Life imitates conspiracy theory as art....

Note that I am a triangle....

Wow.  WDBJ 7 is reporting that schools in Narrows, Virginia, didn't open after Christmas Break on Wednesday due to an online article entitled The Next School Massacre Target?  Evidence that a little common sense won out over blind fear, perhaps, is that schools reopened on Thursday.  Still, the article was seen as a possible threat, which had the authorities jumpy enough to close schools for one day, at least.

And the article?  Apparently it was originally posted here, but the site seems to be offline now.  Maybe overloaded after being linked to by Drudge.

Google's webcache, however, makes it possible to read the original article. 

The Next School Massacre Target?  The theory of the article is that the mass shootings in Aurora and Newtown are linked and that clues to these events can be found in the Batman films and were timed around symbolic astronomical configurations.

For example: 

Mainstream media has not touched the fact “SANDY HOOK” is referenced on a map in the latest Batman movie. Commissioner Gordon, briefly drags his hand across the “SANDY HOOK” part of the map, at 1 hour and 58 minutes into the film.  What are the chances of this being a coincidence? Or is this a subtle blue print being followed by sick individuals? What other clues can be gleaned from the map?

The next strike zone on the map is “NARROWS” and just on a hunch I entered “NARROWS SCHOOLS” into GOOGLE Search and this is what I discovered.  Narrows Elementary Middle School and Narrows High School, located in Narrows, Virginia. This made me cringe when I saw a match and I hope there is no relationship to the map and another school massacre. I hope the professionals in law enforcement read this post and take the appropriate measures to protect the innocent, young and old (just as a precaution). 

Easy to see why authorities got a little jumpy; to them all this "synchromystic" stuff must sound like complete lunacy and the last line could be read as what they said it was, a disingenuous implied threat..... 

The article is also another in a long line of articles in the "Illuminati infiltrates pop culture" meme.  The author next asks, in boldface and italics and large font: 

I have been asking myself for months WHY on earth do the Illuminati always present (through occult masking) all their upcoming plans into medias, films, or music? What is the reason of their support to those hard-rock, pop musicians?” 

This conveniently gives us another example of the meme at work, recently discussed in Leave a good-looking corpse.  Given that we've recently been following the conspiracy theories around Aurora (here / here), Clackamas (here) and Newtown (here / here), it's only natural that we include it here, with a healthy dose of wtf?-like head-shaking at how the conspiracy theories are starting to determine the way things unfold not only onscreen or in the collective hallucination, but in the 3D + time space we call "reality".

I also thought it was pretty weird, given how I jumped on the figure 20 in my Newtown posts, that when I went back in search of a link for my first Aurora post I was startled to see that I'd called it 20 rosy fingers.  Maybe there was something to that number 20 after all!  Was this some kind of pre-cognitive sensitivity to some numerical symbolism....?

But of coure, you should immediately see the fallacy of this thinking, seeing where you'd foretold the future by repeating something you forgotten you'd said in the past....

Then again, in this year of the Mayan Apocalypse, around which there seems to have been a heightened mass apprehension of any significant event, it's innarestin' to read that:  The number 20 has little mystical significance, but it is historically interesting because the Mayan number system used base 20. When counting time the Maya replaced 20 × 20 = 400 by 20 × 18 = 360 to approximate the number of days in the year. (Britannica.com)

Fu*kin Mayans! 

PS  The post title was inspired by a book I'd read about then forgotten, until this came up.  I just bought the book and from a LoSian perspective, seems rather intristin'....we'll see when it's delivered.  You can read some about the book on Amazon....

Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form

Egypt, 1898: A Daydream

I've been reading a bit lately on the "modernization of Egypt". I place the term in quotes because I have no idea how Egyptians refer to the period, circa 1880 - 1915. I've mostly read fictionalized accounts that were sympathetic to Egypt though written by non-Africans, plus some newspaper articles & diaries that are overtly racist by today's standards. Basically, just enough bits of this and that to mull over, daydreaming, during a couple of 5 hour solo car trips last weekend.

During this period in Egypt, there was a "cotton bubble" caused when the US Civil War interrupted European supply thereby raising the prices that Egypt could command. The Khedive used the boom to launch a series of "modernizing" efforts without raising taxes, like the Suez Canal and the Royal Opera House.


Accounts of the Khedive's re-workings of Cairo described the newly re-done city in chess-board terms, gridded out with equestrian statues lording over squares. I imagine that slave labor also helped the Khedive keep taxes low, which is ironic when you consider that the end of slavery in the US triggered the re-opening of the US cotton market which burst the cotton bubble: Bad news for Egypt.

The Khedive, unable to raise taxes due to political opposition and the economic downturn, borrowed, largely from England and France, until he couldn't afford the interest. Britain and France stepped forward and pretty much took over Egyptian finances. (Bear in mind that I'm daydreaming this history, so take it for what it's worth.)
The British imposed a fellow called Lord Cromer. He didn't officially run the country, but apparently, to paraphrase a Spanish diplomat, Egypt's leaders went to Cromer to ask his opinion on all important affairs, and they "just happened" to always agree with Cromer's advice.

As Europe took control, the Khedive's mad desire to Europeanize his nation was more fully realized than he had envisioned. A deal with the devil perhaps.
Well, I've skipped over all the bloodshed by European forces, but believe me, there was no shortage. I've also skipped over talking about the true victims, the Egyptians who suffered under tessellating forces of power.

Most accounts, or perhaps just my daydreams, suggest that the locals helped Britain dispose of the Khedive in disgust, but check out this picture of his funeral in opera square:


Not long after the Khedive's death, locals were plotting Cromer's assassination, hoping to switch power over to France. The plan was to start a mob while Cromer attended an opera in the Khedive's beloved opera house--and lynch Cromer in the chaos. Cromer caught wind of the plot. He invited the French diplomat to attend the opera with him, and he posted heavy security in the opera square, clearly visible from the opera house windows. Though history doesn't record this detail, there were probably horse-mounted British troops beneath the statue of horse-mounted Ibrahim Pasha in opera square.

At the key moment when the lynching was begin, a move that was to shift power to France, the would-be assassins were thrown into confusion by the sight of Cromer walking through the opera house beside the French diplomat like two comrades in arms--and further thrown off by the sight of the British troops out the window.

Had the assassins succeeded, it's likely that France and Britain would have launched into full-scale war against each other, triggering what would have been World War I in 1898--a scenario that was prevented when the France inexplicably joined ranks with Britain and slyly helped prevent Cromer's assassination.

The assassination attempt, in retrospect, looks like a trial run for the larger Fashoda incident. In my daydreams, and perhaps in history, the British were expanding north/south and the French were expanding east/west. Their paths happened to meet in Fashoda, south of Egypt in the Sudan. Both nations felt that control of Fashoda was their key to controlling Africa. Once again, France backed off when offered a diplomatic solution.

It's hard to know how the world would have turned out if World War I had occurred at the turn of the century, but in my daydreams, which here turn into nightmares, I see Britain and France weakening themselves in battle and opening up a path for Germany to seize control.

It's crazy to see Cromer--who organized the British control of Egypt and symbolized a key European pillage of Africa--as someone who prevented Nazi takeover by negotiating his way out of assassination with sheer gumption and hoo-za bravado, delivering himself right into his plotters' trap. It's also crazy to see the end of slavery in the US as helping to trigger the British take-over of Egypt.

It's all crazy because connecting the lines between such seemingly unrelated blips in history draws patterns we rightly refuse to accept: We don't want to see bad lead to good or good lead to bad.

It's all crazy because these are the connections drawn by paranoia. Is linear history called into question? If so, is this because there are larger, unseen forces in control?

Of course not, silly.

A recipe for violent confrontations

Came across this article tonight, courtesy of Mother Jones: Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason. Echoes of a recent post....

Tea for Two: American Years of Lead

In a recent post which uses Hitler next to Dr. Frank n' Furter, we were trying to make the point that as a cartoon villain, Hitler has essentially become meaningless. As such, he can serve as a useful foil for any cause because he and his Nazi chums, devoid of meaning, can be recast to have whatever meaning is desired. He is like one of those boards at carnivals where you can stand and poke your head through. Someone takes photo of a strongman or a mermaid, crudely painted on wood, with your face. Ho ho! Now that's fun.

Hitler is the board, anyone's head can be popped in. He has become a caricature, the Nazis something from a zillion films and comic books. The Nazis can be used to slander anyone, from Feminazis to Boy Scouts. In the book I cited in the same post, called The Pink Swastika, the Nazis were said to have as a gang of queer thugs who originally hung out in a gay bar. Indeed, the book goes far beyond the Nazis to implicate the gay rights movement as a kind of cabal bent on infiltrating America. Easy-peasy. Want to denigrate your political opponents? Liken them to Nazis.

This is the kind of attitude that worries me about elements within the Tea Party. I believe the movement is a genuine outpouring of disaffected citizens and I must admit to sympathize with many of their concerns. But like many on the left who used the same metaphor to attack Bush, the Tea People have used the easy and essentially meaningless "Nazi" smear and laid everything at the feet of Obama. I would suggest these people are prone to believing the kind of tripe purveyed in books such as The Pink Swastika.

We want our country back! they say. Who exactly, is we?


When we see photos of the Tea Party or read accounts of those who have walked among them, we see a portrait of white, older, mainly Christian social convservatives, which is telling. These people were born into a world where Christian and white hegemony over American culture was a given.

As the demographics of our country change, these people are becoming nervous. The gays they expected to stay hidden under rocks are everywhere, on TV, in the cinema, in government. Latinos seem to be everywhere. Ominous predictions crop up every year or so: whites a minority by 2050! There's now a man in the White House with a funny name and who isn't white! They could have never envisioned such a radical transformation of the demographic and moral landscape.

Let's not be naiive. Racism, or at least race uneasiness, lies behind a lot of the anger directed towards Obama, not a disagreement over political abstractions such as "socialism." Are the Birthers really concerned over Constitutional proscriptions? Even if race is not at the heart of the matter, doesn't their near-hysterical anger at least indicate a case of xenophobia? We want our country back!

Does my foreign-born mother, who became a citizen when I was four, count as less an American than you? Does it matter that she was from England and not El Salvador? Am I less American because my wife is not, and my children have funny names?

I do not want to suggest that all Tea Partiers are bigots and conspiracy theorists. But in the articles I've previously linked to, there are serious currents of this kind of thinking within the movement. This is not a liberal elitist smear. This is not malicious condescension. And the comparison of Obama with Hitler is for real.

Take for example a part of the Tea Party coalition, called Oath Keepers, who intend to recruit soldiers and policemen into its ranks. While its goals are noble, they seem to have the impression that the US is gearing up to be a giant police state. Check out the list of orders they will not obey. Again, noble aims. But they seems to think at any moment Obama is going round up dissidents and put them into giant camps. Two of the ten points:

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

This last point is nicely illustrated by a Nazi shooting a prisoner in the head at the edge of a corpse-filled pit.

Kudos to the cops and military officers who assert these anti-fascist principles. But is it really necessary? Are people getting a little carried away with the paranoia? Does this shed some light on why we at LoS get a little pissed off at knee-jerk conspiracy theory? Are we at LoS thus deluded sheeple?

Hitler has served as a good tool for the Tea Party protesters. People jump on the "S" word in "National Socialism" and then use it to slam Obama's "socialist" agenda. Never mind that he is to the right of genuine European socialism, or that Hitler's NSDAP was merely socialist in name. It was an authoritarian, fascist movement. Control of industry remained firmly in the hands of private capitalists. Ever see Schindler's List? That factory he used for saving Jewish lives? Privately-owned, folks. Many behemoth German companies in existence today amassed large amounts of wealth during the Nazi period. They were and remain privately-owned. Naziism was no more a socialist phenomenon than is was a capitalist one. It shared elements with both, but it was its own animal.


Remember those Hitler comparisons and photos. They are instructive. First, it's so over the top to compare Obama to Hitler that it loses any sense of proportion whatsoever. Secondly, this kind of popular outpouring never happened under Bush, and the fascist qualities of his tenure were equally, if not more alarming. This period of constitutinal travesty was even kicked off by our very own version of the Reichstag Fire. Finally, we reiterate our warning (from the last post) against taking angry displays at face value. Like we said before, the Tea Party may be built to last and the heady idealism of newbie revolutionaries and tricornered would-be militiamen could signal a new phase of popular democratic engagement (if not serious social strife).

Or it could become simply another well-rehearsed and staged event which make a few empty vessels like $arah Palin into political forces to be reckoned with, without of course neglecting to collect large sums of money along the way. They call a false "grass-roots" campaign astroturfing; it is clear the Tea Party is not made of astroturf. But elements of it, such as the Republican attempt to coopt the movement, are fraudulent, and I am filled with a mixture of inquietude and wonder whenever they cross my radar.

As for Palin, you may recall her attacking government healthcare as "evil" and citing "death panels" that would threaten her baby Trig. She must be terribly worried about grandson Tripp, seeing that his healthcare is funded through the Indian Health Service. One can reasonably ask what this says about her commitment to her principle$. Does something so inherently evil become acceptable when one's own dollars are at stake?

Whatever the case, what are we to make of this guy Joeseph Stack, who recently flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin? Fox News refers to him as a "protestor" in this article, but at which point does protest become terrorism? The article reports that fan pages set up in his honor have attracted thousands of hits, with comments ranging from lauding him as a hero to portraying him as a victim. Were these the same people slamming Obama for associating with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers? Is right-wing violence protest, left-wing violence terrorism? Was the original Tea Party a terrorist act? Were the rum-runners and landed gentry we call the Founding Fathers terrorists?

I predict this guy flying his plane into the IRS building will become a rallying point for the extremists of the Tea People, and its meaning much debated. Conservatives will decry linking it with the Tea Party as a smear, and the left will hammer away at it. Remember when the Department of Homeland Security issued a report saying that the time was ripe for a rise in right-wing extremism among disaffected veterans? How it was attacked and the DHS was forced to make an apology? The left-wing Wall Street Journal reports that there is a "steady, upward trend" of threats against IRS workers. At what point does the lone nut become a movement?

The Tea Protestors will attack anything that comes out of the current administration as a reflex when fact is, militia movements are gaining numbers, as well as mainstream defenders. The anti-tax movement is on the rise. The last time so many average Joes cried for revolution was in the sixties. Trouble is, those freaky folks were more into smoking dope and fucking than fighting. The only ones who put their money where their mouths were, the Weather Underground, the SLA, the Black Panthers, are the most likely to be derided by Tea People today. Bill Ayers, terrorist. Remember him? He wanted revolution too, and for many of the same reasons as the Tea Party. Thing is, Tea Protestors are less likely to be dope-smoking group gropers than they are proficient in firearms.

Meanwhile, over at Fox, some commentators are calling posts such as this part of an "internet frenzy" to discredite the Tea Party:



We recommend Fox stop disingenuously using fucking blog comments (!) as editorial points to discredit liberals uneasy with the Tea Party and begin examining the violent rhetoric, the wearing of firearms to political rallies, the talk of revolution and secession, instead. Let's stop pretending there's not a potential for more of this kind of "protest" to be stoked by Tea Party theater. If the right can emphasize over an over that a disturbed individual who turns a gun on her colleagues over a tenure dispute is a "far-left radical" enamored of Obama, perhaps it's not so heinous to link Joe Stack with Tea Party rhetoric and imagery.

Thing is, last time I checked, revolution and secession usually involve large amounts of terrible violence, always justifiable by those who perpetrate it. 9-11 changed America. Now we have a 9-12 Project. And their talking points are echoed in a suicide note by another guy willing to fly a plane into a building to make his point.

Wild and woolly times ahead.
Be Prepared for the Years of Lead!

"His bigboned Texans follow him into the mist."

The Ft. Hood shooting has made a few things painfully clear. We are truly living in an age of paranoia. With any event of this magnitude it's now a given that people will seize upon it as yet another conspiracy. Whether the conspiracy is something as straightforward and political as an attempt to damage Obama or tar American Muslims, or something more esoteric, as in a piece of "processing" theater to induce more generalized panic and fear, is another question.

Another thing that is clear is that this paranoia is fed by the instantaneous nature of our communication. Early reports from the media, telephone calls, tweets etc. talked about three shooters and that info later turned out to be wrong, which is normal; in the heat of things there is confusion and facts are later clarified. But of course the conspiracy-minded individual is going to see this as a re-writing of history in order to suit whatever theatrics "they" are trying to put over.

Michael Hoffman, who we've already talked about on LoS, has interpreted the shooting as an alchemical ceremony: "Ft. Hoodwink". His take on it seems to be that it's a Zionist mindfuck to draw attention away from what is happening in Israel and to denigrate Muslims in general, as well as bolster support for our increasingly futile engagements in Afghnaistan and Iraq. He makes much hay of the date: the 5th of November, day of the infamous Gunpowder Plot and basis for the "V for Vendetta" comic and film. He equates Ft. Hood shooter Nadil Hasan with Guy Fawkes and by implication Lee Harvey Oswald: patsies in a cleverly orchestrated "lone nut" scenario. See also R for Revelation (of the Method)

Comments upon his article have made some pretty interesting "synchromystic" insights.

"Anonymous" points out this took place in "Kill-een" Texas and that Ft. Hood sits on the latitude of 31:13, a mirror image (As Above, So Below) reflecting the number of people killed and wounded in the attack(an inaccurate figure as it turns out). Further points by the same or another "Anonymous" raised include the fact that Hasan is a Virginia Tech graduate ('nuff said), and that the BBC reported that the shooting began at 1330 local time and that the dead and injured totaled 13 and 30. This commenter also points out the prominence of the words "processing center", "theater", "ceremony" and "graduation" in the report. Remember that latitude!

What is potent for us is that LoS recently wrote about Howard Barton Unruh, an Army veteran who is described as the first mass shooter in US history; he killed 13 people. Mr. Hasan--shades of Hassan i Sabbah--as in "Nothing is True Everything is Permitted" and the leader of an unorthodox sect of Muslim assassins--is an Army guy who also killed 13 people.

Another recent news story that was actually heavily reported but mixed up a bit in the wake of the Ft. Hood shooting was the execution on November 10th of the "Beltway Sniper" John Muhammad. The beltway sniper incidents totaled 13 dead and wounded. Muhammad was an ex-Army reservist. So: 13-13-13. Army-Army-Army.

How more interesting a coupling could you get than the name "John Muhammad?" One of if not the most common name in America paired with the most common name in the Muslim world reinforces the idea that the Islamic terrorist behind the curtains could be anyone, it could be your neighbor, the guy named John....Muhammad!

We don't think this is a conspiracy of cryptocrats nor a sleeper cell of Jihadis--but we'll see what facts eventually come to light. Maybe Hasan was a terrorist.

The sad thing is how this is already being used to implicate all Muslims in the military--and by extension all Muslims in America as: being terrorists or being sympathetic to terrorists; people who represent a threat; citizens who must thus be purged or subject to tighter controls.

By the way, have you heard that "political correctness can kill"? Have you heard about the Marine reservist who thought a Greek Orthodox priest was a "terrorist" (as well as a robber and molester) and hit him over the head with a tire iron before chasing him down the street? This happened in Tampa, the Big Guava, the Cigar City, one time home of your LoS crackpots.

Sometimes a lone nut is just a cigar.

Postscript:

Ft. Hood was named after John Bell Hood, a Confederate general with a "reputation for bravery and aggressiveness that sometimes bordered on recklessness." (faithful Wicky-p). After the war he became a cotton broker and ran an insurance company:

"His insurance business was ruined by a yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans during the winter of 1878 – 79 and he succumbed to the disease himself, dying just days after his wife and oldest child, leaving ten destitute orphans, who were adopted by families in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, and New York."

Perhaps Ft. Hood was not the most propitious of names....

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

We want to leave these pyramids alone, honest. But they just won’t let us. A few days after posting about the StorageTek pyramid, we were confronted with yet another.

Let’s jump back a sec. We have argued that the pyramid was chosen as a symbol to honor Western social organization, wealth and power. In Blagnac wealth and power is synonymous with the aerospace industry. Architecture evokes the wings of jetliners, plane parts decorate the traffic circles, the names of streets are named for the heroes of French aviation.

The rocades are no exception. Their names link the sky to the land. The Blagnac pyramids are all situated along the Voie Lactée (Milky Way). To the south the rocade is called the Arc-en-Ciel: the Rainbow Road.

When this other pyramid made itself known, we were hesitant to post about it, for you see, it is inverted. We didn't want to push things too far, what with so many other more obvious and clear-cut cases to look at. But it is striking, situated as it is just a scant few hundred meters across from the StorageTek pyramid. What makes it harder to ignore is that it is a fountain with a pool at the base. Just like every other pyramid we have come across recently.

Of all the pyramids discussed on LoS so far, the most debatable is the one in Odyssud park. One could argue that it’s more of mound than a pyramid. Unlike the others in Place de la Revolution and the Centre Commercial Blagnac, it’s not a fountain. It does sit on an artificial lake at the center of which is an enormous fountain, but the beast itself does not spew water. But close enough for government work, eh?

We could go on about the fact the pyramid fountain adorns the entrance to Méteo France and is flanked by incongruous circular landscape architecture (a round parking lot?). That inverted it resembles a kind of funnel to concentrate the powers of the sky onto the earth (what’s a weather service for other than the measurement, prediction of and thus control of the skies?) We could mention the traffic circle decorated like a compass, perfectly oriented towards the north, which like other imagery we have seen near the pyramids, symbolically extends its power around the globe.

The pyramid is a way to raise the aristocracy and the priestly cast closer to the heavens. In this inverted pyramid (another of which can be found under the famous glass pyramid of the Louvre), we propose that the idea was to bring heavens down to earth.

The doctrine of progress and the perfection of nature is thus implicit.

More than one way to skin a cat

25 September 2017:  I still think this post is an interesting experiment in "twilight language exegesis" and synchromysticism, but I'd be remiss not to follow up on a recent comment and point out that all charges were dropped against Tyler Weinman after it was determined the cats he was charged with killing were in fact killed by another animal.  I should have emphasized he was innocent until proven guilty.  The poetic exploration is remains valid even though Weinman is innocent, maybe especially so....

We often come across interesting blogs during our various researches, some of which we've linked to over there on the right. While we might not subscribe to their particular viewpoints, we include them because they explore themes and events so often explored here on LoS.

One thing that binds these blogs together is that they attempt in one form or another to decode what is referred to in the business as "twilight language."

Huh? you may ask. As far as we know, the concept of twilight language first appeared in the works of James Shelby Downard, one of the most elaborate and fantastical conspiracy theorists in recent memory. An example of his methodology can be found online in the introduction to the classic King Kill-33. Follow that link and take a look-see. You won't be disappointed. His self-avowed acolyte Michael Hoffman continues the Downardian exegesis in his regular columns and in his book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, a book LoS chum TA Wilson refers to as "one of the greatest novels ever written."

So, again, what is twilight language? Twilight language can be viewed as a series of triggers or cues for subliminally-primed patsies and the public at large. It takes the form of number symbolism, suggestive names and symbolically charged events. It is alleged to induce anxiety, dread, panic, even upsurges in seemingly random violence. Twilight language is a tool of psychological warfare much akin to disinformation. Fact and fantasy are mixed up and released upon the unsuspecting public to create confusion, fear and paranoia. So much doubt about seemingly straight-up occurrences is created that the general public has a hard time separating fact from fiction, even when facing seemingly incontrovertible truths. Twilight language is both subliminal and overt, hidden--like the purloined letter--in plain sight, but it works best when the maximum number of people can see it, whether it consciously registers or not.

But this begs the question: by whom is it used?

Downard and Hoffman point to what they call "the cryptocracy": the hidden elite. It should come as no surprise that this hidden elite is comprised of some of the usual suspects: the Rabbis, of course, and their minions the Freemasons. For a better understanding of these ideas, we recommend reading Hoffman directly, but be forewarned: although unarguably a brilliant writer and an erudite mind, he may leave you convinced he's a raging anti-Semite.

Some may write-off the decryption of twilight language as paranoid raving and--in the sense of Salvador Dalí's "paranoiac-critical method"--it is. Dalí called his method a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."

André Breton, the magus of Surrealism, said it was and "instrument of primary importance" that "has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis." (Boldface added)

We suspect that consciousness itself, the process of forming a world view, is more or less a kind of paranoia. Think of perception itself as an organizing process. Metaphor, simile and symbol, the archetype. All are fundamentals of imagination and thinking, not to mention seeing. When it gets out of control--pathological--it may be a kind of mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia. Or it may be as simple as calling a cut fingernail a crescent moon.

We propose that the paranoid germ lies in every mind and when properly cultivated and trained, can become a valuable exegetical tool. At the very least it enables us to riff on current events and if not contrive a coherent conspiratorial narrative, at least make some interesting and beautiful noise. Like Burroughs said of his cut-up method, anyone can do it, but it may only be interesting in skilled hands. Both Burroughs and Woody Allen also point out that paranoia is merely knowing all the facts.

Which brings us to the story of Tyler Hayes Weinman.

Weinman is the South Florida teen arrested on 14 June for a series of cat killings/mutilations which had left at least two communities, in the words of one headline: "Frightened and Paranoid."

Now, why we were drawn to this case probably has to do with our series of posts about animal on human and human on animal violence. We were of course using irony as a weapon of satire in these posts, but it kind of kept us on the lookout for more of the same. Now, this here is a pretty brutal and extended series of mutilations, so we're going to avoid being snarky. If--and we reiterate the big "if"--this kid is guilty, we're looking at a pretty disturbed young fellow.

So, what does all of this have to do with twilight language? First of all, as the the headline says, residents were getting paranoid, many even speculating if this was all the prelude to the working of a serial killer of humans. And serial killers are the most fertile subjects imaginable for the weaving tales of conspiracy theory. There are also some other very suggestive features of the case. So lets decrypt a few things here and see what happens.

First of all the name: Tyler Hayes Weinman.

In Freemasonry, the Tyler is the guardian of the outer door of the Lodge. The word "tyler" or "tiler" initially meant a doorkeeper at an inn. As the Freemasons initially met in taverns and inns, they adopted this title. This is also why Freemasons were at some point characterized as drunkards, as in Hogarth's engraving Night where it is the Tyler who helps a drunken Mason to his home. Obviously, any evocation of Freemasonry, no matter how tenuous, will set of alarm bells in the would-be exegete.

Take note also of the many strange and incongruous images of fire in the engraving, as well as the general tone of panic and discord.

Hayes is an English or Scottish place name for a man who lived near a "haeg" or "heye", that is to say the enclosure around an area of forest designated for hunting. The name is said to have entered the language via Norman French and indeed, "haie" in modern French is the word for "hedge."

"Hayes" in Ireland is an Anglicized corruption of the Gaelic "Ó hAodha", or descendant of Aodh, a name meaning "fire." Aodh was the name of several early Irish saints and in pre-Christian times the name of more than a few Celtic divinities in some way associated with flames, fire or the sun.

I suppose it would be remiss not to point out that Florida is the "Sunshine State" (and the original homeland of your LoS writers!) More evocative perhaps is that the name is associated with hunting, which is what our cat-killer was doing, after all.

Weinman is a German/Ashkenazic Jewish name. It means exactly what it sounds like: "wine-man"; it is an occupational name for a viticulturalist or wine merchant. In Middle High German it was wīnman, In German: Weinmann.

This hearkens back to the original meeting places of the Freemasons and for the racist conspiracy theorist has the dubious "bonus" of in some way implicating the Jews, as some sort of barely-suppressed or even overt blood libel. This is risky territory because even though we're not promoting anything of the sort, we don't want to inadvertently provide any ammunition for anti-Semites. Don't feed the animals. Too late. They're already chunky and frothing for more.

So, on with the riffs.

In Classical mythology, Priapus was the guardian of vineyards. Ovid relates a tale where Priapus attempted to rape the sleeping nymph Lotis but was thwarted by a braying ass, which caused him to lose his erection and also woke the nymph. She fled and was eventually turned into a lotus plant by the gods, in order to save her from the pursuing Priapus. After this episode, Priapus hated asses and became happy to see them killed in his honor.

In Bulgaria, an important saint and guardian of vineyards is Trifon Zarezan. Among other anecdotes it is said that once--while pruning his plants--Trifon mocked the Virgin Mary as she passed his vineyard. She cursed him and had an accident--his new nickname became Trifon the snub-nosed!

So when we riff on tyler (guardian) with weinman (viticulture) we find at least two mythological vineyard guardians which evoke animal sacrifice and human mutilation.

Now, ABC reports--oddly precise compared to other sources--that 33 cats were killed in two towns near Miami (also known as The Magic City). Number symbolism is an omnipresent warning bell among aficionados of twilight language. Anything which has 33 in it will automatically be associated with Freemasonry because in the Scottish Rite, 33 is the ultimate degree. Now if 33 were all we had to work with, it might be less convincing. Add to it that the kid bears the name of a Masonic officer and there's a lock on it. The headline of that ABC report includes the following phrase:

Killings Had Stumped Police, Left Miami-Area Residents Frightened and Paranoid

Which is exactly the purpose for which twilight language is purported to be employed: to spread fear, confusion, paranoia. Oddly, we don't find this 33 figure in other reports.

Recall for a moment Saint Trifon. The legend says he mocked the Virgin Mary, but is it so outlandish to wonder if the mockery was in fact some kind of lewd remark or proposal? Did he make a wolf whistle? Her rebuff and the subsequent curse which caused him to cut off his nose would both be a kind of symbolic castration. Obviously though, he was reborn--the cock will rise again, after all--or he would not be venerated as a saint today in important Bulgarian fertility rituals clearly dating back to pre-Christian times.

In Classical Greece Priapus served as a protector of vineyards and was an important fertility figure. Priapus is recognized by his permanently engorged phallus. What may be less apparent is that these organs were more a source of frustration than pleasure. Indeed some tales have it that his member was made of wood, impressive but otherwise useless. Ovid's tale is one of thwarted rape and in many tales Priapus' unbounded sexual desire is met with equal doses of sexual frustration. Sounds like many guys we knew in high school.


In Sexual Personae Camille Paglia devotes a few paragraphs of her analysis of the famous Nefertiti bust to the worship of cats in ancient Egypt. She equates the cat with chthonic, womanly forces. Paglia also points out that cats were hunted and killed in the Middle Ages during periods of witch hysteria. It has long been assumed that witch hysteria in some aspects represents the struggle of the masculine Christian faith over the remnants of goddess worship. Psychologists also note that fear of witches also may be simply an expression of the fear of feminine sexual power. Tales of witchcraft invariably speak of naked orgies, copulation with the devil and flying about on poles greased with ointment.

In the following chapter of her book, Paglia equates many of the legends surrounding Greek goddesses as a fear of castration. Without being crass it may also be worth re-stating what every grade-schooler knows, that the word for a female cat--a pussy--is also slang for the vagina, a rule which also holds true in French with the word "chatte."

Paglia also explores the significance of the androgyny of the Olympiad. This was often expressed in the transvesticism of both divine beings and their worshipers. Dig if you will these comments on the alleged perpetrator's Facebook page:

-- "niggercake. you're a freaking bisexual."

-- "i think u look like a chick...u cross dressing freak from HELL!!!!!!!\"

The occult associations of cats and cat sacrifice are worthy of a book in and of itself. But perhaps the following examples might be of interest.

Robert Talen, in Voodoo in New Orleans (1994) claims that 19th-century voodoo rituals involved killing cats by dunking their heads in boiling water. The cats were then skinned and eaten and the bones divided among the celebrants. The purpose of this was to ingest the power thought to reside in the bones.

George C. Horst's Deuteroscopie (1830) describes a ritual called the Taigheirm practiced in the Scottish Highlands intended to invoke evil spirits by sacrificing cats in the cruelest of manners, including burning them alive. The last of these was held in the mid 17th-century. The ceremony is believed to have originated as a sacrifice to subterranean--that is to say chthonic--divinities. The benefits of these invocations could include second sight, fortitude and courage.

John Richard Stephens, author of The Enchanted Cat, relates that cats not only were sentenced to die in witch trials but sometimes involved in non-occult litigation.

The following passage is instructive:

"There are various aspects of the cat's close association with fire. Sometimes it guards the fire; sometimes it is transformed by the fire or burnt in the fire; at other times, as in the case of the Celtic myth of Maeldune, it is the fire....In so far as the cat was other than the fire, it was destined to be destroyed by it. It was as an incarnation of the god of the setting sun, for ultimately, the sacrifice people make is always of a god to a god. As the head and tail of the White Cat had to be burnt, in order that the maiden should regain her natural form, so the solar cat had to be sacrificed in order that it should rise again and its worshipers be reborn.

The spiritual significance of such a ceremony was so manifest, that in later times, the pagan rite of cat sacrifice had the full support of the Christian Church. At Aix, in Provence, on Corpus Christi [in 2009 it fell on June 11], the finest tom cat in the country was chosen each year and wrapped in swaddling clothes like an infant. It was then exhibited in a beautiful shrine for public adoration. People burnt incense, strewed flowers and bent low before this incarnation of the solar god. When the sun crossed the meridian, the feted cat was placed in a wicker basket and thrown alive into a huge bonfire in the city square. During the sacrifice of "the dying god," priests sang anthems and when the ceremony was complete, they marched off in solemn procession."

A few weeks ago on the blog Twilight Language, self-described "synchromystic" Loren Coleman made a post describing "an ongoing war that seems to be going in both directions." This was entitled Cat People: Enemy Action? This so-called war caught our attention due to its thematic similarity to our own series of (satirical) posts which at one point led us to write: "In the apparently escalating war between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom...."

What all this means, however, is still an open question. There is a seemingly weird series of coincidences, perhaps even synchronicity, which lead us down various avenues. Can we psycho-analyze from afar? Was Weinman simply a sexually frustrated youth? A foot soldier in this war between humanity and its feline neighbors? Is Weinman merely a modern Priapus? Permanently ready to go without a pussy in sight and, thus thwarted, primed to take out his energies on the hapless neighborhood cats which mocked him from their pampered pedestals, arrogant, maybe even inviting? In the Magic City of the Sunshine State, is there some pale echo of archaic rituals to the sun god?

Apparently, Weinman did in fact have a girlfriend. To speculate upon the sex lives of two 18-year-old kids we've never met goes beyond absurdity and risks being perverse, but in the world of twilight language, her name is suggestive.

In the ethnic crucible of Miami, it would be absurd to say what constitutes a "normal" name or not. But this girfriend, even among such a flurry of diversity, bears the strikingly evocative name of Valentina Contesse.

Valentina is a feminine is a feminine form of the Roman name Valentinus and derives from the Latin word "valens" meaning "healthy" or "strong." For the modern reader the name will of course evoke Valentine, the Saint associated with romantic love.

In the Golden Legend of St. Valentine, the hapless saint was set to be be executed for refusing to deny Christ before the Emperor Claudius. Before having his head cut off, Valentine is said to have restored sight and hearing to his jailer's daughter. Valentine's Day is mostly a 19th-century invention, but Valentine's feast day is said to have become associated with romantic love among Chaucer and his pals, who elaborated upon the Golden Legend in order to celebrate the virtues of courtly love.

In the U.S. Sat. Valentine's day is on February 14. Remember Saint Trifon? That wine man is celebrated on February 1, but many people prefer to repeat their rituals on February 14.

A Contesse is of course a "countess"--the wife of a count, a word which ultimately derives from the Latin comes meaning "companion".

The object of courtly love was more often or not a woman that could not be had, but an ideal woman. She was often an aristocratic figure, well above the station of the troubadour. In the heyday of courtly love, this might have been a source of suffering but it was a noble suffering. But in the affluent suburbs of Miami, in a culture of instant gratification and hyper-sexuality, it might just cause a young man to go off the rails.

Our post has already made an reference to Poe's Purloined Letter, but it's appropriate here to summarize the plot of The Black Cat. In this tale an alcoholic and unreliable narrator tells us that he (like friends say of Weinman) was an animal lover with many pets, among them a black cat named Pluto. Pluto is of course the Roman god of the underworld, a subterranean, chthonic force. The man and his cat are perfect pals until one night our narrator comes home drunk and, in a fit of rage over a perceived slight, gouges out one the cat's eyes with a knife. This of course ends the friendship and not long after--overwhelmed by a spirit of "perverseness"--the narrator takes the cat out and hangs it from a tree, where it dies. That night, his house is destroyed by fire.

You will recall, no doubt the passages we cited about the association of cats with fire. Paglia's discussion of the cat comes at a moment when she is discussing the aesthetic and sexual meaning of the famous bust of Nefertiti.; one point she dwells upon is that the Nefertiti bust is missing an eye.

In Poe's tale, he eventually finds another cat which resembles Pluto in every detail, even down to the missing eye. He takes the cat in but soon begins to hate the creature. One night it gets underfoot and he stumbles on the stairs. Enraged the narrator grabs an axe with which to kill the cat and his swing misses; he plants the axe in his wife's head instead.

To hide the crime he conceals his wife behind a wall in the cellar. When the police come to investigate the wife's disappearance, they are convinced nothing is amiss until at the last moment a weird cry from the cellar draws their attention to the wall. Tearing it down they find the cat atop the body of his wife.

Now, an analysis of this tale is another essay in itself. We will merely point out that the cat is quite obviously a chthonic creature carrying the name of a chthonic god, which is ultimately associated with a cleansing fire. The cat is in a sense reborn yet this time a woman is killed in its place. The cat itself brings justice from the tomb. This cat and the woman are in a sense each others' surrogate. Paglia, in addition to equating Nefertiti (one-eyed) with the cat (one-eyed), also points out that the vagina is a kind of wound. It bleeds and as she reminds us--is often referred to as a "gash."

The tale is a more elaborate narrative to illustrate a principle defined more philosophically in The Imp of the Perverse. What is the origin of the perversity that afflicts our narrator? Alcoholism is often cited, but may it not also be sexual frustration? The cat becomes the focus but ultimately it is his wife who takes the axe. Could she have be the intended target all along? Had alcoholism rendered him impotent or at least repugnant to his wife, thus accounting for his otherwise inexplicable violent rage?

Remember also the name of the alleged cat killer in the Magic City, as it evokes by poetic association frustrated sexual desire, alcohol, fire and mutilation. We could also point out that Valentine, Trifon, Poe's woman, Nefertiti and Hiram Abiff all suffered some kind of death by a head wound or at least mutilation of the face.

When the narrator of The Black Cat walls his wife up in the cellar, one cannot help but think of The Cask of Amontillado, another Poe story in which a person is walled up in a cellar. Another unreliable narrator and a story of revenge. At one point In this tale the victim gives the Masonic distress signal, which the narrator doesn't recognize. The victim then asks: "You are not of the masons?" The narrator says he is and the victim is doubtful. The narrator then removes a trowel to show he is in fact a Freemason. It is this symbol of Freemasonry he then uses to conceal his victim behind the wall.
Themes of concealment and revenge, subterranean climax and of course drunkenness link these two tales. They also link back to the associations we have derived from the name of Tyler Weinman.

Remember also The Purloined Letter, in which an object is concealed in plain sight. Is this not in fact what the subliminal character of twilight language is purported to be? Isn't it also strange that Michael Hoffman--disciple of twilight language godfather James Downard--wrote one of his first books on Masonic Assassination (1978)--in which he purports to demonstrate that Poe was in fact killed by Freemasons?

What this post is not.

It is certainly not meant to be an endorsement of Weinman's guilt. The court of public opinion is a savage beast whose aggressiveness is matched only by its' ignorance. We have nothing but fairly scanty newspaper reports to go on and well, 'nuff said.

Questions of guilt and innocence aside, we don't think this is an alchemical psychodrama staged by the so-called cryptocracy. We're pretty much agnostic about the whole notion of a cryptocracy for that matter. Certainly there is at least one conspiracy floating around out there, attempting to manipulate people and events in pursuit of the obvious things: money and power. Maybe they do employ disinformation and twilight language. Maybe they just buy newspapers and television stations. One thing is for certain is that the stoking of and subsequent exploitation of peoples' fear is a time-honored way to assert authority, get laws passed, cause people to accept things they might never accept were the world a bit less menacing....

It also shouldn't be taken as an insult.

What it is.

We have already hinted that our take on "synchromysticism" is a poetic one. We're not even going to stick a toe into the epistemological minefield of determining what is "true." There are facts and there is interpretation. And for this interpretation we have chosen an associationalist methodology to explore indubitably weird stuff.

Do we believe in what we've written? Yes. And no.

Full disclosure: The author of this article is a Freemason, a modern drunkard, a sex-fiend and lives with a cat. A black one.

This article was pretty much complete a few days ago, but the most recent news focuses on potential accomplices. We'll go out on a limb and wager that a total of three ruffians are in on this....

[added July 20]

Check out the affidavit in support of Weinman's arrest warrant here.