The Immanence of Myth Release Approaches!

COMING IN AUGUST
The Immanence of Myth uses a deep but also conversational, honest and even subversive approach towards looking at the issue of mythology in our lives, especially as the book moves towards personal mythology and conversations with current mythic artists.

If you haven't already, take this as a wake-up call to join in and become a myth-maker of the 21st century. (More)

Published by Weaponized.

A Blind Woman, On Philosophy

"Philosophy is the history of a deaf-blind person writ large. From the talks of Socrates up through Plato,[26] Berkeley and Kant, philosophy records the efforts of human intelligence to be free of the clogging material world and fly forth into a universe of pure idea. A deaf-blind person ought to find special meaning in Plato’s Ideal World. These things which you see and hear and touch are not the reality of realities, but imperfect manifestations of the Idea, the Principle, the Spiritual; the Idea is the truth, the rest is delusion.If this be so, my brethren who enjoy the fullest use of the senses are not aware of any reality which may not equally well be in reach of my mind. Philosophy gives to the mind the prerogative of seeing truth, and bears us into a realm where I, who am blind, am not different from you who see. When I learned from Berkeley that your eyes receive an inverted image of things which your brain unconsciously corrects, I began[27] to suspect that the eye is not a very reliable instrument after all, and I felt as one who had been restored to equality with others, glad,not because the senses avail them so little, but because in God’s eternal world, mind and spirit avail so much. It seemed to me that philosophy had been written for my special consolation,whereby I get even with some modern philosophers who apparently think that I was intended as an experimental case for their special instruction! But in a little measure my small voice of individual experience does join in the declaration of philosophy that the good is the only world,and that world is a world of spirit. It is also a universe where order is All, where an unbroken logic holds the parts together, where disorder defines itself as non-existence, where evil, as St.Augustine held, is delusion, and therefore is not.[28]"

Optimism by Helen Keller.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011. (Or sign up to be notified of its release on Amazon.com)

Confession of a Fugitive

By James Curcio

I’ve been big on confessions lately. There’s much we can learn from one another by being honest, even if we give ourselves a certain poetic license with the form that honesty takes. So bear with me a moment.

I wrote a piece on modern mythology in May that talked about how I came to identify as an artist. I first started thinking about this because I asked UK-based artist Laurie Lipton a similar question in an interview, “Was there a sudden point when you realized 'I'm an artist,' or has that always been with you?,” and I realized I had never asked myself that question.

Being an artist seems like no big thing, but it takes a real psychological shock to stick with it.

“Being an artist doesn't take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one and the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this meaningless gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.” -Hubert Selby, Jr.

That sentiment rings true for me. At the same time, you don’t get on a path that requires such a commitment without having a psychological reason for following it. We have to be tricked or cajoled by fate. For him, it was ostensibly being laid up in a sanitarium for four years with tuberculosis. For me, an alcoholic Grandfather. Either analysis is actually specious. Our latent traits are like fuel for the fire of our lives. Do we really want to atomize and dissect ourselves into a series of anecdotes born from our personal history?

I certainly don’t. The truth is, "A" (for artist) isn't the only scarlet letter I've sewn to my chest. Though I admit it selectively in public, close friends and lovers know that I also identify with another unfavorable term: philosopher.

Read the article on The Nervous Breakdown.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011. (Or sign up to be notified of its release on Amazon.com)

Thee One True TOPI Tribe at Contact Conference 2011

Dear reader, greetings from St. Stephen, we have something of a blurb of a cross posting to make... we hope it is worth while (informative)

What is TOPI? It's Genesis P-Orridge's "new way on" and a coming community, where community is spelled coum-unity... this spelling hearkens back to the 1970-80s Coum Transmissions. But more in the way of the future, October, in NY/NY, there is to be an un-conference called, Contact Conference 2011, where Genesis (and supporters) are invited to participate in furthering the realization of thee One True TOPI Tribe (thee OTTT). Yet the un-conference is not exclusive to Genesis, rather for more information see the above link and also here for: Genesis P-Orridge at Contact Conference 2011.

The Kaleidoscopic Force-Fields of the Archons



By Brian George

This is my first comment to Miguel Connor on the Reality Sandwich forum for his piece "'Gnostic' is an Open Question; An Interview with Elaine Pagels":

Hi Migel,

The study of Gnosticism, and a deep engagement with the Nag Hammadi texts, played an important role in my intellectual, creative, and spiritual development. I have always been grateful to any writers who could provide me with insight into this period, and among them was Elaine Pagels, whose “Gnostic Gospels” I have read perhaps four or five times through the years. There had always been an aroma of Christian sentimentality to Pagels’ thought—kind of like the scent of Easter lilies—which was a bit distracting, perhaps, but not at all unpleasant. Sadly, if what you are describing is accurate, it would indicate that Pagels has gone in the direction of full blown Christian apologetics.

What I find truly amazing is the idea that “Gnosticism” is somehow too restrictive a category while “Christianity” is not. This passage is instructive: “Furthermore, within these accepted Gnostic categories, there exist so many contradictions in history, dogma and even praxis that it makes them all but cumbersome.” I believe that it was Irenaeus who said, “Each week, the Gnostics invent some new cosmology.” I had always assumed that this statement went to the very heart of Gnosticism, which never struck me as in any way a “movement,” but rather a very loosely woven network of schools—with no centralized authority and no fixed set of beliefs.

The idea that you can make the almost incomprehensibly broad category and/or world of “Gnosticism” less restrictive by funneling all of its contradictions into the tiny box of “Christianity” seems, on the face of things, absurd. The box of Christianity is already filled to the point of bursting with the fetishization of the personhood of Jesus.

The three excerpts below illustrate the problem that I have with what seems the current tendencies in Pagels’ thought. And I have to say that a phrase such as “can induce a deeper midwifing of the tenets of Jesus Christ” sends a shiver down my non-Christian spine. Must be my past life memories acting up again! The three excerpts are as follows:

Ἀποκάλυψις - Apocalypsis - Thoughts on Chelsea Wolfe's Upcoming Album

by David Metcalfe

The funeral for the recording industry is going quite well. With pyres lit across the fields, from tech savvy dance halls to the tattered fringes of ghostland, we all stand in joyous expectation as the façade falls down. Behind the veil of conflagration, Chelsea Wolfe’s voice echoes through lurking atmospherics, monastic guitar riffs, invoking goetic memories of past performers and present players. Such a lovely voice to sing the dirges of the day when music dies, and ars musica is called back from the grave.

We’ve stepped out of the mediated séance parlor of the late 20^th century, with its pantomime passion for theatrical display and sleight of hand, songs are starting to sound real again. Artists are taking back the techniques stolen by corporations and conmen. If we are beginning to once more see true poesis, soon we’ll see true gods.

Wolfe’s latest expression, Ἀποκάλυψις, her second album released through Pendu Sound Recordings, leaves trite table tipping to lesser musicians in favor of summoning spirits on dead urban hillsides beneath the sidereal spin of unseen forces and the city’s dim lights. Mystery returns full force, gaining ground against the ill bent representations and mock revelations of pastiche plaguing the industrialized music scene.

Welcome to the Future!

By Dr. Adventure!

As you all know, we are now living in the Future. Jet-packs, Aliens, gun-toting robots, giant remote-controlled insects, global disasters, World War III, open insurrection, Skynet, digital drugs and Super-Heroes. The Future.

Feels like Ive been here all along but its nice seeing the rest of the planet start to catch up. The entirety of human history and civilization has led right here. So, if you haven't already, get the fuck up off your ass and do something about it.

Staring down the barrel of Armageddon, we are facing the greatest threats and most profound opportunities ever presented to the human race. From open Tantric enlightenment available at your local Underground to planet-wide mind-control, from mass surveillance to every 10 year old being able to post pictures of himself blowing shit up to everyone on the planet, from trapping antimatter to....well, trapping ANTIMATTER; Humanity is thoroughly kicking reality's nards and realizing that it hurts them just as bad.

But then again, we live in a time when some folks pay good money to get a swift kick in the jewels.
What I want to know is what are You doing about it?! And I do mean YOU! Maybe you're reading this for cheap sci-fi thrills or as philosophical masturbation or, more likely, the Matrix has you. Searching the global Hive-mind in the dead of night trying to find a glimmer of the Divine Mystery revealed to you through a story, looking for the Door to the Real world, waiting and searching to be invited into something truly Great and Unique and Free. It is my Pleasure and Honor to Welcome you all to the Future!

Revolution and Notes From The Underground

By James Curcio
I've written some about how Euripides' The Bacchae was an early inspiration in the writing of Fallen Nation. However, there are many more, some of which have only become more clear to me at the end of the writing process. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but I've found time and again that I stumble upon something that seemed to inform a project I was working on, which I was in the past only loosely aware of... and now I've finished the thing and suddenly these cultural pointers are there, tangible to me as my hand.

So this leads me to ask if any of you know about the Weather Underground? Named after that line from a Dylan tune, ("You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows") the WUO were a "radical left" organization that seemed to use white guilt to crystallize the need for revolution. Not so much on the methodology, but culturally, the forces that created the WUO couldn't have been far from our minds when dreaming up the fictional side to the Mother Hive Brain.

Here is a rather good documentary on the Weather Men which is available free online. Watch the whole documentary on YouTube, it's also available on Netflix On-Demand.

Skilluminati Research has an excellent write up on a figure that had connection with this organization, using more methods sanctioned by the need to counter fascist order with blind chaos, Ronald Stark :

"He had a mission, he explained, to use LSD in order to facilitate the overthrow of the political systems of both the capitalist West and communist East by inducing altered states of consciousness in millions of people. Stark did not hide the fact that he was well connected in the world of covert politics." ("article.)

Perhaps this Batman-esque weaponized hallucinogen campaign tickles our wicked imagination, however, when a rebellion is fought as a reaction to violence, violence seems a paradoxical choice. My stance on this issue is not a straightforward one. It's doubtless that not only is there a "time and a place" for revolution, but more importantly, there are times where to do anything but revolt is a crime against one's own humanity. That said, most of the options available to the average citizen amount to petty crime, and are unlikely to result in positive change. As toothless as pacifist rebellion can be, violent rebellion will always spiral out of control or burn itself out, leaving rubble in its wake. We say missiles and bombs can't bring freedom to Iraqis - they can't bring it to Americans, either.

Modernism to Postmodernism to Postmortemism

By P. Emerson Williams


We cultural types do love to declare death wherever we cast our jaded blood-shot eyes. When our imaginations are exhausted, hard-ons for the latest arising only with greater efforts require new extremes of fetishism. A point comes when completed work crowds out attention. Art, empire, economy, politics look to us to be sated with days and ready to give in to sweet oblivion.

Lady Gaga killed sex, says the once much discussed Camille Paglia, who quotes her subject who declaims “Music is a lie”, “Art is a lie”, “Gaga is a lie”. The death of the novel is an idea so oft repeated that one can envision members of the literary establishment daring each other to intone the phrase three times in front of a mirror in expectation of the candyman to appear. And closer to home for us here, the right honourable psychonaut James L. Kent writing for Acceler8or the new transhumanist vehicle established by R. U. Sirius says we've come to rest after years of the deceler8ing of music as a living mode of expression. Nice opening shot.

Every style of traditional, ethnic, and world music has been incorporated into the modern pop uber-genre. There are no more Afro beats, throat singers, Middle Eastern microtonal scales, Buddhist Ohms, Irish sea shanties, American folk songs, Navajo ancestral chants, and so on, that haven’t already been chewed up, digested, and shat out by modern pop composers.

Forcing sound snippets into a twelve-tone, four on the floor format is for sure a denigration of these traditions, but it's a very colonial Western POV that would consider that this raiding of sampled sounds a cancelling out of entire traditions of music and culture. I recall a thread in an occult social site that began from a post that stated basically that Eastern philosophies were being killed by Western adoption through Western seekers not understanding the finer points or getting entire belief systems wrong. Well, I have news – taking a photo of a person does not trap their soul in the camera and Americans weaving Tibetan buddhism into candy-coated self help material doesn't make all the monks in exile disappear from the universe.

Maybe he's right. Perhaps the hum that is plaguing many towns across the globe with no detectable source is just the musicological equivalent of the smell of dead plague victims piling up.

Arthur Krystal is a voice in the Death of the Novel chorus for some time. In an interview in Harper's magazine he expands his theme:

Leaving film aside, since it’s a relatively recent art, the arts as we know them have run their course. You can argue this until your face is blue, but it won’t change the historical fact. Time and technology wait for no artist, and unfortunately history has seen fit to alter our sense of time by the invention of new technologies.

Tina Brown Asks Philip Roth About the Future of the Novel from The Daily Beast Video on Vimeo.
Philip Roth has devoted his life to creating novels, but he’s pessimistic about their future.
“The book can’t compete with the screen,” Roth tells Tina Brown in this video, and even the Kindle won’t change that.
“It couldn’t compete beginning with the movie screen," Roth says. "It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen.”

Escape Artist

By James Curcio

This past year, I've completed three book-length projects. I've blogged I don't know how many pages of articles on this and other sites. Though I have many other writing projects on my mind for the future, I have been feeling my brain changing gears. Or maybe it isn't my brain, maybe it's little robots or aliens that control my creative output. How would I know? I wouldn't.

Regardless, whatever it is that controls these things, I can feel the frequency shifting. I'm burned out on writing for the time being and am feeling my auditory and visual circuits turning on.

That's not to say that they've been off - the past two years I've worked on two albums for HoodooEngine and a bunch of early material for the soundtrack for a movie that didn't make it to post production. But I've really been focused on writing. It's where my head and my heart have been at. And suddenly, they're just not.

Shifts like this tend to go across the board for me. I find myself humming melodies and harmonies along with the music I'm listening to more, I find myself bursting into tears seemingly spontaneously from particularly beautiful pieces of music. Writing and even speaking have become more of a chore.

This isn't new to me. I think it goes along with having your head in so many places at once. The bulb burns out if you focus too much on one area, and you need to give it a little time and replace it.

This past week I went to see Zoe Keating at World Cafe Live in Philly. While waiting for her show, I had the luck to happen upon Dustin O'Halloran and several other musicians performing his pieces. (His was one of the pieces that has recently made me cry, if you're wondering. The other is Beethoven's 7th 2nd movement, which Zoe randomly "covered" in her show, though it had been stuck in my head for nearly a week at that point.)

Rather than give you a lot of words, here are some samples of their work:

Dustin O'Halloran - Opus 28 from Dustin O'Halloran on Vimeo.

Opus 28 Dustin O'Halloran live in Berlin

Zoe Keating performing Escape Artist

My posting here may show this shift of focus, consisting more of media and less of long passages of text. We will see. I named this post after Zoe's piece because the theme is similar. She explained at the show that it was about being evicted from a shared studio space in urban San Fran, and moving to the country, and wondering what she was doing there... and moving back to the city... and wondering what she was doing there. I feel a bit like that right now. And I also know what it is like to lose group spaces. I used to be part of a collective in upstate NY that had several rather large shared A/V studios. Many days I think, if we only had access to that space and that equipment now... But space and equipment is expensive to keep. Art rarely pays what it costs. It's an addiction that some of us can't help but feed, or learn to feed. Or die. So, moving on--

If you're curious what I'm looking towards...

As many of you know Citizen Y: Blueprint Of A Ritual Experience has already been released on Amazon. An eBook version will be available on Weaponized shortly. The Immanence of Myth is down to the wire now, and should be on Amazon by August at the latest. There is a fair chance I will have an announcement to make shortly about the publication of Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End and the release of HoodooEngine's Murder The World. All of that combined represents the substantial bulk of my focus the past few years, and will free me up to look towards new projects -- when I'm not trying to promote those works, of course.

I'm thinking about starting a new music project that allows me more freedom of emotional expression than HoodooEngine does. Don't get me wrong, I love working on HE, but I wouldn't describe any of it as particularly beautiful, or haunting. HE songs aren't landscapes, they don't breathe. They are by design like an angry locomotive or hive of bees, buzzing in your head with unrelenting hate. BEE HATE. I'm hoping I can collaborate with some old friends on this new project, including Molly Zenobia, whom I played guitar for back in college. (Or maybe I'll join up on something she's working on already. I don't know yet.)

Maybe I'll only collaborate with women on this next one. It'd be some sort of weird inversion of the energy of HE. It's too early to say.

I will also be giving more attention back to Nyssa, the prequel to Fallen Nation, once I can get FN off my plate. It is another modern myth, with more of a dark fairy tale feel to it. At the same time, I intend to begin a web video series for FN as I look towards trying to get a related feature film produced.

Finally, I will be helping Daniel edit season 1 of the Gonzomentary: Clark so we can release it on DVD and re-release the episodes online, and look towards working on season 2, "Tito's Place."

Oh yeah. Of course, we will continue to run content here, however the nature of that content shifts over time.

Amidst all of this, as if that wasn't enough, I need to figure out how I'm going to be eating and paying rent in months to come. All in all it looks to be an eventful summer, though whether it is productive or a complete catastrophe always remains to be seen. I hope you continue along for the ride, and help support the work we're all doing here with your pocketbooks as well as all the complements. (Much as I love them, they don't keep the lights on.)


Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011. (Or sign up to be notified of its release on Amazon.com)

Lord Shiva, King of Ghosts

by David Metcalfe

"This particular time is most inauspicious; at this time the horrible ghosts and constant companions of the lord of the ghosts are visible. Lord Shiva, king of ghosts, sitting on the back of his bull carrier, travels, accompanied by ghosts who follow him for their welfare."

- Bhagavata Purana

The media is calling them 'flash mobs', but from what I've read of recent incidents there's no real connection to the internet, just a roaming group of 20 or so teens willing to beat and rob whatever mark they set up.

This weekend 4 people were assaulted and robbed near Northwestern University, an upscale neighborhood in downtown Chicago, where violence isn't the norm. One of the victims was a 68 year old man. According to Crane's Chicago Business this is a new development in a series of group related crimes in the area. The end of 2010 saw nearby Michigan avenue, a popular shopping area in the city, hit with a rash of shop lifting carried out by teens in organized groups.

Cranes states that, "in January, 11 teens, reportedly coordinating their actions via text message, stole some $5,000 worth of merchandise from North Face, Filene's Basement and AX Armani Exchange stores. According to a Chicago Sun-Times report, one of the teens yelled “Snatch!” to initiate the shoplifting. Another shouted, “Meet you on the Red Line!”

The Theatre of Manifestation

Theatre of Manifestation - Strange Factories from FoolishPeople on Vimeo.

"Very, very challenging, mentally and physically" - David Mondard - Sam
Theatre of Manifestation is FoolishPeople's unique working practice, created by its founder John Harrigan and further developed and perfected by FP over the last twenty years during projects undertaken throughout the UK, Europe and USA.
Theatre of Manifestation is central to how 'Strange Factories', FP's first living feature film will produced, created and experienced.
‘Strange Factories’ explores the power of stories and myths and how they are ultimately given life by those who engage with them.
We would like you to become part of our story.

Join our IndieGoGo campaign and become a part of 'Strange Factories':
indiegogo.com/​strange-factories
strangefactories.com
info.strangefactories.com

If you are a regular reader of this site, you've probably noticed some synergy going on between Weaponized and Modern Mythology/Mythos Media on several projects. Just this year, I have released the Citizen Y script which I co-wrote with John Harrigan through them, and later this summer we will be releasing The Immanence of Myth, which is culmination of many years of work and research.

I hope you check out one or both of these releases, and explore Strange Factories along with them.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011. (Or sign up to be notified of its release on Amazon.com)

The Basic Principles of True and Lasting Success - An Inquiry into the Psychical World of Napoleon Hill

by David Metcalfe

"......there is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought -- especially the so-called "prosperity" psychology, "will-power building" metaphysics and systems of "high-pressure" salesmanship -- black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its name may be changed, its nature remains the same."

- Manly P. Hall, Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, 1969

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill is perhaps the most popular success book available. As an integral part of the contemporary corporate mythos, it's a primer for the 'culture of success' that runs bloody and gorged with oxygen through economically fevered executive minds of the managerial class. Published in 1937 it has remained on Business Week's best seller list for over 70 years. In the 2007 list Business Week has it placed alongside contemporary selections such as Freakonomics, The World is Flat, and The Tao of Warren Buffett.

Have you ever read this book? Am I alone in my mystification with it?

I'd heard it mentioned so many times by key note speakers at corporate conferences, referenced in business literature, heralded by executives offering me advice on my career, that it never occurred to me to actually look at the book itself. When I did I was quite surprised with what it advised.

Researching William Walker Atkinson, whose prolific pseudonymous publications popularized Mind Science, Telepathy, Hermeticism and American Yoga in the early 20th century, lead me to reconsider my preconceptions of works like Hill's. It also became impossible to ignore the strange imaginative associations that a head full of esoterica and alchemy will import to titles from other success literature I ran into like The Richest Man in Babylon, The 48 Laws of Power, and The Master Key. Further peaking my interest, even an innocuous title such as The Greatest Salesman in the World, by Og Mandino, contains a frame story based in some nebulous Middle Eastern city with a main character named Hafid who discovers the 10 sacred scrolls of success.

This all seemed kind of odd to me, I can't really picture any of the executives I know being particularly taken by orientalist mystique. Some of these success books were looking remarkably similar to 18th century narrative grimoires like Treasure of the Old Man of the Pyramids.

And then I actually opened the 25 cent copy of Think and Grow Rich I'd picked up at a library sale while collecting New Thought material...

Chapter 11 - The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
THE meaning of the word "transmute" is, in simple language, "the changing, or transferring of one element, or form of energy, into another." The emotion of sex brings into being a state of mind. Because of ignorance on the subject, this state of mind is generally associated with the physical, and because of improper influences, to which most people have been subjected, in acquiring knowledge of sex, things essentially physical have highly biased the mind. The emotion of sex has back of it the possibility of three constructive potentialities, they are:-- 1. The perpetuation of mankind. 2. The maintenance of health, (as a therapeutic agency, it has no equal). 3. The transformation of mediocrity into genius through transmutation.

This wasn't what I was expecting from an exegesis on Hill's maxim "whatever the human mind can conceive, the human mind can achieve."

Nor was I expecting to find...

Chapter 14 - The Sixth Sense, The Door to the Temple of Wisdom the 13th Step Towards Riches
THE "thirteenth" principle is known as the SIXTH SENSE, through which Infinite Intelligence may, and will communicate voluntarily, without any effort from, or demands by, the individual. This principle is the apex of the philosophy. It can be assimilated, understood, and applied ONLY by first mastering the other twelve principles. The SIXTH SENSE is that portion of the subconscious mind which has been referred to as the Creative Imagination. It has also been referred to as the "receiving set" through which ideas, plans, and thoughts flash into the mind. The "flashes" are sometimes called "hunches" or "inspirations." The sixth sense defies description! It cannot be described to a person who has not mastered the other principles of this philosophy, because such a person has no knowledge, and no experience with which the sixth sense may be compared. Understanding of the sixth sense comes only by meditation through mind development from within. The sixth sense probably is the medium of contact between the finite mind of man and Infinite Intelligence, and for this reason, it is a mixture of both the mental and the spiritual. It is believed to be the point at which the mind of man contacts the Universal Mind.

I'd really like to know how unwitting executives who buy this book approach these final chapters. With a 70 year run, and several million copies in circulation, there are a lot of potential clairvoyant sex magicians out there.

Citizen Y now available

Citizen Y: Blueprint of a Ritual Experience is now available on Amazon and Weaponized.

Order Now

CITIZEN Y: Blueprint of a Ritual Experience
168 pages
Written by John Harrigan and James Curcio
ISBN: 1907810102
Includes:
Full script
8 pages of concept art
Introductions by the writers
Deleted scenes

My introduction to this edition:

Introductions might just be a conceit of the writer and artist. We assume that you really want to hear all about why or how we made something, that you'll be interested to know seemingly pithy behind-the-scenes anecdotes: for instance, how I cut my hand and bled all over the first printed version of this script (true story.)

Maybe you will want to hear those things, and maybe you won't. In either case, you'll just have to bear with us a moment. There are a few things I wanted to share about this project which should prepare you for the process of properly imagining the script as you read it.

When you read a script you are being asked not just to read, but to stage it in your mind, as if it was a dream. You have to be the stage and set manager, the lighting technician, and of course, all of the actors.

When John and I started writing, it occurred to me that we should create a story that contained a strong sense of ancient theater, especially Greek tragedy. However, it had to be expressed in a very modern way. It is a myth which deals with modern issues. To a large extent this creative direction arose naturally through following John's lead. (He wrote the first draft after we had several trans-Atlantic conversations). But it is a goal which I think carried throughout the ten drafts of the script that followed as we moved into a pre-production cycle that sadly had to be aborted.

Secondly, like all of Foolish People's productions, Citizen Y was created with the intent of being a living ritual, and a living mythology, which could have a real psychological effect on the audience - supposing that they meet it halfway. This asks much more of the audience than many productions, as its success or failure becomes dependent in part on their experience, and their participation. It is not pre-fabricated. It demands more of you as an audience than spoon-fed media.

This ties into the method employed in staging such a production. We wrote the script with the intent of it being a “transmedia experiment” to be experienced by audience members that are inducted into the world of Citizen Y, with a film crew similarly embedded within the story. There is no “off set.” Different events might happen in different rooms at the same time, and each participant's experience while moving through the structure would necessarily be somewhat unique. The live event would have plenty of opportunity for improvisation and adaptation.

As we conceived it, at the end of this live event, the filmed material would be produced and released on DVD. This is still a possibility for the future, but for the time being the materials we created for this project remain a blueprint of an experience. The practical necessities for putting on the production as planned simply didn't come together the first time around. Such things are either “perfect storms,” or they aren't. However, if you are imaginative, there is no reason that you can't create the staging this experience for yourself as you explore the script.

In the introduction that I wrote for John's script “Dead Language” (also published by Weaponized), I said that it was in bad taste to tell an audience what a piece of art is about. It's almost an insult. Now, I certainly don't want to insult you, but there is one thing that dawned on me fairly late in the creative process, which I wanted to share.

Ninth Moon Black (NMB), Kalyug: Part I: An Overview of Vedic Time

For the previous article: Ninth Moon Black, Kalyug: an introduction

Welcome back dear readers,

Our aim is to give you a basic over view of the concepts of Vedic Time and Yuga Cycles; in order to continue our setup of a detailed examination of Ninth Moon Black's (NMB) EP Kalyug (bandcamp). 

As a fore-word, the next post/part in this series is (to be) an examination of the work of  Michael Cremo. Know as a radical archeologist, and for good reasons, Michael A. Cremo brakes with Darwinian evolutionary theory, running in opposition to "mainstream" geology and archeology, as well as major (Western/Science) presuppositions, apriori assumptions, by first demonstrating that there is archeology evidence that supports thinking that humans have been around a lot longer than we are presently willing to admit. 

Because of archeological evidence, which cannot be explained by modern theories of human evolution from a less complex organism to us, but the other way around (and around) is perhaps why Cremo pays attention to these archeological anomalies, which stand in contradict with present "accepted" understanding. Which gives rationale to why Cremo has been lead to take Hinduism and other ancient texts a bit more seriously/literally.  For new readers, NBM album Kalyug is based on, an interpretation of Michael A. Cremo's work.

Here we turn to the matter of Hindu (Time) Yuga Cycles. It is well to keep in mind that Hinduism has four major varieties, which are barely considered in this article. 

The four great epochs in Hinduism are: Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapar Yuga and Kali Yuga. Satya Yuga or the Age of Truth is said to last for four thousand divine years, Treta Yuga for three thousand, Dwapara Yuga for two thousand and Kali Yuga will last for one thousand divine Years that equals to 432,000 earthly years. It is also believed that three of these great ages have already passed away, and we are now living in the fourth one. What these ages exactly mean, and why this division, it's hard to explain, because they appear too unrealistic to be true for the rational mind. [whose rationale, whose mind? emphasis added, link]; 

[A seemingly more actuate time table]: 

Satya Yuga      1,728,000  

Treta Yuga        1,296,000

Dvapara Yuga      864,000 

Kali Yuga             432,000
                        __________
Total                  4,320,000  One yuga cycle.