As an example of a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between perspectives, let’s look at the popular conspiracy theory about “Satanic mind control in Hollywood.” Besides a seemingly endless stream of YouTube videos and Reddit threads, there are a few popular books that cover the subject matter, for example, Esoteric Hollywood by Jay Dyer, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon by Dave McGowan (about the music industry in the 1960s), and The Illuminati in Hollywood: Celebrities, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies in Pop Culture and the Entertainment Industry, by Mark Dice. There are also first-hand survivor testimonies such as Brice Taylor’s unfortunately titled Thanks for the Memories: The Truth Has Set Me Free! The Memoirs of Bob Hope’s and Henry Kissinger’s Mind-Controlled Slave.
If we extend the scope a bit further, there is “Pizzagate,” the widespread conspiracy theory about an occultist child sex ring operating through and underneath Comet Ping Pong, a high-power pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C, with links to the Clinton Foundation and beyond. The broad stroke of all of these theories is that, beneath and within the social hierarchies of the celebrity entertainment industry, there exists a hidden (occult) system of rituals and initiations that involves mind control, drugs, child sex trafficking, and blood sacrifice, often (though not always) in the context of Satanic belief, imagery, and worship.
Articles and accounts relating to this subject matter tend to be lurid and sensationalistic; often they seem improbable to the point of absurdity, sometimes almost deliberately so. And yet . . . dismissing them out of hand is a lot harder than many people might wish. The reason it’s not so easy to dismiss these theories is twofold: first of all, they are often sourced in actual claims by victims, so to dismiss them without investigation risks cruelty, even complicity with the crimes described. Secondly, wild and fragmented as these accounts may be, they do refer at least some of the time, as we shall see, to provable facts.
An Ideological Informational Divide
“Being confident that there is ground beneath one’s feet when one needs to plant them firmly is an enabling condition of making a sober judgment. In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates makes a similar point about the political role of orators (read ‘masters of spin’) who boasted that they had great power because they could manipulate people to believe whatever they wanted them to believe.” —Raimond Gaita, “Even Socrates drew the line at spin”
Before we get to those facts, let’s start at the lurid and seemingly absurd end of the spectrum, namely, the current widespread belief in (and equally widespread ridicule of) The Illuminati. Even here, there is a solid historical basis to the belief (18th century Bavaria, Adam Weishaupt, etc.). Curiously enough, there is also an openly fictional basis to it (Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, The Illuminatus Trilogy, 1970s, USA). And then there’s the current manifestation, in which it is seemingly impossible to distinguish one from the other, to separate overt fiction from covert disinformation from reality, myth from history from prank.
In a recent online UK article (The Week), for example, David Bramwell, who claims to have dedicated himself to documenting the origins of the Illuminati myth, told the BBC that “the modern-day Illuminati legend was influenced not by Weishaupt but rather by LSD, the 1960s counter-culture, and specifically a text called Principia Discordia.”
The book extolled an alternative belief system—Discordianism—which preached a form of anarchism and gave birth to the Discordian movement which ultimately wished to cause civil disobedience through practical jokes and hoaxes. One of the main proponents of this new ideology was a writer called Robert Anton Wilson who wanted to bring chaos back into society by “disseminating misinformation through all portals—through counter culture, through the mainstream media,” claims Bramwell. He did this by sending fake letters to the men’s magazine Playboy, where he worked, attributing cover-ups and conspiracy theories, such as the JFK assassination, to a secret elite organization called the Illuminati.
Wilson went on to write The Illuminatus Trilogy with Robert Shea, a massive (“surprise”) cult success that was eventually made into a stage play in Liverpool (it was British actor Bill Nighy’s stage debut).
The Week continues:
Despite its relative popularity . . . the idea of a powerful modern Illuminati conspiring to rule the world remained a niche belief upheld by a handful of cranks until the 1990s. The spread of the internet changed all that, giving conspiracy theorists a global platform to expound their beliefs and present their evidence to a massive audience.
The article cites—dismissively—alleged former MI6 agent John Coleman’s claim that “the Beatles’ overwhelming transatlantic success was engineered by the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, a London-based social research group—or, as theorists would have it, a nefarious organization dedicated to eroding the bedrock of US society.” It also mentions that, while Katy Perry makes fun of the idea she belongs to the Illuminati, Madonna “might just be a believer. . . . Speaking to Rolling Stone, she hinted that she had secret knowledge of the group. The claim is not so shocking given that she released a single titled ‘Illuminati.’ She said: ‘People often accuse me of being a member of the Illuminati, but the thing is, I know who the real Illuminati are.’”
How many levels of deception are we looking at here? Did Madonna really say this? Did she really mean it if she did? Did she really know what she was talking about if she said it and meant it? If she said it and meant it and knew what she was talking about, was she deliberately spreading disinfo, being tricked, trying to be a whistleblower, all three, or none of the above? And so on. We might raise similar questions about the recent Kevin Spacey video in which he pretends to be pretending to be Frank Underwood, the character he played in House of Cards before he was erased from the show for allegedly committing sexual abuse crimes. In the video (which no one seems to know the exact purpose or meaning of), Spacey seems to be addressing the real-life sexual abuse charges as if they were part of a fictional scenario—which for all we know for sure, they could be. Accordingly, the strange artifact seems to have divided audiences down the middle. Mirrors within mirrors.
Returning to the Illuminati, in February 2018, Simon Parkes, a former Labor London borough councilor and town councilor for Whitby, in North Yorkshire (a town I visited often as a child), made some equally outré claims about the Illuminati being “a satanic sect that is seeking to return Satan to Earth.” He claimed to have “led a group that stopped the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) opening a portal to another dimension that would have destroyed mankind through ‘meditation.’” That same month, a similar article, “Former Canadian Defense Minister claims the Illuminati is REAL,” recounted how Paul Hellyer stated the Illuminati “has the technology to reverse the effects of climate change, but is holding back from the public.” The article adds that “Hellyer is known for making some rather outrageous claims—in the past, he’s said the United States intervened to take over an alien crash site in the Canadian province of Manitoba. These aliens are the source of the anti-climate change technology.”
Some of these claims are gaining traction—though also deplorability—via their association with “pro-Trump online conspiracy-theory group,” QAnon. QAnon’s claims have even been debunked—weakly—by the Washington Post, despite one of them—Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s infiltration of US mainstream media in the 1970s—first having been exposed by one of the WaPo’s two most famous reporters, Carl Bernstein. The WaPo’s recent “debunking” of this “theory” takes up three short paragraphs and is borderline incoherent. Weak News vs. Fake News?
The Illuminati meanwhile now has an official website, verified Twitter account, and Facebook page. There is an option to apply for membership at the site, though nothing about what’s required for acceptance. The site states: “The Illuminati is an elite organization of world leaders, business authorities, innovators, artists, and other influential members of this planet. To apply for membership, complete the form on this page” (name and email address). Silly as all this starts to seem, it becomes essential to note that, most probably, this is precisely the point, to make something that is deadly serious (at least to some) seem like an absurd little trifle.
In passing, it’s worth noting that District Attorney Jim Garrison believed (or claimed to) that Robert Anton Wilson and the Discordian society was a CIA front organization involved in the JFK assassination.
Fake News—or Real Disinformation?
“Simple awareness of how indoctrination systems work is a big step towards undermining their effectiveness. As [MKULTRA] psychiatry professor Louis Jolyon West noted in a report on training Air Force flight crews to resist brainwashing as prisoners of war, ‘A realistic, undistorted, truthful account of what a man can expect constitutes a major protection for him.’” —Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds
In recent years (2017 and 2018), online articles have appeared claiming—unconvincingly—to be inside scoops on Hollywood depravity. In June 2017, the notorious “fake news” site Neon Nettle ran “Brad Pitt: ‘Elite Hollywood Pedophiles Control America’ Movie star speaks out against pedophilia rings.” The article claimed that Pitt had “revealed the true depths of Hollywood pedophilia in a shocking exposé,” talking about “a culture of grooming children for child trafficking networks that reach across the United States and beyond, into the upper echelons of the political spectrum and societal hierarchy.” The virtual Pitt named secret societies, politicians, bankers and media running pedophile rings—“backroom deals with kids as bargaining chips”—claiming “it all goes back to Hollywood.” “The media will never expose the truth as they’re part of it,” the presumably fake Pitt added: “It’s the independent media that will expose this.” The article also cites Pitt’s “rocky past with secret societies, after a leaked video of his ex-wife Angelina Jolie, in which she discussed Hollywood Illuminati rituals, went viral.”
The article was not picked up by any other news media and was later taken down by Neon Nettle. The Angelina Jolie video mentioned does exist; at the time of writing (December 2018), it was still viewable online. It is a peculiar artifact that does require some explanation beyond “kooky prank.” Assuming it is actually Jolie talking (which perhaps we shouldn’t—but that’s another neon kettle), she is describing participation in a number of sex and blood activities with an unnamed group for unknown purposes. The setting is informal and doesn’t appear obviously staged. Whether Jolie is talking about S & M sex parties or occult initiation rituals—or both—is a matter for pure speculation. Once again, the various levels of potential deception make analyzing the artifact about as appetizing as eating a raw onion.
A few months later, in November 2017, an even more lurid “Fake News” article appeared: “Keanu Reeves warns that the elite of Hollywood drinks blood from babies.” The man-who-would-be-Reeves claimed the “Hollywood elite uses baby blood to get high,” and that “the more innocent the child and the more he suffered before he died, the higher they reach.” Reeves was allegedly in Milan, Italy, at the time, presenting three motorcycles he had designed for a company he founded in 2007. The “practice seems to be becoming more open to these circles in recent years” the article claimed. “These people are sociopaths, clean and simple.” The article wasn’t picked up by other media outlets, but it remains online. The part about unveiling motorcycles in Milan (and the timing) is accurate enough, giving the piece a modicum of verisimilitude over the Pitt one.
So what about first-hand testimonies? Brice Taylor afore-cited book, with its terrible packaging and presentation, seems almost proudly indifferent to establishing any kind of academic credibility. At the same time, the book has a forward by Walter Bowart, founder and editor of the first underground newspaper in New York City, the East Village Other, and author of the book Operation Mind Control. By his own account, Bowart cannot vouch for the accuracy of Taylor’s accounts, but he does vouch for her sincerity, meaning that (Bowart believes) either the things she describes in the book really happened to Taylor, or something caused her to believe they did.
As an example of Taylor’s many claims, she writes that “Barbra Streisand was used in the same way as other Hollywood celebrities before and after her [and was] pre-programmed to deliver messages” unconsciously to millions of people. She recounts that Streisand’s songs included carefully selected, pre-chosen words designed to trigger other mind control victims, and that her own programming, “was laced with many [Streisand] songs,” the lyrics of which were used to “tie into subconscious memory of past traumatic experiences.”
Barbra had to be kept together because she had been used to make the connections to some very important people, and especially to the masses. . . . Unlike a “normal” person, she could never talk about what she saw and remembered in private (during sleep or upon awakening) without being monitored. Whatever it took or cost was worth it to her controllers because they built her up to a certain targeted audience so completely that her controllers paid exorbitant amounts of money to keep her together, and her fans would pay any amount to see her. Many may themselves be under mind control.
Taylor claims the Streisand song “My Pa” was used on her to create “a feeling of love and safety with my father, when in fact he was torturing me endlessly, nearly every day”; “Send in the Clowns,” she writes, was used to remind survivors of “the abuse they endured as children in circus or amusement park settings where clowns were used as perpetrators.” If we find such accounts incredible, it is worth thinking about why that’s so. One reason—or rather a whole cluster of them—can be traced to the entertainment industry itself: all of this sounds too damn much like a movie! What a grim irony that would turn out to be, if Taylor’s accounts turn out to be true.
How seriously we take any of this depends, among other factors, on how seriously we take the fact that a lot of people take it very seriously. This presents a similar conundrum to that faced by the liberal progressives who are in such horror of Donald Trump that they are willing to abolish the democratic process to prevent “populism” from taking over their world. Those who wish to frame accounts of Satanic mind control in Hollywood as further evidence of the gullibility and reactionaryism of millions of uneducated deplorables are in danger of winding up inside a circle as elitist and closed as their own argumentation. The witnesses are not credible, this line of reasoning goes, because their stories are unbelievable, and vice versa.
Yet at the same time, the historical and political context for these sorts of accounts is becoming increasingly more compatible with, and even amenable to, them. In October 2018, for example, the Australian Prime Minster Scott Morrison made a national apology to “Australian survivors and victims of child sexual abuse” that referred to “17,000 survivors coming forward.” As well as using the term “survivor” (which is generally used in reference to trauma-based mind control), it included this passage:
The crimes of ritual sexual abuse happened in schools, churches, youth groups, scout troops, orphanages, foster homes, sporting clubs, group homes, charities, and in family homes as well. It happened anywhere a predator thought they could get away with it, and the systems within these organisations allowed it to happen and turned a blind eye. It happened day after day, week after week, month after month, and decade after decade. Unrelenting torment. When a child spoke up, they weren’t believed and the crimes continued with impunity. One survivor told me that when he told a teacher of his abuse, that teacher then became his next abuser. Trust broken. Innocence betrayed. Power and position exploited for evil dark crimes.
It’s an understatement, then, to say that there are people who are sincerely—and often credibly—making claims about the ritual torture, rape, and even the murder of children and infants. Whether their claims are taken seriously depends on who hears them or the context they are made in. None of this is meant to conflate first-person victim testimonials with yellow journalism, but only to juxtapose them. In either case, this material has to be taken seriously because, if it is not referring to actual crimes, it constitutes a different kind of crime, one that goes well beyond yellow journalism—in consequences if not intention—into malicious disinformation.
One of the ways schismogenesis works is by triggering the desire in us to take a stronger position than we might normally take in reaction against the perceived belief of others. No one wants to be a sucker, and in the case of “wild” conspiracy theories, where we place ourselves on the cognitive spectrum is determined by whether we consider belief or disbelief the more gullible position. Yet ironically, both sides consider the other to be naïve.
Managing Information: National Enquirer & the CIA
One thing they can both agree about is that there are vested interests in managing the flow of information, and that this relates to the drive for a more tightly controlled internet. Since Donald Trump became POTUS (Trump had a soft alliance with arch-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who in September of 2018 was roundly banned from his primary social media platforms), Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Apple, and now Patreon have become more proactive in advancing a new “politically correct” cyber-sphere. And since there are, equally certainly, vested interests in discrediting or censoring stories of systematized, high-level child sexual abuse—specifically ones less lurid and more fact-based—then it’s fair to point out that inundating the web with fake news stories might be—or is demonstrably—an effective means of doing so.
News stories as lurid and unsubstantiated as the ones cited previously—whether true or not—can be easily dismissed—but should they be? At the very least, they represent the smoke of hysteria-rumor that’s sourced in a very real fire. They also tend to serve potentially to muddy a swamp of organized crime and its ties to the entertainment industry, in such a way as to intensify a growing divide in public perception that’s becoming increasingly associated with an ideological affiliation.
The blurry zone between intelligence maneuvers, celebrity secrets, yellow journalism, and manipulation of public perception regarding what’s true or false obviously predates the internet and the current furor over “Fake News” by several decades. The publisher of the notorious but still massively popular National Enquirer, Gene Pope Jr., for example, “worked briefly on the CIA’s Italy desk in the early 1950s and maintained close ties with the Agency thereafter.” (See “The CIA and the Media: 50 Historical Facts the World Needs to Know.” )
In The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today, Paul David Pope describes how the Enquirer refrained from publishing dozens of stories with “details of CIA kidnappings and murders, enough stuff for a year’s worth of headlines” in order to “collect chits, IOUs [that] would come in handy when he got to 20 million circulation. When that happened, he’d have the voice to be almost his own branch of government and would need the cover.” Other potential stories drew on documents proving the CIA financed Howard Hughes “to secretly fund, with campaign donations, twenty-seven congressmen and senators who sat on sub-committees critical to the agency,” “fifty-three international companies named and sourced as CIA fronts,” as well as a list of reporters for mainstream media organizations who were playing ball with the agency.”
Regarding the CIA and National Enquirer’s relationship to Hollywood, in “The Secret History of the National Enquirer” DuJour reported that
Over the years, scores of celebrities and politicians were rumored to be making deals with the National Enquirer to conceal all manner of indiscretions, be it a DWI or other arrest on a minor charge, an intimate photo or video, an affair (particularly worrisome if it involved the spouse of another star), a gay or lesbian encounter or an out-of-wedlock child. In exchange for information on someone else or agreeing to an exclusive interview, stars were able to keep their secrets out of the spotlight. Confidential sources confirmed to DuJour that celebrities were essentially blackmailed to work with the Enquirer or else risk their improprieties appearing on the front page. It is alleged that Sylvester Stallone was told to cooperate or have a nasty exposé published. As agreed, such a story was not written, but a National Enquirer reporter gave the incriminating details to Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano for one of his clients to use as leverage against Stallone. (Pellicano is currently serving 15 years in federal prison for numerous RICO violations, including illegally wiretapping his clients.) Other prominent figures who reportedly cooperated under duress were Arnold Schwarzenegger, Burt Reynolds and Bill Cosby.
Like the alleged “Fake News” articles about Hollywood blood-drinking Illuminati, the National Enquirer would seem to have both a primary or overt target audience and a secondary one. First up there is the gullible, scandal-hungry masses who lap it up with nary a thought for veracity or confirmability. Then there is the discerning intelligentsia who, while they consider it beneath their interest, at the same time regard it as further proof of the common folk’s salacious lack of discernment. Neither demographic (one supposes) is aware of being hoodwinked in a more or less similar fashion.
In the same way, while the mainstream reaction to much of the material cited in this present essay is one of derision, still many people now unquestioningly believe in the reality of claims around organized, ritualized child abuse and mind control within the entertainment industry, to the extent that they may not care if the accounts are fictional or not, since they believe them to be true in “essence.” In these people’s minds, it could even be a way for movie stars to go on record without having to suffer the consequences, since afterwards they can say the articles are pure fiction! This could even be true—how would we know it if it were?!
In a similar way, some stars now seem to be playing into the growing belief that they are mind-controlled mouth-pieces for the Illuminati. Or, like Kevin Spacey, are happy to blur the line in the public mind between the sinister characters they play in TV melodramas and the abusive behaviors being attributed to them in the news.
Of course, this doesn’t count as evidence for either possibility, it only proves that, fact or fiction, dark legends sell. And at a certain point, people may cease to care which it is, especially when real-life moral outrage is becoming a form of entertainment that’s quite complementary with the ironic detachment of make-believe fantasies.
Hollywood Conspiracy: Just the Facts
“Movies as PSYOP tools are most effective during consolidation, FID [foreign internal defense], and UW [unconventional warfare] operations. Movies combine many aspects of television and face-to-face communication by creating a visual and aural impact on the target audience. Most children and a high percentage of adults accept, without question, the presumably factual information presented in films.” —“Psychological Operations Techniques and Procedures”:
Now we have covered the disinformation angle, let’s look at what’s more less provable, or at least generally uncontested—if mostly ignored—in mainstream reporting. There is considerable factual evidence for the following:
• A noted pioneer of American radio and television, David Sarnoff, later became a Reserve Brigadier General and was known as “the General.” Sarnoff was one of the first to see the potential of radio for not just point-to-point but point-to-mass transmission (i.e., one person speaking to many). He was put in charge of radio broadcasting at RCA. He also was one of the first credited with recognizing the potential for the combination of motion pictures with electronic transmission, and pioneered the television medium in 1928. “Sarnoff’s law” states that the value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers. Another pioneer in the field was William Paley, who started the first American TV channel Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), which had its origins in a collection of 16 radio stations purchased by Paley, also in 1928. During World War II, Paley served as director of radio operations of the Psychological Warfare branch in London, where he held the rank of colonel. It was there that Paley befriended Edward R. Murrow, CBS’s head of European news.
• Involvement of the CIA, MI5, US military, and other intelligence agencies in the entertainment industry (BBC, Hollywood) throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Here’s an example from a non-classified 1994 Field Manual 33-1-1 released by the US military, “Psychological Operations Techniques and Procedures”:
Motion pictures have the advantage of bypassing audience illiteracy. Movies also have an inherent quality of drama and the ability to elicit a high degree of recall. They may include cartoons or special effects. They may gain added credibility by including news events and local settings familiar to the target audience. A producer may rehearse scenes before filming and make the final performance seem highly realistic. In many cultures, the actor in a movie is considered to be like the part he has played. An actor can be useful because of the credibility he has gained. Movies may present a larger-than-life situation, which has great popular appeal. Background music can add to the emotional impact. The theater presentation can create group cohesiveness and can be enhanced by discussions with the audience afterward. Many people accept as factual the information presented in films. . . Movies . . . are ordinarily shown to groups and, therefore, have the power to arouse crowd reactions and to stimulate discussion. They lend themselves almost exclusively to friendly PSYOP.
• Popular entertainment industry figures with confirmed intelligence-affiliations include actors Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Sterling Hayden, and Christopher Lee; writers Noel Coward, Ian Fleming, and Roald Dahl; director John Ford; and producers Walt Disney and Arnon Milchan. According to John Rizzo, the former acting CIA general counsel and author of the (CIA-authorized) book Company Man: Thirty Years of Crisis and Controversy in the CIA, the CIA has long had a “special relationship” with the entertainment industry. Rizzo’s book does not name any Hollywood players, however, because these names are classified.
• Celebrities have exhibited symptoms of mind control (Anna Nicole), made claims of dark conspiracies operating in Hollywood (Randy Quaid, Crispin Glover, Corey Feldman), and/or had affiliations with cult organizations (River and Joaquin Phoenix, Rose McGowan, the Children of God; Tom Cruise and John Travolta, the Church of Scientology). Quaid has gone on record about how early sexual abuse led to his becoming an actor, and that he is one among many: “Many actors have experienced severe emotional . . . trauma in their lives to one degree or another. For us, acting is more than just a career, it’s a way of coping, a welcomed survival. . . . I was left feeling vulnerable, and the vulnerability in turn manifests itself in personality and behavior, which does not go unnoticed by vicious Hollywood predators where I continue to be taken advantage of by these monsters.”
• Many celebrities—previously and now—have shown a serious interest in and involvement with occultism; for example, credibly alleged members of the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis), past and present, include David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Jay-Z, Russell Brand, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Timothy Leary, and James Franco. Confirmed (or self-professed) celebrity members are few, however, and may be restricted to Marilyn Manson, Kanye West, and the late Peaches Geldof.
• Occultist imagery and symbolism can frequently be seen in celebrity events, Hollywood movies, and mainstream TV shows, seemingly beyond what’s appropriate to the subject matter. In 2013, comedienne Roseanne Barr told a cable news interviewer: “MKULTRA mind control rules in Hollywood.” She expanded on her statement to Esquire magazine: “A lot of people who are actors and artists who work in Hollywood come from a background of abuse, and you can make abused people very fearful and they’ll do what they’re told. Hollywood definitely has a point of view that it sells.”
• Hollywood has had intimate connections to organized crime from its inception onwards. “From the days when Lucky Luciano and Al Capone battled over Hollywood turf, to Chicago mob associate, lawyer and legendary fixer Sidney Korshak pulling strings so that MGM would let Al Pacino play Michael Corleone in The Godfather, show business and the mob have fit together like a brass-knuckled hand in a silk opera glove. The relationship goes back at least to the 1920s, when the Chicago ‘outfit’—which controlled the labor unions—arrived in Los Angeles to help studio executives ride herd on their crews. As Gus Russo, who wrote about Korshak in his book Supermob, told me, Hollywood ‘was a mob town’ for decades, possibly into the 1980s.” That last may be no more than a diplomatic evasion. If Hollywood has been mobbed up since the 1920s, there’s no good reason to suppose it isn’t today.
• Organized, high-level pedophilia exists within the UK entertainment industry. In the UK, TV DJ and children’s entertainer Jimmy Savile was sexually abusing people of all ages for five whole decades, sometimes quite openly, with the full protection not only of the BBC where he worked, but with at least partial knowledge of UK’s MI5, the police force, high-level government figures, and possibly even the Royal family. In a 2015 report from the UK National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) regarding Operation Hydrant, 1,433 suspects of child sexual abuse were identified though not publicly named; 261 were classified as people of public prominence, with 135 coming from TV, film or radio, 76 politicians, 43 from the music industry, and seven from the world of sport.
• Ditto in the US: on a 2011 episode of Nightline, child actor Corey Feldman stated, “The No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia. . . . That’s the biggest problem for children in this industry. . . It’s the big secret.” In 2016, Elijah Wood told The Sunday Times that “many of his young peers had been ‘preyed upon’ by child molesters. Feldman corroborated Wood’s accusation, saying, ‘Ask anybody in our group of kids at that time: They were passing us back and forth to each other.’” The 2015 documentary An Open Secret, from director Amy Berg, included testimonies of several ex-child actors who claimed that abusers regularly get away with abuses. “This film could be the start to show people there’s a problem in Hollywood,” said one ex-child actor interviewed in the film, who claimed to have been abused by his ex-manager Marty Weiss for six years. The film has so far been unable to find a distributor.
• In the corporate world (to which Hollywood belongs), committing criminal acts—especially of the sexual variety—have been described as a means of “binding men [and women] together through the power of taboo and mutual self-exposure, or at least the pretense of it. . . . In part, the power of the experience comes from the mutual pleasure of shared transgression, the feeling of a shared secret. . . . As one saying that went rapidly around the Chinese Internet in 2011 put it, ‘It’s better to do one bad thing with your boss than a hundred good things for your boss.’ Over time, this can extend to an actual exchange of what criminologist Diego Gambetta in his pioneering Codes of the Underworld calls ‘hostage-information,’ mutual knowledge of each party’s sins that acts as a powerful guarantee neither will break their agreements. [V]ice serves as a kind of screen, weeding out the rare few who might have moral qualms about future dealings. It tells both sides that they’re playing by the same rules. . . . Refusing to play the game, on the other hand, comes at a sharp cost.”
• Organized sexual abuse that targets children sometimes includes occult and even “satanic” elements. While supposedly “discredited” as a case of “mass hysteria” or “psychic contagion,” in fact many of the claims made by children and adults during the infamous period in the US (the 1980s) were fully substantiated (see Ross Cheit’s The Witch-Hunt Narrative, Oxford University Press, and Dave McGowan’s Programmed to Kill, IUniverse). This is to say nothing of countless other claims throughout the world over the last fifty years or more. I have addressed this subject elsewhere.
• There are known first-person testimonies of celebrity involvement in both sexual abuse and mind control, as both victims and perpetrators of it; for example: Bryce Taylor’s writing about Barbra Streisand, Elvis, Bob Hope, Neil Diamond, and Michael Jackson (Thanks for the Memories), or Anne Diamond’s memories and speculations about Leonard Cohen. Within the “survivor” community in general—including among professional therapists such as Alison Miller—the “Hollywood connection” is taken seriously. I have spoken with Diamond, Miller, and Wendy Hoffman, and find them credible as witnesses. At the very least, they appear to sincerely believe these things have happened, based on first- or second-hand experience of something.
The broad-stroke description of a “Satanic Hollywood mind control and ritual sacrifice conspiracy” may seem absurd, when stated baldly and uncoupled from the necessary deep cultural and sociopolitical background. And yet, as the above list shows, much (though not all) of the data being presented within this “absurd” (limited) context is verifiable, to a degree at least. So clearly, the subject requires further investigation before being dismissed. So how is it that it’s either viewed as too lurid and improbable a subject to take seriously, or as already proven beyond doubt?
And how is it that our point of view seems to depend on which side of an ever-growing ideological divide we happen to find ourselves on? The answer seems to be that, as with the case of belief in the existence of the Keyser Soze, we are perceptually compromised by an unthinking reliance on the most unreliable of narrators.
Continued in Part 4
This series forms the basis of the upcoming 16 Maps of Hell: The Unravelling of Hollywood Superculture.
Of further interest:
The royal commission in Australia had its terms of reference deliberately restricted to focus mainly on religious institutions, purposely shielding political and law enforcement institutions from scrutiny.
Senator Bill Heffernan used parliamentary privelege to put the frighteners on some 28 high profile people including an ex Prime Minister.
Bill Heffernan ex PM alleged Pedophile 21/10/15
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/liberal-senator-bill-heffernan-says-former-prime-minister-a-suspected-paedophile-20151020-gke2o0.html
A lady called Fiona Barnett has popped up alleging she was a victim of an MK Ultra peddo ring headed by Nicole Kidmans dad who recently committed suicide. Hard to say if she is just muddying the waters.
Media Watch Debunking Fiona Barnett 9/11/15
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/approach-some-claims-with-caution/9973098
I like these guys who trawl through Pop culture looking for MK Uktra Satanic references.
https://vigilantcitizen.com
Great write, thanks
Mind Blown! I’ll check back in later if I can put my eyeballs back into my head.
Fiona Barnett is adamant the OTO is virulently active in Australia
https://fionabarnett.org/2018/08/
Meanwhile Detective Peter Fox blew the whistle on senior Police trying to shut down his enquiries into Catholic pedophilia in the Maitland diocese.
ABC Article Detective Peter Fox on Corrupt Pedo Police 6/5/13
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-06/inquiry-into-hunter-valley-sex-abuse-begins/4671692
The Royal Commission wound up identifying seventeen thousand victims , but you would have to say this could only be the tip of the iceberg. By any measure, one has to assume the warm and fuzzy land down under is an absolute pedophile paradise.
I sense as of late that the “revelation of the revelation” is compulsive. There’s a loss of the power of their method so there is a desperate need show how powerful “they” are. In fact lately it all seems so suffocating as the facade cracks and the true nature of our “culture” oozes out. Some days I can barely handle it especially when I’m around those who are unable to see it due to the blinders they willingly put on. It will get harder for them and that’s who we should be afraid of because they will run to their masters to”save” them from them.
The current astrology is quite accurate with Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn. Next year Jupiter joins the party making it bigger. A disintegration of our belief in government and institutions. An exposure that makes the status quo hard to maintain. The Piscean age which we are gradually leaving is unhinging the power to control – hence all the attempt to homogenize us so it can continue. If I have any faith at all it is that our creator wants us to evolve and like a blade of grass pushing through concrete to greet the sun we can’t be stopped. I believe once Pluto moves into Aquarius in 2024 we will look back and wonder how we were all so deceived. It might be gradual but with Pluto likely not.
I also want you to know how throughly I am enjoying your content. Your writing is wonderful and I look forward to seeing what you have to say in 2019. Happy New Year!
thanks; an optimistic yet realistic outlook for the New Year! Hail Pluto! 😉
I find the word “Satanic” interesting as the usual defining word in your title. I only recently (thanks to one of your conversations) discovered that Satan’s only real crime was wanting equal status to God. In the holy book, it is stated that man was created in gods (plural) image so there are more gods in the picture if one cares to look.
In the holy book, God has no gender – we only know Jesus is the SON of God. Now as Ariana Grande sings – “God Is A Woman” and I believe her. Also, most likely Satan is a woman, too. The old testament clearly depicts god as a jealous woman.
Hollywood is full of actors last time I checked. And politicians are honest? “We are perceptually compromised by an unthinking reliance on the most unreliable of narrators.” Check.
Hi Lucy , you might like to check out Charles Uptons “The System of AnticChrist” if you are lookng to Grok the metaphysics of God vs Satan , i can assure you it goes way beyond pop identity politics, although you will find Satan having coffee there regularly.
Happy New Year !
I wonder if maybe it’s not so much that the Dark Forces totally invent all our cultural artifacts whole cloth, but that they seize upon things that resonate with the masses, create a counterfeit and propagate it until something else catches on.
I’ve played in rock n roll bands & written a lot of music. I’ve played in front of dozens of people and got positive feedback, at times bordering on adulation (that’s a bit unsettling).
No one from any agency fed me any ideas. I just invent melodies in my head and channel them onto electric guitar.
So if one takes someone like a Miles Mathis seriously, the entirety of reality as most of us experience it daily is a hermetically sealed counterfeit crafted by…something that cannot possibly be human. Hardt & Negri’s “Empire” breaks this down for an audience presumably of Marxist-oriented intellectuals. Basically, the control system will seize upon anything that it might be threatened by and turns it into a tool of control.
Your latest vid- chat group thing features some resonating commentary about these issues. (the message always seems to be ‘give up- you fight the law and the law wins”
Maybe what seems to be system of total control is really that a set of actual control freaks noticed during the world wars that you can own society’s head space if you control the important pressure points of cultural reproduction. So the rock band who are actual working class lads that begins to catch on with an audience in a genuine way gets given access to channels of distribution previously unavailable if they prove corruptible. Look at Black Sabbath. Did someone say, “These guys are a bunch of drunks with a cartoon idea of occultism borrowed from Hammer Horror films- but people dig it. It can lead young audiences to take a lot of reds and drink a lot of cheap wine and generally waste their intellectual energy with something that is as magickally threatening to actual power as HP Lovecraft’s pulp stories.- so let’s get them into the studio and give them a recording deal.”
So far the article is quite interesting. Very complex analysis, because, of course, reality is itself very complex!
A very interesting book that looks into the origins of the phenomena of how all this stuff began would be Brian Hayden’s “The Power of Ritual in Prehistory: Secret Societies and Origins of Social Complexity”, Cambridge, 2018. The book definitely figures out something important about human beings by focusing its lens on the phenomena of a) being hungry for power, and b) the practice of lying. By combining these very obvious human behaviors, Hayden looks at the ethnographic evidences from North America, Oceania, and Africa, and finds plenty of instances of what he calls “transegalitarian secret societies”, which, more or less, are a form of secret organization which enhances the networking power of ‘aggrandizers’ who seek to add to their own individual power. These bodies combined ecstatic shamanism, a belief in spirits who demand human sacrifice, and devious conversation that ultimately resulted in a coordinated manipulation of their individual societies and, if it ever happen to arose, to come to one another’s aid to help deal with intransigents who challenged the constructed order.
Overtime, these bodies and their chosen sites of ritual evolved into ‘super-secret society structures’, producing sites like Stonehenge, Chauvin de Huantar, Jerf el Ahmar, and Gobekli tepe. Some of these ‘superstructures’ would later evolve into official cult centers – such as Eridu in Sumeria, which later became involved in the organization of a larger economy. Hayden mentions the temples of Melqart as an example of a secret society/mafia type structure which operated during the heyday of the Phoenecian state.
So yes, humans are complex! It takes a lot of thinking and reasoning and speculating to arrive at a position that feels ‘balanced’; you can’t be too paranoid, otherwise you’re letting the dynamics of trauma control you; yet you can’t be too willing to believe simple stories, otherwise the converse effects of trauma – the need to relax the stresses moving through you as a function of affect regulation/homeostasis dynamics – will put you offset with what is probably the truth.
So its a constant, non-stop internally navigated Hegelian dialectic between various speculations that arise from certain inferences (cued by certain affective reactions) that are repeatedly subjected to a “what is the probability of this being true” sorts of questions.
This article nicely attempts to sift through the mind games that human beings are perfectly capable of – and sophisticated enough – to create for other human beings. Its Pan’s Labryinth indeed!
Excellent commentary, and very interesting book recommendation. I’m on it. I hope you’ll continue to provide feedback as the series proceeds.
So I’m reading your latest book – and I wanted to comment on what you’ve written on page 141 as to Richard Dawkins and child abuse. The entire issue is contained here: the simplistic, unscientific, unsystematic position taken to the organism by Dawkins is ENTIRELY in the service of the UNRESOLVED SHAME of having been sexually abused.
Dawkins is such a shameful egotist that he imagines that no one can figure out the logic of his various positions: selfish gene – the denial of cybernetics, systems biology, epigenetics etc; where does this pseudo-scientific nonsense come from but from a mind that deeply believes itself to be “selected” by the universe?
Consider the real scientific ontology vis-à-vis the organism. The material world is generated by symmetry dynamics – from quarks on up. As the material order organizes itself, some parts – the living organism – parallel the universal order by seeking to maintain its symmetrical ordering by “capturing” – or being captured – by other symmetry dynamics within the material order.
If you follow this line of inquiry as many modern day mind scientists are doing – both for memory and cognition (Leyton) and linguistics and semantics (Castillo), it is not surprising that the entirety of developmental psychology also parallels these fields, but with MOTIVATION and COGNITIVE CAPACITY being that which determines symmetry dynamics between human beings in interaction.
Undoubtedly – only a perverse mind would look at a child and fail to represent their feeble representational capacities – nor fail to recognize that in the absence of puberty, sexual arousal/motivation is inchoate and undeveloped, and if it is ever to be expressed, its only proper and legitimate expression is with people of the same age – and certainly not between adults and children.
The issue is objectification, and how ‘being objectified’ is a function of one party projecting its motivational needs on another party, without correctly attuning to the motivational and developmental capacities of the other party – to come to an attuned/objective representation of what a normally developing child should feel and desire.
The pedophile is entrapped in a system of confusion and therefore tension. When the object that they once were appears before them – the child, sexual arousal can arise purely as a function of implicit memory; but as per all experiences of being victimized, the whole persecutor-victim dynamic inverts itself, with the once-victim becoming persecutor, and the victim they are desiring to act their motivations upon becomes “other”. Their needs and their states fail to update the attentional awareness of the pedophile because the pedophile is being overwhelmed by their own desire: the other cannot find a place in a mind this obsessively entrained to an object that they find themselves spellbound by. What’s moronic and intellectually pathetic is how little knowledge/awareness they take to why they feel they feel – which, because of their intense egotism (supercharged sense of agency/entitlement) they just imagine that its normal – again, to protect themselves from the shame affects. Thus, the normalization of child-molestation is completely about disowning the shame and/or guilt (if you have become a perpetrator) that stresses your self-experience.
As to what you’ve written about how the priest being a positive object at the same tiem as being an object of abuse – that’s a very accurate understanding: indeed, the perception the girl has of the protestant girl is again an example of internalizing the persecutor priest and taking on HIS object-relations: The unconscious/dissociated shame of being molested by the priest is actually the dynamical basis of the supercharged persecutory attitude towards the protestant whose going to hell. Is this response not a function of a ‘summation’ of past self-states, converging on a ‘coherent’ position vis-à-vis the known-unknown information that has built up the self-system? Yes. But dummies who subscribe to pedophilia are more or les subject to a diseased understanding of their own self vis-à-vis the things they do to others. They are wantonly unaware of what kind of suffering they will perforce need to go through to bring themselves – their witnessing consciousness – back to a state of symmetry with others. They are truly, in my view, delusional maniacs who believe what they do purely as a function of the echo-chamber effect of repeating the same narratives with others who subscribe to the same narratives.
You got a great deal of self-awareness Jasun. To not give in to the social symmetry-dynamics – to mindlessly converge as a function of social pressure on the narratives of others – makes you a very coherent voice for making these painful realities more known.
Also, I very much enjoy the maturity of your understanding in describing others. Evil – as a true state – is simply what happens when symmetry systems i.e. our brain-world relations, becomes so distorted such that the objects (humans/elites/Satanists etc) who become this way merely add to their entropy/dysfunction by positing stories that work to protect themselves from the injustice they cultivate/indulge in.
My sense is, the self is a global, human phenomenon. No individual self exists – or rather, to treat your individual self as more than your body is the acme of delusion. Hence, to reason in ways that ‘the end justifies the means’ is an idiocy that is driven by a tendentious mind seeking to distance itself from whatever unresolved trauma motivates this very incorrect relationship to its own self-experience.
Trauma is only resolved when the observing self develops a compassionate relationship with the traumatized self. Such a compassionate orientation is itself dependent on ‘being known’ in such a way by an other. But what happens – as therapists well know – if sociopathy (an geometrodynamical state, not an ontologically intrinsic state of being – as these people sadly believe) sets up the delusion of being ‘invulnerable’? This is basically what the problem is. Sociopaths continue to posit myths/narratives as a way to defend themselves.
More from Hayden:
There’s good reason to question the whole concept of ‘genetics’. In reality, there are multiple ontological scales that feed into one another at different temporal scales. The organism-environment is thus subject to a fundamental symmetry system – which I conceptualize as based in a tensional integrity (tensegrity) system. So, if social stresses become great, homeostasis functioning (interoception) becomes strained, which affects the affective system – i.e. how the affective/experiencing self represents itself i.e. in cuing, which in turn affects narrative formation. This is what we mean by ‘environmental influences’. There is thus a complex multidimensional relational field that ‘feeds’ down onto gene-cell dynamics, which in turn feed back upward in interoceptive states i.e. affecting how we feel in our bodies. We are thus compressed between a bottom-up vector which regulates our window of affective tolerance in relation to cognitive objects, and a top-down relational system from the environment which activates/triggers are threat-safety dynamics.
Biologists are really beginning to wonder – given how much molecular continuity exists between the DNA in the nucleus and extra-nuclear processes in the cell and beyond the cell – whether the gene is a real thing, or just an abstraction for what in reality is a ‘long term’ aperiodic crystal that stores the memory of what works in relation to the environment. Directionality is thus both ways, meaning that external situations control/shape genetic activity – as all the evidence from molecular biology, developmental biology, developmental psychology and paleontology (theory of punctuated equilibrium) shows.
It’s been an extremely powerful propaganda that almost everyone implicitly references when they think about sexuality/identity/feelings/values. No one is ‘born’ any way – yet this is the leitmotif operating in the background of contemporary culture.
I just discovered your fascinating, thoughtful website via Kunstler’s reprint and plug. I particularly appreciate your non-dismissive view in this article because over a two-year period my wife (now deceased) had memories surface of childhood sexual, ritual, and CIA-experiment abuse. Day after day, she would tell me the memories that surfaced that are similar to the goriest and most depraved accounts of others (which she knew nothing of at the time). She was able to confirm details (and her sanity) via communication with a step sister who shared many of the memories. All I can say is that taking the basic claims about this seriously is warranted—and I am impressed that you are doing so!
Thanks for sharing that; quite surprising to discover that sort of intersect with JHK’s audience. If you didnt see it yet, here’s my piece on ritual abuse: https://auticulture.com/blog/2018/10/22/what-you-should-know-about-organized-satanic-ritual-abuse/
also Vice of Kings covers this subject much more extensively within the context of our larger cultural matrix: http://www.aeonbooks.co.uk/product/the-vice-of-kings-how-socialism-occultism-and-the-sexual-revolution-engineered-a-culture-of-abuse/40232/
Thank you for your response and the links; I read your post and look forward to your book. Another aspect I didn’t mention is the Jekyll and Hyde world that existed in the small upstate NY town where she partly grew up with her doctor-uncle. By day all was “normal,” but at night (at least some nights), these same “ordinary” people participated in truly gruesome activities of child ritual abuse and sacrifice, burning a black man alive; warehousing infants for abuse, etc. I met her father only once; he seemed a delightful, creative, person—yet he was a cult member who abused his psychically-gifted daughter from infancy. Her uncle was a wonderful, caring doctor, apparently less-willingly involved—yet he took her to NYC for her to be experimentally drugged by the CIA. When she later confronted him, his response was “don’t go there!” I think you are right that its extreme nature and hence “unbelievability” is a significant reason why it can continue unacknowledged and unchallenged.
that’s chilling and fascinating in equal parts; do you mean that you interacted with these people after you knew the truth about them?
Not much, she communicated just once, and not in person, with her uncle, who seemed to be more of an unwilling participant, but too weak to resist.
It must have been devastating for you both. I hope there was relief in the seeing. It’s a consolation to find at least that our wounds are neither imaginary nor self-inflicted.
Here’s another book recommendation (although you may have read this).
It’s a trilogy of works by Michel Serres called the ‘book of foundations’. Part 1 is called Rome, part 2 is called Statues, and part 3 is called geometry.
I think Serres was more or less exposing this cult without being too explicit about it – likely reflecting his own trauma’s as to the age/longevity of the ‘imperial’ system. It is nevertheless full of interesting insight which, if you understand the object he’s referring to (which he never makes very clear – consistent with the continental style of writing) actually says a lot about the system is fundamentally rooted in.
I also like to think of the emergence of narratives to be a function of symmetry dynamics between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The larger scale social-symmetry between classes emerges as the material culture ‘entrenches’ material, social and epistemological asymmetries. By the time Rome comes along, there is now an established narrative that says, or rationalizes along the lines of “the world will no longer exist unless evil is inserted into it”. This interpretation seems like what the traumatized mindbrain drums up as a function of living in intense tension/awareness of the root/basis of being, yet embodied in its neurological structure the opposite semiotic processes. The fear of the ‘ground of being’, as Voegelin has written, is what maintains philosophies/theologies (mythologies) that assume a-priori to know what would happen if natural processes were integrated into the human mind-brain. The narrative appears to be: “if we change, the world we and all other humans so love would be gone”. You can see a bit of the language of Christianity hidden within this narrative i.e. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son”, where the global self i.e. God (which is not really God, since the self is always embodied/embedded in a local part of the emergent environment, and hence can never know absolutely – especially from the vantage point of its embodied social asymmetry) sacrifices its experiential self (“his son” or ego) for the sake of what the self “loves about the world”.
Part II, Statues more or less describes the inner-rigidity that this cultic-system creates in the self; and Geometry is the system – likely formalized in Babylonia, and transferred to Greece – of the logic of manipulation that underlies the ‘intellectual’ relation with the natural world.
All in all, the world will not end, but it can very feel so to a profoundly polarized self that is continuously tormented by the tension between consciousness of the ultimate truth (love) and consciousness of the world, embodied in its neurological structuring, and thus, expresses the difference between the real (traumatized) and the ideal. In short, time seems unreal/meaningless to them precisely because they fail to align themselves with the purpose/meaning embodied in its patterns – which is the patterns of how our brainmind represents the world. Ergo, if you live in opposition to the expressed/emergent dynamics, you are made to feel that the ‘end of the world’ is around the corner. A delusion – and hence, their beliefs about the ‘end’ are what pokes them into maintaining a way-of-being that maintains the present order (isn’t this how our attachments always affect us? They are, in effect, the meta-objects/value we are dynamically regulated by]
I’m very impressed by the quality of your insights in part II of your book.
On pg. 158, “moral outrage obliterates all nuance” should be expanded, really, into “hyper-aroused emotionality in a context of conflict leads to pre-mature selection of narrative/theory coherency”.
When you’re morally outraged – any of the time, in any situation – you fail to take into account the most basic of facts: we are globally determined by the fact that past brain structure inheres within our every experience – meaning everything we do is being probabilistically canalized by the way meanings are encoded in the synapses/neurons/glia of our brain-body-world relation. It makes absolutely no sense to get aroused i.e. to express a condemnatory anger, while triggering in the person you’re speaking with an experience of shame which they defend against with an anger/outrage/resentment that comes from being represented as evil to yourself.
Since this enforces a feedback loop between your self and the other, with each party dissociatively related to the circular dynamic that’s controlling them, it makes no sense to take an acrimonious hateful view – i.e., it requires a high level of patience, so that you can reflect and then come to understand – and then accept – that logical facts of causation are what underlie the phenomena i.e. pedophilia, which can only be helped/improved by treating the perpetrator as once a victim, who is now dissociatively ‘triumphant’ as the persecutor overcoming the powerlessness of the victim – both external and internal.
This calls for a view of the self that is much bigger than your body, and hence, it disturbs the ground of your present identity structure. To know how this world works entails knowing how you work – how you’re habits of being/clichés/stereotyped ways of responding are really ‘self-objects’ which prevent you – and implicate you as well – from acknowledging the real evil that exists in this world.
this made me smile because one of the things I work towards as a writer and speaker is keeping my use of language as simple and accessible as possible (without sacrificing nuance), and because your recent comments have tested me to my limits in terms of keeping up with all the complex terminology you employ. Don’t get me wrong, if your comments seem to require multiple readings to grok, they also would seem to merit them, and I am definitely grateful to have such erudition expressed at this blog. Someone already suggested talking with you on a podcast, to which my first proviso would be, if you talk like you write, I probably wouldn’t be able to keep up! I might even be the Dave Oshana to your Jasun! 😉
BTW, I am not familiar with symmetry dynamics at all; can you cite some introductory sources?
Hi Jasun,
Symmetry dynamics is an obvious idea that unfortunately is not very obvious; you can be in the world – and be created by such dynamics – and still have no concept at all of how all this complexity can be effectively and coherently reduced to symmetry dynamics.
No one per-se has developed these ideas to their full-extent (I am interested in doing that). In linguistics and cognitive science, Michael Leyton (Rutgers) wrote “Symmetry, Causality, Mind”, which tries to show how the structure of consciousness can be explained by seeing it as a very complex assemblage of various forms of knowledges that you have interacted with, and so, the dynamics of consciousness are ‘nested’ in the dynamics of how one object interacts with other objects (i.e. a human, or a cell, with its environment).
More coherently, Camilo Castillo (who has influenced me greatly with his ideas) wrote “Origin of Mind”, and bases his approach in symmetry theory i.e. the idea that since the big bang, matter has been ordering itself in repeating ways so that a balance is always conserved i.e. symmetry is always maintained, even as the system at large (universe) generates creates the conditions for local asymmetry, the generative processes within matter (subatomic particles, which reflect the conserved symmetry of the whole) create protons/neutrons, and then when an electron comes around, “captures it”, and so creates an atom (hydrogen). This process continues through all the atoms (always a symmetry in number between protons and electrons) and then higher up for molecules, then cells, etc. There is always an exquisite balance that, if interrupted, can destroy the whole ‘dance of life’. Terrence Deacon emphasizes constraints – but what are constraints but those dynamics that ‘work’ – and hence, have been constrained by physics into the structure/form of the organism? If happy faces mean ‘good’ to our biology, its because it constitutes a ‘coherency’ between self and other that most effectively relaxes the stresses moving through both objects (deacon coined the term ‘teleodynamism’ to explain how a purposefulness to the organism – to survive – is simultaneously that ‘basic of attraction’ which controls the flow/dissipation of energy through the entire biodynamical system.). There’s a symmetry between our bodies that is controlled by a ‘third’ – a shared object (‘shared-intentionality’ in the psychologist Michael Tomasello’s language) it is this third which underlies how every mindbrain works; and hence, there is a ‘unity’ between us that is paradoxically dependent on a semiotically recognized symmetry between our bodies. Without this knowing, we are more or less relying unconsciously on culturally inherited clichés.
This view of life in terms of geometry/symmetry/dialectic has its roots in the late 19th century i.e. implicit in Hegel, but becomes ingeniously developed by CS Peirce in the late 19th century. In the 20th century, Peirce is almost totally ignored until he is rediscovered by Jakob xon Uexkull in the early part (coining the brilliant notion of ‘point-couterpoint’ to describe the animal-world relationship), and then various semioticians influenced by Peirce integrated his ideas (which are basically implicitly based in symmetry between organism and world; Peirce developed the sign to explain how this relationship with objects comes about) with biology, creating the modern field of biosemiotics. This is, in my opinion, the obvious position that will come after modern systems biology (which is displacing neodarwinism) understands that the events in our mind are integrated with our cyclical bodily dynamics, and hence, the relationships we have on the outside determine the world we experience on the inside – as you’ve written about with a great deal of depth (I thought your reading of the occultist as trying to ‘overcome’ his awareness of a violated innocence as brilliant; from a neuropsychological perspective, you could say that the self is fundamentally organized by a threat-safety spectrum, and that because we are aware of mental objects – even if implicitly and usually unconsciously – we still react to our own perceptions of our feelings with a sense of good or bad, and hence, we are always being unconsciously coaxed by ‘affect’ into identifying with self-states that will allow us to coherently ‘dissipate’, or handle, the situations we encounter in our living. Threat and safety – and their associated mental objects, thus form our perception before we perceive, and inform our cognition before we cognize. How we identify is basically – in a competitive system – almost always driven by dissociation (of threat) and idealization (which is what one needs to feel safe). Occultism gets the mind SOOOO fundamentally wrong, that it is an astonishing idea that it exists, and people can be made to believe the myths they concoct within themselves. On an another note – there is a structure in the inner brain (pulvinar, in the ventral thalamus) which is known to filter out and amplify certain dynamics. It is thus a possible sight for this psychological phenomenon of ‘dissociating’ (what your body has associated with hurt) and idealize (what your body has associated with pleasure/reward).
Point is, symmetry is an interesting, and, if you really think about it, a fundamental principle of the universe we live within. The story of how your thinking relates to symmetry is a story that will be told by the neurosciences, and especially the linking up of this field (informed by cognitive science/cognitive psychology) with developmental psychodynamics, so that we can see how experience becomes brain structure, which becomes the guiding mechanism for how to relate in future upcoming experiences.
Sorry for any quickness. I am an avid reader who treats (perhaps unfairly to my interlocuters) any time away from reading as a luxury to communicate my ideas (periods of intense research apparently makes you a less-than effective communicator of ideas). I am also a hyper-person to begin with – and hence, so much comes out that I often times fail to shape the affect moving through me to better convey – to meet the abilities of others – what I mean. Its ironic since my research is basically about explaining how the mind works.
On the other hand, it makes me eager to accept criticism when its valid and sensible and try to do a better job finding a language that doesn’t confuse my readers.
In any case, there is just so much happening in every scientific field that moves towards an ecological understanding of how we work that it seems inevitable that belief systems of the type you describe will flounder and then fade away. How could they possibly survive the tidal-wave of knowledge that the sciences have revealed about how we work? Ignorance. And ignorance is a powerful tool of the power-hungry; who, btw, are ignorant of what it feels like to be connected to your body – to life, and to a feeling of care for the self and the other.
Thanks for turning me onto Camilo Castillo. Just downloaded Orgins of Mind and started reading it. I’m very grateful for being steered down another pathway of astonishment!
Occultism gets the mind SOOOO fundamentally wrong, that it is an astonishing idea that it exists, and people can be made to believe the myths they concoct within themselves. On an another note – there is a structure in the inner brain (pulvinar, in the ventral thalamus) which is known to filter out and amplify certain dynamics. It is thus a possible sight for this psychological phenomenon of ‘dissociating’ (what your body has associated with hurt) and idealize (what your body has associated with pleasure/reward).
I’m interested in delving more into this, maybe for a podcast? Do you have much experience with occultism or occultists?
I’m coming to the end of your book, and I just wanted to say that you have written a very truthful – coherent – account of both what it exists, how it exists, and ultimately how it demands from everyone a fresh set of eyes if we ever hope to bring this deranged/confused/horrific reality to an end.
I came to this confused world through conspiracy theory in the early 2000’s; dropped it because I began to become aware of the way my own traumas made me overly identified with seeing the ‘end of things’ (i.e. so everyone could be as unhappy/broken as I was). I then went through a serious breakdown, which led to a very deep effort to understand myself – which led me to interpersonal neurobiology, developmental psychology, traumatology, relational psychoanalysis, infant studies, cognitive science, metaphor theory, etc, etc, ultimately revealing to me what is a profound – and still relatively unknown reality – our later life perceptions/cognitions are metaphorical re-representations of more basic self-other relationships with caregivers. That truth still astonishes me – which is made even more astonishing when you immerse yourself in the insane world of occult theorizing.
The reason we accept shitty explanations for things is because we have simple minds – with simple/limited representational capacities; yet the brain is plastic, so putting information into your mind – via a focused, yet relaxed study – complexifies brain-structure, and thus increases the range of your perception – and capacity for thinking.
All the clichés we’ve inherited – above all, knowledge is power – is certainly something that is borne from experience; and given the research of anthropologists like Brian Hayden, it appears knowing reality from the ‘outside’ – from outside the bastions of power – produces very different percepts, insights, and understanding – than the manipulations of the power-hungry practised from within a secret society. It is precisely this reality – so hidden, yet so blatantly obvious to the ratiocinating mind – is that “your mind is imprinted by the types of conversations you have”. The knowing of the inside/outside is evidently very different, and appears to be organized around a completely different value system, itself an emergent property of the exigencies – pressures – that social asymmetry creates in brain-structure (your hemispheric asymmetry, and also the intentional I (forebrain) put in opposition to the homeostatic I (brainstem)) and the way affect prompts a dissociative relation to motivations, and hence, inserts – through the simplicity of tendentious reasoning – idealized exaggerations of ones own agency (occult claims literally imagine that they can influence after-life situations i.e. their distortions/idealizations which grow like a virus – because that is exactly what these beliefs are (akin to the way a virus hijacks a cell, a meme/ideal like occultism (living forever/ invulnerability; being ‘god’) possesses all the ‘keys’ to act upon the insecurities/needs of humans to eventually create a runaway positive feedback process.
The primary and obvious issue is the fact that your feelings represent events; ergo, the whole demiurgic, ‘reality is evil’ percept – and the feeling which represents it – merely represents an asymmetry imposed on you in your early life i.e. a state where your needs/motivations (which set the parameters in any relational exchange) were ignored/devalued in relation to a hyper-valued neediness in the interlocutor who acted upon you and in effect made you an object of their agency – and you, in turn, were made to feel unreal unless you converged to the same intentionality as the other. This is the persecutor/victim dyad which exists in the mind of anyone who is been aggressed against – basically everyone: we’re compelled in situations where we feel bad – and hence, potentially powerless – to respond to an implicit victim/weakness quality in the other by identifying with the aggressor/persecutor implicit in our brain-structure. I.e, to avoid feeling weakness, we identify with the abuser who made us feel weak.
This is all very strange – the way identities get into us in such a relational way. This means we are all ‘fractals’ of one another – we live versions of the same template – since we are the same organism/species, yet we exaggerate and fetishize our individuality as if it consisted as a complete “feeling” that we ourselves are in control of – and originated in ourselves – when the truth is quite the opposite: we are intimately intertwined with the needs/vulnerabilities/idealizations/defenses of others. How do you think one gets out of such an intimate connection?
You’ve definitely figured it out; its not by continuing to deny the boundaries that physical structures create – and expect our brain-minds to be responsive to. To deny the relationship between how you act – and how people can feel about reality (nihilism/antagonism) – is to deny the root – and ultimate teacher – of your being. It is to be drunk with the strength of pride – and intoxicated by the strength it puts into you to ignore that the pride that comes at the expense of another is symmetrical to the suffering you will one day feel in order to purge the carelessness/meanness that makes you think/feel that the other isn’t fundamentally a part of your being.
In any case, I am in agreement with your general epistemological/ontological approach in your book; what Crowley thought was necessary really wasn’t; its an example of Maslow’s “deficiency” cognition in which the self feels void and empty of a good self-object, and hence, it continues to enact, again and again, its own valuation of “being powerful”, which they asininely assume to be a reflection of some higher ‘spiritual’ principle, a “grey alien” “eternal” self. It is precisely this premature engagement with what I call the ‘awe-vector’ – of the human experiencing continuity with the universe around it – that predisposes the traumatize self to project its own internal structure i.e. the relational abuse at the hands of the other, and so, is it really surprising that a narrative of self vs. universe is created? Think about the multiple scales of causation – and confusion – here. Early abuse sets the template; which becomes internalized in sensorimotor dynamics, in affects in relation with the other, in affects in relation to the mind-body relationship (the mind is correlated with the self in interpersonal interaction; while the body is correlated with the other), and then eventually, they become ‘reified’ as belief systems, occult practice and theory. It is an example of digging deeper as a way to get out of the hole your in: what will digging do but deepen the suffering you will have to experience in order to restore a coherent relationship with the actual world?
“your mind is imprinted by the types of conversations you have”
profound in its simplicity
I especially liked the way you finished the book:
“Our trauma has become our God, and in His traumatic guise He is a wrathful, jealous God, the mere thought of approach Whom fills us with terror.” – Jasun Horsley, The Vice of Kings: How Socialism, Occultism, and the Sexual Revolution Engineered a Culture of Abuse; pg. 275; Aeon; 2019
Do you know how many years I’ve been contemplating this idea? I basically see a thesis/antithesis dialectic emerging sometime around 3000-2000 BCE between the philosophy/cult of the ruling class based in a gnostic, antireal (i.e. based in depersonalization/derealization trauma) spirituality which justified violence/bloodshed as a way to sustain power, which then engendered a mass-movement, defensive, Manichean belief system which saw matters in a good and evil light. This splitting into good and evil already marks a biosemiotic transition from seeing things in ecological and circular terms, to seeing them in linear, cause-effect terms. This clearly derives from the way and manner the brainmind was being conditioned in such a technically organized commercial society.
More or less, these positions weren’t “thought up”. Both the elites and the masses were being determined by causal processes built around attachment dynamics and investment: processes we do not, by definition, have control over i.e. everything you believe you are invested in; and everything you’re invested in constitutes a relationship between your brain and something in the environment that serves as the root for your belief. There is thus a symmetry between something in your brain-body, and something in the external world which forced a particular representation in your mind – which is the ‘liminal zone’ between your body and the world. Thus, the semiotic breakdown between organism and world at the level of body-world relationship allowed the breakdown of the self into seeing other selves as definite individuals with an essence that allowed you to think of them as being as they are without defining them in terms of theoretical, causal-processes. What is the basis of mythology, but the mythology of one self trying to convince another self of its mythology? And if it works, it works by definition because the self which tries to sell mythology, and the self which believes it, are equally ignorant of how the self forms. Knowledge – representation in words – literally depends on a coherent knowledge in the body, which depends on a coherent relational dynamic with others. Take away the base – let evil in – and it first colonizes feelings, enforces through relationships, and teases through temptations/idealization in the way we reason about things. This is a bottom-up process, from the logic of physics and geometry, into relationships, feelings, and then thinking.
Here is a quote from a book I was reading:
“Seen this way, “God” is not an abstraction; “It” is the highest scalar entity capable of inducing awesome/fearful mysterium tremendum experiences and of imposing dramatic sensory/hyletic and semiotic/discursive constraints.” – Alex Shalom Kohav, The Sod Hypothesis; pg. 38, Makom, 2013
Think about that word – ‘mysterium tremendum’. It is sold off as a fact about God, rather than seen as an emergent property of early-life caregiver regulation of the infants body, and hence, dependent on whether or not love/recognition was present in those interactions. Is self-other not a template for mind-body? Or, more basically, a template for self-world? If God = World/Universe/Nature, then this later capacity to represent is clearly ‘leaching off’ the more earlier developing relationship between self and other, and the way that relationship is inscribed in the mind-body relationship.
This author also has some very sketchy/nihilist looking art, so its not hard to see the relationship between his metaphysical acceptance of God as ‘fearful/terrifying’ – and taking these constraints as essential to reality – rather than seeing them as the emergent product of a self entrained/conditioned by environmental experiences of the other and its body, which, because all thought is organically based in earlier representations (via affect), metaphysical thoughts are simply projections of these more basic social processes. Thus, the high-winded fixation on God and his ‘mysterious terror’ is a function of a brain that cannot metabolize the ideal truth of things: it sees the universe as terrifying – as well as fundamentally other.
What does this mean, ultimately? It means a) your damaged goods. Not your fault; but you still have a brain that is less-than-able to metabolize the ideal truth of things. Hence, maybe it would be in your and everyone elses interests to restrain your self for the sake of the next generation. Maybe reincarnation is real – since the sense of ones own eternity implies such a belief. If so, you will gain later by sacrificing your affectional/attachment issues today, for the sake of those who will directly benefit from your caring, more symmetrical relation to the needs of a growing self.
More or less, if you’ve experienced asymmetry in relationship – especially in an extremely traumatizing form (i.e. sexual, emotional and physical abuse) – your feeling states cannot help but represent reality “as this” – or whatever it is your believing it to be.
It is so easy to disengage from this level of reasoning, yet when most – or all – conversations skirt the way affects relate to ‘cognitions’, incoherent concepts are snuck in, and thinking is carried out in a reckless/incoherent way.
Thus, I try to hold to first-principles – as defined and understood by the physical sciences. This theme, if held to and explored in a chronological way – from the emergence of matter, to the origin of life, it will be seen that symmetry is a very useful guide to helping us think/recognize what is real, and what isn’t real. If the mathematical truths of symmetry/geometry isn’t trustworthy, nothing is. And of course, the latter doesn’t make sense – and is itself a cliché borne of an asymmetrical culture that “cant face truths
” – and so, “nothing” is not a real option; just something we say to make sense of the division that exists within each and every one of us.
If you don’t forget about how symmetry works, and how it grows – and in what way/manner is grows – it wont be too hard to discriminate truth from falsehood. Everyone has an internalized sense of what ‘symmetry’ means in human relationships i.e. love. And if love is the embodied affect of ‘care’, then reason – a later developing faculty – must then exist in the service of justifying/clarifying how the various affects we experience put us out of touch with – or in touch with – love.
It is important not to let cynicism sneak inside of you – which is what many men, unknowingly, cannot help but let happen to themselves. Love/care sounds like ‘socialism’ – yet, socialism definitely has a coherent basis to it, given that we ourselves arise in such a fundamentally intertwined way (“co-arising”)with one another. We need a common narrative in order to relax the stresses between us.
Yet, we’re also individuals; and individuals who are made by social-processes don’t need to have those truths shoved down their throats; indeed, if its by ignoring the others agency that the other comes to pursue precisely that which you attempt to prohibit them from pursuing. There is thus a balance to be found between the “liberty” to pursue something (i.e. as in capitalism) and the responsibility to that which is – reality (socialism). The tension between opposites – self vs. community, eternity vs. temporality, cannot be broken down; the attempt to break it down is an implicit need ‘not to think’ – not to negotiate or dialogue with others. Democracy thus bridges the social and the capital, the communal and the individual. Yet, the relationship between institutions and society needs to be one based in empirical facts – in science, and so, a vital link between power (as institutions) and being empowered to regulate those institutions, can only occur if development is recognized to be dependent on symmetry between bodies, and then between affects i.e. expectancies in relation to other, and then thought/language (how we represent those expectancies in narratives); with each developmental stage being understood as an elaboration/complexification of what precedes it.
There is thus a deep, deep need to understand that science isn’t ‘evil’ – its a method of acquiring knowledge (which is what Scientia means in latin) – and so is basically epistemology. People need to understand that an epistemology born from a coherent – an empirically checkable – set of facts naturally grades upwards to explain how our minds work.
Lastly, I think there is much joy/goodness to be salvaged from todays world; from sports, to games, to travel, to entertainment. None of these things are inherently wrong. Even ‘sexual liberation’ is a necessary prelude to the levelling out of differences between self and other.
What is clearly and utterly wrong is the ritualized child abuse, misogyny, and greediness – that emanates out from a naïve/disordered value-system that fetishes the individual in such a way as to make a religion out of asymmetry – and perhaps this ‘religion of asymmetry’ – this projecting of “man” on to the structure of everything else (i.e. an intense preoccupation with self) is yet another symptom of the deficiency cognition Maslow noted.
I mention this so as to avoid the very human habit of “polarization”; where our need to be coherent – to the other and to ourselves – leads to an exaggerated identification with a position polar to the one you’re in conflict with, but which, under a more relaxed gaze, is not as problematic as it appears when the self is aroused in such a way. This is how idealization works in the moment-to-moment facts of affect-regulation; we prematurely accept – or ‘select’ – a theory/position as it really were as certain/clear as we think it is. Socialism/Capitalism is an example where people either hate one or the other. The middle path – or position – which seems to be the more truthful/accurate/sophisticated position, is always the one that undeveloped/unrefined minds have trouble achieving. Why – if because interactions in a competitive social-context are always implicitly competitive i.e. act upon a self that has been refined to deal with a world that constantly strains us – and so makes our brains attuned to what we need to protect our self-esteem?
The religion of the elite is a religion that seems to change the human from a triadic organization, into a dyadic organization. Unity is achieved through sex and deception; whereas the trinity is basically the coherent semiosis of one self understanding another self in terms of a third – the facts of both which require negotiation and cooperation to reconcile the passive/unconscious stresses that affect our relationship? Care/love is the unity of the trinity, whereas aggression/dissembling is what comes from a system which represents humans as ineluctably “other” from the universe around them.
Look at the Yin-Yang symbol, the Gnostic cross, or the Star of David. These all imply the same thing: two vectors in interaction. Without interaction, there is only the ‘comedy” of the manic defensiveness, and then the suffering of the finally defeated ego.
All seems pointless.
Till, can I give you a word of advice? I’ve read your comments, some many times. You make some good points, some especially interesting points and then use an encyclopedia of linguistics to make some more. I feel I’m pretty well read. Aside from the penetrating studies you have made into symmetry. And even with looking up some concepts and reading about them I still feel a bit lost. My advice is if you can, break it down for us a little more. A little less obscure jargon as I bet most of us don’t have six degrees in semiotics or even 1 in linguistics. How does symmetry even play into relationships? No 2 people are symmetrical. Let’s start with that. But hey, thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole of reading.
Finally caught up on this series, thoroughly enjoyable. Especially the commentary! Till you took a crowbar to my head and while I struggled tremendously and sense I have not grokked the immensity of what you so excitedly and infectiously speak I loved the mind cranking experience of it. Luscious recommendations to bookmark abound! I look forward to reading the rest of this series hoping everyone continues to divulge their take.
I’d love to hear a podcast between you’d
I am here to say thank you to Mr Steven for helping me join this Illuminati I lost too much money trying to join this organization everyone i contacted always take my money and after that i wont hear from them again until i found Mr Steven comment on the internet so i decided to give him a try i did everything he asked of and finally i got everything i request and wanted in this life my brothers and sisters out there looking for help organization at first i taught i would never find a real agent of Illuminati i kindly follow the right way and contact Mr Steven on this number +2340938028405 or message him on whatsapp on that same email or you can email him on this email agentsteven13@gmail.com hail Lucifer am looking forward to become a real agent like Mr Steven to help the poor and the talented who are ready to change their life.
LOL; a master satirist in our midst – the proof being I can’t be sure if you are serious or not; keep it up