toilet brush head at me…as a punk.
EC- Speaking of hair, the other hare. I was checking out this niftydice roller that you use. Could you tell me what you use this for, and why it is called “catch your hare”?
BW- Yes, indeed the homonystic ‘Catch Your Hare’ random dice site connects to this (homonyms and spelling plays a huge role in etymological punk)…This site is used for modern role play like Dungeons and Dragons by producing random dice results for the game…In a similar way the ‘Hare and Stag Game’ was a medieval thought game where the player must choose between catching the small Hare in the morning, that will only feed him, or not trip the ambush for the larger Stag, that will feed all the hunters at the end of the day, or perhaps all go hungry…This is a primitive form of Game Theory matrices and hypereality tile box…Also the rabbit is incorporated into Anglo cathedrals and churches in the triptych of the three rabbits, usually arranged in a triangular fashion chasing each other….This sort of magic appears in all instances of life and death. As I write this an advertisement called ‘DermaWand’ is on my TV and reminds me of your earlier writings. The DermaWand (promising radiowave facelifts) is in fact marketed as a ‘penis’ wand that the aged woman rubs on her face – often with white cream as shown on the ad. It is a literal “skin”wand -ie. a phallus. It is a fascinator of the Roman Imperial times hanging in the face of women.
EC- So, when did these thought games turn into role play games?
BW- Around the 1800’s miniature hyperreal tin soldier games and chess of the Freemasons began to be incorporated into American Civil War games for navies in the 1860’s….Small model ships were placed on flat boards and point awarded to scale damage….This set up the first rules for miniature war gaming….Later, Monash would use role-play to imagine small unit tactics that would finally break the stalemate on the Western Front….Shortly thereafter HP Lovecraft and Tolkien began to exchange letters in their writing circles involving role play…During the 20’s, Jung demonstrated the power of role play in exploring the Unconscious…Freud also pursued this technique…Eventually all business planning and training had transferred to role play by the 50’s.
EC- I see you have campaign guides on your site Discordia555 . Could you explain what the name Discordia and the number 555 is reference to?
BW- Yes, Discordia is in reference to the representatives of Eris Discordia, the Discordians. Eris is the Classical Greek goddess of Chaos. The Triple 5s represents the Tri-Veca of the universes which forms a 3-D sonargram-like image of the female vulva
EC- And dicotyledons- which have two cotyledons (embryonic leaves). representing a duality of sorts- tend to have five petaled flowers. And the 5th letter of the alphabet is ‘E’, for Eris presumably?
BW- Indeed, the Triple 5’s is connected to 5 petaled flowers found on Crete and idolized during the Minoan civilization…in their golden jewellery…the Cretean Minoans were also apiculturists (bee keepers), and traded honey from their pastures to the Ancient Egyptians…This figured heavily in their heavily materialistic gold jewellery motifs…along with the vertebrae spinal column of the apis bull that was seen as sacred…these sacred apis bulls were traded with ancient Egypt by Minoa and cleaved with polearm fasces axes by the Priestesses of Knossos on Crete who guarded the Minotaur’s Labyrinth.
EC- How did Eris factor into antiquity Were there any cults dedicated to her?
BW- Eris is one of the most primal goddesses in the Greek pantheon – in fact, in some instances, and according to some cults, She predated the other Olympian gods, including the Titans- by pulling Nature and the Cosmos into existence- either as an egg, or coming from insects and twigs, or spit and mud. She is Cosmic Chaos and the progenitor of all things that be. In the Greek mythos She takes the place of Chronos the Titan as space-time on a Mobius Continuum …Space-Time is replaced by the Roman empire and mythology as Saturnus, and Christianized as ‘Old Father Time’ with a scythe and the previous year’s sash…Eris is also the sister of Ares, god of War, and the two are so competitive that when they incestuously lay with each other, it must be side by side only…Also it is Eris who sets the Trojan Wars of Ilium in train with her Golden Apple of Kallisti fashioned by Hephaestus to trap and embarrass Aphrodite for her many indiscretions to her husband…This ultimately ends in the geasing of Gog and Magog to guard the Grand GuildHall of London.
EC- So you are saying that the myth of Eris actually entered into history during the Trojan War and continues to shape present day reality?
BW- Yes indeed – Brutus the Trojan is regarded by some British historians to have been an actual personage who came to Albion to slay Alba and geas her two gargantuan sons – Gog and Magog, to guard the North and South doors of the Grand Guild Hall which still stands in London…Each year Londoners parade huge paper mache statues of Gog and Magog, as the Protectors of the City of London.
EC- As a modern day Discordian, how do you perceive Eris? In what way does this inform and inspire your existence?
BW- Eridians are generally gap-toothed due to their hypersexuality, and sometimes have mixed colour eyes. Dark-haired, dark-eyed Eridians tend to be somewhat more powerful than fairer ones. Eris is a Greek personification of The Monad. The Monad is only gendered female due to its negative black energy (as in Yin)…If The Monad is to be pictured, She may be pictured as a circuit with negative electricity passing around it. Essentially, patriarchy acts as electrical Resistance exhibited by The Monad as hysterical emanations of Arches who in turn emanate Godheads (typically the personification of Eris would be a Godhead and She would appear among Her mortal followers as an avatar). As it can be seen, many terms of the World Wide Net (Techne the spider-god’s web or net) are incorporated in the mythological (ie. icon, scroll, virtual).
EC- Yes, this chaotic lattice spins out so much dual referenced meaning that it seems almost intentional. How do you see synchronicity playing into all of this?
BW- I find the songs of The Police very influential on this subject. Literally the correlation of two seemingly unconnected events, synchronicity really holds the only hope of thought (not necessarily ‘coherent’) for the sentient human in the Chaotic universe. Increasingly as we advance into Post-Modernism we are finding the rules of things like Quantum Theory breaking down and no Grand Unified Theory to be found. If there is none, or if as indications have shown, we will be irretrievably prevented from finding it, synchronicity will be the only anti-discipline left open to us.
EC- Haha, Yes, this is why it is so exciting for me. It is tastefully irrational, yet from it there seems to come some sort of profound logic. Really, I must say these are very exciting times, and very exciting ideas to take part in. Thank you very much for doing this interview, and I hope to include your work in future journal entries. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we sign off?
BW- Hail Eris Discordia, and Her Son, Horkus, the Etruscan Orcus 555!
EC- You heard it here first folks, Hail Eris! Don’t forget to subscribe to synchrologistics for updates, and bookmark Discordia555to keep up with the work Brett is doing.
Since the dawn of history (way to use a trite lead in) we have been telling stories that blur the lines between fiction and reality. In many cases this could be seen as nothing more then a propagandist tool. The over glorification of the pharaoh into a living god, for example- became a functioning reality through the use of hyperreal narrative. It was hyperreality which first forged the collective beliefs of our ancestors
To a degree, one could say that an attempt to create a consensus reality through hyperreal narrative is necessary to the formation of society. If the dictators did not have a good enough story to back up their dictatorship, then why would we listen at all? What has made certain people chosen to rule throughout history has primarily been backed by claims substantiated by hyperreality.
Hyperreality is the realm of experience where fiction and reality blend and merge so that, at times, it becomes impossible to separate them. History was first told in this way- with recalled events laced with fantasized elaborations, gods which were on our sides, heros who never really existed- everything inflate. The winner takes the narrative and defines it. History is written by conquerors.
And at times these hyperrealities take on bizarre new twists as they are recycled to serve entirely new purposes…
The relative context of the use of hyperreality reveals it’s fictional nature. For, who can really lay claim to stories which have been told since we were telling stories?
The reality is that people can think and say whatever they want, but the fiction is that ideas and symbols belong to specific groups who hold rights to control the context by which those ideas are communicated. The hegemony on hyperreality was once waged as inquisitions to enforce a singular Roman Christian narrative- with the killing even of other Christians who did no adhere to the same narrative in which they placed their personal context of Christianity. Today the hegemony on hyperreality continues as corporate copyright licensing guided by opportunistic monopolization.
As it was in the beginning, history is told by conquerors, and dissent is either destroyed or appropriated back into the hegemony. Those with the most money can speak the loudest. It comes down to the same dynamics as it always has. It is not the rule by money though, no. Money is imagined. It is the rule by magic!
Those with the magic make the rules. The sorcerer has always been the hidden asset in the castle tower. To cast a spell, one must know how to get people to believe in it. What makes people believe in money? What makes people believe in copyrights? What makes people believe in law? Propaganda is magic, and magic is propaganda. To use symbols, words, and narratives to influence the minds of others is an act of magic. To establish magical effect is as mundane as convincing people. There are no sparkles or shimmers about it, unless you take the right “potion”, or get “slipped a mickey”.
But even if you see how the magic works, the illusion persists as long as enough people in your environment are under the spell. Whether you believe in money or not, chances are you still have to use it. The power of hyperreality is that it becomes a functioning reality through it’s simulation of meaning. Our world is run by simulations which are directed by an unquestioned use of mind control technique. Do we feel good about this? The blissfully ignorant actually seem to enjoy it so long as the illusion works in their favor.
It is sedation which encumbers the mind to shallow acceptance. The mind in its natural state is to question. Only through denial and reward are we conditioned to memorize answers without questioning. Many people stop questioning entirely once they have found the right level of sedation.
Holly wood is associated with the waning forces of nature and so is preferred by some for wands to use in ritual magic. Besides being used as a dildo, wands are used to direct attention. Appropriate to its name, Hollywood is a guiding force (wand) to engineer (conjure) cultural (cult ritual) developments. At times this magic is mere distraction, and at times it is intentional imprinting. The mind switches to a low alpha state (meditation, day dreaming/high suggestibility) after staring at a screen long enough. The fuzzy detached feeling you get from exiting a theater is your mind trying to wake up. You may not remember all the details of the film, but at the deepest level of your psyche they have been imprinted.
If you consciously remember something you can choose how you feel about it and make critical judgments about it. If something is retained in the unconscious, it can manifest as a reality which is unquestioningly accepted. The less you think about it, the more you think it is you thinking about it. The more you think about it, the more you realize that the thought is an objectified packet of information entirely detached from the self, and of no more meaning than you care to place in it. To take your mental programming as personal is seriously self limiting.
But we have been collectively sized up to be ruled predicatively through emotions- not real emotions, but just really good acting of emotions. The acting informs us of unspoken norms, and personal life takes on a scripted quality as we act out the narratives which have been reinforced by Disney, Hollywood, and other such hegemonies. But what are they trying to achieve? We can see clearly in the past how this was used to guide society by religious superstitions- enforced for cohesion of empires.
Today we are fooled by pretenses of liberalism and science, so that we assume we are more enlightened than our ancestors were. What we often fail to realize is that, though the social narrative has changed, the social dynamic remains the same. History is told through television just as obliquely as it was in pictograph- with as much hyperreal inflation as ever.
So, what is the answer to this equation? How is humanity to relieve itself from the exploitative use of hyperreal narrative? How can humanity exit history? The initial solution is absolute and unrelenting cynicism. Cynicism has been conveniently misrepresented in our society as a bitter stubbornness. The dogged nature of the cynic has been practically vilified, even as we continue to recall that “dog is man’s best friend”. The personal loyalty of the dog is only half of its virtue, for it is its distrust which guards from predators.
Once absolute cynicism is embraced it might be possible to create new hyperrealities, whose purposes and designs are entirely transparent to those who adopt them. For, magic doesn’t control people- people control people. As absurd as it may sound, arming everyone with magic could level the playing field. We don’t need to fight once we can override. In reality we are already there, it is only a matter of clearing the static of conceptual interface.
On the night of September 10th, 2001, I was at a friends house getting high on stolen over-the-counter cough medicine. ‘Robotripping’, the kids all called it, and I was fortunate enough to have a friend, who worked as a pharmacist at the very CVS I stole the drug from, instruct me on the recommended over dosage to take. I didn’t even know she worked at CVS until she showed up wearing her lab coat just as I was about to take the drug. It was a funny little coincidence to kick off the night. I didn’t have the word synchronicity yet in my vocabulary, but if I did, I probably would have invoked it.
Our high school hadn’t started classes yet because of a teachers strike, and so we were all enjoying an extra long Summer vacation. In those days I was endlessly seeking new internal experiences. I had no direction, no guidance, no framework to compare my experiences to, but I wanted them anyways. I was, after all, just another slacker kid looking for kicks in the prefabricated doldrum of suburbia.
My best friend at the time, whose house I was staying at for the night, was not at all into drugs. He thought I was foolish messing around as I did, but usually enabled my nonsense anyways by providing his basement as a place to hide out, whenever I needed to get away for awhile. He had his computer in the basement, and would stay up with me all night sometimes- listening to music or playing video games. That night was no different from the usual. I was sitting on the couch with my eyes closed going into hallucination while he played a video game- something about a mystery, a skull, a monkey, and an island.
DXM, the psychoactive component of cough medicine, is a dissociative. The quality of hallucination is far more dreamy, cloudy, dark than LSD. It is less demanding of the attention than purely psychedelic drugs. It is highly influenced by tactile feelings of waves. On a proper dose the waves are like a pleasant gooey surge through the body. On an overdose the waves feel like a burning centralized in the back of the neck,which threatens to black out consciousness- feels like dieing.
(PRECAUTION- If you are going to try to get high from cough syrup, use a brand which contains only DXM as the active ingredient. Other active ingredients will dry you out with no psychoactive benefits, and will increase the danger of dieing at high doses. Dieing from a psychoactive drug is about the most terrible thing you could do to yourself accidentally- terror and confusion as your last living experience just because you wanted to get high? Best advice for DXM is to order it in powdered form from the Boards of Canada. RECOMMENDED- If you are interested in legal dissociative drugs, MXE, an analogue of ketamine and PCP, can be purchased legally in some markets. None of these drugs are safe without proper dose and setting. Every choice has a consequence. Do your research.)
That night I did not come close to death. It was the first time I ever tried the drug, and I took a proper recreational dose as advised by my personal pharmacist. In the darkness of the basement I relaxed into imaginative visualizations. The content was of an abandoned superstructure. My attention focused onto the upper floors of a massive tower. It was early morning, and birds sang as they dodged to and fro the decayed architecture and the brilliantly blue sky.
As far as I could see, the entire city was vacant of human life. Humanity seemed to have disappeared, and as I sat in the basement thinking that thought; I imagined that this had already become. I opened my eyes to the room I was sitting in, and I wondered how it was that we remained here, when everyone else was gone. It seemed that we were the last humans in a dead city at the center of the world. My sense of location was playfully distorted, so that I was under the real impression that we were in the city, not suburbia. What city was this? I wondered, Philadelphia was the closest, but Philadelphia did not have buildings as tall as the ones I had seen.
This scenario persisted the entire time I was in the basement. When I finally went upstairs, to fall asleep watching MTV, as every suburban kid does, I was reminded of my place and setting enough to relax to sleep. The Alien Ant Farm cover of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal was the last thing I heard before fade to black…
Annie, are you OK
Will you tell us that you’re OK
There’s a sign at the window
That he struck you
A crescendo, Annie
He came into your apartment
He left the bloodstains on the carpet
Then you ran into the bedroom
You were struck down
It was your doomAnnie, are you OK
You OK
Are you OK, Annie
Annie, are you OK
You OK
Are you OK, Annie
Annie, are you OK
You OK
Are you OK, Annie
You’ve been hit by
You’ve been struck by
A smooth criminal
I awoke the following morning quite early for how late I had gone to sleep. I didn’t want to go home yet, so I took a walk to my girlfriends house. It was a beautiful morning, and even without proper rest I was feeling great about life. I could still feel an occasional surge in my body,- a feeling which persisted for days. I have noticed this in particular with DXM, and it may be something to do with my own body chemistry, but after the effects wear off I get recurring body sensations. The only other psychoactive drug I have noticed this with is 2CE, which has a nasal flare sensation which reoccurs for me weeks after ingestion.
When I got to my girlfriends house she was still wearing her pajamas, but seemed wide awake and excited about something, then she said, “A plane just flew into the world trade center!” Her older brother was in the living room laughing nervously as the news reporters scrambled for meaning. We all had shit eating grins on our faces, not sure what to think. Society seemed at the brink of some unimaginable collapse and we were just hoping school would be canceled forever. I was imagining Fight Club. I was hoping for Fight Club! I must admit that I was a very ignorant youth, and understood nothing of the world outside my teenage obsessions. It was not that I was disinterested in understanding the world. I was simply uninformed. Whatever the television projected, I saw as history- with no elaborations outside of the immediate narrative provided.
I saw 9/11 as most people saw 9/11. My drug induced fantasy of post-societal ruin, the night before, had lubricated my anticipation for all out disaster, but in no way did I think it odd that there would be a cohesion between fantasy and reality. It took many years before I began to cognize this process, to develop a language to describe it, and to attempt to use it as a psychic technology.
9/11 was a bit like an initiation whose ceremony was performed unbeknownst to the initiate. On a mass scale, we had been blinded and led through the pillars of some invisible temple, to have our lives dedicated to an oath whose debt was our freedom. It was a blood ritual whose sacrifice was paid for by the masses, for the masses.
As the second plane hit, we knew this was not an accident. Immediately the terrorist narrative was provided. As the events of the day unfolded we were supposed to feel the fear, the unknowing fear of, ‘how far will this go?’ The anger springs forth from the fear. I was already too cynical to bite onto it. At least I had that going for me. On the way walking back to my house latter that day; my girlfriend, two friends, and I were pulled up on by a white jeep, and offered a ride by a man that looked high on meth,. “No thanks, we like to walk.” I said. He pulled up a couple of yards and then stalled. When we approached the vehicle he started to burn out the tires, Skreeeeee, and wove a hand full of kitchen knives out the window, shouting at us, “Woooooo, I’m gonna go kill me some sand niggers!”, before tearing off down the road. I felt more shaken up by that than by any of the news events.
It spread like wildfire. Suddenly everyone had little American flags on everything. It brought our nation together, and our presidents approval rating went up. Anything felt possible- so long as it had to do with defensive emotional appeal on the national level. This was long before conspiracy theories were a common language, at least for suburban slackers such as myself.
I didn’t need to hear speculations that 9/11 was an inside job to see exactly how it was being handled as a convenient pretext. Before I ever even imagined it could have been a staged event, I realized that it was being handled very opportunistically by some. I had older friends who were in college at the time who kept me informed about otherwise unnoticeable progressions, such as The Patriot Act.
To most of my peers in high school, whatever it would take to protect our freedom and get our vengeance was necessary- at all cost. It was assumed pretentious to question these developments, and provoked real emotions of anger from fellow citizens who were under the ‘you’re either with us, or against us’ mentality. All of it was churned out as anti-intellectual axioms blubbered by of our baboon president Bush, who somehow had the nation transfixed enough to only ever be laughed at, and not beheaded.
By the time I was a freshman in college the conspiracy theories about 9/11 had hit the public at large. It was 2004, people were sick of Bush, and the alternative narrative which implemented him and his establishment was the not so perfect storm; as most Americans mimicked the mainstream medias act of disgust for even suggesting that our government would do such a thing- pure treason. The 9/11 Truth Movement became like a barometer for the effects of narrative control. Both sides, pointing to evidence, but who was really listening? Besides what the media told us, who among us really considered the narratives for all of their implications?
It would seem that a great number of people could simply not be bothered to consider new information which was not directly reinforced by the establishment. Both mainstream political parties, their respective media brokers, and state led education were all indifferent or hostile to the alternative narrative which was conveniently self-described as a conspiracy theory. The phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ had long been transposed through the hyperreality of popular entertainment to be a ‘faery tale’. Show the truth as fiction, and it will be internalized as an unconsciously validated reality which eludes the conscious mind who received it as fiction.
And so the cognitive dissonance drives us insane for the pharmaceutical industry to sedate, and slowly poison us out of existence. Problem solved.
Does it seem too contrived? Too much like something out of a movie script? It is all narrative. To delineate the possibilities of reality by an alternative narratives seeming congruency with prescribed narrative is to self regulate ones own mental enslavement. There are no chains in the theater. It is only our fear of rejection which keeps us seated in the great cinema hall. Inside we already know. Fiction has always been telling us, all the world is a stage! We fail to see the reality in fiction, and so we live in falsehood- unable to grasp the screen. Who wrote this stuff? you may ask, and it all depends on how far back you want to go.
On an exoteric level one need go no further back than Project for the New American Century, a think tank started in the late 90’s to envision America’s long term strategy for securing global dominance. It is mostly hinged on oil, and how to secure our access to it. The fact of the fiction is, the whole terrorist aspect is a controlled measure, and we don’t care about bringing democracy to the Middle East. All we are really concerned with is securing dwindling resources in a power grab with China. We don’t talk about China, because that is the long term opponent in the American nationalist perspective. But American nationalism, at least how it is carried out by those in power, is really nothing more than the disembodied will of some ancient Western Imperial ideal; which saw it self though the Roman and British empires- with their chimera like royalty schemes- and claimed in America, a secret reign for building their next great empire. How far back does it go? How far back do you want to go?
The readily offered narratives of history are spotted at best, and purposefully altered; with enough force, at times, to completely distort human reality- with no way to rewind the film. We are a narrative bound species, whose greatest mental capacity- to tell a tale- to conceive a possibility- has been hijacked to serve the agendas of a long line of inbred narcissists. True innovation moves at a snails pace in this backwards world of fictitious reality. It is not a matter of truth versus fiction, but of real fiction versus false narrative. Which is a matter of interpretation?
How would you take it if I told you that your birth name was a fictitious creation? What if I told you that the people who named you, selected some words by choice or at random, still unconsciously influenced by the choices of others, and on top of it laid a crown which was forged in the same manner a long time ago? “But my genes!” you might declare, and what of your genes? Are they not a revised compilation of narratives? G, Cat… Our thoughts, actions, and exposures affect our genes, and so goes the story we’ve been telling ourselves for so long.
I wonder what kind of genetic markers were placed by the mass trauma of 9/11? I wonder how this story will develop as the narratives collide into what has always been destined to be our future? As the individual becomes self aware as a social animal, created out of story telling, perhaps we as individuals might learn to write better stories for ourselves. The art of Politics is too weak and outdated to survive the emerging politics of Art. As fiction becomes known as the supremely real narrative of mind- new realities will become conceivable- realities in which our imagination is our possibility.
But this is getting a little ahead of ourselves. We are still existing in a very static dynamic, and getting to a truly dynamic dynamic requires first that we undue the static. The static is the predictive programming we have all been conditioned with since birth. It has laid us in lines of predictable parameters which can be controlled as easy as counting to five. It only takes one hand to rule the world. Is it an iron fist? Is it covered in a glove? Is it making a peace sign? Does it have a hypermobile thumb for hitching an automobile? Is it your hand?… It is your hand. We have been trying to tell you this all along. Stop hitting yourself! Who is making you do that?
It’s not an easy answer. It starts God and ends with NSA. It’s a general pretense of externalized authority- all seeing, all knowing, all controlling. It’s not about realizing that you are God. No, that would be petty and new age. We all know it’s not even about that at all. It’s a human thing. We do it to ourselves. We put on these masks and scare each other, but why? Are we afraid of some authentic communication which is free of self defensive pretense? Does dropping the act feel like a fear of dying ? Perhaps it is that we are afraid there will be nothing left if we stop pretending.
What would the neighbors think? What would Russia think if we stopped pretending? They might laugh at us! We might seem weak and confused… It’s the fear that holds us back. We are afraid to fly… It’s a long way down to the bottom of the 3rd world, but it seems like we are headed off that cliff anyways- so may as well start flapping those arms, kid. Just don’t look down (they always look down)!
Even if we don’t make it, at least we can say we saw it coming. Even if no one will ever notice that we notice- we will notice- and this is all we could do, but to notice. The universe is here supremely as an event for the observant; any amount of appreciation had in that observation is fuel enough for a million more worlds- in one of those worlds we might just get it, really get what we were looking for. Pure conjecture, so let’s get back to the dominant narrative.
The standard Left/Right forward march of the American political machine is really just a straight line of bullshit! Our predictive programming had us already set up for Obama. A progressive black man with the scripted pretense of being intelligent; exactly what we wanted to wash our hands with after Bush- but not a thing has changed. The measures which were implemented under Bush have only been compounded by Obama. It is hardly imaginative to play such a racially contentious nation by the race card. It is simply economics. Obama is bought and paid for by the same constituents as ever- more names- more fictions- none of it is real; but we elect it to be so, by the resignation of our mind to the power of the belief that it is real. You believe what you are told. The words somehow have a magical effect if they come from the right person. Don’t they?
Especially if that person has a gun to your head.
Every symbol, word, and phrase is a coding device for imprinting the human mind- these gather a collective resonance by the mutual understanding they evoke, and the hidden objectives they encode. We are collectively plagued by the unexamined implications of our shared cultural vocabulary. Who has the master coding book? I doubt you can learn it from Websters, though any place is as good as any to start. It comes unraveled from every point of departure- all interconnected, even at random. The question I ask myself is, not how intentional, but how conscious of interrelation? Someone is riding the beast, but is there another beast riding them? Again, conjecture ad infinitum- back to the narrative.
After 9/11 a lot of people started noticing coincidence in art, music, movies, and books- which seemed to almost predict the event. To hail, to salute, to call forth, to beckon the arrival- as an operative form of sympathetic magic the sorcerer will use symbolic forms which imitate the desired object, place, thing, or event to arrive into manifestation.
The official documents themselves act as self fulfilling prophesy- because much like religion, they must find ways to affirm the proper narrative.
But when your favorite pre-9/11 movie…
your favorite pre-9/11 animated television series…
your favorite pre-9/11 x-files spin off…
your favorite pre-9/11 card game…
and your favorite pre-9/11 visionary artist- all contain coincidental allusions to 9/11…
You start to wonder, what is coincidence?
The masses have been trained to disbelieve in magic, while the elite play dress up and ritual- and so magic may be practiced openly on the masses, so that any attempt to reveal it would be judged as based only in fiction. But Yes! It is all fiction! It is just that which we have been told is truth, is the least imaginative, and most self restraining fiction of all. It takes a lot of really bad writing to keep the human animal in it’s own mental cage. It is the identification with the cage as the sense of self which keeps the mind from realizing that the bars are imagined. A thin veil of contrived imagination separates us from imaginative freedom- which is the only true freedom, real fiction.
synchrologistics 