Some commentary on the Mothman Festival

I had made plans to attend the festival this year, come hell or high water.  Well it worked out well for me.  Andy Colvin (author and blogger/researcher whom I have interviewed here, here, and here) had arranged to stay with a friend of his in Point Pleasant and was kind enough to include me in his plans.  The Mothman Festival happens every year and this year was the 10th.
I had an interview with the organizer Jeff Wamsley and had the opportunity to meet him even though he was running around nonstop the whole time trying to keep things moving smoothly.
I met some very incredible people and was pleasantly surprised to find a receptive audience to some of the more Earthly explanations for things like UFOs.  Though there was some of the new agey ideas as well.  It was a treat to meet Rosemary Ellen Guiley who is a sincere investigator and has a lot of credibility in the field.  She gave a talk on the Djinn.
Andy's talk focused on the probable human origin for much of the UFO phenomena as well as conspiratorial aspects of the research.

That's Andy with his notes.

Susan Sheppard was next to speak.

There were vendors in a little bazaar area and of course many great and interesting things to buy.  It is a good thing I think that people have a real interest in the byways like the paranormal and UFOlogy.

Here's Andy hawking his wares:

A shot of Rosemary:

I had several highlights on the trip. One of course was a visit to the notorious "TNT" area where Mothman first appeared.

Noxious looking water in the "TNT" area.  This area was used for munitions storage in what are called "igloos" which are concrete bunkers.  We visited the so-called "haunted igloo" purported to have been lived in by a homeless man that had killed some people at one time.

There's Andy at the entrance to the haunted igloo.  Inside looks exactly like an igloo with sloping walls in a half sphere shape.

There's a hole in the roof at the apex presumably for ventilation and to allow for gas escape in the event of an explosion or fire inside.  One of these bunkers exploded a while back and closed off the area for a time.  Some of this land is still in use for "reclamation" and storage of chemicals and presumably explosives.

In our explorations in the area Andy led the way to the Defense Logistics Plant in Point Pleasant which is closing and recently had an auction for some of it's surplus material.

A sign for the auction:

Andy has put together a rather complex web of corporate/intelligence/military money and people that surrounds the whole Mothman phenomenon and UFOlogy.
Working on a hunch Andy led us to an abandoned plant or factory of some kind which was completely gutted with random holes in the walls but was completely accessible with no fences or even signs to keep people out.  There was what appeared to be an oven or furnace inside which had what looked like asbestos just hanging out of the area around it.
A couple of strange things were observed inside.

I captured a lot of "orbs" in this photo, which was not reproduced in a subsequent photo of the same room which was the only one I photographed twice.
A creepy drawing on the wall in the abandoned facility:

BEFORE we went into the building Andy predicted that orbs would be seen.  I have never had orbs on any of my photos before that I am aware of.

After the event I attended a picnic with Andy at the home of one of his relatives.  We road a quad and took a roll on a steep hill, shot my .45 pistol, visited a private graveyard on the top of a mound like hill and had some great food with some fine folk.

The end is nigh...or maybe not

It is quite easy to draw conclusions and to predict events that support various theories that one might have regarding the state of affairs in the world.  I do it myself so I should know.
We've been living in a time of upheaval and momentous change and this fact alone serves to fuel the desire to "put things in context" and this usually leads to making pronouncements of doom.

Optimism and pessimism are dead.  It's time for realism.  What do we make of the signs and portents in the wake of realism?  One could make the claim that we are living in the last days of your religion of choice.  In reality what we are seeing today largely has occurred many times in the past.  We have a short memory indeed.

Looking at the violent riots occurring around the world one might think that this is really IT.

But we have seen this all before:

French Revolution:

Plug riots:

Philadelphia riots:

New York draft riots:

I could go on and on.  There is a strong undercurrent in the world today of a fervent desire to change things for the better and we have been let down time and time again in hopes of making the world a better place for all of us.

We have also had a belly full of economic problems but history is filled with such things.  The point is that there is nothing about today to mark it as special or any reason to think that we will see an end to the continued march of the human race into the future.
The only thing that we can really say is that we have seen the trends of history and they have indicated to us that where we might be headed as a people may not be such a nice place to live in.

We have always been at war with (insert name of country or countries here).

So what can be gleaned from the tea leaves of today?  Since we have been here before?
I think that like all times that we have seen momentous change as a possibility we have a choice.  We can try to achieve that change and carry it through to make something better for all of us.  We can try.  We may fail as we have many times before, but we may succeed.
It's time to grasp the bull by the horns and seize the day.
Do we have the ability to do what our forebears did and TRY?
Apathy is deadly.

Saturn devours it's children

How does one go about making a statement that has meaning or substance when one is observing the phenomena of the breakdown of Western civilization? What we have happening in society around the world is a total breakdown.  
There is a conspiratorial nature to history that would have it that all of the various things that are going on are the result of cabals acting behind the scenes.  I agree with the conspiratorial nature of history.


Franklin D. Roosevelt: "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."


Benjamin Disraeli: "The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans."


It seems to me the closer we look at the current breakdown of Western civilization we see that the nature of it is outside the control of even the most powerful secret societies.

                            Bilderberg Group

                                  Bohemian Grove


Some of these groups are very powerful but I think they are limited in their ability to act in such a way that can explain the complete collapse of the world economy which seems to be on the brink of occurring. 


To add to this mix we have all kinds of apocalyptic scenarios peppering us.  There is a mythology surrounding the comet "Elenin".  A photo circulating around the Internet is being used to support the idea of spacecraft following the comet in a replay of "Heaven's Gate".  

The Sun too is acting up.  We are supposed to be going through a Solar maximum and the Sun has not been cooperating.  Astronomers take note of the fact that when we have a delay in Solar cycles the Sun has a way of catching up by becoming suddenly more active.  We are starting to see this now.

The weather and actions of the Earth are both also seemingly out of whack too.  The Fukushima disaster stems from an earthquake and tsunami.

We have had a series of devastating tornadoes in the USA as well as massive ongoing flooding.  Joplin was almost completely destroyed.

We are seeing a rock rolling downhill and like physics it is gathering steam and getting faster and faster.  This brings in mind the idea of the ages that man and civilization goes through in time and this brings me to the title of this post.  According to various traditions man is now in the Iron Age and that is soon to collapse bringing on a period of chaos that will ultimately lead to a new Golden Age.  The king of the Golden Age is Saturn.  I was privileged to talk with Jay Weidner and we touched upon some of this in relation to time.

I also talked with Tracy R. Twyman who had a lot to say on the idea of Saturn and the ages of man.

In looking at this I have come to a conclusion.  That is we have had numerous conspiracies in history and that are going on today which have attempted and are attempting to shape the future of this world and of humanity in general.  But these competing interests have precipitated a kind of collapse that is now out of their power to control.
And this can be seen by the nature of politics today and the surrealistic nature of what is being proposed.  It is almost as if the veil of reality has been lifted to show us what is REALLY real.
What can be done?  Do we stand a chance of getting through this mess and achieving a future?  I have no answers but if we are going through ages and are approaching the new Golden Age we need to prepare for a period of chaos and change unlike any we have seen before.  And there are a lot of things that we can do to be prepared for that coming period.
Of course this is all speculation.  There is the meme of doomsday and 2012 as well which I put no stock in whatsoever but the timing of a lot we are seeing leads me to believe that plans had been laid to take advantage of that meme in order for certain elite factions to enact plans of global control and enslavement.  The good thing that we can take from the rock rolling relentlessly downhill is that it will flatten these elitist plans along with everything else.  In other words we have a "golden" opportunity to start over and it is only something that will be limited by the ability of people to imagine and implement that which is good and sustainable for the future of us and our world. 

Independence Day

It's July 4th, Independence Day in the good old US of A.  It is a terrible tragedy that there are many people who do not know the history of our country at all.  There is unfortunately an ever more terrible tragedy in that there are a lot of people that THINK they know the history of this country.
Before you go out and watch the fireworks perhaps you should take a moment to consider the history of this nation and the nature of the founding and the founding fathers of this "republic".
First there is the Declaration of Independence.  Basically it is an indictment of King George III and his failure to address the grievances of the people who wrote and signed the document.  This purported to represent the will of the people.  They had no authority to do this.  In any event this nation purports to be a nation that allows it's people a redress of it's grievances but in fact it does not allow for this at all.  In the Medicare slashing of Paul Ryan we have seen a total disregard for the constituency as here:

and here:

One could easily write up a list of grievances very similar to that which is in the Declaration, but against our supposed great government of, by and for the people.

The constitution is meaningless as a document because the government, supposedly constrained by it, routinely ignores it and have done so since this country was supposedly founded.   Today we have a manifest disregard for the 4th Amendment with the TSA searching people with no probable cause as here:

and here:

Little girls are presumed to be carrying bombs in their Underoos.  Guilty until groped.

The fact of the matter is that the "founding fathers" were rich white men that owned land.  There was a strong impulse for rich landowners to protect their interests but to do so with some cover.  The "we the people" and reference to "us" and "our" are only for the rich and powerful but because they also have another meaning people think those provisions apply to them.  They do not and never did.

The Whiskey Rebellion was a perfect and early example of the ignorance of grievances by the government just barely born.

Hey how about this.  I am a colony of a hated tyrannical King.  I declare independence from that kingdom.  So in setting up my country I want to have a distinctive flag to show my new status.  I am not going to use any of the devices of the hated tyrannical kingdom I just fought with for independence?  Right?

First US Flag:

"Betsy Ross" supposed flag:

British flag:

Variant:

One of the chief corporate oligarchical controllers of the British Empire was the East India Company and this was it's flag:

Seems like there was no desire to draw a clear distinction from the tyranny by the "blessed" founding fathers, which should be rather telling, no?

Food for thought on the idea of independence and whether or not we ever had it at all.

My 4th of July video for 2011:

Notice:  Any videos or images embedded on this site that are not owned or produced by me are done so under the fair use provisions of the DMCA.

Surrealism in the world; do you sense some imminent "event"?

It has really become apparent to me that there is a certain level of surrealism in the world that, at first, I attributed to some more mundane activities by people for rather mundane and all too human feelings and motives.  I am now starting to wonder if that is all there is to it.  I am betting that anyone that is reading this is feeling something similar to what I am feeling.  Here is my video that I just did on this topic last night:

This is not a "psychic" or "predictive prophecy" of any kind.  It is more along the lines of "normal" human intuition and "reading" the signs and symbols around us.
This surrealism is most apparent to me in politics and economics and that is where the idea first started to trickle into my consciousness.  I have looked at the Republican candidates for office and have just shaken my head at the ludicrous nature of them and their policies and platforms.  You only have to look at the news to see the cartoonish aspects of the campaign.
There also was the idea of President Obama and his lack of a past and his overt attempts to obfuscate about it.  He also has gone to great lengths to betray all of the things that he supposedly stood for in running for office.  Something I picked up on really early on.

That video was done in February of 2008.

Then we had the release of Obama's birth certificate, the legendary "long form" that he fought to keep out of public consciousness.

This was apparently as a result of supposed candidate for office Donald Trump and his constant media attention to the matter.  It is my belief that Trump was actually working FOR Obama in some capacity, whether wittingly or not.
We quickly had a thorough debunking of the document as an obvious fake and fraud.  The surrealism is that people just accept it and the media has absolutely nothing to say on the matter.
Then we had very shortly after this the supposed killing of Osama Bin Laden at the direction of President Obama.  Something that I also had intuited when I made a video saying that the release of the certificate was a "signal" for something major to come.

The fake death of Osama Bin Laden was only part of the major event to come and that is what I have been feeling.  There is much more to this than simply politics or economics.  It may be an Earth wide sort of thing or even bigger than that.
Do you feel this?
Of course my view had been tempered by the fact that I tend to focus on the political and economic world because that is what I do with my videos on youtube.  But we have also seen some amazing things happening in other areas as well.  We have had tremendous solar flares disrupting the Earth's magnetic sphere from a largely dormant Sun that may becoming more active, or maybe not.

I say that the Sun may not act up much because of recent scientific claims.  And also speculation of a new Ice Age.  Because of a phenomenon similar to that experienced during the Maunder Minimum.  We have seen devastating tornadoes and Earthquakes.  We have also seen a nuclear disaster slowly turning into an apocalyptic scenario in Fukushima,

 which may just be the beginning as there is evidence of problems at other plants, here, and here and here.
The Earthquake in Japan had some anomalous heating of the atmosphere that some have equated with the use of HAARP.  I do not believe this explanation since there have been reports of unusual weather patterns associated with Earthquakes before HAARP.
It is a conglomeration of events, most of which I have commented upon individually before.  Some others of note include the "killing" of Bin Laden on Beltane, which I covered in the following video:

Which happened to coincide with the marriage of Prince William and Kate in England on the newly "rediscovered" Cosmati Pavement...

As well as the beatification of Pope John Paul II.

We have seen a lot of things like this over the years to be sure, none of it is new, per se, but it does seem to be happening at a more rapid pace and much more blatantly now.  Do you sense something?  Or am I just crazy?

"DUNE"; retrograde apotheosis; rise and fall of the machines; plans within plans

Frank Herbert's "DUNE" is a film that has so many themes that it is difficult to give it a full rendition as to the various ideas presented in the first theatrical version.  Frank Herbert himself is a character that reminds me a bit of L. Ron Hubbard the creator of Scientology.  He has an eclectic background and his writing reflects this to a great degree.  One cannot ignore the very Scientology-like things that are very apparent in the movie (one that comes to mind is the "testing" of Paul Atreides by the Reverend Mother, but there are more).
There is a basic storyline on the surface of the film that is very relevant to us today and the symbolism is revealing.  The movie takes place in the distant future where humanity has spread throughout the galaxy and there is a galactic empire.  There is an intricate system of feudalism with noble families, but we also have a corporate structure as well that is essential to the story.  There are also a myriad of secret societies that play important roles in the story.  It is of course also about the apotheosis of Paul Atreides who is the very un-Christ like messiah figure.

Kyle MacLachlan is an interesting choice for this role considering some of the strange roles that he has had, especially in Twin Peaks, and The Hidden.

There are dichotomies in the story that relate to much other science fiction.  There are no "thinking machines", that is artificially intelligent computers, as they had been banned centuries before and destroyed in the Butlerian Jihad.  This is interesting in comparison to the ideas expressed in other films that have the machines destroying humanity or waging an apparently endless war ("The Terminator" and "The Matrix" come to mind).  There is a total outlawing of any kind of machine "made in the image of a human mind" and the penalty for creating or using such was death.

There is no lack of technology for all of this.  It is of a different kind and centered on the development of human potential and on organic technology.  Drugs are an integral part of the story, the Mentats use the "Juice of Sapho" to quicken their thoughts, giving them a stain around their mouths.

                                                        Pitr Devries Operating Thetan Mentat


The Mentats are meant to take over the actions of computers because they are trained to think in strictly computer like ways, analytically and capable of amassing huge amounts of data and collating it just like computers.
The elite all use "Melange", the spice that is created by the biological action of the sandworms of Dune or Arakis.
Reverand Mothers in the "Bene Gesserit" school ( a religious order that fulfills many different functions in the empire) use several different drugs and poisons in their rituals.
The "Guild Navigator" uses the spice for seeing accurately through space time to enable the folding of space to allow for near instantaneous transport of heighliners between distant planets, it also mutates them over time. David Lynch chose to have the navigators actually do the folding of space in the movie even though in the book they are only able to see the correct safe passage that the heighliner will take to travel safely.  This is an interesting departure because it makes the navigators much more powerful because they can literally go anywhere nearly instantly.

                                                                   Guild Navigator

                                                    Gaius Helen Mohiam and a couple of
                                                         fellow Bene Gesserit sisters.


There are plenty of themes to explore in the movie.  One thing I want to point out before we go on is what is conspicuously ABSENT from the film.  Can you guess or do you know?  What's missing?  ALIENS!  The whole galaxy in this mythology is peopled by humans, there is no other intelligent life, just humans.

It should be noted that even in the books there is no other intelligent life in the galaxy besides humanity.

Believe it or not this actually plays into the idea of a hidden "other" on Earth as has been the subject of discussion on this blog as well as some other less "reputable" ones. ;)
It would take a month to properly lay out all of the back story to show the symbolism here.

A scientific genius, who becomes part man, part machine discovers the secret to interstellar travel and communication over a long lifetime.  Part of this technology is the idea of a null point.  These can be used to create pocket dimensions.  That is a very real blueprint for the alien as Earth inhabitant, AND dimensional entity.  Humans are the same everywhere in the Dune Universe but you would not know it to look at them since the variance is quite broad ON THE SURFACE.  Genetically they are all human.  This is key in considering the idea of other beings existing with us that equate with the gods of old.  Sometimes these gods have been depicted as having certain animal characteristics but a lot of the time they are shown wearing things that made them look animal like.

                                          Oannes, clearly manlike "wearing" a fish.

And then you have the Guild Navigators that are described in the books as vaguely aquatic looking.  And depicted this way in the "Children of Dune" miniseries:

They even have a little bit of the "grey alien" in them eh?  David Lynch chose to depict the Navigators as shown further above.  That change takes away from my thesis a little, but he had a different vision of these beings than Herbert did.

There is a messianic story here as well with Paul Atreides' ascension to near godlike status.  His apotheosis is a retrograde one.  The breeding program that produces him is clearly designed to produce a human that is in command of the forces that man had in the ancient past.  The perfect man that existed in the "Golden Age", or Eden, or take your pick of any of countless myths of mans origins.

Artificially intelligent/computer technology is shunned (though this envelope is pushed even after the ban) and organic evolution is pursued through control of the body right down to the cellular and genetic level.
Various societies exist in a dynamic tension of control.  Most of the major organizations are highly secretive and masonic or church like though there is no overt subject of worship except amongst the Fremen, which clearly are derivative of Middle Eastern racial groups and religious philosophies such as Islam, Zoroastrianism, Sufism, etc.  The empire is highly structured and religious but there is an absence of a god or gods, except, perhaps, amongst the Fremen.

There is a fanatical devotion to Paul Atreides by his Fremen warriors, and interestingly enough Paul's secret name is Usul, which in their language meant "base of the pillar", shades of "Foundation" and "Al-Qaeda".
Just a little aside in the story.  After 9/11 there was almost immediately a conspiracy theory that purported that Al-Qaeda derived it's name from the Foundation series of books by Asimov.  But it seems to me that one could argue that it could just as easily, and perhaps even more so, have been a reference to this movie.  Let us not forget the cogent point that the movie came out in 1984, shades of Orwell/Blair here and the ushering in of Big Brother via the police state actions following the activity of the "foundation" or "base" and the attack on 9/11.  Food for synchonistic thought.
 There is a certain prescience here since the Fremen come to terrorize the forces of the empire in much the same way we are led to believe that Al-Qaeda does to the US empire republic.

This movie can be seen as a model for the elite plans for world domination as well as the secret societies plans for the fulfillment of their goals of "perfected man".  The various ways that is done are by the various routes one can take and what "brotherhood" to which you belong.

There is even a monopoly that runs all commerce, or seems to.  That is CHOAM.  The galactic Wal-Mart.

Now let us tie it all together shall we.  Ancient man and his interaction with the gods that live among us showed how through the superior genetics of hybrid offspring one could achieve the greatness of demigods and heroes.  Analogous to the highly evolved people of the Dune movie, the Reverend Mother, Paul, Jessica, Guild Navigators, etc.

                                                                    Achilles

                                                                     Gilgamesh

Ultimately the gods left or went into hiding leaving us on our own to develop or atrophy on the vine.  To preserve the knowledge of the ancients and the magic of the gods there were formed secret societies and mystery religions.

                                                                            Mithras

Analogous to the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, etc.

This knowledge is used by some to try and control the population and push us into a direction they want us to go and this is precisely what we see in this movie.
International banking and commerce are part of the equation of control as depicted in the movie by CHOAM.

Through the "weirding way" and the evolution that the spice enhances along with exotic technology and drugs and a millenias long eugenics program the end result is the reverse apotheosis of the "super being" back to the genetic pureness of the "golden age".  This is the goal of the secret societies and the mystery religions.

The David Lynch movie is one of those movies that really resonated with me and it was probably the most highly symbolic of  movies to me and was only replaced when "The Matrix" came out.  The SciFi miniseries was also good but the movie was it for me.

I might pick this movie up again in the future for more discussion.

Secret History of Rock and Roll; a book review

I must admit that I am not a huge fan of music, and never have been, even as a child I preferred reading to anything else when it came to entertainment.  When reading the book I was surprised by how much nostalgia it generated in me.  Because, despite the fact that I was and am primarily a book worm and still have little interest in music I remembered with fondness a lot of the bands and songs discussed in the book by way of examples of musical genres.

I have written another book review on "Our Gods Wear Spandex" also by Christopher Knowles.  Reading both books gives a good example of Chris' writing style which is easy flowing and crisp, not a lot of unnecessary diversion.  It is only fitting that I should read and review Chris' work here as I also had him as a guest on my Stench of Truth radio show.
A precursor to this work for me was the very interesting work by Alex Constantine titled "The Covert War Against Rock".

The works are not related in content but in theme.  Also as prelude it is interesting to delve into the material of  Dave McGowan particularly his material on the Laurel Canyon scene and the birth of some of the more famous rock stars, and bands as well as some of the bigger names in Hollywood.

Well, interesting prelude aside let us get to the work in question.
Chris' main focus in his works both "Gods" and "Rock" is the influence of the mystery religions in the development of the modern art expressions in comics and the music scene respectively.
They both stand as unique examples of research into this connection and he makes a strong connection to the mystery schools in both of them.
In "Rock" we have the exposition of the very potent musical rituals surrounding the various mystery schools of ancient times translated into the music scene of today.  We find the Korybantes, armed, dancing warriors of Cybele the Earth Goddess.  We have the cult of Dionysus famed (or infamous if you prefer) for their excess.  And many more examples of genres and themes in the ancient's approach to the Gods and the modern rock equivalents.
This is all underground stuff.  The mystery schools were supposedly shunned by the church and attempts were made to suppress them by various groups over time.  The reality is that many of these groups were just taken over by the church and their feasts and holy days renamed for saints in the church and much of the practice simply renamed and brought under the auspices of the church.  Stamping out heresy is not always successful and in those cases the wholesale taking and renaming of such ideas is a classic and effective way of taming them and bringing them in line with orthodoxy.
In "Rock" Knowles gives us concrete examples of the various mystery schools as personified in the modern rock environment by individuals and groups.  The purpose, as in "Gods", is to show that the power and reality of these mythological constructs is still with us and the unorthodox theology and ritual practices surrounding the worship of the "old gods" is still a real undercurrent in modern artistic expression.
We are left with the real question yet again of what does this mean for us and the for the "reality" of the "old gods"?  Since the influence and strength of these themes is so strong as to survive in different ways today it obviously indicates the possibility that we are dealing with a "reality" that is still attempting to impinge on our own and perhaps will one day come out again in the open.
I cannot help but think of H. P. Lovecraft who also posited in his fiction the idea of a race of "old gods" just waiting with slimy tentacles to reemerge from their various prisons to once again take over Earth, which they view as rightfully theirs.
In a sense the gods of the Mystery Schools have a claim for being the rightful rulers of the Earth because the themes and rituals surrounding them have always been with us in one form or another.
Christopher Knowles has once again shown us that we cannot think of ourselves as beyond the influence of these ancient gods and that we may yet again see them seeping out of their current hiding places to come full force into our "reality".  I recommend the book as well as "Gods" as a crisp narrative of modern expression of ancient themes.  Check out his blog Secret Sun, which is also linked in the fellow travelers section.