Teleology and Circularity, a footnote

Working on re-writing a footnote for IoM that, it's been pointed out to me, was not as clear as I'd like it to be. The re-write:

In life we are confronted by problems that we render as binaries. This framing may be culturally or biologically established. Such barriers are for instance the inner and outer, mental and matter, order and chaos, and so on. Superimposed atop that we present ideas of teleology, linear movement towards an end, contrasting ideas of circularity. For instance, the Big Bang either presents a teleological or circular myth, depending on if we believe it is followed by a Big Crunch or not. These are all points of mythic necessity, existential dilemmas that we must directly confront in our lives— and the myths we spin as a result of those crisis points defines our way of being in that world. “We are segmented from all around and in every direction. The human being is a segmentary animal. Segmentarity is inherent to all the strata composing us. Dwelling, getting around, working playing: life is spatially and socially segmented.” For more on this, and many other ideas of segmentation, see Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. [9]

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HoodooEngine Announce $5 Pre-Orders

Johan unleashing DIY FURY

The album is chock full of tongue-in-cheek occult and conspiracy missives served up as part of an all out auditory assault. 

You can preorder for $5 on Bandcamp. That means 8 pre-masters now, and the whole 13 track album when it comes out. All for five bucks. Kick ass!

It's going into mastering now at Bob Idakaar's studio -- tubes should lend some nice warmth. We're hoping for a final release in September, though it might be slightly after. After working on this project for years, there's no sense in rushing the final stage.

Check out this interview for Dark Entries if you're new to the HoodooEngine style of insanity, and want to know a bit about the project. Or this podcast interview on solipsisticNATION along with Karsh Kale, Tim Skold (Manson, KMFDM), and Ogre (Skinny Puppy, Ohgr.) 

Finding My Voice

By Endymion

When James Curcio invited me aboard this ship of god-intoxicated fools at www.modernmythology.net, I jumped at the chance. To tell you the truth, I was flattered by the invitation and eager to blog about something interesting. Who knows, maybe my thoughts would find an audience with which to resonate. The next thing to enter my mind, however, was confusion… What is Modern Mythology? I mean, really, what does that phrase even mean? How can I write about it if I don’t even understand it? James sent me links to explanatory material. I read these. He sent me a sampling of the material complete with an introductory essay of his own device. I read this. I then spent several weeks reading the various posts by other contributors on the site itself. In the end, I was left more confused than ever.

The various contributions, explanatory prefaces, and articles that I’ve studied were variously thought-provoking, insightful, and humorous. I enjoyed every minute spent familiarizing myself with Modern Mythology. Unfortunately, I was no closer to having an answer to my basic question. What is it? What is the underlying commonality that serves to justify and unite these many voices? What is meant by this phrase “modern mythology”? I am convinced that I can never hope to contribute anything relevant or worthwhile without that answer. How can I find my voice when I don't understand the language?

Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End paperback

The Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End paperback proof was accepted -- looks good! It'll be a few days to a week before the first edition shows on Amazon, another week before it appears through extended distribution networks. I'll announce when it's on Amazon. I hope many of you order a copy, and take this first trip into an alternate history, modern mythology.

(If enough take the first trip, it'll certainly help ensure that there's a second.) 

If you want to order a copy right away, click here. ($16.99) This has the added benefit for me that it puts the most money in my pocket, though I'm not sure if you care about that sort of thing, and I care most about getting people reading it myself. 

And of course, the eBook is available in multiple formats for $2.99. 

The Big Score

The pupils dilate. The rush of expectation met and satisfied.

Everyone who’s done coke knows this: the expectation of the rush is as rewarding as the dopamine hit itself. Maybe more.

In a Behaviorist universe, we’ve come to understand the world in terms of this simple mechanism: supply and demand. We’ve stripped ourselves down, re-purposed myths of spirit, turned ourselves into machines. And we’re machines driven by mechanical hungers, rewarded by chemical combinations.

I could be describing a junky scoring their next fix, or of the promise of seduction rewarded. I could be describing the satisfaction we receive when our virtual characters level up, or when we vanquish virtual enemies with our vorpal sword of badassness. (Some of us will even ostensibly sell our children for in-game currency). Hollywood has devised various formulas involving the offset of expectation and the big payoff: the protagonist “gets the girl,” the “bad guys” are destroyed by the hero after a fierce struggle.

Read the full article on The Nervous Breakdown. 

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Birds of a Feather and the Playthings of the 12/ Part 6

By Brian George

Once, in an alternate reality, I was in a car that was hurtling down a mountain road. Kim Hertz, my girlfriend during that period, was the driver. Its mouth opened wide, a giant snake was pursuing us. Fir trees towered toward the moon. The scent of resin was like a drug. Energy lines hissed, crackling where they intersected.

With much power in reserve, and toying with our fears, the snake closed on us at its leisure. It had no difficulty in navigating every twist and turn in the road. Each detail on the face seemed hyper-real. Its many coils snapped into and at the same time out of focus. Quite suddenly, an even larger snake appeared behind the snake that was behind us. It swallowed him/ her like an hors d’oeuvre. And then an even larger snake appeared and swallowed that one, and so on and so forth, snake after snake.

The snake soon became the mountain and 12 thousand years of landscape and each hair-pin turn of the road; until finally, a snake that appeared to be the World Snake gulped us down. Sucked as though through a vortex, I saw things through the World Snakes eyes. All of space flipped inside out. The sky cracked like an egg. My vision then became kaleidoscopic.

Dead birds were the judges. Every stone became a Shakespeare. Energy grids copulated, crackling where their currents met, as the whole night rang with the music of the spheres—again audible. Trees ranted against the invention of the hieroglyph. I could see tall cities collapsing along the coast, as, bearing gifts, the waves of a black ocean rose.


(Illustration: Brian George, Uroboros 3, 2004)

New posts every 2-3 days on my blog Masks of Origin
http://masksoforigin.blogspot.com/

Names Banished Beneath the Sea - On Revenant Returns, and Fears of Adversarial Immortality

By David Metcalfe

“A human being is experienced as a power, and power reveals itself to the human being. We have seen how in certain respects a dead person as compared to a living person experienced an increase in power. The dead person possessed knowledge of the future, which the living (using dead magic) could gain access to and utilize. The living corpse, the revenant in particular, has command of monstrous physical forces. A revenant could shift its physical location in a way that a living person could not, and it also had the ability to transform its shape.”

- from Barbarian Rites, by Hanz-Peter HasenFrantz (trans. by Michael Moynihan)

The internet is an immortality machine without the need for Kurzweil’s Singularity. All you need is a name on which to hang a thin frame of philosophy, a single photograph of emotional resonance, and you can affect a return. A physical site of personal importance is even more potent, a grave on which the living can focus their intentions, gifts, talismans and memories. Dead heroes return in the lives of their attentive lovers, and when a society wishes to forget, to forgo such revenant returns, it seeks ways to blot out the names, the memories, and most importantly the body of the deceased so no return can be made.

The body of Rudolph Hess, a close companion of Hitler, was recently exhumed from its resting place in a Bavarian cemetery, cremated, and scattered in an effort to take power away from his enduring image as a hero of nascent Neo-Nazis. According to the New York Daily News, Roland Schoeffel, deputy mayor of Wunsiedel where Hess was buried, said “Now, hopefully we can put it all behind us, we hope the phantom has left.” His tombstone, where someone had scratched “I Dared” was also removed.

Yes, it’s the 21st century, and we no longer hang apotropaic charms on our doorway, or conduct ritual mutilation, to keep the dead down (at least most don’t admit to doing so.) Fears of their return, however, are no less prevalent, and precautions are taken despite our wish to evolve away from our shadowy unconscious. We know that whether or not the dead themselves come back, their memories festering in the minds of admirers can bring them back as an impetus for actions that carry on the goals they had in life.

Turning Hate On Its Head Racial Purity

By James Curcio
I'm not the first to say that the lunatic that bombed Oslo was a white Christian neo nazi really throws a monkey-wrench in all of the idiotic terrorist racial profiling.

But here's another one that'd probably really get his panties in a bunch. And he's not the only one. It seems fairly likely that Africans are in fact more racially pure than, well. Everyone else. Go fucking figure. That is, if we're talking about racial purity in terms of homo sapien. The rest of us, you see, are part Neanderthal. Of course, "racial purity" has been the underlying myth supporting Nazism and many other groups that fixate on the boogeyman of the outsider or demonic Other. They're going to have a tough time with this one, although I'm sure they'll dismiss or ignore it.

The evidence has been mounting for years that early humans and Neanderthals interbred, but now it’s pretty much a certainty. Part of the X chromosome found in people from outside Africa originally comes from our Neanderthal cousins.
It’s kind of amazing to think that, as recently as just a few years ago, the scientific consensus was that humans and Neanderthals were completely separate species and probably didn’t interbreed. Since then, a ton of new evidence has come to light to change that position, and now new research from Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal more or less completes this big reversal. (Disinfo)

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

Brids of a Feather and the Playthings of the 12/ Part 4

By Brian George

Once, transported from the Earth by a tornado, I found myself on the field of a great battle. It was Gotterdamerung or the battle at Kurukshetra, or some other even more archaic conflict, in which the fate of the 3 Worlds hung in the balance.

The whole of recorded history was played fast-forward on a VCR. Each atom was clearly visible.

It was humans who were then in charge. Their pregnant emptiness gave birth to the gods, who were then little more than mechanical contraptions. They had not yet stolen the keys to DNA, or removed 10 of its strands, or reclassified almost 90 percent of its information as “junk.” Death was then a branch of yoga. War was the way the preexistent played. Magicians danced on the black waters of the ocean.

Somehow driven from behind, they competed to reinvent the wheel. Ecstasy drove the brave to throw away their omnipotence.

Absent for millennia, I, the Aeon, had returned just a moment later to the field of a great battle—perhaps slightly the worse for wear.

Cities flew, as planets fell. The scene was bathed in the rays of an alternate sun. As if illuminated from the inside out, all colors were painfully bright. Stupid me—it was my race that had weaponized the rainbow! Banners crackled like bursts of lightning through the air.

Quite oddly, as I found myself projected headlong into the action, my body seemed to move without me; each world-destroying movement flashing into the next. Like the violence itself, my eyes seemed to spin in all directions simultaneously. Feinting West, I performed the martial pranayama of the Vrishnis. Lunging East, I enacted the occult taunts of the Andhakas. I could hear each strophe from the Ur-Text clicking into place. It was hard to believe that I was not already dead. A large portion of the warriors had the heads of “animals.” Snake-men and bird-men and boar-men and lion-men attacked me from all sides.

Spears were inserted into my abdomen, and then withdrawn. I was relieved to see that my intestines were still on the inside of my body; recombinant feet by the millions had not yet trampled them. I was struck by swords and halberds and even more exotic weapons—blows that should have taken off my arms and legs, to leave me no more than a screaming torso.

At last, unable to withstand the convulsive flood of energy, I simply fell to the ground, staring, and did my best to prepare for death.

The Return of the Revenge of Rusty Shackleford, pt. 2: "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore."

Greetings, fellow scumfucks and voyeurs condemned to live vicariously thru the failings of others!

Some of you may know me as Rusty Shackleford, Bradley the Buyer, or any number of poorly disguised attempts at pseudo-anonymity, which in all honesty is an unattainable goal in our current historical epoch. Every dipshit in the entire world has their 15 nanoseconds of fame, via youtube, bandcamp, reverbnation, facebook, chat roulette, and any number of CIA DATA MINING EXCURSIONS conveniently marketed to your demographic as "social networking" - whether they like it or not. Memes are the currency of our generation, for better or for worse, whether it is an 11 year old girl getting her ass handed to her on 4chan or the newest celebrity OD- which I will get to, in a half-assed attempt at social commentary that will inevitably devolve into what I am best known for- hyphenated drunken rambling, pretentious gibberish speckled with commas and useless parenthetical asides.

Today is July, 23rd- a month anniversary to the day of the release of "Figurative and Literal Opiates" by Bradley the Buyer (another alternate identity of "mine") , and "coincidentally" happens to be the date of the overdose of a relatively more famous and internationally adored (and thus more valuable and economically viable) celebrity. AMY WINEHOUSE. Just wait for the meme generator captions to roll in- I am sure they will in about three hours now, as news of her death has just publicly hit teh intranetz.

This should ensure a bountiful harvest come fall.

Sacred Cows

By James Curcio
Zen Master Linji, the founder of the Rinzai sect, supposedly said:

"If you meet the Buddha, kill him."

Like most Zen sayings, this is subject to interpretation. It's unlikely he was suggesting literally killing anyone, but the point is well taken: one of the hardest parts of freedom comes in avoiding sacred cows and idols.

One of the best litmus tests you can give, to determine if individual thought is occurring in a group, is to attack their sacred cows. For instance, I'm deeply indebted to Joseph Campbell's work, but he was a human being. I've thrown punches in his imagined direction in the company of members of the Joseph Campbell foundation, to see how they reacted. The same goes for followers of all stripes, and of course Occultists are often the worst, when it comes to frothing at the mouth as a reaction to such "attacks." Listen, Mr. Campbell is dead, it's not hurting him any, especially if you follow it up with what a great effect he has had on your life, despite the shortcomings you previously aired for the sake of seeing the reaction you'd provoke.

I point this out in regard to Rowan's recent post about Machine Elves. Almost no one has jumped to Adam Jones' support, but many have gotten deeply offended at Rowan's slightly flippant attack on Terence Mckenna. I'd like to remind all of you about Sacred Cows, and for all the people who have emailed me angry attacks, thinking I was the one that wrote the article, I suggest you actually read the "by" line of an article. Modern Mythology is not my personal site, and I don't restrict what other people say. More than anything else, I advocate people's right to express their myths here. If you disagree, by all means, spin your own yarns.

But you may want to consider that if someone is really pissing you off by pissing on a dead Sacred Cow, they might just be trying to get a rise out of you. And you may want to consider your reaction. Why must you defend something that requires no defense?


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The Duplication of Time: Time, Sacrifice and the Inception of History

By Prof. Rowan

The experience and concept of time/temporality has not always been what it is for us today. Time has, as it were, a history extending long before the emergence of historical time and consciousness. This history is attested to and recorded by traces preserved in the words each language uses to designate time. In the Indo-European family of languages and the systems of thought which developed within each milieu, we note a widespread incidence – a nearly universal presence – of at least two conceptually distinct words for time: linguistic and conceptual doublets such as kairos and chronos can be found in all Indo-European languages from the Sanskrit “Rtú, 'proper time [for a ritual action], allotted or regulated span of time'”[1] and kāla, "a fixed or right point of time, a space of time, time... destiny, fate... death,”[2] to the distinction between divisible and indivisible time in Avestan and Zoroastrianism, and continuing in the oppositions of sacred and profane, human and cosmic, historical and experiential time.

Pure time – a temporality without qualities, immeasurable and non-directional, all following from the fact that time in its pure form would be pre-dimensional [3] – pure time would be the time of the Aion, a timeless time, amounting to nothing less than the much debated khora of the Timaeus – the place and pure possibility of happening.
   
It was humanity's attainment of the capacity to experience anxiety, becoming able to preemptively react to a future event (which, according to Hans Blumenberg [4] is a quintessentially human development), taken together with the emergence of story-telling, oral culture and the most rudimentary cultures and collective memories, that first doubled the experience, concept and words for time and made time thinkable in terms of spatial metaphor.

Goodbye Space Shuttle

By James Curcio
I know this may already be an issue past its sell-by date, as the shelf-life for ideas seems to be decreasing on a daily basis. But I think it is an important point to make, so I'm going to make it.

Many of you know by now that the US space program, though not ended in its entirety, has been demonstrably downgraded, and now faces an uncertain privatized future. This isn't new, the dismantling of the shuttle program is just the external proof of something that has long been in the works: the continued ideology of privitization at work.

I was saddened by this news, but not so much because of the mothballing of a program that is admittedly mired in many ways in an abandoned past. No. It further shows that our government either doesn't understand the nature of the scientific endeavor, or more likely, simply doesn't care. Short term profit has completely overtaken American mythology in the past few decades, and it is leading us into a death spiral from which there may be no escape until we reach the other side of the vortex.

I'll admit my bias in this upfront: I have a lot of shall we say misgivings about the idea that everything does better when privatized. Certain systems become inherently unhealthy for the people within them when privatized, while other systems perform better based on a profit motive. For instance, medicine and prisons should never, ever, be purely profit based. It's insane. We are seeing the results of that. Fuck the cost benefit ratio, if a patient's leg is going to fall off, you save the patient. Doctors took an oath, didn't they? We should make the pharmeceutical industry take the same oath, and hold them to it. And it should never be a financial incentive to anyone to lock more people up.

It's a tougher issue with something like the space program. I can see ways that there will be improvements from privatizing the program, actually. NASA has ostensibly long languishes as a result of government bureaucracy.

But in terms of pure science, it seems likely that it'll be a long term loss. Discovery doesn't occur as a result of the question "how is this going to make money?" Discovery occurs as a result of people following their curiosity.

It is after that point that people - often other people - go back and say, "now we know that xx element behaves yy way in zz environment - hey, I think I know how we can make better engines as a result of this!"

I have dedicated thousands of hours of my life to this site because issues relating to mythology are interesting to me. That should be the only reason we need. Practical benefit does factor into the equation, but we never know where from. There need to be methods of supporting and sustaining this kind of inquiry, because beginning the inquiry with the question "how is this profitable?" never leads to the best results.

Let's put faith in ingenuity. And let's support it, both in our thoughts and beliefs, as well as with our pocketbooks. I have faith that if you put a hundred passionate scientists into an environment that supports that passionate curiosity, they will wind up discovering incredibly beneficial things. It may take a long time. That isn't the point.

And if you don't know how this short post relates to mythology, you need to be paying better attention.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Elves of the Apocalypse: "Machine Elves" and the Self-Sabotage of Psychedelic Research

By Prof Rowan
(Note: Someone tried to scrub this from Wikipedia (restored as of 6am Friday) yesterday. Hopefully this makes it all the more futile to try to make this little gem go away.)

I guess when getting worked up over whether "beings exist and not nothing at all" or whether "the nothing is really nothing" just isn't enough, you can always get worked up over the "clockwork [sic] elves" who control the global elite promising them "eternal life, total power, total control, everything you could ever want, just kill everyone [...] friendly little guys..."

Right. Most if not all mythologies include creatures resembling elves. Therefore the archetypal image must be based upon encounters with the Machine... Er... Clockwork Elves. As with all paranoid logic, this argument is easily felled by Occam's Razor, which advocates that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity," in short, that the "simplest answer is most likely the correct one." It is much more plausible to propose that the entities encountered during the DMT-experience could very well bear some measure of resemblance to elves (elongated and angular shapes are common); that one comes to think "if they look like elves, they are elves" at least makes sense!

THERE ARE NO FUCKING MACHINE ELVES!

The Nervous Breakdown: You Are Not What You Think You Are

Ah, an early source of the type of thinking that invariably led to The Immanence of Myth (this little bit written in a journal in 1998):

I was driving home the other day with a friend when the car jolted to a halt. Sitting in the middle of the road was a blackbird. Or maybe a raven. I don't really know birds. It was black.
"What did that mean?" he wondered, once the bird hopped out of the way.
"What do you mean what did that mean?" I asked reluctantly, when the car didn't move. They symbolize death, right? But why? Apparently this was an important question.
And then it hit me:
All of our everyday experience is metaphorical of a deeper, unknown substance; it points at what we really are. The dark - that is, invisible - side of our persona.
A white car passed us on the road.
What does that mean?
I decided to categorize my all my responses and observations. To make a library of metaphors. I thought about the white car, and about the emotional undertone - subtle but present - that was connected to that moment. I thought about my naive presupposition that there is an object made of synthetically re-configured materials that is a white car. White is the color that it is not, everything that the object rejects as repugnant. 

We live in a world of imagined constructs, never thinking about how this perceived world affects, reflects them; never seeing the intangible level the object points at; as symbols (like the word "car" points at what hides behind "car," it points towards it but neither contains nor describes it.)
There is no higher validity in this metaphor and metaphysical perspective (which an artist calls upon to inform their work.) There is no Jewish father figure hiding behind the world of appearance, ready to chastise his unruly children. There is only You.

Read piece on The Nervous Breakdown.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized.

BOMB A Manifesto of Art Terrorism

BOMB: A manifesto of art terrorism - RSH from Raymond Salvatore Harmon on Vimeo.

Graffiti artist and media terrorist RSH (Raymond Salvatore Harmon) has released his manifesto, an often humorous and poignantly personal account of his creative exploits over the past decade.

Offering a salient indictment of the art world's currently fashionable attention to graffiti culture BOMB turns the role of the artist in the 21st century into that of cultural insurgent. BOMB is a call to arms for those who see the current state of the art world as a feckless sham perpetrated on the public by a cynical financial infrastructure fed by commodities traders and art university shareholders.
"BOMB is part personal reflection, part social critique. A pointed and opinionated observation about graffiti culture, media terrorism, art "education", corporate control, and the ills of the current art world."
- RSH


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Ex nihilo nihil fit: Heidegger's Vacuuity and False Vacuum Decay

By Prof Rowan

There's no denying that Heidegger was a member of the National Socialist party. The controversy over Heidegger's association with the Nazis is now well-known and all too often used as an excuse, a shortcut, to dismiss his philosophy out of hand with the phrase “well, you know, he was a Nazi!” A recently published book (Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy (2005), by Emmanuel Faye) has even made the utterly moronic argument that his philosophical work is so thoroughly contaminated by party ideology that his books ought not to be taught as philosophies but rather as “hate speech.” Look, I loathe Heidegger even more than I do Sartre, and I reject his philosophy as emphatically as anyone, but for various reasons and according to arguments more valid than merely calling him a Nazi. [1] The very existence of Godwin's law testifies to the fact that to do so amounts to little more than ad hominem and one that is widely taken to indicate the absence of a better argument, and in the case of Heidegger's “philosophy” there is no shortage of them.

The final section of the newly published English translation of Hans Blumenberg's Care Crosses The River (1987, English Translation 2010), “Dasein's Care,” contains several suggestive and compelling criticisms, including the following:

Perhaps no one has ever shuddered, as if before a yawning abyss, on being asked or asking themselves whether the world in which we live, experience, and gain knowledge really exists... In opposition to many opinions that want to view this question as the core of modern philosophy, it must be insisted that none of the imaginable answers had any consequences. In each case, everything remained the same. Indifference in the face of what looks to be such a hard problematic already sees that nothing will come of it, because nothing can come of it. (Blumenberg 141-2) [2]

Hans Blumenberg is Awesome

This refers, of course, primarily to Heidegger's lectures of the early to mid 1930s, “What is Metaphysics?” and even more to An Introduction to Metaphysics. In these lectures, Heidegger makes precisely the claim that the question “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” (Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics 1) is precisely the core of modern philosophy, concern for which differentiates it from science, for “the nothing is rejected precisely by science, given up as a nullity... The nothing – what else can it be fore science but an outrage and a phantasm? If science is right, then only one thing is sure: science wants to know nothing of the nothing.” (Heidegger, Pathmarks 84)

Birds of a Feather and the Playthings of the 12/ Part 3

By Brian George

However much it might contain each detail of the future past, the Soul is nonetheless only 1 inch in diameter.

Like the seed of Space, we are tiny; our opponents must help us grow.

Let no passive/ aggressive “victim” look a gift horse in the mouth, lest he be handed his head on a metaphysical platter. For he has broken the law that governs that glad welcoming of the Guest.

Fear not the Killer Klown, as laughter is the best medicine for the dead.

If we refuse to learn what our teachers have to teach, then that says very little about the agenda behind their actions; it is up to us to readjust our focus. It is always possible that, in a distant age, it was we who were the teachers of our teachers. Linearity is a self-created trap. Perhaps, like the world-wide web of megalithic sites, a web of teachers was set in place to serve as catalytic cues, as gateways to and beyond the 12 signs of the Zodiac, as the agents of the Great Year that is not different from one’s body—the body of the epileptic Aeon.

Intent on making the same mistake every time, we have taken apart the mechanisms of each clock, piece by perfect piece, only to find that we must put them back together. Always, we are on the outside looking in—except when we are on the inside looking out. Picked up—yet again!—and transported to Pangaea, we are in danger of becoming joyous. It is our blood that potentiates the Stone of the Philosophers—which we ride. There is much “work” left to do. We are the descendants of an 8-armed sphere that has somehow misplaced its circumference.

On a microcosmic as well as a macrocosmic level, some agency has inserted cues into key parts of the story; loaves of bread are left on top of our benches at the circus. Friends appear at their appointed hour, as do enemies and shifts in the Earth’s tectonic plates. We watch in a state of suspended disbelief—as nonsense articulates the geometry of sense. In a dream, there is an image that reminds us that we are dreaming. A fossil points to its counterpart in the Ur-Text.

LOVE SEX FEAR DEATH

"After many years of speculation, rumor and innuendo surrounding this enigmatic group LOVE SEX FEAR DEATH lends voice to those who were there. What began as a collaborative effort by Adam Parfrey and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge to publish a monograph of Process magazines produced by the group in the 1960s soon became something more. Original member of The Process Church Of The Final Judgment and it’s latter incarnations, Timothy Wyllie along with a host of former members were contacted and given the opportunity to contribute their stories, memories and experiences regarding their involvement with one of the most misunderstood cults of modern times." (More)

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

Calling On Reviewers!

Got your attention?
Good. 

In the next three weeks, we are putting two books on the market: The Immanence of Myth published by Weaponized, and Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End.

Here's the deal: If you agree to read and review one of these books, I will give you a free eBook version of it. It's an honor system.

We make no stipulations on what that review contains, though I suggest you keep "I love it," "I hate it" out of it. A good review tells people whether they, in particular, will enjoy it or get something useful out of it. If you write a solid review of a book that you hate, it could just as easily tell someone else that they'd love it as hate it. There's no accounting for taste.

Post your review on the relevant Amazon page, Smashwords page (for Fallen Nation), on Goodreads. Any and all of these, and your own site if you have one. By the time you're finished reading it, these sites should all be updated, and the right product should be easy to find with a quick search.

Interested? Email me!

NOTE: The Immanence of Myth will be ready for review in 2-3 weeks. Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End is ready for review now.

What's Your Story?

What's Your Story? - Aryan Kaganof from one small seed on Vimeo.

I first encountered Aryan's work when I was editor for Alterati.com. Every now and then he sends me what he's up to- he sent this to me a few months ago but I've been so immersed in working on all these modern myth projects that it got lost in the shuffle. And resurfaced today, and woah.

Enjoy.

A definitive leader in the digital revolution in cinema, he was the first filmmaker across the globe to produce a digital feature film on video up to 35 mm with his release of naar de klote / wasted in 1996. Three years later, he took this process to Japan to produce the first-ever Japanese digital feature, entitled Shabondama Elegy aka Tokyo Elegy.

Aryan is also famed for making the world’s first mobile feature film sms sugar man in 2007. Recently he has produced the highly controversial The Uprising in Hangberg; a documentary that presents substantial evidence that metro police used unprovoked force when arriving in Hangberg on 21 September 2010 to tear down informal houses built on a fire break.

At times suspended naked, blood smeared and silhouetted by hostile global images, Aryan Kaganof’s work reminds us of the fragility of humankind. A subjective voyeur, he’s prolific. And he’s watching YOU.

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

Murdoch, Media & Mythology: A Hermetic Tale?

By Mr. VI

When you get down to it, the news is Chinese whispers. Despite claims to be fair and balanced, or that they do things in the public interest, the news media have placed their own spin on every event you have read about, seen, heard, or experienced indirectly.

By definition that's what media does, it mediates experience. Marshall McLuhan famously wrote:

"The medium is the message."

Irrevocably, the information becomes part of the medium – events become part of the output of a given signal. The recent events in the UK regarding Rupert Murdoch and so-called 'phone hacking' are the property of those who disseminate them. For example, the BBC coverage of the event is just that – it becomes part of the BBC message. It's exactly the same with Fox, MSNBC or any of the rest of the outlets.

Unless you are directly experiencing the events yourself right now, then you are reliant on media. Even if you are directly experiencing events right now, they are mediated themselves through your senses. Of course we don't like to think about that, because if that's the case then the media could be altered – our senses are equally open to bias, just as a newspaper or television show.

Our culture places great primacy on the phenomenon of the eyewitness, yet recent research suggests that even eyewitnesses may not recall actual events, but in fact recall their own arrangement of events which are influenced by many factors, some internal and some external.

There is a level at which you may think that this is irrelevant, but consider this:

If in fact we cannot say for certain that what we perceive is some kind of truth, then by definition the whole duality of truth versus lie is called into question. The current coverage of the Murdoch scandal has provoked public outrage – employees of his corporation have allegedly committed criminal acts, conspiring to bribe police officers, obtain information illegally and intruded upon the privacy of the families of murder victims and war dead, not just politicians and celebrities.

It's not just Rupert Murdoch and News International which engage in dodgy dealings, because certain forms of journalism operate in grey areas – their acceptability is often backdated once their claim of "public interest" is validated by the audience. In fact, such things are pretty endemic within almost every form of communication, from the white lies you tell yourself and others, to the work of speechwriters and spin doctors.

I've previously referred to Murdoch as a "lizardly Methuselah", and indeed my inaugural post on Modern Mythology made a metaphorical reference to the reptilian agenda, an indirect nod to the wildly strange fears of David Icke and others. Consider this to be if you like, a statement of my credentials – I think Murdoch is a leathery old bastard with billions at his command, and exceedingly cunning ability to get what he wants at almost any cost.

But right now, in this place and time, he is widely regarded by some to be almost as bad as the devil himself. This makes an interesting to us because in actuality, Murdoch and his ilk have a long, long mythic pedigree…

Sacred Economics With Charles Eisenstein

I was introduced to Charles Eisenstein through Daniel Pinchbeck, to talk about his book Sacred Economics which is published by Evolver Editions. I suggest you check it out.


As we talked, it became apparent to me that we’ve both worked on projects with many similar intentions, and so there seems to be an element of serendipity involved here. I offered the opportunity to post here on Modern Mythology, so you will likely be hearing more from him in the future. 


I hope you enjoy the conversation we had about myth, post-economics, and the apocalyptic, evolutionary challenges facing our species. 

James Curcio: It seems to me that you're taking a lot of the issues now facing us as a species – economically and environmentally – and posing them as challenges.

It has long seemed to me that there is a sort of “evolve or die” challenge posed to us as a direct result of our own actions, and it's best to face those challenges with optimism rather than pessimism. Much of that challenge arises from the myth of the individual and our unwillingness to bring that back to actions for the greater collective good. It can be hard to remain optimistic in light of that.

Charles Eisenstein: It isn't so much that I see the crises we face as challenges, but as the drivers of a transformational process. I guess you could call them challenges – but only in the sense that they challenge the basic mythology of our civilization. They are not bumps in the road that we can overcome and continue our trajectory. As you mention, one of the primary, defining myths of our civilization is the “myth of the individual,” or what I would call our “story of self” – that we are discrete, separate beings living in an objective universe, bubbles of psychology isolated in genetically-determined flesh robots, seeking to maximize self-interest. I think that the crises converging upon us are making this story of self untenable, as we become most painfully aware that what we do unto the other, we do unto ourselves.

New Disease: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Superbugs

By Mr. VI

Not to worry you, but you're going to die. If it's not old age that gets you, it's probably going to be some mutated form of the primordial killer – as much an apparent monster as Godzilla, rising up from the depths to cause chaos and destruction in your life.

Unless you're extraordinarily unusual, or a little bit morbid, you don't like to think about it much. After all, there is so much to see and do in life that thinking about it and can be a little distracting, can't it?

But vast amounts of future tech notwithstanding, you're not going to be rejuvenated, or immortal any time soon. Of course, even if the future tech arrives, initially it'll probably belong to this sinister lizardy Methuselah-types like Rupert Murdoch due to the billions of dollars they have in their bank accounts.

The fact is, the majority of the world still doesn't have access to decent healthcare – and those that do tend to live in the richer nations. In the UK there is state healthcare, but in America? Staying healthy is the province of those who can afford it. Now, imagine all those folks in countries which we laughably call the Third World or the developing world.

Imagine what happens when they get ill, and what they do when it comes time to die. Technology and medical care and such may have advanced way beyond the four humours – rationalism may be slowly doing away with snake oil sales but what good is that if you can't get your hands on what you need?

What stories do they tell themselves to make sense out of death and dying? Are they that different to the ones we tell ourselves when disease strikes, seemingly out of the blue?

Fallen Nation eBook 35% off

2012 Is Just The Beginning.

Fallen Nation Party At The World's End is a mad ride past the event horizon of sanity with a group of young, escaped mental patients that come to realize—or believe—that they are demigods.
They form Babylon, a band that captures the spirit of the age as sex, drugs, and chaos reign in the final years of the American Empire.

Metaphysical spoiler: this book is a modern take on the Bacchae of Euripides, or a practical how-to guide for hedonistic end times cults.

Available now as an eBook in multiple eBook formats
35% Fallen Nation eBook ($1.94) Good for 3 days, get it now!

Coupon Code: ZD88R

Note about reader formats: Though I have tested this version in all the formats by computer, if there are any major errors on your reader - an error that makes it unreadable for you - please report it to me immediately and I will look into fixing it and getting you a fixed version of the book.

Paperback version coming soon

All Your Eclipse Are Belong To Us

Let the cries be heard! Last week, three outer bullies—Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto—cornered the poor, unassuming planet of Earth within a vast ocean of disbelief and tired emotion. Pluto nearly stoned us to death, Uranus burned all that was left of our trivial self-image, and Saturn delegated the entire affair, making sure everyone got their turn.

All we had at our backs were our dreams, which were subsequently shattered and revealed to be nothing but feeble cries for attention.

Speaking of dreams, the New Year—which the start of happens in the summer, not the winter—will begin to resurface the dreams and mysticism that has so desperately been forgotten. Neptune, whose gradual temperament was not enlisted for the aforementioned beat-down, has just entered into Pisces, and is making its first full return since the planet’s discovery in 1846.

Birds of a Feather and the Playthings of the 12/ Part 2

By Brian George

In my own travels, I have often met with snake-beings and with bird-beings, who, as the guardians of the dimensions they inhabit, must first determine if we have any right to be there. To this end, they inspire fear. They torture both our bodies and our intellects, in order to resuscitate our memories. They may cut us, piece by piece, apart—to remind us of how we were originally put together. For this reason I have little patience with many of the current crop of conspiracy theorists—such as David Icke and Michael Tsarion—who have demonized these inter-dimensional helpers, and portrayed them as the dark oppressors of our race.

At the very least, it is counterproductive to demonize the energy of the Snake, which is, after all, the energy of Wisdom. One could even view it as a kind of psychic suicide. "It is we who are the good guys! Those bad Reptiles from Orion are the ones who are ruining the neighborhood!" This is little different from saying that the Jews killed Christ, and that this is why Christians have been forced to act so badly. This sort of "reasoning" never ends well. Fears projected into other-dimensional realms will still return to make us stupid.

The true enemy of any paranoid is the energy of his or her subconscious mind—or, to be more blunt, his or her tendency to systematic extermination; some prehistoric insult cries out to be avenged. To the one side, those with 12-strand DNA, an army of the Evolved. To the other side, the League of Aborted Fetuses from Orion. For it came to pass that Eugenics had not yet seen its finest hour. The New Age did not begin in 1985. It is more likely to have begun around 1885, and we ignore at our own risk the occult actions of the “Superman”—as revealed by the last century, bit by contradictory bit.

There is the Superman of Nietzsche and his later Fascist incarnation. There is the Superman of DC Comics and the Superman of New Age antediluvian nostalgia—oddly similar to the Fascist version. There is the real Superman and his almost exact duplicate. For our purposes there is very little difference between the two—except that one may kill you and the other one may not.

In any event, it is towards him that all archetypes converge. He is the shadow of the Apocalypse; the fulfillment of our dreams. It is he who whets our appetite for omnipotence. He prompts us to reclaim our birthright, and, at the same time, takes back what he gives.

Phish and the Ultimate Product: a mythology continues (to sell)

It seems to me that anyone into sound manipulation would be interested in what Phish accomplished after hours on Saturday night, at SuperBall IX, 2011. Allow me to set the stage. Watkins Glen, starting Wednesday, was slowly transformed into a skeleton movie set-type town in a matter of a few days. Marking off the corners of the field that made up the playground area at Watkins Glen, know as Ball Square, were four large speakers stacks at each corner of the park part of the glen, where they had made their makeshift town. The speakers hung suspended by some obviously study ropes. And at the "center" of this was of course the storage space, and the release of the "ultimate product". But now i am rushing to the end. Because unless you were there, or already read about this, then you are probably in the dark. And that is how we where, at first, in the dark about what was going on.

For those who are not fans of Phish, perhaps this is a good point at which to dole out some background.

Phish USA Storage with Time Machine

You see, Phish started playing at a place called Nectar's around 1988, and would come out with an album called Picture of Nectar in 1992. Nectar's was the bar where Phish got their start as a musical act, as it the very place they attribute to giving them the freedom to play around with their music, as well as the crowds of fans they would eventually gather into a loyal following. Nectar's was that all important space, a place where they could fail without having to pack it in. For a more complete history of Phish see the Mocking Bird Project.

Birds of a Feather and the Playthings of the 12/ Part 1

By Brian George

Pagan Moir wrote, “Now Zodiac means 'circle of living beings'—beings who live outside of time. Forget all the astrology—about Gemini the twins, Virgo the virgin, Aquarius the waterbearer—all those meanings are very new comparatively. We must let go of the signs as well; they have gone through the overlay of too many cultures. 

"Beings who live outside of time—so they dwell on the aetheric—I think they are groups; not just singular beings or symbolic archetypes, but very real groups. I also get the words 'tribe' and 'family' coming though. There are twelve of these groups, and each corresponds to one of the signs of the Zodiac.

"Ok, now to get to the crux of the matter, at least for me: these groups—and I think that I know three of the twelve—may be here to be of assistance to the members of their family who have somehow gotten stuck on the Earth. I think that the Zodiac was originally meant to be used as a kind of gateway; through with we could keep in contact with our group.

"The three groups that I have encountered are as follows:

1) The 'Felidae'—They are like big cats, and have a panther-like energy to them.

"2) The 'Draconni'—They have a dragon-like energy, but are white with blue eyes.

"3) The 'Wolverem'—The name speaks for itself; they are wolf-like, but their energy is golden.

"All of the energies have a humanoid aspect to them. They can morph into it. Brian, have you seen anything like this on your travels? I am most curious to compare notes with others.”

__

Just as every human may have one or more animal forms, so too every animal may have one or more humanoid forms. "Therianthropes,” or "man-animals,” are some of the oldest images in the history of art. They often appear on surfaces that are covered with zig-zags, arcane symbols, and geometric patterns—all indications of hallucinatory transport. In some cases these figures are clearly shamans, who have undergone a transformation. In other cases, they appear to be inter-dimensional beings—of some indeterminate anatomy, perhaps, whatever the masks they wear—who have chosen to appear in this particular hybrid form.

But why have these cosmonauts been transfixed by spears and arrows, sometimes by the dozen? And should we read these lines as acupuncture needles, placed within a network of meridians to heal, thus opening the cosmonaut to a flood of primordial energy? No, it is probably best to be practical; they are the technocratic probes of the Nephillim, whose doctors seek to reconstitute the genome.

One action is “good”; the other one is “bad.”

The Best of Modern Mythology 2011 (cover rough)

Best of Modern Mythology 2011 cover (rough), a photo by agent139 on Flickr.

Rough draft of the cover for the www.modernmythology.net 2011 anthology.

To be released Autumn 2011 as a $.99 eBook in multiple formats. Print versions TBA.

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

Variations on a Theme

Tell me if this is a normal conversation to have while standing with the other groomsmen at a wedding.

“Never before has there been a generation of Americans so disillusioned by the American Dream.”

“Maybe in the 20s? It’s hard to compare.”

“Totally broken down. You can see it on everyone’s face. We all know we’ve been had.”

I was fidgeting with my sleeves. I’d never worn a tux before. “Just going through the motions. So. What you been doing lately?”

“Mixing cement.”

I’m not sure it is a normal conversation, but who wants to have those? Beautiful wedding, otherwise, at least what I remember through the haze of pain medication. But he had a point, didn’t he? Arguably that dream was always a bill of goods leveraged by the blood and sweat of the poor, but never before has the general public so generally recognized that we’ve been had. Many feel the downward slope yawning before us, as peak petroleum, an Empire over-extended, and an unstable climate push us into a troubled and horribly wondrous near future.

Or so it might appear. Our future runs through our past. In the first century AD, there were revolutions within Rome that made its history seem bleak. I imagine in times like those, it seems like the entire world is about to end. As it turned out, those were the explosions that birth a sun, not its death throes in nova. That wouldn’t come for three or four centuries when the Visigoths helped dismantle an already collapsing empire. It should come as no great revelation that systemic change comes about...systemically. Call it the hand of God, if you want. There will always be “the Visigoths,” in one form or another. Just as it seems there will always be fascists, the great organizing principle of Empire.

(READ 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)

Bedtime Stories With The Antichrist

As Greylodge is no longer online, I wanted to get this file back up. Download MP3.

This is the pilot of a podcast I produced with Agent 156 in 2005. It received 25,000 listens in the first month. Agent 156 disappeared shortly thereafter. Today is his birthday.

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)

Independence Day: Release Announcements

Meta: this is me,
telling you what I'm saying here. 

Happy blowing shit up day, folks!

We are very busy lately. By "we" I mean myself, and the people involved in the projects I'm about to tell you about. I can only imagine that it is difficult to keep track, so I thought I might help out:

• Citizen Y: Blueprint of a Ritual Experience was published a month or two ago by Weaponized. It is a script, but moreover, the blueprint for an initiation ceremony relevant to post-history. Check it out. ($15)
• 
  
• The Immanence of Myth will be published by August by Weaponized. It uses a deep but also conversational, honest and even subversive approach towards looking at the issue of mythology in our lives, especially as this almost 500 pg. oversize book moves towards personal mythology and conversations with current mythic artists. ($25)
• 
  
• The Best Of Modern Mythology 2011. I have decided. Mythos Media will be releasing an eBook featuring polished versions of some of what I consider to be the best articles that we've run on this site in 2011. The eBook will sell for $.99 through Smashwords, and will go towards the costs of running and maintaining the site, and promoting our mutual work. If it does well we may release it as paperback and/or hardcover. I expect to release this in September or October. 
• 
  
• Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End - I will be releasing the full and final version of this book either through Mythos Media or a publishing partner - if we find a suitable partner. This release will come in late 2011 or early 2012. I intend for it to remain the opening volley for a post-history, transmedia narrative that I've been planning these past few years. Listen: don't worry. It's got tits and machine guns, too. 
• 
  
• Hoodoo Engine's Murder The World, after almost 3 years of work, is nearly ready for the final mix and master through some very nice analog outboard gear. This album is a machine-metal tour through a terrain of conspiracy theories and cult leaders. We don't have a release date yet. I expect a September release through Bandcamp and iTunes, making it one year after the release of our debut, EgoWhore. ($.99 / track or $10 for the CD.) 
• Here's a track from the album, "In The Flesh": 
• InTheFlesh 150bpm by agent139

Looking towards 2012: 

• I am talking with Pearry Teo about working with him and the rest of the Bedlam Stories production team, including Chad Michael Ward and P. Emerson Williams. I can't say more than that at this time, but it looks like it will be a really exciting project to be involved in. 
• 
  
• I am still talking with S Jenx from The Fall Studios about the production of Nyssa, which is the illustrated prequel / sequel to Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End. 

I hope you are as excited about this material as we are. Please support the work, so there can be more of it. If you write reviews or have other involvement with the media/press, please contact me, as there is a lot of need to spread the word about all this work.