Resolutions

Yesterday morning, I finished reading Murakami’s Norwegian Wood.

It was raining, unusually cold for an August morning, and almost coal black. I couldn’t imagine a better morning to finish this particular book. I sat in silence for a good hour after closing the cover, thinking to myself. (Who else would I think to?)

Beethoven was playing in the background. It colored all my thoughts for the rest of the day.

While reading, I suggested it to several people, and one of them asked me if I could explain the ending to her. She was looking for a sort of resolution that Murakami seems typically reticent to provide.

As a result, I’ve been thinking about resolutions. Well, I’ve been thinking about many things, but one of the threads is resolution.

I’ll share my notes, and hope that you aren’t offended by “spoilers,” because personally, I could give a damn—any story worth reading is worth reading. It isn’t about the ending.

The idea of “spoilers” themselves gives us a starting point. There are certain expectations that most readers put on endings. It’s an unrealistic expectation, given the nature of life—often the endings that count the most seem to come unexpectedly, out of nowhere. You’re crossing the road thinking about the complications posed by the two women you love, and wham! a truck hits you. These endings resolve nothing.

My point is, endings and resolutions are not the same, and an ending doesn’t need to resolve anything. Something can end, people can drop out of our lives as if they had instead dropped off the face of a steep cliff. But there is no resolution. Similarly something can resolve, and in the process transform into something else, which is a way whereby an end can be turned into a beginning. The Death card in the Tarot is said to be a resolution, for instance. It isn’t necessarily an ending.

Now that we’ve got that straight, I’d like to return to Murakami’s ending for Norwegian Wood, and its lack of resolution.

Read the article on The Nervous Breakdown.

Elite Reptilian Overlords Like Eating Our Brains Cold

Title taken from the lyrics to Thee Aeon Falls:

The idea of reptilian aliens that rule the planet is of course on its face patently absurd, yet it is a myth that has driven a wide range of fictional media (V, Sitchen's various novels, etc), as well as a surprising number of people who believe it quite literally, especially those that buy Icke's implicitly anti-semitic model of reptilian aliens.

As I said in the Immanence of Myth,

"...Zecharia Sitchin has written several books about the “true” origin of Sumerian mythology: aliens. Th is, or the mythology of planet Niburu, is a wonderful modernization of ancient mythic elements, but considered as empirical fact, one may as well buy into the hollow Earth theory. Th e author David Icke takes it a step further: aliens, or reptilians, exist in the world today and control the world economy. Though there is some truth to the argument from ignorance “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence,” that doesn’t mean either of these scenarios are even remotely likely in a factual or historic sense..."

So let's look a little deeper at this as a myth, and at some of the ideas that exist in what we might call the connective tissue of these ideas. Reptilians are of course cold-blooded, and they do not nurture their young. If you've ever spent time with a lizard or bird, you can get a sense of the consciousness at work behind their similarly cold eyes. It calculates, it measures, it ponders and waits, and most of what it is contemplating is food and danger. So too with mammals, but there is something uniquely... reptilian... about the way that a lizard does it, isn't there?

Thee One True TOPI Tribe Compilation: TOPI members Speak

What we have for you, dear reader, is a article in part about the One True TOPI Tribe (OTTT or TOPI), as well as the One True TOPI Tribe Compilation, coming out 23 August, 2011. We will start with a little information from a few of the projects/groups/individuals connected to the compilation, and then move into information on the OTTT from Thee Uncondemning Monk. See also: Outer TOPI projects.

This is the list for the first fourteen tracks of the compilation, rumor has it there is 23 tracks in all, tracks are subject to rearrangement on the final version of the album, this is only a pre-release/realization preview

 loopool (Jean-Paul Garier) and Sisiult (Benj Carmeron)

Excavation by loopool (Jean-Paul Garnier)

Homeland Security: The Nuke That Wiped LA 404 Attacks

The following is one of the many parts from Fallen Nation that wound up on the cutting room floor. But it still makes for quite an interesting little snippet, especially given that it was written in 2005 ... (Order a copy of the final novel on Amazon.)

Art: P. Emerson Williams

Don hadn’t been to an airport in the past year. It wasn’t an experience he much missed. He wondered how they managed to combine the feeling of a checkout line at a supermarket, a doctor’s office, and a gulag. It was well executed, though to what end was never entirely clear.

For better or worse his mission had been accomplished. He had a nice little chunk of change set aside for himself, so long as he could get out of dodge before someone found out that without his aid, all the social viruses that were biting the establishment in the ass now would have starved themselves to death long ago. It was time for him to find a nice plot of land to lie low in for the next millennium. Thailand seemed ideal. No questions, no pesky laws if you bought off the right cartels.

Lines of people shifted, clutching briefcases close to their bodies. Cordial, preemptive cavity searches had become standard. So had random DNA testing and crosschecking. Cotton swab brushed quickly across the tender inner cheek was all it took, and they could trace almost anything, if the system determined there was cause for a full query.

The group brusquely wading through the crowd was far more troubling.

He warily watched them pass from over the brim of the magazine he wasn’t reading. Ten of them, in black. No badges. Walking proudly, confidently, the pad of their boots on the carpet promising a near eternity of red tape followed by an abrupt death. Definitely a DHS mercenary group. They’d started seeing regular use in the conflicts in Iraq, but had been called in regularly for Homeland Security missions in the time since.

TOPI Talks: An Interview by Members of The One True TOPI Tribe compilation

Here is an interview between two highly active members of the One True TOPI Tribe access-point/ning, focused on actively building physical coum-unities and humanE support networks for creative individuals and (decentralized) collectives. Two artist conversing on what TOPI means to them, and the state of the world today. The background music in the interview is a cutup mix of the first 14 tracks from the TOPI compilation. These 14 tracks are known as the Outer Album.

The second album, the "bonus" material, as well as everything else, will be release on 23 August, 2011. Downloads will limited (200 copies) but the album grows from there, see the compilation for more information.

Jason and Aglaeca give what we think is an honest interview, a relic ov time with exemplary standing, (along with the One True TOPI compilation), of what can be done when thee come together to move beyond. The One True TOPI Tribe Compilation is an international accomplishment of the tribe, and it is this unity (the Third Mind) that this interview aims to promote, while as acting as a small window into two tribe members relationship with life and art. The One True TOPI Tribe compilation is the work of over thirty individuals, and we thank them all. The One True TOPI Tribe was create by occultural engineer/artist/musician/actor, etc. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. We of the tribe dedicate this work toward the greater realization of coum-Unity.

"Go grow your wings, and fly" --Jason P. Doherty 

          

          credits:

(for official realization/release date: 23 August 2011, propaganda date 17 August, 2011) Jason P. Doherty, Rachel Doherty, & Thee Uncondemning Monk (Aglaeca, as al-Jakeha).

(The below is a promotional on an up-and-coming textual work, not directly related to any of the above, and yet Hoodoo Engine will appear on the not yet realease 2nd Inner Section of the One True TOPI Tribe Compilation.)

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

Party At The World's End Video Trailer

New trailer for Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End





Music "Nothing Is Sacred" from HoodooEngine's album Murder The World.

Video/motion and some still work by Daniel Warwick, other still visuals by James Curcio,
rest of the credits at the end of the video. Enjoy, and show your support by picking up a copy!

One True TOPI Tribe Compilation (coming soon) and Thee Uncondemning Monk

Greetings, and please spread the word. Thee Uncomdemning Monk (Aglaeca & St. Stephen) writes you to tell you about a new experimental compilation from the One True TOPI Tribe. It is worldwide in scope and will be realized on August 23, 2011, when 200 downloads will be made available for those to make their own official versions of said album (in any way you see fit)... there will be bonus material, such as a video made by Z (me) as Thee Uncondemning Monk. Here are a list of links in regards to this project, we have been working hard to promote this in college radio and underground outlet from Discogs to ColdStone (in the UK), to Binghamton University, NY and to many other NY State Collage radio stations, and that is just my promoting of the album... there is at least 15 people that made this work a reality.

If you review music and would like to do a review of the album, please let us know. I would not mind an interview, and would spread the word to other on the album, also if you would like to DJ the album, give it airplay, we have a special section for that, and I can email that information to those who would be serious in giving this work some air-play, even if a shoutcast station...

Anyway, without further ado:

The ONE TRUE TOPI TRIBE Compilation (bandcamp)

Thee Uncondemning Monk (bandcamp) and Thee Uncondemning Monk (blog)

Thee ONE TRUE TOPI TRIBE


A∴​ A∴​

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

An Epitaph for the American Dream

An Epitaph for the American Dream

by Rusty Shackleford. For Bill.

"PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!" -Oz, the Great and Terrible.
"99% of magic is misdirection." - Common knowledge.

(Edit: Since writing this entry, I recently discovered a Mother Jones article informing me that the Republican/Tea Party Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, founded a company called SOLANTIC that specializes in drug testing, among other "public services"... Could it be that this legislation stands to benefit the people who are passing it financially? Hrmm... Jigsaw falling into place.)

Recently, as many of you may have heard, Florida senators successfully passed a bill requiring welfare recipients to receive mandatory drug screenings. It is doubtful the legislation will stop there. In what seems to me to be an instance of VERY OBVIOUSLY blatant racial discrimination and discrimination of the haves towards the have-nots, they are now finding another way to invade all of our lives and rob us of more of our privacy. One gradual erosion of civil liberties at a time. The cruel and hilarious irony of the situation is that although at the moment these measures are now only being taken against those who have already slipped through the cracks, it is only a matter of time before all of our privacy and civil liberties will be up for grabs.

Think of it like this: What if your healthcare provider (if you even have one, and you probably don't) suddenly decided to take it upon themselves to barge into your house and force you to piss in a cup, clip your hair, ransack your apartment or home and search for anything mildly incriminating. Any evidence that you had engaged in anything mildly incriminating (and most of you have, or know someone who has) would then be immediate grounds for them to discontinue your healthcare. Alternately, say you yourself or someone you knew suffered from some sort of drug related addiction or health problems. Ironically, many of the same persons I have heard complaining about people on welfare using drugs have had similar issues themselves. Imagine, then, you yourself or someone you love ODs and they are dying. They are now in a position of life or death. Now imagine the doctor in charge tells you, "Sorry, new ER policy: We are no longer allowed to treat this person because they have a history of drug use and their healthcare won't allow it." What if a doctor in an ER refused someone a life saving preventative measure to keep them from dying because of drug use? What if your healthcare provider suddenly decided that it didn't have to insure you if you had a history of drug use?

Sound extreme? It is.

Machiavellian Social Metaphysics, pt. 1

By Rusty

An Analysis of Machiavellian Social Metaphysics: Being the first step towards constructing a Bible of Self Empowerment. (Pt. 1)

"Learn to be cruel, learn to be dry, learn to survive."

-John Fowles, The Magus

I have to apologize to you, the reader, for my typically highly self-indulgent and subjectively personal narratives and style of writing. I've had a few skeletons to clean out of my closet (or perhaps more accurately, dead hookers to clear out of my crawlspace) and you will be happy to know that I have found Christ and a new wonderful antipsychotic that is the chemical equivalent to a full-frontal lobotomy. This has given me a new and heightened sense of clarity. So I would like to take a break from my typically rambling and deliberately insulting style of derivative prose to deliver to you a bit of neatly encapsulated and summarized sociopolitical philosophy based upon the writings of Machiavelli, excerpts from Robert Anton Wilson's "Prometheus Rising" on "How To Brainwash Friends & Robotize People", and William S. Burroughs' "Revised Boy Scout Manual" among others. My plan is to work through this piece in installments, as I see fit and when I am properly motivated (send Peruvian cocaine, preferably uncut with flesh-eating chemical agents, to Rusty Shackleford, C/O Modern Mythology and/or JC).

A careful reading of Machiavelli can provide us with a better understanding not only of modern day politics on a global level, but also a way of formulating strategy to be more highly effective as a sociopath (er... "Extreme Individual.") Also, it is worth noting that I have never, nor would I ever advocate a violent or hostile takeover of the state or federal government and that all of the information here is provided for *aherm* "educational purposes". Moreover, I am providing this information as a means of pulling back the curtain on certain global hegemonies and power structures. As with anything, a hammer can be used to build a house or bash a human being's skull in.

So, without further ado:

"It is indeed true, however, that after one has conquered a rebellious territory a second time, it will be less easily lost, for the ruler, using the rebellion as his excuse, will be the less reluctant to establish himself solidly by PUNISHING DEFECTORS [emphasis mine], uncovering suspects, and strengthening his position wherever it is weak." -Machiavelli.

The Apocalyptic Imaginary

Toward a Psycho-Philosophy of History

Prof Rowan is teaching a course at Binghamton College by this name which includes The Immanence of Myth in its curriculum. The whole reading list looks interesting.

I will be joining him up there in October to co-teach 2 classes, 10/11 and 10/13, unless we re-schedule. I plan to record those conversations and podcast them here.

I also hope that more professors choose to incorporate this book, the work we are doing here on the Modern Mythology site, and forthcoming books such as the forthcoming Best of Modern Mythology 2011 anthology in future classes. We plan on bringing a new interdisciplinary approach to the study of these overlapping issues.

More on the basis of that thinking here.


The Immanence of Myth is in final layout now and will be available on Amazon very soon.

December 23rd, 2022

(From Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End. Pick up the eBook for $2.99 or paperback for $16.99.)

It would seem Judgment day came nearly eleven years late.
I woke up this morning with the certain knowledge that it would be my last. I have fallen my entire life, as if through empty air. Now I can see the ground rushing up to greet me, and I am almost eager to make its acquaintance.
But it isn’t just me. The world is changing: the tide rises a little each day, never receding. There are terrible floods, fires, hurricanes. Solar storms. The constant catastrophe numbs you to the end result. Then one day you realize you’re about to eat asphalt.
Of all the people in this crumbling city, I had the most warning. I could have fled and started yet another life from scratch. Maybe I could have stood out on the sidewalk wrapped in three layers of thrift store trench coats, showering passersby with prophetic warnings and a plume of spit.


We all had our warnings. This end has been prophesied in our religions, in the newspaper headlines, and in the countless feverish dreams we choose to forget upon awakening. It has even happened before, and it will happen again, when the next civilization comes to its own grinding halt.


At the end of the lifespan of a universe, a culture, a life, it is destroyed, and a new one born. But for it to be born, and for life to be renewed, a divine sacrifice must be made. On the other side is a new dawn, and a new world.

The Party At The World's End Begins... NOW

It's finally here:

• 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.
• This is the beginning of a modern mythology that spills off the page: the ticket to the Party At The World's End is inside, if you dare to search for it. It starts right here, but it won't end here--
• $16.99 paperback.
• $2.99 eBook. 

Expect more media across various platforms as this thing grows- although there is already an assortment of related myths strewn across the Internet, waiting to be re-discovered.

Echo-gnomicks: Financial Meltdown and the Sound of the Underground

By Mr. VI

Okay, who did it? Who went and angered the Gnomes of Zurich? Who screwed the dwarves out of their rightful tribute? Who went and annoyed the boys at Gringotts? I know somebody did, because otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess.

No, really we wouldn't. Of course, it always happens this way – humans get greedy for gold and it all goes downhill from there. All you have to do is keep your head down and don't go near them. Instead, like magpies in their black and charcoal plumage, the suits decided to plunder the shiny realm, help themselves to the pots of gold.

Look where that has got us – another financial meltdown. Stocks plummeting, doom upon the horizon. Some part of me wouldn't be surprised if Ragnarok was around the corner, except of course it always is – just at the corner of your eye, but that's another story.

Economics – or as Terry Pratchett puts it 'reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits' a.k.a. Echo-gnome-ics – purports to be the art of dealing with such things. But as anybody who understands the myth of Echo will tell you, there's a bit of a problem.

Echo was doomed to repeat the words of others, her voice taken away by Hera in revenge for consorting with Zeus. Essentially, her communication was reduced to that of a cargo cult – mimicking and repeating sound with little hope of understanding.

Now, notwithstanding the fact that all communication is a bit like this, economics is about appearance. Those bankers and stockbrokers are doing the equivalent of listening to the voices of the gnomes and other chthonic spirits, echoing down mining tunnels and fissures in the Earth. They interpret echoes and make decisions based upon them – an entirely virtual construction based off second or third order perceptions.

It's no wonder really, considering that Paracelsus states that gnomes are capable of passing through solid rock as easily as humans pass through air, so for those of you who enjoy Harry Potter it might help to envisage them as being masters of the Apparate spell.

As apparitions, their substance is by nature more loosely bound than those humans – their outline lest fixed and form more fluid. It makes sense then, that they are masters of the physical, because their ability to modulate matter is a massive engineering boon. This is why in Norse myth, the dwarves are the creatures that create the weapons and tools of the very gods themselves.

This excerpt from Neil Gaiman's award-winning novella The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, which is available in full here, illustrates this really quite well:

Mythology of Business Part 1: The Veil of Ignorance

This is part 1 of an excerpted series for Reality Sandwich from the upcoming anthology The Immanence of Myth published by Weaponized.


Myth's central importance does not end with our art or religions. It is not solely a dusty world of broken clay pots and tablets written in dead languages. Our myths determine how we engage with the world, how we enter into it. How we treat ourselves and one another. Far from being archaic relics of the past, myths will determine our future. Even if we are unaware of them, they will continue to affect us.

The advertising used to disseminate films, books and music shows the profound value that mythology has within modern markets. You just need to know what you're looking for. However, it does not end with the entertainment industry. A brand, any brand in an increasingly interactive media environment, is myth.

This role is made all the more pervasive thanks to the proliferation of instantaneous and virtually limitless communication mediums. Whether it is beneficial or dangerous is another matter entirely.

Despite this, myth is so entrenched in the nature of business that it is often overlooked within the advertising rhetoric of capitalism, even if the building of a mythology is the centerpiece of all effective branding. Though the commercialization of desire and fear, and creation of "false needs" is essentially coercive, it is the long-term cultural effects that must be considered once we understand the extent to which marketing and advertising are myth.

Demonstration of this fact clearly requires an understanding both of the function of myth and the function of a brand. Prevalent misconceptions in both of these cases has clouded what should otherwise be a self-evident thesis, so the purpose of this brief article is to identify these misconceptions and clarify our position.

(Read article)


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

The Myth of Work vs The Reality of Abuse

How surprised would you be if Cthulu awoke tomorrow?
I'm not sure I'd be very surprised, at this point.

By James Curcio

In the wake of yet another collosal political and social disappointment, I'd like to touch on an issue which, frankly, could be the topic of a book. And it's a book that, if it hasn't been written already, should be written. It needs to be written, and more importantly, it needs to be talked about.

Every culture has myths about work. What is acceptable for an employee or employer, what the nature of that relationship should be. It is in the benefit of the employer to have myths throughout the workforce that tie their very identity and sense of self worth into how well they meet that employers demands, and if there aren't forces in place, either enforced through government oversight or the unionization of the workers in some configuration, these myths can run rampant. There is, after all, a word in Japanese for working one's self to death. (They also apparently have a word for eating one's self to ruin. But that's another story.) 

Elements of our religions provide the infrastructure for these myths. They are further re-enforced by our social institutions, our education in many cases being little more than a tool for shaping people into effective workers as defined by the mandates of society.

This process is not inherently good or bad. As I said in the chapter on initiation in The Immanence of Myth, the prescriptive nature of indoctrination may sound ominous, but many of us know what humans become when left to be feral creatures. They can hardly be called human, at all. 

However, this process can still break down in any number of ways. And I believe many of you will agree, it has broken down in a fundamental way in the United States, and it is getting worse.

There was an article in Mother Jones entitled "All Work And No Pay" that I suggest you read immediately, before continuing with this piece.