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(Nov-Dec 2017)
from
NewDawnMagazine Website is always more important
than science...
The signs are everywhere, blended into the sidewalks, pulp fictions, and the kitsch trappings of the art world. For iconic sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, most of the sublime things of his world were disguised as trash that seamlessly slipped into the background of a dysfunctional world reality.
The seeming trash of the
everyday mundane clashed with incoming cosmic mutterings that have
found their way into much of our popular culture.
One of these was the text of the Principia Discordia that emerged in the 1960s as a 'sacred text' of Discordianism.
Written by Malaclypse the Younger (Greg Hill) and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst (Kerry Thornley), it proclaimed "All hail Discordia!" in a mixture of goddess worship with the notion of order and disorder as balancing illusions.
The fifth commandment of Principia Discordia (PDF) states,
In line with what today we would call a 'post-truth' position, the Principia Discordia knew that,
Discordia came to influence the writings of maverick author-philosopher Robert Anton Wilson, who popularized it further in his books, especially in the Illuminatus! Trilogy.
These utterances were further echoed by the writer William S. Burroughs who, besides experimenting with cut-up narrative techniques, proclaimed a Discordian-esque,
With this endless possibility came the rise of literate figures, or rather literary magicians, who were connected to systems of magic, such as the Golden Dawn.
Popular culture began to open up and see combined forms of neo-shamanism, eastern philosophy, quantum science, visionary art, and computer technology.
This modern twist on magic was part of a wider trend in experimenting with new forms of stimulating and awakening consciousness.
These paths were
attempting to destabilize our conditioning patterns and our
resultant consensus reality. They were all aimed at waking up the
usually-slumbering human mind.
In more recent years the metaphors and memes of being trapped within a waking dream, or of dreams within dreams, have been explored in such popular films as,
Part of the myth we find
ourselves popularizing is the mythology that we are in some sort of
constructed reality - a gnostic-inspired simulacrum of truth.
There's an odd wave of mystical-spiritual impulses now radiating through popular culture that encourages us to throw ourselves into new fantastic realms and mythological fictions. These are modern mash-ups of the counterculture now being packaged and presented as part of mainstream culture.
In recent years the most extraordinary success in this area has been the incredible, phenomenal rise of the modern 'superhero'...
We seek a cultural expression for the human psyche; for our psychic currents and transmissions and sacred communication. Hence, our superheroes must live on!
We have the X-Men walking amongst us, a mutant subspecies of humans.
The natural order is evo-mythological - it is sacred, beyond human, and connects us with evolutionary currents. In the absence of our ancient myths we have ingested the sacred alchemical root and through pop-culture morphed this transformation into the new wave of superheroes - myth lives anew in spandex.
Maybe it is a cliché because it's true; we wish to find the personal superhero within each of us - the journey of the individual, unfolding within the great cosmic drama.
This mythical journey has
so far taken us from scientific rationalism and industrial
modernity, and now we may finally be becoming more than we are; that
is, more than human.
It is not only a question of whether more people are interested or not, but rather that these ideas are more widely available now thanks to popular culture.
The waking life and the dream are becoming part of the same movie plot, as in Richard Linklater's film version of Philip K. Dick's 'A Scanner Darkly' (2006). We are more and more waking up into our own movie - our very own Truman Show - where ideas are seeded directly into our environments in order to catalyze our awakening.
Like many of the ancient wisdoms foretold, we have been asleep in a distant land, and now we are receiving messages and signals flashing like neon signs through our popular culture.
This marks our juncture,
our crisis point, between moving toward waking up or falling back
into catastrophic and catatonic slumber.
Transcendental states of consciousness, ratified by the far explorations of new science, are adding to the mix of a new 21st century mythology that as of yet remains unnamed. Perhaps we are emerging toward the birth of new sacred gods.
These are the gods of mutations, of neurological and biological adaptations. And they are emerging first in our pop cultures as our superheroes and psychic mutants.
In this initiation into a psychically enhanced future, we will need more than ever to learn how to distinguish the demonic from the spiritual.
Hence the current barrage of films, TV series, and fiction that shows angels vs. devils, humans vs. vampires, and the whole gamut of the good vs. the bad that has crawled from the forest floor to enter into the quest for the Holy Grail.
In this way, the gods will never be forgotten as they merge with a super-augmented mutant humanity in spandex. The real gods, temporarily forgotten, reside within our psyche - they are kept in mind.
And yet they can only become real for us - to re-mind us - when dashing about on the stage and streets in front of our very eyes.
We need the sacred to
slap our faces in spandex gloves before we begin to blink a waking
eye. That is, our sacred and supernatural fictions appear for us and
require our engagement with them.
These new heroes are displaying to us our latent capacities and powers that are yet to unfold. We are witness to the first wave of mutant evolutionary pioneers.
The summit of human evolution is far in the distance, and yet its early stages are manifesting through the Marvel and DC Universes where god-like potentials await us.
They are now our teachers, our guides, our mutant futures that are beyond human.
The
mutants have become practicing mystics...
We are already well on our way as our outer and inner spaces explode into a new blistering supernova.
Our early civilizations mapped the heavens before they mapped the terrain under their feet. It was no surprise when UFOs started to dart across our urban skies and come crashing down disguised as government weather balloons. 2
Recent popular culture has nurtured a fascination with outer spaces and our galactic cousins from the Golden Age of science fiction of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s to the new wave of the 60s and 70s.
The concerns of our outer space relations shifted from how to make contact with our space cousins to the entropic death of the universe.
Then the environmental
theme entered our outer spaces as if a subliminal projection from
our very own inner spaces. The growing number of alleged UFO
abductees that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century began
to relay messages of extraterrestrial concern for our planetary
wellbeing.
Mack came to view the alien abduction phenomenon as acting as a catalyst to open human consciousness to the wider possibilities of connection with the universe.
For more than a decade Mack rigorously studied the alien abduction phenomenon and interviewed hundreds of people (whom Mack referred to as "experiencers"). 3
What initially started out as an exercise in studying mental illness soon turned into an in-depth inquiry into personal and spiritual transformation. Mack eventually came to see the alien abduction phenomenon as one of the most powerful agents for spiritual growth, personal transformation, and expanded awareness - in other words, as a trigger for a sacred experience.
Despite the external anxiety produced by the experience, it was clear to both Mack and his set of experiencers that a profound communion was being established between humankind and other realities.
Further, this interaction
was catalyzing a shift in human consciousness toward collapsing the
old models of materialistic duality and opening up a connection not
only 'beyond the Earth' but with other dimensional realities.
A major part of the information was apparently concerning the status of the Earth and humanity's relationship with its environment. Many of the experiencers referred to their own abduction phenomenon as participating in a trans-dimensional or interspecies relationship.
The transformative effects of these unusual encounters were often remarkable.
Mack's experiencers talked about,
Significant from these accounts is that, according to the experiencers, the abduction phenomenon is sometimes accompanied by a sense of moving into, or connecting with, other realities or dimensions.
The sacred space and outer space were becoming one and the same.
It made sense then that our human future was going to include space
migration. And, according to our galactic cousins, it may even be a
necessity if we continue to mess up our planetary home.
Leary's S.M.I.2L.E. stood for,
Basically, these were all the themes from the post-humanism, sci-fi dream of humanity living off-planet.
We also have now the commercial race to establish a new branch of space tourism, with Virgin Galactic being one of the visible and vocal frontrunners.
SpaceX, another private
enterprise, is banking its dollars on helping to
colonize Mars.
There's no lack of vision; it's down to the know-how and the
technological leg-up.
From the earliest sacred expressions in the cave art of our ancestors to the ideas of space migration, they all show two fundamental urges within the human being:
Human dreams have
encompassed living
on Mars, leaving and migrating beyond the solar
system, and contact with 'Higher Intelligence'.
It has been documented that Roddenberry was introduced to an entity called 'Tom' who represented The Council of Nine, through the channel medium Phyllis Schlemmer. 4
Roddenberry allegedly received information for a film script to be written that would help prepare the public for extraterrestrial contact. The alleged film never got made, yet we might wonder what ideas made their way into 'Star Trek' (including 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine').
It appears there are
those 'out there' who are concerned for our proper preparation for
the sacred communion. And the archetypes are now flooding through
popular culture like an evangelical tsunami.
It is now well-known that Lucas took personal inspiration from Campbell's mythological structure, as well as personal advice from the man himself.
There may be those who bemoan that our current civilization does not have a mythic center, but they're missing the point. The point is that there is no exact point anymore.
As Hermetic lore states,
The earlier gods retreated back on their sky chariots until we finally arrived at the point where we asked ourselves,
The new sacred guides are now secreted in our popular texts that penetrate the outer and inner worlds.
These post-historic mythic guides are first to be found within us - within our collective species psyche that gets projected out onto our celluloid and digital landscapes.
These mythical memes are telling us that we are not here alone, nor are we here for ourselves alone.
We have such films as 'Back to the Future', 'Primer', 'Looper', 'Terminator', 'Interstellar', and all the rest to attest to our obsession with shifting our timely perspectives.
Everything is now malleable, according to our new quantum sciences, and this new reality is knocking down our rigid, linear walls.
Just when you thought you were safe in stable comfort zones, the paranormal is getting ready to redress itself as the new normal. A gnostic-like awareness of being embedded in a reality-construct will become ever greater as our technologies increasingly broker and interface our physical experience.
There are plentiful
arrays of fictions and films that are trying to signal our entry
into a new space of hybrid awareness...
is the only real alternative
to extinction...
Nor are we heading toward
a techno-machine Overlord future
with us as slaves. Because the
sacred works in multiple ways and never hedges all its bets on one
horse only.
The coming space migration is a reflection of our expanding inner spaces. We are toying with these memes in our popular culture now ahead of their coming actualization. Our fictions are dealing with the blueprints before we're ready to go the full distance.
That's why we're in a period of incredible experimentation - we are juggling with a new type of energy coming into our cultural realities.
This new 'pranic force'
is getting expressed in a myriad of multiple forms; be it
creatively, chaotically, commercially, or crazily. It's an
incredible mix of exuberance and experimentation trying to find its
harmonic resonance.
There's a strong sense of these sacred themes filtering through our modern popular culture, and we can only guess that it's preparing us for something.
Here we
go…
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